The Bulwark Podcast - Jonathan V. Last and Ben Raderstorf: Retribution Agenda

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Republicans had a tête-à-tête with Trump to remind him how, if he wins, he should extend the tax cuts before he gets tied up with punishing all his enemies. Meanwhile, should Biden suggest extending the tax cuts so CEOs can end their flirtation with authoritarianism? Plus, the value of 'agreeing to disagree' in the pro-democracy coalition. JVL and Protect Democracy's Ben Raderstorf join guest host Amanda Carpenter. show notes: Protect Democracy's "If you can keep it" newsletter JVL's newsletter piece on Truth Social JVL's newsletter piece on the Epoch Times 

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 Bulwark Podcast. I am Amanda Carpenter sitting in for Tim Miller,

who is on a well-deserved vacation. And with me today is the Dark Knight of the Bulwark, JVL. JVL, what is going on? It's been a while. All caps, Amanda. It is so, so good to have you back home. How you been? I'm great. You protecting democracy?

All the time. It's a 24-hour job, man. Speaking of, Trump's back in Washington. It's his big day. He's making his triumphant return so didn't napoleon do this once like came back from exile once it is amazing that all of the people who got so upset on january 6th and 7th and were you know well that's it i'm out and you know they uh they're they're all gonna be there know, they're all going to be there for him. Yep. They're all going to be there for him. Yeah, I guess I should make a note. He's technically, he's been to Washington.

Strangely, he's not going to the Capitol Conflict itself. Why not? No, he's going to the Capitol Hill Club. Yeah, so weird, fine. I mean, if I had to guess, I would say that this is part of his TV brain, which views it as him telling a reality TV story in which this is one step of his hero's journey back to the presidency. And so he gets the, hey, he's meeting with Congress, but he's not all the way to Congress yet. He's over at the Capitol Hill Club. And then after the nomination, then he'll meet to address the House conference on the hill or something like that.

All building up to and culminating from his perspective with his triumphant return as he is sworn in on January 20th of 2025. Thanks, America. Well, I can tell you at the time of this taping, he is now meeting with House Republicans at their club and they opened the meeting by singing him happy birthday. His birthday is Flag Day. Did you know that? So, I mean, if there's anybody who loves the flag, I mean, I can't think of any other president who ever hugged an American flag as he famously did. So he must love the flag more than anyone else because of his birthday or something. Yeah, definitely going to be meaningful of constructive criticism about how to write the

Republican Party and a positive vision for America. Running through the coverage of this, it's really interesting. A lot of people like zoned right in on Mitch McConnell because he's going to meet with House Republicans and Senate Republicans and also meet with the business roundtable. And we'll talk about that a little bit more later. It was just going through some of the comments. I'm just going to read some of them to you from esteemed Republican senators about their meeting with the past and future president. Mitch McConnell, we all know that he said that Donald Trump was practically and morally responsible for January 6. So he, of course, was asked about, well, are you meeting? Are you meeting with Trump now? You guys haven't spoken for two years. He hasn't been in Washington two years. You're going

to meet with him now? And of course, he said, he's earned, this is Mitch McConnell, he's earned the nomination by the voters all across the country. And of course, I'll be meeting with him tomorrow. John Cornyn, who I think is the likely successor to McConnell, his quote, division only helps our opposition. So unity is really important. And I think President Trump understands that. While Bill Cassidy, who voted for conviction, he says the polls say he's going to be our next president. So you got to work with the guy. I mean, the polls say it. Reasonable. The polls all it reasonable the polls all rational so it must be true so this is a perfect example of why trump was able to take over the republican party

and it's because of how weak these guys are right so trump i mean one of his superpowers is that he can smell weakness and you think of a guy like m McConnell's like, oh, the powerful leader in the Senate and stuff. But that's not right. That's not the truth. When push comes to shove, Mitch McConnell is not willing to hold a grudge. And Donald Trump is. It reminds me of Kaiser Soze in The Usual Suspect.

I don't know if you remember, but you know, so Kaiser Soze shows- I can't remember something I didn't know, JBL. So he, you know, his wife and children are kidnapped by his enemies. And so what he does is he shows up

and he shoots his own wife and children in front of them to show them how. And this is what Donald Trump has done to the Republican Party. This is a movie, right? This is a movie. It's a great movie.

Okay. I'm making sure this isn't like a historical example. Although it probably is. But this is what Trump has done with the Republican Party, right? So he has said, you know, implicit in everything he does is, if you don't give me what I want, I'll kill the Republican Party. This is sort of Maggie Heidman's theory of the case. I should read her con man book, but when she explains it, she says, my observation with Trump over his lifetime in public life is that he approaches everything as a challenge of power dynamics. Yeah.

So these senators are not willing to hold a grudge against Trump because they know that he will hold a grudge against them. And so they fold. And this is, I mean, that's just what weakness is, right? We often think, I said this to Sarah this week, I think, like, what happened to spite? Does nobody feel spite anymore? Because you used to think that, you know. They didn't stuff it down. Well, I can tell you who is spiteful. Troy Neals, am I saying his last name right? He's the. Congressman on the House side. I forget what state he represents.

But he was talking in this instance of Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan did an interview two days ago with Neil Cavuto, 4 p.m. hour, not primetime, notably, and essentially gave his spiel that he often gives that Trump is unfit for president. But I really don't like how old Biden is or his policies. And when kind of pressed on it, like Paul Ryan will say Trump is an authoritarian. He doesn't stand by the Constitution. But I, you know, I could never vote for Biden. What are we going to do? And Neal's blasted him after blasted him. It was essentially like, get out of the party. We

don't want you. That guy knows spite. Called him garbage. Yeah. But that's because, again, he understands that Paul Ryan has no power over him. It is amazing to me. This is not how it used to work. I think it used to be that the people would hold on to spite. And these guys were all barons of their own fiefdoms. And they had nothing to fear from anybody. And they could just do whatever they wanted, basically. And that's why they had to be cajoled, right?

If you were, you know, party to party, you had to cajole the guys in your party to get them to go along by giving them goodies. And, well, we'll build a military base in your district if you'll give me this vote on the telecom bill or something. And now it's, the Republican Party is basically an authoritarian state where the idea is you have to go along with

Trump or Trump will come and end your career. And it doesn't always work, but it works enough of the time that it is a plausible deterrent. And none of these guys are willing to go back at Trump and say, if you come after me, I'll come after you. And this is one of those asymmetries. I've spent a lot of last year talking about asymmetries in politics. So Trump in just pure game theory, Trump's approach to life is called tit for tat, which is, you know, if you're nice to him, he'll be nice to you. Basically. Is that a technical term? It is actually, believe it or not. In game theory economics, they call that game tit for tat. And with Trump, it's a variation called tit for tat with some forgiveness. This is, again, only people who have taken economics on this are like smiling and laughing.

Transactional forgiveness. Once you come on my side, all good. But it has to be like forgiveness that is unpredictable. So like Mitch McConnell is not going to be forgiven, even though he has come back to Trump's side. But Marco Rubio has been and J.D. Vance have been. So that's, again, this is all just econometrics. But the other Republicans aren't willing to do that, right? The other Republicans aren't willing to play tit for tat with Trump. They just buckle under because they're so weak. Right. And Trump had their number. It is amazing to me how correctly Trump had their number. And, you know, I mean, the things that have been said to Mitch McConnell by Trump, things that were said about Mitch McConnell's wife. And Mitch McConnell is done.

He's leaving the Senate. He's an old man. He has nothing left to play for. And yet he wants to have Trump win so that the tax cut can be extended in 2025. That's it. It is so important to extend the tax cut for a bunch of people who are, he won't be, I'm sorry. I mean, you know, I wish him a long life, but Mitch McConnell is unlikely to be around for all that much longer on this mortal coil. And it is so important to him that the tax cut remains in place, that he's willing to swallow all of this and be humiliated. And what an absolute wuss. Yeah, let me pick your brain on

this. On the Paul Ryan question. So Paul Ryan is sidelined to daytime hours of saying a little bit about Trump. Fine. Doesn't he sort of have an obligation when you're talking about these power dynamics to bring up why he's on Fox News Dayside and not Speaker of the House anymore? Isn't that an important part of this story? And it's not because, oh, I got sick of it. It's because, Paul Ryan, there is no place for you in Donald Trump's Republican Party because you refuse to act as his political and legal shield for all his wrongdoing.

That's really what it gets down to. Paul Ryan got his tax cuts passed and then essentially was out of there. Like that was the breaking point. And now bring it back to Trump going back on Capitol Hill. He's going to be meeting with Mike Johnson, obviously, later today. There was reporting this morning. Who was one of the first people that Donald Trump called after he was convicted in New York? Mike Johnson. Speaker Mike Johnson. Yep.

Why would that be, JBL? Why would that be the first phone call? What possibly could they have to talk about besides their legislative tax agenda to secure tax cuts for another 10 years? Any ideas? Where do you think Melania was on the list of people Trump called following his conviction? Do you think she was number two? Do you think she was number five? I don't know. I mean, who could say? I'm sure she was right up there. I don't want to bring Melania into it. I hope she's shopping. I hope she's doing whatever she wants. I'm just saying

the idea that he gets convicted of 34 felonies and what he does first is reaches out to the Speaker of the House. The interesting point is that Speaker Mike Johnson supported him in New York at the trial. Yeah. When Melania did it. In many ways, he was Trump's work wife. You've got

to make it weird? I don't think it's weird at all. There are some prison terms I could have used, but I didn't do that because of your delicate ears. I don't even know what prison terms would be for that. I don't want to know. You've got me all distracted now. But here's my point, though. I mean, so today's meeting is supposed to be forward-looking.

It's a forward looking they're getting the you know john corden's like we had to get our agenda sorted out and they're gonna get unified unified with their you know to figure out all the things they're gonna do and there is no agenda there is no agenda the agenda is they're talking about what he's gonna do in a trump second term that's all up and up correct? The agenda is he just has to let us extend the tax cuts and then he can go off on his jihads against, you know, Democratic prosecutors and whatever. And he can do whatever he wants

with the Department of Justice. So long as we get the tax cuts. I mean, this is almost like a parody of Republican thought patterns. Well, let's say I just want to sort out what we're making fun of and what we're actually talking about for the listeners. So number one, I think the cover story is the story they want to be in the newspapers is that they're talking about tax cuts. Yes. Are they really talking about just tax cuts? Absolutely not. Mike Johnson is trying

to figure out ways that they can be a legal shield for Trump, not in a Trump 2.0 situation, this summer, right now. This is why they're holding Merrick Garland in contempt. It's why they're going on and on with these. So what was the news yesterday? So over the last year, hasn't it been that Comer and Jim Jordan were all going to help Speaker Johnson do all these investigations into the Biden crime family? And they came up with nothing. They dropped the impeachment against Biden because they have nothing. So the news in response to the Hunter Biden conviction is that we need more investigations of Hunter Biden. Yeah. And that's what we're going to be doing. This is the retribution agenda. That's the policy. It is crazy to me.

And it's crazy. One of the lines, I forget who it was. It might have been Cornyn. It might have been Barrasso. Interviewed about the meetings today with Trump and the agenda. They said something to the equivalent of like, yeah, I mean, that's what we're supposed to do. But, you know, who knows what this guy is going to do one minute to the next.

Which is true and awful. It is true. But and you're going to give him the nuclear codes again after you saw what happened last time when I'm sorry to say this, but one million Americans died from COVID. One million. And it's not like we haven't seen what happens when you have an erratic guy who doesn't know what he's going to do from one moment to the next, be president. And all of the downsides are theoretical. Like we just did it. It was five minutes ago. Does nobody, does nobody remember? And for these businesses, and we'll get to the business round table in a

minute, I'm sure who are lining up to support Trump because of tax cuts. I would ask them, because, you know, everything is about bottom line and self-interest, did you gain more from the Trump tax cuts than you lost from COVID? Because the government's handling of COVID costs businesses a lot of fucking money. This idea that it's all free, that, you know, there are no financial downsides to Trump. Well, we'll see what the markets look like if democracy starts teetering and confidence in the dollar goes down. And it's just the craziest, dumbest, most short-sighted thing I can see. And it is like businesses are behaving in the caricature way that commies would say they would behave. You go over to Jacobin, and the guys at Jacobin Magazine would be like,

oh, of course, these green-eye-shade capitalists, all they care about is an extra dollar. And it turns out, yeah. It's all a setup, man. Yeah. If they get their tax cuts, they're fine with autocracy. So let's talk about the Business Roundtable meeting. Larry Kudlow is going to be hosting the discussion.

I'm sure that will be full of tough interrogation of Trump's first term and promises for second term, correct? Yeah. I mean, Larry, that guy's just a straight shooter all the way. Yes. But in holding this meeting, I should note that they did invite President Biden. And President Biden is busy with the g7 kind of doing presidential type he's out presidenting he's out presidenting so there's going to be a number of ceos from all the places you would know assembling here um there's been some reporting they're trying to

figure out like who's going and who's not that's nice i guess we could have a list of who's actually showing up to meet with trump but the idea that this event is being held and they are hosting him and they are inviting Larry Kudlow to ask the questions of him. And it's all under this pretense of providing an opportunity for Trump to come back to Washington and promote this idea that they have some kind of up and up economic agenda that the GOP and business leaders can all get on board with. Like, this is part of the scheme. And so, like, it doesn't matter who attends and who doesn't.

They're part of this. I don't want to say narrative, but they're putting on the show. They're putting on the show for sure. Literally, they're showing up and they're help feeding. Oh, he's good for business. And again, I if Biden had governed like Jimmy Carter. But is he good for business? And this is something, let me just stop here, because this is something that we've sort of struggled with largely in our work.

And how to explain in real concrete tangential ways, how do we explain to these types of peoples that authoritarianism is bad for business? That doesn't seem like rocket science to me. And I think it's hard to explain because we assume it like, duh, why would businesses want to be under an authoritarian regime? You can't predict what prices will be. It'll be all based on retribution. You can be singled out. You can't depend on secure and stable economic policy. But it's like, actually, when they're confronted with it, the instinct isn't to think about any of that. It's like, okay, well, how do I secure my space?

How do I get the bag? How do I get my tax cuts? How do I make sure I'm in good with the leader? And so it leads to this kind of preemptive acquiescence where it's like, okay, well, let's just invite him. And we'll have the nice people ask the questions. And we don't got to get in too deep, but we'll put on the show. Yeah.

Here we go. I mean, you put your finger on it. It's a matter of them thinking, sure, authoritarianism is bad for business in general, but it's great for the businesses who have the favor of the leader, right? If the strongman favors you, then it's great for business.

You can get some railroads. You can get some railroads. Yeah, you can get anything you want, right? Because the rule of law no longer applies. You know, the delusion is that every one of them thinks, well, I'll be the one he loves and he'll let me do whatever I want to my competitors. Is that capitalism? Tell me, is that capitalism? But here's the thing. No capitalist really wants capitalism, right? Like they don't want a free market. Everybody's a rent seeker.

Again, in economic terms, they do the people want free markets is crazy. But I'm just getting all kinds of lessons here today. This is great. Who needs college? You can listen to the Bulwark podcast. Oh, just like PragerU. They all rent seek, right?

Everybody wants the playing field tilted towards them. And what drives me crazy is, as I was saying, this hasn't been Jimmy Carter's second term. It's not like Biden has been hostile to business. We have the stock market at record highs. We have corporate profits at record highs. This has been an extraordinarily good four years for business. And in fact, a better four years for business. And in fact, a better four years for business than the Trump years were because the Trump years had the pandemic for the entire final year, right? Let me just run this by you. Given that these are, you can make the argument, these are already Biden's economic policies. Why doesn't he just say, sure, things are fine the way they are.

I plan on keeping them that way. You don't got to suck up to this nut job. I don't know. How about that? I have wondered if Biden shouldn't signal that he's going to extend the tax cuts. Now, there may be really good policy reasons not to. Oh, I'm sure it would cause some problems on the left, but this is the status quo now. Right. As I said, there may be good policy reasons not to. There may be good policy reasons to extend parts of them, but cut back the corporate

tax. That's a different course. Right. That's a different podcast. But if Biden was going to be like purely transactional about this, you just say, you know, this is the environment we have and I plan to keep this environment going forward. And then if you're a business leader, then what what impetus in the world would there be for you? But here's again, asymmetry. If you lead a business in America and either Joe Biden or Donald Trump is going to be president, if you support Joe Biden and Trump winds up as president, he will hurt you. If you support Donald Trump and Joe Biden is president, there are no consequences. The Biden administration is not coming after you. Elon Musk isn't losing all of his tax breaks because he spends all of his time talking about how terrible joe biden is and how great donald trump is because joe biden doesn't do all of the authoritarian stuff and by nature of him not doing the authoritarian stuff which again is good i'm not saying that he should fight fire with fire i'm saying that it's it's good then it becomes a free pass to just the way to hedge your bets is to just be like, yeah, you know, let's get right

with Trump just in case he wins. And if he doesn't win, it's fine. It's fine. The Biden, the Democrats aren't going to like try to put us out of business or regulate us into oblivion. They're normal people who will continue governing and letting the business world go along. But if we sign with Biden now, or we don't support Trump and Trump does win, then we could wind up with some complications. Well, while I still have you, because listeners, we are splitting the hour. I don't have JVL for the whole hour today. You're going to get my Protect Democracy colleague for the back half the hour. But I had to ask you, JVL, about what you've been writing in your newsletter about a successful business,

an amazingly successful business in the media industry known as the Epoch Times and also True Social, apparently. I mean, these are incredible stories. So I was so glad that you wrote about that because I haven't closely tracked it, but I have noticed it was this publication. Sometimes you'd get shoved in your hand if you were walking around the streets of dc yes and then suddenly it's in your feed all the time i somehow i get emails about it constantly i can't unsubscribe to it it's about impossible i have no

idea why epoch times keeps showing up in my inbox but it turns out it might be a criminal enterprise allegedly allegedly the cfo has been arrested for doing some light money laundering to the tune of 67 million dollars i think i think it was 67 million dollars it seems like a lot of money uh the epoch times had a division now you you know this having worked in media. When you're at a media publication, they have, like, there's the breaking news division. And then there's the customer relations division. And then there's the investigative reporting division. The Epoch Times had the make money online division.

Sounds like not a bad idea. Which sounds totally, that does not sound like a, you like a multi-level marketing scam or anything like that. And what it was, is it was a division of people who were going into the dark web to purchase ill-gotten monies. So monies that have been gotten through fraudulent means for pennies on the dollar. So somebody has $100 of money they've stolen. been gotten through fraudulent means for like you know pennies on the dollar so somebody somebody has a hundred dollars of money they've stolen that money needs to be laundered it can't be spent and so they sell it to the epoch times for like 76 cents for each dollar and then the epoch times people were going and laundering that money through by creating a series of fake bank accounts and routing things around and this was all happening at a time when their their total revenue went from like four million

dollars a year to like 150 million dollars a year over the course of like four years or something like that media success i mean just i like how you had a line that like it clicked it into my head it was a fully operational flywheel. The Epoch Times took in money. It paid Fox to run advertisements to attract more money. Grifter activists then paid Epoch Times to get access to their readers in order to hit them up for cash, too. So we. Yeah.

And the craziest thing about this is the China stuff. So the Epoch Times is founded by Falun Gong. So what made people do this with the obvious Chinese propaganda outlet? Yeah. Well, this is what's funny, though, right? So the Epoch Times is against the Chinese communist regime. Yes. Donald Trump is the most pro-Chinese communist regime president we've ever had.

He expressly told Xi Jinping thatping that you know like do whatever you need to do with the uyghurs in the camps whatever you know yeah he alibi g on on covid when covid was happening and yet the epoch times decided that it was going to throw its lot in with trump which doesn't make any sense but it fits fits, right? The Chinese national, the rich guy whose yacht Bannon was indicted on. Another amazing moment in the Trump semantic history. Yeah. He himself has also been indicted for fraud. And what he was doing was he was going out and basically shaking down chinese expatriates here in america who who fled china and succeeded over here and really hate the chinese regime and he was like shaking them down oh give me this money and i'm gonna set up this amazing voice of america style thing

to we're gonna really hammer g don't worry about it and he was raising again millions of dollars from these people he was just buying yachts with it and stuff. It's the sincerest form of Trumpism. It profits by the stupidity of its marks, or in this case, with the genuine desire to see change in China. It takes you know, it takes these people who just aren't sophisticated enough to understand that the people they're supporting are actually working in the opposite direction. Another point about the demonstration of Trumpism

in the media money market, you included the numbers for Truth Social recently, which are just worth reiterating. Let me make sure I have this right. Gross revenues of $800,000, losses of $327 million? Gross revenues mean the total money you took in. It's not your profit. It's just all of the money your business took in from various sources.

I can't tell you how small $800,000 is. There are thousands of podcasters in America who make more than $800,000 a year from their podcasts. And these are people who are just like sitting in their basements. They do not have a publicly traded company. Like on Substack, there are people making multiples of this who are just people who write. They sit at their computer in their office and write Substacks. The people who post on True Social, the influencers on True Social, take in more than that, for sure.

Yeah. Charlie, what's-his-face, all those guys. Ben Shapiro, they would laugh at this. What in the world is Trump spending $320 million on with that thing? And that's, I mean, I don't want to allege fraud because that would be wrong. I don't have any proof. But when you look at that platform and say, where do you think the money's going? Like just as a, you know, looking down the line items, how much are they paying for servers?

How much are they paying their dev team? Right. And you're like, how could you spend this much money and it looked that bad it's a little brewster's millions i think the i mean the only way to spend that money is if it's just a wealth transfer and yet the company is worth eight billion dollars on the you know in its total market cap and trump's lockup so he has a lockup in which he can't sell his shares yeah for like six months or something it I think it's until September. I think in September he can sell. Okay. It'll be interesting to see what happens because he's not a real billionaire. So what does that mean? He has to

keep the valuation as high as he can until he can get out. He's got to keep the valuation as high as he can until he gets out. But then when he gets out, he's got to do it under the cover of night. So he's got to figure out a way to sell shares a little bit at a time and to have it not be traced back that it's his shares that are floating on the market. Because if he dumped all the shares at once, that would drive the prices down to nothing. And so he's got to slowly extract value without spooking all the marks who are out there holding their shares because they think that he's taken them to the moon. Well, one last thing on the Trump money marketing genius that we are privileged

enough to stand witness to his latest fundraising email that went out yesterday. Did you, if you saw it, the headline was haul out the guillotine. That was the headline of it and the thing backing it up bastille day is that what he was celebrating bastille day it was actually about how the evil liberals were coming after him and remember that one time that g-list celeb kathy griffin

did a beheading video of me that was so so bad. They're coming after me. They'll come after you. Haul out the guillotine. Do you remember the gallows? Unity. I think they'll get all unified at that meeting today about these kind of marketing appeals. Do you remember the actual gallows that the people waving the Trump flags

set up outside of the Capitol before they went into the Capitol looking for Mike Pence and shouting, hang Mike Pence. Yeah, there's no chance people like that would misinterpret his message that he was talking about Kathy Griffith, right? No chance. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess that's okay. That's free expression. And we should all just like, yeah, cool. But Kathy Griffith, yeah. I mean, God knows I'm still upset about that. Yeah, they're the same. Comedian. Amanda, before you let me go. Please let me go.

No, no. Just give me a feelings check. Tell me, where are you on what's happening five months from now? Give me odds. If you were setting odds. Oh, I hate the odds game. I mean, if you gave me truth serum and gun to my head, I feel 80% chance Biden will probably win pending no major altering events. I look at the evidence from the previous elections. I look at the Republicans that have's there's Republican and I know it's not enough and I complain about it and I push them to do more all the time but people are refusing to meet with him like people are actually not on board with this they may signal it they may rig a lot of it

but I think as the choice becomes more and more clear the election trend will continue in the way it has since 2018 that's what I feel those the vibes. That's where the evidence leads me. But, you know, this is all a work in progress. And I, 20% is not good. I don't care if it was 1% chance. Like, okay, if there was a 1% chance of winning the lottery, wouldn't you? I would be running to buy tickets.

And I hate the lottery, hate gambling. But if there was a 1% chance I would win, I would play it all the time. Yeah. 1% is too high for this guy to come back one percent you know makes me devote all my time all my energy focusing on this and so my actions don't change regardless of how good i feel because the stakes are that high you'd never get on a plane that somebody told you had a one percent chance of crashing that's the dark view. I said lotto. You said plane crash.

Okay. I would just say this because I don't want you to walk out of here feeling good. That's nice of you. Monmouth poll from this week. Do you approve or disapprove of the job Joe Biden is doing as president? 38% approve, 58% disapprove. So negative 20. All right. JBL, everybody. No, no, looking back no no no no no no you're not

getting off that easy it gets worse looking back do you approve or disapprove of the job donald trump did when he was president do you want to guess no 47 50% disapprove. Negative three. Looking back on how things were when he left, with everybody locked in their houses and people dying every day by the thousands and unemployment at 9% and the stock market in the toilet and the attempted coup, looking back on all that,

people say, you know, actually, yeah, halfsies. It's really 50-50 with Trump. It wasn't so bad. We're resilient people. People say, you know, actually, yeah, have these have. It's really 50 50 with Trump. It wasn't so bad. We're resilient people. Amazing. Amazing.

Good to see you, Amanda. Always good catching up. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye. all right and now we are back for the second half of the show and to get rid of that jvl darkness that he tried to bring into my mood, I brought in my good friend from Protect Democracy, Ben Raidersdorf, who is the editor of our newsletter, If You Can Keep It. Ben, what is going on? Hey, Amanda, it is so good to see you. Wow, what a treat to be on the pod. Yeah, so this is great. So those of you who may be new to Protect

Democracy, I wanted you to get to know Ben because every week he puts out a newsletter talking about the work that we do to show up our institutions, have explainers about things that are in the news. And he has such a good eye for what people need to know. So I just wanted you to come on and talk a little bit about why you started doing this newsletter and what you're trying to accomplish with it. In addition to asking all of these great bulwark people to subscribe. Amazing. Well, it's such a good place to start. So I, I came to this work, you know, unlike Amanda, I'm not, I'm not really a political animal. I don't, I don't have a political background. I used to work in foreign policy.

And I used to work back when we thought of, you know, here in the US, we thought of democratic backsliding as an other country's problem. Obviously, that didn't last. But it's something that we see and something that I, you know, I feel like I saw all around the world. But really, we know this to be true, you know, compared to political scientists, they'll all tell you the same thing. And that countries that survive moments of democratic crisis and backsliding

of an authoritarian threat, one of the key things that distinguishes all of them is that you have a big cross ideological coalition, you know, sort of multi sectoral, right? So people who disagree with each other politically, but also different types of people, you know, religious groups, civil society groups, business leaders, journalists, right? If all of those groups come together and form, you know, what we think of as a cross ideological pro-democracy coalition, then those democracies tend to survive, right? So places like Poland or Czech Republic. This is something that I think in our circles, we use the phrase pro-democracy coalition a lot. What does that actually mean? Because I ask people this all the time. I get different answers and it's kind of vague. And I think it's

really important that we do define it because, you know, what are the things that hold us together? Like what makes this thing work? And I'll just bring this other point into this. Sarah Longwell, who of course is a publisher of the Bullwork, she often talks about the biggest coalition in America right now is the anti-Trump coalition. Yeah. My personal view is that is true, yes. But in order for the larger project to be successful, and by that larger project, I mean America, not just going from election to election, that anti-Trump faction, which has turned up in election after election, needs to be translated into something affirmative, right, that keeps us together. I think that's the quote unquote pro-democracy coalition, but I couldn't give you an easy answer for what that is, who gets to be in

it, and why. Yeah, I think of in short, the pro-democracy coalition is a group of people that come together agreeing to disagree. By that, I mean, in a democracy, we all have different viewpoints, policy preferences, values, right? You know, you and I might disagree on tax policy or social issues or other things. And that's okay. That's healthy, right? If we all agreed on everything, we wouldn't need democracy in the first place. So the pro-democracy coalition, I think of that as, you know, it's the group of us who see that as important, right? Who see our differences of policy or values as part of what we're, you know, we're all doing this democracy thing for, and we want to come together to defend it. We want to

defend our right to disagree peacefully, fairly through fair processes like elections or through representative government. And, you know, we know that sometimes we're going to win and sometimes we're going to lose, but the system, the institutions that allow us to disagree and work through those differences is more important than getting what we want. I think that's like, you know, if there's another side to this, that's what we're sort of, we're losing for a lot of voters as they're starting to see, you know, mine, what I want to see my values, my priorities. It's a win or die kind of mindset. And so if there's an opposite to a pro-democracy coalition, it's whatever, whatever group of people are trying to get what they want out of politics at any cost, even if it means burning our system down. So when talking about how keeping the right to disagree is important to democracy, I know this

is a subject that we touch on a lot in the newsletter in our work, and sort of how do we distinguish between regular political disagreements and what is actually a threat to democracy, right? Because the democracy as an institution protects our right to disagree. And so we've talked about that a lot with the authoritarian playbook and that these are the certain threats to democracy when, you know, we no longer have rule of law, people don't respect election outcomes, because those are the things that protect the rights to disagree. And I know you cover that kind of stuff all the time. But it's interesting, because it is important to continually explain that through the frame of public events.

Yeah, I think that's right. And something else I think that makes authoritarianism, at least in the 21st century, kind of hard to deal with is that modern autocrats have gotten really good at using the sort of language of democracy or the institutions of democracy as a smokescreen, right? So one example, if you look at Vladimir Putin, he still holds elections, right? They're not real, they're not free, they're not fair, there's no chance anybody else is going to win, but he still goes through the motions. And we see that in more subtle, sort of less direct ways here in the US where it can be genuinely hard to distinguish what is a good faith application pursued fairly independently, apolitically by prosecutors who've been tasked by our system to make those decisions independently. That can be hard to distinguish that from something like, you know, a deliberately weaponized use of the Department

of Justice to go after your enemies, right? And autocrats, Trump included, are really good at sort of using the language to confuse to sort of throw up chaff throw up smoke screens so we unfortunately do live in a time where people have to they have to be able to understand this stuff they have to to know how something like department of justice independence works right what the guardrails are in place with the sort of wonky legalese like what this all means because all, you know, to be an informed citizen in our democracy today, we have to be able to separate out the sort of good faith applications of the rule of law from its sort of deliberate abuses and weaponization. Does that make sense? I think it makes perfect sense. But I

think talking more about what you're covering in the news, like what is on your eye this week?, it's my interpretation now with the threatening more investigations into Hunter Biden after he has already been convicted in court, going after Merrick Garland for contempt, continuing these threats without ever producing any real evidence over the past year. And so I know that's something you are going to be keeping an eye on, but what else is coming down the pike? Like, what are these other examples of instances of authoritarian threats that present themselves that you're explaining? Just this week, I think we have a really good example of we dive this week into some of the more administrative sort of bureaucratic tactics that Trump and his supporters are proposing that they want to use to advance their agenda.

So things like Schedule F, which folks have probably heard of, I'm curious how many of us could actually define what it means, what it basically is. I think our listeners are familiar, but in your explanation, tell me why is Schedule F an authoritarian threat? Because even when I read this, I was a little skeptical, like, okay, this is reclassification of government workers, we have a lot already. So what? Of course, I changed my mind once I delved into a little skeptical, like, okay, this is reclassification of government workers. We have a lot already. So what? Of course, I changed my mind once I delved into a little bit more, but I want you to explain why it is actually authoritarian and not just, you know, we're shrinking the size

of government and there's too much waste, fraud, and abuse. Totally. And then, you know, it's, again, it's framed in a way that sounds perfectly legitimate, perfectly defensible. What this is, is a civil service purge. Essentially, every democracy around the world, every certainly every modern, healthy one has something called a civil service. And the idea is for the sort of day to day functions of government, right, that processing

of your taxes or mailing your social security checks or all those sort of things that those should be monitoring the weather, right? Or, you know, keeping the air travel safe, right? Or, you know, exactly, exactly. Is that a problem in California where you are? We've got a little bit of that, a little bit of that. But so all these things, these sort of, you know, bureaucratic tasks, and I know bureaucratic is often seen as an insult, but but the reality is we're a big, complicated country, it takes a lot to run this country. No matter how big or small you think government is, it does take sort of serious professionals who are going to work every day to operate it. And every modern democracy around the world has decided that those tasks, there

shouldn't be political cronies, right? We want experts who are hired on the merits because they're the best at fighting wildfires or the best at, you know, keeping air traffic control safe. And that's worked really well, right? It's worked so well that we now we generally don't see it. None of us really think about okay, is your are my tomatoes kind of poisonous, because we trust that the FDA, you know, serious scientists there are keeping our food supply safe. The FDA is not a place you want to be politicized with a bunch of people are screened for political loyalty, not actual expertise. I mean, not only your food, but I, number one, we want our drugs to be safe. Number one, number two, it's a huge part of the economy. I mean, we are the gold standard when it comes to pharmaceuticals for good. You know,

we can have a whole discussion about pharmaceuticals and how those have flooded the streets. That said, if we can't trust the standards that they were safe and healthy for some level, that is going to have just tremendous trickle down effects. That's just, you know, one instance that has really freaked me out as I've delved in more to this. Totally. And, you know, I think about it as, you know, if you're a senior relying on your social security check, arriving on time, do you want it to be somebody who is there because it's their career, it's their job, this is what they do? Or do you want it somebody who got that job as part of political spoils? And that's how it used to be. You know, if you look back in the 1800s, that's how federal government positions were appointed. You were a party machine apparatchik for a leader, and then you'd get sort of a government large-ass job. We don't want to go back to that. That was

really bad. And that's what Schedule F essentially proposes. But the key thing is the reason why Trump and his supporters are pursuing this is they want to use that as a tool to go after their enemies, right? If you fill the bureaucracy with political loyalists, then when Trump says, you know what, those Californians, they voted against me, I think we should just go ahead and let the wildfires burn, right? That's much easier for him to do if it's cronies in those positions, not professional wildfire scientists. It's worth spending another second on that point because a lot of the coverage about Schedule F takes aside, I don't want to say takes aside, but views it from the perspective of the civil servant that gets fired, which is bad, right? It sucks to be terminated from your job for no reason

because you don't want to go along with these loyalty tests or for, you know, Donald Trump says, I want bleach in my vaccines, put it in there. And they say, no, that's a totally hypothetical example. But it's the other side of it is who comes in after that. And this is a backdoor way to balloon political appointees of which another surprising stat I didn't realize. So a lot of countries have a political appointees, like that's a natural thing. The executive comes in, he gets to pick his people. But we as a percentage have way more than other stable democracies.

I mean, 4,000 political appointees is a lot. Way more. And I certainly like, you should be able to pick your people, but I didn't realize to what degree that dictates all across the federal agencies

and how much they burrow in. And like, that is a problem. Maybe we should be shrinking back the political appointees and not making more people political appointees. Maybe that's where we should go. Right. And you know, I don't think anybody disagrees that the decision making positions should be reflecting the priorities of the administration. Right. But that's not what these guys are proposing. Well, Ben, I've had to ask you this, because in the space, you know, I've been at Protect Democracy about a year. I actually think I'm coming up on my one year anniversary.

You've been here longer. And people always ask me, working in this space, isn't it tough? Like, I know you're editing the newsletter going through, like, you know, the Trump trials and what will it mean for the rule of law? And are we tipping on the edge of autocracy? And if Trump wins, what does that mean for the second term? Like this is heavy stuff, but somehow you are like a ray of California sunshine. You are always so enthusiastic and ready to go.

How? Yeah, I got three things. One, I do think it really helps that I don't live in DC. You know, protect democracy. We're all across the country. We're in like 26 States. And just that alone, I think makes us a much more optimistic crowd because we're out, you know, and we see all the good things about this country, not just the, the rot in our politics right now. Number two, I get to work with amazing people, you know, people like Amanda, and we are seeing this whole idea of a cross ideological pro-democracy coalition. It's happening at Protect Democracy, right? Amanda and

I, we probably disagree on like 90% of things that the Congress would have voted on in the before times, right? And Amanda is so amazing to work with. And there's so many people like that. And that's really inspiring that that can happen. But the third one, and this is the one that I, you know, I'm always encouraging people who work in our space to go find some aspect of our democracy that is not this. So for me, I live in California, and you know, our big problem is housing. It's a thing that's honestly increasingly happening elsewhere across the country, too. You know, I like to say California doesn't have different problems. We just get them first. So I grew up in the Midwest, worked on the East Coast. California is just always kind of an afterthought. From my perspective, it's probably because I came up through Republican politics and it's like natural to write California off as, okay,

they're a bunch of liberals. Nobody really has to pay attention to them. But now I've been thinking about it more. It's like, well, Texas has been able to establish itself as such a big national presence because it's a big state with a lot of people. Why doesn't California get the love? I mean, you know, again, we're cutting edge in good ways and bad, right? We're always sort of our own creature. But the thing that really gives me hope, you know, so I, on nights and weekends, the thing that I'm pretty involved in is zoning reform and housing reform. Wait, wait, wait. Say that again. On nights and weekends, I get involved with zoning reform and housing reform.

Is this not what everybody else does outside of their policy day job? This is why Ben is so great to work with. But the point is what's happening here in California, and we're actually seeing this across the country, is that when a problem like a housing crisis, we've underbuilt homes by like 4 million homes in this country. Some astronomical number, which is why everybody's rents have gone up, which is why nobody can afford a house anymore. Honestly, wherever you live, even if you don't live in California. But what's happening, at least here, is there is this sort of wacky, cross-ideological, very diverse coalitions coming together to sort of seriously solve the problem. And I live in Sacramento, where the city just implemented a massive new zoning reform. We totally got rid of single-family zoning. We've done all these things to make new multifamily

housing much more affordable, much more accessible. And the key is when you get involved in something like that, and you go down to your city hall and you give your public comment, you meet your city council member, at least on the micro level, our democracy still totally works, right? And when you see the process going through what it's supposed to be, and actually helping make people's lives better, it's a reminder that, you know, this is what we can expect from our democracy writ large, right, from Washington. And I believe we can make that happen together. All right. Well, listeners, that is your cue to move to California where town hall meetings are actually fun and nice. The weather is really nice. Ben, I am so lucky to work with you. Listeners, Tim Miller will be back on Monday.

There will not be a show tomorrow, but that does not mean he's not working because I am sure that he is crawling the comments on YouTube, Substack, and all the places we're available. Please talk to him. Please leave him nice notes and tell him how much you want him back immediately on Monday.

And we will all be here for him. Ben, thank you very much for joining us. Amanda, such a treat to see you. Go sign up for our newsletter, if you can keep it.org. All right, guys, you heard the man. Talk to you later. California, just had a party In the city of Berlin In the city of good old once In the city, city of Compton We keep it rockin', we keep it rockin' Now let me welcome everybody to the wild, wild west

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