Bulwark Takes - Bulwark on Sunday: You Can’t Make A Deal With Darth Vader

Episode Date: March 23, 2025

How To Fix It Host John Avlon sits in for Bill this weekend on Bulwark on Sunday with Reporter Joe Perticone. They break down the news of the week including the continued folding to Trump, Dems who are fighting back and much more.

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hey, all. Good morning. Welcome to the Bulwark Live on Sunday. You got some guest hosts in today. I'm John Avalon. I host the How to Fix It podcast. New episode dropped live this morning uh with larry diamond which y'all should listen to and many of you are and joe predicone

reporter joe how's it going i'm good man i'm good we got a lot to get to and we're going to be taking your questions post them in the comments section um but first, Joe, I just think it's important to take a step back on a Sunday because it is kind of a recap because part of the strategy of this administration is explicitly the flood the zone with shit strategy where they try to overwhelm everybody. And so, you know, I know it's disorienting. That's by design. But just let's list a couple of the major things the Trump administration did this week that contribute to this ongoing sort of assault on American democracy. One, invoking the Alien Act to have the extrajudicial deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador. And most importantly, possibly ignoring a judge's request that it be stopped.

So therefore, putting the screws to that ongoing sort of testing the constitutional limits or trying to encourage a constitutional crisis. We know that some of the people who've ended up in El Salvador are not gang members. And that itself is sort of an outrage. We've got the dismantling the Department of Education. It also happened this week. The ongoing assault on law firms undermining the rule of law and, indeed, the apparent capitulation of one major law firm, which sends a bad sign. We've got ongoing actions against Houthi rebels, President Trump talking to Zelensky and Putin, firing members of the FTC who are Democrats. I could go on.

What am I missing, Joe? Well, back on the judges thing, they also, Trump was expressing this eagerness to impeach judges who overturned their orders. And you saw some momentum. I thought, oh, this will be the first easy week in quite some time because Congress is out. And I was very wrong. Because you saw these members of Congress get on board with it. Like the most sycophantic ones love to immediately take anything he says and turn it into a messaging bill or whatever. But now you have this thing where it's like, are they going to

demand this be part of the agenda, which when you embark on any kind of impeachment, whether it's ridiculous or warranted, it stops all business in Congress. So there's a lot that's happened. About an hour ago, we learned that the second lady is going to visit Greenland this week. I'm sure she'll be received very well. By the way, she'll stop on her general tour. I mean, she always is stopping off in Greenland. So this is a continuation of a normal course of business for her. Yeah.

So a lot happened. There were a lot of town halls this week in resistance to the administration, but then also there were a couple of Republican ones that didn't go as planned. And the kind of tactics they've employed to hold these town halls without having the backlash they had earlier in the year, we're seeing that unfold too. So what are some of those tactics, Joe? So for example, instead of having their office being the one that hosts them, some of these Republicans have had town halls where it's an outside host.

Andy Biggs in Arizona had one, and his excuse was, well, this wasn't my office's town hall. It was a town hall with Andy Biggs. What they did is they were checking party registration at the door. So they were only letting Republicans in. That's one. Another was Chuck Grassley went to, he just showed up at this small meeting and there turned out to be like 100 people there. He wasn't expecting that. And his reason for not listing the event on his website was, well, I'm not the one hosting it.

And so there's ways to get around these things. but no matter what, you're still seeing the backlash. I think really hanging a lantern on the fact that they're trying to have only Republicans join their town halls. That's not a town hall. That's hiding from your constituents. And this is something I saw in my congressional campaign. My opponent, the first congressional district, Nicola Loda, has always refused to hold any open in-person town halls, lies about it. But says, you know, says, well, if it's a telephone town hall or anything else, but it's all about constraining that kind of feedback. And the fact that now Republican members of Congress, like Andy Biggs, who's about as far right as you can get, are only letting Republicans attend their town halls. That's a complete dereliction of duty and their responsibility to represent all their constituents. But this is just that creeping normalization of an undermining of basic democracy. You said that they're signing

on impeached judges who have the temerity to disagree with the Trump administration. And this is a Bush appointed judge initially, who was then elevated by Barack Obama. This is always a test about who could be the biggest sycophant, right? It's not enough to be a rubber stamp. You got to be a sycophant. And that's the creeping sort of authoritarian. Larry Diamond and the How to Fix It podcast that just dropped this morning warns against, he's a scholar of democracy from the Hoover Institution. This is not someone who's a partisan, but he is beyond concerned that what we're seeing is an authoritarian assault on American democratic norms. That's what the former president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, said outright this

past week as well. But you're starting to see folks fold as well. The law firms that have been targeted, one of them, Paul Weiss, went to the White House to negotiate, came out with what they might have thought was a good deal. But then the White House doubles down through the Department of Justice and says there's going to be a new norm that the Justice Department investigates any law firm that sues the Trump administration. I think, you know, this is the frog in the pot of water, pick your metaphor, but there's this attempt to undermine the rule of law and strengthen the administration that concerns every American,

particularly one who once described themselves as a constitutional conservative. Yeah, it reminds me of in the Empire Strikes Back when Lando Calrissian, he strikes a deal with Darth Vader and he says, this is gonna keep the empire out of the Cloud City forever. And then the terms of the deal keep getting altered. And he's like, this deal keeps getting worse all the time.

And it eventually ends in disaster. And that's, we watch it all the time. And like, the reason why that's in Star Wars is because it's based on what happens throughout history. When you make these deals, when you don't unify, it just keeps happening and it keeps getting worse. That's collective action, that unity. You stand, if they come for one group, you've got to stand together.

Otherwise it fragments. I appreciate a good Lando Calrissian anecdote, rarely top of the list of the Star Wars metaphorical canon. But you're right, right? I mean, that is a pattern we have seen throughout history, even if we are borrowing from Empire Strikes Back for that particular anecdote. But good on the pop culture reference there, man. I appreciate that. And it's true. I mean, if people don't stand together, everyone's got their reasons. And they might say,

look, we would have spent pro bono money on combating anti-Semitism and veterans anyway. But it's the underlying principle gets eroded when people cave and it does not stop. This is my, I'll do Churchill. I'll take your Lando Calrissian and raise you Churchill, which is the Churchill quote where he says, appeasement is feeding a crocodile hoping it eats you last. Yeah. It never works. Ever. So I know there was another thing that happened this week that it seemed like a significant misstep uh that you wanted to flag

uh involving the Commerce Secretary Howard lutnik I think we got that clip why don't you tee it up and then toss to it I think oh here it is we go. Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks. This month, my mother in law, who's 94. She wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't. She thinks something got messed up. And she'll get it next. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming screaming, yelling, and complaining. Yeah, you're a fraudster. Just call your billionaire son-in-law.

It's that easy. This was really tone deaf. So I kind of got two takeaways from it. First, it was just the most egregious tone deaf elitism I think I've ever seen from a cabinet official. In another administration, this would ruin someone's career. This would be massive news. Beyond that, it kind of made me think when we saw them negotiating the budget resolution, which will ultimately justify the tax cuts they want to pass. The way they sort of workshop how they talk about things is how they justify cutting them. So with Medicaid, you saw them switch from saying we won't

touch Medicaid to saying we won't touch Medicaid benefits. And it's not really clear what they define as a benefit. Some would say the ability to get a representative on the phone to hash things out and to resolve problems is a benefit of the program. They might just be talking about money, though, when they say benefit. In this case, he says, well, don't complain if you don't get your check. Social Security has never missed a check. That's why it's arguably the most trusted government program. So Martin O'Malley, the Social Security Commissioner under Biden, he predicted there's going to be missed checks in 30 to 90 days.

He made that prediction about a month ago. So this could be them workshopping the response to an eventual missed check. They're closing offices. They're maybe looking at slashing staff. The acting commissioner of social security is kind of all over the place here. And the idea that, oh, if you miss a check, it's not a big deal. 40% of the recipients of social security, that's their sole source of income. Beyond that, it's not just Yeah, 40%. So when Howard Lutnick says that his mother in law wouldn't notice a missed payment or wouldn't really care.

Obviously, you know, the billionaires mother in law is not living tech to check. It'd be kind of funny if she was. But that's a very right. This is about you know, only the the little people pay taxes, as Leanna Helmsley once said. But this is this is only little people depend on Social Security. And this is a third rail, as you say. Right. I mean, they're they're violating a lot of the promises that were made. I mean, from the beginning, by the way, remember, 2025 Project 2025, never heard of it. That was a campaign promise. We've

normalized lying. This administration has normalized lying. But, but I really think that this is totally tone deaf, as you say, and if it's waste, fraud and abuse, fine, knock yourself out, but find cases of fraud and then delineate those, address them, take them out. But this isn't about that, is it? Yeah. And you know, where they've pointed to what they claim is those, address them, take them out. But this isn't about that, is it? Yeah. And, you know, where they've pointed to what they claim is fraud, they say, oh, there's a 200 year old person on Social Security. That's just people who haven't had death certificates. And so it's not clear that money is even going to those people.

The actual number of recipients of money from Social Security is lower than the existing Social Security eligible population. of recipients of money from social security is lower than the existing social security eligible population. So if there was this fraud, it'd probably be more than that, not less. In addition to that, they say, oh, kids are getting social security. Yes. Kids who have dead parents who are recipients will receive those benefits after that unfortunate death. So there are circumstances in which somebody who's not a senior is receiving social security. That's by design, that's not fraud.

And so when they point to these things, it's kind of preying on the inability to understand the full depth of such a massive government program. But the way that they that they're approaching this and talking about it, I mean, you can't help but think that it's going to get much worse, which that's that's the trend. That's that's by design, right?

I mean, that's the argument they're using for tariffs going to crater the economy. Well, all of a sudden you see all these folks. It's amazing saying, well, you know you know conservative wall street types being well you know maybe the stock market isn't the right measure and you know obviously they've already accepted reversing themselves on tariffs so now it's maybe he's trying to create a recession right this is some grand strategy uh by the president which is just again that gravitational pull towards sycophancy where you rationalize anything the great leader does even if it requires abandoning your principles or common sense on any level. Given that you cover the Hill, I mean, you're a Capitol Hill reporter,

the Capitol reporter for the Bulwark. What are the outlines of the deal you see likely getting done at this point? So the budget resolution provided a blueprint. And I think that there's some political ramifications that they're not thinking through. When it passed, you saw Republicans saying, no tax on tips, no tax on social security, that's coming. There's not any mention of that in the resolution. There's also not the financial space for that. The areas they need to cut are, they say, oh, we didn't cut Medicaid in it, obviously, because it's just a blueprint. But it directs the committee that oversees Medicaid to cut more money than would allow. So they're going to have to cut Medicaid.

So there's going to be the political headache here. So they have their hands hovering over the hottest stove in politics, which is entitlements. And if it's powerful- Right there, right there. Hold on. Entitlements. This is a point of personal clarification.

Social Security is not, in fact, an entitlement, correct? Yeah. I mean, that's just our kind of blanket word for everything. I know, but it's sort of buying into a right wing framing. In the case of Social Security, people pay into it. So that definitionally Social Security is definitely there are entitlements that are set up for whatever reason, but Social Security is not one. Yeah. But these are things that you pay into and you are guaranteed to get back out. And going after that is so politically toxic and dangerous. You might see some waffling from some of these more moderate, I don't think there are any moderate Republicans in the house, but those who fancy themselves or have these districts where they have to kind of bend politically, there'll be a lot of a little bit of resistance there. But I think the areas where it'll be hard for them to pass these tax cuts is on the far right.

If there are people who see that this doesn't balance the budget, you have guys like Chip Roy, Thomas Massey. And like they're the ones who push back on these things for the total opposite reasons. That's usually the case. But hold on. Okay. Let's just do the math here because you cover Congress, right? So first of all, it's not going to balance the budget. It's not. I mean, there's no way to massage that. You know, they're even saying that extension of the tax cuts have no cost, right? Which is itself magical thinking. And somewhere there's an accounting professor slowly, you know,uipro in a corner. But tell me, so that's a non-starter. They can lose, what, three votes? That's why at least Stefanik isn't in the United Nations at this point? Yeah. But there was a recent death of a

Democratic member. I think it's extended for, there's a special election for Matt Gaetz's seat coming up, too. So it's the math is kind of up or down three to one to four. So you just mentioned three folks on the far right who say they won't vote for it if it doesn't balance the budget. It's not going to balance the budget. It's unclear. They won't vote for it. There are plenty of folks who are sort of, you know, I think there are there are a handful of legitimately moderate Republicans still in Congress. But I think the acid test is it's not what you say, it's what you do. Or more importantly, it's how you vote. I mean, I think, you know, Brian Fitzpatrick has tried to fight a pretty lonely fight. And, you know, usually courts of primary as a result as a limited example.

But you saw a lot of folks saying, well, we've got to get the state and local tax deduction restored. This is a very big deal in states like New York. And it was designed politically to punish blue states. There was a lot of talk. Trump reversed himself on it. Now, keep in mind, it would be entirely restored if those tax cuts were set to expire. What's the status of the SALT fight right now?

So, as you said, it was designed to punish blue states, but these New York and sort of inland and Orange County, California Republicans, they're the reason why they have a majority. So they have to make this calculation if they need to keep these people and they need to keep the voters in those districts happy. And the way to do that is to get those salt deductions back in place. That's the huge disagreement, because if you look at the leadership structure in the House and Senate, they do not care about those constituents, but they understand the political danger of not including that. So that's going to be a major point. If you're going to see resistance to from some of the other republicans if that's not included um but again like they're they're going to take this down to the wire um the idea is to do it sometime end of september um they always go until like midnight the night before everything's

about to expire um so it's going to be a busy summer but at this at the same time you have the most estimates show that the debt ceiling is going to expire this summer, like the X date is some point before that. So that's another area where like Democrats are going to have another big fight on their hands. And are they going to blow it like they did with this most recent CR? Or are they going to put up a bigger fight the way I think a lot of voters want them to? And this goes to a question we just got from Holly Shannon. Holly, thanks for joining us. Thanks for being a Bulwark subscriber.

All right. Holly says, what do you see as the best messengers going forward to fight Elon Musk? We know about Bernie and AOC. We know about Chris Murphy. But who else is out there you think might catch fire? What's the strategy to fight back? I'll note that we had 30,000, or Democrats had 30,000 people show out for a Bernie Sanders AOC rally in Denver, Colorado.

Subjectively, a lot of humans this time of year are standing outside in Denver. But what's your thoughts to Holly's questions, Jeff? So I went to a town hall this week up in Frederick, Maryland. It was Jamie Raskin and April McLean Delaney. She now represents, because of redistricting, some of the territory that Raskin used to have. So they did it together.

And you've seen little headlines about how, like, Democrats are facing their own Tea Party. That is very literal. Jamie Raskin sounded like, you know, 2012 Ted Cruz because he was not in a bad way, but he was reciting the Constitution verbatim. He was quoting Thomas Paine. And so there's this divide occurring now in the Democratic Party where it's not left or centrist. It is who's willing to get up there and do something. And you're seeing the ones who don't are getting backlash, like Chuck Schumer, and you're seeing the ones who are really eager and really proactive about this, like AOC making amends with Conor Lamb, who could have been Senator if it weren't for John Fetterman. You're seeing everyone's kind of pushing aside these, you know, little policy differences. And the divide is now, you know, who's willing to get up there and do something versus who isn't. That's a very healthy divide, it seems to me. You know,

the danger is the democracy movement splinters into these sort of, you know, narcissism, the small differences. And, you know, I always remember the line from Monty Python, Life of Brian, where it's the fight between the Judean people's army and the James people's front, the people's front of Judea. They end up like killing each other in a hallway because of that vast difference factually. I'll say that I do think the governors need to get out.

I wrote a piece for the bulwark saying we need to you know get governors red state and world democrats you know to the extent they need are there with purple states certainly for me I would like to be hearing more from Wes Moore from Gretchen Whitmer from Pete Buttigieg who announced he would not go for Gary Peters seat the other day but I think it's one of the best communicators in the Democratic Party. I think, you know, Josh Shapiro is a good communicator, obviously. But I think the governors and the mayors, particularly sort of purple state, Midwest, you know, those are the folks who need to be getting Andy Beshear is a very, you know, I think a compelling figure. Those are the folks who need to, you know, be getting out.

And I think almost there's an argument for the Democratic primary to be advanced so that there are more leaders, not only elected officials currently, but people who think they might want to run for president to get out and speak clearly and cite the founding fathers. You know, this is a speech I've been given a lot and I've written about. The founding fathers warned us about this, right? The founding fathers' number one concern was a demagogue.

That was their number one concern about how their democracy would be overturned. It would be hyper-partisanship and polarization leading to anarchy, which would open the door to tyranny. But a demagogue is the fruit line. And as Hakeem Jeffries is fond of pointing out, in the Federalist Papers, the founders, the authors of the Federalist Papers mentioned the word demagogue more even than democracy. So this is something that we need to get canned, build a broad coalition around with a strong foundation rooted in the founding fathers. Yeah. And to your point about governors, you know, I saw J.B. Pritzker this week, too.

J.B. Pritzker. And I asked him, you know, what was your reaction to how Congress handled or kind of laid down on this continuing resolution? And he made a point. He was like, I called Tammy Duckworth to make sure she was voting no. And the fact that he the fact that he called her out as a positive and didn't mention Dick Durbin, who's one of the people who voted for it and who's very likely retiring, it shows that if they're involved, they can move the needle a little bit because they're the heads of these individual states and they can work a lot with their representatives and their senators. And so governors being more proactive, as opposed to someone I thought would be more proactive would be Gavin Newsom. And he's, you know, he's doing this kind of media tour, and he's doing his podcast, which has its own goals. But the pressure campaigns can really start from these governors. And the ones who are really involved, Wes Moore is working to absorb some

of the subject matter experts who are fired from the federal government into the Maryland government. There's ways to do things and be very aggressive about it and then the ones who emerge as those ones are going to be looked at really favorably if they do want to run for president. So you just mentioned Wes Moore as someone who's doing something very proactive about the firearms, particularly in his region, right? Addressing effectively the brain drain from the federal government. Who are some other, you mentioned Pritzker calling Duckworth, but who are some other folks who are trying to provide solutions,

just not rhetorical opportunities in this moment of crisis? So I would say that like Moore and Pritzker are the biggest. Moore obviously has to because he has so many federal workers, you know, more than almost any other state. But if you look at like Shapiro, he did the Bill Maher show with Sam Stein last week. And so you're seeing them get out there more. I feel like I haven't seen much of Gretchen Whitmer, but that might just be me being very overwhelmed by Congress, which is my primary responsibility. It's often said that cynicism passes for wisdom in Washington for a reason. Covering Congress can make you cynical. Who are the Democrats you think are are fighting the good fight?

And are there any people you think that I mentioned, Brian Fitzpatrick, but any any sort of anyone principled in the center right left, as far as you can tell, covering Congress? I mean, look, Murkowski and Collins have the courage to vote against Cash, Patel, and Pete Hegseth pretty much alone. A little bit. I mean, the confirmation votes were, they get more breathing room to kind of say no, because they have a bigger majority now. They have 53 seats, and so they can kind of do this when they want to. The interesting thing I've seen is Mitch McConnell has voted against several cabinet nominees. And everyone was like, is this him turning a corner? And it's like, no, it's not, because he is now behaving the way that like guys like Bob Corker and Mitt Romney did.

And he left them hung out to dry when he was leader. And so you're seeing some of them take these easier votes. Is that a liberation? You don't think that's a liberation of Mitch McConnell to vote his conscience? You think that's just. Yeah, I think it's just like a little too late, obviously. Yeah. You know, and it's, he doesn't have the influence to whip the way he used to. I think that the real principled votes will be things like this tax cuts plan. If it cuts social security, if it cuts Medicaid, that's the real test because these cabinet nominees, you could,

you know, vote against Kash Patel and then, or you could vote against Tulsi Gabbard. And if she fails, they'll just put Richard Grinnell in there. It's not like there's this alternative that's going to be infinitely better than the last one, except I guess maybe in the case of Pam Bondi versus Matt Gaetz. But the real principled tests will be these major pieces of legislation. That's where it will really matter for them. I've heard some folks talking about the SAVE Act, which is coming down the pike sooner rather than later,

some folks, and then also the danger in when the ultimate reconciliation bill comes in that the Senate parliamentarian will be, there'll be a pressure to overrule or ignore the Senate parliamentarian. A little bit wonky, but you cover the hills. So let's let's let's get I get the wonk on for a second in terms of coming attractions for folks, because these are both part of the general assault we're seeing.

Yeah. So there was a moment when Paul Ryan was speaker. It was very shocking. The House chaplain, Catholic priest, Father Conroy, he prayed for a fair and equitable tax cut on the floor. And then suddenly, Paul Ryan wanted him removed as chaplain. And there are these kinds of random positions that get overlooked compared to the members of Congress. And someone like the parliamentarian, could she be ousted in any way? Could she be the subject of attacks if she's not getting on board?

Or is she even willing to do that? We don't know. A lot of what they've tried to do, she's okayed. And so we'll see. I think that that's another thing. They would say if she says no, that can't be part of reconciliation because it doesn't apply to the somewhat narrow constraints of reconciliation, they ignore that. Then I've heard some senators say you might as well just get rid of the filibuster,

which would be a very bad thing for our democracy in my mind. If they ignore the relatively minor constraints she can put on things, then it's, there's no, there's no guardrails. Yeah. And if we remember the tax cuts in the first Trump administration, they allowed a lot of things into that, that you maybe didn't think would have been part of a reconciliation process. Like they allowed wildlife area drilling in Alaska. What does that have to do with a budget oriented tax cut bill? They made that justification. So there's a lot that the parliamentarian can do.

It's just really unseen that are unknown if she'll do anything about it well joe we are over our 30 minutes and that's coming down the pike they've kicked the can effectively six months but you're you're on the front lines here but in a way we're all on the front lines right now i don't think people should underestimate uh how dangerous this moment is with any sense of perspective in American history. And it's tough to keep up, but it's your job to keep it keeping up. And it's one of the reasons why the Trump administration has also tried to isolate and attack news organizations and media organizations. And I will say in closing that one of the ways to step up is, you know, obviously you vote every two years, but you vote with your wallet every day, supporting local journalism, supporting places that have the

courage and the conscience to be independent and to do the reporting like you're doing on Capitol Hill right now. It is stark but true to say that that's under attack right now. So everybody listening, you get it. But it's really important that we all spread the word and we stand together and take that collective action to defend our democracy that Joe was talking about. Anything to add? That's it.

Big week ahead. Big week ahead always. All right. Keep the faith, guys. Good fight goes on. I'm John Avalon, Joe Pritikone for The Bulwark this Sunday. Take care.