The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Miller: A Week Full of Nazis

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

Kanye not only ruined the cover story on Trump's Nazi dinner, he also wrecked Tucker's plan to make him a conservative icon. Plus, prematurely clearing the field for DeSantis, Trump's judge gets slapped down, and Hunter's laptop will be a punchline. Tim Miller's back with Charlie Sykes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, happy Friday. We made it to the end of the week, our first Friday in December podcast. Happy to be welcoming Tim Miller back to the Friday podcast, the weekend podcast. How's your week been going so far, Tim? You know, Charlie, my week's been going great much better than the week that I think some of the Republicans who endorsed Ye's week has been going by comparison so I'm feeling pretty good I didn't accidentally endorse or

have dinner with any Nazis this week so a huge step up I had a nice little you know went to the market last night with my daughter we played some foosball against a 10 year old you know, Matt, Matt, uh, watched a little bit of the football game and I'm, I'm pretty certain there wasn't any, not, there were not any Nazis there. Okay. I want to work up to that because, um,

what happened yesterday that, you know, it feels like for the last five years, we've all been waking up thinking we took crazy pills. And today for people waking up and looking at the picture, and I have, we have the picture in my, in my morning shots, a newsletter of, of Kanye West, uh, on the Alex Jones show wearing, what the hell is he wearing? He's wearing his black stocking mask over his head. I mean, it is bizarre for people who, you know, just a reminder that I don't know, provocative. The guy is barking mad. I mean, he's decompensating in, in, in real time. It's kind of brutal, but this all takes place in the same week that he, well, a week and a half after he dined with the former president of the United States. And, and of course that was the Trump world's

best spin about the whole, um, Nick Fuentes, neo-Nazi showing up for dinner that their, their defense was, we didn't know that Fuentes was going to come. We just thought it was going to be Kanye West because, and I mean, because that's our defense. And I'm sure Kanye's just little dinner table chatter was, was very benign, right? I mean, I doubt somebody that spent three hours shocking Alex Jones with his effusive praise of Hitler was just kind of, you know, talking about, I don't know, Tom Brady or something, the Bucks, the weather.

So where do we start with this? The fact that, and please do not misunderstand me here. So here you have this show with Alex Jones, Kanye West, and Nick Fuentes. And I'm watching this thing and realizing, OK, this is how strange things are. This is how, by the way, we are not back to normal when Alex Jones is the most reasonable guy in the room. actually trying to help out kanye west i mean should we start with that or should we start with the fact that the republic house republicans finally got around after all of this time to say hey maybe it's time uh to take down the kanye elon trump tweet that's been up for months now where do we start? is like the big takeaway and obviously there's the kanye meltdown element of it um but uh and and the alex jones thing it does bear mentioning for the people that didn't suffer through it and i

really don't encourage people to suffer through it if they haven't already um it is we have some soundbite you're gonna you're going to stuff okay great we're going to okay so we'll get to that don't make promises you can't fulfill here. Okay. But to me, like the big takeaway is just everyone is tainted by this. And it was the most obvious thing to avoid possible. And this guy is having a public manic meltdown where he not, I guess, not even at the beginning dabbles in, but a pretty aggressive pretty aggressive dabble in antisemitism from the jump, you know, and, and you go back and,

you know, I pulled this up, the, the, the media tour, if people don't remember all this, because I did my Snapchat show on this like a month ago, right?

It's like, it was very clear. This was, and the message of the Snapchat show was, this is dangerous. I contrarian antisemitism, like leads to dark places. Like,

don't go down this path like reject this guy and it was like the most obvious advice you could give and and but that was that started i did that show after his tucker appearance which was the beginning of the show uh tucker this was my comment from earlier described his interview with kanye here is interesting deep provocative oh yes such a deep such a deep yeah such a deep commentator so tucker starts this if you recall tucker cut out he edited it like he aired two hours of kanye but but they still cut out uh some parts you know where he got like much more aggressive in his anti-semitic remarks so they all knew this they all knew that he was playing the anti-semitism

game they all knew that he was spreading hate and yet still they aired two hours of his show on fox news uh did anybody quit like did anybody quit over it on fox i don't think so and it was that interview that the kanye elon twump tweet you know is the house judiciary gop i i tweeted something like this at the time there are a dozen plus members of the house judiciary gop if you're on that committee that twitter account represents you did any of them say you know no i don't think so this guy that is spreading conspiracy theories and attacking jews like maybe we should maybe we should take that down. No, none of them did because they all are scared. And they all now are tainted by Trump and tainted by Kanye. And they've learned horrible lessons the last seven years, which is like it's some kind of whatever sop to the media or to us never Trump cucka leaks for them to just say, like, no, some things are right. Some things

are wrong. This is wrong. This guy is a no-fly zone here. But they did the opposite. They jumped in the ship because he was trolling the people they hated. They learned fucking nothing in the last seven years. There's so many good points here, you know, including the fact, you know, why is it relevant, you know, who Kanye West is or who the president has dinner with? Well, you know, it goes back to the, you know, being in the room where it happens, who is in the room where it happens when Donald Trump is the president of the United States. I mean, we saw, you know, a group of, you know, crackpots and nutters, you know, brought into the White House during the stop the steal. And of course, that pattern is continuing. Even Rich Lowry is writing. Can you imagine who's going to be in the room in

a second Trump term? You know, good point. But you remind me um it was like five kind of a good point kind of kind of a good point i guess i wish it would have been like we need to do everything possible to prevent a trump term up to and including supporting democrats but you know there's there's a lot of hand waving on there but you know you remind me you know about five minutes ago fox news you know tucker carlson decided that he was going to make Kanye West. They were going to make him a new right wing icon. He was, you know, our celebrity icon. Now they get to tingle up their leg.

You know, we have this billionaire ex rapper or whatever who is, you know, saying things that we actually like. So what we're going to do is we're going to whitewash him. We're going to, you know, polish this turd and, you know, eliminate the stuff about the anti-Semitism, but then hold him up. I mean, they, they were invested in building his brand, changing his brand, even though it was obvious that the guy was, um, was having some serious problems, that he was nuts, these barking mad, as well as that he was peddling real hate. And so, you know, it, it all blows up when he brings Nick Fuentes along. So but what's interesting to me, and I'm going to play this Alex Jones, who is one of the most vile conspiracy

theorists and bigots in the world, one of the most deplorable human beings, leave aside his political and cultural impact. So he he wants to jump into this. He brings Kanye West and Nick Fuentes onto his show. And he's trying to, again, clarify that, well, you know, you're you're you're clearly you're not Hitler. You're not a Nazi. Right. All of these, you know, left wing media types that are trying to say that you guys are Nazis. That's really not true. This is what's so weird. Alex Jones is trying to help Kanye West, and this is how it went. Let's just play this. That's right. You're not Hitler. You're not a Nazi. You don't deserve to be called that and demonized. Well, I see good things about Hitler also.

I love everyone, and Jewish people are not going to tell me, you can love us and you can love what we're doing to you with the contracts. And you can love what we're pushing with the pornography. But this guy that invented highways, invented the very microphone that I use as a musician. You can't say out loud that this person ever did anything good. And I'm done with that. I'm done with the classifications. Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler. Especially.

Especially Hitler. Look, I'm not going to spend time fact checking whether Adolf Hitler invented the microphone that we're using. I'm just going to leave that aside. Let's just stick to these. We can fact-check it really quick. He did not. Yeah, he did not. He invented the microphone, actually.

Yeah, yes. The Jews are pushing pornography, whereas Hitler gave us microphones and the freeway. And in case there was any ambiguity. It also goes on to compliment Hitler's fashion. I know. That was interesting. And it's a fashion magnate, kind of an inspo for him.

Well, and the Nazis, they did good things too. We have to stop dissing the Nazis all the time. The Jewish media has made us feel like the Nazis and Hitler have never offered anything of value to the world. As he goes on, Kanye says he doesn't like the word evil associated with nazis i love jewish people i also love nazis i mean whoa i mean as i wrote this morning how the hell is your week going and even alex jones is going okay wow

this this is this guy is nuts not to mention what was with the fucking mask okay you're you're you're my fashion go-to guy can you explain the fucking mask so he's been doing the mask for a little while and it is all about this yeah and it's all about this is why tucker uh tucker called him provocative a provocateur you know i think it's part of being shocking he wore the mask when he at his i believe it was the donda tour. I'd checked out of Kanye, like, uh, uh, and his music, I don't know, in college dropout era, I think. So I, so someone might want to fact check me on this. I was like, I think it was his Donda tour. He would wear a mask

or, or he'd go down into the stadium and, you know, there'd be like a little mystery around when he would come out. But, uh, I believe he had the mask on when he was wearing the White Lives Matter jacket. Anyway, you know, it's all about just, you know, letting the fashion speak for itself, I think, is the best way of putting it, shocking people. So he does that. I'm not shocked. And that takes Alex Jones.

Yeah, freaking people out, but I think that's part of it. Alex Jones, though, is also freaked out like you. Oh, creeped. Yeah, creeped, freaked, all of the above. Cringe. Alex is like you. I don't know that Alex, a lot of these middle-aged white guys, conservatives, I don't think are very deeply versed

in Kanye's musical oeuvre. So I think he also didn't know this uh that it was coming and so alex like it's like when are you gonna take this thing off halfway through and multiple times alex jones the fucking disgusting ass pimple that like you know talked about the frogs making people gay and in a state we don't need to go down his list like multiple times he's looking at kanye like dude like you were off the deep end like what are you talking about at he had they had to gut it to commercial during one of his pro hitler rants you know because alex is just like alex starts laughing out of frustration of just like

what like really like i'm trying to bail you out here and let you you know do the perfunctory no i'm not a nazi thing and you won't even, you won't even do that. Like, like, you know, Alex is versed in how you, well, he's finally failed, thank God, recently, but he's versed in how you walk this line of spreading hate, spreading conspiracy, you know, while leaving enough gray or enough doubt to prevent you from, you know, getting sued or fully, you know, thrown overboard. And, And Kanye had no interest in that. Well, and even Elon Musk had to decide that, hey, maybe content moderation is not such a terrible idea after all, after Kanye posted this bizarre image of a star of David with

a swastika inside it, sort of blending them together. And he says, yeah, that that's kind of it. You're resuspended, which, of of course he's now being dragged on online you well you were supposed to be a free speech absolutist and you know it's very interesting watching you know the various convolutions and it does lead to an interesting question on the content moderation because there are a lot of people on twitter that post memes that have swastikas in them so they all gonna get banned now right and this shows that elon i thought about this with the depth of of like a five-year-old when he bought twitter and he literally bought it with a 420 joke um as the price so and this is despite the fact that people you know his fan

boys want to turn him into some super genius and he might have some genius qualities like this was not one this was an impulsive he's an impulsive child so what's a 420 joke well 420 is the number that stands for smoking pot yeah and so when he offered twitter he made he made his official offer of his price that he was going to buy it out was 54 and 20 cents a share uh because because it was 420 was the last three digits like that was not he did not have his business guys, you know, take a look of the EBITDA or whatever it is. And look at the look at the revenue was and make a determined on valuation. Now, he made a joke about marijuana and his purchase. So a little weed joke.

Pretty funny. But anyway, so he makes that purchase and and and he's just like a child. So, oh, we need free speech, oh, free speech. And now he'd banned Alex Jones already because he has personal issues with anybody who'd screw with dead children. Okay, that's a reasonable human's impulse. But now he's banned Ye. And what Ye tweeted, the swastika, trust me,

if you want to go search it on Twitter today, you can find plenty of swastikas. If you look at the trending topics, they're almost all about Nazis right now, Trust me, if you want to go search it on Twitter today, you can find plenty of swastikas. If you look at the trending topics, they're almost all about Nazis right now, which is a heck of a job, Elon, on that. And there was Richard Spencer, the old Nazi. You might not remember him because we're sort of moving through our Nazi children leaders. But Richard Spencer, the previous Nick Fuentes, had a Twitter space going yesterday, a pro-yay Twitter space where people met and were chatting about this. So why isn't that banned? In some ways, if you take Elon's logic to its conclusion, why would you ban Kanye? And if you're going to ban Kanye, then you do need to rehire all

your moderators and ban the other people that are posting Nazi stuff. Why is Ye treated any differently than just some random 19-year-old shit-posting Nazi from, you know, North Carolina? So awkward, so complicated. Who could have possibly known that this was going to not work out well? Who could have possibly seen it coming? So I know that you get the same thing that I get,

that there are those of our listeners who think that we are sometimes perhaps a little bit too cynical because you look at what's going on right now. And I think it's reasonable to say that, you know, Donald Trump has had a bad couple of weeks. This is really terrible. You know, this is there's a turning point. He's got no momentum coming out of the announcement. He's facing these legal problems. He actually dined with a Nazi and his defense was, no, I meant to dine with this other

guy who's now a Nazi. And so there's a feeling, well, this is going to be the turning point. But you and I have been through this so many times. Right. I mean, we thought this after January 6th or after the election or after Charlottesville or after, you know, I like people who weren't captured. It's happened so many times before. Is there any real reason to think that this is different? And I think that there are reasons. But what do you think?

I mean, in terms of I mean, again, again, this is burned into my psyche. I'm guessing it's burned into your psyche as well. Right. You know, all those moments you thought he can't come back from this. This is going to be too bad. And yet he always does. So give me your handicap, this different same old what? Well, so I think that there are two levels to this, right? Is it different in its impact on Donald Trump? And are there an increasing number of people within the party that maybe are not willing to say, oh man, I really made a mistake associating with all these Nazis. And like, you know,

the guy in the hot dog suit being like, we're all looking for the guy that did the crime wearing the hot dog suit. Like maybe it was me that was a part of the problem. I don't think we're going to get that right. Cause you know, people don't like to admit their own faults. But are we getting enough people that are saying, even Republican rank and file, that like, we like winning, all this crazy shit is not helping. Like, it might be time to move on. Yeah, I think possibly.

Your fellow Badger Stater, what do you guys call yourselves? Wisconsinites? Cheesehead. Cheesehead. Your fellow Cheesehead, Charles Franklin at the Polster had a pullout. National Republican poll had it 60-40. DeSantis had it head-to-head.

That's possible. I've always said I thought that Trump had a 35 or 40 solid base within the party and that DeSantis, you know, the whole DeSantis idea is based on uniting that other 60, the majority of which actually like Trump, but would be open to moving on. So maybe he will achieve, maybe he's on pathiting like that other 60, the majority of which actually like Trump, but would be open to moving on.

So maybe he will achieve, maybe he's on path to achieving that. But okay, so that's one step. That'd be a good step, by the way. If there's just some progress that's like, hey, maybe we're not going to take a moral stand here about our association with bigots and hate mongers and anti-Semites, but just as a practical step,

we're going to kind of like try to make sure that they hang out over there in the corner because they're hurting our brand. Okay, that's something. It's better than nothing. It's not bringing me back into the fold. I don't think that that's what they need to do as a party, but I think that that's progress. But here's the thing. You can have that progress while also just being clear-eyed about the fact that they're not actually learning anything. Here's something I'm just eyeing here coming up December 17th to 20th. I was texting with a friend. Friend is the wrong word. Former colleague that works for a Republican candidate that's attending this thing.

And they were upset about how I was tarring the whole party for their associations with Kanyeye like it's not my boss's fault i'm like actually it is but here's an event that your boss is speaking at coming up 2022 december charlie kirk is there tucker carlson steve bannon candace owens matt walsh tim pool jack posabiak these are the people that were promoting kanye okay who's who's speaking with them at the same time they will all be kanye in five minutes too yeah steve hilton who has a who has a weekend fox show and was supposedly one of the normal you know independent minded tech guys right you know eric makes taxes is there mike lindell and republican politicians are going to that right so okay until until there is a recognition that, no, this is not some one-off dude who had a manic episode and started talking Nazi stuff.

The problem with Trump is not that he's not electorally viable anymore, which is Mitch McConnell's critique of Trump at Nazi dinner. Like the problem is that we keep associating and providing platforms for this hate speech, and that our voters are responding to it. And that nobody has the balls to actually stand up and say to them, No, we are not going to do this anymore. Like, like, America is better than this. We're a poor, lost country, blah, blah, blah, the kind of shit that John McCain, etc, used to say, there's nobody out there saying that nobody out there out there is making a moral argument for this. So you can hold two thoughts in your head at the same time, which is, yeah, this is damaging Trump in a meaningful way. But no, it doesn't feel like the Republican Party has learned anything from it, besides that Trump is like electoral poison. So let's go back to this poll that came out that you mentioned, the Charles Franklin poll.

This is the Marquette University law poll, which is highly respected in Wisconsin, mainly because it's almost always right. I mean, it just nails one election after another and it does national polls now. And the one that came out yesterday was interesting because it shows DeSantis running much better against Joe Biden than Donald Trump. Donald Trump is trailing by 10 points. DeSantis running much better against Joe Biden than Donald Trump. Donald Trump is trailing by 10 points. DeSantis runs even, uh, also the approval ratings for DeSantis are pretty high. Um, he's got a 68% approval rating among the DeSantis among, uh, Republicans. Um, so these are the kinds of things that actually I think are more likely to move the needle with Republicans than whether or not Donald Trump is, you know, throwing insane crap

up against the law, you know, might have engaged in a seditious conspiracy or dines with Nazis. They're willing to swallow the Nazis, the sedition, the corruption, all of that. But a poll showing that, you know, you're the one guy that's going to get waxed in 2024, that appeals to what's left of the moral sentiments of the Republican Party, isn't it? Yeah, maybe. This is another kind of known unknown, right? Which is, that was true in 16, right? It wasn't quite this dark where, you know, Marco was tied and Trump was losing by 10 or whatever. But Marco was polling better head toto-head against Hillary than Trump was, and that didn't persuade enough people. I used to make this argument.

I cringe at myself, actually. Heilman did this to me when I went and did his podcast. he had on Bloomberg in 2015. And it was me making the argument that Republicans should vote against Trump in the primary because he can't win, which obviously ended up turning out to be wrong, but also was like, that just goes to show I was the spokesperson for the anti-Trump PAC at the time. So that was the messaging we thought worked, right? So maybe that will work better this time.

You know, now that they've already seen him lose, but then the problem is you got about 30%, which isn't enough to win a primary. You got to get beyond that. But there's about 30% that don't believe he lost, right? They don't believe the polls. They don't believe anything, right? So I think that, yes, that has an impact on the margins. And if that holds through, you know, might end up being his death knell, because obviously that is compelling in a way to Republican voters in a way that like the FBI raiding his house isn't because, you know, the FBI must be politicized and woke or whatever.

Well, I also think there's cumulative fatigue with all of it. You know, there's a accumulation of it, which and you just mentioned the FBI raid on his house. Trump continues to lose in the courts. It is really a remarkable losing streak. What's really interesting about it is not only was it was it a complete slam dunk ruling. I mean, it was, you know, just dripping with contempt for the ruling. But it was written by three judges who were all appointed by Republicans. The chief judge there is William Pryor, who's very, very conservative, former attorney general of Alabama. The other two judges on the panel were actually appointed by Trump.

And they just dropped from a great height on Eileen Cannon. I mean, they threw out her whole ruling. She said she had no jurisdiction. The whole special master thing is done. And I posted a link to the whole decision, which I would urge people to read because it's very, very clear and it is absolutely definitive. But for those of you that don't have time to do that, here's a shorter version, I think, Tim, of what the appellate court was telling Judge Cannon yesterday. What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything

that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. Charlie, a pop culture reference from after 1958. That movie was in color. I know that one.

There wasn't any musical bits in there. That's great. Billy Madison, I have to say, this is one of my favorite cuts of all time, and I have to confess that when I was on talk radio many, many years ago, I always had this queued up for that special caller. And so, and I, I expressed no regrets for this, but there were times when

callers would call up and they would make some absurd point. And rather than respond, I would just simply play that cut on the air. So this is, this is a chance for me to go back to my roots, the golden oldies, but that was intense. And now, I mean, you want to talk about a bad week for Trump. I mean, this is the same week that you have the federal court jury come back and convict the leaders of the Oath Keepers of seditious conspiracy. I mean, not just disorderly conduct or violence, seditious conspiracy. And a few days later, Trump loses this particular case. If you're the new special counsel, Jack Smith, and I'm sorry to use this cliche, but maybe come up with a better one. I mean, you want to talk about, you know, wind filling your sails at the moment.

I mean, it's this, there's some momentum here. And again, it may not matter for the Republican core voters, but shit's coming down. I mean, you can, you can feel it. I mean, the new year, you're going to see an avalanche of shit headed toward Mar-a-Lago. What do you think? Firstly, you know, I thought the, your podcast has been with us over at Lawfare earlier this week was excellent. So if people skipped that one, they should go back and listen to it for actual expertise on this sort of stuff, which I'm not bringing to the table. I will bring more of a political eye to it, which is I was always very hesitant to get falsely exuberant over news coming from the courts. And I still feel that my dream, the champagne that I have on ice,

you know, for the Donald Trump perp walk and conviction, probably will stay on ice. You know, I just think that there are a myriad challenges that make it hard to effectively prosecute and convict a former president. That said, the amount of difference between the documents case, Georgia, the private case regarding his businesses, the tax returns, you know, ruling that just came down in addition to the Nazi dinner,

in addition to people turning on him. I think about old the people who jumped out of the barn early on the 2024 endorsement, like Elise Stefanik, you know, and like, ooh, you know, it's it definitely feels like there's been a series of good news for those of us on the side of righteousness. We should enjoy and celebrate that the heat is, is on him in a way that, you know, there's kind of this cliche, um, that, that, you know, people would, would make fun of the resistance Twitter types who are always like the doors are closing in on Trump and like the doors aren't really closing in. But man, there are feds coming through doors all around him. And we should appreciate and enjoy that. And I think that that is going to reflect his behavior. And I think that

his political standing is hurt. And I think that it's hurting the entire Republican Party's political standing. And so to your question earlier about whether I don't know, the Trump monster is coming back and it's going to rise from the dead. I don't know. But we do know in this moment that it's been a nice little run for those of us on the side of democracy. It'd be nice to hear from just one person that was like, you know, you guys really had this right, it turns out. It would be nice for one person to say that, because it is kind of true. So we just can say it to each other, Charlie, because I feel like we always knew we were right. But boy, the evidence just keeps piling up in our favor, doesn't it? Well, and it has for a long time now. So that's true. You know, we've been acutely right

this week. That's a low level of rightness for a long time. It does feel that moral vindication, however, is sort of like is the equivalent of a participation trophy, right? Okay, so, hey, here's your little, you know, certificate of moral vindication, but let's move on to something else. I like my certificate, so, okay, can I just, can we get it, can we frame one? Can somebody send one to me and I can frame it and put it up next to the pinto bean? I wouldn't mind that. Like, it's something. So I wanted to talk to you about also your piece from earlier this week.

Oh, yeah. You had a really interesting piece about all the anti-anti-Trumpers who are, you know, who are now saying this is terrible. We need to not do this again. But you people who have been right all along, you need to get on board with us now and support DeSantis. So you wrote a letter to the DeSantis fanboys from a real network trumper. I actually have to admit that I was I was a little surprised. Let me just put my eyebrows to the extent I have any eyebrows went up when you basically got to the point saying that, you know, if it came down to it 15 days before the California primary and it's a binary choice between Ron

DeSantis and Donald Trump, you're going to go in there and you're going to vote for Ron DeSantis. But this is after all of the things that you're not going to do. So tell me about, you know, why you wrote this piece. Give me the background of this. Well, the background was really kind of driven by there's been a series of National Review articles recently, including one trying to tell everyone else not to run for president, except for Ron, because people need to circle the wagons around the person that can beat Trump for the good of the party. You know, I don't have that piece in front of me, so I don't have this direct quote. But the sentiment was like being a good governor and somebody with integrity is not enough, right,

for running for president. Like you got to also be able to win, right? So, you know, we appreciate your service, but that's not going to be good enough. So just don't get in and make problems for the rest of us if you are just a Larry Hogan or an Asa Hutchinson or Brian Kemp or Chris Sununu type. And that just pissed me off.

I was just like, fuck you guys, you know? And so I had Twitter to tweet. You always get in trouble on Twitter, criticizing them for that article and another article about how they're unmistakably anti-Trump. I'm like, are you sure? Is it unmistakable? And I just, there was a pile on on me from everyone on

that side, you know, anyone that is even one iota to the right of the dispatch to, you know, being like, oh, never Trumpers or grifters. And you guys are all going to actually be rooting for Trump. And you love Trump because he helps you get attention. And you're just as bad. And I just I could tell that this was going to happen now for the next year and a half. And so I just wanted to lay it all out on a piece of paper, which was actually, no, I'm not. You know, we have actual beliefs, those of us that went anti-Trump.

We have red lines. You know, we are not maneuvering and moving our red line when it's convenient. And here are mine. And here is what I plan to do. If it does turn out that it is just Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump running against each other. And I will lay that out for you so that next time you try to troll me, you can just come back to this one article and review what I said I would do and what I said I would not do. That's the backstory.

Well, it's interesting, you know, how deeply invested they are in Ron DeSantis. I mean, we've described National Review has now become a fanzine for Ron DeSantis. And, you know, the piece you're talking about, he says, yeah, no one else should run. Yeah, I'm not being just cheeky. And you can just go if you want to punish yourself to like they have a Ron DeSantis tag, you know, which is how I linked all these articles. I mean, it is it's insane. I mean, it is honestly like RT has been harsher on Putin during the war effort than National Review has been on Ron DeSantis

during his time as governor. Well, I don't want to break their hearts, but I just remind people that two years out, you know, front runners do not always, you know, become president, you know, and ask Fred Thompson or Rick Perry or- Or your boy, Scott Walker. Yeah, exactly. Mark Leibovich has a great piece in The Atlantic suggesting that, you know, and ask Fred Thompson or Rick Perry or your boy, Scott Walker. Yeah, exactly.

There's a lot. Mark Leibovich has a great piece in The Atlantic suggesting that, you know, he might not wear that well when people get to know him. In fact, I'm going to have Mark on the podcast next week. But it is interesting that we're two years out and they're already saying we need to clear the field for this guy who has never been remotely tested on the national stage. No. So there's the political element to this, which is like, you have no idea if he's going to actually be able to pull this off or not.

Right. We're doing Thanksgiving 2022. We're clearing the field for somebody. Thanksgiving 2022. It's just absurd in its face. Okay. Just just as a political matter. I said this on the next level podcast.

Like this is a calculation for fall of 2023. You know, if you want to start putting the pressure on somebody who feels like they're being a spoiler or whatever okay like this is what i did i wrote that article in the democratic primary about bloomberg right which was like okay you had your chance you know you got on the debate stage elizabeth warren smacked you down and now you're just playing a spoiler for bernie go away right that's the appropriate time to do this. But to say that Brian Kemp or Asa Hutchinson or Chris Sununu, none of whom are exactly my cup of tea, by the way. So this is not like me being wanting to go work for them or being a fanboy or even saying I'd vote for any of them in a general. I'm not sure that I would. I probably wouldn't actually. But they all at least had an

iota of integrity over the last seven years. And it just doesn't make any sense to say Donald Trump is toxic. Donald Trump is political poison for the party. Like Donald Trump is a Nazi collaborator. And so what we have to do in order to beat him is to anoint someone that has never criticized him. You're right. A single time, including this week. Yeah, including right now, up to the Nazi dinner that happened in his state. A former president had dinner with a Nazi in Ron DeSantis' state, and he hasn't had the courage to say anything.

Apparently two Nazis. Yeah, two Nazis. And you know, there are people, there's some former Mitch McConnell staffer tweeting, saying like, oh, well, you guys are just trying to bait him and hurt him. And this is bad strategy. It's bad strategy for him to engage.

I'm like, it's bad strategy to say don't have dinner with Nazis. If you're a former president, are we sure that's bad strategy? I don't think so. I think that Ron DeSantis could just be like, eh, I don't know if I'm president or even as governor, I'm not having any Nazis over to dinner. I don't think that's going to hurt him that much. I really don't. And if it does, I think that that says something deeply disturbing about the Republican base. It's another conversation. Well, the people complaining about this are basically saying, please don't don't test Ron DeSantis. Let's not poke to find out what what his metal is, how he's going to handle

Let's protect him, then we throw him onto the public stage and then we'll find out what he, I mean, bad strategy, bad politics. So they're trying to protect him saying that he, you know, shouldn't have to engage in any of this. And I guess my point is, okay, I don't know. Let's actually see. Right. And maybe if Trump is so weak, he should not be replaced with somebody that like cut an ad you know where he's reading to art of the deal to his baby i literally this ron desantis ad which is in the article if you haven't watched it people should go back and re-watch it i mean joe biden is if he's the nominee or whoever the democrat nominee is in 2024 could like air this

ad in in arizona it's just like i'm gonna air the ad that Ron DeSantis aired in like unedited in his primary. I mean, if Trump is that toxic, then shouldn't somebody who is less tainted by his toxicity at least be able to try? And all these guys

who claim to be anti-Trump, who, you know, all these anti-anti-Trumpers are like, no, no, we need to scare these people off, the people that have had some integrity in order to protect precious little Ron. And so I'm like, no, fuck that. Fuck you. And criticizing Ron for his cowardice is not helping Trump. It is very early in the process. And that is why, just to demonstrate some credibility,

I was like, if it gets to the point, if we get to the point where it really is a binary choice between Ron and Trump, and at that point, Ron has not gone full Nazi, because I don't know. I mean, a number of other MAGA people seemed at least to be on team normal

and then like went down this slide over to Nazism. So assuming he doesn't do that, okay, you know, then he's clearly better than the person that tried to end our democracy and people should hold their nose and vote for him in the primary and then go against him in the general like fine i will i'm happy to concede that but that is a calculation for spring of 2024 not fucking thanksgiving and i will not be lectured to by people who have shown absolutely no courage or

no balls over the past seven years about what it means to be an anti-Trumper. So that's my rant. So let's do something a little bit counterintuitive because I want to get into some wonky stuff here for a moment and also talk about Georgia. I mentioned this with Dana Milbank yesterday during our podcast. It is remarkable this week to watch what's going on in the Capitol. And you and I have spent lots of time talking about, you know, Democrats, you know, forming circular firing squads and the various dysfunction of the factions, etc. To watch the way they have coalesced behind, you know, Hakeem Jeffries and this new, much younger leadership team, you know, in juxtaposition with the absolute gang warfare

that's going on over on the Republican side. I mean, you know, to use the cliches again, you have Republicans in absolute disarray and Democrats very much in array. And I can't remember the last time, you know, a party that just lost control of a house was as unified as the Democrats are right now. Now, again, everything that we talk about is temporary, but it's worth at least marking that this is kind of an unexpected moment, isn't it? I mean, and we ought to acknowledge it. I think so. And I think it's

a question of whether Jeffries will be as skilled, you know, once Pelosi, et cetera, move off stage right, you know, to keep that together. But I think that, you know, it again shows Pelosi's strength as a leader compared to the Republican leaders of late. And then I think that, you know, she could kind of bestow a successor and have there not be really meaningful objection to it. It also, once again, reveals I have plenty of disagreements with some of the squad's tactics and various things. We went round and round on their tactic around BBB, example but most of the time like they've been kind of team

players actually it's and you know there's this like meme on the right that it's like oh the left is like they're puppets for the squad and it's like well i don't you know they've been given take there's certain things that that biden has moved left on but a lot of times they've gotten in line it's it's interesting to note that there's not like a Rashida Tlaib challenge or anything to Hakeem Jeffries. So anyway, it's just worth observing. It is. Yeah. On the right, though, I just pulled this up. There's a group called the House Accountability War Room I started following that's monitoring Kevin McCarthy.

That listed out the concessions that he's made already to the right in order to get the 218 votes that he doesn't have yet. He's committed to investigate the January 6th committee and the supposed mistreatment of January 6th attackers. Now, I kind of refuse to believe that he's actually going to do this. I just, you can't be this stupid. Is it possible? I mean, Kevin McCarthy is dumb as a box of rocks, but is he really so stupid that he would start the new congress by re-litigating january 6th yes if he does that yes okay i mean that honestly that would be i would feel bad for the democratic staffers who have to like hire lawyers or whatever uh for this but besides that it is an absolute present it's like a cake handing to the democrats if he does that okay he's also promised to restore marjorie taylorene and Paul Gosar.

Do it. Yeah, speak of our Nick Fuentes problem. You know, Donald Trump headed over to dinner. Well, let's get Nick Fuentes' two favorite members of Congress and give them a promotion. Okay, so we're getting back into the battle with the Nazis. Can I just interject here?

Yeah, please. You know, you and I have both been doing this long enough that there was a time when people on the right would mock resistance Twitter, resistance commentary, because, you know, oh, you people are always using words like fascist and Nazi. And it was, okay, we need to be a little bit restrained here.

That's what made, I thought yesterday was so hilarious. Like Alex Jones, like you're, this is crazy because you're not Nazis, right? Well, wait, no, actually we are. We are actually. Yeah, we are. We actually are Nazis. So I have spent the last-

So we're going to take the two people that are the most friends with the Nazis, give them a promo. So I've exercised as much restraint as I can with mixed success in not comparing everything that's going on to Adolf Hitler, right? You don't want to play the Hitler card. You don't want to play the Nazi card. You want to have a daily podcast. You can't do Hitler every week. No, you can't do Hitler. And it says that, what is that law? Godwin's law. Godwin's law. You know, the first person that invokes Hitler or Nazis, you know, basically has lost the argument. And so I've always kept that in the back of my mind and there's kanye west and nick fuentes and donald trump going no no that's yeah nazis let's put the hell going okay i'll go the rest

of this quick but so he's gonna give a promo to the nazi diners mtg and paul gosar and then take off from their committees elon omar eric swalwell and adam schiff it's like i mean okay then he is gonna look into impeaching secretary my orcas we'll figure out a reason afterwards and chip roy is demanding that the freedom caucus gets more power in promoting the agenda he's agreed to that i mean laptop this is moronic in addition to just the fact that like here's where i thought you were going where republicans used to say the conservatives the tea party conservatives i mean they were always nihilistic assholes it turns out but at least back in the 2010s they would pretend that their demands on boehner were like based on some kind of conservative principle right like we need to

cut spending you know we need to shut down the government to cut spending or you know we need this on immigration like none of these demands are even about policy. It's just about, like, this, like, Twitter lib-owning. And Hunter's laptop. Why are you not talking about the laptop? You're not talking about the laptop. Tim Miller never talks about the laptop. I just like saying laptop.

That's going to be one of those words that, the problem is, is that they think this is their magic bullet and i i think there's a very real possibility that uh the term uh hunter's laptop is going to be a uh is going to be a punch line um by may again well benghazi became a punch line and benghazi was a legitimate thing at some they made it illegitimate by how many you know by like your 28th hearing on it. It's like, okay. But it was legitimate, at least. The Hunter laptop, Hunter wasn't even in government.

He's a kid. You think that this is what... Was this really what you learned from your sweep in these key Senate races? Nevada, New Hampshire, Arizona. It seems like Georgia. We'll see. Pennsylvania. You think that the voters that voted you out care about investigating the mistreatment of January 6th attackers and Paul

Gosar's committee assignments and Hunter's laptop? And are you fucking insane? Who are they even talking to? It's just like they're in this hermetically sealed bubble of Tucker Carlson show. That's exactly what it is. Okay, so you meant you mentioned Georgia. And of course, I'm out of the prediction business. But I have to say that the Georgia runoff, which is next week, it certainly doesn't look like the Republicans have gotten their act together down there. I mean, Herschel is not like rising to the moment. I mean, look, I anything can happen. I see the New York Times hasn't has a piece, you know, how Herschel Walker can still win. But number one, there's concerns that he's not campaigning enough.

He apparently took five days off during the holiday. He's being outspent tremendously. He continues to say incredibly stupid things about werewolves and vampires. Barack Obama, did you ever watch any of that speech that Obama gave? I caught a couple minutes of it. He's good. That guy's good. If they could just if you could just change his name to Barry Soweto

and put on a mustache and run again, that might help the Democrats a little bit. It is interesting that we're also in this little interesting moment where Donald Trump is too toxic. Joe Biden's approval ratings are too low. And so the most effective surrogate in the country right now is Barack Obama. Yeah.

And he's got the juice back. He does. You can tell he's having fun out there. He likes doing it. He was actually funny. He's loose. He's just he just carves up Herschel Walker. So there's going to be a lot of agita. If Herschel Walker goes down and the Democrats get 51 seats, all of this sort of bad mood among Republicans. I think, you know, you have to ratchet it up a couple notches, don't you? What's going to happen next? I think that it's baked in that he's going to lose, actually. I don't know.

I don't know how much to ratchet. I don't think that Republicans expect that he's going to win. I don't get the sense that they do. And, you know, he needed to have Bryant kept dragging across the line. And that's really what he needed was to win on the original election. I do just want to say this is I made a I made a flub on our other podcast where I said that the primary was Saturday. I got it mixed up. The SEC championship game is on Saturday and the primaries on Tuesday. And in my brain, I was just thinking about these two big Georgia events and I transposed them.

So if you're in Georgia, please don't go vote on Saturday. Go on Tuesday when the actual election is, you know, look, the early vote you can overanalyze. It's interesting that about 5% of the early vote is people that didn't vote in the midterm. Then over half of that group is under 30. So that doesn't necessarily mean everything, but what it does mean is you can just already tell that there is this energy on the left about, okay, let's finish the job here and about shutting down this about Herschel and turning out for Warnock. So you got that. And then you got the people that I wrote about in Georgia, these Kemp Warnock voters, that they had a brother group, you know, which was people that were kemp reluctant walker voters right um and are those people really gonna show you know for this midterm people that like are your classic you know buckhead

republican types that that didn't really like herschel walker in the first place he embarrassed them and you know did like that did think kemp did a good job like are they gonna go out and vote again for herschel just stand alone and you saw jeff duncan say he couldn't do that lieutenant governor is kind of the stand-in for him uh you know said he wouldn't do it and so i think that they're gonna be you know and not a not a million jeff duncans but one or two percent right so to me i'm also not in the prediction business i've been bad at it but just it does not it feels like um you know it's going the other way and warnock just one last thing on this deserves credit has just run a really strong campaign and the contrast between him and abrams and i wrote about this in the article but it's just a good lesson for democrats is is him and

abrams i don't think i disagree on anything. I mean, maybe there's one issue that you could find, you know, if you went down an issue list. But Warnock's campaign had this brand and this vibe and this energy of, if you're a suburban swing voter, if you're somebody who used to be a Republican, you can trust me. I'm bipartisan. I'll work with Republicans when I need to. You know, I haven't gone fully woke or whatever. You know, I'm a pastor. I'm a guy that you can feel good about. While at the same time, you know, because he grabbed on to, you know, key issues that like student loan debt has energized the younger and African American base of the Democratic Party. So Warnock has run a really good campaign, you know, in a state, still a tough state for Democrats. I mean, it was, you know, they hadn't won it until 2020, right? So it's not as if all these Republicans

magically disappeared and Stacey Abrams lost by nine or whatever it was. So big credit to him on the type of campaign that he's running to appeal to these crossover voters and also energize the base. You can do both. Yeah, just briefly to underline the point that you're making, a runoff election is different than a regular election because there's only one thing on the ballot. So you can imagine people who would get up and go to the polls because there's a lot of other things they want to vote for. They want to vote for the governor. They want to vote for Congress. They want to vote for the state legislature or the state attorney general. This election, there's only one reason to get up, get in your car and drive to the polls, which is to vote for Senate. So if you are a soft Republican, you could imagine

that person going into the polls on election day in November, but then thinking, do I want to go through all of this for Herschel Walker, just for Herschel Walker, knowing that the control of the Senate is not up. And again, it may not be 10 million votes. It may not be a million votes, but one or two percent that go, you know what? You know, like Jeff Duncan said that he stood in line for two hours. He's he's the Republican lieutenant governor, gets into the voting booth, looks at it, goes, I just can't do this. I'm just not. I mean, it's like, why? All of the rationalizations for voting for Herschel Walker just have evaporated. OK, so since we're getting a little bit wonky here, let's talk about Michigan, South Carolina and Georgia. A lot of speculation about what the

Democrats are going to do to change their primary schedule. I mean, it's a big deal. Demoting Iowa and maybe displacing New Hampshire as the first in the country. Tell me, it's a big deal. Demoting Iowa and maybe displacing New Hampshire as the first in the country. Tell me what do you think is going on? How it's going to end up? Yeah, well, I mean, I think Iowa boned them. They played themselves with the way they handled the last caucus. So I think they were, they made it easy. The Democrats wanted to do this because just the diversity issue of Iowa and New Hampshire being first and having all white people. Which was ridiculous. And so, yeah,

which was ridiculous on his mayor on his face. And then Iowa made it easy for them to move it. So I do love the small state thing. So this has a personal, you know, implication for me because I want to go out there and cover the stuff for the bulwark. I miss it. I loved going to Iowa, New Hampshire. I loved the fact that they, you know, they had these, you know, the people there actually cared. I was kind of hoping that they would replace it with another small state i thought joe biden's there from delaware i was already planning out my summer next year you know you got rehoboth beach charlie you don't might not know about this gay beach there in delaware we got a gay beach you got there are there black people in wilmington you know it's like american

miniature but delaware didn't make the cut joe biden I guess they thought that it would feel too biased or whatever. So they're pushing Michigan and Georgia, I guess, as the replacements. And I think that's fine. You lose a little bit. Yes, the South Carolina will stay. We don't know what the order is quite yet. It seems like there's been some Jonathan Martin's reporting was that Michigan was going to be first. Now it seems like there's some reporting that maybe Biden wants South Carolina to be first.

So TBD on that, I think you lose a little bit of having a bigger state, having more of a media market campaign. But I've not spent a ton of time in Michigan. So I'm also excited to hear from our Michigan listeners. If it does end up being Michigan, where to hang out in the summer? Can I go to the UP? I've never been to Traverse City. I don't know. I could see a little Michigan tour in my future. It's easy for you, Charlie. You could drive over. Maybe we could have a little bulwark event in Ann Arbor or something. That would be very cool.

I don't know. Let's say you. So actually, the western coast on Lake Michigan in summer is absolutely gorgeous. Now, you know how Lake Michigan, picture it. Wisconsin, we have the western shore on the east side of the lake. The beaches are completely different. I don't know what it's the prevailing winds. They have these beautiful, gorgeous beaches in places like Sagatuck and others, you know, towns, New Holland that have no relationship to the coastline of Wisconsin, which is a little bit, you know, rockier, a little bit rougher. So yes, summer in Michigan, especially on the Lake Michigan coast is really special. It's really

good. I highly recommend it. Never done that. I had to give that a try. The other thing I think that is worth noting that I don't know if this is intentional or not, but the Democrats, the most liberal part of the Democratic electorate is college educated whites okay and so demographically just making this change to georgia um emphasizing south carolina michigan new hampshire is a little bit different uh because you have this independent big independent vote which i didn't really have because there are caucuses there wasn't this crossover vote so you did that in new hampshire kind of is like the one place where swing voters like actually make a difference in primaries which i think is is mostly a good thing it does at times led to some weird outcomes like pep buchanan

and donald trump so not always a good thing but um mostly a good thing so in some ways i think that they're moderating a little bit as well you know the states that have importance and giving more power to the older voters of color uh which which are a little bit as well, you know, the states that have importance and giving more power to the older voters of color, which are a little bit more culturally conservative, you know, going to some states, you know, in the South, in Georgia and South Carolina that are going to have, you know, these, you know, Georgia in particular, these big Atlanta Metro Democrats, you know, who are a little bit different than their counterparts, you know, who show up to caucuses in Iowa. So in some ways, I think,

that's good about it is it could have some moderating impact on the makeup of voters in those important early states. Oh, well, have a great weekend. Are you going to be watching the World Cup? I'm not. There's an ad on this podcast for another World Cup podcast, so I would never impugn one of the advertisers. But I got to tell you, Charlie, I can't even. It's so boring.

It's just unbelievable how boring. I know that whatever, I'm a stereotypical ugly American or whatever, but I've tried. I put in my effort. I mean, literally, I guess in one of the games yesterday, the tiebreaker went to the team with the less yellow cards. I mean, this is like a kindness points. I mean, there's

zero, zero. So no, I will be, I'll be suffering through probably Georgia's beat down of LSU and the SEC championship on Saturday. And I'm, I'm fully into, I'm fully into basketball season. Me, I took the kid to St. Mary's New Mexico game. I'm just, I'm just getting deep on basketball right now. And you can wake me up when the world cup gets interesting. Well, you need to wake me up when the NFL season's over as a Packer fan. So I am, I am desperately looking for some sort of alternative and i and i haven't i haven't found it quite yet so i i am open to it however you know for the and again i'm

a big fan of the u.s team however um so 90 plus 90 plus nine plus whatever other stoppage time there was for a grand total of one goal i I just, I don't know what it is. I like my sports where they score points, but that's just me. Maybe I'll get over it. Give me a little action, a little bit. Hey, have a great weekend. You have a great weekend as well, Charlie. It's good to be with you.

All right. Well, we will talk next week sometime. And thank you all for listening to this weekend's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We'll be back on Monday and we'll do this all over again.