The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Miller: DeSantis Whiffs on Disney

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

"Tiny D" thought he'd puff up his chest to go after Mickey Mouse — only to get outflanked. Plus, loony GOP state legislators, Wisconsin's $45 million judicial seat, the very un-elite cabal in the Manhattan grand jury, and the torment of not knowing about Annette Funicello. Tim Miller joins Charlie Sykes today.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is Thursday. It's not Friday. I don't want people to be confused because I'm joined by Tim Miller, who's usually with me on you. I have to say, I wonder if, is this like a short man privilege thing that you're giving Adam Kinzinger the Friday slot? Or, you know, what is it? Go cheap shot. I don't know. I mean, you know, Kinzinger's pretty good. I mean, he's good. If he's not even in Congress anymore, I thought maybe he'd be more of a Thursday man. No, no, no.

He's definitely the Friday slot this week. But, you know, I think that there was pent-up demand. People want more Tim, particularly after Rui Teixeira. They want more Tim. They really do. So there was a lot of demand. So there's so much to talk about today. So can I just tell you my favorite story because it's so weird?

I love that. Before we get into everything else, I mean, we're going to talk about guns. We're going to talk about Chris Christie. We're going to talk about Disney. We're going to talk about the grand jury. We'll get to all that, I promise. I want to talk about the burrito, the DNA on the burrito. This is an amazing story.

I thought it was going to be the, in eight years, we get to be immortal story. I don't even know the burrito story, so I'm ready for this. The immortality story, as a malignant narcissist, like I am, the immortality story was the one that grabbed me. But go ahead with the burrito. Yeah, and by the way, I do have mixed feelings about that, but we can talk about that some other time. That might get us into some weird existential philosophical territory here. So I'm not quite ready this early in the morning, so I want to talk about the half-eaten burrito. Okay. So here's the headline. DNA pulled from half-eaten burrito used to charge man with

firebombing anti-abortion office in Wisconsin. After nearly a year of searching, investigators used DNA pulled from a half-eaten burrito to capture a man they believe firebombed a prominent Wisconsin anti-abortion lobbying group's office. Okay, so the guy firebombed, 29-year-old guy, whose name I'm not going to try to pronounce, tries to firebomb this office in Madison. They've been looking for him. Apparently they fish out this burrito from a trash can, and they're able to identify him. Is it Chipotle? I don't know. It doesn't say.

Taco Bell? I don't know how anyone gets away with anything anymore when you think about it. So just, you know, they half-eaten burrito. I have to say I would not have seen that coming. And how did they know? So somebody had an eye on him? So all we know is that the burrito is the key piece of evidence.

It's the burrito. We don't have any more details. It's in, like, the beans. I'm waiting for the series. CSI Burrito. Okay, just go in there. Well, I'm glad that we have some accountability in law and order for this. You shouldn't be firebombing offices, no matter what your position is on abortion or any other issue. That is not part of a pluralistic society. So, I'm glad he's found. I will say this,

though, it's pretty odd to me that, I don't know, have you been watching the Gwyneth Paltrow case at all? Only tangentially. Okay, now that is a witch hunt. So, here we are, though, this guy's getting nabbed over the half-eaten burrito, and yet Gwyneth is being forced to testify by some litigious asshole over, you know, her mid-mountain skiing encounter when she did nothing. I mean, poor Gwyneth, you know, did nothing right. I think she's going to be vindicated. The gentleman's lawyer seems pretty bad. It seems kind of like when I was interviewing Adam Brody, is when he's, and is when this lawyer is cross-examining Gwyneth. She's like, I love you. I love your work. But I thought that was weird.

But Gwyneth, you're so tall. It is a witch hunt against Gwyneth. Gwyneth is innocent. So I hope the other guy had like a mid-mountain chili that we can dig up to prove his guilt. Let me confess, I just don't have enough bandwidth to deal with the witch hunt against Gwyneth. But now that you mention it, I mean,

you're talking about pretty much a B-list terrorist if you're about to firebomb somebody and you have a burrito first. But you're so anxious to firebomb the place that you can't finish the burrito. This is never in the movies. You know, you need the energy, you know? I don't know. You kind of, the sustenance. It's never occurred to me to try to fire bomb

something no it seems like a mentally unstable person and um but i got to thinking about burritos already i know this hey can i mention what's about to happen to you sure yeah let's do it with the moment we wrap up this podcast your doorbell is going to ring and there will be movers you are moving from the left coast this is a big thing i mean you're moving across the left coast. This is a big thing. I mean, you're moving across the whole freaking country. Yeah. I know. I'm leaving blue America. I know. My California dream is over. You know, the little California magic I've been experiencing the last half decade. California's been nice to me. You know, there's some things to really love about it. It gets a bad rap, the little Bay Area in the news. There's some issues, you know issues that need to be dealt with. The homelessness issue is real.

The lack of housing is real. Cost of living. But, man, it's so lovely out here. But, no, we're making the move to New Orleans. We've been teasing it for a while, and it's happening. We've purchased a home. We've got a lot of close friends there with kids that are my kid's age, and it's closer to D.C. and New York.

Unfortunately, it's kind of hard to do this whole media. I mean, you kind of are in your bunker in Wisconsin, which is nice. But even then, you know, you can pop into D.C. if you need to. Post-COVID, people keep being like, hey, Tim, will you come to D.C. for this? Will you come to New York for that? And I don't want to live in D.C. or New York, but it'd be nice to be able to just fly there, you know, and not have it be a red eye or spend my entire life on planes when I've got a little girl at home. Not a baby anymore, a little girl at home that I want to get back to.

So we're moving to New Orleans. It's happening. A lot of people are going to come through and visit, I think. It's the best city in America, in my opinion. And so I'm thrilled to move there. You get to do Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest. On a regular basis.

I'm a little worried. I mean, if people feel like my content product is going down 10% or 20%, I am a little bit worried about the alcohol consumption that will be surrounding me in New Orleans and that that might be going into my gullet. Hurricanes. Hurricanes flooding.

Yeah, sure. But we have fires here. I don't know. You have snow. be going into my gullet hurricanes you know the hurricanes yeah sure um but uh but you know we can we have fires here i don't know you have snow i'm not sure the snow fire and hurricanes are really in the same category you don't think so not here the fires out here have been pretty bad so yeah the hurricanes are on the negative side of the ledger no doubt about that no i mean the snow is not as bad as you know a fire and fire pestilence hurricanes snow but i mean this is why you're so grumpy though i mean you just have and the hurricane season is like three weeks you've got you've got months upon months of just dreariness you know and you get

vitamin d deficient you know that's and so sometimes if you're a little prickly on the podcast in the morning people that texted me they're like why is charlie a little prickly today and i'm like well it's just he hasn't had he hasn't seen the sun. He hasn't seen the sun in five months. Hey, do you know, though, that I was born in Seattle? Speaking of not seeing the sun, I didn't I always think of, you know, Wisconsin as being kind of, you know, the sun capital of the world having grown up a little bit in Seattle, where we're what there's a reason why they hang out in coffee shops all the time, right? Because they're just too depressed. I mean, they they need the caffeine just to get through the day. So I what, I mean, there's a reason why they hang out in coffee shops all the time, right? Because they're just too depressed. I mean, they, they need the caffeine just to get

through the day. So, I mean, I mean, there's gotta be that mixture of, of excitement and sort of, I mean, you know, picking up your whole life, packing it in boxes and moving away from, from your home. That's a stressful thing, but then looking forward to a completely new life, that's gotta be kind of exciting. So it is, it's been emotional. Is it kind of like a cycle of emotions? I mean, you must go through all of that. I mean, when you, later today, all of your stuff is going to be in a truck and you're going to be standing there in your house and it's going to be empty and you got to feel a little twinge there. Yeah. I mean, I feel a twinge for you. Thank you. I do feel a twinge. You know, there's some people, especially humans, that were leaving here in California that makes me sad to leave.

I was getting emotionally wound a little tight about two weeks ago. I hadn't actually gone to see the house. My husband had gone house hunting, and he was like, just fly down there for the day. And so I did that about, I don't know, like a week and a half ago. I flew down to see the house, walked around the neighborhood, and it was really booing. I was like, oh, right. I love this city. The cost of living is less. We're going to have more space for podcasting and for child play and for adult play.

That's cool. And I walk into the coffee shop in my neighborhood, did I tell you this? And the guy walks in behind me. He's like, hey, I'm a big Bullwark podcast fan. Oh, man. I told Charlie I bought my lady friend those Never Trump sheets. So we have a sheet purchaser. You know, saw some of my buddies that live down there. And it was spiritually uplifting. And I'm just made me feel like excited to be there. And we land there and it's like jazz

fest in a week. So, I do have mixed emotions. You know, and this is like the house that my kid grew up in. But you know, she's only five. We moved a lot as kids. So, I don't have quite this. Some people get wrapped up in the nostalgia of a home that's a little bit less of the case for me i don't know i have good moves as a kid we moved from st louis to denver and it was awesome and i loved that i was so happy about that move and so i don't know maybe i don't have the same kind of twinge as someone that i grew up in the same house and has little notches in the wall and it's like that's right well that's how big i was when I was seven and when I was 11. I get that.

I understand that. But I don't quite have that same instinct as I see in others. I think I was about five when we moved from Seattle to New York. We had to cross the entire country. So do you even remember Seattle? I've been thinking about that until it's like, well, she even remembers Oakland? Actually, I grew up in Edmonds and you're right on Puget Sound.

And I do kind of have memories of the incredibly long road trip with animals in the back of the car who occasionally got sick and everything. But not terribly nostalgic because I was young. It was much more traumatic when we moved from New York to Wisconsin when I was in about third grade because that was like, what do you mean Wisconsin? I mean, are there wolves there? What was the imp that was like, what do you mean Wisconsin? I mean, are there wolves there? What was the impetus for that move from New York to Wisconsin? My dad got a job at the old Milwaukee Sentinel. In fact, the Milwaukee Sentinel had just been purchased by the Milwaukee Journal, and he was writing for a newspaper out on Staten Island,

and he got hired to be a reporter slash editorial writer at the newspaper. So we moved for the job and have been here ever since. So speaking of Wisconsin and Wisconsin politics, there's an analysis out today that spending on Wisconsin's high stakes Supreme Court election, this is one justice, that the spending has now reached, ready for this, $45 million judicial seat in Wisconsin. And of course, you know, the stakes are so high because it's sort of like everything's on the table. We've talked about this before. It's not overhyped. I mean, whether you're talking about the election, voting rights, abortion, any anything, it's going to be decided by this this one election. It's it's become really contentious, really acrimonious, really, really ugly. But to give you a sense of how over the top it is,

Wisconsin's Republicans are already considering a nuclear option if they lose this election, which would really challenge their hold on power. There's a Republican state Senate candidate in this special election, which happens to be in the district I live in, who's saying that if he wins, if this Republican wins, it will give Republicans in the state Senate a two-thirds supermajority. And now they're openly talking about launching impeachment proceedings against Janet Protasewicz, who is the liberal candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. They're talking about impeaching and removing her before the election is even held.

And you know what? I think it's completely plausible. It is completely plausible these guys, if you know these guys, might actually pull that. So, boy, it's ugly, the most expensive elections, and they might pull that shit, yes. I know you've written about this. My two reactions are, one, it feels like we have a broken system, that a judicial race has this level of stakes. This is not the way that our balance of power is supposed to break out here. We should have the legislature and the executive should be maybe a little bit more responsible, rather than us having to completely politicize the third branch.

But anyway, my other thought is, I thought about this, you know, with some of the responses to the shooting, too. I think that there are a lot of people that are out that don't punish themselves with the goings on of, you know, the median Republican elected official that I don't really appreciate just how insane that person has gotten over the past 10 years. Like we know the big names, you know, you know that the Marjorie Taylor Greene's are out there and that the party, you know, that Trump won over Romney and that the party's changed a little bit. Like, Joe, Republican state senator, right now is like a total lunatic. And we've never been sending our

best to the state legislature for anybody who follows state legislative politics closely or spends time meeting state legislators. But man, you know, I just like the radicalization and how wrapped up they are in crazy conservative media nonsense. I don't know. I feel like there's some negative long tail effects of the Trump era in the form of like these random state senators who are like, I'm going straight to impeach, you know, anyway. Well, then they'll be around for 30 years. Okay. So I'm going to get a lot of pushback on this because I do have friends in the legislature still. And what they will say is, look, Charlie, you know, 60%, you know, two thirds of the Republican legislature are normies. They're

not the crazies. The problem is though, that they continue to empower and enable the crazy. So the question is, would they stand up? I'm just trying to imagine the scenario. So Judge Janet gets elected and she, you know, rules to throw out the 1849 abortion law. She throws out the legislative redistricting map. She's part of a majority that says that Act 10 was unconstitutional. It, you know, changes voting rights laws, etc. All of those things. And then the grassroots demands, you have to do something about this. This is terrible. The radical left has taken over the court. They've taken over the state. What are you going to do about it? Will they be able and willing to stand up and say, we are not going to misuse the

impeachment power of the state legislature? And I don't know what the answer to that is. Okay. Just a really quick one sentence on the Colorado thing, because I did this deep dive a couple weeks ago, folks hadn't had a chance to read it on what happened to the Colorado Republican Party. What you're describing is just like it happened to Colorado on steroids, right? Because Democrats ended up winning a lot of seats so that, you know, group of people in the legislature got smaller, right? Wisconsin has more Republicans in the legislature still. But it was basically 80% normies and 20% Tea Party wackos for a while. But even, I told the story of the normie speaker at the time, a guy named Frank McNulty that I knew,

who opposed this very popular civil unions bill to shut up the 20% of the base, right? Then all the suburban voters in Colorado are like, wait a minute, you're against civil unions? This is crazy. It's like they threw out the normies, and so then it ends up flipping, right? And you end up in this situation where it's like, oh, okay, well now it used to be 80, but it's 60, and now it's 55.

And, you know, this is where your friends in the legislature, you can just give them a little picture of their future. It's in Colorado. Then they're 45%, then they're 40, then they're 30%. And it's like, oh, wait, I'm the only normie left. Now we've totally flipped. And that is the trajectory, you know, and some of the normies are leaving. Okay, so I want to get to the gun issue. I want to get to Disney. But the latest Fox News story out of the Dominion lawsuit, I just have to mention this. I continue to be absolutely gobsmacked at all the stuff they put in writing. I mean, it's just one of those things.

So here's the latest. And you can tell why Fox had wanted to redact this in the past. The Fox News CEO said the correspondent's fact check of Trump's election lies was bad for business. I mean, she just wrote this out. This is Suzanne Scott. I mean, it's not subtle. So subject line is Fox News, Eric Sean fact checks, Trump dump claims. This has to stop. I'm going to address this with you and Jay and Lowell tomorrow. This is bad business. And there's clearly a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we

are just feeding them material bad for business. Okay. Not a lot of subtlety. I mean, it's right there. You cannot even subtly fact-checking. Stop doing fact-checking. So it is hard to win a libel suit in America. And I think that's a good thing. What you have to prove is actual malice or reckless disregard of the truth. So here you have in freaking writing, the CEO of Fox News saying, we have to stop this fact checking, this pointing out that these things are lies because it is bad for business. So you have, you have the smoking gun, you have the motive, you have the opportunity. It's just like, but they wrote this out. Is there any gene in their heads to go, you know,

as they're typing this going, maybe I should make a phone call. Maybe I shouldn't actually write this. Yeah, or, I don't know, maybe we shouldn't put fact check bad for business right next to each other in two sentences. Maybe I could use a little bit more roundabout language to make that point. And it's the second one. And this is the second one, and this is the CEO, the other one was the host, but it was Jackie Heinrich. That, to me, was the most alarming thing about all of the first batch of texts right was tucker and hannity you know when did they get fired jackie heinrich for in that case it wasn't even on fox it was a tweet she tweeted a fact check so this is the second fact check that they go after you know the correspondent over it the

legal side of this is the one thing i just, I have to admit, I don't understand. I can't wrap my head around why they didn't figure out a way to settle this. I guess maybe the number was just too big. Maybe the dominion. I haven't got a good answer. I've asked several lawyers about this. I haven't got a good answer. Some lawyers say that they're definitely going to lose. Some lawyers say, oh, because of the high libel standard here fox might still prevail even though it seems really really bad i've had a couple of lawyers tell me that so i i don't understand the truth but this has just been so damaging well just imagine the trial yeah so but maybe they just have decided they don't care i guess maybe they just don't care maybe they're

just in like they're fuck you rich at this point you know that phrase like we're just fuck you rich people are gonna watch us no matter what we don't care we're they're just in like, they're fuck you rich at this point. You know that phrase, like, we're just fuck you rich. People are going to watch us no matter what. We don't care. We're not going to pay you a penny. Or maybe Rupert's an old 92 year old man and he's too stubborn and doesn't. Someone has to explain that to me because this has just been, can you think of any other example of a business that has just totally had the mask ripped off and revealed in such a plain way as has happened to Fox? It's such a cartoonish way. If you and I sat down, if we had like a boiler room, we can't, let's fabricate the worst possible, the most egregious type of emails. We'd have so-and-so saying this, like, well, this is a terrible lie.

And, you know, why are we doing this? Well, we're doing this because it's good for business. I mean, and yet it's, it's all there. Here's my, and I'm going to be proved wrong very, very quickly if I'm wrong, that generally, you know, you have a kind of a game of legal chicken here. And, you know, Fox's lawyers are, you know, trying to, you know, test all the doorknobs, which ones are, you know, been left unlocked and everything. What can they get away with? What can they do? What can they suppress? And then once all of those motions have been taken care of, that's the go, no-go moment, where they have to decide, do we want to go to a full-blown trial where America is

going to be riveted by Rupert Murdoch on the stand being eviscerated by the lawyers here, or are we going to settle? And I think that they probably have held off on that specific decision until they know exactly what the trial is going to be, what is going to be allowed to be admitted in evidence, who is going to be required to testify. It's hard for me to imagine that they want to put themselves through that. Because whatever reputational damage has occurred so far, it's nothing compared to day after day of having these guys on the stand. Imagine Tucker Carlson on the stand. Imagine, you know, Sean Hannity on the stand. Imagine Tucker Carlson on the stand.

Imagine, you know, Sean Hannity on the stand. Imagine Lou Dobbs on the stand or Maria Bartiromo. And then you have this other producer. Is it Abby Grossman? Who is blowing the whistle on this. And I mean, this is just like, this is ugly with fur on it. I guess maybe Maria would be the one person you wouldn't want to get on the stand because I just, I don't know how you can prove actual malice with her because she seems to have gone so cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs that she, like, I don't know if I'm a juror or I'm looking at this and I'm like, this insane lady actually believes this.

I mean, she thinks that hamburgers eat people. I don't like, I can't believe that this was intentional malice. Judge Janine sitting there with her box of wine. I mean, oh, that'll be like, you can't handle the truth. It would be like that. Hey, folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones.

So why not head over to thebullwork.com and take a look around. Every day we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bulwark Plus membership free for the next 30 days? To claim this offer, go to thebulwark.com slash charlie. That's thebulwark.com forward slash charlie. I'm going to get through this together. I promise. Okay, so let's engage in some rank speculation. Love that. Love to do that.

That's what I described in my newsletter this morning. Bottom line is we really don't know anything about what's going on in Manhattan, so I want to just do that caveat. The latest story is the Manhattan Trump grand jury is set to break for a month. I mean, we have been in the indictment holding pattern now for a couple of weeks now. And now it turns out that the grand jury examining the alleged role in the hush money payments to a porn star is not expected to hear evidence in the case for the next month, which means that there won't be any indictment until late April at the very earliest, maybe May. And of course, they're saying, at least Politico is reporting that this hiatus is largely due to a previously scheduled hiatus, which I just think that's bullshit. That's kind of eyewash.

That's pretty flimsy. You want to speculate what's going on here? It was like it's imminent. It's imminent. It's going to be Tuesday. It's going to be Tuesday. It's probably going to be Wednesday. Nah, maybe not next month or the month after that.

What do you think is going on? I don't want to speculate. I'll let you speculate. I do have a lot of thoughts, though. It is reminiscent of, I remember when in Pennsylvania there was that county after the 2016 election, and they're like, we're taking the weekend off. What? It was from counting.

And it was like, we need a president, okay? I know it's government work, but you've got to finish counting before you take a vacation. Like a month? Long spring break here. It continues to reveal the reality of this, you know, of the supposed elite cabal, you know, deep state going after Donald Trump. If you sort of were to live and put yourself in the worldview of the, you know, put upon MAGA voter who thinks that the judicial system's coming for them, once again, kind of proves to be. If there is only cabal, it's a pretty toothless cabal. So, you're thinking that juror eight, Karen, has reservations at Disney World.

We're not doing Karen anymore. We've had too many complaints. We're doing Todd now. Okay, Todd's. Okay. So, you have juror Todd who's married to Karen. And they have reservations down at Epcot, and by God, they're going to go. Yeah.

So they're only going to do the grand jury if they could have their month-long spring break. Yeah, I don't know. I have a completely different take than you on this. Okay. Please. Okay, okay. Worst-case scenario is, of course, that Trump's campaign of intimidation has taken its toll and Alvin Bragg is getting the willies. Okay.

And I don't think that's what's happening, but that's the worst case. Okay. I can't. Okay. Better case scenario. Okay. Now, here we get to the deep state cabal thing. All right.

That better case scenario is, and this is rank speculation. Just want to put the asterisk there. Everything's still on track. They're going to indict Trump. But Alvin Bragg has listened to the critics who have been saying that it's not a good thing for the porn star case to go first. Even people in the never Trump world are going, it's unfortunate that that case, because that's the most minor case, that's the weakest case. It allows Trump to frame it in such a way that they're going after me for trivial things. So what's actually going on is he's locked and loaded, but he's stepping back because of the timing to let Georgia and the Department of Justice prosecutors give them a

chance to go first. Okay, by delaying it, there's a real chance that there may be other indictments that come first and that he'll be, you know, number two or number three, number four. Who knows? I mean, look, we don't really know anything. But I think that's not completely implausible that he's decided that, okay, I'm going to do this, but do I really want to be hanging out there? Do I really want to go first? Is that really in my interest? Is that really smart? And, you know, he can do whatever the hell he wants. That's based on Jack or Fonny or getting some intel from Jack or Fonny.

I just don't really see that. Like them wanting to show any cards to him. Or he's just hoping. He's just like, let's take a month off and hope that someone else goes. Looking at the calendar. Okay. So if I go now, I'm definitely first. If I wait until May, I don't have any inside information, but there's a chance that I won't be the first guy. Now, of course, best case scenario is that he's come up with new evidence, new material,

and that he's expanding the indictment to include some of Trump's more recent threats and everything. As I wrote in a footnote in my newsletter today, you put things in footnotes that you don't really want to emphasize, but I would not count on this at all. I don't think that's what's going on. I'm just thinking that he's going, all right, this is my invitation to you guys. You know, I'm getting all this bitching and moaning about me going first with this weaker case. All right, fine. I'm going to go with the case. But let me give you a little bit of an opening, unless you guys have reservations down in Disney World, too. I don't know.

I hope that's right. It would explain the other frustrating part about this to me. As a former PR man, what has been puzzling me that I've been thinking about is just why, if they knew that they were not finished with the grand jury work, and they knew that there was this planned month-long vacation coming, why he didn't shut this all down over the last week? It would be not that hard for Alvin to be a person close to the investigation to call up Maggie Haberman and just say, hey, can you throw some ice water on this?

And say, this is not coming imminently. And it wouldn't have been hard to do that, right? Like, I know that they say, oh, we don't discuss open cases, but these kind of things happen all the time, right? Where something's getting out of hand in the news, and you just got to tamp it down, source close to. And the fact that he didn't do that, I mean, I had kind of settled on just incompetence, you know, when in doubt, incompetence. But maybe it is just a reconsideration.

Maybe. Maybe. I'm going with my rank speculation. I like it. We'll see. I'm rooting for it, Charlie. I'm happy. We're moving.

We're moving south. The sun's going to shine. You know, I'm like, I'm staying optimistic today. So, since we mentioned Todd and Karen going down to Disney, let's talk about this latest Disney thing with Florida. Reed Wilson. Nice transition. You're an old radio pro. I know. How about that? And after the break,

the mouse comes for Ron. That's right. But Ron needs to call his office because the day before floral lawmakers voted to create a new board overseeing Disney, the Disney aligned old board, passed an agreement basically neutering the new one to be in effect, I like this,

until 21 years after the death of the last survivor of King Charles III. I like the whimsy of that. I do, too. I love it. Points for style. So is Ron DeSantis really committed to taking over and punishing Disney? Or is that just sort of, you know, he's waving his hand. This is the kind of bully that I can be. I can fight my enemies. This is how tough I am. And he's satisfied with all of this.

So how is this going to play out? Yeah, I think that there's a lot going on. Peter Schorsch, who is a friend and a, I think, listener, so we'll see if he listens to this, but he's a Florida politics reporter, a longtime Florida politics reporter, and he says that there's some internal personnel. You always have to consider that in these sort of local political slap fights that sometimes there's some personal happening you know and desantis has some people on his team that were actually you know trying to specifically target disney over whatever past lights so i think that there's an element of that i think there's an element of desantis you know feeling like this was a way for him to look tough

you know tiny d wanted to puff up his chest, go after the mouse. Disney has this reputation, and he could say it's this woke business. And all these other Republicans, and even Trump maybe, have talked a big game, but nobody's actually got anything done. And here I am, and I took him on, and I got it done. I think that in his head, he sees that narrative. That was a narrative he was pushing when I went to see him in the villages a couple of weeks ago. So, I think that it has taken on, you know, some mythic elements to him, I think, in his own mind. And he sort of sees this as the contrast, right? Like, my contrast with Trump is I'm effective, I get stuff done. And so, that's why to me, like, there's a real threat here.

You know, the particulars of who runs the Reedy Creek board, you know, I don't think are going to determine who wins the Republican primary. But this sense that DeSantis is an effective governor and Trump is this kind of whatever incompetent chaos magnet is a little bit undermined if the stop woke act gets overturned by the courts the don't say gay act gets overturned by the courts the disney thing he gets outflanked by some board members and it's like all of his things don't actually turn into anything and it's like oh you're just a bunch of it's just hot air like how are you different than trump exactly maybe i want kind of the red meat steak instead of the, like, medium well steak over here.

If your bowls are just going to be hot air, I want the hottest air, you know? So, I don't know. I think that there's potential threat there. And somebody's going to bring that up. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you could certainly imagine certain people bringing this up. So speaking of Disney and the Mouseketeers, the most famous Mouseketeer, as listeners know, is... You have no idea how many people have tweeted me about fucking Annette Funicello.

Annette Funicello. You have no idea how many people have tweeted me about her. The reason I'm mentioning this is clearly you're a bit of a snowflake on this because you tweeted out, Attention followers, please stop tagging me in the net limoncello gifts thank you management i mean i swear over the last 48 hours my mention seed is all gifts of this mouseketeer lady from 1937 i just i i'd really please stop i get it'm sorry. I didn't know who she was. It's okay. Okay, just so people know that this is still a sore spot for Mr. Miller, that Annette Funicello, who was one of the people, I think,

really responsible for launching Disney, is the cultural icon that it is. So, I'm just putting this in a little bit of... I mean, I would say Mickey and Pluto, but okay. Okay, yeah, Mickey, Pluto, Annette Funicello. Probably in that order. That's the metal stand. Okay. Yeah. Mickey, Pluto, Annette Funicello, probably in that order. That's the metal stand. Okay. All right. So deep breath here. You wrote a very powerful piece about the school shooting earlier this week. I have made it clear for more than the last decade that there is no subject that I find

more painful to talk about than this. I do think that the shooting up in Newtown kind of really did, I can just remember, it kind of broke me, but also the frustration and the disgust with the doom loop of talking points that takes place afterward, and that hasn't changed. But I do want to talk about this because I keep looking at this and going, if this doesn't break us, what would? You and I both remember, you know, what happened to the country after 9-11 when we watched those planes go into the building and how shocked America was. We launched two wars as a result of this. And yet we have hundreds of children now.

I'm still taking off my shoes at the airport. Well, exactly. You know, if this was al-Qaeda who was coming in and committing these crimes, this country would be on fire and there would be no real question about whether or not Congress would take an action. If we had airplanes falling from the sky and killing this many children, we would have, you know, a national emergency and there'd be no question about whether or not we would pass the regulations necessary. But we have people walking into schools and murdering babies. And you pointed this out on the Next Level podcast. And we have Republican congressmen just basically saying, there's nothing we can do about that. We can't do anything about it.

And you put this in the context of everything else that politicians are talking about, how we need to protect the children. We need to protect the children against that book. We need to protect those children from the drag queen story hour. We must protect our children from having to read certain things about race. But when it comes to actually protecting the children from the things that are killing them, you know, there's nothing we can do. Okay, so Jon Stewart had this just amazing exchange, and I know many people have seen it. This is with an Oklahoma state senator who apparently thought that he could handle Jon Stewart. He was completely wrong. Here's just about one minute near the end of one of their exchanges where they're talking about the priorities and what they're willing to do to

protect children. Here's Jon Stewart with this, I don't even remember what his name is, this Republican state senator from Oklahoma. Let's play this. You want to ban drag show readings to children. To minors, yes. Why? Why? What are you protecting? Why can we prohibit children from voting,

those under 18 from voting? Why are you banning? But also that. Is that free speech? Are you infringing on that performer's free speech? They can continue to exercise their free speech, just not in front of a child. Why? Because the government does have a responsibility to protect...

I'm sorry? The government does have a responsibility in certain instances to protect children. What's the leading cause of death amongst children in this country? And I'm going to give you a hint. It's not drag show readings to children. Correct, yes. So what is it? I'm presuming you're going to say it's firearms.

No, I'm not going to say it like it's an opinion. That's what it is. It's firearms. No, I'm not going to say it like it's an opinion. That's what it is. It's firearms. More than cancer, more than car accidents. And what you're telling me is you don't mind infringing free speech to protect children from this amorphous thing that you think of. But when it comes to children that have died, you don't give a flying fuck to stop that because that shall not be infringed. That is hypocrisy at its highest order. Oh my God, Tim.

That is just brutal. That is just brutal and brilliant at the same time. Yeah. Think about how much of the culture war is just designed to protect children against these injuries and how we're willing to pass these laws and have these restrictions and step on the First Amendment, etc. And yet when it comes to this, can't do it. with with ruin your discussion yesterday it's just that i i do think that that what john stewart just laid out is a winner for people that are on the pro action on gun side of things so for the people that aren't supportive of these so-called reforms in florida and other places where they want to ban and tango makes three and you know not have you know make sure that libraries can't do drag queen story hour i think it makes them look preposterous.

I think that there is a big majority of the country that is on the Jon Stewart side of that debate and doesn't care about whether the government gets involved in Drag Queen Story Hour and does care about these extremely traumatic mass shootings. You know, and I think that the gun issue, we talked about this for like a half hour, the next hour, I could talk about this forever, because I hear that people get frustrated and people don't want we talked about it's like a half hour next level i could talk about this forever because i hear that people get frustrated people don't want to talk about it and are already pressing the plus 30 on this conversation right now to get to the chris christie part i get that but i'm not going to start talking about it you know i was formed by this issue i think having

lived a mile from columbine when i was in high school and it's the thing that i've changed my views the most on i know a lot of people in my generation who have changed their views on this, you know, who have come around, people who are more conservative temperamentally or who were W voters, who are parents now, who are fucking sick of this, who are sick of their kids having to do active shooter drills, who are fed up. And I think that it's a winning issue now for Democrats. And I think that what Republicans are doing is wrong on the merits. It's immoral. And it's also a political loser if the fight is fought. And if people are not willing to just say, okay, well, I'm moving on from this one today. You know, you can always see this with Evaldi. Evaldi's not really being talked about that much anymore. I know it's painful,

but like, it needs to be continued to talk about. The one other thing on this is i did see liz cheney weigh in on this yesterday who yeah exactly can i remember her yeah yeah she was in congress yeah it's been a while it has where's she been i guess she's teaching she's working on a book i guess i don't know i'd like to see more from her too i thought it was interesting that she sent this and here's why because it it matches my prior opinion and what I think is correct and my experience, which is that, you know, when she was in Congress, she's this hardline, down the line conservative, right? And she was not a moderate in any way. Her Ted Cruz voting record was probably identical. And she now gets this freedom to kind of be true to

herself because of what happened on January 6th and her brave stand on January 6th. She gets his freedom and she votes with Biden on the gun reform bill, you know, which was a good first step. And she votes with the Democrats on that, one of just 14 Republicans. And now she's speaking out on this on Twitter. It's not that Liz Cheney has become a liberal, right? It's not that Liz Cheney is now for government regulation and wants to raise taxes and wants to be an isolationist. She hasn't changed her view of all this stuff. She's just now, I think, free as a mom and another person who's lived through this to speak out about this because the fucking facts have changed. You know, like in 1999, it was maybe reasonable to be like, hey, maybe we should arm more teachers.

And that's the answer. Maybe if the gym coach at Columbine had a gun, this wouldn't have been solved. That was crazy then in retrospect, but maybe you could understand it's reasonable. Now, 25 years later, it's not reasonable anymore. And I think that the fact that that is the issue that she is changing on and speaking out on, I think shows that there's a lot of people like that if you just free them from the political manacles. I agree with everything you said in terms of how ridiculous Republicans look when they're put in this position. But having said that, okay, now here's my deep breath. I don't give a shit whether it's a winner or not. This is a life or death issue. And whether it's a winner

or not, essentially saying that we can't be a country that sacrifices our children in this particular way. And I have to say that I know you feel probably the same way. One of the reasons why I think this is so powerful, but also so scary and difficult to talk about, is if you are a parent or a grandparent, you are absolutely terrified about this. You know, the worst nightmare you can imagine is to have one of your children go off to school and something like this happen. And I think that we're getting the sense that no place is immune. There's no place that you can go where this might not happen. And you can imagine, you know, sending your baby off to school and having this happen. I can imagine one of my three granddaughters going off to school. And if this happens right now, this is a greater fear for parents than I think almost anything you

can think about. Everything else is kind of abstract. This feels very urgent. And the callousness and the complete paralysis that we've seen since 2012 on all of this is highlighted every time it happens. You know, that congressman who said, well, there's nothing we can do about it. Basically, what he's saying is given the nature of politics, given the fact that if I want to not be primary and defeated in a Republican primary, I have to go along with all this. You know, I have to continue to sacrifice children on this altar. So this is not something that I've changed my mind on since Trump.

I want to make this very clear. You know, 2012 was one of the moments that broke me. Watching the NRA, watching the right decide that they are not going to change direction or acknowledge the horror of what happened up in Newtown. And I just, since then, I just cannot take those people seriously. I don't want to listen to them. And I think that many of them are just out of their fucking minds when they talk about this particular issue. If Newtown did not change the dynamic of this issue, then nothing would. And I think we've seen that over and over and over and over again. Also, I want to make a point that JVL made on the Next Level podcast,

that I don't agree with it at all. But you know, there are Second Amendment purists out there who take intellectual positions. But there's no defense whatsoever for the people who, you know, post these dick pics of themselves and their families holding these weapons of mass destruction, of mass murder. The people who sent out the Christmas cards where they're holding the, you know, AR-15 and their, you know, their daughters are, you know, holding some, you know, weapon of mass destruction like that. I mean, that's just freaking obscene, turning it into a fetish. Even in a society where we can't legislate this, you would think there would be a modicum of decency in an environment where children are being blown apart by these fucking things, that you don't wear it as a lapel pin, that you don't make a joke out of it, that you don't pose in hot pants with it. Is that really too much to ask? Well, apparently it is for

these motherfuckers. Okay So there's the explicit rating. Yeah, okay. Well, that's good. I'm with you. And the 2012 thing, just really quick, I mean, this got cut from my book because it was just kind of not really relevant and it was a little gratuitous. After Newtown, so I'm at the RNC during Newtown. And I was walking around, and at the time my boss is Sean Spicer. And I'm in his office i'm saying to him like

we can't just come out for like magazine limits right like i'm not saying we should go do confiscation right but it's like we can't come up with something you know so that at least if some deranged lunatic walks into the school they have to like pull the trigger you know i have to reload their fucking weapon after they fire it off you know a few times and he was like no no we can't and um it was a very dispiriting day for me it probably should have been more enough of a dispiriting day to like wake me up it shouldn't have taken four years later to wake me up but i can't even get myself into that mindset right that we can't do anything about this because it's's for the dead, kids that have been blown apart, which you had the just amazing newsletter about, about just what happens to their bodies.

That's part of it. But this trauma goes, it's the whole generation. It's that kid in Michigan in college who has been in two school shootings now. Remember that? There have been so many, I can't even remember what the high school was. It was like he went to high school in Ohio and went to college in Michigan and was at a school shooting both times. Like, what does that do to you?

You're watching the video, listening to these haunting sirens, being the parent waiting for, oh, wait, is it my kid? You know, so there are all these communities. The impact of it expands a lot farther than even, yeah. On the politics of this, I mean, I want to stress that I just think this is just a fundamentally moral cultural issue that we have here. But just on the politics of this, I think the vast majority of gun owners don't disagree with us. You know, the NRA, you know, portrays itself as speaking for them. But I remember when I was, you know,

conservative talk show host, and I would open up the phone lines and ask people, what do you think about, you know, people who, you people who bring AR-15s, open carry, into a farmer's market up in Appleton? The vast majority of people said, that's crazy. And I asked people, what do you think of these proposals to allow people to carry concealed weapons without a background check, without permits, without any sort of training whatsoever? And it was the gun owners who were the ones to call up to say, we think that's crazy. And you ask people, what do you think about expanding background checks? A lot of these things. And it's 80% of people going, yes, absolutely. And yet, this is one of those issues where Republicans are completely held hostage by the most extreme, most reckless players on their team.

Okay. You want to talk about Chris Christie? I know you got the movers coming any minute now. Chris Christie. Yeah, I think we've had a healthy debate over Chris Christie. I am just going to drop a couple more F-bombs here if we keep on it. Yeah, fuck it. Yeah, let's do it.

I have some F-bombs for Chris Christie. Okay, so in my newsletter today, and I do have a language warning on it. Yeah, fuck it. Yeah, let's do it. I have some F-bombs for Chris Christie. Okay, so in my newsletter today, and I do have a language warning on this, I do replay some of what my imaginary conversation with Chris Christie would be, because I don't... I think he should do the podcast, by the way. I'm for it. I think you were joking at the end of the newsletter,

but I don't know if you were joking or serious, but I think I'm for it. If he's such a tough guy, if he's so strong, and he's such a good debater, what's he afraid of? That's my thing. Like he should be talking to outlets like this, like ours, never Trump outlets. I have mixed feelings about him as I laid out, because I can remember, you know, when he decided that he was going to be the shine box and he's standing behind Donald Trump, the role he played in legitimizing Donald Trump, you know, cannot be minimized. And so I would have some strong words for him about that. But then the question is, all right, is it possible that he could be the guy on that

debate stage who is punching Donald Trump in the face? It's not going to be Rhonda Sanders. It's not going to be Nikki Haley. If you want somebody to take the fight to Donald Trump, as Nick Catagio wrote, Chris Christie is probably the only game in town right now. So despite all of the things we'd like to say to him, you know, is it better or worse that Chris Christie is up there willing to punch Donald Trump in the face? Rhetorically speaking, peacefully, of course. Oh, no, I wouldn't mind if Nick Cattio's article, and I love Allah, is like porn. I mean, honestly, it's fantasy porn.

And, you know, every once in a while, somebody's porn fantasy comes to life, and they just get that lucky day for them, and I'm supportive of that. And maybe that'll be for us. Maybe it'll happen. I just, to me, Chrisie is cartman from south park he talks a big game when he's making fun of the you know weak little you know kid with the blanket but like when he actually has to stand up to somebody he runs away it's all a front well we'll see and he can yell at a teacher he can yell at some like local news at seven reporter but he's gonna do

this he's gonna stand up and say maybe hey if he does it i'll be i'll come on this podcast and out for the first time in eight years i'll say chris christie good on you bud yeah thank you for doing this i'm happy you did it if he's gonna do it i'm just saying i'm not joining the chris christie fan club until i see something and him going out there at this town hall again he's supposed to be this great debater he gets out debated by the 67 year old guy who's like, what are you talking about? I knew Trump was bad. And Silas and the crowd out debated him. And then he's attacking Meg Pence and DeSantis. I'm having some PTSD. I'm having some PTSD. Okay, I thought you were going to get in

this race to get after Trump. But now you're making fun of DeSantis and Pence. I thought this was the point of this was this was a this was a sumo kamikaze mission after Trump. Doesn't seem like it to me. So, I don't know. I mean, I think it's much more likely that he's going to sit on his couch and pour the small M&M box into the big M&M box and try to get attention from John Carl and people that want to give him free press. And until then, if he does it, great. But I lived this. Chris Christie, in my opinion, is more responsible for Donald Trump than any politician. Oh, I agree. He took out Marco when Marco had a chance to beat him. And then he endorsed Trump first.

Trump's only main endorsement was like Jeff Sessions when Chris Christie endorsed him. He was the cover. It was big. It was really big. And so, again, if he does it, great. I will give him an attaboy. But until then, I'm not going to engage in the porn fantasy. We'll see.

I think that skepticism is justifiable. And by the way, you know, Nick Cattaggio, who, you know, a pundit formerly known as a pundit, does write about how maybe Christie's the only guy in town. But in fairness to him, he also lays out the alternative scenario, which is that Christie could once again help Trump by blowing up his rivals like he did with Marco Rubio back in 2016. So he could get up on that stage and he could be the one to deliver the roundhouse punch that takes out Ron DeSantis. When you're going through the various things that Ron DeSantis had done that were being thrown out by the courts, I could really almost hear in my head Chris Christie just pounding the crap out of him. Where's the beef, Ron? Where actually you did these things, but you got outmaneuvered by the Disney board. You got thrown out by a federal

judge. I could see him taking out DeSantis and clearing the way for Trump like he did back in 2016. So that is a possibility. And Nick Cattaggio does recognize that. So you think I should invite him on the podcast? I don't know if he's going to come. I mean, I said, he does Nick Cattaggio. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't think Chris is going to do an interview with me. His staff didn't really like me very much after some of my, they didn't like my jokes on Twitter over the years, which I get, um, which is fair for the Cartman thing. Yeah. It's not that nice, but, um, look, here's my, what I would say to Christy or Nikki Haley or any of these folks in that lane is,

and I felt the same way about cinema. I do think that they should do your podcast. It's like, if you can't- If you can't handle Charlie Sykes, you're not going to be able to handle Donald Trump. That's pretty clear, right? If you can't handle this guy in his basement in Mequon, Wisconsin,

how are you going to take on Donald freaking Trump? I wasn't going to talk you down. I was saying the opposite. I was saying if you can't win over the percentage of this audience. Now, some of your audience obviously are people that would never vote in a Republican primary. But of the people that were never Trumpers, used to be Republicans, people that are open to the idea of supporting a Republican in a primary. If you can't win over those people who listen to this podcast and answer these questions, then how the fuck are you going to win a primary?

Who are you going to win? The dispatch, I guess, should be your base or the National Review or something. But these should be part of your coalition. If you can't win over a single person that listens to this podcast, then what the fuck are you doing? What's the point of being in this race? So, yeah, I do think you should do it. All right, well, you've talked me into it.

We'll make the ask. I'll report back, okay? Tell them I won't be on. That might help your cause. I don't even know Tim. We had this thing about Annette Funicello, and after that, we just had to make an agreement to take a break from one another. So, you know, please do not blame me for it. You can take the Friday slot, Chris.

Do not blame me for Tim Miller. Tim, good luck with the move. Pretty exciting. Coming up in about a minute. I'm pumped. So I appreciate you joining me. And we'll talk next Friday, on Good Friday. And then you're going to be on the road, right?

I'm looking forward to that. On the road with Tim. Then we're hitting the road. I'm doing the Southern Road Trip. I've never done this. I'm doing a hipster desert road trip. Are you ready for this? Joshua Tree, Bisbee, Arizona, Marfa.

Wow. So that's it. So we're going to do the Southern Road Trip. You did the Northern one as a kid. And so maybe I'm hoping Toulouse has a memory of cactuses in the desert. And we're going to do a desert five-day road trip to New Orleans. I'm looking forward to it. Five days. Yeah, we're going to take our time. You know, lay to New Orleans. I'm looking forward to it. Five days.

Yeah, we're going to take our time. You know, lay by the pool. I am jealous. We're taking your time. We're not going to do the old man, oh, you got to pee in a cup, you know, kind of road trip. No, we're going to do, you know, a reasonable eight or so hours a day, sit by the pool for a couple hours, and make a little vacation out of it. Have some family time. I'm looking forward to it.

I want to hear all the reports. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. We'll be back tomorrow and do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.