Bulwark Takes - Sarah Longwell: Trump’s DOJ Goes After Bolton—For Doing What Trump Did

Episode Date: October 18, 2025

Sarah Longwell joins Nicolle Wallace on ‘Deadline: Whitehouse’ to take on John Bolton’s indictment, Trump’s continued efforts to target political foes, and what the Young Republicans’ obscene group chat reflects about the current Republican Party. Watch Deadline: White House on MSNBC: https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everyone, Sarah Longwell here, publisher of the bulwark. So I was with Nicole today for the full hour. We were talking about those racist texts from the young Republicans. We also did a big segment on John Bolton, weaponization of the DOJ.

Thought you'd like it. Here it is. Sarah, it's great to have you back. I want to start with you and ask you if this is sinking in. I've seen some of the poll numbers, Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of using. of using the justice system to prosecute one's enemies. But what isn't clear to me is how many people are aware of this pattern and practice? Yeah, look, I would love to say that the American people are incensed about this,

but the fact is the number one thing we are hearing from voters in terms of what they are frustrated about really is the economy prices. And what they see is Donald Trump's failure to focus on those things and instead focus on things like prosecuting his enemies. And so it's not that they're not aware of it. It's just that they're like, Trump is doing this thing where it's about, you know, making himself happy and going after people he doesn't like instead of focusing on the things that I care about. But what they don't do necessarily, unless, I mean, Democrats certainly do, but sort of swing voters, voters who aren't paying as much of attention, certainly MAGA voters, they are less interested

in sort of the institutional problems of Trump, weaponize. the Justice Department, going after his enemies, and they are more focused on just the fact that Donald Trump doesn't seem to be doing anything for them. It's all about him. Sir, let me ask you this. We had so many conversations, I think, sharing exasperation that some of these folks sat on the sidelines. John Bolton wasn't one of them. I mean, he jumped into the arena and harshly criticized Donald Trump when all the generals described him as, quote, fascistic to the core and meeting the, quote, technical definition of of a dictator. John Bolton, when asked about it, said, essentially, Trump is too stupid to be a

fascist. What do you, he didn't, though, go to the next logical step, in my view, and endorse Kamala Harris or Joe Biden before him, as Liz Cheney did. But what do you make of these people without sort of natural constituencies? Tish James has sort of the thunderous, you know, palpable roar of New York behind her, of the Democratic Party behind her. Jim Comey and Bolton are sort of constituent lists, they don't have a constituency or really stakeholders. Do you think that makes any difference? Does that change how people see these indictments? You know, they do live in the sour spot of public opinion to some degree. I do think, however, people, as best as I can tell, seem to feel somewhat differently about James Comey than they do about John Bolton. And I think that

the reason is, is that even though, you know, a lot of people look back at 2016 and they've got very negative feelings about some of the decisions that James Comey made in those moments. I also think that people have sort of softened on him. They sort of feel like, you know, maybe he made bad choices with imperfect information, but what Trump is doing going after him is wrong. Also, I think for people who are paying closer attention, they know that his daughter was one of the people that was fired for trying to just uphold the law. And I think that the way that he has pushed back specifically has sort of galvanized people.

I mean, I've done a lot of live shows and a lot of focus groups since the Comey indictment came down. There's a lot of sympathy for Comey. I think people feel slightly differently about John Bolton, in part because there's a strong memory of the fact that specifically around this book, when he was writing it, he chose to write the book instead of testify against Donald Trump when people felt like it would really matter. And so there's some frustration there. I will say one thing that the public is aware of, I think, pretty clearly, is that John Bolton. is being prosecuted for the very thing that Donald Trump was doing himself, which was keeping all of these documents, sharing them with people, showing them around when he had all of those documents at Mara Lago.

And so I do think people, though, even if they are not directly sympathetic exactly to John Bolton, they do think that it is unfair for John Bolton to be prosecuted for crime and go to jail for 10 years for something that Donald Trump absolutely. did in plain sight tried to cover up and then was re-elected president subsequently. Sarah, let me come back to you. I mean, and I guess this conversation bears out your first point, right? That people may not be tracked. I can barely track all the specific details of all the cases. But to the degree that this is where Trump's intensity lies, that the most animated remarks he seemed to make all week in the Oval Office were these remarks, where he named

checks a list of four additional political targets for prosecution, describes Jack Smith as a criminal, describes Andrew Weissman as a bad guy, talks about going after Lisa, who was, I forget who was, who's puppet and has been attacking Lisa Monaco, the former deputy attorney general, around the clock. Is it, is it that lack of focus on the things that the swing voters, you know, sort of were persuaded by in the final weeks of the election, that is a turnoff? Or is it, it the fact that the economy is also a big suck, according to large majorities of the American people? So this looks like a distraction. Yeah, it's that latter piece. I mean, boy, I just can't tell you. You ask people how things are going in the country, including Trump voters, and they do

not think things are going well. You know, and this is where vibes over substance tend to come in. Like, they just, they see the chaos, right? It's the shutdown. There's national, the National Guard is in different cities and they people will sort of put things on either side of the ledger right they'll say well i'm glad trump is securing the border but i really need prices to come down and i'm really frustrated with it and the more that side of the ledger of frustration like why is all this other stuff happening instead of you know them making things cheaper that was the thing that was promised to me and so that is just absolutely what i hear and it's the reason i mean if you're looking at the polling that is coming out around Trump right now. It is being chipped away at. He was down to

the AP just came out with the poll today. He's down to 37 percent in that. It's his lowest of his presidency. So people do notice. But I want to make just one last point on the documents case, because here's another thing people understand, which is when Donald Trump had the issue with the documents case, shortly thereafter, so did Joe Biden and so did Mike Pence. And now we've got a situation where, you know, we've got John Bolton, who is sending classified information, allegedly. You've got the signal gate where Trump's Pete Hegseth is just signaling out war plans that people could hack. You've got Trump himself using his janky social media site, Truth Social, to communicate with his attorney general. Our OPSEC in America is not clean.

We have a problem. And if they're going to prosecute John Bolton for this, then what I would, my hope is that they use that to reestablish some real good. guidelines for what people are doing because it appears that nobody is taking these things seriously. And that, I can't imagine there is in a foreign country now who isn't looking at the way that we are handling our classified information and laughing at us. I mean, Sarah, Janky made me laugh out loud and choke on my coffee. But I mean, I guess let me just follow with you because you and I both know no one will. Because you and I both know that the guy on the signal chat who put the reporter on the thread wasn't removed from his.

post because anyone was worried about the operational security of imminent, active in the future war plans, it's because Laura Lumer soured on him and thought he was too closely aligned with the deep state. There is no one worried about what you just articulated. And the other thing happening, the other pillar of this is that they have completely dismantled the leadership of the FBI, the country's top law enforcement agency. Yeah, I mean, look, we're in a humiliating moment for the United States in terms of the quality of our leadership and what's happening and what I look I am I am just am mystified every day by the fact that you don't have business leaders community leaders military leaders everybody talking about what Donald Trump is doing

and I know that his campaign of retribution and vengeance has a chilling effect and people are afraid and they don't want him to turn his eye of sauron on them and you know focus on whatever their taxes or something they might have done. But people have got to stop. Everybody has got to find their spine again. And you know what's frustrating is that there's going to be a March this weekend. There's probably going to be one of the biggest turnouts in history at this No King's event on Saturday. And average people are going to show up to register how upset they are with what Donald Trump is doing to the country.

But America's elites have more or less rolled over. And I don't know, I remember thinking I was the most disappointed I could be in 2018 watching Republicans capitulate to Donald. Trump, but watching the rest of civil society do it has been one of the more demoralizing things I've ever seen. Okay, that's the conversation we're going to have on the other side of the break, because that's the one thing that can change, right? The Republican Party is Bruce Willis in the sixth sense. They're dead.

Maybe they don't know it, but we all do. I mean, it's everybody else. It's the people right now staring at their capitulation plans, whether they're at law firms or universities or businesses or sitting on the sidelines. that could still make a decision in the next 12 hours to show up at a No King's March. The thing that I was wondering about that I actually wanted to ask Sarah about was is what Trump, to me it seems like Trump has an incredible amount of momentum right now. It doesn't seem like anything can really stand in his way.

But at the same time, it seems like he might be setting himself up for like a, it's politically risky to be so focused on retribution and to be so focused on immigration because there's so many other things that could go wrong. And is there, from the political perspective, from what Americans see when they look at this, is there a risk here in retribution, just not even in the sense of the fact that Americans think that he's not paying attention to the most important things,

but that if something were to go wrong and people say, well, what was the FBI up to? And the answer is that they were up to different retribution conspiracy investigations and such, or at least that's the perception, is he, at the same time, it looks like he has a lot of momentum in a much riskier place than maybe he thinks he's in. Look, I think he's in an incredibly risky place, and largely because I hear frustrations with voters that are from all different sides. Like, you know, you've got a lot of the MAGA voters, whether it's the Epstein files or the fact that he's too focused on helping Israel or that he's sending money to Argentina.

like everybody is frustrated right now there's a reason I think his numbers are that low despite the fact that I think in terms of big picture things you might say he's had some wins but the fact is the American people do not feel like those winds are redounding to them they are glad they want the border secure but they think he's going too far with the ice raids and so you know right now the big political the only way to fight back politically right there's really two ways one is to show up at something like no Kings and demonstrate the opposition. And the other is for them to win, for Democrats to win the 2026 midterms in a way that allows for real oversight, which Donald Trump is absolutely, he's so scared of, right? He's so scared of this oversight. And so for me, what I see as Donald, because Donald Trump, regardless of whether you think he's going to try not to leave, he's not up for reelection again. And so his real political liability lies in the midterms and there being oversight from people that uncovers like all the corruption that he's been doing some you know some measure of accountability because right now there is no accountability

and if i were some of these civic leaders who've been letting him off the hook time after time i would remember that there's a future like this idea that the trump's not going to be in charge forever all of these things he's doing right now weaponizing the irs these things can come back at them he is changing the country we live in and they will have to live in it later when The Democrats are in charge. And so I think that's the risk is that people sort of, it starts to occur to them that Trump is not forever. And they start to at some point say, I'm going to look back at the people who capitulated to this guy, especially when he leaves office at a 29% approval rating because he did nothing about the economy and just tried to put his political enemies in jail.

Republicans in the state of New York have moved to revoke the chapter of their state's young Republican group. That move comes days after Politico unveiled a massive. massive horde of telegram chats that span more than seven months chats among the young Republicans who are all adults are looking at you, J.D, and in many cases, leaders of their groups in New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont. The thousands of pages of chats, many of which are too vile and graphic to put on television or even read to you, show how these Republicans casually make racist jokes and use slurs about topics like slavery, rape, Hitler, and the Holocaust. Peter Junta, who Politico describes as the most prominent voice in the chat,

spreading racist messages, was running to chair the Young Republican National Federation and said in regards to his candidacy for that position, quote, everyone that votes know is going to the gas chamber, end quote. He apologized for what was said in the messages, but also caveated his response by saying he wasn't sure that they hadn't been doctored. Sarah, the story's been percolating for a couple of days, but what's new is that the New York young Republicans has drawn a line where J.D. Vance wouldn't and said they wouldn't tolerate this. J.D. Vance is chalking up the messages sent by, you know, men and women as old as 40 years old, as dumb stuff that kids do. Yeah, well, look, first, and I'm glad that some people at the local level

are taking action, but I want to go back to Trump, because it's not just that Donald Trump fans the flames of behavior like this. It's that Donald Trump's own behavior has now attracted people like this to the party. This is not an isolated incident. This is about what the future of the Republican Party is going to look like because of who Donald Trump is and who he is attracted to the party. Look, if you're Nick Fuentes and you're a white nationalist who has white nationalist conferences or you're Kanye West, who's become a, you know, a raging anti-Semite, what does Donald Trump do? He invites you to dinner at Mar-a-Lago, you know. And so what, why are they making jokes about rape? Well, maybe because the president was an adjudicated, convicted of sexual assault, right? Like who Donald Trump is as a sort of a, it does vice signaling, right? Everything he has done is corrupt and indecent. And so he's attracting that type of person to the party. And in the 10 years that he's been dominating the Republican Party, he has driven out people of honor. He has driven out. He has driven out.

Like, it's no good to look back at George W. Bush in some ways because not only is he no longer reflective of the Republican Party, he is reviled by rank and file Republicans now. And so it is very important to understand that what you are seeing in these text messages, what you are seeing from the vice president. And the reason you're not hearing any pushback from the president is because this is what the party represents now. It has been taken over by, let's just face it, crazy people, many of whom are sort of these racist, online edge lords because that's who Donald Trump attracts to this party. And so that is where it's going. These are not kids. They're not children. They're not 17. They are the strivers who are part of the young institutions that are one of them is a state senator. You know, like they are, they are in the sort of firmament of institutional republicanism. And so I'm glad that they're being

censured in some places. But I don't think that anybody should make the mistake of thinking that this isolated. This is who Donald Trump has been attracting to the party now for over a decade.