The Bulwark Podcast - David French: Maybe the Tariffs Are the Problem

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Last month, Trump fired the "woke" job numbers person after she released weak employment data. Now, we have even worse jobs numbers—and burgeoning signs of a tariffs-triggered manufacturing recession. Meanwhile, the administration may be working on a de facto military policy that would fulfill one of Trump's biggest longtime wishes: summarily executing drug dealers. Plus, a trans gun ban would be grotesquely unconstitutional, the blood-and-soil types at NatCon are missing what the Founding Fathers intended, Tucker can't quit his Putin obsession, and why Gen X enthusiastically embraced helicopter parenting. David French joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes Bulwark's live reaction to RFK hearing, with Sam, Jon Cohn, and Will Saletan David on Gen X helicopter parenting Gen Z (gifted) More from James Madison in 1785 Post-recording news: Pentagon is deploying F-35s for a counter-narcotics mission Tim's playlist Bulwark Live in DC and NYC at TheBulwark.com/events. Toronto is SOLD OUT To get 6 bottles of wine for $39.99, head to NakedWines.com/THEBULWARK and use code THEBULWARK for both the code AND PASSWORD.

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. So much happening that we're going to probably largely skate over the RFK shit show on Capitol Hill on the pod. But Sam Stein, Jonathan Cohn, and Will Salatin did a live reaction yesterday on the Bullwark takes feed. I recommend. We'll put a link in the show notes here. And we might talk about it a little bit. We'll see how it goes. You never know with today's guest. He's opinion columnist for The New York Times. He's also co-host of the legal podcast advisory opinions during the Iraq War.

He served with the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment and was awarded a bronze star. It's Memphis Grizzlies fan, David French. What's going on there? You know, you need to reverse the order there, Tim. It's Memphis Grizzlies fan, David French. And then all the rest is just details compared to that staggering amount of credibility I get from that. Yeah, that's pretty good. I had to cut it down some, actually. The producer had even a more bulky, more bulky bio for you. So much accomplishment. We don't, we don't mention the failed. Well, was it failed? The flirtation with a presidential run in 2016. That doesn't make the bio. Flirtation. It was. No, no, no, no. And it was a flirtation. It was not. Never, never got off the ground. I still can't believe that happened. I mean, you had, I think, two endorsements. Bill Crystal, your wife. Was anybody else? Did anybody else endorse?

Hey, Mitt Romney said nice things about me. Everyone in the GOP loves Mitt Romney. I don't know why this never would have worked. All right. We've got some news this morning I want to start with on the economy. Then we'll get into the legal stuff in your bailiwick. But job creation, this is from CNBC, job creation sputtered in August, adding to recent signs of labor market weakening. Payrolls increased by just 22,000 for the month.

Expectations are 75,000. Unemployment rate's still low, but it ticked up a little bit. They also revised job growth from the last two months. June job growth was down to negative $13,000. So it doesn't seem great. I don't know if you have thoughts on what are we in, the golden age. Do you feel the golden age is coming imminently? Yeah, it doesn't seem great.

And then when you add some of these numbers to other numbers that we've seen around burgeoning evidence of a manufacturing recession, which should sting doubly hard because one of the whole reasons why we're enduring these economic pains is because they're trying to reshore manufacturing. I mean, if you're going to listen to some of the more sophisticated Trump apologist on his economic theory, it's that, look, this is all necessary to reshore manufacturing. Well, if manufacturing investment is down, if manufacturing jobs are down, that's some warning signs. Yeah, we've got, I just, I said this note here, as of today's report, 78,000 lost manufacturing jobs this year, according to the loss. Yeah. So, you know,

You know, the U.S. economy, and I think this is something that's really important for people to understand, don't think of the U.S. economy as like a speedboat where a new president gets in and they can just turn the helm and the boat flips around and moves very quickly. Think of it like a super tanker. This is the biggest economic super tanker in the world. And it doesn't move really rapidly necessarily. So you can make negative policy changes and it will have marginal effect in the short term. But it could have very large scale effects in the long term. And also, there's just a lot of stuff happening at once. So we've been through a couple of cycles recently where you've seen sort of the Trump apologist saying, well, he's implemented all these tariffs and economy is still good. Inflation isn't out of control. All of you guys were, you know, doomsayers. You're losing your credibility. But the smart people looking at all of this were not saying, okay, Trump executes a policy change, and two weeks later, economy crumbles, it was he's executing changes in the economy that will have a negative effect on the economy. And unless they're offset by other positive

effects, maybe those negative effects could tip us into recession. And so we've had some of that, you know, you've had the giant AI investments that are propping up a lot of the economy. At the same time, we've had a lot of inputs coming from the Trump administration that are holding the economy me back. And it looks like we're tipping in a negative direction right now. But again, these things kind of tend to move slowly. It's not an immediate reaction. There are a couple of kind of sub-controversies conversations happening around this data, right? For starters, that's the first month we've got a report since they fired Erica McIntarfer last time. Turns out that it wasn't Erica that magically gave the bad report by herself. So maybe at some level, it's a minor silver.

overlining on the concern about authoritarian creep that a bad number came out today at all. We should also note that the person that he nominated to replace McIntyre with is this E.J. Antony. He's not been confirmed yet. He needs to be confirmed. A story out this morning by my man, Andrew Kaczynski. He found that Anthony had an alt's Twitter account named after Curtis LeMay, George Wallace's VP there. Oh, well, of course. He tweeted anti-gay taunts at Don Lemon and Anderson called Krugman, a pedophile, women should learn to cook and not be annoying, et cetera, et et cetera. It's all the same stuff you could go on. But, you know, so that is kind of like a sub-story of all this about, like, whether if these numbers continue to look bad, whether we'll get them.

Yeah, you know, that is something that I felt when it was interesting. And look, I'm withholding judgment on whatever the new numbers are going to be until we see if the guys actually confirmed. It is remarkable, though, Tim. It is remarkable, the extent to which you can almost set your clock by stories like alt Twitter account with crazy comments or were they at January 6th or I mean it's just you know when when you're talking about oh yeah yeah he was like he was walking the other way that's his defense he was the pictures of him have him walking away from the Capitol so you know oh it's fine then it's fine he was just there you know he was just there debating the conspiracy theorist Tim that that's what it was a tourist visit was

Just taking some pictures for Instagram. But, I mean, that's the thing about this administration. When you just lift up the rock on any number of people, you're going to find all of this unbelievable nonsense and latent authoritarianism and ridiculous trolling. And so I'll be very interested to see what the numbers are when he's at the helm. I could easily imagine upward revisions. Everybody, look. So we'll see. Well, and you have to.

I mean, I guess these things are coming across purposes because they have been begging the Fed to lower rates, right? I mean, that's why they are hassling Lisa Cook, the Fed governor. She was targeted for two mortgages so that were her primary residence, and that's against the rules. I'm striking out this week. Three Trump cabinet members also have two mortgages, two houses as their private residence. So, you know, we'll see if any of them are fired. But you have this kind of simultaneous thing happening where the Fed might do what they want, but not for the – because the economy looks so. soft, right? And so, you know, at some level that maybe it's okay, you know, they sort of are at

cross purposes, right? Like the idea of having a couple bad months, maybe they'll get what they want on the interest rate side, and then this guy comes in on the bat. Who knows, right? Yeah, I mean, as they're saying, there's just a lot of inputs in. And so the Fed has tools at its disposal when it sees the economy softening. And, you know, I think what you've seen from Trump is he really wants to go back to sort of the economic environment of 2018. 2019, where you were spending a giant amount of money at the same time, you had very, very low interest rates. So let's remember the superheeded economy of Trump's first term. We were in this sort of fantasy world where very low interest rates and giant amounts of government spending

were, we were still in this sort of honeymoon period where that wasn't impacting us in terms of inflation the way that it later did. And so then inflation hits early in Biden, where it hits you know, all over the world, post-pandemic inflation just comes down on us like a ton of breaks. And we learn some important lessons that we can't just be pouring money into the economy and expect to not have high inflation. And so, you know, we've been battling this ever since. And there's a lot of tools out there. We'll see what the Fed does. We'll see if the Fed can mitigate damage. But you're right to a spotlight that this could actually result in perhaps some action that the Trump administration agrees with. But what they really want is just,

this ocean of money flooding into the economy so that he can go back to that sort of 2018, 2019 reality. Yeah, you can never go back, you know, it never works in life, right? So one of the other inputs, obviously, one of the main inputs driving all this is the tariffs. And there's an appeals court ruling about how the tariffs are unlawful. Trump on Tuesday said that that ruling was an emergency and that the administration would like to seek an immediate hearing from the Supreme Court, Trump citing AEPA,

international emergency economic powers act in defense of the fact that he can, I guess, do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. If he loses this case, an interesting kind of subplot is that might mean the government might have to pay back the companies that had to pay tariffs. A strange sub subplot is Canter Fitzgerald right now is making bets where they're paying companies like cents on the dollar so that if they get paid back, they, you know, they get a multiple on it. Kenneth Fitzgerald is Howard Nutlick's company. His kid is running it now. So I think that's an interesting subplot. Anyway, I'm just curious what you think about the tariff rulings, what you think we should expect from the Supreme Court. So here's what I think should happen, and I'll explain to you why

it also might not happen. Okay. So here's what should happen. What should happen is that the Supreme Court should rule against these tariffs in much the same way and on much the same grounds that they ruled against the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness program. So if you remember the student loan forgiveness program, Biden used the COVID emergency to justify unlocking sweeping powers under what was called the Heroes Act. This was a post-9-11 act that allowed for certain modifications and waivers in the student loan program in the event of emergencies. So you had an emergency around COVID, undeniable that it existed. But the question is, did the declaration of the COVID emergency unlock enough power to avoid the student loans entirely versus sort of moderate? their terms. And the Supreme Court said no, and the reason it said no, is that the statute,

if it's going to grant the executive that much sweeping power to void entirely these loans, it should be in the statute. That wouldn't be, that would be clearly in the statute. You wouldn't say that, well, that's just part of a vague catch-all provision, right? And so this was, Congress has to do something. Congress has to do, if you're going to give the executive that much power, you've got to do it clearly and unmistakably. You can't sneak in major powers into these little loopholes. So that should pretty clearly apply to Trump's tariff actions because he's operating under a statute that grants him some powers in the event that he declares an emergency. The powers do not encompass by there's no mention of the word tariffs in the underlying statute.

And he's trying to claim in this statute, the sweeping power, to implement a global tariff regime on the basis of him declaring his own emergency when Congress, then the tariff power is reserved for Congress in the Constitution. Now, Congress can delegate some of that, but if you read the actual underlying statute, they haven't done so clearly. So you think, okay, what's good for Biden is good for Trump here.

Is there any distinction between the two? Is there a legally significant distinction between the two? I would say the legally significant distinction between the two is that Trump is declaring the emergency in the context of his power over foreign relations where the president's powers are near their peak, so constitutionally. So is that enough of a distinction to mean that the student loan case doesn't really foreclose the tariff program? I don't think so. I don't think so, but we'll see.

So enough a distinction to give them cover to do something that they would like to do, though. I'm sorry to be cynical about the Supreme Court. You know, I know that you are more on the side of they're doing their best to follow what they think is in the Constitution. I think at times John Roberts is a little more strategic than he wants to let on about when he's going to pick fights. I would not disagree that the court can be strategic, that the current court can be strategic. I reject the idea that they are trying to figure out ways to rule for Trump. I think they've ruled against Trump too many times for that to be sort of the top line criticism of the court. court. This court has ruled against Trump a lot. Yeah, that's true. I guess my other question is just

they're asking for this emergency hearing. I know there's another session coming up at the beginning of October. Do I wait for that? What would you even expect timeline-wise on this? Well, you know, the appeals court didn't block the tariffs immediately. So there's time. Right. I suspect that you'll see a preliminary ruling at some point this fall. This is going to come up under what's called the emergency docket. This is going to be an accelerated process. So I'm not. necessarily saying that the court will issue a definitive final ruling on this before next year. I do think we're going to get at least a preliminary ruling, whether indicating that they're blocking the tariffs or not. And I would expect it in a few months, if not just a few weeks.

So a preliminary ruling, explain what that means. A lot of these cases that are coming up that you're seeing the court ruling on right now involving Trump, they're not actually issuing final rulings in these cases. They're coming up injunctions. And the injunctions are saying, hey, court, can you stop the Trump action while we determine if it is constitutional? In other words, stop the Trump administration from doing what it's doing while the case works. Now, you can only do that. You can only get injunctions when you can show that you're likely to succeed on the case. So if you're likely to lose, you can't get an injunction. But if you're likely to succeed and you meet other conditions, you can get an injunction.

And so what's happening is these cases are going on up to the Supreme Court on the question of, was the injunction appropriate, not was the underlying conduct lawful? Their related questions are not the same question. And so what they are is they're saying this is where we're headed, but it's not the conclusion, if that makes sense. Yeah, now I'm going to quiz you and we'll see how good your advisory opinions as a history is because I'm just curious. So like, are there examples of, you know, times where they've done a preliminary injunction that makes it seem like they're going to say this is not constitutional, but then you get to next spring and then they go the other way. Like are there, or generally does the preliminary ruling kind of match what ends up happening? Generally, the preliminary ruling on the merits matches what happens. So if they say there's a likelihood of success on the merits, then I'm not saying you can absolutely take that to the bank, but I'm driving to the bank with a lot of confidence.

I feel like I've got a check in my hand that's a good check. If I've got that, you're likely to succeed on the merits. But some of the other factors, balance of equities, irreparable harm, these are some of the other factors. I have seen courts say, okay, there's a likelihood of. of success on the merits, but the other factors don't come in. And in that circumstance, you don't get the injunction, but you do get a really good sense that you're going to win in the end.

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to get six bottles of wine for just $39.99 with shipping included. That's $100 off your first six bottles at Nakedwines.com slash the bulwark and use the code and password of the bulwark for six bottles of wine for $39.99. All right. Speaking of other legal controversies, we had General Hurtling on the pod yesterday. We talked a lot about this bombing of the cigarette boat in the Caribbean of the Venezuelan alleged drug runners. One thing I should say in the pot yesterday, I was snarkily mocking the notion that this was

possibly even cocaine coming to America because America doesn't get cocaine from Venezuela. It comes from Colombia and Peru and Bolivia. And as I was reading up on it more after the pod, there are examples of Colombian drug cartels going through Venezuela because the border is so porous and then kind of leaving from Venezuela. So anyway, for those who are curious about cocaine trafficking routes through the seas, that's one possible situation here. But Hurtling was saying he thinks it might have been human smuggling, not drugs, like the fact that there are 11 of them on the boat. So it's possible then that there were innocent victims who were being smuggled who got summarily executed.

So a lot here, Hegseth says he has absolute and complete authority to kill suspected drug smugglers. He said, this is his quote, I'd say we smoked a drug drug drug. boat, and there's 11 narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean. It wasn't actually the ocean, but that's a nitpick, I guess. And when other people try to do that, they're going to meet the same fate. Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what the legal authority they would tell the public was. So that's where we're at.

Yeah, this is bad, Tim. This is bad. You know, Donald Trump has done it again. And when I say done it again, I mean, he is a tackling. No one doubts that drug trafficking is a serious problem. No one doubts that drug trafficking is a deadly problem in the United States of America. No one doubts these things. However, does that mean that you have the power on your own authority to declare a gang to be terrorists

and then execute them from the air on the basis of whatever shifting standard? And I'm a former JAG officer in the military when I heard the tier of the terms positive ID. That does not mean what it sounds like. It does not mean that you know something for certain. It means that the strike meets the conditions that have been established under the rules of engagement. It does not mean that we know for certain that a person meets a particular category. And so what you're dealing with is... Really?

Yes. Yes. So positive identification is according to particular categories that you've created for how you determine whether somebody's a terrorist or not a terrorist. It's not... It doesn't mean we ID'd all 11 people. We know that one guy is nacho and one guy. guys, whatever. Exactly. Exactly. Lead there on our list. It doesn't mean that. It's possible it means it. It's possible. It's possible that you have high resolution camera footage with facial ID of

each one of the 11 people. That's possible. But I'm just saying the phrase positive ID does not mean that. And when we're in Iraq, we'd use the phrase positive identification all the time. Sometimes it meant, well, we absolutely know this is shake, so and so. Other times it would mean they met the conditions. In other words, they were displaying AK-47s. They were engaging in the kinds of tactics that terrorists engage in, et cetera. And so if the administration is saying, using that language that we 100% know who all of these people are, that's maybe they do, maybe, but that's not what that phrase necessarily means. And so what we're dealing with really, truly, is a situation where normally you would have, say, a Coast Guard cutter or whatever, would stop that ship.

If it wouldn't stop, they would try to disable it, you know, aim at the engines or whatever. And then they would search it, seize any drugs, arrest the people who are on the boat, and question them to see, you know, what other evidence we could uncover. And that's not being soft on crime. That's how you combat crime, right? yeah and maybe potentially rescue humans that are being trafficked i you know i don't have any reason to believe that is that but i don't have a reason not to believe it and i don't think that there's any reason to take at face value what this administration is saying when you have like a weekend talk show host being like we smoked the drug boat it's like okay well you were the same people that

were just talking about the the tattoo you know the president just thought that ms 13 was on kilmar brago garcia's hand because he saw a photoshop tattoo so it's like hard to take them at their word on this with no actual evidence. And let's unspool this in a couple of ways that I've not heard people unspool this. So one that I have heard people say that is a very justified thing, which is to say that the American Constitution and American law does not give the president the authority to reclassify crime as military activity and then use military assets to go after it. There is nowhere you're going to find in U.S. statutes in the Constitution, the ability of

the president to, on his own authority, say, well, we're going to go to war against La Cosa Nostra. We're going to go against the war against the mafia. And here comes a J-DAM on John Gotti's house. Like that's, that is not what the Constitution or American law gives the president the authority. Now, here's what I have not heard enough people talk about. Okay, he's wanting to put the military in American streets. And he's wanting to classify and has classified some international narco gangs as terrorist organizations. And now, now they appear to be saying that that terrorist designation unlocks military capabilities, all on its own. Now, the statute that gives the Secretary of State the power to designate a terrorist organization, that statute does

not give military use of military force authority attached to it. It doesn't. But that's what the that's what the Trump administration is claiming, that once they've designated something a terrorist force, they then unlock the ability to use military force with military weapons. The legal train of thought here is pretty clear, Tim, then that means you've just unleashed potentially

your troops in the streets to use military force if they believe they're encountering one of these various narco-terror gangs, right? And so there's some people in Magaland who might be like, heck yeah, brother. That's what I voted for, good and hard.

I do not think that is what Americans want. We want tough on crime. We want tough on drug trafficking. The idea that we can then use military force to summarily kill people that we believe through an unknown intel process to be terrorists when the underlying statutes criminalizing what they're doing

don't even impose the death penalty for it. I mean, what are we doing here, Tim? What are we doing here? Well, two thoughts on that. And one, we also just have evidence now from the first nine months of the administration. They've wrongly identified people as terrorists. And there are several just prime examples of this,

like obviously including Andrea, we talked about a lot, but many people are based on tattoos and stuff. So it's bad enough if you're detaining people wrongly based on a false identification that they're part of turning to Aragoa, but now if you are killing it, right? I mean, like now they're setting the precedent that they can kill them. They can just, like the US military can just kill them either, you know,

in the Caribbean or here. The other thing is Trump has a long, you know, he only has a few things he's actually consistent about. But loving the death penalty, you know, goes back to the Central Park Five, and being for the death penalty for drug dealers is one of them. He's been talking about that a lot. He talked about a lot in the first time.

They didn't really do anything about it. This was one of those things where he would tweet, like, you know, death penalty for drug dealers. And, you know, then there'd be a round of stories and then nothing would happen. It's different this time around, you know. And you look at the model of Duterte and his buddy in El Salvador, Buckele. I mean, it kind of feels like they're laying the groundwork kind of for a de facto policy of just being able to summarily execute drug dealers if they want to. Yeah. I mean, look, Trump has been fantasizing about just deploying military force against all kinds of people. You're exactly right that drug dealers are on the top of the list. I mean, he's fantasized about openly speculated about shooting protesters in the legs, using military force to stop people trying to cross the border. Because remember also that the argument from the MAGA world is that the migration itself, that the migrants themselves are invaders. And they have intent. potentially use that term, again, trying to unlock war powers to deal with migrants crossing the

border. Now, again, it's so important for people who are opposing Trump to also say and to act on the reality that unrestrained illegal immigration is a problem that something has to be done about it. Crime is a problem. We need to combat it through lawful means. You don't want to slide all the way into, and I see people do that on occasion. But these are serious problems. that he's combating in many ways, the most reckless and dangerous and lawless way possible. And the downline consequences of this, I mean, could be just incredibly chaotic and bloody. I tried to use this, I think it was on the next level earlier this week, but I want to throw it at you. Sometimes Trump gets credit for this from like commentators.

They're like, ooh, it's pretty clever. He's put his opponents in the position where they have to defend drug dealers or they have to defend crime in New Orleans or Chicago. go. And it's like, the asymmetry is so shocking. Like, you can just, you know, if you imagine, you know, kind of an alternate Trump, like a Democratic Trump, you know, and like following a school shooting, you know, they decide we are going to, you know, we're not going to go to Congress. We have a new rule, you know, that around every school, we're to have a one mile gun-free zone. And if you come through there, we're going to confiscate your weapon. And, you know, we're like, you'll have no due process.

We do it. We're going to take weapons from every young man under the age of 25 if they have one, and they're going to have no due process. And then if you say, oh, well, that violates my rights, then you're on the side of school shooters. Sorry, sorry, you're on the side of school shooters. You have to acknowledge that school shooting is really bad. You know what I mean? Like, the whole thing is fucking stupid. Well, and they don't play by those rules at all. I mean, back in Tennessee, after the horrible covenant shooting, you know, a coalition of moms, mothers of kids at Covenant, got together and they tried to pass some pretty modest gun reforms in Tennessee. I mean, this is Tennessee after all. Okay. And one of the things that they

wanted to pass was were red flag laws. That one of the sad realities of these mass shootings is that for a majority of them, the shooters actually broadcast their intentions. This one did. The most recent one did. Yeah, absolutely. And so one of the reasons why red flag laws are a good tool for parents, law enforcement, school officials, is that if someone has said and engaged in conduct that indicates that they're likely or may well shoot up a school, then there's a tool they're available to you. It doesn't take everybody's guns. It's very targeted. It's very individualized. And you know what they were called by some of the more radical gun groups in Nashville or in Tennessee, commie mommies? I mean, so these are people whose kids had survived,

one of the most terrifying things that could happen. And I believe some of the moms were of kids who did not survive. I can't remember the exact composition of the group, but let's just say best case scenario. These are mothers whose kids had survived one of the most terrifying things that can ever happen to any human being ever. They had been through one of the most terrifying things that could happen to any parent ever.

And then they're calming mommies because they want a very modest gun control measure in response to documented, prevailing, persistent problems in responding to mass shootings. So you're right, Tim. There is a double game that is being played here.

Hey, y'all, I warned you. I warned you. Our Toronto show has sold out. The Canadians love Sam Stein so much that, you know, there are lines around the block to get tickets to it. But the good news is we still have tickets left for our live shows in Washington, D.C.

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I might have a couple of bourbons in me by the time we get on stage on Saturday night. So that one could be a rowdy one. So if you're looking for an excuse to get to the Big Apple, go see a show Friday night, come see us Saturday night. Could be a fun little weekend. Go get tickets.

Like I said, thebork.com slash events. Thebork.com slash events. See you all soon. Okay, well, I was going to get to this later, but we're unfortunately, sadly, already on the topic of school shooting. So let's go ahead and knock it out. There's a Daily Wire report yesterday. It's the Ben Shapiro site, and it's been confirmed by CNN. The Justice Department is deliberating banning guns for transgender people as part of a range of options blocking mentally unstable individuals from committing acts of violence. This is according to them. Senior DOJ official said, according to the Daily Wire, we're not playing semantics with words like for you. We're talking about trannies, and we don't think they should have guns. What do you think about that? So there's unconstitutional, there's wildly unconstitutional, and then there's grotesquely unconstitutional. And banning gun ownership for an entire class of Americans out of deep-seated

animus is grotesquely unconstitutional. It's, that would be enjoined by any court, any competent court, within seconds of a lawsuit being filed. I mean, obviously, I'm exaggerating. It might take minutes, maybe minutes, Tim. But you absolutely cannot do this. And, you know, one of the things I think MAGA is going to learn a lesson that the hard left has already learning. And that is brutality and bullying, create a backlash. the ch-do.

And a lot of MAGA is right now feeling very culturally ascendant and very culturally triumphant. The canceled culture world of the far left is in decisive retreat. The cancel culture world of the MAGA right is ascendant. And they're feeling strong and they're feeling big and they're engaging in just unbelievable amounts of bullying and authoritarianism. And they're thinking that the same laws of culture and politics and reality that have so damaged their political opponents on the far left, on the

extreme left, won't apply to them. And I think that's just fundamentally wrong, Tim. You are always more, you kind of in line with the social conservative side of things than me. Even back, we were both, you know, Republicans in good standing. So help me understand this a little bit. I don't really get the premise of the policy. I was told that gun confiscation doesn't work actually. You need good guys with guns to protect bad guys. You need door control. SSRIs of the problem. It feels like they're opening a dangerous door for, you know, the gun rights community, for them to say that what they need to do to protect people's safety is to confiscate guns from folks. Yeah, what they're trying to do is classify a competing sort of worldview as dangerous

mental illness, not just mental illness, because it is not the rule. that if like you have a Xanax prescription for occasional bouts of anxiety, that you're now disqualified from owning a gun, that's not the way this works. For you to be disqualified from owning a gun, the level of mental illness that you suffer from has to rise to a particular level

where you're a danger to yourself or others. What they're trying to do is essentially arbitrary classify being transgender as being a mental illness of that level of danger. And that's what they're trying to do. And when I posted online that, you know, this is wildly unconstitutional as it is, then, you know, that's the message I got. I thought you were against mentally ill people having weapons. But are they against mentally ill people?

That's what I don't understand. Under what thesis would you, like, let's say that they succeeded at this, you know, whatever. And like, wouldn't then that just set the groundwork for, okay, fine, then, you know, people that have committed domestic violence shouldn't have guns, this group shouldn't have guns, that group shouldn't have guns. It seems like it's seeding the argument, actually, to the other side in the most bigoted way possible. If I take off my hat, put it on the red hat on now. What they're going to say is, but Tim, everybody who is transgender is dangerously mentally ill, just like, say, somebody who's schizophrenic and yelling at the clouds on the street, that they're the same thing, that being transgender is being the same thing as being the kind of dangerously.

mentally ill, that, you know, there's consensus in the society that somebody who's a danger to themselves and others should not own a gun. They're saying every single human being who is trans is dangerously mentally ill. That would be their argument. I don't think they're going to like it then when the other side decides that everybody who espouses any white nationalist ideology is dangerously mentally ill and shouldn't have a gun. And to that point, there was a conference, not of all of white nationalists, called the National Conservative Conference, or people who don't follow the internecine warfare on the right as closely as me and David. This group is a scent, like, it's sort of a weird amalgamation of people.

It was originally started by Peter Thiel, strangely, who's definitely not the Antichrist. He's just doing a four-part series of lectures on the Antichrist because he's very interested in that topic. And it was started by him, but it was kind of co-opted by, I guess the best shorthand for it would be kind of the hall wing of the GOP, kind of this view of, you know, strong borders, strong nation, you know, no more free trade, none of the adventurism of the, you know, neocon set, et cetera. And the center from Missouri, Holly's counterparty, Eric Schmidt, who came up as kind of like just a regular old conservative, decided to use this conference to make a pivot towards demonstrating how he, where he fits.

Another pivoter. Yeah. And I want to play. It's kind of long, but I think it's worth it. I chose a couple of choice cuts from his pretty boring speech. The presentation was boring. The words for me were pretty ominous. So let's listen to that. If you impose a carbon copy of the U.S. Constitution on Kazakhstan tomorrow, Kazakhstan won't magically become America. Because Kazakhstan isn't filled with Americans. It's filled with Kazakhstanis. What makes America exceptional isn't just that we committed ourselves to the principles of self-government. It's that we as a people are actually capable of living them. America was, as one neo-conservative writer put it, the first universal nation. That's what set Donald Trump apart from the old conservatism and the old liberalism alike. He knows that America is not just an abstract proposition. but a nation and a people with its own distinct history

and heritage and interests. His movement is a revolt of the real American nation. The first settlers of my state were mostly Scotch Irish, a hard, proud, fiercely independent people forged in the hills of Ulster and the backwoods of Appalachia, ideally suited to life on the edge of civilization. They were the ancestors, as it just so happens of my friend and vice president, J.D. Vance. As the historian David McCullough writes,

the Scotch-Irish families that first settled Missouri saw themselves as the true Americans. So the true Americans are the Scotch Irish, the Germans that came in the 1840s, they are the ones who have a real American nation. The Kazakhs, they're not capable and they're not part of our heritage and we're not an idea. I wonder what you think about his interpretation of our nation. Well, so many things, Tim. First, let's just be kind of clear about history. You had the U.S. Constitution from 1787. You put the U.S. Constitution on top of American society, and we didn't live up to it for a really long time. Okay. So if you look at the Declaration of Independence. That can't be right. I think that the pilgrims and the Scotch Irish stock, they were the ones that could do it. Okay. They were the only ones that were the true Americans who lived up to the Constitution. Is that not accurate? I mean, people, I think people have not locked in enough on the idea that the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not necessarily a reflection of the society that existed, but in many ways a challenge to the society that existed. And how do we know this?

Because every single marginalized community in American history that has increased its liberty and equality has done so by challenging the existing system by appealing to those principles. So let's just say one thing. The Constitution took a long time to those principles took a long time to shape us into what we are now. So even the Scotch Irish, Tim, when they got the Constitution, they didn't live up to it. They were, of course, still Americans, of course, but they weren't living up to these ideals. No, no. So that's just one historical point. And then the other is, I'm going to be more interested, actually, in what the founders

thought about, the kind of nation they were building, as opposed to what he thinks the founders were trying to build. And the founders were pretty darn clear about this. I'm teaching a course this semester at my alma mater, Lipscomb University, and it's the foundations of religious liberty. and so I've been diving into a lot of the early American writing on religious liberty. And I came across this quote from James Madison. So I think he's pretty qualified to talk about what the intention in this country is.

This is his memorial and remonstrance against religious assessments of 1785. And he's going against a Virginia policy that would have essentially taxed people to pay for pastors and religious institutions. And he says, the proposed establishment is a departure. from that generous policy which offering an asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every nation and religion promised a luster to our country and an accession to the number of its citizens. Wow. It's pretty clear. I'll take that. I'll take that over Senator Schmidt at NACON any day. Senator Schmidt, the Mayflower American Schmidt. You know, he was just, he was on the Nemia of the Pintet and then Santa Maria himself. There's no question about whether the Germans could live up to the Constitution if we dropped it on them.

The dark irony of all this for me, David, the thing that bugs me about it the most is the people that he's talking about are flawed, but faithful humans that founded this nation. Like, they were literally fleeing the ideology that he is now espousing. He's totally turned it upside out. It's like he is trying to bring back the blood and soil national. and for some of the people in that con conference, the religious, you know, Christian nationalism that the folks that came across the ocean to come to America wanted to get away from because they either wanted religious freedom or because their societies were declining or because of, you know, war, like, it's the opposite.

Yeah. It's the opposite. And I don't know how to get that to break through to people because I understand the appeal of the blood and soil stuff. Well, and, you know, there's another part of this, which is these. guys really idealize Europe and they look at Europe and they say well these are ancient homogenous civilizations ancient nations use that word yeah okay some of them if you're going to look at the United Kingdom and the you know the United Kingdom was various different things for

a very long time but what it wasn't for most of its history was a United Kingdom it was actually many different kingdoms the Kingdom of France now the Republic of France again many different things over many centuries, but I'll grant that the French and English nations have existed in some form for really long time. Italy, we're a lot older nation than Italy. We're in a lot older nation than Germany, okay? You know, Prussia, yeah, that's a kingdom that existed for a long time.

There are a lot of these European nations that are young pups compared to the United States of America. Now, Europe is an old civilization. of course. But these nations that they're sort of lionizing like they were, you know, when after Adam took his first breath, he founded Hungary. No, that's not the way this all worked out. A lot of these nations are relatively new compared to the United States. And so if they're going back and talking about what the founders thought about us, they're wrong. If they're talking about what the nature of the very continent that they're trying to aspire to be like, they're wrong.

I mean, it's just a staggering level of ignorance in service of bigotry is what a lot of this Christian nationalism is. And I'll just say we've made some great Kazakh Americans. Oh, we totally have. I'm not really in the business of judging Americanness, but if I had to judge whether Borat or Eric Schmidt was living more truly to the American ideal, I probably have to side with Borat. Speaking of confused NatConns, I do have to play one clip, just as a point of personal privilege, from Tucker's interview with Michael Knowles, as another Daily Wire podcaster. They had a little chat. Among the things they talked about whether Pete Buttigieg is really gay, they have a theory that he's pretending to be gay, which was news to Chastin when I texted him. But that's not the clip I want to play.

There's a better one for you. Let's listen. If you think that Joe Biden was a better leader or a better man than Vladimir, Putin. Like, I don't even know what to say to you, but that's insane. There's by no measure, by no measure, did Joe Biden's country, the people he solemnly swore to help and defend, did they thrive? No, they withered. Putin, who's been there for 25 years, his country's improved, the people are happier. They like him, actually. Look, I'm not moving to Russia. I mean, Putin has been the most effective leader in my lifetime. I can't think of a more effective one.

He's been a very stable leader for Russia. But why is he more evil than Joe Biden? Well, I can't even conceptualize that. Like, you know, you could say, look, I don't know his, I don't know his religious views, but he's promoted Christianity within Russia. Aggressively. Yes, to combat, you know, liberalism. I'm sad to report that that podcast is fifth in the rankings right now under news,

and I'm eighth, so that's what the people are looking for right now. See, I'm so glad you raised that because a lot of, of people have made the mistake of saying, as Tucker gets crazier or crazier, you see Candice Owens, whoa, my goodness, like leave Earth's orbit, her conspiracy theories have become so crazy. And they think, well, they're just not relevant anymore. Millions of people still listen to these guys because sort of respectable opinion has written them off doesn't mean that they don't have influence anymore. So this stuff does matter.

As crazy as that is, it absolutely does matter. What do you think about the idea that Putin is a stable leader and a better man than Joe Biden? Do you have any thoughts on that? I mean, one million dead and wounded Russian soldiers would, I think, question the stability, that hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded Ukrainians would question that. I mean, Putin has been a war leader virtually since he assumed office. He led Russia through the second Chechen war, through a war in Georgia, through the first intervention in Ukraine, the invasion of Crimea, the Donbass War, war in Syria.

Now the largest land war in Europe since World War II, that's not stability, Tim. Normally we don't look at decade plus of blood-soaked violence and say, oh, look at all that stability. Under what metric is Putin the greatest leader of his lifetime? I wonder. Well, like, economic, moral leadership. Like, what? It's hard to even fathom what he's talking about. Russia is a gas station with an army and a nuclear arsenal. That's what Russia is.

It is not a healthy society. Even by the standards that, you know, that Tucker judges the U.S., I mean, Russia is economically backward. Russia is, it has got declining birth rates. It has soaring rates of abortion. It's a very violent society. I mean, what is he talking about? But, you know what, Tim, the point is not to be truthful.

The point is to whip up hatred against Democrats. And I think that that's the real point of a lot of this escalating rhetoric is they want to whip their public into a frenzy. Because the more they hate the Democrats, the more that you loathe your opponents, guess what? the more grace and permission you give your own team to be corrupt and terrible and bad. Well, that one grocery store was nice too. It's that. You have to, you know, they got at that one good grocery store. Like, yeah, it's never been to a suburban publics.

I mean, come on. I don't know that I've ever mentioned Project Veritas or, you know, the, you know, theater kid that runs that and they're kind of secret videos that they take of people where they have people go on dates. I guess I would say if you're listening, and I'm stealing this from my colleague Will Summer, but if a young opair named Skyler wants to take you on a date and then start quizzing you about your job immediately on the first date, that should raise a few red flags. That's all. But anyway, Skylar found this guy, Joseph Schnitt, who's at DOJ, acting deputy chief of enforcement.

They've got them on video saying they have thousands of pages of the Epstein files. they'll redact every Republican or conservative person while leaving all the liberal Democratic people in there. It goes on to talk about how moving Julian Maxwell was against protocol. Some of the stuff is obvious, I guess, but it is worth, it's worth mentioning that that's the kind of person that you got in there at the DOJ. He's up for a promotion. Yeah, none of that surprises me at all. And your advice, Tim, is so correct, to any mid-level bureaucrat out there or even senior-level bureaucrat or journalist or pundit or commentator or whatever. if a beautiful 25-year-old woman is just so interested in you and your work,

check for the camera. Do not assume that finally, finally, somebody appreci- Or do what Cory Booker's fiancé did. Ask to look at their For You page, you know, on their Instagram account. Just be like, can I just check out your, for you? I don't want to see what other kind of material you're watching. You know, just do a little bit of vetting at least. It's possible that a beautiful 25-year-old just thinks you're amazing.

It's five, not a zero percent chance. Zero, Tim, it's zero percent. It's zero. It's zero. It's zero. You know, different strokes for different folks out there. Maybe it's a three percent chance. Maybe you ran the lottery, but I do, I would do some, I do some due diligence.

We're taking a total right turn, but I just, I was curious. I expect that we'll be hearing soon that the Texas House of Democrat, James Taurico, is going to be running for one of the offices there, maybe Senate. I'm just wondering if you've had a chance to, like, kind of check him out at all. Obviously, he is sort of positioning himself as a, you know, faithful Christian of the left. Yeah. And I'm wondering whether you think that might have any purchase. I think the last time we talked to, you were like, there's nothing that evangelical will write this hate more

than leftist Christians. So maybe it's not a great sign. But maybe there's another kind of maybe not the hard right evangelicals of the people he's going for me. There's another demo. I don't know. Just what have you made of what he's been out there doing? Look, I mean, I think this idea that somebody who's sort of a mainline,

a left-leaning Christian can appeal to evangelicals. No, evangelicals have been sort of taught from the cradle that mainline Christians are not even Christians at all, that they're a threat to Christianity. So the hardcore evangelical is going to see that person not as an appealing alternative, but they're going to actually see them as a threat. However, not every Republican voter is a hardcore evangelical.

That's still, you know, the self-described white evangelical vote is what 24, 25% of the vote in any given election. Yeah, I find a little higher in Texas, but yeah. Yeah, higher in Texas. But there's going to be, there are still mainline Christians

who vote Republican. There are a lot of people who are not particularly religious or they don't really center their politics around their religion. And in that circumstance, I think he's got a lot of potential to reach some wavering individuals

because I, I've been very impressed by the directness of his, the way in which he approaches, he does not use, in my experience, the far left buzzwords. He's very direct. He speaks a language that people can understand. He injects his faith into his work in a way that is relatable to an awful lot of people. It's very familiar to a lot of people who are themselves, maybe not like the hardcore evangelical right-winger, but their faith matters to them an awful lot.

So in that way, I think he actually presents a version. of the Democratic Party that's a reflection of the way a lot of people live their lives. Could he beat Cornyn? No. Could he beat Ken Paxton? Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah, I also throw out there another community that kind of gets lost in these other discussions is Hispanics. Now, a lot of them are going to be Catholic, not mainline Protestant, but there'll be some. For the Gen Z show, I do, FYI Pod. I interviewed a Hispanic TikToker, Carlos. Eduardo Espina. I was just asking him for some theories on why the Democrats backslid with Hispanic voters. And one of them was just that in his experience, a lot of Hispanics think

that the Democrats are, I don't know if he used this word, but godless basically, right? Like that even like present, even if you go back to Obama, I don't think anybody thought Obama was like the most faithful Christian ever. But like he went to church. He talked about his faith. You know, he talked about it comfortably, right? And Biden did that. Right. And Biden did that, right? Talked about his faith comfortably, went to church. And there are other Democrats who are maybe culturally of that same milieu, but don't do that. And like, I do think like just even just saying I'm a Christian, talking about it, open some doors with some people for whom that matters. No, I do agree with that. Again, there are more religious voters that matter than

white evangelicals. So there are many other religious constituencies. And so I agree with that. And it's interesting to speak about the Hispanic vote because there's a couple of things going on at once, I think. One is people are underestimating the extent to which the Hispanic population is becoming Pentecostal, not Catholic. And so for a lot of Hispanic voters, their Pentecostal identity, which puts them more in sort of that evangelical camp is more important to them than they're Hispanic. They see themselves more reflected like they would walk into a majority white Pentecostal church and maybe feel more at home than if they walk into a majority Hispanic Catholic church. Interesting.

Would be one way to put it. A lot of those voters have sort of gone with the evangelical culture more broadly. So that's one element that I think a lot of people miss. And the other one is, you know, Trump did well with much better with Hispanic men. And I think that the Democrats' problems with men have radiated into some of these voting blocks that they've long taken for granted. And so I think dealing with the problem of Democrats' ability to reach men is also going to have the effect of, you know, for them, hopefully, restoring some of that male support

that they've lost with black men and Hispanic men. Final topic, you wrote for the Times, the failing Moaks New York Times that you write for now, about sometimes you're like, I need a break. I'm not doing the daily Trump outrage. Like, you know, if you're doing two columns a week, you've got to do some other stuff, which I kind of personally, this is, this probably doesn't reflect the numbers on the, you know, most clicks on the opinion page. But personally, I like it when David French gets off the news. But the column this week was interesting. It was about how the Gen X latchkey kids, which you cut yourself among, raised this sort of generation that is filled with anxiety, that they're all helicopter parents, that the kids never get to go anywhere without super.

provision, and how did that happen? And you offered some theories. I've kind of a counter theory I want to run by you, but why don't you explain to listeners what your argument was? Yeah, so this is rooted in, I've been just seeing more and more. It's a combination of two things. One, we've seen, thanks to the incredible work of Jonathan Haid and others, this idea that, wait, one of the things that we've lost in this country, one of the reasons why our young people are struggling is we've lost that play-based childhood. And instead of having that play-based childhood, it's become a micromanaged childhood where people are pouring a lot of time

and energy into screens and that's been really on net bad for us. And then at the same time, I've been seeing a lot of these and I'm sure you've seen these things, Tim, although I'm older than you, so maybe it's just fed to me in the algorithm. These reels or these videos about what life was like growing up in the 70s and 80s

and how free we were and how... I don't get those, but can I just do a quick aside to listeners just because you brought this up, I've been looking for an excuse to make this. I love reading feedback from people. I don't know about you. I like getting feedback from people.

I do my best to reply to it. This menace has happened, though, where people send me reels on Instagram messages, and they don't put any message in there. Like, I'm interested in just blindly clicking on what some random person says for four minutes. So it's just a beg to listeners. Please stop sending me reels.

I'm not watching them. Anyway, so you're getting nostalgia reels. It's back on top. Yeah. And so, but the whole time I'm watching those things, which are kind of a reflection of my own childhood, thinking, wait a minute, my generation, now it didn't start with us, it arguably started with some of the younger boomers raising millennials, but my generation embraced the helicopter

parenting model with Augusto. I mean, we're the ones who parented Gen Z. And so the sort of idea that the screenager just didn't, it wasn't spawned, it was raised. Screenagers were raised by us. And so why is that? And so my point was, if you dig a little bit deeper below the nostalgia, you actually, there's a lot darker reality of Gen X. And the darker reality was it wasn't just that we were free range. We were also latchkey. And that second element really was harmful for a lot of people. And what I mean, the difference between free range and latchkey is latchkey essentially means that my independence exists. It's not because my parents are around and they let me go. So it's my parents are just not around, either because of family disillusion.

the divorce rate was more than twice what it is now right now or back then the violence was much greater so you had more family instability you had more violence people were just adjusting to two parents working so you had a lot of separation without the infrastructure built in and a lot of bad things happened you know and and a lot of bad things happened and a lot of parents grew up saying that's not going to be for my kid my kid's not going to go through that and so I wanted people to get inside the head of like helicopter parenting, because if we're going to want to go back to play-based childhood, as I believe we should, there's got to be a happy medium because independence without security can lead to abuse and really negative events, but security without any

independence can lead to anxiety and failure to thrive. So there's got to be a Goldilocks in their solution in there. I agree with a happy medium, and I'm sure that childhood trauma for some folks is part of it. What's the line Joan always likes to say about how in complicated, when there are complicated problems, there's not a single explanation for it. Exactly. Exactly. I just have another thing I just want to toss out there because I think it is related. And it's something I'm worried about is now kind of raising a younger gender to the next gen alpha, right, about how they're dealing with it. And something I talked about with other parents is like the social pressure side of it is really is hard to deal with. And I just,

I think sometimes we underestimate like how just how susceptible people are to even minor social pressure and how they do things. I'm like this kind of fight online with about Malcolm Gladwell was in an interview and he said, I was cowed into not saying that I didn't think that trans girls should be in girls sports and now I can say it. And I'm like Malcolm Gladwell was cowed. I mean, he's like a multi-millionaire. He made his whole business on doing kind of heterodoxy. opinion, you know, having heterodox insights about pop psychology. It's like, you were that worried that if you just gave a counter opinion on, on youth swimming, youth girls swimming, that you were not going to, that you were going to be ostracized? Like, if Malcolm Gladwell is that sensitive to being ostracized, we've seen this in Trump world, if like people are that sensitive to being ostracized, if they say one bad thing about Donald Trump, I kind of think

that this is like it with parents, that if you're, like, if you even have a couple of outlier parents that are extreme helicopter parents that are putting their kids in everything that are talking about how worried about their safety then the other parents start to be like well i guess i should do that right like because i don't want to be the one outlier that's like letting my kid run around the neighborhood and getting judged by the other parents and all that and i i don't really know what the solution is to that but i feel like that is something that is underlying a lot of the stuff and I worry about kind of the inverse of that with my generation where it's like if a couple parents give their kids a phone, then it's like, it's hard to be the one that stands out

and says, no, I'm going to go a different way. I don't know. You were in that, you were around those parents. What do you make of that theory? Totally. So I would say in some ways, sort of the more close hold parents, the most helicopter parents have an outsized effect because think of it like this. If you have a friend group of like four young boys and three of the parents who are very willing for the boys to roam around the neighborhood, but one is not. Yeah. Well, if the friend group is going to be intact, you bend to the most cautious parent. Right.

And you do that, you replicate that across the country where people are to sort of keep group cohesion sort of bending to the most cautious, or in the phone context, often bending to the least cautious, because once the phones get unleashed in the friend group, it has a massive, And I know this because for our youngest, we were very keen on keeping the smartphone out of her hands for a very long time. So she ended up being the last person in her sort of friend group to have a smartphone. And by the end of that period, it was a real burden. Like you're the only one not on the text chain. You're not the one who's part of the group decisions being made or the planning or people are showing each other pictures and laughing about them and you're completely out of it and all of this stuff.

So I do think the social pressure really matters. And I think on the cautious side of things, the most cautious parent tends to win because very few other parents are willing to say to push other parents past their point of discomfort, if that makes sense. To steal the line from Malcolm Gladwell, maybe it's the outliers that are pushing us into this type of behavior. Yeah, I think there's a lot to that. Yeah. And you're right. There's no monocausal explanation. But I think that the negative experiences people had is latchable.

That's the word I was looking for. Yes. That the negative experiences people had as latchkey kids have influenced their parenting decisions. David French, as always, we go longer than I intend to. But I appreciate it. Hopefully, folks enjoy it. You have a wonderful weekend up there in Chicago, and I hope to see you soon. You too, Tim.

It's always fun to talk to you. All right. Everybody else, we'll be back on Monday with Bill Crystal. See you all then. Peace. This is bad doing the world. This bad, you know what? This bad, you know.

It's bad, you know. She asked me why. I just went on toller. She asked me why. I just went on total. She asked me why. I just went on taller. I just went on taller.

She asked me why, I just went on to tell her. That hill you blow to whistle, if I made his ring the bell. That hill you blow the whistle of the fire made his ring the bell. That here you have blown with the hull of fire made he rang the bell. That here you have blown with the hall of fire made he rang a bell. It's bad, you know. The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.