The Bulwark Podcast - Ben Wittes: The Worst Story We Told Ourselves Was True

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

January 6 was not merely a conspiracy to break windows and storm the Capitol — for some, it was a conspiracy to resist the lawful authority of the United States. Plus, Musk's vandalism of Twitter is destroying something precious. Ben Wittes joins Charlie Sykes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Where do we start today? We have this another remarkable vote in the United States Senate, bipartisan vote of 61 to 36 to pass landmark same-sex marriage legislation. Mitch McConnell is joining the chorus denouncing Trump's Nazi dinner. South Carolina Supreme Court tells Mark Meadows that no, you have to show up and testify before the grand jury in Georgia. The economy actually amazingly grew faster than anybody expected in the third quarter. Congress is moving to stop a crippling rail strike. Russia's campaign of terror and genocide in Ukraine is continuing. China is cracking down on protests.

Elon Musk continues to, who the fuck knows what Elon Musk is doing. And the good news is the U.S. men's soccer team finally scored a goal. There was actually scoring at the World Cup. So I'm pretty happy about all of that. So we have a lot to talk about with our guests. Welcoming back, it's been too long, Ben Wittes, Editor-in-Chief at Lawfare, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. Ben, welcome back to the podcast.

Thanks. It's good to be back. So where do we start? I obviously want to talk to you about the seditious conspiracy convictions yesterday, which I think is a BFD. I want to get your take on all of that. But could we just start with Trump's dinner with Nick and the latest developments on that? I actually had to laugh out loud when I saw the headline that Trump aides are now going to be

tightening access to the former president, as in now. OK, now. Yeah. Well, I've heard of them before. Yeah. The delusional component of them that Trump aides actually have any control over access to, you know, a guy who impulsively reaches out to people by phone and truth social. I mean, there's a delusional component of thinking they can crack down. But look, I am I'm going to defend the former president. I have been in this position where, you know, you invite a friend to dinner who really wants just to get your advice and you're you have no idea. You don't tell him, you know, bring friends. And then he shows up with, you know, three friends and one of them is Himmler.

And, you know, there's just nothing you can do about that. It would be really rude to say you can come in, but your dear friend Heinrich Himmler can't come in. And so, you know, you do what a gracious host does. You have dinner with them. And that's the sort of thing that can happen to anybody. And I do think it's just the liberal media that's making a big deal of it. Who among us has not accidentally had dinner with a Nazi? Well, that's obviously true. And of course, if in fact the Nazi does not actually bring up concentration camps or the Holocaust or talk about Zyklon B, then what's the harm, right? That's right.

As long as he compliments you, then, you know, no harm, no foul. That's right. And as the president said at the time that people were asking him to denounce Putin, he called me brilliant. What am I supposed to do? Right. And and I think, you know, when a Nazi shows up at your house or your club with a friend and you you had no idea who it is and he's polite to you, you should be polite back. So I think this is really Trump modeling the sort of civility that we should all be asking for in our political culture. And I just think it's very unfair that people are not being more sympathetic to the point, the problem that he confronted and the graciousness with which he confronted it. And moreover, I don't like the way people are abandoning him over this.

They, you know, they, it's sad. They should show more loyalty. But, you know, the moment he starts losing and meeting with Nazis, it's like all these people who, you know, were fine to be on board with the Trump train when it was doing so much winning and they were tired of winning, you know, they were fine to be on board then. But now, you know, the first sign of trouble on the ship, you know, Mitch McConnell, he's being all judgmental about it. And he actually said yesterday, in what I loved, he framed it as a political analysis rather than a normative statement. He said he didn't think anybody who dines with Nazis could be elected as the Republican nominee.

Let me play that, because what's interesting about it is Mitch McConnell comes out for his, what is it, his gaggle or whatever, and he doesn't even wait for a question. He just, without being prompted, this is what he says. First, let me just say that there is no room in the Republican Party for anti-Semitism or white supremacy. And anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view,

in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States. Pretty scathing, Ben. Pretty scathing. Yeah. Can I just point out that the first sentence is absolutely false? There is room in the Republican Party for anti-Semites and white supremacists. I think that's been demonstrated. Consider Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, members in good standing. I could name a bunch. So McConnell's first statement is simply a false statement. And the second statement, notice that he does not say, I will not support him if he is the nominee. He says he's extremely, anybody who does this is extremely unlikely to be the president, as though he's a sort of political analyst, you know, punditizing on CNN or something. And so I think even now there's a degree of care in the way people

are talking about it that's, you know, designed to leave them some room for whatever eventuality happens. Yeah, I mean, basically he's saying that meeting with Nazis is likely to hurt him with swing voters, that he will need to win the election, which is really kind of a rather morally vacuous statement. Now, you know- It's a courageous statement.

Right, But the defenses that are coming out of MAGA world right now that Donald Trump is the victim here, he's a punk here, basically boil down to he's got lousy staff and a terrible judgment, which is not the ringing endorsement that I think or ringing defense that I think they imagine it to be, because we're talking about a guy that wants to be president again, and he surrounds himself with really bad people. He can't help himself surrounding himself with bad people. He ignores good advice, and then he exercises extraordinarily bad judgment in the way he handles it and responds to it afterwards. But yes, absolutely, four more years. Four more years in the Oval Office for this

guy. You know, and I also just think, you know, it's been a while since the Nick Fuenteses of the world had access to the White House. And, you know, they they they need representation, too, as Roman Hruska might say. No one is going to get that reference. And I you know, I occasionally will come up with an obscure reference. I actually am old enough that I remember the Roman Hruska reference here. But but could you just enlighten the ninety nine point nine percent of our listeners who have no idea what you're talking about? his intellect. And at the time of Richard Nixon's nomination of, I believe it was Harold Carswell to the Supreme Court, and Carswell was criticized for being thirdly mediocre and was eventually rejected for the Supreme Court. And Roman Hruska courageously took to the Senate floor and said, and I believe this is it's close to an exact quote, there are a lot of mediocre people in the United States and they

deserve representation on the Supreme Court, too. And I think it is one of the great statements of of American pluralism that has ever been made. It is an American classic. You know, I have not thought about that quote in a very, very long time. And at the risk of taking us down a very weird rabbit hole of digression here, you know, Hruska is kind of an unusual name, isn't it? It is. OK, let me tell you why I'm bringing this up.

My mother, my mother before World War II, married her high school sweetheart, whose name was Lambert Ruska, who then went on to be a genuine hero, was awarded the Silver Star, and was killed in World War II. Otherwise, I wouldn't be alive. But my mother was actually married to a Ruska. So I wonder whether or not in some weird sort of bizarre seven, you know, you know, seven layers of separation, you know, that there might be some connection between me and Roman Ruska and Roman, the champion of mediocrity, which is no one has ever accused you of mediocrity, Charlie. So even if you were married into the champion of mediocrity's family, I think you escape the charge. But I'm at the age where now I'm really grasping for some sort of, you know, historical ties and significance. So maybe it's going to be, and he has some sort of relationship to the, whatever. So before we get into this, I don't want to forget this, okay?

So you have been the architect and the author of what I think is one of the most wonderful political trolling endeavors of the year. Harassing, is harassing too strong a word? Harassing the Russian embassy. I hope not. Okay, so can you tell me what they, do you have anything planned?

Tell me what the last several things, your last several projects were. I want people to bring people up to speed with this. This is really important. I've got some good ones in the works. Oh, good. So first of all, I acquired a laser, which allows me to not merely project images like a projector can do onto Russian diplomatic facilities, but to write on the walls of the Russian embassy, which is a fabulous thing because, you know, you can from

very great distances put, you know, pretty precise language on the walls. So I have teamed up with a group of Ukrainian activists in Washington and called U.S.-Ukraine activists. And we periodically go out and demonstrate in front of the embassy. Sometimes I go to support their mischief and sometimes they come to support mine. And then I decided this needed an international road trip. So I went up to Ottawa and projected against the embassy in Canada, the Russian embassy in Canada. And that led to a very amusing set of interactions with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who were baffled by it and had no idea whether it was legal. And then I went to France and I did it in Paris where the French national... You have taken this global. You have taken this trolling global. I had no idea.

And so we did special military operation Paris. The French national police were really not amused. And we escaped arrest by the skin of our teeth. Well, what had you been doing? What were you up to? We were projecting with the laser against the embassy, only in French, of course. We wouldn't want to offend local sensibilities by projecting in English. But, you know, good appropriate slogans like stop killing Ukrainian children and that sort of thing. And the Russian embassy staff in Paris did not appreciate it. The French national police did not appreciate it.

So the next operation I have planned is a woman who survived Bucha and wrote an incredible diary of her time in Butcha during the occupation, is writing me an essay that I'm going to project line by line onto the embassy with her narrating it in both English and Ukrainian. And so that's the next operation. And then I have invitations from a number of foreign capitals, and also to do an operation in Tallinn, Estonia, where the former president, Tomas Ilves, has offered to host the operation. So we have a busy schedule of harassment of Russian diplomats all over. If any listeners are in foreign capitals where they think the Russian embassy really needs a wake-up call, please get in touch. And we're going to keep bothering them. It really does bother them. They take extraordinary measures to try to stop it. And so, you know, there's not that much we can do to help Ukrainians from here in Washington.

But keeping the Russians very aware of how unwelcome they are in our city is one of the things we can do. So has the laser now replaced the little cannon, the tiny cannon? Is it the successor? The cannon has jurisdictional limitations. Baby cannon announces major events. I have not seen baby cannon. Was there a baby cannon yesterday for the Stuart? No, no. It only deals with Trump accountability matters. So there will certainly be a baby cannon detonation if and when Trump is indicted. But if you bring ballistics to foreign embassies, the Secret Service really doesn't like that.

But pointing lasers? Lasers, I've worked out a protocol with the Secret Service. You don't shine them at people. You don't shine them anywhere near people's eyes. You don't do anything that could seem to be targeting a person. But if you're just projecting against a wall, it's harmless light. Okay, I'm a little concerned for you here, Benjamin. I don't want to see you ending up, you know, next to Brittany Griner somewhere.

Well, I won't be going to Russia. Okay, so deep breath here. I was wondering whether there was going to be a baby cannon for this, but we had a landmark decision yesterday after two months of trial, three days of deliberations. This jury, this federal jury in D.C. found leader of the Oath Keepers, Stuart Rhodes, and the man who ran his Florida chapter, Kelly Meggs, guilty of seditious conspiracy for their attempt to keep Donald Trump in power. So there were there was a mixed verdict. There were some acquittals here. But I think that the the main the top line is the Justice Department's most aggressive charges. Biggest case coming out of January 6th to date resulted in major convictions for very high profile figures. So let's start at 30,000 feet. How big a deal is this? What is the significance of the Department of Justice

victory yesterday, the conviction of the Oath Keeper leaders? Well, so it's a very significant victory. It's perhaps not in the way a lot of people imagine, which is this. I don't think this is one of the roads that leads to Donald Trump, but it is very significant in its own right. So the Oath Keepers are one of two major groups, the other one being the Proud Boys, whose leadership is going to trial on a different seditious conspiracy indictment in late December. If you think about January 6th as basically several different conspiracies happening at the same time, right? The conspiracy by the president and the people around him to stop the counting of the votes and to, you know, fake Georgia electors and to put pressure on Mike Pence. Right. That stuff is the highest level political conspiracy. The second thing that's going on at the same time is a bunch of spontaneous, you know, hey, let's storm the Capitol and a whole

bunch of people run and, you know, beat up cops and stuff and, you know, invade Nancy Pelosi's office. The third thing is several discrete conspiracies to do that. There were groups of people who had, you know, plans to organize trouble. And the fourth, which is related to the third, is groups of people like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers who planned to do that stuff and by doing that stuff, basically install a different government, overthrow the government of the United States, resist the authority, block the transition of power. And there has been a lot of questioning of whether that really happened and a lot of denialism about whether that really happened. And this is a jury after listening to more than a month and a half of evidence, after listening to what was actually a quite competent defense, saying, okay, there are some smaller matters on which the government didn't prove its case, and it didn't prove the seditious conspiracy case as to all of the defendants.

But as to Stuart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, the Oath Keepers' leadership, yes, this was a conspiracy to resist the authority of the United States using violence, using weapons. It involved more than just braggadocio, more than just what my colleague Roger Parloff calls seditious fetching. It involved an actual coordinated objective between multiple people to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president that, by the way, continued after January 6th. So I think, you know, establishing that one of the two major seditious conspiracies that the government alleged actually happened to a jury, that it happened beyond a reasonable doubt, that it was not merely a conspiracy to break windows or storm the Capitol, but it was a conspiracy to resist the lawful authority of the United States. That's extremely important.

And it establishes as a matter of fact in the American judicial system that at least some group of people was, you know, was doing what we all saw as the worst on January 6th, that the worst story we told ourselves was true. So let's talk about the decision by the Department of Justice to charge seditious conspiracy in particular. The fact that with a conspiracy, you don't have to show that Stuart Rhodes even entered the Capitol because it's a conspiracy, but also how aggressive it was to use a statute that is very, very rarely applied. I think the relevant language here is the statutes. If two or more persons in any state or territory or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States conspire to overthrow, put down or destroy by force the government of the United States

or to levy war against them or to oppose by force the authority thereof or by force to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States or by force to seize, take execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States, contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined or imprisoned not more than 20 years or both. So this was, and tell me if I'm wrong, this strikes me as the maximum kind of charge that the federal government could bring against people like Stuart Rhodes.

Very aggressive decision has not been used for decades. Very problematic getting convictions on all this. So talk to me about the decision to go for seditious conspiracy as opposed to any of the other possibilities. I mean, I guess what I'm getting is for all the criticism of Merrick Garland, I mean, he pushed it to 10 on this one, didn't he? Yes. And rightly so. I mean, the evidence in this case is pretty dramatic. And so for a really good summary of that evidence, I refer people to Roger Parloff's summary of the evidence in Lawfare that came out while the jury was out deliberating. And Roger very precisely predicted this split verdict, both because he thought the evidence was stronger on some counts than on others, and because he thought that some defendants

had a better defense against seditious conspiracy than did Rhodes and Meggs. So look, seditious conspiracy is the closest thing the United States has to a treason statute that is applicable when the country is not at war. Treason doesn't really work when there's no military enemy. And you're right, it has been used pretty sparingly over the years. The last successful case, I believe, was the blind sheikh Omar Abdulrahman and his co-conspirators in the 90s following in the wake of the World Trade Center bombing, although the first World Trade Center bombing, that is, they were actually charged with a much broader range of stuff than that. There have been other attempts to use it. There's a bizarre case in, I believe it's Michigan, involving a group called the Hutari. I believe that that case didn't stick. And I think there

were some, there may have been some seditious conspiracy charges in connection with the kidnapping plot involving Gretchen Whitmer, but those fell apart as well. And so, you know, it's been used sparingly, partly because it is pretty hard, although the wording of it is quite broad, it's pretty hard to make charges under its stick. And so to bring two seditious conspiracy cases that are actually have been divided into more, the Oath Keepers case was divided into two, another one is going to trial next week. And then you also have the Proud Boys case. I mean, what the Justice Department is saying here is there are a bunch of people who just basically were there at a political protest and ended up trespassing. And those are the cases

that everybody's been criticizing them for resolving on the basis of misdemeanors or, you know, very small amounts of jail time. Then there are people who did that, but also fought with and attacked cops or who, you know, sought to obstruct the Congress from doing its business. And those people are getting, you know, some real time. And then there are people who were involved in conspiracies, either to obstruct or, in the case of these organized groups, actually to resist the authority of the United States. And that is a smaller group of people. But those charges are extremely serious. And what the Justice Department showed yesterday is that, you know, they can they can imagine if it had gone the other way. If, in fact, the defendants had been acquitted of all the charges, if the jury had rejected the Department of Justice's most important case, you know, going out of the insurrection. You can sort of imagine the way the MAGA right would have, you know, exalted about it. You can imagine what the media spin would have been, the blowback against the DOJ. And obviously the inevitable doubts and second guessing within the Justice Department, I mean, obviously there'd be a step back, you know, to say what went wrong here. It obviously

would certainly not provide any momentum to Jack Smith. But I want to go to a point that you made before. You said that this does not like some people are thinking, well, you know, this is, more breadcrumbs headed toward an indictment of Donald Trump. This does not lead directly to Trump. However, they have established that they can get convictions on conspiracy. They can get convictions on obstructing the certification of the election during a joint session of Congress. Are there any implications here for the decision that Jack Smith has to make involving the conspiracy led and pushed by Donald Trump? Yeah, I think there are, but they're indirect. So first of all, I don't know of any evidence other than little breadcrumbs here and there of direct relationship between the conspiracy yesterday that was convicted yesterday and the activity that Trump was involved in.

There are certain threads that connect it, particularly involving Roger Stone. But I don't think what we're going to see is, you know, Jack Smith now filing a seditious conspiracy indictment against Donald Trump for, you know, some role in this Oath Keepers project. I think if there were any glimmers of that, first of all, the special counsel would not have been walled off from the January 6th riot prosecutions the way he was. He was given the political echelon cases, but not the on-the-ground cases. And if they were really connected in a deep way, I don't think Merrick Garland would have separated them that way. And then the other thing is, I don't think we would have had a presentation of evidence that went on for a month and a half and didn't implicate the president at all. So I think in that sense, you can probably take as your working assumption that there is no direct work your way up from the Oath Keepers case to Donald Trump. I could be wrong about that. Sometimes you don't show all your cards, but I am assuming that that is not the direction the January 6th special counsel investigation will go. Here's the sense in which I think it does have implications for Trump. If this conviction

had been unattainable, and you are Jack Smith, and you are thinking about bringing a case against the former president of the United States, you would say, my God, even a DC jury is thinking twice, thinking hard and not convicting against a thug with an eye patch who's, you know, has a giant cache of weapons at a Virginia hotel. How are we ever going to get a conviction against the former president who to this, has the support of very large numbers of Americans. So I think there would have been an incredible negative disincentive message sent by an acquittal. Okay, so let's switch perspective just a little bit from what happened with the court yesterday to what's going on with the January 6th Select Committee, which is very clearly, specifically focused on Donald Trump and whatever conspiracy or incitement he was engaged in. They have about a month left.

I mean, they the clock is very much running on them. They they cease to exist at the end of this Congress. It doesn't even take an action by the new Republican majority to get rid of them. And yet what we're hearing is they are continuing to have interviews. Kellyanne Conway for five hours. Apparently Stephen Miller talked to them. Report today that the speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, Robin Voss, is talking with them. So do you, and of course we're getting reports that there's a little bit of controversy within the committee or with the committee staff about what the focus of that final report should be with Liz Cheney apparently reportedly saying, I want the focus to be really laser locked onto Donald Trump as opposed to anything else. So

give me your sense of where we're at on this. And I just, you know, putting it in the perspective that this verdict, I think, kind of resets the political environment for this report to come out. Had there been acquittals, it would have been, you know, it would have undermined the case of the January 6th committee. This is a very, very big deal. This was not a normal tourist trip. This was a fundamental seditious attack on, you know, the foundations of our republic. So where are we at with the January 6th committee? What are you looking for? What are you expecting? First of all, I applaud the committee for working right up until the end. I think, you know, that is something you very seldom see Congress do. They did not put out their report before the election, which was kind of what everybody expected them to do several months ago.

They just kept working. As to the dispute between Vice Chair Cheney and the committee staff, it does not appear incidentally to be a dispute between Cheney and her colleagues. It's a legitimate dispute. And there is a good case for the staff position, which is that, hey, there's all these other aspects of it, FBI intelligence failures and Capitol Police failures. We're supposed to be a comprehensive body. We did all this work. Don't throw it on the floor. Don't leave it on the floor. Liz Cheney's position, on the other hand, I think also has a lot of merit, which is we've faced intelligence failures before. We'll face them again. And there's a lot of opportunity to address those issues, there is a fundamental difference between

this and all other such failures, which is that this was perpetrated by the president of the United States, and we need to focus single-mindedly on Trump's accountability. I actually, on the merits, can argue this either way. I think there's a good case for both positions. There's a reason why Liz Cheney is the vice chair and the staff is the staff. And I think this is a question that has to be worked out between Cheney and her colleagues, not between Cheney and the staff. And I think it was frankly wrong and inappropriate for the staff members, current and former, and there were apparently 15 of them who talked to the Post about it. I thought that was in bad form, honestly. It's a legitimate dispute. And I have a lot of respect for Cheney's position,

which is that there's only going to be one headline when we release this report. It only really gets to be about one thing. So what's the right answer? The right answer is, I think, first of all, they got to release all the evidence, all the deposition transcripts. And if you do that, then you kind of crowdsource the stuff you don't treat. If there are issues involving law enforcement failures and intelligence failures, let the New York Times have a crack at that. Let the scholars have a crack at that. You don't have to do everything in your report. So I think there's probably the best position for the committee to take is they are going to focus on Trump. They are going to flag other issues, but

the report will really focus on Trump. But they're also going to release this incredible library of evidence that they've collected over time and let other people mine through it for their own work. I think the instinct to keep interviewing people right up to the buzzer is very laudable. And I really look forward to the work that they're going to do and the written report that they're going to put out. So Liz Cheney is arguing that there's only going to be one headline from the report. What do you think that headline is going to be? Well, I think if the members clearly all believe that the story is January 6th was the culmination of a three-month plot by Donald Trump to not honor the results of the

election that he knew he had lost, and that he tried other means, legal and illegal, of contesting the election. And when they failed, he resorted to violence. And that is the story they told in their hearings over the summer, is a story they told, I think, largely very effectively and convincingly. But we know that story. I guess we know that story. So I guess the question is, how do they, in this report, you know, come up with something that will be the headline? What will it be? What are they going to see? Now, I mean, there's a lot of speculation about will they make a criminal referral to the Justice Department? And I don't even know. Which is a question that It doesn't because my sense is, and I want to get your take on this, is that the entire report will in effect be a criminal referral to the Department of Justice. The entire report. And they're on it. And they're already investigating it. There's a special counsel appointed the other day to make prosecutorial judgments about it. The question of whether there may be some pieces of evidence that the committee has that are important to the Justice Department, but the direction, please investigate this, is of no consequence

whatsoever. I think the much more important role, and by the way, the Justice Department has investigative tools that the committee lacks, specifically the ability to compel witnesses who might assert privilege before the committee. Those privileges do not obtain in front of a grand jury by and large. So the Justice Department is in a position to investigate however, you know, as effectively as it chooses to. The sense in which the committee has a unique contribution to play is in releasing material to the public. And that is something that the Justice Department cannot do because of the rules of grand jury secrecy. And so, you know, if we're going to think about how much information is in the Cassidy Hutchins interview that we have not seen.

Yes, absolutely. All of that evidence is going to be a trove for historians for many, many years, and it's going to be the fodder for hundreds of news articles. But I also think that they are going to have to boil it down. They're going to have to come up with, and you pointed out, what is the one headline going to be? And I think, I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction that there will be a line in the report that says that it's our conclusion, however they want to put it, that President Donald J. Trump engaged in a months long seditious conspiracy to overturn this election. I think they will use the word seditious conspiracy, not necessarily as a criminal referral, but as a way of summing up everything that we've been talking about here, his plot to overturn the election, his attempt to obstruct the

role of Congress. And what the jury did yesterday was to give them that, I think, that opening to use that particular phrase against Donald Trump. I'm just I'm going to just throw it out there. I'm going to bet you a dollar that's going to be in the report. And it's a very interesting point. So that will be the headline. Yeah. So as a colloquial matter, I have no problem with that prediction. The question of I don't think based on the evidence that I've seen that you could convict Donald Trump of seditious conspiracy. The reason being that it's hard for me to see the evidentiary connective tissue that would allow you to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that he conspired to use force. Right. That's there's two there's two courts. Right.

And I agree with you about that. But there's also the court of public opinion. That's right. That's why I say it like as a colloquial matter, I don't have a problem with it. Just they shouldn't do it with reference to the statute. Right. Unless they have the evidence to support the charge under the statute. OK, I agree with you there. Yes. But do I think that Donald Trump engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the constitution of the United States and prevent the peaceful transition of power by means including but not limited to violence? Yes, I absolutely do. And that that is reasonably described as a seditious conspiracy.

Yeah, I have no problem with that. A violent, seditious conspiracy. I guess I'm imagining them sitting around and they're drafting it and you know how the editing process goes. And the bottom line is that Liz Cheney is going to be sitting there and saying the language in this report has got to emphasize what a big fucking deal this is and to try to break through the kind of same old, same old numbness. So I think they are going to have to come up with a phrase that has that kind of legal constitutional resonance. Again, perhaps not in direct relationship to that statute, because I'm not a lawyer and I'm not prepared to discuss that. But but I do think that if the headline is committee accuses Donald Trump of leading a violent, seditionist conspiracy, then the report will have accomplished what I think Liz Cheney wants it to. Well, we will know pretty soon because the committee turns in turns into a pumpkin in a month

and the report will have to be out before then. Yeah, actually less than that, because you know that they're going to have to have it done before Christmas. I mean, there's that whole week between Christmas and New Year's. So that's why it's extraordinary that they're continuing to have these discussions today, you know, on November 30th, considering that this thing has to go to the printer within several weeks. And you know how that goes. OK, so, Ben, in the time that we have left, do you want to talk about Elon Musk at all? And the confusion that Elon Musk seems to have about free speech. We're having this incredible debate, which which I welcome about free speech and its enemies. Unfortunately, it seems to have taken a very, very weird turn. So I'm interested

in your take on Elon Musk claim that he is a savior of Western civilization and the values of free speech. Yeah, I don't know how to respond to this. First of all, I love Twitter, and I am one of the people who, when people will write for years on Twitter, this hellscape of a website, I would be like, I love Twitter. I've met so many wonderful people on Twitter. Yes, I've been harassed on Twitter. It's not the biggest problem in my life. Twitter has forced me to confront lots of ideas that I don't normally confront in my day-to-day life. I am just a kind of unapologetic Twitter

enthusiast. So I find Elon Musk's vandalism of Twitter, and I think it is a kind of form of ownership, corporate vandalism. Really sad. I mean, it's actually forced me to think about how do I move that community that I've found on Twitter? How do I follow it to where it's going to go? Or how do I help bring it somewhere else. So I say this with no triumph, but like his conception of free speech is so juvenile. I mean, it really is reminiscent of the 13 year old whose idea of freedom of speech is sort of the freedom to make fart jokes and snap the girl's bra and who sits in front of him in class. Right. And, you know, that's like actually not a useful conception of free speech for adults who have to be. That feels like the intellectual level of much of this discussion, though. Yeah. And so I guess I I I don't really want to be part of a Twitter where hundreds of thousands of Marjorie Taylor

Greens and Donald Trumps are back. And I think, you know, the previous leadership of Twitter did a very good job of trying to isolate and remove people who were not playing by basic rules of truth and civility and non-harassment. You know, the word that keeps coming to mind is vandalism, that there's just a, you know, just working to undo that as he has and doing it of all things in the name of free speech strikes me as it's very hard to reconcile to me with the apparent brilliance of his prior career. Yeah, I think the emphasis is on the word apparent there. So since you have expressed the unfashionable thought that we actually like Twitter, and I, of course, have engaged in the Twitter as hellscape rhetoric in the past myself. However, I guess my appreciation for the community that it formed, that we were all able to be part of, has increased now that it's possibly at risk.

And also, I'm sure you've done the same thing, you know, checking out some of the alternatives, which I, I intend to encourage. I tend to support. I'm over at post news. I I'll go over to Mastodon at some, at some point, but you get a sense of how convenient, how easy Twitter was and also how it's become such a fabric of our, of our culture and of the, this debate and the dialogue and the relationships that have been formed. It's going to be a terrible loss if this adolescent narcissist does, in fact, vandalize it. And it's going to be very, very difficult to replace. So I have to say that I have a sense of appreciation, as we always do, belatedly when we're about to lose something, we suddenly realize how valuable we thought it was. Yeah. So I will just say three things related to that point. For everybody who

is part of the, it's fashionable to hate Twitter community, the pro-democracy movement in the United States, the cross-ideological movement that both you and I have been a part of would have been impossible without Twitter. If you think about how Twitter, there are a few listservs, but the fundamental organizing place, public square of that group, the place where the Bill Crystals and the Sarah Longwells engaged the Will Salatans first is all Twitter. I just made that fact up, but somebody should ask Sarah or Will whether I'm right. But I really think Twitter was the means by which Ukrainians shouted out to the rest of the world and engaged the rest of the world. And think about how the last nine months would have been different had thousands of individual Ukrainians not been able to make little furry dog images and talk to us. And then finally, even as late as this weekend, you want to know what's going on in Iran?

You want to know what's going on in China in these protests? The best news source in the world is Twitter to this day. And so I have a very deep sense of loss at what is happening to Twitter. And that compounds my distaste for Elon Musk and his behavior. He's actually vandalizing something that is very precious, although has big problems. And, you know, managing that amount of content is a very, very difficult problem. And Twitter has done better at it in some iterations at some times on some issues than it has with others. My sense of loss at the destruction is real and

big. And it's also very apparent, and I think this was evident right from the beginning, that he had really no idea what he was getting into. He was weighing over his head that he hadn't really thought through these issues. So right now, you know, he's in the position of basically I decide all content moderation. But, you know, in a world of billions and billions of posts, that's an unsustainable position. So, you know, he thinks he can sort of govern by whim, but it will be absolutely consuming to have to make all of the judgments, especially now that he's pulled down all of the barriers, all of the limits. You know, it's interesting online since we're doing pop culture here. I think the comparison

that works the most since we're going with dated references is remembering Ghostbusters, the EPA guy that shows up at the Ghostbusters headquarters and decides he's going to turn off the containment unit. And they say, don't do that. Don't let them out. And he's like, no, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do it anyway. And they release all of the demons into the universe. It feels like that's kind of what Elon Musk is doing, that he has no idea what he is releasing, what he is doing, what it's going to mean for the culture. And frankly, he doesn't give a damn about it. But it's a sad story. It's a tragic story. I cannot take any pleasure in it. And I just, you know, to emphasize your point, you know, over the last five, six, seven years, this has been

the public square. This has been where these issues have been debated, where ideas have been exchanged, where relationships have been formed. And for people who have held, you know, aloof from all of that in order to, I don't know, protect themselves. Well, you know, if you weren't in the public square having the debate, maybe you want to sit out this particular discussion of what's happening with Twitter. Benjamin Wittes, it has been way too long to have you back, and I cannot wait for the next laser troll of the Russian embassy somewhere in the world. It's great to hear your voice, which I do regularly anyway, but it's great to dialogue with your voice again. And let's do it again soon. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by

Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Siri. I'm Charlie Sykes. Thank you for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast, and we'll be back tomorrow to do this all over again.