The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Miller: Here's Why You Need to Shut Up

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

The Georgia jury forewoman needs to stop talking, Norma Desmond took a break from Mar-a-Lago, Charlie and Tim disagree on Roald Dahl, and DeSantis lectures New Yorkers on law & order while the big cities in Florida have a higher crime rate. Tim Miller joins Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is February 24th, 2013. Happy Friday. And because it's Friday, it means that Tim Miller is back with me. How are you doing, Tim? You ready for the weekend? I'm doing good. Unfortunately, we tape these in the mornings, you know, so you don't get the full Friday Tim experience, right? Maybe one of these days we should tape one of these like at 8.30 after I've had a happy hour. We should acknowledge that, in fact, we're not even doing this on Friday.

This is Thursday. And the reason I'm mentioning this is that I'm scheduled to do that one-on-one event later Thursday with Paul Ryan. So by the time you and I are officially talking, we've already had it. But I can't tell you anything about it. You know, what happened? I don't know. We can imagine, like, is he battered and bruised?

You know, do we think at this moment? Who's to say? I'm excited for you, though. There's going to be tough love. Now, tough love has love, but it also has toughness in it. Okay, so there's a bunch of things I wanted to get your take on. I have to admit that I am not totally up to speed on all of the rules and the regulations and the bureaucratic decisions that were made that were not made involving that horrific train derailment in Ohio, Palestine, Ohio.

But it's become the usual political firestorm of finger pointing from a PR point of view. So here you have Joe Biden going to Kiev and you have Donald Trump going to Palestine, Ohio. And he's really making the point, I'm here. The president's not here. Why has Pete Buttigieg not showed up in Ohio? So, again, I don't know a lot about the underlying issues here. Should Biden have gone to Ohio? Should Pete Buttigieg have gone to Ohio? Thank you for just teeing me up for a PR question, because boy, I'm not here to talk about rail regulatory policy. I'm sure that there are things that could be tightened up on that front. I did once consult, speaking of PR, for a private rail. And I'll just throw this out there.

Rail accidents are more common than you realize. And I think this comment relates to the PR side of things. And I think the mistake that Pete and the Biden administration made was, if you are the person at the comms department, at the Department of Transportation, and you're just getting a little memo every time a train derails, like you're getting a lot of memos, right? And, you know, train derailments and train crashes and even deaths happen way more often than you realize. Don't make the news. Maybe, I don't know, maybe it should be on the news more. It's just like, it's like a car accident, right? Car accidents on the highway, don't make the news really, except unless it's local news and there's a backup you know and i-95 that people need to hear about before they before they leave work right so i think that that is my impression

based on pete's early comments is what was underlying this mistake like of this political mistake of just not getting out in front of it a little earlier. Now, I think that substantively... You could have just turned on television and seen it was a BFD. Yeah, well, no, no. There were a few days where it really was a little delayed on television. I mean, it was on the nightly news, I think, the second night. And I think that, you know, substantively, you know, at least what my understanding is, and I think if you listen to what Governor DeWine says in his press conference, is that the federal government, like, offered help immediately, right? And there's the DeWine press conference a few days after the

derailment, where he says, where, you know, they ask him what he needs from Joe Biden, and he says nothing, right? You know, he says that they've offered help, you know, we have this under control, yada, yada, yada. It's what the governor of Ohio says, which seems like a political mistake by the governor of Ohio. So I think that that is what this sort of, you know, the commonality of train issues aligned with the fact that like, they felt like they were doing what they should, right, led them to, I think, have a little bit of a PR blind spot on this one. And, you know, Pete going there today, three weeks feels a little late. And I think that it is important, like in politics, you too have to understand that

dealing with the merits of the case is the most important part of the job, right? That the policy part of this, the governing part is most important. But the optics part is part of it. You have to win. Like that's just part of the reality of this thing. And like you have to send a message. And I think that in this case, what you see is the Republicans, I think, like really disingenuously in a lot of ways, trying to do this reverse Katrina situation, right? Which is, you know, which is like, you don't care about white people, right? You don't care about rural white people. Like, you didn't respond to this because it's Appalachia and these are MAGAs and these are Trumpers. Now, that's bullshit.

Yeah. bullshit yeah but responding to that you know requires both substantive response to actually care about these people as well as optics response right to go there demonstrate that you actually care and i think that yeah showing it i think that letting trump get there first was you know a little bit of a mistake i just one really quick thing before you chime in i do not abide the fucking bullshit about how biden have gone to Palestine before Ukraine. And I've seen a lot of reasonable, actual, even centrist commentators saying this. And I'm like, that is insane. Biden could have sent Pete or Kamala or someone else to Palestine while he tried this.

This is the biggest land war in over a half century. This is tens of thousands of people dead. Just absolutely critical world historic event. Thank God Biden went there. And that's just petty small ball bullshit to try to hit him over that. So what about Trump? There was a certain nimbleness before we get into the fact that he'd rolled back train safety regulations, which we have to mention here.

He did show up with his apparently 10-year-old bottles of Trump water, which he distributed. At least he wasn't handing out the old steaks. I mean, you know, you sitting around the comm room and your candidate goes, you go, hey, this is good. This is a good photo op. Why not? Any downside for Trump showing up? I'm in an uncomfortable situation here coming on this podcast. People are going to be like, is there a body snatcher situation criticizing Pete and saying Trump did something good? But look, your friend Norma Desmond, and if people didn't listen to your Olivia Nosey podcast, it's worth going back and re-listening to it, by the way, her Norma Desmond Trump comparison. I am ready for my close-up. Old Norma had barely left South Florida

since he announced for the presidency. I mean, literally, I think he left the state of Florida one time. He did that little South Carolina, I think one other state, campaign jaunt. I mean, literally, I think he left the state of Florida one time. He did that little South Carolina, I think one other state campaign jaunt. I mean, he's barely left his house. You know, I mean, he's like only showing up to be the wedding singer at Mar-a-Lago weddings, you know, and I think that it's demonstrated a, for lack of a better term, low energy effort at the beginning of this campaign. And I think that he's gotten out his great Jonathan Chait piece, and Alex Rorty has a piece about this in the Miami Herald today about how DeSantis has kind of really beat Trump in his own game about, you know, getting out there, you know, making news, a lot of it's bullshit, a lot of it's performative BS, right? But you're getting on news and people will be like, oh,

this guy's a fighter. Like that was Trump's bread and butter. Oh, he's a fighter. It's, you know, it's just a PR op, but he's but he's doing the optics part, but not the substance part. So, this, I think, was his first really good move politically since he launched. You might say maybe standing with Kevin in Congress, JVL mentioned that to me as another one, but maybe those are the only two that you can even think of, and Trump's had a really sluggish. The problem is the bar has been so low because he's done nothing. So, by saying this was the best move, that's really not saying much. Here's the counter spin that I'm reading in Politico this morning. Donald Trump's visit to the site of a toxic train derailment in Ohio is offering a political opening to battered Biden administration officials by calling new attention

to the former president's record of rolling back regulations on both rail safety and hazardous chemicals. Trump's administration withdrew an Obama-era proposal to require faster brakes on trains carrying highly flammable materials, ended regular rail safety audits of railroads and mothball, depending rule requiring freight trains to have at least two crew members. He also placed a veteran of the chemical industry in charge of the EPA's chemical safety office, where she made industry-friendly changes to how the agency studied health risks. Of course, this is the moment where we remind people that Donald Trump's superpower is complete lack of shame. So none of that came up when he was tossing the bottles of Trump water in Ohio.

And so we'll see how Pete does getting out. He's in Palestine today as we're taping this and making those arguments. We're grownups, Charlie. We can carry these two thoughts together in the head at the same time. Obviously, Trump didn't give a shit about the EPA. You do not have to be a regulatory expert on rail policy to understand that the priorities of the Trump administration was not, you know, rail safety and environmental safety. That was not their priorities. You know, clearly

that there were some things done that could have been done to shore this up with, you know, who the hell knows, right? We wait the actual report on this train. That said, okay, there are going to be a lot of people out there that don't understand the intricacies of rail policy and environmental policies. You can make these arguments, but you also have to demonstrate that you're fighting for these people. You're on the sides of these people. Look, Bill Clinton got this, right? George Bush got this. And Biden has at times really done well with this with old Scranton Joe. And maybe you know, maybe that's unfair, you know, maybe that's, you know, BS, or we're just doing kind of figure skating judging here.

And that's a fair criticism, I guess, of media. But the people in rural America need to see, okay, there's a problem in your neck of the woods. We really care, you know, what was the old George H.W. Bush was someone who struggled with this? What was the old thing in the teleprompter message? I care. You need to actually show them that. And I think that, you know, you can do both, right? You have to do both, right? Which is to say, wait a minute, actually, it was these assholes that stripped back the, you know, the safety regulations around this. At the same time, I'm going to be here and make sure that we help these communities rebuild. You got to do both. Okay. So, since we're on the topic of PR advice, I have ranted and railed about this now for, this will probably be the third consecutive day.

I started on Twitter, talked about it on my podcast briefly yesterday with Brian Rosenwald. But I want to tee this up again. This foreperson from the Florida grand jury who embarked on this press tour, headline in Drudge, she jeopardizes Trump indictment, question mark, coy, cryptic, cringe, exclamation point. So, Tim, how did this happen? I would like to know. I'm just throwing this out there. Look, I'm retired from PR. Okay, except for when you or Stephanie Rule ask me to give PR advice on TV for free.

Okay, so I'm retired. That said, this is such a bad situation that if somebody knows the forewoman, you can give her my number. And I'm happy just to have a PR call with her. Just a pro bono just one call maybe director to somebody else that's that's still in the in the biz would advice be shut up and i'll send you my bill i mean that'd be my main advice yeah but sometimes

doing pr you know i know that we're we get a bad rap old pr folks but there's also some handholding that's required with that right like shut up and also here's why you need to shut up. And let me talk you through why you need to shut up. And oh, maybe here's a couple little things that we could do to, you know, make you feel like you're shaping the narrative. Because right now you're letting the narrative shape you. And she was asked this by an MSNBC reporter, why she's doing this. And apparently she said, I don't have the direct quote, but something to the effect of apparently she said, I don't have the direct quote, but something to the effect of, you know, I don't want other people out there telling the story about what happened in this grand jury, you know, before we do, I want to be able to

get the facts out there. And it's just like, which she's not doing, but yeah, I mean, what you're doing is just, you're not executing on that goal at all. And all you're doing is making yourself a punching bag for all these bad faith magas, you know, who want to muddy the waters and find excuses for Trump. And there's a reason that juries should be kind of like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, right? Like, you don't want to know the detail. Like, we don't want to see all 12 jurors that made this decision, because then you can make it about them and not about the merits of what Trump and these other folks did. There's a reason why we keep these proceedings secret and why the foreperson usually is secret. But, you know, on a number of different levels, I don't know whether this officially, formally, legally taints any indictments to come down. We

won't know that for some time. What we do know is that we're already getting signals from some of the targets of this investigation that they will, in fact, move to quash any indictment because of her comments. So it's become an issue. Also, I think it's naive not to realize that all of these cases play out, you know, in two different venues, you know, in the court of law where these technicalities matter a great deal, but also in the court of public opinion. And she certainly has done herself and the prosecutors and the jury no favors at all. You know, what a surprise the Trump world would have, you know, seized upon this because she does not look serious. She does not

look credible. She does undermine this. She certainly, you know, taints this recommendation. Now, again, just to remind people, the grand jury in Georgia only makes recommendations. It is up to the DA, Fannie Willis, to make the decision. And, you know, she will walk it through. But, you know, again, this is just not helpful. And I'm not sure that there's much that can be done about it. And as I said yesterday on the podcast, I'm not blaming the media for having her on. I mean, that's not their job is to cover up for it. But I think that the way the story played out, sounding like it was really, really, you know, newsworthy and important, and then it just keeps going and it becomes more and more ridiculous, really almost like a gift.

She did several other interviews. I just, just two things, one confluent and then one thing that might be a little mean, but you know, it's the weekend pod. Fannie Willis, I've heard just nothing but overwhelming, like the people that are, you know, legal experts, you know it's the weekend pod fanny uh willis i've heard just nothing but overwhelming like the people that are you know legal experts you know that are our friends you know george conway's of the world and bakari sellers on this podcast while back was talking about it i mean she seems to be taking this seriously in a way that some of the early criticism of merrick garland you know she moved she was a fast mover on this and deserves credit. So, hopefully, you know, it's now been almost a month since they said indictments are coming. So, fingers crossed, hopefully, that she does her job

and that this little kerfuffle with the forewoman doesn't ruin, you know, I think a lot of real work that's come out of the Fulton County DA's office. My just one other observation is like, doesn't it make you wonder who else is on this jury? She was elected the four-line. I'm sorry if that's mean, but it does. See, this is the problem. You actually don't want to see this. Imagine if we had interviews like this in every single case like this, it would be like, ooh, okay. You know, we keep telling ourselves that the jury system is working and it's all wonderful and everything. And then you go, well, okay. All right. So, let's talk about another big story that we

need to get our heads around. New York Times has a very interesting analysis about Kevin McCarthy's decision to give all of the January 6th Capitol surveillance footage exclusively, not just to Fox News, but exclusively to Tucker Carlson. So the headline is, in sharing video with Fox host McCarthy hits rewind on January 6th, in granting exclusive access to a cable news host bent on rewriting the history of the attack, the speaker effectively outsourced a politically toxic relitigation of the riot. This is really fascinating. I mean, obviously, this is his latest move to appease the right wing of his party. But I think it's an interesting way that Luke Broadwater and Jonathan Swan put this, that he's effectively outsourcing a bid to reinvestigate the riot to his favorite

cable news commentator, who has circulated conspiracy theories about the assault. See, Tim, this is one of those cases where this looks bad, but I think the reality is much worse than it even looks. Yeah, I think it is much worse than it looks. And here is, we finally get some synergy. We have all these topics where the policy and the politics are both bad. I mean, I guess I understand in the narrow sense why McCarthy's doing this. You know, it's nice to get in good with the biggest host on cable news. It is nice to shore up, you know, the crazy caucus, the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and, you know, the Jim Jordan's and the people that want to reinvestigate January 6th and, you know, want justice for the rioters and all this nonsense. And so, I get why he's doing that to shore up his own conference that this is part of the demands for why, you know, he got to be the speaker in name only. And he promised, I promised, McCarthy said on Wednesday in a brief phone interview, I promised I was going

to do this. These were part of my gonads that I was carving off to give to these people. Yeah, I think the politics of this is really bad, though, for them. I mean, why would they want to do this? Taking away the merits of all this and just thinking of this as, what are issues that are good for Republicans to talk about? Like, what is good for the party that is, you know, if this is in the news? Immigration. Maybe this train derailment.

Inflation. Like, when people are talking about that the democrats are on the defense crime crime the border when we're talking about january 6th like that is a loser like did you not learn anything from the midterms i just think that this is a nightmare we're talking about this now they're talking about on the news whatever tucker puts out that's going to cause another round of you know recriminations and analysis. I just think this is a massive loser in the biggest picture, even if it's a small ball win in keeping his conference happy. I think the question is, it's also an opening for the Democrats.

Should the Democrats now release this footage? Because they have it, but there are Democrats that have access to this footage. It's not as if it's only the speaker and they'd had the January 6th committee, to other media outlets, I think maybe so. Well, I think the other media outlets have to immediately make requests to get them as well. I mean, that's the only check on this, right? Otherwise, you know what Tucker Carlson's going to do. And there's 41,000 hours of footage. He's going to take the eight hours

where you have people looking silly, walking through the hallways, and hooting and hollering, or I'm sure there's some video of somebody cleaning up the poop on the ground, right? I mean, like you, it's 41,000 hours of footage. I do think that we've, as we've all said from the start, you know, there were different levels to this kind of riot. There were people that were actively there to riot and cause harm. There are people that got caught up in the moment. And there are people who are like, where am I right now? Oh my God, I'm in the Capitol, right? And I'm moseying around. And the DOJ has done a good job of making

sure that the people that were actively there to harm police officers and riot and are being held accountable. So, you know what Tucker's going to do is just focus on that supporting evidence of that last group. And I'm sure he'll probably come up with some other conspiracies, which is, oh, supporting evidence that somebody was a fed or that the cops let him in or something. You know, there are plenty of ways to muddy the waters here if you just get down into the super micro. And that's what he's going to try to do. I mean, the power of editing. And we've seen what you can do with this.

I mean, look, you have a mildly talented editor, and you can make January 6th look like the Barry Manilow concert. I mean, it's whatever he wants to do. The importance is, I think, for other eyes to be on this, to be able to point out the kinds of edits that he makes. Not that it will matter, not that there's any shame at Fox, and not that the Fox audience actually gives a shit about any of this. There were probably some raucous Barry Manilow concerts back in the early 80s. You know, people, you know, ladies throwing their undergarments at them.

I never went to a Barry Manilow concert. No? I picked him completely randomly. Surprising. I would have leaned into your expertise on that. You could have busted me. You could have said, well, you know, what about the Barry Manilow concert in Altamont where, you know, 20 people were... I never...

Sorry, I forgot about that. I just didn't know. I was just trying to think of, you know, it would be very mellow in which the demographic would skew, you know, not scary. Our people would never do this. As long as I was Ron Johnson said, our people would never do this. The Barry Manilow people would never riot. It's only their people, the Antifas, Black Lives Matter. He meant that very sincerely. You have to understand that he meant that very sincerely. They were people who look like me,

you know, somebody from Oshkosh, not the kind of people that we ought to be scared about. Down in Milwaukee, down in that inner city. There was no... Okay, so, I know that you want to talk about the Roald Dahl story the vandalism of roald dahl and i think it's nice when we can have a disagreement that's why i wanted to do it we agree all the

time right charlie you know this podcast people love the friday pod i think maybe because it's just often a dunk session but for time to time we got to mix it up for folks we don't feel we get bored are you ready for my my pitch on why the Roald Dahl thing is not a big deal? And we're maybe overstating it. Well, you can tell me why you disagree with me. For starters, so I've got a little quick trivia for you. Maybe you're ready for this because you seem to be doing a lot of reading on this. But in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1964, the Oompa Loompas were, when it was written in 1964, do you know what the Oompa Loompas were?

Yeah. Yeah, African pygmies. Yeah, they were. Not orange-faced, green-haired people. And they made the change in 71 for the movie. And I think that was probably a great change. I don't think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is one of my favorite movies. I love Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

And I don't think that would be canon, probably, these days, if it was African pygmies. I think they made the right decision to strip that from the art and, you know, life moved on. It was nothing. It was not like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. It was something that, you know, made a change to go with the times. And here we are. I don't think that these, I've not like looked at every single change. I don't think these changes are that. I think that... Okay, could we talk about this pygmy thing? This is an interesting thing. And of course, it doesn't necessarily provide a justification for the vandalism by the, you know, the inclusive children with hammers in the China shop that we're having right now. Helen Lewis writes about this in

The Atlantic, you know, and one of the inadvertently funniest amendments is a passage in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which once explained how the Oompa Loompas, whom Dahl originally wrote specifically were African pygmies, had actually come to work for Willy Wonka. It was easy, the deranged capitalist inventor used to say in the pre-Baudelaireized version, that I smuggled them over in large packing cases with holes in them. In the newly sanitized version, Wonka instead tells his audience that the Oompa Loompas were volunteers and, quote, they've told me they love it here. Yes, the sensitivity readers have somehow recreated a classic trope from colonial literature. If those slaves are unhappy, why are they singing all the time? Thank you for the

clarification, Mr. Wonka. And now perhaps your PR firm could explain why the Oompa Loompas are not allowed to leave the factory. Well, they aren't slaves anymore. I think that there's a lot of, as someone who has a five-year-old that has to suffer through children's movies and literature, there's a lot of inconsistencies in other children's art. Look, my point is, if we want to have a new version, I liked the, I always forget what his real name is, Ala Pundit, the Nick Cattaggio thing. Yeah, Nick Cattaggio.

Okay, if we're going to reprint this, we need to at least write that it was Roald Dahl as edited by Inclusive Media or whatever. So if there's a version of it out there and they don't want to call Augustus fat, okay, I don't know. I mean, should we have a little bit more sensitivity towards fat kids?

Are there some fat kids whose feelings get hurt reading this? Who, you know, are fat not because they're gluttons, but just because of their genes? Probably not. Is it okay? Is it that big of a deal, though? It doesn't matter. Is this not the government censors? Okay, i am not going to accuse you of being what we're not going

library to library taking out all the old charlie and the chocolate factories we're not banning the original from tv you know this isn't russia you know we don't have a art department somewhere deep inside the government where somebody's airbrushing over photos to get lenin out of them like that's not what this is. It's a new version by a company that may or may not be misguided. Is that that big of a deal? Well, no, see, here's the big deal, because I don't use the word censorship. I know that some people like, you know, Salman Rushdie, who disagrees with you,

you know, thought that it was absurd, that it was censorship. It is not censorship. It is vandalism. It is the stupidity. It is how bad it is. It is the way they have inserted just completely irrelevant stuff into it. They do not have any literary talent. And I understand that there might not be a legal right. Legally, they have the right to do this, which, by the way, is a dumb argument because there's a lot of things that we have the legal right to do that are not right to do. The Brits actually recognize some moral right that writers have to not have their work destroyed. But I think the larger point here, Tim, is that we're talking about Roald Dahl. These books are not sweet. They are not inoffensive.

They are not happy. And in fact, because I knew we were going to talk about it, I wanted to bring in somebody who really, I think, really gets the Roald Dahl culture and everything. Is this a special guest? This is like we're on Sally Jessie Raphael and you're going to bring in like, Tim, this is your life.

Okay, open the door here because here is to explain why this was like doubly and triply stupid. Here's Alyssa Rosenberg from the Washington Post who actually said this on Sonny Bunch's podcast. This is Alyssa. This sort of boulderization misses the point, which is that the deep nastiness of Roald Dahl's work

has nothing to do with sort of one-off references or which books Matilda is reading and everything to do with the sort of deep sort of sense of cruelty and unfairness at the heart of the stories themselves. And that's what makes them great, right? Roald Dahl's books scared the hell out of me when I was a kid, and they were some of my favorite things to read. You know, The Witches, for example, which has the, you know, the really egregious example of editing you mentioned where you have the bizarre line about women's like wigs and gloves and everything. That's a story about witches who

have basically like an international plan to genocide children and they are competing against each other to see who can kill the most children. The happy ending involves the narrator being turned into a mouse and realizing that this means that like he won't outlive his grandmother because he's probably only going to live another nine years and she's probably only going to live another nine or ten years he doesn't really want anyone else to take care of him so it's like they'll both die when they're you know at the same time and he'll be a mouse forever but they'll have like done a insurgency against the witches right right? I mean, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a book about a, you know, desperately poor child who is thrust by the totally capricious and insane whims of an

incredibly rich man into the company of just these awful other children from, you know, terrible families. You know, Matilda is a story about a child who is sort of basically unwanted and unloved until she meets someone who helps her understand her specialness. I mean, these are very much books that are not built around, you know, building up reader's self-esteem or even necessarily sort of identification with the characters, but are about introducing the idea that the world can be cruel and disgusting and unbeatably unfair. And that what you have going for you is sort of your wits and your gumption. And they can be really upsetting. I mean, I remember the original illustrations in The Witches scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. I mean,

the like illustration of the Grand Witches rot kid. I mean, the illustration of the grand witch's rotting face frightened me so much that I literally had a post-it note over it in the book because the book scared me, that image gave me nightmares, but I found the tension and the stakes and the creativity of it magnetic. And so I wanted to read it over and over and over again. I made the part of the book that I couldn't handle bearable on my own terms, even as I was allowing it to challenge me as a reader in other ways. And, you know, I think that a healthy diet of kids' books is never going to be one thing, right? I mean, there are going to be stories with genuinely happy endings. There are going to be

the Hermione Grangers of the literary world who are smart and grow up and figure out going to be stories with genuinely happy endings. There are going to be the Hermione Grangers of the literary world who are smart and grow up and figure out how to be pretty. But there are going to be parts of life that are dark or unfair or upsetting. And Dahl's books are a really perfect early encounter with that. And the idea that you need to clean up these books around the edges strikes me as a double failure of literary stewardship, because you're defacing the text, but you also are demonstrating that you don't understand that the nastiness of the stories is what makes them powerful. You know, it's not just that you're essentially committing an act of vandalism,

but you're demonstrating an ignorance of the importance of the work in the first place. You know, Dahl's books, and not just his books, but his memoirs, you know, Boy and Going Solo, which are great, and I highly recommend to anyone who hasn't read those real-life stories, because they give you a real sense of where Roald Dahl was coming from. If you don't understand the work and what makes it great, you shouldn't be the steward of it. And it's just incredibly disappointing. Incredibly disappointing. By the way, that was Alyssa Rosenberg from Across the Movie Aisle.

So I guess the thing is, Tim, you know, if people don't like Ro words like fat and black and everything is going to transform them into something soft, squishy, safe, and inclusive because that's just dumb. So that's a podcast that's about the movie and culture industry. And I think that a criticism of what's this company called, Insight or whatever, for having no talent in editing them and for not understanding the underlying value of doll is a fair criticism that's fine expanding that out into like this being part of some politicized like woke culture and we need to have fox news segments about it and people are trying to take doll away from you nobody's trying to take doll away from anybody and i think that updating things for the times, let me tell you, not to get too personal or whatever here,

but the number of old nursery rhymes and old stories that are racist is pretty alarming and pretty jarring. And as I go back and read some of these things and have to read it to a five-year-old that is black and that has gay dads a lot of them have had to be changed you know eeny meeny miny moe used to be about the n-word okay so like a lot of this stuff has had to be changed a lot of the stuff has had to be sanded down there are a lot of tv shows and movies that if you watch it on tnt on saturday afternoon you know it doesn't have all of my favorite cuss words if If I want to have to watch Pulp Fiction on cable, it doesn't have all my favorite cuss words. Like there are a lot of

examples of this. And I just like from a political standpoint, this is a problem for politicians. If people are saying, no, you cannot read your child, the original Charlie, the chocolate factory, and we're going to take it out of school libraries. And we're going to replace it with this terrible, like new speak Orwellian woke version. Like, okay, that's something to be mad about at a local school board. But like, what this is, is a critique of this company. Like, that's fine. A cultural critique of this company is fine. But like trying to expand into, oh, it's not a good thing to try to update some of these old nursery engine stories, so they feel more inclusive for kids that are reading them.

That's where this all gets a little bit, to me, to be way over the top, and I get uncomfortable with the arguments that are being put forth. Well, I'm not going to deal with the straw man there, because I think that clearly, you know, some of the updating is completely justifiable. I mean, you should take out the N-word. You don't need to, you know, have those cuss words on Saturday television. I get that. But simply because some things need to be changed is not an argument for saying that it's okay to change everything. Merely because there have been some edits in the past does not mean that every edit by the

Inclusion Collective in the future is a good idea. And I guess what you're seeing here is the, and Mona and I talked about it on our podcast, this sort of this notion that we have to bubble wrap children. Okay, it's one thing, yes, take out the overt racism, and we can have a discussion about that, but I would not have a problem with that. But it's the bubble wrapping the notion that, boy, if somebody read about somebody with a double chin or they were fat or we have to explain why some people wear wigs and all of this. It's like people at some point in our culture, can we understand that we cannot protect children from everything that might even theoretically make them uncomfortable? So leave out the politics.

And simply because some jerk on Fox News is going to demagogue this doesn't mean we can say, you know, that's really not a good idea. Isn't one of the things that we've learned, Tim, is that it's important to call out people on our own side, is to see, you know, bad trends and say, okay, even though you might be subject to some unfair criticism, this is still really not a good idea. Are the Roald Dahl editors on my side? I don't think so. I don't know. I don't know that they

need to be called out by me. I guess that's my point. I think that maybe these are some well-intentioned people with no literary talent, and that's a fine criticism, I think. But I think that we can really, you know, once we start to expand it out beyond that, I get a little bit skeptical of some of the arguments that are being made. This is a sign of culture that our kids can't take bad news. Kids get plenty of bad news. There's plenty of bad

shit in the world. Kids have plenty of bad experiences. If you're a fat kid and you don't want to read a book about a fat kid getting made fun of, I'm sensitive to that. I think that that's fine. Okay, that is okay. I can't wait until I get to buy the copyright to your book, see how you feel when I own the copyright to your book.

Nobody should change a single word of why we did it. Okay, that is a masterpiece, all right? I will not have my art vandalized, Charlie. I think we will update it to include everyone that you don't like, I'll call them a poopy head. Just edit it right now. Okay, I'm sorry. This deteriorated because I wanted to be the defender of high literature.

Okay, Ron DeSantis. We haven't talked about him yet. He went to New York to give a big law and order speech. And you had a great story about the politics of law and order. So what is your take on Ron DeSantis, who's on the road, who's commenting on stuff, and who's going around the country basically saying, I'm the guy who's going to back the blue?

Well, I think that the Democrats need to start to really aggressively prosecute this fight because the reality is, if we just look at the stats of what is happening in our cities and what's happening across the country when it comes to crime, there are two main problems. Like one is not a lot of police departments are actually defunded. But if you talk to any urban police department, if you talk to any cop, I have friends who are cops, like the culture around policing in urban environments has, you know, I think they feel like there's a lack of support. There's less policing happening than there used to be. This is not as we could go back and listen

to my Brooke Jenkins interview. There's a way to, you know, have more policing and more cops and not, you know, support dirty cops and not support cop killers and all that. But right, there needs to be maybe greater support for policing in our cities. And that's a criticism that Republicans wield against Democrats to blame them for crime. Okay. Meanwhile, there's another big problem, which is we have this massive proliferation of guns that is just unlike anything in the history of the world, as far as the amount of firepower that we have in this country. And it's unrelated to any other, you know, first world country. Nobody else, you know, with the exception of countries that basically have no rule of law have this level of, you know, firepower in the hands of the citizenry. And that's causing a lot of deaths. And so,

if you look at the actual stats, Matt Iglesias has been really good about this. The highest crime states are often red states, like the top five highest crime murder states are mostly in the South and Southeast and Missouri. If you look at Florida, Ron DeSantis flies to New York to lecture New Yorkers about law and order and how they're not supporting cops enough. Meanwhile, the big cities in Florida have a much higher crime rate and murder rate than New York does. Why? Because they have lax gun laws, right? And so, we just have two days after Ron DeSantis goes to lecture New Yorkers about law and order. We have a shooting in Orlando where a nine-month-old dies and then local news goes to cover it

and then local news reporter that goes to cover it gets shot and they get killed. That happened in Florida. Like, where is the law and order for that? Parkland happened in Florida. Pulse happened in Florida. Like, the Democrats need to go on offense of this and not allow Republicans to lecture them about this and have to say, no, we need to support police, but yeah. You are making a really interesting point here,

because the Republicans and the right and the conservative media have done a really masterful job of portraying cities like Chicago and New York and Los Angeles as absolute freaking hellholes, right? That is the image and the focus on crime. And now there's a certain justification for the fact that there are a lot of murders. But your point being, look over your shoulder at some of these red states, including Ron DeSantis' state, and look at the amount of violence, look at the amount of mass murder and everything, and look how he is responding on a policy basis that, you know, rather than doing anything at all that seems reasonable to confront this, what are they doing? They are passing laws that I think are frankly textbook insane. This whole idea of, you know, constitutional carry without permits, background checks,

anybody, you know, can stick a handgun in their pocket and walk around anywhere. I mean, this is madness. And yet somehow the Republicans have been successful in saying we are the party of law and order. We are the anti-violence party, which is in many ways ludicrous. Yeah. And it's, and part of it is that, look, there is a racial subtext to this. There's a lot of people in cities. And so you hear more about city crime, right? And, you know, things are less spread out. But look, here's, I'm just pulled up this Iglesias thread, which is really good on this. Brooklyn has more than twice as many people combined as Miami plus Jacksonville, the two big cities in Miami that have Republican mayors. It's not even like, oh, it's the blue parts of red states. No, these are Republican mayors, Miami and Jacksonville. And Brooklyn has twice as many people and fewer murders. Queens has more people than either city and fewer murders,

right? So, you know, you have this impression that, oh, these Democratic, big Democratic cities are lawless and, you know, there's just crime happening everywhere. And there has been a crime uptick in some of these big cities, but New York is actually significantly safer than a lot of these other places. And Democrats have to make that case not as a way to say, oh, we don't need to do anything. Oh, we're perfect. Like, New York is safer than Florida. But to say, look, you know, there's some things we're doing right here, which is trying to have some reasonable laws about firearms. Well, not doing gun confiscation, but reasonable firearm laws. And, you know, there are other things we could do a little bit better, you know, as far as supporting police and, you know, making sure they have the

resources they need. I think that's a winning argument. And it's something that Joe Biden, incidentally, believes. And they just can't be scared to make it because they're worried that people are going to get mad at them on the left flank. Why do people get mad at them on the left flank? You know, because I think that anytime you say, oh, we need to support police and have more resources for police, there's going to be a, there's going to be a cadre of people, you know, because I think that any time you say, oh, we need to support police and have more resources for police, there's going to be a cadre of people, you know, within the Democratic coalition, not really a ton of elected officials, a handful, that will say, no, actually, we need police abolition. You know, we need to fully reform police. And there do need to be some policing reforms, right? Isn't that an opportunity for Biden to stand up and say, okay, no, I disagree.

Do not conflate me with these guys. We disagree on this. Yeah, I don't, we don't need police abolition. Sure, we need accountability for bad cops. You know, police unions need to stop protecting bad cops, of course. But we also need funding and resources for the people that are keeping our community safe. And meanwhile, we need less, we need less AR-15. Constitutional carry is insane. It's insane. Like, no permit. I think you need to write this again. Constitutional carry is insane. It's insane. No permit? I think you need to write this again. I think this is a great point.

I really do. I think this is a very, very powerful point, particularly since Ron DeSantis flies out of his state to lecture other states about this while you have the carnage in his rearview mirror. This ought to be pointed out, Tim, I just think. That's what I'm saying. Take it to him.

I know that you've already addressed this question, and maybe it's been beaten to death. And I understand the people who say, you know, why do you pay attention to Marjorie Taylor Greene? Well, the answer is she's on the Homeland Security Committee. She holds the Speaker of the House of Representatives testicles in a lockbox. And yet she's not backing off from this whole idea of national divorce, the idea that we should have kind of a quasi civil war or a separation between the blue and red states. I mean, it's an insane idea. It's an impractical idea. It's an unserious idea. But she's getting airtime for it. She's getting some traction for it. Sean Hannity is taking it seriously.

Charlie Kirk is taking it seriously. What should we make? Should we mock this or say, this is kind of scary because we're moving from sedition to secession at warp speed? Can we do both? So here's the thing to be worried about, right? Is that you get whatever the number is. I know you had Will Summer on the podcast, a pretty scary podcast about QAnon, and he said there are 10 million QAnon people out there. Okay, well, let's say 1% of those people are potentially able to be spurred to violence. That's 100,000 people. Let's say that's 0.1%. That's 10,000 people. 10,000 people can cause a lot of problems, right? So, I think that there's reason to take this seriously and and to be appalled frankly that fox would give voice to this that nobody within the republican party seems to want to slap her

down that they just want to eye roll you would think that they would learn that the oh let's pretend the crazies don't exist and i roll it away strategy doesn't work you know after the capital is sieged but i guess they haven't learned that they're sticking with the same strategy i also think it's worth mocking i mean we can have a little bit of fun here i work you know after the capital is sieged but i guess they haven't learned that they're sticking with the same strategy i also think it's worth mocking i mean we can have a little bit of fun here i just you know when i think about the national divorce the only part of it that appeals to me at all and i'm completely it's completely disgusting and and and i don't but just if we're going to indulge the fantasy for a second having to think about like the soft boys you know we're making fun of josh hawley on the next level podcast which was which you can listen to on wednesday so please go subscribe to that we're making fun of josh holly on the next level podcast which was which you can

listen to on wednesday so please go subscribe to that we make fun of josh holly but you can think about all the other people like i think about the national review masthead like you know your rich lowry's and where are these guys going to buy their artisanal tomatoes how are they going to go to the opera red states is going to get what? Florida? Maybe they get Miami. That's the nicest thing that they get. But Jacksonville and Fresno, I assume that they're not going to be a globalist. The red country isn't going to be a globalist country. It's going to be a protectionist country. So, there's going to be a lot of great American ingenuity and resources that they're not going to have access to. They're going to have plenty of cracker

barrels. That'll be nice, I guess. A lot of cracker barrel meals. I have other questions, though. So, Marjorie Taylor Greene is from Georgia. Is Georgia right now a red state or a blue state? I don't know. She's going to have to move across the way to Alabama. That'll be too bad. You won't be able to drive into Atlanta to go do your CrossFit, you know, unfortunately, because that'll went into the blue country. How are you going to get your Lululemon? Are there any Lululemons in red America? I don't think so. What's Marjorie going to wear? I think there are a lot of practical issues. I like to just sort of imagine, you know,

all of the luxuries of blue America being denied, the people that like to live in New York and LA and DC and pretend like they're part of this culture war, pretend like they're, you know, out there living in whatever, Midland. Maybe we should do it by counties rather than states, because you look at the map of most states, including California and Massachusetts, and they're not uniformly blue, right? You have your red pockets, so maybe we'll just do this in a town by town. Yeah, there are more Republicans in Los Angeles County than there are in Wyoming. That's literally true, by the way. That's the part that I like to think about. I like to think about their

betrayal of tears for the Los Angeles Republicans who've got to enjoy all the wonders of Los Angeles, and now they've got to move to Laramie. I would like to visit Laramie. Enjoy, guys. A little Steinbeckian trip for them to move to their part of the country and the divorce. That part is just kind of warms me up a little bit. But the practicalities are just not there. Yeah, they think the practicalities might be a little bit complicated. I've got some people on their side of the divorce in my life. I don't. I'm not looking for civil war. You know what I mean? I don't want to be on the opposite side of my Mimi. We can be in the same

country. I think civil War would be extremely opposite. So what is your Not My Party about this week? I'm looking forward to it. Not My Party is up. It was Fox. We had to go deeper on the Fox texts this week on Not My Party. Like the Jackie Heinrich thing, I think, got a little bit lost. Yes.

And so I really wanted to focus on that in Not My Party this week. This is the reporter who fact-checked a fake Donald Trump tweet and Tucker Carlson went nuts demanding that she be fired for telling the truth. And Hannity emailed the CEO, Suzanne Scott, of the company to chastise her. And he talks about how the stock price is going down. There's a lot of discussion around how they're full of shit. And it's kind of like dog bites man news at 11 the fox news hosts are are stirring up animus and rage about something they don't

even believe we all know that that's happening there was something for me about the fact that man there was one person at the network actually doing their job you know reporting the news you know reporting what was factual and as punishment for. She had the biggest stars at the company trying to get her fired. To me, I think that shows a level of depravity that is kind of beyond the normal stuff we already know about Fox. And so, I focused on that a little bit this week on Not My Party. Oh, I cannot wait to watch. Well, listen, have a fantastic weekend, Mr. Miller. You too, Charlie. And we will talk shortly.

And again, 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.