The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: Pure Oligarchic Greed

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Trump's billionaire donors had it so bad under Obama, Clinton, and RINO presidents that they just have to go with the authoritarian. Plus, the return of s**thole countries, women's hoops and culture war killjoys, a follow-up on white rural rage, and Trump's latest abortion position. Kristol joins Tim Miller. show notes: White Rural Rage episode 

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 Bullwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It's Monday, so I've got Bill Kristol, of course, but a little bit of housekeeping first.

After Bill's righteous rant about the Trump donors, I'm going to have a little monologue about white rural rage. You may have suffered through the social media discourse about our recent guests and their book on this topic. And so I've got some additional thoughts. So make sure to stick around for that. We have an update for the big mailbag fans out there. And by the way, if you if you want to send in a mailbag question, you send it to bulwarkpodcast at thebulwark.com. But our very first mailbag was Cindy, who was thinking about moving to Door County because she wanted to make a difference. And Door County is a 50-50 county in Wisconsin. She had some ancestors that lived there, and she's going to move there for six months to volunteer. She reached out to the Wisconsin Democrats and she's doing it. Cindy's moving to Door County. And so amazing. We're so happy for you, Cindy. And if you're in Wisconsin,

if you're in Green Bay or somewhere in that region, put a comment in here and we'll put everybody in touch. Make sure she gets a warm welcome there. One more thing. We have two events coming up. We have May 1st, our first trip to Philadelphia. What's up, city of brotherly love? We will be in you May 1st. May 15th, we'll be back in D.C. at 6 and I with George Conway. You may have heard of him. I'm trying to get Claudia in the building, but I haven't heard yet whether she's going to be able to make it. So go to the bulwark.com slash events to get tickets for both of those events. bulwark.com slash events. All right, this afternoon, we're eclipsing. We won't have another total solar eclipse in the contiguous 48 until 2044.

That's assuming that God does not punish us with another one, as Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested was happening this time. So, Bill, do you have some eclipse glasses? Do you feel like God is judging your actions? And that is why we're going to have this historic event this afternoon. You know, I'm not really as into the eclipse either way as a lot of people are. I've never, as I said to Susan the other day, I've never really been that interested in the heavenly bodies. And I'm sure that's a failure on my part, a lack of scientific curiosity or something.

But anyway, I hope some people enjoy it. That's it. you're a man that cares about what's happening here on earth feet on the ground do you also not like movies about kind of like what's happening out in outer space i mean like everyone of my age i saw star wars when i came out and all that but no i i've never been much of a science never been a science fiction person so i think there isn't the conventional view that there are two kinds of people for kind of casual, relaxing reading. This is maybe true 50 years ago, not today.

Mystery readers and science fiction readers. And I do think there's something true to that. And I like mysteries, you know, like actual things set here in England or America or anywhere. And in which, you know, detectives solve crimes and it's semi-realistic at least. And science fiction, I don't know. But I don't, not being judgmental here, there's a lot of great science fiction you're not making fun you're not begrudging it's another bulwark divide i'm more on your side of this we do have a couple of nerds i believe at least jim swift and andrew egger have traveled yeah to prime eclipse locations which you know

god love you whatever brings you joy it's an interesting travel choice though um all right we've got a lot of business let's mr trump you wrote in the newsletter this morning really a strong newsletter if i might add about donald trump's comments with some rich donors you can't believe a fucking word out of their mouth i'm a little frustrated by the media just blindly repeating that donald trump's saying that he raised 50 million in south florida today like let's see the numbers all right first before we just believe whatever this person says but But here is a quote that Maggie Haberman had from inside the fundraiser. Trump, he was recounting the shithole countries discussion, which, you know, he claimed was fake news back when it happened. But now he's admitting that

it actually happened. And he's reflecting on that controversy. I said, you know, why can't we allow people to come in from nice countries? I'm trying to be nice. Nice countries, you know, like Denmark, Switzerland. Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway? And, you know, they took that as a very terrible comment, but I felt it was fine. Bill, what were your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think Maggie and Michael Gold, her co-author, also report, and this is based on an attendee who told them about this, who I take it is a Trump donor, right? You had to pledge $800,000 to the Trump Victory Fund and the RNC and that whole medley to get in. So presumably, this is a Trump donor kind of cheerfully recounting this wonderful evening at Paulson's house in Palm Beach. And they chuckled according to the according to the attendee. So they chuckled at this denigration of immigrants and Trump reveling in his denigration of immigrants. If they're not from the Nordic countries, the Aryan countries, I did, you know, two minutes of research yesterday when I was struck by the piece in the New York Times, as people should read, really, you know, this is such a big deal back in the 19-teens and 20s in America, right?

This elephant, the Nordic race, you know, the race, we're losing the race, the purity of our race, and that's a very, very bad result in the real world. And Hitler loves some of it, incidentally, not to go right to Hitler, but why not? That's a true fact, you know? Anyway, yeah, so these people all chuckled at it. These donors, of course, I look quickly at the list that is available. I think it was like the sponsors or something, the original hosts who signed up. They do not all have names that make one think that they are from their sons and daughters of the American Revolution or Nordic or Teutonic or Aryan.

There's the usual medley. Or Native American, for that matter. Yeah, but there's the usual medley of American names, which is good. I mean, right. It's America provides opportunities for wealth and success. It's concerning actually, that there is a normal medley of Americans that are donating to Donald Trump, but yeah. I'm sure it's slightly disproportionately, you know, on the Teutonic side, so to speak, and the Nordic and Aryan side. But I, so I looked up John Paulson, who I don't know at all, the hedge fund billionaire who's the host. And it turns out, I had no knowledge of this,

that his father's from Ecuador and his mother is the daughter of East European Jewish immigrants. And they met at UCLA, a state institution of public higher education, which I'm sure everyone in that room thinks should be defunded because A, why is the state wasting money

on educating poor kids? And B, it's probably woke or something. So you'd think someone in thatunded because A, why is the state wasting money on educating poor kids? And B, you know, it's probably woke or something. So you think someone in that room would have thought, you know, this isn't, I'm like my parents or my grandparents. These are the people Trump not only wants to keep out, but just has contempt and scorn for. But there seems to be no such reaction. No. And sometimes I feel a little awkward on getting this earnest and high-minded, but it's just, it is true. It is what it is. You wrote this, you ended the newsletter today

with political leaders once tried to urge the wealthy to look beyond their immediate comfort to act for the greater good, not pull the ladder of opportunity advancement up after them. And the more responsible this group themselves criticized the inevitable temptation to wallow in the smug self-regard

and indulge in fanciful grievances, not in Donald Trump's America. This is like, right. And obviously there were conservative politicians, time immemorial, that said that we should cut taxes and that people should be rewarded for their success. And we can have debates over that. But there is a category difference between that and between denigrating people based on their race, between celebrating people only because of their financial success, which is another element of what is happening at this, Donald Trump just lavishing praise on these people and focusing only on what the government can do

to make their lives, you know, even easier. Yeah, wealth is success, according to Trump, and it's all about success. And there's not even the obligatory nod that used to happen, maybe slightly obligatory to the scientists and the artists. I'll take a disingenuous obligatory nod. Can you at least give me that? Somebody messaged me this. They're like, Tim, you don't you missed that sometimes these rich people were grin fucking you and then screwing you behind your back. And I'm like, I'll take that. Actually, I'll take it. You know, just give me some obligatory noblesse oblige. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, right?

I mean, that you want that hypocrisy of, you know what? We also respect the scientists and the artists and the do-gooders and the philanthropists and the people who've made wonderful discoveries that have helped mankind. But there's not even the pre-tax. I mean, there's not even, as you say, a nod to that anymore, nor is there a nod to America as a nation of immigrants, which again, is something people said, and then they went ahead with whatever policies they wanted to go ahead with to some degree. So I do think that's important though, you know, the obligatory nods signify something. They signify a certain deference to a kind of liberal democratic norms

and history and probably limit, the scope of the pure oligarchic greed, and in particular, the scope of the authoritarianism. I mean, for me, that's what's so striking about Trump and all these huge donors who've done so well in America, so well over the last 30 years, under the horrors of the Obama administration and the Clinton administration, and all those right-o Republicans running everything. Those people have suffered. John Paulson has suffered so much and all those other, you know, people writing checks for a million dollars. They've suffered so much in America that they just have to embrace this authoritarian. And it's too earnest. I mean, I get too worked up about this. No, no, no, no. I'm earnest. This is my other two thoughts. It's

not earnest because fuck these people. And it's like, I have a practical and an ideological thought one more while we're getting ourselves riled up. On a practical matter, I also just think that they're making a bad choice here. It's like, the economy is not going that great in Hungary. And I think that just risking to completely breaking down the American institutions and taking a flamethrower to them in the form of Donald Trump's second term might not turn out as well as they think. Just as a practical matter for rich people who are listening. The other thing I just think is worth mentioning is, you know, sometimes people of our ilk look at the progressives who want to say, talk about everything being white nationalism, this white nationalism thing.

Maybe they're overstating. Maybe there's a little too much talk of this white nationalism. Maybe sometimes they're exaggerating. And certainly in cases, there's exaggeration. But I mean, a statement that we should only bring in people from Denmark and Switzerland, in a room full of rich people, is kind of literally white nationalism, you know, and so a lot of times you get the pearl clutching over the use of this term. And like that is what's, you know, the explicit argument that Donald Trump is making that this is a country, we should protect America first, and we should only bring in white people. I mean, that's his explicit argument.

And well received, apparently, by all these dozens of super wealthy donors who've done so well in America. Good stuff. That's uplifting. One other thing, my note here is rich people suck. This was, rich Trump donors suck. Rich Trump donors suck, maybe is what I should have written. Okay, the other thing. Can note here is rich people suck. This was, rich Trump donors suck. Rich Trump donors suck, maybe is what I should have written. Okay, the other thing.

Can I just add one thing? I mean, rich Biden donors are a mixed bag. I'll stipulate that too. And I wasn't a big fan of the Radio City Music Hall, you know, glitzy thing. And I got criticized by some people for saying, I didn't think that was a brilliant political move by the Biden campaign.

Maybe they could raise the money a little more quietly and not been so, oh, so much. We raised so much, you know, in such a public way at all. There's a little much too much courting of donors, even on the left. Having said that, at least the limousine liberals do have the sense that they're supposed to be dedicated to something bigger. And, you know, maybe sometimes they don't, they aren't, and they're selfish and hypocritical, but it is, as you said earlier, it's kind of a category difference, I think, to some of these Trump donors, right? I mean, they are trying to do well, but realizing they live in a broader democracy, and they have some

obligations. And when Biden says, I'm going to raise your taxes, they at least pretend to go along, even if they're quietly hiring some lobbyists to work on the Hill to prevent the taxes from going up. The Trump donors, it's all just, hey, I cut your, Trump says to them, this is quoted in the piece in the Times, I cut your taxes and give me some guidance on which kind of tax cut for the tax cut would be more helpful. I couldn't quite follow the Times as little abbreviated the account, but he wants to just help them as much as he can. There's not even a pretense of this is for the greater good. Indeed. One other thing from Trump from

this comment, the Resolute Desk is beautiful, Mr. Trump said. Ronald Reagan used it, others used it, and Biden's using it. I might not use it next time. It's been soiled, and I mean that literally, which is sad. Again, in the last week, Donald Trump has accused Joe Biden of using cocaine and of crapping, like literally pooping on the on the Resolute desk. I don't know what I really want the media to do in this sort of situation. But we go through these cycles of where we had to spend three days, you know, rending our garments over whether Donald Trump literally meant bloodbath or figuratively meant it or whether he's talking about the auto industry or whatever. And yet, Donald Trump just gets away with this stuff. Like Donald Trump can just go out there and be like, Joe Biden is on cocaine

and wears diapers. And it's like, okay, well, there's no, there's no expectation that Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell, you know, speak out and say, no, actually, we're working with Joe Biden right now and bipartisan legislation. And you know, he's a decent person. We disagree on policy. He's not pooping himself, right? Like, there's no expectation that happens. There's no expectation that conservative commentators do the right thing. I like this imbalance is just a continued frustration of mine that I feel like it just merits mentioning. I don't want to contribute to the problem by not bringing it up like the media doesn't bring this stuff up. Totally agree. And I want to say the media would bring it up if Republicans criticized it. That becomes a story. And the media should

bring it up anyway, but it's a little harder for them just on their own, so to speak, you know, freestanding to sort of go crazy about this or not just crazy, but even make any kind of big deal about it. But you're right. There was once a time, and there should be a time, and it really is important for the health of the country, that the party be a party and say, well, in this case, we think our presidential nominee has gone too far. And the last time that happened was what day was that? October 7th, 2016, when they rebelled against the Exxon Hollywood tape for about 24 hours.

And once that subsided, I don't know, they've just, they've just gone along and, uh, and gone along increasingly cheerfully and unhesitatingly, I would say. 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 have some other news this morning. Donald Trump has has released his position on abortion for now.

Let's take a listen to a clip of it. The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state. Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others. And that's what they will be. At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people. Just as somebody that had to write papers in college, it's impossible to diagram that sentence. There's just a lot of a lot of nonsense, a gobbledygook there. Politically speaking, Bill, what do you think about where Donald Trump has landed on this? He's going to say, just whatever the states think.

Whatever you all want to do is fine with me. Please don't blame me for anything you don't like when it comes to abortion. Seems like the stance he wants to take. Yeah, that overturning road stuff I was so proud of. Well, that's actually just throwing it back to the States. And if you live in Michigan or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Arizona, you've got abortion rights protected in law to some considerable degree. And right now you have governors who will protect it. And so don't not vote for me because you fear a national abortion ban. So I think in some short-term tactical way, it's probably a reasonably clever move. And do we think any actual pro-life leaders are going to, I mean, there'll be some carping

at Trump today, but are they actually going to jump ship? I don't know. What do you think, Tim? I'm not sure there'll be any carping. I saw Matt Schlapp of CPAC just off having to have his insurance pay out a big number after a sexual assault accusation. He tweeted out that they've polled people at CPAC and that this is a popular position at CPAC. And so I don't even know how much carpeting there's

going to be. I worry that it could be effective. I do. I keep looking back to the midterms. And I think that clearly the two big things that helped Democrats were democracy, concerns about threats to democracy and abortion rights, right? And if you just look at the places where the Democrats did well, if there were legitimate concerns about abortion rights, and if the Republican candidates were MAGA extremists who wanted to overturn the election, the Democrats tend to do well. If there were states where the Republican candidates were at least in the ballpark of normal and where the voters felt like their abortion rights were relatively secure, California, New York, the Republicans did well.

Florida, I guess, would be the one counterexample to this trend. But besides Florida, that was pretty much the trend. And so I do worry that, you know, there's some practical set of voters that doesn't want to lose abortion rights or does not want the Tennessee zero week abortion ban, but who prefers Donald Trump for whatever reason on other issues and might choose to vote for them if they feel like abortion rights are safe because they live in Wisconsin, whatever, and their governor is a Democrat. How many people is that? I don't know, but it's not zero. And I think it's going to be incumbent on the Democrats to really focus a campaign to message that direction here based on the 2022 results. For all that he's kind of a lunatic, kind of doesn't want to listen to reality and kind of lives in his own bubble and so forth and drinks his own Kool-Aid, I guess, you know, he's not impervious to a certain

kind of electoral reality and hearing voters. Well, he doesn't care about this. He doesn't care at all. And he's impervious. He's in his own bubble on things that he cares about, his own ego, you know, the fact that he won, his narcissism. He doesn't actually care all. And he's impervious. He's in his own bubble on things that he cares about. His own ego. Right. You know, the fact that he won. His narcissism. He doesn't actually care about abortion. Like, him not actually caring about abortion rights doesn't mean that the threat to abortion rights isn't real. And that's kind of the conundrum that Democrats face in making that case to people.

That's why, I think. But I think the one thing, I think Democrats will be tempted, and they should do this to some degree, to put up all the old quotes of Trump sounding much more dogmatically and pro-life and talking about a national ban and boasting about overturning Roe. I'm not sure that's really going to convince people. For one thing, I don't think a national ban is really practical, given that it would take 60 senators, presumably. Maybe the Republican Senate would change the rules, but then Susan Collins would get on for it, et cetera. I don't know. I feel like that's going to be hard to sell, that if you vote for Trump, you're going to have a national ban on abortion, or even much of a national restriction. What I think you could sell much better is he has

no principles at all. Anything you like about Trump, he could just as easily toss that overboard, which is pretty much true with one or two exceptions. I think he does believe in being nicer to dictators abroad than to democracies. That's kind of one of his core principles. But pretty much everything else, God knows what he could do. And I think the notion that he's a totally unprincipled, you know, authoritarian, only in it for himself. I think Axelrod said this to me on the conversation I did with him, and I take it this was based, didn't really elaborate on some focus groups and polling, that Trump's in it for himself. And you are just along for the

ride. And you may like some things he's saying, but you can't count on them, you know, manifesting themselves in any actual action that will help you. I kind of feel like his betrayal of the pro life forces, what could make as much of an issue of that as sort of saying, well, he's deep down, he's still plotting to do that national abortion ban. I think that Axelrod's frame is right. I do think that Trump's going to continue to appoint judges. These judges, you know, are going to have oversight over various abortion rights, IVF rights, birth control pill, right? Like all of that is something that is relevant. I think that Mike Johnson, so I've continued to suggest that the Democrats do a little bit more to elevate Mike Johnson's profile. This man is the Speaker of the House. This person definitely wants a national abortion ban. Is that a risk worth taking? I think that all of those messages are potentially

convincing. The other thing, Mark Caputo, who writes our Magaville newsletter, flagged is that it seems like he's going to have to vote in Florida on abortion. He's just going to be one man voting, but he lives in at Mar-a-Lago and Florida has a ballot initiative on upholding the six week ban or not. Eventually, somebody's going to have to ask him about that. I assume. I don't know. He might just be able to get out of it with word salad. But I think that's an interesting subplot. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Okay, we've got house dysfunction. They're back. They've taken a holiday. Kharkiv is just being bombed. Speaker Johnson does not care about that. They've been on a lengthy vacation, but they're back now in Washington, DC. Here's a quote from Marjorie Taylor Greene about the challenges facing

Speaker Johnson in the coming weeks. If Johnson passes the $60 billion to Ukraine and then follows it up with FISA reauthorization, you're going to see a lot more Republicans than just me coming out saying his speakership is over with. Huge divisions on both of these issues for Johnson. What say you about what to expect here in the coming weeks? I mean, I've been moderately hopeful on Ukraine. There's such a clear majority in the House for it. And Johnson at least has said he kind of wants to make it happen. And I think he's under the threat of a discharge petition or maybe a couple of different ones if he doesn't make it happen. But I'm also, he's managed to draw it out and maybe he'll just keep on drawing it out. At some

point, the Republicans who do want to do the right thing have to drop the hammer and say, OK, we're going to a discharge petition with the Democrats, not some sort of fake discharge petition that sort of creates yet another piece of legislation that then has to go back to the Senate and so forth. Ultimately, the real hammer would be if five of them said, you know what, we're going to support Jeffries for speaker for like two weeks and get this legislation through. And Jeffries will make a deal not to change the committees even for that time. I don't know. There are things they could do if they were serious. And they all claim some of them, you guess, and fear of maybe political retribution that they just can't liberate themselves from pleading with Mike Johnson to help an ally fighting in the largest land war in 80 years against an unbelievably brutal dictatorship. I mean, can't they do a little better than pleading? Aren't they elected representatives?

Aren't they supposed to act when something crucial is at stake? They really only need three. I mean, you're asking for five, but there have been so many retirements. There's so few of them that are required. There's a letter you put in the newsletter this morning from Mike Pompeo to Johnson. We write as individuals, it's him and the head of the Hudson Institute, as you consider the path forward in the House of Representatives for the national security supplemental that includes critical replenishment of u.s weapons stocks and support to our allies we encourage you to lead with conviction and bring the aid palette package to a vote i think we're kind of past the point of no return on leading with conviction but um the pompeo factor of all this

is interesting and he's like the one person that has just tried to walk this mega isolationist but also i'm still you know i still believe in the post-world war ii world order you know a tightrope as much as anybody does he have any influence anymore is this just a retired guy howling at the moon he's been to the Hill. Hudson has brought, he's I think associated with Hudson now. Hudson's brought him to the Hill several times and I'm told he gets good attendance of Republican members of Congress and they respect him. And so he's not like bringing, you know, one of us rhino types or never Trump Republicans to the Hill. So maybe he could do good. It wouldn't hurt if Pence and others weighed in on this too. Nikki Haley could,

you know, she's been good on this, and obviously she's taking a bit of a break after losing to Trump, but again, she can write a letter. I don't know. I feel like this is the moment when you see what's happening in Ukraine. It's so horrible, and it's so shameful that we're not doing the minimal thing we could do, which is simply send them the weapons. I mean, I personally am sort of open to no-fly zones

and much greater NATO and U.S. involvement, but I know that's probably a minority view, and I shouldn't even say it, so I won't. If the Bulwark podcast, if you can't say it on the Bulwark podcast, where can you say it? Good point. Okay, I said it. But anyway, I hope others have a sense of urgency. I give Pompeo credit because he didn't have to do this. He's probably taking some grief for it, and I wish more people would weigh in. But I wish the actual members of the House who are elected officials by their constituents, they're not, they don't work for Mike Johnson in the old days. And I mean, for all of American history, they have often been splits in parties, and that's fine if you don't agree with something. And here they don't agree

clearly, and it's a very important priority. I would say the Biden administration has not ratcheted up the pressure on this. I think they've wanted, and this has been reported, to give Mike Johnson room to move, not look like he's being beaten up, make it his own choice. I can see that as a tactical matter. But I think at some point pretty soon, if Biden's serious, and I assume he is, about Ukraine, he needs to kind of make an issue of this to the country the way, you know, Reagan would have made an issue on a major foreign policy issue, or Bush in 07, even though the war in Iraq was so unpopular, defending the surge,

President Obama and things he cared about. I mean, I think this could use a little more pressure from the White House if Johnson doesn't do anything this week or next. I could also use some more trolling. You know, we had Jared Moskovitz on last week, who is a Democrat from Florida. And, you know, he's done a nice job, I think, of kind of pantsing Comer and Jim Jordan on the impeachment stuff. But not every Democrat needs to be sober and responsible. I like we like sobriety and responsibility, but we could use a couple of guys over there in the House, really shaming them and making them you know suffer some political penalty from this dysfunction and the stalling right and i think that maybe whether the ukraine issue itself can carry political penalty

or just the broader issue of like these guys can't do anything like they went on vacation they're back he can't do anything like they can't govern they don't care about governing i do think a little bit more trolling on that would be welcome. I agree. They always show up with those big cardboard things, what are they called, on easels. Sometimes it's a chart or a photo. How about photos of Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, which is being just destroyed purely gratuitously, no military reason at all, just to kill Ukrainians and make the city less and less habitable in Ukraine, destroyed by the Russian Air Force. That's where I do think, you know, NATO Air Force, why exactly don't we declare it a no-fly zone? But leaving that aside,

we could help Ukraine with obviously anti-aircraft and Patriot batteries and so forth. And that's what they were asking for. They're not asking for us to intervene. So people should go to the floor with those photos and say, you are not doing anything and innocent people are being killed by a brutal dictator. And it's the easiest thing to do in the world. Send them the weapons. Totally agree. And can I just say, you might actually be providing some political help here by, we maybe might need a headline, maybe distribute tomorrow's newsletter, Bill Kristol, no-fly zone over Ukraine, because that allows moving the Overton window you know allows people to be like well at least i'm not crazy like bill crystal calling for a no-fly zone i'm just

i'm just calling for weapons over here maybe you can help move the overton window a little bit thank you for that suggestion i want to finish with uh watching women's hoops this weekend what a tournament a little bit i think of a talk weirdly it was scheduled ages ago yesterday afternoon at a local kind of community organization so i I missed most of the Iowa game. Was Princeton the local community organization that you're talking about? No, I was in Princeton during the week. This was the Northern Virginia Jewish Community Center. Very nice people.

But yeah, I was in Princeton. Got cheered up in Princeton, actually. The students were perfectly sane and intelligent. And I had a nice talk with different kind of groups of them as part of my little half day at Princeton. And they gave a broader talk and stuff. Actually stuff actually sort of cheered me up a little bit. You know, maybe the young ones will save us. There's not like hang glider memes or any pro far left, you know,

ending overthrowing capitalism, like none of that. You just kind of, I mean, they may not have come to talk to me if they were into that, but the students said it's been pretty quiet there. Princeton has the big advantage of being a, it's kind of Princeton, which has a different tradition, maybe. And B, it's not in a big city. If you're a professional activist, you're in New York or Boston, and then you just hop on the subway and go up to Columbia or to Harvard Yard and, you know,

cause a huge amount of trouble. They're not probably living in Princeton if you're a professional 27-year-old left-wing activist. So they're kind of a little bit insulated. Fair. And maybe i i was discussed about this on the next level podcast last week about how i was at usc for a week doing a study group and um same and the usc campus was great my study group had a diverse set of views on israel gaza we discussed it you know there were members of the group that were very much pro-israel they held an event that was about freeing the hostages which i attended on the quad and there was no you know and any of the kind of like whatever nobody's throwing feces

out on there was no counterpart so again one school maybe usc and princeton both private self-selecting maybe in a certain way but i was equally encouraged that people felt free to share their views pro and anti what what was happening in Israel on campuses, and that some of the doomsdaying about the fact that the youth are too afraid to give their opinions was not what I experienced at USC either. Okay, I do want to, on Women's Basketball, before I leave you, I have to just rant about one thing, if that's okay. Would you mind just listening to a rant? Happy to. The Final Four was amazing. It was so good. And Sarah and I talked at length about Women's Basketball on The Secret Podcast. So if you're not a borg plus member this is your chance to join the

borg plus go listen to the secret podcast if you really want to hear my thoughts on you know kind of like analyzing the strategy of the various uh teams but the yukon iowa game i watched at a bar in new orleans and it was rocking fans on both sides. Just people were so into it. You know, you would have thought it was a Saints game or something. The level of interest in UConn, Iowa. I watched with my daughter the championship at home and that was a great game. USC was wonderful.

But because I was at home, I was suffering through social media while I was on it. And a few things that I noticed, the right wingers that want to just take all our joy away. You know, we had Steve Dace who was tweeting about as great as Caitlin Clark is, all her records are going to be broken by some young freshman at the Citadel who decides he feels pretty and wants to pretend to be a girl. Megan Kelly, who is the self-appointed protector of women's sports. I was looking at her feed this morning.

She's posted several times about the women's tournament. Nothing nice about any of the players. She insulted Dawn Staley, coach of South Carolina, for saying that she'd be open to having a transgender woman playing in women's basketball. She was calling some random person, a reporter, a disgrace for abandoning our daughters, blah, blah, blah. I don't really want to get into that. We can debate transgender sports action but the thing that like that bothers me about all this bill is like the people who are out there like donning this mantle of being the self-proclaimed defender of women's sports don't like women's sports and i admit i'm raising my hand i'm new to this i i'm

new to caring about women's basketball i'm loving loving it. I've been loving the tournament. And I've always felt the thing is it's like, I care much more about Dawn Staley's opinion about protecting women's sports. One of the best women's basketball players herself who's now won three championships as a coach who has to coach these young women who is with them day to day,

who cares about them, who's obviously competitive, who was crying and just a beautiful moment. And her congratulation of Caitlin Clark was very beautiful. I care a lot more about Don Staley's opinion about how to protect women's sports than I care about Megyn Kelly's. And so anyway, if you're out there and you feel very strongly that transgender women shouldn't play in women's sports and that you want to protect young girls and young women, I feel like the ante for holding that position is also actually enjoying women's sports. So that's anyway,

that is my rant that was just driving me crazy over the weekend. And it was a wonderful tournament. And you know, the people that are trying to kind of ruin our joy in the culture war are really pretty evil, I think. So I don't know if you have any final thoughts on that or any any meditation. That was well said, I take your point about the, you know, obviously they should care about and like what they're claiming to defend. The thing is, they just are so into ruining everyone's joy. No one was thinking about it. I mean, everyone enjoyed the women's final four. There were interesting stories about at least three of the teams, maybe all four of the teams, obviously, Caitlin Clark. Paige Buecher's off an injury at UConn. Great player, but SC seems to have been, I don't, again, I haven't followed this much, but SC, a generational team. I mean, just, right? I mean, UConn,

and instead of enjoying it or letting the rest of us just enjoy it and keeping their own thoughts to themselves, you know? So how much of the culture war really is about them being unhappy, them feeling a sense of grievance and wanting to make the rest of us unhappy? You really wonder about that, right? Is it about any actual issue they talk about? Or is it they think they see people in America enjoying themselves in a kind of healthy and good natured, but also competitive way. And they say, I hate it when those people are enjoying America in 2024. There's an element to this.

And their critique is always of the left. It's like, oh, the left wants to take our joy away with the language police and all this. And I think this is the Joe Biden advantage. This is the great Joe Biden advantage, is that there is a coalition, the new silent majority of people who just want to enjoy women's basketball. You know, who just want to enjoy women's basketball, and they're not interested in the language police. They're not interested in being shouted down and turning it into a debate about transgender politics. I just want to enjoy the tournament and celebrate the young women who were just so talented and so passionate. Maybe that is our advantage as we go into November.

That is the silent majority of people who just want to be normal. Okay, Bill Kristol, we'll see you back here next Monday. I'm on the other side with one more rant. I've got one more rant. It's a double Tim rant day about white world rage. Stick around for that. All right, we are back. I want to get into the white rural rage kerfuffle a little bit. For those who were enjoying their weekend and blissfully missed this, there are articles in Politico and The Atlantic arguing that the

academic research underlying the book was misused. What liberals get wrong about white rural rage, said Politico. A misleading book about rural America, said The Atlantic. There's a lot of Twitter discourse about this. A few people sending me messages about how I'm a liberal elitist, blah, blah, blah, for having these people on. And so I want to get into it. I want to get into the critiques. Some of this is a bit of a nerdy pedagogical, inter-academic argument. Some of this is just about the research methods that Schaller and Waldman used. Some of that may have merit, but it's just not all that relevant to the broader political questions that we're getting into on this podcast. So I want to focus on the effort to take those academic critiques and broaden it

out to try to dismiss the argument that they're making, try to dismiss the notion that we've seen any uptick in right-row rage at all. We've seen a lot of this. There are people out there saying this is just another case of, you know, academics and Morning Joe Green Room types who never leave the Stella Corridor staring down their nose at real Americans. And on that part of the charge, I think that there are two minor points that have some merit. I want to get into those. But in the big picture, I think that they really missed the ball and that Waldman and Schaller have the argument. So let's take a look at the two points that the critics, I think, got right. The first W is on the semantic point,

and that is over the use of the word rage. Now, I want to point out during our interview, which, by the way, everybody should go back and listen to the whole thing, and we had a ton of feedback on it and a ton of folks listened to it. So, you know, if you happen to miss it, you just kind of go back to the archives

a couple weeks ago and go to the White World Rage app. But during that discussion, Schaller admits that the authors were gilding the lily a little bit with the title. Let's just listen to what he said. First of all, and we've pled guiltiness in public appearances already, the title is a bit provocative. We use the word rage, but we're really talking about the academic and scholarly construct resentment. But white world resentment is a lot of syllables and doesn't really fit neatly vertically. And as you know, publishers want, you know, one word blink Malcolm Gladwell kind of titles. We couldn't get it down to one or even two words, but we got it down to three words and four syllables. And so we're

really talking about resentment. And if you do a search on the galleys of the book, as we've done, the word rage actually appears in the actual texts a handful of times. Okay, so I get it. They're slanging books. This is a business. I had to slang books. Everybody has to do it. But it is quite the caveat on the title. When he said it, I was wincing a little bit. And I just think that calling it white rural resentment, making it accurate might have cost some book sales, but was probably unbalanced the right call given the backlash now that they're dealing with. And so sometimes you just got to take your lumps on this sort of thing. And the fact that he was offering that I wasn't even really pressing him on it. And he just volunteered that showed that

they were sensitive and knew that these critics were going to come. The second critique was something that I did ask him about, which was whether we can really identify whether the most enraged, resentful groups here are actually the rural Trump supporters or whether they're in these MAGA communities in the exurbs. Because in my experience, it's where I've seen the most Punisher stickers, okay? And I think this distinction is important.

And being imprecise is important. And trying to suss out whether the radicalization is the same or different, or more intense or less intense in Queen Creek, Arizona, where I went to the Scary Carrie Lake rally or in Waverly, Iowa, where I lived, where, you know, the town had been hollowed out because of globalization. I don't know, maybe there is a difference in these kind of rural rural communities or the small towns are acting versus you know the kind of sunbelt excerpts I don't know and so I think that that's a distinction that's worth getting into we got into that on the on the podcast and I'm not sure that the book provides a lot of clarity on that okay but here's my big picture defense of the

author's broader thesis both in terms of the academic data and all of our life experience, there is undeniably a radicalization happening among rural whites. One of the book's critics included this line in their article in Politico. Our research, the critic is a researcher, our research found that just 27% of rural voters, including 23% of rural Trump voters, think that if the opposing candidate wins in November, people will need to take drastic action in order to stop them from taking office. They go on to say that's the same percentage they see in urban and suburban areas. Okay. But here's the thing. Just, just 27%?%, just like that is an insanely high percentage. One in four, 23% of rural Trump voters, one in four think that drastic action would be needed to stop Biden from

winning reelects. Do we have a baseline on what that number looked like in 1996? Because I don't think there were one in four dole voters planning drastic action to stop the Clinton reelect. Okay. Something has changed. And there's another factor you have to consider here. We've seen with our one in four Dole voters planning drastic action to stop the Clinton reelect. Okay, something has changed. And there's another fact you have to consider here. We've seen with our eyes what these people mean by drastic action and how drastic action looks in different communities over the last eight years. You remember the Women's March and the pink pussy hats? That's what left wing drastic action looked like following Donald Trump's shocking victory. It was protests. It was peaceful. There was some rage there, no doubt. I had some rage.

But the way it manifested was within a normal band of how you would expect people to protest in a democratic society. Now compare that to what happened on January 6th, all right? So, we saw what drastic action looked like on January 6th, beating up police officers, storming the Capitol, raising a Trump flag over the Capitol, and taking down the American flag. So, yeah, it worries me a little bit when one in four Trump voters are already stating that they are planning drastic action. Here's another thing that those of us who actually venture out into red America have seen. All right. There's a tangible uptick in radical right-wing political statements happening. My in-laws live in rural West Virginia, not great airport options there. God love you. But you know, sometimes we got to fly in different places. We're

trying different things. What's the best way to get there? For 17 years, I've been doing a lot of driving around rural North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, rural Appalachia, going to their house, going to different communities near where they live. And, you know, back in the late 2000s, 2009, 10, 11, the political signs I saw were mostly leftists that were mad about the fracking that was happening in these rural communities. The last few years, Trump signs with quite a few F words, fuck your feelings, Trump 2024, fuck you, you know, Trump forever. So an index marking the number of fuck your feelings signs, I see driving through rural West Virginia might not be academic rigor, but it's not nothing. All right, like that's happening. The same story is true with the Oath Keeper stickers. Look, I drive a lot between doing the circus and between driving to Louisiana,

driving around Louisiana, driving through Texas. The number of Oath Keeper stickers that you see on cars on the highways is notable. The radicalized crowd I talked about, I go to these events, I've seen these crowds, the crowds are different. The crowds at Mitt Romney events versus the crowds at Kerry Lake events are different. The crowds at Trump events versus the crowd at McCain's events, it's different. What Tim Alberta and what David French have written about in the evangelical churches in these communities, the changes that are happening there, the number of Trump flags on the boats in Floribama, all right? I'm just telling you, again, anecdotal, but I have friends that go down to floribama all right i'm just telling you again anecdotal but i have friends

that go down to floribama for the beach they used to invite me now they're kind of like i don't know gay family with a black daughter probably i don't know that you probably want to come right now it gets pretty weird there's a lot of very political drunk people now at the beach in floribama okay these are all anecdotes all right but you put them all together how about the mass shooters with their manifestos we've read the manifestos it's not, all right? But you put them all together. How about the mass shooters with their manifestos? We've read the manifestos. It's not nothing, all right? We're not imagining these changes.

We aren't reversed racist elites for noticing the changes. So if some rural expert professors want to have a white paper off with Schaller and Waldman on their thesis, make it more precise, I'm all for it. All for it. But to take the critiques and then use them to dismiss the thesis outright demands that we not believe our lion eyes, that we not notice what happened on January 6th and what's happened all across the country in many of these communities. We've already seen up close the consequences of what happens when you ignore threats like this. So, speaking of our lion eyes, hope you wore your eclipse sunglasses this afternoon. We're going to see you back here tomorrow. We're going to do it all over again. Peace. Knockin' at your door Now let me in

Oh, I try Yes, I try You're not bad But you're not good You just say That you're misunderstood And I hate't gonna try Ain't gonna be no

Shine, shine, shine I'll be shining When the moon eclipses the sun Well then my baby Is undone How can I love What can I say She's never And now my baby Is undone The Board Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.