The Bulwark Podcast - A.B. Stoddard: Christie Brought the Hot Sauce

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

Chris Christie launched his presidential campaign by calling out Trump—and hit him on the kleptocracy, the hypocrisy, and the lying. Plus, the Freedom Caucus punishes McCarthy, Licht only had an elevator pitch—not a plan for CNN, and the PGA rolls over for the Saudis. A.B. Stoddard joins Charlie Sykes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is June 7th, 2023, and it is an extraordinarily busy week so far in terms of the news cycle. And it's only Wednesday. Chris Licht is out at CNN less than a week after that devastating Atlantic profile from Tim Alberta, yesterday, conservatives in the House kneecapped Kevin McCarthy in a surprise revolt. They tanked a bill involving gas stoves, but their vote had nothing to do with the gas stoves. It was just pure sort of petulant peak. They figured we need to screw Kevin McCarthy. So they voted down the rules. It was the first time this has happened in more than 20 years inside baseball, but interesting. Of course, the indictment watch intensifies. There's ketchup on the walls down at Mar-a-Lago.

The PGA sold out to the Saudis, which we'll get to in a little while. We continue to monitor that human ecological and military disaster in Ukraine as both sides are accusing the other of sabotaging the dam. Tucker has returned. I actually, on my podcast with Mona Chernius today, I said, you know, we haven't heard from Tucker Carlson lately. Well, he must have been listening because he dropped a low-rent Twitter video yesterday. And this will not come as a surprise to any of you. He is still lying and going deeper down the wormhole of various conspiracy theories. And there are reports that Mark Meadows testified before a grand jury. So the big question is rats fleeing from the ship.

Did he flip? We have no idea. We are joined this morning by A.B. Stoddard, associate editor and columnist at Real Clear Politics. Welcome back to the podcast. Great to be with you, Charlie. Can we start with the presidential race? I mean, there's a lot of juicy stuff out there that we could get to, but I have to say that I'm a little bit, I was fascinated watching Chris Christie last night. Now, Mike Pence is rolling out his campaign today, and you can go

watch the video if you want, but I think the real buzz is around the way that Chris Christie brought the hot sauce last night. I don't need to be reminded why I am thoroughly disgusted by the guy. You know, the way he sold out, the way he enabled Donald Trump. I mean, I know all of this. But last night kind of reminded me how I kind of liked him back in the old days. Look, I mean, he's not going to win, right? I mean, he has zero shot. He's got a ton of baggage.

But he could still end up becoming the most consequential candidate in the race, in part because he's willing to go where most other Republicans fear to tread. So let's go through some of the things that he said last night, and I want to get your reaction, because I don't think it was a surprise that he's launching this campaign as the Trump slayer, but you got a real taste of how far he's willing to go. I mean, he went after the narcissism, the losing, the lying. He hit him on the issue of character and he hits him on policy, including the substantive issues like Donald Trump's claim that he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. This is what Chris Christie had to say about that. And now I heard him say, if we made a president again,

he would settle the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Did you hear that one? That's a beauty. That's really in a career of complete falsehoods. That makes the top five. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Let's say Donald Trump could settle it in 24 hours. Let me tell you how he would. He'd give Ukraine to Russia. And he said it. He said it on television. He said it at CNN. He said,

look, Russia's going to wind up with Ukraine anyway, so what's the difference? That's how he'd settle in 24 hours. He calls Zelensky and said, hey, guess what? Time to raise the Russian flag up on the pole. We're out of here. Wow. Okay.

And then he goes after the grift, including Jared and Ivanka. This is what he had to say about their dealings with the Saudis. Let me tell you something, everybody. The grift from this family is breathtaking. It's breathtaking. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Kushner walk out of the White House and months later get $2 billion from the Saudis. $2 billion from the Saudis.

You think it's because he's some kind of investing genius? Or do you think it's because he was sitting next to the President of the United States for four years doing favors for the Saudis? That's your money. That's your money he stole. And gave it to his family. You know what that makes us? A banana republic. That's what it makes us.

So, he may get 30% again. I'm not sure. Maybe he'll get more. Maybe he'll get 30% again. I'm not sure. Maybe he'll get more. Maybe he'll get less. But let me tell you what he'll know in 2024 that he had no idea of in 2016. He's in for a fight to get it. Damn. Okay, so to Donald Trump's comment that I am your justice, I am your retribution.

This is what Christie had to say about retribution. This is what Christie had to say about retribution. If you think for one minute when he says, I am your retribution, if you think he wants to be your retribution, forget it. He's going to be retribution for one person and one person only himself. All the things he's angry about and all the ways he thinks he got snookered. Well, if that's the kind of president you want, let me tell you, no one can compete with him. He's the runaway winner. And then he talks about the dangers of handing leadership to somebody who never admits to making a mistake. And he talks about his own past experience. Beware. Beware of the leader in this country who you have handed leadership to, who has never made a mistake, who has never done anything wrong,

who when something goes wrong, it's always someone else's fault, and who has never lost. I've lost. You people did that to me in 2016 okay so A.B. we're getting a taste that Chris Christie is is going to unload all the baggage I mean he's going to unload it all on the stage now I was on a show yesterday with Steve Kornacki and he was saying you know what Christie would do on a debate stage with Donald Trump. And I guess my cautionary note would be that Donald Trump is never going to get on the debate stage with Chris Christie. It's just never going to happen. I don't know that Donald Trump will even debate.

But now you get a sense of what Christie brings to the race. So what are your thoughts? He's a no-hoper. He's at 1% in the polls. But can he make a dent? What's he going to accomplish here? Charlie, like you, I was so surprised to see just how unleashed he was. And there's something, not only is he talented at this, willing to do what none of the other candidates will do, which is to attack Trump, but he has nothing left to lose. He's been through this. 2012 was his

moment. He didn't take it. He went through 2016. He tried to be Trump's attorney general, his vice president, his this, his that. He spent so much time last night focused on his humility, his self-deprecating humor, making fun of himself, and admitting mistakes. And that, I thought, was very potent. In addition, he just was a very compelling performer. Standing in this theater-in-the-round setting with no notes, no teleprompter, and giving what I thought was a really interesting speech, it was uplifting, it was full of history, and it was talking about how we've gone small. And as an idea, as an experiment, America has always been big and that we succeed when we're large. And so this small thinking and this narrowing of our potential, we need new leadership to

put us back on the right track. And I was surprised that he was going to give a lofty speech. I was surprised that he was going to be able to do it like that without a teleprompter. I was surprised at his ease and his confidence. Yes, he's a confident guy, but if you look at the trajectory of his career and where he is now, he's coming from this place where he has nothing left to lose and a lot of talent to bring and this willingness to call out people. He called out the people running for vice president, didn't name them, called out DeSantis, didn't name them. And of course to call out people. He called out the people running for vice president, didn't name them, called out DeSantis, didn't name them.

And of course, he called out Trump and he named it. He named the kleptocracy, the hypocrisy, the ignorance, the lying. And we can sit here and go through all the things that you and I know, which is that I can't get excited about the unicorn of Chris Christie because, of course, he knew the character mattered in 2016 and he knew it mattered in 2020 when he voted for him again. And, you know, the truth is that Donald Trump gave him COVID and Chris Christie could have died from it. There's so many things that we could, you know, basically roast Chris Christie for, his own sort of hypocrisy and mistakes. But as a candidate in this moment, in this really dangerous time where it looks as if the primary electorate is just ready to embrace Donald Trump again, him getting into this divide to this field and sort of

shaking it up, I think is welcome news. It means that all of this stuff that has usually been confined to podcasts like this is going to be out there, not necessarily on the debate stage podcasts like this is going to be out there, not necessarily on the debate stage, but it's going to be out there. And again, I want to just clarify my position on all of this. I wrote, I think it was last year, that I had very mixed feelings about Chris Christie because he could pose a challenge that Donald Trump hasn't faced before. I mean, Trump climbed to power on the backs of wimps and weaklings. But if he had somebody like Chris Christie pushing back against him, what happened? So I tried to imagine this imaginary conversation with Chris Christie, what it might go like. And it would be like, you know,

Chris, thanks for coming here today. F you and everything you did, you pathetic effing sellout. What do you think would happen? What the F were you doing standing there like a total asshat? Aren't you embarrassed? And having vented, I'd say, okay, I'm listening. I'm going to watch it. And I want to know, you know, are you going to go Liz Cheney? You're going to go Nikki Haley? Are you going to get all sort of squishy? And well, last night, I think he laid down the marker that he's not going to be doing that. So, you know, good for him. Certainly not a sign that the Republican electorate is moving toward normalcy or anything because they have not embraced him, but at least he's going to be in their face. I have one more soundbite from him because, again, he goes after Donald Trump on policy substance as well as character. I mean,

he's gone after him on January 6th. He's gone after him on the grift, on the lying, on the narcissism, all of those things. But he's also gone after him on his fiscal record, which is interesting considering the Republican Party appears to be about to tear itself apart again over who's a real fiscal hawk. This is what Christie had to say about deficits. The reason this is going to be different this time, sir, is because at least one of us is going to call him on the fact that eight years ago, he stood on the stage in New Hampshire and said he was going to balance the budget in four years. And he left with the biggest deficit of any president in American history. He said he was going to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He added three

trillion dollars to the national debt in four years. Well, that's a problem, isn't it? So we will see. Mike Pence rolled out a much more generic sort of, you know, morning in America type announcement today. But I have to admit to you, AB, I just don't get the Mike Pence thing other than he feels that as vice president, it's his turn. But what do you think? Charlie, Mike Pence is on a planet unto himself. We can't treat him the same way that we are looking at these other contenders for the primary nomination. He has no constituency. He is arcing back to a time in the Republican Party that no longer exists. He evokes Lincoln because he wants us to find our better angels. I don't know if he has looked around the primary

electorate of the Republican Party, but they're not reaching critical mass on better angels right now because they want offense and grievance and they embrace lies and the erosion of the rule of law because they want a strong man who he's trying to break away from. His only appeal was that Donald Trump picked him as vice president. They've broken up. And the truth is that Mike Pence believes that God has called him to run for president. And it doesn't matter what God you worship. And it might be that when we have faith, we have more confidence to aspire to large tasks and challenges. But God doesn't pick gold medal winners at the Olympics versus silver medal winners. And God is not calling Mike Pence to run. It has this very

strange line where he says that he doesn't believe God has given up on America. Mike Pence has no idea what he's doing. And he can't just win on trying to peel off evangelicals alone. And I wrote recently about how the pro-life leadership has already decided they will let Donald Trump decide their policy. And they've already given in to him. So if Mike Pence thought in January or February that Trump's sort of angry response about Roe and dismissal of the pro-life leaders and the results in the midterm elections was going to, you know, sour them on Trump and provide Pence an opportunity, he's wrong because they're back

in his embrace. And I mean, Chris Christie last night created a lane. If we talk about lanes, Mike Pence doesn't have one. I think the others are running for vice president, Scott and Haley. But Mike Pence, I mean, just trying to imagine who's going to be at his kickoff event. It's just surreal. It is. And it's a reminder that there are still people out there. And I would put Mike Pence and maybe Paul Ryan in the same category, who are in denial about how the world has changed since 2015. They honestly believe that they still live in the before times. Okay, so let's talk about something else that happened. This is really inside baseball. This is probably going to appeal only to the political nerds, but of course, political nerds listen to this podcast. What happened yesterday on the floor of the House was extraordinary because it was completely

unpredicted. It took Kevin McCarthy completely by surprise. So you correct me if I get any of this wrong. Basically, in the arcane rules of the House, when you bring up a bill, no matter what it is, you have to pass the rule first. But passing the rule is routine because the party that controls the House sets the rules. So it's very, very unusual for the rule to go down. Now, we had an interesting rules vote last week on that debt ceiling vote where Kevin McCarthy needed Democratic votes. And it looked at least for about five minutes as if the Freedom Caucus was completely declawed, right? Their wings had been clipped, whatever analogy you want, and that they were no longer in control. Well, their anger obviously was simmering beneath the surface because yesterday something remarkable happened.

They were going to bring up one of these messaging bills, you know, protecting your gas stove, you know, because people are going to take away your gas stove. Just leave the merits aside because the vote yesterday had nothing to do with gas stoves. Am I confusing people now? So you have to pass the rule to pass this bullshit piece of legislation. And 11 members of the Freedom Caucus voted against Kevin McCarthy's rule. This is the first time in more than 20 years that the speaker has not been able to get a rule passed. And so clearly the Freedom Caucus,

this has nothing to do with the gas stove. They could care less about that particular issue. They just wanted basically to say, screw you, Kevin McCarthy, we are still mad. So they voted no on the rule and they tipped the scales. It basically is a show of force to McCarthy and the Republican leadership for leaving them behind on the debt deal. So it went down 206 to 220. And this is the first time this has happened since 2002. Never happened under Nancy Pelosi's watch. So give me your take on that, that they were prepared to burn down the House on a bill that in Republican circles had zero controversy behind it. This was just an F you Kevin McCarthy vote, wasn't it? I think that the reaction to the debt deal, though there was rage from the right, that definitely Kevin McCarthy had lost and Joe Biden had won, and it was such a disappointment,

that was mixed with other stories in the media about how Kevin McCarthy had defied expectations and was indeed a strong speaker and had worked his magic and done the unthinkable, most of which is true, first getting his own bill on a debt ceiling increase with Republican priorities passed through the House, and then negotiating ultimately the final deal. And in this narrative, the House Freedom Caucus was sort of cast aside as go-along, get-along followers and not, you know, the big knuckle-draggers with force that they presented themselves to be through 15 votes in January. And people like Matt Gaetz obviously need their perch. So they didn't do it on the debt deal. And they waited to punish him on this gas stove bill, which is fine. No, it wasn't going anywhere.

Right. It's meaningless, right? But the interesting thing about what you mentioned, and this hasn't happened since 2002, is that they did it to surprise Kevin McCarthy, knowing he won't punish them. And Nancy Pelosi would not have been surprised on a rule because people would have been afraid of what she would have done in response. Interesting. No matter how mad they were. If I do this to the leader, if I completely screw him and shock him, what will be the consequences?

And they do not fear the consequences. And that's why they did it. That's fascinating because I had said that there were three tests that McCarthy had to pass, whether he could make a deal, whether he could get the votes to have the deal passed, which he did. But then the third test, I think, was more difficult and would have a longer tail. Would he be able to survive the blowback? What would the consequences be for cutting this deal? And I think it's still

percolating out there. I don't think that we have the answer yet. We have people like Steve Bannon who are out there saying that, you know, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries was the man and McCarthy was his bitch. And he's calling for primaries against Republicans, including even like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who voted for this particular deal. And as you and I both know, there's this vast outrage machine that needs to be constantly angry and feeling betrayed and, you know, hunting rhinos out there. And there's not a lot of appetite in the Republican media ecosystem for things like compromise. So Kevin McCarthy was always vulnerable. And I think the conventional wisdom before yesterday was, well, he's won, he's beaten

these guys back, they're not going to do anything about it. And then they said, screw that, we are going to do something about it. And as you point out, Kevin McCarthy still remains, despite his successes, still remains a self-guilded speaker. And nobody's afraid of him. And so the question going forward is, basically, Ken Buck seemed to be the only person talking about doing a recall vote on motion to vacate the chair, vote on the speaker's job. So the question is now, Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to get her right-wing cred back with the outrage machine.

So she wants to impeach Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, or Joe Biden. And then, you know, they'll do things on these rules. But what is kind of the next step? I think most certainly they're going to want to shut down the government and do some hocus-pocus at the end of the fiscal year. So McCarthy, if he wants to keep his job, has to navigate much acting out that they're going to plan and they're going to relish and that, like you point out, they require. I think we've seen the high point is my point about Kevin McCarthy's glory days as a leader and as sort of an adult, because now he either pays with his job or he pays with a bunch of radical acts that will be very bad for the party and will cause the House Republican ranks, I think, to shrink in the next election. Well, you also wrote yesterday, you know, that Biden is scoring wins, but asked, will they matter? Clearly, Biden got the better of this particular deal, but the successes don't

seem to be registering yet. And as you wrote, Americans likely know more about him tripping over a sandbag than about the deal that he cut. Yeah, Biden has had a remarkable couple weeks. He has the momentum in Ukraine, a very surprisingly strong jobs report, crossings at the border after the end of Title 42, Charlie are down%. Now, that doesn't mean the situation there is still fluid. It doesn't mean that they won't increase again. But the predicted catastrophe that, you know, Kyrsten Sinema and everyone was running around talking about did not materialize. And that is because the mitigation measures that they put in place were competent enough to control the situation and, of course, the debt deal. So I think, you know, in Biden's situation,

this would be a great run of successes. It's just that in the political position he's in, where most of the public doesn't want him to run again because of his age and he will only get older, it's not the kind of thing that's going to resonate. It's not really going to help his approval numbers. They are abysmal. And I think that they might raise a bit next year if Trump is the nominee, because, you know, as Trump's go down, which I think they will, even though I still think he can win with terrible approval numbers, you know, that could help Biden. But Biden, he can escape a recession. He can do all these things and make problems better. And I don't think he's going to get the credit that the Democrats would hope that he would. So just because House Republicans

act crazy, he doesn't, maybe in the months to come, doesn't mean that it helps, in my view, his approval numbers change. Yeah, the one big thing that Biden has going for him is the prospect that he will face Donald Trump. And Donald Trump, as I think we've commented before, it's not your imagination. He actually is getting worse. He's becoming more extreme, more unhinged. You just read those truth social bleats, you know, his enthusiasm for, you know, I mean, just this week, you know, praising Kim Jong-un, enthusiastic about this PGA sellout to the Saudis, throwing the ketchup against the wall about the special prosecutor. And of course, we may be days away, AB, from Donald Trump being indicted by the U.S. government for obstruction. I don't know whether it's espionage. We don't know

what's going to happen with January 6th. We now are hearing that Mark Meadows testified before a grand jury. And again, we don't know what he said. We don't know whether he pled the Fifth Amendment, whether he flipped, whether he got immunity, any of those things. And yet it's hard to think the last time that Donald Trump had any good legal news. So the question is, again, and we keep asking this question and nobody knows the answer. Will it matter? Will it matter when there are indictments from the special counsel, when there are indictments in a couple of months from Georgia? What do you think?

So I do think that we know that the idea of Mark Meadows flipping potentially for some kind of immunity, it seems like, and testifying in both the January 6th and the documents cases, the idea of the piercing of attorney-client privilege with Evan Corcoran with his extensive notes. This is terrible news for him on what will be solid charges. Now, most definitely, the right, just like they did in the case of Alvin Bragg's indictment with Stormy Daniels, they'll say, you know, they called that a bookkeeping error. And Republicans who love Trump will say, you know, he magically declassified them, you know, with a blink of his eyelashes, and he totally gets to have all those documents. And this is crazy. And he never should have had to cooperate with a subpoena. And they'll rationalize that, for sure. But the charges

will be very serious for Ron DeSantis and other candidates to sort of brush off. They are not the base voter who goes to Trump rallies. They have to react responsibly to these charges. And then if you combine that with what we're looking at in the January 6th investigation, and then, of course, there's Georgia, you know, the accumulation, as it adds up, we just don't know what kind of fatigue it's going to give some of the voters. We have to remember that most Republican voters, according to polls, don't want Trump. And so if they're looking for an alternative and they're looking for an escape, and I get excited thinking that donors actually gave money to Chris Christie to launch this campaign knowing he was going to go after Trump, then maybe there is a way for those non-Trump candidates to tap into the fatigue and the fear that Trump will lose. What I really respect about Chris Christie is he's the first one, of course, Asa Hutchinson says this, but he doesn't register on anyone's radar screen. And much like my voice today, no one can hear what he is even saying, like Joe Biden. Chris

Christie is the first one to come out and say, besides Hutchinson, not only that he can't win, but that he shouldn't win. Which is a different argument. Yes. And I just think that it's an unknown. Am I being hopeful? Am I being naive? Yes, yes, I guess I am. Maybe they all just say once again, oh, this is unfair. But I think it's just the pile up of the charges

and the seriousness that they represent is just different than the brag thing. And that Jonah Goldberg had this column at the time that sounded Pollyanna, but he said maybe if the Stormy Daniels case is first, it actually does help that people can pretend, look, I was with Trump on the Stormy Daniels thing, but this, this other thing, this is serious. So maybe we see that. No, I think I've identified the three factors to keep an eye on. Number one is what are the

charges and what are the details in the charges? I think Alvin Bragg did not do a good job in explaining the narrative. That's what's known as the speaking indictment. And I'm hoping that when Jack Smith comes out with his indictment, that he tells the story. He doesn't just say, you're charged with these crimes that nobody fully understands, but that he tells the story about why this is being done, why a former president of the United States is being charged, why it is important, why it matters to the American people. So the details, I think, matter. That's number one. Number two, you use the term, you know, the fatigue factor. That's, you know, the cumulative weight of all of this. At what point do people go, okay, I like the guy, but this is just too much freaking baggage. It's just too much drip, drip, drip.

And then, of course, there's the question of whether or not there's a large enough segment of Republican voters who think, you know, it comes back to the question of electability, that they decide that he just cannot win whether they like him or not. And then, of course, you know, there's that vanishing small number who think that maybe this is a reason why he should not win the Chris Christie lane here. So there is that possibility that the fatigue factor will set in because we've been doing this for how long now? Seven years, the same thing. And it's exhausting. We were talking about, you know, Chris Christie being willing to go there. Even more deplorable than Chris Christie's enabling of Donald Trump, though, is I can't believe I'm going to say anything positive about former Attorney General Bill Barr.

But he has been very outspoken on this whole classified documents investigation. And he's been going on CBS and saying this is not a case of the Department of Justice conducting a witch hunt. This would have gone nowhere if the president had just returned the documents. But he jerked them around for a year and a half. There is no excuse for what he did here. And so this is what George Conway is saying. Everybody should retweet this video as many times as humanly and technologically possible to hear this from Bill Barr, who has covered up so much shit for this guy, has gone to the wall so many times, has lied so many times. And yet even Bill Barr is saying, yeah, this document case,

this is really bad. This is not a witch hunt. This is really a big deal. Let's pay attention to it. I don't know whether it makes a difference at all. So this is not really sort of on our direct agenda, but I feel it's on our agenda. Any thoughts about the PGA's decision to basically do a 180, you know, after posing for holy picture saying we don't want to get in bed with the Saudis because of their record on human rights, you know, telling the 9-11 families, don't worry, we are the sports organization with integrity, we can't be bought off. And basically saying yesterday, fuck it, you know, we'll take the money and going along with it. I mean, the blowback is incredible. The PGA wimped out. I think the New York Times points

out that this is not like the Saudis just like buying a Premier League team or buying a race car. This looks like an attempt by the Saudis to take control of an iconic American sport. And the leaders of that sport have just rolled over. When I first saw it, I have to admit, I was stunned. I couldn't believe that they would do this. But thoughts about this? Charlie, I do not follow golf, although my son was a competitive golfer in high school and the youngest state of Maryland champion three weeks after he turned 15 in Maryland history. But I will say that I had a visceral, terrible pain in my stomach when I saw this yesterday on CNN. I was completely stunned and sickened because I just feel this nexus between the Trump family and the Saudis

so incredibly dangerous. We don't even know the depths of the consequences it has yielded yet. They are literally sustaining him because he, you know, he is running out of places with all his foreign, you know, loans and everything to make money. And he, you know, his brand is crap now. And literally my first thought was like, the bad guys always win. And as I literally texted that to my family group chat, like, I just couldn't believe it. And I think that as Chris Christie said last night, Jared Kushner, who should not have had a security clearance was granted one anyway, because Donald Trump overrides the decision of the Intel experts who say it's not a good idea. And he makes a friendship

immediately with the Saudi prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and they protect him on the Khashoggi murder. And then, of course, when he leaves the White House, you know, he ends up with a great deal. The idea of this sports washing is what they call it. To use the PGA as a way of washing their reputation, you know, that someone like Tiger Woods turned down a billion dollars. A lot of these guys made major sacrifices on principle. To do the right thing. The Saudi thing really terrifies me.

I mean, you can call me a conspiracy kook, but I am not going to be surprised if Donald Trump gave intelligence from those classified documents to the Saudis in the last year and a half. Ed Mar-a-Lago, not at all. I think they're hand in glove in business together, the Trump family and the Saudis. So I think it's just devastating. Well, you know, there's so much going on with Donald Trump that it's easy to take something

that would have been a major story and kind of miss it. So for example, we kind of know that Donald Trump is a puppet of Vladimir Putin and he sucks sucks up to Kim Jong Un. But the reality is that he is very much the Saudis bitch when it comes to this, that he is financially dependent on them, that he is supportive of them. The business deals are breathtaking in their grift, which is, again, I thought it was very interesting and very telling that Chris Christie was willing to call him out on that corruption. And so, you know, while much of America was reacting sort of in shock to the hypocrisy of what the PGA had done, you know, Trump is bleeding out, you know, all in caps, great news from live golf, a big, beautiful and glamorous deal for the wonderful world of golf.

Congrats to all. And you know that he is neck deep in all of the financial transactions that are going on here. And yet that may not be the top five thing that is the most deplorable about Donald Trump. But I guess the other part of the reaction is I agree with everything you said there. The role that, how do I say this without sounding like Bernie Sanders? The role that cynical and demented billionaires are now playing in our culture, in our economy, in our world is increasingly disturbing. And I can't help think, you know, that so Elon Musk swans in and buys Twitter and begins to transform it. We have, you know, a billionaire board member who apparently completely fucked up CNN. We have the Saudis saying, you may have fucked up cnn we have uh the saudis

saying you may have your principles but we have billions of dollars we win and again i'm not so naive to think that hey the world has suddenly changed in this way that hey money and power can corrupt things but it feels as if it's very much in our face right now and it's like in our simulation it's like okay how much of this you're to take? How far are you going to go with all of this? You know, at a certain point, we become a political culture, a sports culture that is determined and controlled by a very, very small number of people. So, I mean, the people who sit around there with, you know, the paranoid fears of the secretive cabals, well, guys, you're kind of right when

it comes to this shit now. I know it is really strange. I mean, I'm a capitalist. I have laughed at AOC talking about the danger of billionaires, but they are acting badly. And it is true. They seem particularly less charitable, less open-minded, less generous, and far more morally deranged than ever. There's no altruism. It's really, I guess I'll have to say, you know, nice things about Bill Gates, who got threatened and his marriage was ruined by an affair with some poker player that, you know, Epstein knew about. But let's just admit it, he hasn't been a dick. Things are getting really weird. Speaking of things getting very weird, this is a media story. Well, you know, Epstein knew about. But let's just admit it. He hasn't been a dick. Things are getting really weird. Speaking of things getting very weird, this is a media story. Well, I suppose

it's a political story as well. The fall of Chris Licht at CNN, which came so quickly. He lasted, what, about 18 months, but less than a week after that devastating profiling in Atlantic by our friend Tim Alberta. It is interesting, you know, Brian Stelter, who was fired for being too excessively critical of Donald Trump, tweeted out a little while ago, he said, you know, a little bit of a backstory here. That Atlantic story about Chris Lick shocked a lot of staffers, but the people who were closest with Lick weren't surprised. They were actually relieved because they felt like the absolute truth had finally been compiled and would now have to be addressed. And of course, they addressed it by throwing him out a window. But this also comes

in the wake of that disastrous Trump town hall meeting. So here's somebody else who was destroyed by not understanding how to deal with Donald Trump. CNN is a complete mess at the moment. You've been around the media for a long time. It's an amazing story. And what's amazing to me is how we could be doing this for as long as we have done this. And yet the people who run one of the major news networks in America clearly still do not understand how to handle this particular era or this particular character. I mean, the fact that Chris Lick thought that we'll just treat Donald Trump like any other candidate. What could possibly go wrong? It's so brutal. One of Stelter's tweets today said that he was convinced over the weekend he

could survive. And people were telling him, you're not going to survive in this job. He was romanced by this Zaslav to take the job. He was courted. He was told he could do it. Obviously, I've learned everything from Tim's article. But clearly, if you read Tim's piece, there was never a plan. There was an elevator pitch. There was never a vision. There was never a strategy. There were tactics. Have Republicans on. Be balanced. The elevator pitch is great. He had this thing where he said, you can't pretend that it isn't raining. It's raining or it's not raining. And we're not going to put on people that deny it's raining. The elevator pitch is great,

but beyond that, they didn't have a plan. And so I feel like he was kind of set up. Then he tumbles into this idea that he should talk to Tim for a long time, like a year, I don't know. And Tim was very fair to him. And he has in the piece a moment near the end where Tim says, do you understand how it's going to be hard for me to write like a positive piece about CNN?

You know, he's very upfront with him. And Chris Licht is very blind in these quotes. But again, I feel like dispatching him to this enormous task, even though he had good experience and honest resume and stuff, without a plan was obviously, you know, the owner is complicit in this as well. But yeah, to say the way that we'll deal with Trump is just throw facts his way is crazy. I was on Morning Joe the morning after the town hall. I would on Morning Joe the morning after the town hall. I would not, Charlie, have watched the town hall. I would have only watched the excerpts if I wasn't going to be on Morning Joe

because I did not want to watch it. Yeah. Because I didn't want to be traumatized after years of not dealing with Trump on TV for hours. I knew the audience would be yucking it up and I didn't know they would be as Trumpy. But I had to watch it. And I really couldn't believe, you know, Daniel Dale, their fact checker, he's encyclopedic.

Poor guy. He could tell you hearing three of the January 6th committee from right now, like of last summer, he could tell you the date, the witnesses, what the findings were. And he, they had this resource where they could have, they could have balanced out a really friendly crowd for Trump and a setting where he could just bulldoze over Caitlyn with some kind of fact check, you know, either on screen or on the screen behind him on stage just to say, we are going to fact check you because you spew untruths and we have this plan. But they didn't. They just gave him Trump's open mic night and he had a complete ball. And it was the exact failure we knew that it would be. Well, and there's also details here within that story of how they had apparently gone out of their way to appease Donald Trump, the way that they chose the panelists who were Trump friendly.

They chose the audience, which was Trump friendly. They actually took down a chyron that had the word sexual assault or sexual abuse on it because they didn't want to make Trump mad. I mean, the whole thing was a fiasco and it was a predictable fiasco. But I think you've really put your finger in it when you say that they didn't have a strategy. They had an elevator pitch. And I think that really comes through in Tim's story, which is they actually had a pretty sound analysis. This is our problem and we need to find a way to fix it. And then the question is, okay, what is your plan to fix it? Okay, you've identified the problem, what is your solution, and then it became sort of yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, something, something, something magical, which we hear of a lot. It's always amazing to read

these titans of industry or the media unburden themselves, and you realize, there's really not a lot there there is there we're not talking about some deep thinkers you really haven't worked this out have you sitting around in whatever freaking c-suite bubble you are in has anybody in the back of the room raise their hand and say uh yeah you know this uh plan is bullshit you really haven't worked this out have you really thought out A, B, and C? And clearly, Chris Licht had not, nor his boss, who was pulling all of the strings and continues to pull the strings. So anybody that thinks that, well, CNN is going to fix everything,

as long as you have David Zaslav thinking that he is one of the masters of the universe at CNN, you have board members who have their thumb on the scale. That's not going to happen. But what a cluster. I mean, what an extraordinary story watching them go up against this era. And again, I keep coming back to this, A.B. We've been doing this Trump thing for seven years. And I continue to be amazed at the number of folks who you would think would know better that still haven't figured out this guy's not a normal candidate this guy is not just any other candidate this is the way he's going to behave you cannot treat him in this particular way and the fact that donald trump's sitting down in

mar-a-lago and he's got all kinds of you know bad things coming his way but he but he's got to have this at least a couple of moments going, and I really fucked up CNN. I set out to fuck these guys up and mission accomplished. Yeah, it was such a gimme, right? It was a gimme. It was a gift. But it's such a metaphor, as you describe, for the Republican Party. Their main goal is to get rid of Trump, and they have no way forward.

There is no plan. Yep. There is no plan. There's a great elevator pitch, but there's no plan. There is no plan. CNN and the GOP needed like talk. They need to like get together, like let's share notes here. A.B. Stoddard, thank you so much. A.B. is associate editor and columnist at Real Clear Politics. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. Charlie, it's always a pleasure. Thank you for putting up with my coughing spasms and everything else. It was great to be with you. Not a problem. Always

a pleasure. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow. And we will do this all over again with a new episode of the Trump trials with Ben Wittes from Lawfare. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.