The Bulwark Podcast - Peter Wehner: Turning on Trump for the Wrong Reason

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

The Republican establishment scolding Trump has little to do with morality and everything to do with power. Peter Wehner joins Charlie Sykes today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Thanks, Charlie. It's always great to be on the show and to have the conversation with you. Well, as you know, I struggle against and I warn against irrational exuberance or actually hopefulness of any kind, which is why I want to talk to you about this. In the first 24 hours after the reports of the Donald Trump, Kanye West, Nick Fuentes Nazi dinner, it looked like we were going to see the same old pattern of Republicans looking at their shoes, you know, pretending they didn't know about it, observing strategic silence. There are some indications that that may be changing. And again, I, you know, as I as I wrote in my newsletter, I, you know, dare I say it, it feels a little bit

hopeful. Let me just read you something from Semaphore this morning. Trump's dinner party seemed to be going the way of prior Trump scandals over the holiday weekend. A lot of noise in the press, a handful of attention getting condemnations from Republicans, but mostly silence within his party. On Monday, though, it became clear that this was not going to be another story that gets quietly swept under the rug. Overall, it was the most widespread Republican rebuke Trump has received since January 6th. And it came just two weeks after the former president launched his reelection campaign and three weeks after a disappointing midterm election that many Republicans blamed on Trumped candidates who voters perceived as extreme. Trump has made it through worse, and rank-and-file voters are the ultimate judge of his place in the party, but he also can't afford to bleed support when Republicans have other options in a competitive

primary. So, Peter, I'm reading through the various condemnations, and they range from the tepid to the pretty strong, Mitt Romney calling him a gargoyle, even Mike Pence saying that he should apologize for it. What do you make of this? Is this a crack or just a hairline fracture, or are you suffering PTSD from having lived through this so many times before? I don't think it's the latter. I think it's a crack. I think I disaggregate what was going on. There's no question in my mind that the now GOP establishment, which is really a sort of MAGA establishment, is breaking with him. And the precipitating event was not anything moral. It had to do with a perceived loss of power and the real loss of power

because the Republicans rightly understood that they haven't done well in elections because of Trump and his 2022 midterm results, I think had a big psychological effect on the Republican establishment. And a lot of them were looking, as you and I know, just from private conversations, they knew that Trump was a deeply disturbed person, but they were afraid to break with him. And I think this gave them the opportunity to break. And then this dinner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, yay, is another reason for them to do it. So I think that's real. What we don't know is what was alluded to in what you read, which is how's the base of the party going to react to this? And that's just an unknown.

There's not much doubt that there's been an erosion in Trump support. We've seen that in the focus groups that Sarah Longwell has done, which are so helpful. We've seen it in some of the polling data. That said, the real test is going to be elections. And if, you know, Trump is lasting and standing by the time of the 2024 election, primaries are seriously underway. And you have winner take all primaries. He only needs a certain percentage of the base to win. And people have consistently underestimated his hold on the base. That doesn't mean that there hasn't been some real erosion that's happened, but he started at a phenomenally high place and he could afford to lose support. So how much of this is filtering down to the Trumpified, magnified base? We don't know. The stuff can't help him. But I think right now, too many people are essentially burying him without sufficient evidence for that to happen. I think, you know, until the evidence to the contrary comes in, you have to assume that he is still the odds-on favorite to be the nominee. The question we always have to ask is, is this new? Is this a real shift?

Clearly, there's kind of a permission structure out there where other elected Republicans are kind of looking over their shoulder and going, OK, I can denounce this. It's really not that hard to denounce, you know, a neo-Nazi white supremacist Holocaust denier. This is relatively easy. They seem willing to do this. But you made an interesting point here that it seems like the Republican establishment is prepared to break with him. And I guess let's break this down because we know that Trump has brushed aside the Republican establishment in the past, that he's co-opted or destroyed it, that they turned out to be completely feckless. But you made an interesting point that it's not just the old,

you know, Bush establishment. When you talk about the establishment, you're talking about the MAGA establishment. And I guess that's the question is, what is the establishment in the party anymore? I mean, break it down. You have the old, you know, pre-Trump Republicans who maybe held their nose, you know, five or six of us, you know, went off to never Trump land. But when you're talking about the establishment, you're talking about people who have up until now been kind of loyal spear carriers for Trump. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, it's a good question. It's somewhat paradoxical because a lot of MAGA world has been running against the establishment, qua establishment. That is, they view themselves as revolutionaries.

And in fact, they wouldn't acknowledge what is true, which is they themselves have become the establishment. What is that establishment now, six years after Trump won the nomination? I mean, it's the Murdoch empire, right, which is the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Fox News. It's talk radio. It's political institutions like the RNC. And then there are elected officials in the House and the Senate and elsewhere. And you used a good phrase, I thought, the sort of permission structure. And you can just tell that that's changing. People are speaking out. Bill Barr is one example of several others, and they're signaling to each other that it's okay to be critical of him, even if you've been

supportive of him in the past. You're not being a traitor. So it's a fascinating sort of tribal dance that we're seeing. I think of that establishment, the most prominent part of it to turn against Trump is, is the Murdoch empire because of journal editorial page, which is still significant, uh, and the New York post, but, but I think above all Fox, Fox news, um, and you know, that's can't help Trump. I mean, if they're basically freezing him out of Fox news and, and those shows are celebrating and featuring DeSantis and others. That can't help Trump. But Trump had the entire establishment against him in 2015, 2016, up until it was clear that he was going to win the nomination. That didn't stop him. In some ways, it even helped him,

I guess, demonstrated his bona fides in a party that was somewhat revolutionary in its temperament. Well, look, let's go with this guy who's really to burn down the house. So it's really, really interesting to observe. And, you know, you and I, as people who have been critical of Trump really since the get go, watching this unfold, it's a kind of fascinating thing to observe. It is fascinating. So you mentioned Bill Barr in the context of the permission structure to criticize Donald Trump. But it comes with an asterisk, right? Because apparently this permission structure means you can criticize him. You can be very harsh in your criticism.

But the asterisk is as long as you say that you would support him again in 2024 if he were the nominee. I mean, that seems to be the caveat, which, again, is as mind boggling as as listening to Republicans back in 2016, who would say things like, yes, you know, he's you know, his comment is textbook racism. But nevertheless, we should put him in the Oval Office. I mean, this is yep. This has been that two step, right? That that as long as you pledge ultimate loyalty in the binary choice of the election, you still are able to criticize them. But it feels hollow.

I mean, when Bill Barr says he's completely unfit to be the president, that he's delusional and yet will suggest that despite the racism, the anti-Semitism, the dinner with Nazis, et cetera, that he'd be willing to support him for president again. I mean, they haven't moved past that yet, have they? No, they haven't. And I entirely agree. I'm glad. I'm very happy that the GOP establishment is breaking with Trump because I think he is such a malignant and malicious figure in American politics, unlike anything we've seen. And this is something that you and I have been arguing for and calling for and hoping for for a lot of years. So I'm glad they're turning against him. But I think there are important, I guess, qualifiers

to that. One is what you said, which is, you know, Bill Barr basically said, I think he actually did say that Donald Trump was unhinged, essentially deranged after the election and the insurrection in 2021. And in the next breath, he said that he would vote for Trump if he were the Republican nominee in the blink of an eye. He did that during his book tour several months ago. That just doesn't parse. Morally, it doesn't parse. Ethically, it doesn't parse in terms of the good of the republic. So you're quite right. Their view is we are going to vote a Republican even if the person who is the nominee is a monstrous figure, which is true of Donald Trump. The other thing that is happening is that the break with Trump has been utilitarian. It's been in no sense a moral break, a realization of what a toxic,

dangerous, threatening figure he was. The inflection point, to the degree that we've seen it, was because Republicans lost in the midterm. And in the past, they thought Trump was the pathway to power, so they supported him no matter what he did. And now there's the perception that he's a block to power, so they're going to break from him. The problem with that, apart from it being, you know, them being hollow men in terms of the lack of any moral or ethical basis for their judgment, is that that can shift again. If it becomes clear to them that Trump can win, then they'll line up around him again. I wanted to say one other thing. You're quite right. I mean, one of the tests here is for Republicans, even if they're critical of Trump,

to say that they would support Trump if he were the nominee in 2024. I think the other thing that is required of these people who are now breaking with Trump is not to admit that the critics of Trump over the last six years were right in any respect. They can't bring themselves to say that. And I want to come back to that. The Barr position makes no sense morally, but of course it's completely consistent with what Republican leaders have done over the last five or six years, which is that no matter what he has done, they will ultimately support his return to power. I mean, they they didn't break with him decisively after Charlottesville, after the Muslim ban, after after access Hollywood, after I mean, the list is just so long after he tried to overturn the free and fair election, et cetera. So why would dinner with one of the most vile neo-Nazis in the country make that much of a difference?

And you're right. It is utilitarian. You wrote about this break. And I think this is this is, again, the dilemma that Republicans have, that that even if you have the donors, the political operatives, even former White House staff members, even the Murdoch empire, even if elected Republicans turn against him, as you point out in your piece in the Times, the break wouldn't come clean or easy. Trump likes running as an outsider. And you look at the numbers, you still have about 40% of Republicans are always Trumpers, right? They will never abandon him.

You had about 50 percent who are maybe Trumpers. So I guess, Peter, the question is, how does he go away? I just don't see the scenario. He's not going to graciously concede defeat to Ron DeSantis, right? He's not going to walk off into the sunset and say, OK, you know, that was fun. Now I'm going to go enjoy my the rest of my life down in Mar-a-Lago. Yeah, he's not going to go away. That is the one thing that I think we can we can pretty much guarantee his psychological profile and disordered personality won't allow him to go away. And I think that one of the things

that Republicans who are breaking with Trump haven't given sufficient thought to, and it may be because it's a thought that strikes fear into their hearts, is that if Trump runs and doesn't win the nomination, I think he's going to try and burn down the Republican Party. I think he would turn against it with fury. And he would tell his I agree. it's currently constituted, turned against the Republican nominee in 2024 if it wasn't Trump, whether they voted for a Democrat or third party or didn't vote for the Republican nominee, Republicans would really, really suffer, not just at the presidential level, but congressional governorships, state legislatures, and all the rest. And Trump has never been a party man. Anybody who knows his history knows that. He landed the Republican Party simply because that was the opening that he had.

He could just as easily have run as a Democrat. And of course, we also know that he has no loyalty to individuals, let alone to institutions or to political parties and if the republican party uh does turn on him rejects him that will psychologically be too much for him and he'll he'll go on the war path and i do think he'll try and burn down the republican party they stuck with him are they hostage to to his derangement? As the old saying goes, between a rock and a hard place, because if they nominate him, he's such a flawed, deeply flawed figure. And this is the reason they're breaking with him. They know that unless there are exceptional circumstances, he's not going to win the election in 2024. And they don't want that. They want somebody at the top of the ticket they think can win. On the other hand, if they don't nominate him, if they turn against him and he decides to aim all of his fire and fury on the GOP, they're going to suffer there too.

So it's basically pick your poison. But look, they're responsible for this. They created him. They supported him. They bought his ticket. They're taking the ride now. Yeah, exactly. They propagated his lies. They allowed the. They bought this ticket. They're taking the ride now. Yeah, exactly. They propagated his lies. They allowed the base to get radicalized. And then they thought, well, you know,

when the time comes, we're just going to hit the off switch. Guess what? There's no off switch. So I do think that that it's it's complicated for them. And I think they don't quite know what to what to do. What we do know is it'll be chaotic. Well, what's interesting is watching some of the anti anti Trumpers lining up behind Ron DeSantis is kind of their golden ticket, you know, out of Trump world. But here's the problem with Ron DeSantis. Maybe I need to come back to all of this. Ron DeSantis wants to run as, you know, the second coming of Trump, which means that he cannot antagonize any part of that Trump base. He wants to inherit it. In fact, I think baseball crank at the National Review, you know, is, you know, National Review,

which has now become kind of a fanzine for Ron DeSantis said, you know, they, the real trick for DeSantis is, is how do you not alienate, you know, the most hardcore Trump supporters. And that means then not only not breaking decisively with Trump himself, but also not denouncing these this troll base that that Donald Trump has has has encouraged. And I think my real takeaway from the Nick Fuentes dinner was whether or not Donald Trump knew who he was when he when he walked in the door. He certainly knew afterwards who he was, and he's refused to criticize him or denounce him. And the reason he's refused to criticize or denounce him is because he thinks that anti-Semitic racist troll

base is a fundamental part of his base. And Republicans need to, if they're ever going to move past this, they're not just going to have to denounce Trump. They're going to have to go after that base, right? They're going to have to go after this Graper army, just the way William F. Buckley Jr. did it with the John Birch Society and the KKK back in the 1960s. And so far, Ron DeSantis hasn't figured out how to how to finesse that, has he? He wants to run against Trump. But his silence is really parallel at this point to Trump's silence because he wants to keep that base in the base. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, Ron DeSantis is in the easiest possible position right now that he'll ever find himself. He won an overwhelming election in Florida. He's not running for the presidency yet. He gets to pick and choose what he says when he says it.

And he's not being targeted by other Republicans, particularly he was for a short time by Trump, and Trump seems to have veered away from that, at least for now. And on paper, DeSantis looks formidable, but there are a ton of people who have looked formidable on paper in presidential elections who flamed out once they actually ran. And we'll see how much dexterity and skill that DeSantis has. Just a couple of comments on him. I don't know if this is your impression, but my impression is that for an awful lot of people who are lining up behind Ron DeSantis now, they're doing it without actually having really seen or known much about Ron DeSantis. So they know him on paper. They know he did well in Florida.

They've seen him yelling at high school students who are wearing masks. They've seen him bark at reporters in 20-second sound clips. I don't know how many of them saw, for example, the debate that he had with Charlie Criss. And I'm not convinced that he's a supremely great political talent. I think he's good. He's smart. He's clearly smart from everything that I know and from what others have said about him. But smart doesn't mean that you're going to be a good political candidate. So in a way, he's a slightly empty vessel in which a lot of people are investing their hopes of what they think he is. That's very different from what he may be. And I've been in presidential campaigns, have studied politics and presidential campaigns like you have, I can tell you there's nothing like running for president. If you think running for governor or running for Senate is the same thing, you haven't done it before. It's a different league. We don't know how Ron DeSantis would do if he's on a debate stage with Trump and Trump turns that blowtorch.

We don't know what's going to happen if he's asked to break with some of the far right elements, QAnon elements, how much dexterity he has. So I agree with you. The one person who is speaking out more and more is Mike Pence. He did an interview the other day and said that Trump should apologize for having hosted the dinner. But Pence isn't going to go anywhere. There's no lane for him to go. Chris Christie is doing the same thing. is they have to not antagonize, not alienate the Trumpian base, because that's the base of the Republican Party. They have to signal that they're different than Trump and they have to give a rationale for why voters should vote for them rather than Trump. That's not an easy task. We'll see if DeSantis and others are up to it. Your point about DeSantis being untested needs to be underlined. It would be interesting to go back and write a piece about what presidential fields look like two years out from an election, because I believe that President Scott Walker would like a word. President Rudy Giuliani, President Fred Thompson.

Remember when President John Connolly was running? I mean, there there's a long list of people who look just fantastic on paper. Remember President Rick Perry when he surged? And all of these guys faded in the spotlight. The other problem that DeSantis has, though, is his strategy is is to go for the Trump base, prove that he can be as cruel and manipulative as Trump, that he can own the libs as effectively as Trump. And it worked for him in Florida. But part of the tradeoff here is that by playing so hard to the base and being unwilling to take on this troll base is the ongoing alienation of the swing voters, the suburban voters. So, you know, this is this again is part of the problem that

what it takes to win a Republican primary is exactly what kills you in the general election. And that erosion continues. And I do I agree with my colleague Tim Miller, who says, you know, honestly, if if Republicans are thinking that the rest of the country has this this bottomless appetite for what's going on in Florida, I'd like to see what they are actually smoking, because I'm not sure that the things that are appealing right now about DeSantis and Florida are going to play well in Pennsylvania and in Michigan and in Wisconsin and Minnesota and Arizona and Nevada, the states that are going to determine who wins the 2024 election. Yeah, I think that's right. And there's this interesting and I think for Republicans alarming phenomenon, which is which is playing out, which is the base of the party is much insanity that's unfolded. And you see it in people

like, uh, Herschel Walker and that whole slate of election deniers that were defeated in the 2022 midterm election. So they're going further and further into dark and ugly places. Um, and that if people aren't willing, uh, if candidates aren't willing to stand up against that, a lot of swing voters, you say, are going to say, look, this is this is easy. If you can't do this, then I don't want anything to do with you. But it's precisely because this is an energized part of the Republican Party that going after them is going to really take that portion, that wing of the party off. So it's tricky. And again, this is something that they've created. They've made this bed. Now they have to lie in it. And of course, this is not just a problem for the Republican Party. I think we need to step back for a moment. And the more

that I think about, you know, the events of the last week, look, anti-Semitism has been a problem in this country for a very, very long time. There's no question about it. It is not new, but there is something new that's going on right now. And the fact that we're focusing on Nick Fuentes rather than the fact that the former president wanted to have this millionaire rap superstar, who's also one of the most virulent anti-Semites to dinner, in itself is a bad landmark. Michelle Goldberg, I've been thinking about her column all night, and she talks about the fact that maybe we've become numbed to all of this. And, you know, you and I have, you know, dealt with anti-Semitism for many, many, many years, but there is a new, there's a new threat, and it is bigger than anything that I've experienced in my life.

So this is what Michelle Goldberg wrote in the Times. For most of my adult life, anti-Semites, with exceptions like Pat Buchanan and Mel Gibson, have lacked status in America. The most virulent anti-Semites tended to hate Jews from below, blaming them for their own failures and disappointments. Now, however, anti-Jewish bigotry, or at least tacit approval of anti-Jewish bigotry, is coming from people with serious power. The leader of a major political party, a famous pop star, and the world's richest man. Such anti-Semitism still feels, at least to me, less like an immediate source of terror than an ominous force offstage,

just as it was for the comfortable Austrian Jews in Stoppard's play. Maybe this time for the first time it won't get worse. So I guess this is the moment where you have to go, OK, you know, this this beast has been out there. We have looked the other way as it's been nurtured. Interesting headline in The New York Times today. Jewish allies call Trump's dinner with anti-Semites a breaking point. And the subhead is supporters who look past the former president's admirers and bigoted corners of the far right and his own use of anti-Semitic tropes now are drawing the line. He legitimizes Jew hatred and Jew haters, says one. And this scares me.

OK, so, Peter, better late than never, but this is kind of a like, oh shit moment for a lot of these folks that this has consequences. You make a really important point, which is we're focusing on the effects on the Republican Party, but the most important thing is the moral condition of the country. Yeah, a lot of these people are, you know, are shocked, shocked that Trump has gone in this direction and these ugly and dark forces and passions have been unleashed. And this was so predictable. You could see this coming six years ago. That was really one of the main reasons why it was important to stand up to Trump early on and to do it in a unified way before he had secured power. And even after he had power

to stand up and say, look, there's some lines that you can't cross because if you succumb to it, if you turn the other way, or if you amplify those charges, you defend him, always engage in whataboutism, it has a tremendously corrosive effect on the civic and political culture of the country. And that's something you and I remember that. I mean, when we were young and really became part of the conservative movement, that was one of the essential elements of conservatism, which was not necessarily the policy and the political realm per se, but the civic and political culture of a country, the institutions of a country, the moral sentiments of a country, the Republican virtues that are necessary for a free republic to survive. And conservatives used to believe that you had to

attend to those and nurture those. And not only have they given up on that? It's been the exact opposite. And now we're seeing it play out and it's locating itself right now in a really nasty and ugly place, which is anti-Semitism. Um, but it's not going to stop there. Um, because this, this is, these are like lightning bolts. They're going to strike someplace. Uh,'re going to strike, in fact, in many different places. And it's anti-Semitism right now. It'll be someplace else later down the road. That's what happens when these kind of passions are unleashed. The founders worried about this. And so did Lincoln in his young men's Lyceum speech. That's always been one of the great dangers of democracy, which is what happens when ugly passions are unleashed and demagogues come onto the scene and you lose control of this. And I agree, too, that all of us, to some degree, have gotten inured to this. And that's understandable psychologically, because otherwise you would just be in a perpetual state of outrage and fear and concern for the country.

So we've kind of inured ourselves to it, and we know what Trump is like, and we know how this moral freak show plays out. But it's also important at the same time to take a step back now and then and to see just how far we've fallen and just how dangerous this stuff is. Right now it's in the bloodstream and it's going to take a lot of time and effort and some degree of luck to try and drain it. predictable. This is not something that just happened as a one-off. I know that you remember 2015 and 2016. You know, back then, Trump's flirtation with the alt-right, with the anti-Semitic right, you know, with the Daily Stormers of the world was an issue. And, you know, when I wrote my book back in, which now seems like a kinder, gentler, more naive era, you know, how the right lost its mind, there's a lot in there about Donald Trump's empowerment and encouragement to the anti-Semites. After one of the mass shootings, I wrote a piece for the Weekly Standard, Trump's anti-Semitism problem and ours and the consequence of these ideas.

This has been building for years. The other point I think that's important to stress here is that the modern conservative movement, which I would trace back to Buckley and the National Review, was very much focused on ridding the right of the cancer of anti-Semitism. This was something that William F. Buckley Jr. was obsessed about because, you know, in fact, he he banned anyone who wrote for the publication known as the American Mercury from ever appearing in National Review. And the American Mercury was just, you know, a sort of a cesspool of Jew hatred. And this was a real problem. And I think the conservatives realized that if there was ever going to be a future for American conservatism,

it needed to purge itself and cleanse itself of this anti-Semitism. And that was a project that took decades and it has all been undone or much of it has been undone by the willing embrace of Trump or at least the tacit acceptance of what Trump has done to anti-Semites because they are out there, they are big, and people think we're exaggerating. It's because you probably do not inhabit those fever swamps out there that are becoming much, much more influential in Republican politics. Yeah, that's a poignant description, and you're quite right. I mean, you remember when Buckley broke with Buchanan, it was in the early 1990s. And that was a big deal within the conservative movement and the inter-conservative debate,

because Buckley felt like Buchanan had crossed the line in terms of anti-Semitism. And Buchanan's anti-Semitism wasn't as undisguised as what we're seeing now. It was bad enough, but it's worse now. I'm curious, do you think that the people who are now expressing shock at what's happened are genuinely shocked by it? Or do you think that they're just saying that? Or do you think it's a complicated mix of both? I think that's a very interesting question. I always try to figure out what are people's motivations, what do they actually think? And I think the answer is probably the third. It's a complicated mix. I think that there have been people who have been shocked by it, maybe horrified by it,

but unwilling or simply afraid to speak out that muscle memory of cowardice. On the other hand, there is that moment where you go, OK, I thought I could keep this under control. I didn't think that the alligator would come out and eat me. There's a certain reduction to absurdity where, well, what if you had Donald Trump have dinner with an actual neo-Nazi? Would that be too far? Right. They've swallowed it all thinking, OK, I can sort of put this in a box in the corner and I don't need to worry about it. And this maybe is a little bit too much in your face. So I think that there's some genuine shock.

But of course, as you pointed out, there's also just the sort of the rank cynical opportunism of people who have swallowed all of this until they start to lose elections. So who knows? People are complicated. It's a helpful answer. I think that cognitive dissonance is a hard thing for anybody to lose elections. And so who knows? People are complicated. It's a helpful answer. I think that cognitive dissonance is a hard thing for anybody to live with. And the mind has this tremendous capacity

to rationalize and to excuse our conduct and our attitudes and what we embrace. But it is a really fascinating test. I mean, if you go back to what happened at Charlottesville, which was 2017, and there was condemnation, if you go back to what happened at Charlottesville, which was 2017, and there was condemnation, as you'll recall, from Republican leaders, you know, Paul Ryan, and I think Mitch McConnell and several others. And we're way beyond Charlottesville at this, at this point. And it does show you how, how people accommodate themselves and how one accommodation gives way to another accommodation, which gives way to another accommodation.

And before you know it, you've gone down really dark, dark alleyways. Well, exactly. And again, can anybody really be shocked? This is a man who brought Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller into the White House. I mean, you know, again, every single thing here was done in the open. None of this was a secret. And so I guess this this really tests their capacity for denial, which has been pretty amazing, the degree to which they can engage in denialism. I mean, how many years Paul Ryan spends saying, well, I didn't read the tweets. I never read the tweets. Well, and again, I don't know whether you feel this way, but I am prepared to lower the bar and open the gates a little bit. out. Although for those of us who have taken the slings and arrows for seven years and been

derided and sneered at by many of the anti anti Trumpers, how should we think about, you know, all of those emphatic supporters of Donald Trump until that moment they decided, well, wait, maybe he's a loser. What should we think about these people? Yeah, it's a really intriguing question. I agree with you. I mean, if people are willing to take an exit ramp from the Trump highway, then they should do it and we should celebrate that they're doing it. We should be glad that they're doing it because it was just the essential first step that was required to get the country back on course, get the Republican Party back on

course, to get conservatism back on course, if all of those things are in fact rectified and straightened out. So that's important to do. I do think that at the same time, it's important and fair to critique where those people have been and what's motivating them now. I mean, we talked earlier about the fact that their judgment is not moral, it's utilitarian. And so presumably, if they're convinced that Trump could win, they would rally around him again. And that's then an active danger. And it also means that there isn't a lot of credit that is due for them getting off of this exit. It's not as if they've had a revelation of any kind, any contemplation, self-reflection, a mean that they wouldn't do this again, or if there's another figure comparable to Trump, but with less baggage, they wouldn't rally around him. So I think that's important too. And then there's just sort of basic, I don't know, maybe this is some degree of

good graces, which is if you've been attacking people for five, six, seven years for making essentially the same critique you're making now to try and explain what it is that they missed about it, what do you see now that you didn't see before? Because as we've talked about, none of this is surprising with Donald Trump. There was almost an inevitability to it going here. And it would be helpful and I think impressive for a few of the never, never Trumpers who are now sort of welcome to the resistance to reflect on that. I think it's hard for them for two reasons. One is it's not easy for any of us to admit that we were wrong. And so I think there's this tendency to just skip over that part of the process, just to say, we were with him, but he's changed and he's a loser and now we're against him.

So they don't want to admit that they were wrong on any deep or fundamental sense or that they missed something important or that they were morally blind to certain things. The other thing that I think is even harder than admitting that they were wrong is to admit the people that they had been attacking for the last four or five, six years were right. I think that's even psychologically more difficult because there was so much energy, so much antipathy that's been aimed at critics of Trump. And those sensibilities have been shaved. And to now say, look, maybe there was there was a point maybe those critics saw things that that we didn't is probably asking too much of of them. Well, and as a never Trumper from before, there was never or never Trump.

I do find myself thinking about the prodigal son story. Um, you know, we've been out here taking the slings and arrows and, and then these guys, uh, just sort of show up and everything and they want the fatted calf, but they're going to have to be strange alliances and we're going to have to, um, uh, welcome back people that we've been alienated from, I think, to get, to get through all of this. And I say, this is somebody that until about a year ago, uh, here in, in my, in my basement study had a picture on the wall. I'm embarrassed to even tell this story. Picture of me with Ted Cruz right before the 2016 Wisconsin primary saying I will do anything I can beat Donald Trump. And if that meant supporting Ted Cruz, which, by the way, is a choice that does not age well, does I do not feel better over time.

But, you know, I'm sure that there were a lot of people that felt that way about about Joseph Stalin in World War Two. OK, I went there. But there's going to have to be those moments where we're going to have to make that that common cause. And it's not going to be easy for anybody. You know, I think that's well stated. I think it's important to do because it's, it's important for the good of the country and the, and the good of this movement that we care about. And so, um, it's, it's good in every respect to be able to welcome people back. And beyond that, there's this point about grace and about reconciliation. We've all failed. We've all made misjudgments. Um, have, too. And you don't that, this can play out again. If it's simply for utilitarian reasons, if it's simply for power, then the right lessons haven't

been learned. So I think it's completely fair and legit to be able to have those conversations and to say to the people who are now joining the resistance to reflect. to have those conversations and to say to the people who are now joining the resistance to reflect. But it doesn't have to be said with bitterness or acrimony. It doesn't have to be said in a way that signals we never want you or that you're irredeemable or anything like that. I'm a person of the Christian faith. You are as well. And grace is a central concept and we've all benefited from it. And when you've been the recipient of grace, you're able to extend grace to others. And hopefully I'll be able to do that.

I think it's the right thing to do. So one last note here, just changing gears a little bit. You wrote a very, very powerful, moving and eloquent remembrance of Mike Gerson, who died from cancer about two weeks ago. And Mike was a columnist for The Washington Post, previously a speechwriter in a very difficult time. And you obviously were very, very close with Michael. I mean, he's going to be, his voice, I think, is going to be terribly missed over the next few years. Yeah, thanks for mentioning him. He was a tremendous friend and a cherished friend of mine. C.S. Lewis once described friends as joining like raindrops on a window. And that happened with Mike and me, really the first time that I met him, which was in the 1990s. And we worked together. We were colleagues. We wrote books together. We did essays together. There were times where we would talk two or three times a day. And he was a remarkable person. He was, he wrote like an angel, just a beautiful,

beautiful writer. One of the most gifted speechwriters, presidential speechwriters in generations and generations. He was a voice of conscience. He was a person who had a deep moral center, and he acted on that because of his efforts and the efforts of others, but very much because of Mike's efforts. The Global AIDS Initiative went forward and 20 million people are alive today because of PEPFAR, which President Bush had signed into law. And Mike was a person that pushed very hard for that in the Bush administration. And he was always trying to work out in a serious and thoughtful way, you know, the moral implications of his views and politics and culture. And then he was a person of deep Christian faith. I mean, the litany of illnesses that he has was just remarkable. He had a heart attack when he was 40.

He had kidney cancer in 2013 that metastasized into lung cancer, adrenal cancer, finally bone cancer. He was struggling with Parkinson's disease. He had dealt with depression for most of his adult life. And yet in the last several weeks of his life, and I saw him three times in the last two weeks, and other people saw him when he was at Georgetown Hospital, the through line of those conversations was gratitude. He was deeply grateful for the life that he was able to live and the people who were able to be part of that journey. And to see a person moving toward death and struggling with not just cancer, but a particularly painful kind of cancer, and yet having a heart and a disposition of gratitude was a remarkable thing to see. His faith was part of that because he knew that that this was not the end of the story that there was a new

and glorious chapter ahead but it was also a testimony to just a basic character um of um of his he he lived a consequential life and a lovely life and it left its imprint on on a lot of people um preeminently uh his his family but very much mine too and and and uh i miss him a lot of people, um, preeminently, uh, his, his family, but very much mine too. And, and, and, um, I miss him a lot. Well, we should all be so fortunate as to have a friend like you to provide this kind of remembrance. And by the way, on my desk here, as we are speaking, I have, uh, the book that you co-wrote, uh, with, uh, with Michael Gerson, City of Man, Religion and Politics in a New Era, which I strongly recommend and think it's probably due for a rereading. Peter Wehner, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. I appreciate it very much. I always enjoy the conversation, Charlie.

Thanks so much. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Seary. I'm Charlie Sykes. Thank you for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. We'll be back tomorrow to do this all over again.