The Bulwark Podcast - Biden’s Kyiv Moment

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Biden went to an active war zone, Lindsey Graham shows his old McCain-sidekick self, DeSantis weighs in on Ukraine, the Michigan GOP disconnects from reality, and MTG takes the leap from sedition to secession. Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast and happy Monday. I am Charlie Sykes. It is February 20th, 2023. And if you thought that this President's Day was going to be a slow news day, forget about it, because we woke up this morning to find out that President Joe Biden is in Kiev pledging his support for the Ukrainians. This was the president this morning. One year ago, the world was literally at the time bracing for the fall of Kiev. Seems like a lot longer ago than a year, but think back to that year. Perhaps even the end of Ukraine. You know, one year later, Kiev stands.

And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you. And the world stands with you, and the world stands with you. With those words, you had the President of the United States in an active war zone for one of the few times in history. So joining me, of course, because it is Monday to break all of this down, Will Salatin. How are you, Will? I'm excited, Charlie. I had no idea he was going. I guess nobody else did either. So very proud of our president and our country today. Okay, so let me just read you from Politico's playbook to put this

in a little bit of context. It was a trip months in the works, but President Joe Biden and a small cadre of administration officials made the decision final in a meeting on Friday, setting into motion a complex plan with substantial risks for Biden's safety, political standing, and international relations. While many presidents have gone to active war zones, George W. Bush, Barack Obama both went to Iraq and Afghanistan, Donald Trump made a Thanksgiving time trek to the latter country in 2019, those visits have typically happened within secure military installations or in territories under U.S. control. Kiev, by contrast, is the ongoing target of a missile offensive by Russia, one expected to increase in ferocity as the two nations mark the one-year anniversary of

Russia's invasion later this week. The message of the visit was unambiguous. Ukraine is safe enough for an American president to visit despite the missile strikes, drone attacks, and trench warfare initiated by Vladimir Putin, right Alex Ward, and Jonathan Lemire. It was risky, and it should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that Joe Biden is a leader who takes commitment seriously, the White House said. So, you know, I always try to separate the hype from the reality, but this is a big deal and there is considerable risk. And I am trying to think of any time when an American president has gone into an active war zone that was not controlled by the American military. And I have to tell you, Will, I'm coming up short. So Joe

Biden has done something rather extraordinary to mark the anniversary. So you were saying it makes you proud. Give me your thoughts on it. Well, first of all, we needed to go and signal to the world that the alliance behind Ukraine, the largely Western alliance, is solid, and Biden did that. In terms of the courage of going, there's an interesting contrast to me, Charlie. You might recall that in the Republican response to the State of the Union message, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Republican governor of Arkansas, bragged about how Donald Trump flew with her to Iraq and how the plane came in and how they turned off all the lights, right, because they didn't want the enemy to know that they were landing there. Apparently, the United States government notified Russia hours before Biden landed in Ukraine that he was going to be there. And the Russians obviously didn't strike, although there were air raid sirens. There were Russian fighter jets nearby, apparently. To me, it's an interesting contrast between Trump going in and trying to, and they're trying to protect the president. I understand that. But to notify the enemy, the enemy that we know has these, you know, very fast, very

lethal missiles that they have used on Kiev. They've used on apartment buildings in other countries. He told them he was coming. He arrived and he basically said, if you want to come at me, come at me. And they didn't. And I think that's an important message too. Well, I think they obviously wanted to avoid the worst possible scenario, which would have been a miscalculation, an error. This is why we have these deconfliction protocols out there. But

even with that communication, there's no such thing as risk-free going into a war zone. And Joe Biden had to do that. And I do think that the anniversary is so important because the big question that hangs over everyone is what is the nature of our commitment? How solid are we? Are we going to give them everything they want? And this was certainly an unambiguous, as dramatic a gesture as the president of the United States actually has. So let's put this in context. I'm going to get some of the reaction a little bit later because we finally had Ron DeSantis come out of his Florida bunker and comment on Ukraine. This is one of the things that I've sort of had the big question mark is, when is Ron DeSantis, who wants to be apparently the leader of the free world, when will he actually lead? When will he say anything about this? Also, Nikki Haley's comments on Ukraine, I want to get to that in a moment. But over the weekend, we had a couple of other interesting interviews, and I know that you highlighted those, and I wanted to share that. You had Secretary of

State Anthony Blinken talking about the possibility that China will provide lethal weapons to Russia for its war in Ukraine. The New York Times reported that if they did that, that would transform the nature of the conflict. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken appeared on three network Sunday morning shows to share that the Biden administration thinks that China is very close to crossing that line. So here's Blinken on Face the Nation with Marge Brennan. The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they're considering providing lethal support. And we've made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship. Lethal support. What would that entail?

What do you think? Weapons. Weapons. That's ammunition. Primarily weapons. Primarily. There's a whole gamut of things that fit in that category, everything from ammunition to the weapons themselves. Hmm. All right. So Lindsey Graham, your good friend Lindsey Graham, also commented on this. He was part of a very large bipartisan delegation to this annual security conference in Munich. And he also was responding to some of the things that Secretary Blinken said. Let's play, Lindsay. But what Secretary Blinken said is big news to me. He believes that the Chinese are on

the verge of providing lethal weapons to Putin. Now, if that happens, the world needs to come down hard on China. Because if you believe, as I do, and the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harrison believes, that Russia is engaged in crimes against humanity in Ukraine, any country that comes to their aid should pay a heavy price. So that's why we should designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, because if you do that under U.S. law and China provides lethal weapons, they will get sanctioned. And to the Chinese, if you jump on the Putin train now, you're dumber than dirt. It would be like buying a ticket on the Titanic after you saw the movie. Don't do this. So, Will, I have to say that I'm having a bit of a flashback. I'm having a bit of a flashback to the old Lindsey Graham,

the Lindsey Graham who used to hang out with John McCain. But that was pretty forceful. If there was any doubt that there's still some Republican support, even with Lindsey Graham, who had spent the last four or five years being Donald Trump's fluffer, that was a pretty unambiguous term. So give me your sense of what's going on here, because you have this major statement from Anthony Blinken backed up by Lindsey Graham, and then this gigantic exclamation point of Joe Biden landing in Kiev today. Right. Okay. So first of all, let me defend Lindsey Graham, who has not changed any of his position. I was praising him.

Lindsey Graham has been an internationalist. He has been a hawk the whole time. And in fact, he's been trying to cover for Donald Trump's cowardice and Donald Trump's complicity with Putin, right? It is Lindsey Graham and other Republicans in the Senate who stood up and provided the backbone against Putin when Trump would not. So he's been consistent about this. On the whole China situation, China providing weapons to Russia, which as far as we know hasn't exactly happened yet, although they're on the way to doing that. Charlie, this is one of those stories that suddenly explains something we've been going through and it's been mysterious.

And the thing that it explains to me is why the heck has the Biden administration been so nice to China after China sent this balloon over us, right? And there's a lot of complications about the balloon story and the extent to which China really understood that it was going to go over the United States mainland, et cetera. But the U.S. government has been surprisingly kind, gentle, and diplomatic. We're the ones who've been trying to call up the Chinese military and they wouldn't take our phone calls. What the heck was that about? Now I feel like I understand that. And the reason is that we knew that China was heading into this acceleration of its alliance with Russia, and Biden administration understands that the big fight in the world is not about some balloons floating over countries. It is about Ukraine. It is about

the mass murder in Ukraine and the threat to world order, the threat to the principle of sovereign borders. And whatever we can do to keep China from joining Russia in that fight is worth doing. Okay. I don't disagree with you, but what can we do? What leverage do we have? Well, it's not exactly clear. It has been reported we don't have a lot of leverage. There are trade relationships. You get to keep TikTok? I mean, what do we say to them? Okay, we won't shut down TikTok. Are we happy? Yeah, it's, Charlie, it's really awkward for a whole bunch of reasons. I mean, we just set up this whole China committee. Everyone in the United States, both parties have been in agreement that the number one enemy is China.

China is the bigger threat, right? And at that moment, suddenly, we need to deter China. We need to dissuade China from going in on Putin's side. I don't begrudge Lindsey Graham saying, as he said, look, we've shown you that Putin is a loser. For your own benefit, don't climb onto that ship. It's going down. Now, this really is interesting, this dynamic you just described. The one thing that does seem to have strong bipartisan support is that everybody is prepared to be tough on China. Now, what that actually means, we don't know. We have seen this new isolationism. Lindsey Graham, I'm defending Lindsey Graham because his statement was so forceful. And you know a lot more about Lindsey Graham. You've been working on this massive piece, which I'm very anxious to read. You know,

if we had Lindsey Graham in a secure room somewhere and, you know, we're looking him in the eye and, you know, pumped him full of truth serum and asked him, okay, so all of the sucking up to Donald Trump, is it because you think you need to stay close to him? I mean, does he rationalize in his own mind that he can pick up the phone and dissuade Trump from abandoning our allies, crossing some red line with the Chinese or with Vladimir Putin? Because if that's the case, he's had only, shall we say, mixed success. Is that his motive? Is that what he tells himself? That's certainly what he tells himself. But to be fair, okay, there's the part that's just BS.

The part that's BS is that Lindsey Graham or any other hawk in Congress was going to change Donald Trump. That just didn't happen, didn't work because Trump is who he is. But the part where Graham and other hawks in Congress, you know, they made sure that there were sanctions on Russia when Trump didn't want there to be any sanctions on Russia. They made sure, a lot of folks made sure that the aid went through, the javelins and such went through to Ukraine when Trump plainly didn't want to send them and wanted to use them as leverage to get an investigation of Joe Biden. So the part where other Republicans just went ahead and did the right thing with respect to Ukraine, regardless of what Trump said, that held true. It's the part where you're going to change Donald Trump that just was unrealistic from the beginning. Okay, so let's look at some of the reaction to this.

Usually when the President of the United States is in harm's way, or I don't know what the word usually means anymore. There was once a time when the president of the United States, if he was representing his country in a war zone at a moment like this, that there would be a cessation of partisanship, right? That old canard about, you know, partisan politics ends at the nation's shoreline, which of course hasn't been true for what, 50, 60 years. But I thought it was interesting that this was the moment that we heard from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Now, Ron DeSantis is not quiet, but generally he addresses himself to culture war issues. He gets himself worked up about going after Walt Disney or going after, you know, the college board threatening to eliminate all the AP courses and everything. He's been very noticeably reticent

in addressing national issues, including this big one of Ukraine. And yet this was the moment that Ron DeSantis chose to say something about our support for Ukraine. Okay, now, so here's the split screen, because this is 2024, perhaps. You have Joe Biden in Kiev, pledging our support for Ukraine and for the cause of democracy. Here's Ron DeSantis. Things first, on the president's unannounced visit, is this a good move? Well, you know, Brian, I'm reminded of when he was vice president, Obama and Biden opposed providing lethal aid to Ukraine during those years. And then I'm also reminded that I don't think any of this would have happened. But for the weakness that the president showed during his first year in office, culminating, of course, in the disastrous withdrawal

in Afghanistan. So I think while he's over there, I think I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves, OK, he's very concerned about those borders halfway around the world. He's not done anything to secure our own border here at home. We've had millions and millions of people pour in, tens of thousands of Americans dead because of fentanyl. And then, of course, we just suffered a national humiliation of having China fly a spy balloon clear across the continental United States. So we have a lot of problems accumulating here in our own country that he is neglecting. Okay, so let's leave aside

the Obama-Biden policy back in 2014, because I actually don't disagree with him about that. You can push back in a moment. He basically did the Trumpian knee-jerk response like, you know, why are we over there when our border is blah, blah, blah, blah? Your thoughts, Will? Well, I think both parts of what DeSantis said are important. And one of the big questions going forward is going to be, which way does he lean? And let me clarify a little bit. So the first part of what DeSantis said about Obama and Biden opposed lethal aid, if DeSantis were to pursue that critique of the Democrats, that would position him with the sort of Mitch McConnell wing of the Republican Party that is internationalist and serious about defending Ukraine and standing up to Russia.

The second part of what DeSantis said about, hey, we should be protecting our own borders instead of Ukraine's borders, that is the J.D. Vance, Marjorie Taylor Greene, America First wing of the Republican Party. And it's going to be really important to see which of those two directions DeSantis moves into. Because if DeSantis becomes an America Firster, and I don't think he's figured it out because he just doesn't have a lot of experience as governor. But if he becomes one of those America firsters, and he's all about defending our borders and, you know, screw Ukraine and that, then we're going to end up with a

Republican presidential primary in which the odds are it's either Donald Trump or it's Ron DeSantis. And either way, you get one of these isolationists. And that is really bad news for the world. It is extremely bad news for the world. And again, we don't know where he's going to come down. But Trump is sitting down there in Mar-a-Lago firing off the true socials that we saw over the weekend. He's ripping Rupert Murdoch. He's ripping Ron DeSantis. He's ripping Paul Ryan.

I mean, just sort of keeps throwing this stuff out. And he's looking for any issue with which he disagrees with him on, including, you know, you supported cutting Social Security and Medicare. You said blah, blah, blah, blah. And clearly, you know, had he said anything supportive of Ukraine, Trump would have used that as a wedge issue, which brings me to Nikki Haley. Because as you have been monitoring, Nikki Haley has gone out of her way not to distinguish herself explicitly in any way from Donald Trump. That's not exactly right. When she's asked, can you name any issue you disagree with Donald Trump? She has the same thing about kicking sideways, or by the way, the kicking thing's already gotten old,

that she's focused on Biden, not on Trump. People say, but you're running for the Republican nomination. Is there any critical thing that you want to say about Donald Trump? Absolutely not. She does not want to say anything. But there is one issue that she's clearly not on board with Trump. I talked to David Frum about this on the podcast. When she was on NBC's Today Show with Craig Melvin, she was really quite explicit about her aggressive, enthusiastic, and all in support for Ukraine, giving them all the weapons that they need. In fact, if anything, she was critical of Biden for not giving them more weapons more quickly. And she was asked specifically, what about F-16s? And she seemed to be endorsing that as well. So here's an issue where Nikki Haley could lead if she chose, but probably won't because this would require her

to say, you know, we fundamentally disagree with this. But I mean, this could set up a real substantive debate about the future of the Republican Party. And when I was talking to David, I was thinking, you know, getting a little bit wonky here. You know, we think about the future of the Republican Party. And when I was talking to David, I was thinking, you know, getting a little bit wonky here. You know, we think about the historical significance of Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie back in 1940, who broke with the isolationists in the Republican Party and provided cover for FDR to prepare the country for World War II, or Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg from Michigan, who became an internationalist as a leading Republican at a time when there's a very, very strong isolationist wing in the Republican Party. Nikki Haley could play a very considerable role here, but she won't. And I told her before the

podcast, I was thinking of writing a piece about this, about Nikki Haley could lead. And then, of course, I came upon this brilliant piece in the bulwark by Will Salatan, who talked about how incredibly cynical, opportunistic, and inconsistent Nikki Haley has been on this issue of Ukraine. So where are we at with Nikki Haley? Because, I mean, you just remind people that she's been all over the map. She's been supportive, but she's kind of been all over the map on what she said about Ukraine. So one of the interesting debates about Nikki Haley is, okay, she's a cynical opportunist who sort of goes wherever the wind is blowing. Is that still better? Is it better to have a cynical opportunist who knows what the right policy is, which is to defend Ukraine against

Russia, than to have one of these America firsters? And I don't know which DeSantis is. And I think the answer is yes. Nikki Haley is an opportunist. But the thing about this situation is there's a split between what the right policy is and what the good politics are in the Republican Party. And I think that's what you were pointing up there. The policy, and Nikki Haley knows this, Nikki Haley was the ambassador to the United Nations. What she did was diplomacy. What she did was work with some governments against other governments. Who are the bad guys? How can we assemble a coalition against the bad guys? That is an internationalist perspective. And she understands that the bad guys are, in this case, the Russians who are killing people in Ukraine. The politics are the other way around, right? The politics are isolationist. The politics are defend America's borders, don't get involved in the world. So she's going to be somewhat

constrained by that. And it's just going to be a question of courage as to whether she stands up to that. But the other thing about Nikki Haley is that she has a bad habit of focusing on looking tough rather than being tough. Remember that the job of UN ambassador is a lot about looking tough. You give these speeches about the bad guys, but you're not actually fighting the bad guys. And so what Nikki Haley did a year ago, this was, I think, before the invasion actually began, but also a little bit after was she bitched about the Biden administration trying to make overtures to China against Russia, because we knew that Russia was going in and Russia had gone in at that point.

And she accused Biden of being weak by going to the Chinese. And she actually said, you never work with one bad country against another. That is completely wrong. And she knows it, right? The whole history of the world. To take the most obvious example, the United States working with Stalin against Hitler. That's what you do when things are really, really bad. So it's an open question to me whether Nikki Haley will do what she knows is the right thing, but at least she knows what it is. Well, or whether she's able

to apply the lessons of history there. So there's an opportunity for her, but this is the thing. In order to lead, you have to be prepared to lead. And this seems to be a trait that just runs through the Republican Party, that unwillingness to actually take a stand when it, in fact, matters. Okay, speaking of the Republican Party, I think this is an amazing story. And I'm sorry if it sounds like, okay, we've heard this like a million times before, but wait, in Michigan, one of the key battleground states in America, where Republicans suffered some really embarrassing losses. I mean, look, this is the state that Donald Trump or whoever really needs to win. I mean, Donald Trump won by winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona. He lost all of those states. Things are not going well for Republicans in Pennsylvania.

They're actually not going well for Republicans in Wisconsin. We saw what happened to Republicans in Arizona, right? In Michigan, how's it going down? They had an election for chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, and they doubled down on election denialism and losing. They have elected a woman named Christina Caramo, who is an ultra conservative election denier as the new Michigan chair. And it's not just that she's one of many. She's a former candidate for secretary of state. She ran for Michigan secretary of state and she got blown out just last November. She was in a year of many Republican losers in Michigan. She was the biggest loser and they turned her around and they elected her the chairperson beating 10 challengers in what's described as a passionate, yet often chaotic, 11-hour convention in Lansing, Michigan. And this is what she had to say after she took the helm of the Michigan Republican Party.

You may not always like me, but you know I'll keep my word. And that's what we need as chair and co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party. We need to fight to secure our elections. It's the reason I did not concede after the 2022 election. Why would I concede to a fraudulent process? Conceding to a fraudulent process is an agreement with the fraud, which I will not do. Uh, she lost, Will, by 14 points. She didn't just lose. She lost by 14 points. And in her campaign, she pushed conspiracy theories

on the campaign trail about Trump winning in 2020, ballot mules, corrupting absentee voting. She sits around, obviously, and watches Dinesh D'Souza's movies. She called Democrats were authoritarians and tyrants. So she loses by 14 points. She refuses to concede, and the crowd freaking loves it. In fact, this was probably the jet fuel that propelled her to be chairperson of the state party. Her refusal to acknowledge her double digit defeat in last November's election. OK, I my head's feeling a little full here. By the way, Charlie, the person that she beat out for this job of chair of the Michigan Republican Party was Matt DiPerno, the other election denier who was, I think, with the nominee for attorney general. Who also lost.

Right. Who also lost big. And as you point out, her distinction against DiPerno was that he, I don't know if she emphasized this so much, but you can hear it in her speech. He had decided to move on from the election denialism, and she's deciding to stick with it and run with it and deny what happened. And didn't Trump support him? I mean, so basically it was like, again, another contest between MAGA, super MAGA, and super crazy MAGA, and the Republicans went for super crazy MAGA. Right. But she's obviously got Trump's love now because he truthed that she's a powerful and fearless election denier. Those are his words,

Charlie. Those are not my words. I know he does. So damn right I'm an election denier. They're embracing the term. And okay, it's funny, but it's sad. Part of the way politics is supposed to work is you have these two parties fighting against each other. And if your party loses, you go and you reflect on what it is that you did wrong that people voted against you. You do what used to be called an autopsy, right? And then you come back and you change, right? And to take Nikki Haley as an example, she's running for president saying, we've lost seven of the last eight presidential elections in terms of the popular vote. And so we need to change. What we're hearing in Michigan, what we're seeing in Michigan is a party that is so pathologically deluded that they don't even accept that they lost. They're blaming the vote

counting, right? It's a fraudulent, a woman who lost by 14 points claiming that. So if your kid sticks their finger in an electric socket, part of what they're supposed to learn is don't stick your finger in the socket again. What we have in Michigan and in the Republican Party in general is a party that keeps sticking its finger in the socket and refuses to accept that it has been shocked. And so it's just going to keep going from socket to socket until it learns that lesson. Well, it's sort of like you put your finger in the socket and you get shocked and you say. Okay, next time I need to put my tongue in the socket. Right? It's like, wow, it is amazing. Okay, so I want to get to Jimmy Carter in a moment. But since we're in the upper Midwest, where American presidential elections are going

to continue to be decided, let's go over to Wisconsin. I'm sure you've read about the Wisconsin State Supreme Court election. This is one of those where I come to tell you that all of the stories that seem to be like over the top and overhyped are not. This is one of those elections where so much is at stake, it's hard to run down all of the things that are on the ballot. Now, some people, you know, I mean, I have mixed feelings about all of this, including what it means for judicial independence. I mean, I am obviously not naive. I've been involved in these elections for a very, very long time. And so there's always been the subtext that it's liberal versus conservative. Right now, there's a campaign in which nobody makes any pretense about the fact that it's anything other than a raw partisan

contest, Democrat versus Republican, progressive versus right-wing, no pretense whatsoever. And there's virtually no pretense that these are candidates running for judge who will not tell you how they rule. It's basically, they've all decided, if this comes before me, this is how I'm going to rule. All of the right-wing literature that we're getting is all about abortion. The progressive candidates have made it very clear that they would throw out the redistricting maps. Maybe they would toss out Act 10. They've made their position on how they would rule on the state's abortion law crystal clear. But it is interesting what makes this different from every other state Supreme

Court election that I can recall. And some of them have been pretty intense, including the one during Act 10. But national Democrats have never been engaged in a campaign like they are right now. National progressives have never focused on this kind of an election the way they are now. In fact, we used to kind of joke that the reason why conservatives always won state Supreme Court elections is because it was only conservatives that actually understood the stakes. That is completely different now. That's number one. Number two, tell me if this is confusing. It's a nonpartisan open primary tomorrow. There are four candidates. Two of them are conservative. Two of them are liberal. The top two vote getters will go to the general election.

So in theory, you could have two progressives. In theory, you could have two conservatives on the ballot. That's happened before. Nobody thinks that's going to happen. You know, one conservative will advance, one liberal will advance. Everybody seems to know who the liberal is. A woman named Protis Awitz will advance. What's amazing, Will, kind of sitting back and watching the Wisconsin right devour itself. And it's not really about a specific issue because they're both pretty right wing. They both went to the same sketchy law school founded by Pat Robertson, Regent Law School. But I'm sorry to go on this long, but they just set it up. So there's a former Supreme Court justice named Dan Kelly, who was appointed by Scott Walker, who was a terrible candidate and was defeated for reelection, which almost never happens in Wisconsin for a Supreme Court justice. And he's running against a woman named

Jennifer Dorough, who is a judge in crucial Waukesha County who presided over the very, very, very high profile Christmas Day parade massacre case, which was televised live throughout the state. She got very high marks for how she handled that, and she figured that she would use the notoriety and the fame from that trial to slingshot her way into the Supreme Court. And the reality is, is that she's probably better known than any other sitting judge in the state of Wisconsin. But Dan Kelly felt it was his turn and he's got some massive right wing money from the Uline family. And so every single day I get a stack of mailers. My social media is just filled. You cannot turn on television without seeing attacks on Doro or Doro defending herself on this or that. And part of the irony is, and there's other conservatives who are going, look, Doro would be likely the most electable candidate in a general election because she's kind of a

rock star. And yet all of the right-wing energy in Wisconsin seems to be designed to take her out in the primary tomorrow. And I'm not saying she's an ideal candidate by any means, but literally, I cannot remember a time when they had a primary this vicious aimed at taking out a candidate who probably is the best, if not the only chance that Republicans and conservatives have to hold their majority on the court. Because if they don't, this court flips to a liberal majority, and it has not had a liberal majority in decades. So I'm sorry to have gone on, but wow,

you're really seeing kind of the post-Trump MAGA crack up here in Wisconsin while watching what's going on in Michigan as well. So that is a really, really interesting and persuasive political analysis. It's really sad to me that it is about a judicial race. So I am from Texas and I always thought it was tragic that we had judicial elections and we had people running for these offices who are supposed to be just interpreting the law or applying the law. And instead, there are all these political promises. I mean, Charlie, what you are describing here, among other things, is just this is the end of the judiciary. If judges are just like any other politician, if they're running on political promises, if they're running on an ideology,

and it's one party against the other, then okay, we can pretend that we have a third branch of government. But in reality, they're just legislators. And this is like some, what is it, seven members on the Supreme Court in Wisconsin? Yeah, it's four, three conservative majority now would flip to a four, three liberal majority if they lose this year. Right. And it's fine if that were a legislature. You'd have the voters go in and decide which way they want to go.

But the idea that this is a judiciary is ridiculous. You know, think about the Supreme Court of the United States. Like, I am okay with there being a conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the United States. If by conservatism, you mean a kind of judicial philosophy. If you believe in judicial restraint, if you believe in letting legislatures act unless the Constitution explicitly stops them from, I'm fine with that. If you want to overturn Roe v. Wade because you believe it's not literally in the Constitution and this wasn't what the founders intended,

that's okay. But I want you to apply that principle regardless of party. I want you to apply the same principle, say, to the right to bear arms. Did the founders really intend to prohibit New York's gun law because of this clause about militias? So if you're just going to say, we're the party that's against abortion and for guns, and your judges are going to rule that way, that's not a judicial philosophy. That's just a legislative position. Boy, I am so glad to hear you say this. Another reason why you're not just another pretty face, Will. I have been thinking about writing a piece, you know, a requiem for judicial independence along the lines that you just said.

And of course, you know, everybody's going to be mad at that because, you know, no, don't you understand that democracy is on the ballot, that everything is at stake? Well, okay, it is true that everything is at stake at this point. I do get that. However, you know, what we are losing along the way is not insignificant. I mean, I have known many, many judges here in Wisconsin, including Federalist Society, endorsed judges, and the vast majority of them were serious legal minds, were serious about their job, which was to enforce the law and to read the law and to make rulings very, very thoughtfully without necessarily starting from the conclusion. I mean, there's two ways that a judge can handle a case, right? Decide who he or

she wants to win. That's number one, result oriented, or go through and saying, regardless who wins, what does the law say? What is the right thing to do in terms of the law? And I will say the vast majority of judges, I mean, it's become, there's no question about it, it's become polarized. And I'm not trying to be naive here. But what you are seeing now from these judicial candidates is just naked partisanship. There is no distinction between their rhetoric in many cases than that running for a legislature. So something is lost here, and I don't know how easy it is to retain it. For some time, there's been a debate about whether or not it is a good idea to elect

these judges, because this debate pits the independence of the judiciary, which is not supposed to be political. It's supposed to be insulated from public opinion and partisan pressures. You want them to be independent, but you also want them to be accountable. So this clash between independence and accountability has always been there. The problem now, though, is that by continuing to elect judges in campaigns like that, there's not even a fig leaf left of judicial independence. And I think this is bad for the judiciary. I think it's bad for the legal system. And it means that, you know, as opposed to the majesty of the law, it's going to flip back and forth with every single low turnout spring election. You could flip the majority. And so there's no reliability, even if you get what you want. Right. And what's going on at the national level, of course, is that Democrats are now so

convinced that Republicans are just basically have packed the Supreme Court and gotten what they wanted. They got rid of Roe, et cetera. And now we're, you know, there's all this fear about court packing. Court packing is part of what happens when the system loses its credibility and people decide, you know, you're just sticking your judges who vote your way on the court. So we're going to stick some of ours. And then it would just go back and forth ad infinitum. Let me say one more thing about this, which is when Donald Trump was appointing judges, a lot of my liberal friends said, you know, Trump judges, Trump judges, they're just going to do what Trump wants. And I was never really persuaded of that because I believed that a lot of these judges were basically Federalist Society judges who had a view about the limits of judicial

interference in legislative action. And they were going to vote that way. And they were going to basically uphold a larger philosophy. And when it came time after the 2020 election and Donald Trump going to court and trying to overturn elections and all of these so-called Trump judges ruled against him, I felt vindicated. I felt vindicated that they had done the right thing, that they had shown they did believe in a philosophy and they were not loyal to a man. They were not loyal to a political party. And it was amazing to me to watch Trump in his dismay at these rulings, because he really thought that because he had appointed these judges as though they were, you know, county commissioners or legislators, that they were

going to vote his way, no matter what his way was. And full credit to them for not doing so. Full credit to the Supreme Court and to the Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices for saying, no, we're going to rule what the Constitution requires from us, not what you want. No, he's the other guy that does not understand this. You know, I'd be good to spend more time on this. I'm going to be, well, obviously on Wednesday after the primary, I'm going to be joined by somebody from Wisconsin. We'll talk about this. But I think that like so many things that have been happening in the last several years, this will all accelerate. And again, I am certainly not claiming that there has not been an ongoing liberal versus conservative split on the court for many, many years, but

those terms have meant something very, very different. And the stakes are different. The lack of any sort of judicial restraint by the candidates. Okay, so I beat that dead horse. Okay, so Nikki Haley has been suggesting that she thinks there should be a cognitive test for any candidates over the age of 75, which I think is, hmm, why 75? Maybe it's because Donald Trump is 76. Bernie Sanders pushed back on all this. So what do you think of requiring cognitive competency tests for people above a certain age, Will Saladay? So the dispute between Haley and Sanders is she says that there should be this cognitive test once you're over 75. And this is what Bernie Sanders said. He was on TV over the weekend. He said, we're fighting racism. We're fighting sexism. We're fighting

homophobia. I think we should also be fighting ageism. So that's Bernie's position. I disagree with Bernie here. Age fact that your body deteriorates. And part of your body is your brain. And we all know that the probabilities are that as you age, you're going to lose some of those mental faculties. We all vary in the rate at which we do so in the degree. Bernie Sanders seems to me more lucid than Joe Biden, who seems way more sensible than Donald Trump. So it's not that you can have some ironclad rule, and I agree with Bernie there, but it is true that we have been governed by people who are very old,

and part of the problem we're dealing with is some of the loss of mental acuity. Having said that, part of what you get in exchange for losing your mental acuity as you age is wisdom. And I will say that in the case of Joe Biden, the guy is not particularly good at talking. And if you look at video of him from years and years ago, you will see that he has lost some of his ability to talk persuasively and cogently and

clearly. As has Donald Trump. Yes, yes. But Joe Biden's thinking has not abated. And that's because thinking is a slower, more reflective process. It requires wisdom and experience. And I think that in Ukraine and in other places, we are seeing a very wise president, not so good at talking, but very good at thinking. I tend to agree with you. I don't know what age I would put it at, but it is a fact of life. It is a reality. On the other hand, and I don't know whether this is completely snarky, if we're going to be having tests for candidates for president, I would like to raise my hand at the back of the room and suggest, okay, we'll have the cognitive competency test. Could we also have like a basic civic literacy test for everybody else? I would like to see

Marjorie Taylor Greene sit down and take that test. I would like to see some of these people take the test. By the way, the Marjorie Taylor Greene, did you see her latest tweet out there? No. She's now favoring the national divorce issue, which is basically secession. Let me just read what she writes here. We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. Everyone. They come up to her with tears in their eyes and say, ma'am. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issue shoved down our throats to the Democrats'

traitorous America last policies, we are, and then goes on. So she's actually all in on. By the way, I have been predicting this for some time, that eventually, because we have to constantly be escalating, that at some point, this rhetoric is going to lead to people talking about a national divorce, which means that secession at some point is going to be the new hot thing, right? I mean, you go from sedition, insurrection to secession. I mean, there's a logical progression. Right. But I think you bring up a great point. Cognitive fitness, mental fitness is more than whether you can, you know, say person, woman, man, camera, TV. It's being able to accept reality, right? I mean, and this is where I would agree with Bernie. I am way less concerned about Joe Biden's difficulty remembering where he was in a sentence than I am about Kristen Karamo being unable to accept that she lost an election by 14

points, right? Being in touch with reality is the most important, the most important cognitive faculty. And that test should apply to you regardless of age. Okay. So this is good. So at some point, if you're running for office, you should have to have little flashcards. You know, we can do the camera woman, man thing, okay, for, you should have to have little flashcards. We can do the camera woman, man thing for somebody who's 80. But for everybody else, you hold up the flashcard and you say, 58, 44. Identify the higher number. Okay. Let's say that Sally gets 58 votes and Jimmy gets 44 votes. Who wins? And require them to answer that question. I think we know that we could sift and win a lot of candidates.

Charlie, I just need you to find me 15 votes. Just find me 15 votes. Yeah, I guess. Okay. So we have to talk about Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter, rather extraordinary man, 98 years old. Am I right about that? He's 98. He's now going into hospice care. He's been in and out of the hospital. Had an extraordinary long and storied life. And so people are, I mean, let's be honest about it. I mean, what is the media doing right now? They're preparing obituaries. I'm sure that we are at the bulwark as well. And the interesting

thing about Jimmy Carter, and I don't know, well, I'll let you go first on what is the take on Jimmy Carter, whose life has been so long that obviously the headline on his obituary is going to be very different in 2023 than it would have been had it been written shortly after his defeat for reelection in 1980, won't it? Yeah, it will be. I think he's a good man, and it's very simple. Live a good life. Live a good life and keep learning.

So he didn't have a great presidency in a lot of ways, but he learned from it. He continued to pursue peace as an older person. I mean, the guy went on for like 40 years, right? He's like 50 years, then I'm president, then another 40 years after that. And everybody admires him because he was virtuous. It's possible. I mean, Donald Trump is not a fine example of this, but it's possible after you're president, instead of denying that you lost an election and trying to destroy the republic, to go out and do good things. And among the things that I am most proud of Jimmy Carter for is the guy, he gets melanoma. The cancer goes to his brain. They tell him he's got weeks to live. He survives it. He breaks his hip. The guy has broken

his hip. After he has his hip broken, he comes back, heals up and goes out and goes back to Habitat for Humanity to build houses again. Which is amazing. He's indomitable. Indomitable and good. And those are really good lessons for everyone, young and old. So I was thinking about how I would describe it. And there's so many mixed legacies here. And I hope people bear with me because I think that one of the things that he represents is the complexity of human life, particularly along human life, because I don't think he was a particularly good president.

I think he showed bad judgment on a number of occasions, and yet he was a good, decent, truthful man. And as you look back on that, that is now his legacy. I mean, how many presidents will be remembered? And I don't think this is a cliche. I think that he will be remembered for his post-presidency even more than his presidency itself, which is something that I think that people in politics, I won't say forget because I don't think they ever knew it, to understand that the be-all and end-all of your life is not the position you hold because he held the most august position in American life. And yet he will be remembered with affection and respect because of the quality of his character. And especially as we look back on that era to realize that his Christianity was deep and it was real. And he lived his Christianity in a very different way than the performative, pugilistic, national version that passes for Christianity. So I do think, I don't think it's contradictory to say that he was not a successful president

and did exercise bad judgment on a lot of things, but he also showed an ability to pivot and to learn. So I've been reading over the weekend, you know, 1979, 1980. Jimmy Carter had a very naive view willing to say, okay, this is what I believed before. I was wrong. I'm going to change my position, and I'm going to take a much stronger position, and did so. In fact, it's interesting, the number of articles that I came on were people writing later saying that they wished that Barack Obama had been more like Jimmy Carter when it came to foreign policy, particularly after Russia invaded Crimea. They were saying, you know, maybe this will be, you know, Barack Obama's Jimmy Carter moment where the scales will fall from his eyes and he will take a much stronger position. And I guess as time goes on, my appreciation for

judging political figures by their character has grown. And I'm trying to think, you know, how many really good, good, good men have risen to that position and then not completely disgraced and humiliated themselves? And how many presidencies ended in disgrace? And essentially, the post-presidencies were just either obscure, abbreviated, or bitter. And Jimmy Carter showed us something and continues to show us something. And I say that to somebody who really was not a fan at the time. And I would trace a lot of my growing conservatism to that period of time watching the exhaustion of liberalism in the late 1970s. And you could certainly argue that liberalism did not recover for more than a generation after that. But that seems less important now when you talk about him? Yeah. I mean, look, if you are interested in doing the right thing in this world and you have a political career, then that interest, if that is in your character, will persist after your political career is over. And I think we can say that

about Jimmy Carter. And I think you make an excellent point about his Christianity. A serious Christian continues to live a Christian life and tries to help others. But the other point you raise is also important about Carter becoming stronger in foreign policy when he realized it was necessary. Part of what your job is as a human being is to learn. It is to learn. So you may have an idea, you come in and you let reality affect you. So there are a lot of people in the Democratic Party who, you know, didn't stand up against the Iranian revolution at the time, didn't challenge that regime. And there's now an acknowledgement in the Biden administration, you know, we didn't

do that. We should have stood up more. In the case of China, there was a belief that, you know, bringing them into the world order economically would reform them politically. And now you see a lot of people in the Democratic Party saying, you know, we were just wrong about that. We got that wrong. And if you learn, having started out getting things wrong, you will get things right. And I think that's a lesson from Carter and a lesson from others. So what are you going to be looking at this week? Anything in particular? I was thinking about this age thing.

I was thinking that Nikki Haley is not going to stop talking about this. And we do have aging politicians and we have arguments about generational change. And how are we going to respond to this? And is it discriminatory? And I think that those on the left who think that ageism is just like other kinds of discrimination are wrong. But I also think that we should apply these tests about cognitive ability more broadly if we're going to apply them. And honestly, Charlie, what I think is that the cognitive tests don't have to be administered on some sheet of paper. You can see them. You can see them when somebody doesn't side by side, headed to honor the memory of the heroes from the Heavenly Hundred who died nine years ago for Ukrainian freedom and democracy

the day when it all began. And they are walking across the cobblestones of downtown Kiev. It's an extraordinary picture. It really is. I'll be interested to see what the reaction is afterwards. My advice to Republicans would be this would be a time to rally around their country. I don't know. I think we've seen too much to know that people like Rhonda Sanders are more likely to be the model in their response to all of this. Will Salatan, always wonderful to talk with you on Monday. We'll do it again next week. Thanks, Charlie. Happy President's Day and happy ex-president's day.

By the way, I had literally never in my life have ever had President's Day off. It's clearly, it is a demonstrably fake holiday. I mean, I remember as a kid, Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday, but then they made this fake president's birthday so that some people will have three-day weekends. So banks, post office, government workers, not once in my entire career holiday meant you had the day off. And then after I became a parent, a holiday meant that your daycare didn't have the day off. So you were on call that day. That's exactly right. Well, thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast.

I'm Charlie Seix. We will be back tomorrow and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown. Music .