The Bulwark Podcast - John Avlon: The Bomb Throwers Just Don't Care

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

McCarthy thought he could appease the kamikaze caucus with cash and playing along with Stop the Steal — surprise, they'd rather ruin everything if they can't rule. CNN's John Avlon joins Charlie Sykes on today's pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is day two of the Republican Congress. How's it going so far? So I think it's a good idea to put some historical perspective on today and yesterday's shit show. And so we are joined by John Avalon, senior political analyst and anchor at CNN, whose most recent book is Lincoln and the Fight for Peace. So first of all, welcome back, John. Thanks, Charlie. It's good to be with you. Speaking of cognitive dissonance, as an historian that has meditated on the leadership qualities of the 16th president of the United States? Is it sort of jarring to think, you know, we've gone from Lincoln to Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene in a catfight?

Yeah, I mean, Lincoln to Trump was jarring enough, you know. It was pretty bad. One of the things I did in the book is I looked at the essential qualities of Lincoln's character, because I think it's all about character at the end of the day. And, you know, what I delineated was empathy, honesty, humor, and humility. And those are four core qualities which are utterly absent from most of the leaders in the GOP, I think, in the wake of Donald Trump. And we're seeing folks reaping what they've sown. I don't know how many more times people need to learn that Gollum turns on its creator, but here you go. As we are recording this, we don't know what's going to happen on day two, whether or not Donald Trump's all caps endorsement of Kevin McCarthy is going to make a difference. But apparently he's put out another statement in the last few minutes. Can I just read it? And in terms of the qualities that you just delineated, Trump said, there is so much unnecessary turmoil in the Republican Party, in large part,

due to people like the old broken crow, Mitch McConnell, his wife, in quotation marks, his wife, Coco Chow, who is a sellout to China and their rhino allies who make it difficult for everyone else by constantly capitulating to, all caps, hopeless Joe Biden and the Democrats. The $1.7 trillion green New Deal booster that McConnell and the rhinos handed to the Dems last week was a real downer and an embarrassment to Republicans, exclamation point. So he doesn't actually mention Kevin McCarthy there, but I guess, and maybe I'm just sort of nutpicking here, but it is interesting that he keeps going after Mitch McConnell's wife. He keeps referring to her as Coco Chow. And despite the fact that that is just egregiously racist and there's been blowback, he just doesn't give a shit, does he? He just is going to keep going back to that well. Trump's superpower is shamelessness, and apparently that's contagious,

right? Because that's the core problem I think we're seeing in George Santos is just a particularly ripe example of the environment that he created. But, you know, if you take a half step back, Friday is the anniversary of January 6th. And when you look at the now 20 people who voted against Kevin McCarthy on the third ballot of the first day, the core leaders of this crew are the stop the steal folks who are still left in Congress. You know, it's Andy Biggs, it's Paul Gosar, it's Scott Perry. And so this is really a cautionary tale about the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party in its most hardcore form, which is the election deniers. And they are people who would

rather ruin if they cannot rule. And it's more of a reflection of a fundamental discomfort with majoritarian democracy. And the irony, of course, is that Kevin McCarthy thought he could appease those folks with cash, with trying to scuttle the bipartisan Jan 6 commission, whatever it may be. And you can't. You can't reason people out of something they weren't reasoned into. And it does make you wonder whether the fever will break. I mean, John Boehner resigned over this problem in what is now an embryonic form in the wake of the Tea Party. Paul Ryan cashed in his chips at the end of the day because he didn't want to deal with the chaos caucus, the crazy caucus, the kamikaze caucus, whatever you want to call it.

But now it's come to this, where even Kevin McCarthy, after all the appeasement, after all the, you know, it still looks like he could very well be denied the prize that he has sacrificed everything for. And then the question is what comes after. And, you know, I don't mind, unlike a lot of folks talking about solutions, but it doesn't need to be this way. It's just people need to stop being enthralled to the extremes, stop giving them so much power and leverage over our politics because it's diminishing democracy, not just the Republican Party. You know, I was a little startled this morning to realize that John Boehner abruptly quit seven years ago. Oh, God. I mean, that was really a long time.

And Kevin McCarthy could have looked at what happened to John Boehner, could have looked at what happened to Paul Ryan and said, you know what? It's just not worth it. This is the worst job in American politics. And instead, he decided, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take the leopards eating people's faces party, and I'm going to make it my own because they will never eat my face, right? So I will enable them. I will go along with them. I will sign whatever crazy letters they want me to sign. I will empower Marjorie Taylor Greene. I will vote against certifying the election. I will do everything. I will sell off every part of my soul. And yet here we are where the Republican Party is dominated by the crazy

caucus. And I can't really feel that sorry for him because in many ways, you know, Kevin McCarthy became their creature, right? I mean, he became the avatar of capitulation, of appeasement, of enabling, and of self-humiliation. And look where it got him. Yeah. And look, this is, again, how many times will the Republican Party have to learn this lesson before they actually take it to heart? But it's Winston Churchill's definition of appeasement, which is feeding a crocodile in the hopes that it eats you last. Perfect. Yeah. It's gonna eat you. And I don't know how many more times the Republican Party or, you know, so-called, you know, Republican leaders, which implies leadership, by the way, not following, think that they can somehow triangulate with this crew and make all sorts of concessions.

Because, you know, on the practical level, one of the things about this is there were a lot of negotiations and concessions given before the voting began. And it wasn't enough. And guess what? It'll never be enough. And at some point, folks need to learn. And I'll offer a little hopeful counterpoint, you know, because I think one of the things about journalism today is we need to be focused on accountability. Yeah. Always on following the facts. And, you know, I know you've been very generous and kind about my reality checks, but also solutions. And we shouldn't be afraid to talk about them because

we act like somehow this is all inevitable and it's not. And I'll give you two examples, one which occurred just yesterday that could provide a path out. Pennsylvania state legislature, bitter election, Republican party, very polarized, dominated by the far right as seen by the nomination of Doug Mastriano. The state legislature, narrowly divided because of some quirky resignations and et cetera, et cetera. It was, I think it was 101 to 99 Republican edge. So what happened late yesterday is they found a centrist Democrat who won with Democrats and the support of centrist Republicans, presumably of the Charlie Dent stripe, and promptly said he'll become speaker, but he'll resign from the Democratic Party and be an independent and act as an

independent speaker. That's not fantasy baseball. That happened in Harrisburg, of all places, yesterday. They go back just a few weeks to Alaska, where you got a relatively small state Senate. I don't recall the exact margins, but let's say it's 15. You had sort of a nine to six Republican margin. And the leadership was from the far, far right. And you can imagine that in Alaska. And then you had some Murkowski types who decided to form a bipartisan governing coalition with the Democrats and exclude the far right. Because, you know, if folks aren't interested in governing, if they're not interested in reasoning together to solve problems and defining common ground and

finding, you know, common solutions, maybe we should stop letting that tail wag the dog of our politics. And it'll actually be more reflective of the electorate at large. It'll be more consistent with majoritarian rule. Well, and something similar happened in Ohio yesterday, too, didn't it, where the Republicans had nominated a far-right election denier to be the Speaker of the House, and the Republicans split and eventually voted with the Democrats to elect a more moderate Republican Speaker. So again, the exact same thing happened there, kind of broke the duopoly. So yeah, these things actually can happen, although it seems unlikely that it will happen in Washington, D.C. anytime soon.

I know. I don't want to be Pollyannish about this, but I also want to say with due love and respect to my, you know, cynicism passes for wisdom in Washington for a reason. And it does make people think that nothing could ever be done and this is all just inevitable and we got to take our lumps and like it and then, you know, live to fight another day ad infinitum. This isn't normal. It's been a hundred years. We've had one floor fight since the Civil War of this scale, right? 1923. It hadn't happened since 1923. This isn't a normal negotiating process. This is a total aberration that reveals the utter dysfunction of the Republican Party. And the irony, by the way, you know, as students of history, I did a little bit of looking into this. The Speaker of the House in 1923 was a guy named

Fred Gillette. He was a Massachusetts Republican. And he had to deal with a bunch of recalcitrant Republicans from the progressive wing of the party then, including Fiorello LaGuardia, who famously, and I love this fact, was a Republican socialist. A fusion ticket. You're from Wisconsin, so you'll appreciate those sorts of coalitions and traditions. And it just goes to show that, you know, these parties aren't permanent. They're shifting coalitions. And certainly any study of Lincoln and the role the Republican Party played at its beginning, in contrast to the, you know, conservative populist Democrats at the time, which were based in the South, obviously, is itself clarifying. We should not, what's the Lincoln quote about not being captive to the dogmas of the quiet past,

insufficient to the stormy present. So let's innovate boldly and try to find a way to defend and restore our democracy. So most people probably are a little bit vague about what happened in 1923 with Fred Gillette, but I think it's worth pointing out how we got here with a little bit more recent history as well. And you mentioned, you know, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, reminders that, you know, getting and holding the job has been very, very hard for Republicans. You know, Boehner was known for his dealmaking and crashed and burned in 15. Ryan was a policy wonk and had to quit in 18. And you quoted on Twitter, you quoted Boehner from his

book. I may have been the speaker, but I didn't hold the power. The chaos caucus in the house had built up their own power base thanks to fawning right-wing media and outrage-driven fundraising cash. And so that was more than seven years ago. And by the way, you kind of inspired me to go back and look at something from Boehner's book, because I'm sorry, I'm jumping around here. I thought it was very revealing after the adjournment yesterday, after the three ballots up, the incoming whip was asked, well, what's your strategy now for Kevin McCarthy? And the strategy was, well, we're hoping, you know, the Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Ben Shapiro will beat up on these guys. Maybe that'll move votes,

which again is a recognition where the real centers of power are. And this reminded me of Boehner's book where he talked about Michelle Bachman as an example of a public figure that conservative media elevated from obscurity to star status. And she wanted to be on the House Ways and Means Committee. And he says there was no way that she was going to be on Ways and Means, the most prestigious committee in Congress, and jump ahead of everybody else in line. Not while I was speaker. You know, in the past, a member of Congress in her position wouldn't even dare to ask for something like this. Sam Rayburn would have laughed her out of the room. But then Bachman threatens Boehner and says if he didn't give her what she wanted, she would unleash the forces of the right wing media on him. This is his quote of her. Well,

then I'll just have to go talk to Sean Hannity and everybody at Fox and Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and everybody else on the radio and tell them this is how John Boehner is treating the people who made it possible for the Republicans to take back the House, Bachman told Boehner. So that was kind of the moment he realized that I wasn't the one with the power, you know, and she was right. And so this is how you get to this moment where you have 20 bomb throwers who just don't care what they're doing to the institution. That's exactly right. And a couple of things you highlighted are so critical to remember. First of all, this didn't happen in a vacuum or out of the blue. This has been building as a problem within the Republican Party for a long time, particularly in the wake of the Tea Party wave and reaction to

the election of President Obama. And the logic and rationale then, and Boehner was part of this at the time, was we're just going to harness their energy. So what if there's some of these folks who are a little crazy and extremist and conspiratorial? We're going to harness their energy into the majority and then find a way to channel it in a constructive direction. Guess what? Guess what? Folks who care about ratings and a right-wing media ecosystem don't care about solving problems because it's about keeping people addicted to anger and conflict and agitation, not actually the business of solving problems for the American people, which depends upon constructive and principled compromise and has since the ratification of the constitution, if you want to get all old

school about it. And for John Boehner, who learned that lesson the hard way, and then his successor, Paul Ryan, they get broadly respected people. You know, his successor, Paul Ryan, that dynamic you just described with Michelle Bachman, Ryan would dismissively call the conservative media industrial complex. And it's the tail wagging the dog. And that combined with the polarization of the electorate because of the rigged system of redistricting, which has reduced the number of competitive districts. So the general election is an afterthought. So people holding on to power depends playing to the base and winning closed partisan primaries, which Republicans are trying to close existing open primaries right now, by the way, a story that's been under reported in terms of its implications for the Republic. And it creates this dynamic that is incredibly destructive

to the business of governing. And then, you know, the media, we frankly could do more focus on covering governing rather than the horse race politics of who gets into power, because it's what you do with it. And then in the both of Boehner's case, and he talks about the shutdowns that Ted Cruz inflicted upon him in sort of profane terms on his audio book. But in both cases, sometimes to get anything big done, even and especially at a point of crisis, Republicans need to depend on centrist Democrats to get it done. And maybe that's not such a bad coalition. Maybe that's what we should be looking towards. You know, we got all sorts of disagreements.

That's fine. But there is a core group of people, it's the majority of Americans, and I still believe a majority of folks in the House, if they had the courage and spine to speak up, that's fine. But there is a core group of people, it's the majority of Americans, and I still believe a majority of folks in the House, if they had the courage and spine to speak up, that actually believe and act on their belief that there's more than unites us than divides us as Americans. We can actually solve big problems if those folks were empowered. But as long as the extremes can hijack and hold everybody hostage, nothing's going to happen. And that is bad for democracy because it increases apathy and cynicism. And the only people who are going to do well are these sort of folks who are professional polarizers because they profit off it. And I think that they understand that.

And everything you're describing, though, has gotten worse. It is far more difficult to do those kinds of deals than it was, say, seven years ago when it was virtually impossible. I mean, you know, going back to Boehner again, you know, he was asked about, you know, Obama's hesitation to work with the Republicans at the time. And Boehner says, how do you find common cause with people who think you are a secret Kenyan Muslim traitor? Yeah. And that was before Trump.

And I think that part of what Trump has done is he obviously has emboldened and empowered the you know, the entertainment wing, that right-wing media industrial complex, but also to use the term that you used earlier, to encourage people to embrace their shamelessness. So I think if you had a script writer who was writing about all of this, I think that they might hesitate to write a character like George Santos, because it would be too much on the nose, you know, just too unsubtle. But in so many ways, I didn't get your take on this. Santos seems like the personification of our age, of Trumpian politics, of the culture of grift. I mean, so just talk to me about this. I mean, he's sitting in the back row. Nobody's talking to him yesterday, but the GOP is generally pretty silent about him.

Of course. Well, first of all, it's because they don't have the margin where they don't feel like they can lose anybody. And by the way, he hasn't been sworn in yet, but his office put out a press release saying he'd been sworn in. So, you know, the theme just continues. I agree with you. The other day on CNN this morning, I did a story about Santos and the culture of lying in American politics. And this is all downstream from Donald Trump, where shamelessness has become table stakes. And it leads to absurdities of the kind we're seeing where, you know, I have a real problem with headlines that describe it as

resume inflation, you know, or a fabulist, which is such a fancy word that makes him sound like a modern day Jay Gatsby. This guy is a serial liar about seemingly every aspect of his life. He defrauded the voters in his district. Some reporting was done locally about some of the open questions that still exist with regards to, for example, when he ran two years ago, he had a net worth of, I believe, under $5,000. 18 months later, it was over 11 million. How's that happen? Great question. And that's the reporting still to be done. But regardless, I just remind folks that, first of all, lying on your federal financial disclosures is a crime. And conspiracy to defraud the United States, or at least the voters of his

district, could also apply. And Dan Goldman, the new congressman from lower Manhattan in New York, suggested that those could be applied. But it's really about Republicans healing themselves. And here's where I think the work of you all at the Bulwark and bias with my wife, Margaret, Republicans have to police themselves here. And I know the theme of our times is party over principle, right? Party over country. And that's the road to hell in the larger geopolitical struggle between autocracy and democracy. The parties need to police their own extremes. They have ceased to do so. But if you can't deal with a George Santos, a guy with no power who lied fundamentally

about his office, this is like the character test keeps getting lower. We lowered that bar. Where's it going to be? And I think one of the despairing things was, is that we failed to unite as a nation after January 6th. The good news is, in 2022, which is, you know, should be the cycle a la the Tea Party, out cycle, you know, independent voters who, you know, I focus on intensely swung towards Democrats and the election deniers lost in the swing states. Narrow margins in some cases, but that's the good news. So you think it would give people a little bit more courage to strengthen their civic spine and do the right thing when you're dealing with

people like Santos, because realizing that the environment has been established and the race was not considered competitive, so it didn't get the attention it should have deserved, even and especially by New York media. But the grifter and the liar cons his way into Congress. That's not a good advertisement. And, you know, you think there are a bunch of laws that we should dust off and apply them so that we can strengthen and rebuild, frankly, the guardrails around our democracy. We need to do that with a sense of urgency, and it should be, it needs to be bipartisan. Yeah, we shouldn't be so completely dependent on the criminal justice system. And by the way, I still think fabulous is a pretty good

word. You put your finger, though, on the real danger here. And you wrote, you know, it shows how much we have put the pursuit of power over principles that shamelessness has become table stakes in politics. And this is all downstream from Donald Trump. But the larger cultural damage is that lying has become normalized and we are in danger of becoming numb to it. I think that's the thing, is that things that used to, of course, would generate outrage, will of course would cross the line. Now the zone is so flooded with it that there does seem to be this sort of despairing shrug. So there's George Santos. He's voting. Everybody's counting on him. Maybe the criminal justice system will take him out. But we're way past the point where the Republican Party will say, well, we are shocked, shocked to find out that we have politicians in our ranks who lie to us, who make things up.

We're just done with that now. Right. And so what happens when lying and deception and all of this becomes completely normalized and whatnot? Well, look, I think that that's the real danger and we're living with it in real time. And it's the problem of people being unable to say clearly for fear and greed fueled political reasons that Donald Trump was a serial liar and his biggest lie was about the election. Because all of a sudden you get into a face-saving move that's compounded by the dynamics of political parties that punish dissent, where reasoning is considered risky or disqualifying. And look, you know, if you look at the ways that disinformation is confronted, you know, I interviewed these guys from a Ukrainian

counter-disinformation news organization called Stop Fake. They were formed in 2014 after the annexation invasion of Crimea. As you know, with Reality Check, I do a lot on combating disinformation. I think it's one of the core responsibilities we've got as journalists. And they made two really profound points that have always stuck to me. One, the goal of disinformation is not to convince, but to confuse. So you don't know who's telling the truth. And it's one of the reasons why in the game of moral relativism, well, all politicians lie. So, you know, how can we possibly know what's true and why get hung up on the truth?

Just because my guy happens to be lying a lot, it doesn't mean the game of whataboutism. And the other thing they say is that part of the game that is often played is to pit the far left and far right against the center. And that's where you see sort of the horseshoe theory of politics and the surfacing of conspiracy theories. Those two things are the driving forces between a lot of what is being deployed to erode faith in our democracy and our ability to reason together, which is all the more reason to form a bulwark, yeah, there you go, against those forces. And it's got to be bipartisan. And it's going to come from the center. And it's the reason that character matters. Character counts. Go back to the stories of the founding fathers, any fundamental story of American history. Character is the quality

that matters more than a president, than all others. You can put ideology, politics aside almost. Character is what counts the most. And that's the lesson of the American story at its best. And so when you discard character, you find excuses to not pursue it. That's when you get real problems. Well, we have discarded it. It does feel increasingly irrelevant. And I guess the hardest question is how do you put it back together again once you have, and this numbness to disinformation is not just in the political class, but what if the American people, what if it's not a leadership problem anymore? What if it's a followership problem and that the voters themselves don't value these things, that they

just don't care? So I would say, first of all, that the most recent elections provide proof that enough critical voters in the center of the electorate still do. I will be the determined optimist in my Capra-esque soul that says that we cannot give up on those qualities and the difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. So you need to look at the incentive structures that have been created around our politics and our media because that's driving a lot of this. The cowardice of members of Congress to do in many cases what they know is right or say what they know to be true is because they do not face competitive general elections and they therefore do not worry about reaching out to win over the reasonable edge of the opposition. They just worry about playing to the base. And in that context, particularly with the conservative industrial media complex, there is no such thing as too extreme. But that of course gets you in a trap

where you can't ultimately condemn lies, and all your principles are basically Potemkin. So what can we do about it? Well, first of all, change the incentive structures in our politics. We need open primaries and redistricting reforms. We've got competitive general elections, and that can still be done on a state-by-state basis when parties don't try to overrule the state constitution like they did in Ohio. Social media is a huge problem because, of course, it amplifies conspiracy theories and conflict.

And I do think that we need desperately need algorithm reform. We need more transparency because the extremism and the conspiracy theories are being amplified disproportionately. And that's putting these people in positions of relative influence and power up to the presidency. Now, I don't know that Donald Trump would have been president before social media, and it's a multifactorial problem, you know, reality TV, celebrity, etc. We need to think about ways to reunite the nation. And I co-authored an op-ed with my friends John Haidt and Mickey Edwards and Maya McGinnis a few years ago called the Unum Test. And we said, look, we've got to think not just in terms of political reform, but also economics and

culture. And we need to be elevating policies that will find ways to reunite the nation rather than divide it. Things like national service, not exclusively military. We need to be thinking comprehensively about this, rebuilding the middle class. It's no wonder the middle of our politics have hollowed out at the same time the middle class has been hollowed out. So I think we need to think with a sense of generational urgency about a comprehensive strategy to reunite the nation. And no, we can't simply say these larger forces are driving us to the place where democracy is being degraded and all people will be decadent and self-interested and we cannot possibly reason together ever again. That would be an abandonment of the

American experiment. That's not acceptable. I would like to end on that positive, positive optimistic note, because I so desperately want you to be right about this. But instead, I want to talk about Rudy Giuliani. Yeah, we've got to. Occasionally, I make a list of the people that if I was redoing a history of what the hell happened to American conservatism, you'd write down certain personalities, tracing them over the years, watch the devolution of all of this. But I don't know that there is a more spectacularly quasi-tragic, almost Shakespearean aspect. Shakespearean, except that it ends in complete

farce. I am very anxious to see your new special series about Rudy Giuliani. It's going to be airing over two consecutive weekends, starting this Sunday with back-to-back episodes at 9 and 10 o'clock Eastern time. You go way back with Rudy Giuliani, and this series is going to be asking that question, you know, how somebody who was the nation's most beloved hero in the aftermath of 9-11, became the architect of these election conspiracies, has managed to be, had his law license taken from him. So, I mean, just talk to me about Rudy. You were his chief speechwriter in the aftermath of 9-11. So you were with Rudy at his pinnacle. You knew him back then. I knew him back when, and it was an honor to work for Rudy as mayor, even before 9-11. And I think there's a misunderstanding that somehow he was deeply unpopular in New York before 9-11. There's a New York Times poll, among other data points, which showed that, I mean, you know, the Republican mayor in a six-to-one Democrat

city and had over 50% approval. And his record before 9-11 was extraordinary. I mean, George Will called it, you know, America's most successful case of conservative governance. In that he, in eight years, cut murder 64%, crime, I think, 58%, cut welfare in half, turned multi $2 billion deficit into a multi billion dollar surplus, cut taxes, was pro-gay rights, pro-choice, pro-immigrant. And, you know, I'm an independent and always have been, but I was very proud to work for him with that record. And then on 9-11, he showed the kind of leadership that the nation needed. And I hope, to the extent tragedies are self-inflicted, people who've had, blessed to have long lives in the public eye, you know,

have different chapters. And I hope that the positive lessons of Rudy's leadership are not entirely eclipsed by his fourth act, which has been tragic and destructive and disgraceful. Because a lot of those policy lessons actually are pretty urgently needed to be remembered right now. How did he get from there to now? How did his mindset, is it a psychological collapse? Is it a professional? I mean, was it a flaw that was always there in his character that was exposed over time? Did he change? Well, that I think is the most interesting question. You know, I'm subject to what is known as the Goldwater Rule, which is an unofficial rule among journalists where you do not diagnose from afar. I will say that his character has changed

in fundamental ways. And I'll give you two examples about principles that he did embody. People forget that he was one of the more distinguished lawyers of his generation as a U.S. attorney, member of the Justice Department, Reagan administration. And one of the things he said and believed is that the law is a search for the truth. And the verb is chosen carefully. Another thing he said to me that I think typified his politics, again, as a urban Republican, head of a third-way generation of mayors that helped save America's cities. It's a great New Republic cover story by Peter Beinart, by the way, called The New Progressives about that era. He said to me, to be locked into partisan politics doesn't permit you to think clearly.

And I think what we have seen is a utter desecration of judgment, of those principles that he once held, where objectively he has pursued the law not in search for the truth, but to pursue hyper-partisan ends. And he is not thinking clearly because he has become locked into partisan politics. And there is a larger cautionary tale, not just related to the fact that he's much older, but about the ecosystems that have been created, that people live in, that hyper-partisan news has made worse, where all of a sudden, combined with the addiction to attention, which I think is endemic to ex-mayors, created this brew where all of a sudden he has tried to overturn an election on the basis of absolutely no facts. And it is a tragic way to end his career. This becomes even more puzzling as you think through this, that he was at one time one of the got the hair dye going down his cheek while he's standing at a press conference, you know, peddling the most bizarre sorts of things. I know that

there's the Goldwater rule, but it seems that even political considerations, financial considerations just don't add up to get to that point. What was his relationship and how does his relationship with Donald Trump figure? Because, I mean, Donald Trump kind of pulled him out of a little bit of obscurity. He regarded him as a superstar. He obviously admired Rudy Giuliani and propped him up for some time. So can you talk to me at all about the mutual pact they formed with each other and how that played into the story of Rudy's decline and fall? The story is, I think, stranger than often replicated. First of all, it is not true that Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani have always been close friends. That was not the case when he was mayor.

I'd say they were people who certainly knew each other. Trump appeared in one, frankly, horrific video for a thing called The Inner Circle with Rudy dressed in drag, which I never really understood why that was a good idea. But they weren't particularly close, although Trump had been kind to Rudy's son, Andrew, during a divorce. You know, when Trump's running, again, remember that Rudy is definitely, you know, a pugilist. He definitely was motivated by intense dislike of the Clintons in part, motivated by a desire for attention. He was pleading a case in the court of public opinion.

He'd already sort of gone all in on the anti-Obama stuff. And initially, you know, when Trump was running, I mean, I had a conversation with him, you know, it was down to Kasich and Cruz and Trump, and he felt that Cruz had just a fundamentally different vision of the Republican Party, that he needed to reach out and win over new voters, not simply play to the bases, he saw it. And Kasich, he didn't think, had a shot, although historically, Kasich would have been a Rudy-style Republican. So he went with the guy he knew, the New Yorker, initially said he was going to vote for but not endorse, and then became deployed as sort of a pit bull surrogate on television, court of public opinion, flourished in that role, and was the ultimate loyalist. And of course, with Donald Trump, you know, he will deploy people to be pit bulls and dogged defenders all day long because that's the language he understands, even if the language of loyalty is a totally one-way street. And Rudy effectively lit his reputation on fire to serve that man's ambition. And it is tragic. It is tragic. You know, I know that Rick Wilson's

book, you know, Everything Trump Touches Dies, it's hard to think of anyone whose reputation was more thoroughly destroyed than Rudy Giuliani. I mean, obviously, we all wish long life and health to everybody. But if he had passed away, say, in 2002 or 2003, there would be monuments to him all over the country. There'd be airports named after him. There would be schools named after him. There would be parks named after him. There might be national parks named after him. And now he's likely to be remembered for these last few years, his association. And you kind of wonder what, you know, when he's sitting by himself, whether he thinks about this, you know, how he went from that, including being the front running

candidate for president of the United States at one point, to being this figure of, you know, loathing and derision. I met my wife, Margaret Hoover, working on his campaign. You know, I talked to him towards the end of 2016. We used to do a annual 9-11 dinner with those of us who served in the mayor's senior staff at the time. And I said, look, the election is going to be over soon. And why don't you think about your own legacy? And the reason being is that I felt that the policies he enacted were important and shouldn't be eclipsed by sort of his more outrageous partisan proclivities late in life. He said to me, and I tell the story in the documentary, he said, I don't give a damn

about my legacy. And I think that's a dangerous thing. Do you think he means that, though? Who doesn't care about their legacy? There's a peculiar fatalism with Rudy, which, you know, one of the more interesting aspects of Rudy is that, you know, he's a guy who, you know, thought about becoming a priest and knew himself well enough to know that, you know, he liked women too much for that to be realistic and became a prosecutor instead. And one of the things I think 9-11

taught me, taught us, is that you don't have to be perfect to be a hero. He never played perfect because he knew he wasn't. He was a flawed person, but he was able to stand up and do the right thing at a critical time. And I think he sort of feels like some successful politicians do that, you know, that his legacy is up to politicians and he'll be dead. That's a little bit at odds with his religious training. But moreover, I think consideration of one's legacy plays a very useful role in strengthening guardrails in our democracy. It helps people, I think, often aspire to be their best selves and not simply be motivated by short-term self-interests. The absence of that, I think, is one of the things that leads

to hurtling disgrace. We'll watch this over this weekend, the CNN special series about Rudy Giuliani starting this Sunday with two back-to-back episodes at 9 and 10 o'clock, both Eastern Time and Pacific Time. And I have to admit that I am somewhat obsessed by figures like Rudy Giuliani who at near the end of their lives do not care about their legacy or who have trashed their legacy so dramatically. Would you apply the word tragedy to it? Is there a tragedy of Rudy Giuliani? I would in the ancient Greek sense, which is that there's, you know, power doesn't corrupt power reveals. That's a Bob Ker-ism, full credit. But that this is a self-inflicted fall, and it's related to his weaknesses, not his many

strengths. And those weaknesses end up coming to define him. But I also think that the larger thing it starkly projects, in contrast to a man like Abraham Lincoln, of whom Sherman said he was the only man whose goodness was equal to his greatness, is that greatness in the absence of goodness can end very badly for everybody. John Avalon's latest book is Lincoln and the Fight for Peace. He is a senior political analyst and anchor at CNN. John, thank you so much for spending time with us today on the podcast. Thank you, Charlie. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. Keep up the great work. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again.