The Bulwark Podcast - Jamie Weinstein: The Cowardice of Mitch McConnell

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

McConnell wouldn't put the stake in the heart of Trump—will that overshadow his legacy? Plus, Dan Crenshaw is not happy, debating Gaza & media bias, and it's up to 'we the people,' not the courts, to save us from Trump. The Dispatch's Weinstein joins Tim Miller today. show notes: Weinstein's interview with Crenshaw Finding Matt Drudge pod

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Hey, everybody. Before we get to a really interesting and maybe a bit long exchange with our guest, Jamie Weinstein, I just wanted to give you guys two things really quick. Number one, I mentioned this on the podcast, but with regard to the SCOTUS decision, I was really moved last night by some comments on the Bulwark Reddit. And their takeaway from all this was it's always been up to us, folks. And I think while I'm just talking to you guys here in the family, stopping Donald Trump is going to be up to us. All right, the courts are not going to save us. We can keep watching it. The George Conway and Sarah Longwell

show is out today. And you should listen to George's legal analysis on this. But we're going to have to be the ones to stop him. We're the ones we've been waiting for. And so if you were down by the Supreme Court news last night, you shouldn't be. We've just got to beat this asshole. Lastly, RIP to the great Richard Lewis, the great comedian. This guy, he loved his country. He loved his faith. He was a proud Jew. And he used to message many of us that are involved in the anti-Trump movement from time to time, giving us encouragement. I always appreciated that and was really moved by it. I was hoping we could have him on sometime.

And I was sad to hear of his passing yesterday. And so I want to leave you with a little sound from the great Richard Lewis. We'll dedicate this show to him. And on the other side, Jamie Weinstein. Peace. To one and all and all in one. It's a little redundant, isn't it? What? Shut up. Tell everybody that before the day is out, we shall have a wedding of fun huh hello and welcome to the bulwark podcast i'm here with my old friend jamie weinstein he's a producer and creator of finding matt drudge on iheart media it is a serial about well matt drudge we're going to talk about that he's a host of the dispatch

podcast on mondays in a former life he hosted the jam the Jamie Weinstein podcast. And I just do need to mention that I consider the interview that he conducted with me about my political transformation, I think the best one that I did anywhere. So now I get to turn the tables on him. What's up, brother? How's it going? This is wonderful. I didn't know that. I didn't know that you considered that the best interview you did. So I appreciate that. Well, you know, I mean, there are different kinds of bests, but I thought it was the best because you actually made me think and kind of challenged my assumptions about it. I think probably a lot of it was a lot of people that were interviewing me were happy about my political transformation and didn't really challenge me on it too much. And so I thought that those elements of it were good. So I go back every once in a while, I'll go back to it when I send people to it when they're like, what do you think about this? So anyway, you did nice work. People can go find it in the archives. Thank you. I'm going to give you the business though now. But beforehand, for people that don't know you, I just kind of want to level set a little bit. And maybe you can just tell us like,

how do you define yourself politically these days? And what does that mean for you with regards to our octogenarian presidential candidates? Well, I guess the way I tell people I define myself these days, less ideological than I once was, although I am somewhat ideological. But the way I describe it is I'm pro-democracy in the sense that I think that there's a threat to the country with Donald Trump. I don't know if that's 100% threat if he's reelected, but it's much higher than it was last time. And I thought it was a threat last time. But I'm also for not teaching my kids crazy things. I guess on both sides of the spectrum, I find issues, but I like to have conversations, especially with people that disagree with me. And I think that brings, if not agreement, it brings clarity to a debate. And I think that's healthy. So are you still using the C word,

conservative? Are you still using the C word? Or are you classically liberal, a different C word? How are you describing yourself? Moderate? Are you a neoliberal now? I've used classically liberal when I was in college. I mean, I guess that's probably what I'm closest to, but I still say I'm conservative. Yeah, I'm not afraid of saying I'm conservative. I mean, you said beforehand, you might be moving to California. So like, would you see yourself as a Steve Garvey supporter? I haven't paid too much attention. It seems like he doesn't say very much from what I can tell. He was on some debate stage. And he seems to know how to just repeat lines as far as I can tell. But I really haven't been following it very closely. closely okay we'll explore over the course of this podcast maybe

we'll revisit that question at the end and see if we've evolved at all um i want to do state of the republican party state of the conservative movement stuff i want to argue with you a couple things you've been tweeting about lately and i want to talk about matt drudge but like unfortunately the news gods have forced us to delay all that just just a bit. We had the SCOTUS decision late last night, or I guess yesterday afternoon, where they announced that they will be hearing Donald Trump's appeal with regards to whether or not he's completely immune as president from doing all crimes, a preposterous appeal. And they'll be hearing that on April 22nd. I don't know.

I don't know what Samuel Lito has to wash his dome or something for the next eight weeks. It's unclear to me what the delay is on that. But I was wondering what your top line response was to this and the political implications. You know, I always thought these are in the background. Will he get convicted? You know, will something happen? There's going to be an election no matter whether he's convicted or not. And I'm not sure the convictions are if he is convicted. I don't know how much that will play, good or bad. It might spur people to come out and vote for him who they think he's aggrieved. Donald Trump's a little bit like, I always think of the picture of Dorian Gray in a different way,

like everything goes right for him. There must be someone up there that allows all the chips to fall where they may. Everyone around him falls and burns, goes to prison, fall apart, go bankrupt, lose their money. And yet, you know, Trump, the cards just always fall exactly right for Trump where he avoids it all while all those around him burn. Is that right? I mean, he's lost a lot of elections lately. I hate like this sense of, oh, there's nothing we can do with Donald Trump. He just, he is, he's Teflon. That's not really right. I do think it is a little bit right, actually. Yes, he lost, obviously, 2020, and there were midterms that he lost, but he didn't really lose. Those were other candidates

that lost. He's been indicted four times. That's not great. I've never been indicted. Yeah. I mean, he went bankrupt three times, and yet he still won the presidency. He finds his way back. Everyone thinks he's gone, and then he's back. I mean, I use this jokingly. When he left office, he had all these commentators, some of which I agree with. They were calling him the former guy as if he's going to disappear and he's going to go away. And now he's going to win the Republican nomination and one election away from being president again. So despite all of this, he is at worst the second most likely person to be president in 2025. Yeah, maybe the most likely. So I guess there's something to be said for that. What's your

sense about the SCOTUS side of this? I mean, we have a legal podcast, so people can go check out George Conway's take on this. But I don't think that you have to be, you know, a Supreme Court, a constitutional law expert to feel like that doesn't seem like they're in a rush. Again, I'm going to give them a little more credit. I actually think the court, and maybe there are figures on the court that are more ideological. I do think the court wants to get this right. And weighing in one way or the other probably has political implications. And the D.C. Circuit ruling on this was pretty resounding. I mean, it was rude, frankly, to the Trump challenge. And it was

mocking almost of this notion that like the president could order SEAL Team Six to kill Hunter Biden and he would be okay and that would be fine. Like it's a rather preposterous appeal. I mean, you know, Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court took that up promptly. What they didn't in winter of 2000, you know, they weren't saying, well, we'll look at this in spring. Yeah. Let's see what happens. I don't have a problem with them looking at it. I agree with you. I think, I mean, it should be somewhat immediate.

I don't know why they're delaying it. And, you know, maybe the George Conway podcast will have more clarity on why the court is doing this. I think we'll have more harsh words, maybe, on why, but I don't know about more clarity. Okay, that's fine. The main takeaway, in some ways, I think there are a lot of people in my life, I don't know about you, in our Slack chain, in the Bulwark Slack chain, in my text messages, on my social media that were very disappointed about this. I'm disappointed, I'm annoyed. But to me, a lot of that disappointment was predicated on this notion that the courts were going to save us in this case. And I just kind of never really believed that was true. From the

start, I've always felt like the voters and those of us that are stated activists against Donald Trump are going to have to save ourselves for this one in November. And I was just never that, I never had that much optimism about the court side of this. And so it sounds to me like that's kind of where you've fallen on this stuff too. Yeah. I don't think the court's going to save the country from Donald Trump. I think the one thing that may have done it, and I think you tweeted about it yesterday, which is a decision that was made in 2021 in January to not impeach him and try him and convict him. And it was made for the same reason people called him the former guy. They wanted to

get off their plate. They thought he'd just disappear. Turned out completely wrong. And here he is again. When he ran again, I thought this would be the easier primary than 2016. And people were claiming, oh, all these people were going to overtake Trump, DeSantis. And it seemed to me from the very beginning that Trump was going to walk through the primary, and that's kind of what he did. And now he'll be an inch away from the presidency again. So it's depressing. You can tell you're a podcast host because you've transitioned us into the other news of the day. So we have Mitch McConnell's retirement from leadership, at least. And that announcement was yesterday. He spoke on the Senate floor, got a little verklempt. And man, I don't know. It's hard for me to look at the Mitch McConnell thing and feel

anything besides just pure rage, as you mentioned, just about his behavior around January 6th. I mean, I look back at this and I just think, you know, he wanted those two damn Senate seats in Georgia. Georgia had that Senate runoff on January 5th. A lot of party leaders who knew that the stop the steal was nonsense were quiet. They wanted to win those Senate seats. So they said nothing, sat on their hands. And then January 6th happens. They knew again, what he did was wrong, but they didn't want to blow up the party, right? And which is what would frankly happen. So it would have been an internal civil war in the party had they convicted him after

the impeachment. And so they didn't do that. My opinion, you tell me, is that Mitch McConnell, for all his supposed savvy in this case, on the one hand, he was being a coward. He didn't want to be the one to put the stake through Trump's heart. But on the other hand, I think his political antenna was off. I do think he really thought Trump was dead. And so he didn't have to kill him, right? I think that he did not recognize what you recognized or we did, that he could rise from the dead and win a Republican primary after what happened at the Capitol. And so instead he did nothing. Is it

TDS for me to say that that is really kind of overshadows everything else of the longest running Senate leader? Well, let me answer that. But to go to the previous question, I mean, it would be crazy if he did not. I mean, and it's possible he didn't, but all the people that thought that Trump could not leave office and then come and run again and be in a position of, I mean, even at that moment, he was at worst, the second most likely person to be president in 2025. The idea that he's just going to go away and, you know, never hear from again. So, you know, maybe he thought that, I think it was what you said, cowardice, not to give Trump too much credit, but Trump recognized this when he entered the race in 2015, that all these leaders in Washington, they talk a tough game, but their spines are made of

jelly, and that he exploited that, and he continues to exploit it, and he'll continue to exploit it right now with all these guys that talk a tough game. They're slowly going to endorse him as it goes to... John Thune has endorsed him. It relates to the January 5th, January 6th thing, right? There's always a reason why not to challenge him, right? We shouldn't challenge the Stop the Steal stuff because we've got to win the Leffler and Perdue race in the Georgia runoff on January 5th.

John Thune. I could endorse Nikki Haley. Obviously, I like Nikki Haley better, but I want to be leader. I know Mitch is going to retire, so I want to be leader, so I'm going to endorse him, right? Isn't that what this comes down to? Yeah. I think you're right. I think for Mitch McConnell in retire, so I want to be leader. So I'm going to endure, right? Like, isn't that what this comes down to? Yeah. I mean, I think you're right.

I think for Mitch McConnell in that moment, it also, I think if he impeached him, it would probably be, you know, it would be very hard for him to continue on politically in, in many ways. So what?

So what? Isn't that his whole thing also? Isn't his whole legacy Supreme court? He did it already. I guess he wouldn't have been the longest running Senate leader. So you wouldn't have the Cal Ripken record. you'd be whoever's second for the most straight game plays lou gehrig he had a pretty okay career i think some jvl can check me if that's right it's been a while since i did baseball trivia but right that's it he's not like he did anything it's not

like he was he like had this big agenda item he wanted to do the last two years tim what is amazing to me and it still is and i'm still in of it, is the number of people that are either powerful and could get a great job after leaving wherever they are now, or already wealthy, like bending over and humiliating themselves in order to stay in good graces with Donald Trump. I mean, look at Vivek Ramas. I mean, the guy's a billionaire, and yet he's like, what can I do in order to suck up to Donald Trump? And I don't get the value of that. You think that at some point these people say, F you, this isn't worth it. My dignity is worth it.

But in Washington, it seems like dignity is very low on the totem pole of what matters. And I just want to mention one more thing. I hope Nikki Haley rises somehow and beats Donald Trump in this primary. That would be wonderful. And I think she's way better beats Donald Trump in this primary, that would be wonderful. And I think she's way better than Donald Trump. Sure. The odds that she comes and endorses Donald Trump after she loses this primary are greater than 50%. Greater than 90 on this podcast. I don't know. I mean, I don't want to take anybody's hope away. Hope dies last, but it's greater than 90 on this podcast.

I'm starting to be convinced that maybe Chris Christie won't do it again, but I'm not 100% convinced that Chris Christie doesn't come out and endorse Donald Trump in the end. He's really trying to make it clear he's not, but... Yeah, back to McConnell before we leave. So you didn't get to the TDS question. You have my level, at least, of Trump derangement. Mitch McConnell's first paragraph of the legacy is this, right?

I was thinking about it, and I think the answer is we don't know yet, and it depends what happens in is this, right? I was thinking about it. And I think the answer is, we don't know yet. And it depends what happens in the future, right? If Donald Trump wins, and especially if it's as catastrophic as the worst case scenarios, of course, that is the first paragraph in his betrothal. And if it's written by certain papers, it will be no matter what. If, on the other hand, Trump loses, so, you know so it didn't matter all that much in the end other than he wasn't able to get a Republican that could actually win to be the nominee, I think it will be the Supreme Court. I think it will be a master of Senate maneuvers who helped create a Supreme

Court that's conservative for a generation. So, I mean, the answer I think to that is depends what happens, but you and me both know the risk that he took by not doing that should probably be preeminent. And even if Trump doesn't win, he still took a great risk that put him in that position to win. But that's not how I think these things happen. We have memories. Especially because he knew. And the risk to me, it it's like he told us he knew yeah like he said it on the center floor it's not like it was oh he was too dumb or he didn't see the threat from donald trump clearly or he didn't he was under the impression that donald trump didn't do anything wrong like your boy dan crenshaw he'll get to in a second uh it wasn't like any of that like he went on the senate floor and was like no you did this

it was your fault but i can't do anything about it because we had to go on vacation after Christmas and we had to take a couple weeks off and then you were gone. And I guess we can't convict somebody who's gone technically by some rule I just made up, right? Like that's the most telling part of it. We get a lot of these really powerful speeches against Donald Trump. We get, you know, Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz at the convention, all these righteous speeches and every concession speech.

Yeah. It's all BS in 2016. All BS. Like they're not like that, that upset about him. No one actually has that strong of a position because it all fades like three weeks later. All right.

So here's my one more Mitch McConnell thing. We need to hash out to see you can, you can grade how deep into the, you know, resistance Kool-Aid I've gotten since leaving the Republican Party. But some of my old friends get mad at me when I say that functionally, he stole a Supreme Court seat. I mean, he didn't literally steal one. Functionally, it was a situation where in a normal working system, you would have ways that you appoint judges, there would be norms, both sides would respect them. And, you know, the rules would be the same,

no matter who's the president, which party is president, which party is the Senate. Like didn't really happen, right? Like there were two situations, they were exactly, they weren't even exactly the same. In the one case, the justice left like many months before the election. In the other case, the justice left many months before the election. In the other case, the justice died right before the election. And he was in charge of the Senate, and he did things differently for two different nominees based on no real principle except a made-up principle about election year appointments. And as a result, the conservative side of the bench got an extra seat. So stole is like an okay word to use. When

I say stole, conservatives get really mad, really mad. They're like, oh, Tim, this is Joy Reid, MSNBC stuff. And I'm like, I don't really think so. I mean, functionally, he stole one. I'm not going to get upset at you, but I think the reality is that the Supreme Court fights had been existential in a certain sense because of Roe v. Wade. And I think the Democrats ratcheted up to begin with, starting with Bork and other places, and the attacks on Alito that attacked his character for being a racist, I think was very thin. So you have these escalating adventures, and I believe the Democrats would have done the

same thing in the same position, all over Roe v. Wade. You do? Yeah, I do. And I think... You think that this Democratic Party, you think Chuck Schumer, these guys that haven't even brought Jared Kushner up for a hearing, you think these guys would have held a Supreme Court seat for 10 months? I don't know anymore. Because I do think the interesting question is now Roe v. Wade is overturned. That court case was in many ways kind of this escalatory impetus for these Supreme Court fights. So I do believe that in that moment, the Democrats would have probably done the same thing, whether it's right or wrong. And I think at the end of the day, the Democrats, why did Ruth Bader Ginsburg stay as long as she did? I mean, there's so many questions that you could ask the Democrats could have better control of the court than they do. But yeah, I mean, he'll be viewed as a hero by Republicans in his obituary, especially if

Trump's a faded memory and he doesn't win again. And he'll be viewed as a villain by Democrats for what he did on the Supreme Court, but that will be his legacy. So not stalled for you? No, I wouldn't. I mean... You know, what word are we going to use? Can we use the word aggressively seized, maybe? A bonus Supreme Court seat? Legislatively maneuvered. You know, I have to go back in time to read, you know, the arguments for and against. At the time, I think it was pretty clever. But then again, you could argue in the same way it would be clever to put more really on the right to be like the treatment of kavanaugh

radicalized me like that's a comment like the demo wage democrats treated kavanaugh radicalized me and like pushed me towards trump's side you hear this from from people and like i actually wasn't really so keen on the kavanaugh treatment but it's like kavanaugh's on the supreme court merrick garland's fucking things up at the Department of Justice. So, I don't know how I, you know, sometimes I think that the outrage side of this stuff gets a little performative. Yeah. I mean, I do think there are people that say that's how they came back to, it's usually like the moment they came to Trump. And the other one, how they supported Trump the first time is the way Romney was treated radicalized them. I can't even do this. I can't even do that one. That one makes

me so mad jamie when like somebody is like i'm a blogger for the federalist and mitt romney's treatment radicalized me and i'm like why did it radicalize you it didn't radicalize mid or ann romney and it radicalized you yeah like a mean super pack out what about the birtherism did birtherism radicalize you into being i just i i hate it so well i think it you know so a i do think he was mistreated but b doesn't justify like like going all in for i don't i don't get the the correlation there but that is the argument that they realize they can't play nice anymore so they needed a mean guy like donald trump but to me the meanness was never the main issue with donald trump so I don't get that justification. All right.

I want to move on. You did an interview that reminded me to reach out that I was listening to driving around Los Angeles a couple weeks ago with Dan Crenshaw, and it nearly caused me to take the car off the road. So I encourage people to listen to it, and it's full on your Monday Dispatch podcast. Well, just at the top line, you probably don't want to insult interview guests, which I understand. So I'm not going to put you in that place. So I'm just going to speak about my perspective of it. His whole tone to me in this discussion,

which was very fair, it was not you're not being overly aggressive. That was reminiscent to me of how I behaved in like ninth grade when I was in trouble with my mother or a teacher. And I was like, screw you. This is stupid. I don't have to do this homework. I know how to do this. He just, he had a very kind of like condescending, too cool for this. I'm not having fun. I don't enjoy this. And I say that not to insult him really, but because I think the context of this

is important because right around the time you did that interview mike gallagher you know who is another in this kind of more traditional whatever you want to call it mccain bush reaganish republican vein left congress at age 39 and i listened to that crenshaw interview and i was like this guy doesn't seem like he's having a good time so just at first blush like you're when you're talking to me so it doesn't seem like he's having a good time. So just at first blush, like you're when you're talking to me. So doesn't that you don't have to go with the with the childish ninth grader comparison. But like, don't you think that like there's a sense of frustration with people in Congress that do actually want to achieve tasks? Yeah, I mean, he doesn't seem like he's enjoying himself. And I asked a variation of a question.

I almost asked it more directly that, you know, you're getting attacked viciously by certain wings of the party. You seem upset that you can't get actually bills through the house. Is it worth it? Do you want to stay? And he said, he's going to stay, but then as we'll mention, it gets to January 6th.

And I wanted to go, look, Dan, you're not very convincing with that. You're really enjoying making this argument. Like, do you want to do this for four years again? If he's reelected? This will be for four years, you're going to get this. Every time you're going to get questions on Trump, you see me don't want to talk about Trump.

Why are you signed up for this? I mean, you can get a pretty good job. I'm sure you can after this. You're a former Navy SEAL who was in Congress. Why are you doing this? Yeah, that's, I got the sense that this is not something that he's particularly enjoying. And you didn't get a satisfactory answer of that. So my other question, which I guess is less about Dan and more about the bigger kind of party, is the exchange you had about Tucker. And the line from Crenshaw that really stuck out to me was he says, I don't consider Tucker to be a Republican.

He sort of vamps about how his views about foreign policy are weird. And then some of his economic views are closer to Elizabeth Warren than Republicans. And then you rightly kind of push back on him and are like, well, Tucker, though, could be a VP choice. And so I guess I wonder what is your assessment of the answer to that question? Who is more of a Republican these days, Dan Crenshaw or Tucker? What did you think about his engagement on that question? There are still Reagan conservatives, people that imagine themselves in the party of Reagan, who still want to believe that the majority of the party is that. And I don't know what ideologically the party is to some degree, because I don't think it's an ideology at this moment. It's Donald Trump and supporting Donald Trump. And Donald Trump can pretty quickly sway most of voting Republicans

to whatever position that he decides from time to time that he has. And most of the people that go to vote on election day, the primary voters are not there for the Dan Crenshaw's view, certainly, the Reagan conservatives. And they're not there even for the American first Steve Bannon ideological framework, or even the Tucker Carlson ideological framework. They're there for Donald Trump. And whatever Donald Trump's view is, that is what the Republican Party is today. And it might not be forever, but right now, and it has been since Donald Trump became the leader of the party, he is the party, and his views and ideas are what animated. And Dan Crenshaw is not going to be the vice president to Donald Trump.

Yeah. Now let's do a thought experiment on that. I'm not sure that that's a hundred percent right. And I clearly the party is the cult of Trump. And if Trump woke up tomorrow and was like the number one issue that matters to this party is that like, we need to have daylight savings time forever and like that's what i'm going to truth about every day then like that

would be a 100 issue no doubt but i don't know if trump woke up tomorrow and was like you know i've been having some conversations with my friend jamie diamond and i really do think we need to kind of move to a globalist no labels the type platform within the party and i like the scales have fallen from my eyes on trade and immigration and foreign entanglements you think people would snap back to him yeah because on that i because i don't know i do think that there's some of that i guess my point is that i think that that a lot of voters do prefer that yeah he wouldn't frame it that way obviously i mean he would say like beat China, they're on their knees. Now it's the time we're doing this from a business. Now we're lowering the tariffs to get, you know, or he would say that, you know, he would come up

with some, some reason where he already, his policies won. So now we have reached a point where we can recalibrate where our policy is. I think for sure, they could go to a free trade. I mean, if you're talking about free trade, I don't think that is deeply held by the voters that vote for him. He made it a significant issue, I think, to most of the Republican Party because it was actually a pretty free trade party before that. And I think he could reverse that. Sure. Yeah, no, I think he can do pretty much anything. Okay. Yeah. Let me, think he can do pretty much anything. flew back to Jamie Weinstein's house with the Churchill picture. And I'm letting you know that the Iowa caucus in the Hampshire primaries just happened. And the clear front runner is either

Dan Crenshaw or Nikki Haley or Tucker Carlson or Vivek. I'm telling you that the front runner is somebody who's running on an America first Steve Bannonist platform, or it's somebody that's running on a Dan Crenshaw platform. Like What would you say is the more likely kind of outcome following Trump's death? Yeah. When did he die in this scenario? In this scenario? He died this year. He lost the election to Joe Biden and then he died over Christmas

because his eggnog was spiked. Yeah. There's a lot of concerns that the deep state spiked the eggnog but that's kind of a side issue so i do think that donald trump is a unique figure that is not replaceable and and therefore i do think the party could go back to a different policy orientation so it would not shock me in that scenario if it was dan crenshaw versus Nikki Haley. Really? Yeah. Or Vivek might have slightly different positions. Vivek is not set on his positions. It depends at the moment what is politically viable. So I could see him in that mix as well, but having positions on certain issues that are

very different than he has today. So it's not really answering your question, like what is the most likely, but I would say I would not be shocked in that scenario if the party is moved away from Donald Trump. Either outcome. Yeah. On your podcast, you used to ask people, do you think what explains Trump is more like his force of personality and will or more his policy orientation? And it seems like your answer to that question is the former, like that it's less about the policy. I always ask that question, but I think it's obviously the former, his personality. It was shown time and time again. You would have Ann Coulter. When Steve Bannon left, people are going to be like, oh, this is going to be bad for,

I mean, he was the ideological force. People are going to be really angry. No one in the Republican Party, other than like six people, knew who Steve Bannon was. I mean, it was just a DC-centric thing. Like, none of those people that went to go vote for Donald Trump knew who Steve Bannon was, other than a very small, very politically online-involved force. It didn't make any difference that Donald Trump kicked Steve Bannon to the curb. It didn't make any difference when Ann Coulter started tweeting against him. It doesn't make any difference when these people leave and attack him for not being

so true to the American first cause. It just doesn't matter because they're voting for Donald Trump. I don't think there's a 0% chance you're right about that, but I kind of respectfully disagree. I think they work in concert together. And I think that the global movement of parties, of concert right-wing parties in this direction is telling in this account, like my interviews with the people at Turning Point and at these events is telling, but it's a compelling point that like, it might all just be cult of Trump, that it might all just disappear. I don't really think so, but it's interesting. But Tim, so I had Charlie Kirk on my old podcast.

Okay. Charlie Kirk has changed his positions to model himself off Donald Trump, like a hundred percent. Will he keep them when Donald Trump's not on the stage? It seems like Charlie these days is like for ingratiating himself who's ever in power. So, I mean, maybe his views will model whoever is. I mean, Nikki Haley's the nominee. Who's the next cult leader? Yeah, maybe he's now echoing Nikki Haley.

I think things change rapidly. And if Donald Trump's not on the stage, I don't think there's anyone who can fill his shoes. Donald Trump Jr. might think. I think he probably thinks he can step in after Donald Trump leaves the stage. It's not going to work. Yeah.

Yeah. I agree with that. Okay, one more thing on the Crenshaw interview. Let's just listen to... You didn't even ask him about January 6th, actually. He just started talking about it i was i wasn't planning on going there i thought it's already been done with him you know i didn't feel like having that conversation but he he brought us to that conversation okay here it is

let's listen to it i want to give bill crystal a heart attack mostly because i tried to get him to listen to it and he refused so we're gonna play it right now in the end it was a peaceful transfer of power and and that was it you know it was i mean transfer of power. And that was it. You know, it was, I mean, like I was there and I was pissed about it. I was, you know, pissed about how that mob got whipped up. But in the end, you know, I don't call it an insurrection. It's just by definition, that's not what it is. It was an angry mob that got really out of control. And like they were lied to, they were lied to in the sense that they were told that they could affect change. And when people think that they can affect

change, well, they'll get really passionate about it. They'll go. And they thought that that day was the day to affect change because they thought that that process you're engaging in in Congress could actually change the presidential election. Of course, it can't. That's a very different thing than trying to raise an army to

stay in power. It's a very, very different thing. And fair, not at the end. I mean, I don't think January 6th with procedures. I mean, he filed court cases that he lost. And then when those failed, I mean, he attempted to, it wasn't procedural. I don't think in the end, I think you'll agree on that, Congressman. Well, no, I don't. Because it's, what's the, what did he do?

He tweeted at Mike Pence. Did it instigate, like, did it kind of make all these people crazy and make them do crazy shit? Yeah. But in the end, he tweeted at Mike Pence. Now, I think that was wrong. And he stayed inside and didn't initiate help to Mike Pence and do all sorts of things. Yeah.

No, but you can criticize the morality of it all day long, you can't call it this this sort of south american style poo okay so boy it's just a lot of post hoc rationalization happening here i think that he has a psychological need for this to be true and he's kind of convinced himself that this is true that donald trump didn't really do anything that bad there It was just kind of a little light treason. What's your take? Here's the thing. The January 6th stuff, to me, I remember, and it's still in my mind, that was the worst thing that happened domestically in my lifetime in terms of the government. It was shocking, shocking. I couldn't believe. I live right near the VP's residence. I heard like military helicopters. I thought maybe the Article

25 was being enacted. I thought like there might be, I mean, it was pretty crazy. It is amazing that all these figures knew it at the time, how awful it was. Even Nikki Haley, remember? She said, I could never support him and then kind of started backing away, and now is back to it again. But everyone knew. And as time goes, Trump has maintained his power in the party. They all have to rationalize it.

It's not as bad if they're going to stay within the Republican Party, because for the head of the party, Donald Trump, when he started his campaign, he had a choir of the january 6th like musicians or something uh to to this to to speak them and and not only do they have to do that now they have to compare that the prisoners to navalli in order to stay in good graces i quoted to crenshaw what um zeldin said and i i got the sense he likes zeldin so he's like oh i don't

know what exactly he meant there you know maybe it's a joke maybe it's maybe it's not a joke anymore it's like the the party line is yes russia has political prisoners and so does america and either were similar or in some cases they're better at the way they handle their political prisoners than us. The other thing that drives me crazy about that, any conversation with anybody in your life, public or private figure, about this, they want to do the whole media, you guys

all overstated. It's just his words. It's just the mean truths. It's just his words. If we got back in the time machine now going backwards to 2015 and showed Dan Crenshaw just a picture of January 6th and been like,

here's the Trump flags, here's the Confederate flags, here's the smoke, it's the Capitol. And we're like, this will happen and you will defend it. You know what I mean? He would be like, come on, you're an idiot. Never. Right? You know what I mean? And that's the thing like that's how the goalposts get yeah and i'm sure if he was here he said i'm not defending and he'd say i but he's minimizing it he's certainly

minimizing it now and donald trump and i brought this up to him was like how long was he like not responding watching tv while the secret service were Service were trying to rescue Mike Pence. His vice president was like, life was being threatened and didn't care. So, I mean, yeah, I agree. Donald Trump is not the greatest planner. And thankfully, he might not be able to execute things that well. But he's also a guy who had the power to try to save his vice president for five hours and chose not to lift a finger. That's kind of as damning as you can get.

And I know this is kind of superfluous, but it's kind of an important point. Anybody who's ever worked around him, say he's the worst human being of all time, and yet that's where we are. You'd think that would be a data point that people would consider. Maybe.

Yeah, I know. And I can agree. You implied this earlier. Maybe there's not a 100% chance that the democracy ends if he wins again. And I'm also on that. But my point always to people like Crenshaw is like, what do you think the chance is? Do you think there's a 1% chance?

2%? Right? Because it's like 2% is really bad. Previously, before 2020, we hadn't really had an election where you thought that one of the two candidates, there was a 2% chance that the American experiment would end if they won. That was a 0% chance for both sides question. Like no matter how bad of a planner he is, like you would think that would be, you know, cross the red line. So in my piece where I wrote in 2016, I think I wrote Hillary's malaria and Trump's Ebola.

That's why I'm a support of malaria over Ebola. And in that piece- Our listeners will really appreciate that. Yeah, I will be the malaria net in my vote for Hillary. We appreciated your Hillary vote. But in that piece, I said, you know, look, I don't think Donald Trump is going to overthrow the government, but is there a 10% chance he'll try to like maintain power

and overthrow the government? That's 10% too high. Like I can't vote for someone there's that percentage chance. I kind of remember conservative commentators at the time saying, it's just so hyperbolic that people think that he's going to try to maintain power and be a... Well, he did it. And now we're saying

he probably won't again. I actually think he probably won't again and say term limited out. But it has to be at least the same percentage chance as the time before when he did it. Like, why are we, like, we're taking that risk? I guess we're taking that risk. I don't know.

All right. I've got some other topics we've got to get through. Okay. I want to talk about Israel. I got some unhappy reader email about my conversation with Brian Boitler on Tuesday and Iglesias about Gaza. They thought that he was a little overstated in his claims about Israel's actions. So now I want to give you a chance to discuss this. It was

something you sent recently. You said this before, but it remains true. The sadistic October 7th massacre was the easiest moral test of our time. But since so many people are failing it, it has become the most clarifying moral moment of our time. You wrote that. Talk about that a little bit more and what you mean by it. Well, there have been sadistic attacks before. I think the Yazidis is probably up there and the ISIS attack on the Yazidis from what we know. But we've not had one as sadistic that's at that level that has been filmed. We're able to see the sadism.

We're able to see the levelism. We're able to see the level of just, you know, it's not murder. It was joyful killing because they were attacking Jews and people that were, you know, working with Jews, fellow Muslims that lived in Israel that coexist with Jews. And it was from an organization that controls Gaza, the managers of Gaza, who were founded upon a document that not only calls for the murder of Israelis, but the genocide of Jews worldwide in its founding charter. Now, what is the response that is proportional to that threat? After you know that they can, which was shocking to me, I mean, totally shocking, having been to

that fence and having written about it for years that it had 100% success rate in stopping terrorist infiltration. What is the proportional threat to the threat of elimination, the threat of genocide? It has to be to destroy the group that wants to do it. It just so happens that this group has spent aid money that was supposed to go to help the people of Gaza and their fellow citizens, I guess you would say, because they're the leaders of Gaza, and built the most elaborate tunnel system that the world has ever known to hide under the population so that in this conflict, it will be even more bloody than it would be if they were fighting another way. So in order to defeat this organization, there's no way it can not be bloody, unfortunately, because that's the way they made it. They made it so that would be the case. So I am not a military expert. I'm not in Israel's position. I would understand if they said, there's no way we can actually do this. A ceasefire is necessary to get our hostages back. But I don't see how this cycle that we've had with Gaza ends going back and forth in these wars unless Hamas is totally defeated.

And by defeated, I mean its leadership totally eliminated and its foot soldiers, to the extent you can, killed or captured. Okay. The first 90% of you that answer i was with you 100 of the way so you know i think that we have a a little bit of a area worth hashing out about kind of what to do about it right and one of the things you didn't get into that i'm sure we agree on when you talk about the people that failed the moral test the folks that were posting hang glider memes on instagram you know at my alma mater there was glory to the martyrs projected onto the library. We could go down the list of people that were literally pro-Hamas in their response, and then expand that circle out to the people that were silent in the face of folks that were

literally pro-Hamas at their organization, be it a college or political organization. You know, there are folks that have tried to create moral equivalency, gross, horrible, and infecting too many of our American institutions. I 100% agree with that. But I think we get to another like moral question though, which like okay is there unlimited are there no you know rules of war that israel has to abide to do they get unlimited ability to kill in response and the the usage of the 2 000 pound bombs in civilian areas uh there was just a story this

morning uh civilians had swarmed around newly arrived aid trucks in the hope to get food when Israeli tanks and drones started shooting at people. Israeli officials, this is not coming from Palestine or Gaza, told CNN that they did use live fire on people surrounding the aid truck because they felt like the crowd were approaching the forces in a manner that posed a threat to the troops and i get it you know people waving white flags it doesn't seem like there's a real plan like 60 to 80 percent of the structures in gaza have been bombed it's like okay we kill all the hamas leaders to what end right like and so that is like just this giving carte blanche to bb in this sense i think a lot from the pro-israel side a lot of times, that if anybody raises concerns about this, then they're giving aid and comfort to the terror. That's where I

start to kind of part ways with people. Well, I would say there's no question that there's a lot of death and destruction. I think actually Israel has enormous standards and the standards that they act to launch attacks is well known and documented. Now, I don't know all the things that you mentioned. A lot of these things that are reported at the time often turn out not to be the case when the dust settles. I go back to 2002, the Janine massacre. I just, I will say on this point, I wanted to be very specific.

I only used examples of things that the IDF has copped. Right, because I agree with that. There's been a lot of news out there and a lot of false news taking kind of the Hamas angle from that face. Yeah, I'm not accusing you of it, but I remember like in 2002, the Janine massacre, they called it a massacre. MSNBC was flaring this massacre that Israel killed 500 people. It turns out the troops went door to door to make

sure they killed only the terrorists that were in there. And I think 50 people died, not 500. It wasn't a massacre. 23 Israeli troops died in the same battle instead of doing a campaign above to just drop bombs on it. So a lot of times when the dust settles, some of these claims of massacres often turn out not to be true. I'm sure that there could be cases where some Israeli soldiers are not following protocol, but I ask a lot of people this who have a similar position. How do you get Hamas leaders that have deliberately decided to hide under civilian infrastructures in tunnels?

I mean, that's not a scenario that I know has happened in any other war. Israel's in a position to root out this genocidal foe that has burrowed itself underground. And by the way, with the aid that has come from the world to help the Palestinians, they use that money not to build bunkers for the Palestinians in case of war, not to provide food, but to hide underground. And the question is, if any country is in that position, it's a terrible position to be in. So how do you do it? And I think the reason they're in that position

is because Hamas deliberately knows that once civilians die, that there are these calls for ceasefire and that's their exit plan. That's how they'll survive. Once it's over or there's a ceasefire, they'll come out of their bunkers with a victory, V for victory,

and plan and plot to do this again. As they said, they would. That's what they want to do. They want to keep doing it. So it's deeply tragic. But I do believe the blame for it goes to Hamas and to a lesser extent to a lot of international aid organizations

that were giving money and not following where that money was going. And instead of giving it to the people, it was enriching Hamas to do these type of things. Yeah, our views about Hamas and their culpability here are completely simpatico. I think the question, though, is there's a lot of things in life where you don't have good choices, where there are gray areas, right? Where you're being treated unfairly, right? And like, does not still Israel have some responsibility and the leaders of israel some responsibility to say okay i mean we need to

root out hamas we need to kill them but in order to kill all the hamas leadership we're gonna have to totally decimate gaza all you know so that it's unlivable afterwards we're gonna kill some x number of innocents that's going to number into the thousands. And then at the end, we still don't really have a plan for what we're going to do after. Maybe we'll occupy it, I guess. Maybe there'll be a couple non-terrorists that can take over. We don't have a good option, though. The Palestinian Authority is hollowed out and corrupt. Hamas is the thing that people voted for. Okay. So like in the face of those bad options, like, is it not okay for there to be people that to say to Israel, okay, like,

maybe we need to start, you know, going back to the drawing board. I don't know. Like maybe there's a lot of space here between just mass slaughter and doing nothing. Well, I just don't, I'm not going to say it's mass slaughter. Cause I mean, if it was, if, if Israel wanted it to be mass slaughter and there would be, you know, a hundred thousand dead, it could be mass slaughter. I believe they are targeting to the best they can the terrorists there, but it's not an easy job when people have created a system of tunnels underground to hide from Israel after committing the worst massacre since the Holocaust. I think people have to understand Benjamin Netanyahu.

I wish he would resign. I think he's been there too long. I think the failure to, to, to prevent what occurred on October 7th is going to be a damning legacy to him, but he has not been a particularly violent or someone who wants to engage in,

in wars. Like this is not what he wanted. What I mean, he was, he was more hardliners and there are people trying to push him to engage in wars. Like this is not what he wanted. I mean, he was- There are more hardliners and there are people trying to push him to be more aggressive in the government. Sure, but even he was avoiding kind of this issue

until October 7th. And I don't believe if you replace Benjamin Netanyahu today with someone else in the war cabinet, you would have a policy that is that much different in terms of a war in Gaza. You might have someone who is more likable and easy to deal with the U.S. administration,

but I do not believe you would have a very much different situation in the struggle, the fight in Gaza. Because I think after October 7th, the view in Israel, and I'm not Israeli, but I don't think they can tolerate the existence of Hamas. And there is a solution. There is a better option to this. And that is for Hamas to give back the hostages and surrender, or at least come to a deal where they give back the hostages and get a ceasefire. They can do that. I mean, this was a genocide, as some people claim. I've never heard a genocide in history where the solution to stop the genocide is to just return the prisoners, these hostages, innocent civilians that the person

losing the battle has captured. If you raise the light flag, we stop the genocide. It's a fair point. I concur with that. There are many of my colleagues that agree. I'm just, I don't know. It's starting to make me uncomfortable. It's been a long time. I was essentially where you were during October and then early November, and it's late February. And if anything, it seems potentially, well, hopefully there's a deal this weekend, but BB is sending signals that it's potentially escalatory signals if the deal falls through. So we'll see. But you make a compelling case. I do not think that you're supporting an ethnic cleansing, but I think that there's maybe some space between.

Unfortunately, the only views I see out there is like Mehdi Hassan's view and the completely opposite side of that. I'm trying to stake out some room between. Okay, I want to argue with you about one other thing. Our friend, I don't really want to make it about him, Adam Rubenstein wrote for The Atlantic. I was a heretic of The New York Times. People can read that in The Atlantic if they haven't and they want context. He was on the opinion page of The New York Times when the Tom Cotton brouhaha happened about publishing the Tom Cotton op-ed. And he stayed there for a while after that. He's a Weekly Standard alum. know his argument basically says that as a conservative or center right person at the new york times that he you know felt i think separate from very much separate from the culture there um ostracized and uh that he was treated poorly and with regards to kind of

the oversight and the review of how the tom cotton op-ed was handled and i I just, I want to say in the micro, I like basically agree with everything that he said. And I think that he got screwed over. But like, I think the part that I want to hash out with you is not like so much about his specific case, but about what that case says about our current discourse and media landscape. Because I read the story and I was like, okay, the Times is culturally liberal and you got screwed over by your colleagues. That sucks.

But that's like a dog bites man story to me. Like I just, I don't, there are culturally liberal outlets or culturally conservative outlets. There are culturally liberal companies, culturally conservative companies. People get screwed over and inter-office fights all the time.

I don't think that this is a crisis of epic proportions. I don't think we need massive movements and organizations dedicated to this. Other people disagree. Where do you fall on that? Well, I think part of his piece is a micro, but really is a macro, which is the opening anecdote, which, for people who haven't read it,

he was in an HR meeting with a bunch of other employees, and they asked him a question just to kind of break the ice with everybody. Like, what's your favorite sandwich? And his initial thought in his mind was, I guess, a very expensive sandwich I've never heard of. But he didn't want to do that because he thought people would not like it. So he said, you know, a spicy Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. And the HR person said, we don't eat Chick-fil-A in this place because of the... No, because the Chick-fil-A's, the leadership of Chick-fil-A's views on gay marriage. And then everyone started

snapping. Okay, that is not culturally liberal. That is an insane asylum. That is a scene that is an insane asylum. And where I would say the macro in that is an insane asylum that is a scene that is an insane asylum and and where i would say the macro in that is is that this is the paper of record if if that is the staff reaction and that is going on and that's like not seen as an insane snapping that bothers you it's a snapping you're you're more of a clapping man or you just feel uncomfortable maybe this is more about your age though i don't Snapping is just more in vogue. I don't know. I thought it was like the beatniks in the 1950s or something. I don't know

about that age. But yeah, no, I think that's kind of a painting an insane asylum. And this is supposed to be the paper of record. And look, I feel bad because I know people there or friends of mine. I mean, great reporters. So I know, because i know people in media like when i read this like okay there are some at least some really great writers the times it's not all like this i can trust their work but if you're like this is an outside person of the media doesn't know the media world and you see this like i don't know should i be reading the times like this is this is absolutely a crazy environment so that's a micro which I think is a macro. So, okay, that's fair though. But again, that's about the Times.

Like the Times is culturally liberal and is staffed by people that are elite and culturally liberal. Like this has been true since the beginning of the New York Times, right? He published his story in The Atlantic, you know, not exactly a lunch pail magazine, okay? That is a culturally elite magazine. It's very good. I look at the Washington Post, the Washington Post editorial page,

as far as I'm concerned, has conservative white man, affirmative action, like Hugh Hewitt, Mark Thiessen, Jim Garrity, Ramesh, Ramesh isn't white, but Ramesh, Ramesh is great. Whatever you think about any of these people, like Hugh Hewitt, if he was a liberal white man and he was putting out the quality of columns that he puts out, would be writing letters to the editor. Okay. He would not have a perch at one of the top magazines. So like this idea that conservative thought is being stifled in these organizations.

Sure. Yeah. Some at some places, right? But I mean, I'm sure somebody that works at Fox News that puts their pronouns in their bio would say that they get mocked and treated poorly and that that's rude. I guess, why does this matter? Convince me that this matters at all. And I don't think this is actually a cancel culture question, but this is why I think it matters uh even more than uh i mean i'd have to think about the cancel culture aspect but i think what it matters is um well it's cancel culture in the sense of like the ideas are being silenced culturally because maybe they're

not being canceled but they feel uncomfortable sharing them i think the notion is that if i can't mention that i i eat a spicy chick-fil-a sandwich then i'm sure as hell not going to mention that like i think abortion should be banned in the first trimester because, or whatever. Like, so I think that it's related in that sense. But here's why it matters, I think, even beyond the cancel culture aspect is that, and I had this conversation in my old show with Ben Smith, when you staff a paper with all like-minded people from like-minded places, as you just said, they're all probably Ivy League graduates who feel comfortable snapping. I never saw that when I went to Cornell 20 years ago, so maybe it's new. But look, they're all comfortable in the same milieu. They all have kind of same cultural reference points, probably similar ideological outlook. And the problem is when you're covering politics and the New York Times isn't known as a liberal paper, at least it doesn't present itself as a liberal paper, right? It might be viewed as that by conservatives, but it does not present itself

as a liberal paper. It's a paper of record. When you ask questions of politicians, you start having, asking it from a certain framework and you brought up abortion right uh there's a way to ask an abortion question if your if your view is that it's a human right to have an abortion uh and there's a way to ask abortion question of a politician if your framework perhaps is that it's you know murder or something less than that something that should have some restrictions and both ways to ask a question are actually probably good questions to ask of different senators depending on the senator if you're trying to be neutral the new york times isn't asking you know i think the classic example is a democratic senator you know when is a baby a

life is it sure but who cares i guess who cares what do you mean he cares aren't there other reporters out there that can ask those questions i mean we are we are living in a time of abundance to me i'm just like really? People are feeling stifled. There's so many outlets. There's this preponderance of outlets. Ben Smith now runs when he has Semaphore. Like there is the Axios. There's Politico.

There's the AP. There's Reuters. Washington Examiner has people there. The Dispatch has people. The Bolt, we just stole somebody from you and he's going to be at the White House. Andrew, like isn't everybody's view represented? And isn't the fact that the New York Times view is all of the same milieu, isn't that just

downstream from our polarization of education and our politics? And isn't that also kind of Donald Trump's fault? Who do you want the New York Times to hire? Somebody that likes Donald Trump? No, I didn't quite say that, but you might know this better than me, since I think probably at one point in your career, you imagined being at the podium looking down at the reporters from the White House briefing room. I did imagine that once. No, no longer. Who is the front row there? Yeah, it's the networks, ABC, NBC, CBS.

It's AP. You know, it used to be Helen Thomas. Peter Doocy looks like he's in the front row now most days. Maybe he's in the second row sometime. There you go. But it's all outlets that say they are not biased. They say they are mainstream. And I'm not saying they are or they aren't.

But if they all have people from the same mindset, they are put on a different pedestal than the Washington Examiner getting a question about one of these topics that we're talking about in one of these- Hunter Biden's laptop. Yeah. So I do think it matters when you're talking about outlets that are considered non-biased, mainstream, non-ideological. They're the ones that tend to get debates more often than not, or at least they used to. I don't know if that happened. I don't know if that's going to be the same case anymore. But it used to be ABC and CNN.

If you're all staffed, and I'm not saying they all are, but I think in the case of what we're seeing in that New York Times piece, it looks like a lot of the staff has the same... Snapping. Yeah, snapping. If everybody's snapping, that's a problem. Yeah. So I do think it's an issue if you're staffed with people from one perspective. And I actually think that's this perspective that people argue for

the importance of diversity at companies in different places. When everyone has the same perspective, you might be missing out on something else. I'm for it. I'm for it. I think the New York Times should hire people that, you know, went to state school and whatever. But like, I just, I think at a time when we're seeing increased education polarization, like there's something that you have to to go to college, tried at the New York Times, I think. Maybe not. Somebody, I guess, could be a college dropout and also be a New York Times reporter. I'm not saying that that's impossible.

But generally speaking, if you're going to be a person of letters, you kind of need to have graduated college. percent of college graduates are for one party because the other party is appealing to racist bigots by putting a reality TV show buffoon as their presidential nominee for three cycles, then I'm kind of like, I don't know what to do. I think that the New York Times should try harder to have viewpoint diversity. I do. But I just don't care that much about it. I don't think that it's that big of a deal. Again, I went to undergrad at Cornell, went to grad school at LSE. So I've been to some of these institutions that are supposedly elite and like super liberal. Like not everyone who's even left of center and votes a Democrat is like snapping their fingers and like at the Chick-fil-A thing.

Like we're acting like this is like, I don't, I don't know people that do that. I mean, and I know a lot of people in the media. I mean, they're friends and none of them, very few of them share my center right ideology. Okay, this comes down to the snapping. We're going to do a whole hour on this. We've gone way over. Katie is going to be so mad at me.

Don't cut this, Katie. I want people to know that you're mad at me when they listen. But we need to talk about Finding Matt Drudge really quick. And then we're going to be finished. I guess I should reveal that I was interviewed for the Finding Matt Drudge podcast. And so I guess I have a little bit of skin in the game here. But he's a super interesting character. He's extremely influential, still influential, you know, maybe not at his peak like he once was. And the podcast digs into his influence

and his history, while also trying to literally find him because he's missing. And so it's a little bit politics, a little bit, I don't know, true crime or something. I don't know. You pitch it better than me. Well, it's kind of the political version of finding Richard Simmons. And we are literally trying to find him while trying to tell his story and answer some of the questions that are still mysterious. Because why did he become increasingly reclusive when he used to come to the DC White House Correspondence Centers and have a TV show? Why did he turn against Donald Trump after supporting him? The questions. Way to go, Matt. I'm snapping at Matt, giving him snaps for that turn.

And then there's some people that believe that he doesn't even own the site anymore. So the show tries to answer uh, to answer those questions, uh, and try to get him in the final episode to sit down for an interview. So we, we are actively, have you had any luck? Well,

I'm heading out. Do we have any leads? Do we have any hot leads? Well, I'm heading out to a city, uh, tomorrow and we have an invitation to him that we have a, a seat will be open for him at a dinner.

Uh, and we're hoping, uh, that, that he'll come join us. Uh, that will be open for him at a dinner. And we're hoping that he'll come join us. That will be part of episode eight. So hopefully we'll be able to tell you that he did come and we had an interview. I don't know. I don't know if he's going to sit down with us. He kind of, in the past when authors wrote books on him, there's a recent pretty good biography of him from 2020. He plays around with it, lets people know that he's listening, but he didn't give an interview to the author. Our last episode that just came out on Wednesday, episode six, kind of goes into why he turned. And then we have a big,

big episode that's going to answer a lot of questions about Trump next week, where we have a former employee, the first employee, perhaps, coming out on the record talking about Matt Drudge. So I think we're going to learn a lot from that. And I hope that he sees that we kind of try to do a fair job on this. I mean, we weren't trying to make an ideological case against him or for him. And I would love for him to sit down. Our tagline is, how can you be the most powerful man in media?

And we know so little about him. And to your question, he's still quite powerful. I mean, we try to talk to a lot of people that did not want to talk because they still, still are dependent on those drudgelings. I've been listening. It is a great podcast. People should check it out. Finding Matt Drudge. Jamie Weinstein, thank you for being in the hot seat today and hope we can do this again soon, brother. Thank you. Appreciate it. Love's the only thing that ever saved my life. It's a long ways to mind on nursery rhymes. Fairy tales of blood and wine. Turtles all the way down the line.

So to Easter on we go home. For the realms our souls must roam. To and through, may that be all gone. Space and time. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brell.