The Bulwark Podcast - Michael Steele: We're Way Past Kumbaya

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

The media thinks the GOP base could still want 'Morning in America,' Citizens United is keeping no-hopers in the race, Charlie totally called it on Tara Reade Biden made McCarthy grow up, and MAGA world turns to infighting. Michael Steele joins Charlie Sykes today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is May 31st, 2023. We've made it through the first five months of this year. How are you, Michael? I am great, my friend. It is now officially summer. I can whip out the short, short swimming trunks. And I'm just really to let my beer belly do its thing, man. It's great. We're, of course, joined by Michael Steele. That is Michael Steele, but you knew this, host of the Michael Steele podcast, political analyst, and now a host. You're like a host on MSNBC. I'm sorry I missed you Saturday night. You were sitting in. Yeah, I got pulled into the debt deal. It was fascinating.

I got a text from your producer, but it was like in the afternoon. And by the way, it was summer on Memorial Day weekend in Wisconsin. And I have to say, you know, the thing about Wisconsin is, I mean, just imagine being locked in a, you know, a freezer for nine months of the year, and then one day they open the door and it's warm and sunny out. This is Wisconsin. Every single person is outside for the entire weekend. It's part of our culture. Everybody just starts running, running into the sun. All right. So I do not want to be the one to inject any optimism discussion today. But, you know, as I was reading through the prep notes and looking at social media, it occurs to me that we're in this kind of weird world where most of the energy from

MAGA world is focused on attacking one another. The attacks between the DeSantis camp and the Trump camp, watching Donald Trump attack Kayleigh McEnany, calling her a milquetoast, a word that not surprisingly he misspelled. They are turning on one another. I mean, it really is kind of, I think it's Nicole Wallace's phrase, you know, watching the tarantulas go at each other in the bag. Give me your sense of this. Watching these folks who had, you know, kept their heads down and not broken ranks, and now they're just throwing shit at each other. Down in Texas, you got Ken Paxton, who is so corrupt.

The guy is so squalid that the House GOP can't even stand him. They impeach him. Donald Trump is riding in saying, I will fight you. I mean, this is an interesting dynamic, isn't it, Mr. Chairman? It is. But then, Charlie, in the main, I will fight you. I mean, this is an interesting dynamic, isn't it, Mr. Chairman? It is. But then, Charlie, in the main, it's not. I mean, this is something we fully expected to play out the way it is. And there's more of the bombastic, you know, name-calling and infighting to come if, you

know, Chris Christie gets in and Mike Pence, who, you know, milquetoast, but, you know, will be in the mix. So it's not surprising that they would do this. Look, everybody's trying to figure out how to take out the king. Meanwhile, the king is still moving around on the chessboard, you know, so he's in Iowa, he's in Texas, he's injecting himself into conversations people don't want him to be injected into, but that's what he does. And so this narrative is going to continue to move in this direction until such time as it is firmly agreed to by all the intelligentsia inside the GOP that, oh yeah, okay, he's our nominee. A lot of these shots, they're not landing hard. They're not moving numbers. It is part of the performative bullshit that Republicans have gotten used to doing. And they're so good at it.

You know, they just turn it on each other and they just role play until such time as someone decides, OK, that's enough of that. Let's let's you know, Trump is the nominee. Let's go forward. It doesn't surprise me that this is happening. It's actually rather boring and not that amusing because it's a lot of noise signifying not much of anything. Except that you also get this, I have the sense, this image in my head of sort of the vultures coming in and picking over the spoils that the MAGA world has become so bloated and so sort of adrift now

that the grifters are turning on one another, the extremists are turning on one another. Let me come back to that theme in a moment. I want to get your take on what is going on with this debt deal, because, you know, Mike Kevin is trying to quell a revolt in the ranks. It looks like, and of course we could be wrong, I mean, it looks like they're going to come up with enough votes, but we will not default. Kevin actually turned out to be a quasi-adult in the room. I mean, am I actually saying those words? Because Joe Biden wasn't giving him any help. So he had to make the first move. I mean, when you look at the analysis of this process, everybody was talking about, and I admit myself falling into this trap. Why isn't Joe saying more about what he wants to do? Well, Joe's like, well, when the other guy puts something on the table, then I'll tell you what I want to do. And that happened when Kevin was able to negotiate that vote for the House Republican bill. So now,

oh, okay. So now I know what the parameters are. And it was such an outlier. It was so extreme that it was very easy to kind of put in place something that at the end of the day compared to what else was possible, this deal made the most sense. Look, to your point, Charlie, it's going to pass. These Republicans no more want to have a default, let alone be talking about this in March of next year. So everything that this bill does moves it beyond the presidential race, gives everybody a little bit of bragging right here and there, you know, Republicans saying, hey, we got this, this, and this. And yeah, the hard right, it's going to scream about, you know, not being able to destroy the federal government, but okay. And the president's going to be able to say, look, we avoided default. We minimized the assault on the safety net of America and held firm on some

things. And yeah, we had to eat crow on some others, which is what? That's the art of negotiations. I think in the end, it's going to wind up being a plus for the president and a plus for Kevin McCarthy. And I think the challenge now is how do we see these two individuals moving forward? I don't think there's going to be much more after this. I don't think anyone in Washington has a stomach to do anything after this. So Kevin will basically be managing a frothing right wing. And Biden will just, you know, hopefully have a conversation with his communication shop and tell him, could you guys tell them what the hell I did? Tell people what I've done in this administration.

And that'll be the presidential campaign. In terms of playing poker, and there's a lot of memes out there about all of this. And again, the I want to point out the cognitive dissonance of the Republicans were saying that Joe Biden is just so senile and so out of it, he's not capable of anything. But he ran rings around us. And basically, we're we're sitting here at the at the poker table, buck naked. One of the things that he did, though, was to call out the bluff of the Republicans saying, show me your budget. You want to cut spending. You know, be specific about all of this. And when it came right down to it, Republicans, and this is not a new story. This is a very old story. They realized, OK, we don't want to cut defense. We don't want to cut Social Security. We don't want to cut Medicare. What actually is left? What are we going to propose?

Maybe we should just sort of back away from all this. He asked them, you know, show me your cards. And once again, we're reminded that Republicans can talk a big deal about cutting the deficit, but when it comes right down to it, they don't really have any ideas that they're willing to stand behind. They don't. And I would argue Republicans don't have ideas and Democrats don't have balls. So that combination is why we see what we see playing out. And it's played out where the roles switch. Democrats don't have, you know, the policy or the plan in place and Republicans don't have the balls. It's just a lot easier, you know, to scream and shout when you're on the outside than actually having to deal with the prospects of a dead implosion on your watch. You had a great piece in the Bulwark yesterday, which I responded to online, in which you wrote about, well, who won the dead fight? Which I, you know, because of the limitations of Twitter and I refused to buy a blue checkmark so I can write more. I couldn't start it the way

I really wanted to start it, which was, I get what you were saying in that piece, Charlie, about, you know, the various factions and how the game played itself out. But at the end of the day, I asked the question, wouldn't we just be better off just ending this bullshit charade of the debt ceiling? And I mean, we're the only nation outside of Denmark that even has a debt limit and Denmark has their debt limit so high, they'll never reach it. So, you know, the point is this becomes the same play every 18 or 24 months where they, you know, commits over the debt. Everybody knows it's coming. They take us all to the brink. They, you know, push fear into the markets. The markets get a little bit rattled.

The American people scratch their head and go, why can't we just pay the bills? And then they raise the debt limit. Can we just do away with it? It is the most self-destructive thing we could possibly do. And I'd actually forgotten the fact that, you know, for at least a decade or so, you know, sanity prevailed. And was it the Gephardt rule or something that you wouldn't have to have a vote on raising the debt limit if we were talking about already authorized spending or something like that? So this was the case until 2011 when the Tea Party folks decided that they were going to strap the bomb of the debt ceiling vote around the country. I want to get your take, though, on what's going on with the right wing. So Kevin McCarthy looks like he's doing something that a lot of us were very

skeptical that he would be able to do, which is to keep the crazies in line without blowing everything up. Now, he had like three major tasks. Number one, cutting a deal with Joe Biden. And that was never the hardest part. The harder part is number two, being able to deliver the votes to get it passed. Big question mark there. And then number three, and this is what I wanted to put on the table here, then survive the blowback. Because as I said yesterday on one of the cable shows, there's nothing in the DNA of the modern Republican Party that wants to cut deals with Joe Biden or give Joe Biden, you know, any cover whatsoever. So right now, it looks like he

survived. It looks like he's holding it together. And yet, you and I both know what happens out there in the right wing ecosystem with all the folks who stoke that perpetual outrage machine who are going to rail about this. Now, we haven't heard from Donald Trump from Mar-a-Lago over the last couple of days, as far as I know. But as soon as this thing is passed, you know what he's going to do. He's going to say this was terrible, right? I mean, after the fact, he's going to come down from the mountain and he's going to shoot all the survivors. So the number three, so Kevin is number one, he got the deal. Number two, he's apparently looking like he's going to be able to deliver the votes. But will there be a backlash to this? Because everyone's positioning themselves and no one wants to be in favor in the modern Republican

party of a compromise or getting into bed with Joe Biden. So how does this play out going forward? I think that this will be another example of a whole lot of people wetting and soiling their pants. And that's it. I don't think Kevin loses his job. A temper tantrum. A temper tantrum. I don't think he loses his job. I don't think the votes are there. And I think the Democrats, quite frankly, will backfill any votes that are lost. Oh, sure. And so he has his 218 votes. The Democrats, under Jeffrey's

leadership, is sitting there saying, okay, this is better than what we could potentially get running the House. So let's just hold the line here. It's very similar to some of the insurances Democrats gave John Boehner back in 2015-16 before he left the House, and they were threatening him that we'll get through this cycle, and then you can do what you need to do, but let's just get to the next Congress. And I think that's pretty much the same attitude right, but let's just get to the next Congress. And I think that's pretty much the same attitude right now. Let's just get to the next Congress. And so I think Kevin's going to be fine.

There'll be a lot of noise. There'll be a lot of money raised by the MAGA stupids off of him, which would be hysterically funny to watch. But the reality of it is they got nothing because they don't have anyone that they can replace Kevin with who's going to want to step in. So Scalise ain't doing it, for example, and Jim Jordan doesn't want it. So who are they going to get?

At least Stefanik. Me, me, me. Go Sarg. Yeah, Paul Go Sarg. Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene's always willing to wield that gavel. And Marjorie Taylor Greene would probably be the most logical choice coming out of that, how she's trying to fashion her stupid ass. But the reality of it is no one's going to bite on that sour cake. And the reality for Kevin is, how do you manage the noise going into a presidential cycle where you're going to need those folks at some point to calm the hell down because you don't need them agitating a base that could wind up hurting the Republican nominee? And more importantly, those candidates who will be

running to build on the House majority. Here's the other little piece of that, Charlie, from a strategery perspective, and that is on the point of those House members. If the Republicans play these cards the way I suspect they will, the problem they're going to run into is that they're going to have candidates who are going to be running saying that they won't support Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House. They're going to have candidates like Marjorie Taylor Greene types that are going to be out there in Republican primaries stirring things up, and that's something he can't control for. And that will, in some races, change the dynamics of how these things flow gives, I think, political advantage to Democrats, particularly in those districts, those 18 congressional districts that Joe Biden won

in 2020. This is fraught for Kevin in terms of the politics. In terms of the management of this issue in the House, I think he's going to survive that okay. I think he'll survive the short term, but I do think that what you're pointing out is sort of the long-term legacy, you know, whether he becomes the symbol of rhinoism. Okay, so Michael. Yes. I want you to help me figure something out, which I think has really become extraordinary. You know, there's been a lot of talk about, you know, anti-wokeness and everything, but I want to focus on the obsession of the right wing now with gay rights, the gay issue and the trans issue and how intense it has become. You probably saw over the

weekend. I know you saw for the weekend, Ted Cruz with a moment of, and I'm going to say these words now, Ted Cruz was right. He actually did the decent thing. On Monday, no, seriously, Ted Cruz tweeted out his reaction to this new law criminalizing homosexuality in Uganda. And the law includes a death penalty as one of the most punitive laws anywhere in the world. And he wrote, this Uganda law is horrific and wrong. Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality is grotesque and an abomination. All civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse. And then he used the hashtag LGBTQ. Okay, this is Ted Cruz. What was really interesting was watching the reaction from the Cruz base, a lot of them pushing back. Why are

you talking about this? Why are you doing this? Has your account been hacked? Why aren't you standing up for the January 6th prisoners? And then there were some who basically were in favor of the Uganda law. And there's a kind of a mega pastor who's all in on Ron DeSantis, who tweeted at him, tell it to God, Ted, quoting Leviticus. And I guess the question is, we've gone from 2016, where even Donald Trump at the Republican convention said that he had no problem with gay marriage, to now this being one of the hottest culture war issues on the right. And it's not clear to me that they're able to control the prairie fire. You know, guys like Ted Cruz, you know, light the fire and they're like shocked when it turns into this conflagration. But even Ted Cruz had to be a little bit surprised by how much just really virulently anti-gay sentiment there is out there on the base and how much permission people feel to express it now.

So how did that happen between 2016 and now, Michael? I think the confluence of a number of cultural developments that, absent appropriate context, absent smart political strategy, pushed a segment of the population to a point where they are absolutist rejectionists. There is no explanation. There is no way in which they conceivably can wrap their head around transgenderism, particularly as it relates to younger individuals. And I think the narratives that emerged in this space emerged without appropriate context and without medical and scientific affirmation. I understand that the trans is going to be a hot butt. But that fed the rest of it. That's the point. They glom it all together.

Okay, see, I think you're right there. I do think that there was sort of, it was like, okay, we're not happy with gay marriage, we're not happy with homosexuality, but we're going to live with it. And then the trans issue seemed to have been the trigger for, and then all of it blew back. Okay. I think you're right. Right. That's my point. It was like, see, I told you that was the next step. And so that's the problem that a lot of these folks see this as progressive, small p, progressive politics that pushes this issue further and further to what they would deem to be an extreme. And it's funny, Charlie, I remember when the whole gay marriage issue finally kind of, I'll use the word, settled. I remember. Yeah, it felt like it was settled. Yeah. And I remember telling a group that I was speaking to, this issue is not settled. It is not settled with the American people. And the reason it's not settled is that there are other issues related to gay rights and the gay community that over time, when they are addressed, will come back and impact on this. And that's exactly what's happening.

Because again, a segment of the population, and I would dare say that segment is a lot larger than people may like to believe, just never got 100% okay with it. So it was always one of those, all right, we'll see. I'm suspicious of this. This seems like you're sort of a backdoor to something else. And that something else is now what you're seeing come out on a number of other issues. And this is the reaction. So Ted's response is in one sense, a bit ironic, particularly coming from Ted. But the question for him is the base that you have allowed to be stoked in this space, where do you think they're going to go next with this? You've given them no room to really fully understand what you've just texted because you've talked about this in

absolutist terms. And because of your grift with the evangelicals, you've wrapped up the Bible as the weapon of choice to affirm that narrative that you've pushed. And so now when I didn't even bother to respond to Ted's because it was such a bullshit response. Yes, on his face, you would agree with it. But I'm sitting there going, but dude, this is the height of hypocrisy. Because you live in a state and you have given credence to the very thing that led to what we see happening in Uganda. What do you think these very same people would do the exact same thing here in America if they could? Well, it'll be interesting to see whether or not Ron DeSantis has anything to say about this pastor

who seemed to be endorsing the Ugandan law, and Ben, who's like all in on DeSantis. I have it in my newsletter. I mean, this is a guy that actually, back in January, took to the stage in Tallahassee to thank God in your wisdom, goodness, and power. You have once again established Governor DeSantis to serve the people of Florida. I mean, this guy's all in. Can I just give you a comparative now? There's very little difference between this pastor who's taking an extreme view and wanting to kill an individual because they're transgendered or gay and what we saw with the embrace of white nationalism and the Proud Boys, there's very little difference.

You create this lane for these people to emerge. And when they emerge into it, you can't control what they say or what they do. You're very happy when this pastor is saying, oh, God has ordained you to be the next president. And then in the next breath, oh, by the way, let's kill all the gay people, then what you gonna do? Yeah, bring back Leviticus. I don't know. I do wonder what parts of the Bible they read, and he answered the question because I'm thinking, did you actually

read the Gospels? I mean, is this your Christianity? And no, if you're going back to Leviticus, it's a whole different look. Okay, here's something else I want you to help me sort out. The obsession on the right with the wokeness of the military and how far they're willing to take this. You have Tommy Tuberville, arguably the Senate's dumbest member. I know there's a lot of competition there. You know, putting a hold on all of these military positions. I mean, this is an extreme step that actually puts the nation's national security at risk, all because the military is woke. And going back to Ted Cruz, who is so frequently wrong, remember when he was tweeting out these comparisons about the manly and tough Russian military versus the woke? Yeah, how did that play out? But I was thinking about this yesterday.

Why is there so much obsession with this? What did the military do to trigger this? And one of the major initiatives that we saw was the attempt to weed out white nationalists, extremists, people who might be pro-sedition and everything from the military. And this has prompted a hell of a blowback, which makes you wonder, and I know I'm getting into a speculative and maybe slightly paranoid area, what kind of a military do these folks actually want? Why are they so intent on not having these potentially violent extremists being in the rank? What is this about? They nestle in there.

It's how you assert command and control, ultimately. If you've got allies or people who are more aligned with your view on an authoritarian state or the absolute rule. I mean, which is ironic coming from, you know, these small government, you know, sort of quasi-libertarian Republicans who advocated for years, you know, a strong national defense to protect us from enemies abroad, as well as, you know, making sure that the government didn't play any role in our daily lives, you know, a very little role, to now all of a sudden be advocating for keeping this type of bile inside the ranks of the military. The military, from its beginning, has always been about not doing that. You know, it has led the way of a

number of social reforms historically, because at the end of the day, for their purposes of command and control, Charlie, they need a fighting unit that's not at odds with itself, you know? So the reality here is for these guys is, look, if I've got some, you know, KKK members and Proud Boy and, you know, jacked up former cops who like walk in with their sticks first, the reality is that changes the nature of that military. And the fact that you have people out here now saying that this is not the kind of military we want, oh, it's less manly. Oh, really?

Well, I don't consider any of those individuals to be manly. That's not what makes a man is his racism and his hate of others. That doesn't make a boy a man. And so the reality for a lot of Republicans is how do they work in this space when the military does what the military has always done, and that is to be the best reflection of the people they serve and protect and defend, bringing the best from amongst us to serve with honor and dignity in the roles that the military has. And it is a microcosm, a little experiment, if you will, on how we all get along. And the fact that the military has recognized we have a problem because we have too many hotheads now, too many people who want

to kick ass and take names as opposed to serve, and we need to weed them out. And you've got Republicans now looking at that saying, oh, our military's gone woke. Well, that's the problem. Well, let me push this a little bit further, though, because I think that there's an element of the right that really thinks the military should be theirs, that in the culture war, that they want the military to be their allies. And in the QAnon world, this idea that really the military is really running things, you know, that Donald Trump, you know, it really, you know, gave them permission to control everything. And during that whole transition up until January 6, as you look back on how alarming all of that was, when you had all of the former secretaries of defense feeling the need to sign

that open letter saying the military plays no role in the determining of an outcome of a presidential election. And this was one of the maybe unconscionable sins of Mark Millian and others saying, we are not going to play any role in this whatsoever. I'm just looking at this obsession with de-woking, or whatever, I just made that word up, the military, to what extent it is to say, no, this is ours. You people really do not belong here because our view of the military is very different than what you just articulated, Michael. It's been a constant struggle for the military. I mean, you go back and think about before you had the self-awareness to desegregate the military. It was nothing to have, you know,

these white platoons segregated from the black platoons and reflecting back what was going on culturally and politically in the country. And when the leadership of the military changed the course and changed the focus and the emphasis, yeah, that had some repercussions. And you do have, Charlie, to your point, this sense among a lot of these right-wing hotheads that this is ours, and it's ours because we need it to do the other things that we want to do. So, my other favorite story of the day, and this is, you know, not one of the most important things in the world. In my newsletter, I ask people, do you remember Tara Reid? Do you remember Tara Reid? I use the term horseshoe politics in this context because for one brief and shining moment in our horseshoe politics, she was this heroine to both the far right and the far left. Remember, she was the woman who accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her.

Yes. And Biden was denied the allegation. And her story never held up. It always was weird. And I mean, right. And some of us back then noticed something odd about her behavior that while she was making these weird allegations about Joe Biden, which never sounded credible at all. She was also writing things like why a liberal Democrat supports Vladimir Putin and talking about how, you know, President Putin's obvious reverence for women, children, animals and his ability with sports is intoxicating to American women. President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with gentleness. His sensuous image projects his love for life, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity. I highlighted at the time, and I remember all these right-wing trolls saying, what are you trying to imply? What are you trying to imply, Charlie Sykes, about Tara Rita? I'm trying to imply she's a nut job,

and also that she's a number one. She's a Putin shill. And boy, did that age well, because in case anybody missed it yesterday with great fanfare, she announced that she is officially defecting to Russia. And she appears on stage with Russian spy Marina Butina, who's going to help her get Russian citizenship. And I just think about how weird our politics is, that here's somebody that was championed by some of the writers at The Intercept on the far left. The right loved her. All she had to do was make this bogus allegation against Joe Biden. And she was this hero for a while. And I actually posted this tweet from Marjorie Taylor Greene at the time, I believe Tara Reid, who is now officially a traitor. But there's no Russia. There's nothing there to see. The Russians have

no Russia, right? There's nothing here. Keep and move along, move along. You know, Russia, Russia, Russia. But yeah, look, all of that gets exposed at some point in time. And the test for us at this hour is how we hold ourselves together. How individuals like yourself in the moment are clear in their expression of what it is we're seeing and what we're probably missing or what we need to understand and why this doesn't sound or smell or look right. Because that's the difference maker. All these things, Charlie, ultimately get revealed. They just do. And the reality for this country right now, particularly given that you have a party that has a knee-jerk, all-in embrace of the Putin lies and the authoritarian narratives, that becomes even

more important for us. And so, yeah, you should be retweeting the stuff you wrote at the time and reminding people, this is why I said what I said then. And this is why you needed to pay attention, because this is what you missed. And this is what I tried to show and explain. Because unless you contextualize it, people just throw it in a political bucket and they want to move on, not realizing that the ramifications from the embrace of some of these people and these approaches and attitudes and policies have long-term dangerous consequences. And I think this is a very good example of that. Let's turn to the presidential race. And obviously, I'm cutting to the chase. I want to

ask you whether you think Trump is inevitable. But before we get to all of that, the field is crowded. It is getting bigger. Give me your take on Chris Christie, because I have to admit, I mean, you know where I come down on Chris Christie. I'm never going to forget that moment. On the other hand, he's the only guy willing to throw a punch at Donald Trump right now. So am I wrong to root for Chris Christie to get into this race and begin throwing some haymakers? No, I don't think you're wrong to do that. I think that you're right, that Chris can be that guy. But I hope he understands, and I hope everyone else understands, that it's just not enough to throw the haymakers. No. That because at the end of the day, swinging wildly and even landing a few

punches without sort of creating a lane or space for either himself or someone else to emerge to be the beneficiaries of all of that. All it does is reinforces the drama of Donald Trump as victim, the drama of Donald Trump as inevitable. And we've seen this already with DA Bragg's indictment in New York solidifying Trump's number. He goes from 42% to 51% among Republicans, now sitting somewhere around 55% among Republicans. So it's not just enough to be the guy who can throw the punch. Once the punch has landed, you got to be the guy that continues to deliver those punches at the same time, moving that base vote or that Republican vote writ large in your direction or the direction of someone else. Here's the problem. There are too many people in the race. And at some point, my hope is that there's a meeting among the intelligentsia

and they decide who amongst us stands the better chance to survive this primary in a way that they can not only pull from the 70% of Republicans who don't vote in Republican primaries, worrying less about trying to get all of Donald Trump's vote because you won't, but having a strategy to tap into individuals who will switch parties to vote in a Republican primary for you, draw out more Republicans who otherwise do not vote in Republican primaries, and that's a big-ass number, as well as in states where it is allowed getting independents in line with you to support your candidacy. If they don't do that, this is a fool's errand, and it will end just as everyone believes it will be as Donald Trump with the nomination.

So this intelligentsia of which you speak, implying that it still exists, is there a group of smart, rich people with clout who can actually get in a room and make any difference anymore? Or is that world just blown to bits? I think that world has been fractionalized by Citizens United and the rise of 527s and other tools in the finance area. The party used to be the central funnel for all of that. Those individuals would go to the party leadership, the chairman of the party, and sit down and say, hey, you guys going to work this out? What do we need to do? How much do you need? Who do you want us to get behind? They don't need them anymore. So if I'm a very wealthy donor of Peter Till or whomever.

And I say, look, I want to get behind this candidate or I want to get behind this cause. I'm running independent of anything within the party structure itself. And even though nobody else is necessarily on board with my candidate because my candidate is a complete ass, I'm funding an ass. And as long as I'm funding that ass, guess what? He's in the race. He's going to stay in the race. And that has changed fundamentally the way this process plays out. So it's harder now to get these candidates out when you have billionaires who are aligning themselves with a candidate or, worst case, more than one because they put the money in a pool and it's like, okay, I'm going to give to

Tim and Nikki. And how do you decide between the two of them which one you want to sit down and which one you want to promote? And Tim and Nikki are not likely to get out of the race unless they're told directly that your funding is gone. Correct. Exactly. Tim comes in with $22 million and he ain't going anywhere for a while. So the default setting, I think, of all of us has been so far, because this has been the experience, that every indictment actually bonds the base tighter to Donald Trump. Might not help him in the general election, but makes his renomination more likely. However, with all these Republican candidates, and some of these people are not stupid people,

they're looking at this, and clearly some of them, I mean, some of them may be just looking for book deals or looking for vice presidency or looking for whatever, but some of them are looking at this thinking there might be an opening here. So I wanted to get your sense. So let's play out the next several months. The Jack Smith comes down with some sweeping indictments of Donald Trump, either at Mar-a-Lago or January 6th, or both. The charges come down in Georgia, which are going to come down in August. Do you see anything here that changes the conventional wisdom? Is there any scenario at which the, whatever is left of the tattered mythical Republican establishment or where the base goes, yeah, time to give Donald Trump his gold watch because we cannot have a candidate who goes to the nominating convention as a convicted felon wearing an ankle bracelet. Is there anything out there that could change this?

I'm just being straight up frank about it. I don't see it. I just gave you an example of why I don't see it. When the man's indicted, his numbers go up. They didn't go down. And convicted doesn't make a difference. And convicted, as I told a group this past weekend that I spoke to out in California, that there's nothing in our constitution that will prevent Donald Trump from being the nominee of this party because he was indicted, because he's on trial, or because he's convicted. In fact, he can actually go on and win the general election and be president from jail. There's nothing that prevents that. And so the reality of it is you have to know the man

you're dealing with, people. None of those are obstacles for Donald Trump. They're not obstacles, they're opportunities. And so they further the victimhood narrative, the witch hunt narrative, the anti-government narratives. I mean, you've already had his base, particularly the more exercisable members, already screeding out there about, you know, they're going to defend Trump. Everybody made a big deal where there wasn't this big march on, you know, Mar-a-Lago and protests in New York. No, there wasn't because Donald Trump really didn't call for that. He didn't really excite them to do that. He was like, okay, yeah, you know, if you want to show up, you can.

But they're channeling in a whole different network now. They learned a lot from 2020. They've learned a lot. And my fear is that we haven't because we're still looking at Donald Trump through a conventional presidential lens. He is not. Get over it. You will have to tactically understand what this man is willing to do to get this job. He made it clear to his base, I am your retribution. This is not about wanting to be president because of a policy of making the country better.

This is becoming president for retribution. And there's nothing that will stop that from his perspective. And we'll see whether or not Republicans can man up enough to, you know, put someone in front of them that can get the job done. But here's the problem, Charlie. This base is not looking for kumbaya. Tim Scott is trying to sound like Reagan. They've already kicked Reagan's ass to the curb.

They want someone who's going to break things, cuss people out, tear up things. They don't want someone who says, oh, let's all hold hands and see mourning in America. They're like F mourning in America. And that's the problem. I just had a flashing image here, which I probably should keep to myself because, you know, any sort of visions like this are probably not appropriate for a podcast. But here's my vision. It is Milwaukee. It is the summer of 2024. And Donald Trump, who is a convicted felon out of New York, steps from behind the podium, pulls up his pants leg, shows the ankle bracelet and says, I wear this as a badge of honor. I wear this for you. For you. The crowd would go fucking out of their minds.

Boom. The hall erupts. Erupts. Women and children pass out. Weeping. Yeah. Yes. They're weeping. Yeah. That's exactly what happens. That's exactly what happens. And that's what our media and our political class still don't get about the man in front of them. After all this time, they still don't understand that. I think you are right. And I'm sorry that that image is so vivid in my mind right now because I could really, really see it.

For all the people out there who are saying, you've dealt with these folks, you know, the wishful thinkers, the wish casters out there. Well, he really wouldn't want to. I mean, he would drop out then, right? Or he wouldn't want to put himself through all of this. Have you been paying attention? Do you understand who this man is? I mean, I mean, come on. Anyone in their right mind would have quit the presidential race in 2016 after Access Hollywood, let alone all the other stuff that was revealed by that point.

And Donald Trump was like, I'm not going anywhere. He is not going anywhere and he's not going quietly and he's not going graciously. What part of this do you not understand? Michael Steele is the host of the Michael Steele podcast, a political analyst for MSNBC, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, and he was Lieutenant Governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007. Michael, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast today. Charlie, it's always a treat when we're together, man. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow and we will do this all over again with a new episode

of The Trump Trials with Ben Wittes. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.