The Bulwark Podcast - David Frum: House Republicans Aim for a Rerun

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

The incoming House majority looks like it will repeat the patterns of '94 and 2010 by heading into the fever swamps to indulge its coalition, rather than expand it. Plus, Trump isn't the only one to blame for the midterms. David Frum joins Charlie Sykes on today's pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask? BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self so you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P, dot com.

This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. October is the season for wearing masks and costumes, but some of us feel like we wear a mask and hide more often than we want to. At work, in social settings, around our family. Therapy can help you learn to accept all parts of yourself so you can stop hiding and take off the mask. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Therapy is a great tool for facing your fears and finding ways to overcome them. If you're thinking of starting therapy, but you're afraid of what you might uncover, give BetterHelp a try.

It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is a short week because of Thanksgiving, so I hope you're all thinking about what you are thankful for in the run up to Thanksgiving.

But let's look back at the last couple of days, last couple of weeks, including the election. We're still sorting out all of the consequences. Also looking ahead to the shambolic clown car that will be the House Republican majority. And joining me on the podcast today, David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic, the author of 10 books, most recently Trumpocalypse and Trumpocracy. So first of all, good morning, David. Hey, thank you. So I mentioned that as we were beginning the podcast, I was reading an op-ed piece in,

of all places, the New York Post by Bill Barr saying that it is time to dump Trump. It's time to move on, that he lacks the qualities for leadership. Again, kind of interesting. Bill Barr making his move as other Republicans are now suggesting that, yeah, they may have never been never Trump. They may have been Trump enablers and rationalizers, but now it's sort of kind of never again Trump. So what do you make a bill bar escalating? Pretty broadly among the donor community, among the Republican electeds, among certainly former Trump officers, office holders, there is a mood to say it's time to move past Trump for reasons we'd prefer not to specify. And there's a suggestion. It's a little bit like that dish of yogurt you have at the back of the refrigerator.

It was fine in its time, but we are now some weeks past the little printed date. So let's just get rid of it without ever suggesting there was anything wrong with the yogurt in the first place. Unless you're really hungry and you go, OK, so this is just a suggestion. It may be old, but I'm going to eat it anyway. Or unless you're a depression baby and says, these young people today, they're throwing things out by the cell by day. Why? Yeah. Well, here's the problem.

If you won't grapple with whether the yogurt was any good or not, you raise the question, well, is it really true that it's passed its sell-by date? And one of the things that I see going on in the Republican world is the core of the Republican Party is a coalition of the very rich, the very religious, and the very racially anxious. Trump's secret sauce in 2016, and he didn't win a popular vote plurality or anything like that, but he did better than maybe another candidate would have done. And he certainly broke through in the primaries, was that Trump found a way to broaden the coalition beyond the very rich, the very religious, and the very racially anxious. And you look at the alternatives to him now. Is there anyone of them who can repeat that? Or are they all falling back on the problems pre-Trump of appealing only to these very narrow silos in American life? Yeah. And there are real contradictions there as well. I wasn't planning on getting into this, but I was reading another piece about the

strains between the libertarian live free or die strains and the more overtly religious, socially conservative. I mean, you know, at what point do you have to make a choice between, yeah, we're going to go with, I want the government to leave me alone. I want to live free, but I also really want to crack down on drag queen story hour and go after homosexuals and talk about transgender all the time and ban books. There's a real tension there, and they haven't had to resolve it yet, have they? Yeah, but even these ideological factions, I remember during the campaign of 1988, George H.W. Bush was asked about his philosophy, and he said, I'm a conservative, but I'm not a nut about it. That is the bedrock of the winning Republican coalition. People are conservatives, but not a nut

about it. So I mean, you know, what happens in the conservative world is different varieties of nut have debate about what kind of nut you should be. And so the libertarian people say, you know, I certainly don't want to defame the drag queens or go after them, but I agree you should be. And so the libertarian people say, you know, I certainly don't want to defame the drag queens or go after them, but I agree. You should be able to put your gun on the bar as you have nine drinks. And then the religious people say, you know, not sure about the gun and the nine drinks, but absolutely drag queens are the greatest threat to American life. And all of these people who are running small businesses and driving the kids to school, and I think there should be less crime and disorder in the streets and the books should

balance, but I'm not a nut about it. And you guys all sound like nuts. Who's talking to them? Trump tried to do, I mean, criminal as he was, and Trump is a great marketer. And in 2016, Trump understood that that group mattered and he found ways to deceive them. And as repellent and wicked as Trump is, he saw marketing possibilities that are being overlooked by people who are, I think, less repellent and less wicked, but maybe less creative. Well, what's interesting about the Paul Ryans and the Bill Bars of the world, though, is that they're not saying that they have a problem with the crazy. They're saying they have a problem with the crazy when it loses. At some point, they have to take on the crazy, don't they? And they have to say that. But that means moving beyond just Donald Trump to actually taking on this base? Well, it means also facing something else. Um, that one thing that lots of Republicans, um, not, and not just Trump has succumbed to was the myth of the great victory of 2016. So if you don't, if you, once you liberate yourself from that myth, then you realize, my God, the Republican party has had a voting, an electoral crisis on its hands since the end of the

cold war. This has been the big theme of my work over the past three decades. There was a dominant Republican majority for the second half of the Cold War, from Nixon through H.W. Bush. Then the Cold War ended, and a lot of the basis of the reassuring Republican message, you know, the Republicans are the people

who are realistic on danger. They're realistic on dangers abroad and realistic on dangers at home. They suddenly stopped looking that way. And so from in 92, 96, 2000, Republicans have this problem. They only one time they get a majority of the vote in a presidential election is 2004 in the aftermath of 9-11. And they've had more recently this string of popular vote defeats, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022. If you are going to think about that in a serious way, then you have to say that while Trump is obviously a moral and constitutional problem, that he was, Republicans succumbed to the moral and constitutional problem of Trump because they had a political problem that he offered them an exit from. And good for them if they part ways with Trump.

But the reason authoritarianism took root in the Republican Party is because they couldn't win elections fair and square anymore. And if you're going to break with not just Trump but authoritarianism, you have to find a way to win elections again. And that means making your peace with modern America. Except that they did win this election in one sense. They are going to be taking control of the House of Representatives and apparently won the popular vote by about four points. So even though they underperformed and the narrative is that they lost, Republicans at some point are going to convince themselves, because we know how this works, that maybe they didn't lose, that maybe they have come up with this formula to win, and maybe a formula to win without Trump. Well, the popular vote in the House of Representatives is something we need to not

comment on for a few months because they're still counting the ballots in California. So that may turn out to be less dramatic. And I mean, it will be iron that the classic democratic problem of voter inefficiency may have succumbed to the Republicans that they ran up huge margins in their safest areas and were non-competitive in the swing areas. Uh, but they did win control of the house of representatives. But I, my most recent article in the Atlantic draws attention to this parallel. I look at four times since the cold war, when the House changed hands, 1994, 2006, 2010, 2018. Twice to Republicans, 94 and 10, and twice to Democrats, 06 and 18.

Both times the Democrats won their big swing, they won the presidency two years later. And both times the Republicans won their big swing, they lost the presidency two years later. This is fascinating. Yeah. Now, there are many, I don't want to have like one explanation of why that happened. But one thing that happened is if anyone out there likes hockey, you'll know that when you get the puck in your zone, your job is not to race to the other guy's goal.

Your job is to start making the play, to move the puck up the ice and get ready for a good shot on the net. Nancy Pelosi was the leader of the Democrats in the House, both after 2006 and both after 2018. And that's what she did. She began saying, my rendezvous with history is after we win the presidency, then I can pass the Affordable Care Act. So how do I get from here to there? And then how do I recruit candidates who can win swing districts? How do we have a total party electoral strategy? The Republicans in 94, in 2010, they just said, we don't want to expand our coalition. We want to indulge our coalition. And Newt Gingrich did this deliberately and intentionally. John Boehner did it reluctantly and wearily. But in both cases, they let their coalition drive them

rather than leading their coalition. And so where they led them into were these fever swamps. In Gingrich's case, these wild attacks on Clinton, not just for the stuff Clinton actually did, which was bad. And the president should not be running the Oval Office as a dating service. I think we can all agree about that. It may not be our highest voting priority, but even in those days before Me Too, that was improper. But he's not a serial killer. I wrote this little play like, would you believe it if we told you that Bill Clinton is a bad husband? Yes. Do you care? No. Well, what if we told you he's running an international crime syndicate with drug smuggling and murders? Well, then we'd think you guys are nuts. And that happened after 2010 with the Tea Party and the attempts and the near default on

obligations in 2011 and birtherism. They just look like crackpots. And that pattern, I think, is repeating itself after these successes for the Republicans in the House in 2022, where they're going that they had this press conference where they announced that oversight and judiciary are going to make the investigation of Hunter Biden top priority. Biden is obviously a pretty sad case, emotionally and financially. And, you know, there's a kind of strong Billy Carter vibe to him that he did try to play off his dad's vice presidency to make some money for himself. And that's not good. But no one voted, is electing Hunter Biden to anything. And there are a lot of unfortunate presidential relatives. Trump had his unfortunate presidential relatives. He thought they were fortunate ones and he got them security clearances against the rules and brought them into his government. And they looted the place. But they're going to repeat this. And people say, you know, you're right about Hunter Biden. It's very, very unfortunate. I love your now dialogue. You know, you had the Clinton

dialogue. Now, Republicans, do you know that Hunter Biden's a financial and emotional mess? Voters, now we do. Republicans, do you care? Voters, no. Republicans, do you know that Joe Biden wrote notes telling his son he loved him despite his troubles and also let his son stay in his house when his son was down on his luck? Voters, that sounds like a good thing, right? And then, of course, if they go to the what if we told

you this was part of this international crime syndicate well as you as you write you can foresee where this dialogue is heading back to the you guys are delusional nut jobs yeah right you know maybe we need you know a code of conduct for presidential relatives. Um, yeah, that, that would be an, that's an interesting idea. Um, I've, I've often thought about that. Um, and you know, maybe any, there should be a disclosure rules. If you, if you accept secret service protection, for example, as the president's immediate family does, then, then maybe there's some rules that should apply to you. So that's an interesting proposition. Um, and it would have, it would apply to Hunter Biden for sure. And it would apply to, you know, all future presidential funds. That is a plausible line of argument. But the idea that

Biden, the poorest man in the Senate for almost all his time there, you know, if whatever Joe Biden's faults, financially impropriety is obviously not one of them. I just want to go back for people taking notes at home on this, because I think this analogy is so important right now, the significance of a midterm election. So and again, I'm going to repeat what you just said, though. In 2006 and 2018, Democrats won the House on the way to winning the presidency two years later. The contrast, 1994 and 2010, Republicans won the House and then lost the presidency two years later. And one of the key variables is discipline. As you point out, Nancy Pelosi restrained the firebrands in her caucus, wanted to build a governing majority, behaved like an adult. The Republicans couldn't help themselves. They went right into government shutdowns.

And as a result, they lost the presidential election. And all the signs indicate that the next House is going to do the hair on fire. What really strikes me about this, David, is I'm listening to Jim Jordan, listening to Kevin McCarthy, listening to some of the commentary about what they're planning on doing. And honestly, unless you have been spending time on the right wing bubble, unless you've been following these very online chats, you have no idea what they're actually talking about. I mean, they really have gone into, you know, really into this kind of this little silo of their own making here, haven't they? And even though that didn't really work out for them in this midterm election. Yeah. There are things to investigate in this Congress. You know, why was the administration taken so by surprise at the collapse of the Afghan government

and military? That's, you know, that would be an interesting thing to know the answer to. And what do we know about the origins of coronavirus? Congress could try to get to the bottom of this question of whether it originated in a marketplace or in a lab or somewhere in between. You know, the border, that's a real thing to look at. But of course, Republicans don't want to go there because all of those problems are, first, very complicated. They don't have good choices.

They're often not Biden's personal fault. Certainly with the coronavirus investigation, none of that is that all happened during the Trump presidency. You're not going to be able to create monsters and villains. You're just going to get information that would allow you to make the government work better. But what Republicans really want is they just want an excuse to enable Donald Trump instead. Right. I mean, that's that's that's the one through line. All of this that they want to believe that Biden helping out his son is the equivalent of Trump looting modern era. And there isn't a runner up. I mean, just on a scale that you couldn't even compare it to anything that happened in the 19th century. I'm just massive corruption, self-dealing, plundering, you know, directing his vice president to fly across the island of Ireland so he could stay at a Trump resort rather than stay at the U.S. embassy or in Dublin to go to his meetings. All of that crooked, crooked, crooked stuff. Now, one of the ways of moving past Trump, as you could say, well, we like the Abraham Accords and we like the tax cut and judges,

but you know what? It was a crooked administration and we can't have that. Now, that would give you a reason to move past Trump. But because Republicans so defended him at the time, they can't say that. So they have to come up with this fantasy that when Joe Biden leaves a voicemail saying, love you, son, that that is the equivalent of Donald Trump moving and lets them. It's not they're not trying to protect Trump. They're trying to protect themselves because they otherwise look very complicit with this massive degree of corruption, the worst in modern history, probably the worst ever in the history of the presidency. So you write, off we go with a repeat of an old show written, directed, and performed by a production company oblivious that it is chasing box office success by remaking a three-decade-old flop. They're going to go back to the old playbook.

And obviously, the lead characters here have no discipline whatsoever. I mean, I think what's going to make this almost guaranteed that will be a shambolic will be that the the public face of this Congress is going to be people like Jim Jordan, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And there's nothing that Kevin McCarthy can do about it, can he? Well, there is something he could do about it if he were I mean, if were completely different human being if he was not kevin mccarthy yeah which is uh you go find the 12 most conservative democrats in the house and you say to them i'm i'm going to need your votes in case

of emergency and i'm asking you to do this for uh not as a party matter but for america because i otherwise these these crackpots i mean you guys don't have the votes to run the House. That has to be me. But I don't want to be beholden to these crackpots. Give me 12 votes when I really need them. I think a different leader could make that deal. And then the next time Marjorie Taylor Greene takes you hostage, you say, you know what? No, no. In fact, I am taking you off all those committees. And you know, you want to find a, you want to form a crackpot caucus. I've got 12 votes. I don't need you. Now, here's the interesting thing about this, and I don't know how this is going to play out. Of course, we don't even know whether Kevin McCarthy will become speaker, you know, whether he's going to be able to get those 218 votes.

But the number of so-called crossover seats has doubled. That's the number of seats, you know, House Republicans who win in districts that voted for Joe Biden. And somewhere between 16 and 18 House Republicans will be in Biden districts, which means in theory that you have some of these independent minded Republicans who will be a counterweight to the MAGA caucus. Now, I don't know how Kevin McCarthy, who is no Nancy Pelosi, is going to square the circle, but there's at least the possibility of more than a dozen House Republicans basically saying, we don't want to go along with this crazy show. We don't want to go along with the endless investigations and impeachments. We

actually want to deal with policy. How is that going to shape the caucus? I mean, there's obviously going to be real tension in that caucus between the crazies who are in the safe districts and these folks that are in the crossover districts. Well, there's one more political possibility, especially if in 2023, the inflation subsides and Biden's number improves, which is I wonder if any of those crossover Republicans would like to be ambassador to Bermuda. And, you know, the United States maintains embassies in a number of tropical island paradises. You know, why don't your wife, your kids, they've sacrificed so much for your congressional career. You know, maybe you should take them to the Seychelles for the next two years in this Biden plus four district. And then you can

take away Kevin McCarthy's House majority if the numbers improve a little bit. And that's something Biden and McCarthy both need to be thinking about. This is actually very funny because I remember former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, the legendary Republican governor of Wisconsin, used to do that with Democrats in the legislature. He was one of the guys that figured that out. And there is something about being ambassador to, you know, Bermuda that might appeal to somebody who otherwise might be a one-term congressman. It doesn't have to be tropical. You get sunburned. I mean, you can see I've been to the house of the U.S. ambassador in Oslo. It's fantastic. It's like this Art Nouveau masterpiece. Maybe somebody would like that in a Biden Biden plus four district. It's not completely

inconceivable. People need to understand that when you're talking about, you know, three, four vote majorities, all sorts of things can happen. And they're very, very fragile. But by the way, that's also the case, you know, speaking of fragility, when you're dealing with the United States Senate, where you have, you know, members who might be over 80 years old. So, David, give me your sense of Trump is running. Trump gave his announcement speech, which was more disciplined than usual. But he hasn't cleared the field. So give me a sense of where you're at. You know, you're saying Trump's running the, but the GOP is to blame. What's going on? Yeah. Well, so as you say, Trump did run, his speech was undisciplined in that he improvised in the bottom half and it was, the speech was too long and it was not as energetic and lively, but you know, it was a careful speech. Trump nowhere in that speech repeated the 2020 election

lies. There must have been some meeting about this. We talked about after I left office or I departed office. They wouldn't say that he was beaten, but he didn't pretend that he was still president either. And he may want this badly enough to run a different kind of campaign. He does have a lot of money on hand, much of it raised in deceptive ways, but money is money. He's running against what looks like is going to be a crowded field, not only Ron DeSantis, but Nikki Haley's pretty obviously interested. Kristi Noem looks to be interested, the governor of South Dakota. There are people who have maybe less chance, Mike Pompeo

and former Vice President Pence, they look interested. Ted Cruz seems to be running on a religious message. And so he may face a multiple field. He also has this secret sauce of not being beholden to these traditional Republican microgroups and being able to find ways of talking to people who are less affiliated. And I don't know whether he can repeat that from 2016. He's a more of a known quantity. But this idea that he's going to fail just because the donors are sick of him. What is Ron DeSantis offering those less affiliated Republicans? As governor, DeSantis joined a pretty obnoxious style to a not so radical substance. But as a candidate, all there is is the style. Well, also, he hasn't had to answer the questions, you know, how will he react to a Trump indictment

when someone asks him, OK, so Donald Trump is suggesting that we execute drug dealers after a one day trial. Do you favor that or oppose that? I mean, at some point, they're all going to have to take positions on all of this. And it's not clear what they're going to say. Yeah, well, the indictment one is the toughest it's not clear what they're going to say. Yeah. Well, the indictment one is the toughest because there are a lot of things you can say. I'm not going to comment on other people's campaigns. We're doing our own campaign, blah, blah, blah. But if and when Trump is indicted federally or at the state level, if he faces other kinds

of legal problems, civil jeopardy, he is going to claim I'm a victim of political persecution. Sure. Now, let me just put this since i probably most of the listeners to this thing lean in different partisan directions imagine if the trump administration had indicted hillary clinton in 2017 you'd be out in the streets and even if you didn't like hillary clinton that much and even if you thought some of the things she had done were not were maybe a little shady you would still say this is an outrage and everyone would be expected

to say so on her side of the aisle. Now they would have the advantage that they wouldn't be, that clearly she wasn't going to run for anything ever again, because she was a reasonable risk calculator and not a maniac. So you were not helping the Hillary Clinton 2020 campaign, but you would be obliged to defend her. So the question, if Trump is indicted or faces other legal jeopardy, Republican leaders are going to have to signal, we think this is a moral outrage, or we think there's a fair chance he's guilty

and the system should work. And Ron DeSantis and the others are hoping that the legal system knocks Trump out of the way, but they're hoping that they'll be able to fight the legal system, even as it does what they want. Right, they want it both ways. That's not just hypocritical. That is a very complicated maneuver to execute because they

might start a fight that they win. Or they put out one statement and then they just never repeat it. Right. Let's say, you know, we are deeply troubled by all this. We don't want to politicize justice and then stop talking about it. Well, if they can do that, but they're going to have, you know, Fox news revving people up. They're going to have Fox news as competitors on the broadcast, right? Revving people up. They're going to have Trump going. And if you do keep quiet, you are signaling. And by the way, this is absolutely the right thing to do. You are signaling we respect the process and we'll let it work itself out. Right. I don't know how

the voters who have been taught to be revved up, if they are saying we think that these prosecutions need to go forward. And if they resist the prosecutions, how do they then not end up serving Trump's interests? OK, so you mentioned Fox News, but Fox News is clearly part of this Murdoch empire that is making a pivot away from from Donald Trump. You have, you know, Bill Barr writing in one of the Murdoch newspapers that it's time to move on. Are we sure that we know how this right wing media is going to react to this? I mean, I think you're probably right. I think that that's the trick. I think Trump is probably counting on the base rallying to him in the in the wake of the indictments. The indictments may actually be the one favor that that jazzes up this this this this campaign. But are we sure? How will the right wing media handle this? I mean, Fox is already Fox. The Wall Street Journal,

New York Post was already signaled that they are they're completely done with Trump. So in other words, that base, which has been, you know, feeding, you know, has been injecting Fox News and this sort of stuff, you know, directly into their veins for years, are going to be hearing a different different tone and different information and different voices. Well, that's possibly true. It's also true that in 2016, Fox tried to do the same thing. Remember Megyn Kelly's famous question to Trump at the Fox debate in New Hampshire about what he said to women? That was cleared up and down the Fox News hierarchy. There were no surprises. And Trump knew that. That's why he refused to appear on the next Fox invitation. And he broke Fox.

They surrendered. Megyn Kelly lost her position at Fox. So it'll be a trial of strength. But I'll tell you, any plan for getting rid of Trump that depends on the strength of character of the Republican elite, we've seen. I think that's been established. Consistency of purpose. We've seen that's a pretty weak read.

Okay. You make another provocative point here. I mean, obviously the conventional wisdom and certainly the, the, the line from his presidential rivals is that 2022 was Donald Trump's fault that we lost because of Trump. You have a counterpoint to that, right? That it wasn't just Trump. Trump obviously made it worse. And maybe somebody other than Herschel Walker would have done better in Georgia. I mean, Trump, but a lot of this was other people's fault. It wasn't Trump who, when the Supreme Court struck down Roe versus Wade, went on TV and said, we need a national abortion restriction. That was Lindsey Graham. It wasn't Trump who went into state after state and began passing punitive

abortion laws and, or glorying in pre-existing punitive abortion laws. Those are state legislators. You know, some of the losingest candidates, like Blake Masters in Arizona, that wasn't Trump's fault. That was Peter Thiel. And Joe Kent in Washington in 03, the member of the House who had been consorting with white nationalists and defending Putin in Ukraine, that was a Peter Thiel special. So there's a lot of fault to go around. And Trump got his start as a solution to pre-existing Republican problems. Trump then worsened those problems, but the problems are still there. And the Republican Party is still not yet the governing

center-right party that it needs to be to be competitive. It needs an answer on abortion that is not punitive. I mean, without jettisoning pro-life views that says that, okay, that now that states have more leeway, they can both build laws that protect the later stages of pregnancy while also doing a better job of supporting women as they in pregnancy, supporting young children, maybe some mother's allowances to make maternity more possible. And one of the things we know about women who have abortions is I think the majority of them are a very large number of them already have one child. It's usually because of some economic shock that this is the path they choose. Maybe if there were cash mothers' allowances, you could tip their consideration

some way. Those are the kinds of things that a party that wanted to govern and that wanted to advance incrementally its values would do. But that's not what happened in the run-up to 2022. No, and they had 50 years to prepare for this. And if in 50 years they didn't come up with, you know, pro actual child policies was unlikely they were going to come come up with that afterwards. So you argue that if the Republicans want to stop Trump, they're going to have to do some truth telling. And we're not seeing that yet, are we? They're willing to say that he's a loser, but they're not willing to go at the he's completely unfit for office. He's running a

scam pack. He is dishonest. He is corrupt, in part because every other Republican who's ever told the truth about Trump ends up being excommunicated. So is there a path for Republicans to tell the truth about Donald Trump? Is it possible? Well, they don't have to tell all the truths. And they probably can't at this point. But one truth they can tell is to defend the integrity of the U.S. justice system. So they can, when the legal troubles, if, when and if the legal troubles accumulate for them, say, you know, we respect the process. We respect the integrity of the Department of Justice. And, you know, Donald Trump says that he will prevail. I hope he will. But of course, justice must take its course. And that's like a baby step. By the way, it shouldn't be remarkable that politicians accept the integrity of the American judicial system. But let's start there.

That could be a big first step. You also point out that the conservative media is going to have to point out that Trump is running scam packs. I can see that actually happening, especially you've already begun to hear complaints from the Herschel Walker campaign when they started to realize that Trump was just sucking money, using his name, but not giving it to him. That seems to be a relatively easy one to say, look, and there are some people even like Nikki Haley is saying, we didn't lose because we had a bad message. We lost because we didn't have enough money. Well, where did the money go? Well, that raises another awkward question, which is Trump was not the only one running a scam pack. So was Rick Scott, the head of the National Senate. The National Senate Republican Coalition turned out to be a scam pack, too.

That what has happened and this is it's a little bit like some kind of corrupt authoritarian regime. It's not when the guy at the top loots the Treasury. He sends a signal to all the people at the next level down that they can loot the treasury too. And so there are pretty systematic problems inside the Republican world of duping and deceiving small dollar donors. And Rick Scott raised what, something like almost $150 million for the national Senate effort and squandered almost all of it on an attempt to build a personal Rick Scott political operation to advance his fantasy of a 2024 presidential campaign. So if we're going to talk about scam PACs, it's hard to do that without widening the indictment, which is a good thing. I mean, a party that has lost as

many elections as the Republican Party has does need to do some of this, not just message fixing, but mechanical fixing and say, we are going to have a real serious approach to deceptive fundraising methods and to waste by not just Trump, but also everyone else. But that's a real moment of soul searching, isn't it? So you make a great analogy. You cite Greek mythology to point out that monsters don't get bored or retire, and that if you don't fight or defeat the monster, you're going to suffer humiliation and destruction by the monster. That does seem to encapsulate exactly where the Republican Party is right now. They're just kind of hoping and wishing that this monster is going to get bored or retire or that something else is going to happen that they don't actually have to

confront themselves. Well, if Ron DeSantis does emerge as the Republican nominee or somebody else, when it gets into the last moments of the 2024 campaign and the Democrats hit him with Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, at that point, he's going to wish he could say, I stood up to Trump in some way. He's going to want some example of standing up to Trump and not, and not just saying, oh, I don't I didn't think that the Trump scam would work if run one more time. So knowing that that's what you're going to wish for in October of 2024, why not start doing it now? What do you make of Mike Pence's strategy here? I continue to be puzzled. You had this moment of real principle and courage on January 6th, which he appears determined to undermine at every step now, refusing to testify in front of the January 6th committee, questioning the appointment of the special counsel. What is Mike Pence's lane here?

Or is he just bad at this? I remember watching a baseball game with my late father-in-law and the announcer said something like, so-and-so, the player now up, was the best athlete in the history of whatever his high school was. And my late father-in-law, she said, the worst player in the major league is the best player in the history of his high school.

So Penn, of course he's good at it. He was governor of Indiana. That's no negligible achievement. Of course he's good at it. He was governor of Indiana. You know, that's no negligible achievement. Of course, he's good at it. But sometimes the problems are just too hard. And I don't think he is psychologically ready in times that I'm not going to be the Republican nominee for president. Why didn't I go into retirement taking credit for the thing I did? Yeah, right. And I don't think he can do that. So he's searching for something. And it's not that he's bad at it. It's not like there's some other doorway that would lead him to where he wants to go. There's no door. Going back, I have a different memory of Mike Pence in Indiana, which was that he might not have been reelected back in 2016 if he hadn't taken the vice presidential slot. Because remember how he totally botched the whole religious liberty issue, which should be in his wheelhouse? I mean,

that should be one of his defining signature issues. And they passed the bill. It kind of blew up. He gave an interview. I'm trying to remember where it was. And he was just freaking awful. And from that moment on, he was kind of dead man walking even in Indiana, wasn't it? So maybe it's kind of a room. Yeah. I mean, he he actually kind of saved himself by by bailing out and taking that vice presidential nomination. I mean, I just remember, you know, thinking back at the time that, gosh, Mike Pence is, let's say that he doesn't have the full toolkit of political skills here on an issue that he should have been great on. So I just don't understand, you know, who's sitting around

going, okay, so if you have the skills to somehow thread this needle of having stood up to Donald Trump and then signaling that you really didn't stand up to Donald Trump, I just don't know how that works. Well, he has the same problem as Paul Ryan has in that, in that interview that Paul Ryan just did with Jonathan Karl, which is you need to create, having not taken the off ramp in the two years, in the case of Ryan, or in the first four years minus a few days, in the case of Mike Pence, having taken the off-ramp at the last minute, or in Paul Ryan's case, having ridden with Trump all the way, but then at the truck stop, while having your snack, you say, boy, I sure disapproved of

everything that happened at the time. You raise the question, where were you when these other things were happening? And because they don't have answers to that, it's hard for them to come up with credible after the fact reflections. And in Ryan's case, he doesn't seem to have future political ambitions. It's not a problem. But for Pence, it really is. He would have to have, he needs to tell a story of a basically honorable administration.

But if he is a candidate of a basically honorable administration. But if he is a candidate, there is this question I've written in, I think just on Twitter, maybe not in the Atlantic about the case of a, an official at the general services administration who had been a very effective leader for 20 years. There was some GSA event, I think in Hawaii, and he then booked a very rambling air route to the event. He went to the event, but he went via Fiji with his girlfriend and spent a few days in Fiji, at least with his own ticket at government expense. And he was sentenced to three months in prison. And the punishment would have been harsher but for 20 years of good service before that apparently unique misconduct. Well, when Mike Pence took that trip around Ireland, yes, Trump asked him to do it or

suggested he do it, but he did it. If he'd been anybody other than the vice president, he would have gone to prison just for that. So he's got this larger problem. There is no way to be in that orbit and not be contaminated. And the fiction of a generally effective administration is you need some answer to that, And there isn't one for someone in his position. So I don't think he's got a path. And that means he needs to make some peace with his life choices and his future options. One of the most extraordinary things about the Trump presidency, and I need to sit down and update the list, but the number of high ranking officials who have now broken with Trump in one way or another have said that he is unfit to serve from the secretary of defense to the attorney general to the vice.

I mean, I don't know that there's any historical parallel. The number of people who sat in the room with him and said, guys, this is really terrible chiefs of staff. And we're not talking about people who were of negligible importance. I mean, you know, the January 6th committee, most of the testimony came from people who were within Trump world. And yet none of this seems to have really registered with the Trumpist base, that the people, the closest people, the secretaries of state, the secretaries of defense, the attorney general, the chief of staff, all of them saying roughly the same thing. And it doesn't seem to register. But is there any historical parallel to this kind of a break from the man who put them in office? None, nothing like

this. By the way, this is something that critics of Republicans are going to have to bear in mind, which is if Trump really is the worst, as I believe, and by country league, as I also believe, then everybody else is not the worst. And so what the coming pivot that you're going to hear from some talkers about how Ron DeSantis is even worse than Trump, you let Trump off the hook. And I wrote somewhere that I thought of DeSantis as a recognizably normal politician. That doesn't mean I thought he had good manners or was a winning personality or should be president. I just, I just recognize him as somebody who plays, plays the game by understandable rules. And I had gotten a lot of blowback from people who say things like, well, he's the worst ever,

worse than Trump, just smarter. You think, well, you know, you, you undermine your own argument. If you say things like that. Trump really was different. And as you say, these statements by members of his innermost circle confirm that difference. Whatever bad things other leaders, other presidents, other would-be presidents have done, none took part in a plot to try to overthrow an election by violence. That's a different kind of thing. And that person is a different kind of person.

This is also frustrating, though, the people who will say, well, you know, Trump is just, you know, simply an updated version of Ronald Reagan or of some other Republican that we don't like. That does undermine the argument that he is a unique existential threat, that he is uniquely awful, that there is something about this man that separates him from any other person who's ever been in an office of public trust like this. Yeah. So would Ronald Reagan have tried to overthrow an election if he lost one? We'll never know because, of course, he never lost one.

But that should tell you something, too. So Ronald Reagan kept winning election after election because Americans who are the same good and decent people that they are today, testimony against his character that you're, you know, from his, from his cabinet and from his immediate staff that you have with Trump. And I'm coming up with the worst possible example. I mean, somebody who was forced to resign in absolute disgrace and yet Trump still stands distinctly alone in the way that he repelled the people who saw him up close and intimately as the president of the United States. The people who saw Nixon up close and intimately were baffled by his split personality. And that's one of the reasons he remains such a fascinating character, because he could be squalid and petty and dirty and dishonest and anti-democratic.

But he also, there were things in him that were great. And people would be baffled that he would pivot in his own psyche from one Nixon to another Nixon. You know, the same man who could have fantasies about firebombing the Brookings Institution would then an hour later have a meeting where he would unveil his vision for rebalancing the world to attain greater peace and befriending former rivals. And so without making excuses for the bad parts of Nixon, the reason he fascinates us is because of the good things. And the reason his fall is so, again, is one of those great sagas in American life, is because he fell from a height. Whereas Trump, what's a good thing you can say about him?

Yeah, he started squalid and ended squalid. So speaking of the unique nature of Donald Trump, were you surprised by, with the exception of Kerry Lake, were you surprised by the rather gracious concessions, the willingness to accept the results of the election from many of the other MAGA candidates, including people like Doug Mastriana. Yeah, I'm relieved and gratified. And I mean, it's a sad thing to have to be relieved and gratified, but I am. But I think it tells you something about how, OK, they got the message. Bill Clinton, when he lost, he lost one of his races for governor and then he ran for reelection and won. And in his kind of ability to talk country talk, when he was running to be restored to

the office, he would tell country voters, my daddy never had to whip me twice for the same thing. So, which is, no, he shouldn't have to whip me once, but there shouldn't be any whipping. But anyway, that was the line. So, okay, in this case, the voters had to whip them twice, but the Mastroianos got it that there is no tolerance for coups d'etat, or I should say there, there are some tolerance. There's not enough tolerance for coups d'etat. It's not going to work. And so, um, yeah, you lose, you have to step aside. Um, and that's just what is expected. And ideally you do it as graciously as Richard Nixon did. And that's just what is expected. And ideally, you do it as graciously as Richard

Nixon did. And that amazing enough, people haven't seen this. I urged them to, it's on YouTube. When Richard Nixon had to read the news of his own, he was serving as vice president in 1961, had to read the news of his own defeat in the electoral college in front of Congress. He gave a statement that really needs to be seen where he did it in a very plain way. And then there was a lot of applause. And then he was asked to make a statement. And he said that there is no more dramatic way of sending to the world a message about our constitutional institutions than to have the loser of the election announce the news in a formal proceeding of his own defeat. As did Al Gore. As did Al Gore a generation later, two generations later.

That's the way it's supposed to be. And I'm sorry we have to give marks for it. But it also is one of the things that the voters serve notice of. That's expected. You can't do that. You're not considered for the job in the first place. Even though he was quasi-disciplined during his announcements, I think there's no way that Donald Trump continues to be disciplined.

He is obsessed with the 2020 election. He's going to continue to replay it. He's going to continue to demand election denialism as a litmus test. And even though it feels like it's old, stale, and rejected. And I think that's going to be a problem for him. Yes. But, you know, one of the questions will be,

will any of the challengers be able to say on a stage, look, Donald, you got beat and we have to face why? They're going to have to do that. David Frum, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. We always enjoy it. Thank you so much. Bye bye. David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic, author of 10 books, most recently Trumpocalypse

and Trumpocracy. Thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again.