The Bulwark Podcast - The Next Level Takes Over The Bulwark

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

Tim Miller checks in from Turning Point's event in Phoenix on the role of "Gays Against Groomers" in the culture war. Plus, George Santos as Tom Ripley, and the Musk crowd's "Free Speech for Me and Not for Thee." JVL, Sarah, and Tim bring it for today's Bulwark pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. It is Monday, December 19th. I am JVL sitting in for Charlie Sykes, joined with my best friends, Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell of the Bulwark. It's like we're doing a next level on Charlie's show. Can you imagine? It's so crazy. It's just the next level with a bigger audience. Significantly bigger. And maybe there'll be like one or two people that's like,

well, I should maybe consider going to the next level now and not just doing The Bulwark podcast. You people should all be listening to The Next Level because it's a very good show. Although we're not actually going to do The Next next level we're going to do it like it's charlie's show and we're not going to do the next level of it you you should get the real next level you'll have to come and sign up on wednesday and get the show all right guys the big news the big news this morning is that george santos who for people who are not familiar, is really the future of the Republican Party. He was just elected to a Biden district in New York, and he is young.

He's 34 years old. He's openly gay. He's the son of immigrants. An amazing self-made success story, and really pointing towards what could be a bright post-insurrection future for the Republican Party. Slight problem. He's very handsome. No, he is not handsome. I think that you are looking at his Carrie Lake filter picture.

No. Not his actual. I'm just looking at what Sebastian sent me. I think maybe Sebastian found his filtered photo. I don't want to pick on him for his looks, but I don't. Oh, look, he's not horrible looking. I'm just saying, like, when you look at guys, Adam Kinzinger, very handsome, right? You know, sort of rugged, Tom Selleck-like sort of thing.

Not my type, but objectively handsome. George Santos, more like an average guy. You know, like every man, if you will. I disagree, but, you know, whatever. Keep going. We don't have to turn this into rate my congressman. Here's the problem. The New York Times is out with a piece today in which it turns out that George Santos is basically Tom Ripley. Everything in his life has been a lie. He said that he had worked for Citi Rupp and Goldman Sachs. They said that they have no record of him ever working for them. He said that he graduated from Baruch College. They do not have any record of him

having graduated from there. He said that he had this nonprofit animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United. It does not seem to have been registered as a charity anywhere. They can only find a single event this charity had ever done, and the woman who was supposed to benefit got stiff. And after collecting money from people, he never gave it to the woman who was supposed to be the beneficiary. And then his financial disclosure forms are weird because he went from having eviction notices just a few years ago to somehow lending his campaign more than $700,000 during the midterm. You missed a couple of my favorites. You can fill in the blanks, Tim, as an oppo guy. But the first thing I want to ask you is, as a former oppo guy, is this the worst political malpractice you've ever seen on the part of

any political party that the Democrats have gotten this story out now, two weeks before Representative-elect Santos is to be sworn in, instead of, say, back in September, given especially that this was Santos' second bite at the apple. He ran for the seat in 2020 and lost it. Yeah, I know. So I actually was planning on coming to their defense. You know, as a fellow oppo person, this is your nightmare. This is like the thing of nightmares for this to happen.

And so I was like, you know, those poor guys, like, they a late primary and the redistricting and he didn't even get picked till September. And, you know, by the time you do all the financials, it's already October and nobody wants to write, but he ran a 2020. So they had three years to figure this out. And then if you look at the oppo book, some of it is in there. They don't really have it. You know, they don't have the nuts like the New York times does, but they have key elements of it. But it's like page 17 of 87. And it's like after was too nice to Donald Trump, which is also an important thing to put in an oppo book. But wait, Tim, I'm sorry. What was in the 87 pages of oppo that didn't contain any of these other things? It was like his opinion on abortion, like all of the

times that he said nice things about Donald Trump, you know, that was 13 pages, you know, so just was like, buried. Again, now they didn't have that he was a total fraud. Like what they had was like his financial disclosures were very suspicious. And they also had that the friends of pets thing wasn't real. One thing that they didn't have that it seemed like the New York Times actually did shoe leather reporting on and deserve credit for. He also was arrested in Brazil. He didn't mention this for fraud. Oh, yeah, he was arrested. He's a fraudster in Brazil was arrested there. He said his mom was like a Jewish refugee from Ukraine. But it seems like his mom was just a poor lady in Brazil who was a nurse. Like his mom was nursing an elderly person and he stole that person's checks and then

used it to buy shoes, then used it to purchase shoes and then was arrested in Brazil for this or was charged in Brazil. So pending because he skipped out. Yeah, because he skipped out of the country, right? So it's like a guy that had to steal an elderly person's checks to purchase shoes is now lending himself $700,000 to his campaign. There's also the most despicable thing in there. I just I don't want to get lost, which is he said that one of his fake companies employed four people that died at the Pulse nightclub shooting, use that as like a shield to like protect him from criticism about being, you know, whatever a gay trader, like working for Donald Trump's GOP. You know, that didn't happen. And that's pretty despicable. Just trying to like,

use the dead bodies of the Pulse nightclub massacre as a political shield. Don't love that. So he's not going to resign, right? You have a Democratic governor of New York. My interesting question, I feel like this is our Joe Perticone job, is like, what's the lunchroom like for this guy? Oh, I know the answer to this. He's a hero. It's fine. The failing New York Times is going after him. The liberal effete New York Times reporters and the media are trying to destroy this great man just because he is a gay American who happens to love the Republican Party. And you know what? Who among us has not exaggerated a little bit and shaded our taxes a little bit or said that we won a book prize in eighth grade or something on our college application? That's weirdly specific, JVL.

My medical school applications. Behind every great fortune, there's a crime and it's all like there will be blood. All that real Americans care about is whether you get the job done for them. Well, there might be an actual crime here, though, because since we don't know where the money is. So I guess in theory, that could be the thing that runs them out, is like, there could

be actual consequences with Johnny Law. I mean, because it's still unclear where the, and is he paying taxes on the $700,000? Who's giving him the money? Where did the money come from? I think a lot of open questions. Sarah, what do you, what'd you make of all this? My biggest thing, Tim, I don't know if you saw this, gay to gay here, but did you see who the

speaker at the log cabin Republicans' most recent dinner was? Carrie? It was Carrie Lake. Oh, yeah. I've got a lot of material on this coming up in segment two. Okay. Well, I don't want to preempt that, but I want to say that there is a genre. And so this Spirit of Lincoln dinner was held at Mar-a-Lago. I used to be the board chair of this organization. I was the first female board chair ever, in fact, of the Log Cabin Republicans. Charles Moran took over for me. He's an upstanding guy.

I'm not going to comment on anybody individually. I am just going to say that one of my greatest disappointments has been the role that the gay Republicans have played in elevating Donald Trump and anybody who supports him. This is the first gay Republican in Congress, openly gay, who is probably not the first gay Republican in Congress, openly gay. He's probably not the first gay Republican, but the first openly gay Republican. Well, elected. Elected. Just Jim Colby just died. That's right. He was. He did. You're right. You're right. So who was elected is openly gay, though, right? First elected. And for that person to be this guy, I just think is maybe not what I worked all those years for. Maybe not what other

gay Republicans worked all those years for. It's sad that this is the representation that you get. Yeah, that makes me really mad, actually. Are you surprised, Sarah? Because I have to say, after what the log cabin Republicans did during the Trump era, I kind of assumed that when this happened, it would be like, this is the spirit of the party, right? It's the grifter ethos. I just know a lot of these guys personally who are part of that organization and they are lovely people. But I'm not surprised now because now I've watched seven years go by. But at the time when I was still there and I was watching everybody defending him, that surprised me.

The one argument is that Donald Trump was the most pro-gay Republican presidential candidate of our lifetime, which weirdly is kind of true. He was pro-groomer. Rhonda Santos is going to beat up on him for that. I'm just saying that's one of the reasons these guys love him. Sarah, do you think that the rest of the Republican caucus will be cool with Santos or no? Do you think there will be consequences? Will he be given committee assignments? If you recall, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and I believe also after she was elected, is when maybe we found out. Now, she wouldn't have had tough competition,

but we found out about Jewish space lasers and a bunch of other things. She was having an affair with her CrossFit coach, all kinds of stuff we found out about Marjorie Taylor Greene. And she was sort of sidelined there for a while. But the lesson that has been learned in the intervening period of time, because now she is standing with McCarthy at events, right? She is going to have enormous power in the upcoming Congress. And so I think that the lesson that McCarthy has learned that unless you're doing what Madison Cawthorn did, and you're outwardly embarrassing the party by calling out the leadership, other than that, you're a member in good standing,

no matter what you've done. Unless he goes under criminal investigation, which these scamming charities, I also want to say this, he's not the only candidate that had like one of these scam charities. There were a bunch of these guys. Who was Mr. Violent Guy in the Missouri? Greitens. Greitens. He had scammed a veteran. He had a scam veterans charity. And then J.D. Vance had a scam opioid charity. Donald Trump also had a scam charity. Yeah. Lots of scam charities now as a part of the Republican sort of fundraising operation.

I don't think that there was an inherently grifty element. I mean, when I was there, lots of scam charities now as a part of the Republican sort of fundraising operation. Like, I don't think that there was an inherently grifty element. I mean, when I was there, for the bulk of my time, it was like working towards ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell and ending the ban on marriage equality and pushing for gay marriage. Well, and there also becomes a vacuum of leadership, right? Like the people like Sarah Leaf. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They endorsed Trump. And so that makes a hole for people that were shoe thieves in Brazil and came to America and wanted to, you know, paint a new a new life for themselves. can actually have, right? Because it can sort of provide cover where you see why somebody like Carrie Lake would sort of embrace the Log Cabin Republicans at the same time that she and lots of others are kind of doing the groomer thing because it allows them to kind of play both sides of that. JV, I don't want to do your job for you, but this is a kind of a nice transition to one of the many things that I saw this weekend. Yes, this perfect transition. I don't know if you can tell

from my voice, but of seven hours prior to this taping, I was drinking bourbon at the Project Veritas after party at the TPUSA gathering here in Phoenix, Arizona. You might notice on my Twitter feed, if you are interested in having your eyes bleed this Christmas week, I have a behind the scenes video of James O'Keefe doing a dance to shuffling. Anyway, it's a little bit hard to process all the things that I could share from the past 48 hours of my life. But one of the things that is just relevant to what you were just talking about, Sarah, there's like this group now, are you familiar with this? The Gays Against Groomers? Do you know about this? They're on Tucker a lot. It's the same thing, right? Like they're a shield, you know, that the more the Republicans go in on, you know, gay teachers and trans folks and drag queens, drag shows, like the more cachet you have, right? If you're a gay

person, you're able to, you know, kind of become an influencer. There's a lot of the Gays Against Groomers like have big Instagram followings, et cetera. Among the things I got to do this weekend, I get to chat with a couple of these guys. And the thing is, it's sad for me. Like the thing is pretty sad. And I had a lot of takeaways from being here. Um, there were like funny things like, like James O'Keefe dancing and there were interesting things, you know, about what is motivating this folks. There's some scary things about what they were saying on stage. But like, the sad part for me is just, they're getting used, right? And they can't see it. And I broke out of journalist character at one point talking to one of them. And just being like, these people hate you. Like I just had spent

20 minutes watching Matt Walsh, his entire speech was about pronouns and about truth and about heterosexual marriage. And it's like Matt Walsh would like not really care if every one of these guys' rights were taken away. And women, there's some gay women in the group too. He would not care one whit. And if he was emperor of the country, he would absolutely do that. And yet, like they're being used as a shield to protect from advancing that. And, you know, I did my best to have my like Robin Williams, you know, Matt Damon, Goodwill hunting moment with them. And I just, I couldn't break through.

I couldn't break through. What was the response? One of them said, yeah, I get it, Matt Walsh, because that's probably hate me. But like, directionally, I still think that they're right, was one of the kids' responses. Another one, you know, directly said, well, I don't love the word groomers because of the reasons that you're laying out about how it's being used to smear, you know, gay teachers. But like, what I really don't like is underage sex change operations and puberty blockers and all that. And I was like, well, okay, then why isn't it like gays against underage sex change operations, which, you know, isn't really a big problem, I don't think in this country anyway. But you know, at least that's a more narrow thing about what you're saying is like, well, you know, but gays against groomers, you know, that has a nice ring to it. It helps us if it gets viral and it's short

for gag. Oh my gosh, I'm gagging right now. Another one of them was kind of silent. And it's probably like, why is this weird old guy lecturing me? Probably. Where are they on gay marriage? They're all four. Okay. Are they bothered by the fact that the majority of the republican congressional delegation voted against gay marriage didn't seem so okay one said to me and then i and i had walked away after this actually and now i'm refreshing my memory um he was like i don't you know what you're talking about like i don't i've never met any republican in my life who would want to ban me from like adopting a kid.

Because, you know, that's, that was one of the things I said, I was like, these people hate you, like they want to ban you from this. He's like, I've never met any Republican in my life who believes that. And I was like, how old are you? And he said, you know, 23. For most of your life, it was illegal for you to, like, what are you talking about? Like, for most of your life, it was illegal in a lot of states for gays to adopt kids. So you have heard of people in your life. He's like, well, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know about that. I just, I've never actually. So, uh, you know, there's just this compartmentalization. I mean, a lot of the same themes that I go from the book, but, um, you know,

then I started to get a little heated and I was just like, I'm not actually, this is not a useful exercise any longer. And so I wished them well. We exchanged social media. Here's the thing. I don't want to spend the whole time psychoanalyzing, you know, gay Republicans. But I will say that when we were growing up, Tim, you're a little younger than I am. For the majority of our growing up, there were a lot of people who made these arguments to me. Well, the Republicans hate you.

But until about 2013, Republicans and Democrats had the same position on gay marriage. Barack Obama did not believe in gay marriage when he was elected in 2008. He evolved on the issue right before his second term. And so, you know, I think that there was a time where I thought that the left's condemnation of gay Republicans was really poorly thought out and that a lot of the advancements that got made and the reason that 71% of people now support gay marriage across the country is because a bunch of people made the case that this was not a partisan issue. There were a bunch of gay Republicans who worked for these issues and helped work within

the party. And that was all meaningful and important. And first, like this kid you're talking to says, I've never met anybody like that. You know, I don't know where this person grew up, but there are a lot of people, a lot of gay people who grew up in places, blue places, where actually, and on college campuses, where their sexuality, like being gay is not a thing people criticize them for. But they're being a Republican, they get a ton of criticism for. And it does start to radicalize one where you feel like it's your Republican identity that you take all the heat for. And so you dig in. I felt some of this in college. I don't know. I guess I think it's different now. It's different now, I think, because the environment is so strange with the groomers and DeSantis and the reinvigoration of the war on LGBT people. I have a wide community in the sort of gay conservative sphere. And the puberty blocker, you know, trans kids, trans athletes,

is very controversial within that group, where they don't want to see discrimination against trans people, but they also think that sort of the trans activists, you know, are taking it too far in a lot of ways. I think there's like a reasonable discussion to be had on some of this stuff. And then there's, and then there's a stupid one. May I ask a question of the two of you as an outsider to the community? I imagine that if we jump back eight years and I were to grab 10 gay Republicans off the street and ask them, why are you a Republican? That nine out of the 10 would say, because I'm in favor of fiscal responsibility. I love capitalism. I believe in small government and the rule of law. And this is a great country country and these are the things which have made it

successful and i'm not going to be held hostage by you know my my identity and identity politics etc etc am i getting the sense that that is not what the the gay republican current mindset is that it's actually like culture war stuff. Yes. This is important to understand. And this was always a fight with it. Like literally there was a rival to the log cabin that sprouted up called geo proud, like over this point, like that was initially wait 10 years ago,

15 years ago, that was the divide. Like there was a lot, the log cabin group was more of the people that you just described the fiscal, you know, I believe in these other issues and the geo proud people were like, no,

actually I'm with the GOP on culture war issues and like these guys are cucks and that's like who and coulter would like speak at their conferences and like yeah yeah i want to just go into we're we're really deep on this at this point but like out of what sarah said i agree with one thing really a lot and i disagree with one and the one i disagree with is even though there is, yes, a difference between like 04 and now as far as like what people's rationales were for being a Republican, like those rationales were extremely contorted in 2004 too, right? like platform was much more gay friendly than george bush's and like john kerry was not running a campaign to put gay marriage constitutional amendments on state ballots to help them get elected and you know barack obama was running against don't ask don't tell and john mccain wasn't right like there were there were meaningful differences even back then but um i do think that this feeling of of being ostracized this feeling that like you were being judged right as like if i'm a gay person that has

these other beliefs that don't align with whatever the popular opinion is of the day, is the motivating factor here. And that is why now these guys, to get back to your question, JBL, that's how I started the conversation, actually. I was like, what's motivating you guys? Why are you here? And it was COVID, culture wars, like masking, free speech on the internet, pronouns being forced in my face, right? Like, that's what they answered. And I said exactly your point. I was like, this is interesting, because if I would have done this 15 years ago, like the thing I think most people would have said would have been tax cuts, America's strong role in the world, small government. And I was like, is that what's motivating any of the

people in your group? And like, they kind of laughed, basically. They're like, no, yeah, you're right. It has changed. Yeah. And I'll just add just to your disagreement very quickly, which is that one of the other motivators for me was sort of like, hey, look, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. And I felt very strongly that if you were somebody who you could have easily been a moderate Democrat, but you were also, you know, a moderate Republican, you decide to be a moderate Republican because you could have easily been a moderate Democrat, but you were also, you know, a moderate Republican. You decide to be a moderate Republican because you sort of believe in the free markets, limited government, that frame.

I came up through the whole conservative movement, conservative ecosystem. But the idea of being in a position to talk to the audience that needed the most convincing, to me, strategically, always made a lot of sense. Do you guys mind if I give you a couple other story times from here? Yes, I want more story time from your time. Can you tell the people where you were? I think we sort of missed that. Okay, yeah. So I'm at the Turning Point USA, TPUSA's AmericaFest conference here in Phoenix. It is all of your favorites from the MAGA, you know, extended MAGA multiverse are here. The MAGA Cinematic Universe?

Yeah, the MAGA Cinematic Universe. They're all here. How'd you get in there? How'd they let you in? I called in a favor. And this is an important context. There are a lot of stories that we could go to, but one of my favorites is Carrie Lake. So we can just go into Carrie Lake because this is very related.

Carrie Lake's speech last night, she was the keynote. This was planned to be her coronation. They'd obviously planned this to be in Phoenix a month after the election, long before the election. And so this was going to be her breakout moment for the queen of the MAGA movement, the VP in waiting, et cetera. Obviously, that was not the case, not exactly how things turned out. And so she dealt with that by pretending that she won. Her entire speech was about how she won. She said her pronouns are I won, etc, etc. But one of the there was a funny part of this. And then the part that made me sad is that her speech, like she only has two things that she talks about election fraud, and the media being corrupt. Okay. And so she has this whole spiel about how the media is corrupt. You know, she does the Trump thing, turn around and wave at them and, you know, tell them that, you know, that they're a bunch of liars and they're fake news. And, oh, they don't ever show the good stuff. I can see the red light going on and off. So she's doing this whole shtick.

And at one point she says, turn around and tell those bastards what we really think about them. And then she gives a middle finger gesture without putting up her middle finger kind of you know like the fist in the air with uh why not yeah why not actually put up the finger but the interesting part about this the funny part is there was no media there the guys at tbusa um had decided you know because they didn't like the media bugging the students that they only were going to credential certain people the only media there was like lindell tv real America Voices, Newsmax. There were no cameras on the stage except for the in-house cameras

that was doing the live stream of the print reporters. There were about four or five there. I had to call around and have some very lengthy conversations with some of my new friends here at TPUSA and tell them that I'd be a good boy and behave, which I feel like I've done. And so she's doing this whole spiel, which is like, I can see the red lights turning off right now. I can see the red light turning back on now that I'm saying this. And oh, those those

fake news jerks. Oh, point at them. There's nobody there. Like it was all like talking about kayfabe. It was all it's all for nothing. They were doing it to nobody. And so I was- Did the kids eat it up? Yeah, oh yeah, everybody ate it up. That part was kind of funny and mockable, but then I got sad. So I'm sitting there just in the crowd, right? Because there isn't a media section.

And I'm on my computer taking notes. And I do have a badge that says press. And so when everybody turns around, a lady about two rows in front of me, a middle-aged lady, points at me and is like, that's him. That's them. Then a handful of people point at me and laugh. Most of them were in good cheer. I didn't feel at risk or anything, but they were trying to mock me.

And I just sat there and kind of waved at them and typed on my computer. But then something made me really sad, which was one of the moms had a girl uh that was i don't know maybe 10 and this little girl is like looking at me and cringing and kind of being like i'm sorry like putting her hands over her eyes and then like carrie lakes up there being like bastards bastards and this this little girl is like i can't even look at me. And I'm like, looking at her being like, it's okay. Like, it's fine. Like, it's fine. And that like, got me very sad. Well, at least that mom didn't take her to a drag queen story hour. Because that would have been really hurtful.

Because that would have really been corrupting. The other thing that this is related to, Republican events have always been very gaudy. You know, there's no shortage of, you know, wanting to talk about God and talking about and saying Merry Christmas and doing more on Christmas stick a week out from Christmas, like that's always been there. But the emphasis was much, much higher. And I think it was in the face of these losses, that like, they didn't have a lot of answers for why they lost. And so a lot of the speakers, you know, were singing the same hymn, so to speak, which was basically that, you know, this is a godless country, the Democrats think they are God,

you know, we've got to put our faith in God and his dominion on earth, and we've got to be fighters for him, and we have to fear not, and we have to, you know, retreat to our families and to our churches and be fiery advocates against the demonic stuff among us. The preponderance of speakers said something to that effect. And so I just, I think about like all the David French stuff at the Christian nationalism, like they're just the Christian nationalism infused element to this was much more than I expected, right? And obviously there's going to be a little bit, but there was a emphasis on it that was quite intense. And like to contrast that, you know, it's one thing where I was like, in a vacuum, you might be kind of like, well, okay, that's a healthy way for people to process defeat is to,

you know, focus on their religion and their faith and their faith community. But like, literally within one minute of people saying like, we need to care about God's dominion on earth, we need to put our faith in God, then it'll be like, the pro-choice lib ladies are fat, aren't they? You know, like, everybody, let's stand up and cheer for how Rhonda Sanders sent those immigrants to Rosie O'Donnell's house and Martha's vineyard. And, and, and how about those cuts? And it's just like, I, the, the counter juxtaposition of that and, and of like pointing at me and calling me a bastard and all that. I can take that. I don't care about that. I doesn't, didn't make me sad, but what made me sad is just that I didn't get any sense that anybody was at

all put off by that contradiction. Like there was not one, you know, Maude Flanders there that's like, you know, hey, maybe we should be nicer at least if we're going to talk about God the whole time. Sarah, do you ever see that sort of tension in people in your focus groups? Or is this only when people are in crowds? All the time. So this is, it's funny, actually, as Tim was saying that I was thinking about this dynamic that I often remark on in the focus groups where you will have people up front when you're asking them how things are going. And they will say, you know, this was especially true

when Trump was president, you'd be doing sort of Trump focus groups. And people would lament at the top about how divided we are. You know, it's just, oh, it's just so divisive and everyone's so angry at each other and they would lament how much we hated each other. And 20 minutes into the focus group, they would be like, those communist liberals are trying of self-awareness about that phenomenon. But it happened all the time. I talk about it frequently. Whatever. I don't even quite know what to say about it, except that it's not great. And it's the kind of thing which, you know, like it's just a little brush fire now. It's not hard to see how it gets out of hand,

right? I mean, the history is replete with examples. Especially the demonic stuff. And the other thing is the interesting thing there is the people self-select who talk to me, right? So, I would love tips from, you know, other people. I'm new to being a Tom Wolfe on the scene journalist, unlike how to, you know, best engage with like some of the true believers right so the people that come talk to me self-select because they recognize me right it's either like teens who know the snapchat show and like don't really like me but like are interested enough in politics to like watch it and you know aren't like fully on the deep end of mega stuff right it's them or it's like the operatives who like don't you know who it's all fucking game for

and they don't actually care and they're there and they know me because you know my twitter or whatever like those are the people who come and talk to me and so when i ask either of those groups about this stuff they like pretend like they don't even know what i'm talking about right they're like oh i didn't hear that part i'm just like i literally just sat in the hall and listened to james lindsey and eric mcstxis talk for 20 minutes about how we are going through a period where the left are Gnostic hermetic demons and Satan is taking over the country and Nazism is right around the corner. If we continue going down these paths with the groomer teachers and the critical race

theory and everybody's cheering and then Matt Walsh comes on next. And it's 20 minutes on pronouns and how it's the size of the end of society and how it's demonic and Nazis and Satan is in our midst and we need to turn back to God. And you know, then I'm like, doesn't that concern you? Like, aren't you concerned that some of the people in the room are going to like take that seriously? And if you really think that like Satan is about to rise and take over America through the democratic party, that that might radicalize people in a way that is dangerous. And they're like, yeah, I don't, I don't, I didn't hear that. Was that, did he really say that?

And I'm just like, we're at the same conference. And so, and, and so I feel like the one thing that hopefully I get invited back, I want to challenge myself to do better next time is like, go up to the people that are cheering during those parts and be like, what do you think, you know, and try to understand what they're, how they're processing it. Because it's, it's alarming for me. One of the things that I have noted over the last five years is that basically from the center left, there was an entire cottage industry of people who looked at the populist rebellion, sort of, you know, which was Trumpism and nationalism and all that stuff, and basically was asking themselves, so why are these people doing this? How can we understand

them? And how can we persuade them? And so everyone from like Rui to Shara to some of the work that Sarah did to, you know, like the New York Times had people on the beat of this. It was pretty substantial. I'll never forget, Sarah, one of your Democratic focus groups where you had some Democratic voters from Pennsylvania who were all explaining why their friends voted for Donald Trump. And none of it was like that my friends are Nazis. It was like, no, you got to understand they feel left behind and, you know, didn't really mean any of it. There's a lot of permissiveness about the nationalism stuff. This is not the entirety of the Democratic side. It's not the entirety of the left. Certainly like Rose Twitter is on, you know, full crystal knocked Nazi watch, and sometimes they overstate that.

But a large portion of the center-left, I think, has spent the last five or six years trying to understand their counterparts on the right. Am I wrong that there is precisely zero part of the Republican world, which does the same with the left. Because I have never once in my life seen somebody roughly equivalent on the Republican side, not demonizing like liberals and Democratic voters, and instead saying, look, you got to understand why these people vote this way, and this is how we can do better to capture them. Oh, I disagree completely. I would characterize it differently. Republicans have been thinking very hard about how they capture Hispanic voters, how they capture Black voters, how they do slightly better with women. And especially,

especially, they spent a lot of time thinking about how to get a bigger share of those white working class voters who voted for Obama and then voted for Trump, who might be attracted to Bernie Sanders. And they have completely revolutionized the way they talk about economics, the way they talk about trade to better appeal economically to those voters. And that doesn't mean that when Trump got elected, the first thing they did in terms of any economic priority was pass a major tax cut, but that's not how they talk really anymore. And so, you know, Trump went to the coal countries and said he was going to bring all those jobs back. Now, that was a lie. And the focus on immigration was, you know, to mix in kind of the racism with a nod to the

economic insecurity by placing blame, economically distressed white working class voters, along with Hispanic working class voters and black working class voters, been the bread and butter of the Democratic Party at its where Republicans have been meaningfully eating into Democrats margins. And I do think that was intentional. They just don't do it in the same way that the Democrats do, which is like with empathy. Like it's a different, it's like a different way of approaching it. And I would answer this question a little differently. I agree with Sarah on the tactical side. I think that maybe your question, JBL, is more about kind of like the narrative side and

like thinking about people's, you know, interior lives. And I think that there is none of that, right? There was none of that here at this conference of like, oh, you know, like there's a lot of discussion about how other kids, not kids here are too woke, and how they're all caught up in gender ideology and all this, but there's not any discussion of like, well, why do we think that's happening? Like, what do we think it is that's making, you know, that more appealing to kids in this generation or with the past generations? Besides, just like, oh, they're being, you know, propagandized to by these like, teachers. I think the reason why is that they see themselves as the people at this conference in particular

see themselves as the marginalized ones. We are the ostracized. We are the targeted. We are the marginalized. They are the dominant. They're the dominant cultural force. We don't need to try to understand them or psychoanalyze them or figure out how to bring them into the fold because they already have everything. So that creates a

disconnect in how people, you know, they look at the other side, right? Like the Democrats don't look at rich white guys feel that way, but they do, Democrats with empathy do look at working class people and are like, oh, okay, well, what do we think is driving them? What do we think is motivating them? Republicans at places like this don't feel like they have any need to do that because those people are getting all of the affirmation and validation that they desire. Republicans did win the House popular vote last month. Do they not understand? It's a bigger picture. Do they believe that they're a persistent minority?

They do. Is that what that is, basically? Yes. That's interesting. A persistent minority who speaks for a silent majority somehow, right? This is the tension in the populist worldview, right? We are the victims of grievance, even though really we're the true know, 70% of the country is with us. I mean, yeah, the silent majority and the moral majority and all those things, like there's

this constant awareness that they believe they reflect the dominant culture in terms of numbers, but they are controlled. I think Tim's point is well taken. I still stand by my point, but I think that Tim's point about the perpetuation, I mean, grievance culture is at the center of Trumpism. I mean, it's even who Trump is himself. It's why he has this sort of persecution complex, right? And it's why he says- It's the center of all populism, right? I mean, all populism is grievance culture. That's right. You see what happens when they search Mar-a-Lago. The talking point that comes out immediately is if it can happen to me, it can happen to you. Because this is about the deep state and all the big institutions, all of them being controlled by

democratic elites. Sometimes this is a stand in for other forms of like anti-Semitism and other things. I think Tim's point about the dominant culture is the right one. People want to watch one speech for this because it's all on their website. Tucker was the only person that tried to grapple with this. And it's an interesting speech because he seems extremely tormented by that very paradox that you just laid out jbl like he kind of says this at the top he's like i don't understand how every normal person didn't vote out these demons i don't think he doesn't use the word right that didn't vote out these insane people and he goes on a extremely stream of consciousness rambambly speech that hits on all kinds of different stuff. And he's emoting.

And it was kind of interesting to watch him try to grapple with this. And one of the points he brings up is he's like, even in Montana, they voted against us on ballot initiative stuff related to abortion. And it's almost like he doesn't quite get there. He's almost there, but not quite there to the fact of like, no, actually, the normal, quote unquote,

like the mainstream, the center is not with you on this stuff at all. But he's trying to understand that because he feels like they should be while also feeling aggrieved. All right, I want to do five minutes on Twitter. It was an eventful weekend on the Twitterverse. We had a bunch of journalists suspended late last week. Then we had some of them reinstated. Then we had Elon Musk's own Twitter account being suspended for 15 minutes. possibly because it was algorithmic, because he doxed his own location in real time by reporting that he was at the World Cup sitting with Jared Kushner, which is amazing. And then we had the rollout of a policy in which you could not promote other social media platforms who are competitors, but it was a very curated list of platforms. Truth Social, for instance, was deemed a competitor, but Parler and Getter were not. platforms who are competitors but it was a very curated list of platforms truth social for

instance was deemed a competitor but parlor and getter were not interesting i don't know if you guys noticed that then this policy was 404'd late on sunday and disappeared tiktok also was not seen as competitive tiktok also not seen as competitor, right? Because they would have lost, right? Everybody would have just said, oh, well, screw Twitter then. And then we had in place a poll posted about this very question. And simultaneously, we have a poll from Elon Musk asking the people if he should step down from day-to-day operations. And he says that he will abide by it. Now, I'm going to give you guys a spoiler. There was no way that Elon Musk was going to continue day-to-day operations of Twitter indefinitely because Tesla shareholders have been revolting. I don't know if you guys have seen, but Tesla stock is in the toilet in part because Tesla is wildly overvalued, not investing in vice, and in part

because the Tesla CEO has been off doing other things. Elon's been on a, what, two-month journey to make every liberal who might buy a Tesla hate him so much that I can't tell you the number of people. I hate most of the Teslas. Yeah, there's so many people who I've heard say, like, I'm never buying a Tesla. Like, who might otherwise have been just kind of, you know, electric car driving libs.

And at a moment when EVs are being rolled out everywhere. Somebody in my feed replied to me and was like, I don't usually let this stuff get to me. I don't participate in boycotts. But he's like, every time I get in my car in the morning, it makes me think about him, and I hate that. And so I'm going to get a new car, because I don't want to have to think about it.

And that is how much he's annoying like his his target demo what do you guys make of this i mean there are a bunch of things to take away the one of the more interesting things taylor lorenz of the washington post was banned she then on her sub stack said that you know they have not told me why i was banned but the last tweet i did was a public ask of musk because i'm doing a story on him and I was, you know, I've been trying to get comment from him on things. You know, it kind of looks like maybe the free speech stuff was all code for something else. I don't know. Sarah? Here's the thing. I got to say, I really hate Musk Twitter. And I don't even mean Musk running it. I

mean the intense focus on all things Musk, right? Like all the discourse. But I don't even mean Musk running it. I mean the intense focus on all things Musk, right? Like all the discourse. But I have learned a great deal about free speech over the last, I don't know, couple of weeks. The number one is that oftentimes the most vocal free speech advocates are not in favor of the neutral application of free speech rules. It is actually, I want the people who I like to be able to say whatever they want with impunity and without suffering consequences. But when I am in charge, it is free speech for me and not for thee. And, you know, that is one of the most complicating things about free speech is that, you know, this often happens. And again,

it goes back to this power dynamic that Tim was talking about with the culture, where when you feel like the institution, right, is in charge, and they are powerful, you say that they're censoring your free speech. And then when you are in charge, when you are in the dominant position, you find yourself unable to resist in your power, limiting other people's free speech, especially when that speech is being critical of you. You know, when he did this poll about should I reinstate the journalists, people were like, yes, like there are a lot of his, I think he has diminished himself. There's a cohort of the Elon folks who are like, but they're doxing him. They said where his jet

was, which of course is not what a lot of the reporters were doing. They were reporting on that element. And so, you know, there's, there's that part that doesn't get it, but there's another part that was like, yeah, free speech. Who's now like, oh wait, this guy isn't, this guy is not upholding what he said he was going to uphold. Can I say something that's about to sound a little hubristic? Go ahead. So could you guys, I was about to suggest that you guys keep me in check and then i and then i remembered that you have a shirt that says jvl is always right so maybe you're not the right person to keep me in check on this the people demanded that tim i'm not the person who who was will the contrarian assholes like ever just admit that like they were

wrong like this is the actually thing that bugs me about all this like we've had a series of events recently and the same fucking people like i don't know are you familiar with this the all-in podcast these fucking assholes that run this they're tech bros that run this contrarian all-in podcast it's david sacks who's peter teal's old friend and jason calcacness i don't know how to say his name was like elon's friend and his end twitter hq they were all like jack is horrible elon's gonna be great everybody's wrong elon's purchase of this is brilliant he's gonna do this it's brilliant they're the same assholes that are like oh the ukraine war is terrible and like oh maybe we should consider that we were we asked for it and like you know we should be dealing with russia in good faith and they're the same

assholes who said the vaccine didn't work and they're the same assholes who like defended kanye and the other intellectual dark web people and it's like the normie resistance moms out there listening to this podcast like have been right over and over again on all of these hot button issues maybe they've been wrong about things in the past. Maybe they don't have the right opinion on every possible issue and are not prescient. But like, on these obvious things about Kanye and Elon and Trump and Ukraine, like normie, regular resistance moms have been right every time. And these fuckers have been wrong every time. We all saw that Elon was going to be a disaster.

That is my biggest takeaway from this whole exchange. And so Elon is going to literally lose $20 billion and still, there's still not going to be one person that's like, yeah, whoops, I was wrong. I just want one person to say that. I would like to read you three tweets. Three tweets from Paul Graham, who is at Paul G on Twitter,

who is a venture capital and tech bro, who on 11-16-2022 tweets, it's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX. Next tweet. In both those companies, people die if the software doesn't work right. Do you really think he's not up to managing a social network?

Now, here's Paul G. this weekend. This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site. Here's the thing about being a contrarian and what people often don't appreciate about it. They think, Oh, he's really contrarian thing. If all you are is a contrarian, then you're going to be wrong. Like 95% of the time. If your entire mode of intellectual operation is, I'm taking the other side of what people think is going to happen, then you're going to be wrong all the fucking time. And maybe you'll be right every once in a while, and then you go around, oh,

look at me, look at me, I got one right. Because another word for contrarian is like, you know, stopped clock being right twice a day. Contrarianism is not a useful frame for evaluating the universe around you. It's in fact no better than like last in, first out. It's, you know, and if your skepticism is useful, right? And being selectively contrarian can be useful. And this is how all of these people operate. They just sort of take the other way. Whatever the bad guys, whatever the out group is saying, they go the other way.

Did you see the back and forth between Barry and Elon? Oh, I did. What did you think about it, Sarah? Well, I thought Barry was trying. She was even like giving him all the caveats, but she was reminding him that yes, because Elon's argument was that Twitter as a public utility, as a town square, that it needed unfettered free speech. Like, yes, it was a private platform, but it should have unfettered free speech. Like, yes, it was a private platform, but it should have unfettered free speech. And that's what he was going to bring to it. Now he's the

owner and it is not unfettered free speech. He does not believe in a big culture of free speech. And when Barry points that out, he goes hard at her, hammer and tong. He was mad at her. And so do you give her any credit for at least standing up to him? She barely stood up to him. Even in her mealy-mouthed way. This is what drives me crazy about her. Her stand up to him is to not say, look, Elon Musk is terrible.

It turns out we need content moderation. Barry's version of this is, maybe no individual, no private company should be allowed to make these decisions. And you're like, okay, great. So what do you think? Who do you think? It's this insane libertarian bullshit. Like you think the government should then make these decisions? Of course not. That's called communism. This is why actually the old version of Twitter was while suboptimal in terms of free speech stuff was not terribly bad because what it did was itoptimal in terms of free speech stuff, was not terribly bad. Because what it did

was it disentangled, in terms of moderation, influence from power. And so the people with the most influence over how those decisions were made were the people with the least amount of actual power over the company. So you had the line workers in the standards department and the health and safety making decisions. But in terms of the grand scheme of Twitter's power structure, these people had very, very little power. They could be hired and fired at will, right? And the people with the most power,

all the way at the end of the CEO and board member stage, were the people with the least amount of influence over day-to-day operations. And that is not a bad way to set up a system where there is some tension and which tries to sort of keep things basically even keel. And the Musk version, which is to commingle all of the power

and the influence in the same place, is of course going to lead to worse abuses. You just have to put your head around the fact that it's always going to suck because anybody can moderate a platform with a hundred people on it. That's not hard, right? At scale,

this shit is incredibly complicated and will always be done badly. And you know, like you just got to make your peace with that or not. It will be done imperfectly. I wrote a whole article about this. So I won't talk about it. People can read it three cheers for content moderation. I wrote it over the weekend. But I just want to say one

more thing about Barry before we let it go. I do give her credit. I do. I really do. You tweeted at Elon Musk after he'd provided you all this access saying, no, dude, actually, you screwed this up. I give her credit for that. But it still leaves me wanting because again all the critics of her were right like the critics of her who were saying you are doing pr for a lunatic that has his own agenda that is not a free speech advocate that actually just wants to target a different group of enemies and wants to let nazis back onto the platform because he sees them as allies and part of this coalition. And you were doing PR for him unskeptically by doing these Twitter files on Twitter. That criticism was right. Okay. And so this is the, this is what I'm saying

that is frustrating, right? It's like nobody that is involved in that world from Barry on down, not picking on her, everyone in that quote unquote pro free speech contrarian like group from Glenn Greenwald to the all in podcast guys to her, they all were wrong about this. Like they all said Jack had a unique like kind of bias and that Elon is different and better. And like, that's why I'm happy to go do this and promote his bullshit. But like, that was not right. And that was obvious to anyone who looked at Elon with just an ounce of critical thinking. And so to put yourself in a place where you're just doing his PR was a big mistake. And so then just to then say afterwards, Oh, man, you really screwed this up when you got in charge, I shouldn't have been, you know, okay, that's one thing. But

there wasn't like, I shouldn't have been so gullible. You know what I mean? And I just, I would love to have some kind of acknowledgement that was like, you know what? Actually, my critics had it right on this one. Never going to get it. I know. I know I'm not going to get it. All right, guys. Good show. Long show. Thanks for being with us. Everybody, we do this every Wednesday. It's really good. You should go to the next level and sign up, go to the bulwark.com, sign up for all of our stuff that we've got there. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, come and hang out with us.

We're coming to Seattle on January 21? Yes. Is it 21? Yes. Is that right? Go to thebullwork.com slash no BS and sign up. Come hang out with us. It'll be a good time.

Everybody, thanks for joining us. We'll be a good time. Everybody, thanks for joining us. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again. Peace. Bye.