The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Alberta: Trump Has an Evangelical Problem

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

Trump threw the anti-abortion movement under the bus after losses in the midterms — which prompted a ferocious backlash among evangelicals. He has yet to repair the damage. Apart from criminal prosecution, could the end of Roe end up spelling his political downfall? Tim Alberta joins Charlie Sykes today.  show notes: Tim's Atlantic piece Tim's book, "American Carnage" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Happy Arraignment Day. The former president of the United States surrendering to authorities in New York City to describe it as a circus, I think is unfair to circuses. For those of you who may have missed it because you actually have a life, the media coverage yesterday was absolutely wall to wall. It was slow Bronco driving on the freeway coverage of the motorcade, the media has learned absolutely nothing about these guys. So this is an extraordinarily busy news day. I mean, obviously, the coverage is going to be dominated by what happens, the highly choreographed appearance of Donald Trump at the New York City courthouse. The fact that we will be getting real news. We will finally find out what is in that sealed indictment. These 34 reported class E

felonies. There's been tremendous speculation about them, but until today, we actually have not seen them. And then, of course, we'll have the appearance of Donald Trump. Apparently, there will not be a mugshot. We're not totally clear about all that. He's not going to be handcuffed. And the notoriously camera shy Donald Trump did not want cameras in the courtroom. So apparently there will not be cameras in the courtroom, but we're going to see all of these images over and over and over again, recycled. Just a reminder, though, today is the day of that incredibly high stakes Supreme Court election in my home state of Wisconsin. There's a hugely interesting race for mayor of Chicago

that really illustrates the democratic divide on issues like education and crime. And, you know, lest we sort of ignore this major geopolitical moment, Finland joins NATO today, which dramatically expands NATO's border with Russia. All of that is going on. And our guest today to talk about this extraordinarily, I won't say consequential day because we don't know. I mean, it's certainly going to be theatrical. We're joined by Tim Alberta, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the book American Carnage. Welcome back, Tim. I'm dragging you back into this. Charlie, this feels like a bait and switch. Here, I thought that we were going to talk some baseball and that we were just going to catch up on old times.

And well, I guess we are catching up on old times, right? All that's old is new again. We're just taking one more trip around the Trump sun here. It does feel like that. So American Carnage, that title aged well. Well, I've had to jokingly decline the requests to write a sequel, in part because I don't think a sequel is really even necessary, Charlie. I mean, you said it in the intro, like we're just sort of doing the same thing over and over again. Trump is certainly doing the same thing over and over again. And the playbook's not really changing. I mean, it's kind of like when you get to season five of a TV show that's been a hit.

And, you know, they're recycling some old plot lines and hoping that you don't notice, you know, because they're changing some of the characters, but they've sort of run out of plot. And you're just sort of looking around like, oh, okay. I mean, I guess I'll keep watching. Sure. That was the first thing I said to you when you came on is like, I feel like we've had this conversation before, or can you believe that we're still having this conversation? I think that's what I said, right? Can you believe we are still after seven years having this conversation, taking another trip around the Trumpian sun? Sorry to drag you back in. Don't be sorry. I mean, what's most amazing to me, honestly, is how many people are still on board, like how many people are still all in.

That's what's surprising. And we can get into that more if you'd like, but I'm just amazed that there isn't a higher level of fatigue. I mean, there's some fatigue out there for sure, but it's not at the levels that you would expect at this point. And that is genuinely surprising to me. It was surprising to me in 2016, but it continues to be surprising to me, especially as all of the evidence piles up. Is it because at a certain point you have the sunken cost that once you're all in with it, you know, the next outrage, the next data point is like, okay, I've already made the choice. I'm all in. I've sliced off so many pieces of my soul here. What's one more?

Because you would think that there have been, you know, so many moments where people could go, okay, I'm done. I mean, even Lindsey Graham, you know, night of January 6th said, hey, it's been a great ride, but I'm out. He's back in. I mean, he's back in crying and blubbering on television and raising money for Donald Trump. They just cannot freaking quit him. You know, Charlie, I have sort of a grand unified theory of this. I'm not sure if I've ever shared it exactly this way with you before, but the way that I've come to think about sort of Trump's hold on the Republican Party is that, you know, it's basically broken into thirds. The first third is diehard MAGA. They're all in. These are the true believers.

This is Trump's base, right? And not coincidentally, you know, during the 2016 primary, he was typically topping out at around 33%, you know, give or take, right? And these are the folks who, you know, even with a big multi-candidate field, they were buying what Trump was selling, 100%. So they're all in. And they're not going anywhere. They're never going anywhere. He could shoot somebody at Fifth Avenue. They'd still be with him. We all know this. Then you've got the third at the other end, that is really, you know, they're really, really not crazy about Trump,

you know, they're going to hold their nose and vote for him in a general election, most of them probably, but they would really like to move on at this point, they probably would have liked to move on seven years ago. They're not crazy about the guy for any number of different reasons. You know, they just at this point sort of soak their head and hope that the storm will pass sooner rather than later. And they're not having much luck with that hope. It's the middle third that's really interesting. It's the middle third of folks who are sort of really sick of Trump personally, but still feel like his presidency was mostly a success. And they get a little tired of the liberal media beating up on him. And they get a little defensive, because like, yeah, he's a jackass, but he's their jackass. And so they're

not, they have this sort of weird, hot and cold relationship with Trump. And the thing that's interesting, and the real parallel I see with this episode relative to what we've seen over the last seven or eight years, Charlie, is that any time it looks like there's an opportunity for Republican leaders in influential positions to use their influence to turn that middle third decisively against Trump, they decide to play to the first third of his MAGA supporters because they're so scared of them, right? That first third of MAGA supporters terrifies the elected class of the Republican Party. And in this instance, you look at the Mike Pence's and the Nikki Haley's and the Tim Scott's, the people who are going to be running

against them for president, they feel so threatened by that first third of the MAGA diehards of the Republican base that they are willing to sort of bend over backwards to defend Trump. And in so doing, they are sort of inadvertently influencing that middle third of the Republican party base to sort of say, well, boy, you heard what Tim Scott said. You heard what Mike Pence said about this indictment. Maybe this really is a political prosecutor. You know, I thought that actually he might be in some real legal hot water here. But boy, the way that all these folks are rallying around him, maybe it's just a bunch of BS. And boy, Charlie, that's the piece of it that really feels like Groundhog's Day here. I mean, just time and time and time again over the last seven or eight years.

The part of the reason the party can't quit Trump is because you've got this big chunk in the middle of the party base who's been looking for a reason to quit Trump. And the elected class, the governing class of the party, just won't let them. The thought leaders won't lead. They won't think and then they won't lead. That's the problem of being a thought leader, right? You have to do both of those things. Like the cowardice is pretty obvious here, but also, you know, I'm listening to you and thinking there's something else too. I mean, there's the opportunism, there's an exhaustion. There's also this, this is the price that you have to pay to be a member of this tribe, to continue to be relevant. I mean, a lot of them are afraid, but what they're most afraid of

is that they won't have a seat at the table, that they'll become like Liz Cheney, that they'll be thrown out. So therefore they have to go through the motions just to make sure they can stay with the clan, right? And a lot of people that I've talked to get the sense of, yeah, I'm afraid of getting ratioed and attacked and have the flying monkeys. But also, it's like, it's just not worth it. There's a sense of like, okay, we've been doing this for seven years. I could put out a statement. I could say what I actually think, but it would just make my life miserable. And I'd probably end up hoping to get a CNN contract or something. But I mean, there is that kind of sort of despairing shrug,

as well as abject fear. I think that's right. And I think it is, in part, a collective action problem, right? They look around and they say, well, you know, if a bunch of us were willing to lock arms and do this together, then it could really make an impact. It could really change things. They've been saying that since 2015, though. I know. That's the groundhog day. Charlie, seriously, I'm not even being cute here. I'm actually having deja vu as I'm saying this to you on the podcast, because I feel like we've had this conversation at least twice, maybe three times in the last seven

or eight years. Again, this is where we find ourselves. I mean, you know, whether it's members of the Freedom Caucus saying to me privately, let me be even more explicit, like future members of the Trump administration members of the Freedom Caucus saying to me privately in the spring of 2015, that they think that this guy is amoral, that they think he's wicked, that they think he's a threat to the country. But individually, there's only so much they can do. It would really take sort of groundswell in the Republican Party to stand up and stop this guy, right? Whether it's that in 2015, or whether it's some of the folks who were vote no, hope yes,

on impeachment after January 6th, or, you know, fast forward to, you know, April 4th, 2023. It's just the fundamentals of this for all that has changed, for all that has changed. And I mean, this guy has changed, fundamentally changed the Republican Party, fundamentally changed American politics, in some ways, fundamentally changed the country. So much has changed. And yet that piece of it has not changed at all. And it's just astonishing. Yeah. I mean, and who knew that Mark Meadows was not a man of deep principle? I never would have guessed. Okay. So this is where I need some deep thought here, because I'm going through some of the truth social bleeds from Trump over the last, I don't know, 48, 76 hours and whatever, 72 hours. They range between demented and deranged. They become more conspiratorial. They've just become more and more unhinged. And again, you and I've had this conversation again over the last seven years, but I'm looking at them and thinking, how can anyone look at these? How can anyone listen to him or watch him and think, yeah, let's make him president

of the United States again. This guy is acceptable. This is somebody that I think of as a role model, as somebody that, you know, I want to put in the most powerful position in American politics. I just want us to step back for a moment here, Tim, because there are tens of millions of people that still look at him and admire him. And they may know that he's deeply corrupt or he's lying to them and they don't care. And I guess we're political journalists. We follow this. We're pundits. And we're trying to like, why is this happening? Why is this happening? Let's look at this piece of wreckage over here. And I was thinking last night, you know, maybe we're the last people around who can really explain what's going on. Who do we need to explain

what has broken in America? Do we need sociologists? Do we need theologians? Do we need psychologists? Do we need historians? Are you following where I'm going here? Because it feels as if we're watching what's happening with a certain level of incomprehension about what's happened to American culture, to the American brain, to the American mind, all of this stuff. And that maybe something broke decades ago that we missed or overlooked. And maybe it's not completely political. I'm sorry to go deep on you this morning, but I do feel like we're caught in this doom loop. And I'm thinking, you know, did we need to step out of the doom loop and get some perspective on how we got where we're at right now? Oh, boy. Did I warn you? No, it's look, it's the right question. And I'm not at all convinced that I've

got the answer. But I think the best I could give you is we need all of the above because you're right, it's not political. And in fact, you know, even in writing American Carnage, I sort of opened the book by explaining the sort of runway to Trumpism, cultural, economic. Obviously, Trump sort of very uniquely weaponized the environment around him, this building distrust of institutions in American life, this polarization that was beginning to reach a fever pitch, the conspiratorial mindset that was beginning to grip sizable elements of the Republican Party base that you could see, you know, during the Obama years with the Bertha Crusade and all of this. So in other words, like you couldn't divorce any of Trump's outright

political maneuverings relative to Obama and the birther crusade, for example, with some of these kind of macro economic developments, you know, with the crash in 08 and the Wall Street bailout and all the misinformation around TARP and people feeling like there were almost this emerging caste system in American life. And some people didn't have to play by the rules because they were connected, et cetera, et cetera. And meanwhile, the social fabric of the country is changing so quickly. Demographic change is accelerating and Obama wins the presidency in a way opposed to same-sex marriage. And by the time he leaves office, it's the law of the land. It's hard to quantify. I think about this all the time, Charlie, because I've got

young kids, right? Like when they're in high school, when they're in college, they're going to be studying this 10, 12 year stretch of American history very intensely. And I think that we'll be studying it for a long time. And it's going to take more than historians, to your point, it's going to take some serious like sociological work to unpack the psyche of the American people during this stretch, because it feels like more than anything else, so much of what animates the continued attraction to Trump is fear. And I think that there's other things that you can attach to the fear or things that perhaps inform the fear. But at the end of the day, there is just a palpable, deep-seated sense with so many voters on the right that this country is teetering at the edge of the abyss, that it's almost lost, that something that once made it special is gone and they're sort of scrapping and clawing to protect the very last vestiges of it and this guy no matter his warts that he's doing it that he's the guy standing up to all of these forces the woke progressives and the transgenders and the hollywood elites and the

all of this yeah he will fight for them and it starts to feel like a total cliche and well-worn at a certain point. Again, we've had this conversation, but it's the best answer I can come up with because eight years later, it's still the answer I get all over the country when I spend time with these folks. I just have gotten to a place where I think it's the thing that's really hard to measure, but it's the thing that's really hard to measure, but it's the thing that's the most consistent in all of this. Yeah. And so the fight becomes central. It's not about a specific issue or public policy. Sometimes the fight is just about the fight. Okay. So let me ask you this. I want to get to your piece, which is absolutely fascinating that Donald Trump is on the wrong

side of the religious right, because the transformation of social conservatives and the religious right has been central to this story. And one of the great right, because the transformation of social conservatives and the religious right has, you know, been central to this story and one of the great puzzles, I think, for a lot of observers to this. But here's the other unanswerable question. Right now, Donald Trump is enjoying the rally around the flag boost that he always enjoys after, you know, something like this happens. Will fatigue set in? Will the exhaustion begin to take a toll when you have the cumulative effect? Okay, so today we have the non-perp walk, non-mugshot. You know, all these Republicans are saying this is all political. What will they say after Georgia? What will they say after Mar-a-Lago? What will they say after Jack Smith comes down, perhaps with some January 6th indictments? What

will they say when, you know, the SEC comes forward with this investigation? Does this take a toll or are they all in? The history would tell us they're all in and they're never going to break. But at some point, is there a cumulative weight where the voters go? We still like the guy, but it's just too much. We need to move on. I mean, that's obviously what a lot of these Republicans are hoping for, but they're just too much. We need to move on. I mean, that's obviously what a lot of these Republicans are hoping for, but they're not willing to do anything. They're not willing to take the collective action to push them in that way. So how do you think this plays out by August or September? Are people still like, he's our guy and he's our fighter,

and we don't give a damn what he's done or how many times he's been indicted. We're going with him. Well, Charlie, here's the thing. I can't see the future any better than you can. And I'm certainly not going to go out on this limb of saying, well, this is it. This is finally when a lot of these people are going to sort of pack it up and call it a day with Trump. But I do think just as three or four months ago, we were maybe a little bit off with our expectations when we, you know, after the midterms, we saw Trump start to dive a little bit in the polls, we saw DeSantis ascendant, and we started to think, oh, okay, well, here's the first real sign of folks moving on. And now we start to see folks sort of rallying back a bit. My hunch is that three or four months

from now, things will again be a little bit different. In other words, I don't know that there's any trend line that's going to hold constant over the next 18 months here. You know, when we say that we're in uncharted waters, you know, legally we are. We're also really in uncharted waters politically in the sense that you've got a former president running to reclaim his office. But, you know, he's doing so under these really nasty storm clouds. He's doing so in all likelihood running against his former vice president, running against former cabinet officials. And he's old and he's incredibly unpopular with the general electorate. You know, you see some people in the last 72 hours like, well, okay, he's the nominee now, right? Like this clinches it. Like I'm not

going there at all yet because unlike 2016, we've already seen some key differences. Some of them I've laid out in the piece and we can get more into that in a minute as far as where sort of influential evangelical leaders are at. I think another place we see is that donors are moving quickly with their money this time around to throw it behind other candidates recognizing the Trump threat that exists. We've seen, you know, the Koch network already mobilized, whereas back in 2016, you know, Eliana Johnson and I had reported this big scoop back in 2016 that basically Mark Short, you know, Mike Pence's right-hand man who had led the Koch network's political operations, he and some others had gone to, you know, Charles Koch himself and had begged basically for $10

million to try and stop Trump on Super Tuesday. And the whole Koch network basically shrugged their shoulders and said, nope, we're not doing it. This time around, eight years later, they're already making moves. They're already allocating those funds. There's going to be a very well-financed, very well-coordinated campaign against Trump this time in a way that there wasn't back in 2016, Charlie. All of that is to say that, look, he could very well be the nominee again, but I'm not going to operate under the assumption that we're sort of in this static political environment and that the polling we see today is going to hold

up or even continue to trend up for Trump in the months ahead, because I think there's a saturation effect here. I do think that a lot of people, even though they're registering support for him right now, there's only one other declared candidate really in the field. So, you know, I think six, seven, eight months from now, it's going to be a very different environment politically. Well, let's dive into your piece, because you write that Donald Trump is on the wrong side of the religious right. Trump's relationship with evangelicals had seemed to be shatterproof, but it's gotten shaky. Just a reminder, I mean, you're the son of an evangelical pastor, and you wrote last year about how politics has poisoned the evangelical church. So let's talk about all this.

You write, the scale of his trouble is difficult to overstate. In my recent conversations with some two dozen evangelical leaders, many of whom asked not to be named, all of whom backed Trump in 2016 throughout his presidency and again in 2020, not a single one would commit to supporting him in the 2024 Republican primary. And this was all before the speculation of his potential arrest on charges related to paying hush money to his porn star Paramore back in 2016. So, Tim, what's going on? How can this unshakable, unbreakable alliance be broken? So the first point to make here, Charlie, that I can't stress enough is, you know, these folks I'm talking to, these are the grass tops, right?

This is the leadership class of a lot of these big organizations, the people who raise all the money, who do a temperamentally quite disconnected from their constituents that they represent at the grassroots level, just to make that clear, because I think it's really important and we can get more into that. But that having been said, yes, this is a really significant breakage in the relationship between Trump and a lot of these evangelical organization leaders. And it's almost entirely rooted back to Trump's remarks after the midterm election, in which he basically threw pro-lifers under the bus and said, well, you know, don't look at me for pushing, you know, Herschel Walker and Kerry Lake and all these other terrible candidates who lost eminently winnable races. Don't blame me. Blame the pro-lifers because they were the dog that caught the car, right? They were the people who spent all these years fighting to overturn Roe v. Wade. And then where are they now? They didn't show up on election day and they didn't have any plans for how to handle the aftermath, part of

which is actually true. And Trump in that, misread the room so badly, right? Because, you know, I don't have to tell you, Charlie, but like, for my money, the most pivotal stretch of time for Trump politically over the last eight years was after he won the Indiana primary and Cruz drops out, Kasich drops out. Trump has effectively cinched the nomination at that point. Within a few weeks, Trump has gathered about 500 evangelical leaders in New York City at the Marriott Marquis Hotel. He gets up on stage with Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson and Franklin Graham, among others. And basically, they vouch for him and they rally around him. And he gives this very fiery speech there about abortion.

It was really the first time he leaned into that issue. And everybody walked out of that meeting, you know, Marjorie Dannenfelser from the Susan B. Anthony list and Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council and a lot of these other sort of pro-life evangelical figureheads, they all walked out of that meeting for the first time, like, okay, I could see this, I could see supporting this guy. And then a few weeks later, he puts could see supporting this guy. And then a few weeks later, he puts out the Supreme Court list. And then a few weeks after that, he selects Mike Pence. And all of this was very tightly choreographed around this idea of signaling to the evangelical pro-life movement that he was going to be their guy, that they could trust him,

that he was going to deliver for them. And in many ways, he did, right? And so that's where it's so incredible that his first impulse politically after this disastrous 2022 midterm for the Republican Party was to come out and say, hey, it's not my fault, blame the pro-lifers. I can't even measure for you, Charlie, the sense of betrayal that he kicked up by doing that. I mean, there were people who felt like this was an absolute, unforgivable act of betrayal. Some of these people, I was shocked because I fully expected them to say, well, yeah, that's just Trump being Trump. That was rash, and it wasn't smart. But ultimately, I think it was just bad advice from his people around him. I know that

what's in his heart is different. No, no, no, no. They went at him directly. And that was surprising. See, this seems fixable to me from Trump's point of view, because, you know, all he really needs to do is to come back and say, OK, I didn't mean that. Plus, or, you know, he never apologized. He could say, look, I'm the guy that gave you the Supreme Court. You know, I'm the one who appointed three conservative, three pro-life justices. I'm the one who made it possible to overturn Roe versus Wade. You've been talking about this for 50 years. I got it done. And won't they all like go, yeah, that's true. How come the comment outweighs the fact that Donald Trump gave them the holy grail that they'd been searching for for half a century? Well, I think it's two things, Charlie. First, I think when you are entered into

a nakedly transactional relationship with someone, but you don't want it to be acknowledged that it's nakedly transactional, it's very painful when the other party comes out and says, yeah, this was nakedly transactional, right? And that's effectively what Trump did. There were a lot of these folks who, I don't know how many of them deluded themselves into believing that Trump was transactional, right? And that's effectively what Trump did. There were a lot of these folks who I don't know how many of them deluded themselves into believing that Trump was actually a pro lifer himself. But some of them did. I think the great majority of them, though, had really at least gotten to the point where they were very comfortable in this alliance with Trump, because they felt like he was at the very least very respectful of them, very respectful of their views, was willing to sort of be a champion for their cause in a way that they found really like

endearing, right? They never would have predicted, which I think is foolish, of course, but they never would have predicted that he would throw them under the bus this way. And I say it's very foolish because, I mean, this is who Trump is. I mean, he cares about himself. And so I think by coming out and saying what he said, when I say that it was a betrayal, I mean, look, Charlie, all these folks who had entered into that transactional relationship with him over those previous six, seven years, they had any number of opportunities to throw him under the bus when it would have been convenient, right? Especially after they got what they wanted on the policy front, they could have thrown him under the bus, but they didn't because they felt like

they had entered into a deal with him where, look, you know, we're going to kind of turn a blind eye to some of this. We're not going to call you out because you've given us what we want. And they were foolish enough in some cases to believe that he was going to do the same for them. And he just didn't.

So this is the opportunity for Mike Pence, as you write, you know, you talk about, you know, Mike Pence's, you know, longtime ties to the religious right. He was quick to pick up on the fact that there was this sense of betrayal out there. And you point out, I mean, Pence is, is friends with some of the people who are the most angry over the, you know, scapegoating of the Dobbs ruling. You explain that Pence knows that Trump has refused to make any sort of a peace offering to the anti-abortion community and is now effectively estranged from its most influential leaders. So talk to me a little bit about, Mike Pence continues to puzzle me because I keep trying

to figure out what is his lane, what is his theory of the case. But you lay out at least one of the real opportunities that he has to take back the evangelical community. He had been one of the people who brokered the Lend-Lease back in 2016. So what is Pence doing and how successful has he been so far? Well, yeah, look, this is his lane, Charlie. I mean, it's a simple, straightforward answer to that question. What is his theory of the case? It's to drive this wedge between Trump and the evangelical movement that was largely supportive of Cruz, to some extent Rubio, a little bit Bush, a little bit Kasich. But really, the sort of organized evangelical movement in 2016 was not at all behind Trump until the general election, until that sequence of events that I

laid out earlier in the late spring, early summer of 2016, after he'd sewn up the nomination. These are folks who were pretty distrustful and pretty outspoken in their opposition to Trump. Pence knows that. Pence knows these people very well. They're like personal friends of his, the people who are the heads of these big organizations. He knows that there's this breakage, this rupture, this sense of betrayal. So his theory of the case, his path to the nomination, narrow as it may be, is to exploit that rupture and to try and make the case to the grassroots that he can deliver on all the things, the same policy wins that Trump gave them, but that he can do it in a more respectful, humble, Christ-like fashion. And I think there's a bunch of problems with Pence's theory of the case. But one of them, just on that last point, is part of Trump's

appeal to a not insignificant number of religious conservative voters is that he's not humble, that he's not respectful, that he's not Christ-like, that he's not willing to play by the rules, that he's not observant of the boundaries and the etiquette that govern political life. A lot of these folks believe that Trump was actually able to get these things done in ways that other Republicans haven't because he was a bull in a china shop and because he was willing to color way outside the lines. And so in many ways, it seems like he is the answer to a question that nobody is asking in the Republican Party right now. You talked to Tony Perkins, who's the president of the Family Research Council, you know, immensely influential figure, and he and his allies are also meeting with other

Republican contenders as well, right? But he still won't rule out backing Trump's primary campaign. So even he, and he's one of the main characters in your piece, is still hedging on all of this, correct? He is. That's right. And he said to me, look, I'm not ruling out backing Trump in the primary, but everything else he said to me in the course of a long conversation, he was making very clear that he wants to support somebody else and that most of his allies want to support somebody else. What makes it really interesting, and he said to me, Charlie, really fascinating window into the thinking of a lot of these people. Perkins said to me at one point, he said, you know, frankly, what we really want is a mix of Trump and Pence. You know, we want Trump because he had that fight and he was able

to accomplish things because he was willing to sort of, you know, take the gloves off and go to war with these people. But we know that Pence actually believes in the things that we believe in, you know, wink, wink, nod, nod, right? So what's interesting about that is it's very clear in many of the conversations that I've had with other people who are like-minded that they're waiting for DeSantis to sort of ride in on his white horse and make the case that he can be that hybrid, that he can be that guy who's both willing to go to the mattresses with the left and do it with a real set of principles that he actually holds to, you know, intellectually, philosophically. The problem is that DeSantis thus far has not shown great sort of political instincts in that respect. He's not really done much to build relationships,

to build alliances, strategic partnerships with these people who could help him immensely to sort of grow his footprint with the pro-life movement, for example. And there's some quotes in the piece that I was really sort of shocked by, where people who could really go a long way to helping DeSantis topple Trump, these people have just sort of been looking around waiting for DeSantis to come make his play. And so far, he hasn't. Yeah. It is interesting, you know, how many people are on the record in your piece, you know, airing their grievances. You have a guy named Mike Evans, original member of Trump's evangelical advisory board.

He told the Washington Post, he used us to win the White House and then turn Christians into cult members, glorifying Donald Trump like he was an idol. Another guy, David Lane, an activist, told pastors and church leaders in an email blast that the vision of making America great again has been put on the sidelines. Will the mission and message are now subordinate to personal grievances and self-importance? Interesting that, you know, Mike Pompeo has been quoting scripture now in fundraising emails. Tim Scott did that faith in America as his soft launch. Nikki Haley had a televangelist, John Hagee, deliver the invocation to her campaign

announcement. Now, the one thing that really surprises me about this, going back to this, you know, throwing the pro-lifers under the bus, the one thing about Trump that's been consistent has been that sort of reptilian instinct to stay as close to his base as possible. He's the guy that, you know, has his ear tuned to talk radio and to social media. What are people saying? What are they thinking? How do I signal to them that I'm their guy? And as you write, he didn't even bother with damage control following his November outburst, anti-abortion leaders say, because he didn't understand how fundamentally out of step he

was with his erstwhile allies. This is one of the very few times when I have seen this with Donald Trump being crosswise with his base and not moving to fix it. Since it's obviously a real problem, why has he not bothered with damage control? Charlie, it's the right question and it's the right observation. I don't have a great answer for it, but you're exactly right. I mean, I've been really struck in these conversations by how many people who have been so loyal to Trump, in many cases, they've got a pretty clear-eyed view of who this guy is. And they've been really surprised that he has not made any sort of overture, has not extended any sort of olive branch to try and fix this. It's actually pretty stunning. And a lot of them, I think the best conclusion that they can come up

with is that there's a certain sort of arrogance here on the part of Trump where he says, look, I got you these three Supreme Court justices. I got you Roe v. Wade struck down. I took care of the Mexico City policy. I appointed these dozens and dozens of federal judges. Don't lecture me about what's right for the pro-life movement. I do think that there's a certain arrogance there. And I think the other piece of it, Charlie, that's been interesting, somebody made this point to me, and I think it's right. Trump generally does well, responds well to a sort of lighter touch, people coming to him and saying, hey, you know, Donald, this was really great. It was tremendous. It was terrific.

One little piece of it that I might adjust is, you know, you might have gotten a little over your ski saying this. Oh, okay, okay. He doesn't typically deal well with a sort of frontal, ferocious backlash. And that's what he got in the aftermath of those remarks. There were people who like lectured him, who censured him, who very angrily confronted him. And, you know, he doesn't respond well often to that. And I think that that could be in pairing with the arrogance part. I think that could explain a lot of this is that he basically at this point almost feels

like he was backed into a corner by these folks and that he's not going to give them what they want, which essentially is an apology. I mean, a lot of them, they want him to come out and say, hey, I was wrong. I shouldn't have said that. It was really dumb. That's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. He thinks they owe him and he expects loyalty from them.

Let's go back to DeSantis for a moment. DeSantis looks like he's about to sign a six-week abortion ban, which is much more restrictive than previous bans, more restrictive than what had been floated as a national ban. Obviously, DeSantis, like the others, is trying to exploit this particular opening. How is this playing? I mean, is this going to open that lane for DeSantis with the evangelicals who feel he hasn't done enough to reach? I mean, when he comes out and says, I passed one of the strictest bans in the country, is that going to be a card? And then how do you think that Trump is going to respond? Is Trump, I mean, this is an interesting one. I mean, Trump could say, you know, that's too extreme. You know, I favor a 15-week ban, but that would really solidify this gap that you're describing. How do you think this plays out now? Because in real time, you're going to have DeSantis sign this bill and Trump's going to

respond in some way, one way or another. Two big question marks here. Yeah. Number one, what does DeSantis do with this? I mean, there's been some speculation, informed speculation from people who have a kind of window into his thinking that he's going to see the writing on the wall here the same way that Pence has, the same way that some others have, and realize that to the extent Trump has a real vulnerability with a real piece of the Republican primary base that's going to be voting, you know, this time next year, Charlie, that this is it, that it's with evangelicals, that it's with pro-lifers, single issue voters specifically, and that he's going to try to take advantage of that, DeSantis is. And so there's been quite a bit of talk around the signing of that bill and how

closely tethered to it his presidential launch may be. I think that we can expect to see a pretty aggressive set of campaign maneuvers around the abortion issue specifically. I think DeSantis is going to have a vulnerability of his own on this front. I quote a major pro-life leader in the piece who points out that Florida is the only Republican controlled state that's among the top 10 in abortion rates nationally. And in fact, Florida is usually among the top two or top three states in abortion rates nationally. It's known as a prime place for abortion tourism, and it has been for a while. I know for a fact that Pence and Haley and Tim Scott and others are going to be attacking him on that vulnerability. But to the second question

you asked, I think this is the more interesting one, Charlie, is what does Trump do? Because remember, this is a guy who, even during some of the primary debates in 2016, if people recall, he was defending Planned Parenthood, saying that Planned Parenthood does a lot of good work, right? And that was, I think, shocking to a lot of people when they heard him say that. And later, they would sort of explain it away like, oh, well, he was talking about just sort of women's health care. But like, for a Republican candidate to be singing the praises of Planned Parenthood on a primary stage is stunning. And it's even more stunning that he was ultimately able to get away with it. But it was a good window into where his instincts really are here and where his beliefs are on the abortion issue. He's never been a true believer. He'll never be a true believer. He's just not sort of

a pro-lifer in his bones. And so, yeah, does he respond to the Florida heartbeat bill and say, actually, that's too extreme. And that's part of the reason that Republicans lost in 2022. If he says that, then you have to wonder if he doesn't just sort of open the floodgates at that point. But, you know, can he be coached up? Otherwise, can some of these people get back in his ear and explain to him where the Republican base is on some of the abortion laws? It's fascinating that actually, Charlie, for the fact that Roe v. Wade coming down will be remembered by conservatives as one of the great lasting achievements of the Trump era, it could in many ways spell his political downfall. So this seems like a naive question given what's happened over the last seven years,

but how does the whole payoffs to porn stars play with the evangelical base? I say it sounds naive because, of course, they made their peace with everything else that Donald Trump did, you know, the Access Hollywood tape. I've read articles where people say, yeah, you probably actually paid for abortions, and yet we're still going to go with him as long as we get the Supreme Court justices. Does this play into this at all? If, in fact, it turns out that he paid, you know, Stormy Daniels money after having sex with her, that, you know, Karen McDougal, if there's another woman out there, or is that already baked in? Have evangelicals made their peace with the fact that Donald Trump is Donald Trump, and that's not going to change? Or does this remind them of the nature of the transactional deal they made with him. You know, Charlie, I don't want to say that it's just totally baked in because that's dismissive. And I think it ignores some of the dynamics we've been discussing here. It's never just one thing, right? There's not just like a

straw that breaks the camel's back. And if Trump, six, seven months from now is really struggling and kind of clawing to hang on to some of that evangelical support, then every little thing like this could matter. There's going to be a cumulative effect where some of these folks, they're looking at him and looking at his record and looking at the string of nasty headlines and scandals, and it's going to add up. And so I don't want to say that they've just sort of made peace with it. But at the same time, I think if it were really going to represent a like major fracturing point, then we would have known already, you know, like you saw Al Mohler, who's the president of the Southern Seminary, very influential evangelical figure, you know, he wrote when the news broke last week,

this is not quite verbatim, but it's close. He said, you know, this is sleazy, but is it criminal? And, you know, look, like I think that even getting people to acknowledge that it's sleazy is probably meaningful. Again, our bar has been lowered quite a bit over the last seven, eight years. But that's generally the vibe you get in conversations with a lot of these folks is they'll say, yeah, this is pretty gross. And we sort of know this about this guy at this point. But, you know, the left is coming after him. And it's always that but it's always that pivot, right? It's always the but this is a political prosecution. And that's the piece of it. Charlie, I have to wonder that as we move forward

here, and as the headlines fade, and as the circus leaves lower Manhattan, I have to wonder if the but piece of it starts to fade a little bit as well. If people sort of remember the misdeeds, but they kind of lose their fervor around the political prosecution shtick. Let's circle back to the caveat you began with when we started discussing this, because of course, we've seen over the last seven years, the gap between these so-called thought leaders and the actual base and the way in which eventually the quote unquote thought leaders bow the knee or cave in. Is there any reason to think that this won't happen again with the evangelicals? As you point out, 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump last

time, 81%. So we are talking about, you know, people at the very top, you know, the people like Tony Perkins and others, but do they speak for the grassroots? Is this actually a grassroots phenomenon or is this an elite evangelical phenomenon? And you caveated this right at the beginning. And so what is your gut sense? You know, will this be one of those things where they may say it's time to move on from Donald Trump and 81% of their followers go, screw that, we're still MAGA? Well, there's a big distinction here, Charlie, right? Like the 81% is in a general election where it's a binary choice and they're effectively, many of them feel like their

hand is forced because they don't want to support Hillary Clinton. Or in 2020, they feel like they don't want to support Joe Biden, largely around the issue of abortion. In a primary setting, I think it actually is a little bit different. You know, I've spent the last few years doing a lot of reporting in evangelical churches, like a lot, a lot, a lot of reporting. And I'll have more to say about that soon, a little teaser for you. But in that reporting, I've actually been consistently pretty surprised at the degree of disillusionment with Trump at the ground level from people who supported him and voted for him twice. Now, often those conversations are sort of hushed, and people kind of looking around to make sure that they're in the clear saying what they want to say about him first, which tells you something.

It's really hard to quantify this, but I do think that at the grassroots level, there is a disappointment with Trump and a willingness to move on from Trump that I haven't seen before. But that is explicitly in the context of a primary Charlie. If Trump were again, the nominee, I think you'd be very hard pressed to imagine a scenario where he doesn't repeat that same, you know, 80% ballpark support level with those white evangelicals, because almost all of them are going to be looking at it through that same sort of binary prism. And if in fact, it's a choice between Donald Trump and Mike Pence, that's a completely different decision tree for evangelical voters to make. Tim Alberta is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of American Carnage, and he's teasing out more projects ahead. Tim, it is great to have you back on the podcast on a day like today.

Charlie, I won't say that there wasn't a little PTSD here, but it was fun talking with you nonetheless, my friend. All right. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will continue to have full coverage on this, including a reaction to what happens in New York today and Donald Trump's response from Mar-a-Lago, presuming that he's out on bail.

We'll be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.