The Bulwark Podcast - David French and Bill Kristol: The Age Thing

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

The special counsel's report on Biden's docs—and a gaffe about Mexico—have placed Joe's age and memory front and center in the campaign. Plus, SCOTUS's potential undermining of part of the 14th Amendment, and Charlie Sykes signs off with the very first guest of the pod. David French and Bill Kristol join Charlie.

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charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit Better Charlie Sykes. Let me tell you about today's show. This is my last Bulwark Podcast, but we're going to go out the way we came in. We're going to be joined by David French from the New York Times, longtime friend of the podcast, to talk about the Supreme Court decision yesterday. But I wanted to start off by kind of bookending the podcast because I remember a cold, dark day in December 2018 when Bill Kristol and I sat down and did the very first Bulwark podcast. In fact, we did the Bulwark podcast before it was the Bulwark Podcast. This is the way it sounded. Good morning. I'm Charlie Sykes, and welcome to what is eventually going to

be the Bulwark Podcast, and we're going to be launching it after the holidays. But Bill Christel and I thought that, well, we have some things to talk about today. So here's a special pre-Christmas edition. You can sort of think of it as a sample. So, Bill, here we are. Good to be here with you, Charlie, and I'm looking forward to when we pick up in the new year doing this regularly. Yeah, well, we figured it's the winter solstice. What else are we going to do? It's the darkest day of the year. How appropriate is that?

How appropriate is it that it's still kind of one of the darkest days of the year? Bill, welcome back on the podcast. My first Bulwark podcast, my last Bulwark podcast with you. It's great to be with you and an honor to be both on the first and the last. It was, just so people understand, that was the Monday, I believe, December 21st. The Weekly Standard had been murdered on Friday before you would come to town for that event. We had an whole staff meeting there. And then we just thought, you know what? The bulwark had been, we'd started a couple months

before in a very bare bones skeleton thing. We thought, you know what, let's see if there is a market for contrarians. You called yourself at the time a contrarian conservative, a never Trump, ex-Republican kind of Republican or ex-Republican type of enterprise. But we were very uncertain, weren't we, that this thing would actually go anywhere. We did it because we were sitting there in Sarah Longwell's conference room. We thought, well, why not, right? We have audio equipment to do a bare bones podcast. But it's really amazing what you've done over the last, God, how long is it? Five plus years? I mean. And you think about what the bulwark has become. You and I were sitting there, it was just a few days after the murder of the weekly standard. And it was still

kind of stunning that that had happened. And originally, it was like, hey, you know, how do you keep the band together? And so I think the original plan was maybe, you know, hang on for for three months, you know, Sarah was trying to pull together the money, and here we are in 2024. So it has been a wild and very, very interesting ride, Bill. It has been. And there we were in 2019, the end of 2018. Looked like Trump was in charge of the Republican Party. Looked like he'd be the nominee again.

Looked like the Republicans on the Hill were going south. Looked like the country was being increasingly deluged with authoritarian, you know, BS and having its institutions undermined right and left. And things have really changed a lot in the last five plus years. Right, Charlie? Yeah, I know. That's the funny thing. I was listening to more of it.

And we were talking about, you know, the firehose news and all the things that were going on that particular week and why we, why you and I had to do kind of an emergency early podcast. And it's like, okay, fast forward five years, six years. And it, you know, every week has been that way. So by the way, I just want people to know that starting Monday, Morning Shots is going to be taken over by you and Andrew Ager, who was also one of the original Bulwark guys, has been working at the Dispatch, coming back home to the Bulwark. So congratulations on having to get up at five o'clock every morning, Bill, and turning out a newsletter. I'm looking forward to doing it, at least for this year. And I'm looking forward to Andrew doing the bulk of

work that you did. The two of us together will hopefully be able to somewhat make up for your, compared to what you did individually. I mean, both the assembling of all the links that were so useful and so, you know, important to be able to see every morning, plus the actual, you know, interesting, perceptive, witty commentary on it. So we will do our best together to fill your shoes. I think it's going to be well worth it. And so people, make sure you watch your inbox on Monday morning for Bill and Andrew. And I have to say that looking back on the five years or so that I've been doing the daily stuff,

I don't think there was a single morning when I got up and I thought, geez, there's nothing to write about today. And certainly that's not going to be the case in 2024. And of course, on Monday, this podcast will continue, of course, and Tim Miller will be taking over as the host of that. So make sure that you listen in. I'm sure that Tim's going to do a great job. But since I have you here, Bill, would you like to do a little bit of rank punditry? That's what we do, Charlie. You know, that's like asking, I don't know, what's the right metaphor for this? Asking a gorilla if you'd like a banana or something, right? You know? Well, that wouldn't be the analogy that I was going to go for.

But OK. So, you know, there's been so much that's happened this week. Actually, you know, Friday podcasts are always interesting to do because you go, was that this week? It seems so long ago. I mean, when you had the Mayorkas impeachment, you know, earlier in the week, the D.C. Court of Appeals comes down with this immunity ruling. Then you have this gigantic argument in front of the US Supreme Court about the 14th Amendment.

And here we are on Friday and all of that has happened. And then we also had that special counsel report. So I want to ask you about that because it's one of those things that people may not want to talk about it, but it's out there. This special counsel named her, a Republican, a Trump appointee, decides he's not going to charge Joe Biden with any crime for having the documents, but that's not what people are really talking about. They're talking about the language in that report that calls into question whether Joe Biden is there and he's got a memory. I think the Biden White House gets how potentially damaging this is because Biden was, he was pissed. He comes out last night,

has a press conference, and here's a little bit of his reaction to this. The special counsel acknowledged I cooperated completely. I did not throw up any roadblocks. I sought no delays. In fact, I was so determined to give the special counsel what he needed, I went forward with a five-hour in-person interview over two days on October the 8th and 9th of last year, even though Israel had just been attacked by Hamas on the 7th, and I was very occupied. It was in the middle of handling an international crisis. I was especially pleased to see special counsel make clear the stark distinction and difference between this case and Mr. Trump's case.

Special counsel wrote, and I quote, several material distinctions between Mr. Trump's case and Mr. Biden's are clear, continuing to quote, most notably, after giving multiple chances to return classified documents to avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, we want to say Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations, including his home, sat for a voluntary interview,

and in other ways cooperated with the investigation, end of quote. Okay, but here's the part where he's clearly ticked off, because having gone through all of that, then he has to address the language about him being a little shaky in his memory. In addition, I know there's some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There's even reference that I don't remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business. All right, Bill, what's your take? How much damage has this done to Joe Biden and how is he handling it? I mean, I would say that, first of all, I've been concerned about this for quite a while.

You have too, I think. Then maybe I was even more on the extreme side of concern. And James Carville and others have really worried about this, that he is old. The individual laughs at memory I don't think are decisive. You can get a country's name wrong, or we all make... Those are really slip-ups, obviously. They're not affecting governing. They're not even affecting communications that much. He corrects them typically pretty quickly. It's more that he's 81, he'll be 82 if re-elected. That would imply he's president until he's 86. As James Carver put it, you don't get better in those years. Hopefully, you stabilize and you're

just fine, but that's a hope. I saw a clip of him in 2021 early in his presidency the other day. He was pretty different, I've got to say. That doesn't mean that he's not capable of being a perfectly good president. It's just he was different. There's clear aging and there's going to be aging. I mean, that's the trouble with it. Right. And I think people and that's why the polls showed that two thirds of Americans, maybe 70 percent and a majority of Democrats a year ago did not want him to run for re-election and thought he could well be too old for a second term. So for me, that's really the key. The special counsel's report obviously has brought it back to the forefront. I think we'll have a little bit of silly debate about memory for a day or two, and then it still is what it is. And I was always on the side of let's have a vigorous, let's have a one-term successful presidency. He did what he

did, transitional figure. I have a lively primary, probably would turn out okay, I think, and have a next generation Democratic candidate. I suppose it's too late for that, though. I don't know. You can imagine jiggering primaries and writing candidates, but I remain very worried about it, just as a matter of electability, and secondarily, as a matter of what an actual second term would look like in terms of his governance. And thirdly, the fact that his vice president is not, you know, just fairly or unfairly isn't terribly well thought of or terribly popular people don't have great confidence i mean yeah you and i are only to remember this you know he had some real problems he kind of lost track of things in that

one debate remember that and and he was a young pup back then though a he was 73 if i'm not mistaken yeah so eight years younger than biden and George H.W. Bush was vice president. And people didn't love Bush at the time. And he was, you know what? But you know what? No one was worried, right? Bush, George Shultz, Jim Baker. You know, if Reagan failed a little bit, they were there.

And so it would be fine. I don't feel like the Biden team, people don't have that kind of confidence. So more rests on him. And he is 81 years old. Well, and the language that was used in this, and again, there's a lot of controversy about whether or not the special counsel gratuitously threw it in, you know, was it necessary, you know, to write, Mr. Biden's memory was significantly limited, limited precision and recall, that Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. And then he goes on,

in his interview with our office, Mr. Biden's memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended. If it was 2013, when did I stop being vice president? Forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began. He did not remember even within several years when his son Beau died. Probably unnecessary, but the damage is real, and you have that sense. And I guess if anybody thought that this was not going to be front and center, just look at the way this has become a major talking point on the right. Well, and your point about the sudden remarks by the president in press conference at 745, whatever it was last night, they don't do that very often.

They haven't done it very often. I don't think he's had a press conference of that sort in four or five months, maybe. So that shows the White House was really alarmed. I mean, they could easily have taken the view, maybe they should have, that, okay, look, it's a hit. It's a print story, if I can use an old-fashioned term. There's no audio or video on it. There's a report from her. And we're just going to say this is gratuitous and inaccurate and roll out six people who've been in meetings with Biden recently and say it's totally fine. And that's that. Instead, they were worried enough, or he was personally maybe worried and angry enough. He insisted on doing this thing that I think was not wise. I mean, he didn't look great. Leave aside the slip up about Egypt and Mexico. And it just is,

it elevates it. I mean, how can you not cover the next, as Biden supporters say, well, why is the press obsessing about this? The president of the United States had a specially called announcement at a press conference at 7.45 p.m. on a weekend on Thursday night. You can't really blame the media for spending the next day talking about it. Well, I know the headlines are, you know, Biden angrily responds. Well, I'm going to be very interested in following all of your takes, as I have been for many, many years now. Congratulations to you and to Andrew. I've tried to keep the chair warm for you and for Tim on the podcast. And it has been a great run, Bill. And, you know, we're still going to be in the fight together.

So I appreciate it all. Totally. And congratulations to you. And we will be in the fight. And I'll see you in a couple of weeks here for that conference. You're on that panel at the... Absolutely.

I will see you then. Principals first. Principals first. Principals first. So that's a good group. And that's a little bit of an offspring, you might say, of what we were trying to do, too.

Very much so. So I feel good about the fact that we have the bulwark, but also other institutions that have grown up in this space. And so it gives us a little bit of hope occasionally for the country, right? All right. Bill Kristol, thank you so much for joining me again on the podcast, My First and My Last. Thanks, Charlie. Coming up, David French from The New York Times. 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. Well, because this is my last Bulwark podcast as the host, we want to end on a high note. And how much higher can we get than going to our good friend, David French, New York Times columnist, longtime friend of the podcast. David, good to talk with you today. Charlie, I cannot tell you how honored I am that I'm your last guest. I'm seriously touched, Charlie. I'm serious. I'm very honored to be here. Thank you. Well, we have a lot to talk about. We have a lot of ground to cover today. I was just talking to Bill about the whole Joe Biden special counsel age thing. And I'm going to get to that in a

moment. But first, let's just talk a little bit about what happened in the Supreme Court yesterday, rather extraordinary hearing. I know that you have been arguing that, in fact, the 14th Amendment should be used to disqualify Donald Trump from running, but it seemed pretty obvious. I think the consensus is that that is not going to be the decision of the court. In fact, the court might actually rule unanimously against the disqualification or maybe 8-1. So I'm interested to get your take on this, the way the court is handling it and the decision that seems inevitable now. I think it's going to be a grave mistake, Charlie. I'm not going to sit here and be one of these folks who says, well, the Supreme Court's illegitimate or it's not operating in good faith or anything like that. Courts make decisions that I disagree with all the time. But I disagree with this. And I think it's a very

profound mistake. And honestly, Charlie, I think I'm going to write this when the actual opinion comes down, if it comes down as we expect, it could be a mistake more consequential in some ways than the failure to convict Trump after January 6th. And the reason is that the actual effect of the decision will be very much the same as the effect of acquitting him from the impeachment charge, which the effect will be to allow him to be president again. So it's a very similar effect in one sense, but here's the way it would be worse. It would set a legal precedent that undermines the force and effect of section three of the 14th amendment going forward. So an impeachment decision doesn't have precedential effect in the way a court decision has. Impeachment's a political process.

They can choose to follow precedent or not follow precedent. And sure, the Supreme Court obviously has demonstrated that it will reject precedent, but it also tends to follow it. That's the general tendency of the Supreme Court is it tends to follow it. And certainly the lower courts are bound to follow it. And so my real concern is that the Supreme Court is going to issue a decision here that doesn't just grant Trump access to the presidency again, but also creates a precedent undermining Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which I think of as a sort of a fundamental,

basic safeguard that any nation should uphold against insurrectionists and those who would attack its own system violently. So I'm very concerned about it. Okay. But it obviously matters greatly what grounds the court uses to keep Trump on the ballot. I could certainly imagine very, very narrow grounds that they could do that would not create a really negative precedent? What do you think? Here's the trouble, Charlie. On the grounds that I think they're going to go, it's not that narrow. So I think essentially what you were looking at and what you were seeing broadcast in the actual oral argument was they were leaning towards some sort of rule that is essentially saying

the states just can't do this, that there's going to have to be some sort of rule that is essentially saying the states just can't do this, that there's going to have to be some sort of congressional action. And that would essentially eviscerate the amendment. Right. Because if you're going to say you need to have some congressional action to make this amendment enforceable, and there's no congressional action making the amendment enforceable, then does the amendment, is it a dead letter in many ways? And then here's the other thing, Charlie, that I have not seen people focus in on because one of the key arguments here was only

Congress can do this, that this is not something that the Secretary of State can do. Well, when does Congress have an opportunity other other than passing legislation, to weigh in on qualifications for the presidency? At events like January 6th. So is this empowering in a weird way with this decision? And again, it's speculation based on the oral argument. That is always dangerous. But if you go the direction the oral arguments seem to

be going, the argument would be, well, this is all Congress, which renders it a dead letter in the absence of legislation or Congress sitting to judge qualifications. And when does it do that? When it's counting electoral college votes. And so there has been electoral college act reform, but qualifications for the presidency are still qualifications for the presidency. And so, Charlie, I am very concerned that what we're going to deal with here is a decision that would feel stabilizing in the moment to a lot of people, but could be ultimately more destabilizing. Well, and as you pointed out, nobody at the court even disputed that Trump was an insurrectionist.

So we're not going to see a court decision that says, yes, the 14th Amendment applies, but it doesn't apply to Donald Trump because he is not an insurrectionist. That was not really at issue at all in the arguments yesterday. No, not really at all in the arguments and that was quite telling in fact because going into the arguments i i was asked about this by a number of folks and i said you're going to know where they're leaning based on the subject of the questions if they're really leaning in on did he engage in an insurrection or did he provide aid or comfort to enemies of the constitution if they're really leaning in on that that means means they're really leaning on, hey, maybe this guy needs to be disqualified.

If they're leaning in on why did Colorado do this or what kind of due process should occur before this happens, then they're really looking at a way out of this that is related to process without adjudicating the substance. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so there's so much stuff that's been going on this week in Congress. We had a vote yesterday in the Senate where they finally voted aid to Ukraine. We don't know what's going to happen in the House. It's one of those, you know, glass half full things. You know, some people were saying, well, 17 Republicans joined with Democrats in voting for Ukraine. My reaction, I don't know what yours was, but like only 17. This is what the Republican party has become. And when I come back to that, I thought it was just extraordinary that you had

Tucker Carlson in Moscow interviewing Vladimir Putin yesterday, this sort of, you know, kiss fest. We have a little bit of soundbite for this. I don't know how much of it you caught. I mean, it's not riveting television. I mean, trust me on all this, you know, especially watching Vladimir Putin just roll over and talk over Tucker and Tucker taking it. I mean, it was, yeah, it was a self-owned for the ages. But here's just a little clip of Tucker Carlson. With the backing of CIA, of course, The organization you wanted to join back in the day, as I understand. We should thank God they didn't let you in. Although, it is a serious organization.

I understand. Okay, so... Wow. It went like that a lot. So, here's a video clip on what used to be known as Twitter by Ron Filipkowski. He said, this is a hilarious shit show. Putin is now 28 minutes into his history lesson. This is the third time Tucker tries to interrupt.

And Putin mocks Tucker for just being an entertainer and not a serious journalist. Tucker tries to fake laugh it off while Putin emasculates him. Chef's kiss. Yeah. A great moment. Yeah. Putin is exculates him. Chef's kiss. Yeah. Just a great moment. Yeah. Putin is exerting dominance here. Putin's exerting dominance over Tucker Carlson.

And the thing is, Charlie, it won't really matter the Tuckerites. It just won't matter. I mean, look, if advancing testicle tanning did not undermine this guy standing with his core fans, then a little light humiliation by Vladimir Putin isn't going to do the trick. Okay, but this raises the larger question, though, and you wrote about this. Why MAGA loves Russia and hates Ukraine? We've seen it develop

in real time. For some of us with a little bit of historical perspective, it is still stunning and amazing. So give me your take. Why has the right decided they love Vladimir Putin and hate Vladimir Zelensky and Ukraine? What is this about, David? Help me get my head there. This is a fascinating issue. So let me just take one segment of people and put them to one side. There is a segment of people who are what you would call traditional paleo conservatives on the right, who they don't like foreign aid. They don't like foreign military entanglements. I'm not talking about those guys. Those guys have had an argument about foreign policy in America for a long time. What I'm talking about is the pop culture right, the pop culture right that has

this- The entertainment wing, yeah. Yes, that has this visceral reaction against Ukraine. Candace Owens saying she wants to punch him. I mean, people saying he dresses like, was it Tucker Carlson who said, dresses like a strip club manager, or Donald Trump Jr. hurling these vicious personal insults. Where does that come from? Where does all of that angst and anger? Good question. And when you dive into the MAGA lore here, Charlie, it's sort of like there's the Marvel extended universe and the DC extended universe. Well, there's a MAGA extended universe. And when you dive into the MAGA extended universe, you realize there are people on the right who live in an upside down reality. And in this upside down reality, they believe that Ukraine interfered

in the 2016 election and sort of engineered the whole thing to blame it on Russia. So remember first impeachment, Donald Trump talked about this CrowdStrike server that he was looking for. I remember this. It's a batshit crazy conspiracy theory. I mean, this is in the category of the Italian space satellites changing votes. And I remember that. You're saying that the tale of that has gotten us where we are today? It's one piece of it. Oh, man.

It's one piece of it. So the tale of it is that's the hostility towards Ukraine. And then at the same time, going all the way back until years before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there were a number of people on the right who said, essentially, Putin is the Christian leader against secular wokeness in the West. And there's all kinds of commentary out there like that, or that even if, hey, I don't love Vladimir Putin, but he's making the right case against the West. After the invasion, even after the brutality, you know, Jordan Peterson was talking about, is the culture war in the West so threatening to Vladimir Putin that he would think he would need to invade a neighboring country to keep it at bay. So Vladimir Putin as defender of Christian civilization against the woke West, and then you lay on top of that, Charlie, this whole weird masculinity thing on the right. And I don't know if you remember this, but right before the invasion, you had people on the right, including Ted Cruz, sharing these videos.

Oh, I do. Yeah, online about, look at this Russian military recruitment ad versus this American military recruitment ad. We're woke and emasculated. Look how tough they are. And so they had this narrative that the toughness of Russia was clearly superior to the weakness of the West. And then Russia invades and it stopped cold, just stopped cold. And the, quote, weak, woke West actually turns out to have a lot of courage and resolve. And so it disrupts this whole narrative about the West that was emerging on the right. So you have Ukraine as a villain.

Vladimir Putin is a, in some ways, admirable figure taking on the weak, woke West, and then the whole war not going according to the script that they is turning over in his grave. The man's probably trying to lurch out of his tomb and come after the GOP saying, what are you doing? Well, this is also this pattern that we've been discussing at some length where initially after the invasion, the pro-Russian faction was relatively small in the Republican Party, and it looked like maybe the center would hold. And as we see as we're speaking today, it looks like there's a real possibility that this country could abandon Ukraine because of Republican elected officials. It's remarkable. Who are just not sent the way it has infected. So, you know, looking back on this, and again,

we don't have, I'm asking you to speculate a little bit because, you know, from the very beginning, there's been this question, what is going on between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin? You know, on the right, it's the Russia hoax, you know, like nothing to see here. And yet, you know, Donald Trump is not, you know, reluctant to rip and criticize domestic enemies. I struggle to come up with any time when he has said anything critical of Vladimir Putin and his admiration for Putin, his unwillingness to cross Putin is extraordinary and consistent.

So looking back on all of this, what is the meta take? What is the Trump Putin thing about and where does it come from? Well, I think a couple of things. One, Trump obviously admires strongmen. Yeah, it's not just Putin, it's Xi. I mean, he repeatedly praises Chinese leader, North Korean leader, Russian leader, like all of these authoritarian strongmen. He consistently expresses admiration. And I think he sees himself in them in some ways, or the what he could be if he were not so constrained.

What he wants to be. Right. Now, the other factor here, Charlie, and this is what's really dark. So that's dark enough, like having a past president of the United States and potential future president who actually admires authoritarian dictators is dark. But let's get darker, okay? Charlie, I can always go darker in this era, but the darker thing is you've heard the old phrase, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And so traditionally in the U S

how that has manifested itself is that we may have a lot of domestic differences, but we will unite against a foreign foe right now. We might disagree about how to fight the foreign foe, but we agree it's a foreign foe, right? And so we can and have demonstrated repeatedly in the past that we will put aside differences domestically to take on the international threat. Trump's and MAGA's enemy of my enemy is my friend analysis is different. They will set aside foreign differences to take on the domestic foe. So go back to the admiration for Vladimir Putin, that admiration for Vladimir Putin, because he was taking on their domestic political opponents. And so there is an admiration for Putin because he was taking on the shared enemy as they see it, which is the left,

the Republican establishment, et cetera. And that's why I say this is really dark. The toxic polarization that MAGA feels towards fellow Americans is so great that some of them will wrap their arms around a Russian dictator and endorse his critiques of American society to advance their own domestic agenda. You know, a lot of the stuff that we talk about is performative, but this is really substantive. You know, as you wrote, you note that America has made catastrophic foreign policy mistakes in the past, but never in our lifetime have we been on the verge of a mistake so profound and catastrophic that was the direct result of theories and ideas that were so shallow, stupid, and

frankly, bizarre. The thing is, it is the alignment of the stupid, the crazy, and the catastrophic all at once. Yeah. And we can't escape that reality. It's not like we can change the channel and, you know, just not pay attention because the consequences of a Russian victory in Ukraine because of American Republican betrayal of Ukraine is very, very hard to quantify. Yeah. In some ways, Charlie, a defeat of Ukraine now, in some ways would be worse than a defeat of Ukraine in the initial attack. Because even in the initial attack, even supporters of Ukraine were shocked at the tenacity of Ukrainian resistance. Because there was a lot of hype about the Russian military before the invasion. And it

wasn't just amongst MAGA. A lot of thoughtful observers of the Russian military thought it had really modernized and become a far more professional force. And yeah, it had compared to previous years, but it wasn't as competent and professional as a lot of international observers thought. So if there had been an initial invasion that had gone the way international observers had thought it would go, it would have been a catastrophe. No question about it. It would have been a catastrophe, but it wouldn't have been a catastrophe of the West more broadly. It would have been a catastrophe for Ukraine, but it wouldn't have demonstrated a failure of will in the West.

Here, if Russia is able to impose upon Ukraine a favorable settlement to the war, it will have been the result not of a catastrophic failure amongst Russia's real enemy, the West, the West, not Ukraine. So Ukraine would have fought courageously and would have given its all and we would have abandoned them. And that from a geopolitical standpoint is far worse. So Putin would both accomplish subjugating Ukraine and accomplish the complete undermining of American credibility and national security, totally undermined it. And that's a worse outcome than him succeeding in that initial blitzkrieg, although it obviously will come at a very, very, very high cost to Russia. But Putin doesn't care about his people's lives. Well, that's why 2024 feels like it is going to be a pivotal year in American political history, but also in world history.

You don't always know at the beginning of the year that something is going to be pivotal. You're a student of history. I keep trying to come up with the analogy that, and again, there's a cliche, this is the most important election of our lifetime. But I'm trying to imagine, historically, in terms of its significance, the 2024 election is the most fraught since when? What year would you go back to? If any. That's a great question. I mean, if you look back at history, at the super consequential American elections, this is going to be up there. I mean, obviously 1860 with Lincoln. That's the one I was going to come up with. Yeah. Enormously consequential. I also think people sleep on the consequences of the election of 1876 and the conflict that played out over who was going to win that because the consequence

of that election was the compromise of 1877, which abandoned the South to Jim Crow and segregation. That was hugely consequential. For a century. A century-long abandonment of Black Americans, hugely consequential. I would say it's in that ballpark. And the reason why I say that is after what we saw on January 6th, I have never said these words before, Charlie, but I am not 100% certain that if Donald Trump wins the presidency, that the United States will survive as an intact nation. I think 99%, 99.9%. I don't want to be like some doomsayer who says America will fade or collapse or whatever

if Trump is elected. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is he is so volatile that he raises risks that we have not seen in American politics. And how do we know that? Because we have a memory, Charlie, of what we just saw. I mean, this is a man who triggered the storming of the United States Capitol. And so this idea that he's, well, no, he's stable enough to rein himself in when it really matters. That's shot. That's gone. That's not there's no argument for that anymore. And there's no argument for the fact that, well, the Republican grownups will, you know, they'll be the guardrails on him because I think we've we've gotten the answer on that.

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So give me your take on what we saw play out yesterday. We had the special counsel report, which said, you know, no criminal charges against Joe Biden because of the document. Made a very clear distinction between the way Biden handled the documents and Trump and all of that. But what everybody's talking about, everybody's focusing on is this, I suppose you could argue, somewhat gratuitous commentary about Joe Biden's memory and his age. And of course, it's placed Joe Biden's memory and his age front and center in the campaign. Joe Biden goes out angrily, very angry last night. So give me your take. How bad is this? What should we make of this, David? Where do you come down? We know where Bill came down. Where do you come down? It's bad. It's bad.

Now, it's not, is Trump better than Biden bad? Biden is clearly better than Trump, clearly. But it is bad in the sense of, can he serve capably for the next four years bad? Which is bad. That's a serious question, Charlie. And here's the thing that gets me. Don't blame the special counsel for this. Look, this is where partisanship leads us. The special counsel was evaluating a crime that one of the elements of the crime is willfulness

or intent. The state of mind is relevant to the legal analysis. And one reason why he felt like he would not charge Joe Biden was the state of mind. And you have to explain that to people. Now, if this was something that had come out of nowhere, where Biden is sharp and quick and quick-witted, and then you have this, and then he comes out and he gives a press conference where he's on top of his game, you would think, what's the special counsel doing, right? But this comes on the heels of in the last week, he'd confused two European leaders for their deceased predecessors. And then he comes out very, very angry about the report and then confuses the president of Egypt and the president of Mexico.

And I know there are legions of listeners who are saying, but Donald Trump confused Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. Yes, he is corrupt and he is confused. No question. But the question you have here is that a lot of Americans, especially those people who don't pay really close attention to politics, you can't yell at them so much that they'll forget about things like age. Because you know why? They all have experience with it, whether they're aging themselves or their parents or their grandparents. And here's one thing that every American knows. It doesn't get better. It doesn't get better. It's not like at 83, you're better than you are at 81. So there's two questions and they're obviously related. Number one is, you know, can he serve for another four years as president? More immediate question is,

how much political damage has this caused to him? I mean, if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States in November, are we going to look back on this week and say this was kind of the decisive, not turning point, but an inflection point where people just decided, you know, that now you have this special counsel who's underlining these sort of pre-existing concerns? I mean, how badly hurt is Joe Biden? And is there anything that anyone can do about it? I mean, how badly hurt is Joe Biden? And is there anything that anyone can do about it? I mean, it doesn't seem like Democrats are in the mood to like move on. I mean, it's going to be Biden. It's going to be Biden and Trump. I think our former colleague, Steve Hayes said, it's going to be the 25th amendment election. It's going to be Trump

versus Biden. And it's going to be, no, your guy's more senile. No, your guy's decompensating. No, it's your guy. I prefer senility over psychosis. I mean, we're stuck with it, right? I mean, we probably are stuck with it because it all depends on Joe Biden. Joe Biden has to decide that he's going to step aside and nobody can make him step aside. Nobody's going to trigger the 25th amendment. There's not grounds for triggering the 25th Amendment. And so he has to decide. And Charlie, here's the other thing. We all know what it is like to have really hard conversations with people who are entering the twilight of their career.

And often the last person to recognize that they're entering the twilight of their career is the person. So they have to reach a point where they understand, okay, I understand my best days were behind me, but I also know that I'm now reaching a point where I don't have confidence I can do the job, so I should voluntarily step away. That is one of the hardest and most delegate conversations you can have with somebody who's retiring from, say, being an insurance agent, much less all the pride and all of the power that comes along with the presidency of the United States of America. And what's even more difficult, though, is that a lot of Democrats

who might be willing to have that conversation are thinking there's not a plan B that's better. Right. There's nobody that we have that would be more likely to beat Donald Trump. So it kind of feels we're on this glide path is that nobody wants to have that conversation, but also they're not sure they want it because they don't necessarily think that Kamala Harris is more electable. And once you get past her, who are we talking about? You know, Gavin Newsom. So they don't really have a plan B, do they, David? Gavin Newsom has a plan B. I mean, he's been running his little shadow campaign for a while where he could just jump right in. I'm here. I'm ready. I'm ready. Yeah.

Yeah. He's out there. He's warming up in the bullpen. He's Mariano Rivera waiting for the music. But here's the thing is you hit the nail on the head and that the alternative, at least in the short term to Biden is actually kind of democratic party chaos because you would have Kamala jumping in huge arguments about her, just huge arguments. She is not incredibly popular, even with Democrats. So nobody would clear the field for her. Gavin Newsom would probably come in. You'd have governors of Michigan, maybe Colorado come in. You would have a very compressed, super intense primary while the Republicans will have already picked their man or just sort of watching the Democrats consume each other. And that's very dangerous. Look,

primary challenges when your party isn't the incumbent or primaries fought over when your party is the incumbent tend to weaken the incumbent party. And so it's just a giant problem. And the way through, Charlie, there is a way through. I saw Dan Pfeiffer say this. Biden's got to get out there. He's got to say yes to the Super Bowl interview. He's got to get out there. And here's the thing that I would ask listeners who are mad at us about talking about this. In your heart of hearts, when you hear Biden's got to get out there, are you encouraged or worried? And I would bet you a lot of folks, when I say Biden's got to get out there and he's got to nail these interviews and he's got to nail these speeches and appearances, a lot of folks when I say Biden's got to get out there and he's got to nail these interviews and he's got to nail these speeches and appearances, a lot of folks who are

actually mad at us for talking about this would be very worried about that approach. And my question to you is if you're worried about the approach, don't be mad at the messenger. Don't be mad at the messenger. This is a serious issue. Well, since this is my last Bulwark podcast, you know, I've been thinking a lot about the trajectory of conservatism and the Never Trump movement. And you wrote a piece a few weeks ago, I've lost track of time here, that Never Trumpers never had a chance. And I keep going back over that saying, you know, what if this would have happened? What if so-and-so would have taken a stand? I asked the question in a conversation I had with Mona Charan, you know, the Never Trump movement, you know, has been a success in many ways in creating, you know, cross-partisan alliances.

And Donald Trump is not the president right now, but in terms of its ability to influence the Republican party, I don't think there's any question that it turned out to be a lot worse after the 2016 election. So give me your take on that. Was there any world in which never Trump was going to succeed in rescuing the Republican Party after 2016? No, no, no, no, no, Charlie. So really, this is, yeah. So this is one thing that I think there should be greater awareness of this. And that is, if you're talking about politics where, let's say you lost by five points, three points, one point, it's very legitimate. Five points might be on the outer bounds, but if it was a close race, it is very legitimate

to sit there and say, what could we have done differently? Look, if you had the 2016 race, Hillary and Trump, there are 17 different things that you and I could identify that if they swung this way or that way, the election could have come out differently. That is not the case when you're never greater than within 25 or 30 points. What is the tactic that closes the 30-point gap, right? You know, look, I thought Ron DeSantis ran a terrible campaign, but all of these DeSantis postmortems, in a way, I think are misleading people because they're saying, well, if he had just tweaked this or tweaked that,

he could have won. No. If he tweaked this or tweaked that, he could have won. No. If he tweaked this or tweaked that, he could have lost by 20 points instead of 40 or 25 points instead of 35. There was never a huge constituency in the GOP for the never Trump message. Never. Now, it might have been that there was a constituency earlier in 2015 for rejecting Trump, but never for never Trump, never for saying he is out of bounds. That argument, we were never going to win in hindsight. to support Democrats. And I think that people sometimes underestimate how difficult it is in Republican conservative circles to say, not only do you reject Trumpism, but now you must

affirmatively vote for somebody who you've opposed your entire career. I mean, on paper, I mean, you and I have done it, we've done it, but I don't think it's shocking that that's been difficult to scale that up, that people's partisan tribal loyalties are just, you know, much stickier than I think people sometimes acknowledge. Yes, yes, 100%. And that's why, you know, the Republican voters against Trump strategy was so smart to say, we're not asking you to vote for Biden. We're not asking you to cross the aisle to vote for Biden. We're just asking you not to vote for Donald Trump. You know, for my Democratic friends who say, how dare you be so partisan that you would never cross the aisle to vote for a Democrat? I say to them in response, under what circumstances would you vote for a pro-life Republican? And the folks who are honest with themselves say,

oh, I'm not sure when I would vote for a pro-life Republican. So, you know, there's a need for a measure of humility on this when we're scolding people for not crossing partisan lines that we've never had to cross ourselves and don't know if we would, right? So it was going to be a challenge to get people to cross the partisan lines, for sure. I expected that. What I did not expect was the deep, deep, intense loyalty for Donald Trump against all other Republicans, including Republicans who were demonstrably more conservative and demonstrably had higher character. No, and I think that that has played out really quite dramatically. Okay, so in the few minutes that we have left, I want to strike a little bit of a personal note because, David, I have thought many times over the last several months that I wanted to reach out to you for advice and counsel

and to go back. And by the way, for people who don't know, David and I kind of go way back. And I am still very, very grateful for when we were in Austin, Texas for the Texas Tribune Festival. I was there with my French grandson, Elliot, and you were so gracious in sitting down with him and letting him interview you. You have a special place in our household. But every time I thought about it, things that I wanted to bring up, I try to put it in the context of, and this is hard for me. And I think it's hard for a lot of people because I think about you and your wife, Nancy, all the time. And whatever problems that we are experiencing in our lives compared to what you and Nancy are facing and the courage you're doing it. And I just, you know, first of all, just I want you to know that I think about you all the time. And I am moved by her courage and her optimism.

And your piece that you wrote about the power of community was really moving. And I have to admit that I struggle with community and how to express these things. But how are you doing? You know, Charlie, in the piece that I wrote, I shared this Swedish proverb that I think is just beautiful. And it really is kind of a mission statement for friendship. And it is shared joy is double joy and shared sorrow is half sorrow. And I have never understood the truth of that more.

I've always used it because I think it's a beautiful statement and it has resonated as true, but only in the last several months has it really hit home at this gut level. Because when we initially found out Nancy's diagnosis diagnosis and it's a it's a very aggressive form of cancer but she has a lot of hope for a good outcome but it's it's a very scary time and in that short period of time when we kept the diagnosis to ourselves it was terrifying and debilitating in many ways and then when when we shared, when we began to share and people began to absolutely pour out love and concern and compassion, that is what made everything so much more bearable. And I could watch the love of others really energize Nancy,

my wife. I could see it. I just say that to encourage people to reach out to those folks in your community that you know are suffering, it really matters. It really matters. Even if it's just a note that says, I'm thinking about you, love you, much less a concrete offer of help. All of it is valuable, all of it. And it's really convicted me, Charlie. I've had to look and ask myself in my life, have I been that kind of person? Because I'm so overwhelmed by the reaction of others to us. It's been convicting to me, and it's made me sort of redouble my own commitment to be that kind of person. Well, and again, I think what you underlined there was just the power of community and not trying

to do everything on your own. And I think that, you know, whether we're talking about this or we're talking about other things, you know, that community is absolutely essential to stay strong, to stay spiritually connected. And so I want to thank you for that piece because it is a real challenge. And tell Nancy to keep putting those pictures out there because it's like, I want a thumbs up every one of them.

And David, thank you for coming on the podcast for our final podcast before we go dark here. Of course, Tim Miller is going to be here on Monday, but this is going to be my sign-off. I have to say that one of the great experiences of my life has been able to, every single morning, to get up and talk to the smartest, most interesting people I know and to have these kinds of conversations. I think that has been a real privilege and a real blessing. I am very, very privileged to have you come on this podcast and

very, very grateful for all the conversations we've had over the years. And we'll keep having conversations, Charlie. We will. Thank you for your work. God bless you and your future endeavors. And as I said at the outset, I'm honored that I'm your last guest and I truly treasure and value our friendship. And I look forward to seeing what you do next and helping in any way that I can. Okay, well, we'll see you around the corner. Thank you, David.

And some final words as I head out the door. Look, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity that Sarah Longwell and Bill Crystal gave me when we founded The Bulwark and this extraordinary community. I mean, working alongside folks like JVL and Mona Cherne, A.B. Stoddard, Will Salatin, Kathy Young, Jim Swift, Adam Kuyper, Sonny Bunch, Barry Rubin, Tim, Ben Parker, Joe Perticone. This has been one of the most rewarding professional experiences of my life. And I'm really grateful for all of you for joining us in the wilderness. And a special shout out to our brilliant art director, Hannah Yost, who got up very early every single morning to make the Bulwark

the best looking political site you're going to find. And to the very best podcast team in the business, the absolutely incomparable Katie Cooper, who prepped and produced our daily show, and to our engineer, Jason Brown, who always made us sound a lot better than we actually deserved. We could not have done that without that team. An extra special shout out to my brilliant wife, J.F. Reardon, who's taking time out from writing her novels, writing her books of essays, J.F. Reardon, who's taking time out from writing her

novels, writing her books of essays, her children's books about dogs, copy edit morning shots every single morning. And again, to the entire Bulwark community, to all of the brave contrarian conservatives, the never Trumpers, the people who've been willing to reach across the aisle, a reminder, you are not the crazy ones. And that's it for me.