Tom Nichols: The Kook Bench

[0] Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast.

[1] It is February 9, 2023.

[2] Man, that was just embarrassing.

[3] I mean, embarrassing.

[4] And we're joined by our good friend Tom Nichols, Professor Emeritus at the Naval College, now a staff writer at the Atlantic and author of the Atlantic Daily newsletter.

[5] Tom, welcome back to the podcast, one of the few places where you still have tenure.

[6] Thank you, Charlie.

[7] It feels like home just to hear that.

[8] So that was really, really, really embarrassing.

[9] Now the thing about this is, is you could go any number of ways because I could be referring to about 12 different things right now, right?

[10] I mean, we could be talking about the heckling.

[11] We could be talking about, you know, the pathetic performance by Kevin McCarthy.

[12] I'm really, by the way, I'm struggling to come up with the right analogy for Kevin McCarthy, you know, having self -guelded himself into the speakership, how he's sitting there watching, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greenmake, you know, screaming at the president after he told him that behave like adults.

[13] Here's what I'm working on.

[14] It's like, we know that the guy has emasculated himself, but he was kind of like the guy who brings his date, Crueletteville, to the soiree at the bowling alley, and he has to sit in the car while she goes in.

[15] He's not even allowed to hold her coat.

[16] And he's just like, I'll be here, Marjorie, I'll be.

[17] There's a kind of a Dean Wormer thing going on here where, you know, the Delta's showed up and destroyed his homecoming parade and then said, you know, time to reinstate us, sir.

[18] It's the drunken heckler caucus.

[19] I think the thing that's always important to remember about what the kook bench was doing, these are not out of control Republicans.

[20] These Republicans who are doing what they were elected by their voters back home to do.

[21] And that's the really creepy, you know, messed up.

[22] part of this, that it's not like there are people sitting back in Georgia and saying, oh, geez, you know, we sent Marge there to get us, you know, better bridges and roads and get the airport fixed up and to make sure that, you know, our money is being spent wisely.

[23] And no, they sent her there to be a mob wife in a whatever that thing she was wearing.

[24] I mean, it's a populace, woman of the people, white fur coat thing.

[25] wearing a coat made out of Pomeranians or something and let us be bipartisan for a moment.

[26] It was bad, but it wasn't as bad as whatever Kristen Cinema was doing with that flying nun outfit.

[27] Well, see, here's the thing is it's already become a cliche.

[28] We're in early February of this Congress, and it's already become a cliche.

[29] You elect clowns.

[30] You get a circus, right?

[31] Well, that's the thing about cliches is they become cliches because they are absolutely true.

[32] And so, yeah, people are getting what they want.

[33] On the other hand, I don't know, let me push back a little bit because I'm imagining, you're sitting down.

[34] there, you know, over the cracker barrel in Georgia.

[35] And you're thinking about, you know, your best girl, Marjorie up there to, you know, fight the power, you know, to be like, you know, every man. And there she is, you know, wearing the Crewella Deville coat and she's screaming and blubbering.

[36] And, you know, she's got like a fifth of Bailey's, you know, stuck in her, you know, in her boot.

[37] I don't know.

[38] Maybe there's even some of her constituents are going, this is not good.

[39] I don't know, Charlie.

[40] I think, you know, that's, she does that stuff.

[41] And the footstomp begins.

[42] It's one of us, one of us.

[43] Think about how the poorest white Americans never held Donald Trump's wealth against him because it's okay to be wealthy as long as you're trashy.

[44] Yeah.

[45] And that's cool with them.

[46] But the minute she yelled liar, I thought, yeah, that's, of course, it was also a great moment of rope a dope because two minutes later, Joe Biden said, okay, great.

[47] We now have a, you know, chamberwide agreement that Medicare and Social Security are off the table.

[48] we shall move on.

[49] But I think it's really important to just emphasize every time that what the Clown Caucus is doing is what they were elected to do.

[50] And that speaks to a real dysfunction, you know, in the base of the Republican Party.

[51] Well, and, you know, among other things that were really embarrassing, the new Hunter Biden committee kicked off this week and kind of landed with a thud.

[52] You had Lauren Bobert yelling and screaming at former Twitter executives.

[53] You had one Congressman, was it Clay Higgins who was saying that, you know, prepare to go to jail for your role?

[54] I mean, it's all just ridiculous stuff.

[55] And what a shock to you and to you and I that they did not come up with actually any evidence.

[56] So that was embarrassing.

[57] But can we just start with the, and I always debate when you and I have these things.

[58] Should we start with the really heavy stuff or should we go with the absolute ridiculous?

[59] And, of course, we always offer the absolute ridiculous, right?

[60] We're dark enough on our own, Charlie, so we might as well try and light it up.

[61] We may get dark a little bit later.

[62] So it may seem a little bit repetitive to comment on, you know, the Tucker Carlson is be clowning himself.

[63] But, I mean, here's the thing about Tucker Carlson.

[64] You know, speaking of like, you know, smart preppy guys, he, unlike, say, the Sean Hannity's of the world or the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world or, you know, the people over at O .A. And, I mean, Tucker Carlson's a smart guy.

[65] I mean, he knows what he's doing.

[66] But you've got to help me with this because there were people online who do this for a living, who monitor Fox News, who were actually asking for mercy killing after last.

[67] night's broadcast.

[68] So I don't know whether you caught.

[69] We're not going to spend a lot of time on this, but, you know, as God is my witness, here is the number one rated cable TV host in the United States of America in 2023 with his hot take of what happened when the president of the United States delivered his State of the Union address, Tucker Curles.

[70] Well, it was Joe Biden's State of the Union last night, technically, but somehow it was Dr. Jill and Kamala's speaking.

[71] the second gentleman making out that stole the show.

[72] What is going on between those two?

[73] A forensic examination next.

[74] And I'm sorry to tell you, Tom, he then proceeded to do a forensic evaluation of whether or not Dr. Jill was making out with Kamala Harris's husband.

[75] I'm trying to cut down on the F -bombs, but WTF.

[76] Well, Tucker knows his audience.

[77] I mean, you know, let's face it.

[78] You know, this is now, you know, the tell.

[79] television equivalent of the weekly world news.

[80] And he knows what they want.

[81] I mean, part of the problem, you know, you and I have talked about this problem with the entertainment wing is once you acclimate your viewers to, you know, these big jolts of, you know, political crack of these dopamine hits, it's classic tolerance behavior.

[82] You have to go bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

[83] And content, the idea that you would talk about content, that's boring.

[84] People tune in for an hour of, I'm having a flashback to the movie Network, right?

[85] Which really, I mean, if you think about it, for you younger listeners, if you've never seen the 1975 movie network, go watch it now because it predicted all of this where a guy that used to do rants on the evening news turns out to be mentally unstable.

[86] But by the end of the show, you know, it's Sybil the soothsayer and Vox Populi and all the, and it becomes a big Broadway thing.

[87] And that's what Tucker's doing.

[88] It's like it was a pretty good state of the union.

[89] Joe Biden, I think, you know, walked away with it.

[90] And so what's Tucker going to talk about was, you know, the vice president's husband and Dr. Jill making out because what else is he going to talk about and what has he got to do to hold their attention?

[91] You know, before we came on, I mentioned to you.

[92] I'm still amazed at the kind of sneering contempt at signs of education from a guy like Tucker Carlson who went to a prep school and fancied himself to be the next George Will, who, by the way, has a doctorate in philosophy.

[93] He was actually an intellectual.

[94] Yeah, I mean, you know, that he started off in a teaching career, and people don't know that about him.

[95] Sometimes I bristle a little at the emphasis on the doctor part.

[96] I mean, there are a lot of doctorates in the world, and most of us don't use them.

[97] But, you know, she earned the degree.

[98] If she wants to use it, she can use it.

[99] But it's clearly play -acting to a new base for shows like Tucker Carlson's show and for the Republican Party to say, these are markers of education.

[100] And boy, the thing we hate more than anything are people with education because they're bad.

[101] Right.

[102] Okay.

[103] But leaving that aside, leaving the snide snark aside about the Dr. Jill Biden, he's basically decided that he was going to lead off his show with speculation that they were snogging one another.

[104] Yeah, it's tabloid bullshit.

[105] But here's the thing is, at this moment that we're at right now, because I know that you've come back to this again and again with a deeply unsurious country we are.

[106] I mean, there are major things going on in America and in the world.

[107] The number one issue in the Republican presidential primary right now seems to be Donald Trump's some accusations that Ron DeSantis is a pedophile.

[108] He's a groomer.

[109] That one picture, and I'm sorry to repeat myself, but he's got one picture of DeSantis with some teenage girls when he was a teacher, whatever.

[110] If you're Donald Trump and you have about a gazillion pictures of you and Jeffrey Epstein, you know, and Playboy models and, you know, Miss Teen Americas, you know, probably, you know, in on Earth 2 .0, you don't want to go there.

[111] But of course, this is Donald Trump.

[112] So it feels like, you know, as we continue this long slide down the slope of complete triviality, as we amuse ourselves completely to death, we are at this moment where the number one cable show in America is trying to imply that the first lady and the second husband are necking at the state of the unions, which is complete bullshit, by the way.

[113] And Donald Trump is sitting down in Marilago thinking, you know, I'm going to make Ron DeSantis look like a pedo.

[114] I mean, this is where we are.

[115] And it shows you that the bait, and I, you know, I keep saying the base of the Republican Party because I, you know, I'm trying to be better about not painting everyone who was ever a Republican, including you and me, with that brush.

[116] But the current Republican Party, and especially at space, Tucker Carlson is the perfect show.

[117] It's tabloidism.

[118] You could divide the show just as you could, the basic Republican platform, right?

[119] Who do we hate?

[120] Who are we mad at?

[121] What makes us uncomfortable?

[122] And also, sex, sex, sex, sex, and more sex.

[123] Wait, wait, wait.

[124] I was told by Sarah Huckabee Sanders that people just wanted to live their normal lives and that they were being subject to a culture war that they did not start and they do not want to fight.

[125] Sarah Huckabee Sanders told us, assured us that they are not the ones that want to talk about the culture war except for, of course, you know, Drag Queen Story Hour, CRT.

[126] furries and litter boxes and schools, and whether or not Joe Biden was snogging Kamala Harris.

[127] I used the word snogging again.

[128] I love that word.

[129] It's so British of you, Charlie.

[130] You know, 90 % of all of this now is just snicker, snicker.

[131] And you know that if you tried to start an actual conversation about, you know, substantive foreign policy or entitlement reform, everybody's eyes would roll back in their heads.

[132] And maybe that's what Tucker Carlson recognizes, is that he has to keep.

[133] They don't care.

[134] He cares about keeping the dopamine rush up.

[135] You know, this is part of the problem with the collapse of an entire political party.

[136] They just don't care about policy.

[137] They couldn't care less.

[138] And they care about, you've already taken snogging.

[139] I'll take, you know, consul hockey.

[140] None of this happened.

[141] So it's just, it's all bullshit.

[142] Right.

[143] But there is this prurient kind of, you know, the whole Hunter Biden story.

[144] Is it about, you know, we're having a serious investigation into.

[145] whether classified matters or undue, no, we're looking for pictures of Hunter Biden's main parts because somehow it shows that Joe Biden is unfit because here is a snippet of his son, you know, cavorting with bad girls doing bad things.

[146] There is this kind of pruriance now.

[147] I mean, I kind of always liked the fact that the Republican Party back in the day was kind of the uptight party a little bit.

[148] You know, I mean, Richard, Nixon took a lot of crap for that, and Reagan took crap for it.

[149] But there was a, you know, a certain amount of old school decorum about that.

[150] And now it's really, the Republicans are, I won't even smear the National Inquirer here, because after they got sued, they actually had to be a little more responsible.

[151] They had to clean it up.

[152] This may feel like a digression, but last night I spent a good deal of time rereading both in the print version and then through audiobook, which I don't know, do you listen to audiobook?

[153] I found it fascinating.

[154] I switched back and forth.

[155] I do.

[156] I have a fascination with John Le Carrey books read by British authors, which is just really a great way to pass an hour.

[157] Okay, great minds think alike.

[158] We need to talk about this.

[159] So I was listening to columns from Charles Crowdhammer from his final book, including the eulogy given by his son.

[160] And, you know, as I was listening and reading what Charles Cranhammer, you know, wrote about culture and principles and life and about foreign policy, it really hit me. You know, how cataclysmic this collapse has been.

[161] You know, for people, there are people who listen to us to say, oh, you know, this is, this is all inevitable.

[162] This is just, you know, they're just saying out loud with what you conservatives had always said.

[163] It's a continuum.

[164] It is like reading documents from before the fall to realize that at one time, one of the most prominent voices in American conservatism was somebody as decent, as humane, as intelligent, and as articulate as Charles.

[165] Crowdhammer, and that he was a fixture, not that long ago, on Fox News.

[166] And you think of the break between that back in, what, 2016 to now.

[167] And it is like watching this cataclysm, this, you know, it must have been like this in like, you know, what, 580 when people are looking back on the fall of the Roman Empire and going, fuck, how did that happen?

[168] You read my mind.

[169] The difference being that the Romans kind of deserved it, whereas this was just a takeover through default and inaction, you know, that it was just like, okay, we need better circuses.

[170] We need better gladiatorial games.

[171] The calls coming from inside the house.

[172] The barbarians were inside the Coliseum, so to speak.

[173] And that Crowdhammer and Will, there were other fixtures.

[174] There were actually very intelligent voices on Fox of all places.

[175] And yet the other thing you see is that some of the people who started there as kind of middle -of -the -road center -right voices said, okay, I got the memo on Fox.

[176] You know, be crazy.

[177] Keep the ratings flowing.

[178] Make sure people are tuning in.

[179] Let's start talking about, you know, kitty litter in bathrooms.

[180] And I think for a large segment of the population, this is an attempt to give meaning to life in some way that I think they feel has been taken.

[181] from them.

[182] I feel like this is a, that in some way, the kind of viewership and the Republican base that votes for this stuff, they were the people that were once people that said, listen, I go to work, I take care of my family, I love my dog, you know, I hang out with my kids on the weekend, and that's a good life.

[183] And now it's like a good life is being a Marvel action hero because somehow they've just internalized the idea that they're, that their life is lacking somehow.

[184] And I don't know what to say to people like that.

[185] I mean, I just don't understand.

[186] That's more than just a lack of meaning.

[187] That's a lack of meaning that you have when an entire civilization is collapsed, when you replace Shakespeare with Benny Hill, you know, when you replace Abraham Lincoln with Donald Trump.

[188] And that's what was really striking me is how radical the collapse has been.

[189] And so the entire culture that actually believed in character and had value, and, you know, would not have seen mercy or prudence as signs of weakness.

[190] The thought that the business of being an American was serious.

[191] They took citizenship and American leadership and exceptionalism seriously has been replaced by, you know, all of this, well, how did that happen?

[192] Well, because, you know, once you break it all down, once you destroy an entire value system, once you basically say, no, it's not about, you know, virtue and goodness and kindness and thoughtfulness and intelligence.

[193] No, it's not about philosophy.

[194] It's about, you know, putting whoopee cushions on the chair of, you know, somebody you don't like.

[195] The speaker of the house.

[196] The speaker of the house, exactly.

[197] You really have to say, you know, what happened?

[198] These people are searching for meaning because we've destroyed an entire intellectual universe and just spend time reading, you know, Charles Crowdhammer and realize, I mean, you know, Charles Crouthammer died in 2018.

[199] That is not that long ago, and yet...

[200] Seems years ago, it's ages ago.

[201] Go if you have a chance and read some of it, and there's a clarity to the writing that feels like it is from a different lost world.

[202] I think, to be fair, as much as it annoys me and you, when people say, well, you guys were always like this.

[203] Okay, I'll grant one thing.

[204] You know, people in rural white America were not sitting around reading Charles Crowdhammer, but they were watching him, and they were seeing exam.

[205] on their televisions and in public life of people who said that, you know, there are important things in the world that matter, that you should conduct yourself with a certain amount of decorum.

[206] And I think the collapse is not just a moral collapse.

[207] It was, I keep thinking about something George Will once said about when grown men started dressing like their sons.

[208] And grown men were indistinguishable from their eight -year -old sons in the way they address.

[209] I think it was inevitable that there would come a time that they're indistinguishable in the way they would act as well.

[210] That there's no more pleasure in sort of growing up and being responsible.

[211] That everything is a game.

[212] Everything is, you know, sitting in the back of the class, throwing gum wrappers, because there's nothing at stake.

[213] And I think some of that is structural, right?

[214] I mean, we just live in a safer, people go nuts when I say this, but we live in a safer, more prosperous world where the average person does not wake up every day and think about where their next meal is coming from, how they're going to get back and forth to work, or whether they're going to get nuked into oblivion.

[215] And so that leaves a lot of room for just kind of being a general shithead.

[216] Yeah.

[217] Because it's just fun.

[218] And I think a whole political party kind of capitalized on the boredom and unwee and rootlessness, this sense of being lost to say, listen, we are here to rescue you.

[219] We're going to make life into a Benny Hill episode, only really dark and violent.

[220] Yeah, very dark and violent.

[221] In my newsletter today, I talked about, you know, Sarah Huckabee -B -Sanders, the gaslighting that, you know, the world is divided into normals and crazy.

[222] Seriously, you know, a spokesman for a party that has led in every sort of loon imaginable.

[223] And she's saying this, you know, at a time when Trump is, you know, down in Mar -a -Lago, and he's putting out, you know, screeds about how the election was stomped.

[224] from him.

[225] He can't even spell the word right.

[226] She's, you know, saying, I left her phrase here.

[227] Every day we are told to partake in their rituals, salute their flags and worship their false idols.

[228] Wow.

[229] Okay.

[230] Yeah.

[231] Flags, false idols.

[232] Okay, whatever.

[233] But also this whole idea that, you know, it's the Normies versus the crazies.

[234] And this is the same day that you have people like Alex Jones who are still out there, believe it or not, you know, talking about, you know, went on a rant about the gang of racist foaming at the mouth.

[235] Black people are coming for your family.

[236] And he advises audience to kill every person you need to.

[237] So you're not just entertaining them, but you are creating this artificial drama, dystopia.

[238] You know, things are not that bad, so you have to cook up, you know, your kids are having their, you know, their sexual organs cut off at schools.

[239] They are being, you know, propagandized.

[240] It's like the satanic panic all over again.

[241] It's like for people that are old enough to remember.

[242] Remember that?

[243] You know, that people were doing satanic rituals in preschools across the country.

[244] which really turned out to be a kind of generational expression of anxiety among the first generation of parents who really were leaving their kids alone all day at preschools.

[245] And this took hold through, you know.

[246] Oh, that's back.

[247] I mean, we could come back and listen to this podcast a month from now and go, wow, remember when we were just sort of speculating it was like the satanic panic?

[248] I don't know whether you saw the reaction to some of the things that happened at the Grammys.

[249] And they went full, you know, DefCon.

[250] What's the worst DefCon?

[251] Is it one or is it five?

[252] DefCon 1, Roundhouse, baby, cocked pistol.

[253] They went full DefCon, too, at least.

[254] Two things struck me, though, about the Sarah Huckabee Sanders thing.

[255] One was the thing about false idols and flags.

[256] Considering that I watched an assault on the capital of my country, with people flying blue flags with a man's name on them, with icons of Donald Trump as, you know, Rambo and Rocky and whatever, man, what a huge amount of projection there was.

[257] Well, did you remember the golden image of Trump that was unveiled at CPAC?

[258] Yep.

[259] I mean, it looked like Mooby, the Golden Cow from Dogma.

[260] I mean, it was incredible.

[261] I'm not a fan of Sarah Huckabee Sanders or, you know, or her mad political skills.

[262] But I can remember saying when she replaced Sean Spicer, I took a lot of shit from people because I said, look, she's actually okay at this.

[263] I mean, she's not great.

[264] I mean, she's certainly better at this job than Sean Spicer, and she kind of knows how to do this as White House Press Secretary.

[265] The person that you saw the other night, I mean, that was creepy.

[266] It was like two seconds away from, I won't be ignored, Dan, you know, this kind of staring into the camera and this dark litany of fear and anger.

[267] And I thought, you know, this is somebody who used to be better at this, but I think it also tells you, again, they know their audience.

[268] They know that that is pushing this, you know, put it right into my veins, that I'm a victim of dark forces that are controlling my life, and, you know, although interesting enough, then maybe the only last thing we need to say about Sanders, not once did the word Trump cross her lips.

[269] Oh, and she's in trouble for that.

[270] Steve Bannon is very upset with her about that.

[271] Did you hear that?

[272] I mean, he actually had because, by the way, I do not do this sort of thing.

[273] So Steve Bannon had the Louvre Dobbs on his show.

[274] Wow.

[275] I mean, there's a meeting of the minds.

[276] There's a name I have not heard in a long while.

[277] So Bannon says, Sarah Huckabee -Sanders response, she's not intellectually capable.

[278] But the real problem was that she didn't mention Trump.

[279] Because, of course, it's not about conservative idea or anything.

[280] It's like she needs to say Trump.

[281] I mean, it's really come down to all of that.

[282] So, yeah, she's lost Lou Dobbs.

[283] If you pinned some of these people down and said, okay, fine, we're going to talk about conservative ideas.

[284] And this reaches back to, you know, Crownhammer.

[285] If you ask Crownhammer, what does it mean to you to be a conservative?

[286] you would get a very intelligent answer that had real policy applications.

[287] Not everybody would agree.

[288] Not everybody on the right would agree.

[289] But you'd get some kind of coherent answer.

[290] If you ask that question now, it's like, well, I'm a conservative because you will pry my assault rifle from my cold dead hands while I'm defending against having my kid having to pee in a litter box in a high school.

[291] And I think this is what kind of looping back to Tucker Carlson.

[292] This is what everybody's figured out.

[293] You're not going to have a rational, conversation about any of this stuff.

[294] All you can do is play to the crazy.

[295] And the one thing Sanders said that was right that I think we all agree about is this is the crazies versus the normals.

[296] I just don't think she meant it in the way the rest of us mean it.

[297] The honorable governor of Arkansas is correct about that, but not in the context.

[298] Okay, so one of the bigger surprises of the week, at least to me, did not have this on my dance card at all.

[299] They had one of these, what was it, the press club correspondence, one of these dinners that you and I don't get invited to were reporters sit down with newsmakers, which is always a bad idea, I think.

[300] And Nancy Mace was one of the main roasters, I guess, and apparently from all of the accounts, she kind of killed it.

[301] So in terms of surprise, I did not think that Nancy Mace was funny.

[302] Let's play a little bit of Nancy Mace and see whether we find it funny.

[303] And I know everyone thinks Republicans aren't funny, but if you.

[304] If you get a bunch of us together, we can be a real riot.

[305] Oh, my.

[306] I got an end on a high note.

[307] Oh.

[308] And she had a couple of other things, you know, hey, did you see Kevin McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, you know, taking all these positions, you know, no one's ever, you know, assume so many positions for Republicans since Stormy Daniels.

[309] Oh, my.

[310] Okay, so give Nancy Mace credit for having a good writer.

[311] and being willing to pull that stuff off, because that was not terrible.

[312] I mean, I remember having this discussion years ago that some of the best outside guest hosts on Saturday Night Live were Republicans that were poking fun at themselves because, you know, there's no one expects them to be fun.

[313] There's nobody expects you to be funny.

[314] I mean, you know, George H .W. Bush coming on and saying to Dana Carvey, you know, Dana never said, nah, God, duh, never said it.

[315] You know, Carby, you know, all right, Mr. President, you know, I mean, even Nixon on laughing, although I guess the less set of that, the better, but it was the first time, you know, you got a presidential candidate to do that.

[316] It was a big deal at the time.

[317] I actually remember that.

[318] I do.

[319] Sock it to me, which didn't age well, but it was people thought it was funny at the time.

[320] We thought a lot of things were funny back in the early 70s.

[321] Well, you know, there were a lot of other problems with substances going around at the time, too, made things seem funny that weren't a problem with the Republican Party, is that it is incredibly grim and humorless because everything about them is we are in an existential battle for everything and no matter how trivial.

[322] And one of the things that really marks them now, I think marks the Republicans, our former comrades as a truly authoritarian movement, is that there is no such thing as compromise, there is only defeat.

[323] And that the willingness to accept.

[324] you know, compromise or the transfer of power.

[325] Of course, people like that aren't going to joke.

[326] There's nothing funny here.

[327] This is, you know, but I mean, hell, even guys at the battle of the bulge managed to crack a joke now and then.

[328] Part of the problem, though, is a lot of these guys think that they're funny and it's pretty cringe -worthy.

[329] I mean, I'm sure they thought it was hilarious to wear gun pins on their lapels.

[330] Are you not entertained?

[331] Yes.

[332] I'm sure there was a huge amount of snickering about, wow, this is going to be so triggering, get it, triggering, and lib -owning, and without thinking for one moment that, you know, there are people all across this country who have lost loved ones to weapons like that.

[333] I mean, it's just incredible.

[334] Earlier in the podcast, you said something like, you know, these folks are not out of control.

[335] I want to take a slightly different point of view.

[336] I think one of the things we're seeing is that they are out of control in the sense that many of them have slipped the surly bonds of sanity and there is no limit.

[337] Once you've taken down the guard wheels, there is no limit to what George Santos is going to do or what Marjorie Taylor Green is going to do.

[338] And because of this constant search for the dopamine hits, it's going to get worse and worse and worse and nobody can tell them to behave.

[339] If Kevin McCarthy was sitting up there thinking, I had a talk with Marjorie Taylor Green and I'm never going to leave this woman and I will hold her a coat.

[340] And she proved it.

[341] She proved that that's true.

[342] She absolutely proved that's true.

[343] But if he thought that she was going to behave or that he could rein this in any way, it's like, what a surprise.

[344] This is what happens when you, you know, you grow the alligator in the bathtub and it gets out and starts going down the street eating people.

[345] You're going, wait, heal, heel, down both.

[346] Well, you understand this having cats.

[347] Oh, you decided to go there.

[348] Imagine having an alligator with the morals of a cat.

[349] Wow.

[350] You know, Charlie, you had to, and here we were just sitting, chatting so amiably.

[351] There we go.

[352] But I think there's two things to consider about people like Santos and Green.

[353] First of all, I'll just say, my personal opinion, I love Pete Wainer's phrase about Trump, and I'll apply it to these folks.

[354] These are emotionally disordered people.

[355] There's something wrong with George Santos.

[356] I mean, this is just not a normal person to do this much lying and this much fabricating.

[357] And I think there's something wrong with, you know, somebody like Green or Bobert.

[358] I mean, I just think that these are people who just are kind of messed up and have some, you know, deep -seated problems that they're playing out in public.

[359] Yeah, but we live in their world now.

[360] Well, but that's a different problem than the fact that there is no demand signal from anywhere, and this gets to your point, to tell them to stop doing it.

[361] Yeah, that's right.

[362] Or whether they will listen.

[363] Bobert should have gotten a brushback by only winning her reelection by 600 votes.

[364] The lesson she took from it is, okay, I got to be a little crazier here.

[365] I got to be a little nuttier than I usually am.

[366] But I think for a lot of the Republicans, and this gets to, let me just link a big cultural issue to a boring, wonky, structural issue.

[367] This is because of primaries and the fact that only the faithful come up, because these Republicans in these, it's not just gerrymandering.

[368] There are some of these districts are gerrymandered, but some of them are also just naturally sorted out.

[369] There was a great book about 15 years ago called The Big Sort, where people are just moving closer to people who think like them.

[370] Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not gerrymander Arkansas to win the state.

[371] She won the state fair and square.

[372] But the problem with that is that, you know, when you get these guys going to Washington and wearing guns on their lapels and saying all kinds of, you know, crazy shit about you're going to go to jail Twitter, all they have to worry about is getting past the craziest vote.

[373] voters back home because once they get the local crazies on their side, the seat is theirs.

[374] But there's also a choice.

[375] This was a really good piece yesterday by my colleague, Jonathan last, who pointed out the contrast between Biden's speech and what you're getting from the Republicans.

[376] Biden was very self -consciously reaching out to non -democratic voters.

[377] He's reaching out to unaffiliated voters.

[378] He was talking about voters in small rural communities, who many of them presumably live in, you know, deep red states.

[379] But at least he's trying to expand the base.

[380] The Republicans have made a choice.

[381] They have made the choice that they are not going to be reaching out, that all they're going to do is to continue to stoke the base, that they're going to continue to feed them, feed them, feed them, feed the outrage machines.

[382] In the contrast that he pointed out, Joe Biden's talking about people in rural America that I'm listening to, I care about, and this is what I'm going to do for you.

[383] And this is my message to you.

[384] What do you hear from Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the other Republicans, you know, the sneering at the coastal elites, the you're not the real Americans.

[385] So they're insulting fellow Americans where Biden is at least, and this is a tactical choice, you know, whether it will work or not, you know, I don't know, I'm not commenting on it.

[386] But that contrast is interesting.

[387] And you're absolutely right about the primaries.

[388] But also, it has been a specific choice by the Republicans, you know, screw the autopsy, screw, you know, changing our message, screw going after any of these other states, we're just going to double down on what we've been doing.

[389] And, you know, that's playing out right now.

[390] And it's a choice that I would argue and that I suspect comes purely from self -interest.

[391] You know, when I think of the hot mess of crazy ideas, you know, yeah, we right away think of, you know, green and Jordan and Biggs and those guys.

[392] But if you think about cold soulless opportunism, look at Elise DeFinn.

[393] Oh, yeah, perfect.

[394] Who says, hey, I like being in Washington.

[395] I'm not here to build a national Republican Party.

[396] I'm here to say the crazy stuff that people in my upstate New York district want to hear, and I'm going to shovel that at them, and they're going to send me back to Washington.

[397] And then whatever I'm doing in D .C. is really not their business and their problem.

[398] Right.

[399] You know, if you contrast this with, say, the big Republican takeover of 1980, which was kind of then followed later on the left with the Howard Dean 50 state strategy, right?

[400] Yeah.

[401] There was a time where both of these parties said, our goal is to become a national governing majority.

[402] Yeah.

[403] And the Republicans pull this off for about five years before they get walloped in, you know, in the 86 midterms.

[404] The Democrats pull it off for a while.

[405] pull it off again under Obama until they get walloped in the midterms.

[406] And I think the Democrats, as you point out, Charlie, they're still trying to say, okay, we're not going to win the 32nd Georgia or whatever it is because it's a ruby red state.

[407] But you can start peeling off voters for statewide elections, statewide elections, statewide offices, presidential elections, and so on.

[408] I think you're absolutely right that the Republicans have given up on that.

[409] But in part because the group of cooks and opportunists who are there now, there's no option.

[410] There's no option.

[411] side in it for them.

[412] And, you know, for many of them, I mean, at least DeFonick and Tucker Carlson, you know, are, they're intelligent enough that they could do other things.

[413] There are a lot of them who, you know, let's face it, a lot of this stuff is much easier.

[414] It's much easier talking about, you know, the culture war stuff than it is actually getting into what should we do about entitlements, you know, what should the nature of our foreign policy be.

[415] One last thought on Tucker Cross.

[416] I was not intending on spending this much time.

[417] But, you know, thinking about the fact that, you know, he would spend so much time about, you know, some alleged, you know, a sexual affair between the first lady and the first husband is, first of all, you know, how incredibly disingenuous it is, but also how safe he must feel, how secure he must feel in his job, that he would do that.

[418] And you know that I'm sitting down with a member of the Fox Corporation Board next week.

[419] I wonder who that could be, Charlie.

[420] Former Speaker Paul Ryan.

[421] I was going to say, would it be a Wisconsinite?

[422] He probably doesn't want to talk about this, but at some point, there must be something, I mean, And again, Tucker Carlson is a smart guy, and he knows he can get away with this.

[423] He knows he has been given the license to do this.

[424] He knows that somebody higher up has his back.

[425] The thing I will never understand is, when is there enough money in the world that you will finally sit back from the microphone for a moment and say, you know, this is embarrassing to say this.

[426] I am keenly aware that I have a child who, you know, is a grown young woman practically.

[427] and, you know, can hear me and knows the things.

[428] I don't, I would never want someone to say, is your dad that guy who, you know, says all that weird stuff about, I mean, at some point, don't you just feel like you have a duty to yourself and to the future, not to be a complete freak at some point?

[429] I mean, I just don't, I'm not a rich man, Charlie, but, you know, everybody likes money.

[430] Everybody likes, you know, the warm glow of public approbation and all that stuff.

[431] but I just wonder when there's enough applause and enough money that you will just push the microphone away and say, listen, there are crazy things that I'm just not going to say no matter how much people would send me money for it.

[432] Well, and also this is part of the culture that Charles Crouthammer represented, where we talked about the life well live, how you make a decision to live a life well virtue, so that at the end of your life, you can look back on your life and say, I did the right things, I am proud of what I did.

[433] that feels like it has been completely abandoned by his successors.

[434] All right.

[435] Heavy lifting for you a little bit.

[436] I am worried about Ukraine and what's going on, but I'm also worried about the way this is going to play out in the 2024 election.

[437] Okay.

[438] Undoubtedly, you saw that story in Politico, which had this bizarre headline, Trump's 24 game plan, be the dove among the hawks.

[439] Now, I'm sitting here thinking, I need to write a piece, you know, making the point, Donald Trump is not a dove.

[440] Now, Damon Linker's written a really great piece on all of this, but it strikes me that we need to, you know, draw line right now that somebody who is an apologist for this homicidal, genocidal maniac in Russia that allowing Vladimir Putin to slaughter Ukrainians and swallow up that country, that does not make one a dove.

[441] What are your thoughts about that?

[442] First of all, on most things, Donald Trump is a goldfish.

[443] He darts from one under the bowl of the other, looking for food pellets and avoiding threats.

[444] He has no memory of 10 minutes ago.

[445] He has no ability to grasp 10 minutes from now.

[446] I think Maggie Haberman in her new book said something effective.

[447] Donald Trump survives his life 10 minutes at a time, basically.

[448] Yeah, yeah.

[449] Now, the one place he has always been as constant as the Northern Star is being pro -rush.

[450] And I think that's because he is compromised.

[451] He knows that they know stuff about him.

[452] I don't think he's an agent of Russia or any of that paranoid crap.

[453] I think he watches his step because he firmly understands that there's probably all kinds of nasty cheese and a file somewhere in Moscow that he prefers and stay wherever it is.

[454] And I don't mean a beat tape.

[455] I mean, you know, dealing with mobsters and all of that stuff.

[456] His position on Russia is, and the Ukraine war, is, I could fix this.

[457] I can make it stop.

[458] I'll make it go away because that's what he has to say in the next 10 minutes.

[459] But then, you know, Putin blows up an apartment block and say, I'll call him, I'll fix this.

[460] And then he'll move on to something else.

[461] And he is neither a hawk nor a dove.

[462] He is just, you know, he's just darting back and forth and in the bowl looking for the right thing to say to stay out of trouble with the Russians and stay in good with the people who send them money and love.

[463] Okay, this analogy works, but it only works partially, okay, because there's something else.

[464] There is the, like a limpid -like quality.

[465] What is the, the fish that, you know, is constantly sucking up to a larger fish?

[466] Ramora.

[467] The Ramora, okay, so.

[468] He's a parasitical attachment to the belly of the shark.

[469] That's right.

[470] Yes, Vlad, you know, yes, you were made to do this.

[471] I am your friend, you are my true friend.

[472] Can we talk about the Miss Universe contest again?

[473] I mean, whatever.

[474] So, yes, I think the goldfish applies to him, but there's something a little bit more about his just, the fawning dependency.

[475] It's fear, Charlie.

[476] It's just fear.

[477] Trump is a very weak man. And like all weak bullies, he defers to whoever he thinks is the stronger bully.

[478] He likes it, though.

[479] He likes the brutality.

[480] He likes the fact that Duterte takes people out in.

[481] kills them.

[482] He likes the fact that Xi, the Xi and the Chinese rode tanks over people.

[483] That's like, that gives him his dopamine hit.

[484] Sure he does.

[485] He wishes he could be Putin.

[486] She and Putin are ruthless, adult, scary men.

[487] And Trump is a scared little boy.

[488] So of course, whenever he's around these people, he's like, oh, you're very handsome men and you're very powerful men.

[489] And please don't hurt me. And I'm your friend.

[490] And, you know, he's like, remember in a demolition man?

[491] He's, he's associate Bob, you know, I can be a very effective associate for you, sir.

[492] You know, he's just a professional courtier, much stronger men, which is why he is such a ruthless bully to anyone below him, because that's how scared little boys get through their day doing that kind of stuff.

[493] His image is that he is the alpha man, right?

[494] That he is the apex predator, when in fact, that's not true at all.

[495] He is the scared little boy who quivers.

[496] He's a terrified nine -year -old.

[497] The moment that should have ended all of this debate about Donald Trump and manliness and foreign policy and all that stuff was Helsinki when he just came out, you know, and Putin stood there with this beatific, serene smile on his face.

[498] And Donald Trump was, you know, if we're going to keep using movie references, Donald Trump was Renfield, you know, oh, tasty flies, master, you know.

[499] Yeah, reek, you know.

[500] Yeah, exactly.

[501] He was reek.

[502] And, you know, he just, I'm too old for reek, so I went right for the classic of Renfield.

[503] But, you know, that's who he is, and that's, he's a bully.

[504] You know this, I mean, I've written about it.

[505] It blows my mind that people look to Trump as this strong man when everything he does, including right down to his body language, you know, where he hugs himself and he sits back and he jumps his joy and everything just emanates fear.

[506] from this guy.

[507] He can get away with it when he's pushing around Marco Rubio on a stage.

[508] He can't get away with it when he's in a room with guys, plural, from China and Russia, who have literally ordered the deaths of other human beings for political purposes.

[509] So here's a man who thinks that he is Mussolini when, in fact, he is the stay puff marshmallow man. That's unfair to stay puff.

[510] I mean, stay puff, you know, put up a good fight.

[511] And Mussolini, you know, let me just, for the sake of clarity, say, you do not.

[512] ever, under any circumstances, got to hand it to Mussolini.

[513] But, you know, Mussolini, like Hitler, frankly, these were guys, and Stalin.

[514] These were men had a certain amount of personal bravery.

[515] They were, you know, pretty reckless in their way sometimes.

[516] I mean, Trump is more like, I can't even think of an authoritarian leader who reached power by being as cowardly and craven as Donald Trump is, because he even lacks that kind of personal bravery.

[517] Let's work on that, yeah.

[518] somebody who would hide out and he's president gregg stillson you know the guy that would hold up a baby okay i don't get that one the dead zone remember martin sheen at the last minute somebody starts shooting so he holds up a kid in front of him as a shield and that ends his career it was a great martin sheen moment christopher walkin martin sheen i know there are people out there who got that reference i just need to make a list here the dead zone charlie it's classic 80 Stephen King, man. I know.

[519] I just need to make a list of the movies to catch up with.

[520] So Tom Nichols now as staff writer at The Atlantic, author of The Atlantic Daily Newsletter.

[521] His books include The Death of Expertise and Our Own Worst Enemy, The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy.

[522] He is Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College and still has tenure on the Bullwark Podcast.

[523] Thanks for coming back.

[524] Thanks, Charlie.

[525] And thank you all for listening to today's Bullwork podcast.

[526] I'm Charlie Sykes.

[527] We will be back.

[528] tomorrow and we'll do this all over again.

[529] The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.