The Bulwark Podcast - John Heilemann: Piss and Vinegar

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

If persuadable voters are going to back an octogenarian, they are going to need to see less caution—and more piss and vinegar from Biden to combat Trump's "me strong, you weak" schtick. Meanwhile, TFG and RFK, Jr face-planted at the Libertarian convention, James Carville's advice for the Dems, and a tribute to an American original, Bill Walton. show notes: Biden in 2020 calling a voter fat, and a "damn liar" Biden's address at West Point Heilemann's Puck newsletter 

landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. Hello and welcome to the Bulleric Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Tuesday. It is summer. We're through the Memorial Day weekend. I'm delighted to be here with my pal,

my former partner in crime on the circus, chief political columnist at puck he's host of a new podcast coming out june 4th called impolitic impolitic impolitic i like that impolitic but impolitic i kind of like saying so i'm going to say it like that because you're a fancy pretentious frenchman tim deep at heart i am a fancy boy uh john heman is here. He's already interrupting me. The Bill Walton of political commentary. It was appropriate that he'd be here today. We'll do a little Bill Walton remembrance at the end. John, how you doing, brother? Dude, it's awesome to see you. I don't think of you as a former partner in crime. I just think of you as a former circus partner in crime. But I thought we were partners in crime before

you came on the circus. And I think of us as partners in crime, you know, in perpetuity. I take that at it. I take that at it. You know, we are, we will be partners in crime today. And then again, in the future, they're closing arguments in the Trump Tower happening right now as we tape. And so I want to get to that. But before, if you don't mind, I just want to play a little game with you.

It was Memorial Day, as I mentioned, and I just, I want to read a Memorial Day post from one prominent politician, see if you can guess who it was memorial day as i mentioned i just i want to read a memorial day post from one prominent politician see if you can guess who it was happy happy memorial day to all including the human scum that is working so hard to destroy our once great country and to the radical left trump hating federal judge in new york that presided over get this two separate trials that awarded a woman who i never met before a quick handshake at a celebrity event doesn't count $91 million, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Any thoughts on which politician that might have been? Well, here's the you know, it's such a gimme. It's like a six inch putt. You know, the truth is, Tim, that given the what we previously thought we had reached the nadir

of obeisance and upsuckery to Trump, right, in the Republican party. We all, we thought, man, they couldn't get any worse. It's now worse than it's ever been. And it's so bad that almost any Republican senator could have written that tweet. Like, except for some of the weird, like, like linguistic curlicues. It's like, you know, the basic sentiment is what they all say every day in front of the, I watched them, you know, parade down in front of that courthouse you know and they're a little matching trump maga outfits there's like weird trump

halloween costumes i'm like guys get the orange fright wig if you're gonna wear a trump costume where i get that get a fright wig too it's like a leftovers thing it's like a trumpy leftovers the trumpy remnant that's right that's actually really funny we should do that that'd be a hilarious parody series that where the where the instead of the guilty remnant be the trumpy remnant uh it's funny it's trump it was true it was trump where i thought you were going to go with that is it's true other trumpy senators could have written that but the other thing was even the vestigial like pushback of like oh i wish he wouldn't do this or oh but the tweets like that doesn't happen it's the opposite i did see several republican politicians and leading commentators criticize a political memorial

day tweet but it wasn't trump's they were making fun of ilhan omar and cory bush because they didn't know that memorial day was celebrating the dead you know those who died those who were memorializing they thought it was about veterans which is a goof uh but it shows that they're able to read other apparently eric trump doesn't know that either because he thinks that is he thinks his family has sacrificed much for america like you know on memorial day yeah yeah eric trump quote tweeted that you know we've done this before but if this person was i don't know in your child's you know camp group and there was a group text and they started posting things like this about human scum on memorial day you'd be like i think we're trying to find a new camp but some people want

this guy to be president i got a weird text yesterday some app that i'm on from mark mckinnon no no i got a weird i mean like i'm not on any of these you know like they're all these parents now um who have like who are like on the sex of the registered sex offender thing so they can know if there's a sex offender that's moved into their their school district you know there's that thing i'm not on any of those but i did get a thing yesterday saying that registered sex offender on some app of mine i don't know where it came from never seen it before and i keep thinking that i would really like an alert for like when trump is in my in my zip code or like someone in one of those trump outfits is there like some kind of like a little like amber alert thing that would pop up

and be like you know beware of who's around I would also like that though that would be problematic when I go to Baton Rouge I think that it would just be like yes I was gonna say I want to get to your thoughts on the Trump trial but I think that's interesting that something else happened today and that is maybe more right on your wheelhouse which is media commentary I noticed that this morning in every media outlet, there was basically like everyone, all the editors had decided this is the time to let everybody know that the Biden people are panicking. Politico, full-blown freak out in Biden world, the post Trump trial, unremarkable for some voters, the times our friend Jason Zengerly about how the Biden team is

struggling to make the campaign about Trump. The Biden team is addressing this today with an announcement that their campaign will hold a press conference with special guests outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse. Something I've been saying they should be doing for a while. Something that some pearl clutchers are now on Twitter saying is very deep norm breaking. So I'm curious what your thoughts are on the political side of this and whether it is true that trump is not being harmed by this or at all is it is it an unknown unknown we don't know because you know we have to wait for a verdict like where do you kind of sit on the political analysis before the legal right this is the first real column i wrote

puck was about this and and look at my you live outside the seller corridor so you know what i'm about to say is true basically no one gives a shit about the trial right right it has not in this in its in its proceeding and i think it's totally natural this is like trump diddled stormy daniels in 2006 wow and the and then he paid her off in 2016 it's a long time ago i was straight in 2006 i mean not literally i was gonna say i was gonna say not really i think i came out in 2007 i'm doing the quick math in my head right now. So yeah, it's been a long time. I was in Jackie's in 2006. Even by my kind of, you know, Mesozoic era standards, that's a long time ago, right?

And like in the world of today, it's like, it really is like a cave painting from the Paleolithic era. It's like, that's old news, right? Who is there in America who doesn't already have a pretty settled view of Donald Trump and the Stormy Daniels and paying her off? Almost no one. I mean, either you think it's disgusting or you think it's whatever, but irrelevant to being president, or you think he's like, a lovable horned dog, like Bill Clinton was, like, yeah, he's a rogue, he's promiscuous, I kind of like that. Or yes, that's, yeah you know it was charming the funniest thing about the whole thing is this is i think really

of all of trump's lies he's told so many lies but the most gratuitous and idiotic one is expecting anyone to believe that donald trump the cheapest skin flintiest you know welshire of wealth i don't like that word with trump i know that you're using it accurately, but skinflint. Well, whatever you want to say. Someone who doesn't pay his debts. I'm not talking about the Welsh here. It's just like, you know, it's like when I say I've been gypped, I'm not really actually talking about gypsies. Like I just, you know, whatever.

But my point is like the idea that that guy would pay $130,000 to a woman who he didn't have sex with is like the literally the most ludicrous thing he's ever said. It's just kind of crazy, right? It's all priced in the stock. I think that in terms of the long run political implications of it, I don't like to be one of these people says, well, you really can't know. I think if he's acquitted or there's a hung jury, I don't think it really moves the needle much at all because all it does is rev up the Trump base more.

Trump will beat his chest and talk about how he's been victimized. But those people, the people who are moved by that are already voting for Trump. They can't pull the lever more than once, right? It's like they're going to pull it, what, 10 times harder? They're like, ah. I think among the maybe 800,000 voters in the combined area of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin that will probably determine the outcome of American democracy and this election. The polling that is all is not, I think, particularly reliable, and it's all over the place in this. But you see these numbers like 6%. It would have an effect on their point of view among persuadable voters, 6%,

if he were convicted. It's a slightly higher number if he's convicted and put in jail. That's not going to happen before election day. He's going to appeal number if he's convicted and put in jail. That's not going to happen before election day. He's going to appeal. He's not going to go to jail. He's not going to be in an orange jumpsuit. He might one day be, but not. What about an ankle bracelet? Can we get an ankle bracelet?

Judge Mershon has the total power over what happens to Trump as he's convicted, whether he gets probation, house arrest, all those things. So ankle bracelets, not off the cards. But 6%, people say, well, that's no, that's, that's tiny. And I'm like, 6% in those three states is the ballgame, you know, so I don't know. I mean, I think a conviction is the only verdict that has potential political long term salience.

It's on the margins, but this election is going to be won or lost on the margins, you know, based on assuming if everything you're saying is true, which I think it is, most people don't care about this, people aren't paying that close of attention, maybe a conviction will matter, then, you know, the logical strategic follow up that is it kind of doesn't matter what Biden does, like, does he talk about this or not? Do they have campaign press conferences or not? Do you feel like all that panic is unnecessary bedwetting? Or do you think there's something they could do to increase the salience on this? Like, what's your thought from a strategic standpoint? I think in the absence of conviction, really nothing. Anything that where those guys are showing a lack of complacency are on the move, are doing something. If I was a partisan of this,

and to the extent I'm a partisan for democracy, I'm one of those people. It would be good for them in a lot of ways to demonstrate to people that they are the eye of the tiger. If I were a political strategist, I'd be on offense all the time. This is not an era that rewards being on your back foot. Do I think it's going to matter in the absence of a guilty verdict? No. But I do think with a guilty verdict, you could argue you're setting up something that you're going to build on later. And a guilty verdict does raise some interesting questions.

And those questions, we talked about it a little bit on Morning Joe this morning, where Lemire had some reporting basically that said, you know, they're going to start, at least in social media, referring to Trump as a convicted criminal, a convicted felon. And the question of what Biden will do about that is very much in play. You know, like, and I mean, we can speculate on Biden's mindset about these things, but I want to believe Tim, that there's still some small part of America where if you happen to be in the category of you're really undecided between these two candidates, after everything we know about the two of them, that like being reminded, this gets to the Zengerle piece, you know, this challenge

of memory, which is how much the Trump amnesia factor of people who thought Trump sucked in January of 2021, and now remember the administration is having been great, people who've forgotten how bad January 6th is. We see data on this all the time, right? So one of the biggest challenges the Biden campaign has is a tactical and strategic one, reminding people, making vivid for people who are, again, in that very small subset of persuadable voters, just what it was really like when Donald Trump was president and just what he is really like. And figuring out a way to do that is not easy. That's the point of the Zengerle piece. It's fucking hard. It's not easy. And it's a weird way that his pervasiveness,

his wall-to-wallness is a thing that, again, for 48.5% of the electorate is like, I'm never going to vote for that motherfucker ever. For the ones that are still undecided, the persuadable voters, it's inured them to a lot of these memories of shaking them by the shoulders and trying to remind them of what Trump was really like, because they're obviously in this weird twilight zone anyway. I think it's a huge challenge. And I think to that point, that you're gonna have to do everything, you know, that you can try everything tactically. But that as a strategic thing, that seems central to me. Same. Yeah, I to me, I feel like, look, the his schedule is a little light. Biden's schedule is a little light, the aggressiveness could be turned up to 11, so to

speak, on some of the, on some of the attacks. And so I'm happy to hear that they're doing some of this. And just for one example, you're pointing out amnesia, which I think is right. There is an amnesia about the terrible Trump stuff. But there's also new stuff. There's also stuff people don't know. Yeah. Right.

Like, for example, a convicted felon Trump pairing that. I was talking. I'm quoted in the Times today. I was talking to'm quoted in the times today i was talking about maggie about this and comparing the convicted felon trump with trump had two alleged murderers on stage with him in new york chef g and poppy hollow i'm not sleepy hollow i know kendrick but i don't know the deep cuts when it comes to uh you know the new york rap scene but let's just make sure we're not talking about poppy harlow poppy harlow not a convicted murder let's be clear on the podcast now and neither is sleepyy Harlow.

He's an alleged murder who's out on bail. All right, but you've got that. You have criminals all around him. He pardoned multiple criminals, including Bannon, Stone, and Manafort. And all of them, by reports, apparently still talk to him. His campaign chairman from the last campaign, his campaign fixer, the chairman of the inauguration like all these people been convicted the guy what that was uh weisselberg you know the guy the dude is surrounded by criminals and you could put together an orange jumpsuit mashup that would be much more aggressive

and i think much more compelling and maybe stick with people on you know some of these people who either have amnesia or don't know what they're talking about or just getting little tiktok clips i just think that there are more compelling ways to make this point than what biden is doing when we're both dead and buried tim the only thing that will of mine that will ever be in bartleby's is the quote which i'm proud of and will will happily actually maybe inscribe my tombstone although having trump my tombstone would be weird but the quote that is everything trump does is either projection or confession. And Biden crime family is like one of the greatest examples of Trump projection, literally one of the great, I mean, it's so out there. It's like exhibit A, right?

Trump is the ultimate ex-president, presidential candidate, whatever you want to call him, who really is a member of a non-blood, but a literal crime family. He's surrounded by criminals. And he does stuff like I wrote in this week's column, the one that just came out last night, about the Libertarian Convention. And he's up there on stage. The Libertarians are booing him. The funniest thing over the weekend was listening to cable news, trying to debate whether, in what ways is Trump a Libertarian? How could he make that claim i'm like do you people have you people know anything like here's the thing in political ideology libertarianism and libertarianism and authoritarianism are the opposite ends of the

polarity okay like that's that thing couldn't be more different but you know here he is up there you know the libertarians are you know obviously would you mind can we just listen i think some of the listeners might want to listen if they were out at the beach on a barbecue they might get some joy out of some booing we're gonna play it for you that is why i'm committing to you tonight that i will put a libertarian in my cabinet and also libertarians And also, Libertarians in senior posts. Pretty good. Pretty good. That's pretty big. Doesn't seem like they like that deal.

That's nice. The boos get louder. Only if you want to win. Okay, that's enough. Only if you want to win. We got the boos. Well, this is what he shifts to start insulting them it's like he moves from at the beginning it's he says i you know i never knew i was libertarian but now that i've been indicted 91 times i'm definitely a libertarian so like it's just the basic kind of like finding common cause pandering

then he moves to to favor trading right so his next move is i'll put a libertarian uh in my cabinet and i'll have libertarians as high advisors he then moves to to your point earlier which was what triggered me here was he says you know i'm going to commute the sentence he sees all these free ross signs yeah right which they had i think they had no plan to make this pledge until they saw all the signs that said free ross ross being ross albrecht the guy who started silk road which is like the most notorious dark web vice market that ever existed not just drugs but all kinds of terrible how much time did you spend on the silk road back in i'm i i don't want to answer that question on the grounds that might incriminate me but i will say a lot of bad shit went on silk road right the guy got caught

he's in jail for life and trump just like just hey well pardon i know i said before many times that i want to have death sentences for drug dealers but this guy commuted sentence if you guys if they'll help me get that libertarian endorsement let him walk now he was only talking about black drug dealers sean ross is white that doesn't count that's a high quality right only the best only the best drug dealers tim only the best i'll surround myself with all the best drug dealers so i yeah i mean it was hilarious in the sense that the whole libertarian convention was such a shit show, but I got a candid to him for one thing, which is that they looked at the two interlopers, Trump, the greatest of them.

I mean, Bobby Kennedy Jr. is at least a little more libertarian on certain things, not very many, but certain ones. But these two guys walked down there and tried to like, you know, interpose themselves in libertarian land. And the libertarians, I will give them credit. They did exactly what they should have done, which was basically just say, fuck you. Both of you get out of here. Like, leave us alone.

One thing I also think the Biden campaign is going to end up being able to use, I think maybe it was a mistake from staging. You say what you want about Trump's campaign, and it's been pretty incompetent all three times, but they usually are pretty good with staging and making them look presidential and strong and etc have that you don't have trump in the background in this case they didn't get to do the staging because libertarian convention and behind him it says become ungovernable with the anarchy a and that feels like that potentially could work Trump in certain ways as an image. I mean, yes.

I mean, the anarchy sign was, I mean, become ungovernable is an incredible slogan for a political party, even for libertarians. It's more of an anarchist kind of slogan. And they've got that anarchist A up there behind him. I mean, if you were doing comms for the Biden campaign, that would definitely be a lot of digital, a lot of digital hits. The funniest thing about that was him saying, make me your nominee. He says, make me your nominee.

Literally, he's like, right there. Make me your nominee. I want to be your nominee, or at least vote for me a lot. It's the only way you're going to win. If you don't want to win, you get your 3%. Then he starts mocking them because they keep booing. He starts making fun of the people he's courting, which is hilarious. Then the next day, when the chair rules immediately on the day that the voting will

proceed, she says, I'm sorry, Donald Trump can't be put in nomination because his campaign has failed to turn in the proper paperwork, right? Trump puts out a post on Truth Social that says, well, I never wanted it anyway. And I couldn't apply for it, in fact, because I'm the nominee of another party. So I never wanted it anyway. But of course, if I had wanted it on the basis, he literally says of the incredible reception I got there, which you just heard, I obviously would have won it. I mean, it's just like, it's so fucking crackers.

Crackers, Tim. I got an interesting note about the libertarian thing. It seems like you spent a decent amount of time watching it this weekend, which this is an interesting judgment call on your part. Well, I was going to write about it. So I did watch it. And let's just say there's a lot of weed in my house. Well, you're on brand.

One of the nominees did an edible, I guess, before he spoke and gave an incoherent. Yes, the guy who invited Milo to NYU and got basically got fired from NYU. The professor dude, Recton Wald or whatever his name is, Recton something. He was supposed to be at the post- Trump press conference. They were inviting some of the top candidates to get up on stage after Trump left. That's where the guy who won denounced Trump and

said he was a war criminal and stuff. And this guy got up and was like a babbling idiot. And people were yelling at him from the crowd, how high are you? And he kept saying, not high enough, which I thought was right. I could relate to that. And then the next day he was like, yeah, it edible i'm a libertarian like what is this a big political scandal it's not like i it's not like i boink stormy daniels or something i mean what's the fucking difference i like i took it edible it's a libertarian convention someone

handed me something i ate it all right someone handed me something i ate it that's a it's a great quote that's a bill walton uh homage if I've ever heard one. Totally. The serious political side of this, which I think is probably, I think probably the impact this young man, Chase Oliver, as you wrote in your column, advertises himself as gay and armed, which is different from the weak and gay, which I've tried to self-brand as. But gay and armed. And he is more of this like kind of liberalitarian type, you know, and there's like pictures of him wearing a mask and hanging out with drag queens. And, you know, he's liberal on various social issues. And somebody messaged me and asked if this is potentially a threat to Biden a little bit and if maybe it would have been better for it to be, you know, a more right wing, you know, Rand Paul, Thomas Massey-type nominee to peel off from Trump. Does that strike you one way or the other that it's going to be meaningful at all,

Jace Oliver winning the nomination? I mean, look, the guy Jorgensen, who no one paid attention to in 2020. I believe it was a woman. I'm sorry. It was a woman, Jorgensen. The guy used guy there. I sometimes refer to my women friends as guys. Hey, guys.

Yeah, same. I say thanks, man, to people, to women at the coffee shop, and sometimes they get mad about that. So I've tried to stop. You know, she won whatever her 1.5% of the vote, but in Arizona, she took enough votes away from Trump in Arizona that you could argue that she kept Trump from winning Arizona because of how narrow that was. You look at the high watermark for libertarians, which is the Gary Johnson, Bill Weld ticket, which is not trivial. I mean, they won 4.5% or something, almost 5% of the vote in-

It unintentionally cost Hillary the election, really. I'd honestly- In 2016. A bunch of people thought that Trump was going to win. There was probably 1% of their 4.5% that would have voted for Hillary, because they did pull from the left, I think. It's always the confusing part because you get all these people and i this is the

thing i i sometimes i try to avoid arguments about this kind of thing but people like jill stein cost hillary clinton the presidency in 2016 like jill stein had a quarter of the vote of gary johnson and bill weld and of course libertarians are complicated it's not all the republicans there are some people on the left who vote for libertarians but it's like you know it's a kind of a messy picture there's a bunch of thirdparty people who were problematic in a lot of ways that year. It's just impossible to really know. I think that if you think this election is going to be won or lost on the margins, as I do, and if I were in the Biden campaign, I would have rather seen the edible-eating, Milo-hosting expert on 19th-century British secularism. That's what I learned about him.

He's written books about that. He's a former professor. That guy would have been a better choice, but I will say the, the main thing, if I'm a Biden person that I'm psyched about is that Kennedy, who, who actually had spent a year talking about winning the libertarian nomination, you know, even before he left the party and dropped his bid against Biden, he talked about it in public with Smirconish on TV and said, you know, maybe the Libertarian Party is what I want. The Libertarian Party has ballot access in 38 states.

Like if RFK Jr. had been remotely competent and actually been in that fight and really worked it, I mean, that's the nightmare scenario for Biden was that RFK Jr. I know you might want to talk about debate qualifications, but like the instant pickup, he's got right now on the ballot in six states they say they've submitted for a seventh and they have another like nine or something maybe eight or nine on the way where they think they have the right number of signatures they obviously have to get all those signatures the states all decide whether those signatures are verified etc etc but even then you're at 15 you know compared to 38 with the libertarian party and

and that that's a ticket to ballot access man 38 states a lot of states and it's most of the battleground states that you get that you're on i think maybe even all six or seven so you know maybe it was always a pipe dream maybe rfk jr was never going to get the libertarian nomination but i will say that you know he met with them privately and publicly over the course of a year and then pretended like he didn't want it but then accepted the nomination when he got it, had his running mate was ready to speak on Sunday. I mean, I think there was still some hope in that part of the world, as bonkers as they are, that he might have been the libertarian nominee.

And I think if you're the Biden campaign, you're like, we can live with Chase Oliver as long as it's not Bobby Kennedy Jr. Yeah. I don't know if the Bobby Kennedy campaign has a Ken Melman, David Plouffe type over there running. Bobby was on Brian Taylor Cohen's YouTube over the weekend, which I watched, and he was rambling about how he doesn't want to submit the signatures they have in states until as late as possible

so the DNC rat fuckers can't do anything to disqualify them. The problem with that is that it goes in direct conflict with my next topic, which is that he needs to submit them and to get on enough state balance to be in the June debate. Here's my question for you. I have it wasn't in the room when the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign came to their agreement with CNN. But my understanding is that the Biden campaign will only do a two person debate. So like, does it really matter if he meets the qualification threshold of the Biden people people look at cnn and go hey uh we said only one-on-one we're not doing a three-person debate like we'll take our business

across the street someone will do a two-person debate if cnn somehow just says well you know bobby kennedy jr made met the qualifications we're going to get him on stage i imagine the biden campaign will say uh okay see you later we'll go talk to nbc i'm sure msnbc will take that debate in a heartbeat with just two yeah well this is kind of my question is what i wanted to game out a little bit with you because i don't know i was walking down to the street corner this weekend thinking with my child kind of thinking about this spending too much time rattling around my brain and i'm like are we sure that maybe uh maybe the biden came in shouldn shouldn't want Kennedy in the debate? I do think that there's two sides to this.

I understand your point, which is right, right? Which is you want to tamp down the Kennedy number as much as possible because Kennedy's core support, 3%, 4% are kind of Trumpy, you know, iconoclastic type people, contrarians. But then if you get it more than that, if you get up to 12%, 13 percent, he's picking up probably younger voters, blackness, Latino voters that Biden needs. So in some level, you want to tamp him down at another level. Could Biden maybe not benefit from like having a moment where he's like, look at these two. You know, the topic of vaccines come up and Trump and Bobby are fighting out on who's more anti-vax, who's going to be stronger on limiting funding for schools that have measles, mumps, and rubella mandates. I don't know. Might it help Biden a little? We can agree to agree about something on this podcast, which is, I think,

you can believe that Joe Biden is an 82-year-old man and therefore not as sharp as he was at 72, 62, 52, 42, and without saying he's infirm or senile or any of those things. I don't think he is any of those things. Agreed, agreed. But I think he's 82. And if you've ever met an 82-year-old man, what I imagine you're going to be like at 82, and I'm going to be like at 82.

It's like we're not at our absolute best prime. We're in prime debate condition. So one question is, if you asked me, would a presidential candidate in their prime who was in command, but would they be able to navigate a three-person debate and make the point you're going to make like confidently be able to use that? Like, yeah, more crazy on the stage, please. Like more crazy on the stage makes me look sane. They both look like they're nuts. I win. I just, you know,

everything the way the Biden campaign has done this is suggestive of wanting to eliminate or reduce as much as possible variables that would be in any way tricky for Biden, right? I think the way they got this debate done on their terms was a triumph for them, but they are, you know, we're not going to have a live audience. We're going to be able to cut Trump's mic. I think the way they got this debate done on their terms was a triumph for them. But they are, you know, we're not going to have a live audience.

We're going to be able to cut Trump's mic. It's like, how many variables can we tamp down so that essentially our guy gets to speak and not be interrupted, not have an audience to deal with, and Trump will speak, and then his mic will be cut, in theory. Biden will speak, and then his mic will be cut. That reflects a certain degree of like, man, we want to keep this thing pretty simple well that's making me nervous right no you're right you're right no you're totally right yeah and i don't like the mic cutting thing actually just that thought crossed my head i was like you want trump to seem like a lunatic biden won the first debate last time because trump seemed like a lunatic there was no memorable byline it wasn't like

reagan look you know talking about his youth and inexperience. There was no great moment. Trump looked like a lunatic. This was the time when he told him to shut up. That was like where there was an expression of the visceral thing that a lot of people in the audience were thinking. It was like, yeah, shut up. Goddamn right. Shut the fuck up. Again, that was because Trump was being a lunatic.

Shouldn't they let him be a lunatic? At some point, it's like the caution. I worry that there's a cutting off the nose despite the face element to the caution. And they got to just try to let it rip. In the world of Obama people, their view has been for a while. You got to get Biden out a lot and essentially try to do for Biden what Trump's craziness has done for Trump, which is to say Biden is going to stumble. He's going to have bad moments. He's going to say some dumb stuff. He's going to trip over his

verbal feet. He might trip over his literal feet. But the more people see that, the more it gets priced in the stock and people just go, okay, that's Biden, whatever. It's really going to be painful because Biden's going to look bad a bunch. And in the long run, getting people used to Biden looking like, let's say, like looking like an 82-year-old man is in their long-term interest. They are not doing that. That has not been advice. As you pointed out earlier, the schedule's not super aggressive. And they're doing the opposite of putting him in situations where it's like, yeah, this is going to be painful. You're going to make mistakes, but we got to let you make small mistakes over and over and over

again so people stop paying attention to them so much. Biden was out this weekend. He was at West Point. I'll just put the link in the show notes. People want to watch Biden. He was totally fine. But again, are people seeing it? That's why more is more here. And it's not just the Obama folks. I want to play a clip from our mutual friend, James Carville has similar frustrations. It's what you want about the Obama guys and James Carville, but they did successfully elect presidents, which I did not. I don't know if you recall my track record, John, of covering, but I don't have that. You're not quite in the Mount Rushmore of political strategists yet.

Yeah, so podcast host, maybe. So I want to bring in the expertise of people who have one. So here's a little bit of James Carville. And we keep wondering why these young people aren't coming home to the Democrats. Why Blacks are not coming home to the Democrats? Because Democratic messaging is full of shit. That's why. And talk about cost of living. And we're going to help deal with this. And don't talk about cost of living and we're going to help deal with this and it don't talk about gotha and student loans that's so out that the harvard that guy delavope is pretty good in 15 issues you know what the number 14 and 15 issue were total student debt and gaza i forgot which order it's in and why are we forgiving student loans for people that go to Harvard,

which, according to Scott Galloway, quite accurately, is nothing but a hedge fund that has classrooms? Well, they got a $52 billion fucking surplus. Why are taxpayers going to bail these people out? We've got another James clip here in a second, but I want your reaction. Wait, where's that from? Is that you? No, this is James's YouTube feed. James has an amazing YouTube feed. I'm doing my best on YouTube, but speaking of how 82-year-old men can make strong arguments, James Carville is beating me on YouTube. I want one more James Carville clip for you.

I know what he means. Ask him one question. Did Keith Schiller steal Trump's medical records from his internist? And where are these medical records? Prove that you're fair. Ask him and keep asking him. And the same thing for the Biden campaign, because you and I are not stupid. We know why he stole the records. Right. Let me put it this way. We have a strong suspicion is he stole the records because he had the goddamn class. And look up, go to the Mayo Clinic or WebMD or whatever, you know, get a ration.

I'll look it up on the computer. Go look up how insidious a disease of secondary syphilis can be. I'm not sure he's not having sex anymore because his dick may have fallen off the mall of VD, yes. I mean, I think James Carville would have 400 electoral votes if he was the ad or alternate nominee dude the greatest thing that could ever happen it would like it would be the thing that would change my mind and make me think i should write another book about a presidential campaign would be if the biden campaign after i'm imagining the scenario a disastrous debate performance in june and there's so much panic that they decide we got to, we got

to just throw the long ball, bring in James, let him run the whole thing. Like just let James run the whole thing. It'd be incredible. It'd be like one of the most incredible things that we would ever experience in our lifetimes. There's some absurdity in James, obviously. And, and, you know, there's certain things that a sitting president can't do, like talk about his opponent's dick falling off. That's probably not a winner, um his point is right though right like chris wrote this morning about how biden should take some lessons from clinton about being you know wrong and strong instead of you know weak and right what do you think i've always thought that that clinton thing is is true i mean look there's always possibility that the whole copernican

universe of politics has now been rendered obsolete or whatever, and that none of these things are true anymore. But I think the basic Trump framing of the election is me strong, you weak. And that's just the strength thing. We focus on the victimology of it, which plays to his base. But in those parts of the country that are going to decide the election and in those voter groups, it's Trump is basically like, I am strong. I am indomitable. I am invincible. I'm a bad motherfucker. And the detail of this is I will get inflation down because I will, because I will bend it

to my will. I will beat the Chinese because I'm stronger. And he points at Biden and says, weak, infirm, incontinent. And so I think things that show strength, I like when Biden gets mad. Those moments when Biden gets mad and really kind of lashes out are, to me, good moments. There's nothing worse than a docile octogenarian, a quiet, meek octogenarian. That is not the oxygenarian we want i'd rather see an oxygenarian making mistakes but but being like grandpa simpson waving his cane on the lawn and scaring the kids away and like doing that to these fucking protesters you know on the campuses

just like screaming at him and and anybody who gets in his way just if you're going to re-elect an octogenarian you want to think the oxygen is full of piss and vinegar yeah and at the opposite that's the case against trump this is where i'm with james a lot of to play this right like making trump into you know a whiny syphilis stricken ball sack who has to put makeup on syphilitic is the word you're looking for syphilitic a whiny syphilitic ball sack who has to put makeup on to hide just how like aged and peaked his skin is like like that is good right like that is a good frame you know now on twitter the smart set gets oh the resistance mom they don't know what they're doing it's like i don't know man like a campaign that was more

that's a little resistance pill talking about how trump's putin's bitch would be preferable to, you know, one that's like, well, actually, let me tell you about what might happen in 2025. Democratic principles. I am inherently attracted to Michelle Obama's formulation, the when they go low, we go high. I'm inherently attracted to it. I wish for a world in which that was wise. And I think maybe when she said it, she was right. It probably was wise. Maybe then I forget what year it was that she said that,

but like I thought when they go low, we go high, you know, better angels, et cetera. That is definitely not the right strategy in 2024. We are not in a better angels moment. We are not in a, they go low, we go high. You know, you're not going to win that way. Apart from everything else, it just doesn't, at your point, which I think is about the way that the media works now, going high just doesn't break through. Whatever else can be said of it, whatever other nobility it encapsulates, it doesn't break through. There's so much noise and there's so much fragmentation that going high, the high you know the the aaron sorkin version of the presidency or the presidential campaign is not a thing that breaks through that no one there's just no one even hears it maybe it could work if you had somebody that could hit the notes

also it's just not joe biden right like you know i know with brock obama's not coming out of the bullpen you know that joe biden in from 2020 when he threatened if when he wanted to get in a fight with that guy and call him fatso that guy like where's where's that joe biden yeah i like that joe biden i was like yeah pony soldier right exactly i mean it's kind of you know you can make fun of it but at least it's like again piss vinegar called him fat i love the fat he's like he's like fatso yeah he's like you're like yeah you know it's it's like that's the formula for fighting donald trump is piss vinegar mix distribute repeat you know just kind of related to the go logo high formulation one thing i just i've never

asked you about that i wanted to ask you about since i have you alone on this podcast yeah just just you and me no one no one else is doing me now it's not about your the choices in your private life oh good you know a lot of what i you know what wrote about and was thinking about was from like the republican perspective of looking back and like our mistakes in 08 at 12 and your book game change was like so central to that time and accompanying film and i just wonder i don't know like i looked back in that period and patlin is kind of portrayed as as this like clownish figure like kind of ridiculous and a little threatening a little risky obviously nicole is concerned she might be president so like there's

a seriousness to it but it's also clownish and you know you know, McCain is the going high figure. I just wonder, like, you look back on that now, 12 years later, I just wonder what you think about that whole scene. You mean the scene, the book? Do you think about it differently? Do you think about it differently? Do you think that, like, if you were able to go back and talk to 2012 John writing that book, do you think you would have covered it? Do you think that the media would have?

I'm not looking for you to hit yourself over the head, but do you think we would have covered it differently? Do you think that it was covered right? First of all, the things about Palin that are in the book, she got caricatured as a clown for a whole lot of reasons that had nothing to do with game change. And she was caricatured that way long before the book came out, which was, you know, in January of 2010. And the things that we wrote about that were things that made her that were clownish, but that were also signs of how manifestly unqualified she was to be vice president, let alone president.

Those are just the facts. If you laid out the facts of things that were striking to people on the campaign about things she didn't know about ways she behaved, those were things that people were going to interpret in a certain way. The movie, Danny Strong, who wrote the script and what Jay ended with a much more ominous tone in the movie than in the book because you could see the tea party was now happening by the time the movie got made. The movie didn't come out until 2012. And so the book comes out in January 2010, the movie came out in January, February 2012. And in

that intervening period of 2010, 2011 was the rise of the Tea Party. And so you could see her as an avatar for that. So the movie had a darker cast to what Palin augured for, even though she was too much of a buffoon and too incompetent and dumb to be able to actually ride that wave. But people saw that. I don't think the book, fairly speaking, the book was not John McCain is like an avatar of like principle and going high and she was going low. I mean, that's a good point. I mean, the book, again, accurately presented McCain as being pretty craven in a lot of ways, not just in the selection of Palin, but pretty craven that moment when he, that

he gets all the credit for, and I'm happy to give him credit for it. But, you know, the moment when he finally snapped at the end of the campaign, where he took on that woman in the, in the hall who said that obama was a muslim that gets played over and over again on tv that was after a long period of time where mccain was willing to see obama i've got to defend mccain's honor here there was all the back and forth which was right which you wrote about and others about how some of the the consultants wanted to go in harder on airs and wanted to go in higher on that stuff yeah i'm not saying mccain wanted to go if the consultants wanted to go in harder on airs and wanted to go in higher on that stuff. Yeah.

I'm not saying McCain wanted to go. If he had wanted to go as far as, you know, there were a couple of ads that didn't get run that were really, really incendiary and McCain pushed back on those. I'm not saying he was without scruples whatsoever. I'm just saying like, you know, he gave Palin a pretty, at the beginning gave her a pretty wide berth and it took a pretty long time for him to,

he's a mixed figure. McCain often in the end ended up in the right place. He was not like a prissy John Huntsman figure. He was not prim about his views about negative campaigning. I'd rather be strong and right in the end than prissy and wrong. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it wasn't like Little Miss Muffet on his tuffet there. He was willing to hit pretty hard. Given what we knew at the time, which is all you can really judge, is we couldn't know what would come after. With the benefit of hindsight, there's a million things I would go back and change and add all kinds of foreshadowings. But we don't have the benefit of hindsight.

We were writing the book in 2009. So we don't have a problem with that. And as I say, I think Jay and Danny did a nice job of taking into account what Palin portended in the movie, giving it that slightly darker cast and not making her... I mean, I thought the reason that Julianne's performance was so great was that she did a really nice job of both capturing some of the ways in which Palin

was just really ill-served by the whole process. I mean, on some level, she was obviously manifestly unqualified, and she was not served well by that process in some ways. And some of the things that happened to her were not really her fault. On the other hand, there were other things that were totally her fault. She became an ambition monster and a really craven one along the way. I thought the movie was pretty good at that, like getting a little sense of the darkness, more of the darkness than we had a picture of in the immediate aftermath

of the campaign. If Palin had one good trusted advisor with her that she could have listened to and she decided to run, she would win the nominee in 2012. Right. I wrote a cover story in New York magazine in the fall of 2010. In the fall of 2010, that was like the headline that Adam Moss put on the cover was President Palin. It was a scenario thing of, she is going to run, she is likely to be the Republican nominee, and here's how it could work out that she could end

up being president. Not like predicting, but sort of saying, this is the scenario by which this could happen and how crazy it was. I mean, it it was a kind of a you know it was meant to be kind of a shock treatment thing i mean if somehow this is such a ridiculous counterfactual but if you know the people some of the people who worked with her at the convention if she had maintained a real relationship with like tucker eskew nicole you know i mean again these are all ridiculous counterfactuals but tucker and nicole are good people but maybe there's somebody around who would have would have stuck but remember i mean her performance of the convention was incredible yeah i mean i don't think i've ever seen a politician who was more in the the human microwave as mckinnon would call it

of politics than that period from when she was selected to when she gave her speech in Minneapolis. I mean, she was just being vivisected before your eyes. And she got up there and gave a lights out speech at that convention. And I will give her credit for that forever. And she was like, really? I mean, the pressure was on that woman. I mean, if I were her, after 48 hours, I would have been like, I'm going back to Wasilla. I'm out of here. She had this charisma and she had these natural performance skills. And the people who helped her in Minneapolis when she was so willing to take their help were some really talented people

like Tucker and Nicole and some others. And, you know, for obviously various reasons having to do with her personality defects, she ended up basically losing all of the people that had any capacity to be the person you're talking about. But yeah, if she had put together a team that was as good as John Huntsman's team,

for instance, like if she had had-ick santorum's team forget john like rick santorum almost beat mitt right rick santorum almost beat mitt i was gonna say tim miller john bray bender nick ayers nick ayers bray bender and me would have taken out mitt with perrin lynn easily easily thank god that didn't happen that's a horrible counter and then throw it alex conan and you guys could have made her president all right That's a horrible counterfactual. And then throw in Alex Conant, and you guys could have made her president. Ugh, all right. That's a horrible counterfactual. All right, I want to close with, I want to put a quarter and let you talk about Bill Walton.

But I want to play one clip, because Bill Walton, this was a guy who liked John Halliman. He would go there. He was not afraid. Let's listen to Bill Walton. They don't. Not even if you beat Liberty next time. If you beat Liberty next time. Okay.

If you beat Liberty next time, will they rush the floor? Why don't we just talk about Liberty since you brought it up? All right. Let's move on. Coloco with his second foul. Tiger Campbell at the line. If there was ever a misapplied name. All right.

So, Tiger. This is the middle of the second half. And Bill Walton's like, let's talk about Jerry Falwell for a second. Okay. This man could talk about the beauty of life, but also our darker angels with a plum. And man, there are very few originals. We'll miss Bill Walton. Do you have any closing thoughts for the listeners on the Big Red?

So, you know, I grew up in Southern California and in the San Fernando Valley. So my dad was a huge basketball fan and had played at university of wisconsin when he was a undergrad and and i played a lot of hoops and so we were huge lakers fans and ucla fans even though we didn't go but the cult of john wooden was deep i might you know wooden was from indiana my dad was from wisconsin like that kind of Midwestern guy who had been transplanted. And so, you know, Lew Alcindor, soon to be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, dominant center with UCLA in the late 60s, then goes to the Milwaukee Bucks, where my dad was a huge fan. So we're like, who's going to replace Lew Alcindor in the early 70s? I was young, you know, but Bill Walton was rad.

At the time, I didn't appreciate this. But later, the pictures of him engaged in student protests at UCLA, things that with the beard- While playing on the team. While playing on the team. A team that John Wooden, for all of his, I mean, he had many obvious attributes, incredible coach, one of the greatest coaches in the history of the game. But that was not a Wooden kind of thing. And his ability to reach an accommodation with being with living within

the wooden system and he worshipped wooden on some level but also really was an individualist and was there were things he wouldn't compromise on i always thought that was so admirable and you know people talk about that era in sports and you know kareem bill russell muhammad ali jim brown Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, these were all very out front, very politically active athletes at a time, Arthur Ashe, but huge politically expressive, involved in the protest movements, involved in all of that stuff that was happening late 60s, early 70s. Bill Walton was in that group. He was the only white guy. He was the one white dude who was a great athlete in that era. It was really politically outspoken, willing to court controversy, willing to stick to his principles, and was a white dude fighting in a lot of cases on the side of poor African

Americans and also of racial justice and on the side of those kinds of issues. So I always thought he was great for all of that. And he was also so funny, right? I mean, the combination of his seriousness and his goofiness. And there was a thing in one of the obits that said that he talked about how when he was the sixth man on the Celtics and won his second NBA title was the thing he was proudest of, being a sixth man, that that was the thing that meant most to him of his two NCAA championships, his two state championships in high school, and his two NBA championships, the one where he was a sixth man of the Celtics. And there was a quote from Larry Bird saying that Walton was one of the greatest players that he'd ever played with when he was healthy. And their interviewer said to him, do you mean greatest centers? And he goes, no, one of the greatest players ever to walk the court.

But when Larry Bird gives that kind of compliment out about somebody, it makes you sit back and go, man, if that dude hadn't, his feet were so fucked up. I think in his book, he said he felt like he was basically ruined by the time he got into high school. He was like, he was never- Age 14. Age 14 was the first time that happened, yeah. What that guy would have been capable of if he had had good health, he's already in a pantheon of one of the 50 maybe greatest basketball players who ever played the game. But what guy would have been capable of if he had had good health. He's already in a pantheon of one of the 50 maybe greatest basketball players who ever played the game. But what he would have achieved had he been remotely healthy and not in constant pain. And then finally, a guy who as a broadcaster would occasionally go on a beautiful little P.N. to his experiences of mushroom eating, acid dropping, Grateful Dead listening.

Mid-game. Middle of the second quarter. Just all of a sudden start talking about it well you know my experience with mushrooms is always that they're pretty good and here's how you use them it's been like oh there goes bill i mean the phrase american original is thrown around a lot and often not fully accurately bill walton was a true american original and i think you know we don't have enough people like that that qualify as being you know that original and that surprising all the time and i think he'll be missed uh a lot i would watch random late night pack 12 games just because he was calling up just because the joy he'd bring me he'd answer his dorm room phone impeach the president back in

those days on the national championship teams look at his final four box scores they're insane it was like 21 to 22 in the final four game or something crazy it's and he scored 20 points have 25 rebounds like a 10 assists and like nine block shots it was like he did yeah you know he did fucking everything on the court when he was on the court everything john howman thank you for staying a little long with me talk bill walton your new podcast launching june 4th, Impolitic. I call it Impolitique, but it's Impolitic. He's a national political columnist at Puck. We'll be talking to you soon.

My partner in crime, Bill Walton. Fare thee well, the rest of you. We'll see you all here tomorrow. Peace. Fare you well, my only true one All the birds that were singing singing are gone except you alone This rope down palace On my hands and my knees I will rope, pull, roll, roll Make myself a man

By the warm inside In my time, in my time I will roll, roll, roll In a bed, in a bed by the water side I will lay my head Listen to the river sing sweet song to my soul the bulwark podcast is produced by katie cooper with audio engineering and editing by jason brown