The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Miller: Never Should Mean Never

Episode Date: February 3, 2023

Too many normies STILL won't say "Never Trump," but Paul Ryan may be coming around. Plus, Kari keeps pretending to be governor, Hugh Hewitt is leg-humpy, and Charlie wants Dark Brandon to go out in a flak jacket and pop the balloon. Your weekend pod with Charlie Sykes and Tim Miller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. I'll say the good news is that we made it through the week. It is Friday, and Tim Miller, who is basking in the beautiful glow of Palm Springs, joins us. By the way, it's like two degrees here in Wisconsin. But, hey, happy Friday, Tim. Ooh, yeah. Hi in the mid-70s today here in Palm Springs joins us. By the way, it's like two degrees here in Wisconsin. But hey, happy Friday, Tim. Ooh, yeah. High in the mid-70s today here in Palm Springs. I'm trying to, you know, caramelize my skin a little bit this afternoon after spending

some time on some panels. I would be caramelized if I spent more than five minutes outside. Even the dogs, when I, you know, open the door, the dogs turn around, they look at me and they go, are you freaking kidding me? You want us to go out in this cold? So as we start this morning, there's a spy balloon, Chinese spy balloon over Montana. Take it out. Well, this is the interesting question.

I mean, I don't want to rush to judgment, but why haven't we blown it out of the air or out of the sky? I'd be actually in favor of that. I don't think you have to worry too much about balloon debris over Montana. But that's just me. Yeah, I didn't get the intelligence report with all the, you know, exigencies about what might happen if we blow up the balloon. This would unite America. All America would love to see the balloon blown up. Yeah, emotionally.

This would be a coming together moment, wouldn't it? I would think so. Emotionally and viscerally, I would like to blow up the balloon. But, you know, obviously sometimes cooler heads do have to prevail. My first thought, though, was initially was like, is this a hoax? Because any balloon story brings me back to Balloon Boy, which was, you know, kind of a highlight for me. I love the Balloon Boy saga. It was, you know, one of the great early internet events. It was in my home state of Colorado. But, yeah, I don't have a ton to report on the balloon except for my emotional desire to blow it up. But also trusting that, you know, probably the people at the White House know a little bit more than I do about, you know, what's in the balloon, what might happen if we exploded it. I'm sure that there's a logical explanation for why the Chinese are using balloons as opposed to, I don't know, satellites. Satellites. We wouldn't be having this discussion about whether to blow up the satellite, right?

We would just say, hey, it's a Chinese satellite. And it's, you know, it's got spy cameras and TikTok videos and all the other stuff there. And it wouldn't be an issue. Based on the Chinese vaccine success, maybe they can't, their satellites aren't working. Well, that's an interesting sort of footnote. We sort of found out that the Russian military does not work as advertised, and maybe the Chinese are not that great

when it comes to things like vaccines and spy balloons. Okay, so you and I usually do not talk about the economy a lot, even though it is the economy, stupid. However, I'm looking at a headline today in the Washington Post this morning that uses a word that you very rarely see in a headline. And the word is astonishing. The U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs last month, which takes the unemployment rate to a 53-year low.

It has not been this low since man walked on the moon in 1969. I, of course, remember this, you do not. But this is kind of an amazing, an amazing story. And of course, you know, people are wringing their hands, oh, this is really tough for the Fed. Oh, my God, what does this mean for inflation? But I started in the morning, reading all of the accounts saying, well, you know, the economy is definitely slowed. And economists are thinking that, you know, I guess jobs were created, but that pace is going to be down. And then boom, 517,000. A reminder that economists are no better at predicting things than most of the rest of us. But I don't know. What do you think, Tim? I mean, it's like, what the hell is going on with this economy? We keep saying it's

going to be a recession. It's a recession. It's slowing down. It's slowing down. And the jobs market just keeps saying, hold my beer. Is it possible that the same economists that thought that inflation was going to be transitory and were wrong on that side are now wrong on the other side about how recession will come out the back end? You know, this is not a crew with a perfect record. I have this up from Justin Wolfers.

400,000 average payroll growth per month. So average job growth per month, 400,000 from the last 12 month period. That doesn't feel very recession-y to me. You know, he has a funny little chart pulled up where he's like the jobs per month during the last actual recession in 2008 was negative 400,000 per month. And it certainly was, there was not a big positive jump leading into that, like we're having right now. So, you know, I don't know, the future will take care of itself, I guess. And I'm no better than the wrong... I don't even know what that means.

It's just, it's one of those kind of like Zen Buddhist lines that, you know, it's not worth worrying about. And it's not worth trying to predict. But like that said, there's not a ton of evidence that we have a recession coming, despite the fact that a lot of commentators are trying to wish us into one for some reason. You know, I think that there's a good story to tell as far as the post COVID recovery here that's happened. You know, obviously, the inflation was extremely troubling. And there's still, you know, some annoying elements to that for people going to the grocery store and having to pay seven bucks for eggs. You know, eggs are

outside of my price range now, Charlie, we're just we're skipping eggs now in the family. But yeah, but you know, so there's still random annoying things like that. But when you have the lowest unemployment rate since since 1969, when inflation is basically stabilizing, when everyone that wants a job, they essentially can have a job and we're almost at full employment after, you know, one of these just unprecedented century-level disruptions. I mean, I think that things are coming back a lot better than folks, you know, the naysayers wanted to argue. You can really tell how good the job market is because as you say, anyone who wants a job can get a job. And as an illustration of that, you and I both actually have jobs,

which is kind of amazing, right? I mean, when you think about it, the fact that you and I are not unemployed is, I don't know, it's indication of something. I think we both have two jobs, actually. There's so much to talk about today, including, please do not make me defend Ilhan Omar. Okay, we're going to come back to that. Just do not.

There's a lot of periods in that sentence. Fascinating story in the Washington Post. Republicans continue to rally around conservatives who lost their elections. This is an interesting phenomenon because for most of my life, if somebody lost an election, it behaved badly. You forgot about them the next week, right? I mean, they became absolutely invisible. And yet we've created this sort of weird, well, the Republicans have created this weird

new zone where they can claim to be victims and they have this little cocoon that they can go into. So Carrie Lake is in the weird position of having lost the election, refusing to say she lost the election. But, you know, she's got the world. She's, the election, refusing to say she lost the election, but, you know, she's got the world. She's, you know, talking about running for Senate. Our colleague, Sarah Longwell, I think has a great quote in the Times.

Actually, so do you. Look at this. This is a big bulwark moment. There now exists an entire state of being for people where you never apologize. You always claim you're a victim. Somebody should write a book about that, by the way. And there's safety in numbers and solidarity in the victimhood.

And that gives you a community and a place to fight back from, said Longwell. Exactly. Much of the appeal, the Post writes, rests in a shared sense of victimization, with the political losers holding themselves up as martyrs for a broad cause. And then there's this guy who says, the victimization culture is definitely at the core of this trend, said Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist and ardent, ardent Trump critic who works as a writer for the Bulwark website. The base has determined that the elites are unfairly targeting conservatives and must be treated as enemy combatants. And then you also said Miller, who previously worked for the losing presidential

campaigns of Mitt Romney and Jeb, you know, feel free to clap, Bush, added that in this context, accepting defeat and playing by their rules is seen as weakness. You kind of nailed it there, Tim. Thank you. You kind of nailed it. Yeah. She cut out my final line about how personally I miss the days of the strong, silent type who take losses like a man. But I don't know, maybe that was a little much for the Washington Post or the Times, whichever paper that was in. I left out your last quote, another quote, throwing a tantrum about how these elites have conspired against you and committing to topple them, even if it takes force, is seen as strength. This is important, that any apology, any concession that you lost the vote, it's all about,

you know, who is strong, who fights, no matter what. And so, I mean, obviously, this is not new, but everything feels like it's accelerating. Yeah. And we'll look, and we're very early in the 2024 primary cycle and all this, so we'll see how this all shakes out. But the notion that the NRSC is inviting Cary Lake through to come into the building to strategize about a possible Senate run, I mean, it's ludicrous. A friend of mine in Arizona was texting me earlier this week and said that Cary, that on Sunday afternoon, so across from the, you know, AFC championship game, a big sporting event, the losing candidate from the governor's race

held a rally in Arizona where she's pretending like she's the rightful governor. It was around by his house or whatever. And he said, there's a line around the block. You know, he said the place was packed. You know, again, that's not the majority of the party per se that, you know, it's like, you know, a couple hundred people that are showing up to one thing. But it shows, you know, that is a very different situation, right? You know, the losing governor candidates don't usually, you know, I think if Mandela Barnes, God love him, threw a rally in Madison tomorrow for himself, you know, I don't think that there'd be a rabid crowd of Democrats, you know, cheering him on and going along with the fiction that he actually won the Senate race, right? And this is a category difference. This is not usual. It's abnormal. And I think that that post story does a good job of just assessing like, what is, there's something underlying all this, right? I mean, there's the actions of the politicians,

of course, but the fact that there's a demand for this, I think, speaks to the id of where the party's at. So, I have a pre-Tim Miller memory. Okay. Long, long pre. What year were you born? That's private information, Charlie, but, you know, early 80s. Okay, you weren't reading the newspaper

or campaigning in 1968, though. I was not. I wanted to just be sure that... My mother was nine. I'll age my mother. Okay, okay. My mother was nine in 1968. Oh, man, this is hard. Okay, so how old was I in 1968?

Anyway, what I remember, because that was like the center of my universe, you know, being in the McCarthy campaign and everything, and flying around the country with my dad, you know, who was Eugene McCarthy's campaign manager. I was at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that summer, the famous, you know, riot convention. One memory that's really stuck with me is the newspaper, reading the newspaper the day after the presidential election.

Maybe it was a week after Nixon defeating Hubert Humphrey. And my dad said, look at this paper, you know, see what's not there. And what he was pointing out to me was Hubert Humphrey's name was not even mentioned. This was a week after the presidential race, and nobody was writing about Hubert Humphrey. He just vanished. Now, he later went back in the Senate. But there once was a time when we did not obsess about the candidates that lost the election. So you're down at this elite globalist event down in Palm Springs, right?

Yeah, literally. Yeah, it's both elite and globalist. Yeah, there are minor royals here. And it's all kind of absurdities. You're probably going through the breakfast buffet, you, George Soros, Karl Rove, right? Stuff like that. Exactly. But Karl Rove is there, right? Yeah, Karl's here. And we did a panel yesterday where we kind of hashed some of this stuff out. And unfortunately, since this is, you know, an elite globalist event, we don't have the video of this. Everyone's just gonna have to trust my my recollection. I'm prepared to do that. Our friends Susan Glasser

and Peter Baker were on this panel with me and Carl. Yeah. And so we were just discussing where the Republican Party is going. So what does Carl say? I kind of can guess what you said. What my take is, it ends up getting a little hot up there. So, you know, it's a little prep, I guess, for your Paul Ryan interview, because I wonder how Paul Ryan and Carl might be decently aligned. But Carl was saying that the Republican Party's affinity for Trump was a lot visceral and emotional. This was the area that we agree on, you know, and was not policy based. Right. Really. Right. OK. And so that part we agree on.

Now, here's where we parted company. So for that reason, he thought that there's a lot of evidence that the party is actually poised to pivot back out, do want, Republican voters do want to support Ukraine and do, are interested in tax cuts and smaller government and energy independence and making, you know, America being strong on the world stage. And I just started laughing. Excuse me, Tim, I don't want to interrupt you here, but I have to go let my unicorn out. At one point, the moderator said to Carl, he's like, okay, so in that context, what would a platform be like for a Tim Scott campaign in 2024? And I interrupted. I was like, Carl's a nonfiction writer, actually. So I don't know that he should be writing policy speeches for something that has no chance of happening. But yeah, so we went back and forth quite a bit and it got a little heated. At one point he told me that I should stop yelling at him. And I was like, I'm not yelling. Oh, really? Yeah. And he was in good spirits at the end.

What were you yelling at him about? Just like, this is ridiculous. Like, this is ridiculous. You know, I rehashed my time at the Turning Point USA conference. I was like, nobody talks about any of the things that you're talking about. Nobody, none of these people care. The delusion runs deep, doesn't it? I mean, it really runs deep. And he starts listing, the policies start going very, like deeper and deeper. He starts mentioning how people were upset about Obama not following up through on his red line in Syria. And they want the US to be tough and back up what we say. And I'm like, none of these fucking people even remember what happened in Syria. Donald Trump didn't have a clear position on what Donald Trump wanted us to go to war in Syria. That's not even what he's for.

And Donald Trump is out now defending Vladimir Putin, saying that Biden forced him to go into Ukraine. So I'm not sure a muscular projection of American power is really what the Republican Party is about right now. He also said that the House was going to be strong on Ukraine. And I just I kept having to interrupt. I was like, what world are you living in, Carl? This is not the party. It's not where people are. So and then, you know, then we obviously had a back and forth on Donald Trump. And he tried to have a big D contest over who Donald Trump hated more. And, you know, so so he tried to have a big D contest over who Donald Trump hated more. So he tried to point out that he was anti-Trump.

So we had that one area of conflict. What does that mean for Karl Rove? Anti-Trump means anti-Trump until he starts winning again? Anti-Trump until what? Do we have the Chris DiNunno clip? I think that it means for Karl Rove pretty similar to what it means for Chris DiNunno, I think. Okay. So I was wanting to slow walk into this. Okay, sorry. The kabuki dance of the normies. And we've used the phrase soul crushing in the past, but, you know, just watching one Republican after another, you know, seem to take a strong stand and then cave in.

I mean, this is a long story. This is, you know, the last six years of our lives, right? Do you realize that it's been like six or seven years, Tim? I keep coming back to all of that. Yeah, almost eight. I mean, this will be the eight-year anniversary of the escalator. I didn't need to hear that. Yeah, sorry. It was Groundhog Day yesterday.

Well, I was doing a podcast with Rick Wilson, and we were talking about this, that we have kind of a PTSD flashback to 2016, where, you know, people were like, Trump is absolutely unacceptable. There's no way we're going to support Trump. Nobody supports Trump. You know, how can we stop Trump? And then one by one, as he starts winning the primaries, like, well, you know, we got to go with the team. It's got to be with the team. And they caved in, they caved in, they caved in. And what was considered unthinkable became thinkable. And

then it became inevitable. and then it became required. And that's why it feels like Groundhog Day, we're going through the same shit all over again. I know you talked about this on the Next Level podcast, which is excellent. I link in my newsletter this morning. Yesterday, two of the anti-Trump great hopes, former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, both of whom have been very, very critical of Donald Trump, both of whom pin them down on the question of, you say that you're, you know, anti-Trump, but what does that mean? Would you support him for president? I mean, Tim, given everything that's happened, and I'm waving my hands, everything, I mean, the sedition, the overthrow, the terminate the constitution, the dinner with Nazis, the fact that every day he puts out another absolutely batshit, crazy, demented tweet.

Like today, he's talking about Ashley Babbitt was murdered and, you know, sliming the Capitol cops with every freaking thing that we know about him. The easiest question in the world should be, so we don't think we should put Donald Trump back in the White House again, right? This is the easiest question in the world, right? Yeah, and there's a really snappy two-word answer to that question, actually. Something we've been working on for quite a while now. Never Trump. Never. But what does never mean, Tim? Never means never. Okay, here's Larry Hogan, who I think, at least

initially, I think he broke Sarah Longwell's heart. I mean, she's got like a poster and a shrine in her house to Larry Hogan. Is this right? This is what I've heard. I know. Vote of candles. Yeah. I haven't seen it, but I definitely, I think the vote of candle part is true. I don't, I can't verify though.

Okay. Because I mean, she's on record just saying she's kind of a Larry Hogan stan. I don't want to put words in her mouth. Okay. So I had a Larry Hogan affair as well. No candle. So here's Larry Hogan yesterday asked the what ought to be the easiest question in the universe. Let's play number one. Will you support whoever the nominee of the Republican Party is in 2024? No, I imagine

that will be the case. I'm anxious to find out who the nominee is going to be. Well, I'm assuming that no one knows, but it might be Donald Trump. So you're saying if it's Donald Trump, you'll be willing to support him? Yeah, as I've said, Hugh, I don't think it is going to be Donald Trump. But, you know, we'll cross that bridge or jump off that bridge when we come to it. Now, wait a minute. That was a little Lamar Jackson. Earlier you said you'd support the nominee, and then you said we'd cross the bridge. I'm not letting go of the leg. I'm like Miles Garrett. If Trump is the nominee, does Larry Hogan support him?

Yeah, I just don't think it's going to be the nominee. You know, also the image of, you know, Hugh Hewitt hanging on the leg like, you know, my dog humping somebody as I kind of got stuck with that. Hugh Hewitt is pretty tough when Larry Hogan's in the hot seat. The Donald Trump interview, I don't know if you listened to that one, a little less leg humpy in the Donald Trump. Well, I guess he was a different kind of leg humpy, I guess. So just to put this in context, it wasn't that long ago that Larry Hogan, and as I said, Larry Hogan is not held back in his criticism of Donald Trump. Here's Larry Hogan talking about his responsibility for January 6th. OK, so let's play number two. Does President Trump have blood on his hands? Yes.

There's no question in my mind that he was he was responsible for inciting this this riotous mob. This was an insurrection. And, you know, they stormed the Capitol and threatened to kill the vice president and put the lives of people in danger. And he had a huge part, a huge role to play in that. Okay. He just said, yes, but it was pretty clear. So at that point, if you believe what Larry Hogan just said, wouldn't it be a very, very tiny, tiny, small step for mankind to say, and therefore he is disqualified from any position of trust ever again in the United States, right? You had a whole bunch of Republican senators who voted to convict him in the second impeachment trial, which would have disqualified him from any office of trust. Correct? Right. They've gone on record never again. Okay. So here's Chris Sununu, who had in the past described the former president as effing crazy. Let's play number three. If Trump's the Republican nominee, do you support

him? If he's the nominee? Yeah. Yeah. I fully plan on supporting the Republican nominee. He's not going to be the nominee though. I mean, that is a real hypothetical. Isn't that, isn't that, I mean, given your critiques of him over the past, isn't that, walk me through how you get there. If you think that, you know, if you've been as critical as he's been, if you've joked and sort of half joked that he's crazy. Well, look at the alternative. All right. That's our good friend, Steve Hayes from the dispatch. And he's crazy. Well, look at the alternative. All right, that's our good friend Steve Hayes from The Dispatch. And he's going through the whole thing. It's like, okay, can we just walk through this, how you get up to, you know, all the things you said about him, and yet you cannot say because your tribal loyalties are so intense

because however completely awful and toxic and dangerous Donald Trump is, well, you know, consider the alternative. He's not worse than Joe Biden. Has Joe Biden tried a coup? Steve is a good sport for pairing with Chris like that. And I need to go back and listen to the full interview. But what are you even talking about? Consider the alternative. Like what could possibly be worse than Donald Trump? Joe Biden and a communistic, atheistic, woke Democrat. Donald Trump has been the worst president ever of all time, certainly of our lifetimes. Like, what is Chris Sununu looking at? And the whole thing is just, I went into this a little bit on the next level, but the whole thing is just so phony. It's so farcical. It's obviously farcical. Nobody thinks that Chris Sununu actually would prefer Donald Trump to Joe Biden. And if

Chris Sununu is not an ambitious politician, if he was just a plebe living in New Hampshire, he would have voted for Joe Biden. I'm sure he probably would have also voted for the normal Republicans and stuff still, but like, or maybe he would have stepped in and not voted for anybody, but that he, he fits the exact profile of everybody that swung between Mitt Romney in 2012 and 2020. Like it's all farce. And so then you get to the question, is it worth it?

Like to, for what? To finish third in your home state of New Hampshire and then have to drop out of a presidential race. Like that's really worth it. Because we know where this is going, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like where this is going, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Like Chris Sununu is not going to be the nominee of this party. Somebody asked me yesterday, so what lane does Larry Hogan or Chris Sununu have? And I said, okay, to the extent there is a lane, it's like a bike lane to a den. I mean, there is no lane. There's no bike lane. It's like one of those little roads in New Hampshire, the windy ones in Europe. They're on the sideline on the rocks. And it's not paved. Trust me, it is no lane. There's no bike lane. It's like one of those little roads in New Hampshire, the windy ones in Europe. They're on the sideline on the rocks. And it's not paved.

Trust me, it is not paved. And there are some big freaking holes in it. Now, Larry Hogan, because I think that he was desperate to keep Sarah from plunging into real depression, quote unquote, walked it back. And I've spent some time with this. Diagramming it? I actually did try to diagram it a little bit. And it's sort of a sort of walk back, kind of. This is his, you know, semi sort of walking back.

He starts the tweet. To be clear, which is always a warning sign, right? Anytime I apologize, to be clear, I am about to throw dust and smoke in your face. To be clear, Governor Larry Hogan writes, my position on Trump hasn't changed. Trump won't commit to supporting the Republican nominee, and I won't commit to supporting him. As I have repeatedly said, I fully expect to support the Republican nominee, who I don't believe will be Trump. Is that the end of the clear tweet? That's it.

So, okay, wait. So this is what McKay Coppins in The Atlantic describes, I think, is the magical thinking. We need to get rid of Trump. And this is how we're going to do it. Something, something, something, unicorn, maybe a meteor, or maybe he'll die. So to be clear, he doesn't think Trump's going to win, but he will support the Republican nominee. And he's absolutely confident that some unicorn is going to take Trump out. So I don't know that I Trump. That's it. Ever. That's it. It's not that hard. Never means never.

I will never vote for Donald Trump. It's like bewildering that this is even a fucking issue at this point. I mean, the people storming the Capitol, we don't need to keep going around and around on this. But if you would have told somebody, if you had gotten a time travel back to 2011 and said to these people that a president was going to lead a storming of the Capitol in order to try to steal an election and people are going to die and there will be Confederate flags waving above the Capitol and you were going to hedge on whether or not you'd support keeping that person in power again. You know, I think Chris Nunez and Larry Hogan and everybody else would look at you like you're insane, right? I mean, that is so far beyond the realm of possibility. And yet here we are. And for no good reason, you know, they're trying to, oh, see if they can use weasel

words in order to help maintain viability in a party that has left them behind. Larry Hogan wouldn't even support the governor candidate of his own state that went to replace him. Republicans nominated an insane insurrectionist. So he is capable of doing that. He is capable of saying, because they appear to be acknowledging some sort of a mandate, a litmus test, that you must be loyal

to the party to be viable, right? So if you're going to be running for president, you have to commit to support the nominee, which is a rule that applies to everyone else except Donald J. Trump. Okay, so same day, which is a rule that applies to everyone else except... Donald J. Trump. Donald Trump. Okay, so same day, yes.

As all of this is happening, Trump, you know, once again, refuses to commit to supporting the GOP nominee if it was not him, because of course he's Trump. It would depend, Trump told Hugh Hewitt, who was not actually grabbing onto his leg quite as aggressively. It would depend. It would have to depend on who the nominee was.

In other words, as long as it's me. Trump's unwillingness to deliver a full-throated endorsement of the eventual nominee stood in contrast to other leading Republicans, including some critics of the former president, who have promised to support the GOP nominee, even if it is Trump. Now, Tim, this may trigger you, but this feels like 2016 all over again because that was the game he played. And this was the game that utterly unmanned Reince Priebus. Yes. The moment he said, you know, I am not necessarily going to support the nominee unless everybody else promises to support me.

He had Reince Priebus' balls in a lockbox for the rest of his life. Reince got on that train, dove to New York to give him a special press conference, you know, where he congratulated him for committing to the party. And yes, no, it is triggering to look back on. Here's the other thing, you know, to go back to your Groundhog Day, we're coming up on eight years since then. And the fact that people haven't learned anything from it. Again, why would if you're Larry H learned anything from it. Again, why would if you're Larry Hogan or any of these people, why would you also blindly say you're going to support the nominee if it wasn't Trump? I mean, in your home state of Maryland, they put up an

insane insurrectionist for governor. In New Hampshire, they put up the general Don Bolduc, you know, a vaccine conspiracist, an election conspiracist. If it's not going to be Trump, it's not going to be Chris Sununu. And now over eight years, since that moment where Trump put Reince's balls in the jar, the Hugh Hewitt on his program and on all these programs have been spreading pro-Trump propaganda. Like the people that have stuck around and listened to the Hugh Hewitt show day in and day out. In what earth do you think those people are going to wake up one day and say, you know, Larry Hogan, I think, is what I'm looking for. Like, who is the audience for this equivocating?

These folks now spent eight, they're in, they're on the train. Exactly. Yeah. And this was another argument that I had with Carl last night. Carl's like, oh, well, if you look at the Trump ballot number, you know, people are starting to get sick of him. People are starting to get tired of him. And I'm like, it's true in the narrow sense that people are getting tired of Donald Trump,

the man, because he keeps losing and the shine is worn off him. But they're not tired of what he brought to the party. They're eating that shit up. Okay. And the people with this section of a small section of maybe 10% of the party who all hang out with Karl Rove and Chris Sununu in New York City, like besides that small group of people, like the rest of the party likes him and is just wavering whether, oh, maybe we should go to a different flavor of Trump, you

know, something that might have a better chance of winning. Like, that's the calculus. These people aren't ready to move on from him in any meaningful sense. So you want a little bit of quasi good news? I would love some, Troy. In contrast to this, which I'm going to put down as mildly surprising. But at this point, we need to grab onto any mildly surprising good news. Of course. You know, I am sitting down with Paul Ryan later this month. So here's the story out of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this morning. Former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan is doubling down on his belief that former President Donald Trump is the wrong choice for Republicans in 2024. Are you ready for it?

I'm ready. Saying he would not support Trump if he becomes the Republican nominee for president. You can say, yes, you can say it. OK. Not that hard. The moment he said it, I'm guessing he felt his chest just kind of just, you know, just loosen up. You know what I'm saying? It's like, oh, man, all that tension in your shoulders.

It's like, I don't have to carry this bullshit around with me anymore. It must have felt really fucking good. Now, I'm getting a little greedy. So since you're interviewing him, I mean, you know, no pressure, but I'm getting a little greedy. I would even, you know what I'd really like? We'll get that clap up to a little faster speed. And Joe Biden is better. And Joe Biden is better.

No, no, no. That's all I'm looking for. That's it. That's all I want. Come on. Come on. This is where you and I are different. He's better than Trump.

He's better. That's all I'm looking for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's better. I'm just going never Trump. Okay, so. All right. Okay.

And of course, look, if it's Trump versus Biden, there's no question I'm voting for Biden. But then again, if in the Wisconsin primary, it's Ron DeSantis versus Trump, I'm sorry, I'm going to vote for Ron DeSantis. And I say that as somebody that voted for Ted Cruz because I just thought that, I know, because, yeah. This is why it feels like Groundhog Day. It's because you're going to be handed a shit sandwich versus the sandwich laced with arsenic. I mean, it's like, choose your, what would you like, Mr. Seitz? Would you like to be hanged or would you like to be put through the wood chipper? Hang, please.

Yeah, but this is, I guess, hold on. This is one of the Biden things. You can't just get, I don't need Paul Ryan to say or any of these people to say, I love Joe Biden. It's great. I think he's doing an A plus job, but you know, you can't be like, you know what? I'm assessing the field. There's somebody I look at and I say, you're a D plus. And someone else I look at and say, you're an F and I would like the D plus better. I'm not grading Biden a D plus, but I'm just saying, if that's where Paul Ryan is, why is that so hard? I don't understand why that's so hard. Okay. Let me, let me go back to reading because we gave him this clap.

Okay, he got a small clap. So here's the direct quote. There are too many people like me in the Republican Party who would not support him if he were the nominee. And that is why I don't think he'll be the nominee. Because everyone knows he'll lose the election if we nominate this guy again. Here's my cautionary note. I think he will lose the election if they nominate this guy again. Here's my cautionary note. I think he will lose the election if they nominate him again.

I am not certain, and people should not be delusional about all of this. So the Janesville Republican, not anymore, has been increasingly outspoken in his opposition to Trump in recent months,

and his comments Thursday come as a number of prominent Republicans consider challenges to the president who blah, blah, blah, blah. But Ryan's comments also land at a time when the former speaker has emerged from several years away from government to present a fresh vision for Republicans that focuses on fiscal reform. You forget all about that. But again, the key point here, he does kind of the Karl Rove thing.

Republican Party is going through a moment where it has to redefine itself. Yes, yes, yes. I agree on all of that. But the key thing is he finally said, no, I will not vote to return him to the presidency. My partisan loyalty does not lead me to say that I want to give the nuclear codes back to Donald Trump. I am not going to give control of the FBI and the Department of Justice back to Donald Trump. I do not want to put Donald Trump in charge of the IRS and the CIA. I do not want to give the button back to Donald Trump. Good.

That wasn't that hard, was it? Really? And I'm glad he put one foot in the water. I'm giving him prompts for it, but I'm down here in the pool. I'm down here in the pool, and I'm just trying to bring him in. What I would like, the next step, the next foot into the water, let's put the Biden thing aside, is to not couch every critique of Donald Trump going into 2024 as an electability critique. Because the fundamental problem with Donald Trump is that he's bad. That he's a bad person. He was a bad president. He's dangerous.

He's racist. He's a threat to the country. That is why he's bad. Okay. Not because that means Republicans might lose. And I get it. We went through all this. I did this. I went on John Hyland's podcast and that fucker pulled up a old clip of me from 2016, 15 sometime on TV. Low blow. I know. I know it was a low blow. And I was sounding like Ryan then. Okay. But I've grayed a little bit and we've had eight years. So I've learned some things over the last eight years. And my critique of Trump in that interview that he pulled up was just all electability. Oh, we can't nominate him or else Hillary will win, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That was a fundamentally empty critique, you know, and also just not right, in addition to not working.

And so that's the next step to get Paul, you know, to get him into a full embrace, into the light. That's where I'd like to just go. It doesn't seem like a big step. The Joe Biden thing might be a big ask. That's diving into the pool. I just want a foot in. I just want one more foot in. Donald Trump is a bad person. Your point is fundamental, and it leads me where I wanted to go here, because until you have a substantive critique of Donald Trump, you're really not engaging in the actual threat. So the whole non-electability thing is a hollow thing because let's be honest about it. And I know a lot of people don't want to hear this. There are tens of millions of Americans that don't believe that Donald Trump is a loser.

They actually believe that he won that election. There are tens of millions of Republican voters who believe that he, this election was stolen, that it was the worst crime, the worst scandal in American history, and that justice demands returning him to the White House. So you and I may be, you know, when Karl Rove and Paul Ryan may be thinking, well, you know, he's got this terrible electability problem. That is not necessarily going to be top of mind.

Also, and you played, I think, a very significant role in this in 2020 in telling Democratic primary voters, guys, do you want to win this election or do you want to scratch your id? They were, what, 11 days away from nominating Bernie Sanders, and you were one of those who sounded the alarm. And it turned out that Democratic primary voters were very pragmatic. They really wanted someone who could win. I don't think Republican primary voters have the same mindset. So I don't think that it's going to be enough to say. And what I wanted to get to was, so Ron DeSantis is sitting down there and essentially the only thing he says about Trump is, look at the scoreboard. I won, he lost. At some point, he's going to have to move beyond that,

but I don't know whether he will. I'm trying to imagine, well, two things. Will Ron DeSantis ever issue a substantive critique of Donald Trump? And if he does, what would he say? I can't imagine what it's going to be in this environment. I can't imagine what Nikki Haley will say about Donald Trump that would be anything other than, we need a new generation, which is just not going to cut it. I'm going to answer the Santa's question, but just really quick on the message to the Republican voters, the electability message. You also have to think about who has credibility on this with them. Let's put aside the millions, tens of millions who think Donald Trump won. The remaining probably half of the party, let's say, that is pragmatic, right, or that might be possibly

pragmatic and open to a pragmatic argument. Paul Ryan is like the worst messenger for that. And any establishment person, I don't mean to pick on him, Karl Rovis, right? Because these people look at this and they say, well, you told me I had to swallow McCain and Romney, right? You told me I had to swallow Romney-Ryan, which wasn't my favorite ticket, you know, because of electability. And you guys got whooped. And then Trump came around and won. They cannot use the electability argument. You're right. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. So, DeSantis maybe has a little more credibility with this because he did win in Florida. Well, I guess Trump won Florida, but he did win by a bigger margin. So there's a little bit more credibility with DeSantis. He is going to have to come up with other arguments. To me, I think the two obvious ones

are going to be very unappealing to you and me and to every listener of this podcast, I assume, which is that Trump got bullied by Dr. Fauci and did too much of that, right? And that he should have been more like freedom Ron on COVID and let more people die. I think that's going to be one critique. And maybe the border, right? Like you said, we'd build a wall and Mexico would pay for it. Like, where is the wall? I don't, you know, we still have big gaps. Here's a picture of Arizona. You had four years. We'll see if he has the cojones to do that kind of argument. You know, he hasn't to date. And I think that he's probably happy to set it out. But no, but none of these, who would be the

person to be on stage? And this goes to God love Sarah Longwell, who wants Hogan or Sununu to run for this reason. I think this is a good earnest reason that would have some value. Who would be the one on the stage? It's like, no, actually, Donald Trump's problem isn't the vaccines, right? Donald Trump's problem is his corruption. We can go down all the list. Having someone on the stage say that would serve some purpose. Anybody who actually thinks that they could win, no matter how delusional that is, isn't going to do that.

Therein lies the problem. My hand is raised here. Okay, please. This is why there is raised here. Oh, it's your place. This is why there is a lane. It's not a lane to victory, but it's still a lane for Liz Cheney. Because Liz Cheney would be the person who would stand on that stage and say, let me tell you how I am different than all of these other guys. I believe that he is a fundamental threat to democracy. I think that he has been a disgrace to this country and we can never put him back into office.

And then I think what you will see is the sort of irrelevance then of Larry Hogan and Chris Sununu standing there and going, yeah, I agree, but sort of, what of, you know. I would be highly entertained by watching the RNC twist itself into pretzels, trying to borrow Liz Cheney from the state, which of of course they would do because their job is, you know, is to protect the precious, you know, at all costs. So I think that would be highly entertaining. Okay, a couple of other things we got to get to before the end of this. Okay. I do not want to defend Ilhan Omar. I do believe that she has said anti-Semitic things. I think she has engaged in anti-Semitic tropes.

However, it is just the hypocrisy of what happened yesterday. It just burns. You compare the worst thing that Ilhan Omar has said. It is not even in the ballpark with what Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene have trafficked in, the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the attendance at white nationalist neo-Nazi events. In fact, the worst things that Ilhan Omar has said pale in comparison to what Donald Trump has said. And he is still the leader of the party. His casual acceptance of anti-Semitism, his jibes, you know, that, you know, Jews better watch out. They need to be more loyal, et cetera, et cetera. Having dinner with Holocaust deniers. So for the Republican in the House saying, well, we have to have standards here. We have to have some, you know, legislative hygiene. To pick on Elon Omar, well, George fucking Santos is sitting right there.

And Marjorie Taylor Greene has, you Greene has her tongue in Kevin McCarthy's ear, is just one of these ludicrous scenes. Yeah, totally agree. And just really short on Elon, I agree with what you said. I mean, you know, she gave the statement saying she didn't know that there were anti-Semitic tropes about Jews and money. I was like, okay, come on, come on, don't pee on me and tell me it's raining. Okay. That said, everything that you said is exactly right. She's totally targeted. And there's absolutely a racial subtext to it. There is absolutely a hypocrisy here. It's insane to want to vote her out. I honestly don't think it's good politics. I just think on the face of it, it looks stupid. I mean, it's like all these

voters that just projected them, you know, your average median suburban voter actually doesn't want, you know, a bunch of old white guys targeting this one woman, you know, when I'm not dealing with what's happening in their own house. Right. Like that's just it's not popular. It's hypocritical. And, you know, we could go on and on about the anti-Semitism of these other guys. Did you watch her speech on the floor yesterday? Sorry, I didn't. Again, I am not an Elon Omar fan. I just, I want to underline this. She was,

okay, and, you know, cancel me, but she was magnificent. That was an incredible speech. She had a picture of her nine-year-old self, this, you know, young girl, you know, who was, you know, a refugee from war and she came to this country and it was powerful.

To your point about it being bad politics, they have made her a martyr. They have elevated her to a Republicans who would vote against this, just the raw retribution. I mean, you had several of them who had issued statements saying we can't engage in this kind of tit for tat. It's wrong to be doing something like this. And in the end, every single one of them lined up to ouster from the committee. So was it wrong to think that there would have been some Republican? What, you know, Sparts, is that her name? Yeah, from Indiana and Victoria Veronica. Oh boy, I'm just, I'm having a senior moment there. They basically said they were going to vote no, and then they didn't. Yeah, well, they said that they got a promise from McCarthy

that in the future, these things would go to ethics committee. It's all just BS. It's total BS. And then again, we're all these supposed secret governing Republicans. Yes. I keep being told that there's this whole governing wing of Republicans. You're Patrick McHenry's in North Carolina and you're Mike McCall's and Carl was telling me about, you know, the great young new congressman in Arizona that they've got. And, you know, your, your pal in Wisconsin, Mike Gallagher, right? Like, yeah, these people really want this? Anyway, it's bad politics. And the other thing for me that it recalls is there's nothing that she's done.

Probably the most underrated grotesque moment of the last eight years, which is a very competitive category, is when Trump sent the tweets saying to send them back to the squad, when Elon was the only one that's actually an immigrant, everyone else from America. And then he has that rally in North Carolina and people are chanting, send them back, send them back. And that was the most blood boiling moment for me of the whole era, I think, just because just the raw, just racism and how it was just totally anathema to the American ideal. And so, you know, again, targeting this person, it's in the context of, you know, all those other actions by Republicans that just make this seem, you know, even more maddening. I wanted to just comment a little bit on your piece about Brooke Jenkins, who is the DA in San Francisco. She's the one that replaced the

uber-progressive guy that didn't actually believe in enforcing the law, which seems a little bit unfair. This was a magnificent piece, Tim. Thank you. And I'm saying this to your face. Well, actually, not directly to your face. To my ears. But she is a very impressive individual. And I was struck by, you know, how blunt she was in saying, we need more cops.

We need to start enforcing the law. And it is interesting that it's happening in San Francisco, you know, which is, you know, has to be the, you know, apex progressive capital of America. And yet the voters there threw out the uber progressive DA and they put in, I mean, she's pretty badass, isn't she? Just talk to me a little bit about her because I was, I have to say, I was prepared to roll my eyes a little bit, and I was very impressed. People should watch your Snapchat video conversation with her and then read the article that has the backstory about the—but she's impressive, isn't she? Yeah, she's tough. I was impressed by her from a distance, and so I wanted to do this, but she also exceeded my expectations. It's funny that not in the article, I don't think, but after, you know, she had to go, you know, do her real job of being the city's top cop, you know, she met with her comms person. And then, you know, I bumped into the comms guy

walking out of the building and he's like, and I said, well, what'd she think? And he's like, ah, she thought it was good. She was just, she's worried that I was going to be mad at her for being too real. That is never a negative. No, that's the good part about it. Right. That she's being real. That's never a negative. Yeah. But I, good part about it. She's too real. Right, that she's being real. That's never a negative. Yeah, but you get that in your head as a politician, right? That you've got to be cautious, that you've got to use your words precisely. And she just let it rip. I mean, the one anecdote that's in the story that really caught me off guard was when I was like,

okay, obviously all this takes time. There's still problems. She's only been in for about six months. And she was lamenting that it's tough, right? Like arresting people, you know, making sure you get a good case together, getting judges to not give them bail. Like all of this, you know, it's not something that just happens in a snap, cleaning up the streets.

And so I said to her, okay, well, what would you, if I could give you some fairy dust and you just got to one magic thing that would help you clean up the streets faster. What would it be? She was like, more police. I was like, I mean, that caught me off. You know, that is just to be so blunt and just go right at it. You sort of blow it out. Okay.

That was not what I expected her to say. And, you know, I know that she'd been more supportive of the police than other, obviously her predecessor and others, but for that to be the fundamental issue, you know, and to identify it as such and not kind of dance around it and, you know, to throat clear about progressive concerns about, you know, some legitimate progressive concerns, obviously, with what we say with Tyree Nichols, but just to say, hey, you know, we need accountability for bad cops, right, obviously, and, you know, we need to make sure we're policing in a fair way. You know, I said to her, you know, I just saw an open air drug market and you can see in the video, you know, we watch these guys doing drugs right on the street, right in the middle of town. And she's amazing. I was crazy. It was like three, you know, I we're outside

Whole Foods, you know, and the video is pretty jarring. And she's like, well, this is what is different from her and Rudy Giuliani, right? So, you know, you don't like, I'm not trying to be, you know, stop and frisk and broken windows. I can't just go down the street and start arresting people. You got to find the real dealers that are doing this and you got to put together a case against them and you need to have witnesses, right? Like all of that stuff takes time. And so, you know, she's very conscious of the racial profiling element of this and all that. But, you know, once you just acknowledge that, you know, she's very conscious of the racial profiling element of this and all that. But, you know, once you just acknowledge that, you know, there still is the fundamental reality that that they need more police, and that need there need to be more arrests, there need to be actual

accountability for people that steal from Target and stuff, you know, because it's all part of a broader system between, you know, the thieves and the users and the dealers, and you got to break it up. And so it was encouraging. And the thing that's most encouraging is as a California resident, you know, some of the California stuff is overblown, but like the state has some good things going for it, but it also has some real problems. And it's frustrating that so many of the Democratic politicians can't just say that. I can't just say, hey, we're better than the Republicans. We have this great story on economic growth, but like we have this real issue on housing,

on crime, and we need to deal with it. We need to change some of our policies. And that's a rare person who's willing to say that. And she says it without any hesitation. Well, that's what makes this, I think, so significant, because she provides the permission structure to say, look, if she, if this Black, Latino, progressive DA in San Francisco can talk like this, then maybe you can too. Right. Because, I mean, really, here's a flag here. So, as we're wrapping up, we do have some Chinese spy balloon news. Oh, great.

What's the update? Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has announced that he is postponing his trip to Beijing as the U.S. probes suspected spy balloon. This is a BFD. It is a BFD. President Biden postponed his top diplomats for Biden intervene. President Biden postponed his top diplomats first official trip to China on Friday in response to the Pentagon's discovery of an alleged Chinese spy balloon. Wow. Flying over

the continental United States, a U.S. official familiar with the matter. The decision came just hours before Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was scheduled to depart for Beijing in a dramatic indication of how seriously the Biden administration takes the incident and wants to avoid appearing soft on China. So I'll be honest with you. When we started this, I was thinking, is this going to be sort of just like a novelty story sort of on the side? No, it is now the biggest story. It's underappreciated just because it doesn't fit the narrative that Biden has been very conscious about being tough on China, at least some in policy, but also in positioning. You know, that was just something that Ron Klain, I think, if you are a close watcher of the Ron Klain Twitter feed, right? Anytime that Biden says something that helps competition with China,

that stands up to China, standing behind Nancy Pelosi when she wanted to go visit Taiwan, you know, and, you know, there's the Pompeo story in the book about how Trump told him to soften on China, you know, because he was working the deal out with Xi, right? And so, I don't know that this is like broken through to the average voter. And, you know, I think in 2024, there'll be a lot of China demagoguery in the Republican Party, some of which will be legit, some of which will be, you know, performative bullshittery. But like, in a lot of ways, substantively, Biden really has been tougher on China and very conscious of this than Trump was with maybe exception of the tariffs. And it's just another example of that. So, I mean, good on him. I also thought it was gonna be a novelty

story. So that's great. Okay. so you have pipelined to the administration. You're the comms guy. You're the guy who's into messaging. So I'm just thinking, you want a photo op? You have Derek Brandon go out to Montana in a flak jacket, put on the sunglasses, put him next to one of those HIMARS, and say, you know, fuck you, China, and have Joe Biden take it out. We're taking it out.

I'll send the suggestion in to Neera. And then you were the guy who came up with the mission accomplished sign, right? I was in college. Hey, speaking of messaging, this is like a total digression. Last night, kind of randomly, I was watching Netflix and watched the David Letterman special about his visit to Kiev and his sit down with President Zelensky. Have you seen this at all? I haven't seen it.

And I saw that he did it, but I haven't seen it. Okay. I'm not really a Letterman guy, but this is awesome. And it was pretty awesome watching. And I would really like to get your take on this. Watching Zelensky, you know, talking about his life, his values, the man is not just articulate, he is eloquent with a depth that I'm just sitting there thinking, is there any American politician who is like this, who seems so

real, who is engaging on this particular level? And he's speaking in Ukrainian, but you have the subtitles. If you admired Volodymyr Zelensky before, you will admire him more after watching this. And I don't want to just reduce it to he's a good communicator because there's something that he is bringing to this whole moment in history that really feels quite extraordinary. I just wanted to recommend on Netflix, the David Letterman sitting down with Vladimir Zelensky, because you're watching somebody that

comes along, really, it feels like only once in a century. He's been phenomenal. His New Year's message. Yeah, I don't know if you watch that video. They put out a New Year's video, which is now a month old or whatever. But if you did miss that, I would add that to the recommendation list. Absolutely phenomenal. Tim, have a great weekend. Enjoy yourself down in Palm Springs. And we will do this again next week, okay? Sounds great. See you, Charlie.

All right. Thanks for listening to the Weekend Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. I'll be back on Monday, and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.