The Bulwark Podcast - Jonathan Alter: How the Documents Hurt Biden

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

Biden has been seen as scandal-free, but his classified docs case may cost him a big political asset: the benefit of the doubt. Plus, Trump's map in the '24 primaries looks smaller. And the fallout from the arrest of a former FBI agent with ties to Russia. Jonathan Alter joins Charlie Sykes today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is January 25th, 2023, and the Leopards are free and apparently headed to Ukraine. The Biden administration has greenlit the M1 Abrams tank, which of course then is the signal that Germany's been waiting for to send tanks. Also in the news today, Mike Pence is going to get his time in the classified documents barrel. And normally this would be one of my favorite stories, but there's so much else going on. Kevin McCarthy, who continues to be all in and protecting people like George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Remember, you know, I his words, integrity matters. Welcome to 2023. We are joined by Jonathan Alter, longtime political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.

He is an author, documentary filmmaker, columnist, television producer, and radio host. Jonathan, it is good to talk with you again. It's great talking to you, Charlie. You know, I have been a fan of yours since you did what was arguably the only tough interview that was done of Donald Trump in the 2016 campaign. Basically, everybody else except you let him off the hook in one way or another. And I still have a very vivid memory of that radio interview you did with him pretty early on. You know, the funny thing about this, I actually don't think

it was that tough an interview. And I was surprised afterwards to realize that he hadn't had his feet held to the fire before. And so I was actually kind of mild. But, you know, this is kind of a flashback to the fact in 2015 and 2016, I think America and particularly the American news media was in complete denial about Donald Trump. They just refused to take him seriously. It was inconceivable to them that he would ever be president. So like other Republicans, they figured, eh, you know, just let him go. You don't have to pound him. And I have to tell you, this morning I was thinking, I wonder whether or not we're underestimating him again. I mean, here's a guy who is increasingly isolated, increasingly demented. I'm sorry that, you know, the all cap

stuff he's putting out. He's, you know, dined with neo-Nazis. He's called for suspending the constitution. People roll their eyes at him. And yet, you know, he is, has a huge lead in the polls among Republican primary voters. And there's a new Emerson poll showing that in a head to head with Joe Biden, he might actually win. I don't want to have PTSD about Donald Trump. On the other hand, I do think it's dangerous to write him off because it is so early and Donald Trump still has that hold on the Republican base. What do you think? I completely agree with you. I mean, I don't think he is a sure thing for the Republican nomination, but it would be insane to write him off.

And if he were to get the nomination in a closely divided country, he could easily go back to the White House, which would be lights out for American democracy for all kinds of reasons that you've explained before and that we can go into. But I think what people don't understand, everybody nowadays is an armchair pundit, whether they've looked at the numbers on past elections or not. If you get the nomination of a major party, you have a very good chance of being elected president. Yeah. With the Electoral College, it is possible. And I think people shouldn't be in denial about

all of that. I want to come back to Trump and Biden in just a moment. But the news today that the Biden administration finally has agreed to give the tanks to Ukraine, which means that the Germans are going to give the tanks. Apparently, there's going to be quite a lot of tanks going to Ukraine. We don't know whether it's going to be in time for the spring offensive. But I was interested in your thoughts about this, because I have mixed feelings. Number one, I think this is really good news. On the other hand, I have this chronic frustration. If they really need the tanks, why did it take so long? You know, you can always second guess the speed

with which the Western alliance came to the aid of Ukraine, but better late than never. You know, I mean, you have a faction of the Republican party that doesn't want to give any weapons at all and is actually on Russia's side. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's effectively the majority leader or majority whip of the House of Representatives at this point, she's anti-Ukraine. These tanks, I think, are coming just in time. This is an extraordinarily important development because it gives the edge to the Ukrainians. I think it's about 40% of Russian tanks have already been destroyed. Their tanks are not nearly as good. Now, I'm not a fan of the M1. It's really not a very good tank, the Abrams. But the Leopards have a better reputation than

German tanks. And the combination of the two tank forces gives Ukraine a real edge when they need it, when hostilities really resume after the worst of the winter is over. So you mentioned Marjorie Taylor Greene before, and we've had a couple of news stories about what Kevin McCarthy is doing over the last 48 hours, including, you know, putting some of the Freedom Caucus bomb throwers onto the Rules Committee. I don't know if you've seen a list of the appointments to the Weaponized Government Committee, whatever it's called, the Oversight Committee. I mean, that looks like the Star Wars bar scene of the House Republican Caucus. I am really struck by the fact that in announcing that he's blocking Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff from the Intelligence Committee, he's citing integrity. At the same time, he is still granting committee assignments to George Santos. And really, his new BFF is Marjorie Taylor Greene. You probably saw NBC News is reporting today that Marjorie Taylor Greene is telling people that she's really angling to be Donald Trump's vice presidential running mate, which I have to tell you is crazy, but not implausible at this point. Yeah, I don't think that Trump is likely to pick her, but she

clearly, you know, for a woman who believes in Jewish space lasers and is okay with assassinating Nancy Pelosi, her closeness to Kevin McCarthy that was outlined in a good New York Times article is just shocking. And I really recommend people read that article. The only problem with it is it had the wrong headline. It called her a firebrand when she should be called an extremist. And when is the press going to get the memo that these people are not just firebrands or mavericks, they are way out on the lunatic fringe of American politics? As far as throwing Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off the Intelligence Committee, why were they thrown off? Well, the cover story for Kevin McCarthy was what Adam Schiff did on Russia back in 2017.

He went too far in his accusations about Russia. Well, what also has happened this week, the former head of the counterintelligence unit of the New York FBI was arrested for taking payments from Deripashka, the Russian oligarch. So clearly, you know, Adam Schiff was not barking up the wrong tree. Even if he had been, that wouldn't have been reason to throw him off the committee. Basically, everything Adam Schiff was talking about is turning out to be correct. As far as Eric Swalwell goes, there was a Chinese lobbyist who tried to get an intern in his office, somebody close to him. When it was discovered, Swalwell reported it, there was an investigation, and he was cleared. What's the point of investigations if when somebody is fully cleared, it's still held against them? So these are just two more black marks

smudging Kevin McCarthy's, you know, ledger. Okay, so let's go back to the Russia investigation and the FBI agent. I have to admit that I'm still trying to disentangle everything that, you know, we're talking about, because we're talking about a very high-ranking agent who played a significant role in the investigation of the Trump-Russia collusion. So, and it turns out he's on the payroll of one of the Russian oligarchs. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump down in Mar-a-Lago is seizing on this as another example of FBI corruption. But actually, it looks like it's almost the opposite here, because as you point out, what you have now is more evidence of the degree to which, you know, Russian influence was being felt and whether or not this guy might have been involved in.

I don't know. I mean, how does this play out in terms of was the Russia thing real? Was it the Russia hoax? What have we learned? What is the fallout going to be from this, do you think? Or is it too early to know? So I think it complicates Jim Jordan's task as chairman of this new committee on the weaponization of, you know, the federal government, mostly focused on the FBI, you know, with this, as you called them, the Star Wars bar on his committee. The Democrats on the committee now have a very clear way to push back. Okay. All right. You want to investigate the so-called Russian hoax? Well, we obviously have to investigate this guy who's just been indicted and his connections to Trump. Remember, if you go back, the reason that Comey came forward just before the 2016 election is he was worried about leaks from the New York office of the FBI,

anti-Hillary leaks. Now, we know that Giuliani had all these contacts with the New York office of the FBI, which was pro-Trump. So if he's going to look at the politicizing of the FBI, they're going to have to go there on this other dimension of it. And, you know, the information they have about, you know, anti-Trump people in the FBI, which we're going to see a lot of, is going to have to now be matched by the information about pro-Trump people in the FBI. And we'll see whether Jordan tries to prevent that from happening. But at a minimum, it gives the Democrats on the committee an opportunity to put Jim Jordan and the rest of his clowns on the defensive. Yeah, it's going to be an extraordinary story. Okay, so let's move ahead, flash forward to today

or yesterday. Mike Pence, the latest president or vice president to get caught up in the, you know, having confidential documents, you know, squirreled away somewhere, obviously an embarrassment for the vice president, especially since, you know, Pence had given interviews where he was critical of Trump and then he was critical of Biden. So he gets, he gets his time in the barrel. I'm guessing that right now, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and others are on the phone too. I mean, I don't know, you know, Al Gore, do you think it stops here or are we going to find out that basically everybody walked out of the White House or the vice presidency with confidential documents? And if everybody does it, what does that mean for Trump and for Biden? So I saw a story this morning that Jimmy Carter said that he had returned some documents many years ago.

He actually was not subject to the Presidential Records Act, which he signed when he was president. I wrote a biography of Jimmy Carter that came out fairly recently, and he was scrupulous about these things. He was entitled at that point when he left the presidency in 1981 to bring records with him. But after the Presidential Records Act went into effect in the Reagan administration, Carter scoured his archives and returned some records so people like me couldn't find them. Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama have all in the last 24 hours reported that they did not find any classified records in their homes or offices. What this does moving forward is I think it will likely, I shouldn't say likely because predicting these things can be tricky, but I would imagine

that Merrick Garland will ask Robert Herr, who's the special counsel in the Biden case, to expand his ambit and also do an investigation of Mike Pence. Now, I would guess that neither one of them will be criminally prosecuted. I think that's a pretty safe bet. And then what will happen is at a certain point, the special counsel will issue a report that kind of slaps them on the wrist and says, they shouldn't do this, shouldn't have done this, but it was unintentional. And there are other cases of people unintentionally taking documents. Intentionality is critical to prosecution in these matters if you look at prior cases. And Donald Trump's problem is there's intentionality here. And he refused to give them back, which is not just potentially obstruction of justice, but if you look at Section 3 of the Espionage Act of

1917, it says very clearly that you're in violation of the act if the government asks you to return documents and you do not. But having said that, you know Charlie as well as I do, that the legal issues here often get trumped by the political issues. And the political considerations here are clearly, they're in a context with the public assuming everyone does it. So unequal treatment of these cases is very tough for Merrick Garland and the special counsel and Jack Smith. So my expectation is there's no way they'll go after him on the Espionage Act. And the only way they would go after him for obstruction of justice, and this again is just making a prediction here, which you should take with a whole salt shaker of salt, Charlie. But

the only way they would go forward with an obstruction of justice charge against Donald Trump is if it was wrapped in to a larger case against him, if it was wrapped in to the January 6th case, which could happen. Let's talk about Joe Biden, because you had an excellent piece over the weekend in the New York Times talking about Joe Biden with the headline, Oh, Biden, what have you done? Now, just a little bit of background here. You have interviewed nine of the last 10 American presidents either before, during or after their presidencies. So 2020 was the 10th presidential election that you covered for a major news organization. You've known Joe Biden for decades. You wrote a big profile of him back in 2016 in the New York Times magazine.

So let's talk about your take on Joe Biden and the situation he finds himself in and what it's going to mean for him. I love the line where, you know, you sort of start with him sitting in the Corvette, stingray, charming Uncle Joe, a retro cool guy who'd been around the track, knew how to handle it. But now that Corvette's become transformed into a Chinese symbol of hypocrisy. If you went into a GOP whataboutism lab and asked for a perfect gaffe, you'd come out with the president snapping last week to a Fox News reporter, my Corvette is in a locked garage. So talk to me a little bit about Joe Biden and where he's at on this. What is his time in the barrel going to look like? You know, I think the danger for Joe Biden is that sloppy Joe becomes testy Joe. And, you know, he starts barking at reporters when, you know, they come after him with something related to Hunter Biden. Now, I think a lot of listeners are going, Hunter Biden,

give me a break. You know, it's so old. But the House now has subpoena power. The Republicans in the House will haul Hunter Biden and Jimmy Biden, Joe's brother, before their committees. Definitely Comer's House Oversight Committee will take their testimony. And it's going to be really squalid, ugly testimony that I don't think implicates Joe Biden in a serious way, but can be made to look like it might for people who aren't paying close attention and for the right-wing media ecosystem. And so he's going to go through a lot over the course of this year and take a lot of incoming without the benefit of the doubt. So the thing I think people forget is that Barack Obama was the first president of the last 10 going back to Nixon, who did not have a special prosecutor

investigating something in his administration. And they were clean as a houndstooth. And I can explain why Solyndra and Fast and Furious and these other things were not real scandals, if you want. But without wasting time on that, Solyndra, just very briefly, that program in the Department of Energy actually made money for the federal government and there was no impropriety. So Obama and Biden looked really clean. And then when Biden comes back, he looks really clean in the first two years of his presidency. Now, suddenly he's in the scandal machinery of Washington that thrusts him on the defensive.

His problem is he's never played good defense. He's never been a nimble politician. He's actually, to be truthful, he's never been a good candidate for president. He's a much better president than candidate. And now he's old and his candidate skills are getting worse and worse as time went on. I compare him, Charlie, to an elderly swimmer in a sea of sharks. And I think the Democrats have to ask themselves some really hard questions about whether they want to nominate him and whether he can beat not just Trump, who he's running even with or a little ahead or a little behind, but I think he'd have a really hard time with a younger Republican. And is that what Democrats

want to do? And I think they need to surface this for debate now rather than later on. You have a reality check here in your piece, because obviously there's not an equivalence between what Biden did and what Trump did. There are real distinctions. But as you point out, in the political world, the actual world we live in, that distinction is not going to survive all of, you know, the miasma of congressional special counsel subpoenas, relentless questions from reporters. And also, and I thought this was really a great point, by taking away this sort of benefit of the doubt, it undermines Biden's core political brand of honor and decency. I mean, this is one of the interesting thing, you know, that it's a challenge to this core political brand at the start of a much more intense,

potentially combative period of scrutiny. And I guess you've already answered the question, you know, will he be able to adapt? Will he be able to rise? Who knows? But this again reminds us that Joe Biden has lost a few steps. Let's be honest about it. And the testy defensiveness is not going to play well in this particular environment. So the question is, how does he navigate through this? And the reason I'm asking this this way is there's a CNN poll out this morning showing that Biden's approval rating has really not been affected by this at all, which is kind of a reminder that stuff that, you know, folks like us think of is really, really important tend not to move the needle. It did never move the needle for Trump really, not moving the needle for Biden. So how does he survive this?

Well, first of all, not only did I argue in The New York Times that the equivalence between Biden and Trump is totally phony, but I also argued that this will not be a first-tier issue in the campaign. And, you know, it may even be forgotten, you know, within weeks. And then we'll just see, you know, the special counsel report, and the whole thing will be viewed as not a huge deal and not all that relevant to what happens in the campaign. So having said that, though, Biden has to navigate a lot of other things. The good news for him is that presidents have a real capacity to change the conversation when they do something well. So for instance, if he does better than expected in his State of the Union address, he'll get, you know,

some kudos for that. If he manages to deal with the debt ceiling crisis and the game of chicken that the Republicans are trying to play with the full faith and credit of the United States, and he manages to get, you know, six or seven of the Republicans who are from Biden districts, districts that Biden carried in 2020, and he can get them to not take the global economy over the cliff, that'll make him look better. If he has an economy that is really recovering and avoids a recession, obviously that would make him look better. But I don't think we should assume that he is necessarily the strongest candidate to run against the Republicans. And to me, the most significant poll of the last 12 months, especially since so many of the 2022 polls were completely worthless, was one that showed

nearly two thirds of Democrats. These are the same Democrats who, you know, approve of Joe Biden. They think he's been a good president, but nearly two thirds don't think he should run again. They think he's too old. And there are other polls that have now validated that. It's been replicated. So even within his own party, there's real unease about whether he's up to this and whether we should have a president who will be 86 years old in the last year of his second term. So I think the challenge for Democrats is to, well, I think basically to convince him and Jill Biden that he should announce he's not running again. And then he would, all of this would be forgotten. All the criticism would be forgotten. He wouldn't really

be a lame duck any more than a second-term president is. And he would secure his place as arguably the most accomplished one-term president in American history. And I just think it's kind of a natural thing for him to do if he wasn't an ordinary politician in the sense of wanting to cling to power. So I'm inclined to agree with you about the age, except for this. And a lot of this depends, doesn't it, on who the Democrats think the Republicans will nominate. If the Republicans are going to nominate Donald Trump, then Joe Biden has beaten him once. He might be the strongest candidate. Joe Biden may be too old. But what is their plan B, Jonathan? What is the plan B? Because what I see is Joe Biden makes that announcement you're describing, and then it becomes, you know, the Democratic food fight, where Kamala Harris starts

as a frontrunner, not a prohibitive frontrunner. But you have all of these divisions between the centrists and the progressives, you know, out in the open. And it's certainly possible that the Democrats would nominate somebody less electable than Joe Biden. And Joe Biden was the nominee because he was perceived to be the most electable candidate against Donald Trump. And isn't that still the case in 2024, as long as it's Donald Trump? If it's a younger nominee, it's a different calculus. But let's just look at if the Democrats think that it's going to be Donald Trump, aren't they still where they were last time that Joe Biden is the safest choice, the most likely to be able to win a presidential general election?

Personally, I think that any Democrat can beat Trump because the independents, you know, went for Biden by 9% and they would continue to break for the Democrat if Trump was the nominee. But if Trump is not the nominee, and I don't think he's going to be for reasons that we can discuss. Just to be clear, I think writing him off or saying he won't be the nominee is silly. But I think ultimately, he will not be the nominee. Then the Democrats are in a real pickle. Because Biden could easily lose independence to Ron DeSantis or especially to Brian Kemp or Glenn Youngkin. And younger voters don't like Biden. And this has been clear over and over again. So there are these problems and challenges that he has. And I think that in handicapping this,

which at this early stage is very difficult to do, and I won't pretend to tell. And I think that in handicapping this, which at this early stage is very difficult to do, and I won't pretend to tell you who I think is going to win the nomination, but in handicapping it, you've got to not rerun 2016. So there's not going to be a self-avowed socialist in the Democratic primaries. Bernie Sanders isn't running, right? And Ro Khanna, he's even not a self-described socialist. There are not these AOCs not going to be running, right? I don't believe that Kamala Harris is popular enough within the Democratic Party to make any significant headway in the primaries. And Biden probably wouldn't endorse her in the same way Obama didn't endorse him. But even if he did, I don't think that would be a particular

advantage for her. So it would be wide open. And I think both parties are much more likely to nominate governors or former governors for president. And this documents story reinforces that because it says, oh, all of them in Washington, they all do it. They're all hypocrites. They put people in jail for taking classified documents home. But when they do it, it's okay. Mess in Washington. Let's get an outsider. That's been a very powerful impulse. So who would be, in your mind, the strongest Democratic non-Biden nominee in 2024? To my mind, the strongest would be Gina Raimondo, who's currently the Secretary of Commerce. There's talk about her becoming Secretary of the Treasury if Janet Yellen steps down soon as expected. Biden has

described her as the star of his cabinet privately. She has obviously executive experience as a former governor of Rhode Island, and now she has Washington and international experience, which you get when you're Secretary of Commerce. She's really well respected. A little bit of a problem with some elements of organized labor, but they don't carry the clout that they once did in the Democratic Party. And there've been cycles. I mean, go back to 1976, organized labor was against Jimmy Carter. It didn't make any difference. Organized labor was behind Dick Gephardt. He didn't get the nomination. So now, does that mean I think Gina Raimondo is going to get the nomination? That's what primaries are for, is to find out

what kind of heat these various candidates are throwing. I don't think there's going to be a food fight within the Democratic Party. Because one thing where Biden has been very successful is he's found the common ground between moderates and progressives. And I think any Democratic candidate is going to basically embrace that Biden record, which walks that line between moderate and progressive, and then maybe throw in a couple of their own ideas. Maybe they want baby bonds. You know, maybe they've got they want to have a child care tax credit. There are various other ideas that they can throw out there to show they're thinking positively. But I don't think they're going to really rip the party apart over this at this point. That's just not the way I see it. Now, will there be some negativity? Obviously,

but I don't think in a way that weakens the party when they finally settle on a nominee. But that's assuming that Biden gets out. My feeling is, having covered so many New Hampshire primaries going back to 1976, my feeling is, looking at it today, Joe Biden would be the underdog in the New Hampshire primary. That primary, they love, going back to what they did to LBJ in 1968, they love going after incumbents, slapping them around. It's a state loaded with independents who vote in either primary depending on their mood. Biden is very unpopular in New Hampshire now for trying to push them out of their first in the nation. We don't know which, you know, renegade Democrat, in other words, Democrat with the balls to do this,

would be willing to say, look, I think he's been really good, but we need vigorous new leadership. Who knows who that would be? They have, you know, a year to figure it out. So whether he's challenged or not depends on what 2023 is like for Joe Biden. If he has a good year, he probably won't be challenged. If he has a not so good year, he probably will be. I think that's probably right. See, I worry that when Joe Biden leaves the scene, that what he represented was kind of a bandaid that disguised the very, very deep and enduring rifts in the Democratic coalition and that it would flare up rather than people saying, okay, the Biden coalition worked, let's replicate that. My concern is that it rips apart and that you get folks who are,

shall we say, a little bit less realistic when it comes to politics. Sure. I just want to say that's a very legitimate worry because never underestimate the ability of some Democrats to lead with their chins. All you have to do is look at defund the police. But also, you do need to look at their remarkable unity in the last couple of years. The discipline inside the Democratic Party in both the Senate and the House has been rather extraordinary. And I don't see these ruptures like you saw in, say, as I mentioned, I wrote this book about Jimmy Carter. So in 1979, right before the 1980 election, already the Kennedy-Carter split was flaring into view. You had this very intense rupture between the moderates and the, what were then called, you know, liberals,

very liberal Democrats. I don't see that going on inside the Democratic Party right now. No, and in fact, that's one of the extraordinary things about 2023 so far, you know, watching the House Democrats who just lost control, though, you know, hanging together, you know, behind Hakeem Jeffries, that if the early years of the Biden presidency were characterized by a little bit of, you know, internecine warfare among Democrats, now what you're seeing is they are all pulling together. Nancy Pelosi was able to hold a very, very small majority together. So from the Democratic point of view, as long as they can keep that truce going and watch as the Republicans turn on one another, because the Republican crackup is very, very real. I mean, when you have Marjorie

Taylor Greene fighting with Lauren Boebert, the quote unquote moderates, I put quotation marks around that, against the extremists, that would be a scenario that they could carry in. If Joe Biden steps away, the potential is that you have a Democratic crack up. And again, we've sort of talked about this. Now, you said something I'm very interested in. You do not think at this point that Donald Trump gets the nomination. And I understand that position. I'm trying to work through in my mind, though, the scenario in which he is beaten. I mean, let's say, for example, that Ron DeSantis was to beat him in New Hampshire. Donald Trump doesn't go away. Donald Trump does not graciously concede defeat.

So how does it play out? And particularly if the Republican field does not coalesce, if we have a replay of 2016, if you have Mike Pompeo and Glenn Youngkin and Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis and they're all jockeying, then all Donald Trump needs is to get, you know, 38, 39, 40 percent of the vote to get the nomination. So how does he lose this nomination? How do you see it playing out? So I think all of the points you raise are legitimate concerns, but there are other ways that this plays out. And I think the most important kind of leading indicator are these focus groups of Trump voters. And they're 80, 90% for DeSantis at this point. You know, like they'll have 12 people in the focus group and two people will raise their hand for Trump. OK, so his popularity inside the Republican Party is in question.

I'm not minimizing that he brings new people to the polls who wouldn't otherwise vote. But look at his strength in a state like Georgia, where he's basically just been beaten, you know, basically four times now in the last three years. So if you had somebody like Brian Kemp, who interestingly is showing up at this Texas forum they're having, that's a little bit of a, you know, tryout for various Republican potential candidates that the Texas Republican Party is hosting. So let's say you had a scenario where Trump finished third or fourth in New Hampshire. Yeah, he's still in, and the others are dividing the anti-Trump vote, but that's not a very good place from which to stage a political comeback. And then where does he come back? What's then a good

state for him? And the reason I think that Trump will do poorly in the New Hampshire primary is not just because his candidate, Don Bulldog, lost by so much more than everybody expected last year. But as I mentioned earlier, independents can vote. These are open primaries. So New Hampshire, you will have thousands and thousands of independents and even people who normally vote in the Democratic primary who will vote in the Republican primary just to stop Trump. That's how motivated the anti-Trump vote is. So I wouldn't expect him to do well in New Hampshire. If Iowa still has its place in the Republican caucus system as number one, he didn't win Iowa the last time, right? So I think Trump is very vulnerable, not just from DeSantis, but from

other governors, not Ted Cruz, not the normal cast of Washington types, but governors who have that fresh appeal. And Trump looks tired, old, yesterday's news and like a loser. So I don't think that it's at all inconceivable. I don't even think it's unlikely that he could run and lose. The bad news for Republicans is he won't just go away quietly. He would either denounce the prospective nominee all over the country, or as he indicated on Truth Social, maybe run as an independent, which would, of course, elect the Democrat. Which, of course, is the nightmare scenario that kept Reince Priebus up

at night and then explained what happened to him back in 2016. Well, you know who agrees with you about this? Apparently, all of the Republican candidates for president. I've commented on this before. I think it's remarkable. Donald Trump comes out and he announces and does not clear the field. Nobody drops out. So clearly, people like Nikki Haley and Mike Pence before this document thing and Ron DeSantis and others and maybe Glenn Youngkin are looking at this the same way you are and saying this guy is yesterday's news. He's incredibly vulnerable. Given his massive hold on the Republican Party, it is kind of remarkable how difficult it has been for Donald Trump to, you know, rack up a lot of the endorsements. He's going to South Carolina and apparently has his folks have been on the phone and they have not been able to line up the endorsements. You have a lot of Republicans that will say nice

things about Donald Trump, but they're keeping their powder dry. So this seems to be a widespread view. So what do you think Nikki Haley's calculation here? What does Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence, what is their theory of the case that they think that there's a lane for them? Or are they just waiting for something to happen, figuring that I'm just going to put my toe in the water and maybe something's going to happen with Trump and, I don't know, mixing my metaphors and lightning will strike. What do you think Nikki Haley's calculation is, for example? Well, I think that they are looking at the same focus groups I mentioned, and they're talking to people in their states. I mean, I was just in South Carolina recently, and I talked to some

Republicans there, and they're all anti-Trump, all the ones I talked to. They realize that he's in a lot of ways a dangerous guy, and they use words like crazy when they talk about him. In private. In private. What this indicates to me is that their reaction to Trump will be a little bit like the reaction of the Democratic candidates to the prospect of Bernie Sanders being their nominee in 2020. What happened after Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary? He had been crushed in Iowa and New Hampshire. He's obviously not a good candidate in a lot of ways. But all of these other candidates

dropped out so that Biden could beat Sanders and win the nomination because they didn't think Sanders could beat Trump. They thought he would lose to Trump. And I think that what would happen is even though right now they're operating pretty selfishly, that after the first two, three primaries, if, you know, let's say DeSantis is running ahead of the rest of them, they will drop out and back DeSantis in order to stop Trump. That was the scenario that I was interested in. And, you know, this is an interesting reminder from 2020, because I remember there was a moment when it appeared that Bernie Sanders was about 10 or 11 days away from sealing the nomination. Right.

He was on this cruise path. And I remember my colleague Tim Miller wrote a piece in The Bulwark about this, you know, to Democrats. Democrats, you have 11 days to save the party. And sure enough, that's what happened with South Carolina. And then this amazing decision by all the other candidates to get out of the way. It would be interesting to know, you know, to find out whether or not the Republicans have that same, you know, level of, and by the way, that was a very non-democratic party type moment when you think about it, right? I mean, the Democrats in 2020 behaved in an unusual manner, right? Because

usually they will fight to the bitter end, but they did not. It'll be interesting to see whether Republicans take that same lesson in 2024, because I think it was a little bit the cost of breaking bad on Bernie Sanders is considerable, but not nearly as dangerous as breaking bad on Donald Trump, because that fear of that third party is going to be very, very real. Yeah, that's a good point. But I mean, just to your larger point, you know, the great humorist Will Rogers in the 1930s, he famously said, I'm a member of no organized political party. I'm a Democrat. And now you could say that that's true of the Republicans in the same way they flip from the solid Democratic

South to the solid Republican South. The Republicans are now a chaotic party and some of them thrive off the chaos. But I do think the other candidates that you mentioned, they're not like House Republicans. They're basically grownups. You know, Nikki Haley's a grownup. Glenn Youngkin's a grownup. I don't know about Mike Pompeo. I'm disgusted by what he just said about Khashoggi, you know, the journalist who was chopped up by the Saudis. It sickens me with Pompeo, who I thought was a terrible secretary of state and didn't back his people. And so I'm not sure that he would be responsible, but I also don't think he'd be a very good candidate. The other good candidates, I think that they would, you know, if Greg Abbott or Brian Kemp is getting it done, you know, finishing first and second in some primaries, I think they would, you know, say, all right, let's get behind him. That's the best guy to assure that we get back into the White House and we all get back into power. But again, I think the bigger challenge in some ways for the Democrats,

because if at that point they're saddled with Joe Biden and it's Joe Biden against Brian Kemp, give me a break. If you're a Democrat, you're looking at a wipeout. You know, it is interesting what you mentioned. Mike Pompeo has this new book out where he goes through all of the people that he dislikes, and it's somewhat savage and kind of mocks the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. And I think that he and DeSantis have perhaps figured out that in the era of Trump, people are not looking for a nice guy anymore. So they're free to engage in performative assholery, thinking that the voters, at least the primary voters, are not repelled by this. They don't want a guy that they can have a beer with. They want somebody who's going to punch somebody they don't like in the face. Right.

And so you're seeing kind of a new style of politics. And by the way, Ron DeSantis' strategy is interesting. And I don't know whether he will, you know, fade when he gets into the race, but the way that he has been lining up right-wing Twitter trolls, you know, buying off people like Christopher Ruffo, going into the heart of MAGA and picking these people off, at the same time enjoying the sort of Republican establishment, National Review type, anybody but Trump sentiment. The thing about Ron DeSantis is that he will be acceptable to a wide range of Republicans as an alternative to Trump. And he clearly has been working to do that. Whether or not that will make him electable in November, I have a big question mark. I just

kind of wonder about all of the things that he's doing that will be so effective to winning a Republican primary will make him, you know, put him in a deep hole come November, depending on who he's running against. I'm quite skeptical about DeSantis in the general election. I would be bullish on his prospects to knock Trump off in a primary, though. So I agree with you, but I also think that the point that you've made that as bad as DeSantis is, Trump is a unique evil, is important to keep in mind because you still hear a number of Democrats who say, well, DeSantis is just a smarter, more effective Trump. And that's not true. I mean, Trump is in a class of his own. But just in thinking and handicapping this a little bit, and it's obviously really early,

and pundits have a horrible track record. So please don't hold me to this. But I think the map poses a real problem for Trump. I don't see where he gets his first big victory. I mentioned Iowa and New Hampshire. I don't think he's going to do well in either state. Georgia, he's got nothing going in Georgia. He's not going to win the Georgia primary. It's clear. Now, you know, there are other big states. I don't know exactly what the order of primaries are going to be. You know, if South Carolina is still early on the Republican side and Haley's in the race, she takes that off the board. You know, Trump's not going to beat Haley in South Carolina. You know, where does he go to get his first big win to show that he's back? I'm not sure.

Well, the question is where he goes when he loses. You mentioned that he lost in Iowa to Ted Cruz. You remember that he was not exactly a gracious loser back then. He was saying, you know, that the lion Ted Cruz, you know, had stolen it and cheated him, etc. And again, so it's going to be very, very messy on the Republican side. There's no clean break on the Republican side. So but then again, this is why we play the game, right? This is why we go through the very messy democratic process. Jonathan, it is so good to have you on the podcast.

We will have to have you back. I appreciate it very, very much. Jonathan Alter, longtime political analyst for NBC News, MSNBC, author, documentary filmmaker, columnist, television producer, radio host. You mentioned your most recent book is his very best, Jimmy Carter, A Life. He was a senior editor and columnist at Newsweek, and he now writes the Substack newsletter, Old Goats, and you can subscribe. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast.

I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow, and we'll do it all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.