The Bulwark Podcast - Stephen Richer and Will Saletan: Kari Lake Lied

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

Kari Lake said she'd fight to the bitter end to prove the AZ governor's race was stolen from her, but in court she essentially conceded that it was all a lie. Plus, the danger of the white grievance movement, the Florida abortion ruling, and a shout-out to Caitlin Clark. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer and Will Saletan join Tim Miller. show notes https://stephenricher.com/ Vote for Will's 'Corruption of Lindsey Graham' here 'The Corruption of Lindsey Graham' limited series

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We've got a great double header for you today. First up, Stephen Richer, my pal, the recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, oversees elections there and has been in a long time fight with Carrie Lake. We've got some good news on that front. And then after that, we'll get to Will Salatin. I do have to shout out the great Caitlin Clark last night. It was unbelievable. Kudos to her. I tip my LSU cap to her. 41 points. Most three-pointers ever tied for most in a March Madness game. She has this thing where she does a crossover and then moves left and then does a left step back and then shoots across her body from beyond the three point line. And she made like three of those.

The shot making is just unbelievable. So she's going to have an interesting final four page Bukers and the Yukon's pretty good. The South Carolina Gamecocks are pretty damn good, but kudos to Caitlin Clark and to my friend, Andrew Edgar. He wins our private bet. Steven,

thank you for joining us. How are you feeling? I'm a little surprised that you can give up 41 points in the Elite Eight with a team as talented as LSU when you know that, like, make someone else beat you. Make Kaitlin Clark give up the ball. I was, to see that stat line, I was a little surprised. I was a little disappointed.

I got to say, they could have put Flage Johnson, who's just badass, and she's going to be back next year for LSU. They could have put her on Kaitlyn Clark, I think. Anyway, I could analyze the defensive choices of the LSU Tigers all morning, but that's not what people are here to talk about. So I'll just give kudos to Kaitlyn Clark. But I agree with that. Kim Mulkey maybe has some tape to look at this morning.

Steven, it seems like things are going better for you than for Kim Mulkey right now. Congratulations on your success. For people who don't know, you're in the midst, I guess, ish, of a defamation suit that you filed against Carrie Lake. Why don't you just tell people who aren't familiar the basics of the suit that we can get into to your exciting victory? 2022 election happens. Carrie Lake is the Republican nominee for governor in Arizona. She loses narrowly by about 17,000 votes. Then she starts making a bunch of wild allegations. She files what the appropriate mechanism is for addressing those election contests. But in those election contests before court, she alleges a whole bunch of crazy,

unlawful things that she purports that I did, among other people, including that I injected 300,000 fraudulent early ballots into the system, and that I purposefully disrupted the printing of ballots so as to throw the election to now Governor Katie Hopps. Now, as the Maricopa County Recorder, do you print ballots? Are you in charge of printing? I'm not even in charge of that part of the election. So I'm in charge of the mailing out and the taking back in. And so then it goes over to the Board of Supervisors. So yeah, setting that aside. So she didn't even have her facts straight about the administration of elections in Arizona, which was a bit rich for somebody who claims she knows

a lot about this process. But she loses in all those court cases. She appeals. She loses again. But then after she loses and she loses on all of her appeals, she continues to say all these things. She goes to rallies. She puts pictures up of me and says that this man stole the election from me. This man injected 300,000 fraudulent early ballots into the system. And obviously that has some downstream ramifications for me and my family. And I keep thinking that, gosh, she's going to get over this and she's going to come to terms with her loss and she's going to move on to something else. She might even get a new job and that would be nice. But eventually I realized that this is the job. This is the pathway

to continued political relevance. This is the pathway to continued fundraising. And so then in about June of 2023, my legal team and I decided to file a defamation lawsuit on two specific claims that she had continued to make that were very specific, supposed violations of the law that she purports that I did. Now, it's pretty challenging to win a defamation suit against a public figure, right? There's a lot more leniency when discussing political figures. You know, had you been a private citizen, right? And, you know, had Carrie Lake said, you know, Stephen, I saw you stealing ballots out of a mailbox or something, and you were just kind of like a guy that was a dentist or whatever, like the bar to clear a

defamation suit is much lower for that as a public figure, it's much higher. And so that's part of the reason why Carrie Lake was so confident that she was going to win when you filed this defamation suit against her. And I want to play just a little audio from her just in January about how she was going to fight to the end. And I am not going to go into this without fighting. When is that going to take place? When does it start? Jury selection right now on the path that they're proposing and you're fighting. We're right now trying to get the judge to throw this out it's a ridiculous case um it's a frivolous case it's lawfare um but if not it'll it's going to start immediately it's going to

start immediately with uh discovery and we'll have subpoena power we'll be subpoenaing all kinds of records from stephen richer pertaining to this rigged election that he was part and parcel to. I don't, she's no longer fighting, it turns out. What happened there late last week? She filed motions to dismiss in the fall and she lost on those. And what you said is absolutely right, that it is hard for a public figure to bring a defamation action. But we thought we had a particularly strong case just because the very things that she was alleging had been determined by multiple previous courts who have been categorically false, and yet she kept saying them. And so if anyone should have known

a falsity or have recklessly proceeded, it would have been she. So she loses on those motions to dismiss. And then finally, once she loses her last motion, then the court says, OK, it's time to proceed with discovery. And so we say, let's get down to discovery. Meanwhile, her attorneys are giving us the runaround and we can't pin her down on that. And so what happens is she eventually files a motion to default, meaning that she's not even going to contest that she defamed me. She's just acknowledging that that's going to be entered into a court of law. And I don't understand the strategy behind that. But the rub is that now we don't have to prove falsity.

We don't have to prove that she had malice. All we have to do now is prove damages, and that's something that we're going to be very comfortable doing. And so for somebody who said she was going to fight this to the bitter end, she lied. For somebody who said she could easily prove that I did these very heinous crimes, she lied. For somebody who said that she was looking forward to discovery cutting both ways, she lied. And so now we're just in this situation in which she has completely waved the white flag and we're ready to go to damages.

And we're still going to ask for discovery and damages. We're still going to have expert witnesses and damages. It's just it's going to be very one-sided. And so we feel, to your original point, we feel better about our situation than the LSU women's basketball team now feels about their situation. And the damages,

I want to dunk on Kerry a little more, but to be serious for a second, I mean, the damages related to, you know, threats you've received and very real, I mean, they're real ramifications. This stuff just isn't a game, right? And there are a lot of kooks out there

that believe this kind of stuff when they're being put forth. Yeah, and she'll go online and she continues to make fun of me, which is an interesting legal strategy. And she'll say, okay, well, I'll buy Stephen Richer a therapy dog or okay, well, I'll help him with his hair

that I made fun of. And so, you know, that's not the type of stuff we're talking about. There have been in the recent months, two people arrested who will go to jail for more than two years, who made threats and took steps towards acting on them in response to what Kerry said about me in the 2022 election. Made threats towards you. Yeah. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There have been a lot of costs that we've had to incur in terms of security, reputational damages. This is somebody who says she has millions of followers who hang on her every word. And she told those millions of followers,

not once, not twice, but like 30 plus times that I'm a criminal. So how do you unring that bell? She might've communicated to various Arizonans that I'm not to be trusted and that I'm a criminal that obviously has damages as well. So, so no, this is very frustrating. While I'm a politician and I accept some measure of that, this is based off a pernicious lie and it has had real effects on me and my family. Just on the family point, I mean, how is your kind of family dealing with it? And at some level, it has to be gratifying, right, to continue to be proven right. But on the other hand, like you guys, you're just a public servant, like your family's just, you know, your wife, your family is trying to live their life. Yeah, they get frustrated enough when it's talk about me, but I get especially frustrated when it interrupts their

workday. So my wife had to get pulled out of a work situation because of a threat that one of these followers of election lies was making to both her and me. And so it, you know, pulled her out in the middle of the day. And something like that is jarring, to say nothing of the disruption to your work. And quite frankly, while I signed up for a lot of this stuff, we didn't imagine that she would sign up for such disruptions in her workplace. Yeah, that does suck. I'm sorry that she had to go through that. And you look at the Carrie situation now, she continues to push it. And she's on Bannon's podcast talking about this stuff still last week, continue to put

out meritless claims. But I mean, I think the big takeaway here is, in a way, this defamation suit and the fact that she is, what's the right word, defaulted on her defense, puts a final stamp on something that we've all known. Those of us who live in reality have all known for a long time, but it's an admission in court, essentially, that she lied and that her claims about the election are false. That's absolutely true. Now, she's pretending it's otherwise in some of her public appearances. But just like with the E. Jean Carroll case, if she persists in saying that Stephen injected 300,000 fraudulent ballots and stole the election from me, then we've already got a court judgment saying that these are defamatory remarks.

And so that would make any future action pretty darn easy for us to file a suit. Now, you're still a Republican. Yeah. Republican. You're running as a Republican this time. I'm a Republican running in the primary. And, you know, that has its own complexities, but we're feeling pretty good about it. Okay. We'll put your website there in the show notes for folks that want to support that campaign, or oppose it, I guess. I don't

know if people want to trash talk you. I don't know what complaints they'd have against you, but I don't want to put my finger on the scale. I think it's pretty clear what my views are. As a Republican in Arizona, I mean, it's pretty insane, like, that the party has circled the wagons around her in this Senate race, essentially. I mean, like, I guess the Mark Lamb situation is still out there, but the National Republican Senate Committee, and do any of these people call you? Have any of the Republican senators called you and said, like, what do you think about this? Like, should we have concerns about this? I mean, it's pretty wild to think that somebody that just has been proven to be a consistent liar and now proven in court to be a consistent liar is somebody that

the entire party is putting their stamp of approval on. One, they might feel like it is a foregone conclusion and they're already chip committed at this point. But it will be interesting to see if some of the national groups play as much as they otherwise would have. I think a few concerns that one, this is just more damage to that. This is just really going to carry like solvency fund. And then three, when you're looking at Montana, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and you're saying, how many of these seats do we need to have Republican control of the Senate? And then you look at Arizona and you look at all this, you know, it'll be interesting to see if they think that's still a good investment opportunity. But no, none of those U.S.

senators have reached out and said, what's going on here? A lot of local Republicans who have been elected prior to 2016 have called and said, keep up the good fight. We're so happy. In fact, just yesterday, somebody in elected office and a Republican said, you've got a quiet cheering section who's just really hoping for discovery still. Well, Kerry, you might want to stamp that out. Kerry, you might want to put your research team on that. There's some Republicans quietly whispering about rooting for your demise. It's not surprising considering that Kerry Lake and Donald Trump have hollowed out the party in Arizona.

I mean, it is crazy. Like for people that come from the perspective of we want to have conservative governance, Arizona was a just model across the board, had Republican victors, governor, senators, and Kerry Lake and Donald Trump have hollowed out the party in the state. All they do is lose. John Kyle, John McCain, Jeff Lake, Doug Ducey. In many ways, we were the most sort of the like hollowed grounds, some of the most reputable names within the Republican Party. I mean, yeah, it's pretty amazing where we've gone from in just six, eight years, 2016 to 2024. Can you pundit hat for me?

Are you allowed to pundit hat as a recorder? Are you not allowed to pundit? Let's pundit really quick. You know, there's some concerns about Arizona. We talked yesterday with Bill Kristol. Trump is up by four in the polling average, whereas Kerry Lake is down. How do you assess the state of the presidential race in Arizona right now? I think Trump is running ahead of Kerry in U.S. Senate races. whereas Kerry Lake is down. How do you assess the state of the presidential race in Arizona right now?

I think Trump is running ahead of Kerry in U.S. Senate races. That's shown in most polls where Kerry's like three or four down. Who are those people? I think those are people who are frustrated with the current situation but don't really like the noise of Kerry, maybe. The border is a big stinking deal here. I know you know that. But being here, it's hard to impress upon people just how much people talk about that here in Arizona. And you had our governor, who's a Democrat, U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, who's a Democrat, U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who's an independent, all saying something needs to be done about the

border. And I know that, you know, with the border bill and Trump killing that, but even so, there is a perception that the Biden administration has not given it its due attention. Inflation has had a disproportionate impact on the Phoenix metro area. And so especially with respect to home prices. And so I think that's weighing heavily. And then I, you know, I don't have to tell you, but there's a sentiment that that unemployment isn't at 4% or below. As to that, I would leave it to you guys in the team as to why that is. What was it my team? I'm an independent media, media podcaster now, Stephen. Okay, two more things. If Joe Biden called you tomorrow, said Stephen Richer. Besides, I would hope that he would say thank you for your service to our democracy and defending it from the threats that Donald Trump and Carrie Lake opposed. But after that, if he was like, hey, man, what do you think I should do?

Yeah, I do get a lot of former presidents who ask this and regular presidents. Yeah, current presidents. Yeah. I would say- What would you tell Joe Biden if he called you? Visit the border, commit resources to the border. Go down there, show you care, be with the men and women who are working there every single day and say, to the border. Go down there, show you care, be with the men and women who are working there every single day and say, to the greatest extent possible that I'm allowed to do lawfully, unilaterally, I'm going to commit resources to the border. I'm going to work with

Arizona elected officials to make sure that that is being given attention. Finally, there's been some craziness in Maricopa County. There's a supervisor's meeting with some of these Lake supporters. Washington Post report a swarm of people rushed towards the day, shouting that the members were illegitimate. Another, like you, one of the Republicans who had done the right thing, Clint Hickman, was at a board meeting, said that people were making a death threat against him. They started a prison sentence. Crowd started jeering and laughing and yelling at him when he talked about his death sentence. So I have a two part question. How concerned are we about the radicalization of kind of the mega voters in Arizona?

And what percentage of those people do it has become their religion. It has become their hobby. And, you know, they spend all their time online going down rabbit holes. And that's why they so fervently believe this. So I would say you'd be better off, you know, following all 82 games and painting your face orange every single game. And that would just be a better, healthier outlet. And maybe going to church. Sons in Church would be a lot better than Steve Bannon's podcast and, you know, becoming an acolyte of Kerry Lake's allies. Just a couple of guys giving some free advice.

Yeah, yeah. Now, admittedly, we might be reaching the sun's off season a little sooner than we thought. But hope springs eternal. Yeah, it's serious. There is a radicalization among some segments. And there was a CNN segment recently on an elections director in Pinal County, which is to the southeast of Maricopa County, a smaller county. And the lady who was running elections there, who had been a former prosecutor, criminal prosecutor, she said,

I've been treated better by rapists and murderers than I have been by some of the people I'm interacting with regarding elections. I was just thinking to myself, like, that's one, undoubtedly true, and two, pretty similar to my experience. Just all the normal constraints, all the normal social niceties have seemingly been abandoned in the context of this election conversation. I guess just because if you tell people like this is the Republic being stolen from you, then you're allowed a decent amount of free reign because the Republic being stolen from you is pretty darn serious. Yeah. Carrie tried to tell me when we last spoke that she feels like she's a patriot and that she cares about her country. But I think that somebody that actually cares about her country wouldn't be doing this, wouldn't be spurring people

to make these kind of threats against public servants. I'm inclined to agree. Was this when she was trying to touch your hands? It was when she was trying to touch me. So I'd love to have Carrie back on the podcast. We could talk about it a little bit more. But in summation, what I'm hearing from you and what is happening in the defamation case is similar to maybe what Meghan McCain might have said to Carrie Lake. No peace, bitch. The damages will continue. The defamation suit will press on.

The takeaway is that this is somebody who said if given the opportunity, she could prove that the 2022 election was stolen from her. Here she had an opportunity teed up for her with as much discovery as she possibly want. And she put her tail between her legs and walked out. And now she avoided that, but she's going to have to pay for it. And so when presented with this opportunity, she said, I got nothing. And that is just such a forfeit and is so telling of everything that she has said over the past two years and the falsity of those statements. Amen, brother. Thank you for standing up for truth and for continuing to stay in the arena. It would have been easy for you to step out and we'll be talking to you soon. Thanks very much. Up next on the other side, Will Salatan.

Thanks to Steven Richard. All right. We are back with my colleague, Will Salatan. But boy, Steven Richard, what a great guy. I mean, if we only had more Republicans like Steven Richard,

if you're a Democrat, you've never supported anybody. He's got a reelection campaign. If you've never supported a Republican before, what better time? What better time to make your first one ever, Steven Richard. You can just give him $1 just to say you did. He's running for reelect as Maricopa County, if you've never supported a Republican before. What better time? What better time to make your first one ever, Stephen Richer? You can just give him $1 just to say you did.

He's running for reelect as Maricopa County recorder. We need people like him in public service. Will, what'd you think about our buddy, Stephen? I love Stephen. I love him for standing up. One of the things that I think is really important in our country is it's important that the people who stand up against the Kerry Lakes

and the Donald Trumps, the liars, all the corrupt Republicans are not all libs. Okay. It's important that people see the difference between being an honest conservative because part of the Trump Kerry Lake agenda is to convince normal Republicans that they have to choose between liberals and election liars, election deniers. So Stephen Richard stands up and people like him, Brad Raffensperger, Rusty Bowers, and they say, nope, I'm conservative and I don't believe in these lies. He also speaks clearly and plainly, which I like. You know, he's speaking plainly about Kerry, like being a liar. You could do legal talk.

A lot of times you have politicians. A lot of times I think particularly Democratic politicians a lot of times talking a lot of frou-frou talk. And there's no bullshit from that guy. Okay. touched a lot of times talking a lot of frou-frou talk and there's no bullshit from that guy okay um for those that are just listening on audio will has changed into a houston rockets hat so we can just kind of have a little nba chat here i don't think they're gonna miss the playoffs they're playing pretty well though um i want to play a little audio uh for you um of mike johnson the opposite the anti-steven richard if you, our Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, recently talking about January 6th. Originally, we were trying to blur some of the faces to protect the innocent, you know, people who were just there and just happened to be walking through the building.

Yeah, so that was his priority. Mike Johnson's on an apology tour. I want to hear, you've been monitoring his apology tour. But before we get to kind of the substance of what's happening in Congress, this was part of it. He's on with Eric Bolling on Newsmax there and talking about releasing the tapes, all this bullshit about January 6th or secret tapes, who knows. But before they released them, he wanted to make sure that their priority was blurring the faces of the insurrectionists so that nobody else got into trouble. Law and order. Will, what do you think about that? So, okay, I understand the distinction between people who have committed violence on January 6th

and those who were in the Capitol not necessarily committing violence. Here's what I don't understand, Tim. I don't understand the innocence part. Like, you're outside the Capitol on January 6th. Now, we all saw it happen, like this massive attack on the Capitol, officers getting beaten up, windows broken, people breaking down doors. Smoke going up in the air, people climbing up the Capitol, waving Trump flags. So unless you are legally blind and legally deaf, how is it that you went into the Capitol after that innocently? I don't understand this. I can understand the idea that you weren't protesting for Black Lives Matter. You were protesting for Donald Trump and trying to overthrow democracy. But I don't see how that's defense.

So that doesn't make you innocent. So I don't get where Mike Johnson's coming from. I do. I get where he's coming from. This is a religious thing now. Like they are the martyrs. Like they need to protect and defend the martyrs. And that is the ante now to enter the church of Trumpism.

But yeah, I don't, I would be sympathetic to this view if it was like there was closed footage from like around the washington monument you know and somebody wanted to release video of people like leaving after the rally like going away from the capital we wouldn't want to show their faces that's fine but inside the capital okay no no sorry mike johnson all right this tour though what you called an apology tour, we were messaging earlier, which I liked. A lot of media. Obviously, he's very concerned about being able to manage his conference right now. He's trying to quell the uprising from NTG.

We have one more little bit from Mike Johnson. Let's listen to that. And then I'm interested in you to kind of give us a view of what you've seen from him in these interviews over the last few days. So here's what happened. So because the shutdown would be so terrible, we fought, fought, fought, fought, fought on the appropriation bills. We, we, um, I was, I was hemmed in by the top line spending numbers that my predecessor negotiated. Okay. I inherited all this.

Cause I remember I was after the end of the fiscal year, they handed me the reins of the stagecoach going off the cliff. Yeah. Okay. So he's on the tour. He's fighting. He's fighting. Buddy fights Will, and he is not like that blow-dried Kevin McCarthy, that predecessor hemmed him in. He's been fighting. So what have you seen from Mike? So first of all, remember when in the State of the Union, Biden kept saying, my predecessor, and Republicans went ape over this? They went completely nuts, like, you don't do that. You don't blame your predecessor. And then what ape over this. They went completely nuts. Like, you don't do that. You don't blame your predecessor. And then what happens? The guy who literally sat behind Joe

Biden during the State of the Union and complained about him blaming his predecessor is blaming his predecessor. So what Johnson's saying is he's going out there to right-wing talk radio and right-wing TV. And he's got a lot of buddies, got a lot of friends, Sean Hannity, Eric Bolling, all these guys, or Charlie Kirk. They're all trying to help Mike out. They want hardball interviews. They're trying to assure their listeners who think that Mike Johnson with his one vote majority or whatever it is, three, can sort of ram the conservative agenda through America. They're trying to reconcile. So Mike, tell our listeners why you can't do this. He's out on the tour saying, hey, Kevin McCarthy hamstrung me. I had to cut this deal for the CR

for the extended funding for all this stuff. I'm operating with a really small margin. He says, he uses a football metaphor. He's like, I can't throw a Hail Mary on every play. We need three yards and a cloud of dust, get the first downs, move the ball. He used the word incremental. He doesn't look like a big football fan to me. People can read between the lines on that. I think he'd be a good water boy, don't you think? I don't know. I think that he was probably in the drama club, but that's for another day. One of my favorite little schticks he's got is, he's a Southern Baptist, right? He's promising the Republican base a kind of heaven. The idea of heaven is, he's a Southern Baptist, right? He's promising the Republican

base a kind of heaven. The idea of heaven is, you know, things are really bad in this world, but just be patient. Don't ask for too much because in the next world, everything's going to be cool. So Mike Johnson's version of heaven is he's telling all these guys right now, just bear with me while we don't get much of what we want because we don't have enough majority. And after the election, everything's going to be wonderful. He says, you know, Donald Trump's going to be president. We're going to have a much bigger majority. We're going to have the Senate.

And all good things will come to you, right-wing Republican base, after the election. If you just be patient with me and please, you know, withdraw your motion to vacate. So that's his spiel. Did Ukraine come up much in these interviews? What's your sense? We were talking to Bill Kristol yesterday. He's a little bit more bullish. Joe Perdico and the man on the hill have been very bearish on anything getting done.

Any sense of that? Or were these softball interviews kind of avoiding that touchier topic? So Eric Bolling did bring up, a Newsmax interview, did bring up Ukraine. Because this is like an independent thing. Let's set aside all the spending stuff. We don't want money going to Ukraine before the border. And of course, remember, Republicans had the deal on the table, and they said, we don't want this border agreement that Lankford negotiated in the Senate. And so there has been no movement on Ukraine. So Bolling asks Johnson, have you been actually negotiating with the Democrats to pass money for Ukraine? And Johnson sort of dances around it, which we can probably agree means he is going to do it.

And so Johnson's sales pitch to Bolling and his audience about Ukraine is, we're doing this differently from the way the Democrats did. We're going to do it in loans rather than a grant, rather than just giving them the money. We're going to use this repo act to seize assets from Russian oligarchs to pay for it. We're going to unleash American energy to hurt the Russian gas industry and hurt the war effort. So he's trying to prepare them for, we are going to send some money to Ukraine, but we're going to do it in a Republican, macho, conservative way. I hope so. I hope so. Bill and I talked about this yesterday. I'm wondering your take on it. It sometimes's like a hack when I bring this stuff up. But it's just reality. Like the Democrats don't get any credit for this. I guess it's pretty crazy that like we live in this world

where the Republicans can make these random demands about funding and equipping our allies in Ukraine. And there's not even any worry that the Democrats are going to push back on it. Like the Democrats are just being responsible. You know, not everybody's Jake Auchincloss over there. Not everybody's excited about the military industrial complex, right? There's some Democrats that have legitimate concerns about the way that our defense budget is spent.

And yet no peeps, like they're all just like, all right, whatever, you know, bullshit you assholes need to come up with to provide cover on this, we'll go along with and Joe Biden will sign it. Right. I do just wish that they would get some credit for that, you know, with anybody. I don't know. It's not like I don't know what I'm hoping for.

The Brett Baier is going to say, good on Joe Biden, standing up to Vladimir Putin and doing horse trading. But it is true, right? Am I wrong? I should ask you about this because that's the way I look at it. And I wonder how it works in politics. Because it seems to me, Tim, that priors are so built in that people just refuse to see that what used to be the conservative party isn't anymore and vice versa, right? I mean, Mike Johnson goes around on this apology tour and he tells people, okay, I don't have a lot to show you, conservative base, but we're standing

for all the values we believe. And then he rattles it off like limited government, strong foreign policy, border security. Meanwhile, what's happening in reality? Like they reject the border security bill. Let's leave the border open for another year until Trump gets in. Right. And, you know, family values is a joke. Limited government like they spend as much as the Democrats do. That was Nikki Haley's point.

And on foreign policy, exactly what you said, the Republicans are now the isolationist party. They're the ones who don't want to support our allies. And yet they somehow claim credit for it. And it's not clear that voters in the middle are going to punish them for that. No, or even aware. It's not clear they're even aware. Anyway, I don't know how to message this. You know, this is something for my conversation with Sarah. I mean, Sarah doing the secret pod this week on Friday for people who aren't Buller Plus members. Maybe me and Sarah will hash this all out. But, like, how do you message this so the Democrats can get some credit in the big middle for being willing to give up?

Like, they still have this reputation for going so far to the left and giving in to the left. And they do. They have in various times. We've discussed that. But like on a couple of major issues this year, immigration, which we just talked about with Stephen and Ukraine, like they're willing to sacrifice in order to make a deal. And it's the Republicans that won't. Okay, a couple other topics here we got to get through. I just, I'm so excited about all these. I don't know which one to start with. Let's start with anti-white discrimination. How about that? The Trump administration, Project 2025, they're

starting to put a little meat on the bone about what their plans are if they get in. And one of the big efforts is going to provide protection for victims of racism. It's interesting. White people though. It's when white people are victims of racism. They're going after the Rooney rule. We've been talking about the NBA. Here's some NFL chat. The Rooney rule is how NFL teams, the league requires them to interview a black coaching candidate. It's trying to deal with the fact that in a league that's mostly black players, all

the coaches were white. It's kind of a reasonable rule. They want to look at instances where the government is giving money to black farmers, for example, kind of block that, you know, it should be, you know, the money should go to farmers equally, no matter what their race is, etc. I'm interested in your thoughts on this, both the substance and the politics of this. I'm concerned about this. I think that we're going down a very bad road here. And I think that a lot of the motivation of the right right now is concerns about reverse racism. I think a

lot of times the left plays into that. And so I think this is going to be a very potent political thing, even though I find it obviously ridiculous as a policy matter. Where do you stand on that? So unlike a lot of folks at the poll work, I was born a Democrat and grew up in the Democratic Party. This is before Donald Trump. I feel like Republicans have always had a white grievance angle. Whatever it is, it's Jesse Helms and you needed that job or whatever. I mean, this has been going on my whole life.

And so I feel like the Republican Party has a lot to answer for here. On this particular thing, though, going after the Rooney rule, think about this for a minute, Tim. Okay, this is not even, we gave the job to a non-white person instead of a white person. It's not like it's a job. It's good to interview. All they do is they get an interview. Binders full of black coaches is all they're doing. So the piece in Axios that went into this was really good. And it talks about this group, America First Legal, which is Stephen Miller, you know, the Trump outfit. And they literally sued. They filed a civil rights complaint against the NFL over the Rooney Rule. Again, the Rooney Rule just says you've got to interview, not even give the job to interview what two

minority candidates. The complaint was, oh, but that takes time. It takes time. And any time you spend interviewing a non-white person comes away from a white person. That is a level of extremism in defense of, I don't want to say white supremacy because that's an incendiary term, but like you're not even allowed to make an effort to try to diversify your staff, your coaching staff. And how far does this extend? Because there's these interviewing rules, they're used in corporations, they're used in other political offices. And it's just like the mildest form of let's try to get outside our white bubble. And for them to be sued over that,

just to me testifies to the extremism of this white grievance movement, and certainly under the Trump era. You know, the other one, can I just say one other one about Trump? Donald Trump, they mentioned this in the Axios piece. Donald Trump has been out there claiming that Letitia James and Fannie Willis are racists for prosecuting him. And there's no evidence other than that they're black and he's white. And if that's, you know,

his standard of what counts as racism, then that means like no white person, even one as patently guilty as Donald Trump can ever be prosecuted. So I just think that's gross. I do too. I find it gross. And I find it extreme. I will also say, I think this is something that we're going to be spending a lot of time talking about on this podcast. It's something that I'm very concerned about is how this is perpetuating the sense of grievance outside of environs where, like outside of the Jesse Helms type world, world right and into kind of mainstream white america one thing that that really stuck with me i was watching did you watch the white lotus oh yeah yeah okay yes in the first

season of white lotus i guess it's a rich family they're at a hawaiian resort and the whole thing is kind of a commentary on on white privilege etc cetera. But there's a scene. They're sitting at breakfast at this resort in Hawaii. And the mom, the rich mom, is talking about how she has a daughter and a son. The daughter's doing great. The son isn't. I forget if he's testing for colleges or for internships. I forget the exact context. But her complaint is, you know, oh, he's not going to get the same fair shake you know like he's getting discriminated

against right they're going to be black people or women or whatever are going to be ahead of him in line now and obviously they're making fun of the character in the show in this but i'm telling you like how much this is starting to perpetuate among people like this mom character was not like a MAGA character right if you're guessing who the character voted for probably hillary and biden right and yet she has that thought and And I'm concerned about this. And I'm concerned that the MAGA crowd is going to really use this wedge and that it's something that's going to persist after Trump. So one little piece of- If we have an after Trump. I have a couple of ponies over my shoulder. I'm not even going to grab one here because this is not a real pony.

This is like a, it's a Trojan pony because inside the pony is some more bad news. I don't think that's going to happen yet. And the reason is that the Trump people, they need a scapegoat. They want to tell American white people they need a scapegoat for what's wrong with you. It can't be, you know, some corporation or whatever. Right now it's immigrants. As long as they got immigrants, they're not going to go to domestic nonwhite people. What holds them to that is that Trump is doing better with Hispanic and black voters than

he has been, I think, then certainly than like Mitt Romney, right? So as long as those people, enough of them inside the Trump coalition, then he has something to lose by hyping this too much. But that's only true as long as he's got the immigrants to blame. If at any point, the immigrants are not a sufficient scapegoat, he'll go after domestic non-white Americans. Boy, that was the pony. We're in trouble. Like I said, a Trojan pony. I kept waiting for the real pony. I kept waiting for Pegasus to fly over and give a more positive

view. Okay. I agree with that. I don't know that's much of fly over and give a more positive view. Okay. I agree with that. I don't know that's much of a pony. Definitely a Trojan pony. All right. I want you to be the house lib and we're running out of time. So to be the house lib, would you like to talk about abortion? We have a great Mark Caputo article everybody should read this morning. There's a six-week abortion ban in Florida.

A Supreme Court has now ruled there'll be a ballot initiative to essentially repeal that six-week ban that has been upheld. And then you also are working on a longer, you know, kind of looking into the Republican position about the U.S. having a blank check on Israel. So I want to give one of these two topics the time they deserve rather than being rapid fire. So do you want to be the House of Lib on Israel or abortion? Let's go to abortion. Let's go to abortion. All right.

Next week. We'll do Israel next week. Caputo's got a great piece about what's going on in Florida. And this is really significant. It's certainly significant in Florida, but I think it's going to be significant larger. The Supreme Court of Florida has set things up in the fall for maximum pro-choice backlash, maximum pro-choice turnout, which is the Supreme Court of Florida said the 15-week ban can go into effect. The six-week ban that DeSantis signed is then going to go into effect. And third, the Supreme Court said you can have this ballot initiative. It's going to be on the

ballot in the fall to reinstate basically Roe, allow abortion up until viability essentially. And there's going to be a massive turnout because if you're in Florida and you're pro-choice, the Supreme Court of Florida isn't going to defend you anymore as it used to. The Supreme Court of the United States isn't going to defend you. You've got to get out and turn out for it. And I think the Marx cited polls that it's like 70% for this ballot initiative, which is not surprising. And Tim, I don't even have to be the House lib on this because this is going to get the libertarians turning out and voting for this ballot initiative, okay? A little background.

Ron DeSantis has been bragging for years that he changed voter registration in Florida, and Mark Caputo has in the Bulwark piece some data on this. Florida used to be a plus 700,000 Democratic registration, and it's moved completely the opposite. It's now a plus 700,000 Democratic registration, and it's moved completely the opposite. It's now like plus 800,000 Republican, right? But who are those people, right? Those people are the ones who came to Florida because they wanted freedom. Remember COVID and like, come here, you don't have lockdowns, your kids can go to school, nobody's going to make you get vaxxed, nobody's going to make you wear a mask. Those are libertarian Republicans. You're going to tell those people that the government, which can't tell them to get vaxxed, can't tell them

to wear a mask, can tell them whether they can get an abortion. So there's going to be a big turnout of people who are in the middle, who are libertarian for this ballot initiative. Don't know if it's going to help Democrats, but it's going to be a big win for abortion rights. This is the big challenge that Democrats have. And is it worth fighting over Florida about this? I'm going to rain on the pony here because I agree with that assessment. I think that a ballot initiative such as this almost certainly passes because the coalitions are such that, you know, there's a big percentage of Trump voters that were not in it for the Supreme Court deal. Like he managed to create a fusionism by accident, I think, like bringing in these kind of secular working class folks and doing the deal with the evangelicals on the Supreme Court. So the question is, do the folks go and vote that are coming out? And do they vote for Joe Biden? Do they vote for, you know, whatever Democrat ends up winning the nomination against Rick Scott in the Senate race? And I just don't know. I don't think so. And I think that the

way to do it conceivably is to try to message to those people that your vote today on abortion could be voided by the federal Congress, right? Like by Congress and the Supreme Court, right? Like you could vote today to reinstitute Roe in Florida, and then you could put in place Donald Trump, Mike Johnson, and, you know, whoever takes over Mitch McConnell, and they could pass a national abortion ban. That's not insane. It's kind of hard to imagine 60 Senate votes for it, but it's not totally implausible if Republicans had a big landslide year, for example. And so can that message sink in with some of these voters? I just don't know. We've seen this in Florida before. Florida had a minimum wage ballot initiative on the same ballot that Ron DeSantis won in a record landslide and the minimum wage

increase passed, right? So how do you get the policy and the partisan preference to match up? It's tough because the culture stuff a lot of times overtakes it. I don't know. What do you think? Yeah. Part of what Caputo captures in this piece is that Trump is getting out of the way of this thing. Right.

Remember, there's a 15-week ban that was passed earlier in Florida, then the six-week ban. Right. World of difference between these two things. Sure. Like just numerically, less than 10% of abortions are after. Sex is absurd. Even somebody like me who has pro-life sympathies, like six weeks is absurd. A lot of people don't even know they're pregnant.

Yeah, 60% of abortions, 60 to 65% are after six weeks. So you're cutting them off. You're making abortion illegal in Florida. And what Caputo does, he tries to find out what's Trump's position. And Trump is not saying anything. He's sticking to that 15, 16 weeks, which is politically safer. I don't know if it's safe, Tim, but it's certainly safer. But it goes to your point that by doing that, Trump is going to minimize and possibly save

himself and John Ballot Republicans from the pro-choice backlash. We will see if that will be successful. Will Salatin, thank you so much. Thanks to Stephen Richer. Will, we're going to put this in the show notes here. Will's up for an award, the 28th Annual Webby Awards for the Corruption of Lindsey Graham. It's in the category of limited series. Corruption of Lindsey Graham was awesome.

If you guys did never listen to that, if anybody didn't listen to it, go back. It's on YouTube. It's in the archives here. We'll put that in the show notes as well. Go on there, webbyawards.com. Vote for Will Salatin. He deserves a pony and a, I don't know, what do you get when you win a Webby? I don't know. Is there a little trophy? You can put he deserves a pony and a i don't know what do you get when you win a webby i don't know is there a little trophy you can put it next to the pony i don't

know you might get some oddly shaped piece of plastic i don't know you know the all right you you need oddly shaped pieces of plastic you deserve an oddly shaped piece of plastic will salatin thank you so much we'll be talking to you again soon we'll see y'all back here tomorrow i've got a fun guest for you so make. We'll be talking to you again soon. We'll see you all back here tomorrow. I've got a fun guest for you. So make sure to tune in. Peace. The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Breff. In real time.