The Bulwark Podcast - Adam Kinzinger: The Rhetoric Is Getting More Dangerous

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

Lindsey Graham says the federal courts in DC are illegitimate, the FBI is being called the Gestapo, and Charlie Kirk is casually talking about an execution of Joe Biden. How do we come back from this? Adam Kinzinger joins Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is August 4th, 2023. And as I wrote in my newsletter this morning, Morning Shots, let's just take a pause from the doom loop of nothing matters punditry to note how much this week mattered. The former president of the United States was arrested for the third time, booked, arraigned, warned against committing crimes or bribing witnesses, and then released on his own recognizance. Donald Trump now faces 78 felony charges and potential prison sentences that you have to measure in centuries rather than decades. I had to look this up.

This is literally true. The maximum sentences on all the charges, if he's convicted, would put him behind bars for, wait for this, 641 years. I understand that's unlikely, but 641 years, and that does not count. The civil lawsuits for fraud, defamation, and sexual assault are what is coming from Georgia. And yet, of course, he is the front-running candidate for the Republican nomination for president. A lot to dive into today. And we are fortunate to be joined by one of the key players in this whole saga, Adam Kinzinger, former congressman from Illinois, co-founder of Country First, and of course, member of the January 6th committee.

Adam, how are you? Hey, just great. How are you? What a week. By the way, if the devil had been president, I don't think he would be guilty of as many crimes and probably would be facing less than 600 years in prison. 600 years in prison. I mean, that's a chunk. That sounds serious. So let's start with the obvious question. It seems obvious to me that were it not for the work of your committee, the January 6th committee, we would not be having this conversation today.

Donald Trump would not have been arraigned in Washington, D.C. yesterday. Your thoughts about that? Yeah, I think that's 100% true. You know, and it's disappointing, to be honest with you. I mean, this investigation should have started on January 7th, you know, to include the president. I get that, you know, the DOJ has been going after the people that broke the law directly. Great. But yeah, I think what we felt, you felt it both from the media sphere and from the DOJ sphere, is that when we came out with some of those first hearings

where people's eyes kind of popped open and it's like, oh my gosh, this really was coordinated. The president knew this is deeper than just like some accidental violence on january 6th that's when you started to see doj move and you know they kind of this is a bad on them because they tried to like kind of toss it onto us for a little bit they're like well look we want to investigate but the january 6th committee won't give us their transcripts and you know at the time i had to answer for a month the questions of how come doj doesn't have the transcripts. And, you know, at the time I had to answer for a month, the questions of how come DOJ doesn't have the transcripts. And there's a whole bunch of legal reasons, like then it opens up

discovery and then, you know, but it's like DOJ should have had their own transcripts. They do now, but they, you know, they should have been on this far before us. But yes, it's, it does feel good to know that the work we did isn't just about setting history straight, but actually set justice on the right path. So how did you feel yesterday as you were watching slash listening to the arraignment of Donald Trump after all of this time? What was going through your mind? I mean, were you wishing that you were in the courthouse? Were you wishing you were in the courtroom? Yeah, kind of. Yeah. I mean, I would have loved to have been in the courtroom, you know, just to see it. But I don't think there was any sense of closure at all because, you know, we're still looking at this year long trial could be longer. It's a close race for some reason still. And so for me, it's more of just like nervousness that somehow this actually doesn't end up going to court or he's going to be let off because of some,

you know, Trump are on the jury and it could actually do more damage. So while I don't feel closure, there is a nice sense of knowing at least that the justice department, this will be adjudicated before the American people one way or another, because, you know, look, we never want to be a country that just locks up former presidents. That's a very dangerous path. But we also, and I think greater so, can't be a country that lets what Donald Trump did go unpunished because then there's no incentive to not do that in future administrations. Because if you fail, you can't be prosecuted because you're a former president. If you succeed, well, you succeeded, so you're not going to be prosecuted anyway. So we have to hold that standard.

But I don't think I'm going to feel real like peace until that guilty verdict comes down from the jury. You're suggesting this, the divergent futures out there and the range. One scenario, the one that I think that we're hoping for, is that the rule of law is vindicated, that Donald Trump is held accountable. But there are other scenarios as well, including hung jury or even an acquittal, things that could actually slingshot him back into the presidency. At that point, we would look at this as a catastrophic failure of the system, wouldn't we? Yeah, I mean, truly. And, you know, that's, it's a risk. It's not a risk that we should be adverse to because again, he should be held accountable. But that's like the worst case scenario, by the way.

But I'm also concerned that this thing, you know, there's some people that have some optimism that this gets done before the election. And I know that the judge has quite a bit of leverage in a court. I just actually learned this yesterday, quite a bit of leverage in the courtroom to be able to set the timeline and only give a certain amount of time for motions. And so, you know, potentially Trump can only delay so much, but here's what they're going to do. They're going to try to adjudicate, I've been using adjudicate a lot, and that's also a new word, but they're going to take on, you know, the election in Georgia, the election in Pennsylvania, they're going to try to pretend like they want to prove that there was election fraud, and that's going to buy time. And if the judge, which the judge ought to, in essence shuts that down and says that's been litigated already 60 times, then that

just gives a talking point to Kevin McCarthy and his ilk to go out and say, see, they're trying to silence us. So in a perfect world, you would give them all the time they need to prove that, quote unquote, prove that Michigan was stolen. And then of course it wouldn't be. And you could put that out in front of the American people, but that would delay us to pass the election. And of course, look, Charlie, there is a better than nothing. And I think frankly, better than there has been chance that Donald Trump could win the presidency again. And the second he does, he's not going to be put in jail. He'll be either pardon himself, the trial will be shut down, or he'll just have DOJ

drop the charges. So, you know, there's a lot out there that could go wrong. There's some that could go right still. They're not making much of a secret about that. I mean, Maggie Haberman actually wrote that yesterday that in Trump world, there's a full expectation that, you know, if Trump wins the election, all of this goes away. And maybe that is their great hope, that they are actually pursuing that particular line. So among the darker scenarios, and I want to go back to a more positive scenario in a moment, but among the darker scenarios, of course, is all of this rhetoric attacking the legitimacy of the system. You had Lindsey Graham saying the judge in the case hates Trump. You can convict Trump of kidnapping Lindbergh's baby in

D.C. You have to have a change of venue. We need a new judge. He doesn't trust the jury system. So you have this all out attack from a lot of the even the alleged former grownups in the Republican Party, not just on the FBI, but also in the Department of Justice, on the judges, on the jury system, all of this. And I think it was Ann Applebaum who said, you know, if the right wing succeeds in delegitimizing the rule of law, all of these constitutional institutions, it's hard to see how we come back from that. And it does seem as if the rhetoric is getting more reckless, is escalating all the time. Oh, 100%.

And it's one of the sad lessons that I took away from Washington, which is when you violate a norm, you know, we always wanted to do the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. We could shut down the government, but we always did the NDAA on time until we didn't a few years ago. And now we never do the NDAA on time again. We never showed naked pictures in a committee until Marjorie Taylor Greene does, and now others are going to. You never question the rule of law. You never attack the judge. And now it's like commonplace to do it. I don't know how there becomes then an agreement sometime in the future where everybody gets together and says, we're now going to go back to the old way of doing things, of helping government institutions. Maybe some literally miraculous intervention can happen, which can

change that. But I don't see how we ever go back when a norm is violated. And Donald Trump has so, this is the thing I was struggling with even yesterday while I was on CNN is like Donald Trump has thrown so much garbage at America and done so much that our outraged glands can't be juiced anymore we're empty of outrage because he could do anything now right he's we've already basically spent our capacity to be outraged and And you see somebody like Lindsey Graham, and I used to be friends with Lindsey. By the way, the Will Salatin, both kind of like small book and his podcast are incredible. And I will say as a member of Congress, when he talks about the emotional reasons and kind of how people progressed from like barely accepting to fully accepting to actually leading, he is a hundred percent right. And I have like almost flashes of PTS listening to it because I can sense that I can

feel it. But you see these people that have given an ounce of their soul and now I have to give five ounces and now a pound. And it just continues because at any point when you stop, I mean, look, I'm about as anti-Trump as you can get now. And I still have people that are like, well, you voted for him once and you voted against the first impeachment. The point is you have to come to reckon with what you did. And it's much easier in the sunken cost fallacy. You know, you lost 10,000 soldiers in Vietnam. You can't come home now.

And it is very, very frightening. And that's why I think the only way out of this is a conviction for Donald Trump, because I think as that stuff is exposed, which is why I'm not all for cameras in the courtroom, but in this case, I think there has to be. I think when people see that, when he's actually put in an orange jumpsuit, that can help. And then when, frankly, the Republicans and especially Donald Trump, they have to get their backside handed to them this next election. Otherwise, this is just going to continue. Well, and I do think that it's worth pointing out that this is really, really dangerous.

I talked with your colleague at CNN, Oliver Darcy, about this legitimate, the kinds of rhetoric that you're hearing about the FBI. This is dangerous because if something is not legitimate, then there's no reason to respect it. There's no reason to obey it. Oliver Darcy wrote, you know, talk of imprisoning Democratic politicians and even their families in acts of revenge is now par for the course. Even floating the outright execution of Joe Biden, as Charlie Kirk recently did, is accepted in the warp world of MAGA media, where the audience has been programmed through years of conditioning to welcome such vile rhetoric into their homes. And again, we can't get numbed by all of this. None of this is an exaggeration. It's the reality of what is being broadcast in millions of home across the country. And then, you know,

he asked me what I thought. And I said, I think it's hard to overstate the dangers here because the language moves beyond, you know, your routine political demonization, because it does suggest the need for violent resistance. I mean, if you don't believe in the integrity of the democratic institutions, if you actually believe they are all illegitimate, the election has been stolen, then how do you expect people to react? There's this constant escalation without any concern about where this leads or who might act on the idea that your opponent isn't just wrong, that they're evil, dangerous, and illegitimate. And I pointed out, you know, all this talk about, you know, the FBI being the Gestapo. Well, one doesn't argue, debate, or disagree with the

Gestapo. You go to war against them. You know, I feel like you and I have had this conversation now for some time, but it's like, people, do you understand what is being said and what the consequences are of this kind of rhetoric? And it's coming from people like Lindsey Graham and Kevin McCarthy and other people who really ought to know better. Tim Scott. Oh, Tim, you know, I'm friends with him. And my goodness, it's just so disappointing. And like, yeah, I've been talking about this for a while. You have too. And we have to keep talking about it. Because I think there's a sense among people that like, if we say that there's real danger in the whole system, in essence, collapsing in this leading to violence it's like oh you're just being a little hysterical

you know well maybe i hope so but i don't think so because you know let's take charlie kirk floating assassinating joe biden i mean five years ago if i'd have even said let's take charlie kirk talking about assassinating joe biden i'd get a little nervous that like me even saying the word assassinating Joe Biden is going to lead to like a visit from the Secret Service. Well, Charlie Cook now says this. Let's say the Secret Service decides to go visit Charlie Kirk. What does the right say? Do they say, well, he never should have implied the assassination of Joe Biden?

Or do they say they're violating this first amendment, right? There's a two-tiered system of justice. And now people float this around all the time and the reporter on uh right side broadcasting has a whole tens of people that watch that in any given moment but you know he starts floating i agree with you to somebody that says we want to kill them all and this is just par for the course today and this is dangerous this is my message then to i'll say the left or the center or anybody that's not on the right, is I think they believe their only option is to gain power and maintain it through any means necessary. Because as Barbara Walter, who wrote the book, How Civil Wars Start, mentions, you know, when kind of groups in the majority become groups in the minority, that's when civil wars have the highest risk. And so the key is never to give up power. And I am concerned with what that leads to, which is an authoritarian message, an understanding that we have to gain and maintain power at all costs. Because I'll tell you,

if the left does it, they will have every right to match the rhetoric of the right. I hope they don't, but they'll have every right to do it. And so then my message to the left is this, is like, look, you guys have a right to be very angry. You have a right to match the rhetoric. I hope you don't, because the only way to get out of this moment is to create these unnatural alliances between the left, the center, and some you don't like their policies on the right, but therefore democracy. That's the only way historically, and I think in this moment, that we can defeat this authoritarian movement. Since we're on the subject of the danger of violence, let's talk about the decision that Jack Smith made not to charge Trump directly for inciting the violence that took place on January 6th. And by the way, every time we mention January 6th, we've got to mention that people died as a result of this. This is not theoretical. You have expressed some disappointment that there were not more charges directly linking Donald Trump to the mob attack on the Capitol. Of course, this was one of the referrals from your committee to the Justice Department. So why do you think he did it? And why do you disagree with it?

Well, what I disagree with and what I hope to see is more people charged. I would love to see the president charged with the actual attack on that day. I want to see that second and third tier insurrectionists, the Jeffrey Clark types charged as well, which I think could happen. As I have pondered, as I've kind of sat on this indictment for the last 48 hours, I've come to see Jack Smith's point a little bit, which is, I think charging Trump with attacking the Capitol and the violence may be a much harder thing to prove. I don't know. That's up to lawyers to decide, but it may be a little harder to prove. And not charging other people at the moment simplifies the case to just

Donald Trump, just a few charges. And I think it makes it more likely that this actually gets done before the election. Whereas if you start stacking people and stacking charges, you probably have a legitimate way then that the defense can push this to pass the election. And that doesn't mean, we've seen what he's done in the documents case. He could still come out with further charges, bring a separate case that's different than Donald Trump. But I'll make a bigger point too, which is the thing that my time on the January 6th committee showed me that was probably one of the biggest surprises, or I guess things, I guess, that I didn't realize going into it, which is January 6th was a symptom. That was a terrible day. I'm not trying to minimize it. I was there. But that was a symptom

of a whole bunch of illegal things and a whole bunch of crap that preceded it. It was a symptom of the president saying the election was stolen. It was a symptom of the president sitting with members of the Justice Department and saying, just say the election was corrupt. Let's parse this for a second, Charlie. The President of the United States said, look, all I need from you, all I need from you is to say to the acting Attorney General, just say it was corrupt. That's it. That's your only part of the deal. And then leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman. Because if you sow a bit of a seed of doubt, we can use that to destroy the legitimacy of the election. All of this was stuff he was doing. And on January 6th,

for 187 minutes, he actively resisted for the first time in his life pressure from everybody to make a statement to stop the violence. Only when he saw that the law enforcement turned the tide of the fight did he begrudgingly make a statement. And so why I want to see him charged for that actual day, I think it is important for Americans to see that that day was simply a symptom of much bigger things that happened prior. In the indictment, of course, that is the culmination. And they chose that rather than charging him with incitement, they say that he was exploiting the violence. And I think that probably blunts some of the First Amendment arguments that you'd expect. There are Supreme Court decisions that make it very, I would say, you know, difficult. It's a

high bar to get around free speech questions when you're talking about incitement. Let me just sort of parenthetically, as a digression, just since I was listening to the way you were describing Donald Trump. The one thing about Donald Trump that we just need to recognize is that he never learns his lesson. He never backs away. You think about the lies that he told about the election and everything that's happened since. The 2024 campaign is going to be about the same thing. He is going to make his campaign about the big lie. Everything laid out in the indictment will be central to his campaign. No backing off, no hedging, no apologies whatsoever. Same thing with the attempted extortion of Vladimir Zelensky in Ukraine. What is he doing now? He is

continuing to push dirt about the Biden family from Ukraine. He's getting the House committee to do what Zelensky would not do that resulted in the first impeachment. He learns nothing. But on this question of free speech, I did think it was interesting how that became the talking point that he was being attacked for his speech. Jack Smith made it very clear that he absolutely had the right to say anything about the election that he wanted, but that that did not mean that speech that was in furtherance of a conspiracy to violate the law was protected. Because all conspiracies involve speech. All acts of fraud involve speech. This notion that simply because you are using words that somehow that creates this bubble

zone for you to break the law is absurd. It's amazing to me how many Republicans seem to be taking that seriously or pretending to take it seriously. Well, I think that's a key is pretending to take it seriously. Because again, pulling the curtain back a little of what it's like to be a Republican member, when the president, let's just take something basic when he says shit all countries, for instance, and, you know, it's going to be a censure against him. And you want to vote no, because it's better for your district. All you're waiting for is a talking point that you get from leadership that you can actually convince yourself may be a good enough reason,

or you can convince your constituents. There are a number of people, by the way, including a member of Congress from your home state, whose name rhymes with Blaliger, who, you know, was very close to voting to impeach Donald Trump in the second impeachment, and then found some nuance in the impeachment article. Oh, you can't really prove incitement or whatever that is, to now convince yourself to be able to do that and to buy that argument. And so that's what you're seeing in this speech thing is, first off, about half of the people that believe the speech argument don't believe it and

don't care. But I think the other thing is, it just gives you an answer when you're asked by the media, you can say free speech and move on. And that's how you buy your time. By the way, as your point, if I hired you to kill somebody for me, and I told you, Charlie, I will give you money if you kill somebody for me. That's not a free speech issue. And that's, in essence, what they're arguing Donald Trump did. Oh, he only hired somebody and paid money. No, that's, yeah, everything involves speech. Yeah, that's why it is so hollow.

Then, of course, you get, and this is no surprise to anyone who's been paying any attention over the last seven years, this flood of whataboutism. And we got that from Tom Cotton and Kevin McCarthy. Tom Cotton says, well, every time a Republican won the presidency this century, was it twice? Democrats tried to stop the certification, yet none of them face criminal charges over what is obviously a First Amendment protected activity. And then, of course, Mike Kevin says he does the same thing. It's the same thing that Hillary Clinton said about her election that she lost. I can say the same thing about the DNC who said it about the 2016 race. I can say the same thing about those in the

Democratic Party, the leadership on down about George Bush not winning that Al Gore did. But were any of them prosecuted? Were any of them put in jail? Deep breath here. Because I kind of remember Al Gore in a very, very tough, very hard contested race, very questionable, very close, conceding the 2000 election, presiding at the joint session of Congress where he counted the electoral votes that certified his defeat. I remember Barack Obama actually inviting Donald Trump into the White House, right? And sitting with him, what I don't remember was any of leading Democrats summoning the mob to attack the Capitol. Yeah, you had a few outliers who voted against certification, but this attempt to make an equivalency. What is Kevin McCarthy doing?

I would encourage everybody to go watch his statement because he gets progressively angrier as he's talking. And, you know, I know Kevin well enough to know that he's- Theatrically. Theatrically. He is a man that is very much has always kind of tried to be a Smiley McGee, what I call like fake politicians. But I think he is just burning inside of having to continue to lie to continue to make up these stories to continue to come up with things. But again, he knows that he only has to convince his base and get past that question in the media. But to say, I mean, I saw Marco Rubio, for God's sakes, tweeted something

about how there were some Hollywood people that did a video trying to convince the electors in 2016 to be faithless and vote for Hillary Clinton. And it's like, well, that's totally legal to do. Which nobody paid any attention to. Right. Nobody paid any attention to. And by the way, it is completely legal if you're an elector in most states to become faithless and switch your vote. But it's not legal to send fake electors and incite the mob. And so yes, like, you know, Van Jones said yesterday on the panel we were on,

he goes, yes, the left did try to delegitimize Donald Trump's presidency. I condemn them for that. And to Van's credit, he actually did when that was happening. Yes, also Republicans the whole time claimed Obama was illegitimate because he never produced a birth certificate, so to speak. And so yes, there's this history of that and it's wrong, but there has never been anything like what happened in 2020. Everybody knows that, that is out saying differently, but they're trying to both put salve on their own conscience and they're trying to buy time for their own career for the man on the white horse that's going to come and save all of us,

except they're all on white horses. They're all the people that are supposed to do it. And instead they're busy covering their own backside. And it's sad. You know, all you can do, Charlie, is have a commitment to truth and go out there and speak from whatever platform you can. And I will do it from whatever platform I can and hope that there is some twinge of consciousness in some of these people and hope that people stand up and say, we are sick and tired of being lied to. But I have lost faith that any smart person that is currently elected in the GOP is going to have kind of a stroke of consciousness and come out and tell the truth. Well, I agree with you. But you know, to your point about sunken costs, you know, once you've gone this far, you might as well go the whole way. I certainly understand that. And I

think that explains a lot of what's going on here. But also, there's the normal human and certainly political instinct to cut your losses. Stop digging. And this is the extraordinary thing because they have had so many chances to move on, to take the off ramps. You don't need to rush to the cameras every single time. And here you have someone who is credibly accused, I'm talking about Donald Trump, credibly accused of fraud, of rape, of violating the Espionage Act, of attempting to overthrow the election. And you would think that on the agenda of, you know, politicians would be, you know what, maybe I'll just let that go. I'm not going to defend him. I may not attack him for it, but I'm not going to. I feel like we've asked this question a hundred times, but

there is a certain irrationality of just sticking by him going into an election that I think Republicans ought to have some optimism about, you know, for a variety of reasons. And yet they're going to go into a campaign in which their candidate for president is going to spend much of the campaign actually sitting in a courtroom where he faces felony charges. And no other Republican can seem to figure out how to use the fact, the rape, the espionage charges, the fraud charges, all of this in order to get traction against him. I mean, you would think that the rest of the field would go, okay, here are the things that we really ought to be using. If I want to be elected president, I should really run against Donald Trump by pointing out X, Y, and Z. Yes. Well, there is no excuse in my mind for anybody that's running for president to be as sycophantical as they are. I am shocked every day with the exception of Chris Christie, Asa, Will Hurd. Everybody is just out profusely defending him. Like what? This is a guy that's

beating you in the polls. But here's the thing with, again, let's take the rank and file member of the house. So imagine a scenario where you're sitting, you know, you see like the old Vietnam prison camps, right? All the GIs are sitting around and there's like four guards that are armed. You know that at any time, if everybody at the same time rushes the guards, they'll be able to, in essence, kill them and be free. The problem is if just one guy stands up time rushes the guards, they'll be able to, in essence, kill them and be free. The problem is if just one guy stands up and rushes the guards, he's down. And if one guy starts trying to talk to people about rushing the guards, somebody's going to die in the mud.

It's the same thing in the GOP. I mean, you saw what happened to Liz and I and some of the others, Jeff Flake, that have stood up and said the truth. They get basically politically killed. And so now everybody's worried. There's no way to organize a big group without Donald Trump finding out about it. And so you look in your side and say, look, okay, do I want to stay in Congress? Yes, I do.

Then I have to suck it up because there's no other way. Or if you hit a point where it's like, I can't do this anymore, my conscience won't allow, you're not going to go on TV and say that. You're simply not going to run again, because by the way, when you're out of Congress, you probably need to go lobby to make a living, and you have to lobby a lot of these people that are still huge Trumpers, and you're going to have to work with some of them, and you don't want to alienate them. I wouldn't be a successful lobbyist right now, because I go back and talk to some of my former Republican colleagues. They'd be like, I don't want to listen to you. You've been throwing us under the bus.

I don't want to be seen with you. I don't want to be anywhere near you. This is a quasi lightning round. It doesn't have to be really fast, but I wanted to get your sense of the various actors and players right now. What do you make of Mike Pence, the much tougher Mike Pence? And you know that Mike Pence is turning a corner because he's actually putting out merch. I find this really extraordinary that they're actually gay people have missed this. They're actually marketing hats and t-shirts saying too honest. Now, because according to the special counsel's indictment, Trump called Pence up on New Year's Day and berated him. And Pence says, I don't have the authority to throw out the election. Trump says, you're too honest. So now they're actually marketing that merch.

What do you make of Mike Pence? What took so long? Okay. So I'm a little bitter at Mike Pence because he could have basically on January 7th been the Chris Christie. Actually, I think he'd be like the Ron DeSantis. Not Ron DeSantis, but he'd be like the number two guy right now and would have made a huge impact. He still won't say if what Donald Trump did was criminal. He's like, I'm not a lawyer, which is a little bit of nuance. It drives me nuts. But I will embrace him with open arms if this is a new Mike Pence and he's going to go out and tell the truth. We need him.

We need his voice to go out and say, look, you know, I was all in on the Trump agenda. But this is too much. And I don't think there's anybody, even the hardcore Trump fan, that doesn't doubt that Mike Pence is to an extent pretty honest. And so I welcome his voice. He still drives me a little nuts because he's lukewarm always. He'll say something to please Trumpers a little bit or qualify what he's about to say that's anti-Trump. And he does that in like a sandwich. So he does that, then he goes after Trump, and then he comes back with a positive Trump comment. If he can stay out there and stay strong, I'll be excited to see it. I won't support him for president, but you know, his voice is very important. I thought it was interesting. I think it was, it was Olivier Knox writing in the Washington Post that really he has become,

Mike Pence has become kind of the, uh, the symbol, the avatar of the kind of conservative the Republican electorate has now rejected. I mean, you go down in just in terms of issues, checking the boxes, and he represents everything that conservatives said they were before, say, 2015, and yet they're being rejected. And it's worth noting that he has not yet qualified to be on the debate stage, which is amazing. Okay, so Mike Pence, number one, Bill Barr, number two. So if I could only think of Bill Barr kind of post January 6, I'd be like, man, he is a hero of the truth telling movement. I don't have as much bitterness to Bill Barr as a lot of people do. I think there's a lot that he did that I still am a little upset about. But to me, he's been,

I wish he wouldn't have held on for his book and all that kind of stuff. But I'm glad he's out there speaking and he can speak with some authority. That's my view on him. And I'm not as bitter against him as some, but I can see why some are. Okay, I'm pretty bitter, but it is extraordinary.

And let's take Pence and Barr, you know, and put them together, at least in this category. I mean, it would have been great had they been, you know, earlier and stronger. But this is just another reminder that almost all of the crucial evidence in this case comes from Republicans. It comes from people who were Trump appointees. These are the voices from within the room. And you think about that, and this is a point that I think needs to be made, you know, strongly.

This is not the resistance. This is not Democrats who are coming forward with this evidence. These are people who were literally in the room, who dealt with Donald Trump. And, you know, your committee, the testimony in your committee, I would say that what more than 90% of the witnesses were Republicans, were people who were part of the Trump administration. And many of the key players were not just part of the Trump administration. They were the dead enders. They were the ones that hung on to the bitter end after the election, you know, and who, when they said no to Donald Trump, were also ending their career in government. I mean, Mike Pence, for all of my criticism of him, remember when he said, no, I'm not going to use my power to overturn the election, he was defeating himself. He was the vice president. He basically gave up his job. Some of those officials of the Department of Justice would have been in ongoing positions of real authority and power, and they were destroying their own futures by doing all of this. So I don't know whether this makes a difference. So far, it doesn't seem to have made that much of

a difference for Republican voters, but it is striking how many members of this cabinet, members of this administration, whatever their opinion is on the criminal charges are saying that this whole scenario is another indication of why Donald Trump should never be allowed near power again at all. And by the way, when this trial comes and we see who's actually going to be called to the witness stand, I mean, Mike Pence will probably be a witness against Donald Trump. That's insane. You know, Mark Meadows. It always drove the MAGA folks nuts when I would say like, because I would sometimes be like, yeah, you're right. The January 6th committee was very, very partisan. We only had

Republicans come in and testify. Well, that's not to say, you know, they'd get all upset. But I think it's important to note too, and I kind of just thought of this as we were having this discussion, which is if we actually do want to start seeing the MAGA movement or Donald Trump start collapsing, we're going to have to be embracing a lot of people that were once all in that are now out because they're the only ones left. They're the ones who we have to win over this thing continues. Okay, so since we're running down the list of people, let's talk about Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis, who, unlike, say, Chris Christie, and by the way, can we just mention about Chris Christie? Chris Christie went to

Ukraine. He's meeting with Zelensky today. Good on him. That's awesome. And that is, it's courageous, and Pence did it too. It is courageous. It's important for people to see that. And I love Chris Christie's, I don't, I DGAF attitude right now, which is just fantastic. He really is a magnificent beast. And I was extremely skeptical considering his role. And, you know, like I have a lot of respect for Asa Hutchinson and Will Hurd, but right now it is Chris Christie. One of the reasons why there's no chance that Donald Trump is ever going to get on a debate stage is he's not going to get on the debate stage with Chris Christie ever. It will never happen. Do you agree with me on that? Yes, I do. Now, Chris's view is that maybe not the first debate, but then he won't be able to resist. I think Chris Christie is going to slice him and

dice him so much. He'll just tweet from afar. He'll bleep from afar. And that's about it. And it's funny because I actually was pretty aggressive against Chris Christie as of a few months ago. And he and I actually exchanged some kind of barbs on Twitter. And now I would consider him a friend because the second I saw him out there on, I think it was the CNN town hall or maybe his announcement. I'm like, you know what? Yeah, I'm pissed that he was the first guy that endorsed Donald Trump in 2016. But he is serious, he means it. And he is better than anybody I've seen at exploiting Donald Trump's weakness in

front of the people that he exploited in front of. And I think he's just legitimately now having a good time doing it. So I love watching him. I love it. And there's no restraint. I mean, he is all out of bleeps to give. And you can tell that he's not making the calculation. He is having fun. I look at him and I go, well, what should he be saying? He's saying everything that he should be saying. He's also going everywhere. Right. is utterly fearless. I mean, it's one thing to go to Ukraine. It's another thing to go on Newsmax. You know, he's going everywhere, doing all this stuff, laying it out. And I got to say, it is rather extraordinary. So here's the contrast with Ron DeSantis, who just cannot figure out how to run against Donald Trump, has done this campaign reset that is apparently going nowhere, except one of the elements seems to be that he's making the rhetoric even cruder and more brutal. He was up in New Hampshire yesterday saying that on day one he's going to start, this is his term, slitting throats.

I mean, I'm sorry, what is wrong with this guy? I mean, everything he says is like, it's like the inauthenticity is like you're faking it and you're just trying too hard. It's just too ridiculous. It is like the kid that got the invite to the party to hang out with the cool kids, you know, drink at a high school. Right. He's like, yeah, I pounded a beer, too, last night. And I had 80 beers. And he kind of goes over because he didn't know.

And that's like, so people said to DeSantis, look, you need to go against the deep state and the bureaucracy. And so he goes out and emotionally says, we're going to start slitting throats. First off, I laugh because it's just so insane. That's also like, there's somebody out there that's going to listen to that and be like, I'm going to go slit some throats because there are some crazy people out there. Ron DeSantis, like I knew him in the house. The funny story I have about Ron is like, and everybody will tell you the same story like this. He never would talk to anybody, but there was one time in the cloak room, we're sitting back there and I actually had a bit of a conversation with him. And if I'm sitting, you know, across from you face to face, we're talking. And if I get a phone call, I have to take it.

I'll pick up my phone, look at it and be like, hey, Charlie, would you excuse me for a second? I got to take this call. We're talking in the middle of something. He picks up his phone and literally walks away. It doesn't even say anything. And I'm like, all right, well, F you too, man. See ya. And that's just him.

He doesn't know how to react to people. His campaign view, and it's probably not a terrible thing if he would do it right, is at some point Donald Trump will collapse and I will be the Trumpiest guy, so I'll be there to pick up the pieces. But he's just done it so awkwardly and stupidly that he's not going to be that guy. That scenario was plausible, say, six months ago, right? That something, something, something, unicorn magic, I become the nominee, right? You don't actually have to run against Donald Trump. That somebody else will take him out.

Of course, every time somebody tries to take him out, Ron DeSantis runs to his defense. I mean. That's right. It's nuts. It is nuts. By the way, I was reminded yesterday, I'd actually forgotten about this. Donald Trump actually, you know, surrenders in Washington, D.C. He goes there, he goes to the arraignment. And one of the commentators was saying, you know, this was not necessarily a certainty because you remember when the first

indictment came down, Rhonda Sanders popped out of the governor's mansion and said, you know, the state of Florida will not help extradite Donald Trump. He was prepared to turn Florida into an orange Caligula sanctuary state. And so, yeah, six months ago, it was perhaps plausible that Donald Trump was going to go away and he would be the logical next candidate, but that's obviously not going to happen. And I don't know what this reset is because I'm not seeing any kind of a reset. He's just as awkward as ever. He's incapable of talking for more than 30 seconds without using the word woke. He keeps digging himself deeper. This debate about slavery, which I don't want to get into. I mean, you can make the case that some of the criticism was unfair, that it's one sentence

out of 200 pages and everything. But Ron DeSantis won't let go of his own shitty issue. I mean, he just keeps going and going. He's trying to play the Trump thing, but only Trump can do that. I mean, I'll give Trump credit. Like he can do things that nobody else can. One of those is double down on unpopular things to look tough.

And I think that's what Ron's trying to do on the slavery thing. And he can't do it. He doesn't have the ability to do that. He just looks dumber and stupider and dumber. Okay, so what do you think is going to happen? We started off by, you know, talking about the, the doom loop of nothing ever matters punditry. And let's, let's go back to all of that. Because the conventional wisdom is that despite these indictments that Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite that despite these indictments, that Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to get the Republican nominee. Do you see anything that changes the dynamics of this? So now I don't think it's super likely, but if this court case gets done prior to

the election, now let's, let's take a couple of factors. First off, again, you can read an indictment, but then when you see people testify we'll see that evidence laid out and if he is convicted i just saw a poll today that 50 of republicans would turn in essence turn against or consider turning against trump if in fact he was actually convicted of these crimes now that's going to lower a little bit as people rally around the flag but i do think that this trial if it's done in a more public way and he's convicted, actually does have the opportunity to turn it. Now, I'm not sitting here betting all my money on that, but I think it could be because, you know, it's one thing to stand around and this guy's been indicted and we're going to defend him. It's another thing when he truly is a convicted felon and you all of a sudden realize there's not a chance in blazes he can win the presidency.

I think that's the only case. But that won't happen before the primaries are over and the nominating convention is held here in Milwaukee. Yeah, it's possible because I think they're talking in theory in May, but you're right. And that would maybe have to be a case where he's replaced at the convention. Again, I give it very little chance, but I think that's the only thing that exists that's going to, I think the reality is we're going to have to defeat Donald Trump in the general election. That's what I think the reality is. Well, the poll you mentioned, and we had to at least, you know, pause on that for a moment. This is the new Reuters Ipsos poll. About half of U.S. Republicans would spurn Trump if he is convicted.

Let me read you from the article. The two-day Reuters-Ipsos poll asked respondents if they would vote for Trump for president next year if he were convicted of a felony crime by a jury. Among Republicans, 45% said they would not vote for him, more than the 35% who said they would. The rest said they did not know. So only 35% of Republicans say they would vote for Donald Trump if he was convicted of a felony by a jury. Asked if they would vote for Trump if he were, quote, currently serving time in prison. 52% of Republicans said they would not, which is an amazingly low number when you think about it. I mean, it's like, hello. But compared to 28 percent who said they would. OK, so it is shocking that there are 28 percent of Republicans who say, yes, I would vote for him to be president,

even if he is actually in a orange jumpsuit in prison. But those numbers would suggest that it is impossible for him to win a general election. I guess the question is when that begins to be felt in the Republican world. Okay, one last question. Do you think there's time and room and opportunity for someone else to get into this race to play the role that Ron DeSantis is clearly not going to play, by which I'm obviously referring to a Glenn Youngkin or somebody like that coming in, being the consensus candidate, we have to stop Trump, we have to have some alternative. Can that happen? Well, so putting aside my personal feelings on Youngkin, I do think that is a possibility

because if you think about it, it was part of the thing I was always against DeSantis from the beginning is, which we've talked about about on this show you've said it a hundred times you know you think of president walker president jeb bush you know the people that are in the lead early on are never in the lead later and right now you have this massive baggage on desantis if you could hit a reset button with somebody like glenn yunkin and he can come in and be kind of Trumpy, but a little more polished at it, then I do think there is a possibility as we get more and more into this Muck and Meyer that he could take that position. I'm not a huge Glenn Youngkin fan for any number of reasons. But just speaking from an analytical point of view, I do think that is a possibility. And somebody like

him or like him, that can come forward and has a track record to show they can win on the issues that MAGA cares about, which is only woke issues. You know, it's possible. Adam Kinzinger, who I think needs no introduction for our audience, former congressman from Illinois, crucial member of the January 6th committee, a senior political commentator for CNN and has a new book coming out this fall, Renegade, My Life and Faith, the Military and Defending America from Trump's Attack on Democracy. It is always great to talk with you, Adam. You too. Thanks a lot. And thank you all for listening to this weekend's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back next week, and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.