The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol and Sarah Longwell: Is the Wishcasting Over?

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Old guy Biden got Ezra Klein to back down—and Kristol a little bit as well. Plus, Orbán at Mar-a-lago, the fallout from the "illegal" immigrant line, and Longwell joins Tim to read from the mailbag, and highlight this week's Focus Group pod. show notes: Bill's interview of Timothy Snyder Send your mailbag questions here: [e-mail]

landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. We have emerged from our government-imposed darkness and made it to Daylight Savings Time. I'm so excited about that. We've got Bill Crystal here. Bill, how are you doing? I'm fine, but you're pro daylight savings time?

Permanent daylight savings. Permanent daylight savings. I want to be able to take my child to the park after school. It is very confusing to me that anybody would not be for this because they want it to be light at 6.30 in the morning for some reason. I don't understand these people, and I'm happy that we've successfully, once again, just ripped the shackles of their daylight oppression. I'm for having one thing through the year. I'm very much against having an hour stolen from us unaccountably. And you wake up Sunday morning and suddenly it's, oh my God, it's so late.

Yeah, I'm with you. Permanent daylight savings time forever. Folks, stick around to the end. We've got Sarah Longwells here. We're going to talk a little bit about her focus groups. And we're doing our first mailbag segment, so you're not going to want to miss that. Okay, Bill, before we get to the Biden ad and her testimony and Orban and a rant that I have, there's some audio from the weekend of the senator from Alabama, Katie Britt, that I'd like us to listen to together. First and foremost, I'm a mom.

And like any mom, I'm going to do a pivot out of nowhere into a shockingly violent story about sex trafficking. And rest assured, every detail about it is real, except the year, where it took place,

and who was president when it happened. This is Scarlett Johansson at Saturday Night Live doing her Katie Britt. I spent a lot of time with this, with Will, over the weekend. But at that point, we hadn't gotten, there was an independent journalist, former AP reporter, who kind of tracked down. The most shocking element of her rebuttal was kind of the fake crying that she was doing when talking about a real story that she was doing when talking about a real story that everyone should have sympathy for about a rape victim. But the problem was she was

heavily implying this was happening because of the Biden border policies. And the event happened in 2004 during the Bush administration. In Mexico. In Mexico. 500 miles from the border. I mean, terrible, of course, but I'm not a huge SNL fan these days, but it was excellent to skit with Katie Britt. And my only thought about it is, wasn't she supposed to be the normie Republican, the sound choice for VP, the Chamber of Commerce favorite, the former Shelby chief of staff? I mean, it shows how crazy the, I mean, leaving aside Scarlett Johansson, but the actual speech she gave and the attempt to be hyperbolic and, you know, I don't know what you call that, even with, you know, this ridiculous emoting and performative stuff. It was sort of a nice snapshot of establishment Republicanism in the age of Trump. Yeah. And it's a snapshot, I think, of how uncomfortable they are still.

Right. Like they're supposed to do to appeal to MAGA world. And so they're faking it. And so she was just faking it in the most ostentatious way possible. One thing I was thinking about before I went to bed last night, and Bill, I always want your historical perspective. So I rewatched Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal's speeches, which were markedly better than the Katie Britton speech. Honestly, if you like just watch them all back to back, I was worried I had recency bias. Then that made me think, is this the worst political speech of all time? And because like, when I think about the things that have been terrible, like the Mark Sanford press conference

or the Gary Hart press, I think they're always like press conferences or debates, Admiral Stockdale. I couldn't think of like a set speech where you, nobody's questioning you. You get to prepare. It's on your own terms and you still face plant that epically. So I didn't prepare you for this. But anyway, I just want to leave that little mark. I wouldn't quarrel with the worst. And, you know, just one tiny note. It's not as if she wrote this personally or she and her very small Senate staff who aren't used to the national pressure had to do this this was done for her by the entire republican establishment by the senatorial committee by the rnc she would have had access to mitch mcconnell's that you know i i know how these you know too how these responses to say specifically the two people that were

coaching her were the rnc the my former colleagues of the rnc katie walsh and mike shields who were you know at the top of the RNC establishment, right? So it wasn't as if like it's some random Alabama yokels or something, you know. Okay, that's enough for Katie Brett. I want to get your take on the Biden speech because I haven't heard it, I guess. But before that, I kind, define the choice here of this election. And I'm interested in your take on it. Let's listen to the first real Biden ad of the general election campaign. Look, I'm not a young guy. That's no secret. But here's the deal. I understand how to

get things done for the American people. I led the country through the COVID crisis. Today, we have the strongest economy in the world. I passed a law that lowers prescription drug prices, caps insulin at $35 a month for seniors. For four years, Donald Trump tried to pass an infrastructure law, and he failed. I got it done. Now we're rebuilding America. I passed the biggest law in history to combat climate change because our future depends on it.

Donald Trump took away the freedom of women to choose. I'm determined to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again. Donald Trump believes the job of the president is to take care of Donald Trump. I believe the job of the president is to fight for you, the American people. And that's what I'm doing. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message. Can we do one more take? Look, I'm very young, energetic, and handsome. What the hell am I doing this for? It's like he's reading JVL, I think, whoever script wrote that, or maybe that's just the obvious thing to do, address the age stuff head on, make a joke about it, contrast about Donald Trump caring about himself versus Joe Biden actually getting things done.

What's your take on that attempt to address the Biden vulnerabilities? Yeah, I think it's good. And it was a good speech. And I'm happy the campaign has revved up. And I don't know whether it will change the dynamics politically of the race. That's what I just have no confidence in my judgment on that. You know, I could like it and Biden supporters could like it. Do Haley voters get moved back to Biden or back to Biden?

Do younger voters get reminded of what's at stake? I do think ultimately, obviously, they just have to keep hammering away at what's at stake. It's not a choice of, gee, the last incumbent and the current incumbent has kind of a tough call on their policies. And, you know, it can't be that. It's got to be the existential threat of Trump to democracy at home and to freedom of democracy abroad. I thought there were two good pieces of the bulwark this morning people should read by Trusinski and Gabe Schoenfeld on at home and abroad, sort of what really is at stake. I hear you on feeling uncertain. One of my friends made a funny joke on tech. We had a text chain going during the Katie Britt speech. You know, we're all making fun of it. And then after about 25 minutes, somebody replies in the text chains

like, are we sure that this is bad, right? As bad as we think, right? Like if we, if we just totally lost our ability to judge what MAGA people like. And, and I was like, no, I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure this is really bad. Actually, I'm almost certain that this is horrible. But I hear you on the who knows how much this will break through. And we don't have any quantitative data to demonstrate it. But I think that clearly just the vibe shift from Democratic world and Biden world is real, like whether that trickles down at all. Because some of the Biden number problems, not enough to win, right? But when you're looking at like the Times poll where

he's down five, for example, some of that is just kind of cleaning up people that are Democrats who are concerned either about age or Gaza, or still kind of hoping that there's going to be another option getting in the race, right? And so you would think that a week like this might at least help on the margins, like start that process. Which would be good. It would have its own effect in terms of, you know, reassuring and cheering up and stopping people like me from carping that maybe there's a better Democratic candidate and next generation and all that.

He stopped Ezra Klein. Ezra Klein has been bullied. He already did a column doing a mea culpa. I mean, this is a weak-kneed liberal pundit class. The argument, I think, of Klein's, as I recall it, and certainly mine, was always that there was a risk that he wouldn't be a good candidate in 2024. It wasn't that he's senile or that he and his staff are incompetent of governing the nation for the next nine months, or maybe even for the next five years. So the one speech and one ad obviously don't really answer

that, and it's March, and let's see. But look, it's encouraging. I was cheered up. I watched the speech and cheered up by that. I didn't watch Katie Britt's response. So I didn't have the real time experience yet. That will be great when polls come out Wednesday and Katie Britt's fave on fave is, you know, 32 fave, 21 on fave. People thought the speech was very moving, you know, higher ratings for her as a VP. She would bring over some swing voters as a VP choice. That's going to be the moment where we all go into total 100% despair. Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. I think that for all of Donald Trump's flaws, one thing that he has is a casting ability. And I think that he watched that casting audition and said, No, thank you, ma'am. I guess really quick, one more thing on the age question and Biden's vigor. The other side of that coin is this week

with the Herr testimony, you know, thoughts about what to watch for there, you know, concerns, opportunities, what you think Democrats should do. I mean, he's testifying tomorrow. This is special counsel Herr who had the report that talks about Biden's age a bit. You know, there's been an attempt by Democrats and maybe true to some, to say he's pretty conservative. So Trump appointee is just a U.S. attorney. On the other hand, he was supported in that by the Democratic senators from Delaware. And his reputation is pretty good. And I think if her seems like a reasonable guy, it'll give some credibility to that report.

If he seems partisan, it won't. It's probably smarter than Biden. People let you think to schedule the State of the Union, though, on March 7th. They got past March 5th. The race was ended. Time for refocus. They did a good job. And I wonder if the aftereffect of it is to minimize the likely effect or importance, really, of Hurst's testimony.

So they got a good week here from March 5th, I would say, to hopefully through tomorrow. Yeah, I do think that that was smart. And it was notable. There wasn't kind of a lot of commentary on that, but it was later than usual. Much later. Yeah, and so I think that was intentional and smart as far as audience is concerned. It was huge audience, actually. It was another thing that we've learned since Friday.

I think 5 million more people just have a TV audience than last year. And so obviously, there's interest. We're in an election year. I think we all kind of sense that. But I think that clearly that was a smart strategic move. The bias towards news, which I always complain about, is always the new part, right? And this has been a frustrating thing during the entire Trump era, but it might work to Biden's favor here. It's like, is her going to be able to say anything that's new? Frankly, is it possible that maybe some of the new parts of his testimony are him caveating

some of the stuff that he said in the written report. I don't know. I guess potentially, if he is the conservative rat fucker that, you know, some of the Democrats are accusing of being, maybe he'll drop some new anecdotes or something. But I don't know. It doesn't seem like the type of thing that offers a lot of kind of new fodder. I guess we'll have him speaking about it on video, so you could run that on Fox. But besides that. Yeah, no, I think that's right. Just one last thing on the March 5th. When Haley was in the race, it was actually, for all of her flaws, kind of a reminder of what a next generation candidate would be like. I do wonder if maybe what the Biden campaign has been counting on is happening now to some degree, which is people are beginning to focus on, okay, this is very, very most likely the choice. And let's stop all the, you know, Bill Kristol wishcasting about next generation and really get serious about the fact that it's Biden and Trump. But I feel like the last week has been a pretty good beginning.

If I were in the Biden campaign, I'd at least hope and maybe think that finally we're getting what we need, which is the real focus on Biden versus Trump, instead of lots of complaints about the incumbent. It's been a little more of a choice and a little less of a referendum as the political pros say. I've said from the start, amidst all of your, you know, patty cake that I was going to wait until April 20th, 420 to start panicking for this very reason. I want Haley to be out and I want that to sink in, you be out and I want that to sink in, you know, and I think that takes time and there's a pull lag. You know, if we get towards late April and we're still down five, I'm going to have a brown paper bag next to me for every

episode of the podcast, but we'll see. Sosnick says Memorial Day or July 4th, that that's when the impressions sink in. Traditionally, if you look at incumbents, hard to move people after that. After that, it's the noise of the conventions, it's debates, you look at incumbents, hard to move people after that. After that, it's the noise of the conventions, it's debates, non-debates, it's the day-to-day of the campaign, but it's sort of, that becomes the story, and that's unpredictable, of course,

but the actual judgment of Biden, he thinks, by Memorial Day or maybe July 4th, gets fairly settled, yeah. Doug Sosnick, that's a Democratic pollster. Landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough.

Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't, and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash RentSafeTO. We maybe need a little segment here. We need a little music for this. Occasionally, I have a rant that I don't have another place to get it out. And so we're going to do a little thing where I rant and you just kind of get to respond to my rant, if that's okay. And this is not a traditional interview. Usually an interviewer, the interviewer asking the interviewee the question, but I'm, you know, I'm changing

the conventions here for this podcast. Okay. And my rant is about the brouhaha over Joe Biden saying the word illegal during the State of the Union. What happened for those that kind of missed this was Marjorie Taylor Greene is sort of dressed like a kind of like a racist Chili's host in the crowd. And I stole that joke for someone else. And she is shouting at him about Lake and Riley, who had been killed by an illegal immigrant. And she's shouting in the audience and Biden acknowledges her and holds up the pin, the Lake and Riley pin that she had given him as he walked down the aisle. And then he acknowledges the family. And throughout all this, Greene is shouting from the audience, killed an illegal by an illegal by an illegal and biden

off the cuff retorts to her yeah by an illegal that's right but how many thousands of people are killed by legals to her parents i say my heart goes out to you so kind of an awkward exchange right but all in all like it seems like biden is the winner of this exchange. Like, MTG thinks she has a gotcha. Biden slaps her down. Like, he's responding to her use of the word illegal by trying to make a point that she is the one that is politicizing this, that she keeps bringing up this one murder, despite the fact that there's lots of crime that's happening and, you know, that happens. And oftentimes, if you look at immigrants, they tend to commit these crimes at a lower rate, right? So, this is the point that he's trying to make. Obviously, if you're in a Lincoln-Douglas debate, not being shouted down by a crazy person in the audience, maybe you say it

more adeptly. Despite all that, after this great State of the Union, where Biden's showing vigor, where even Bill Kristol is starting to come around, it's Democrats that are complaining. Here's the headline, progressives fume at biden business insider joaquin casco tweeted about how this was incendiary and wrong senator alex padilla democratic senator of california said the president's ad lib was deeply disappointing are you kidding me bill i'm deeply disappointed in alex padilla like what does this person do i never see this fucking guy's name. He's not doing anything. He's not doing anything to help the Biden campaign.

And like, he pops his head up to wag his finger at Joe Biden. In the context of this speech, does anybody actually think that he was trying to be offensive? Like, obviously not. Like, does anybody think that Joe Biden was in this exchange, the one that was not being on the side of immigrants and not being on the side of migrants? Of course, it's Marjorie Taylor Greene that is shouting and being an insane person. Why are you waving your finger at Biden? To what end? What is the end? I get it.

If you're a Democrat and you're mad at Biden over Gaza or over a policy and you're trying to get him to change the policy. Okay. I'm not saying that you can't criticize Joe Biden. Like that's totally appropriate. We do it here. Obviously you want to advocate for policies. This like supposed gaffe isn't going to change anything. It's not going to change anybody's life to make him apologize. It's not going to change his worldview. He uses the word undocumented most of the time. It's not going to change the policies or the treatment of anybody. It's going to do nothing. These liberals are just shouting, do better at him to try to berate him. And like the net result of this is Biden apologizing, what should have been a friendly interview with Jonathan Capehart. You would have thought it

would have been a friendly interview. So now he's got to apologize. All the news is about how he apologized about this. Everyone in my MAGA Twitter feed is dunking on him. And like the people that criticize him for this, the Alex Padillas of the world, what did they get? Like at best, they achieved nothing. At worst, they gave a news cycle to the person that is planning mass deportation camps. Like that's what you did. Like you gave an assist to the person that is planning mass deportation camps and then his what you did like you gave an assist to the person that is planning mass deportation camps and that is vine's opponent to no end you know if they were bullying biden or pushing him because they wanted to change some feature of the of the asylum policy to make it more humane like okay at least that would have an impact on people's lives they're just doing

random fucking speech codes just to give an assist to Donald Trump and like virtue signal from California. You do better, Alex Padilla. Like with friends like these, Bill, like what are we going to do here? Am I overstating this? Am I letting myself get a little too riled up about this? But this seems like a really stupid cell phone by the Democrats. No, it's an excellent rant. And I would make one last point.

He is a Democratic senator. You know, we are independent people. And other liberal commentators are independent people. And they get to say, I think that's unfortunate. Or I think in the future, people should say X, Y, or Z. And they get to criticize amendments, and he did, I'd maybe vote against that immigration compromise. That's legit, I think. And if he wants to say we should do this on Title 42, that's legit. But yes, just the performative, he's an elected official who's supposed to support the nominee of his party, and is not on something serious, not on something where he thinks he's going to help him politically, not on something where he's been trying to get through to the White House for two months privately and they finally won't take his call and he has to say something. Just gratuitously, what, courting the favor of what? I mean, who exactly anyway? Activists, liberal progressive activists.

Why? He's not up for an election. He's not in the middle of the election. He's just finger wagging. Joe Biden, you know, it's like, oh, 81-year-old man up there on stage, like, dealing with a heckler. It's like, I'd like to see Ox Padilla go up there. Making the right point. Defending the decency of 99.9% of immigrants, documented or undocumented, and making the substantive point to the degree it was substantive that, you know what, you're just exploiting this horrible murder.

So, yes, I agree. It wasn't as even if biden was going in the wrong direct it's one thing if you don't like biden's being too nice to this in the aisle in the past you criticize that okay that's a substantive thing and you could change the policy this is him doing the right thing he's fighting marjorie taylor green right he's fighting marjorie taylor green and also by the way just as one more aside the guy was a murderer okay so if like we're gonna do like if we're gonna do the. President, you should do better and be nicer, maybe find an example where the person that is supposedly offended here isn't someone that killed an

innocent college student who was just out for a run. So anyway, screw you, progressives, for trying to unnecessarily snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on this one. Okay. While we're ranting, before I lose you, I'd like to rant about Viktor Orban. Well, no, I guess I'd like to rant about Donald Trump and his treatment of Viktor Orban, who was at Mar-a-Lago this weekend and was given a king's welcome at the president's Elba. All the cougars in attendance were very excited to see him. And let's take a listen to what the former president said about the Hungarian autocrat. There's nobody that's better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orban. He's fantastic.

As you know, the prime minister of Hungary. And does a great job. He's a non-controversial figure because he said this is the way it's going to be and that's the end of it, right? He's the boss. And now he's a great leader, fantastic leader in Europe and all over the world. Fantastic leader, a little cheery house band in the background. Bill? It really made me feel kind of sick.

I mean, I met some of the liberals in Hungary who were trying to resist Orban. It's not like resisting Putin. They're free to do that. But of course, Orban's taken control of huge numbers of businesses, media, universities in that kind of more insidious authoritarian way that would be more of a model for Trump, incidentally. We're not going to all be locked up on January 21st, 2025. But the kind of way in which he would pressure people through the Justice Department and DOD and all this kind of stuff. It is, in fact, Orban-esque, if that's a word.

And so to see an American president praising that former president, predecessor, as Biden likes to say, but the nominee of one of our two major parties. Yeah, really, I can't even quite think of an example like that. You know, there were other nominees in my youth who were Democrats who we thought were kind of not sufficiently militant and standing up to the Soviet Union and made, but did we, did anyone ever invite someone, you know, in an election year to be lauded at his own home, I guess you could call it, whatever, at his own place, his own Elba, who's explicitly a critic, a denier of liberal democracy and explicitly embraces illiberal democracy. Yeah, and I guess somebody could say, well, you know,

we've had bilaterals with Xi or things like that. We criticized on this podcast the kind of treatment of Xi's welcome in California, for example, but again, that is even still different, right? That it's like, okay, you're trying to, you know, figure out, you know, how to do bilateral relations, you know, with another country, another leader. Like that is a category difference from really a campaign surrogacy is what this is. And just like lavishing praise, unqualified praise on somebody that has cracked down on speech rights, that has cracked down on LGBTQ, cracked down on immigrants, and all the things that Trump is planning on doing. And on top of that, you know,

there was an Orban interview I saw, it was in Hungarian, so we're not going to play it, around the time of the visit, where, you know, he talks about how Trump is going to just stop funding the Ukrainian resistance and how he's, and that is a good thing. And so, you know, it's almost like sort of it was praising Orban but also Putin by extension this isn't happening in a vacuum it's happening when the most important foreign policy issue facing us is Ukraine and Russia Orban has been the most conspicuous defender of Putin in the European Union to praise Orban is in that respect at this moment is to attack Ukraine and to praise Putin. And as Orban said, Trump seems to have said privately, don't worry, I'm cutting

off all the aid to Ukraine. So that is what is at stake. I did this conversation with Tim Snyder, the great Yale historian. It's really good. I listened to it over the weekend. Folks should listen to it. Thank you. Of Ukraine and Russia and Eastern Europe. I said to the guy, the Ukraine issue is so important. He said, it really is the litmus test because it's not just about foreign policy. It tells you what you think about the world and about America at this point. And for Trump to be with Orban and therefore with Putin, for me, that says it all. Yeah. We'll put that in the show notes. It's a crystal conversation with Tim Snyder. Folks should listen to it. Okay. Lastly, I got a kind of a cryptic message from you that was intriguing over the weekend. You said, you'd like to talk about my encouraging two days at a Liberty Fund conference.

I don't, when I hear the words Liberty Fund, my spidey sense starts to get up that maybe that might be a cryptic MAGA group. So tell us what was encouraging about your time with some of these conservative academics. It was a small kind of academic seminar, but it was on liberalism and there were lots of, it was mostly younger people. I sort of, I was kind of a co-organizer. They asked me to do it. So I tried to get people in their twenties, thirties, early forties, and some academics, some other types, public intellectuals, I guess you call them these days and so forth. We read Orwell and a lot of, you know, lot of stuff from Michael Walzer on being a liberal and Hitchens, actually. Liberalism could have a comeback. Good liberalism. Hubert Humphrey

liberalism, anti-fascist, anti-communist, pro-civil rights, but doesn't have a heart attack when an 81-year-old man says the word illegal. That kind of liberalism. I was encouraged by the discussion. Well, that is encouraging. Do you I mean, I was encouraged by the discussion. Well, that is encouraging. Do you have any other positive notes to leave us on? Any other notes of optimism? Baseball season begins in two weeks, and spring training is chugging ahead. And in the morning show this morning, it was sweet. Going down to give a speech, this 10-year-old boy who was going with his family, and he said, are you going to spring training too? And I, you know, maybe think, you know, it'd be better to be going to spring training than

giving my speech there at some hotel. Liberalism is not dead. Baseball is not dead. I'm a little skeptical on both of those points, but that will be for another conversation next week. Thank you, Bill Kristol. On the other side, we've got Sarah Longwell with a focus group update, and we're taking your questions in the Bullwark mailbag. All right, I'm back with my old friend, Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bullwark. Sarah, I wanted to have you on, A, because you have multiple other podcasts I want to make sure people know about.

George Conway explains it all to Sarah Longwell. That publishes kind of periodically. Do you have a schedule? No, it's every week. Do you have a schedule? Do you have a day where we know what's going on? Well, we try to do it when there's good legal news to talk about, but it's like Thursday-ish. Thursday-ish, okay.

And then every Saturday, you have the Focus Group podcast, which is so, so good. And in particular, I wanted to talk briefly about this week's, which was a little bit alarming, but in a good way, kind of a wake-up call, you know, kind of like smelling salt kind of alarming, where you had Ashley Allison, CNN analyst, who was on to discuss focus groups you did with Black voters who had voted for Hillary and Biden, but were now thinking about Donald Trump a little bit. Can we just listen to a little bit, and I'll get you on the other side. I think he just has more of an ability to jumpstart the economy, to inject energy into the economy, and that's really the economy. And that's really

what a lot of it's boiled down to for me. With him and Putin from Russia, they had some kind of rapport. And so that sort of keeps us alive without getting bombs, you know, thrown on our country. So it seems like, I don't know, maybe a gangster knows another gangster and they have respect for one another. But it seems like he was able to get along with them people a little better it didn't matter what he did they were just going to bash him anyway at least it seemed like maybe three-fourths of the media of course he had fox on his side but it seemed like three-fourths of the media was bashing the guys like that's unheard of for somebody to get bashed that hard and he's the president of the united states so that that may be, put a red flag in my head that maybe he's on to something.

I don't know who in government is not committing fraud, who's not being crooked, who's not doing us right. I really don't know. I don't know why he's the only one that's actually being held accountable. Woof. Okay. Again, just one focus group,

but we're seeing in the numbers some bleed among black voters. I thought it was nice that you had Ashley on to kind of talk through it. What did you guys come away with? Well, I mean, first of all, I really wanted to do this group because we keep seeing it in the numbers. People are kind of freaking out about it while also denying that it's real, right? They're like, this isn't possible. And I want to be like, I'm sure it is possible because if there's one thing I know from doing focus groups all of these years, it's that the things that we self-soothe with are often wrong. And that if you go kind of find these voters and ask them,

you're going to hear stuff. Yeah, it's going to make your toes curl, but it's going to be like, what is actually going on? I love Ashley. She's a friend of mine. And she did like a valiant pushback. She was a little bit like JV Ellis, where he wants to sort of reason with all the voters. Like, let me tell you what I would say. Yeah. Let me tell you what I would say back to them. If you put me in the room, put me in the room, let me convince them why they're wrong. But to me, the most interesting thing was how much they just sounded like, like there was nothing different about what the black voters were saying about why they liked Trump than just other Trump voters and why they liked them. It's all the same thing. It's like, I think he'd be better for the economy. Americans want to be rich. Let's just tell you,

like Americans, all of them, they want to be rich and they see Donald Trump as rich. And so when they say we need a businessman running the economy, what they mean is I saw this guy on TV being a businessman. I know he's got a gold toilet and I don't necessarily want a gold toilet, but I want more money. And I think he'll help me get more money because he's figured out how to get more money for himself. And when Trump says things like, well, because I have a mugshot, I think that's going to help me with black voters. You and I hear that and go, well, that's really racist. Boy, that's got to turn off black voters. Of course it is. But there are plenty of black voters who do not hear, and they may not even hear that sort of statement explicitly. What they do

hear is this idea of, and this is, again, same with white voters, is this guy, look how much he has to put up with. I know what it feels like to have either trumped up charges or grievances on. It's so frustrating because Trump, his grievances are all about himself. It's not like he shares your grievance, regular voter, but still they find, they find like a connection there on the grievance side. And then there's just some straight up like anti-vaxxing. Nobody said deep state, but there was like, he's the only one who talks about how they're out to get us, you know, the anti-institutionalists. And I hear that across all the focus groups of people who like Trump. So it just doesn't surprise me, right, that Black voters...

Or some sub-segment of it, yeah. I'm very careful in the podcast to keep pointing out that this does not reflect a majority of Black voters. In fact, it reflects a small percentage. But Black voters are so reliable for Democrats. Hispanics have been so much more reliable for Democrats that bleeding, going from, you know, losing 10% of Black voters to 20% of Black voters, especially in states like Georgia, disaster. Okay. Well, were there any green shoots, things that, issues feeling like that, you know, Democrats can use to talk about them? Well, we did another group of swing voters right after the State of the Union the day after.

Okay. I would say only about half the group had actually watched the whole thing, but then the other half had like, you know, seen the vibes the day after. Yeah. And. Considered the memes. Yeah, that's right. And they were like, okay, okay, there's a guy I could be into. There's sort of a Twitter-esque fight right now of, will that matter? Do voters care? And they

had heard about the Katie Britt stuff too. They were just like, she is so weird. Everyone just goes, this is so weird. Someone said Stepford wife. One person said, I think she's trying to, you know, deflect from the IVF ruling in Alabama. And they were universally going for Biden, which I, you know, anybody who's been listening to my podcast knows we've been seeing some backsliding from these swing voters. But I think that Joe Biden turning the vibes around is really important and they seem to be getting it. They seem to be there. Yeah. Good news for swing voters.

Okay. If you're not listening to the Focus Group podcast, this week, if you can't handle the black voters against Joe Biden, last week they had Jon Favreau.

I'm talking about California. Every week it's a different group of voters. It's super interesting. I love that I'm a Focus Groupie. Okay. Final segment of the day. We're trying it.

This is new. Sarah, you're here. We're doing it live. Our first mailbag segment. Remember, if you have a question for the mailbag email bulwark podcast at the bulwark.com we received an overwhelming amount of mail so i think it's awesome how engaged of an audience we have so i don't know how we're going to try to do this often you've got a big show here timmy you know yeah it's awesome, it's awesome. And they care. They're not just half listening, you know? They're not just cooking and half listening. They're listening and they want our feedback

on things. So we're starting with two. And since I have you, the first one I know is Sarah Bate. We got multiple questions like this. It is very similar to the questions that I got when I was on a panel in Aspen. So I'm a little concerned about how many Aspen listeners we have. But this question is from Bianca in San Diego. She asks, what if there were a Cheney-Haley no-labels ticket

designed to split the Trump vote and also found a new conservative party? Sarah, doesn't that sound wonderful? Guys, guys, guys, listen. The people who would vote for liz cheney and the people who would vote for nikki haley are people that we need to vote for joe biden to win this election you are not building a pro-joe biden coalition you are building an anti-trump coalition and literally anything that splits the anti-trump coalition is bad for Biden. Hear me on this, please. Conservatives, swing voters, there is like 9% to 10% of the country, and there's even like soft Democrats, they will pull from Biden. Trump has a like fixed ceiling and floor, and there's like two points in between there. You cannot take, you cannot take

away anybody from the anti-Trump coalition. I'm sorry. If they want to start a new conservative movement, they should, and they should tell people to vote for Biden in this election. Agreed. And by the way, I think that there are conceivably states or Senate or random races where something like this could work, right? It is not in the presidential election. I'm sorry, Bianca. And I did this a little bit during the live DC show where the weirdness of Trump actually, I can understand why people logically would think, okay, Trump is so hated that it's the perfect time for a third party. But it's wrong because there's no elastic in his support, as you just mentioned, right? And if there would be room, I think, for a Cheney-Haley no-labels ticket, if it was like Mike Johnson versus Rashida Tlaib, right? It was two people on ideological opposite ends of the polls. Then there's a lot of room in

the middle. That's not really what's happening. Joe Biden's running kind of from the center left. Trump is running as an authoritarian, heterodox weirdo who's like off the left-right continuum. It doesn't work. There's no room for it. I'm sorry. I know it would sound nice to some people. It's not going to happen. And God knows I would vote for that ticket. That's like my dream ticket you're talking about, but I'm just telling you that's not going to work. Sorry, Bianca. Okay. Question two of the mailbag. This is from the life advice category. I love the people that came at me with life advice. Some people thought I was joking. I'm dead serious. You know, why not do a little life coaching here at the Bullock? Okay, this is Cindy in DC.

Cindy will retire from a 30-year professor gig at the end of June, which is sooner than she wanted to do to health issues. She plans to stay in DC because her doctor and friends are here, but as an object of MAGA nightmares, single educated white female with savings and no kids, good on you, Cindy, I can live almost anywhere. The threat of another traitor Trump crap storm has her pondering a summer move to Door County, Wisconsin, a 50-50 county in a 50-50 state where my vote could make a difference. Why Door County? She visited last summer to gather information about some ancestors. It was beautiful and much cooler than D.C. in the summer, although there were some gigantic Trump flags. Is she crazy to consider renting out her DC house,

volunteering for the Wisconsin Dems, registering to vote in Door County for the fall election? She'd be grateful for any insights. What life might be like as an East Coast volunteer in a Midwestern locale? How miserable could she be? Could I make enough difference to counterbalance the potential nastiness? What should I seek to do for maximum impact? I know what I think, Sarah. Do you want to hear my answer first or do you want to go first? You go ahead. I'll let you do it. Okay. I think that you should consider it, Cindy.

Life is short. I love it. I just, I love the mindset of the attitude. We're only here for a certain amount of time. It's a good life experience. We obviously made a recent move. I'll caveat one thing. I'm a little concerned about the loneliness quotient.

We have listeners though. We have listeners in Wisconsin to the Bulwark podcast. Door County, for people who don't know, is like on the little, what do you call it? It's like the little finger that sticks out on the east side of Wisconsin into the lakes. And so it's from kind of Green Bay. You go up this little finger. It is really beautiful. I've never been there. I've heard it's really beautiful. But I know, for example, Mark Becker, big fan of ours. It was the Green Bay, whatever county that is, Republican chair for a while. Then he did the right thing. He was a Republican voter against Trump last time. He's written for the Bulwark. We can ask Mark. I just want to make sure you can have some friends. I think otherwise the experience will be great. People are nice. You get surprised

by how nice people are. You can get a little community of people door knocking. I don't know if I'd want to live in Door County, no pun intended there, forever. But to move six months, have a life experience, I don't know. Seems pretty good to me. And I like the mindset regardless. What say you, Sarah? I love the mindset. And I got to tell you, we hear from a lot of people being like, what can I do? And honestly, what I want to say to everybody is like, move to Montana. Like, it's beautiful thing on the loneliness, I think, is that, you know, you could start a blog and encourage other people to move. You could start a whole movement, a community of people who move for democracy and go to places like in swing states. And my guess is, is that you will find a democratic community there that is so excited to have you. Ben Wickler, who runs the Democrats, the party chair there is like a super good guy

that would, I'm sure, like get you hooked up with all the other volunteers. I think it could be like a, yeah, once in a lifetime awesome experience. Move to Door County. And if it's terrible, don't blame us, okay? I'm just like, you know, we're doing the best we can. This is our first life

advice question and we might improve over time but i'm feeling pretty good at it off the bat okay sarah any final thoughts for people before you get out of here any other big focus group takeaways from your post state of the union focus group i don't know that i've got any other ones other than hey guys if you have a zip in your step right now we'll skip after that keep it going because it's going to be a long slog and there's going to be ups and downs, but just should remember that there's going to be ups. And when there's ups, remember to push, lean into them. That's great advice. All right. Let's get your feedback on the first mailbag. Remember to email your questions, bulwarkpodcast at thebulwark.com. We'll be back here tomorrow with Evan Osnos,

who wrote the great New Yorker profile about Joe Biden. I'm excited about that. I'm in there. I'm in that profile. Are you? I didn't make it that far. It's really long. So you must be quoted in the back half. I'm going to be reading the rest of it later today. I'll let you know what I think about your quotes. That's Sarah Longwell, publisher on The Bulwark. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Peace.

Bye, guys. No fun. But fortunately, I have the key to escape reality. And you may see me tonight with an illegal smile. It don't cost very much, but it lasts a long while. Won't you please tell the man I didn't kill anyone no I'm just trying to have me some fun last time I checked my bankroll, it was getting thin. Sometimes it seems like the bottom is the only place I've been. I chased a rainbow down a one-way street, dead end. And all my friends turned out to be insurance salesmen Ah, but fortunately

I have the key to escape reality And you may see me tonight With an illegal smile It don't cost very much But it lasts a long while Won't you please tell the man I didn't kill anyone. No, I'm just trying to have me some fun. Well done.

Hot dog fun. My sister's a nun. The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.