Pod Save America - "Dicks Seek Pics."

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

Joe Biden and the Democratic Party try to kill off Iowa and New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status, Donald Trump tries to kill off the Constitution over Elon Musk’s release of some rehashed Hunter Biden laptop drama, and Georgia closes out the midterms with today’s runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker. Then, the Bulwark’s Tim Miller is back to talk about all the latest nonsense in the Republican Party. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party try to kill off Iowa and New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation status. Donald Trump tries to kill off the Constitution over Elon Musk's release of some rehashed Hunter Biden laptop drama. And Georgia closes out the midterms with today's runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker. Then the Bulwark's Tim Miller is back to talk about all the latest nonsense in the Republican Party. Before we start, it says here that Crooked Coffee's best-selling coffee accessory,

the Cold Brewer, is finally back. Just in time for the holidays. You guys going to get some loved ones a Cold Brewer for a stocking stuffer? Sure am. I don't like how you're saying it. I think Cold Brewed? Sure, I am. I don't like how you're saying it. I think cold brew coffee is great. Yeah, we don't like how you're saying it. Your tone is terrible.

A cold brewer. It's not the product. It's the brewer. It's a brew wave. That's how fast they've been selling. Crooked.com slash coffee. That's how you go to get it. right let's get to the news president biden and the democratic national committee's rules and bylaws committee just endorsed a dramatic change to the presidential nominating calendar that would end iowa's first in the

nation caucus that's been around for 50 years and push back new hamps Hampshire's first in the nation primary that's been around for 100 years, 1920, first New Hampshire primary. Under the new proposal, the state of South Carolina would hold the first primary on February 3rd, 2024. Three days later, Nevada and New Hampshire would hold primaries. A week after that, Georgia would vote. And two weeks after that, the last early state primary would be in Michigan. The primary electorates in these states would be far more diverse than Iowa and New Hampshire, but also more moderate, which is more reflective of both the general electorate and the coalition that just happened to deliver Joe Biden the nomination in 2020.

I'll stop there just to get your reactions. Tommy, RIP Iowa and RIP caucuses. What do you think? Deserved? Any downsides? I think I said this at the time, but the Iowa Democratic Party kind of buried any hope of the Iowa caucuses going first again when they screwed up the reporting process. Or at least I think I said at the time i was a little bit distracted by um uh accusations from uh mentally ill bernie supporters that three of us had rigged the caucuses but i wish we had i didn't see that would have been some power it was really like oh you had one job situation um and they didn't deliver on that and in the past i think iowa Iowa, New Hampshire's role has been protected by the fact that usually the person that does well there goes on to become

president, preserves the status quo. That was obviously not the case with Biden, who took fourth and then fifth in Iowa, New Hampshire. The good thing about Iowa, it's a small state. You can visit every county. You can do retail politics. You can potentially do well without spending a ton of money. Iowans take the process really seriously. They ask good questions. They vet the candidates. The bad part about Iowa was that caucuses themselves are way too hard. They're time consuming.

It's prohibitively hard for disabled people, shift workers, anyone who can't spare like three or four hours on a freezing cold night. It's also a very white state and doesn't come close to matching the diversity of the Democratic Party. So my takeaway is I loved my experience in Iowa. That is obviously I look at it through rose-colored glasses because Obama won. And there's this, I think the suggestion that a Jimmy Carter could come again and like campaign, do retail stops in Iowa and get vaulted to the presidency. I'm just

not sure that's true anymore in an era of of cable news and the internet and everything else so um i think the time would probably come change is good you can't let a couple states own this responsibility forever it's just it's a lot of uh it's a big gift to the states that get to go first it really is love it as a umhard Hillary Clinton supporter. A puma, if you will. Yep. A puma. A term everyone listening understands.

Well, it's a test. It's a test how long you've been around. Party unity my ass is what it stood for. That's right. And it was basically a group of Republicans saying they're going to vote for John McCain instead of Barack Obama. That's right. So I assume that you're happy that the Iowa caucuses will soon be gone.

Look, it's and should we should we separate out the death of the caucuses in general, which it looks like under this plan, no state will hold caucuses or at least that's what Biden wants with Iowa itself as the state not get not being in the early window, even as a primary. Yeah, I mean, look, I think one thing one. I also think it's like i think the order matters i mean joe biden is president united states because the order didn't matter uh in 2008 i think one thing we learned it mattered it mattered because of south carolina south carolina mattered well it mattered that eventually they got to a state he fucking won that's sort of the hard part right it's like's like, right. And but like, you know, you've had in on the Republican side, you've had Rick Santorum when you've had Mike Huckabee when you've had Ted Cruz when in 2008, there was a lot of narrative as the long primary

was unfolding between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But what determined who won that the state that followed wasn't what came before it was the demographics and politics inside of those states. So I think sometimes the order is overblown. I do think it's good to be done with caucuses for all the reasons that Tommy said. Look, I think it's a bittersweet goodbye, Iowa. As we say, see you later, Rapids.

Look, the caucuses... Here's the thing. The caucuses could try to drink it till they make it, but even if Iowa decided to go to court and sue city, everyone would know that they were just counseled loving. Are you trying to say that this is Iowa's Waterloo? It is.

I mean, and they're going to have to Grinnell and Barrett, frankly. I was going to end on Waterloo. I was waiting for you, but you paused. You shouldn't have paused. That was my big close. No, I think it's good. I think the one thing that like, I think that there's a good argument against South Carolina being first, but the one reason I think it's a positive if it does happen is that it is maybe a place that has the potential to do what Iowa did and that it was smaller and it's a place where people could go and like kind of

candidates could live there and you could hopefully see the same kind of like seriousness of purpose that people in Iowa applied which I think is the one sad thing to leave behind I think it also is good that a candidate can live there and even as like politics has become more nationalized and kind of more beholden to uh uh kind of broader storylines I think that there's still like the fact that Bernie basically fought Iowa to the tide, the fact that Barack Obama managed to win, the fact that Pete Buttigieg narrowly semi-won the Iowa caucus, even though we never really got

the results. Try as we did to rig it for him. Try as we did to rig it for him. All of those, I think, are a testament to the fact that like, it's good that there's a place you could go where the national story isn't as important. But beyond that, I say, no more Iowa. Thank you. And also hotter in South Carolina. It'll be nice that people don't have to go to Iowa and New Hampshire. It's December and January. Yeah, that's true. Although New Hampshire is still up there. Well, yeah. Listen. have money who can garner national attention and the things you do to garner national attention

are not necessarily um the things that would make you the best candidate or the best president and so losing sort of the focus on retail politics and losing the focus just on organizing you know on sort of grassroots organizing would worry me i'm not saying that that will go away completely but that would that would and i think you're right. South Carolina is a small enough state that you could still sort of live there, camp out and and and still meet a lot of people. And like as much as a caucus, I think, is a flawed and an undemocratic process in a lot of ways. The fact that it requires you to spend so much time did lead it to be the kind of thing where like candidates were getting really substantive questions all the time. Like

I remember like the final days of 08, both Obama and Hillary were giving these hour and 10 minute meandering answers that were like, they were really losing it. But the reason they were doing that is because they were trying to answer all the questions that they were getting and they were getting really specific, really intense questioning from Iowa voters. So like that part, I do think it's sad to see go, but maybe you can find it elsewhere. Tommy, what do you like about this plan overall, just going beyond Iowa specifically and anything you don't like?

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I i i debuked in my mouth a little bit i love its um explanation earlier and a suggestion that you know south carolina voters are hotter than iowans i think that was rude as well i meant sexier i meant raw sexual chemistry the other thing about caucuses that were actually good is in the iowa caucus at least your second choice matters you couldn't just like torch your opponents because if you, well, I won't get into all the math, but if your opponent wasn't viable,

you wanted their supporters to come to you. Anyway, overall, I think change is good. I'm really surprised and confused about why there's only three days between South Carolina, the first date, and then Nevada,

New Hampshire, the second state in 2020, it went Feb three, Iowa, February 11th, New Hampshire, the second state. In 2020, it went Feb 3, Iowa, February 11, New Hampshire. This new schedule seems way too squeezed for me. I don't know why you wouldn't want a week so that you can go to both states, like kind of camp out in either space, whatever. Adding Georgia and Michigan obviously goes a long way towards making the primary electorate more diverse. I think that's important. It will also force Democrats to like spend real time in the primary in swing states, Georgia in particular, but obviously I think we can't take Michigan for granted as we learned in 2016. Having, you know,

like you guys said, South Carolina, New Hampshire near the top, that means retail politics will still be a part of the process. The main criticism is that we'll get to in a minute in more depth that South Carolina is not really a contested state in the general. So you'll do all this organizing in South Carolina only for that not to matter. But that is a little defeatist. Like we should be able to change that over time. It's not like Iowa going first meant it was democratic forever. The other thing is Georgia is expensive, no matter where you are in the process. So like that will really incentivize money, I think. I don't know, mostly, it's just gonna like upend everything. I think God knows how this will look in the next time there's a contested primary, because it could be like, what, eight years. Yeah, I mean, I like that it forces

candidates to compete earlier for a more diverse electorate that better reflects what they'll face in the general. And I think that's diversity in terms of race, age, geography, and ideology. I like that it forces candidates to compete in states that will be general election states. I share your worry, Tommy, that having three states all within three days of each other, it's going to sort of cut down on the momentum you get from winning a small state, having been there a while. And then it compounds the problem by then having the next two states after those three states that are three days in a row, or within three days of each other, having the next two states be two very large states, Michigan and Georgia. So in essence, having sort of a three day window with three states and

then two bigger states as the entire early state window really does mean that the race will be nationalized quicker and favor the candidates with money and name recognition more than it would otherwise. Right. Especially you can see like split decisions coming out of the smaller states. And then there's that two week window before Michigan. And then all of a sudden, like the stakes in Michigan become incredibly high. Yeah, I mean, I used to have the Iowa results. And then that night you get on a plane and you have a you fly to New Hampshire, you have a midnight rally, you park there for an entire week, there was often a debate. And then you do the same thing in New Hampshire, in South Carolina. I mean, I think you're right it's just it's so compressed i just i don't get why they did that well and speaking of that like the nevada democrats uh must be pretty pissed because having going on the same day as

new hampshire nevada as we just saw takes a while to count their votes and it's in the pacific time zone so when people wake up on Wednesday morning, it's the New Hampshire winner that's going to get most of the headlines if New Hampshire ends up going the same day as Nevada. And by the time we find out Nevada, it'll just be sort of a delegate math thing. It won't be as much of a momentum story.

Maybe. Or this whole thing gets, or it's like there's unforeseen consequences in ways that this plays out that we can't predict. Well, the other thing and then there's the Michigan issue is so Michigan has one hundred and thirty nine delegates, which is nearly as many as the combined total from New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. So as a strategy, which we're going to get to as a bit, you could you could just say, I'm going to skip those first three states and then just for delegate math purposes, just wait till Michigan. Right. But we've seen that's candidates deciding whether or not to skip Iowa in the past. It just creates a whole new kind of set of strategic questions that will all have to grapple.

It depends on the mix of candidates. Yeah. So let's talk about South Carolina. Faz Shakir, who was Bernie Sanders' campaign manager and has been on the pod many times, wrote in The New York Times that the plan is great with the exception of putting South Carolina first, which he argues, quote, would be comical if it weren't tragic because the state isn't a battleground, as Tommy mentioned, and isn't trending towards Democrats and is way more ideologically and culturally conservative than the party and the country. Lovett, what do you think of Baz's argument? It was a very, it's pretty persuasive. It's like, look, Joe Biden is president because he won South Carolina. I think he feels, A, beholden to what South Carolina did, what Jim Clyburn did. I also think, sincerely, they believe that this mix of states is the right mix to make

sure you're choosing a Democrat who's nationally viable, who's doing well with the constituents you need to win. But at the same time, the point that Faz makes, which I think is a good one, is other than the fact that South Carolina is a smaller state, like what is the argument for South Carolina that doesn't apply to North Carolina, which is a swing state? I thought that was the most persuasive point. It's like North Carolina is a state that, you know, we won in 2008 and we stick to for 50 years. We should reevaluate it every once in a while. If South Carolina starts to move, if we think that the way we can compete there, of course, go to South Carolina,

but why not North Carolina, a place where we have a democratic governor. Yeah. I do think that's important too, that the point you just made, which is the, the Biden team and the DNC are basically saying, let's now revisit this calendar every four years. Because as one of you just said, none of this might happen. So let's talk about why it might not happen. I mean, number one is if Joe Biden runs and he runs unopposed, then it doesn't matter where all the different states fall. He's just going to get the nomination. And then by 2028, we could have another conversation entirely his only opponent time itself

so so faz mentions in his piece you know he's a dnc member he says he'll be voting no on the proposal um because of south carolina what are some of the other obstacles to getting this plan approved tommy well i mean you're gonna have to have states approve the new primary calendar process, including Republican controlled legislatures in Georgia. You're also going to have Democratic officials in Iowa and New Hampshire not go down without a fight. Senator Shaheen is boycotting the White House Christmas party in protest of this change. They're going to be mad, you know, and they could try to move their schedules around and, you know, push back on this new calendar.

But in that will then force the Democratic National Committee to punish them and potentially say your delegates don't count or potentially punish candidates that compete in the state. I think it's going to be hard for states to fight this, though, because ultimately it is President Biden's proposal and that's going to carry a lot of weight and they're going to want to listen to him. It will hurt organized labor, which is true. South Carolina is not a strong labor state, but I think having Nevada and Michigan up pretty close to the top gives organized labor a lot of juice in this. I think the broader point is so much of how the current primary process goes is reported on, how strategies are concocted is based on people just kind of doing the last thing. And when you completely upend it like this, there's not going to be customs. There's not going to be the sort of conventional wisdom that you get a bounce out of Iowa or a

bounce out of New Hampshire, you know what I mean? Or that this state always picks the actual winner. So like you could see completely different strategies from everybody and God knows how any of it will go. And that's sort of like in some ways i think that's the most scary and exciting part yeah exactly i think it's great like there was a piece uh you know there was a piece looking back on the history of the iowa caucus and talked about how like jimmy carter saw an opportunity there that other people didn't and i do think that

there's a problem to how rote all of this has become and how yeah how how much it's driven by the previous cycles it'll be great to have people thinking this through in a new way. I think we may be underestimating the complete chaos in just setting this schedule. Because, like, Tom, you mentioned Georgia, right? So Raffensperger would have to agree to move the Democratic primary in Georgia. We should have said from the outset,

Republicans aren't moving any of theirs. They're going to do the Democratic primary in Georgia. We should have said from the outset, Republicans aren't moving any of theirs. They're going to do this the first four states. So that would mean that Georgia would have to hold two different presidential primaries on two different dates. So Raffensperger, as of the time we're recording this, hasn't commented, so that's that. New Hampshire is going to be a real shit show if this ends up happening,

because New Hampshire has a law that says it has to be first no matter what it doesn't seem that they are likely to change that law even if every democrat every whiny democrat new hampshire who's mad about this decided that they wanted to sununu the governor governor sununu who's a republican and the house majority leader who's also republican already went on the record saying we are not changing the law so there's also a question about what the secretary of state of New Hampshire would have to do, right? Because it's a little bit, yes, they have the, they have the ability to move it, to

make sure they go first, but we don't know what would happen if they are threatened with the fact that their delegates won't be seated. Right. In New Hampshire, New Hampshire's pissy nonsense is why Iowa had to be a caucus because they had to be the first primary, right? So there's all these stupid dominoes that are just kind of toppling no but we know what they would i think what's going to happen is new hampshire is going to get their delegates stripped right because sununu doesn't have any incentive to make sure that the delegates get seated he's just going to say no i'm not changing

the law we can't be in violation of the law the primary is going to be on the day that it's going to be and then the dnc would have to decide to strip the delegates or just give in. I also, yeah, like I also like, you can imagine like this is such an improvement in bringing in all these different states, I think is such a better approach. Like the exact or again, I just think like overanalyzing or just sort of overstating the importance of like the very specific order. I just I just don't think, you know, it so if you ended up with a situation where like New Hampshire went, went a week before South Carolina and Nevada, and then into Michigan, then into Georgia to Michigan, whatever, like it's still bringing, it's still achieving the geographic demographic and like ideological diversity that you want. Well, with the stipulation

that we don't know exactly what the order is going to be, or like if there's any states that are going to fall out of this, what do you guys think the general upending of the nomination calendar, which does seem likely, what do you think that will change about strategy for candidates and campaigns in both 2024 and beyond? I mean, if candidates approach it the way they traditionally have, it could mean, you know, I think Obama spent 73 days in Iowa, right? And then probably like 10, 20 in South Carolina. That will likely be flipped. You could see candidates spending 60, 70, 80 days cruising around South Carolina, talking to South Carolina voters. It also means that like your primary task will be reaching someone who's closer to, I think,

the kind of median Democratic Party voter, which is, I don't know, say 50 year old African-American woman who is probably less liberal than the kind of activist base that you find in Iowa. I wonder what this will mean. We mentioned Nevada earlier, John, in that like sort of shortened period. I kind of suspect this means like the Culinary Workers Union in Nevada will be even more powerful because if you have like zero time to focus on the state and organize and turn europe people out like you're gonna need the biggest baddest uh sort of party bosses in town and like i do i worry a little bit about look we should get rid of caucuses probably like primaries are better they're more inclusive we want more people to be a part of the process. But I do like the muscle memory that comes from learning how to organize the Iowa caucuses has trained some of the best organizers in the entire Democratic Party, like actually most of them. And I think I worry a little bit about like losing that muscle memory.

Yeah, I think you can still get that in a primary in a smaller state, but it's tougher. It's tougher. I think in the immediate, in 2024, I think this could effectively kill off a challenge from Biden's left or any first of all, by getting rid of the caucuses, which usually help more progressive challengers, and also just from moving away from more college-educated liberal voters. And also just any challenger. These are states that are very, very good for Joe Biden in 2024. I also think in the future, or if Biden doesn't run, I think you get more potential state skipping and strategy based on delegate math because you don't know what the momentum will or won't be. I think the whole strategy based on momentum out of states, it already was sort of fading. And I think that upending the calendar like this will put a bigger dent in it. Just the one like kind of pushback on that, like just to play counter devil's advocate, Georgia is so big and those media markets are so expensive that you're going to have to raise like $200 million. If let's say you do a Georgia only strategy, you're like, it's a big state, tons of delegates, let's focus there. The amount of money it would take to play

there. It's like, I wonder if you can really pull that off and make it worth your while as opposed to a momentum strategy where you can get more bang for your buck, getting a bounce out of small. I guess what we're getting at is who the hell knows. Well, if you're in that case, if you're a Tom Steyer or Mike Bloomberg and you have a shitload of money, maybe that's when you do that. Run it back, Mike. I think from a substantive policy standpoint, I mean, Tommy, you were talking about the type of voter that you're going to focus on with this kind of calendar. It may generate more moderate policy proposals from the candidates. And I would not be surprised if they spent less time in doing activist forums, right? Like just the type of voter that you're going to have to appeal to in states like these is going to mean that like we saw this in the primary in 2019. A bunch of candidates in that primary took positions that Joe Biden's, you know, sort of stepped a little bit away from in the general election. And the reason they did that is because they were appealing

to an activist base that held a lot of sway in caucuses and in some of those early states that may not be true in this new calendar. I think those people still hold a lot of sway in online fundraising is going to be sort of the challenge and the question. I do wonder too, I mean, look, the Iowa caucuses, you saw how it distorted policy in a bad way. Like the ethanol subsidies we've all been living with for a long time are probably, you know, not the best way to be doing what we're doing. I do worry that like, will those issues get any say? Will there be any like ag forums? Will there be any focus on, you know, certain agricultural issues?

Who knows? Maybe in Georgia? Yes. Maybe in South Carolina. But in Nevada, you could just imagine these things not coming up. Yeah. And some of these dynamics around sort of pressure from the left, like, you know, one of the kind of like mini controversies around that came out of a debate out of Texas.

Right. So it is sort of some of these things are not just dependent on the it's just the different groups of the Democratic electorate that are in every state. All right. Let's talk about the Republican Party, which isn't changing its 2024 nominating calendar, but may have a nominee who wants to get rid of the Constitution. Over the weekend, Donald Trump truth to the following in response to the release of internal Twitter emails about Hunter Biden's laptop. Quote, Do you throw the presidential election results of 2020 out and declare the rightful winner? Or do you have a new election?

clear the rightful winner or do you have a new election a massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules regulations and articles even those found in the constitution crazy shit for sure uh love it how much worse is this than the shit he usually says you know it's more explicit it's just more explicit. You know, like I've, I've actually genuinely surprised that it's getting the reaction it's, it's getting in the sense that like, you know, when you call for overturning the election or rerunning the election or say, a mountain insurrection at the Capitol,

that means you're not a constitutionalist. I know. That's why it was my first reaction. And so it's like, I actually am quite, I am glad he's being this ham fisted and stupid because he's cut off and posting these fucking truths because now it is requiring a response. I mean, the fact that Joe Biden gets these T-balls like he gets to hit a ball that says Nazis are bad and the next ball says the Constitution is good. Like that is fucking ridiculous. is good. Like that is fucking ridiculous. Tommy. Yeah. I mean, it's so brazen. He's such a brazen, clumsy authoritarian that you almost laugh at him. But I mean, you know, you look around the world and tearing up the constitution is really like autocrat 101. It's the thing that all these

lawmakers literally swear an oath to. So I guess it doesn't necessarily tell us anything about Donald Trump that we didn't already know. It does remind us that he can say literally anything and 95% of elected Republicans will not criticize him for it. Right? Because what's worse than this? Well, we've now seen in two weeks, we've seen the two worst examples of anything. You know, like Nazi dinner. And then I'm going to write the Constitution. I mean, but like he has been telling us since 2015 when he came down the escalator that the rules and laws don't apply to him.

That's literally been the one most consistent theme about his first campaign, about his presidency and about the period from when he lost and tried to steal the election through the insurrection. That's the biggest theme, that he doesn't believe any rules or laws apply to him. Yeah, it's all, though, it's getting, we're not too many clicks away from jars filled with piss here at Mar-a-Lago. What is the piss happening? Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes, guys.

Remember? Aviator. Where I got all my history of howard hughes oh when i hear jars of piss i think of um you know what do you think of lazy dudes lazy college people who pee and wow okay that's what i think of uh speaking of the t-balls that joe biden gets so the white house not only issued a statement that condemned trump's comments it issued a follow-up statement from andrewates today, on Monday, that called on every Republican member of Congress to condemn the comments as well. Tommy, the White House doesn't usually respond to every deranged thing Trump says. Why do you think they did it in this case? I mean, I should say we just talked about

in the last Monday, Tuesday pod that they didn't actually go after the, or at least Biden himself didn't go after the Nazi dinner thing. And eventually they came around though. They came around. With a statement. We still haven't heard Biden talk about it. Yeah. I mean, I think as Lovett said, I mean, sometimes you're playing t-ball and that thing just right there sitting on the stand and you want to hammer it. I mean, it is a 99 to 1 political issue to call on Republicans to demand to continue to support the Constitution. So, yeah, I mean, I think I would I would swing at this pitch and he's a declared nominee who's going to run against President Biden at this point. So, yeah, I would be hitting the shit out of pitches like this.

Probably didn't have to do a poll to find out that shredding the Constitution isn't popular with voters. I'd love to do that poll, though. It'd be god it'd be like you know what there's no still like 35 40 well now it's polarized yeah the constitution is a polarized thing you know supporting it but even like even the white house statement there was one part of it that said like the constitution is a document that brings us together it was like there's a there was a anyway, there was a media strategy part of this, too, which is really smart that I know, like Brian Boylan. I had this conversation on offline and positively dreadful last week about like what Democrats can do, sort of call attention to more Republican controversies. And they said, you know, reporters should basically ask Republicans what they think about this members of Congress. And today they did. So there's like a whole nother round of stories

about all these Republican members of Congress. Here's some best of Senator Roger Marshall said, we should be focused on the problems that matter to us at home. The Constitution that like that is that is a good one. Yeah. Rand Paul said, you can talk to him about his opinion, but my opinion is that there are no exceptions to the Constitution. Oh, thanks, Rand. Rick Scott said,

he said he didn't say that because there was another truth today on Monday where Trump said, I didn't actually, I didn't actually, why are they all saying terminate? I didn't use the word terminate. It's like,

the truth says terminate. The truth is still up. We see the truth. We can see your truth. Which I guess. You're speaking your your truth that's how it works and then he finally said they're like oh he did say that he did say it in the truth he goes well i believe we ought to enforce the laws they'll just never miss a chance to disappoint all of us it's so funny oh So the reason that Trump wants to terminate the Constitution is because Elon Musk gave left-wing turned right-wing pundit Matt Taibbi internal Twitter emails that show Twitter executives granted a few requests from the Biden campaign to take down some dick pics of Hunter Biden. This is a story that the right-wing media is losing its mind over.

of Hunter Biden. This is a story that the right wing media is losing its mind over. Is there anything more nefarious here that we didn't already know before the release of what Elon's calling the Twitter, the Twitter files? Love it. Well, I mean, we got a little like there's got a little color. And basically, one thing you learn, I mean, it's always true. But whenever there's some controversy or crisis involving a giant corporation or organization, you can be sure that what's going inside is not like Machiavellian maneuvering, but just like panicked people trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, right? Like, Twitter has said, I think Jack Dorsey has said that taking down this is about a New York Post story that reported on the Hunter Biden laptop. That's the core of all this. So Twitter basically says that this New York Post story is from hacked

materials. They basically don't allow it to be disseminated in a pretty aggressive way. Then over time, they come to reflect on that and view it as having gone too far. The right goes fucking nuts. A bunch of people go fucking nuts. They have basically said that internally. You see, after the story has been throttled, there's a bunch of people trying to figure out whether or not they should have, whether or not it was right. And as that's going on, they're also getting requests to remove pictures of Hunter Biden's ding dong from the social media platform. And even Taibbi says that the Twitter was honoring requests for takedowns from both the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign.

Reminder, Trump was president at the time. Joe Biden was just a just a man from Delaware, not operating under the auspices of the government and therefore the First Amendment, not really applicable. So I don't really think we learned that much other than the the dick pic takedown. That is, that was news yeah tommy yeah i mean it's certainly like interesting to see how the the you know behind the scenes accounts of how the sausage is made or i guess in this case uh struck down but like so i i did that's good tommy that's that's good on the fly how the sausage was on, how the sausage was. All right. Sorry, you had it. We're good.

I shouldn't have helped. No, no. Look, I appreciate your help always. So, I mean, look, some people on Twitter were like, nothing burger, nothing to see here. I disagree with that. Like, it was interesting. But like, I love it. Just said the fact that this was kind of a messy mistake. It wasn't news.

Jack Dorsey copped to that. I think most people in hindsight are like, yeah, that was probably a mistake to block users from sharing this laptop story. But again, like everyone struggled with this decision. The New York Post struggled with this decision. They had to, they turned down the story, I think, before offloading it to some former producer for Sean Hannity, who wrote it up. And that person now works at Breitbart. So it was a tough call. On balance, they made a mistake. I think it was an honest mistake. But when you consider the role that Russian disinformation played in the 2016 election and the pressure that Twitter was getting and Facebook was getting from the U.S. government

to prevent election interference, you can certainly understand it. And so I think bigger picture, Elon Musk is creating more problems for himself here because he is pledging to be this person that he's not, which is a transparent champion of free speech. But he stops being those things when they bump up against his interests. And at some point, there's going to be an edge case like this that pisses off his MAGA base or some decision they don't like. And they're going to want the same level of transparency and they're going to be pissed when he doesn't get it. And like, look, pre-Elon Twitter was not

perfect. It frustrated all of us at times. But like, you know, listen, I listened to Kara Swisher's interview with Yale Roth, I think is how you say his name, the guy who had the job of, you know, trust and safety. And he's a very earnest academic. And what they tried to do was put in place consistent processes to make challenging decisions, knowing that they're all human beings and they're going to screw it up. And Elon has just upended all of that. He's playing king and making impulsive, childish decisions. And so, I don't know, if he wants to be transparent, put these documents out to all journalists. Don't like cherry pick Tybee. And now Barry Weiss is the other journalist who will now have access to them.

I know this because I have a very small shrunken social life. And I listened to like an hour and a half of his Twitter space on Saturday and actually got to ask him a question before they cut me off. What was your question? I asked him, he had gotten asked by somebody else about whether he would do anything to support protesters in Iran and China, and he ducked it. And so I followed up on that. And I was like, like, you say free speech is like critical to the future of civilization. Will Twitter do anything to help free speech in China and Iran with those protesters?

Like, is their speech critical to the future of civilization? And he basically got mad at me, told me it's a dumb question, because they can't connect to Twitter with a VPN. All the little like right-wing guys hosting the call started mocking me. And then they muted me and they kicked me out. And then Seb Gorka asked a question. So it was very productive use of everyone's time. And what time was this on?

What's going on during, what were you doing? I was flying home Saturday night from DC. I was on, yeah, because I was like, I'm like, what time is it in California? I was transitioning from world cup soccer games to Georgia LSU. And so look, I didn't, it did no harm.

Hannah was doing some other stuff. I was. Yeah. A few things annoy me more than right wing media and assholes like Elon Musk trying to scandalize what is sort of normal, clunky behavior inside an organization by trying to like release emails. Right. Like this is what they did with like they've done this forever. Like I went back and looked at the timeline on all this because you sort of forget how this unfolded in the in the weeks before the election but it's like you're right there was good reason to believe that a foreign government would once again interfere in our election on behalf of donald trump and donald trump's intelligence agencies and law enforcement

agencies were putting out that warning at the time right mark zuckerberg in an interview had said oh they told us specifically that this was going to happen and so when the hunter laptop story story comes up, they're like, oh, it could look exactly like this, right? Like it looked like that kind of thing. So what they do is they make the decision, Twitter and Facebook and some other social media companies, to throttle back in a really significant way the ability to share that story for a couple days. Then there was an uproar. And then they realized, okay, we shouldn't throttle it back anymore. Now, the effect that had was to increase the Google search interest on the Hunter

Biden story by fivefold overnight because the story was then that social media companies were restricting the story. In a poll taken about a week before the election, 77% of all voters had heard of the Hunter laptop story. 40% had heard a great deal of it. A plurality thought that Hunter did something wrong and had corrupt business dealings. But just 3% of voters said that the Hunter Biden issue was the most important issue in deciding their vote. Turns out he wasn't running for president. turns out he wasn't running for president turns out he wasn't running for president so this whole idea that they they tipped the scales of the election on behalf of it's bullshit and then jack dorsey over a year ago was saying that it was a mistake initially and that it was basically inaccurate that the hunter

laptop story was based on planted information or some foreign op or whatever it was so yeah it was basically inaccurate that the Hunter laptop story was based on planted information or some foreign op or whatever it was. So yeah, it was a mistake, but it was not nefarious and it didn't have any fucking effect. The people who want you to believe that the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression was critical to the outcome of the election are the same people who mock liberals who get upset about Russian interference in 2016. You can't have both. And again, hey, Republican friends, if you don't want to be treated like you are people who collude with foreign governments and peddle in sketchy information, then don't collude with foreign governments and conspire with WikiLeaks, et cetera, and all the shit you did in 2016.

They created the context where this kind of action would happen from these social media companies. It doesn't change the fact that on balance, it was probably the wrong decision for them to throttle that story for a couple of days. But are we supposed to act like Rudy Giuliani was credible? Give me a break. They already knew that. They already said that. We've already known that for a year. And so Elon Musk is at best ignorant and at worst an asshole for doing this.

And look, he said at one point, oh, I didn't read all the Twitter files. So you just gave all that to Matt Taibbi who like is a bad actor with without good intentions and all we learned that was new was that there were some embarrassing pictures of hunter biden um that didn't have anything to do with the business dealings or the scandal their corruption or anything that he might ultimately get charged for by doj had nothing to do with any of that it was some dick pics that the campaign asked to take down. That was it. And, you know, like Elon, he has bought this thing. He is acting as though he has some tribune for to create a global public square where

people can speak and have a dialogue. He's going to defend free speech. There is this big space between outright misinformation and like hard right bigotry and, you know, whatever NPR. There's this big space in between where I think some of the biggest obstacles to our being able to actually have this utopian space that is impossible that he wants to create. And the thing that stands in its way is not just these heinous examples of the most obvious and disgusting kinds of hate and lies and speech.

It's sensationalism. It's noise. It's hyping things that aren't actually a big deal. It's feeding into people's conspiratorial mindsets. It's treating everything, as John said, as as some kind of nefarious plot rather than people just plotting along, trying their best. That heat is like the biggest is probably day to day the biggest problem we have in having any kind of political debate in this country. And no one is doing more damage to it and actually making Twitter less usable and less likely to survive than Elon Musk, who is wants to be both the mayor of this big fucking town and also its chief troll and destroyer. So it's like, fuck you. What a waste of everyone's fucking time. And he's also just like he's trying to just juice engagement on Twitter because he clearly made Matt Taibbi

roll this all out through via the most confusing Twitter thread you could possibly have structured. It's like a lot of throat clearing, which is very annoying. But like he just wants people on Twitter, which, you know, he's just like he's just doing like earned media ops. But the other thing he did over the weekend that I just want to fly quickly is he tweeted in response to somebody. I've seen a lot of concerning tweets about the recent Brazil election. If those tweets are accurate, it's possible that Twitter personnel gave preference to left wing candidates. So what he's doing there. so right, like Brazil was a military dictatorship until very recently. They just went through an election where a modern

day fascist named Jair Bolsonaro narrowly lost to Lula da Silva, the former president. And there was real concern about the potential for political violence. And it got really close. He is just throwing gas on that fire before the transfer of power actually occurs without knowing the facts and it's like hey man if you care about like truth and transparency that's great get the facts and then tweet about it so don't do this i saw that and this is an example of elon's brain being poisoned by Twitter because he is now he now follows and and interacts with all of these supposed free speech advocates who are actually just right wing fucking trolls who are feeding him so all he's encountering is all this disinformation

misinformation about not only things that are going on here in the United States but all over the world and so now he's just regurgitating him because that's his information environment. Well, because he's also a guy that's been in a fucking boring tunnel for the last 15, 20 years. He's not like he's not he's not familiar with the the organizations that are advocating for democracy in Brazil. He's not familiar with the contours of this debate. He's not familiar with the contours of the American political debate about who's an honest interlocutor, who's full of shit. He is making it up and figuring it out as he goes because he's just a fucking rich guy who built a car, who bought a social media platform. And now we're all along for the ride.

And worse than that, he is exposed in foreign countries, unlike Jack Dorsey was like. So Elon Musk wants to move some of his manufacturing to India, for example. He wants to sell a bunch of Teslas in India. The Indian government, we know, in 2021 went to Twitter and said, take down these hundreds of accounts that have been criticizing the Modi government. That is going to happen again. And Elon is going to bend, if not break, when this happens. And I guarantee you he won't be transparent about it. And guess what?

A bunch of tech workers and a content moderation council. That's messy and it doesn't get it right. But the alternative is what we have now, which is a dictator. Which is Elon Musk making all the rules himself. Yeah, and a Twitter poll that could be, you know, juiced by a whole bunch of bots. That's what he got. His own staff says are just nonsense. They're all juiced by bots, which is his primary beef with the platform.

But absurd. All right. Before we talk to Tim, there is a runoff election Tuesday today in Georgia between Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker. More than two million votes have already been cast and turnout seems to be higher in Democratic areas. higher in Democratic areas. Polls also seem to be favoring Warnock by a few points, but it's a close enough race that a surge of Republicans on Election Day could very easily tip the race toward Walker. Guys, any final reflections on how both campaigns and candidates have closed out this relatively short runoff? Love it. Look, I think Hershel Walker is leaving it all out there on the field, as you would say, in football. He has never been worse as a candidate. And I think that's really going to make the difference. I hope. I hope. I hope. How about that? Tommy, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, Walker seems to be closing out the campaign by dealing with more allegations

of abuse that are incredibly troubling and seeming to misstate which entity he's actually running for. It seemed like he was suggesting he was running in the House or maybe he was just confused about the makeup of the House versus the Senate. I don't know. He's an absolute disaster. It's embarrassing to everyone involved. And I'm just praying that Georgia voters turn out and send Raphael Warnock back to the Senate because the guy isn't... I listened to his interview that I think you did love it. It was like, he's such an inspiring, hopeful, amazing person.

We are lucky to have that man in the US Senate. It's crazy that we were even considering, any state would consider replacing him with Herschel Walker. And I can make fun of how bad a candidate Herschel Walker is, but I do think because he is so bad, there is, I think think a reason to be concerned about people being complacent and thinking it's in the bag when you know we're this is coming out tuesday morning people still need to turn out they need to vote republicans turn on their turnout machine we have no idea what happens when they do yeah i did see um a uh trump's former state director in 2016 in georg who had said that he was in Playbook today and he said he had been hopeful that Walker would win this runoff.

But now he's a little less hopeful. But importantly, what he said is he's like this, the machine that the turnout machine and the organization that Stacey Abrams helped build over the last 10 years is just unbelievable. And that's what makes him most worried that they are that. So that is that is good news. And it's also, you know, good news that the Votes Save America community has really stepped up in these last couple of weeks after stepping up all through the midterm. So we just want to thank everyone who has stepped up for VSA. You've raised over $175,000 for the Warnock campaign and the runoff and over $70,000 to support America Votes organizers through Vote Save America's Every Last Vote fund. You've contacted 150,000 Georgian voters with the goal to call an additional 2,000 voters by the time the polls close this evening.

So that is fantastic work. And if you're hearing this Tuesday morning, there's still time to get out the vote before polls close. Listeners can go to votesaveamerica.com slash volunteer to sign up. All right. When we come back, Lovett and I will talk to Tim Miller. stunning backdrop there you're going for a room raider score or 10 out of 10 out of 10 there uh you know this is just my uh my kitchen here john yeah about to say that's not a kitchen that's a kitchen that belongs to a gay person that's a gay gay kitchen. I'm just trying to balance out my football hat with a gay little plant and wallpaper combo. We get it. You're a man without a party. Let's keep this moving. Shut the fuck up, love it.

Joining us today, writer-at-large at the Bulwark, author of the best-selling book, Why We Did It, a travelogue from the republican road to hell friend of the pod tim miller tim welcome back hey boys and i'm so happy to see that it's love it and not vitor this time there were some rumors in my twitter mentions the last time that there was gay drama and that love it love it snubbed me uh and was no wow there wasn't no people tweeting that at me i look tim as i texted you uh it was a true testament that i liked the book because i finished it even after i missed the interview because of covid i appreciate that text i appreciate that text but this is the proof is now in the pudding that you you know would say it live in front of other people not just in private and you know what you did i did are. Are you two okay? Yeah, we're good. We're good. Tim, your latest bulwark piece, a real banger.

The headline is, no, you do not have a right to post Hunter Biden's dick pic on Twitter. Constitutional right. You do. You do have a right, I guess, but you don't have a constitutional right. Constitutional right. That's correct. Yeah. So you do a great job of cutting through a lot of the bullshit around this story that Mago World is hyperventilating over, though that hasn't stopped the hyperventilating. How much of an appetite do you think there is to keep the story going? And do you think it'll have traction beyond the hardcore fanboys? Have you guys turned on Fox today? I mean, this is leading the hour, leading every hour.

Concerns about constitutional rights related to posting Hunter Biden's hog. I don't know whether I'm not certain whether, you know, how long that this this will have success with the Republican base. But it continues to draw interest right now. Republican base, but it continues to draw interest right now. One of the, I think, you know, two or three affirmative policy platforms of this incoming Republican Congress that one of the things they really do care about is making sure people have a right to post Hunter Biden's penis on the internet if they want to, and that the platforms cannot cancel them for it. So I think they intend to keep talking about it. I do do not i do not get the sense you know i live here oakland now i'm a coastal elite so but i do not get the sense that it's

resonating among among the swing voters that cost the republicans so you don't think hunter biden's penis has become a surprisingly big issue i don't i think it's a growing issue to grow or but i don't i don't think it's showing up in the poll there's not a ton of evidence you know i did travel a little bit during the midterms for my various media endeavors and i didn't hear a lot about it uh you know in pennsylvania and arizona among the swing voters i don't did it show up in your focus groups john we're not hearing that in the bulwark focus groups on the focus no I did not hear anything about didn't pop up every once in a while you do get a something hunter Biden and then there's something nefarious uh attached to it but that's about it

what's your read on Elon Musk's role in all this and just as a fellow twitter addict how concerned are you that he's our chief supplier now? I'm very concerned. I did a whole Snapchat episode this week about being a Twitter addict and being concerned about having Elon and just my mix. It's a troubling relationship that you have. It's like you're in a bad, have an abusive boyfriend, abusive spouse type situation but I'm pressing forward I'm going down with the ship on Twitter I think that this reveals the Twitter files thing the biggest thing that reveals is just you know there's a lot of I think occasionally correct

criticism of the left and the media ecosystem that they're kind of out of touch with the concerns of regular folks and you know you're talking about sometimes things that, that, that, you know, in using language that regular people don't care about. I just think this is a prime example that the Republicans and the like, contrarian tech bro, new Republican allies are like in an equally thick, if not even thicker, hermetically sealed bubble where like they think that the things that they are obsessing about are things that actual people care about. And I think that the Twitter files is just a prime example of this. Like they really did believe, like, I think that Elon really did believe that he had, you know, something, something huge here. I mean, he said,

he replied to Taibbi saying that if this is not a violation of the Constitution, I don't know what is. And it was like, he answered his own question. Yeah, I was like, anything that's a violation of the Constitution would be. But this is not even

in the ballpark. So I think that that shows that like it's not, he's not like putting on a front, like he is obsessed over this stuff, over cancel culture and et cetera.

And so he thinks everybody else is. I think it's concerning. Obviously, I've closed my DM cetera. And so he thinks everybody else is. I think it's concerning. Obviously, I've closed my DMs. I used to have open DM policy, but like, you know, the fact that he would leak people's emails, like internal emails of his own staff and former staff, I just think shows a lack of judgment and concern

about how much he cares about our data. I think that's an obvious point, but another one. Yeah. So speaking of cancel culture, it seems to have come for Kanye and Trump. I am of two minds. Like, you know, look, we have this truth from this weekend where he says he wants to suspend some,

terminate some of the articles of the Constitution that led to a fair amount of, you know, Biden to press Republicans to be asked about this. You have the Nazi dinner. And I'm of two minds. On the one hand, it feels as though his liability is becoming more clear to people, especially after the midterms and that he's committing Trump's liability. So he's committing the ultimate sin, which is not being politically valuable as opposed

to causing insurrection. But on the other hand, this feels a lot like the conversation that was happening before the first votes in 2016 where, oh, he's not viable. Oh, he's not viable. He's too toxic. And then lo and behold, there's enough of a minority to carry him to victory in the primaries. How are you feeling right now about where the Republican party is with Donald Trump? He's as weak as he's been since he came on board with the Republican base, you know, since he came down the escalator. I don't think that that's a question. A big part of that reason is because that like people see a realistic off ramp,

to your point. It's not that he's vulnerable because the Republican, you know, scales have fallen from the eyes of Republican voters and now they see the man for who he is. Like, that's not what has happened. To your point is they now have an alternate choice hypothetical one in Ron DeSantis that is not Hillary or Joe Biden or a Democrat or a rhino cock never Trumper like me. Right. Like they have an off ramp that is someone else that they like who's actually doing a Donald Trump imitation. They have an off-ramp that is someone else that they like who's actually doing a Donald Trump imitation. So for that reason, Trump is a lot more vulnerable than he was.

And I think that also just this sense of his invincibility. You can't understate that with the Republican base. They never really liked Romney or McCain. And we, my people, we thrust them upon the base voters. And they had to hold their nose and they lost both those candidates. You guys might not remember that. But so then when Trump wins, right, they the base voter, your your median Republican voter starts saying themselves, well, fuck these guys. I can get everything I want.

I can own the libs. I can like say racist stuff and we can win. Right. racist stuff and we can win right and so and so trump had this hold over people this power that allowed him to do all this crazy shit because they're like i don't know worked in 2016 um uh despite the fact that he you know lost the popular vote and so i think that that hold on people is is weakening right since they've lost now three straight times and this was the central element of the big lie right in 2020 is it was like if I can convince people I didn't really lose the second time, then I can maintain that hold. And I think that slowly but surely, there's a certain percentage, not the whole Republican Party, obviously, but there's a certain percentage of people that are like, you know, the electability spell is breaking a little bit.

Now, that doesn't mean that he couldn't win, of course. He's still totally viable. But I think he's weaker than he's been yeah i was gonna say like i have seen the argument this is a this is like a new york times pitch bot uh take here that uh that trump's weakness is actually making him stronger in the primary because of the because what's happening, since he's weaker than he's ever been, more potential Republican candidates for president are thinking about jumping into the field. And the more candidates you have in the field, the easier it is because of the Republican primary nomination rules, which has mostly either winner take all or winner take most delegates in a state and now you can win the nomination as a factional candidate who only pulls you know 30 40 all right so pundit the dog is gonna like this because i am uh against conventional wisdom on this this is the this

is the wrong this is the wrongest conventional wisdom about 2016 donald trump would have beat any one of the other 16 candidates one-on-one like donald trump had almost a bare majority despite the fact that there were 17 candidates and he ended up with like 45 percent of the total vote like the people wanted trump okay and then and in in florida is my best example of this so i was working for the anti-trump PAC at the time. Jeb had dropped out. We convinced Cruz to not compete in Florida. So it was really a head-to-head with Marco and Trump.

And John Kasich is a stubborn asshole. So he stayed in and got like 4% or something. I don't know. We can check the numbers. But it wasn't that many. And Trump crushed Marco in his home state, head-to-head, the strongest know candidate opposing him so i i don't think that that is really true someone is gonna have to actually go out and beat trump if he's gonna be beaten there is there a hypothetical scenario where he could get 38 and just santos could get 36 and pence could get whatever uh you know have a math person figure out how many are left um yeah

like that's possible and i think that's something to worry about then you know next fall or next winter but i i don't i think the bigger challenge is can you get enough people off of trump and until he's starting to pull below the number that he was getting into his 2016 primary you know i just i don't know that all i think all of this is like navel gazing uh you know bs and in that, in that argument is particularly being advanced by Ron DeSantis fan boys who, you know, who want everything about Trump except, you know, his, his like unique derangement, psychological derangement. And, you know, rather than getting someone who like has shown one iota of integrity over the last seven years. Yeah, I saw you had a great piece on this.

You're not a fan of the right-wing rush to anoint Ron DeSantis as the one true Trump slayer. Can you tell us about that? Well, sure. Right now, today. So again, if you look at the focus groups of the bulwark of the MAGA voters, Ron is their favorite. I'm not objecting to this. He is the second choice. But we've all seen this before. I mean, Scott Walker was everybody's favorite choice up until the minute he had to stand

on a debate stage. And they're like, oh, my God. Speaking of limp dicks, like this guy's got nothing going, you know, and they moved off him in two seconds. Right. So maybe that'll happen to Ron DeSantis. Maybe his little whiny, you know, Ivy League kind of Trump imitation doesn't wear that well over two years. We don't really know. And so I just get, I get a little upset that everybody's

like, well, we have to anoint, the Republicans have to anoint someone that has never even come close to criticizing Donald Trump. not only that who ran the most obsequious pathetic like i'm sorry i was about to go too far on the penis jokes you'll get it advertisement you've ever seen in support of donald trump where he's like reading his kids it art of the art of the deal book, and building a fake Lego MAGA wall on the border. I mean, we have to have this guy who's never criticized. Trump is so weak.

He's so pathetic. He's cost you three elections. He's having dinner with Nazis. He wants to tear up the Constitution. He's not viable at all, so our only choice is to pick his most obsequious fluffer. just i think it's a little early for that i think it's a little i got around to it i think it's a little early for

that is all i'm saying maybe someone else can have a try i guess why not why not have somebody else who's like you know not trump's little little little guy yeah and there's look there's nothing worse than getting behind a fluffer who's too early that's what your point was i don't understand it's related to my point uh question love it yeah here's my question you said in a hypothetical primary between trump and desantis if it's competitive 15 days out before the california primary you're going to re-register as a republican and vote for DeSantis. You make me sick to my fucking stomach. Look at you. That wallpaper may belong to gay people, but I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I'm looking at a gay person. It's true that you're mad at me. And you did fake your

sickness on the last episode. Wow. I fake COVID. Okay, Here's the first. I would do that. I would do that because here's why. Because it would be a signal to the other people like me, the former Republicans, the fucking people that hate and resent Ron DeSantis with every fiber of our being that like just to end this national nightmare to get rid of this guy that tried a coup that wants to tear up the Constitution that has myriad other problems we don't need to list. Like it's fine to just suck it up. Check the Ron DeSantis box if that's the only option available and then go beat him. Can Joe Biden not beat Ron DeSantis? Did you see the way he went up against Charlie? I mean, like, is he really that scary? Ron desantis i i'm not i don't know that that's my view uh i i

understand taking the other point and you wanted to bring that up to just make sure i lose all credibility with the positive america listeners that's fine tim i tim i i did read the whole piece and and you did say that there was there's a possibility. You might vote the Democratic primary. You might vote the Democratic primary right? If for some reason Joe Biden doesn't just run unopposed and also if Ron DeSantis says something

I guess Trump level crazy. No, not says something but if Ron DeSantis runs which is also possible I guess that he runs like Donald Trump's biggest flaws is that he didn't ban enough Muslims or separate enough children at the border. And then and so that's why I want to, you know, I guess it's possible. But I think that you can you can people at grownups, adults can carry the view at the same time that that Ronon desantis is a despicable twat and that's like donald trump is an existential threat to the country and that like we should probably just do everything we can

to stop an existential threat from the country from being president again uh even if that means supporting a twat let me ask you this uh is kevin mccarthy going to be one of or the strongest speaker of the house industry iron fist kevin sort of called um is he gonna be one of or the strongest Speaker of the House in history? Iron fist, Kevin, sort of called. Is he going to be Speaker of the House? Is he even going to be Speaker of the House? I do think he's going to be Speaker of the House because there's not really a good second option. And the fantasy, I mean, trust me, I'm all about my man Bill Kristol and the West Wing fantasy that like Don Bacon and David Valadao are going to team up with the Democrats to make Liz Cheney the speaker or something. But that's just not really going to happen. There aren't any moderate Republicans

really in the House. There's a very small number and certainly not enough that are going to cross over to work with the Democrats. I think that they could embarrass Kevin. I think that there's a lot of like Matt Gaetz is a petty bitch who loves for drama. So I do think that like he might want to embarrass Kevin and make him do a vote where he loses. And he has to like go on to a second ballot or third ballot. You might remember this happened to Boehner. I think Boehner, I'm going from memory now. Boehner had like five or six ballots one time and took a very long time for him to get to 218. So I think that could happen to Kevin Kevin but there's just not a credible

alternative so I do think if you're looking for a silver lining in the Kevin McCarthy speakership I do think his life's going to be miserable I mean it's just going to be chaos for the next two years right I guess the question is how much chaos is there going to be

and like how much is it going to be fun to watch and how much is it going to be awful because it'll screw all the rest of us too debt ceiling for example I mean I don't think that there's any yeah I mean the debt ceiling and the crazy investigations I feel bad for people that don't have to get lawyers and I was on this

I got invited to some Twitter space to speak and Mick Mulvaney was one of the other speakers and I was like you know I'm going to do that I'm interested in what old Mick has to say and Mick Mulvaney was one of the other speakers and I was like, you know, I'm going to do that. I'm interested in what old Mick has to say. And he was saying that his advice was that

among the things that he thought the new Republican House should do is investigate the politicization of the FBI and the way that they've treated former President Trump. Now, Mick is like on the team normalish side of the type of people that kevin mccarthy talked to right and and like even he is like we need to investigate these fake conspiracies about how like liberals deep within the fbi famously famously

woke progressive institution the fbi you know it's targeting donald trump and so if so think about if that's where mick is like like there's a whole just you know levels of crazy to his right and that and they're going to be making mccarthy do a lot of stuff that i think will be harmful politically but it's annoying for the country for sure painful for certain people any big takeaways or lessons for you from the midterms anything that surprised you anything you yeah man away from that with i was um so i had to suffer through arizona um for i was i did the circus i was down in arizona for a week and i man i was really freaked out by the carrie lake campaign that had an emotional impact on me when he went to those rallies.

They were out of another world from the old types of Republican rallies that I went to back in the day, the boring ones. And that crowd was rabid. They were angry. They were conspiratorial. There was a standing ovation for a guy who refused to get the vaccine. I mean, like all kinds of weird shit was happening. And I just, I was a little too close to it. And I got worried that like that level of energy in Arizona was going to push her into a win. And I'm just, I'm very happy that she didn't win. And I think that there is even, you know, my cynicalness was abated.

My cynicism abated a bit in the midterm because I've always been a person that's like, you know, there are enough crossover voters. Democrats should be focused on them, not just turning out the base. They should focus on both. And I was even surprised the extent to which there were people, you know, who were Republican voters, voters really for all intents and purposes who just looked at these crazies and were like no i'm not this is too far you know if you're trying to make donald trump an autocrat and you want to ban abortion at two weeks like i'm not going to do it i just i can't go that far and that was encouraging and so that's nice it's nice to have nice things right and that was my big uh takeaway from the election that's good yeah

any advice now thinking about the results of the midterm like any advice for the democratic party ahead of 2024 like what are democrats doing wrong what could they be doing better sort of in the context of the results that we just uh we just saw from your vantage point as chief cuck chief cuck was the chief cuck well my people are gettable so don't forget about us i i wrote about this a while back like i think that there are a lot of that you can do a lot of progressive stuff that you know that is not you're not going to lose favor with the potential gettable voters you know by passing forth a very ambitious climate bill for example like that didn't cost you anything right. There's a lot of progressive stuff that you can get done, you know, and still try to appeal to

these voters by pointing out the extremism of Republicans by throwing us a few bones down. And I think that Josh Shapiro's campaign in Pennsylvania is just a prime example of this. There is no world where you can describe him as like a centrist or whatever, but like he or and Raphael Warnock in Georgia, for example, if you look at Warnock versus Abrams, I have nothing against Stacey Abrams. I think that Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams probably agree on everything policy wise. But Warnock just sold himself and positioned himself as like, hey, I'm a pastor for the suburbs. I'm a dad. I wear sweaters. I've got a dog. I'm not obsessed with the elite media. I don't need to be on the cover of magazines. You can trust me from time to time. If I need to work with a Republican, I will. And I think that's why he's going to win this week. And obviously, he did eight, nine points

better than Abrams. Part of that was that Kemp was a lot stronger than Walker, of course. But based on my time in Georgia, when I was interviewing some of these swing voters, for a lot of them, it was like, no, I like Kemp better than Walker, but I also liked Warnock better than Abrams. I felt like he cared more about me and my interest. How much of that is, I mean, look, I hear you, but like Stacey Abrams has worked incredibly hard to present herself in a way that is, you know, runs counter to any idea that she's some far left progressive. Like some of this is that she's been targeted by years of campaigns to make her seem more extreme than Raphael Warnock, right? Yes. And I think that there's certainly a misogyny element to it. But you can do this

yourself. Google image, magazine cover, Stacey Abrams, magazine cover, Raphael Warnock. I think that their vibes just matter now only to a certain percent, only to a certain slice of the electorate. But I think that if you're looking at people in suburban Georgia, a lot of them felt... It's not like Raphael Warnock wasn't the recipient of tons of negative ads over the course of two cycles and two runoffs. So he was targeted to I just think that that strategy worked. And I think that, you know, you saw that in other places around the country. And I think my big lesson from that is just is that you don't really have to pivot that far to the center you know you just have to think about you know how how people are uh you know how those types of voters the gettable swing voters are processing you as a candidate

all right tim miller tim miller thanks for stopping by there was no there was no beef there was no secret beef between us dude there's, there's always a little gay drama. You never know. You know, there's stuff happening. Maybe I'm putting on a show now. Yeah, there's something that happened on the alt Twitter. I know you're on that alt Twitter. It's a different job.

Favreau doesn't even know what's happening. He doesn't know about alt Twitter. Favreau doesn't even know about alt Twitter. It's just a whole different world out there. Is that like Mastodon? It's the opposite of Mastodon. It's actually technically the opposite of Mastodon. Hopefully um hopefully next time in la guys thanks so much for having me come see us all right all right thanks to tim miller for joining us today and uh we'll talk to you on Thursday.

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