The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Miller: Deep Inside Tucker Carlson's Navel

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

Republicans are so out of touch, their public brand is in trouble. Plus, MTG is Queen of the GOP, Schlapp is too sleazy for Gaetz, and party types are praying for a Trump heart attack. Oh, and Tim Miller tells Charlie Sykes he wants to hang with Kari Lake. Your weekend pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Experience amazing now at Dawn Valley North Lexus. Right now, lease the 2024 RX350 Premium Package from just $678 per month for 28 months at 1.9%. Or, choose from Canada's largest selection of Lexus demonstrators with offers you won't want to miss. Now is the time, and Dawn Valley North Lexus is the place. See website for details. Expect excellence. At Dawn Valley North, Dawn Valley North for Lexus. north lexus is the place see website for details expect excellence a proud member of wayne's auto group welcome to the bulwark podcast it is friday which means that I am joined once again by my colleague, Tim Miller. Tim, welcome back to the podcast. How long has it been? Was it 2022? So much has happened. It's

good to be back. We have a lot of things to talk about today. I mean, you know, we have new inflation numbers. Apparently, we killed another ISIS leader. Memphis is bracing for the release of this police video, which is going to be gruesome. Good news, though, asteroid narrowly missed the Earth. So, hey, congratulations. Happy Friday there. Well, I mean, depending on where it would have landed. It's good news. I think a big asteroid landing anywhere is bad everywhere. At least that's what the movies are. Good point. This is my non-scientific understanding. So, Tim, I have a song for you to start the podcast today that's exciting you didn't prep me for this i did not prep you so

oh man well that's touching okay is this on your is this on your is this on one of your playlists i i love that one it doesn't make it on i do make some good spot your playlists? I love that one. It doesn't make it on. I do make some good Spotify playlists for people who are interested, but I don't. Maybe I should do just kind of like a slow jam, some love songs, a little retro kind of Charlie Sykes themed thing. Because it does seem like your musical tastes,

you have this hard candy shell, Charlie, but on the inside. A little different. You want some ballots. You like a ballot. That's true. You'd be amazed at what I actually listen to. So the reunited theme seems appropriate today, don't you think? Sure, of course.

Well, see, I thought you were going to think it was about you. I thought that you were going to think that that song was about you, Tim, when in fact. Like a you're so vain type situation? I didn't say that. You're so vain. But actually, it's about me and Paul. Did you hear this? I'm so excited for this. I do have to object, though. This song better have been about me, because I don't know if you and Paul getting reunited feels so good or not. I don't know if you made it to the second part of the lyric. Well, we will see.

This is the story. I think as I've said before, Paul Ryan and I have been taking a break from one another for several years and seeing other people. But we are going to be sitting down here in my hometown of Milwaukee next month. Talk about what's happened,

where we're going, what the fuck, right? So there is this evening with Paul Ryan moderated by Charlie Sykes, Thursday, February 23rd, UWM Student Union. If you're around, you can get tickets. We'll try to get a recording. Or if you're interested in traveling to the Midwest in the middle of February, you might want to be able to come. But also, I've asked people on my newsletter, if you have any ideas about what I should be asking the former speaker and member of the Fox Corporation board, let me know. Comment sections are open. Email's open. DM's open.

I'm already booked in February, sadly, or I would be there. If this was in March, I'd be there because I would like to see it in 3D. Can I just get a little bit of the back story? You know, this is interesting. I'm good for Paul, kind of, I would say. I haven't compliment see it in 3D. Can I just get a little bit of the backstory? You know, this is interesting. I'm good for Paul, kind of, I would say. I haven't complimented Paul in a while. So, you know, being willing to put himself out there, is this part of like the book tour?

Or he just, did he feel, was he drunk when he agreed to this? I can't comment on the second part, but apparently he does have a book and he's coming here to the university under the sponsorship of the Tommy G. Thompson Center for Public Leadership. And they sponsor speakers as part of the, let me just, what are they actually calling it here? The UWM Distinguished Lecture Series. So I got an email

from the university saying, hey, we're having this. Would you like to be the moderator? And I said, can I call you about this? And I said, okay, yes, I'll say yes. But have you run this by the Ryan people? Are they okay with it? And they said, yes, absolutely. No problem whatsoever. We talked about it. And they said that that is completely fine. I said, well, you know, I've written some things about Paul, you know, including my open letter to him in Political Magazine, which apparently got lost in the mail because I didn't get the response. And they knew about that. So I don't know. He's coming here and he's okay with this. Well, that's phenomenal. I'm going to save my suggested questions for private correspondence. Because as we sit here publicly, I know that we have,

you know, some folks in the riot orbit listening. You know, I just say, I think that we have, you know, some folks in the Ryan Orbit listening. You know, I'd just say I think that a substantive exchange on the ideas of the day would be important. And, you know, any additional suggestions I have, I'll send it private. No, I mean, I think this will be a substantive question. And as you know, my policy is I don't want to say something behind someone's back that I'm not willing to say directly. So anyway. Okay, so let's start with the nerd story of the day. And I'm really interested to get your take on all of this. I mean, there's a lot of real news out there. But then there's also the big event for the political nerd community of which we are members, correct?

I am. The election of the chairman of the Republican National Committee, kind of a nasty race between Ronna Romney McDaniel, Harmeet Dhillon, and my pillow guy. Ron DeSantis actually decided to weigh in yesterday. I don't know if that makes a difference that it was time for new blood. So he's actually now praising Harmeet Dhillon, who is, I think, last heard of as Kerry Lake's lawyer. So, I mean, this is not like a never Trump challenge. I wrote about the election this morning and saying the choice boils down to, you can vote for MAGA, more MAGA, or batshit crazy MAGA. What's your take?

Yeah, that's right. I mean, it is intriguing that all these lessons. I do feel like the last time we were on, we were talking about, you know, and this was good news, like what happened to the midterms and how it was clear that the MAGA-ist Republicans did the worst and that maybe the party could do some reflection on that point and notice that the Mike DeWines of the world did much better than the J.D. Vance's, even if J.D. Vance won still anyway, and that the Chris DeNew news did much better than the General Don Bullducks. And yet, there hasn't been a ton of evidence that the party itself has had their eyes opened to that reality, both in the Speaker's race and what the House Republicans have been doing, but also this race.

I mean, Harmeet Dhillon, who seems like a smart person, you know, she's out here in San Francisco and was always kind of this sort of contrarian. Like at one point she was, you know, one of these free speech types, right? And I, you know, and I don't know that she was ever like particularly baggy conservative, socially conservative or whatever. She was just a San Francisco Republican, which by nature makes you a contrarian. And she's been a lawyer out here, but she'd pivoted in the last few years to be obviously a big advocate of the Stop the Steal movement, defensive of anti-white racism, these sorts of MAGA culture war matters. And she becomes the alternative. It's not as if somebody became the alternative that was like, hey, maybe we should have had a party know, wasn't completely beholden to Donald Trump and didn't just like lick his toes at every opportunity, right?

Like maybe that would have been the pivot. Obviously, there's noell's in the race himself, but other people, one standard deviation to the normal side of Mike Lindell and their beliefs about election fraud and the most Trumpy, the most crazed, culturally MAGA folks. And then also the people on the committee who are kind of more in what was left of the old establishment that want new blood and that are sicker on and that are unhappy that she's given out consulting contracts to all the same people. And, you know, so she's put together a very odd coalition and it'll be interesting. The RNC, for people who don't know, I've been part of these races before, sadly. You worked there. Yeah. Yeah. I worked there. Right. And when Reitz came in, you know, he was new and there's a competitive race. So there are 168 people that make up the committee. It's each state has three, the state chairman, the national committee, and the national

committee woman, that's 150. And then there's 18 miscellaneous folks. So that's who the vote is among, right? So I still think Rana probably has the inside track, you know, because she's been able to work all these people. It the ultimate like school you know class president race right and harmeet has been kind of working this outside angle getting the charlie kirks of the world and the tuckers steve bannon going on all those shows getting the crazed listeners to like email their national committee man you know this is these are people that no one's ever heard of and that never get emails and now they're getting avalanched with emails from like Steve Bannon's listeners. And like, is that going to actually get these folks to change their mind? I don't know. The DeSantis thing piqued my interest.

It doesn't feel like something that he would have done. Maybe he would, but it doesn't feel like something that you'd do if you thought there was no chance that she could lose, right? Like, why get on her bad side unnecessarily? Maybe you just figure Ronna is such like a pushover that doesn't really matter. And if you're the nominee, she'll suck up to you like she sucked up to Trump and maybe change her name to Ronna DeSantis. I actually do understand why DeSantis is doing this. But I mean, I talked about this race earlier this week with Dave Weigel. It was a great podcast. And I guess my problem is I can't really make myself care because it really doesn't matter who wins this at this point. I mean, it's high stakes,

a lot of, you know, drama and everything, but really lowest possible stakes because, I mean, it is, you know, MAGA or more MAGA. Also, the locus of power has shifted away from the organized political parties, you know, to a lot of these outside third-party groups and everything. I mean, it's not like the chairman of the RNC is some sort of an arbiter who will make, you know, major decisions. I mean, Ronna McDaniel did to the RNC is some sort of an arbiter who will make major decisions. I mean, Ronna McDaniel did to the RNC chairmanship what Kevin McCarthy is doing to the speakership. She basically hollowed out the significance of it. So it doesn't really matter. But it is interesting.

It's got some symbolic weight because the grassroots entertainment wing of the party is done with McDaniel. They've got to tingle up their leg about Harmeet Dhillon. And Ron DeSantis, who has had a very consistent strategy of clinging to the right edge of the party, keeping in touch with the Kirks and the grassroots, this is a nice signal. Win or lose, it doesn't matter really who wins, but it's certainly a signal that I'm not going to be outflanked on the right by anyone, including Donald Trump. So you really do see his thinking there. I do think that's right. And then, you know, he makes the silly suggestion in the same interview. He's like, let's move the RNC out to real America, you know, which is like

the exact type of, you know, never going to happen, low calories, I'm an outsider suggestion that you can make, you know, to kind of signal to this crowd that you're not one of the swamp. So I think that's right. And I do. People should, if they didn't go listen to the Weigel podcast, it was really good. I was a little surprised you guys started out with the Oscars. Didn't know that Dave Weigel was an Oscars correspondent.

I had no idea. After Sun was a favorite of mine. And I noticed you didn't ask me, but that's okay. You know, I thought that his analysis on this was good. I had no idea. machinations here. There's also a lot of money that flows with the RNC, a lot of contracts, you know, a lot of people that used to be in the establishment, you know, people that I might have written about in my book, you know, who are old friends of mine are still on the take from this RNC because it's part of this new, you know, sort of Frankenstein MAGA establishment merger that's in the building. You know, getting Harmeet in there might change that and get even more crazy people in there. So there might be some even potentially downside for the party on that side, but it also would kind of clean out some of these old consultants, which would feel nice. But as far as the elections are concerned, the group that really screwed the pooch was the National Republican Senate Committee.

For folks listening, just really quick to understand how these campaigns work, the RNC is sort of this, like, funds all of the grassroots stuff and is this overarching umbrella committee. The committees that actually have an influence in the races, there's one on the House side, one on the Senate side, the NRCC and the NRSC. The NRSC is the one that just botched everything to shit and, like, put out red carpet for Herschel Walker and didn't put their thumb on the scale in any of these competitive races. They end up with all these lunatics, and they didn't even try to compete. I mean, if you're really having a serious autopsy as a party and trying to decide what to do better, that is where you'd make the change, that instead we're having this kind of performative MAGA versus Morph and MAGA fight in the RNC, I think, which tells you a lot about whether they've actually learned any lessons from the midterms. There is no autopsy. And of course, you were part of that, the famous post

2012 autopsy, which I think is still just an interesting moment where the Republican National Committee, you know, looked in the mirror and said, you know, how can we make ourselves more inclusive? How can we, you know, appeal more to Hispanic voters and young voters? And then proceeded, of course, to do the exact opposite of everything in that autopsy. What's interesting is that a political party that could not even bring itself to have a platform a couple of years ago is now not even going through the motions of any sort of an autopsy to explain why they keep losing the popular vote, why they're hemorrhaging support in the suburbs among women and young voters. No suggestion that, hey, maybe we ought to stop doing X, Y, or Z work. None of it. I mean,

Harmeet Dhillon's main complaint seems to be that we ought to have more lawsuits, right? I mean, they have created this bubble in which their message and their appeal is just not on the table because they believe that everything has been rigged. And if they can just find a way to make it harder to vote or to have more lawsuits or whatever, they've kind of gone down that rabbit hole. And so they're not looking in the mirror at all. You know, no platform, no autopsy, and no agenda, no policy agenda in the House right now. Like, they've taken over the House with no desire to do anything. I got to write that down. No platform, no autopsy, no agenda. Yeah, it's the trifecta. Thank you. Yeah, okay. Maybe things will change. The smart Republicans,

the few that, the ones that will still talk to me, do you know what their real autopsy is? It's prayer that Donald Trump has a heart attack or loses to Ron DeSantis and that Ron DeSantis can, like like sprinkle some magic dust and make what happened in Florida happen in all these other states. Like that's the real no BS autopsy. Like that's what they think is going to happen. Okay. For people who are listening and think that you're being snarky, I think that is literally the case. However, I think among those two choices, they would much prefer the former because they know how messy the latter would be. Yeah, for sure. No, no, no. I've talked to several people. I'm working on a kind of a longer piece

that might come out in a month about various why things went so wrong for the party in my home state. But so I've done several interviews about this and it's not me saying it. It's like them volunteering. Well, I think that things will change when, you know, Ron DeSantis takes over and you see what he did in Florida. And it's just like, Florida's a unique place. Florida man is not just an internet meme. And so, you know, maybe, we'll see. But I think that because they have that, like the success in Florida,

hanging over as the specter, and that he feels more normal to them, feels more like somebody that they can recognize. Maybe he's not exactly the same as Republicans in the pre-Trump era, but he's recognizable. They don't have to do any hard thinking or do have to do any thinking about policy changes or any of that, right? Because they're just like, well, we'll just, hopefully this just works out. And, you know, if not, whatever, on to 2028 and we'll still be cashing our checks. Okay. So we do have some mixed signals here. And I wrote about this again in Warning Shots, if you subscribe. If you don't, please consider doing so. So if you look

at the RNC, on the surface, it looks like, okay, it's completely dominated by, you know, by Trump, right? I mean, it's new MAGA versus MAGA. He maintains this iron grip on the party. But we had this extraordinary story in the New York Times yesterday where the reporters called, emailed or texted all 168 RNC members. And of the people that they were able to reach, only four, four offered an endorsement of Trump's 2024 campaign. Wow. 20 said Trump should not be the party's nominee. An additional 35 said they would like to see a big primary field or just didn't want to talk about Trump at all. So this is interesting is that they're trying to find a way to square the circle of of saying nice things about Trump, of showing fealty to Trump, but then distancing themselves from it. OK, so is that significant at all? I mean, or is it just simply a matter that everybody's keeping their powder dry?

Well, I think it's significant in some sense, right? For starters, I think it's important to caveat, I don't think that Trump even had four members of the 168 supporting him when he won the 2016 primary. So it's significant, but not conclusive, right? I mean, he didn't have any, he had Jeff Sessions, literally, was his endorsement, and he ends up, you know, winning handily. But this is a very Trumpy RNC. I mean, this is an RNC that was created in the image of Donald Trump.

Sure. So then there's been a lot of rollover since then. Not complete, right? You know, I mean, we're about to get really dorky, but just off the top of my head, Glenn McCaul, who was on that autopsy with me, he's still the South Carolina guy. You know, sometimes you get entrenched in these positions. Ron Kaufman, Mitt Romney's old buddy, he's still the Massachusetts guy, right? So there's been a ton of rollover. The types of people who stayed, who were old timers, all came around to Trump, right? But they were all like, you know, Rubio or Jeb or Cruz people initially, right? So when you say there's 20 that are against, I mean, I bet if I looked at the list, you know, 16 of them were for my day, right? So, when you say there's 20 that are against, I mean, I bet if I looked at

the list, you know, 16 of them were for my day, right? I bet I'd know most of those 20. It's the only four that stuck out. The only four, right? So, that is the interesting part, right? And so, I think this is where you get to, I think there's something here, right? Because some of the remaining 130, right, are people who came in because of trump right who are washed into that right you know and like in arizona for example maybe all four in arizona but i was there for that tpusa conference and you know i mean that party has completely rolled over into mega a total mega freak show right like people that were not in the system before you know that should

be three votes right there it's surprising to me me that there isn't at least that. That is similar in other states. These are the people that are closest to the grassroots, right? I thought if you look back to 2016, one of the canaries in the coal mine were like the county party leaders and the state party, right? They all kind of knew what was happening before the congressmen did, right? Like you started to see signs of this because they were closer to the grassroots, which was demanding Trump. This tells me, if there are only four, that a lot of these folks feel like they have the rope with the grassroots to kind of wait and see what happens, right? And I do think that that's meaningful. Again, it's not like Trump's dead, but it's meaningful as far as his sort of losing, you know, his hold over that crowd. Okay, so two more just interesting data points stories. You saw this new poll out of New Hampshire, the new Granite State poll shows DeSantis leading Trump by 12 points, 42 to 30%. This is the kind of the gold standard New Hampshire poll. By the way, do you agree with that?

This is the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. No, I mean, let's just say this isn't Marquette. This is a poll that's oftentimes all over the map. OK, fair. I stand corrected. But what it also shows, though, and again, because this is the only thing that's really out there, independent poll, you know, shows that DeSantis is picking up, you know, support while Trump is losing support. So that's one data point. Okay, so Iowa. I don't know if you saw this story from

Bloomberg. Donald Trump doesn't always get his calls to Iowa return these days. Apparently he called Senator Chuck Grassley and Governor Reynolds. They didn't answer when he telephoned. Neither of them were willing to give their party's former leader their nod this early. And Joni Ernst and other top Republicans in Iowa also basically saying, yeah, can we just give you a gold watch? So once again, kind of choose your own adventure. You can either look at the party and go, okay, Donald Trump controls everything, iron grip on the party. On the other hand, at the same time, at the moment, it feels like sort of waiting for Godot, but Godot being Ron DeSantis or somebody else.

They're just waiting on that. So far, the DeSantis-Trump polls have been all over the place. I think we should set them aside for a second. But the Reynolds thing is interesting. The Reynolds Ernst Grassley thing. Now, these folks have not been profiles in Courage, is like the nicest thing that you could possibly say. But it is telling that they're all making political calculations, right? Like none of them were big Trumpers. They were all part of the pre-Trump party, right? So they all go along to get along as much as is needed, right? And I think that what this shows is they're starting to think, maybe it's not needed anymore. You know, we'll see. Like, let's play it by ear. I don't want

to get pressured into endorsing him, which makes like the least phonic endorsement one day after you know, so hilarious by comparison, that she did feel like she needed to do that since she's such a phony. Well, she thought she was going to be leading the parade, right? She says, I'm going to go out there and I have the baton and here, and then she looks around, looked over his shoulder and she's pretty much alone. That's hilarious. So I think that again, I think that's telling, right? That there's that's that that your rentals your earth types are saying like let's see how this plays out a little bit i don't think it says that they're done with him you know if things start to tack back his direction but i think that it shows that they very much if they feel like that they can support desantis and

not have it harm their standing on the base or or wait it out or sit it out or be neutral then they'll probably do that and that's again not It doesn't mean he's dead, but it's definitely a sign of degradation of his support from where it would have been a year ago. Okay. I want to talk about a little bit. We haven't had a chance. You and I have not had a chance to talk about Matt Schlapp. And I want to talk about your video about Marjorie Taylor Greene, which is outstanding if people have not watched it. Tim's latest, Not My Party. But let's have one more sort of blast from the past because I know that you went down to Arizona

and spent some time with the Cary Lake folks. And kind of amazingly, Cary Lake is not going away. So she lost the race for governor. Katie Hobbs has been sworn in as governor. That's the state. And yet Cary Lake is doing a number of things. She continues to, you know, go down to Mar-a-Lago and suck up. She does her media tours.

She's raising lots of money. But she's also, I'm going to play a soundbite. She's on one of these sketchy shows and basically declaring that she needs to be declared the governor after all of this time. That she's still one that, and I will not be ignored. Here's Carrie Lake. We cannot have the election stand. The judge should declare me the rightful winner. I am the rightful winner. And we should move on and reclaim our government. Our state government has been hijacked and stolen by a bunch of people who know this election was fraudulent. Okay. So Tim, what, I mean, the delusion, it burns.

I thought you were going to play the clip where she suggested that she's going to hold a special session to change the voting laws. And it's like, what? Also, on my first day as governor, I'm going to do, Carrie, really? It's like, what special session? You don't get to do that. Like, former TV anchors don't get to call special sessions. Is this just me? I'm just going to throw this out here, Charlie. Maybe this just shows that my vacation in St. Barthes a couple weeks ago was too short

and that I need to go for a hike through the woods or something. But part of me is like, I kind of want Carrie to invite me down to her house. And I just want to hang out with her for like two weeks and like have breakfast. Are you kidding me? I mean, it was scary for a while. And it was quite concerning for democracy. But it's a little fascinating now, right? I mean, how does a person, the psychological, you know, sort of, you know, gymnastics you have to do in order to like go on these shows with these basement dwelling gnomes and just be like,

yes, I'm going to call a special session. I mean, it's demented, but kind of in an interesting way now. For me, it's, no, have I lost my mind? If I'm walking through the park and I'm seeing some crazy person ranting, my first instinct is not like, hey, how could I be able to spend more time? I'm thinking, make eye contact with him, get as far away as possible. So this is kind of interesting, Tim, that you look at somebody who is this completely nuts, and you think, hey, I'd like to have a beer with that person.

Yeah, well, I would. I'm interested. So anyway, that's just me. But we'll put that aside. Politically, if you put aside the derangement, right? She's a good performer. Yeah, but don't even crazy people look at that and go, okay, I know that I'm nuts, but that's really fucking nuts. No, I don't think so. I mean, I think that, again,

it depends on what your definition of crazy is. I mean, I think there's certainly some people who have quite extreme views, you know, who look at her and say, this is lunacy, like we should be moving on to, you know, some other at her and say, this is lunacy. Like we should be moving on to, you know, some other white nationalist or whoever it is that I want. But I think that there's a category of people that are spending all their days inside the mega media bubble, who are totally in line with her. Is that percentage 5% of the party? Is that 20%? I don't know. But even if it's only 5%, that's millions of people, right? You have to assume that when she's walking to the airport, if there are 5 million people

in the country that are inside this bubble that are totally aligned with her, that anytime she walks to the airport, there are two or three people that are like, keep fighting, Carrie, right? And 5 million people is a lot of people. I think that there's that kind of element to this. And then I think that there's the Trump element that hangs over all this, right? Which is maybe a transition into the Marge Taylor Greene question.

But like, you don't exactly know what's going on in that crazy kook's head down in Mar-a-Lago. But you're like, hey, he might decide that the most important thing for his VP is loyalty after he saw what happened with Pence. And maybe he doesn't care that I lost

because he lost too. And it might seem totally illogical to everyone else in the world, but maybe in Trump's warped brain, Kerry is the place to go and she needs to hold the line on this so she gets picked. There could be that element to this as well. You're not wrong. And of course, in Arizona, they have a Senate election coming up. Kyrsten Sinema is an independent. Democrats, you know, Ruben Gallego has already announced he's running. If it's a three-way race, it is not inconceivable that Kerry Lake could be a member of the United States Senate. That is not inconceivable. And as we know, the Republicans will still rally around her if she's the Republican

nominee for Senate in two years down there. Yeah, and she got 49% of the vote, right? So, if you look at the cinema, let's say cinema pulls off 5% of Republicans only, which is maybe the, right? She could get 42%. That could be enough in a three-way for sure. I still do not want to have a beer with her. I am not hanging with her. I don't want to have a beer with her like, oh, hey, me and Carrie watching the ballgame. I want to sleep in her guest room.

I want to really understand what's happening. That's a little bit different. No? Is that even weirder for you? No, I'm sorry. The beer I could handle, the sleeping in Carrie Lake's guest room thing, I'm going to have to think on that, Tim. Okay. So since we're on the slalom course of crazy here, you had a fantastic piece on You're Not My Party video about Marjorie Taylor Greene. And it really is, even in our crazy time, it really is amazing to think that this, you know, how she has

gone from QAnon crazy to queen of the GOP. I mean, as you point out, it was like five minutes ago that Kevin McCarthy's bosom buddy was ranting about crazy, you know, offensive conspiracy theories. And yet she plays this outsized role in the Republican Party right now. I think that people think that they've seen the pattern, but this really is amazing to realize how far she has come. In a normal universe, she would be a complete pariah. She would have been stripped of her committee assignments. Nobody would want anything to do with her. But as you point out, today we wake up, she's queen of the GOP. How did that happen?

Well, part of the reason for wanting to do the episode was wanting to do some funny bits about spirit cooking and frazzle trips. So, you know, just kind of going through our greatest hits. The main reason for doing it. In the same week, we had a New York Times report where Kevin is on the record talking about how much she loves her. I know you've talked about that on the podcast. You know, he wants to be about how much she loves her. I know you've talked about that on the podcast.

He wants to be in a foxhole with her. And some of the language was a little bit creepy. That hell, he always will be with her. And yeah, we'll never let her down. I don't know. I'm just reading between the lines. But there was an element in there that was a little, I don't know, kind of wine bar vibe. But then later, oh, man, I'm going to not credit the right person.

I think it was Axios. But someone else talking about how she really believes that she can be Trump's VP. So she's inside the inner circle for both the MAGA establishment. I think she is the most prime example of this, right? Which is this merger, you know, where there's always this talk of, oh, there's this old line established Republicans against the MAGAs and they're always fighting. And like, it's kind of true, right? Like there is a little bit of that tension within the party, but the dominant force within the party is the people who have gotten comfortable with the merger. And this McCarthy-Green merger is the most clear example of that. They're the real establishment within the party. And the people that aren't comfortable with it, either because they're so MAGA, they don't want to ever talk to Kevin McCarthy, or because they're the tiny caucus of cucks left, you know, who are uncomfortable with the merger. Both of them are on the outliers.

And there's this big, you know, the big middle part of the bell curve that is now the party. And in a lot of ways, Marjorie has disproportionate power within that merger because she's the one that has the voters, right? And, you know, Kevin has the inside game power, right? And he has the gavel and he has the consultants. And, you know, there's certain things that he's going to have control of that she doesn't. Obviously, there are some amendments she put up yesterday that only got 14 votes. So there's some limits to her power.

But on the big controversial stuff, right, like on the mundane day-to-day stuff, Kevin has the power. But on the big controversial stuff, he needs her. He can't do anything without her. And so she really is the more powerful partner when it will come to debt ceiling, Ukraine, whatever cultural war controversy sprouts up next. And I think that the fact that they are willing to allow for that tells you everything about where the party is. And my favorite clip from the episode is this Mike McCall, who's one of these closet normals you never hear from, who just like secretly hopes the party will get back to better. And he's,

cause he likes to focus on foreign policy, which is his expertise. You know, he's on this show going like, oh, well she's matured. It's like, she's, she's matured.

I mean, she was in her mid forties when she was chasing a high schooler down the street. I mean, like this is not. Well, as you pointed out, it was like just a few weeks ago,

she was giving a speech where she was saying that if Steve Bannon and she had organized January 6th and it had been armed, it would have succeeded. I mean, that was, what, three weeks ago? And the call was, she wants to learn now. She's maturing. Well, they have to tell themselves these stories, right? There always has to be a story to rationalize what they're doing. So the VP thing, okay, it's crazy, but you know, there's so many other crazy things.

I was actually toying with the idea of writing sort of a tongue in cheek thing saying, okay, well, why not Vice President Marjorie Taylor Greene? I mean, come up with all of your objections to her in one column and then put Donald Trump in the other column. In what ways is she actually worse than Donald Trump? I mean, let's just walk through this. If you're willing to accept X, Y, and Z from Donald Trump, why would you not be willing to accept X, Y and Z from Marjorie Taylor Greene, except that she's like the new generation version of all of them? I mean, they've already shown a willingness to accept a chronic liar. Right. You know, the conspiracy theorist, Putin fan, all of the other things that, you know, authoritarian. You know, so why is Marjorie, would Marjorie Taylor Greene not be an acceptable choice? I'm not going to write this piece, but. You should, why not write it? I think that, seriously,

how is she different than Donald Trump? She's not. You know, a lot of people convince themselves that Donald Trump is different because like whatever, he was good at real estate and she was just a CrossFit entrepreneur in ex-urban Atlanta. Probably didn't lose as much money as Trump did.

Yeah, exactly. On the merits of their policies and their past comments, they're crazy as she's any different. And you do, if you get in Donald Trump's crazy sexist head, and you just look at the options out there for who a VP type would be. She has as many merits as demerits. I mean, you're looking at a lease. She doesn't really fit the role as part of looking the part, which is important for Donald. You got Carrie, who lost. Which is why he won't pick her, probably. You'll get Kristi Noem.

Maybe she's the merger of crazy and looking the part. I don't know. But there's not a ton of options. And so I don't think it's completely insane to think that it could be her. I wouldn't say that she's the frontrunner or anything. And as we said, Donald Trump's weakening right now within the party. He might have to have other calculations down the line if he wants to gut out a competitive race with DeSantis. And there's a lot of time between now and then, but it isn't crazy. And the people that are dismissing it are the same people

who don't want to come to terms with the reality of the party. Like maybe, for example, somebody you might be interviewing in the next few weeks. So it is crazy, but it's not unrealistic. Right. We have to keep working. Yes, it is completely crazy, but it could actually happen. Okay. So speaking of the House, you saw the CNN poll out this morning. Nearly three quarters of Americans think the House Republican leaders have not paid attention to the most important problems. Fewer than one third believe that Kevin McCarthy and company are prioritizing the country's most important issues. And Kevin McCarthy's personal approval rating, 19%. Well, that's pretty good. So, look, I mean, there's been a long history, right, Tim, of polls of Congress,

and they always suck, right? I mean, it's always horrible. So is this any different? I think it's better than Mitch. I was looking at the polls of everything. I did a Not My Party bit on this once where they're like, defund the police. The only thing that was less popular than Mitch McConnell, who was like one of these pupils of 100 different things. So I think that McCarthy might be squeezing right in ahead of Mitch by a couple points. I think that they're in real trouble with their public brand right now as far as at least pretending to act like they're trying to deal with issues. own conservative media bubble, and maybe they get it at some level, but it hasn't really sunk in that the stuff that is seeping out that they're doing, you know, to the broader public is like, is all seems completely superfluous and stupid. And, you know, I think that a lot of times the Republicans look at the Democrats and occasionally are accurate by saying that the Democrats are out of touch with what whatever flyover country wants and what real

America wants. But this has happened on the inverse where Republicans are so inside their own Tucker Carlson navel. It has not sunk in how out of touch they are with what even like Republican types who live in the suburbs and exurbs want. And you mentioned at the top, inflation is getting better, economy is getting better, but people still have real life concerns. You know, it still is annoying people when they go to the grocery store and eggs are costing eight bucks. And they would like to at least think that their party is trying to deal with this and they're not. And, you know, my article for Monday is looking at state legislatures and particularly in red states and what they're prioritizing. And that's not any different. Speaking of going down the rabbit hole, the fact that they would have convinced themselves or agreed to have a vote on the fair tax, which

basically now Democrats are characterizing as a 30% sales tax on everything. Brilliant. Okay, so at the moment when people are worried about the cost of everything, what is the top line they're hearing about from the Republicans? Now, I think they're realizing this is incredibly stupid, that it's a crackpot idea that has no traction outside of certain Georgia-based talk shows. But that's a perfectly good example of the complete disconnect that you would seriously think about. Yeah, let's abolish the IRS and the income tax and replace it with a 30% tax that nobody understands, except everybody understands a 30% sales tax. So what the hell? That's not going to get any better. Okay. So we need to have to catch up a little bit here. The Matt Schlapp story, which is ugly and

depressing. And of course, we had a great piece yesterday by Joe Perticone, who pointed out that poor Matt Schlapp, his grift is not going well. He's been losing some of his corporate lobbying clients and now appears to be losing some of his clout in the Republican Party. There's still continuing fallout from the allegation of a Republican operative that he grabbed his crotch, pummeled his crotch, I think. To say this has become ugly is putting it mildly. I mean, they are dropping, in fact, a couple of your old friends, feel free to mention this,

dropping just vicious oppo research on the victim slash whistleblower in this particular case. So how does this play out? I mean, look, I mean, Donald Trump proved the Republican Party is willing to look the other way about pussy grabbers. Or is the conservative movement going to look away from a man junk fumbler? I mean, what? There's so many layers here that I'd like to cover on this story, Charlie.

So just bear with me for a second. Number one, Joe Pertico's newsletter is fantastic. If folks haven't signed up for it, they should. He's over on the Hill walking through the halls asking the Republicans the questions that a lot of the mainstream folks aren't asking them. And so he's doing great. Do sign up for that press pass. I agree. Number two, you know what Jesus really taught, Charlie, is that you should sexually assault other men against their will, and then you should defame them publicly. It's an old Christian

teaching, deep into St. Paul to the Ephesians. And then pray over it. Yeah. I mean, it's sick. It's disgusting what they're doing. I know this is alleged, obviously, but boy, if folks have read the articles, there's a ton of documentation that the victim has put forth. And, you know, there'd been other whispers about maybe not non-consensual, but this type of thing in the past from Schlapp and the accused. I thought it was interesting that he still opened for Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago after these reports came out. I think maybe that speaks to Trump's weakness. I don't know. It kind of seems like the type of thing that if I know Donald

Trump, he's a gossip and he likes to emasculate people. So you would think that, I don't know, maybe there were some little jabs at the head table that night, but maybe not. I don't know. Maybe Donald Trump is so desperate for friends right now that maybe this is another sign of his weakness, frankly, that he would swap around. I just don't know that Schlapp himself, we'll see if he survives CPAC. And again, a lot of this is how tight is he with the board and how well has he tightened his grips on leadership and all that. But as far as your rank and file, folks, I thought it was interesting. Perdicone's newsletter, Gates wasn't coming to his defense. Boebert, he's not Donald Trump. When you're too sleazy for Matt Gates, that's a moment.

Yeah. And we've learned in the past seven years that a lot of people who thought that they were Trump, you know, weren't, right? They couldn't get away with the stuff he could get away with because they didn't have the hold on the voters that he did. And a lot of folks have flamed out of Trump world and maybe Schlapp is the latest. One last point before I want to get to a little memory lane, if you don't mind, is that they have an event in Hungary in May, CPAC. More love for Viktor Orban. It encapsulates the whole party. It is, you know, a guy accused of sexual assault against a man, leading the leading conservative organization to go to a autocrat's country for the second year in a row, you know, to celebrate traditional values. I just think that's a very nice. Perfect. Chef's kiss.

At the core of Trump's world is we never apologize. We never admit anything. We have no shame whatsoever. We can get away with anything. So clearly, you know, a guy like Matt Schlapp is still going to be welcomed in that until he becomes too radioactive. But it strikes me that the problem, let me ask you, isn't Matt Schlapp's bigger problem not the sexual assault? In a normal world, the fact that he sexually assaulted somebody would be the real problem. The real problem, however, in this universe that we inhabit is that Matt Schlapp did it to a man, that he might be gay. How do they square this,

since this seems to be the leading fiery edge of the culture war right now? No doubt. And look at how Schlapp has responded, right? If this was a woman accuser, a female accuser, it wouldn't be this behind the scenes subterfuge attacking her. Like Schlapp would be out there doing what Trump did, right? You know, talking about how she's not my type. Yeah, exactly. Whatever, right? I do think so. I think that I said this about Cawthorn. I think that that was a main reason why they purged him. I mean, look, people are like, well, why did they purge Cawthorn, but not Boebert and Gates and Gosar, et cetera? It's like, well, two reasons. One,

he was threatening them directly with these accusations about the Koch parties or whatever he was saying. So I think that was one element of it. But two, you know, because they had this, you know, campaign that like alluded to potentially his homosexuality based on some of these pictures that I don't know, it was all felt like kind of a stretch to me. Right. But like those two things combined, I don't, I don't know if it would have worked if it was, Oh, he's like an alpha male who's being annoying. Right. It was like, Oh yeah, he's, he's hurting the conference and, and P.S. he might be gay. Right. So I do think that this element is a big reason why, you know, why Schlapp's acting the way he is and why, why he's so vulnerable. Can we just do a

little, just one inch of schadenfreude? I've gotten several emails lately from people who tell me that, I guess we have some German aficionados who say that every single person at the bulwark mispronounces schadenfreude, and it's schadenfreude. We have to pronounce the E, so there you go, Germanophiles, schadenfreude. The car, Porsche, not Porsche. Yeah, Porsche. You sound like such a douche if you say Porsche. I see a douche. You sound like a douche if you say Porsche.

You know what? That's right. So even though that I know that it's wrong, I'm kind of clinging to it. Okay, there you go. Can I just paint a picture for you? Please. We're in the period between the 2016 election and the maybe inauguration, at Trump is the president-elect. And I'm in a, I used to go on Fox from time to time and I no longer wanted to, I didn't want to deal

with the bullshit. And so one of my colleagues at my consulting firm at the time wanted to do more TV. So one of my old segments, I was like, why don't you do it this time? I don't want to, you know, take the Trump questions. I don't want to deal with this right now. I was, you know, in my dark period. And he was like, sure, but will you come with me to fox i was like okay so we went to the green room together um we're sitting in the green room waiting for his hit you know i'm prepping him a little bit in walks mercedes schlapp she was she was up next she was up next on the um after after my pal and um you know i said hey mercedes and i knew her a little bit she had initially been a jeb supporter being from florida you know conversation I said, hey, Mercedes, and I knew her a little bit. She had initially been a Jeb supporter being from Florida. You know, conversation gets going in about a minute.

And she says, Tim, I just got to tell you, I just got to ask, how are you going to rehabilitate your brand now that Trump is going to be the president? I mean, what are you going to do to get back in folks' good graces? I kind of blacked out. So, I don't exactly remember what I said, but the gist of it was kind of like, I think I'm going to be fine, Mercedes. Don't worry about it. She was obviously thinking about that herself. Clearly. And I was texting with my friend who I was with yesterday.

I was like, this happened, right? I remembered this correctly. And he's like, oh, yeah, I was there. That happened. And so I like to sometimes just kind of think about that and think about my brand and her brand and how worried she was about her brand and just kind of let a little bit of, just a little hint of schadenfreude like wash over me as I think about that. You should have a lot more than just a little. What about the attacks on this guy? I mean, okay, nobody is naming him.

Everybody knows who it is. And they are just dropping, dropping, dropping. They're trying to discredit him. Just talk to me about that. I mean, somebody that you write about in your book seems to be one of the leading campaigners here. I only know it's reported about like what the people are doing, right? So I don't know. Yeah, apparently Caroline is involved in that. Is this Caroline Wren? Yeah, she hasn't said as much to me, but apparently she is. I guess, why? I guess is my big question as it comes to this.

I mean, well, no, I just mean in the biggest picture. It's just like, okay, so they're going to ruin this person's life, which seems to be happening. It seems like the person's going to lose their job and go into a divorce and has had their dick pummeled by a hideous, well-passed middle-aged man. And so not a great few months to say the least. But again, I just think the Trump era has darkened the souls of a lot of these people. It's not like Matt Schlapp wasn't a hard-hitting political operative back then. But, you know, this is a very Roy Cohn playbook,

right? And it's very similar to what Trump did in 16, to his accusers, to Stormy. You know, I think maybe it's a way to signal that they're fighting this. I don't know. I guess I'll just say that if it was me and I was Matt and Mercedes, I'd be focusing on my five kids and how to deal with that and not be focusing on ruining somebody else's life. But I think that a lot of these folks have learned some pretty gross lessons from the past few years. And this has become now the pattern of the last few years. So I didn't find it surprising. I just find the level of viciousness to be rather notable. Okay. In a few minutes, we have speaking of people whose reputations are being pummeled. I don't know how Bill Barr's reputation comes back from what we're now learning about his role in the Durham

investigation. Big story in the New York Times by Charlie Savage. Let me just read some of the high points on all of it. You know, what a complete cluster the Durham investigation was. Barr and Durham never disclosed their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019 based on a tip from Italian officials to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. And yet Barr and others went out and implied, you know, once it was reported that it was a criminal investigation, that maybe it was somebody else. So they lied. They misled people. Durham used Russian intelligence memos suspected by other officials of containing disinformation to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, deep internal fractures

on the Durham team that resulted in the resignation of some of his top aides, and Bill Barr's obsession with pushing misinformation, disinformation, you know, flying around the world with Durham, and what a complete faceplant it turned out to be. You know, it's hard to read this and imagine that Bill Barr's legal reputation will recover from it. But then again, perhaps we're naive to think that reputations matter at all anymore. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, the bar is so low these days, no pun intended, you know, as far as, you know, since he did the quote-unquote right-ish thing around the election. This is like one of my little peccadillos I do have to mention. Before January 6th, Bill Barr did quit. And in his resignation letter, like talked about how Donald Trump was the greatest thing since like Napoleon or whatever.

And so, you know, again, I don't know that Bill Barr saying when he resigned, hey, this is untrue, would have stopped January 6th, but it might have. I don't, you know, we never know. Actions do have consequences. So for me, Bill Barr has always been zero, and I've not liked his laundering of his reputation even before this. The Durham thing stunk from the start. Anyone that was paying attention to it knew that this was a total con job. The idea that Bill Barr and John Durham were doing a little White Lotus vacation in Italy, you know, to try to track down Joseph and his food and the satellites. I mean, it was all like, these guys were all so far up their own ass that they like really thought that there was like an Italian

spy that was involved in all this. And it's just, it was like all straight. I mean, it was preposterous. The whole thing is the whole thing was preposterous from the start. And I don't want to get down into conspiracy land, but I think that there's been an interesting lack of coverage on the FBI leader who was apparently on the take from Deripaska during this time. I don't know if people saw this story, but some of the Republicans were trying to push this out as acting like it was vindicating Trump, right? That there's this idea that there's one of the FBI. Maybe the opposite. Yeah, maybe the opposite. One of the FBI investigators was on the payroll of Deripaska,

who was the Russian oligarch that had an intermediary speaking with Manafort. You know, TBD, I think it's just a story that I'm following. You know what? I completely agree with you. In fact, I've been waiting for somebody to explain this clearly. What was his role in all of that? And how did he influence the trajectory of the investigation, the leaks about the investigation, disinformation about the investigation? And you're right. This is a huge story. And I don't feel that it's been

explained clearly enough yet. And so if anybody actually knows somebody who has explained it clearly and credibly, I would be very interested. Yeah, same. So we're monitoring that one for sure. And I think that, you know, you remember, and again, I'm not saying that I, because I don't know, but there's a tie here. But the FBI leader in question here was from the New York office, which was the office that famously leaked to the New York Times that there was no there there on the Russia-Trump collusion very shortly before the election. And that leak, I think, was about as important as anything, you know, when you look back at 2016 counterfactuals. So, you know, TBD.

No, this is why this is an important story, and I want to understand it better. You know, I mean, there's also part of me that wonders wonders at what point are we going to be done with the 2016 election? Can we ever move on? The answer is never. Absolutely right. Absolutely never. Tim, it is great to have you back on again. Appreciate it.

Charlie, great to be with you. Have a good weekend, everybody. We'll talk to you soon. And thank you all for listening to this weekend's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will 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.