The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Miller: Be Alarmed

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

Trump is crystal clear that he wants retribution against the people who wouldn't let him remain in office — and he'll pull us out of NATO too. Plus, DeSantis has no personality and no charisma. Tim Miller is back with Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Happy St. Patrick's Day for all of you who celebrate. We've made it through another week. It is Friday and I am joined once again by my colleague Tim Miller. Good morning, Tim. Good morning and happy St. Patrick's Day to my grandmothers, a Hennessy and a Walsh. You know, I've got some Irish there on my maternal side. Well, I have no Irish, I don't believe, but my wife has dual Irish and American citizenship, so the Reardon clan is celebrating. Just my caution, if you live in the upper Midwest or in Wisconsin, today is not a good day to be out driving on the road with people who started drinking the Jamesons

at about, what do you think, nine o'clock? So Tim, just want you to know, this is going to be a very serious podcast. This might be an alarming podcast. It ought to be an alarming podcast, but I have a present for you. Oh, I love that. I specifically have a present,

but you're going to have to wait for it. Oh no. You're going to have to defer the gratification to the end of the podcast. Charlie, that's rude. I don't like that. I specifically have a present, but you're going to have to wait for it. Oh, no. You're going to have to defer the gratification to the end of the podcast. Charlie, that's rude. I don't like that. I don't like surprises. I don't like surprises. It's a gift.

Maybe it'll be a surprise, but it's at the end of the podcast. Look, there's a lot of things going on today, including the hot buzz that the New York indictment of Donald Trump is going to come down today. Let's defer that just for a moment. I do have some thoughts on that. I know that you have some thoughts on that. You have a fantastic Not My Party about all the broken brains out there who are trying to blame the banking crisis on wokeness, and I want to get to that. But Tim, and I mentioned this to you earlier, I have to give you credit for calling attention to a video on your Twitter account. It is a remarkable video. And in my newsletter today, I said, look, we need to slow down here. Pay attention to this because on

Earth 2.0, this stuff would be fodder for endless news cycles and nightmares. Here you have a video apparently taped or filmed in the middle of the night or someplace where there's no lighting. It's dark. He's got two American flags. Vampiric. Something like that. Yeah, it is vampiric. Here's Donald Trump, you know, channeling Kremlin propaganda, siding with Russia and declaring that our real enemy is not Russia, but it's other Americans. And what I want to point out to people is, you know, despite all of this wish casting that's out there and all the magical thinking and all the fervent hopes of, you know, Republicans.

Well, you're just going to go away. Something's going to happen. This guy is still the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party and therefore possibly the next president of the United States. So this is why I think you need to take this seriously. It's only 56 seconds. But, Tim, let's play it, and then I want to break it down. You up for that? Yeah, let's do it. Because we need to break down what the former president of the United States just said. And I'm trying to underline this. For all of you who said, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, we know that.

We know he's a Russian asset or something like that. Or we know that he sides with Vladimir Putin. No, no. Slow down and listen to what he is saying right now. Let's play this. The State Department, the defense bureaucracy, the intelligence services, and all of the rest need to be completely overhauled and reconstituted to fire the deep staters and put America first. We have to purge America first.

Finally, we have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally revaluating NATO's purpose and NATO's mission. Our foreign policy establishment keeps trying to pull the world into conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia based on the lie that Russia represents our greatest threat. The greatest threat to Western civilization

today is not Russia. It's probably more than anything else, ourselves and some of the horrible USA hating people that represent us. Okay, so Tim, you have the purge, dumping NATO, blaming America first, downplaying the risk of Russia, and saying that our real enemy are other Americans. Yeah, so I've been thinking about this this morning before I came on, and here's how I came up with it.

We've got basically the foreign policy of Henry Wallace, communist sympathizer, the vindictiveness of Joe McCarthy, along with the brains of like Cousin Eddie or Lloyd Christmas. And that is one of our two major parties leading contenders for president. I mean, it's insane. It is lunacy. And people should not try to pretend that it did not happen or to defend it. But again, so I mean, that's funny. But I mean, don't assume that he's bluffing about any of this stuff. I mean, he starts off, you know, the world is a dangerous place and it's getting more dangerous.

And there are all these international tensions out there. And you have Trump who's threatening this massive purge of the nation's entire defense infrastructure, dismantling the Defense Department, the nation's intelligence agencies who are our eyes and our ears, and the country's foreign policy capabilities, you know, these mass firing.

I mean, think about the loss of centuries of experience and, you know, how he would exile, you know, all of the adult voices, the independent voices, anybody that might tell the president no. And I think it's important to understand that he's also saying that, you know, after this purge of the deep state, after he hollows out our entire defense establishment, he would reconstitute it by stacking the agencies with his own loyalists, you know, the Kash Patels, the Steve fucking Bannons or whatever. And all the while, Russia is committing war crimes. China is moving all around the world.

Middle East is boiling. Okay, so let's just start with the purge because I do think that he is very much in earnest and that there will be a portion of the base that will really get the tingle of its leg when he thinks he's going to go in there and he's going to blow up the entire federal government, including the intelligence agencies and the Defense Department. People need to focus on this. There are three layers of scariness in the 56 seconds. So he's decided that those are the folks that kept him from winning, right? And regardless of what's happening inside his lizard brain. Or kept him from cooling. Yeah, kept him from continuing on as president. It doesn't really matter the degree to which he genuinely believes it or blah, blah, blah.

He is convinced that these people are his enemy and that there needs to be retribution for them. I mean, he said at the CPAC speech, I am your retribution. Who is he trying to get retribution against? First among equals is the quote-unquote deep state. And these, the folks, the Mark Millies of the world that wouldn't go along with his coup attempt. And so there is absolutely no doubt that were he to win again, God forbid, this would be the top priority, if not one of the top two or three priorities, is quote-unquote cleaning out these departments, having mass firings. And who's going to stop them? This is a really good point. We went through this last time. He won't have another term. He won't have something else to be worried about. What, is the Supreme Court going to intervene? Extrajudicial firings that

go against the rules and norms of how you are supposed to relieve federal officials of their duties are not going to be something that whatever lunatic agrees to be general counsel in a Trump second term would care about. Exactly. I think you're right. There's so many layers here. Dumping NATO. You know, he says, finally, we have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO's purpose and NATO's mission. This comes at a time when I think NATO is proving its worth so dramatically as the bulwark of freedom in the West. And I don't think people should assume that he's bluffing. I mean, John Bolton, his former national security advisor, said that Trump would have pulled the United States out of NATO if he'd been reelected. And, you know, I'm just reading from the Washington Post here. During his presidency,

Trump frequently sought to undermine the alliance, accusing its members of being delinquents and reportedly telling aides that he wanted to leave it. According to the New York Times, Trump told his top national security officials that he did not understand why the military alliance existed and often described it as a drain on the U.S. And you have John Kelly, retired general, one of Trump's former chiefs of staff, has also said that one of the most difficult tasks he faced with Trump was trying to stop him from pulling out of NATO. Tim, for Vladimir Putin, this would be a gift beyond the dreams of avarice. I mean, this would be the greatest geopolitical triumph for Putinism you could

conceivably imagine. And it's coming out of the mouth of the former president of the United States. I think that there's a short-term and a medium-term thing to consider. It's a short-term gain already, right? No matter what happens, right? No matter if Trump gets reelected or wins the nomination, because it's a second wind for the Russian leader right now, right? Because, and, you know, other folks that are more military expert than me have weighed in on this, but, you know, it's pretty obvious on its face. It's like, at this point, why not wait and see, right? Like, even if there is a moment where it feels like the Russian military, you know, is crumbling, or, you know, maybe it might be a moment to reassess, you know, what the strategic imperatives are. Why do that? Until

you see if, you know, a basically a Putinista, like takes over the, you know, the American presidency in 19 months or 20 months or far away we are from it, right? And so there's a short term, like he's already undermining our allies in Ukraine who are under siege right now, you know, because he's giving this kind of rhetorical boost basically to the Russians. Then you go to the medium term. I mean, NATO has not been stronger since I was a young kid than it is right now, right? And you have countries wanting to join NATO, you know, obviously the Nordic countries. And there's a Zelensky quote that has been mangled. Tucker Carlson mangled this. Tucker Carlson tacked me. They also tacked Tom Nichols this week. So you've had two guests.

He tacked you? Congrats, Tim. It was kind of a glancing shot. There was a little montage of people that were talking about how the Republicans should be more supportive of Ukraine, including me. And Tucker's point in this video

is that he's like, these guys want to send your kids to Ukraine, to blah, blah, blah, all this nonsense. But he's using it based on the Zelensky quote, which is an accurate quote that Tucker's mangling, which is Zelensky saying, you are supporting us now, so you don't have to do this, right? Because NATO countries are next, right? Like actual NATO countries are next. And so from a security standpoint, it is abundantly clear that a strong NATO right now has really been a useful deterrent in both supporting Ukraine, but preventing further incursion from Russia. And so it is just an absolute, complete misunderstanding of the security situation that's helping Russia in the short term and the medium term. Trump's statement actually gets worse.

We're only halfway through it here. Oh, great. So we get to this next part where he blames America for all the problems. He says, our foreign policy establishment keeps trying to pull the world into conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia based on the lie that Russia represents our greatest threat. Now, Tim, you compare that line to a propaganda bleat from the Kremlin, and it is indistinguishable. This is almost word for word, the Putin propaganda line, that it is our fault.

We blame America first. America is trying to pull the world into a conflict, arguing that Russia is dangerous when obviously Russia is not dangerous. So we're the warmongers. We're trying to foment World War Three. It's the United States, not Vladimir Putin, who's risking nuclear war. And so, of course, you know, mentioning his nuclear, we should be, you know, deterred by that. We should be afraid of all of that. Well, he's downplaying the danger. So you have the blame America first thing, which, by the way, Ronald Reagan would roll over in his grave as would Jean Patrick. But here's the nub. And here's the thing that I think that people really need to understand. That when Donald Trump says the greatest threat to Western civilization today is not Russia, it is probably more than anything else ourselves and some of the horrible U.S. hating people that represent us. He's not just siding with Russia. He's saying that we shouldn't fear Russia.

We should fear other Americans. Our real enemy is one another. I mean, this is kind of the essence trying to foment this division. Has there ever been a president of the United States, and I'm including even people like Richard Nixon, who have turned Americans against one another as viciously as this. Yeah, Andrew Johnson, maybe, you know, you're going back to the Reconstruction era, right, in order to do that. And this is the other thing, you know, there's the old line about Trump that you should take him whatever, seriously, not literally, you know. That was obviously

ridiculous always, but there was like an iota of truth to it, right? Like Trump is too stupid to like want to actually literally do some of the things that come out of his mouth. That's not the situation here. Any assessment of Donald Trump and MAGA really, the broader MAGA world, and I can tell you this from going to, see back, going to the Turning Point USA conferences that I've written about, these folks are animated by their resentment and grievance and hatred towards you and me, the mainstream media, the liberal elites, broadly defined, wokeism, which we'll get into, black and brown Americans. That is their animating hatred. Trump is dead serious about that.

And if he were to become president again, absolutely, his number one enemy, the number one person that he would try to snuff out are his domestic foes. And he does not see Russia as an enemy. He does not see defending Ukrainians in our interests. Probably if you asked him to just spit out who he would rather see win, it's like the old Tucker Carlson quote. I guess I am rooting for Russia. You're right.

He would be. That is not just like nonsense. That is a very clear-eyed assessment of Donald Trump's words and actions. And that is an unprecedented threat. I said Henry Walton, the cheeky example earlier, but really that's the nearest example. The pro-Nazi, like Charles Lindbergh, like we should not be involved in this that is the closest parallel to what we're dealing with but those were third parties like this is one of the two major parties i appreciate your newsletter so much because i think that people are numb to this and this is another moment kind of like the period between november 2020 and january 6th where

those of us at the poll work like yeah we should be alarmed about this, extremely alarmed. I don't think there's any other way to kind of analyze that video. I'm laying out a lot of this argument in my Morning Shots newsletter. If you don't subscribe, please consider doing that. But I also quoted something from our colleague Will Salatan earlier this week. Now, he was writing about Ron DeSantis, but this is what he said. If a Democratic president were to say these things, dismissing Russia as a threat, cowering before China, preaching moral equivalence and blaming America for Russia's war, every Republican presidential candidate would denounce the president as a gutless, soulless, Putin loving traitor. Now, he said that about DeSantis, but I mean, it applies to Trump so much more. So let's get to this weird dynamic where Republicans felt completely emboldened this week to go after and slap around Ron DeSantis, pushing back. I mean, you know, it was pretty strong. Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, you know, I don't know whether Pompeo said anything about it, but you had Chris Christie denouncing to grips with the fact, wait, DeSantis is just simply mirroring and echoing Donald Trump.

If you say this about DeSantis, you're saying, you know, the same thing about Trump. But they're not willing to go after Trump yet. When Trump, I think, is several steps to the, what, you know, Putin side of even Ron DeSantis. Is that ever going to change? Maybe. This would be the moment for it, right? This would be the time. This is why your call in the newsletter to say that media should be covering this, right? DeSantis is the new shiny toy, right, element of this. So, it's kind of interesting, right? Like, DeSantis' comments about the territorial dispute that Ukraine and Russia are were abominable, but also new, right? And interesting and new as part of news, right? Trump siding with Putin is sadly not that new, right? And so, you know, I think that you had your congressional reporters, etc. challenging a lot of these guys in a way that they've kind of gotten bored with, right, out of Trump. So I think that there are two elements to this. One is- I think exactly right. Yeah. One is the Republican members are a little bit more scared of Trump than they are of DeSantis because they're more scared of the Trump base. And two, they're getting asked about it less.

They're more used to having to deal with it. So I do think that if they're challenged on it, on the Sunday shows, I don't know who's out this weekend, that hopefully they'd say the right thing. Now is the one safe time, right? We're kind of in primary season, but we're not really, right? He doesn't, you know, DeSantis isn't in the race yet. It's quite early. I don't have any hope because we've all lived through this and I'm not an insane person. We bear the scars. Yeah, I bear the scars that these Republicans will hold the line. But, you know, I think there could be a period of time here where they try to flex a little bit of their muscle. The remaining members of the Republican Senate conference who believe in America's role in the free world. But just back

to Saladin's thing, just to put a finer point on that comparison, because the Putin element of this is at this point so baked in, a Democratic presidential candidate going out and saying, she is our ally. Chairman, she is our ally. Chairman Xi is our ally. We shouldn't care about what he's doing and human rights violations. He is a great supporter of our country. We love Chairman Xi. And the real enemies in our country are white Christian Americans who are trying to tear things down, who want to rip us apart. The outrage would never end. Fox would be talking about that until 2085 if Fox doesn't, you know, go under, thanks to the Dominion lawsuit. It would be

unbelievable. And that is just part of the asymmetric nature of our politics right now. I think you're absolutely right. So on this whole, you know, Trump-DeSantis issue, I was glad to see that Kevin Barron over at Defense One is linking the two together. He said, you know, who else would Trump and DeSantis abandon? You know, we now know that Ron DeSantis wouldn't defend Europeans from Putin's war, you know, not to the end at least. Neither would Donald Trump. Why then, he writes, should anyone, especially their hawkish fellow Republicans, think that if elected president, either of them would defend Taiwan from China? Of course they would.

Their reticence to commit arms to stop an invasion on NATO's borders invites even more unsettling questions. What about Australia? What about Japan? How about NATO's eastern countries? Would they be willing to sign the orders for American soldiers to deploy and defend any U.S. allies? So here's the good news, I guess. I think there were some, you know, premature obituaries, youituaries about conservatives completely surrendering. And based on past experience, that's not unreasonable. But they may fall in the line with the appeasement caucus. But that hasn't happened yet. It has not happened at the moment. And there still is a pushback. Maybe there is that still recessive gene of peace through strength Reaganism. But it's a fight worth having as opposed to just surrendering. And it's very, very important that this debate takes place in the Republican Party, because if it becomes a Democrat versus Republican, red versus blue thing, then our foreign policy is going to always be on a knife's edge and we will never be trusted in the world.

The basis of American power and credibility is the fact that our foreign policy has bipartisan support. And I cannot stress enough that if the Republican Party completely goes isolationist, we just simply cannot rely on the Democrats, you know, to be the, you know, the defenders of the Western world alone. They can't do it alone. This is an internal fight really worth having among Republicans. Who would have thought 10 years ago that it'd be the defenders of the Western world alone. They can't do it alone. This is an internal fight really worth having among Republicans. Who would have thought 10 years ago that it'd be the Republicans we'd be worried about on this front? Three cheers for the Uniparty, by the way. I'm always a big fan of the blob and the Uniparty. I think that on the China point, the defense one, it is exactly

right. There is no reason to believe that Trump or DeSantis would do anything to try to help defend Taiwan. And I think that right now that the Republicans get a free pass on this to be butch, like to like butch up their China rhetoric and talk tough because there's no actual need to do anything. But I just don't know how you can live through this Ukraine situation and think that all of these guys would be really stalwart on Taiwan. There's no consistency to it. It doesn't make any sense. It would make no sense. I am also like you encouraged by the number of Republicans

that said something. There were like 9, 10, 11, 12 that went on the record against DeSantis. That's not nothing. That is not nothing. I would rather them be there than not. I do think that many of them

are also either fooling themselves or fooling us about what the party's actual stance is about China and Ukraine. If the two leading Republican contenders, you know, have this clearly isolationist position. I think that on the DeSantis point, some of them were trying to publicly send a signal to DeSantis, like they think that Trump is lost. I think that

the fear of the Trump voters is part of the reason that they don't speak out. But another reason is, I think they still maintain some hope that maybe they can win DeSantis over and say, hey, buddy, you know, we're not into this race yet. Like, you know, we can find a different anti-Trump horse if you don't get in line. Now, I think that's kind of an empty threat, but I think that it's one of the reasons that explains why they were, why they spoke out on this. It's a minor green line. I have a ton of other problems with those guys, but I'm happy that they're saying something. So the obvious flex for Republicans, including Ron DeSantis, would be, wait, wait, I may be soft on Russia, but I'm going to be a hawk on China. We're going to draw the line.

The reason why we can't get too embroiled in this war is because, you know, we have to keep our powder dry for China. The complication there is there's China going, no, no, we're with him. We're with Russia. We're, you know, we are joined in this. They're already on the field, by the way. That's right. No, this is our war, too. So this complicates things.

So speaking of Ron DeSantis, I wanted to get your take on all of this because he's had a hell of a bad couple of weeks, I think. Nate Cohn in the New York Times has a really interesting piece. DeSantis on defense shows signs of slipping in the polls. Now, again, you know, the punditry sometimes moves pretty quickly, but these things do move pretty quickly. And I don't think that the DeSantis bubble is close to having burst, but is it leaking? And Nate Cohn basically cites the widening gap between Trump and DeSantis in the polls. But also, I'm sensing a shift in the conventional wisdom in the media coverage and that people who were thinking, well, DeSantis is perfectly positioned to take over from Donald Trump, now are thinking, actually, maybe he's not ready for prime time.

Maybe he has moved too far to the right for the general election. What do you think? How do you evaluate this? Before I indulge in some DeSantis punditry, would you allow me one final point about the Trump video that relates to DeSantis?unditry, would you allow me one final point about the Trump video that relates to DeSantis? Oh, absolutely. Of course I would. You know, some of these assholes who are, you know, the DeSantis submissives on the internet, you know, like my friend Andrew Sullivan and others who have liked to attack us, the never Trumpers, and say that, oh, you know, you might even be for Trump in the end. and you're going so hard at DeSantis, and you weren't legit about your never-Trumpism and blah, blah, blah, all those accusations.

They really do bother me. And I just think that the Trump video is just yet another reminder that as you compare all of the threats facing us in this country going forward, and we have many, that Donald Trump stands so far head and shoulders above everybody else. Just the absolute, just the use or lunacy, the derangement of this person, the types of folks that he would have around him, the vindictiveness. You just watch that video, and it makes you shiver. Anything to stop that motherfucker from getting in the White House again, I'm for. I totally agree with this. I know you agree with that. I just think that it's another reminder. Anytime I get the chance to say it, I want to say it so that when I criticize DeSantis or whoever emerges, we can go to the videotape on this. There is no question. And I want to just sink in with

everyone else on DeSantis', because these things relate, right? Like the weaker DeSantis is, the stronger Trump seems. I do think that DeSantis' balloon has lost a little bit of air in the past week. I'm not as bearish on DeSantis as, I'm referencing again, your Tom Nichols podcast earlier this week. I share your guys' glee in making fun of Pudding Fingers, Tiny D, Meatball Ron DeSantis. I haven't gotten around to the Pudding Finger thing.

I haven't even addressed that. Oh, yeah. Well, we can get to it. I enjoy making fun of him, and he is weird, and he is a strange person, and I do think that he might not wear well, that that analysis could be right,

that he just might not wear well, and we're seeing the signs of it. I'm totally open to that possibility. But having been in Florida and watched him, he has two things going for him that nobody had in 2016. One is he's got a clear elevator pitch for why he's better than Trump. That you can explain to anybody at the bar, at the dinner table in two seconds, which is, dude was stalwart on the MAGA stuff,

and he won by umpteen points. Donald Trump lost. And if we want to get this stuff through and trigger the libs and win, he's the guy to win, right? So he's got a clear elevator pitch. Nobody had that. You think back, Cruz, Rubio, nobody's elevator pitch about why them over Trump was very clear or it was clear and it was like not what the voters wanted, right? Like we need a traditional Republican. Okay. so he's got that going for him the other thing he's got going for him is in part due to part one the voters kind of have an affinity for him it's part because the winning it's part because the media hates him he's got that thing

that trump had going for him where like they share the same foes and so maybe they excuse it amanda said it actually in the next level podcast so it's his vibes theory of politics and it's just like if the vibe is right and I see you as one of my guys, then I start to make excuses for you, right? I come up with defenses. And so he has both of those things going for him. He's lost in altitude this week,

I think for sure. I think that he made this bet that he could go full MAGA and that the establishment guys would all stick with him anyway because he's just better than Trump and they're so sick of Trump and so ready to get rid of him that he had this leash.

And I think you saw this week some cracks in that where some of these guys are like, actually, I don't know, if you guys look like you're both the same, maybe I won't actually pick a side. And then I think that the personality, just his, what's the right word? He's brittle. Like he just had defensive

he gets and stuff. That's some more signs that he might not wear well with the lights are on. I agree with the fact that he's lost a little altitude. I'm not quite as, you know, David Frum's Atlantic piece, whatever it was this week,

Tomahawk dunking on him, being like, this guy's got nothing. I don't know. There could be a Joe Biden situation and not a Scott Walker situation. I don't know. TBD. does not have a group of deranged flying monkeys that he will sickle on them. They know that if they say the same things about what Donald Trump is saying, which is identical, that they will have, you know, the flying monkeys of MAGA descend on them. They'll be called a rhino and their lives will be absolute hell. Whereas right now, criticizing Ron DeSantis is a free fire zone. Even though they are identical in their positions, there's a complete difference in the way that

Republicans regard holding them accountable. Yep. And one other thing that happened this week, I totally agree with that. Additionally, another sign that DeSantis might lose some altitude, right, and you get these bad news cycles that come, is another judge blocked the Stop Woke Act this week. Yes, very important. If your case over Trump is, right, which I think is his clearest case, is one, unelectability, and two, ineffectiveness, right? That, oh, Trump didn't actually build the wall, right? Like, Trump didn't actually, you know, it's a lot of bluster, but not a lot of results. If all of these unconstitutional bills that he passed continue to strike down, which we all expect that they will,

and, you know, David French and our friends who are legal experts all have said this from the start. Because they are unconstitutional. Yeah, exactly. You know, then that's again, another ding, right? It's not just the personality not wearing well. It's like the effectiveness argument is getting undermined as well, that he has the same limitations that Trump did in being able to deal with whatever, these deep state liberal judges or whatever nonsense, you know, gets pushed around in conservative media. I don't know that that hurts him in the primary because he can say, well, at least I tried. But, you know, it's these lefty judges on the other hand.

And that's what Trump can say, too. You know, at least I tried, but the deep state stopped me. And now you're the same again. Right. And I'm reading this New York Times story about the latest textbook revisions that are going on in Florida because people are trying to make. Insane. Well, it's embarrassing. It's beyond parody, you know, taking the Rosa Parks story and removing

any reference to the fact that she was asked to move from her seat on the bus because of the color of her skin. You take her from being a hero to being a stubborn lady. If you read the thing, it's like crazy. Like you make her the villain of the story. It's like, now why wouldn't this lady get out of her seat? Like, why is this in my history book again? I don't even understand. Was it last week that Santa's held a press conference to sort of push back, I am not banning all these books? Yeah. Which is a recognition that this is a vulnerability. This is not playing well. It might play well with a mag of base, but I'm sitting here in Ozaukee County, okay, in Wisconsin. We were one of the wow counties, used to be overwhelmingly Republican. We used to be among the most conservative counties in the entire state.

I just read an analysis by Craig Gilbert, former reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, about my county. Again, keeping in mind that Ozaukee County used to be one of the most stalwart Republican counties. Right now, if you just look at the number of conservative votes coming out of Ozaukee County. We're now down in the 40s. There's 72 counties in Wisconsin. We're down in the 40s. We are below average now in Wisconsin counties. A lot of rural counties are much redder than we are. These kinds of issues, I look at them and I go, okay, so in a general election,

how does Ron DeSantis play in Ozaukee County? How does he play in my hometown of Mequon or in Brookfield, Wisconsin, in Waukesha County? How does it play when people go, look what he's doing to your kids' textbooks, and he's doing all of these things in the name of freedom? And I think that people are going to call bullshit on that at some point. Yeah, and I think that there's some symbiosis between his general election electability argument getting dinged and his primary argument, right? Because that's one of the cases he has against Trump. And if DeSantis' number starts to mirror Trump's number in all the general election polls, because all of a sudden people start paying attention to him and these Ozaukee County voter that you're talking about, the person that might've been the Romney Biden voter or whatever that is telling pollsters he's going

to vote for DeSantis now starts learning more about him. And it's like, Oh wait, okay. We're going to have a six week abortion ban. And like, he doesn't want, you know,

fifth graders to be able to be aware that gay parents exist. And he doesn't want people to talk about Rosa Parks and constitutional care. And you just go down the line and all the, Oh my God, we're getting rid of the, the liquor license over drag queen story you know like the hits keep on coming that the santas ends up seeming like

indistinguishable from any other mega republican then again now you get back to the primary voters and it's like trump is my id trump's the guy i liked i was only gonna vote for this guy because i thought he was gonna be more electable but now i watch him on the stage and he has he has no personality you know he has negative. The polls aren't any better for him. All that stuff could add up and be a vulnerability for him, even in the primary, not just the general. I agree here. And I don't want to rain on anyone's parade because this weekend, we don't know. As you and I are talking on Friday morning, we don't know whether or not this New York indictment of Donald Trump is coming down. I mean, it will be a big, you know, BFD. There's no question about it. No

former president has ever been indicted on felony charges, presuming that's what it is, before it complicates things. However, and I'm taking a deep breath here, folks, this is not the one you've been waiting for. This is going to be big. It will dominate, you know, cable news for the next three days. But this is not the big one. This is actually, I think, the one that is probably the weakest legally. I think it's great. I think it's good. I want to celebrate. I will have some Irish whiskey tonight. I want to make that clear. I am glad that we're establishing the principle that no one is above the law, not even, you not even a former president who boinked porn stars. Did I actually say boinked?

Yeah, I did say boinked. I don't know if that's what the kids are calling it these days. What would they call it? I don't even know. I always want to keep up with the kids. That's a great question. I was about to say that came out of my mouth, and I was like, I don't know. Back in my era, now that I'm a geriatric millennial, we'd say smashed.

We'd say smashed. I miss that whole era. I'll put that as a question on the Snapchat show for next week. What's the slang for boinked among 17-year-olds? And I'll report back on next week's podcast. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. I think the legal case is going to be complicated.

I think that clearly Donald Trump is going to try and his folks are going to weaponize it to rally the base. Well, they'll do that anywhere. But just in terms of the one you've been waiting for, I think Georgia is bigger. What Jack Smith is doing is exponentially bigger than Georgia. Your thoughts? I don't even know if I have anything to add. I'll be gleeful, totally gleeful.

But I completely 100% agree with your analysis. I guess the one other thing I'd add is just that going back to the old videos, there will be a little bit of his lying about the Stormy Daniels thing was just so bald-faced, right? That I kind of forgot that even as president, this was not even just in the 2016 campaign. He was at the Resolute Desk signing these payoffs, and he has lied to reporters about it in Air Force One

when asked about it in a gaggle. So there's some minor points there that you kind of get to refresh people's memories about his mendacity. But just broadly speaking, I totally agree with your political assessment. So let's talk about wokeness and banks. And please don't just hit the button when you hear the word woke here, because Tim has an absolutely fantastic Not My Party, where you talk about this. How do you even describe it? This sort of orgy of, it's all about wokeness, why we had to run on the bank. It's a mind virus.

Every accusation is a confession, and they say that the wokes have a mind virus, but these people have a mind virus. They're just obsessed. Their brains have broken to such a degree they can't think of anything else to say. Well, that's it. I mean, they can't define it, but basically it's become shorthand for, you know, everything that we don't like, anything that we possibly don't like. It's kind of that Christopher Ruffo thing that I'm going to get people thinking anytime they hear anything about race that makes them uncomfortable, I want them to think critical race theory. And now they've moved on to wokeness because critical race theory had too many syllables in it or something like that. Look, there is a problem out there with smug conformity. I mean, if you listen to the law

students at Stanford, the way they behave, you don't understand it's out there. But what's happened is it's become absolutely absurd. It's almost become, what is the term that Ted Lasso uses when he uses a word too much? You know, I've ever seen that when he, what is the term that Ted Lasso uses when he uses a word too much? You know, have you ever seen that when he, he says the word plan. I'm saying the word plan too much. I love Ted Lasso and it's back on. I'm excited for the next season, but I don't, I don't know this reference. Oh, thank God America needs it. He calls it semantic satiation. You say a word over and over again. And after a while you realize, I just kind of lost all of its meaning. I feel that way about woke. The banks are going down.

It's woke. The problem with the military, it's the woke military. Our woke military could never handle the muscular military of Russia. Oh, wait. So wokeness with its one black did not take down the banks, right? In addition to the frustration with the semantic satiation, that is hard to say. There are two other just points on this bank thing. One is just the overt racism.

You just have to say it. The Wall Street Journal editorial board is always the thing that people fall back on, which is like, you know, there's these Wall Street editorial board Republicans. They're the normal ones. They're the normal ones. Putting in a column in the Wall Street Journal editorial page that the board makeup, the fact that SVB was so conscious of adding diversity

to their board that they added one black, one LGBTQ+, and two veterans, was maybe one of the reasons that explained this is absolutely insane. This is supposed to be the financial paper. It's supposed to be the place where you go to for financial expertise, and you're going to blame

this on the one black? Does this come out of an editor? If you see the word one black in a column, maybe that's a time to just let your wife or husband or whatever read it, vet your column before it goes out. So there's this overt racism to it. And you see it on Fox, you see it with DeSantis saying that they're distracted by diversity and inclusion. There's no other way to describe it besides racism. But the other part is this kind of melancholy part for us, the former Republican types, however you want to define us, is like you could make, and this is what I wanted to put in my party, you could make, and I think people could disagree, a conservative argument for why Biden does share some responsibility for this, right? Like that the bank screwed up by making these stupid investments in the bonds, but

part of the reason why the interest rates went up so high is because we juiced the economy too much and we spent too much money on stimulus. And so interest rates went up and this bank had made a bet against interest rates and they should have hedged and they should have been smarter, but that led to this collapse. Yeah, see, my eyes are glazing over. Oh, I'm talking about the return on bonds. Right, yeah. So now people are bored, so they don't talk about it.

Woke, woke. There's this great Larry Summers-John Stewart exchange, actually. I was just watching before we came on. Where Larry Summers is making the actual substantive argument, not about SVB, but about inflation and why interest rates went up faster than they should have. And have you heard anybody make that? Nobody even made, they don't even try to make like actually a conservative economic argument for why this is a problem and why, you know, liberal leadership has caused problems. It's just straight to the lowest common denominator, straight to the racism. But I think this is also, you know, another indication of how much contempt they have for their own constituency and their audiences, because

what they're thinking of, if I actually use these terms, these technical terms, and try to explain the relationship between interest rates and bond valuation, you know, my people won't get it. They'll be bored. So I'm going to throw them, you know, I'm going to throw them some Cheetos instead. And I mean, that really comes down. I don't want to do the good old days thing. We just really, I just can't imagine going to Jeb, going to Jeb and being like, you know i'm gonna throw them some cheetos instead and i mean that really comes down i don't want to do the good old days thing we just really like i just can't imagine going to jeb going to jeb and being like you know as someone who dealt with this right like i'm not an expert on this like to go to jeb after svp comes down and say hey bud we're gonna put out a tweet from you that's like we're gonna blame the one black board member about this and and say that they were distracted because of this like he would he would look at me like I was insane.

There was a period of time where for all of the flaws, potentially, or merits or demerits, he'd be like, hey, Tim, maybe we should bring in our economic policy expert on this and craft a statement based in reality. And I'd be like, okay, boss. And that's why we finished in last place in the primary, I guess. At some point, people have to make those kinds of arguments again, right? Maybe not.

Maybe it's good to send completely into idiocracy. We already have descended completely into idiocracy. You know, the other day, rather snarkily, I suggested that Republicans, including Ron DeSantis, were sounding like a chatbot. Yeah, I heard that. I want to extend and revise those remarks because I think that if, in fact, they turned over their communications to artificial intelligence chatbots, their IQ would go up. Oh, yeah, it wouldn't even be close. I mean, honestly, I think it would be better. It would be better than what we're getting.

We wouldn't have this guy Comer coming out and going, just woke, woke, woke, woke, woke, woke. Okay, fine. Can you come up with something? The chatbot is way more advanced than what Jesse Waters was spewing on Fox News. I mean, they're not even in the same ballpark. It'd be kind of like the Chinese vaccine, how it didn't work. Maybe there's a Chinese AI chatbot that hasn't quite figured it out yet,

and that might be kind of the level that they're on. All right, so synonyms for boink. I don't think the Youngs use shag anymore, right? But you know what? I think we do know what Donald Trump would describe it as. Wouldn't he call it, you know, schlonging? Isn't that his term? Wouldn't that be his generation?

He did. He did like schlonging. He did. And I liked that one. I kind of wanted to bring that one back. Banging is more my era. No. I don't know.

That's what I'm saying. I don't know what the teens do. I'm going to put out a poll. Okay. Well, speaking of generational change, are you ready for your present? I've been nervous about it. I've had nervous excitement about it the whole podcast. So you and I had a really intelligent, in-depth, I thought remarkably insightful podcast a week ago today. Oh, God. We're going to bring back Annette, whatever her name is. Do you know what 98% of the reaction I got to our Friday podcast was about?

It wasn't about our deep dives. It was about this lovely woman that you acknowledged you were not familiar with. So my Friday gift to you, Tim, is this. It's the Beach Boys and Annette Funicello. Oh.

Is this her? Uh-huh. Annette Funicello. This is horrible, Charlie. This is horrible, Charlie. This is the air poison. Can we put on some Phantom Planet, Katie, and educate about the OC? I mean, that sounds like it was from 1850.

You have heard of the Beach Boys, right? Yeah, I mean, in the early 80s, it was terrible. Pet Sounds is pretty good. So people ask, right? Yeah. I mean, and, and, and the early terrible sounds is pretty good. So people, I got a lot of tweets. Have you heard about Frankie Avalon? And I, my answer to that would have been, had you said the name Frankie Avalon last week, I would have been like,

yeah, that sounds familiar. Was he like one of the rat pack or something? I had heard the name Frankie Avalon before, but the other ladies, I, which I still don't know her last name, but her name, I'd never heard of.

That was the first time I'd ever heard of her in my entire life. People are like, have you not watched Grease? I was like, no, I've not watched Grease. Why would I have watched Grease? You probably should watch Grease. You need to catch up with all of these things, you know, to find out what the, well, but see. I only have so much room in this brain, Charlie.

You know, I need sports knowledge. I need drag queen knowledge. I need politics knowledge, economics, indie rock. I can't get musicals and 1940s film in there. I just got to cut it. I just got to cut it somewhere. It is not 1940s. But I just want to warn you that sometime this weekend,

while you're watching March Madness, you may get that little brain worm, and you may be hearing about Monkey's Uncle, and you'll think, ah, Annette Funicello is in my head. I hope not. Thank you, Charlie Sykes. Oh, probably you won't use the word thank you. A great day one of March Madness, though, by the way.

That Furman, Virginia, and sorry to all the UVA grads out there and your little sweater vests that you wear. It was a tough, tough break for you guys. But that was an amazing game. I really enjoyed that. That's why March Madness is so magical. I still believe that it is the greatest moment in sports because it goes on and you have these storylines

and these dramas and these incredible upsets. And there's so much of it. Yeah, it is so good. Speaking of sports, everybody is signed off already by this, but if you stuck around, on our Sunday, our Sunday next level, we have Colin Allred, who's this congressman from Texas who is an NFL player. He was undrafted out of Baylor.

He went and still tried out for the Tennessee Titans, made the team, played on the team, now is elected in Dallas, and he represents George Bush's district. So he's on this stupid weaponization of government committee. We do a little bit on the weaponization of government committee, a little bit on Ted Raphael Cruz, and then just football, CTE, all the controversy is the NFL woke. It's so good on Sunday, next level. Colin Allred is great. I hope he challenges Ted Cruz, actually. After the conversation, I'm hoping that, I think he'd be a better bet than Beto 3.0 so it occurs to me that when you say smash that like button that it means

something different to you than it means to me I just this had never occurred to me before you should smash yeah make a lot make sweet sweet love to that like button. Tim. Make sweet, sweet love to it on YouTube. Subscribe on YouTube, on Apple, on Spotify. I have to wash my hands right now. We need it. So, Tim, you have a great weekend. It's been great talking with you. Sure, you too, brother.

And thank you all for listening to the Bulwark Weekend Podcast. We'll be back on Monday, and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.