The Bulwark Podcast - Joe Walsh: Red Lines

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

This election is about being a grownup and making a choice. One candidate is clearly preferable, and a protest vote sends a message to no one. Meanwhile, Biden is not waiting to take the fight to Trump, and Democrats have to call out culture war ugliness. Plus, another installment of "The Right Stuff." Joe Walsh joins Tim Miller today.

It might seem like the 2024 U.S. presidential election is happening in a vacuum, but it will have global repercussions. All of America's allies are thinking very, very hard about how they should reconfigure themselves in case an isolationist president is in the White House. Swamp Notes from the Financial Times brings you insights on the race through an international lens. You can listen to Swamp Notes on the FT News Briefing Podcast every Saturday. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We got a fun one today. Former congressman from Illinois, former Republican presidential candidate in 2020. He hosts the podcast White Flag with Joe Walsh. It's Joe Walsh. How you doing, brother? Welcome back to the Bulwark podcast. Hey, Tim Miller. It's great to be with you. And I just want to say you all are doing phenomenal work at the Bulwark. Good job. Thank you so much. We're working hard on it. It's important stuff.

Back at you. And I'm happy we'll have this conversation. I wouldn't even really call it a disagreement. I was being a little cheeky on the internet the other day. I was being a little cheeky on the internet the other day about, you know, how to assess Joe Biden's Israel performance. So we had a little disagreement, Joe and I, but certainly not a big disagreement compared to some of the other disagreements we've got these days. I want to hash all that out with them at the end. It's better to do it long form. Twitter is not that good for those kind of nuanced conversations, if you haven't noticed. Not at all, Tim. You were super respectful, and I was in kind, and that's kind of an unusual thing on Twitter. It is. So I want to hash that just a little bit

more long form at the end. We got to do a little news first. So Joe Biden yesterday came out and, I guess, challenge would maybe be a strong word. He tried to make it seem like he was challenging Donald Trump, being tough, but he's being more assertive and saying, hey, I've got a proposal. We're going to do two debates, one in June, one in September. June will be the earliest presidential debate in memory because it happened before the conventions, which is not traditional. This is not a traditional campaign though. So there's something to be said for that. First one would be on CNN with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash being the moderators. I kind of just am curious on your take on that and Biden's strategic move,

whether it made sense or some blowback. Nate Silver was a little upset that he went around the debate commission. So anyway, what's your take on that whole discussion? Look, as someone who is all in for Biden, I think this was a really good, smart, cool thing to do. I think he had to do it. I worry that he's losing right now. Like, I think the only way Biden can beat Trump, and it pains me to say this, is he's got to take the fight to Trump. He's got to show the American people he's up to the job. I don't think Trump has anything to prove. I mean, he's an utter asshole. Everybody knows that.

But Biden has something to prove. He's got to prove he's up to the job, that he's not too old. So I think the more of this he can do, going after Trump, challenging Trump, the better. I agree with that. What's your take on that as it relates to the trial? So at the end of the video that he put out challenging Trump to the debate, he made a little cheeky joke about how I hear you're available on Wednesdays. And then the campaign put out a shirt, a t-shirt you can buy that's like available on Wednesdays. I forget exactly what the shirt says. Some joke about how Trump is only available on Wednesdays because of his trial schedule. Biden's been pretty reticent to engage publicly on the trials at all, really. He has turned up the heat on that a little bit, making a few, but it's more like this, making a few offhanded jokes, offhanded remarks. What do you think is the right approach to that? I mean, on the one hand, you've got all these Trump fluffers going up there having press conferences. The Democrats aren't really doing that. Some might say that they should be leaning into this more and attacking Trump on the trial stuff more. Others

say it's better to kind of take the high ground on this. Where do you land on that? Tim, I think he's got to fucking go after it, attack him and make fun of him. I love it. I don't know who it was. It might have been Steve Hayes at the dispatch, thought it was a terrible move. And I respectfully said, I don't get I don't get that. I thought it was a terrible move to make fun of the trial. Yeah. Biden's line about, are you free Wednesday nights? Like, I guess he didn't like that or, or the fact that now the Democrats I think are selling t-shirts that say something like I'm free on Wednesday nights. I love that stuff. People like us are so into the weeds every day. We forget about the bigger picture. Donald Trump's in a courthouse right now.

He's in a courtroom this morning because he's on trial. He's a defendant. He's been indicted four times. First time in history. We're three and a half years removed from this guy trying to overthrow a fucking American election. And you want to treat this with kid gloves? No, we can't. He's a lawless, un-American psychopath. I think Trump is. So I think, I think Biden's got to lean

into it and go after him hard and make fun of him as well. I agree with that. And, and Brian Boitler who comes from the left, but he wants more shameless Democratic surrogates all around doing what, you know, Vivek and all of them are doing, you know, going up there and doing what Vivek and Byron Donalds are doing. But on the other side, I kind of agree with that. I don't, you know, the New York delegation, Dan Goldman, you know, Jamie Raskin's good at this. I find the people that are good at this and shouldn't they be up there if the Republicans are going to turn this into a circus and try to own the narrative around Trump's trial? I kind of feel like the Democrats should be doing that too. I was compelled by that argument. I'm equally compelled. That makes a lot of sense. Look again,

Joe Biden is running against a former president who's been indicted four times, 88 some counts. Donald Trump is lawless. In my mind, he's a criminal. Make that the campaign. The only caveat I'd say, Tim, is if it's just Biden's surrogates doing it, I think it hurts Biden. Because again, I go back to this. I think Biden's only got one obstacle. And if I think, I think if he overcomes this obstacle, he wins in November. Is he up to the job? Is he too old? And he's got to prove he's not. So I think in addition to the surrogates, man, Biden's got to be doing it as well. Yeah, I agree with that. One more in our period of agreement here at the top. I think we're going to agree on this one too. Mitt Romney, God love Willard, you know, his heart's in the right place on all this.

But he was out there on Stephanie Ruhle's show the other night saying that Biden should have pardoned Trump. And not only that, he went so far as to say that Biden should have been pressuring, I guess, Alvin Bragg to drop the charges against Trump. In part because of norms and mores, but in part because he thought that'd be a good political strategy, just kind of take the air out of Trump's grievance balloon. I mean, that seems absolutely absurd to me. I assume you too, but we might as well at least hash it out really quick. Mitt is in absentia. He's welcome on the Borg podcast anytime to expand on that case. But where are you on that? Maybe this doesn't make sense, Tim, but you've watched me the last six years. I've publicly apologized maybe 997 times. You've mellowed quite a bit. Even your voice is a little bit mellow. Your whole me-in has mellowed. You know what I mean? I don't know. You've chilled quite a bit. You're right. I've had to publicly apologize for six years how Joe Walsh, crazy Tea Party guy, helped lead to Trump. And I did.

And people like me did. But every time Mitt opens his mouth, Tim, I think that an utterly out of touch Republican establishment led to Trump, too, because Mitt still doesn't get it, period. He still doesn't understand the moment, period. I think you're right. His heart is always in the right place, but he's just utterly clueless. Trump tried to overthrow an American election. You don't pardon a president for an unprecedented attack on our democracy like that. You don't pardon him for something like that. You throw the book at him. I just don't. I do understand. That's Mitt.

How do you think about that? Going back to that time, I sort of reflect on this. And sometimes, you know, our critics who think we've gone too rabid, anti-Trump will say this, that like, we're kind of making the same mistakes we did in the past, just on the other, with the other jersey. How do you think about that Tea Party time? Because, you know, in my head, I'm always like, look, you were doing Tea Party talk radio. I was doing opposition research. We both have a lot to apologize for. My mindset at the time, I was always aggressive. This is a campaign.

Our side needs to win. The other side needs to lose. This is a zero-sum game. My job is to be as aggressive as possible to help my guys win. That was my mindset as a political operative. Now I look at it on the other side and think, man, I had some blind spots when I was doing that. You know, like there were some arguments that I was advancing that weren't really true or that were exaggerated or that were dog whistle or whatever. And so as I flip it now on the other side, you know, sometimes I feel like, like the Democrats are like, have the opposite

problem. Like they're checking themselves too much. Right. And when I want to, when I want them to like be more aggressive, right? Like attack, go after the other side, go for the jugular. But how do you balance that without kind of like tipping back over into doing some of the same mistakes that I think contributed to radicalizing people on the right? How do you sort of balance making aggressive arguments, going after the other side, wanting to win with doing it with integrity? How do you think about that now?

You're right. I was incentivized to piss my audience off, to inflame them. And I did that too well, too often. I got way ahead of my skis. I think the difference here is, you and I have learned from that. And I think the difference is Trump. I mean, we have a real factual, truthful thing in front of us. He lost an election. He refused to concede, refused to participate in the peaceful transfer of power. And then he did everything he fucking could to try to overthrow that result. I mean, that's all there.

And I'm with you in that I don't think Democrats even now sufficiently understand the threat he is. And Tim, I don't think Democrats sufficiently understand that this guy could win. And I think it's incumbent upon people like you and me to, with love and respect, pound Democrats with that truth as much as we can. Yeah, that's where I land on the slide. I don't know. I think about it. I've got my Catholic guilt now. I'm rounding my own guards.

My editor, when I wrote the book, my editor was like, take off the hair shirt. An old Catholic joke. But I don't know. I feel like sometimes we deserve the hair shirt. And I want to make sure I'm not making the same mistakes as before. But you're right. And the category difference is the threat of Trump. And I'm not going to.

And Tim, I don't think you would as the Apple research guy you were in the right wing media guy while I was. I'm not going to veer from the truth. And there were times back in the old Joe Walsh days where I would embellish and spin. I won't do that in attacking Trump. And we have kind of the factual case right there. We don't need to. That is one of the benefits.

Okay. A couple of people haven't learned from this lesson. So before we go deep on hashing out Israel and how to, you know, walk the line with Joe Biden, I want us to chuckle a little bit. And it's a new segment that's a little bit outrage, a little bit humor. And it is called The Right Stuff. Do you know Johnny McEntee? You know our man Johnny McEntee, the deputy president? The guy that was running the Trump personnel department? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's right. Okay. Well, he's got a dating site now called The Right Stuff that has a TikTok account that does viral TikTok videos. I want to get to his latest TikTok in a second. But first, we're expanding the segment out to other crazy people doing right wing social media posts. And I want to play a little bit from the secretary of state candidate in Missouri. Here is a video she put out earlier this week.

In America, you can be anything you want. Don't be with your dad. Stay with your mom. All right, all right. The show goes on all night till the morning. Wait, wait, wait okay in america you'd be anything you want that was good i was with her on that yeah don't be weak and gay was the next line and then she's running in a kevlar vest she's never served in the military she's weirdly running in like in a vest for some reason what is happening joe even in your craziest Tea Party days,

that ad, you would have looked at that and been like, this is a spoof, right? Tim, even in my days, I'm a huge freaking gun guy. I couldn't imagine doing a campaign ad holding an AR-15. But I need context, Tim Miller. And I saw it, but I didn't hear the ad yesterday. When she says, don't when she says don't be whatever and don't be gay what did she mean by gay like you can be anything you want don't be

weak and gay what and so it's like she'd be tough be strong be masculine be heterosexual you know expand the species don't be weak and gay Joe tough and straight. So I know we're supposed to chuckle over this, and we should, but the serious point, Tim Miller, is the base to which she's pointing to is just utterly radicalized now. And so this kind of shit, divisive, ugly shit, works with the base. Yeah. Don't be weak and gay. It's interesting.

They're trying on this gender stuff and sexuality stuff. They know that they've lost the battle on like gay marriage and gay rights. And so that is why this is now pivoted to obviously to trans folks, but also to going back to scaremongering about kids and then pivoting into this more like alpha thing. Okay. You can have your old gay marriage, but being gay still is bad, right? And you're still weak.

And we're really tough. We're alpha chads. Remember the Ron DeSantis ad with all the muscled guys? You know, like that's their new way into it, don't you think? And again, one of the themes of our conversation this morning is Democrats jump all over shit like this because the vast majority of the American people are tolerant. And I've always felt as someone who engaged in the culture wars back in the day, Democrats have always been afraid to engage in the culture wars. And I think they could and should, because I think most Americans generally are with them on this stuff.

Yeah. There's this thing like, don't platform this woman. Don't play this video. Don't give her attention. And it's like, no, actually embarrass these people. Give them attention. This is not, making fun of gay people is not popular. Bingo. All right, it might help her in her little primary,

but okay, like broadly speaking, the broader battle. I make the same fight about gun stuff. We'll just do this right now because, you know, you're a little bit stronger on, you know, Second issues than i am but i just as a general matter i've been making this argument to democrats for a while on fight being on offense on the culture wars of there's certain elements of the gun debate like beto did this wrong you know like i'm going to take all your guns but there's certain elements like for example having easy access to guns if you're an 18 year old you're 21 year old even

right and i've always i've been saying to my democratic friends like they should be running ads people kind of forget how young 18 year olds look you know like they should you're saying i wouldn't have had an ar-15 in my ad i want i want ads that have it's the high school and it's 18 year olds walking through the high school with the ar-15s because i think that when people start seeing that they're like, like this is great. Like we should be banning. Like this is an easy call, right? Like you can't, if you can't drink, you can't hold a gun.

Or maybe there's an exception if you go through a certain number of courses or whatever. There's certain licensing you can do if you're under 21. But like, that seems like a winner for Democrats if they would be less scared of the issue. Yeah, and you and I probably disagree on this issue, but I think more Americans would agree with you. You would disagree that 18 year olds, you think 18 year olds should be able to get a gun, an AR-15? I think if we're going to let an 18 year old use a gun to go off

and defend his country, that 18 year old should be able to carry a gun when he's back home. Sure. So I have a problem on that end, on that part of it. Okay. Tim, I have a problem with if we're going to allow an 18-year-old to go off and fight and defend his country, why don't we let an 18-year-old drink? I tend to be a little more libertarian on that stuff. Well, no, all right. I'm with you. I think we should let 18-year-olds drink too. Tim, I think most Americans probably disagree with me on that. Yeah. But then on the gun issue, I think most Democrats ought to lean into doing whatever the hell we can do before a gun is bought. And if you want to talk about the age or universal background checks or red flag laws, all of this stuff, these are winners

for Democrats. The right stuff segment is very off track. We've got one more. We've got one more piece of sound and the right stuff. Here johnny mcinty on tiktok if you say palestinians deserve a homeland just for themselves you're woke but if you say white people deserve a homeland just for themselves you're racist wow were you compelled by that wow i do know who would be compelled by that. But my God, again, what Trump has allowed him is all of these folks to come out from under where they were and become voices and fairly prominent, being as radicalized and as ugly as they can be. And it's rewarded by that extreme. This is maybe another issue that I don't

know. I don't know where you are on this, but like, this is why I get kind of flustered by the cancel culture stuff. Like I don't, I don't love canceling people. I'm not, you know, I'm a free speech person, but like this whole victim status, like, oh, oh, conservatives are being silenced. It's like kind of the opposite. If you want to be a douche bro who talks about how white people deserve their own homeland, like this is like the greatest time in history for you. You can be a campus leader of TPUSA. You could go viral on TikTok. Like if you had these views in 1982, you would be, you know, writing a letter to the editor and the editor would be like, this is a crazy person. I'm not putting this in the newspaper, you know? And so in a lot of ways, like free speech is blooming right now.

And yet there's this victim culture about it. And I agree with you. I want it to bloom. Good, bad, and ugly. I want it all to bloom. And how do we defeat ugly speech like that with other speech? Like, I don't want to shut it up. And it's kind of a balance because, what's his name?

The Kansas City Chiefs kicker. Oh, Harrison Bucker, yeah. Spoke at a Catholic university and expressed his very fundamentalist Catholic views, which I, as a Catholic, find repugnant. My mother's a daily church-going Catholic, and I was like, that's some weird shit. I guess it's fundamentalist Catholic views, but it's a very small sect, I would say. That's a very small sect, and that's out there, but he's at a Catholic university. I mean, he's got a right to express the views, and we have a right to condemn him.

Do I think he should lose his job as an NFL kicker because of that? No. But the Chiefs are free to do what they want, if they want to keep him or not. Yeah. So there is a consequence if you express your views, but you're free to express them. This is why I was seeing somebody tweet this morning about how Harrison's getting canceled. We'll see if that happens. He should be able to kick balls for the Chiefs. I don't really care one way or the other about that. But he also should be able

to get mocked for his weird speech where he starts crying, talking about how his wife's life started yeah when she met him yeah and how she serves him and makes him a better person by staying in the kitchen sorry bro like if you're gonna do that speech and get all emotional talking about your wife's subservience like people are gonna people are gonna pick on you okay absolutely good that was the longest right stuff yet we're finding our our footing. That was the right stuff. I mostly just like the new kids on the blog, to be honest. All right, let's get into business. This all started, this little debate we had between yourself, Jonah Goldberg, myself, some other people,

when Donald Trump during his CNN, excuse me, oh God, that was a senior moment right there. Joe Biden during his CNN interview talked about limiting offensive weapons to Israel if Bibi went into RAFA. Jonah Goldberg, you know, put out that he's hearing from a lot of reliably anti-Trump people, really a lot of reliably anti-Trump people, really, really, really anti-Trump people. They've had it with Biden tonight. Anecdotal to be sure, but very telling in my circle. I reply that I think these people are children, that you can disagree with people and not then all of a sudden go back to Trump. He didn't like that too much. We'll get into that a little bit more. You then wrote, I'll never vote for Trump. I'm still

all in for Biden. But all of us in this uneasy Biden coalition from lefty to never Trumper have a red line. And if Biden keeps separating from Israel, he'll cross my red line. I hope he doesn't. I replied to you, nothing but respect for Joe. But I'd like to say I have no red line. I'll vote for every single person in American political life against Trump, the girl at the Columbia protest who wants tofu delivered to her. Yes, Matt Gaetz, sure. AOC, I'll put on a t-shirt. So anyway, so that's the formulation. Before we get into kind of the what the red line argument, the merits of this case on Israel, because I guess this is another area where I do think we have a disagreement. I just don't think that anything that Joe Biden did was that bad, actually. I think that that made a lot

of sense. I think if you listen to Jake Sullivan kind of explain it in much more detail, maybe the timing of it, the way he phrased it was maybe not great. Jake Sullivan's much more extensive explanation the next day at the White House press conference, I think was very defensible. There's concerns, you know, in the region among our allies about they're trying to cut a deal with Saudi. There's a lot of concerns with Saudi with the way that a RAF invasion would go. So I think there are a lot of different contingencies here. And I think that Biden's position is very defensible. So just on the merits of Biden's choice, why did that concern you? And let's just kind of talk about the Israel issue first before we get into the voting side of it. Tim, principally, because the more distance that Biden shows with Israel, to me, just strengthens the bad guys.

And maybe you disagree, but to me, from the beginning after October 7th, there should have been publicly no daylight between us and Israel. I believe that generally, but especially after October 7th. So when Biden says shit that makes it clear that he's not happy with what Israel's doing, that only strengthens Hamas and doesn't give Hamas any motivation to release the hostages or put down their arms or do whatever. To me, that's the greatest danger. I know Biden's in a tough spot because Israel's made some big old mistakes, but I just don't think you show that daylight.

It just strengthens the bad guys. Yeah. I guess my question is in the medium term for Israel to be strong and secure, they need friends, you know, and they need America to be their friend, but also they need other, they need friends in the region. They need other friends in the West. And if their actions are turning off all these other friends and the U S is the last friend, then isn't the best thing for us to do to try to nudge them and be like, hey, guys, this is not actually in your interest for your security. If we want to get the Saudis on board, if we want a longer term solution to this, you're going to have to dial this back a little bit because there's just this righteous outrage

that's happening. Maybe some people might not think it's righteous, but they feel like it's a righteous outrage. It's happening through Europe, through the more moderate countries in the region. And so Reagan did this. Other presidents have done this. Isn't that what kind of being a good friend is about? Telling your friend that they're going overboard and that we need to dial it back? As a friend, I'd say that privately. And again, Tim, I just go back to what October 7th was. It was the equivalent of 50,000 Americans being killed in one morning on American soil by one terrorist organization who say came across the border in Texas and kill 50,000 Americans. If that happened, there's no fucking way America is going to care about what the rest of the world says when it comes to how we respond. I will acknowledge that what Israel is doing is not necessarily winning friends, but we knew this

would happen no matter what Israel did, because this is always the deal. Hamas attacks Israel, Israel responds, the world attacks Israel's response. Israel should have known that going in. If I were Israel, Tim, I just would have gone in and wiped out Hamas within the first two and a half months. I think they've dragged this on way too long. I take that point. Maybe that would have been better delivered privately. It's not as if Israel is fully in lockstep on this. I mean, you had the defense minister, you know, just the other day, Golland, you know, saying that Netanyahu's got tough decisions ahead. He's going to go into Rafah.

There has to be a post-Rafah plan. And this has been my frustration from the start. I'm always like directionally and sympathetically defensive of Israel for all the reasons you just laid out. Just the horrific nature of this attack. There are allies. Hamas has no redeeming qualities. Like even from the start, at the Polar Conference,

I've been the most squishy probably on this because i keep saying i don't understand what the plan is i'm okay with if you're like we're gonna go eradicate hamas cool it's like okay we're gonna go eradicate hamas and kill 30,000 other people i'm a little less cool about that we're gonna go eradicate hamas and kill 30,000 people and we don't know what the hell is gonna happen afterwards we don't know who's gonna be in charge we don't have a plan we don't have any the hell is going to happen afterwards. We don't know who's going to be in charge. We don't have a plan. We don't have any allies that are coming to be a security. Maybe we'll take over. And maybe Jared Kushner's plan is we're going to build condos. Now I'm off. I'm off. OK, I'm not signing up for that. And even the defense minister is saying

this. Doesn't that lend a little bit more credibility to the Biden position on this? Bibi shouldn't be around. And I came out like two weeks after October 7th and said Bibi needs to resign now. It would have been a heroic move for Israel if Bibi had stepped down. I agree with that. Because it's enabled the world to call this Netanyahu's war, whereas this is Israel's war. And I do think, Tim, to buttress your argument, Netanyahu doesn't like Biden. Netanyahu wants Trump to get elected. And that's a problem. And Biden knows that. So I can see why that might have been part of why Biden fought back publicly. Look, to your point, what Hamas did put Israel in an untenable position. You invade, you butcher, slaughter 1,200 of our people,

then you go back into Gaza and hide behind your civilians. What's Israel supposed to do? And most of the people who don't like what Israel's done, it probably isn't you, most of the critics have not given me or someone like me a good explanation of what they would have done. How would you have handled that? A terrorist organization that spent 20 years basically embedding their civilian infrastructure with their terror infrastructure. It's a real big, tough problem.

I think that's a fair criticism of some of the critics because I'm with that. I think it's very challenging and I think they had to do something. And I agree with you that it should have been more swift, and there would have been blowback, but it was necessary. And it's not easy. They're learning. The Israel people that are more military experts than me, because I try not to get in on what exactly the military strategy should be. That's not my expertise. But they say they've been learning and getting better.

There's another group here that I feel like their arguments are disingenuous. I want to get into it because I think they're more kind of aligned with where you are at on the Israel issue broadly is you hear now from the right and from the never Trump or crowd. This gets us into the folks that Joan are tweeting about like, well, oh, Biden is doing this to appeal to Dearborn. Biden is doing this to appeal to the campus protesters. I just don't think that's true. And I think it's a slander of Biden. And I want to come to his defense on it.

Here's Sullivan the day after. The president's made clear that the United States wants to see Hamas defeated and justice delivered. There can be no equivocation on that. We're continuing to send military assistance, et cetera, et cetera. They're trying to appeal to, I think, what is the center left that is getting mad at Biden over the extent of this war. I don't think they are trying to appeal to Dearborn. I think they're trying to appeal to the Saudis. I think they're trying to

appeal to other allies in the region. And they're trying to appeal to people in the center who are directionally supportive of Israel, but that are rightly saddened by the pictures that they're seeing out of Gaza and the reports that they're hearing from people there. It's like, that's something that kind of pisses me off. Do you think that's fair? Like, do you think that Biden is appealing to the campus protesters? Or what do you think their strategy is politically? Tim, I'd probably be in between you and some of the critics that say that. And I wonder if you agree with this. This is a tough issue when this happened, because this issue, support for Israel, divides the Democratic coalition. I mean, I'm an off-the-charts Israel guy. The right, Republicans, are generally lockstep supporting Israel for a lot of different reasons, right?

Except for a handful of the neo-Nazis. There's a small, small vote. For a lot of different reasons, but the right is completely pro-Israel. The left isn't. And the Democratic coalition isn't. So here's something happens that divides Biden's coalition. What do you do if you're Biden politically? To me, Biden should do what is in his head and his heart and what he thinks is right. And I think we saw that the first month after October 7th.

That was the Joe Biden. And Tim, I wish then when Biden was starting to get shit from his left flank, I wish Biden would have had a respectful sister soldier moment with his left and said, this is who I am. I'm going to listen to you. I'll counsel Israel that they got to be better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I'm standing with Israel, no doubt about it. And I think if Biden had done that. Didn't he do that? I guess that's my question. Like, didn't he do that? Everybody's like, I'm waiting for Biden to distance himself from the left. Yeah. Biden's not down on the quad, a GW wearing a keffiyeh. Biden's not doing

hashtag from the river to the sea. Biden was with Israel for months in the face of these protests. Why doesn't he get credit for that? Generally, he has because most Americans believe he's been pro-Israel and generally he has. I think in the last two to three months, he's got this split coalition. So he's kind of been veering back and forth. Look, he's 81, Tim. I think 20 years ago, if this happens, Biden goes to one of the student protests and he sits down with 20 students who are activists for the Palestinian cause. And he has a tough, frank, respectful conversation with them. He's not capable of doing that. I don't think Biden's being hurt necessarily with young people by this issue. I think most Americans see him kind of

vacillating. And I think that's hurting him generally with other Americans in the middle. Like from a strength perspective. From a strength and resolution perspective. It goes back to aging. Like the complaint complaint is a little bit less about the details of the policy, a little bit more about, is he driving events or is he a dithering old man that's getting pushed around by different interests? You're the political expert. I'm not.

I mean, you got elected once. I never got elected before. I got lucky. I rode a Tea Party wave. Biden gives a speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and he says, our support for Israel is ironclad. The next day, he goes on CNN and says, I'm cutting off offensive weapons. The optics of that was kind of odd. I mean, it didn't make him look strong. I guess this goes back to my point, and maybe he's just doing a bad job of enunciating this,

but to me, he has been ironclad with israel as compared to as compared to pure countries i mean look at what the euros are doing you know yeah i understand why you see a conflict i don't see a conflict by saying we are ironclad with israel i am horrified by anti-semitism that is occurring in this country it's occurring all the time we saw an example in washington just yesterday Washington State, and also saying, all right, but BB, the best strategic path here, isn't going ham in RAFA with no allies and no plan and a lot of casualties. You know what I mean? Are those things in conflict, being ironclad and also having some strategic advice and some strategic limits on a partner? Again, if I were in the White House, I'd be doing a lot of what Biden's doing,

but I'd be doing it privately. And I certainly wouldn't tell Israel how to fight this war, but I demand that Israel has a plan for the day after. And they haven't. And that's on Bibi. And that's a real concern. Tim, you know, a lot of this is analogous to the economy and all of Biden's domestic accomplishments. I mean, he's had a hell of a record and I say that as a Tea Party guy, but Biden's been unable to communicate that. I think you're right that generally Biden has been pro-Israel. I see a little more vacillation, but Biden has not been able to communicate, I think, effectively how pro-Israel he's been. I meant to ask you this at the top, so let's just do a quick aside on the economy thing. We hashed this out last night at our live event, which you can listen to on the

Next Level feed today if you want to listen to that. Sarah, JBL, and I. If you were, I know that you're not a strategist, you're a candidate, but let's say Uncle Joe calls you up tomorrow to have a little Joe-Joe chat. It's like, I just don't know how to talk about this economy situation. We hit record highs, S&P 500 down, NASDAQ yesterday. Unemployment's low. Wage growth is up. People are still annoyed and frustrated by butter prices, though. And I get it. People are still annoyed and frustrated by airplane prices. But even still, Memorial Day, record travel is expected,

report came out. If you're Joe Biden, do you tell them, you got to do morning in America and say, we did this, we did the recovery, great American recovery? Or do you say, I got to go out and say, I understand you're frustrated. I understand you're annoyed, but we're on the right path. Our path is working, their path won't. Which one of those messaging texts would you take, do you think? Oh, clearly, Tim, the latter. Fuck morning in America, because yeah, that ain't where we are. Clearly the latter. Again, Biden should have done this from the beginning. From the moment he got elected, he should have gotten in front of the American people and said, we just went through a once in a lifetime health crisis. This economic recovery is going to happen, but man, it's going to be wild and bumpy and shit's going to be expensive.

He needed to paint that picture at the beginning. He never did. I think what he should do is not talk and listen. Get out there with small groups of Americans and listen to how they feel about the economy. That interview, Tim, that he did with Erin Burnett again, and she asked him about the economy. And he looked upset and he rattled off a bunch of fucking statistics. Hello, that doesn't work. Show me some empathy. Show some empathy for how people feel. That's always been a strength of his, by the way. I'm really torn on this. And I just have to say, I'm torn internally. I wake up one day and I'm like, we should do Morning in America. Fuck these guys. Everything is great. Every airport I'm in is packed. Every hotel I'm in is packed. I was at a Bad Bunny concert last Tuesday.

It's expensive. It was sold out. I was at a Beyonce concert last summer. It was sold out. I was at Mardi Gras this year. Everyone is out and having a good time. I get it. I get it. There's some annoyance. So part of me wants to be like, people, grow up. Things are really good. They're not perfect, and it's never perfect, but things are really, really good. And part of me wants to do that, and then part of me wants to do the empathy thing. I just don't know. If he had sat you and me down the day he was sworn in, I think it would have been a combo. And I would have wanted a speech like what you just said right when he got elected. Here's what this is going to look like.

Now grow up, Americans, and get ready because this is going to be a really bumpy ride the next two to three years. Yeah, I wish he had done more of that from the beginning. But now to come in this late and to say, what the fuck do you mean? Look at the stock market. That's not going to work. Yeah, I agree with that. Okay, let's go back to the red line combo because I'm genuinely curious. What would be your red line? Again, I was being cheeky when I said I'd vote for the tofu girl at Columbia, but also true. That was a fucking great line, by the way. But it's also true.

I was like in my head, I'm like, who are the most ridiculous people that I could think of that I would vote for over Donald Trump? And her and Matt Gaetz were the first two people that came to mind. I wanted to represent both sides of the spectrum. And I'm genuine about that. And I know you and I are like basically exactly in line in how we view Donald Trump. We're hip to hip. We're hip to hip. We're hip to hip. So why?

Why is there a red line for you? What would it be? And just talk through that because I am curious. Two things, Tim. And by the way, I think this is a fascinating conversation among us never Trumpers. I think it's really important. I think it's cool. Second point, when I first saw your tweet of mine, even though you were respectful,

part of me wanted to fire back at you a little bit. But I couldn't because you cracked me up. Your line about the tofu girl completely disarmed me. Fuck. I couldn't say. So I had to say, okay, Tim's great. Tim, respect right back at you. Thank you.

I'm sorry. I knew as soon as I sent it, I was like, Joe's going to feel like I'm picking on him. You use the word red line. And I'd already been in this exchange with Jonah. And I was like, the red line phrase, I was like, this is a good way for me to be as clear as I possibly can about just how radical my anti-Trump views are. So anyway, thank you for being respectful. You know, and I didn't get pissed off. I got more just a little pissed off when I saw your line to Jonah, when I think you said, these people are children.

Yeah. I wanted to say, come on, Tim. Yeah. But again, that was because I know you and that made me smile as well. Look, I'll never vote for Trump. And I hear you that you'd vote for that girl who requested tofu at Columbia over Trump. But I think, Tim, we all have a red line for any candidate. And I threw out a bunch of extreme ones. If Biden said, I want to get rid of the second amendment or the first amendment, I'm gone. Like then I couldn't support him.

If Biden said, and you, I think you might've agreed with this. If Biden said, and I think you might have agreed with this, if Biden said, no, I refuse to commit to accepting the results of the election, you might have had an issue with that. I just think we can't not have a red line with any candidate or any candidate can do whatever they want. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Let's just play with it, though.

Let's do counterfactuals. Because I had to do this in 2020, and it was hard for me for a second, but then it was kind of liberating when I said it out loud. What would you have done about Bernie or Elizabeth Warren? Tim, when I got out of my silly, stupid primary challenge against Trump that day, I went on CNN and I said, I'll support whoever the hell the Democrat nominee is because Trump's got to be stopped. And that's where I've always been.

I remember having a funny conversation with Bill Kristol. I can remember where I was when Elizabeth Warren was like at her peak in the polls. And he calls me and I'm pacing outside on my phone. And he's like, what are we going to do if it's Warren? And I was like, I think we're for Warren. And he goes, yeah, I think we're for Warren too. And we've all kind of smiled. We all like laughed at each other.

Like, okay, well, I guess this is the world that we're in. That to me says you don't really have a, I like sure you have a hypothetical red line but like nobody like let's say joe biden said tomorrow i'm gonna stop all offensive weapons to israel because of something that happens i i let's just use the israel construct like what could joe biden do you think that would because i i heard from other people after my flippant hit on jonah i heard from other people who were not necessarily on the Jonah side of the argument, but were more sympathetic to the argument that like, man, Biden could lose me. Biden could lose me. Biden couldn't lose me. But I'm just curious,

what could he do on Israel that you think would make him lose you? When you and I say, or when I say Biden could lose me, again, Trump will never get me. It's not hashtag Trump 2024. That's not going to happen. Yeah. Tim, you've got me by the short hairs because when I say Biden's lost me, then I've got to be consistent. Then not voting for Biden is helping Trump. And that's why I jump on guys like Sununu and Pence and all the rest.

Screw them. So, yeah, that's somewhat hypocritical. So what could Biden do israel that would lose me if biden came out tomorrow and he was so pissed off at what israel is doing and he said okay i'm not even talking offensive weapons anymore we're done now funding the iron dome and all defensive weaponry that we give israel to defend. We will no longer help Israel defend themselves. So we're not going to supply that stuff. That'd be very tough. Oh my gosh. Okay. That'd be tough.

You'd have to hold me back. You'd have to hold me back. You're right. He won't do that. We're closer aligned. Jonah's a little bit more to the right. And so I want to, Jonah went after me just a little bit in good spirits. We've been DMing about it. It's all good. It's just a friendly disagreement. Tim but i was going to ask you a question and i don't know this maybe you do where is jonah on biden like is jonah the kind of never trumper who would vote for biden he gave a very long as this is one he calls it the ruminant so he ruminates for a long time so i forget if it's in this clip that we're about to play next but his his position is essentially that he doesn't want to vote for either of them that if he lived in a swing state, that if he felt like he had to vote for one of

them, he'd prefer Biden, but he would still be tempted to vote third party. Actually, some of this I think is in the clip. Let's just listen. Statistically, your vote doesn't matter that much. I think that makes the case all the more for symbolic voting, by which I mean writing in someone like Mitt Romney or Ben Sasse or Mitch Daniels or whoever. But again, we've had this argument a bunch of times that nobody likes it. I mean, nobody likes it, which sort of gets to my point of how it's not necessarily easy to be anti-Trump. I would put it to you. It's much easier if you're going to be anti-Trump to do what Tim and a bunch of other people do or did

and just simply say, okay, I'm a Democrat now. Fuck that. Tim Miller. Now I'm with you. I'm back. Let the world know I'm back solidly aligned with Tim Miller. Good God. Yeah.

That's bullshit. Yeah. That annoys me because also, it also annoys me because actually public people who are podcast hosts and writers, like your opinion on who people should vote for actually does matter a lot more than just a single vote. Because you can influence people. And I just sort of also reject the whole notion of we should write in to send a message. You're sending a message to nobody. It's like a personal thing.

It's like this is about self-actualization more than it is about actually voting. One of these two guys is going to be the next president. And if you feel strongly that one's better than the other, you should be with them even if you have some disagreements. There's one more longer clip of his I want to play to be fair and give a more full view of what he was saying. Tim's a political guy. guys saying that people who are legitimately and rightly furious at what Biden is doing are children or knaves or fools and that they should suck it up and support Biden no matter what. I think they're wrong on the merits, but I think that's politically idiotic. Like I thought the whole point was to convince people to vote for Biden.

Well, calling them idiots and fools and children and all this kind of stuff for even having a problem with Biden. And again, they didn't say it publicly. They said it to me over text messages. And that's what I mean. People just wildly just ran to these crazy conclusions. It's like this panic set in. But this is just this blanket sort of condemnation, contempt for anybody who has a problem with what Biden did, I think just sort of extremely revealing of the mindset that's going on here. And remember when I had Tom Nichols on The Remnant, which was one of the more controversial episodes of The Remnant I had in a while, you know, I asked him the question, why are you guys such cheap dates? You know, I did it in a friendly way, but you know, the point stands is like, I totally get joining the coalition with Democrats against Trump.

If you believe Trump is as terrible as a lot of people correctly, in my view, believe he is. What I don't get is why you shouldn't demand something from Biden or Democrats in return. Nikki Haley keeps getting these just boffo numbers in these primaries. There you go. Joe, where are you on all that? My God, Tim, and understand I'm closer to Jonah on Israel than I'm probably closer to you. But what an arrogant, arrogant summation that is. And I go back to like what you and I have done, like we're all in with Biden or whoever the Democratic nominee is, like that's somehow easier. Excuse me, Jonah, by being all in with Biden in 20 and again, it's basically fucking ruined my career.

It's not an easy decision for a Tim Miller to make. I'm really bothered by that. To me, the easy thing to do is say I'm going to write in Mitt Romney or I'm going to write in Ronald Reagan. This is analogous, Tim, to all of my former congressional colleagues, Republicans who say Trump is unfit, but I won't vote for Biden. The reason they say that is because when you say Trump is unfit, I will vote for Biden. You end your career electorally as a Republican. I'm done. Kinzinger's done as a Republican. I think it's the same thing in your biz. I think a lot of these conservative thinkers and talkers, I mean, Jonah acknowledged Trump's unfit, but he won't take that step because he wants to stay relevant. He doesn't want to lose, you know, kind of the in between Republicans and conservatives who are still hanging on. Cheap date. He calls you a cheap date, me a a cheap date because we believe trump's a fucking existential threat to this democracy so we're gonna vote for the one fucking guy who can beat him now that pisses me off i'm sorry now that's the old sounds like the old joe walsh this makes me so happy i was preparing my rant but it turns out you already did my whole rant for me you already did my whole rant for me i will i did my whole rant for me. I'll add one thing. Well, first, I just want to say, good on you, by the way.

And you did really hard. Your career, it was tough. And talk radio, it's unbelievable. So few people did it. Charlie did it. Yeah. And I gave him a lot of credit for that. You did it.

And there's a reason why so few people did it. So good on you. The cheap date thing, though, is the part I wanted to get into, which is why we played it for so long. Because it is actually the same argument that some of our listeners some left-wing people made about me when i would say you know what if push came to shove if we got to the louisiana primary and it was donald trump and ron desantis and it was close i would tell people to vote for ron desantis i fucking hate ron desantis yeah okay i i feel

about ron desantis i guess how some of these people feel about joe biden i don't understand why you'd feel that way about joe b Biden, but let's just accept that that's legit and not oppose. I fucking hate Ron DeSantis. Like, the shit that he did in schools with kids just boils my blood. But I was like, I would do it because I see Trump as an existential threat, and voting is not about self-actualization. Voting is about chicken or fish. Yes. Like, one of these two people are going to be the president.

Maybe voting is about self-actualization. If it's a state Senate, right. You know what I mean? Some random thing, or, or if it's a primary, you're trying to put your best person for it.

I think there's a lot of times it makes sense in a primary, you know, where there are three good candidates. You like one of the best there, they're in last place, but you vote for them anyway, as a signal, right.

This is like, is it Trump or is it not Trump? Yeah. You know, is it the mercury fish or is it the chicken? And I was like, I would vote, I would have voted for DeSantis and I would have done it happily because it would have meant we were done with Trump. And I was convinced that Ron DeSantis was not going to end our democracy. Nobody was going to charge the Capitol wearing Ron DeSantis

flags or hats, you know, like he doesn't elicit that kind of support. So then I would have been for Joe Biden in the general, obviously, but you know, that would have gotten solved our problem. And this is the thing in the general, it's far, far less close to me than that, in this general election that why am I a cheap date? Yeah, I'm a cheap date, because Donald Trump is a threat to everything that we call dear, like the tail end risk of Donald Trump is literally the end of America. Will it actually happen? I don't know JBL wrote yesterday about what the best case for Trump is the best case Trump is still pretty bad. But the risk of America. Will it actually happen? I don't know. JVL wrote yesterday about what the best case for Trump is. The best case for Trump is still pretty bad, but the risk of Trump is so great that, yeah, I am a cheap date. I'm asking for nothing. I get calls from reporters sometimes that like, don't never Trumpers want Joe Biden to appoint a Republican into the cabinet. And I'm

like, I don't know. Maybe some do, but I don't. Like Liz Cheney becoming secretary of treasury or commerce or whatever, like deputy secretary of state, that'd be great. Liz Cheney becoming Secretary of Treasury or Commerce or whatever, like Deputy Secretary of State, that'd be great. I hope she gets that job if she wants it. But that doesn't change my view about Joe Biden at all. My view about Joe Biden, I have things I like about him. I have things that I've been disappointed in. I think he's a little too old. But the decision here is about, can we have Donald Trump as president?

And if you think he's an existential threat, which Jonah and a lot of these folks say they do, then that's it. Yeah, I'm a cheap date. Fine. Okay. Tim, you nailed it. If you truly believe Trump is an existential threat, and I do and you do, then the only logical play is vote for the only guy who can beat him. And so it makes one wonder, does Jonah really believe he's an existential threat?

Or is Jonah just doing this like a lot of Republican members of Congress, just to stay relevant? Because once you commit to go in there, Biden, I'm in with Biden, a lot of things end. One more thing just on the children thing, and I get that people get their backs up when I call them children, but I just want to explain what I mean by that. In life, as a grownup, a lot of times you have to make tough choices. You know, this is the point that I'm making. And a lot of people who are in way worse situations than me, you know, in their life, financial life, where they're like, man, I've got to decide, is my family going to be able to have this or that? As a grown up, you know, I give the example sometimes, like if you have a kid, and you're in a shitty school district

and you don't have enough money for private school, and if you spend money on private school, then you can't do something else in your life. You have to make a choice. You have to make a grown-up choice. Should I put my kid in a bad school? Should I homeschool, but then I can't work? Should I pay for private school,

and then we can't go on vacations? We can't do whatever. We can't afford something else in our family budget. Those are hard grown-up choices that people face every day. There are two choices. They don't like either of them. One is, though, preferable to the other. That's what this election is.

You have to make a grown-up choice about this. It's not about your feelings or the candidate has to make my heart sing or be perfect. And I think that is what fundamentally had me lashing out about the red line question. anyway do you have any final thoughts on it it's a great point i'll close on my point with this in that i think we all do have a red line mine is way way out there for biden way way out there um i i think you have one and it would have to be way, way, way, way, way, way, way out there. Fair, fair. You believe in your head and your heart trumps a threat, as do I. So end of story.

The Democratic nominee is our vote, period. You have to act as such. Exactly right. Oh, this has been gratifying. This has been a gratifying Thursday, Joe Walsh. I'm so glad we did this. Thank you for taking the time to hang out with me. Please come back to the podcast soon.

Oh, wait, hold on. The social contract. Tell me about the social contract. In 30 seconds, Tim, you know I was a very divisive political asshole. I'm trying to spend the rest of my life making up for that. So I've launched a program called the social contract. We're trying to get Americans to agree to be more tolerant, respectful, and more informed with each other. How can people learn about that? Follow me on Twitter, at Walsh Freedom. We'll explain it there. All right.

We'll keep checking it out. Joe Walsh, he hosts the podcast White Flag with Joe Walsh. Please come back to the Borg soon. We have a very important, very serious, not a fun weekend podcast this week. We've got a very serious podcast coming at you tomorrow, but I'm very excited for the conversation. So please come back then. Thanks to Joe Walsh. Thanks to everybody that came out in D.C. last night. We'll see you all tomorrow. Peace. Tin Machine Tin Machine, Tin Machine The zombies that are ass

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