The Bulwark Podcast - Dana Milbank: Even Kevin McCarthy Doesn't Trust Kevin McCarthy

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

If he can round up the support to be speaker, McCarthy is still going to have to fend off Trump trying to muck things up from Mar-a-Lago, as well members of his caucus threatening repeated no-confidence votes. Dana Milbank joins Charlie Sykes to preview the madness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask, at work, in social settings, around your family? BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self. So you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to

get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com. Welcome to the Bulletwork Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is Thursday and basically it's like, you know, choose your adventure. Which crazy do you want to talk about? I devoted my newsletter today to the crazy down in Arizona. I made the judgment call not to inflict all of these soundbites on listeners of this podcast, but you can read shortish transcripts in Morning Shots where I, yes, I did describe Cary Lake as a groomer, a groomer of crazy. Why should they have the name? Especially when you have this metastasizing lunacy going on down

in Arizona. But today let's focus on some other strange stories that are happening up on Capitol Hill. And we are joined by Dana Milbank, a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, who is speaking to us from the nation's Capitol right now. So good morning, Dana. Good morning. I'd like you to refer to me as a groomer of crazy. A groomer of crazy. I would prefer to be a groomer of sanity. So what are you doing at the Capitol today?

Just tell us. Well, you know, Charlie, I've actually sort of assigned myself a new beat. Speaking of grooming crazy, I am planning to spend the better part of the next year watching the House of Representatives, in particular, the Senate as well, but the Republicans with their four seat majority and just how they're going to pull that off and what chaos is going to ensue. So I am indeed in the belly of the beast today. I'll be heading over to Pelosi's weekly press conference right after this. But there's a nice little soundproof booth right off the house floor in the third floor press gallery here.

So it's a marvel of technology. Well, make sure you let us know when you need to leave to go and cover actual news after we're done with all this rank punditry. So it occurs to me that we're in this very, very strange moment right now where the Republicans have just won control of the House of Representatives, but they are in absolute, complete disarray. Whereas the Democrats who have spent the last 50 years modeling being in disarray are in remarkable array. Could just take a moment to talk about how the fact that you had a changing of the generational guard among house Democrats, and it was unanimous. There was no, the knives were not out. There was not a lot of, you know, things being thrown up against the wall.

And they have a new leader, and he was elected by acclamation. So it can just reflect on this sort of strange reversal of fate that we're seeing on Capitol Hill. Yes, that's exactly what I've been seeing all week here. And yes, of course, it's the opposite of what you'd expect. But really, yes, Republicans won the House, but Democrats won the election in the sense that there was no wave. And if you thought the Democrats had difficulty governing with a five-seat majority, well, wait till you see Kevin McCarthy with a four-seat majority. So, you know, I think it's not just the disarray, it's the mood of things, you know, in the House Democratic caucus meetings, you know, there's hugs and smiles and handshakes and back slapping. I think they feel that certainly that they dodged a bullet there, but also that they're maybe just beginning to break the MAGA craziness that's going on. You know, and of course, then you've got Kevin McCarthy,

who I guess he's more likely to be speaker than anybody else is, but he's got these five hard no votes right now. He's got a month to try to convince a hard no to be a squishy maybe, but there's said to be maybe 20 who aren't so keen on going along with his speakership. So he's basically going to spend the next month giving things away to them. He may well give away things that make it even more impossible to govern. You know, is there going to be this motion to vacate the chair, which basically means they've got a gun to his head. And at any point, any member can demand a vote of no confidence in Kevin McCarthy. And this week, we actually had a vote of no confidence in Kevin McCarthy, and it was cast by Kevin McCarthy because he's getting on

board with passing this omnibus, this massive spending bill now. So he doesn't have to do it in January. You would think if you were confident in your leadership, you'd want a short-term spending extension so you could enact the big spending bill in January when you take over. But Kevin McCarthy has no confidence in Kevin McCarthy's ability to get that through the House. And I think that's sound judgment on his part. I have no idea how he's going to govern the place. So Democrats are now in the minority. They have one task, and that is going to be votes to be elected speaker, right? That if they decide not to vote, if they don't show up or they abstain, he can win the speakership with a smaller number of votes. First of all, is that that's correct, right?

Yes, he needs a majority of those of the votes cast. Of the votes cast. But in terms of actually governing now, because there are a lot of quasi-centrist to the extent that we can describe anyone in the Republican Party as a centrist, there are at least a dozen or more newly elected Republicans from crossover districts that were won by Joe Biden that might not want to go along with the crazy caucus. And so he's going to have to find a way to square the circle. He's also going to have to find a way to square the circle. He's also going to have to find a way to make deals that might be compromises with the Biden administration. And you know that nothing outrages or stokes up the perpetual outrage machine more

than compromising with Democrats. And you know that Donald Trump, who's got no skin in the game, is just going to be throwing turd bombs from Mar-a-Lago at him any time he actually wants to make a deal. So how does it work? Absolutely. And one of the other rules that appears likely, certainly possible, and I would say likely that they're going to impose on McCarthy, is that he can't bring anything to the floor unless it has a majority of the caucus. And that's very significant, because think about what's happening with the rail bill. They had the vote in the House here yesterday, and Republicans got up on the floor and said, yes, it's terrible. It's a Biden failure that we're all here. But it would be absolutely catastrophic to have this rail strike, a loss of $2 billion a day to the country. So we've got to support this. And what happened? Well,

40% of the Republican caucus made that sensible vote. 60% of them said, no, we're going to vote against this. We would rather have an economic calamity than have any sort of a reasonable compromise right now. And I think that's probably a good proxy for what you're looking at. 40% of the Republican caucus, I wouldn't say they're moderate, but they're sort of in the reality-based community. 60%, not there at all, you know, willing to inflict economic calamity rather than do anything that might appear to be compromising or voting with or endorsing the Biden agenda. So, you know, how do you govern in that way? So, yeah, if you mentioned there are a few moderates and they can be just as much, you know, you only need five of

them, the way things look now, to throw the entire vote off kilter. So they can screw things up just as easily as the Freedom Caucus can do. You know, it just seems that when you only have four votes to play with and two thirds of your membership is kind of wackadoodle, I don't see how you govern in any situation. I don't see how you compromise with the Democrats. I don't see how you placate the mainstream Republicans and the Freedom Caucus. Even with a 20 or 30 seat majority, it was, you know, which is the sort of thing that Paul Ryan and John Boehner had, they couldn't handle it. Now, Kevin McCarthy, who I, you know, is a bearer of very little brain, I would say, compared to Boehner or Paul Ryan

dealing with a fraction of their majority. To get a little bit more specific, what happens with aid to Ukraine? Because I think that there's a strong bipartisan majority that would support aid for Ukraine. But with the Hastert rule, is Kevin McCarthy going to be able to get a majority of the caucus to move ahead on that? And even if he did that, what will Donald Trump say from Mar-a-Lago? I mean, all of these things seem to be, you know, unanswered questions, his ability to do that. So what is your sense on Ukraine? Yeah. I mean, obviously that's a life and death issue that they're going to have to confront very shortly. Now, you know, I mentioned the rail strike bill. Now, notably McCarthy and Scalise voted with the 60 percent of the crazy caucus that said, no, we'd rather have economic calamity than vote with the Democrats on this bill.

You know, Ukraine may be just on the other side of the line. So maybe a portion of the crazy caucus will side with the sensible caucus. You know, certainly Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise are on the side of not abandoning our allies in Ukraine and handing the place over to Vladimir Putin. But McCarthy has also said it's going to be difficult. So, I mean, I think the compromise he's working out now is, you know, all kinds of investigations of how the money is being spent in Ukraine. And when you look at the list of investigations that they're preparing to pursue, whether that's against Mayorkas at DHS or the eight different Hunter Biden investigations, investigating where the money is going in Ukraine actually is a perfectly sensible one. So it would surprise me, even in this broken

caucus, in this broken house that they're going to have, if they couldn't get support for Ukraine. But it'll probably be a much, like everything else, a much noisier process and a far lengthier one. And everything's going to be done in a state of suspense because you won't actually know what's going to happen until you get out there on the floor. And also with a very, very short leash, which was on display this week. We spent a lot of time on the podcast talking about Trump's dinner with Nick, dining with Nazis, and the fallout from that. So Mitch McConnell comes out yesterday or the day before, I've lost track of days now, and without prompting, rips Trump saying that he's not likely to be elected president again. Interestingly enough,

he said he's not likely to be elected. He did not say, and therefore should never be elected president again, but we take what we can get. He's a pundit too. You could have him on the Bulwark podcast. Well, exactly. That was more punditry than moral leadership, but there was a little bit of contrast between his approach and Kevin McCarthy. You talk about this. I mean, McCarthy has this incredibly complicated dance. He's got to do a kabuki dance on a tightrope here, right, with Donald Trump. It really is. And of course, you know, Kevin McCarthy is not quite as eloquent, shall we say, as McConnell. So, you know, you often he'll start a sentence and you have no idea what hurdles of syntax await him. So you'd have no

idea how the sentence will end. So even if he's trying to convey something, it may not come across that way. But yes, I think there was Tuesday when they both spoke out on this. So you had McConnell being, well, okay, it was punditry, but it was still fairly clear that he disapproved of Donald Trump meeting with these anti-Semites. McCarthy got up there outside the West Wing of the White House in front of the Camerons and said, Trump denounced these people, which was not true. Which was clearly not true. Right. Did he think it was true? I have no idea. But that was his sort of default position. It was that nobody should be meeting with these characters. And Trump definitely knows that and denounces them. So he was trying to say, okay, we are not on board with the leaders of our party

sitting down to white tablecloth meals with white supremacists, but he was just unable to show any daylight with Trump. So I think that's the difference that you've had from McConnell, who's not a profile in courage either, but is at least willing to take on the slings and arrows from Mar-a-Lago. So McCarthy clearly can't afford to do that now. Maybe he will after he gets his speakership. But if he's going to be on this, being able to have a no confidence vote at any point, well, then every day is basically his leadership is going to be on the line. They've floated some sorts of compromises, like they might give him a six or seven-month honeymoon before they all start the votes of no-confidence. And then if somebody calls for a vote of no-confidence, then they have to wait

60 days before calling the next one. But it's a question of, you know, is his hanging going to come every 24 hours or is it, are they going to, you know, give him brief respites in between? You know, going back to the theme of Republicans in disarray, you know, I, and I know you do as well, you know, spend some time on MAGA media or it's not MAGA media necessarily, but you know, MAGA adjacent media, conservative media. I'm really, really struck again by the amount of agita post-election that you're seeing there, despite winning control of the House and the disarray that you're seeing everywhere. The stories out of Georgia, when people are realizing this Herschel Walker campaign, amazingly, is not working out very well. He's not campaigning.

He's completely incoherent. We have more stories of girlfriends that he's attacking. He is being outspent overwhelmingly. That just didn't know that is not going well. Amazingly, you have a fight at the RNC with people saying Ronald McDaniel has been a complete disaster. We're going to give her another term.

And the only alternative to her, apparently, is my pillow guy, Mike Lindell. And it seems like one thing after another that is affecting them. And then there's one thing that I don't want to gloss over since you're up on Capitol Hill. How really, and I guess with a little bit of historical perspective, how amazing it was that you had a super majority vote in the United States Senate this week to approve a same-sex marriage bill. I mean, you and I both remember when that would have been politically toxic, but you had, was it 10 or was it 11 Republicans that voted in favor of this legislation? Most Republicans voted no, as you might expect.

Yeah, but I think it was 62 votes in favor. So that's a considerable number. In terms of real outrage in the right-wing media, because they have gone all in on the whole idea of, you know, gay marriage and transsexuals. This is a massive defeat for them. I mean, this is an extraordinary moment. It's an extraordinary moment for bipartisanship, and it's really a repudiation of much of what the MAGA right has been banking on as their golden ticket. So you have any thoughts about that? Because it's really quite a transformation of public opinion too. I agree with your larger point, although I would personally very much enjoy seeing my pillow guy

as the head of the RNC. I think that would be... From your lips to God's ear. That would be thoroughly fitting. I was able to get an exclusive interview with him at Trump's rollout at Mar-a-Lago. He's a very tight-lipped fellow, but he did say his agenda was melting down the voting machines and turning them into prison bars, I guess, for the election workers. I would have thought bullets, but prison bars. He didn't specify that. That part of the agenda was left unclear. But you are right. It's not just the election, you know, the smaller wave than expected in the House, the fact that the

Democrats kept the Senate. I think it was because of the very clear repudiation of the MAGA republicanism when you look at particularly all the secretary of state candidates that went down and the gubernatorial candidates who went down, like in Arizona and in Pennsylvania. So it wasn't just that it didn't work out very well for the Republicans. It showed that the horse they've been riding for the last six years is, you know, it may be time to head off to the glue maker. That, I think, is the source of the disarray right now. And I think that is why you're actually able to see some progress here. You know, we talked about gay marriage, you know, progress on a spending bill, maybe progress on this rail strike. You know, a whole about gay marriage, you know, progress on a spending bill, maybe progress on this rail strike.

You know, a whole bunch of other things are happening. So I think the will has been broken to some extent of the MAGA crowd. Now, I don't take this as altogether good news that they may not be able to prevail anymore. But Donald Trump and those Trumpists have more than enough power to bollocks everything go away. He is not going to concede that Donald Trump will burn it all down if he cannot control the party. And I guess this is the one thing that I think that a lot of both pundits and Republican wish casters have yet really to grapple with, which is how do you what do you do with a problem like Donald Trump? He's, he's in the race. He never acknowledges defeat. Ron DeSantis may be the great hope down in Florida. We can get to him

in a moment, but you know, what is your take on this? I mean, how does the Republican party move past Donald Trump? If Donald Trump has made it perfectly clear that he will pull the temple down around it, that he will burn everything down. And he's uniquely good at that, Charlie. I mean, if you think about it, like, look at the wreckage around this man, of all the people who have supported him, who have wound up in prison, or disgraced, or defeated, or some combination of those things. And in each case, you see who walks away from the wreckage is Donald Trump. Character assassination is his unique gift. Look,

DeSantis may be able to prevail against him in a Republican presidential nomination battle, but Trump's ability to destroy the reputation and the image of people is really second to none. And so I think we have only begun to see a little bit, you know, Trump is sort of debuting lines of attack. So I think that is true. And that has to be kept in mind that he has the ability to destroy. I have no idea what Republicans do about this. There were, you know, they had years in which, as you know, that they could have done something about it. But I don't think, you know, suppose he doesn't command 80 or 90 percent of the base, but only half of the base. Well, that's still enough to

cause mayhem every which way. And he has no loyalty other than to Donald Trump. So there's no moral or political imperative to not to do that. You know, all the focus is on what a big winner Ron DeSantis was down in Florida, which is true. But also, I think it's an underappreciated story that Brian Kemp in Georgia defied Donald Trump very, very directly and was excommunicated by Donald Trump, who supported a primary opponent to him. Brian Kemp blew the Trump backed opponent out in the primary and then won handily in the general election. So if you're looking for a Republican that can survive Trumpism, Brian Kemp has actually, of all of these guys that are out there, has actually is the one guy that has done it, hasn't he? You can defy Trump and survive.

And he proved that. Yes. And Brian Kemp will have another data point after the special election. Does Herschel Walker go down in flames without Kemp on the ticket with him? You know, that's actually a laboratory experiment of what was bringing out voters and who wasn't bringing out voters. So we'll have the answers to that very shortly. But also in Florida, I mean, let's be clear, the Democrats really didn't contest Florida. They had candidates, they had serious candidates on the ballot, but they really weren't

working. They weren't pouring money in there. The party or Democratic donors, they weren't doing get out the vote efforts. They weren't working with Latino voters because of the assumption of defeat. I think that was a mistake, but Florida was very much not in play. So I think that artificially magnifies the size of DeSantis' win there. Well, DeSantis is, he's not necessarily the front runner, but he's sort of the pundit's front runner. And now he's getting the front runner treatment. I don't know whether you've had a chance to read Mark Leibovich's treatment of him in The Atlantic.

I started. It's a great read, basically saying, you know, maybe from a distance, he looks really formidable, but up close and personal, maybe not so much. And I guess this is one of those moments where you have to remember all of the other guys that were trotted out as front runners, as, you know, great hopes who then fizzled in the presidential spotlight. And we just, we, Ron DeSantis has just not been remotely tested yet, has he? Yeah, this is true. And I mean, probably the best thing for Ron DeSantis,

it would be if it's a Ron DeSantis versus Donald Trump nomination fight, because, you know, the reason we had Donald Trump in 2016 was because there were, I don't know, 15 or 18 of them. But, and there were, there were several serious ones, but none of them was able to get a clean shot at Trump. He was able to pick them off one at a time. Whereas if, I'm still convinced if Republican voters had been given the choice between Donald Trump or not Donald Trump, they would have chosen that. But I don't think they ever had that choice because it was carved up among so many others. So, and, you know, that could easily happen again. Anybody who's saying Donald Trump cannot win the Republican nomination,

I think is being a bit too hopeful. Of course he can. Yeah, of course he can. Okay, let's go back to the House Republicans. Since you were up on Capitol Hill, you wrote about the, you described the House under the GOP as the crazies take the wheel. And in particular, this this this press conference, this announcement by Jim Jordan and James Comer from Kentucky announcing all of their multiple probes into the not to focus on Hunter Biden until we get some evidence that, in fact, it's relevant to anything.

But it seems hard to overstate the absolute obsession of House Republicans with Hunter Biden. Where is this going? And can it actually do damage to Joe Biden? Or are Republicans just going to be clown themselves? I think your last question answers itself, Charlie, based on history. But, you know, so that, you know, Comer was kind of revealing as he talked about this, because he said several times, this is about Joe Biden. You know, he's the big guy, apparently, you know, according to something on the Hunter Biden laptop.

They tried to draw that link, and it was because, I don't know, Hunter asked for office space for Joe Biden or various other glancing references like that. But then he sort of gave the game away when reporters started asking questions about other topics, January 6th, other things of interest. And Comer says, can we please get back to Hunter Biden? Hunter Biden, it's very important. And I said, wait a second, you were just saying this is not about Hunter, it was about Joe Biden. So yeah, I mean, I suppose, look, Joe Biden has many flaws, and the flaws will be apparent for all to see, assuming he's running for reelection.

But corruption is really not chief among them. So, look, if the Justice Department, more likely them than the clownish House Republicans, find some link, well, we'll all be surprised by that. But, you know, it's sort of, you know, I think we can stipulate that Hunter Biden, whatever the legal ramifications are, is a pretty sleazy guy, had troubles with addiction, got into all kinds of bad stuff. We know that. It is baked into the cake. So it all comes down to the ability to prove somehow that Joe Biden was calling all the shots here, which is sort of goes against everything that we've heard and seen over the years. So, I mean, you know, so that's, you know, they figured, look, that's what they

have at the moment. You know, it was Benghazi against Hillary Clinton until it turned the Benghazi probe unmasked the email server. So, you know, it's a question of this is what they've got for now and they'll see what they, see what documents are turned over and see what else, what other direction that might send. No, I think it's, it's, it's worth remembering that the Benghazi hearings ultimately did torpedo Hillary Clinton. They did not for Benghazi. Right. No, no, but they, yeah, exactly. Because of other things. I mean, so that did have that effect. And I think that's part of their memory. So there's another wild card here. And I don't know how this is going to play. You know, before the election, we had the Hunter Biden laptop story, which most of most of the media decided was not a legitimate story.

It was a bogus story, ignored it. It now turns out not to have been a bogus story. So will there be the temptation on the part of the media now to overcompensate, you know, having not thrown the flag on the original laptop story to overhype anything that comes out about Hunter Biden now as kind of a make good? I suppose there may be some of that, but, you know, look, and the Post did an exhaustive look at the laptop. You know, were people misled by the FBI and others, as the Republicans claim, before the election about the legitimacy of the laptop? I don't know. There certainly were many doubts about the authenticity of it back then. But so, OK, the Post and others have done a re-look at the laptop, knowing that it is maybe not everything involved in this is legitimate, but it is at core legitimate. There still is no Joe Biden evidence in there.

What Jim Jordan's talking about now is not really the laptop, but whistleblowers. We have whistleblowers. We have 18 whistleblowers, apparently. So, okay, well, if they've indeed got whistles and goods, well, I guess we'll be hearing from them. But if they're blowing silly kazoos, I suppose we're going to hear about that too. Let's look ahead a little bit. One of the next big things is going to happen in Congress. Of course, they have a very, very busy lame duck session here. But sometime in the next four weeks, maybe the next three weeks, we're going to get the we'll get the final report from the January 6th committee. What do you expect from that? And will that make any difference? I mean, that's the question we've been asking since the beginning. And I also wonder whether or not the conviction of the Oathkeeper leaders on seditious conspiracy charges puts a little wind in their sails at the moment. What do you think? Look, I think regardless of the committee, that the Stuart Rhodes conviction, I think, is hugely important. And of course, the MAGA crowd will say, you know, attack the jury process and say that it's tainted because it's in the nation's capital. But, you know, this is real. January 6th was sedition. That is official. That's no longer, if it ever was, a judgment call. So

I think that's hugely important in its own right. The January 6th committee did, I think, Yeoman's work over the summer with their hearings. There will be another bite at the apple here. I don't expect, certainly based on what we saw at the last hearing, that they necessarily have anything new other than a narrative that will be important to have out there for posterity. Now, maybe they could work out something't think, could they work out something with ways and means and just throw in an appendix there and here are six years of Trump's tax returns. Okay. What do, yeah, I mean, are we ever going to see those tax returns? And if we did, I mean, hasn't that really been baked into the cake? Don't we kind of know what the deal is there? Right. It would be like, we are shocked that Hunter Biden was involved in sleazy shenanigans. Right. I think the only shock would be if they'd release him and we found out that he'd actually given a fortune to veterans charities or something like that. That would fundamentally change our view of him.

No, I mean, look, who knows? Maybe they'll figure out some way. I think it probably would not look good for them to just dump the taxes out there right now since they've spent years in court arguing that it was for a legislative purpose. You know, and the Roberts Court did, you know, they can technically say they forced the executive to give that up. So it'll be a precedent for future Congresses, but it's of very little use to them now in terms of legislation. You know, so I think it would be gutsy to put it out right now and controversial, but I've given up on predictions. I've surrendered my prediction. I think that's a sound life choice. So I don't want to dwell on the whole Nick Fuente's dinner because I think that we've litigated that pretty extensively and we'll

continue to do so. But you take a step back and I noticed that back in October, before any of this happened, you wrote about American Jews starting to think the unthinkable. And I guess the point here is that anti-Semitism has now, I want to be careful about this. You know, it's always been a factor. It's always been there. But, you know, as I was discussing with Peter Wehner earlier this, this week, I just get the feeling that it's gotten more oxygen and is more dangerous than any time in my lifetime. That something that we thought, you know, was this, you know, sleeping evil has now arisen again. And it's getting a lot more traction than any of us ever would have imagined and maybe

even realized at the moment. So talk to me about this, why you wrote about this back in October. Yeah, it's a very important and troubling thing. I mean, for me as a Jew, but, you know, for all of us, I mean, Jews are often the canary in the coal mine in terms of an intolerant society. Yeah, my rabbi at Yom Kippur services just asked for a show of hands of how many of you have thought about where do we go if we can't stay here. And I'm one of the people who have had those thoughts. Ultimately, I come back to the reasoning that if it's not safe here, it's not going to be safe anywhere. It's not going to be safe in Israel or Europe or anywhere else. You know, this is where a liberal democracy of free people have to make their stand for law

and order, for equal justice. And if it fails here, certainly we can't count on it anywhere else. But, you know, I would say, you know, half or more of the people were raising their hands in my synagogue. And I talked to Jonathan Greenblatt at the Anti-Defamation League, and he says it's among the most common questions he's getting. And this is something that we would never contemplate. It is certainly in my lifetime. Anti-Semitic incidents, as the ADL counts them, I think it was a tripling since 2015 when Trump came down the escalator, and it remains at record high levels. And it's important to point out, this is not just Nick Fuentes and the right. It's the BDS movement that often bleeds into anti-Semitism on the left,

particularly on college campuses. That's been a problem too. But I think we've seen what Trump did here was just the latest example of this, but it's been happening since Charlottesville and, you know, the many anti-Semitic actions of Donald Trump in the years before them. So people have been scolding Republicans or scolding Trump for this. To me, it goes beyond politics. And what's happening is these people have been pulled into the mainstream. It has been legitimized. So now we're talking about Holocaust denial, as if this deserves a place in any American discussion. So they have been emboldened. They've emboldened the Daily Stormer and neo-Nazis, just as they've emboldened QAnon and Proud Boys and Stuart Rhodes and all the rest of them. And this happened before the 2016 election. I mean, there was a lot of discussion about that during that campaign. And some of the people that have become the anti anti Trumpers were raising alarms about Donald Trump's wink wink alliance with some of subtle at first. It was the retweeting of people. It was the use of, remember there was that questionable use of Jewish star atop a pile of money. Was that an accident? George Soros and other financiers, globalists, you know, so they were anti-Semitic overtones.

There was Trump going before a Jewish audience and saying, you won't support me because I don't want your money. You know, his response, you know, is, yeah, I've got a, you know, a Jewish daughter and grandchildren, and no doubt some of his best friends are black, which explained nothing. So, you know, we've seen that over and over again. You know, people like Richard Spencer was saying in 2016, we have a psychic connection with Donald Trump. They were saying, you know, he completes us. And this is before Charlottesville. So, you know, I think the anti-Semitism, you know, maybe compared to the anti-immigrant stuff, the pure racism directed at Latinos, Asians, Black Americans, that was less subtle. But, you know, I think it's now inevitably, you know, it's not just sort of this undertone. It's now the melody of MAGA Republicanism. I think that's right. And also the mainstream of conspiracy theories and conspiratorial thinking, because that always seems to end up with the Jews behind it. And, you know, even though Nick Fuentes is clear, you know, sort of a neo-Nazi, he's the exclamation

point on that story. The real, I think, problem is the fact that Trump actually did want to have dinner with Kanye West, who is an amazingly famous, wealthy, successful pop culture figure who has been trafficking in vile anti-Semitism. And as a result, you know, I often think of anti-Semitism as being the recessive gene out there, you know, that's always been out there. But, you know, we're able to safely keep it at arm's length or suppress it. But what's happening now, I fear, is that it's being introduced to a whole new generation in a whole new ways that you have millions of people that have now been drawn into this conspiracy mindset who are now being exposed to people saying, and you know who's behind it so that you have social media platforms, you have younger voices, you have pop culture voices that are now introducing this ancient evil to a completely new set of people. And so that it's not just the revival of what,

you know, has been there all along. It does feel like it's metastasizing in a way that we don't fully, I don't think that we fully grasp the extent of it or the danger, even after we've seen this dramatic uptick in anti-Jewish violence. Yes. And the other piece of that is we are losing our living historical memory of the Holocaust. That is almost gone already. It's not being taught. Alarming numbers of young people are really not clear about what that was all about. So, you know, it's sort of a virgin territory that the conspiracy theorists are clear to conquer. But it's perhaps no different from what we're hearing about every other racial, religious, ethnic minority in America. But of course, there are centuries and centuries of practice at this. And it is sort of, I mean, it sounds ludicrous to talk about

Jewish space lasers and other things that sound like the protocols of the elders of Zion. So, and I think, you know, I have a tendency to say, oh, come on, how can people possibly believe that? But of course, now that we know exactly what people can possibly believe about ivermectin and voting machines. That's a great point. Why wouldn't they believe that? We are living through in real time a demonstration of what people are capable of believing. So that's a great point. We are living through in real time, a demonstration of what people are capable of believing. So when someone says, or you're being paranoid, if you think X, Y, and Z, look, I I'm listening to a lot of the conservatives who are pushing back on criticism of, you know, Marjorie Taylor green by saying, well, what about Elon Omar?

The what about ism? But, um, the, the reality is, is that Marjorie Taylor Greene is not only not going to pay a political price for, you know, her speculation about Jewish space lasers, she is about to become far more influential and powerful in this House Republican majority. She will get all of her committees back, won't she? They are going to be promoting her. Yes. And Kevin McCarthy is using her to whip votes for him. I mean, you know, she's becoming a key lieutenant to leadership. And I think that, you know, the lesson is to any other, you know, aspiring politicians out there that you can't go too far in terms of conspiracy and crazy assertions that will generate attention, will get you onto Fox News, and that it will be your source of power.

I know that you need to run to Nancy Pelosi's press conference. So thank you for making time for us, and we'll look for your reporting on it. Thanks so much. Thank you, Charlie. It's been a pleasure. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We'll be back tomorrow, and we will do this all over again. Thanks so much. Thank you, Charlie. It's been a pleasure. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We'll be back tomorrow and we will do this all over again.