The Bulwark Podcast - Elizabeth Neumann and Geoff Duncan: Republican Voters Against Trump

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Two conservatives describe their break with Trump. Former DHS official Elizabeth Neumann saw both the mafia culture up close and Trump's disinterest in doing the work of being president. He also exploits the rising extremism in the evangelical church. And former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan says he's voting for Biden, and tells Tim Miller that "doing the right thing will never be the wrong thing." show notes: Elizabeth's new book, "Kingdom of Rage: The Rise Of Christian Extremism And The Path Back to Peace.” Geoff's book, "GOP 2.0" 

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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We've got a monster show today, but I have a few quick housekeeping notes. Number one, I'm not accepting any emails or DMs about the Nuggets at this time, especially from Darla and the Minnesota crew. During yesterday's pod, I made two comments that I need updating. Number one, Mike Collins of Georgia did send out a half-assed apology for tweeting the racist video. Not a brave step, no pat on the back, but you know, a tiny bit of shame and social stigma still existing in the GOP, maybe a ray of light there. Number two, Politico retracted a good chunk of their reporting on Biden donors backing the more extreme elements of the Gaza protests. So we want to always crack the record on here. We've got coming up later, former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan, who did what we've been asking all the anti-Trump Republicans

to do forever now. He actually endorsed Joe Biden in an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. We'll talk to him about that. But first, somebody that beat him to the punch by four years, my friend Elizabeth Newman. She was Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention in the Trump administration. She's out with a new book, Kingdom of Rage, The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace. Elizabeth Newman, welcome to the Bullwark Podcast. Tim, it's so fun to be back with you. How are you doing, girl? I'm pretty good.

This book is in some ways kind of like academic and a deep assessment of extremism. And I learned a lot of interesting facts through that. And I want to get into the meat. But I did get a little emotional reading the opening and kind of remembering the journey of those crazy days in 2020 that you took to speaking out. And so I just, you know, thought maybe you could for listeners who don't know about that, tell them about kind of what was happening with you when you were inside the Trump White House and decided that you needed to do something. Yeah, I did not go into the Trump administration willingly or with excitement. I had been asked a couple of times said no. And then somebody called

just a few days before inauguration and said, it's crazy. I don't know who I can trust. There's some national security stuff going down that I can't tell you about, but I need help. Please come in. I went into security and counterterrorism after 9-11. So when you get a call like that, you, I felt compelled to go in. And it was crazy. And it was, there were severe national security concerns going on. And I'm proud of what I was able to do, which mostly was try to hold some of the guardrails as long as we could. But by late 2019, 2020, the writing was on the wall, I was going to get pushed out. I wanted to get out. And when I finally was able to leave, I had this, it was like COVID, right?

And kids were home and we were doing, you know, trying to figure out how to do homeschooling online. And I was exhausted. And like, I found myself at a small group online Bible study with people that I had met 10 years prior. And we were just all catching up since none of us could leave our house. And we were just sharing what was going on in our life. We were all across the country at that point. We all have kids. And anyway, I was telling them about life in the Trump administration. And their jaws were hitting the floor.

And they were like, Elizabeth, you have to say something. And I'm like, no, why would anybody listen? Nobody listens. Plenty of people have spoken out. And they're like, but we don't see that. We don't see this chaos. We don't see this danger. And somebody needs to say something. And around this time, we had the George Floyd protests, we had Ford deploying to protect monuments, and we had DHS deploying to Portland to protect supposedly a courthouse, but we were sending special forces border patrol into an American city. And we there were videos coming out of like, people getting thrown in

unmarked vans. And it just was like, Oh, my gosh, what has happened? I left three months ago, and the entire thing has fallen apart. This is nuts. And this is what a second term would be like, there would be no adults in the room to say, no, Mr. President, you can't do that. That's illegal or that's unconstitutional. It would just be utter chaos. And that's when I started asking around, how can I help? And I eventually met you and you were like, this is what you're going to do. You're going to do this video. I'm like, no, no, no, that does not sound like something I want to do. But I distinctly remember, you were on the phone, Barry was in the room with me. And you guys were like talking me through I was so nervous. I was so nervous. We're just looking at you right now. Actually, you just

have like the weight of the world off your shoulders, just like, you know, like your whole like your skin tone and everything. I knew looks beautiful beautiful in the video too, but I just, it is a different, it's a lighter Elizabeth, which I appreciate. Here's the thing. It was meaningful. And so I was happy that I got to meet you and Olivia and those that did the RVAD videos, but it was meaningful to me. And I didn't want to push people to be uncomfortable, but we also did want to win the election.

You know, we wanted people to speak out. So you have this. You walk that line very well, I thought, because you guys kept telling me like, if you don't want to put the video out up until it drops, you can back out. And I needed that space. I needed this space to be able to be like,

I think I'm going to do this. And I was genuine about that. Yeah, but the moment it dropped, I felt so relieved. Like, oh, I could speak truth. It was an amazing experience to just be like, I'm going to tell the truth now. And especially after three years of having to like be subversive and hide and like trying to be respectful of the office of the presidency, but also trying to like, make sure that, you know, the backstabbing and the, you know,

illegal stuff stopped. It was such a night and day experience. Well, I want to send this little clip to other people now about the big relief of telling the truth and how good it feels because it's true. I feel the same way. I felt the same way. My question is, like, why were you so lonely? I always feel like sometimes when reporters call me, it seems like a little dig of you, but it's not intended to be.

Because I'm always saying to them, it is insane. There's this huge, sprawling administration and apparatus with a lot of people who felt the way you did, which you know. Let's be honest. It's you. It's Olivia Troy. It's Miles. And you are kind of like mid you're like mid-level people. Like, really.

Like, you know, just people that are doing good work, important work. But like, not the primetime folks. You know, not the brand names. That's right. And then we get to January 6th. And it's Cassidy and Sarah Matthews who are like lower-level people even. Like, again, that's not an insult to them. I'm just saying, it's important to say that just that just because like so many people let you all down.

Like why? Why were you so alone out there, do you think? Why weren't there more people? I really think the closer you got to the president to one of two things happened. You either were just so beaten down and threatened. Like the mafia culture around Trump is real. Like I have people in my life that were threatened, both kind of implied physical threats, but also more more so like financial threats, like we'll make sure you never work again. Right. And so I think there's legitimate

fear that gets instilled. And then I think the other thing is just they felt so beaten down and almost complicit, the closer you got to him that I kind of wonder if that's why we haven't seen more of them come out. And the other thing that happened is that people actually got gaslit, they kind of bought into his mo and his ideology and kind of just changed like they weren't are not the same people that walked in in 2017. You saw that personally, like people. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

You're like, oh, gosh, like what what happened? You are deeply deceived, deeply changed. And like that, that probably hurt the most because at the beginning, whether it was right or not, like there was a number of us that walked in together and we're like, okay, we're going to hold the line, believed in the constitution, he was elected by the people. So he has the right to institute his agenda, we're going to help him do that in a way that is good government in a way that is legal and constitutional. That was our approach. And over time, you started to realize he could care less

about the legal and the constitutional. They didn't care about good governing. And so then you're just kind of trying to hold on for dear life. But some of those people really bought into legal, what's really legal? Oh, the deep state. They're holding us back. And so, yeah, some people changed and that was hard to watch. One more on this, and I'll get to the book. For people who had missed it or don't remember, I do want to just play a little bit of the video that you put out in 2020. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Newman. I am first and foremost a follower of Jesus Christ. I'm a wife and a proud mom. I voted for Trump in 2016, primarily because of the pro-life issue. I served in the Trump administration at the Department of Homeland Security and became the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention.

In my role as Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism, we looked at emerging threats, including the growing threat from domestic terrorists. And over the period of 2017 to 2018, we started to see that rise of the white supremacist agenda. I and my leadership at the Department of Homeland Security were very clear that we found the ideology behind white nationalism, white supremacy to be a growing threat. A very common refrain that I was asked was, does the president's rhetoric make your job harder? And the answer is yes. The president's actions and his language are in fact racist. I do not think that we can afford four more years of President Trump. We are less safe today because of his leadership. We will continue to be less safe as long as he is in control. And this year I'll be

voting for Joe Biden. So you talked about how good you felt after that. And you spoke out on two clear things, you know, which was his mismanagement of COVID, which you kind of watched from the outside-ish. I guess that was happening as you were being pushed out. I mean, I was there in the room for at least three months. It was so poorly managed. It was shocking. And then tying into the book, the domestic terror threat, right? And how you were seeing at DHS the rise of right-wing extremism and the threat. And it'd be one thing to talk just about the lack of seriousness with which they took that threat, and they did take it on seriously.

But in addition to that, the president himself was exacerbating it. And that was something that you were very clear eyed about in that video, that then just comes to fruition seven months later. I mean, did you feel like, well, obviously, this was going to happen? Or were you like, this was my worst nightmares coming to life? Or how'd you feel about that? When you're in the field, you are always pretty hesitant to try to make predictions, right? Like, it's kind of built into you don't want to exaggerate the threat, you don't want to fear monger. But I very much felt especially as COVID set in, like the factors that we were dealing with were a powder keg that we're just waiting for the right spark. And I knew post election that

some bad stuff was manifesting. I don't think even in my wildest dreams, I imagined a January 6 scenario because I just assumed the security apparatus would do their job. That's to me was the big shock that Trump had so effectively beaten down the security apparatus within the executive branch, that even though people detected that something bad was going to happen, gave a little bit of warning to Capitol Police, like none of the normal things that we would have done in an adult run administration seemed to happen. There was no pre planning, there was no phone calls between DHS and Capitol Police and the FBI. I mean, it just is shocking to me that we were so underprepared for January 6. So that was probably the thing that I didn't foresee. I foresaw people getting

mobilized, the Mike Flynn types, the Steve Bannon types, you know, stirring the pot, so to speak. I didn't foresee that we would be so weak on the security side that you wouldn't be able to keep things in check. What a horrible day. So you wrote this book, Kingdom of Rage, and, you know, you could have written a bunch of different kinds of books, right? I'm sure you talked about different kinds of books with people. You could have written a gossipy book, could have written a book about, you know, threats right ahead of us. And this is a little bit about that, but, you know, something that's a little scarier. But, you know, the subtitle of this was The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back

to Peace. And it seemed like you really wanted to take a meticulous approach to understanding the problem and trying to find solutions. Like, why did you land on that as what you wanted to do once the dust had settled from 2020? So, I was in Washington, D.C. on 9-11. I have this distinct memory of driving home that day. My car was packed, a tiny little, like, hatchback car. And in the rearview mirror, I see the Capitol. There are still planes in the sky. And I'm wondering, is the Capitol going to be there tomorrow? Like we were scared to death.

We didn't know what was happening. The information... What was your job then again? Remind me. I worked at HUD. I was working on the faith-based and community initiative in the George W. Bush administration. And I just remember so vividly the chaos and the fear of that day. And, you know, in the days that followed, just made a commitment that I would do whatever it took. Like I was a political appointee. So you don't, it's not like I had any skills to offer at that time.

It just was like, you want me to answer a phone? I will go answer a phone if it's going to make our country safer. And I eventually ended up working at the White House and the Homeland Security Council for some super amazing smart people who trained me and I kind of stayed in the field after that. And flash forward to January 6. Here we are. And the Capitol actually is attacked, but it's not by radical Islamist jihadist. It's by Christians. It's my faith. They had video of people praying on outside of the chapel. There was prayer inside the Senate galley. There are pictures of people holding posters with Bible verses, people holding crosses, like Christian symbolism and Christian language was throughout that day. And that was just gut punching to me that I had spent 20 years protecting our country from the threats over there. And the threat was actually here. And I

kind of felt like, look, at post 9-11, we asked the Muslim community, moderate Muslims, please speak out, please explain how your faith does not justify violence. And I kind of felt like the obligation to the Christian community is the same. We need to be very clear that our faith does not justify violence. It's actually counter to violence. It says, if you were attacked, you actually turn the other cheek. And that's kind of the driver behind the book is I wanted to help my community understand how we got here because so many people were puzzled. So many people are confused why like our churches have fractured. Our families have fractured. Like, how did this happen to us?

And then what can we do about it? How can we rebuild and get back to the basics of the way of Jesus? You know, on the one hand, you're writing about the radicalization pipeline, right? And how individuals get radicalized and this, you know, bowling alone and scrolling alone element to it about how disconnected we are, how the loss of church is part of that, right? Church, it's not all of it, but church is one of these, right? Church, it's not all of it, but church is one of these spaces where people did find community, found meaning. So, we have the loss of church impacting radicalization. We also have the remaining church impacting

radicalization, right? Because, you know, you have the pastors and the religious leaders and the politicians that are now inciting and exacerbating, you know, radicalism. How do you untie that knot, right? Where on the one hand, we need these spaces for people. On the other hand, a lot of the existing spaces are making things worse. Yeah. So, I spend chapters five and six trying to untangle all of the different drivers because radicalization is complex. it's not linear. And usually there's personality factors involved. There's often trauma in somebody's background that makes them more susceptible to being radicalized. So there's a ton of factors that go into why somebody radicalizes. But we've also experienced group radicalization, right? Like a group of

people that are experiencing humiliation, they're being told they need to be scared, they're feeling like a loss of power and significance. And as a group, their answer to that as an extremist solution, which I define extremism as when you perceive a threat to your group's success or survival and hostile action is necessary. It's that hostile action piece that really separates what might otherwise just be the norm in our politics. The other side's bad, my side's good. But it's when you go to, okay, voting's not enough, contributing to a candidate's not enough. I need to go threaten somebody. I need to harass, intimidate. Oh, I might even need to commit an act of violence here. That's when you move into extremism. As a pretty sizable population of our country,

the numbers depends on the survey, but 30 to 40% of adults in the United States have said that they believe sometimes violence is necessary to achieve their political aim. I mean, that is like, shockingly large numbers that we do not have the security apparatus to be able to protect against. Now, most of those are not actually going to go do something. But if you look at what's happened, in particular to that Christian and conservative community, we've spent the last few decades, I mean, your book kind of traces this too, we spent the last few decades. I mean, your book kind of traces this too. We spent the last few decades in a media ecosphere that just tells us all the reasons why the other side hates us, all the reasons why, you know, we should be fearful of what the other side is going to do

to us. And then it becomes really easy for a Trump-like figure or other influencers to step in and say, you know what we got to do? I mean, we might have to fight. We might have to take our country back by force. So it didn't start with Trump. Like, we've been saturating in this. You don't take your country back with weakness. That's right. You take it back with strength.

What is the off-ramp, just within the Christian nationalist group, and there are strains of this that are not religious. Within the Christian nationalist, I talked about this a little bit with Peter Wainer last week. Like, what is the off-ramp we can provide these people? Because to me, it's not like, oh, Christianity is bad or America is bad, right? Like, they're going to recoil at that, right? How can we move it to a more productive place without undermining their identity, you know? I love that question. So a couple of things.

Why in Christian nationalism is a spectrum. When you look at the polls that say, oh, we have this many Christian nationalists in the country, I think most of them are on the lower end of the spectrum. And that's more of a concern for their faith, for their soul. It's not necessarily a security concern. What's the dumb Marjorie Taylor Greene version where she's like, I'm a Christian and I like America, so I'm a Christian nationalist. I mean, she's terrible. But like some people actually believe that. Right. Exactly. That's the sentence that makes sense for some people.

They're not thinking about it more deeply than that. But there is a strain and it is growing that are looking to try to force Christian morals and values. There are certain values of Christianity, like all people are created equal in the eyes of God and worthy of dignity and respect. Like that's like a- Love your neighbor as yourself. That's fine. You can project that on people. Those are great things. We should definitely, the constitution reflects many of those values. Like I'm not saying like get rid of that, but there are certain Christian nationalists that are like, oh, you know what we should do is we should require prayer in schools again. And we are

going to pass a law to do so. And we've already kind of debated that as a country and the Supreme Court's already decided that. So it's that kind of thing that starts to get into this, I'm going to force my religion on you that I think is concerning. The real concerning stuff is that there are a couple of influencers out there who are writing the ideological and supposedly theological justification for violence. That makes me very concerned because when you start to have that underpinning, supposedly academic underpinning for why violence is justified, you could have a small group of people move towards a more violent approach to Christian nationalism. So that's the thing that we want to stop, right? We want to prevent people from moving into that. And the way that you prevent

people from moving into that is you need to understand what's driving them there in the first place. And it's fear. And it's a sense of humiliation, a group humiliation. And we need to, there's two things that I prescribe from a Christian community standpoint, we need to get back to teaching what Jesus taught us, which is, you are going to be persecuted. Like that is the way of Jesus. Jesus was persecuted, and he promises we will have trials like he did. And he gives us a way in which we walk through those trials. And that way is not through the sword, it is not by fighting back. So we need to recatechize our people into the basics of like what the faith actually teaches, which is not, you know, what Lauren Boebert suggested that, oh, if Jesus only had an AR-15, then Pilate wouldn't

have crucified him. You're like, the reason he came was to be crucified. Like, do you actually not understand the faith? Like, it wasn't because he couldn't defend himself. So, there's like, hey, let's get back to the basics of what our faith teaches. And that is a protective factor. That reduces the number of people that could be open to that extremist ideology. I think the other thing the community broader, the Christians as well as non-Christians, need to just be able to say, like, we can disagree, and we can disagree vehemently. Violence is not the answer. Period.

Hard stop. We also need to reestablish norms. I think COVID just did deep damage for us in how we treat each other with lack of respect and lack of kindness. And just going back to the basics, it sounds like we're going to kindergarten again, but we treat each other with civility and you reestablish that norm and you take away the option of that lower end of the hostile action spectrum that, you know, what I'm going to do is go bully and harass somebody because I don't like them or I think they're tampering with my election. No,

go have a conversation with them. Like Stephen Ricker, you mentioned him, like he's great. Like if you have questions about your elections in Arizona, go ask Stephen. Like he has great answers and he will totally like take you seriously and be happy to walk you through you have questions about your elections in Arizona, go ask Stephen, like he has great answers, and he will totally like take you seriously and be happy to walk you through why the election is secure. So rather than like, trying to bully and harass our way into our ideology, like, why not just have a conversation instead, and we need to reestablish those norms. One more thing on the book that you say pretty clearly, which is, I think, notable, given that you come from the right and these are your people, is that you do see right-wing

extremism as more dangerous in this country right now. I want you to talk about why that is, one. But two, I don't want to create a false equivalency or anything, but I'm seeing some of the same mindset on the left when it comes to targeting Jews. You know, there's certain things about getting stuck in an information silo, you know, where you're hearing everything about how the other side is evil. So there are some evil people on the other side. So there's a little more legitimacy to it. There's a lot of layers to this.

So you want to create a nuanced conversation. But I'm curious why you think it's more dangerous. And what you assess as the threats on the left? Are you seeing any echoes? What concerns you? What doesn't concern you? Yeah, so the data shows us going back to the 1990s, that more plots, attacks and deaths have come from groups that are categorized as right wing violent extremists, primarily white power movements and militia movements. When you hear a counterterrorism person say that's where the greater threat is, it's because the data tells us that. We're not saying that today, this moment, we can somehow tell you what the threat is. We're always looking at the data to say, historically speaking, this is where the greater threat comes from. Now, the why behind that,

that's a little more murky. Some of it deals its personality factors. The right tends to be much more organized than the far left, which like the far left value system is, I don't want anybody in charge. They they're very, you know, think about what anarchists stand for. So it's actually harder for them to be more organized and harder for them to therefore conduct. Seeing it with the demands from the groups on the campus. You know, we need dental dams,

you know, we need like, no, no, there's just a lot of weirdness happening. The other thing is the far left tends to destroy property. You'll see them in riots, that kind of thing. It's not a premeditated type of attack. Usually, we did have a significant set of far left terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s, the weather underground, which has roots at Columbia. So there are a number of us that are looking at what's happening on college campuses today and are concerned that maybe we're seeing a resurgence. It is pretty normal when you have one pendulum swing this way that the other side kind of reacts and you start to see the pendulum swing the other way. So it is something to be concerned about. The reason I wrote this book was because

my side is responsible for more deaths and destruction than the other side. And I kind of feel like it's a responsibility to clean our own house, so to speak. I'm not saying you can't be aware of and concerned about the other side, but let's clean up our own house before we fearmonger about Antifa and far left terrorism. Amen to that. Okay, we're running out of time. But really quick, since you were in there in the first round, you kind of alluded to this at the top, but your biggest concerns about a Trump 2.0 administration? Oh, it is really hard to go there. Look, I think there's a lot of focus on Donald Trump as president. And I think we're missing the greater damage that will occur is he's going to bring in people like Kash Patel and

Stephen Miller and Rick Grinnell, and let them do whatever they want. He doesn't actually like to govern. He doesn't like the job of the president. So you will have nobody at the top, no adults left in the room, because nobody will be allowed if you are going to tell the president. So you will have nobody at the top, no adults left in the room, because nobody will be allowed if you are going to tell the president, no, you're not allowed to go work for him. So there's not going to be anybody that actually has any substantive knowledge of how to do things well, how to keep our country safe. So you're going to have this free for all. And Stephen Miller is going to reinstitute everything that they tried to do and were told they weren't allowed to do, he will just go forth and do it. And you will end up with quite significant national security concerns happening overseas that we will not effectively be

able to respond to. So I worry about infringement on our rights here in America, but even more so I'm concerned about not being able to stand up to Russia that is nuclear saber rattling this week, and has interest in doing pretty significant damage in Europe. Iran continues to they would love to be able to take us out like it is a dangerous world and you need smart, competent people on the wall keeping us safe. And he will not allow any of those people to do that job. So it will be a very dangerous second term if he is reelected. Yeah. I'm also concerned about a very dangerous interregnum, no matter who wins.

And so I want to have you back to talk about that in the fall, you know, once that's a little bit more acute. Elizabeth Newman, man, okay, you're in Denver now. You're my hometown that's a little bit more acute. Elizabeth Newman. Man, okay. You're in Denver now. You're my hometown. Yes, I'm in Denver. Have you adopted the Nuggets?

Do you have any Nuggets gear? We do have Nuggets gear. We're not going to talk about the game. No, okay. Let's not talk about the game. We're not going to talk about the game, but I might send you a hat or something. Oh, that would be fun. I would love that. My kids have a bunch of stuff.

I tend to not get the sports gear, but my husband loves hats. So if you send me a hat, he will be very proud of me to have a bunch of stuff. I tend to not get the sports gear, but my husband loves hats. So if you send me a hat, he will be very proud of me to have a hat. Okay, I'm gonna get I'm gonna get on that. And we're in Denver for you. And for listeners, June 21. Maybe Boulder, actually, we haven't figured it out yet. So June 21 of a Borg live event. So I want you to come in person. That would be great. We'll get everybody the details on that soon. Keep an eye on the Borg.com slash events. If you're a listener. Elizabeth Newman, I appreciate you so, so much.

You have no idea. Thank you, Tim. Thank you for everything you've been doing. Did you see that I wrote about you guys in the acknowledgements? I did.

And I got a little verklempt. So I appreciate it very much. You guys changed my life and I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for you. Kingdom of Rage is the book The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace.

Up next, former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan. See you on the other side. All right, we are back with former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan. He had a book out, GOP 2.0. I don't know. We're pretty far away from GOP 2.0, but hope springs eternal, they say in baseball, right, Jeff Duncan? Unfortunately, I think my experience in baseball has been if you lose enough, you finally figure out how to win again. And I think that's the spot we're at as Republicans. We're facing a dismal season and it doesn't look like we've got our best players on the field right now as Republicans. There you go. You're a triple A. You're a triple A man. Yeah, rub it in a little bit. I spent six years beating it through the

minor leagues, but I loved every minute of it except for Fridays when it was payday. That's not rubbing it in, man. I got cut from the sophomore basketball team in high school, okay? So you made it a lot further than I did. You had not bad, I mentioned at the top, in yesterday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And here's the nuts of it. You wrote,

Unlike Trump, I've belonged to the GOP my entire life. This November, I'm voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass. To me, I kind of feel like this should not be like that bold of a statement that you're going to vote against a criminal defendant without a moral compass. But unfortunately, you're standing out in this regard. So try to explain to me why you think that is. Why aren't there other other folks has infiltrated the Republican Party as a fake Republican. There's nothing that he's really done. He's certainly a broken clocks right twice a day, and he stumbled into a few

conservative policies and whatnot. But at the end of the day, he started this process not as a Republican. And nothing that we look at going forward is Donald Trump being our future. I think we almost all agree on that. But I think the problem that we face is folks, you know, feel like, you know, we're victims of gravity. And our best chance to win is to is to get Donald Trump there. But our best chance to barely lose again is Donald Trump. I mean, if you really, honestly evaluate all these elections, whether he's on the ballot or not, if he's a proxy to the ballot, I mean, we were supposed to have this massive majority in the house, It didn't happen. He was supposed to win in 2020. It didn't happen. Just time and time again, it continues to poke its head up. Donald Trump isn't

enough to win, and we just haven't seemed to want to take our medicine because it doesn't taste very good, right? You got to do things like I just did. I mean, I'm getting certainly a lot of positive attaboys from folks that are really seeing this through the same lens I am, and I'm also getting a lot of really good friends who are Republicans like, how could you do this? It's one of those parenting moments. It's like you care about your kids so much, you just feel like they need to take their medicine today instead of waiting a week for the infection to get worse. For people who are listening who might not be as familiar with you, I was always kind of a rhino. All right. I was always pretty moderate Republican. It wasn't quite as big of a jump for me. That's

not really true for you. In your book, you're a traditionally conservative Republican, you are not really an ever jumper at all, through 2016. And 2020, you supported him. And then you're there in Georgia on the front lines, when all the craziness is happening. So So just explain to the listeners what your worldview is what you want out of politics, and like, you know, why you found yourself still sticking with them through 2020. Because I think that there are a lot of people that also do that. I think it's important to hear from people who stuck with them through 2020, who are changing now, because we're going to need people who are going on the same journey that you are.

As I mentioned a minute ago, I'm conservative, but I'm not crazy or angry. And I think the biggest hijack of all that Donald Trump has done to the Republican Party is, is taken our tone and tenor. In my book, I write about this, this notion called my pet project, policy, empathy, and tone. I'm confident in conservative policies. I'm confident that in this election cycle, we could walk into most moderates and independents houses and talk to them about conservative strategies around budgeting and foreign policy and border control and all of these ideas that are really, really big ideas. But do it in a way that talks about the policy, uses empathy just to understand the other side's take and use a tone that encourages them to keep showing up and supporting you. Donald Trump has hijacked our tone so bad

and just turned people into, you know, unfortunately, paper tigers, social media warriors, and they're just, you know, full of, you know, you know what and vinegar when they sit around the water cooler. And it's just distorted this fact that, you know, I think Ronald Reagan got it right when he said, you know, with you 80% of the time, what are you a friend and ally, not a 20% traitor. That's what we've lost. And that's what Donald Trump it's all in. And it's unfortunate, but I do think we can get back there. I want America to get addicted again to conservative policies, but not this just visceral, vile approach to it. Yeah, I wonder, though, has it given you any thought about whether there's some underlying issues that were there that Trump exposed. And I remember we talked a while back a couple years ago, we talked about

a moment in your office, where you're kind of looking out at the, at the protesters and realizing that these were people that were ostensibly on your side on our side, and you kind of had a moment of clarity. And I just sort of wonder, there's just the degree to which people have gone along with this make you think, man, I don't know, maybe I wasn't, maybe I'm not actually on the same team as these people. Yeah, that moment that we talked about is just so vivid in my mind. I mean, I was sitting in my office at the Capitol, you know, post 2020 election, and there's armed guards with, you know, automatic weapons outside my office, making sure that Republicans now not any sort of, you know, like foreign militia, but Republicans don't attack the Capitol

because we wouldn't admit that the 2020 election was rigged because actually it wasn't. And we knew that, all the proof. I think that the takeaway now, you know, a few years removed is just how vile and visceral Donald Trump has turned the Republican Party on its head on. Because up until that point, I was a rock solid conservative in their eyes, right? I was championing the heartbeat bill. I was championing other conservative policies. Brian Kemp and I were budgeting. We had billions of dollars in our state savings account, unlike the federal government, unlike all of these other left-leaning spending policies and pathways. But yet on one issue, because Donald Trump said the election was rigged, they just walked off the plank with him. Death threats started showing up, you know, all of that.

It's not the Republican Party that's going to actually do anything. It's just going to be a bunch of bluster. And look, I think we have to be very specific about calling out Donald Trump on being a fake Republican, even down to the point where these documents are out there. I mean, how is he different than Hillary Clinton? Well, She accepted defeat. So that's one way they're different. Well, yeah. But as far as the documents go, I mean, as Republicans spent billions of gallons of ink trying to express themselves that she was out, you know, stealing state secrets and blah, blah, blah. You know, Donald Trump's got two problems on his hands. Yes, he's got all these other cases. But the two problems on the documents case is one, he had them. Okay,

let's go figure out what he should have had, what he shouldn't have had. That's probably a complicated riddle. But then to unpack what he didn't disclose, what he tried to hide, what he tried to coerce. I mean, that's probably the biggest- Another way is different than Hillary. Yeah, that's the big, big issue. But yet, I mean, I just can't imagine us putting our stamp of approval as Republicans, but we are, and I'm acknowledging that. But that's part of my calculus here is let's just take our medicine as quick as we can. Let's work with trying to have Republican majorities in Congress.

Let's try to work with the Biden administration as much as possible to bring them back into the fold on immigration and foreign policy and inflationary levers that we can additionally pull. Let's work with them as much as we can over the four years, and then take our medicine and go do something different. I'm interested about that, about the Biden administration. Because I feel like maybe you have a freedom to call balls and strikes a little bit more than some others since you've kind of made this endorsement.

But I don't know. I look at the Biden administration. There are things they've done that I've disagreed with, of course. I think there have been a lot of ways where he's resisted some of the stuff from the far left. They're not doing the Green New Deal. They didn't try to expand the Supreme Court. You know, a lot of the protesters out there on campuses, everybody's upset about or shouting, fuck Joe Biden, right alongside the MAGA protesters. Like, you know, he hasn't given in to them. So in a lot of ways, I think he's resisted some of the worst impulses of the left. And yet I never hear anybody on the right give him any credit for that. What do you think? Are there any positive elements to your Biden endorsement or is it all anti-Trump? No, no, it's certainly not anti-Trump. I mean, I believe him walking into the room. I believe him trying to build consensus. I think he's getting better. I think it started off as a serious hat tip to the far left when he first came into office.

I do see a migration towards the middle, slightly small steps-ish. I think that part of this is a messaging issue. This election is going to come down to the suburbs. I live in the suburbs, right? I live in suburb America, 40 miles north of Atlanta. The suburbs are doing pretty well right now across America, right? I mean, everyone's house is probably worth more than it's ever been worth or 401ks are doing well. Whatever small business they work for or own is probably doing well. But there's all kinds of other components of the economy that aren't. I'm sorry, I've been told it's American carnage out there, Lieutenant Governor. I've been told that the suburbs are being eradicated by these policies and that they're building multifamily homes out there and, you know, things are going to shit. Yeah, there are multifamily homes coming because of this. I live in Forsyth County, Georgia. It's growing exponentially because we have the lowest property taxes of any metro county. We have the lowest crime rate and the best public schools. That's really the recipe to win. My first job in politics was the state rep for this area. So I know those stats a little bit well. But to me, that's what we should get back to trying to win

these elections on these policies, right? I mean, we had a very legitimate argument against the Biden administration on their initial immigration efforts, right? It was awful, right? We were watching this and it all came down to a sounding board where, you know, Joe Biden just basically said, we're going to do this thing a lot different than Donald Trump. And word got out to South America that we were going to do things different than Donald Trump. And so they started to flood the border and overwhelm the resources. So then we finally message enough and gallivant enough and put pressure and get the Biden administration through the Lankford legislation. And then we balk at it because Donald Trump says, why are we going to give these guys a win? Why would we dare take this issue off the table?

We need to dig in and not support this effort where we should have been mature enough to take the deal and then remind everybody in America that deal happened because we kept constant, steady pressure on doing the right thing. And you apply that over and over and over and over again. We have micro-sized our aiming on these issues that literally go hour by hour by hour, and they're not doing anything. I agree with that. I agree that conservatives deserve some credit for agitating for more action on the border. It's kind of gotten out of control.

I think David Frum is very good on this. You know, he's like, if liberals aren't going to control the border, then conservatives are. And I think a lot of liberals aren't going to like what they want to do. I also think, though, it's true, the Democrats were all going to vote for that, right? You know, there's this vision of the Democratic Party that gets put out among some, I assume in Georgia, some of the swing voters that Joe Biden's going to have to get. There's a vision of the Democrats that they're extreme, they're open borders. It's like John Lennon over there. The Democrats were all going

to vote for that deal. So, you know, maybe it took some pressure. Sure. But don't they get some credit? Doesn't it show that there's some pragmatism happening with Biden and that you can work with them? Isn't that something, a case that you can maybe make to people like you in Georgia that don't love Donald Trump, that are worried about the far left? That's certainly what my hope is between now and November, whatever the election is forth, is to be able to inject opinions, not because they're Republican opinions, but because they're common sense conservative ideas that help navigate this country in a better direction. I want my president to win. I want my president to be effective, regardless of whether they're a Republican, a Democrat, an independent. We all should want

that, right? That really is what America is all about. If we look in the rear view mirror, history is not going to be kind to somebody of the character, lack of character of Donald Trump. This is easy stuff if you're just mature enough to step away from that moment in time of the next tweet or the next X or whatever you call it these days. I'm not hip enough to know this. But history is not going to be kind to Donald Trump. The quicker we purge this, and look, if it means working with the other team, so be it. Let's do it. And let's do it well. I know that, you know, you're kind of worried about what the Donald Trump party means for the future of conservatism and the GOP. But just on a policy level, or on a governance level, maybe not on a political level. What's the thing that would worry you most about another Trump term?

I think the reckless foreign policy. These times are real. As I watch the news play out, yes, we've got these domestic issues. I think we have massive economic cracks showing just because both Joe Biden and Donald Trump recklessly spent $8 trillion on Donald Trump's side and $9 trillion and growing on Joe Biden's side. But I think at the end of the day, the way he recklessly operates with foreign policy is a huge danger, and not just to the image and the reputation of America, but to our

soldiers and to our very lives. You know, we certainly know what the ramifications of foreign policy gaffes are, you know, then becomes economic and then becomes trade related. Look, this guy has made no mystery of what he's going to do day one when he gets in there. He's going to be a reckless dictator that simply gravitates towards being 1% more powerful every day he's in office. And to me, this country is too important. The future of my three kids is too important to just give the keys to somebody like that just because they have an R next to their name. And by the way, it's a fake R.

It's written with a pencil. It's not written with a sharpie. I appreciate that. You mentioned at the top, like the social kind of fallout for you. I am curious, what are the things like? I mean, I assume you had a poker club or something, a group of former Republican state reps used to hang out with. Are you taking the heat? I know you said that I think your wife was maybe one time hassled at a grocery store. Like what's the social fallout been for you? It's probably a lot less than what most folks would think. It's probably 10 to 1, right? 10 to 1. Now, you know, early on in the 2020 election, it was the inverse

of that. But look, I think most folks realize, look, we need a better pathway forward. We do need a better direction. But yeah, there's certainly some blowback. I mean, I posted a picture of me and my wife with my son on his last baseball game last night. And my wife reminded me this morning to go delete all the comments off of it just because people playing, you know, mindless games of intimidation and whatnot. But look, it is what it is. I'm truly driven by the fact that doing the right thing will never be the wrong thing. And the right thing is not Donald Trump. Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. I don't sometimes I feel like some of these guys get excuses. I think there are threats that are real. Obviously, we just talked to Elizabeth Newman,

domestic terror threat expert, there are threats that are real obviously we just talked to elizabeth newman domestic terror threat expert there are threats that are real so i'm not undermining that but a lot of people i think have used it as an excuse to not speak out you know because they're not up for the blowback okay i want to end on one fun thing if you don't mind all right there's an alternate life for you there's an alternate world for you where you don't say what you think is true and you just go along with the nonsense and you end up on Newsmax with Eric Bowling And I want to play a little clip from Eric Bowling last night with Kristi No, I've also written a couple of books and I know how the process works you write some chapters You don't write the whole book at once you write a chapter or two you send it to the editors and they edit they read

It they add they subtract and here's my question the editor the editor was she possibly a plant a liberal plant because i'm not sure either one of these stories the dog story the the north korea story seems like the christy gnome i know no the the buck always stops with me i take my own full responsibility good for you christy that's good we go. That's the alternate life you could have been leading. Going on Newsmax, you know, hypothesizing about liberal plants inside the publishing industry. This is what's happened to us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, my stock line is, look, I'm not, I didn't run for office again because it's hard to show up to work and only tell 70% of the truth. In that scenario, it feels like you're only showing up and, you know, maybe telling 10% of the truth. 7%. Yeah, that'd be a little hard to look in the mirror.

That's good. All right. Hey, before I lose you, actually, one more thing. At least we're approached, I think, about third party stuff. There are a lot of people out there, conservatives, moderates, who say, you know, maybe not this election, but maybe the right path. The Republican Party is so broken, maybe third party is an option. I just, how did you look at the third party possibility this time? And how do you assess that in the future? Certainly, there's 70% of America that doesn't like the menu Biden or Trump. And so that there's never been, you know, this kind of polling information before. And I seriously looked at it. I mean, I really thought there was, you know, going to be an opportunity and a link and

there is, but the system is not geared for a third party. I mean, you'd have to, how do you raise a billion dollars in a matter of weeks or months, maybe at best? How do you convince 70 or 80 million people to get to know somebody who's relatively, you know, no namer on the national scene? It just would be too hard to break the strings of gravity. But, you know, in a perfect world, it would be a great setup. Have a Republican president, have a Democrat vice president walk in and stabilize the system for four years and then see what happens. My guess is America would get addicted to that type of leadership. Yeah, I'm kind of with you. I think it would have to maybe be a celebrity and it would probably not have to be Donald Trump on the ballot, just he's too at the polarization of it,

makes it too hard. Anyway, Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan, thank you so much for coming on the Bullard podcast. I appreciate your leadership and I just want to repeat, I think that it's so, so important. I'm burned, man. I've been against Trump for nine years, and I was always a rhino. It's so important to have conservatives, of principals who are speaking out and saying, hey, we can survive four years of policies we disagree with. We might not be able to survive four years of Donald Trump. I thank you for doing that. I appreciate you very much. Please come back soon. Absolutely.

Jeff Duncan, enjoy suburban Georgia, baseball tournaments, parenting. It's a good life. It's a good life out there, people. He's got a good life. You can do it too. If you're a Republican that knows the right thing, you can do it too. Jeff Duncan's doing great. Thank you very much for coming on the Bullard Podcast.

We'll be back tomorrow with a friend of the pod. See you then. Peace. Bump like notes inside the chords On every wall, inflections carved Deepest lakes and darkest stars Remember we were the volunteers Chords knew this and nothing more Now it's my rights versus yours Under your wheels, your hopeless reign You fought too hard, were up too late

We had suspended from the heights Until it's safer to walk here Under your wheels, your chances with the easy call, the call of search, the medicine, it still won't work, but there's dangerous Same thing as the other time But now it's your rights versus mine The truth in one free afternoon The truth in one free afternoon I'm right on my own now free afternoon The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing

by Jason Brell