The Bulwark Podcast - Jake Tapper: American Scandal

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

It used to be that politicians who had affairs, took bribes, and paid people off lost their office or lost their base. Tapper joins Tim to discuss his CNN series, "United States of Scandal," as well as his role in freeing a wrongly convicted man. Plus, rising antisemitism on the left and right. show notes: https://www.cnn.com/videos/title-2411812 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/cj-rice-philadelphia-exonerated/677787/ Fundraiser for C.J. Rice

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. I'm delighted to be here with Jake Tapper who I don't get to see anymore since I'm on the other network. He's a CNN anchor, author of four books. His most recent All the Demons Are Here. He's also hosting and executive producing and all the things a new new original series called United States of Scandal, which wraps this Sunday. Jake, what's happening, brother? Hey, Tim. How are you, man? I'm doing quite well. You know, I want to talk about the series. I'm curious. To me, you know, maybe I'm putting you on the couch here for a second. But as I was watching some of the Epps, I was like, you know, maybe this is just a newsman who's nostalgic for the days when journalists could shame politicians who were acting bad.

What was the motivation? No, the motivation was just storytelling and curiosity. I like your theory. I like your theory. I mean, one of my big first moments in journalism was when I wrote a story for the Washington City paper in 1998, right when the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke. And it was a story about I had gone on a platonic date with her. It was basically a rumination on American scandal, political scandal, and why everybody seemed so excited when this young woman I kind of knew was getting

destroyed. So it's possible that the origins of my interest in scandal and the real story and the wreckage left behind is rooted there. But the truth is, it was just, as far as I can tell, it was just really, CNN was looking for original series. And I thought to myself, nobody's, it seems like a no brainer. It seems obvious. Why is there not a series on American scandals? I would that no one's making an r and i'll make it this wasn't on my list but since you brought up monica i have to do an aside on this this is a team monica podcast here she got screwed so bad so i'm like a little younger than you right so as like a teenager i was i was maybe a freshman when this was all happening in high school and for

me it was like they were both adults, you know, like, because when you're 15, a 24 year old, a 23 year old, however old she was as an adult, right? And now to look at it now as a middle aged person, like she was treated horribly. And I just look back on that and think, man, it's kind of crazy. It is remarkable the degree to which there are scandals where a man has an extramarital relationship and the man is popular and a politician. And the woman who is usually single and younger ends up being the Jezebel and chased out of town. And the man is able to, you know know still have a reputation and you know keep his head up high and all that president yeah it is amazing and it still happens to this day yeah she totally got screwed it's not fair it's not fair what happened to her and she's a good

person and you know on earth too linda trip didn't betray her and she's you know, on Earth 2, Linda Tripp didn't betray her. And she's, you know, married with three kids and doing something else. Team Monica on this podcast. You're always welcome, Monica. Just going back and revisiting all this stuff. Was there anything that kind of struck you that surprised you? You know, like looking at it from a post-Trump lens or any other lens? The degree to which these men think that they can get away with anything intrigues me and still shocks me to this day. And one of the reasons I wanted to explore scandals in this series is because I still do not fully understand why

anybody would work so hard for so long to become a governor or a senator and throw it all away for something that seems rather obviously not worth it. We could be talking about Blagojevich or Sanford or McGreevy or the others that I cover in the show, Spitzer. But the one that is the most shocking to me still is John Edwards. First of all, were it not for Barack Obama, you could really make an argument that John Edwards really could have been the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008. I mean, that is a possibility. But beyond that, when you think about what he was doing, not just cheating on his wife, not just cheating on his cancer-stricken wife, not just cheating on the cancer-stricken wife

with a campaign staffer, not just impregnating her, not just convincing a different aide to claim that the baby was his, but doing all of that while running for president. How do you keep track of all the lies, the hubris? I'm exhausted just saying it. And then even after the story broke, he was pitching himself to Barack Obama to be vice president or to be attorney general. After the story broke, it is sociopathic.

I mean, I'm not a qualified doctor, but you see the behavior of a lot of these people. And you mentioned your allusion to Trump that this was an era where politicians could be shamed is on point because I don't think that Donald Trump would get in trouble for any of the same things, any of these scandals. When I say get in trouble, I mean, get in trouble with his base, not necessarily get in trouble. He's certainly in trouble right now in a number of courtrooms.

And I don't know if he's going to be elected or not, but that in itself is saying something. But beyond that, like there is something about him that it, that only applies to him. We've seen other politicians try to do the same thing and it didn't work. Like George Santos tried to try to do the same thing. I want to get into the Trump thing, but one other thing, just before we lose Edwards, I'm wondering if revisiting that story, it becomes really relevant

right now in another upcoming Trump related story, which is the Stormy Daniels case, right? Which is that Edwards has tried and there's a hung jury. So I guess he's acquitted, but there's a hung jury with a very similar case, right, of these kind of payments. Right. Somebody is spending money to hide this affair. Yeah, spending money to hide the affair. Was it a campaign finance violation, etc.? And going back and, you know, sort of revisiting that, is there any perspective that's given you on the upcoming Stormy case or the merits of it, the weaknesses or strengths? It's tough to prove. I mean, it is tough to prove. I mean, and also I think Jack Smith worked on the John Edwards case. He wasn't the primary

prosecutor, but I think he worked on the case. Yeah, he's done a lot of these. He did McDonald. He did, I think he did Menendez, which is also a case that was thrown out by the US Supreme Court and a case that was also a mistrial against Menendez, the first one, not the current one. It's funny. This is not about Trump, but there's a lot of Trump in it because Trump pardons Blagojevich. Charles Kushner is a major player in the McGreedy scandal. And then as you note, there is this shades of Stormy Daniel in the John Edwards case, which is if you are paying somebody to hide from the public or from the media an illicit affair. Does that count as campaign money?

And all you need is one juror to say, well, not necessarily. He was trying to hide it from his wife. He wasn't necessarily trying to hide it from the country. And somebody on the North Carolina jury believed it. I don't know that that's not going to be believed in New York. I mean, who knows? I mean, to me, it's pretty obvious. Now, campaign finance law, you know, we could do a whole nerdy episode on how weak campaign finance law is and all that. But to me, like the fact that

these things were held from the public to advance political careers is pretty obvious. The difference in the Edwards case, right, is that he loses and it comes out like right there. It's of course, the campaign, whereas the Trump, the stormy situation really didn't come out you know who's to say that like there isn't a different world where that was the big story in the final weeks instead of the jim comey thing and and that would have made a difference i don't think that's a crazy counterfactual no i i certainly understand the argument now looking at donald trump empirically what he said on the axis hollywood video is worse than the stormy daniels allegation which is consensual sex and so i don't know who knows i guess is my point like did people really not know what they were getting into

it's hard to argue that people thought he was you you know, a Jeb Bush type, you know, loyal to his wife and happy family man. Jeb and a little Columba holding hands at church, you know? Yeah. No, I don't think anybody thought that of him, but also it's not up to me. It's not a hypothetical. It's, you know, it could have been, I get the argument. So then back to the other point you were making, I've been thinking a lot about this, about the nature of scandal and whether Trump has permanently changed something on the right and like the lack of trusted media institutions. The Santos case is an interesting counterexample. But to me, I look broadly and say that really Democratic politicians still are shameable and still are kind of responsive,

at least to negative news coverage in certain ways and ways that the Republicans aren't. And like in a lot of ways, maybe Republicans now like it when Jake Tapper comes after them on CNN, they can use that to raise money. Right. And so I don't know, what do you think? Do you think that there's an imbalance now or an asymmetry at least in how in how the parties respond to scandal? Or is that TDS on my part? I would never diagnose you with TDS. But I will say, I mean, look, Christian Martinez, right? Was he the head of the Florida Republican party? And he's no longer the head of the Florida Republican party because of this allegation of rape, which he

denies. And also this non-disputed story of threesomes with his wife. So he's gone from that position, I believe. So that was shameable. And that's a fairly safely ensconced red bubble being the head of the Republican party in Florida. He got shamed. I mean, I'm not saying his life is over, his career is over. I'm sure he'll pop back up. But now maybe it was just because DeSantis was still running for president at the time. And DeSantis said, like, get rid of this. I don't know. But he did lose his job. Santos lost his job and was expelled by Republicans mainly. Now you could also argue that's only because he actually committed fraud against the grandmother of Congressman Max Miller and like that specific detail or it was so egregious, like all these

shell corporations he allegedly set up, et cetera. So I don't know, you know, like 20 years ago would lauren bobert have been forced to resign based on the public display of a faction i don't know maybe but sure the steve king steve king is a parallel i always use it was better late than never but he eventually got ran out of the republican conference there's no way that steve king gets run out now for being a white nationalist yeah right there's no way now because we know this because marjorie taylor green and gosar paul gosar have both spoken at nick fuentes's white nationalist white supremacist convention yeah and there are all sorts of things that happen like that so i mean i think you can argue that there has been a a change but i don't know that people

are not shameable that seems like a very strong statement i mean i think people now look at the trump playbook which is we have this bubble we have the support network fox isn't going to report it so if a if a republican has a scandal and fox doesn't cover it doesn't make a sound right i mean for sure part of this power through don't admit it like the playbook is different at least maybe maybe not shameable is too far but the playbook is certainly more aggressive more unapologetic more shameless maybe than say unshameable i have asked woodward and bernstein this question if nixon had done everything he did but he did it with either either today or he did it and he had A, a Republican Congress. People forget that was the Democratic Congress. And B, Fox. Would Richard Nixon have survived? I don't want to put words in their mouth,

but what I recall is both of them saying, yeah. Obviously. It would have been different because he would have had a support network and he didn't then, but he would today. None of this happens without the support network of Republicans in Congress and Fox. None of it happens without that. The Fox video is interesting. My favorite stat of the week, I don't know if you saw this. So Donald Trump's vice president is not endorsing him. I don't know if you noticed that. It's kind of a big news item. I ran it on my show. It's a huge story. It's very important. It happened on Fox. They don't even run it. You looked at the thing. It's like in the period

afterwards, the day or two afterwards, it was like, you guys did 100 minutes on it. MSNBC did 120 minutes on it. Fox did five minutes on it. It happened on their network. Right. Five minutes, including him being interviewed, making that news. Right. on their network right five minutes including him being interviewed making that news right it is fascinating it is empirically huge news you know if if joe biden had not endorsed barack obama i mean i'm trying to think of some sort of world but like it's crazy hw and reagan had some bitternesses you know i don't know but nothing like that like refusing to endorse him when he by the way this isn't him refusing to endorse him at the beginning of the cycle when it could have been desantis or nikki haley or oh there are a lot of where he himself was running penicillin you know a lot of candidates

no this is after after it became clear that he was going to be the nominee no question unless a meteor hits the earth and And what Pence did, whatever people think of Pence, whatever people think of Trump, what Pence did was a brave thing to do. It was a courageous thing to do because that's not getting you anything other than the ability to sleep at night. That's it. No invitations to anything, no short you're you get put on the enemy of maga list you're like number top five at least i mean the only reason to do that is to be true to yourself there's no other reason i feel like sometimes as a news anchor it sucks you end up getting into being in a media criticism bubble when you go on these podcasts but i gotta do one all right we just got

to do one media criticism question i'm interested in your take on I feel like we have probably over the eight years of Trump, I can think of two private disagreements we've had over coverage of Trump. I think I score them one to one. We don't need to go over them with everybody. But over how how much cable should be covering this or that? How do you answer the question now? First of all, let me tell you, I have a very resonant memory of you and i this is when you worked for jeb bush and me screaming at you outside of bed bath and beyond stop covering this was that where you were i was i was in reagan airport right yeah and i will tell you that like i agree that we should not have and zucker has said this subsequent we should not have just run his rallies start to finish with

no fact checking and not doing the same for anyone else comparably sure i 100 agree with that but where you and i disagree and i still feel this way is jeb bush should have done more press i don't know that it would have changed anything donald Trump was a phenomenon, but I do not think the decision to subscribe to the old rules of how candidates, when they do press and when they don't do press, Donald Trump rebroke all the rules. He changed everything. And I think that called for a more aggressive press strategy, just in terms of willingness to do interviews. And that's where you and I also disagree. Yeah, no, no, I think now we agree. That's there was our one to one. That's it. We're even. Okay, so now here we are today. This is a genuine question. I talked to Susan Glasser about earlier this week, I don't know how to deal with it. Because Donald Trump goes out and does a

speech. And his speeches are just wheels off nonsense. And he does election fraud stuff every time. Yep, which is not true. He does January 6th apologia now, every speech. Not just apologia. He starts his rallies with January 6th criminals singing the national anthem and he calls them hostages at a time when there are actual American hostages in Gaza. You're downplaying it. Okay. Thank you. So there you go. So there's's that he's cheering on the insurrectionists he's lying about joe biden constantly and you just go through the list lying about the economy and the crime and like the kind of stuff that if jeb had said like oh

crime is up when crime is down there would have been a fact checked about us and we would have had to apologize right like like that stuff doesn't even get mentioned but if you do the lead every day and talk about the crazy stuff that trump said then you know republicans will come on and say jake you're so biased you're so biased right how do you deal with it in this day and age how do you deal with trump every day lying and the premise of his campaign really being a lie about the election okay so first of all i'm not afraid of being called biased and i get called that by the left and the right all the time period full stop I do think that the way that we cover Trump is something that takes thought and care because

you know it's Chris Eliza does this great thing on his sub stack which is you know the 50 craziest lines from Donald Trump's speech last night or the 30 craziest lines from his interview with Howie Kurtz last day or whatever and he does it's always a great read, but I don't think a TV version of that would be of service to my viewers. I think when he says something that is shocking and new, it is worth discussion. Like I did yesterday with his comment that any american jew who votes for democrats and jews vote for the democratic party about 70 of the time roughly hates their religion hates israel and they should be ashamed of themselves which is an empirically a false statement i know plenty of progressive jews or Democrats who love Israel and love their religion.

I'm even related to a few of them. And two, shocking is the nicest thing I can say. So we covered that. I covered it. We had a discussion with Frum and Crystal. We covered it. It's not like I don't cover it, but I'm not going to hand over my show to Donald Trump. There's a lot of stuff to cover. And I want to make sure that

we're providing a broad and well sourced and interesting news show. But I do think about it a lot. In a weird way. Yeah, we've all come full circle. I'm kind of like show Israelis, people. They're so crazy. Maybe we need to see now. Anyway, we're running out of time. You mentioned the Jewish thing. And I have two more things I have to talk to you about. I'm very curious about your take on this, like the rising anti-Semitism, the threat. I know you cover it on your show. I know this is personal to you. There's an easy answer for a newsman.

Both sides are bad. There's, you know, some stuff on campus that's bad. There's some white nationalist, Nick Fuentes, who you already mentioned, elements that are bad. I wonder how you like wade through all that and separate like, what are the most intense threats? What are the real threats about antisemitism? What is, you know, maybe more performative outrage? And how bad is it out there? What's your sense of the state of play? So I have two teenagers. So what college campuses are like is not frivolous.

And I'm not suggesting that you were saying it was. No, I'm not. Yeah, I'm absolutely not. By the way, that was a serious question. How do you, how do you weigh through this? Both sides? No, but the only reason I raise it up is raise it is because I see some progressives on social media saying things like, oh, you can't compare some jerk college student with Marjorie Taylor Green and Jewish space lasers or whatever. And okay, first of all all i don't have like a chart of like which one is worse like they're all bad second of all you know i have kids that are in their teens and so what the environment is like for kids in high school and college is pertinent to me and even if i

didn't it would still be important what goes on in college campuses is important and i also like i mean one of the great curses of being jewish is you don't actually have to decide which is more of a threat these people yelling at you that you're a colonialist and you support genocide and you you're an occupier and all of that which is said just to jews just for being jews not right most israelis do not support netanyahu there have been cases of like somebody just in iamaka on a bus getting shouted down by yeah right you see this yeah right i posted something about the the anti-semitism or whatever about trump's remarks i posted something on social media and our response from a progressive

was some meme about like, stop committing genocide, you fascists. I'm like, dude, I mean, I grew up in Philadelphia. I live in Washington, DC. Who am I genociding? Like, I'm not killing anybody. I'm an American. Like, I don't even know what you're talking about.

First of all, I mean, I don't want to even get into the argument what Israel's doing and what to call it, et cetera. But I don't think it's a genocide. But beyond that, even if you do, what does it have to do with me? One of the great lessons of 9-11 was we don't hold Arab and Muslim Americans responsible for things that people do in their name or things that people are doing in Egypt or Jordan. I mean, that's prejudice. It's no less prejudice when it's done to Jews.

But anyway, so that's from the left. And then on the right, you have, statistically at least, before October 7th, the real threats of violence were from the right, the white supremacists, et cetera, the Fuenteses of the world, that ilk. And that's where the attacks on the synagogues have come from. Yeah, that was white replacement theory pushed forward by fox pushed forward by donald trump pushed forward by all sorts of people on the right the idea that jews are funding a replacement of the white populace

with brown and black people complete insane delusion and it led to the deadliest act in american history at tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. And I don't have to pick. I don't know which one is going to ultimately come for me in the middle of the night. It's going to be one of them, but I don't have to decide which one is worse. They're both awful, and I see people empowering or at least being complicit in both of them on the Democratic side and the republican side much more in the republican side when it comes to republican officials

100 but there's people i mean not on the federal level but like on the local level you look at like what's going on at like the berkeley high school city councils yeah or city councils and it's like people laughing about october 7th people claiming that the rapes didn't happen, all that stuff. It's pretty offensive. So it's a complicated and uncomfortable time to be Jewish in America, probably anywhere in the world, really. But the truth is, I don't look at one as worse than the other. I think they're both awful and they're both judging look you're i don't think i'm breaking any news you're gay there were homophobes on the left and probably still are for years and years and years and years oh yeah i mean i remember people going after lindsey graham accusing him falsely or whatever of being gay a democrat the head of the democratic party in north carolina south carolina doing that holophobia has never been just one party although it's certainly much stronger in one party than it is in the other but for years it didn't really even used to be that way necessarily outside of you know san francisco you know even every once in a while from fans of the pod i get talk a little

less about your gayness i get that comment about once every week or so don't have to shove it in my face tim yeah don't read your kind of shake okay we're over time but in seriousness seriousness I was I was really moved I watched your segment about CJ Rice it's a personal story it could if you we'll put it in the show notes for you want to watch the whole thing but if you just want to give us one minute on that story yeah I'd really appreciate it CJ Rice was a patient of my dad's my dad's a pediatrician and he practiced in a lower income section of Philadelphia for most of his 40 plus years 50 plus years of being a pediatrician and he practiced in a lower income section of Philadelphia for most of his 40 plus years, 50 plus years of being a pediatrician. And he, CJ Rice was just one of many. My dad saw him in 2011. He had just been shot. And what CJ says was a case of mistaken identity.

He was riding his bike with his buddy and he was a low level drug dealer in drug dealer in south philly but not violent he'd never picked up been picked up for anything violent so he could barely walk he spent time in the hospital his pelvis had been shattered he's you know stitches all up and down his chest and he could barely walk much less run and then a few days after my dad saw him there was another shooting in philadelphia south philly in this one nobody was killed and thankfully nobody was even seriously injured but the people who were injured could not identify who did it and then the police got a tip overnight came in and shown a photo lineup one of the victims said that she did it. This is the only evidence against CJ.

And it was really bad, really weak testimony. But there was a trial in 2013. My dad testified, but CJ had the worst lawyer in the world. She was just awful. She let things be admitted that she'd never been admitted. She was just incompetent. If you or I, Tim or our children were ever charged with anything similar, we would have much, much better representation. And in fact, it's been said before that it's better to be a guilty, rich white man in America when it goes to prison. He tries to get out. He tries to not escape. He tries to appeal the process. In 2016, he writes to my dad asking for medical records from the hospital where he had been taken after he was shot. And he and my dad strike up a correspondence, a pen and paper letter stamp correspondence because he's in prison and make this effort to try to get him out of prison.

The appeals process fails. Not surprisingly, they usually do. The system is designed to protect itself. And after the final appeal failing, my dad finally listens to me. I've been begging him, let me write about this. Let me write about this. Let me tell the story. I start working on the story in 2020. In 2022, The Atlantic publishes the story. It's called This Is Not Justice, A Philadelphia Teenager and the Empty Promises of the Sixth Amendment, which is the right to counsel. And that fall, my dad hires a different attorney who's working on a habeas petition to argue that CJ's attorney was so incompetent, it wasn't a fair trial. And what happens after that is good news.

The system then starts working for CJ for the first time ever. The district attorney's office grants the petition in September. The first judge grants it in October. The second judge grants it in November. And Monday of this week, we announced that the Philadelphia district attorney had dropped all charges, exonerated CJ, and he is a free man. And it has been one of the most, I would say one of the two most important pieces of journalism I've ever done. The other one being writing the book, The Outpost about Afghanistan. But that was just

telling a story. This was more, this was activism, because I don't think CJ could have done it, because I believe my dad, who is honest to a fault, and if you ever meet him, you'll know what I mean. So he's out, and he's trying to pick up his life. If any of your viewers or listeners are inclined or have the means, you can go to my pinned tweet or just Google CJ Race GoFundMe, and we're trying to raise money so that he can go to school, get an apartment. He's 30 years old, but he went away to prison. He turned himself in when he was 17 and he couldn't make bail, like thousands and thousands

of people in prison. He couldn couldn't make bail so he was doing time even though he hadn't been convicted anything and you know we're talking right now i'm you know we still talk all the time and uh he's trying to figure out how to get an apartment and i'm just and it did occurs to me like he has no idea how to get an apartment right he has no idea about rent he has no idea about references i don't even know what his references are going to be he spent the last 13 years i think it sounds like yeah no i'm happy to be a reference for him but i mean yeah and this is a guy who didn't even do anything he didn't even do it you know anyway so that's the story we have a documentary on it airing sunday night at eight uh eastern on

cnn and it has been a long battle i wish i could tell you that my dad is happy but but that's again you have to you have to meet my dad not in his nature no he's just you know he's just upset about the injustice of it all yeah but um i'm like let yourself have one minute to smile yeah take a w he smiles when he talks to cj so anyway that's the story i love that i appreciate that we'll put um all the details in the show notes go So anyway, that's the story. I love that. I appreciate that. We'll put all the details in the show notes. Go support CJ. That's very admirable.

I'm glad you did it, Jake. Jake Tapper, you can see him every day on CNN, on the lead of Jake Tapper. Well, except if I'm on Deadline White House. On that day, you can miss him. But the rest of the days, you can see the lead and United States of Scandal, which wraps this Sunday, as well as the CJ Rice documentary. Thanks, brother. Appreciate the time. Thank you, Tim. It's great to see you again as well as the CJ Rice documentary. Thanks, brother. Appreciate the time. Thank you, Tim.

It's great to see you again. Keep up the great work. I love watching you. Thank you to Jake Tapper. Really appreciate his time. Stick around. We've got some mailbag questions for you. me loose. Freedom, freedom, where are you? Cause I need freedom too. I break chains all by myself. Won't let my freedom rot in hell.

All right, guys. Solo mailbag today. I'm going to just try to rapid fire pop through a few of them. A couple of them you can save the Jake Tapper podcast, you know where to look for it. If you want to know the answer to things such as Rachel's question, tell me more about the Central Valley Bean Co-op Pinto Bean Bag on your wall. I'm originally from Buxton, North Dakota, and I'm wondering if you and I have any mutuals. Well, Rachel, no, we do not have any mutuals, but we do have a lot of mutual pen pals because I think every person that has ever lived in Buxton, North Dakota has emailed me about this beanbag. And I'll tell you the story is kind of just a coincidence. It's a pandemic story. My husband was a policy person for Heidi Heitkamp, Senator of North Dakota, who we should get on this pod, by the way, Heidi's amazing. And so they were touring farms around the state together. And he saw this here, valiant horseman beanbag and thought it was cool. And we also have some coffee beanbag art in our house. And so we got this, we put it up in kind of a corner. It's nice, but we got nicer art than this. We put it up in a corner. And that happened to be our zoom corner in our old house in Oakland.

And we started zooming and then there was a novel coronavirus that you might've heard about. And then all of a sudden, rather than going to a studio to do my television hits, I was doing it from the zoom corner in our house and the beanbag was behind me. And people liked the beanbag so much that it came with me all the way to Louisiana. So there it is. That's the beanbag story. My husband loves North Dakota, by the way. I have no connection to Buxton, but hello to all you Buxton folks.

Okay, we've covered some of this this week, but I wanted to put a finer point on it. Here's Josh from Coffey County, Georgia. What do you think are some of the best strategies to convince these double doubters to not vote for Trump? If I get any of my friends that far, should I even suggest voting for Biden or avoid that so as not to push them back to the right again? You know, we talked about this a little bit on the next level yesterday with Sarah, talked about it with Steve Hayes. You heard my interview with Steve Hayes. I think you'll have a sense for where I come down on this. I made this point with Steve, but I think that it's worth appreciating. I am trying to nudge him and other people in the commentary space and other people that have influence and op-ed columns, etc. to just make the case that they know who the worst

option is. They know who the riskier option is. And so let people know that who is the better choice. Even if you don't think it's a good choice, Joe Biden, let people know who you think is the better choice. I think the obligation of someone in the public space is different than the obligation of a voter. And if you're in Coffee County, Georgia, man, you know, I mean, there was a fake, looks like Josh said one of the fake electorates was a member of his church. There are going to be some people there that just the idea of pulling the lever for a Dem is just too unimaginable, right? And if they voted for Trump twice, moving them from that to not voting is a win. And I think it's going to be different from different people. Some of them,

like in Georgia, I think in particular, are not going to like how they were lied to about the election, right? They experienced this stuff. This was in their face closer. And so, those election lies, you see this in the focus groups, are going to be really salient for people, particularly in Georgia. And so, talking about that, how you can't trust Trump, you don't know what he'll do next time. You saw the risks, just how unpatriotic it all was. The storming of the Capitol, having Trump flags over our Capitol, it just is unimaginable. If that is enough to nudge those people in rural Georgia to not vote for Donald Trump, Joe Biden's going to take that. Joe Biden's going to take that. I think it's okay to bring up the areas where Joe Biden is going to be more

aligned with them, and there are going to be a few, you know, maybe it's worth bringing up in support of NATO. Maybe they're not on the NATO side. So I don't know, you're gonna have to know more about your audience. Maybe the fact that he kept the Trump tariffs is a plus for them. That's going to be a minus for me. But that might be a plus for some of these voters. See, like Joe Biden is not radical. I mean, look, Joe Biden kept the Trump tariffs. He wants to build the factories, the chips plants in these communities. I think you can go online and get a list of where all these factories are being built in red states. You know, I think that's a good thing to talk to folks about.

Try to reach them on a values level with that. Those to me are some of the, you know, better arguments. I think that when you go to that RVvat.org, page through the videos, you know, some of the videos are going to be from people who seem, you're going to be able to smell it. You know, some of them are going to smell a little bit more like their college educated suburban folk who just took a while to come around. And some of them are going to feel much more like they really are Trump. They liked the Trumpiness. They liked the Trumpy part of the party, but they just had these other reservations. Whatever it is, the fact that they have somebody in their life that is feeding them

good information or that their media consumption habits are different. For whatever reason, they've been able to kind of break out of that bubble. And so try to help nudge other people out of that bubble. It's something that we're going to keep talking about. Finger wagging is a big no. You know, I say this all the time. There's a reason I'm not doing Republican voters against Trump this time. Sending them to the Borg podcast is probably not a help anymore. It just is what it is. We've realigned.

I'm a red dog Democrat. I will do some more writing. I wrote something to a family member before the 2020 election about why my best argument from a more conservative, more Trump-friendly point of view, why they should vote for Biden back then, maybe going back to mine, some of that material would be useful. If you're a Bulwark Plus subscriber, you know, make some comments underneath this podcast and I can kind of help point you guys to stuff that you think might be useful. Okay, lastly, life advice, my favorite segment. Some people don't like it.

I had a commenter who was like, why do I care what you think? Maybe you don't, that's fine. That's fine, it's the last question of the podcast. Turn it off, you're gonna miss the song of the day. That's okay. Turn it off, come back tomorrow. We're gonna have great guests tomorrow.

We are not changing this podcast into a life advice podcast though. Maybe that's my future in the 2030s. Who knows? But having a little fun at the end, it's going to be a long year. There's going to be a lot of politics, a lot of things to get mad about. You know, we can kind of spread our wings a little bit. Okay.

Alex, 26 years old. I'm at a crossroads as to whether to continue to pursue my ambitions in politics and public service or to look for a nice job where I could just settle down and live my life uneventfully. I feel as though both those options will leave me tortured in a way. I'm more passionate than most of my friends about this, in part because I saw my father's country, Nicaragua, tip over the edge into authoritarianism in 2018. Do you have any advice or tips on making decisions in this pivotal part of my life while taking into context our current political situation? I do have advice for you, Alex, age 26, because I was at a crossroads. I was at a crossroads in, God,

when would it have been? 2018, probably. And I didn't know what to do. I had hit a big career snag. And I wasn't happy about some of the choices I'd made in my career. And I was talking to some of my friends, and I was saying to them, what should I do? Like, should I just, what did you say? Settle down and live my life uneventfully. I was like, there was a big part of it was like, you know, I should try to get a PR job for Clorox. There's a Clorox headquarters in Oakland and I can just sell bleach and like work nine to five and coach my kids basketball team and be happy right that was something that i was really quite seriously considering even it did some interviews i did an interview with an airline actually about doing airline pr comms maybe that wouldn't have been as

uneventful as i thought given what happened with boeing recently but um i thought about it and i considered it and your question was a question i asked everybody i had drinks with what do you think I should do what do you think I should do and you know one of my friends said to me see this fucking thing through like what are you talking about nut up like go out and fight like you you put your neck on the line for Trump and it was not a time to step aside and go sell bleach and and he really just kind of bucked me up. And I was like, you're right. And through that, and through a little bit of healthy therapy, you can go to betterhelp.com. I was like, I need to find something for me that's fulfilling. And I don't know if fulfilling, fulfilling and ambitious are sometimes aligned, and sometimes they're not. And so when you say,

continue to pursue my ambitions in politics and public service, okay, maybe there's a way for you to channel those passions that you have about what you saw happen in Nicaragua and channel them into a kind of job that you just feel particularly motivated to do something that really hits you deep down. And that could be advocacy, that could be a political campaign, it could be media. You know, I think that there are a lot of ways to do it in ways that are fulfilling. And I think that I look back on some of my political life, and I let ambition get in the way of passion, where I took jobs that were not fulfilling to me deep down, on a deeper level, that did not fulfill, you know, all of our desire to live with integrity,

but instead fulfilled my ambition. And I think a little bit of ambition is good. There's nothing wrong with ambition, but trying to marry those things, the ambition and fulfillment, that's the sweet spot, man. That's the good stuff. So Alex, you can go ahead and email me if you want to, if you want further thoughts on this, but I'm happy to share that two cents. I've gone on long. Somebody asked me about widespread panic. We're going to save that for the next mail've gone on long. Somebody asked me about widespread panic. We're going to save that for the next mailbag. And y'all, I appreciate you sticking around the Bullard podcast.

We will be back here manana with a couple of authors and a good interview about what is happening in rural America. We'll talk to y'all then. Peace. Open correctional gates in high desert. Open our minds as we cast away oppression. Open the streets and watch our beliefs. And when they carve my name inside the concrete, I pray it forever. Freedom, freedom, I can't move.

Freedom cut me loose. Freedom, freedom, where are you? Because I need freedom too. I break chains all by myself. Won't let my freedom rot in hell Hey I'ma keep running cause the winner don't quit on themselves Huh, what you want from me? Is it true? You see a father getting laid

Huh, what you want from me? Is it true? You see a father getting laid The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.