The Bulwark Podcast - Karen Tumulty: The World's Biggest Victim

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

As Trump prepares to clean up in the Iowa caucuses, his campaign narrative has gone full 'Trump: The Victim.' Expect more court appearances and more temper tantrums. Meanwhile, Haley and DeSantis are acting like there's a contest. Karen Tumulty joins Charlie Sykes from frigid Iowa for the weekend pod.

This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask? BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self so you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com.

Welcome to the Bold Work Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. I am in Wisconsin, and our guest today, Karen Tumulty from The Washington Post, is in Iowa. First of all, good morning, Karen. Good morning. So I know we were supposed to be talking about politics, but could we talk about the weather? Because the weather seems to be kind of a factor. I don't know about you, but we're in the middle of a blizzard here, maybe 9 to 12 inches.

So I'm sorry I didn't get dressed up, but my life is going to be snowblowing for the next, I don't know, 48 hours. So what is happening in Iowa right now? I mean, what are we looking at here? Polar vortex in the middle of the Iowa caucus? Exactly. I mean, at this point, weather and politics are inseparable in Iowa. I am looking out the window of my hotel room in downtown Des Moines, where the snow is coming down at one inch an hour and there may be more of it over the weekend. Nikki Haley has already canceled all of her events today and is going to do teletown halls. Ron DeSantis, I think we're waiting for a call in a bit on whether he's going to cancel, But this is life-threatening, Charlie. I do see here that the National Weather Service is predicting life-threatening cold with wind

chills as low as minus 45 degrees early next week during the Iowa caucuses. So this becomes relevant. Generally, when we have a blizzard of this sort, you know what we call that in Wisconsin? January. Friday. Yeah, this does seem to be somewhat worse than usual. Let's deal with some cosmic questions before we get into the horse race stuff. Why every four years do we talk ourselves into thinking that Iowa is really, really important, other than the fact that it goes first? I mean, I guess the reason I'm asking this is every four years, we do a lot of heavy breathing.

We spend so much time talking about the caucus stories, polling and everything. And then every four years, we find out that actually Iowa is not that important. Four years ago, it was a complete fiasco. So give me some sense about the obsession with Iowa. The Democrats aren't even doing Iowa this year. I mean, they said, screw that after what happened last year. So why do we think that Iowa is so important? Well, it is first. I mean, you know, and it's the first time you have something besides a pollster telling you how the race is going. And I do think just the very unique nature of the caucuses and the history of them is, you know, it's wonderful. It's so,

you know, I think that's what draws us back over and over and over again. Is it? It is. Well, I'm telling you, it's not at the moment. It's not the weather. Yeah. And the other thing I think that is important is it's the first test of organization that you see out of any of these campaigns. But as a predictor of how the race is going to end up, it's not good, not only at not predicting the next president, but, you know, Barack Obama being a big exception, but it's not even good at predicting who the nominee is going to be. Yeah, I guess that's one of the reasons why I've always been a little bit of a skeptic.

And we're going to see what's going to happen. We're going to get to this a little bit later, what the expectations are for next week and how that plays out going forward, the Nikki surge and all of that. But before we do that, I want to talk about something that I wrote about in my newsletter this morning. And I'm trying to pull back the lens just a little bit. I find it really amazing. In the last week, two things have happened. Donald Trump has ranted and raved almost on a daily basis, and virtually every day he tops himself on outrageousness, whether he's talking about

how he would do a better job negotiating the Civil War than Abraham Lincoln, his theory about magnets in water, dubbing the rioters who attacked the Capitol and beat up police officers as hostages, going to the courtroom in New York and staging that weird, bizarre temper tantrum. His lawyers in court, and then he has endorsed this as well, essentially saying that the president should be immune from criminal prosecution, even if he were to the assassination of political foes, if he wasn't convicted in an impeachment. So we have all of these reminders of who and what Donald Trump is and what he will do. And yet this has also been the week where it feels like all of the normie Republicans have decided, they look at this and they go, yeah, he's our guy.

I mean, we've seen this over the last eight years. Right. The establishment caving in, but they're not even waiting for it to be a binary choice between Trump and the Democrat. So part of this isn't new. Right. This has been the story of the last seven, eight years. But one after another, you have governors, you have senators, you have, congressmen who are going, yeah, I'm all in with Donald Trump with all of what that means. And what I find more dispiriting, even than that he says it, is how quickly the foot soldiers pick up the language. And when you have Elise Stefanik sitting there on Meet the Press and using the word hostages to describe people who came in and tore up the Capitol and tried to steal an election and who are now facing prosecution for it as hostages. I mean, if he says it, it is not only

him, you know, he's Trump being Trump. This is like, okay, and now the whole party needs to not only accept this, but get in line behind it. This is the extraordinary thing about it. It's not just that Donald Trump says these things, it's the way that he transforms the party and the way in which he transforms the culture. That when you say that I'm 100% behind Donald Trump, you're not just endorsing a candidate, you're also really embracing so many of, you know, aspects of this agenda. You have to look the other way about the big lie, either accept the big lie or not think it's a big deal. It's this internalization of this. This is old, but I think that we need to retain our capacity

to be stunned by some of it. Republicans are not even waiting for him to lock up the nomination. I understand, I don't accept, but I understand the rationalization that when it's a binary choice, as it was in 2016, between Trump and Hillary Clinton, that you're going to go with all the crap. But we're eight years on. We know so much more about Donald Trump. And there are alternatives. This is not a binary choice. So just talk to me a little bit about this dynamic that Rhonda Sanders is still in the race. Why the rush to grovel? Why the rush

to embrace so many things that these people know in their hearts is wrong? I just think that he killed Reaganism and has replaced it with this. And I also think that these candidates are not really trying to differentiate themselves from him. You hear Nikki Haley say, well, fair or not, chaos follows him. And you're like, what? It's like he has nothing to do with this. And they have both said they would pardon him. What kind of choice are they truly offering people? Except you either get Trump or you get a continuation of Trumpism.

And I do think that just one mark of all of this, and I want to talk about Chris Christie for a moment, but he really highlighted his red line where he said, talked about that moment in Milwaukee where all the candidates were asked, would you support Donald Trump as the Republican nominee if he was a convicted felon? And pretty much everybody's hand went up, right? His hand didn't. And I used the phrase, you know, five minutes ago, but now it's much further ago, but it doesn't seem that long ago, no political party would have supported a convicted felon. So it's not just that they're supporting Donald Trump and all of the other baggage and everything. They are explicitly saying that if Donald Trump shows up in Milwaukee for the

Republican National Convention and accepts the nomination, and he is a convicted felon, and he's wearing the ankle bracelet, that they're all in for him. I mean, this is really, this is a transformation of American politics and of a political party that used to be for law and order. But I think that Trump, by his decision to show up in these courtrooms and to say he will continue to show up in courtrooms, that it's become a campaign tool for him. It has become a test of loyalty for him. And I think he thinks that these prosecutions are ultimately, I mean, they will flat out tell you it's going to play in his favor, that the new narrative is he's a victim. He's a hostage. I get that. But why does John Barrasso buy that?

Why would Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, who is not a Trump fan, why would they accept the, yes, I'm going to support a convicted felon to be president of the United Nations? I mean, I understand Trump's mentality at this point. I'm just trying to focus on what other people look at that and go, yeah, I'm going to go along with that. Because it keeps working for him and they are more afraid of him than they, even the critics of him are more afraid of him and his slice of the electorate, then they, you know, care about the norms of our society and our justice system and our traditions in this country. This is why, and I think you and I shared this, this is why I was disappointed by Chris Christie dropping out because I look, I know all about Chris Christie's baggage. I'm going to leave that aside for a moment. I think in the campaign,

he was a magnificent beast. And he was the only guy basically standing there going, guys, are we really going to do this? Are we really going to go along with putting this man back in the Oval Office? So I wrote a piece last week, which obviously had no influence whatsoever. I'm used to that, saying, hey, hang in there, Chris. I think you were sort of on that bandwagon as well. You wanted him to stay in. Oh, very much so. Yeah. I wrote that in December as well. So give me your thoughts about his decision to drop out. Not only had it become clear to him that he didn't have a path to victory here. But it was also becoming clear that if Nikki Haley didn't manage to rise and become a true challenge to Donald Trump, that Chris Christie was likely

to get the blame for this. And I think he didn't want to be ultimately seen as a spoiler. I personally don't think that would have been a fair characterization, but all of those people who had been telling him for months that he needs to get out would have blamed him for something that would not, at least in my opinion, have been fairly placed on him. The horse race punditry, obviously, I mean, the conventional wisdom here is that this benefits Nikki Haley. There was some speculation that he might endorse Nikki Haley. He clearly is not, and I don't think he will endorse Nikki Haley. No, he has nothing but contempt for Nikki Haley. Okay, well, and that came out of that Hot Mike episode, where he not only has contempt for her,

but he thinks she's going to get smoked, that she's not up to this. And yet he still cleared the way for her. I think he was more concerned, and I think legitimately so, that people were somehow going to blame him because he had, what, 12% or something. He was not an insignificant factor in New Hampshire. And I think he was an important voice. I think he played a very, very important role because, you know, as he said, and usually what candidates say about themselves is not necessarily the truth, but I think he was right when he said he was the only candidate who was willing to tell the truth about Donald Trump. He was willing to say, you know, how, you know, talk about his character. And coming from Chris Christie, it had to have an effect on

some folks. I mean, look, he became incredibly disliked because, as he said during that hot mic, people didn't want to hear it. But it is important for people who have been around conservative politics, Republican politics, like Chris Christie, to say these things. So I guess the question is now, Karen, what does he do now? He's not going to endorse her. He says he will do everything possible to prevent Donald Trump from being regulated. What does he do now, do you think? You know, I don't know where he takes this. I can't imagine Chris Christie showing up at the Democratic Convention and speaking. I just honestly don't know where he takes this, except

I think we're going to see a whole lot more of him on television, making the case that he has been making both on television and on the debate stage. If Donald Trump goes down to defeat in November, I mean, Chris Christie may have a very important role in sort of trying to put together what's left of the Republican Party and the conservative coalition. He's kind of burned a lot of the boats, though. So people like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have already sort of crossed that Rubicon and said that they would vote for Joe Biden if it was a binary choice. They've created a little bit of permission, but you don't necessarily see Christie doing the same thing. I find that hard to imagine. I do too.

He still has the Republican bona fides. What about no labels? Is he going to play footsie with them? I cannot imagine. I mean, that is just, I think that no labels, if they do end up putting forward a ticket, is just going to do such damage to Joe Biden. I just don't see how you can read that any other way. Let's talk a little bit about Nikki Haley, because as you mentioned, obviously, Chris Christie has been watching her up close. And at least at the moment,

we wake up today and there's a Washington Post poll showing that she's moved into second place in Iowa. She's clearly surging, surging with my quotation marks here. I'm doing the air quotes in New Hampshire. And yet Chris Christie is looking at her and going, you know, this is the unbearable lightness of Nikki. There's a great piece in The Atlantic by Mark Leibovitz. Yes, I read it on the plane. It's great. Well, and he points out that, you know, she really kind of looks good.

She has a good campaign. Your first take is that, OK, you know, this is this is a serious person. She did well in the debate. But then he says, what exactly is she saying? Basically, if you begin really listening, there's a lot of gobbledygook there. So Chris Christie made the judgment that she is just not up to this. She's going to get smoked. What's going on there?

Because she started strong. And my sense is that even though she's doing well in the polls right now, that there's not as much there as we thought there was, that maybe she's not the one we've been waiting for. What do you think? You know, I've read Mark Leibovich's piece and I thought it was just so on target. You do listen to how she answers a typical voter's question and it's just a whole bunch of phrases put together into an easy to swallow gel cap. Then you realize they don't add up to anything. I think she started out with all the benefits that come from being underestimated. But once you are in the hunt, once you are running second, you lose those and people do start listening to you in a different way. And I mean, I thought her whole answer about the Civil War, which I think was a big wake up for a lot of people, was not only horrifying because, you know, she didn't mention slavery, it was horrifying to

just listen to all these sort of random phrases about freedom and government. And, you know, she just has a bunch of sort of phrases that roll around and just come out. It is like this sort of, this word salad that you can tell that she's been prepped with all the talking points. I have confessed that I did not watch either the faux debate between her and DeSantis the other night or the faux town hall on Fox. Did you watch either one of them or both of them? I was flipping back and forth between the channels.

And one thing that was clear to me and something that the Trump people have been telling me is that they here in Iowa are benefiting so much from the fact that Haley and DeSantis are attacking each other. Well, no kidding. And this allows Trump. I mean, his ads have generally been, I mean, he's been critical of Haley, but in general, his ads have been about taking on Biden, moving on. And all of this has worked at least so far to his advantage. My takeaway, having looked at some of the highlights though, and going back to your point about the way Nikki talks in terms of these sort of pre-can things, that watching her and DeSantis seems like looking at

politicians from the before times, where you look at them and you realize, this is why people don't like politicians. And the contrast with Trump, whatever you can say about him, is kind of unplugged, and he's unpredictable, and he has moments when he's entertaining. He's not entertaining to me, but I think he's entertaining to the base. Whereas you have these two stiff, radically pre-programmed politicians and you're going, same old, same old, same old. Here's the talking point. Press this button and you get this, as opposed to any sort of authenticity. I hate using pre-canned words like that, but I just think that the contrast, you know, in case you were wondering why they're not making more headway against Trump,

I think it was kind of on display that night. What do you think? Yeah, I think so. I think so. And, you know, Haley kept talking about her website about documenting DeSantis' lies. Those of us old enough to remember how Jerry Brown would give you his 800 number in every single answer in a debate, that's what that was reminding me of. You know, I've got one point here and I'm going to hammer it home no matter what the question is. By the way, that's another thing about her is that, you know, very often, and again, she's done really well in the debate stage, but what you see more on the trail is how often the answers don't fit the questions. Well, you know, I mean, she decides she's going to answer what she wants to answer.

So what do you think? What is Rhonda Sanders running for? What is Nikki Haley running for? And I especially want to start with Nikki Haley because one of my colleagues is speculating that she's auditioning to be VP. With deep respect, I think that that's nonsense. There's no way that Nikki Haley is going to be the VP. She wouldn't be saying the things she is saying now if she wanted to be VP. Trump is never going to take a chance on anyone whose loyalty is not absolutely carved in granite. If he learned one lesson from his first presidency, it is that number one, the vice president is the only member of his cabinet he can't fire. And number two, that unless somebody is absolutely even more slavishly loyal than Mike Pence, it's risky. So there's no way that he is going to name anyone other

than somebody who is smaller than him and utterly dependent on him and utterly slavishly loyal. Your thoughts about the Nikki for VP speculation? I would agree with you. Everything you just said, and I would add one more thing, is that there is no way he is going to name someone who has star power of their own. Exactly. Right. Yes. Or who has any sort of independent base at all. Yes.

Or who is capable of any sort of independent thought or who might have a separate agenda. Because the moment, in theory, the moment they were to become elected, he becomes a lame duck president. And, you know, the vice presidency could, in theory, become a power center, which is why he's going to want somebody small and somebody dependable. I can't imagine who he would pick at this point, but it is not going to be anybody. And by the way, you often see this even in functional White Houses, Clinton-Gore, or when the vice president has their own presidential ambitions, there is tension, there is rivalry. There is suspicion. I mean, if you take all of that and add it to the chaos you would already see in a Trump White House, even Trump would be able to figure out pretty quickly that this, you know, would be damaging for reasons that go beyond, you know, Trump himself. Okay, what about Elise Stefanik? She really wants the job. She desperately wants to. I mean, the fact her meet the press performance, I think was a an illustration. Mr. Trump, I will say anything. I will defend anything that you say here. I will use the word

hostages. I will go along with it. But is she too undependable? What do you think? She would be a pretty strong personality to have in there. And again, you would have to be wondering what she is viewing as her next move. Yeah. Now I think she might be a little bit too untrustworthy. So Rhonda Sanders, Rhonda Sanders is not running for VP. I don't think he's got any shot at that whatsoever. What is he running for? Is he trying to maintain his viability for 2028? Because that seems far more plausible to me. You've got to like not be facing reality to even be in this race if you're Ron DeSantis

at this point. But yeah, he's a young man. If he's smart, he's trying to figure out what his exit looks like and what kind of credibility he leaves this race with. I went to an event for him last night. They have put together a pretty impressive organization. He has checked every single box that you are supposed to check in the Iowa caucuses. He's been to those 99 counties. He's got the governor's endorsement. He's got

the evangelical endorsement. And here he is playing by exactly, you know, what was the 2012 playbook. And it didn't get him anywhere. Why didn't it work? You make a really great point. You go down and, you know, if this was, you know, a year and a half ago, we go through, what will it take to win? What does he need to do? And he has gone through, the playbook is perfectly attuned to Iowa. So if he finishes third, what went wrong? What did he misread? Trump has broken all the rules. And by the way, the other thing that I think should not be underestimated is that this Trump operation, as much as it sounds like Trump himself is running off the rails more often than not, he has a much more professional political operation than he has ever had before. This isn't 2016 when he and Corey Lewandowski and

Hope Hicks are kind of living off the land until he gets the nomination. And this isn't 2020 when he just surrounded, he's an incumbent president and just surrounds himself with a bunch of grifters. I mean, these people have built a really impressive operation here in Iowa, if you believe in Seltzer's polls, where he is way ahead is in first-time caucus goers who are younger, who are people who weren't necessarily involved in politics. And his operation has already looking ahead. I mean, they have re-engineered the delegate selection rules in just about every state across the country in Trump's favor. There's not a lot of backbiting in this team. There is not a lot of leaking out of this team. I don't know how they take this operation

and then pivot it to a general election operation. But this operation has been incredibly impressive. Interesting. And that, by the way, goes back to something that happened in 2016, which is that his operation was just a disaster to the point where Ivanka Trump shows up at a caucus in Des Moines. And she gets on her phone and she goes, Daddy, there's nobody here to speak for you. Nobody to stand up and give a speech on his behalf. And Trump apparently brings that up constantly, that that better not happen again. So going back to Ron DeSantis, he's got a good campaign that has not gotten any traction.

Trump is doing a much better job. So when we write our obituaries for the DeSantis campaign, probably next week, you know, there's certainly obvious points. Number one, and I want to get your take on this, Ron DeSantis was just a bad candidate who utterly misread the Republican electorate. Let's start there. If you look at his polling numbers, because don't forget, right after the 2022 midterms, it was such a disaster where all of Trump-endorsed candidates go down in flames, with the exception of here and there, J.D. Vance a sudden, that fills up

the airwaves. That is when Trump suddenly discovers there's a political advantage in playing the victim. And DeSantis and all of these other candidates had to sort of stand behind him and support him in this. Even if he'd been a good candidate, which he was not, that I think was the point of no return for him. What if other Republicans at that point, including Ron DeSantis, had not gone along with Trump's defense? What if they had pushed back and said, you know, this is the moment where he needs, these are serious charges. We need to take them seriously. This party cannot nominate a convicted felon. Would that have made a difference? Because in many ways, they legitimized and normalized Trump's defense, didn't they? If he'd gone the other way, would it have made a difference? Would it have worked?

I think at a minimum, maybe if he had, he and the other ones who were not named Chris Christie would have said, you know, we've got to let the legal process play out here. You know, we've got to withhold judgment. You know, I mean, the fact that Trump turned his mugshot into, you know, a big money raiser for the campaign. The other thing too, was if you you just look again at blocking and tackling, I think it was a strategic mistake for DeSantis to turn over so much of his operation to a super PAC. It was a strategic mistake the way he spent money. I mean, he was hemorrhaging money on things like private jets. Yeah. He made a lot of mistakes. He is not the most appealing candidate. No. But I do think there was probably no way for him to dig out once Trump got indicted. Well, especially the way that he and

other Republicans handled all of that. The other thing about Ron DeSantis is that Ron DeSantis was under the impression that if he moved to the right on policy issues, that he could nail down the MAGA base, that he could be, you know, Trumpism without Trump. When, in fact, I think that was also a miscalculation because what Republican voters wanted was they wanted the fights. They wanted Trump. They wanted the show. And Ron DeSantis was giving them maybe what they wanted, but he was dull as shit. Last night, I think he must have gone on about DEI for about five minutes. We're coming up on 10 o'clock on a weeknight,

and it's almost an hour into he's been speaking. And yeah, there isn't much of a show to this. Plus, it's not only the show that the Trump base likes. I think they find in each other a kind of sense of community that somehow Trump has managed to create. Okay, I stumbled across something that I had not seen before. You probably are more clued in than I am on all of this, but I can't believe that I never knew

that there was such a thing as MAGA romance novels. Have you ever seen these? Nope. Now my book club hadn't read any of those yet. Okay. I will send you something about this. When you talk about a sense of unity, whatever you think, it's way worse than you thought. Okay. So let's do a little horse race punditry on Iowa. Let's go back to where we started. The weather. The weather is going to be a factor because you have to show up. You have to show up in person. You have to get in your car. You have to go someplace. You have to go into some ill-lit basement of a bar and stand around. If it's

minus 45 and there's all of this snow, that's going to have an effect. Who benefits? Who's hurt? How do you think this will affect the outcome of the Iowa caucus? Well, and by the way, you often have to drag your kids out into that. There are two schools of thought on this. One is that the MAGA base is the most dedicated. They are the most do or die. They'll show up no matter what. The other one is there are going to be enough people out there going, the guy's at 30 points ahead in the polls.

He doesn't need me. I'll watch it at home. My gut's telling me it's the me. I'll watch it at home. My gut's telling me it's the former. I think they'll show up. And I think they're excited in a way that maybe the other candidates' bases are. I mean, they've been attached to him for longer. Okay. So there's two ways of looking at these results, of course. Number one is just the raw numbers, who wins, who loses. But of course, that's not the way things really play out. There's also the expectation game. How does the expectation game play out, do you think, Karen?

I agree. Who comes in second versus who comes in third is certainly going to be talked about. But Trump is running against Trump's expectations. And right now, I think the over-under is 50%, which is incredibly high. The biggest margin that any candidate has ever had in a contested Republican caucus was Bob Dole in 1996. And it was 12 percentage points and change. You know, Trump is 30 percentage points in all these polls going in. So even if he like busts every historical record, he's also going to be running against his own poll numbers and showing that those poll numbers are actually real.

So what's the headline? You know, Trump wins, but if Nikki Haley comes within 20 points, does she become the story? I mean, can you become the story even though you lose pretty badly? If he gets somewhere in, say, the low 40s, yeah, Nikki Haley or whoever's number two, we haven't mentioned Vivek Ramaswamy anyway, but whoever's number two, that is going to become the more powerful narrative, I think, going into New Hampshire. And she needs that. Okay. Should we mention Vivek? Because I kind of make an effort not to ever mention him. No, no, I was joking. So what, he's still in the race? He's still like, what happened there? Where's he going?

He's still having events. I must admit, I haven't made it to any of them yet. And you know, it's snowing. Okay, I think we've spent enough time on Vivek. Okay, so before we wrap up, meanwhile, back in Washington, the Republican congressional meltdown continues. I mean, this is just like, oh, my God, the scriptwriters would have, you know, we're in season two of all of this. And you have the new fifth string speaker hanging on by a thread, the right wing Freedom Caucus in revolt again against him. Everybody's scrambling to prevent a government shutdown. Do you think we're going to have a government

shutdown because Mike Johnson can't control his own caucus? What do you think? What happens next week? I think in the end, the Democrats are going to have to come up with the votes again. Okay. Then does Johnson survive that? Because that's what killed Kevin McCarthy, wasn't it? As much as they love to like rattle their swords, do they really want to go through another three weeks of this? And then they end up, you know, they're going to have to go to Chad the intern. Yeah. Chad the intern. We're very, very close to Chad the intern. But when you know, they're going to have to go to Chad, the intern. Yeah, Chad, the intern. We're very, very close to Chad, the intern. But when you say, do they want to go through this? It only takes five or six of them. Actually, it only takes three these days, right? Right. You know, frankly, you know, half a dozen of them want to go through this. They'll go through this, right?

But how badly do they want that? We're in an election year now. We're not dealing with rational actors all the time, though, are we? That's true. That's true. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit. But it does feel like we are going through the same sort of same old, same old. And, you know, this is how the McCarthy speakership came to an end. This was the beginning. You vote down a rule. They're starting to vote down rules. They're yelling at each other, screaming at each other on the House floor. And what is the margin now? Is it two votes? Is it one vote? Is it three votes? I think we're at three. When we say that Mike Johnson's hanging by a thread, it's... Exactly. And we're one person slipping on the ice and breaking a leg or something away from... Yeah. You have one congressman who eats bad fish, and you have Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. It feels that tenuous. And we're laughing about this. Unfortunately, there are big things at stake, including whether or not we're going to ever pass that Ukraine bill, whether we're going to be able to do anything about the border, whether or not we're going to give aid to Israel, all of that stuff. And meanwhile, the theater of Hunter Biden was the most dramatic moment on Capitol Hill, wasn't it? Yeah. But apparently that came

as a surprise to a lot of people at the White House too. I don't know that this was necessarily the best move on Hunter's part. You see, I agree with you. I was listening to a legal analyst yesterday saying that, first of all, they didn't give dad a heads up that he was doing it, which is probably prudent because you want to preserve deniability. And that by showing up, Hunter made it less likely he would be held, you know, charged with, you know, contempt of Congress for not, you know, going into the closed session. But I tend to agree with you. It's a, I don't see that Hunter Biden is a particularly useful asset for the Democrats or for Biden. I mean, there's a little bit of theater there. I thought Republicans are behaving badly, but the less Hunter Biden, the better. At least

that's my take on it. Yeah, I think so too, especially since there's such an imperative now for people to be focusing on Biden and what he wants to present to the public as what he has achieved, as, you know, that he's on top of the three or four gigantic international crises going on. There's just so much else he wants to and needs to be talking about right now. No, completely agree. Karen Tumulty, thank you so much for joining me. Karen Tumulty is the associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post, joining us from frigid, frozen Iowa. Try to stay warm this weekend, Karen. Oh, you too, with you and your snowblower. My only concern is whether or not my snowblower is big enough to handle this.

I have a pretty big snowblower, but when you get to 9 to 12 inches, it becomes a little problematic. We'll let people know on Monday how that works out. And thank you all for listening to this weekend Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back on Monday, and we'll do this all over again. Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.