The Bulwark Podcast - 2024 Will Be a Train Wreck

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

From Trump's court calendar to concerns about Biden's age, we may be underestimating how bad next year could be. Plus, Mark Meadows' dubious claims about Georgia, Vivek and the show, lefty book bans, and the MAGA mob effort to blackmail us out of a constitutional republic. David French joins Charlie Sykes.

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Don Valley North, Don Valley North for Lexus. A proud member of Wayne's Auto Group. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is August 29th, 2023. There's so much going on. But again, there's always so much going on. I mean, I am old enough to remember when in August, nothing happened. Everybody waited until Labor Day and then like everything starts on Labor Day. That's no longer the case. It's sort of like, remember when we used to have news cycles? They were actually like, yes, you have to have the two news cycles, the morning paper and the afternoon paper.

No, there's no more news cycles. It's like all the time. Every 10 seconds is a new news cycle, and there are no downtimes in August. So we are very fortunate to be joined again by our friend David French, who is a columnist for the New York Times. How are you, David, first of all? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me back, Charlie. I appreciate it. Well, we have so much to talk about. I want to talk about the 14th Amendment, the belief that there's a deus ex machina, that the 14th Amendment is going to save us

from Donald Trump. I want to talk about that tragic shooting out in California. I want to talk about the left-wing book banners and the reaction that we've gotten at the bulwark to a really good piece by Kathy Young. But can we just start off by just the top lines? Your thoughts about Mark Meadows' decision to testify? I think that came as a surprise. Mark Meadows, of course, has been indicted down in Georgia, and he wants to remove the case to federal court. And to the surprise of pretty much everybody, he actually took the witness stand yesterday. And he's basically offering the defense that, hey, you know, I was just trying to land the plane, and this is what I was doing as White House chief of staff.

Your reaction to Mark Meadows' defense is here. It's a very interesting issue as to whether a chief of staff could have any kind of purely political role. But here's what's interesting to me, Charlie. So you've got the Hatch Act, right? So the Hatch Act is something that prohibits a federal employee from essentially engaging in electioneering in their official capacity. And so the question that I really have here is, okay, the Trump election challenge, this is Trump challenging the election as a private citizen. So this is Trump in his capacity as a head of a campaign, not the head of the executive branch of the government. So is Meadows helping him? In what capacity is Meadows helping

him? What official capacity does Meadows have as chief of staff in connection with that Georgia election challenge idea? With a state election challenge. Yes, it's a state election. What role does the federal government have in dealing with a state's election count? Right. It's a state election count. It's a private entity is the Trump campaign. Now, I could understand if he's saying, look, I'm trying to land the plane for the transition of power. There's all kinds of things that chief of staff can do that's election adjacent. And if he's saying, look, I'm trying to land the plane for the transition of power, there's all kinds of things that chief of staff can do that's election adjacent.

In other words, working on the transition of power, et cetera. I'm a little bit dubious of this claim that the chief of staff somehow becomes part of the law enforcement apparatus for the investigation of election fraud. Is that really what they do? I'm much more skeptical of that. Besides, part of this is kind of begging the question because the real question here is, were they just lying about all of this? Right, Charlie? That's the allegation here. The allegation here is they were just lying about all of this, that there was never any real foundation for the

belief that they could win in Georgia or they would win in Georgia or all of this other stuff. And so part of it is that you kind of almost have to buy the defense premise in a way that says, oh, no, this was totally about election fraud. And look, one of the hats the president wears and one of the hats the presidency wears and one of the hats the presidency, the White House wears is this law enforcement hat. And we're just totally engaged in this really good faith effort to root out election fraud out of the American system, et cetera, et cetera. No, that's not what was happening here. What was happening here was you had a candidate for president who was engaged in a berserk effort to overturn an election through an avalanche of lies. Now,

that's not Mark Meadows' job description. That's not what he's there to do. So it's going to be very interesting to see how the judge responds to this. Interestingly enough, in a vacuum, sort of the Jeff Clark DOJ piece of this, well, yeah, the DOJ does actually have a role in dealing with investigating potential claims of election fraud or other illegality that would violate federal law. But that wasn't actually his role really at the DOJ. So there's going to be some interesting questions raised here of all of the people who have that sort of removal argument. Meadows and Clark probably are on the most solid ground, but it's still pretty shaky. Well, this is why all of these episodes need to be seen in this larger context. You know, you take one speech or one comment out of context and you can construct a kind of rationalization or defense. But the fact that Fannie Willis has now charged them with this conspiracy, and you also see this with Jack Smith's indictment, that there is a narrative,

there is a pattern of behavior, not just one incident, but put them all together and it becomes pretty clear what they were trying to do. And so Mark Meadows trying to say, I'm just asking questions here. Well, maybe in that narrow context, you're just asking questions, but you broaden the lens out to everything that was going on, all of the attempts to delay and obstruct the peaceful exchange of power. Look, he talks about going into Georgia during this whole blast of nonsense that we endured as a country. And look, if he's in the situation where he's going to Georgia and he's reporting back and he's saying, Mr. President, there is no fraud. What are you doing?

You've got to stop this. That's one thing. It's a whole other thing if he's engaged in the effort with Trump to overturn the election. There's been a lot of conversation about intent, Charlie. So there's a couple of things I want to clear up about this intent piece. One, against all the wish casting you sometimes see from some folks that, no, no, no, no, we don't actually have to prove that they knew what they were saying was false. No, no, you actually do have to prove these are elements of the crime. If you look at the crime, if you look at the jury instructions, et cetera, there is a criminal intent that you do have to prove. And then a lot of people throw their hands up in the air and they say, oh no, we have to prove criminal intent. How are we

ever going to do this? I'm like, well, you do it like it's done in most criminal cases in the country. Proving intent is not sort of this hard extra bar for a prosecution. It's a totally normal part of a criminal prosecution to prove intent to a jury. And it is not the case that you get off scot-free just by looking at a jury and say, well, I didn't mean to do anything bad. That's not to get out of jail free card. The prosecution is going to be able to introduce evidence that essentially leaves a jury with no reasonable conclusion other than you knew what you were doing was wrong. You knew what you were saying was false. And that's why I think it's really important to look at sort of the totality

of the whole thing. And that was one good thing about the indictment, the Georgia indictment. One of the most effective parts was how they raised that even before the election, there was this draft of an address that was going to talk about fraud. So you had a plan locked into place. Now, that's not a big secret. I mean, he was talking about fraud before the election openly. But when you look at the totality of it all, you really realize that it's going to be very hard to make an argument to a jury that this was all genuine. And I think the totality of the national story is what makes it so hard to show that it's genuine. Because if all there was, was Georgia, Charlie, if all we were talking about was Georgia. Exactly.

That's close enough to say, well, maybe I had some really bad information and was operating on that. But no, Georgia was just one piece of a really big fraudulent puzzle that they were putting together. So meanwhile, in a courtroom in Washington, D.C., Trump's lawyers had at least what looked to me like a particularly bad day in court. Trump apparently is insisting that they try to get the trial delayed, the Jack Smith trial delayed until 2026. The judge was not having it. Trump's lawyers obviously were doing what Trump wanted them to do and kind of humiliated themselves.

And we now have a court date in early March, and Trump lashed out at both the prosecutor and the judge. Let me just read you his bleat. Deranged Jack Smith and his team of thugs who were caught going to the White House just prior to indicting the 45th president of the United States, an absolute no-no, I don't even know what that's about, have been working on this witch hunt for almost three years, but decided to bring it smack in the middle of crooked Joe Biden's political opponent's campaign against him. I think you can be sure that Trump himself wrote this tweet. Election interference, exclamation point. Today, a biased Trump-hating judge, all caps, gave me only a two-month

extension, just what our corrupt government wanted. Super Tuesday, I will appeal. So let's talk about this. March 4th, relatively early trial date, judge not buying the Trump attempt to push this off past the presidential election. Donald Trump is saying he's going to appeal. So let's just start right there. My understanding, and I am not a lawyer here, David, is that he can't appeal those kinds of things. What is the state of play there? Yeah, that's a really good question. I'm not aware of any right of appeal of a trial date. Now, there are claims that you can make that would generate some rights of an immediate appeal in extreme circumstances. If you have, say, for example, some kind of evidence of judicial corruption, et cetera, et

cetera. I'm not going to sit here and say that there's absolutely no way to get this in front of an appellate court. Routine procedural rulings from the district court do not generate rights of appeal. What tends to happen in criminal cases is that if you believe that your defense has been prejudiced by district court decisions, after conviction, that becomes part of an appeal. So in other words, if there's an evidentiary ruling, for example, or there's another ruling that you think was prejudicial to your defense, those become elements of an appeal after the case has been decided at the district court level. Okay, let's just step back for a moment, because there's a school of thought that thinks

that every time that Donald Trump, you know, has to do a perp walk or be arraigned or have his mugshot taken, that this actually helps him, makes him stronger. There's another school of thinking that says, wait, somebody charged with 91 felonies who's going to be in and out of court all 2024. You look at the schedule for next year, and I mean, he will be in court. This is very, very time consuming, isn't it? I mean, you have multiple felony cases that are all at least scheduled to take place, as well as the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit in early 2024, which would seem, David, to be a little problematic to run for president of the United States while you are in court. So where do you come down? All of this is is helping Donald Trump or 2024 is going to be just a complete train wreck. Oh, well, I come down completely on the side of 2024 is going to be a complete train wreck. Okay. Going into the 2020 election season, I thought this is going to be unbelievable.

And it was so much worse than I thought it was going to be. And I have a 2020 colored view that 2024 is going to be really bad. And then part of the, in the back of my mind is saying, maybe I'm even underestimating how bad it's going to get. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. You know, look, there's this reality about this primary and there's a reality about the election that it goes something like this. All the normal rules apply to every other politician in America except for Donald Trump. And so if you talk to somebody who is working with one of the other Republican candidates, this is one of the first things that they will say is, look, you have no idea of our challenge. Our challenge is every little gaffe that we make, every little verbal stumble at a debate or a bad moment of

debate, everything that hurts candidates throughout the recent American history hurts us. None of the things that hurt a candidate in recent American history hurt Trump, at least not with Republican voters. And so the reality is everything you think about politics as far as short term, medium term consequences, etc., that you would apply to any other human being when that's filtered through and then you say, but Donald Trump did it. Then you have to say, oh, well, if Donald Trump did it, I don't know that that's going to hurt him. I don't know that that's going to hurt him. I don't know that that will shake his support. Now, the question that I have, Charlie, is not so much about Republicans, because everything that we have seen says to us that any dramatic criminal developments against Trump are at least going to cause a short-term rally around the Trump flag effect. Yeah. I think the longer-term question is, okay, which of the 81 million Biden voters switches

to Trump in 2024? Because all Biden has to do is hold serve, right? And the question that I have, if somebody was opposed enough to Trump to vote for Biden, what effect do these criminal indictments have? And I would say not good. If you're already out from under Trump's spell. This is not a positive. Yeah. If you're already out from under his spell. Yeah. Let's go to the general election. And I agree with you. I can't see how any swing voters that

left the Republicans in 2022 or 2020 are going to come back because of these indictments. But the reality is that Donald Trump still can win this thing because of the asymmetry that you're describing, that you have every other candidate who's held to a different, including Joe Biden. I mean, Donald Trump is not a spring chicken. He's an elderly man. Exactly. Joe Biden is more so. And so when you ask American voters, you know, do you have concerns about, you know, the mental acuity and the age, they're more likely to point the finger at Joe Biden, you know, despite the fact that Donald Trump is behaving in a deranged manner every single day. So I think that people are right to be concerned at this point about Joe Biden's age. What do you

think? Because I guess because the margin for democracy is so thin right now. I mean, it's hanging by the thread of an 80 plus year old man. Of course, we should be worried about that. I'm actually so stumped by the argument that we shouldn't. Yeah. To be honest, Charlie, I mean, do the laws of nature not apply? Yeah, we should absolutely be concerned about that. And I feel like we're sleepwalking into just through kind of sheer inertia. Because look, I get all the arguments that someone says, okay, David, but who else? Who else? I mean, just as practical as it is, if an incumbent president wants to run again, it is virtually impossible and would be certainly destructive to beat them in a primary. So long as Joe Biden wants to run again, what's the option? Yeah, if he steps aside, then you have a real primary and Kamala Harris would come in with some structural advantages, but wouldn't necessarily win it in an actual primary. So long as Joe Biden decides he wants to do this, the Democrats are just in a box. The party can't come to him and go,

you need to move aside. He just says, no, I'm the guy who beat Donald Trump. I'll do it again. I get the, you know, the complaints. We should stop talking about Joe Biden's age, you know, for reasons. Well, I'm not sure you can stop talking about something that millions of people are talking about that is right there. And you're seeing that. And I think the pretending that it's not a problem basically disqualifies you from being able to talk to average voters in the sense because the average voters are going to go, okay, I really don't like Donald Trump, but I'm worried about this. If you say there's no problem whatsoever, not sure that that's going to enhance your credibility. Okay. So I don't want to spend a huge amount of time on this, but I know you've written about this. There's a lot of wishcasting going on that there's going to be this deus ex machina that the 14th amendment will save us from Donald Trump. And we have these very eminent conservative jurists who, who, you know, have made a very compelling and I think credible case that the 14th Amendment, which was adopted after the Civil War, should debar

Donald Trump from running for or serving as president because of his role in the insurrection. I know you've written about this. So is this a real thing? Is it going to save us from Donald Trump? One, is it a real thing? Yes. Is it going to save us from Donald Trump? One, is it a real thing? Yes. Is it going to save us from Donald Trump? I would be shocked if it did. It's as real as the impeachment power is,

for example, Charlie. So this is something that is in the constitution, section three of the 14th amendment, barring somebody who has engaged in acts of insurrection or rebellion or brought aid and comfort to the enemies of the constitution.'re just not eligible to serve okay i would urge everyone it's a it's a long piece it's 120 some odd pages i believe it's a long law review article but it's very well written it's very readable and what it actually is is a work of history of legal history and it's really phenomenal and i think they've put forward a pretty incredible case that, yep, Donald Trump's just not eligible. But here's the problem. The problem is it's now late 2023. This would have been a phenomenal argument as part of the

underpinning of impeachment, for example. This maybe would have been a phenomenal argument to bring even the first moments that he declared his race for the presidency. One of his rivals filed suit at that point, but we're late in the day. So there's sort of two elements here that courts look at, and we've talked about them before, Charlie. One is sort of originalism. When I say courts, I mean the conservative majority. And the other thing is consequentialism. And so one of the areas where consequentialism comes into play sort of the most prominently are in late election changes. The Supreme Court has been very reluctant to intervene in elections late in the process. What it tends to do, it has a bias towards

inaction late in an election process. And I believe there has been a case filed. There will be more cases filed. If you just think through the timeline, it's highly unlikely that this wouldn't get in front of the Supreme Court until well into 2024, for example. And so, even if the argument is very sound and sort of originalist principles would dictate removing him from eligibility, how much prudentially is the court going to be willing to intervene? And that's the one where I would say, look, don't count on that. You absolutely cannot count on that. As solid as the argument is, and I would say, look, don't count on that. You absolutely cannot count on that as solid as the argument is, and I think it's very, very solid.

Yeah, I mean, any court, I think, would be reluctant to step in, but this court particularly, David Frum writes in The Atlantic, he goes even further. He says, the project to disqualify Trump from running for president is misguided and dangerous. It won't work. If it somehow could work, it would create problems worse even than Americans already face. In an ideal world, Trump's fellow Republicans would handle this matter by repudiating his crimes and rejecting his candidacy for their nomination, failing that. And it certainly seems as if that hope is failing. Opponents of Trump must dig deep and beat him at the polls one more time. There is no cheat code to win this game. I agree.

You? Yeah, I'm going to partially agree with that. I'm going to say he should be removed. I don't like consequentialism when it comes to, I don't want to apply the rule of law because applying the rule of law could create bad consequences. My view is apply the rule of law and manage the consequences. And so the last thing that I want to see is a situation where a judge says, or any public official says, well, yeah, the constitution requires this, but I'm not going to do this because of the MAGA mob. Then you've blackmailed yourself right out of the rule of law. And I wrote about this very issue in the Times. I brought up the example of Lincoln's advisors right up in the run-up to the attack on Fort Sumter. They were saying, you need to appease

these guys. You need to appease these guys. If you resupply the fort, it's going to create an armed confrontation. If there's an armed fort, it's going to create an armed confrontation. If there's an armed confrontation, everything's going to get worse. And Lincoln was like, that fort is US property. A gang of rebels cannot chase us out of a US military installation. And he resupplied the fort, which then of course led to the attack on Fort Sumter and kicked off the civil war. And somebody might say, oh no, he made the wrong call. He should have appeased. I don't think he made the wrong call. I think he made the right call and then preserve the union in the face of the illegitimate and

unlawful blowback. And I'm pretty militant about this, Charlie, on this consequentialist argument. My view is we cannot allow people to blackmail us out of this constitutional republic. So no decision should be made on the basis of the fear of Trump's mob. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your dread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get a pro at Tread Experts. Ensure each winter trip is a safe one for your family. Enjoy them for years with a Michelin X-Ice snow tire. Get a $50 prepaid MasterCard with select Michelin tires.

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Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for for your emotions take off the mask with better help visit betterhelp.com today to get 10 off your first month that's betterhelp.com so let's look ahead at where the republican party is going you and i have watched with horror over the last eight years watching the transformation of the republican party uh you know as as the party has contorted itself into various Trumpist shapes. As I was watching the debate last week, I'm looking at the new hotness of the GOP, the new rock star of MAGA, Vivek Ramaswamy, and asking myself, is this the future of the Republican Party? I mean, Ramaswamy is the new hotness because he is hitting all of these hot spots, just throwing stuff out, changing his positions. I mean, in some ways, isn't he the perfect successor of Donald Trump? I mean, just the

complete bullshit artist that he is. I mean, why are you sleeping on RFK, Charlie? Okay. No, I'm only partially. Fair point. Only partially kidding. Yeah, I would say what we saw was a preview of the battle for the future of the party, because I'm not yet convinced that sort of that dispositional Trumpism can translate well to politicians not named Donald Trump in truly contested elections. So we have seen, for example, that extremely Trumpist MAGA election denying candidates

can win primary elections. They absolutely can. Crash and burn. Right. And then they go crash and burn. And they crashed and burned in every swing state election, contested swing state election in 2022. They just crashed and burned. So they could not replicate that Trump appeal. They could replicate some of that Trump success in the primary, but again, not everywhere in the primaries. Because remember,

Georgia, Brian Kemp was specifically targeted by Trump through a former Senator candidate. So in other words, not a no-name candidate going against him. And Kemp smashed him in the primary. Even Brad Raffensperger, who didn't have sort of the Kemp gubernatorial record to run on and his primary election was a referendum on 2020. He wins. He wins. And so it is not universally the case that the Trumpist wins in a primary. It is often the case that a Trumpist wins in the primary.

And it's interesting when you look at some of the post-debate polling, you see two things happened at once. One, yeah, Ramaswamy got a boost, but so did his negatives. His negatives went really up. And so I think what we saw, Charlie, was a preview of the future. It wasn't in this sense, it wasn't the future that Vivek is definitely the heir. It's you saw how the battle will play out to be the heir of Trump. And look, I've had my issues with Nikki Haley. Lord knows I've had my issues with Nikki Haley. But watching her dismantle him and basically call BS on the whole shtick when it came to

foreign policy was a pretty beautiful thing to see, I've got to say. Well, and he's out today making fun of her name. Right. Which is interesting, coming from him. And of course, he even misspells it. But once again, what does he think that this is what Donald Trump would do? That he has to come up with the juvenile ethnic insults? That somehow that's going to be the key to unlocking MAGA support?

But you know what's interesting, Charlie? Where is he really making his progress? He really seems to be making his progress not eating into Trump's support, but eating into DeSantis' support. And so in some ways, what he's proving is that he's a better avatar of MAGA than DeSantis is. DeSantis had one sort of play and bet as to what it would mean to be the heir of MAGA. And it is, I'm going to give them authoritarian policy and I'm going to give them authoritarian

policy, which is good and hard. And Vivek is like, no, I'm going to give them the show. It's the say whatever needs to be said in the moment. It's the over-the-top personality. It's the show. And right now, the show is kind of gaining on the authoritarianism. Because I've written about this. We've talked about this. You cannot analyze Trumpism without the show. If all you're thinking about is how angry Trump is or how populist he is,

whatever this or that policy he might pursue. You can't forget the show that he's entertaining to his fans. And Vivek is bringing a show and Ron DeSantis is definitely not. Definitely not. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get a pro at Tread Experts. Ensure each winter trip is a safe one for your family. Enjoy them for years with a Michelin X-Ice snow tire.

Get a $50 prepaid MasterCard with select Michelin tires. Find a Michelin Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there, treadexperts.ca. This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask? BetterHelp online therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self so you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions.

Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. Okay, so I want to switch gears a little bit, because I really wanted to get your take on all of this. We had a piece yesterday in The Bulwark by Cathy Young about this new PEN America study, book lash, literary freedom, online outrage, and the language of harm. And basically, you know, it's taking on the book banners of the left. And again, PEN America is not a right-wing organization in any way whatsoever. What's interesting to me. And again, Pan America is not a right-wing organization in any

way whatsoever. What's interesting to me, and again, they're talking about, you know, all of the efforts to shut down authors who, you know, have written about people of different ethnic backgrounds or because they've tweeted something, you know, the revision of books. And there's been this debate, you know, should we take this seriously or not? And Pan America has decided to do it. And they acknowledge that, okay, this, you know, takes place at a time of this authoritarian attack from the right. And they write, let me just read you this paragraph. In the face of the broader government-led assault on freedom, some may question whether debates over offense or cultural trespass are a distraction. But it is precisely this context that makes the

conversation so essential. Subjective arguments that books are dangerous or harmful and thus should be removed from circulation are easily weaponized to achieve censorship in service of different political goals. At a time when right-wing activists and politicians have used the machinery of government to pass laws that target the circulation of ideas and information to suppress history, erase identities, and ban books. It is critical that those fighting for the freedom to read stand against such pretextual evaluations. And I guess the heart of their argument is we can't fight the illiberalism of the right, which is being weaponized by these Republicans, without also addressing the illiberalism of the left. I have

to tell you, I found it, you know, bothersome. Some of the reaction that we got from our progressive friends who, you know, made two cases like, oh, this is not really a problem because what you're talking about, this illiberalism, you know, is not government state action. And this is just the marketplace at work. So there's no problem. And that the only illiberalism we should worry about is right-wing illiberalism. So, David, I know that you have dealt with all of this, but it's concerning to me the reluctance to deal with the book banning, book burning on the left as if it doesn't exist or it's not a problem at all. Yeah, we can walk and chew gum at the same time here, Charlie. Right. You know, we can say the Ron DeSantis attack on the First Amendment in Florida is terrible. Full stop should be opposed, is being opposed. I mean,

he's one of the most enjoined governors in America when it comes to court orders blocking enforcement of his laws from his Stop Woke Act to a social media law, et cetera, you can say there is right-wing authoritarianism and it's dangerous and it should be opposed. And you can also say, look, there is left-wing, both left-wing government violations of the First Amendment. And I can point you to chapter and verse of things that have happened in California. In many ways, Gavin Newsom is kind of a progressive doppelganger of Ron DeSantis. But also, we have to take care of the culture of free speech. And this is a really, really important point because these laws spring from a degraded culture. They spring from an appetite, a public appetite for censorship. And so when you defend the culture of free speech,

you often block these laws before they can be enacted because there isn't an appetite for them. And so, look, my view has long been that we should err on the side of free speech when it comes to private institutions and private decisions about whether to punish or to not punish speech, err on the side of free speech. That's not to say you have no standards at all. Because in fact, in fact, Charlie, if you are accustomed to erring on the side of free speech, that when you do say that's too far, it actually has real weight and credibility as opposed to everything is too far.

Or, well, we're going to toss this book out without even reading it because I don't like the race or the identity of the author in some way. That kind of thing is really degrading to a culture of free speech, and it creates an appetite for censorship that is very rapidly translated into law. That's what PEN America is really hitting at, and that's what they're right about. Once you accept the idea, the language of harm, that speech or ideas or books are actual harm, that they can be violent. Well, once you accept that premise, then you have opened the door to actual censorship.

And so, what's happened here, and it's not theoretical, is that the right has adopted this, well, you know, you've been, you know, complaining about, you know, how harmful various books are, and, you know, rewriting the books, taking books out. Well, you know, if it's okay for you to do it, we're going to do it too. And we're just going to define the language of harm differently than you are defining the language of harm. So again, and also this addiction that people have about both sides-ism, that you don't have to argue that the two things are completely equivalent to recognize that they are both dangerous, that they both will lead in this direction at some point, and that illiberalism is not just

confined to state action. I mean, there is illiberalism in ideas. There's illiberalism in academia. There can be all kinds of intolerance and fear of ideas that, again, you know, might, you know, transfer to government action, but might not, but they're still illiberalism. And I think that this sort of two-front attack is particularly worrisome because the right cannot be counted on to defend free speech. And I have to say that there's the very substantial sections of the left that are making it quite clear that they are dug in, that they are not going to push back against illiberalism either. Yeah, you're exactly right. And again, when we're talking about a lot of this private action, we're not talking about action that's unlawful. A publisher has a lot of freedom to publish or

not publish books, for example. Or if you're working in a private corporation, let's say you're a broadcaster or you're a sports league, you have a lot of freedom to put together your disciplinary rules and decide who you're going to condemn or publish or fire or suspend or you name it. We're not saying you shouldn't have that freedom. We're asking you to exercise that liberty in a more small-l liberal way, in a more tolerant manner. Because demonstrating tolerance, again, tolerance properly understood is not affection. You're not tolerant when you're granting freedom to people you like. All right, that's affection.

Right. Tolerance is when you grant liberty and freedom of action to people that you might have a problem with. That's what tolerance is. It means you and freedom of action to people that you might have a problem with. That's what tolerance is. It means you're actually tolerating something. And so these values like small L liberalism and tolerance in the private sphere are actually the foundation of liberalism in the public sphere. Because if you create a value set that views speech you don't like as harm, or even speech you don't like as violence, if you create a value set that says that free speech isn't an asset to our community, but rather a threat to our community, when you create that value set,

I'll say it again, you're laying the foundation for unlawful invasions on speech. And also, you're creating a culture that is often extremely repressive and intolerant to dissenters. If you think, well, that's fine, because I've kind of figured out all these issues. And, you know, I know exactly what we should think about everything from healthcare to race to war to you name it. Well, you might be the problem if you think you've figured all of this out to such an extent that you happening. Now, PEN America doesn't mention this, but Kathy in her article mentions what happened to one of the more prominent liberal, by which I mean progressive novelists and writers, Richard North Patterson, who's written about this experience of having his novel Trial rejected by about 20 publishers, despite having all of these bestsellers. And so what happened was Richard North Patterson wrote a book about racial injustice in Georgia,

but because he's white, there were people who said, well, your cultural appropriation, a white person should not be able to write about racial injustice. Now, David, my head is starting to hurt again because if this is the standard that no one can write about anyone other than their own race and gender, you have wiped away, you know, many, many classic works

of literature, important words, but also the reductionism of everything to racial identity politics, as opposed to what is it they're saying? What is the case they're saying? Have they done it intelligently, sensitively, eloquently? All of that becomes subsumed in this ideological agenda. And again, this is the kind of illiberalism that even writers on the left are facing right now. We can't pretend this is not a problem. Right. The good news is, I believe, I could be wrong about this, but I think we've hit the peak of this and we're on the downslope. Well, I think, I think I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure of that, but I believe we're on the downslope. The bad news is it's still a remarkably prevalent idea. It is. The problem that we have is not that, for example, say a white scholar writes an incredibly well-researched historical work, whether fiction or nonfiction, about the failure of Reconstruction and the imposition of Jim Crow. was really only the white scholars who had the access to all of the opportunities and

advantages that you need to sort of build that career and create that kind of work. So the answer, though, is not to say, well, white scholar, you've had your turn. So now we only want to get books from black scholars on this point. The answer is to say, no, we're removing those previous barriers. We're saying we're going to be more inclusive in the voices that we hear from. It's not that you substitute one form of discrimination for another form of discrimination and call it social justice. That is that illiberalism you're talking about, Charlie, where you're talking to someone and saying, I don't want to hear from you. You cannot publish this book unless you match a particular set of identity criteria. That's illiberalism. Liberalism says, hey, look, we recognize the

historic way in which this industry has unjustly treated Black voices. And we're going to be really intentional about finding the best and the brightest Black scholars and publishing their work. We're removing the barrier. We're not going to be building new identity-based barriers. And we also need to acknowledge that there are certain ideas and words that can, in fact, be dangerous. You had a very, very powerful column last week. Political Christianity has claws. This was the column about the murder of Laura Ann Carlton, the owner of the clothing business in Lake Arrowhead, California, who was shot dead by a guy who tore down a pride flag that was hanging in front of her shop and yelled homophobic slurs at her. And you wrote in, you know, that what was really sort of chilling about this was that,

and again, his social media account filled with, you know, anti-gay stuff, mixed in with the account striding anti-LGBT rhetoric and conspiracy theories, were posts endorsing Christianity, including some that would otherwise suggest a compassionate heart. The account reposted, for instance, a some that would otherwise suggest a compassionate heart. The account reposted, for instance, a post that read, When your heart is hurting and you have nothing left to pray, speak the name of Jesus. When his tears fall and no one else can see, whisper his name. And then this guy goes on and he murders someone for having a pride flag.

So, again, this is how ideas just can take these weird, toxic, violent, tragic turns. Yeah, it's dark out there, Charlie, when it comes to many of the ideas coming from, in particular, the new right. And here's a weird thing. In many ways, the entire creation of this concept called cancel culture has been a gift to them. And here's how it's been a gift to them. You see it, and I know you see it, we see it all the time. Somebody will suddenly start openly flirting with ethno-nationalism, for example, or saying out loud some of the things that they've only said in private, or some of the things they've said in private now spilling out into the public. And it's gross racism. It's gross anti-LGBT rhetoric. You name it. And what happens the

instant you say this is wrong? They say it's cancel culture. It's cancel culture. It's cancel culture. And a lot of people on the right, as soon as they hear that somebody is under fire for what they've said after these last several years, they reflexively defend. And look, this is the whole phenomenon of crying wolf, right? When you go after people for illegitimate reasons, you harden people to the point where when you have a legitimate case to make, nobody wants to hear it, right? And this is a huge problem because it is, as I said earlier in the conversation, there are lines, right? There should be lines that if you're running a private institution that you're going to say, look, we're open to free speech,

but there are lines we don't cross. I think private institutions absolutely can and should do that. They should be broadly tolerant so that when they do draw the lines, they have real credibility to do it. But when you're broadly intolerant and when you're characterized by intolerance,

and you're characterized by censorship, it doesn't take long for your critics to just tune you out. Boy, I remember this really distinctly, you know, back in 2015 and 2016, when, you know, this new right was rising. And I tried to make the case, look, these guys are really, you know, raw racists. This is, you know, this is white nationalism. And the reaction that I got from so many people on the right was, look, they have been accusing us of being racist for 20 years. They accused Mitt Romney of being a racist. They accused George W. Bush of being a racist. The term, which was once kind of a nuclear bomb, was so common that it sort of generated this collective shrug.

So that when the real thing came, and I can't stress how true this is, when the real thing walks through the door and you say, look, look what this is, people go, yeah, I've heard that before. Same old, same old. Like, no, this is different. So you have to establish this level of tolerance to say, okay, here is something that is absolutely intolerable. This is the danger of labeling everything out there as Jim Crow and racist. When you actually have something that's toxic, it's hard to get people to acknowledge. I mean, they should anyway, but this is just the reality. Here's the perfect example. And going back to 2016, because Charlie, you and I had the exact same experience. I remember getting in an exchange on Twitter with somebody who was coming after me for

being pretty aggressively against the new right. We called much more called them the alt-right then. I know the new right and alt-right are not exactly the same thing, but there's a big overlap in the Venn diagram. And I said, for one thing, they're racist. Immediately, I was at a disadvantage as soon as I used that word in the conversation, because then immediately we, oh, oh, that's what people have been saying for so long. And what I had to do was actually had to try to regain ground in the conversation to get him to listen to me again. Because as soon as I said the R word, he tuned me out. He said, oh, okay. Like Mitt Romney, as you were saying, like Mitt Romney

was racist, like George W. Bush was racist. No, no, this is, and I was able to explain the actual things that were said, and slowly we started to make progress again in the conversation. But you're 100% right. I like to protect speech because words matter so much. But because words matter so much, when you are exercising your right to speak, choose your words carefully. Don't be given to hyperbole. Because if you're given to hyperbole, when the real challenge and crisis comes, who's listening to you? And I think we've all lived through all of that. David French, thank you so much. Appreciate so much coming back on the Bulwark Podcast. Oh, thanks so much, Charlie. I have a great time as always.

And thank you all for listening. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown. This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask? BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self so you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month.

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