Tom Nichols: The GOP Needs a Fake Joe Biden

[0] Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast.

[1] I'm your host, Tim Miller.

[2] We're here with a fan favorite, Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College.

[3] He's now a staff writer at the Atlantic and author of The Atlantic Daily newsletter.

[4] That's a lot of writing.

[5] His books include The Death of Expertise, which has an updated and expanded edition.

[6] Lots of fodder for that coming in April.

[7] We're going to get our grump on.

[8] Tom, thank you for doing it.

[9] Hey, Tim.

[10] Good to be back with you.

[11] How are you?

[12] Well, I'm filled with like hellfire rage right now.

[13] And I spent most of yesterday afternoon.

[14] doing something that I've kind of retired from, which was just like quote tweeting just ruthless Twitter bombs on the pathetic quizlings that have decided to get in line with Trump now that he's officially the nominee.

[15] And I just kind of want to get out some of that rage with you today, if that's okay.

[16] I think it feels therapeutic.

[17] Rage is kind of my default setting, especially these days.

[18] And I was I was right there with you.

[19] So I know exactly how you feel.

[20] Well, we've got a long list.

[21] We've got Mitch.

[22] We've got Mike Johnson.

[23] We've got the anti -ante conservative writer class.

[24] Maybe Mitch again, maybe Katie Porter, we'll see.

[25] But first, I want to introduce you to my new friend.

[26] His name's Eric Levine.

[27] Do you happen to see him on the tube yesterday?

[28] This guy is a Nikki Haley.

[29] He's a Nikki Haley donor.

[30] And I was blindsided by a panel with him on MSNBC yesterday.

[31] I was pretty mean to him.

[32] People can find that on the internet if they want.

[33] But rather than play a highlight reel of myself, I wanted to just kind of really get your dander up and make you listen to the arguments that he was making.

[34] Remember, this is a, this is one of the normal Republicans.

[35] This is a Nikki Haley donor trying to determine what he's going to do in the general election.

[36] Let's play it.

[37] So I'm from the Reagan wing of the party.

[38] So one thing that's not going to happen is I'm not going to support Joe Biden.

[39] The world is on fire, the catastrophic surrender from Afghanistan, the unforgivable appeasement of Iran, the separating the United States from supporting Israel.

[40] These are, these are horrible things.

[41] There's spike and explosion of anti -Semitism on the left.

[42] As an American Jew, I can't possibly vote Democrat.

[43] So Donald Trump pull out of NATO, support Putin.

[44] Charlottesville.

[45] Well, Charlottesville, if you play the entire clip, and this is terrible, we always put us in the context of having to support and defend Donald Trump.

[46] If you play the entire clip of Charlottesville and not excerpt it, Donald Trump was clearly talking about people who wanted to take down the statues.

[47] not so let's not get sidetracked to that joe biden also called me a semi -fascist whatever that is and he also accused georgia of jim crow too when they passed their election laws so let's not pretend joe biden is some nice guy he's not we have attempted a coup so there's they've got that he's got that going for him well nobody's charged the capital waiting well hold on a second where does the vote go okay but first what was the russia hoax that was an attempt oh man okay where does the vote Okay, that's enough.

[48] Roll as the Russia host.

[49] That was a coup.

[50] So this is, these are the people we need to win over, Tom.

[51] I don't know.

[52] How does that make you feel?

[53] Yeah, well, you know, Donald Trump need, you know, as Nikki Haley so wisely told us, Donald Trump needs to, you know, win them over and other people outside the party.

[54] Because, you know, he's an unknown quantity.

[55] I mean, this Donald Trump guy, he just burst on the scene here in 2024.

[56] And we're still kind of getting our reading on the guy.

[57] He's got to introduce himself to the American people.

[58] I mean, this is all just, I mean, leave aside any partisan preference you might have.

[59] For anyone to talk this way about Donald Trump and Joe Biden, it's hallucinatory.

[60] It's as if nothing happened.

[61] You know, I keep saying it's like the guy in Memento who keeps, who wakes up every morning and doesn't have any new memories and he has to start all over again, you know?

[62] Maybe we could write a note next to Nikki Haley's bed with just kind of a list of a couple things Trump has done.

[63] Don't trust this person.

[64] right right little polaroids little little tattoos Mitch McConnell is not your friend you know this is a movie script that would write itself the earned the vote thing I'm glad that upset you as much as I did like what are you talking about Donald Trump could earn their vote and like this guy being like I've counted out Joe Biden not considering him but Donald Trump can win me back it's like Donald Trump's not changing Donald Trump is Donald Trump he's been the same for 60 years yeah what the minute she said that I said what does that look like he's going to step forward and say, I'm sorry, I've been a horrible person my whole life, and I didn't mean to do a coup, and I'm sorry about my, you know, many offenses again against the, I mean, that's just, you know, sort of a boilerplate speech writing 101, you know, again, as if it's a normal election.

[65] But I think what you're hearing and that whole clip from Mr. Levine is we know that once again, the, SSGOP has struck the Trump iceberg.

[66] There is now a desperate attempt underway.

[67] And, you know, you and I have both been seeing it among our former friends on the right, you know, of saying, well, Joe Biden is so terrible that the Republican part, forget about Trump.

[68] We know he has problems.

[69] But the Republican Party is the only vessel of salvation against this communist, anti -Semite, antifa -loving, I don't know, you know, Iranian coddling, whatever.

[70] First of all, they're all saying, I mean, I don't think it's coordinated, but it's obviously the same piece of sheet music of Save the Party at all costs.

[71] Save the Party, Save the Party, Save the Party, Save the Party.

[72] And to do that, you have to depict Joe Biden, you know, who's about the most ordinary American politician.

[73] I mean, it's like, again, we need to define Joe Biden because, you know, no one's seen the guy for 50 years.

[74] He's a brand new, you know, like all this stuff is said as if Joe Biden didn't exist 45 years ago.

[75] It's a name.

[76] Well, and this is why you got to bring in the other people.

[77] I mean, so you have to kind of create a fake Joe Biden, right?

[78] And then, you know, when we're off air, this guy, Levine continues to shout at me. And he's like, well, it's the Hamas kids on campus.

[79] It's the pro Hamas kids on campus.

[80] He's like, they're Joe Biden voters.

[81] And I'm like, I'm a Joe Biden voter.

[82] I'm not a pro Hamas.

[83] What are you talking about?

[84] Joe Biden?

[85] has resisted these people.

[86] I thought that the talking point up until like two minutes ago was that Joe Biden was a Trojan horse and he was senile and the far left was going to control him.

[87] It's like if that's the case, why wasn't Joe Biden out there chanting from the river to the sea, you know, with the pro amount?

[88] Like he's resisted that angle.

[89] Well, and also, I'm sorry, you're worried about the Hamas kids on campus.

[90] Can we talk about the new nominee for governor of North Carolina?

[91] Or the guy that had lunch with Donald Trump, Nick Fuente, he was like, the neo -Nazi and Kanye, like after his anti -Jew rant, had lunch with Trump?

[92] Is Joe Biden inviting the students for Palestine to the White House?

[93] I haven't seen that.

[94] I mean, it's an easy call, and I wrote about it myself, about campus anti -Semitism, which I think is, you know, exists, and it's insane.

[95] And concerning.

[96] And it's a whole weird thing unto itself.

[97] But I don't think people are having to post armed guards outside of synagogues because of college kids.

[98] there are bad people who are anti -Semites who want to do terrible things and somehow saying, well, this all's, you know, sort of Joe Biden is the sudden fountainhead of all this anti -Semitism.

[99] Again, it's the rationalizations piling up.

[100] Oh, my God, Donald Trump is the nominee.

[101] How do I avoid the moral stain of Donald Trump being the nominee?

[102] And so now I have to develop all these alternative narratives about how, you know, Joe Biden is the leader of a violent cult.

[103] You know, it's interesting when you, Tim, when you said about Levine continuing to yell at you and, you know, Joe Biden directing the Hamas kids and all of that.

[104] He also told me it was my fault offstage.

[105] It was like we're forcing him to go for Trump by, you know, being condescending, et cetera.

[106] We're up to our hips in that already.

[107] Look what you made me do.

[108] Yeah, right.

[109] It's interesting that people now on the right, because their movement is completely in the thrall to one man. They can't imagine any other movement that isn't.

[110] Right.

[111] They look at, you know, what's happening in the Democratic Party.

[112] They look at people like, you know, I don't know, the former squad or Omar or the campus kids or whatever.

[113] And they say, well, our party is completely directed from the center, you know, by one unhinged, terrible human being.

[114] There's must be too.

[115] Or at least I have to depict it that way so that I can escape, again, this kind of dreadful moral stain.

[116] Eric Erickson wrote this.

[117] So you have, you know, Dan McLaughlin, National Review.

[118] writes, in short, do you help Trump destroy the party, or do you help Biden destroy the country?

[119] I guess that's another question we can get to, whether the country's destroyed be of Eric Erickson, saying, remember all the people outraged by GOP selecting Trump are siding with the party that went all in with BLM, excuse riots and vandalism, dismisses shoplifting crimes, claims violence doesn't apply to property damage and is now muted in response to left -wing anti -Semitism, spare me your lectures.

[120] Wow.

[121] Again, it's like, did Joe Biden do any of that?

[122] Well, Joe Biden clearly directed giant shopliftings in San Francisco.

[123] And it's like, the election is not between the people stealing from Walgreens on Market Street in San Francisco and Donald Trump.

[124] That's not who the election is between.

[125] It's between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

[126] But you have to make it between those two to create a moral equivalence.

[127] Exactly.

[128] Because again, imagine the agony of these folks, you know, 2016, 2020, and not 2024, that, you know, you're basically just scrubbing and scrubbing again to get that moral stain off of you, and the way you do it now is to say, everybody is so awful.

[129] And Joe Biden is the leader of an anti, I mean, if you get talking with, you know, guys like Eric Senator McLaughlin and it becomes, you know, well, the Democrats are enemies of the Constitution as well.

[130] Well, okay, I've had my share of gripes about Democrats and congressional and presidential overreach, but I haven't seen any coups lately.

[131] It's like, well, on the one side, we have a guy who instigated the violent overthrow of the constitutional order, and on the other side, we have some very bad public policy that's resulted in some shoplifting and homelessness and some college kids, you know, being all bitched out about the Middle East.

[132] Those are not comparable, but they have to me. I wanted to get to one other thing before we lose it when you started saying, is the country really on the brink of disaster?

[133] I wrote yesterday or two days ago, see i'm old i'm losing track of my days uh sometime in the past i texted my husband yesterday did you forget to take our daughter to school of rock and he was like that was two days ago exactly it's like the old stephen right joke so just the other day no wait it was three years ago uh so i wrote that if you would strip biden's name off of the current three -year record of an incumbent president and handed it to any voter that's a formidable record for a candidate of either party.

[134] You know, just as a political scientist, I will say that, rather, as a scholar of politics, rather than as a, you know, an opinion guy.

[135] There is no way around it.

[136] That if you took all of these things, took all of the economic data, took where we are in foreign policy, you would say, not perfect, you know, okay, fine, but a pretty solid first term.

[137] I said probably one of the most consequential and successful first term since Reagan.

[138] And yet somehow, this has turned into, you know, these guys are all like, you know, Madam Defarge with, you know, the blood running in the streets of Paris.

[139] And it's, it's nonsense.

[140] But I think it shows you how desperate they are to get out from under what just happened on Tuesday.

[141] I just kind of wonder, like, how do these people get through a day?

[142] I wondered that.

[143] Yeah, I thought that same thing.

[144] There are bad choices in life all the time, right?

[145] Where you're like, oh, what do I do?

[146] Like, okay, there's bad traffic.

[147] All right.

[148] Like, do I go sit in traffic or do I wait in the office for an extra hour.

[149] Both choices I have complaints about.

[150] But like, you have to pick one.

[151] You know what I mean?

[152] Like, I'm hungry.

[153] I didn't, I forgot to go grocery shopping.

[154] Like, should I, should I order food?

[155] Thanks, Biden.

[156] Like, how do these people fucking go through that?

[157] Yeah, sure.

[158] I, fine.

[159] I have complaints with Biden.

[160] No president is going to be perfect.

[161] I didn't like the Afghanistanist withdrawal either.

[162] You can't look at two options and say, I think Biden's been frankly fine.

[163] But even if you think Biden has been bad, even if you would grade him as D, How many times in life do you have to make choices like this where you look at two options and one of them is an F, one of them is potentially catastrophic for you and the other one's like not that great.

[164] Like that happens every week for people.

[165] But having this argument since 2016, it's like, well, the Democrats will put in some policies I don't like.

[166] Yes, I agree.

[167] They're going to put in some bad policies.

[168] I wrote about this back in 2016.

[169] I said the Democrats are going to do things.

[170] They're going to make my head explode and they're going to piss me off.

[171] And there's a whole bunch of stuff that I don't like.

[172] On the other hand, the Constitution.

[173] I mean, it is gaslighting about, well, the Democrats are, you know, dangers of the Constitution and Joe Biden runs Antifa.

[174] How do you write something like that?

[175] And then, you know, at the end of the day, you kind of lay in there and say, did I say that knowing full well, how completely bananas that is?

[176] I mean, look, you and I were Republicans.

[177] We know that party loyalty is the totem.

[178] at the center of the Republican Party, and I think that's what's killing it now.

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[189] Well, that's a nice transition into another clip I wanted to play you.

[190] Speaking of party loyalty being at the totem, here's a minority leader, Mitch McCorm.

[191] Connell, yesterday?

[192] Can we listen to Mitch?

[193] How do you reconcile your Trump endorsement with the fact that you called him practically and morally responsible for January 6th and the fact that he insulted you and your wife repeatedly?

[194] On February the 25th, 2021, shortly after the attack on the Capitol, I was asked a similar question.

[195] And I said, I would support the nominee for president, even if, it were the former president.

[196] Mr. McConnell, in April of last year, you indicated didn't really directly answer the question as to whether or not you were comfortable with Mr. Trump.

[197] If he was in the middle of criminal trials and indictments, he was the nominee.

[198] I presume that means you're comfortable with him.

[199] I don't have anything to add to what I just said.

[200] I said in February of 2021, shortly after the attack on the Capitol.

[201] Okay.

[202] That's it.

[203] The ultimate team, player, the ultimate team player, calls your wife Coco Chow, making a racist Asian attack on his wife and is responsible for an attack on the Capitol.

[204] And yet he looks at it as just like, well, what am I going to do?

[205] Can you explain this one to me?

[206] Because I got to tell you, like some of these other people, Marco, I don't defend them.

[207] I don't excuse it, but I get it.

[208] They have future.

[209] Who knows what the future holds.

[210] Mitch McConnell is an old man who like stroked out earlier this year.

[211] he's retiring.

[212] He's not going to lobby.

[213] It's not like he's going to K Street.

[214] Like, what is, why?

[215] Why not just say it?

[216] Why not just say, you know what?

[217] I've known Joe Biden for 50 years.

[218] We've disagreed on a lot of things, but nobody's going to storm the Capitol and he's never going to make fun of my wife.

[219] So I'm going to be with Joe Biden.

[220] Why not do that?

[221] How hard is that?

[222] I don't know.

[223] I don't know.

[224] You know, there was that moment during an interview where Lindsay Graham blurted out that Joe Biden's one of the nicest guys on God's green earth, you know.

[225] and that he's known him for years, and of course, you know, immediately had to, but when I said that, I meant, you know, one of the most horrible, you know, leprous, you know, first of all, with the other guys, you talk about their future, you know, Marco Rubio's future and Nikki Haley's future, that future, they cannot envision just going back to being something else.

[226] I think that's just part of it.

[227] With Mitch, I don't even know.

[228] I mean, that's, there's just a, remember in Shawshank, the Shawshank Redemption, where Brooks, the guy with the bird, James Whitmore, he's the old guy and he, he's an institution man, he says, you know, that he doesn't even, what doesn't even know how to live on the outside of the institution.

[229] Okay.

[230] And a lot of these guys are like Brooks.

[231] That was the character.

[232] They're like Brooks.

[233] They can't function, you know, outside of the institution.

[234] They've been in it so long.

[235] And I think that's, you know, in part, come to love being at Shawshank.

[236] You know, they want to go back.

[237] Every time I see somebody like McConnell, I think of, you know, poor old James Whitmore saying, you know, on the outside saying, I don't like it here, you know, I want to go back.

[238] I think it could be worse than that.

[239] I think that there are people around him that want to be involved more and are advised pushing him this because here's a thing, Mitch McConnell doesn't talk to me. But I wonder if one person could get to Mitch McConnell.

[240] It's too late now, but could have in the last three years and said, you know what, Mitch, you're an institutionalist.

[241] If you had held the line beginning in January 2021 and said, nope, I need to protect this institution.

[242] They've shit on the capital.

[243] They stormed the capital.

[244] They stormed my office.

[245] I need to defend this.

[246] The institution of the Senate is more important to me. That's why I went to the mattresses on the filibuster.

[247] And guess what?

[248] I will not waver on this one.

[249] I will not.

[250] And they kicked him out.

[251] They might rename one of those buildings after him.

[252] Right.

[253] That's the thing that you get a building named after you for.

[254] You still get to hang out.

[255] He still gets to hang out.

[256] Joe Biden to have him over to the White House.

[257] According to Evan Osnows, Joe Biden calls him.

[258] He'd be in perfect situation.

[259] He would have gotten his Supreme Court and he would be alleged.

[260] Why not do that?

[261] Yeah, except that the culture of the Senate, where other guys are coming to him and saying, Mitch, we can't convict Donald Trump.

[262] I have to go home to, you know, my cherry red state.

[263] And I'm getting threatening phone calls.

[264] guys like McConnell and Collins, they love the institution of the Senate.

[265] But part of that institutional love is that you protect the guys in the club.

[266] They were in danger, though.

[267] I'm physical danger.

[268] Yeah, they were in danger.

[269] But you know what?

[270] They feel safer living in Washington than they do among their own constituents.

[271] And they'd rather be senators.

[272] That's true.

[273] I mean, at least the fanic.

[274] Do you think at least the fanic doesn't know that the things she's saying are completely bonkers?

[275] Of course she does.

[276] Of course she does.

[277] Ted Cruz.

[278] Rubio, they all know.

[279] Yeah, but they didn't have any hope for the statue.

[280] Mitch was on the cusp of having a statue and the people...

[281] I think that's a misunderstanding of McConnell.

[282] I think his day.

[283] He's like, if you had said to Mitch, there won't be no statues, but you can serve as the majority leader until the day you die.

[284] He'd have said, so...

[285] These guys are so weak.

[286] It's the one thing that Trump is right about and is so pliable.

[287] Like, Mitch has this reputation is he's this hard ass, you know?

[288] And all of his little advisors that are around them, they have another podcast that call it ruthless.

[289] We're ruthless.

[290] Mitch McConnell is tough.

[291] And it's like some fucking two -bit reality show host and real estate guy starts calling his wife names.

[292] And like, we'll see how tough he is.

[293] He's out just out there standing in front of the press.

[294] Well, I just got to do what I got to do.

[295] You know, that's not ruthless.

[296] That's not ruthless.

[297] That's weak.

[298] You know, you bring up staff and I wonder, I wonder if that's a part of it too.

[299] The same reason that when there were people saying, you know, hey, McConnell's clearly, you know, doing that freeze thing.

[300] you know, I mean, I was a staffer to a state level and a federal level politician.

[301] And, you know, you only exist as, you know, the samurai for your lord.

[302] You know, once your guy is gone, you're back on the street.

[303] So maybe some of this is just being driven by staff saying, I need to live in Republican world after you're gone, boss.

[304] You know, I just live in a fantasy world where someday I just wish that, you know, when they're putting in the new pool at their house, they're thinking like, you know, what paid for this pool, the fact that I let Donald Trump just demean Elaine Chow.

[305] That's what paid for this pool.

[306] I would like to read to you a quote from Mickey Stout, age 80 in Richmond.

[307] She was a Nikki Haley voter.

[308] Did you see her?

[309] Oh, I know where this is going.

[310] I want to get to Mike John.

[311] I want to get to actual policy next, but I want to do one more on this.

[312] I think Trump is so irrational and really very frightening.

[313] I think that if he allowed this January 6th thing to take place, he could try to take over the next time if he doesn't win this one.

[314] I just think he's dishonest and I don't want that.

[315] But I think Biden is two voice trails off.

[316] Well, I definitely won't vote for Biden.

[317] I will have to vote for Trump.

[318] Mickey Stout.

[319] Two -time Trump voter, Rich in Virginia.

[320] Lucky Virginia is not a swing state.

[321] Mickey doesn't want to be in the club.

[322] Mickey is a nice old lady and a little red sweater here with an American flag.

[323] kind of, what do you call it, a kerchief?

[324] It is an immense triumph of messaging from Fox and from the right -wing media ecosystem that has made old people deathly afraid of a politician that has been part of their life for a half century.

[325] I mean, it is a remarkable kind of ability to bring people to a very clear state of knowledge that, say Donald Trump's very dangerous, he's dishonest, if he tries to get in.

[326] He'll do another January 6th.

[327] She literally says this and then says, but I'll have to vote for him again.

[328] And I've had these conversations with people where I say, what is it that's going on that you think, well, crime's out of control?

[329] Well, no, it isn't.

[330] Well, the border's out of control.

[331] Yeah, it is.

[332] And, you know, everybody agrees that that, of course, Trump trashed a bipartisan.

[333] But okay, the world's on fire.

[334] Yes.

[335] And who's been holding that together, you know, and you kind of walk them through it.

[336] And you eventually get to the point, and this has happened to me in discussions people were to say, well, I just don't think that's true.

[337] This is maybe your space, more respect for elders, but I feel like maybe we lost the deceased generation of folks like lived through the Spanish flu and the Great Depression and stuff, maybe losing that.

[338] Maybe there's like not a sense of how bad things could be, right?

[339] So like Fox has convinced these people that things are horrible, that everything's out of control and they don't have like a reference point to go back to and be like, well, are they that out of control?

[340] I mean, I remember when things were really out of control.

[341] I don't know.

[342] You know, I'm old enough to remember that as well.

[343] And it kind of blows my mind because if you're 80 today, you were, let's say a form, let's say, you know, as you were going into the last of your working years, you know, starting around 50 or 55, that was the 90s.

[344] And I think the problem is that your 30 -year horizon has largely been.

[345] And I wrote about this in my last book, ding, ding, ding, book plug.

[346] But in our own worst enemy, I said, you know, this has been such a long stretch of peace and prosperity and rapidly achieving living standards that it's easy to convince people that things are terrible just by showing them stuff constantly.

[347] I was watching the news last night.

[348] I'm not being cute about which network.

[349] I genuinely don't remember which network.

[350] But it was a report about crime and why crime is down.

[351] And yet the two hooks in the story were National Guard of the New York Subways and shooting in Philadelphia.

[352] So the message you took away from this news story was that it's escaped from New York.

[353] I mean, it's, you know, Snake Pliskin is roaming the streets, even though the verbal, the narrative top line was crime is actually down.

[354] And I think people just don't have any memory of the 60s or the 70s anymore.

[355] and I don't know what to do about that.

[356] Yeah, me neither.

[357] Okay, this is going to be my main theme of the year.

[358] I know that people don't like to hear it, but like things are okay.

[359] Like, things are okay.

[360] Things can get worse, tail risk.

[361] I want to end with the thing on tail risk.

[362] But before that, we got to get back to Mike Johnson.

[363] I was against to defund the police program.

[364] How about you?

[365] That was a bad idea you thought.

[366] I assume we agreed on that.

[367] I was against it until Joe Biden told us we all had to be in favor of it.

[368] Oh, did Joe Biden?

[369] Weren't you at the Antifa meeting?

[370] You know, that's the thing, Tim.

[371] You never come to meeting.

[372] But, no, of course I was, my brother and my father were both cops to fund the police.

[373] I was one of the people like you standing on the side saying, please stop saying this idiotic thing.

[374] So let's hear Mike Johnson.

[375] Let's see what Mike Johnson has is bragging about this week.

[376] Can we play that clip?

[377] We also advanced, as you've seen the summary, cuts to some of the agencies that we believe are really overreaching and have been turned in some ways against the American people.

[378] We're going to cut 3 % from DOJ, 7 % from the ATF, 6 % from the FBI, and 10 % from the EPA.

[379] And that's just a start.

[380] We have a lot more priorities and things that we need to advance.

[381] DOJ, ATF, and FBI.

[382] What do they do?

[383] What do those agencies do, Tom?

[384] What are we defunding there?

[385] Tim, come on.

[386] They oppress the rights of ordinary citizens.

[387] That is the same thing that the left said about local cops.

[388] They oppress the rights of ordinary citizens.

[389] Well, and also, it's where, again, if you're of a certain age, it's what the left said about the FBI.

[390] You know, I was a teenager in the 1970s and then, you know, I became a voting age.

[391] I turned 20 in 1980.

[392] And I feel like this is deja vu, you know, that the far right has now become where the far left was of, you know, the FBI is dangerous, ATF is there to just, you know, hassle people.

[393] The DOJ is a nest of agent Smiths that are out to, you know, destroy.

[394] I mean, it's nuts.

[395] But again, in a time when you can't find really defining differences between the parties about the immigration is probably the closest you get to it.

[396] But it's not 1968, where you really are making a hard decision about law and order or, you know, riots in the cities literally burning, you know.

[397] And I don't mean small towns where there's a riot.

[398] I mean like Los Angeles, Newark, Detroit, in flames, you know.

[399] If you don't have those dark choices, you make them up.

[400] I'm waiting for Mike Johnson.

[401] This is going to be a deep cut from the Cold War.

[402] I'm waiting for Mike Johnson to say he's finally going to put an end to Cointel Pro or something, you know, and go the full Chomsky.

[403] But seriously, I mean, we are.

[404] We're pro Russia.

[405] Russian grocery stores are great.

[406] The Republicans, that's what they're saying.

[407] The Tucker is out there.

[408] The things are great in Russia.

[409] We're cutting for the place.

[410] Maybe Biden needs to do better at this.

[411] Maybe it's just too counterintuitive to get in people's heads.

[412] But as a literal matter, the Democrats are fighting the Russians.

[413] The Democrats are not, maybe not at the prosecutory level, but at the federal level are increasing funding for law enforcement.

[414] And the Republicans are on the side of Russia and on the side of defunding the police.

[415] That is just a fact.

[416] That's just a fact of what's happening right now.

[417] They're killing me, Smalls, because, you know, again, being a cold warrior, I'm going to go all mow green.

[418] I made my bones during the Cold War, you know.

[419] But during the Cold War, I was.

[420] one of those happy warriors saying, you know, you weak need pro -Russia, Kremlin fearing, democratic, liberal, NATO hating, anti -defense.

[421] Those of us that were young Reagan voters, that was the kind of argument we had.

[422] Now I watch Tucker, I was thinking of this when he was doing his supermarket thing, he's like an SNL parody of the most left -wing PBS documentary from like 1981.

[423] You know, it's like Ronald Reagan says they're terrible.

[424] But here in a Soviet grocery store, the borscht is flowing, you know.

[425] I can't even believe what I'm watching and living in the world I live in where the Democrats are, you know, planting the flag for NATO.

[426] They're sending weapons to a country under Russian.

[427] I mean, basically the Democrats are doing a modern version of the Reagan doctrine.

[428] And the people who hate it the most claim to be, you know, Reagan Republicans.

[429] Speaking of which, so we have the State of the Union tonight, we'll be talking about that all day tomorrow.

[430] but is there anything like what do you have any advice oh for the state of the union yeah don't forget you we're going to talk about katie porter too oh we're going to get there we got i've got state of the union i got katie porter and i've got one last thing for you i'm not done being triggered okay here's what i think's going to happen on the state of the union joe biden is going to come in people are going to shake his hand the republicans are going to sit there and glower Biden is going to stumble over a few words he's going to read a little too fast and he's going to have a couple of moments that people are going to say, boy, he sounds old, and the substance will be lost.

[431] I'll write the headline now.

[432] There will be somebody who says, did the state of the union laid arrest concerns about Biden's age?

[433] Yeah, I know.

[434] I know you can't do this.

[435] It'll be interesting.

[436] We'll be going deeper on this tomorrow.

[437] So I don't want to belabor the point.

[438] But I sort of just wish he could go in there and just pick two things and just like, we're just going to talk about two things right now.

[439] Like, we're going to talk about the Democratic threat and we're going to talk about how I've put a proposal on the table to fund Ukraine, to stand with our allies and to secure the border, will the Republicans do it?

[440] This is it.

[441] You got to do it.

[442] We got to put pressure on.

[443] And that would kind of force everybody, because I do think he's going to talk about those things.

[444] And I think that he's on the right side of those things.

[445] But it's like, how do you focus the conversation around it for the people that aren't watching it, you know?

[446] I would love to have them walk in.

[447] Again, as you say, instead of a big, I hate these state of the union addresses where, you know, they're this big smorgas board of laundry lit, yeah, big, you know, aspirational wish list of things that I wish I could do to say, look, this is a very dark time for democracy around the world and even here in the United States.

[448] Here are the two things that I really want done.

[449] I want to get this bipartisan border deal done.

[450] I want to fund the budget and I want to help our friends overseas defend their freedom.

[451] And the Republicans are against all of those things.

[452] And the Republicans are against all of them and I want to turn to my Republican friends in the chamber.

[453] And many of you are my friends.

[454] And you know you are.

[455] We've known each other for a long time.

[456] But your nominee is now telling you to do dangerous things.

[457] And I'm asking you to be legislators to work with me. Whatever happens in 2025, that'll happen when it happens.

[458] But until then, we have work to do.

[459] And the leader of your party, you know, shouldn't be controlling this from outside the building.

[460] Man up.

[461] And that's just not going to happen, unfortunately.

[462] I agree.

[463] I hope we got some of that at least amidst the laundry list.

[464] Okay.

[465] I got two -minute hate on Katie Porter and then one more serious topic for you and then, you know, people can enjoy their Thursday.

[466] Katie Porter, for people who missed it, she got absolutely trounced by Adam Schiff in the California Senate race.

[467] I think it's kind of understood about the way that Schiff, again, going back to Eric Levine, about how the Democrats are abandoning Israel.

[468] Schiff took a middle of the road approach on the Israel question, whereas kind of Katie Porter, you know, lashed out and kind of took more of the lefty approach on that.

[469] Katie Porter loses substantially.

[470] Border plus Barbara Lee.

[471] So the progressive, if you will, vote share in this California Senate.

[472] First round runoff did not even come.

[473] I think together they were 21 and Schiff is like 36.

[474] So it's not even close.

[475] Like the race isn't even close.

[476] Anyway, her statement, thank you to everyone who supported our campaign and voted to shake up the status quo in Washington.

[477] Because of you, we had the establishment running scared, I guess, with standing three to one in TV spending and an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this.

[478] election.

[479] Rig is what she said.

[480] Then this morning, she tried to correct herself by saying that by rigged, she meant manipulated by dishonest means.

[481] I don't think that helps.

[482] Oh, that's better.

[483] Yeah.

[484] I didn't mean cheat.

[485] I meant not follow the rules and, you know, look, I don't want it to be a two minutes hate on Katie Porter, but I hope Katie Porter now understands it.

[486] You know, when you say things like rig, when somebody's been running for the past five years saying all elections are basically rigged except the ones I win, you know, you're not helping.

[487] You know, you got outspent three to one.

[488] Well, welcome to the real world of politics where, you know, sometimes you get outspent.

[489] I hope people understand that getting outspent does not mean that you always lose.

[490] Hillary Clinton outspent Donald Trump.

[491] That did not go well for her.

[492] So did a jab, by the way.

[493] I was on that one.

[494] So did Ron DeSantis.

[495] Yeah.

[496] Yeah.

[497] Oh, Ron DeSantis is, I mean, that's a that's a bonfire.

[498] That's a joker lighting the pallet of money on fire moment that is going to be tough to equal anywhere in modern American politics.

[499] I wrote about this this morning in the morning shots newsletter.

[500] This happened in these house races where you had Ken Griffin and these big money donors on the right that came in in these deep red districts and tried to support like kind of pretend MAGA candidates against real MAGA candidates, right?

[501] They all got swamped because the Republican voters wanted the MAGA freak shows.

[502] They wanted Dinesh D'Souza's son -in -law, who's like an election truther, like, that's what they wanted.

[503] And so money helps, but especially in these high -profile races, if California voters wanted what Katie Border was selling, then she wouldn't have gotten 14%.

[504] Part of the problem with the progressive wing in the Democratic Party is they really have not, and this, I think, does undermine a lot of what Joe Biden's been trying to do in the campaign.

[505] But I think a lot of people in the progressive wing of the party just haven't internalized what a minority of the country they are.

[506] in the same way that the MAGA folks who are always like, we're the silent majority, we're the real Americans.

[507] The MAGA movement is actually a pretty limited minority of people.

[508] They just have outsized influence because of the structure and culture of the Republican Party and because of primaries.

[509] There's nothing wrong with Katie Porter.

[510] She, you know, I watch her in Congress, hardworking member of Congress, you know, don't agree with her on a lot of stuff.

[511] But when you lose by 20 points, you shouldn't be thrown around where it's like rigged.

[512] That's horseshoe politics.

[513] That's where the far right and the far right.

[514] left touch that, you know, all elections are rigged.

[515] And so while not two minutes, hey, let's have a two minutes of, come on, Katie, that was not the right thing to say.

[516] That's a good correction.

[517] Thank you.

[518] Two minutes of come on, Katie, please.

[519] Let's stop with the rigged.

[520] Okay, final topic.

[521] Again, I also don't want this to be a hate because I got nothing of respect for my friend, Joan Goldberg, the people at the dispatch.

[522] We had Jamie Weinstein on this podcast.

[523] If you missed it, I thought it was a really good conversation.

[524] We explored some of our differences.

[525] But this newsletter yesterday, I wanted to get your take on.

[526] Basically says, let me skip ahead.

[527] Five years from now, America will be okay.

[528] You'll probably be okay.

[529] And if you're not okay, it will in all likelihood have nothing to do with who is elected president in 2024.

[530] There's a part of me that agrees with that.

[531] I'm not a doomer.

[532] I think that probably we could survive another Trump term.

[533] We survived one.

[534] I think that there is a epidemic right now of people that are just not willing to just accept tail risk and understand the elements of tail risk.

[535] And I look at this and say, I read that and I was like, you know, I guess one part of me says, okay, I hear what you're trying to say.

[536] The other part of me says, even if there's only a 5 % chance that Donald Trump gets in power and then uses violence to stay in power, or literally rigs, you know, the system to stay in power, if there's even a 5 % chance of that, that's insanely too high.

[537] A one, like, since World War II, we've never had a percent chance for one of the major candidates might literally end democracy.

[538] And so this is where I get frustrated with kind of that attitude, which is a more, which is more mainstream, which I respect more than like the Eric Erickson stuff we were talking about at the top.

[539] But I just, I still think it's a fundamentally flawed logic.

[540] There's a couple of things going on.

[541] One is a normalcy bias.

[542] Normalcy bias is the idea that nothing could really change that much.

[543] It's the same shock when you have a life trauma, right?

[544] One day you're living your life and then suddenly you're hit by a car and you're crippled or you have a cancer diagnosis or you go broke or you lose your job or something.

[545] It's just unimaginable until the point that it's actually happening.

[546] There's an old joke, the comedian who says, hey, I like to live every day like it's my last.

[547] Wake up, call my lawyer, write the will.

[548] Call the funeral home, buy a coffin.

[549] Nobody lives that way.

[550] The problem with the normalcy bias is that there's an element of truth in it.

[551] I mean, look, I live in New England.

[552] for all the talk about how, you know, wild -eyed lefties, you know, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, I mean, I live in one of the most Catholic states in the Union.

[553] I mean, we are a strange combination of, you know, progressivism and old school Catholic machine politics.

[554] You know, it's my life will not change that much.

[555] But if Donald Trump becomes president and uses force and changes the DOJ, life's going to change a lot, especially for women, for people of color, for LGBT immigrants, immigrants, and in places not like Massachusetts, but in Alabama and in Wyoming and in potentially, you know, Texas or other places, the country won't fall.

[556] And if it's a blowout, maybe Massachusetts, by the way, I mean, this is always my thing on the filibuster.

[557] Republicans could win a trifecta this year.

[558] It's not impossible.

[559] Like, it's not impossible.

[560] It's not impossible at all.

[561] And they could kill the filibuster.

[562] And they could make federal laws that do apply to blue states.

[563] But this is a great thing about going back to our, you know, previous Republican days.

[564] Isn't it nice to see liberals rediscovering the joys of federalism?

[565] It's like something we were banging the gong about, you know, 30 years ago, right?

[566] You know, about, hey, hey, you know, it's good to have state legislatures that do their own thing, you know.

[567] But I think that when people talk about, you know, Trump will end democracy, it's not all going to end the day he's inaugurated.

[568] It will fall in a patchwork.

[569] It's like infrastructure collapse, right?

[570] It's not like the whole air traffic system shuts down and all the roads become undrivable.

[571] Bridges start collapsing here and there, a plane crash here and there, water pollution here and there until, you know, finally one thing after another.

[572] And then you find out that, yeah, the infrastructure has collapsed.

[573] You are living in a, you know, dangerous country.

[574] And I think that the people that are making this point about say, oh, five years from now, you'll be fine.

[575] Five years from now, God willing, that was me knocking on wood, five years from now, I'll be 68 years old.

[576] I'll probably be retired for the second time in my life.

[577] You know, I'm already collecting a pension.

[578] And I live, you know, near the beach and super blue southern New England.

[579] Okay, fine.

[580] I'll probably be okay.

[581] That doesn't mean the country's going to be okay.

[582] It's a meaningless thing to say you personally, you know, a white male of means will be okay.

[583] That's a meaningless statement about democracy.

[584] Yeah.

[585] And it also, I think, to your point about the patchwork, You can just look at Orbán.

[586] In their heads, I guess I think you're kind of batting down a straw man where people are saying, well, if Trump wins, it's not going to be Nazi Germany.

[587] It's like, yeah, it's probably not going to be Nazi Germany if Trump wins.

[588] I think that seems like there's going to be mass deportations if Trump wins.

[589] So there's going to be some really bad outcomes for folks that are being deported.

[590] But what really is like a much higher chance than 5 % of total democratic collapse, which is possible, is this soft democratic collapse, stuff that you've written about.

[591] You know, you wrote recently that Democracy's Dark Winter.

[592] or, you know, Trump's autocratic tirade.

[593] Look at his proposals.

[594] It looks a lot more like what's happening in Hungary.

[595] Where it's not like overnight people woke up in, you know, in Hungary and we're like, oh, like my life really changed dramatically from yesterday today, but slowly there's an erosion.

[596] But over the years it has, if you start from where Hungary was 10 or 15 or 20 years ago and look at it now, that's when you kind of step back and say, wow.

[597] You know, it's kind of like it's like watching someone grow up, right?

[598] that you know you see them when they're kids and then you run into them when they're 18 and say wow how did that happen i wasn't looking you know right but i think the when it comes to the erosion of democratic norms i think of sandcastles the beach comes in and kind of washes a little of it away but it's still there you know and you kind of fix it and the tide comes in again and washes a little more away and then you know an hour later you're like there was a sandcastle here and and it just happened one little wave at a time that's how it will happen just to be you know to make sure that our hate is bipartisan and our curmudgeonliness and our anger is bipartisan.

[599] This is why I really have a buron my saddle about the resistance.

[600] These are people in berets escorting down flyers to the channel.

[601] Give me a goddamn break.

[602] You're not living in occupied territory.

[603] This is something that's going to happen in these kind of gradual erosions of your freedoms.

[604] The one place I will say it's fast and where I'm, let me just be, you know, epistemically humble about this and say, the one place I didn't think it would happen was reproductive rights, which really did happen fast.

[605] But again, spread out throughout the country.

[606] The situation of reproductive rights in Massachusetts is not the same as in Alabama.

[607] But it'll, as you say, it can happen.

[608] And it is happening.

[609] But I think the rest of that democratic collapse happens much more.

[610] It's a frog boiling.

[611] It's sandcastles.

[612] It's frogs.

[613] It's metaphors.

[614] that I will run out of if I keep talking.

[615] Tom Nichols, your most recent one, right?

[616] So it's time to end the election, which casting, everything's at stake in the Atlantic.

[617] People should go check it out.

[618] Your working Atlantic has been awesome, brother.

[619] I'm jealous of your output.

[620] Thanks, man. And I hope to come back again soon.

[621] I appreciate it.

[622] The people love you.

[623] Thanks, man. Good to be with you.

[624] All right.

[625] We'll be back tomorrow with another edition.

[626] Do a little State of the Union recap.

[627] We'll see you all then.

[628] Peace.

[629] Down the street, you can hear a scream.

[630] You're disgrace.

[631] And she slants the door.

[632] He's drunk of face, and now he stands outside, and all the neighbors start the gossiping true.

[633] Cries, old girl, you must be mad.

[634] What happened to the sweet love, you and he had?

[635] Against the door, he leans and starts a scene, and his tears fall and burn at Darden Green.

[636] And so castles made a sand fall in the sea, eventually.

[637] He was 10, played more games in the woods, but it's in me, and when he grew up, he was drawn until tomorrow, he was saying his first war.

[638] song and fight his first battle except it would wrong.

[639] Surprise Ted, killed him in his sleep that night.

[640] Ansel Castle's made of sand melts into the sea.

[641] The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.