The Bulwark Podcast - David French: We Are in the Bad Multiverse

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Kash Patel is making legal threats to try to silence his critics, and Tulsi Gabbard wouldn't even be able to get a security clearance in the regular job market: The parade of incompetence is so bad that Pete Hegseth is being described as the most unqualified Cabinet nominee in American history—and that's before the rape and alcoholism. Plus, Bluesky v Twitter, Russia is running out of military equipment, and are preemptive pardons a good idea?  David French joins Tim Miller. show notes Steve Schale's Bulwark piece on the Democratic Party The Southern Baptist Convention's 1998 "Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials" Longer version of Jake Tapper clip

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm delighted to have backed favorite of the pod, opinion columnist for the New York Times, cohost of the legal podcast, advisory opinions. His most recent book is divided. We fall America's secession threat and how we restore our nation. An uplifting topic. It's David French.

How you doing, David? Hey, Tim, it's always great to see you. It's good to see you too, man. You calm me for some reason. People notice that I don't cuss as much when you're on the podcast. So that's a double victory for you as a guest. Yeah, I'm just, I'm glad to have that calming effect, Tim.

I don't have it on everybody, I found out. I've noticed that. I've noticed that. I want to start with Pete Hegg, Seth. There's this guy I follow on social media, Max Twain. I really like him because he's a rabid DeSantis supporter, way more conservative than me. But unlike like 99% of MAGA world, he does not go along with the Trump BS. It's just, it's like what you would expect from somebody living on earth.

Here's how he described the DOD nomination. I thought he put it quite well. Pete Hagseth is the most unqualified cabinet nominee in American history, and that's before accounting for all the rape and alcoholism. So I want to start with you as a veteran, as a conservative, somebody that cares about this. Like it must, you must feel like you're in a simulation that people are taking this like seriously.

Yeah. It's nuts, Tim. I mean, and look, I'm not going to denigrate Pete Hegson's service. He served honorably by all accounts. That's not the issue here. I served with a bunch of guys in Iraq who served honorably as well

with more distinguished records than Pete Hegseth. They're more qualified to be Secretary of Defense than he is. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of veterans are more qualified to be Secretary of Defense than he is. There might be, Tim, 10,000 people in the greater DC area more qualified to be Secretary of Defense. I'm not exaggerating.

I mean, he's a TV host. For eight years, he's been a TV host. He's been a TV host and an activist, and his activism, according to the recent news reports, was largely a failure because of his own failings. And so he ran small organizations that he's left. He hosts a TV show and his basic qualification is that he served, which good, good for him. Again, we honor that service.

He served and he's super MAGA. Super MAGA. And he wrote a book. He wrote a book. Yeah. As, as two authors here, you know, we don't wanna denigrate that work. No, no, no, but no, it really is true,

and I'm very glad you brought that up because the statement aside from all of the alcoholism and the allegations and all of this, one of the issues with Trump's, many of Trump's new appointees, putting aside all their scandals, if we can put those aside for the moment. Yeah, sure. A lot of them are just totally not qualified

for the positions. Matt Gaetz, before he left, was absolutely not qualified. And I'm sorry, being an anti-vaccine, sort of fringe nutrition activist, doesn't qualify a person to become the head of HHS. I mean, this is, you know, what are we doing here? And I think that one of the things he could be doing, or he actually is doing, if all of these go through,

is he's really planting the seeds of his own political demise. I mean, the majority of the people who voted for him were not voting for the MAGA Extended Universe. The majority of people who were voting for him were voting out of discontent with the status quo, and if you roll in with a parade of incompetence, you're not gonna improve on the status quo.

Yeah, I wanna get into the political of it a little bit more as far as what the potential ramifications could be going forward, because I read your column on that point. I think it's interesting. I share that view that I think he's planting the seeds for his own demise, but I think there's some counter views that are worth discussing in a bit.

But I just want to share on this nomination itself, just to kind of put a finer point on the ridiculousness, there was an exchange between Jake Tapper and Rick Scott yesterday. And this was on the personal allegations. But I want to play it just to show how wrapped around the axle the defenders of the Hegs South nomination are. Let's listen to Tapper. We have the risk of war. The world's on fire. We've got to change how our department of defense is run. He's going to do it. I hear you, but you just you started this interview and saying you don't like all these anonymous accusations and I should be able to interview

these people. I'm saying, okay, shouldn't Pete Hegseth release this woman from her non-disclosure agreement so that I can do what you suggested at the top of the interview you wanted me to do. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. No equivocation there, Tim. Absolutely not. Yeah. And so this is the situation with these guys, right?

Where it's like, on the one hand, if he did have the qualifications, then you could go through this whole personal stuff. And it's like, is the fact that his personal life is a complete disaster and that he's a serial cheater and that there are rape allegations, is that enough to disqualify him? Or if the opposite was true, he wasn't really qualified, but he's really shown a lot of ... In his personal life, he's been very distinguished and he ran these other organizations and he ran them well against neither. And these guys, it's just hard to understand like what, well, it's

not hard to understand, I guess, but like, can you just believe that how these guys are putting themselves in the position to have to defend something that's preposterous? Well, you know, it's deja vu all over again, Tim, that we remember 2017 to 2021 when Trump was president and all of these guys are having to defend the next, the latest tweet, they're having to defend the latest temper tantrum, the latest scandal. And you know, some of them just duck, kind of duck and cover,

do the Mike Johnson thing of pretend you're talking on the phone while racing through reporters. Some of them make ridiculous statements like this. I want to interview the person. Okay. Release her from NDA. Absolutely not. I mean, this is like, this is a different category than just avoiding people about the Trump tweets.

I get some level, I, you know, it's like, Oh, Trump said this crazy thing. He's the president. Yes. Members of Congress should have thoughts about statements made by the president of the United States or the president elect in this case. That's true. But like it also is Trump, right? And that's just the reality that we live in, that he's going to say crazy stuff. And it's at least, you know, you can at least understand the rationale behind, you know, these guys not answering for that

at this point. Well, like, what is the rationale for excusing this? I mean, there's a way out here, and this is maybe the most serious job in the world, the non-elected position in the entire world, the Secretary of Defense of the United States. They have agency on this, right? It's not just like Trump popping off. Well, not only do they have agency, Tim,

they have a responsibility here. They have constitutional responsibility. And so, you know, this is one of the things that's so frustrating about the moment is, at this circumstance, you're exactly right to draw a distinction between responding to tweets or even responding to policy papers or positions or executive orders and things like that, and a nomination for which that senator is constitutionally

obligated to give advice and consent. And so what we're beginning to see is a morphing in the Republican Party of the idea of the job of the senator in this moment. They're really seeing themselves, many of them, not all of them thankfully, but many of them are seeing themselves as my job is to vote for the president's team. You will hear this, the president won, he is entitled to his team. But that's actually the opposite of the truth. When you read the Federalist Papers and you read none other than Alexander Hamilton talking about the advice and consent role, the advice and consent role was specifically designed

to prevent the nomination of people through favoritism, obsequiousness, to where the president would only get yes men and yes women around him. And so what we're actually talking about here is what is their fundamental job? What is their role as a senator? And the founders were very, very clear about it. And so far as I know, the 2024 election does not abrogate their constitutional responsibilities. They have it. They have that responsibility. And yes, they're ducking it. And it is far more serious than ducking, commenting even on Trump policies. I think this is the prime example that

we are in the bad multiverse. I do have to say. The Hegseth thing, I just think, is too ridiculous to be real. It has to be okay. It's absurd, Tim, that we've spent five times more time talking about him than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., which is also unbelievably absurd and haven't even raised the name Tulsi Gabbard, which is also ridiculous. And then let's think about this, where're actually, if we're in a world where I'm breathing a sigh of relief that Pam Bondi is the attorney general nominee now.

She would have been my worst case scenario a few years ago, and now I'm like, okay, Pam Bondi, okay. At least it's not Matt Gaetz. People are like, oh, it turned to Pam Bondi. That's somebody responsible. I'm like, oh, return to Pam Bondi. That's somebody responsible. I'm like, she was with Rudy, like when he was at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Pam Bondi was going around with him.

And there are other people that we haven't mentioned yet that we're gonna get to. RFK isn't even on my outline and we're planning a Rogan length podcast here. So you're correct, we are in a strange time. But I wonder if you're bringing in particular one more thing on the Hegsett thing. You wrote something, I think maybe over on Blue Sky, we're going to get into Blue Sky versus Twitter too, that's also coming

about how, you know, as part of his defense of his personal behavior, he's talking about how he's found Jesus and how, like, obviously you have respect for that and somebody finding their faith and turning over a new leaf. It's relatively convenient timing. I would note, great timing for finding Jesus. Great timing, spectacular timing. There is, the other side of that coin, which you've also written a lot about, I mean, he is at the mega church in Tennessee in your home state that has ties to the Doug Wilson Church in Idaho, which we've covered here that has, you know, kind of these deeply radical Christian nationalist beliefs. And I do just

wonder whether that gives you any pause thinking about maybe he has found Jesus, but maybe he's also found the political Jesus. Yeah, it does give me pause, Tim. There's no question about it. And, and you know, look, I've seen some of the defenses of the tattoos that he has, you know, has a Jerusalem cross tattoo. He has another one that says, deus volt, God wills it, which is a slogan of the crusaders. Yeah. Somebody was trying to say that there was, that was a Catholic slogan. And I was like, I did 13 years of Catholic school.

My mom's a daily church goer. Never heard deus volt before. Yeah. I don't love this term, you know, the term gaslighting, which everyone uses all the time in this era, but this is actual gaslighting because, you know, the term gaslighting, which everyone uses all the time in this era. But this is actual gaslighting because, you know, on the one hand, a lot of these Twitter people are like, oh, how dare you take umbrage at a Christian cross

or a Christian saying, you anti-Christian bigot, when anyone who spends any time in these spaces knows that those particular symbols usually, but not always, I have to say it, just like flying an appeal to heaven flag or whatever, there is a usually but not always element to this, but those symbols, especially in this current moment, usually indicate that they are part of a particular strain of Christian nationalism.

And if you doubt that, if you follow any of the major accounts, if you follow any of the people who are deep into this, you see this Deus Volt stuff all the time. You will see it in responses to me online. You'll see it all the time. Deus Volt, God wills it with a crusader swinging a sword. It's an image you see frequently. And you know, when you

combine it with the fact that he is part of a church and a denomination that has had ties to not just Christian nationalists, but some pretty nasty racial stuff as well. Now, I have no indication that he's into that. A lot of churches in the sea though, you know, you could choose. Boy, that, again, this is the kind of thing where if you understand this world, it's alarming, but you have to really understand this world. And those who don't walk into it and they'll be like, they'll be saying things about tattoos or crosses, et cetera, that have no bearing to what's actually happening

in this sort of online subculture. And it's entirely possible to him, but one of the reasons why I haven't really raised this and drilled down on this, it's entirely possible that he has those tattoos in this completely sort of innocent coincidental way, that he belongs to this denomination, but has not been part of the sort of move to the Christian nationalist right

and elements of the white nationalist right. That's all possible, but the affiliation with a denomination in a movement that is one of the most Christian nationalists in the Protestant world is a bit disturbing to me. Same, I'm happy to hear that you said that. Same, same. And you know, look, there are no religious tests for public office that is part of the

American Constitution. But if you have a view of the American Constitution that is subordinate to religious authority, that absolutely you can take into account. What it ties to what we had an interview earlier this week with Thomas Zimmer about Russ Vogt, right? Like there are other, like actually more explicit about that than Hank Seth, right? Just about like his views of kind of being in a post-constitutional moment and what the obligations of the administration are. Right, right. The actual faith itself should not disqualify anybody, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, of course not.

If they have a view that is dangerous to the Constitution, you can consider the view that is dangerous to the Constitution regardless of the faith source, if that makes sense. So whether, if you are hostile to the American Constitution, you come at that hostility through a dedication to say Sharia law, or if you're hostile to the United American Constitution, you come at that hostility through a dedication to say Sharia law, or if you're hostile to the United States Constitution

and you come to that through theonomy, sort of Protestant religious nationalism, either one of those sources, the core issue is, are you hostile to the United States Constitution? Not, are you Muslim, are you Christian? And that, but again, I have put that further down the list, just because we have so many other things that require no speculation at all.

Because there's actually no argument for him, you know? Exactly. So getting through all the arguments against is pretty challenging. All right. Speaking of people that might be hostile to the Constitution, our incoming at least nominee for FBI Director, Cash Patel, there's a letter yesterday that was pretty chilling to me, and then I wanted to get your take on Olivia Troy, which says friend of mine was on MSNBC talking about cash, particularly about the story, which we've discussed on

this podcast in how he allegedly lied to the Defense Department about getting approval for airspace over Nigeria as they were doing kind of an exfil operation for somebody out of Niger. I think this was in Mark Esper's book. So she talked about that and said that he kind of lied about intelligence or something. Cash Patel's lawyer sent a letter to her saying that litigation will be filed against you if you fail to retract defamatory statements made about Mr. Patel. To me that's chilling for a lot of reasons but I'm curious what your thoughts are. Yeah, I mean this is the kind of intimidation that you've seen you know

in a number of places, a number of spaces where somebody with superior resources is trying to challenge a critic and drag them in to either intimidate them into silence because maybe that person doesn't have a number of spaces where somebody with superior resources is trying to challenge a critic and drag them in to either intimidate them into silence because maybe that person doesn't have a lot of resources. They can't hire a lawyer. Even if they're telling the truth, they just don't have the resources to fight the battle over the truth. So you might be trying to intimidate into silence, bully into silence. And this is a tactic that you often see. At one point it became so common to see sort of more powerful, larger entities trying to bully smaller critics into silence that this is a reason why a bunch of states have passed

what are called anti-SLAP laws. In other words, a SLAP lawsuit is strategic lawsuit against public participation. It's where you are filing a lawsuit to try to get somebody to shut up. And a lot of states now have these summary proceedings where if you file that defamation lawsuit and it doesn't have merit, you can have a very short summary proceeding where the lawsuit gets dismissed and the person who filed it has to pay your attorney's fees, which is not the normal course of action. So she's almost certainly legally safe. I mean, she did not defame him in those

statements. She's almost certainly legally safe, but that's not the question, Tim. The question is, is she going to be bullied? Is she going to be intimidated? Now we both know her and she's not the kind of person who's going to be bullied or intimidated. She has high quality legal counsel, unlike a lot of people who are in these circumstances. So she's gonna be fine, but there's no question in my mind this was a shot across the bow. It was a symbol that if you are going to come after him, he will come after you in some way.

And I think that that symbol does really matter. That symbol is really important. And look, defamation law has a role to play in American life. I mean, it was the defamation lawsuit that held Fox News accountable, Rudy Giuliani accountable, Gateway Pundit. I mean, we can go down the line.

But abusive defamation law is one way that powerful people try to silence criticism. And so this looks like that textbook abuse, that effort to try to intimidate somebody and silence somebody with legal threats. In addition to everything you said, the thing that really concerns me the most about this is that it is the person that's the incoming potential FBI director, right? And it was an action that to me, I don't know how you can read it any other way than as personal vengeance or grievance, particularly when you consider that this claim against

him has been made by lots of people. Again, it was in the former defense secretary's book. So to pick one person to target them, to me that's a signal that I'm going to plan on targeting people. And the FBI has huge leeway to target people before you ever get to legal proceedings. There are checks eventually. Eventually, you have to prosecute somebody. There are going to be checks and you're going to have to have grand juries or juries or

other DOJ, whatever, to approve it. There will be other checks. But an incoming FBI director, to me, this is signaling that, yeah, I'm going to go after you and there's actually gonna be a lot you can do about it. There's not an anti-SLAPP lawsuit you can file against the FBI director for investigating it. Yeah, I'm so glad you raised that point, Tim, because I've had a number of people ask me,

okay, wait a minute, how much can the Trump administration really target you? After all, you've got juries, you've got judges, you've got a lot of checks. That's absolutely true when it comes to can the Trump administration prosecute and convict with the emphasis on and convict. It's critics. Yeah, there are a lot of safeguards against that. No question. But where are the safeguards the weakest? The safeguards are the weakest when it comes to investigations. So for example, you could have Pam Bondi appoint a special counsel to quote, investigate Russiagate. You know, in other words, like go back over all the Durham ground or whatever.

Or you could have a special counsel to investigate irregularities in the 2020 election. Or some mandate along those lines. And then this person then just proceeds to pull into the dragnet dozens of Trump critics, dozens of media figures, where everyone's got to get a lawyer. You're going to be spending enormous sums of money that often people don't have. All of a sudden, your name gets leaked into the public

as a potential target of an investigation, then the threats come in, and maybe you don't have the resources for security in that circumstance. And, you know, so whether it's the FBI, whether it's, you know, larger main justice, whether it's the IRS, one of the things that we have seen is that investigation capability, the process is the punishment.

And so that's why the investigation powers of the federal government should be used sparingly only when there is probable cause to believe crimes have been committed because the investigation can be so incredibly burdensome to its targets. And so no, you don't have to prosecute and convict people to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

You can extend the investigation dragnet and literally just ruin people financially. Yeah, this is a- That's cheery. This is so cheery, Tim. This is cheery. Yeah, and I'm adding this question now. We've been doing this with some of my colleagues here, but I'm curious your take. So now looking at all these nominations, like what is the thing that alarms you the most? Because of that answer you just gave, I look at these things and I think that cash and Tulsi are the most alarming because of the leeway they will have to act on things without, before you get to potential checks from other areas of the government. But other folks have

different views. People are very concerned about RFK and you know, whatever polio, the reprisal of polio. Polio, polio is a problem too. So I just wonder what your threat assessment is sitting here right now as you kind of look at the potential incoming administration with, you know, a month's worth of data. Yeah, I mean, I think to me,

the Cash Patel nomination stands out because you're talking about somebody running one of them. And look, there are a lot of good folks at the FBI who would resist him. There's just no question about that. Or resist extra legal demands or whatever. Yes, correct. Resist extra legal demands, yes. They shouldn't resist him if he's offering, you know, making directives that are legal

and appropriate. But extra legal demands, there will be people who resist that. There will be people in the DOJ who would resist extra legal demands for sure. But the amount of power and authority that he has over individuals who have really, almost sort of unrivaled ability to dig into your life,

unrivaled ability to turn your life inside out and to place you in profound legal jeopardy because one of the things that you've seen and one of the, there were critics of the Russia investigation and critics of FBI investigations more broadly have a point about is that often the FBI will dive in to an issue and they won't be able

to prove the underlying crime that was the instigator for the investigation, but there are crimes that are then committed in the process of the investigation, among them things like lying to the FBI, et cetera. And so, you know, one of the things you'll see happen is they'll be investigating topic acts, but they get very angry at how the target of the investigation behaved during the investigation and they'll charge what are called process crimes, crimes allegedly committed

during the course of the investigation. And sometimes that's totally appropriate. Sometimes somebody does, in the middle of the investigation, try to obstruct it, they do lie, et cetera. And then sometimes though, it's a reach, it's a stretch. And so it is just a very dangerous thing to get the FBI targeted on any given person's life. It is.

And so that is very disturbing to me. I'm actually in a weird way, Tim. Hegseth is so unqualified, so profoundly unqualified that in a way he's less dangerous Hegseth is so unqualified, so profoundly unqualified that in a way he's less dangerous because he'll be surrounded by, if you've ever been in rooms full of generals, these are not people who are intimidated by a Pete Hegseth. Right.

So. Though can you imagine having to, yes sir, Pete Hegseth, if you are. Oh my gosh. You know, like the commanding general of Europe, you know, your West Point grad and, you know, have been 40 years on the job going up the ranks. Ridiculous.

But, yes, I concur with that, with your point. Yeah, I mean, it's not that he's harmless. I just think the institution of the Pentagon is not easy to hijack. Let me put it that way. But I will say this. I mean, I do think there are real security risks here. I mean, Tulsi, for example, her past is a past that would, let me put it like this, Tim,

there are a number of things about her past that would make it difficult for her to get a security clearance. Right. Just starting from scratch. Now, I know she's served in the military and all of this, but if you're starting from scratch and you are filling out a security clearance form and you're talking and interviewing in that security clearance form and you're talking about your contacts with foreign powers and foreign leaders, right? There are elements here that just raise concerns

and raise alarms. And then when it comes to Hegeseth, let's just presume for the sake of argument, Tim, let's just presume for the sake of argument that he is, had a genuine religious conversion, that he was a philanderer before, but now by golly, he is faithful to his third wife. There's just no question about it.

Well, he's faithful to his third wife now. We do know that he cheated on her once already because he was with her when the woman who alleged him of rape reported that to the police and he says it was a consensual affair. So now he's belatedly faithful to his third wife. Now, that's what I'm saying. Now he's faithful. He's faithful now. But the problem you have is he's got this long trail of alleged womanizing.

I mean, it's so concrete that his mother's letter, I mean, that letter is chilling. On the one hand, I feel very uncomfortable reading a mother's letter to a son. On the other hand, how bad does it have to be before a mother writes a son a letter like that? A grown son. A grown son, yeah, this is not a high schooler. But here's the issue, Tim.

How many scandals are just embedded in his past? And so how vulnerable is he to blackmail over scandals embedded in his path even assuming he's all faithful and good now. How much vulnerability is there to scandal in the past which is you know again one of these issues adultery for examples against the uniform code of military justice and he's gonna be running the pentagon i mean. to military justice and he's going to be running the Pentagon. I mean, there's just so many layers to this that are absurd, but in a weird way, because the Pentagon is an actually really difficult beast to sort of wrestle to the ground, I worry about him less than I might worry about an RFK or certainly a Cash Patel. Hey, y'all. Clothing trends change and I like to try to keep up with them,

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That's 20% off your first order at american-giant.com code BULLWORK. I want to move on to what the Biden administration can do here in the last month of the lame duck or interregnum. There's a story yesterday in Politico about a discussion happening about preemptive pardons. And I want to say, before I get your opinion about this, I have kind of an emotional guttural reaction in favor of this, especially after the Hunter pardon. And the more I think about it and the more I hear and I've heard from several people that might be on that list, for example, I'm sort of backing off that opinion. And I like to be candid when I change my views here,

you know, full, we're all working through all this stuff in real time. We are in unprecedented times. But I'm wondering how you kind of assess that kind of discussion happening in the Biden administration. Yeah, I think it's a bad idea, Tim. I really do. Let me put it this way. Here would be a good way of thinking through it.

You and I are both occasional Trump critics. We've had beef with MAGA. We both believe the 2020 election was free and fair. We both debunked election, stolen election theories. If Joe Biden offered you a pardon, would you take it? Like, cause my answer is no. Cause I would not want any implication at all that I had done anything illegal, improper, immoral.

And my view would be, you know, to Trump, you're just going to have to come after me. You're going to have to prove it. I would not accept a pardon because I wouldn't want the implication at all that I'd done anything. And can I just add to this, just because for real, like, I hear from people, and I think this is countering the Hunter thing, where they're like, well, you're not considering how dangerous cash could be. And I'm like, I'm considering it.

No, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But my point is I think I would come down on no two. My initial instinct would have been, yeah, let's do it. Let's roll. But I come down on no two for this reason, which is like, if they are going to go so far outside the bounds of the law. Like if you think the worst about this administration, if you think that the worst authoritarian nightmares of the person that spends all day watching,

redoing resistance media, like on resistant social media, you take their worst nightmares, right? And then you put, I put myself in that situation and then they decided to target me. Well, a pardon's not gonna protect me from that. You know what I mean? Like even the Joe Biden pardon of Hunter, right? It expires on New Year's of this year, right? So you don't think that they are gonna,

that if they really wanted to target Hunter, they couldn't target him and investigate him, do all the things you were just talking about earlier about what Cash Patel could do, investigate your life and find other future crimes or past crimes that go past 11 years. I kind of don't know what good it does because if they're going to act within the normal checks and balances, like you are going to be protected not from investigation, that's

going to happen, but eventually when these things get to juries, et cetera. And if they're going to go around, if you really are in dystopian world and think that they're going to go around all that, well, then what the hell is a pardon going to do for you? So yeah, I don't know. I just kind of as a practical matter, and the other one other point I'll say is one of the people I spoke to about this said they don't want to be on the list because they think that they would that would worry them that it would make them targeted more by swatting yes crazy people targeting them and they're like they're then this person said they're more afraid of that than they are of the Justice Department.

Well, that's why I raised that very point when I talked about investigations before, because when names leak out that are being investigated or it becomes known that someone's being investigated, then that sort of worst element of MAGA, that sewer MAGA comes out in intimidation and threats and so, no, that's absolutely right. Here's what I think is a lot more productive response

to this Trump challenge. It's not preemptive pardons. I think that that is something that there's a rule of law implications there. There are implications that if you accept the pardon, a lot of people view that as sort of accepting a level or degree of guilt that is not appropriate. Here's what would be far more preferable.

Remember how I said the process is the punishment? What would be far more preferable is if you took a slice of sort of political slash cultural philanthropy and you created a defense fund, you created a sort of a mutual defense fund where people, regular ordinary people who, you know, that the list, the cash Patel list that you put online, Tim, most of those folks are not rich people.

They do not have infinite resources. And so creating a sort of a defense fund or that capacity for people who get in the cross hairs to have attorney's fees taken care of of to have security maybe deployed to their homes. You know, these kinds of things I think would make people feel far better than a pardon, which implies, even though the whole purpose of it is to foreclose the possibility of innocent people being targeted, the pardon implies a measure of guilt. It will be interpreted by an awful lot of people

as an acceptance of guilt. And again, there are rule of law implications. I think it's a lot better to create more of a defense fund security assistance for people who are targeted than it is to do preemptive pardons. Yeah, I'm deeply torn about this. I don't know. I'd like to think about it more.

I like Fauci is kind of a strange example, right? Because they already are planning on investigating him. Maybe there's an argument for that in his case versus like the Liz Cheney. They're throwing out some names. It's like Liz Cheney. I'm like, what Liz Cheney? What are they going to investigate her for? She didn't do anything. She was just on the January 6th committee. Right? But COVID stuff, I don't know. the Gangory Six Committee, right? But COVID stuff, I don't know. I think it's a tough question. Do you have other thoughts about productive things that the president could do in the last month here,

to either safeguarding against Trump or anything? I think you wrote about potentially some actions around Ukraine, you think? Yeah, you know, what's unfortunate is that when the Biden administration was trying to Trump proof American democracy, it focused on elections appropriately. So, cause we just been through January six, right?

So I'm not the electoral count act reform is a tremendous Biden administration accomplishment. It was important for our country. It's going to be good for us for next 100 years that we won't have the same kind of vulnerabilities that we had in 2020. But what did not happen in the Biden administration was reform of the powers of the presidency itself.

Very specifically around the Insurrection Act. The Insurrection Act is ridiculously broadly drafted to grant the president the ability to deploy troops in American cities on his own initiative when he wants to. And it's just a very scary law. But sadly, I could say, hey, in the remaining period, try to push through an Insurrection Act reform. I don't think Mike Johnson's gonna go for that.

You don't think so? I don't think so. But I do think that there. You don't think so? I don't think so. But I do think that there's still- People tell me he's a straight shooter, as a earnest man. So it's very hard to sort of come up with what can Joe Biden do domestically in these next couple of months,

aside from these pardons, which I'm against, to really sort of Trump-proof America. But there is something overseas, I think, where he could deploy his influence. And that is, and I wrote about this, there are more than $200 billion in Russian assets that are frozen right now. Most of it held, interestingly enough,

in Belgian institutions. And that money's been frozen since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. What I urged was Biden try to seize it, to get our NATO allies to just seize that money. Why? Because one, it would deal a tremendous economic blow to Russia and two, if you seize that money

and transfer it to the Ukrainian war effort, you can at least try to mitigate some of the effects of a lost American support. You know, if we do pull out our support from Ukraine, there's elements of that that are irreplaceable. We just have more stuff than any of our Western allies. We have more shells, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, missiles that we can send to Ukraine.

But if Ukraine at least has resources it can purchase from foreign sources, you know, at least some arms to make up for that shortfall, not entirely, but some. So I think that that would be a very concrete thing he could do to at least improve Ukraine's bargaining position. If there are armistice talks or ceasefire talks in any way. But Tim, we're just at this point where there's just not a lot of options. There's just not much that Biden can do. I don't know. People on Twitter are telling me that he's got to play hardball. This is the moment.

Get rid of the norms. No more norms. Hardball time right now, the last month. You don't have any hardball suggestions? I mean, not that are consistent with the, you know, civic reality of the American constitution. No, I do not. Got it. Okay. Any other thoughts on the incoming administration on the Ukraine side of things that have been, there was a Reuter story about the, you know, the different kinds of options that are being floated by Kellogg and Vance and,

and, and some of these these types as far as negotiating. I'm less confident that Putin is going to want to play ball with this administration's deal making than I think the administration and others are. Maybe that's wrong. Maybe they have a handshake deal and no secret phone calls that Woodward reported on. But I don't know. Do you have any sense for where things are going?

Yeah, you know, we're in a grim place, Tim, but not hopeless. So here's what's grim, and then I'll say why not hopeless. The grim reality is that Russia has seen an opportunity and is expending enormous resources on the battlefield to try to push Ukraine back. And it is pushing Ukraine back. Ukraine has lost, I'm not going to say a lot of territory relative to the size of the country. It's a big country in Europe, but a lot of territory relevant to the last two years.

And they've lost like the Dakotas. Yeah, they've lost. We wouldn't be thrilled about that. Yeah, yeah. Not that big, but they have, and they've taken serious losses in equipment and personnel. So Russia has been pushing its advantage on the battlefield.

And so what I'm very worried about is that what you would have as a situation where essentially Trump pushes the situation to where there is a ceasefire agreement that is a clear win for Putin, but is broadcast to the American people as, I brought peace. And here's how you'll know if Trump has given Putin a win, that he will then turn around and try to talk about like, I'm the guy who brought peace. And the clear indication would be if you had some sort of ceasefire roughly along the current lines of battle.

I don't think Russia will ever agree to a ceasefire while Ukrainian troops are on its soil because there are still Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region. You'll have a ceasefire somewhere along the line of battle, which means Russia is going to hold a significant portion of Ukrainian territory. I think that's generally a foregone conclusion in most people's minds. No matter how this thing ends, Russia's gonna have some more territory

than it started with in February of 2022. But what are the other conditions? It's a win for Ukraine and a loss for Russia if the ceasefire occurs and Ukraine joins the EU and NATO. That's a loss for Vladimir Putin. That he lost that war. Even if he got a few more chunks of Ukraine, he lost the war because he lost influence over Ukraine. If he gets a ceasefire with the pledge of neutrality, with a pledge that, that

Ukraine won't join NATO, that it won't be part of the EU and heaven forbid, deposing Zelensky as leader, then Putin won. He not only got Ukrainian territory that becomes part of Russia, he also essentially got exactly what he wanted by turning Ukraine into a satellite of Russia and not a true free and independent country. That's the outcome that would be a big win for Putin.

And then Trump would turn around to the American people and say, I ended the war. Look at my negotiating skills, I ended the war. But you quote, ended the war, that would be ending the war through what is effectively a surrender to Putin. That's what they're proposing. I mean, that's literally the JD Vance and Kellogg. I mean, not the deposing of Zelensky,

but who knows what would happen there. But like the rest of it, that's what they're proposing. Well, it'd be hard to see Zelensky surviving a settlement agreement like that, a peace settlement like that. But here's where- It's hard for me to see any of the players going along with that except for JD Vance. JD Vance seems to be the only person in this engagement that would really like that engagement, but who knows?

Yeah. Well, but here's where things, I said grim, but not hopeless. So here's the not hopeless part. At the very beginning of my answer, I said Russia is taking enormous losses. It really is. The casualty figures out of eastern Ukraine right now are just mind blowing. And it's not just the casualties. It is the loss in equipment.

And a lot of folks are saying Putin's got until somewhere in 2025 before the equipment losses reached such a critical level, not the manpower losses. In theory, he can replace those, but he's digging through his Cold War era stocks and you just can't wave a magic wand and create a lot more main battle tanks or cruise missiles. And so he's using up these resources faster than he can replace them. And the clock is ticking on that.

And so there's sort of two ticking clocks. One is the pressure on Ukraine, outnumbered insufficient resources. And the other one is the pressure on Russia. It's expending its superior resources at a terrifying rate from the Russian perspective to try to achieve these battlefield gains. And they can't keep doing this forever.

They're gonna hit a critical stage. I just wanna go briefly into some Democratic Party autopsy stuff. Ah, fun. I wasn't gonna do this actually, but I was talking with somebody yesterday about how we were doing this pod today. And I was like, what did you ask them?

And they brought up something that I don't think anybody's mentioned that you are maybe the perfect person in all of America to weigh in on something when you look at what the Dems are doing. And that is that there's a lot of talk about how Democrats have lost working class voters and hemorrhage working class voters. If also just to hemorrhage these huge sw sloths of America, this is a long time coming. Steve Shaley wrote about this for the Bullwork earlier this week about the Florida experience, which I really highly recommend.

I'll put it in the show notes. It was a very good piece. Yeah, it really did. Yeah, he's a democratic strategist, a very smart guy. There's a word that doesn't really ever come up in all this, which is Christianity, which is a religion, and that the Democrats, you know, it's always like, well, maybe we should be more economically populist, you know, is the answer, or maybe this, or maybe we should be tougher on immigration and crime, and maybe so.

Like, the other thing is, you know, Joe Biden was a, is a faithful Catholic, it was believable that he's church-going Christian. Besides that, I mean, Kamala and President Obama are Christian. I'm not saying they're not Christian, but like, not in the cultural sense. They didn't enter public life as... Yeah. Yeah. And I don't mean it's not race, and it's not race-based. Raphael Warnock is culturally Christian, right? Talks about it as comfortable talking about his faith.

He's a pastor. He's a pastor. Like there are plenty of people. Like I'm not, I'm Catholic. I'm not culturally like no, I couldn't run for office and people would be like, he's a Christian. I mean, in a gay marriage, I don't go to church anymore. So this is what I, I'm talking about people that are Christian, that are genuine believers, that go to church and that talk about it. Will the Democrats benefit from recruiting more candidates like that? Do you think?

Or the other side of this is like, the kind of people they've lost that are evangelical are more like they're more culturally evangelical than faithfully evangelical anyway. And so there's not actually not a lot of ground to gain. Yeah, I'm gonna take the darker view of this that right now what you're dealing with is the product of decades of acculturation in white evangelical spaces.

So I'm somebody, I'm pro-life, I'm socially conservative, I'm evangelical, I go to church every Sunday, and I've been expelled, Tim. People call me a heretic, people call me a wolf. Even though I have not changed my views on- The beard. The confessions of faith. Hey, they have beards, like the Theo bros, they all have beards. That's right. They have those big beards though.

You have kind of a wolfian, narrow beard. So it has become so acculturated within sort of white evangelical spaces that to be an evangelical in that culture is to also be Republican. It is very difficult even for somebody who's pro-life, even for somebody who agrees with the confessions of the faith, who believes in the divine inspiration of scripture. But if you're not with Donald Trump, then people question whether you're even a Christian. And Tim, that sounds absurd. Makes sense.

It is totally absurd. It's utterly absurd. But unless you live in these evangelicals- Jesus loved the whoremongers and the- Gosh. Unless you live in the sort of heart, the cradle of evangelical culture, you don't realize how much it's just part of the air

you breathe, the water you drink. You meet a group of people who come, let's say they're at Sunday brunch after church, and there's 15 people at a table. The assumption would be that all 15 are Republicans. Ryan Burge wrote this really interesting thing. He's probably one of the best statisticians of religion out there.

And he said, look, white evangelicals are Republicans, Republicans are white evangelicals. He showed a graph of where does every religious subgroup line up with the ideology of their party? And so what he found was that black Democrats are to the right of the Democratic Party. White atheists are to the left of the Democratic Party. Mormons are to the left of the Democratic Party. Mormons are to the left of the Republican Party.

Catholics go right down the middle between the two. But white evangelicals were the only group that exactly matched the party, exactly. And so there's this union between white evangelical culture and the Republican party, that is extremely powerful and extremely difficult to crack. I do think the Democrats can carve off people on the margins,

but if you're saying like, here's our electoral strategy is we're gonna pry white evangelicals from the Republican party, that's really hard because they have become so culturally combined that, especially in regions like where I live, that it is extremely difficult. All right.

Well, so if you could use your dark magic as a former person in good standing and help the Democrats, since that's what the white evangelicals think about you, use your nefarious powers to help the Democrats, what about you, use your nefarious powers to help the Democrats, what would you tell them to do? If there's just one thing, what would be the thing that you would say would be the most helpful? Jared Liesveld Run your cities better. I mean, I'll just be honest. Now, there are things that... Pete Slauson I agree there's been a kind of annoys me living in Louisiana, which is run like shit, and nobody's like, well, we can't give Republicans power because the Democrats go around the cities.

Republicans aren't exactly knocking it out of the park here, running Louisiana, but I hear you. I agree, but I just do that. And look, I think people are over-reading the results of the election quite a bit. I think that at the end of the day, this was a very close election, both on the electoral college and the popular vote. A couple hundred thousand switched votes and this thing goes a different way. So historically, this is a very close election. And I firmly believe that the, but for inflation and the border,

Harris would have won this thing. And if Trump botches it the next four years, if there's higher inflation or if the economy's struggling, the Democrats could win again without changing anything. I mean, this is a very closely divided country. But I will say that, look, it's just a simple fact that elements of blue run America are not working well, and they're not working well in the most public of ways.

And so unlike, say, rural Louisiana, or rural Kentucky, or rural Tennessee, close to where I live, the dysfunctions in rural America are not front and center in American faces in the way that dysfunctions in America's crown jewel cities are, including, by the way, the inability to get affordable housing, for crying out loud. I mean, so if you look at who voted for whom, the high information voters voted for Kamala Harris.

The people who sort of like are like you, Tim, that they know immediately. Well, San Francisco is struggling, but have you seen Louisiana? Louisiana has some issues, right? Yeah. But the people that were... They're gleaming downtown in Shreveport, let me tell you. There are lots of parts of red run America that are struggling and there's just no question about it. But people who are not paying attention to politics, it's not front and center. They have

economic concerns. And then also, it's quite telling that a lot of America's urban areas had a big red shift in 2024. So my colleague Ezra Klein has been saying this, I'm not, you know, I'm not saying anything brand new, but embracing an abundance agenda, a growth agenda that says we're the party of optimism, we're the party that wants to get things actually done in this country. I think that is, and expresses like optimism

and hope for the country. But Tim, everybody overreads these elections. When I was- I mean, you alluded to at the top and you wrote about this, but like your, like the main Tim theory at this point is that, I mean, I think that there are things Democrats should do and we'll spend a lot of time talking about that.

Like Trump bail link is the main thing that could help rejuvenate the Democrats, as you mentioned, and there are certainly some pretty good signs that he's on that trajectory, but TBD. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and look, if you go back and you read commentary after 04, it will be Republicans cracked the code, they're gonna have the enduring majority. After 06, oh, be, Republicans cracked the code, they're gonna have the enduring majority.

After 06, oh look, Democrats cracked the code. 08, Obama, it's the new era. Then 2010, Tea Party, it just does this constantly. I remember the 2012 front page of Buzzfeed is just like burned in my mind. Liberal America, you know, and it's just like, it's here. Yeah, exactly, you know, the phrase coalition of the ascendant, you know,. Yeah, exactly. You know, the phrase coalition of the ascendant.

So every party overreads its victories. And there are a lot of people who are sort of saying about the Democrats, well, you're engaging in too much self-loathing. The MAGA didn't question itself after 2020. It just charged on believing it had won. But I actually think some of this reflection and angst is healthy.

You know, look- No, I do too. Yeah, I, you know, if you lose- You can't give up 40% of the country. No. This is going to happen when you give up 40% of the country. Yeah. That's my one thing to the Democrats is like, you can't just count out, like if Ohio and

Iowa and Florida, you just won 10 years ago. You can't just count them out now and like not come up with the strategy and expect to be a majority governing party. So yeah, exactly. So blue sky versus Twitter, you laughed, you're a long thread on why you're sticking with blue sky. I'm going to make the counter case to you really quick and we'll see my case for staying on Twitter is essentially twofold. One that it's kind of my job. And so this is not a recommendation really for listeners, but I like knowing what the crazy mega people are saying I think it's useful to know what they're saying I think it's useful to engage with that with some of them not not many people it's not useful to engage with but there's some

that it's useful to engage with but to all bubbles are bad and Democratic bubbles might have different kinds of badness or you might want to want to say they're not quite as bad or not quite as cruel or quite as whatever, but it will make me hate my new allies to go into a democratic bubble and be just bombarded anytime I issue any wrong speak by people who are trying to get me in line or have to go through, as we saw yesterday, a list of people who are purportedly the good-hearted angelic ones that are cheering the murder of a CEO in cold blood on the streets because he's a healthcare executive. So I just, bubbles are bad, liberal bubbles are bad, MAGA bubbles might be worse, that's true, but I would rather try to engage in a space where there is a variety of views. So that's my

pitch for staying on Twitter which is awful and Elon is awful. So it's a modest case, but that's my modest case. Look, I monitor it. I left for a while, I came back right before the election season just because it was the election season and it was worse than when I left it. And, I came back right before the election season just because it was the election season and it was worse than when I left it. And here's the other thing about it, Tim, it was more boring. So it's this kind of weird combination of super toxic

and super boring in the same way that like a sewer is. You know? Yeah. It's, you don't open the sewer and go, oh gross, let me keep watching this. It's no, like, yuck, let me close the manhole cover. And that's sort of how my feeling is about Twitter. And look, I agree with you.

That's one of the reasons why I monitors. I do want to see what sort of like, what are the weirdo Christian nationalist tweeting about today or what, there is some value in that, but I have to say as far as my job, Twitter or social media is, it's not primary, it's not secondary, it's not even tertiary,

it is just an occasional outlet for me and that's that. And so for me, it's a low priority. And so if I have a low priority engagement, I'm gonna engage where quite engagement, I'm going to engage where quite frankly I enjoy it more. And also I realized that, you know, for some people on Twitter, they they are desperate for us to stay because they're desperate for us to say because they their whole sort of business model for their whole brand management their whole everything that they're doing online is

Really focused around taking a rent taking down never Trump conservatives or fighting the establishment or whatever And so in a real way they feel a sense of loss When we don't post Because that's how they build their own platform. And so in a real way, like some of these people need you, Tim, more than a lot, a lot more than you need them. That's a good point. This is a good pitch.

What about the side of it about growing resentment to the progressive bubble that you even sconsed yourself in? You're at the New York Times now, you're on Blue Sky. Are you worried about growing resentment? I dislike the bubble. I mean, it's so funny, you post something on threads or on Blue Sky that's critical of a Democrat and God, they come at you.

And it's hilarious that after all that we've been through over these last nine years, that some sort of snarky pile on on social media, what's that gonna do? Oh no, you know, you're a Republican is showing David. Yeah, really. Yeah, we're a decade into this. I don't know how much more evidence you need. It's, but no, I, because social media is so below tertiary for me, I'm not as worried about the bubble because I just don't live in it much. I kind of dip in and out.

And that raises, I think, a point I think is important and I'd love your thoughts on this. Like how important is this engagement? I think there was a point in time in which people thought that Twitter really did drive the national conversation. I don't think that's the case anymore. I think that Twitter is, in particular, is one of the least relevant social media platforms

towards for ordinary people's lives. And so I'm not sure what you're actually getting out of it by engaging deeply. I think engaging to a shallow to moderate level. I agree with that. And I will say this. The thing that people on the left or even people like us, people in the middle, people like you at the center right who are not mega, there is value in getting outside of liberal spaces and engaging,

but that doesn't need to be Twitter and Twitter might be the least valuable place out of all that. And I'm talking about the streamers and TikTok and the brand, you know, TikTok is his own problems, but the bro podcast world and YouTube, like, absolutely, I do not think I am totally against hermetically sealed bubbles. And I think that it would be good for our, the public sphere, as well as Democrats political interests to like engage in broader places. But I don't know that it has to be on Twitter.

My main MAGA engagement is in real life. Yeah, right. So yeah, you don't have to actually do that. You're out of your bubble. You go to the store. Yeah, my neighborhood is 85% Republican. So it's your job to get that down to 82% by 2028. That's Steve Shale. Steve Shale has deputized you. All right, last thing. Mick gave his farewell address yesterday. And I want to play a clip from it. Then I'm going to have a question for you

that's going to sound snarky, but is actually serious. So I want to listen to it. Mick Shale, Chief Executive Officer, New York State University A country's character is a reflection not just of its elected officials, but also of its people. I leave Washington to return to be one among them and hope to be a voice of unity and virtue. For it is only if the American people merit his benevolence that God will continue to bless America. May he do so is my prayer. I thought that was interesting. Only if Americans deserve it, merit God's love. He seemed to leave it as a question. And I want to leave that question for you. Are we meriting God's love right now?

Well, now we're going to get a little gospel, Tim. So the bottom line is God loves us whether we merit it or not. And God's grace has been poured out upon us whether we merit it or not. And God's grace has been poured out upon us whether we merit it or not. And in fact, that's the entire point of the cross. The cross is Jesus taking upon himself the punishment of our sin. He loved us so much that he took upon himself

the punishment for our sin. But that's not really what Midd is talking about here. I don't think he's talking about, does God love Tim Miller or David French, and do we merit his blessing? I don't think he's talking about that. I think he's talking about something that's actually a quite biblical concept,

which is, if you read the Old Testament, God does judge nations for their wickedness. There are times when God, you know, in the Old Testament accounts, is very displeased with the Babylonians or the Assyrians or the, you know, the Israelites at different points in time. And so I think that what he's saying is,

look, you know, a lot of people have viewed the United States as sort of this shining city on a hill that we are a country that's not only great as in powerful, but it's also a country that is good as in virtuous. And that's not something that we can take for granted. And I think that adding in that sort of element of meriting God's favor sort of is a message to theologically conservative people who've read scripture and realized that God does judge nations. And in fact, you know, Tim, it's fascinating.

That would be a very uncontroversial message in Christian circles. It would have been. In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention wrote a statement on character in politicians. This was when Clinton was in trouble, not Trump in 98, that said this, that tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, leads to unrestrained lawlessness and will surely result in God's judgment. So this was a sort of a conventional statement

of Christian theology for a long time that yeah, in fact, a country can go awry and God can judge a country. So I think in that sense, I don't think he's talking at all about does God love Tim Miller or David French, depending on how good or bad we are. It's much more, wait a minute, you know, we have a responsibility as a country to be good as well as great. And you know, if you are a believer in a holy and righteous and just God, that if a country to be good as well as great. And if you are a believer in a holy and righteous and just God, that if a country is evil

or wicked in some ways, that there are consequences. David French, thank you for your judgment, for hanging out with me, and we'll be talking in the new year. Tim, it is always a pleasure to talk to you, even when the topics are grim. Have a wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas to you and the family. Merry Christmas. Early Christmas and we'll see you soon. Everybody else, I'll be back here

tomorrow for another edition of the Bullwork Podcast. Come hang out with me then. Peace. And take you out of here And the bones shall never heal I cannot let you kneel We can't find you now But they're gonna get their money back somehow And when you finally disappear The world will say you're never near When you finally disappear, the one to save you will never hear

Been working for the church while your life falls apart Been singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart Every spark of friendship below Will die without a hope Here the soldier grown will cry alone Here the soldier grown will cry alone Don't you grow quite alone