Bulwark Takes - RNC Goes Feral Online After Disastrous Interview

Episode Date: December 13, 2025

Sam and Andrew take on the GOP’s latest self-own. RNC chair Joe Gruters went on a radio tour predicting “absolute disaster” in the midterms, the RNC posts the clips, deletes the clips, and then rage-tweets at anyone who quotes the clips. Get 30% off your entire order with Soul at https://GetSoul.com, promo code BULWARKTAKES.

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that will be able to allow others to stand on my shoulders to be able to be helped. Join the Fight for Cures. Tell your elected representatives to support American medical research. Visit UnitedforCures.org slash action to send a letter today. paid for by United for Cure's action. Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor of the bulwark, joined by Andrew Eger, author Morning Shots, wear of a Washington commander's cap, loser franchise, just kidding, they're fine. My franchise is the loser franchise, the New York Giants.

We're going to talk about Morning Shots for this, a bulwark takes episode. I'm getting into the habit of saying that every time. Subscribe to the feed so you can get great takes, subscribe to more. morning shots so you could get a great newsletter. We're going to be talking about the content in the newsletter, but I'm more interested in the reaction to it. Andrew is in what we call the barrel. The RNC Twitter handles are all going after him. You are apparently scum, garbage, and one of the worst journalists ever to grace this profession. Why are they so mad of you, Andrew? Yeah, I'm used to hearing all this from you, Sam. So it was a little bit of shock

to hear the RNC also express so many correct opinions. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm I'm not used to that from them. No, it's the reporting from this morning is about Joe Gruters, who is the chair of the RNC as of this summer. And he is kind of an interesting guy because he is not nearly as public facing as a lot of the RNC chairs we've had in the past. Most notably, obviously, like, Ronna McDaniel, who has, like, more than a million Twitter followers and stuff. People don't pay a ton of attention to, like, his every utterance, right? He doesn't have this giant media operation. So it was interesting to us when we learned this weekend, or just a couple days ago, that he, He has spent the last week kind of going around to all these conservative talk shows and talking about the midterms in kind of wild ways. I mean, he's really, really, really trying to set expectations very low. Let's play a couple of them. You'd hit the nail on the head. This is a absolute disaster. You know, no matter what parties in power, they normally get crushed in the midterms.

What's interesting is the party in power always gets crushed. the midterms. It's not a secret. There's no sugar-coding it. It's a pending, looming disaster heading our way. And the question is, is how can we reverse that trend? But let me put in perspective. Only three times in the last hundred years has the incumbent party been successful winning a midterm. Four times in the last 150. We're facing almost certain defeat. The only person that could bring the nose up and help us win is the President of the United States Donald Jake Trump. That's not really low, buddy. That's like below the floor through the earth down to the earth's core, basically. Right, right. And that's always kind of the way these things go. Right.

I mean, it's all, it's all. No, it's not. No, no, no. Him saying it is not. But I'm saying doing the expectations game is normal. Right. I mean, every operative wants to like set a lowish bar that they can then exceed and clear. But this was really unusual, like, from any party chair ever to hear like this kind of like dramatic. The word disaster is not the word that you ever really hear any political operative using to describe their own chances ever, even if it is a disaster. Let alone the chair of the RNC or the DNC or anything like that. It's nutty. So what's the reaction? Well, actually, to give you a sense of how crazy this is, okay, because it is crazy. First of all, and we should have made more note of this in the newsletter itself. I kind of kicking myself by

this. But it is diametrically opposed to the White House's own messaging, right? Which is that things are gravy. They're going to be fine. They're going to keep control of the house. Things, you know, politically, they're totally in control. They expect to retain the House and Senate. Two is the reason this sort of matters is because it can deflate your donors. It can deflate members of your own party. It could signal to members of your own party that maybe you should probably, you know, get out before you get beat, right? So you're too young to know this. How old were you in 2009? How old was that in 2009? I guess I would have been about 15.

Okay. Maybe you're not too. So back then, during the Obama White House days, Robert Gibbs was a press secretary. And there was kind of like this, there was a moment where he was asked at one of the briefings. Oh, no, sorry. He was asked at, I think, on a Sunday show, meet the press, what he expected if they were worried about the midterms. And he said this. Okay. This is all he said. I think there is no doubt. There are enough seats in play. that could cause Republicans to gain control. That was the totality of the quote, which is like, not, is that even the same stratosphere

as what the RNC chair has said, it caused a multi-day crisis for Democrats. You know, Nancy Pelosi was pissed. I'm pulling up this start from CNN. This is what one senior Democratic official told CNN members were hot, hot, hot about it. He had to backtrack it. It was just, you know, it was bad.

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office beverage, a refreshing alcohol-free alternative that's perfect for winding down on the couch or socializing with friends at one of those endless Christmas parties. Bring on the holiday cheer and treat yourself or someone you love to Seoul this season. Right now, Soul is offering our audience 30% off your entire order. Go to getsole.com and use the code bulwark takes. That's get soul promo code bulwark takes for 30% off. To kind of give a little bit more context about what's happening here, right? I mean, the point he's making in each of these quotes is kind of the same one. In each of them, he's saying, look, like, the party that's in power just tends to get absolutely destroyed in the midterms, right? Historically, that tends to the case. And he goes on

in each of them to say that, like, our only hope of bucking that trend and averting this disaster that I'm talking about here is to just cling to Donald Trump harder than we've ever clung to him before. And that's interesting in and of itself, right? Because right at this moment, Republicans are more so than at any point since like maybe, I don't know, 2018 or something like that, starting to actually sort of reassess their priors about how much they need to be like bear hugging Donald Trump. Like every Republican in the country pretty much has been bear hugging him all the time through every race for, you know, more than five years at this point. But because it's so many of his own policies that have, that are putting them in trouble, especially when it comes to affordability and the tariffs and all these sorts of things. And because we're also starting to see some of these, like, loyalty cracks happening in the MAGA base with people like Marjor Taylor Green and things like that, it's become more of an open question than ever before, like, how much are these guys going to all keep bear hugging the president?

And so the chairman is going out there and he's saying, don't stop, you know, like this is our only shot to, you know, do fine next year is keep going, keep going, keep doing it. But so, but it is notable that while he is doing that, he is talking about, you know, the alternative or what. What was likely to happen in these just, again, just insanely apocalyptic terms. All right. So that's one part of the story. But the funnier part of the story is how the RNC's digital team has handled it, which is not well. I'm going to read you a few of the tweets that the RNC research account clearly doing a lot of research here has put up. Some of them are response to you and me and others.

Some of them are response to other people who pulled the same quotes. Here's one. you're a lying piece of shit that is in response to henry sisson okay great you're a lying piece of shit they said here's the full quote this is to me uh so i take a little pride hey jackass here's the for hey jackass here's the full quote now mind you they're putting this full quote and i'm just going to read the full quote that they themselves are highlighting i like our chances in the midterms but let me put it in perspective only three times in the last hundred years has the incumbent party been successful winning a midterm we're facing almost certain

feet again i don't really see why they're pushing this stuff but whatever and he goes on to say you know like unless unless we really embrace don't trump harder than we ever had before like we let me keep going i'm cooking let me cook here this is in response to the democrat account they say here's the full quote you comma scumbags i don't know why they put the comma in there kind of broke it up then their spokesperson accused you of doing poor reporting then the rnc going after gavin newsome you're a liar then they made fun of you for misspelling the rnc chairman's last name, which you quickly, you did fuck up. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. You fuck that up. In the heat of battle. In the heat of battle. Going after Aaron Blake, this is fake

news. Here's the full quote, comma, scumbag. They really like scumbag. Oh, Bill Crystal. This is a good one. How much does Harvard charge these days to learn how to report bullshit? What? I don't, is Bill being paid by Harvard still? He's a graduate. Hold on. There's more. I'm going to let it go. Oh, and then we'll get to the towel. People get the idea, I think. No, no, no, no, we're going to go. Here's another one, breaking you're a massive loser and a liar. The Daily Beast, which picked up on the story, is a left-wing hack outlet spreading fake news. Okay, they get the point.

So, how are you feeling about that? Well, it's been interesting. The one interesting morning, interesting Friday, from like a comms perspective, right? I mean, they, it is interesting to see the kind of like confidence in the narrative silos so strong there. Yeah. They're not really trying to win an argument. with anybody who is like actually reading the piece right because i did i did give context for all these remarks i did talk about you were over the top fair about it yeah yeah i mean like people can go read it

if they want to i linked to the full uh audio clips of these of these uh radio hits that the rnc had had posted themselves on sound cloud which the rnc then subsequently pulled off sound cloud and deleted while they are accusing me of not put in guy in contact you it's all just very strange but like Again, the idea is not to like reach a median kind of like reasonable person. The idea is to take what is sort of an alarming story for Republicans of these of their chair talking in these sort of dire terms about their own chances instead of doing the pump-up work he's supposed to be doing, taking that story and trying to turn it into like a media story, right?

Like the story of the dastardly fake news bulwark as well as all these other organizations, you know, being unfair and taking things out of context and basically just trying to keep the attention on anything other than the actual words that the chair has been saying out there in the media. I liked what town hall did. They accused you of misstating or misgiving no context to the chairman Joe Grutter's quotes, but then they mingled the quote. Yeah, they themselves actually then did mangle the quote. And then they also included an audio clip in their tweet where like nine seconds in, he says, the thing that I quoted him is, I mean, it's just, it's a very surreal, a very surreal story overall. I don't know. Like, it's, it's, it's true, though. I mean,

like, it's, it is true that the chair was correct in his assessment that, uh, that it is really hard for any incumbent to win in the midterms. And it is also particularly true as I got, I mean, like, this is so weird. It's like, we haven't talked at all about the actual, like, real reporting that I did in the piece, which is not just sort of transcribing these, these radio hits, but also talking to a bunch of Republican strategists about what they make of like, you know, this idea that they just need to grasp Trump ever more aggressively class them to their bosoms, you know, and they're, a lot of them don't like that idea. A lot of them think that it's his policies. You know, it's the affordability stuff that is that is going to kill him next year. But, but they're, they feel kind of sunk because this White House does not, like, go your own way at all. If you're, if you're not like MAGA waving the flag the whole way, you might have to worry about MAGA, nukeing you from orbit before you ever even get to, you know, your, your tough purple state race against a Democrat or whatever. So there's all kinds of difficult, difficult landmines that Republicans are inching around right now. And that's the funny part about this piece.

It's like such a classic, I think they call it Kinsey Gaff or whatever, where it's like he's telling the truth. Like they're probably going to get killed in this midterm. And you substantiated not just by quoting him, but by getting these Republican operatives to say, yeah, it's bleak out there. And the surfacing of the truth is the most problem. problematic thing for everyone is that they just they can't handle it and they have to then go on the attack very i got to i was sympathetic i was sympathetic to to the chair for one reason which is that i myself know what it's like to get off a radio hit and be like that was kind of fucking stupid that thing i said i uh let's hope that just sort of slips back into the past and

and maybe he thought he was in the clear you know this was all from last week or so so i'm sorry about that i mr gruders uh in that respect i think the problem here is he's mostly they got a pleasing an audience of one here and that's Trump doesn't want to hear his R&C chair saying they're about to get killed. All right, buddy. I'm glad your voice is getting better. I can still tell that you're soldiering through it.

We're playing hurt, as JVL says. Yeah, we're doing it. Playing hurt. I've made this comparison before to other people. It's like the MJ Flu game. Exactly. It's unbelievable what you're doing here. People are going to write books about it. World historical. Yeah, exactly. Andrew, Edgar, you're taking it on

the chin online. suffering from some sort of ailment medically and yet here he is doing a bulwark takes that's how much we we care about our audience thanks buddy talk to you later