The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Miller: Normal v Crazy

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

It wasn't like the boring 90s, but politics this week felt almost normal. Meanwhile, Trump's bleats are getting more demented and DeSantis is all-in on attacking him for fast-tracking a vaccine. Plus, the war on Pride Month. Tim Miller is back with Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, before we get started today, a quick note. We really appreciate the support of all of our listeners. You're the reason that this is consistently one of the top 10 political podcasts in the nation. I think we're number five today, but it moves up and down. And actually, we do pretty well in Great Britain too, believe it or not. So I wanted to ask you to consider becoming a member of Bulwark Plus. I'll be honest with you. Most of our stuff is free, and we intend to keep it that way. But membership does have its privileges. Bulwark Plus. I'll be honest with you. Most of our stuff is free and we intend to keep it that way, but membership does have its privileges. Bulwark Plus members can listen to an ad-free version of this podcast and you have access to all of our live streams, secret podcasts,

and my weekly chat with Mona Charon just between us. Bulwark Plus membership also gives you complete access to all of our newsletter, including JBL's Daily Triad and my newsletter, Morning Shots. In fact, in today's edition of Morning Shots, Bulwark Plus members will have access to our updated list of the deplorables of the week. And it is, as usual, a target-rich environment. So I hope you'll just think about it, at least as a way of reminding yourself that you are not the crazy one. Think about joining Bulwark Plus. Well, it is Friday.

It is June 2nd, which means that it is the first Friday podcast of the month that my beloved Denver Nuggets, the first NBA Finals game ever in Denver. And so I flew in to go with my brother, who is just a diehard Nuggets fan. It was an emotional evening to just kind of walk in there, 30 years of watching this team. And it also was really fun to just beat the shit out of the heat last night. And it was a good evening.

But I'm ready. I'm ready to podcast. I'm up and at them. I got my coffee. You know, I'm riding high off the Victory, off the Nikola Jokic magic fumes, and I'm ready to go. Well, I was worried that I would need to do something to get you into the mood. So I actually have a tune for you. Oh, no. No, this is not a name that tune. This is not like this. This is, believe it or not, and I have this in my newsletter this morning on the deplorables of the week. I mean, normally, Carrie Lake, I think, would be sidelined because otherwise

she would be in every week. But, you know, kind of a special thing for her. The election denialist and fabulist is now showing off her musical skills. I've missed this. This is exciting. I know. I know. I thought you'd like this. So Kerry Lake is releasing a song called 81 Million Votes My Ass with the team that is behind Trump's January 6th prison choir track. OK, and they played a preview of this new song. This is undoubtedly about to go to the top of the charts. 81 Million V, my ass. It appeared Wednesday night on Gateway Pundit's Rumble account, which is probably why you missed it. So here's Carrie Lake.

Just a short bit of it, not the whole thing, I promise. If you would have told me two years ago, three years ago, that I would be in the middle of a political movement, I would have said, put down Hunter's crack pipe. Right now. Right now. Right now. Oh, Jesus. Kill me.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my ass. Hey! 81 million votes my ass. Oh. Okay, so you're welcome, Tim. A little pitchy.

That actually did not meet my very low expectations for what it was going to be. It's not going to make your playlist, is it? No. Who do you think did the mixing on that? Was the weekend on that, do you think? Not sure. I could speculate, but I don't think I should. So we probably should interrupt the nonstop coverage of the fall of Joe Biden, the Biden fall. But apparently there's news out there. The Senate passed the debt deal, so we're not going to have a cataclysmic, catastrophic default, which is kind of good. This GOP slap fight between Trump and DeSantis is kind of picking up a little bit of steam. I want

to get your take on all of that. As you probably noticed, the economy just added 339,000 new jobs. I think it's nearly twice what was expected. And Mike Kevin is still hanging on to his job, despite the fact that he kind of slam dunked the Freedom Caucus. So where do you want to start with all of this, Tim? Let's start with the good news. It's Friday. I'm riding high. You know, Jamal Murray was draining threes. I want to just, let's just, let's keep it positive at the start. You don't want to talk about the Joe Biden sandbagging thing. We can get to that. I mean, as a stumbler, it didn't really jar me that much. I'm somebody who's been known to trip. I've tripped a few times. Sometimes I'm spending too much time

scrolling Twitter and I don't notice a tree branch or something. I've had some injuries related to that. So it's hard for me to judge. A sandbag that somebody left. What's interesting to me, though, is the way in which it's hard for me to judge. A sandbag that somebody left like, yeah. What's interesting to me, though, is the way in which it's so predictable. I mean, the knee-jerk response where it became this doom scroll on Fox News and on conservative media. I mean, you go to right-wing Twitter and it's like everybody felt the need to do it, including my old friend, Scott Walker, the former governor of Wisconsin, who felt the need to comment on this, you know, reaching deep into his Christian roots and suggesting how sad this was and how this was a sign that Joe Biden needed to retire because he tripped over a sandbag. Scott Walker is just a model of athletic prowess. I'm sure that he's never, never tripped over anything.

And you can just see him out there with the Green Bay Packers. Never bumped his head. There are options, right? I mean, you cannot comment on it or you can just see him out there with the Green Bay Packers that is five foot four and a half. There are options, right? I mean, you cannot comment on it or you can be compassionate or you can say, hey, here's my chance to take a cheap shot. And by the way, I think my informal poll would suggest that 94% of right wing Twitter felt the need to go with door number three. Well, I mean, that's just how we got here. I think there's a book about this that somebody wrote that a couple of people wrote, maybe that people could go back and check. But, you know, I think that there is this incentive structure where people feel the need, like that

they need to feed the content beast. And if they're provided a memeable moment where they can mock, you know, the other political tribe, they're going to do it. This is not a just a providence of the right, by the way, but obviously the right is particularly obnoxious when it comes to executing it. You know, I think that the only thing that has any relevance when it comes to the Biden fall, you know, as far as our actual governing and our actual politics is concerned, is I was like, legitimately concerned for the guy's hip. And he seems to be okay. Everybody says that he's okay. But this is just the risk that we're running,

having potentially two 80-plus-year-old nominees, is that when 80-year-olds fall, their bruises sometimes are a little bit deeper than mine when I'm not paying attention to the sidewalk and I trip while I'm trying to send a mean tweet. So that is like slightly concerning, but it didn't end up, you know, being any issue in this case. And I think once again, you know, like literally every right-wing person I follow showed their ass on this.

I know. It was really interesting. You know, in part though, it was necessary for them, just like the whole, you know, Hunter Biden thing is kind of necessary because otherwise they would have to reflect on the fact that Joe Biden had a, I want to preface this by saying that I am not one of our Cruz Biden fanboys here, but Joe Biden had a very, very good week. You have to preface with that, Charlie. You just got to do it. Yeah, I did. I just had to, but he had a pretty good week as president. This debt deal, I mean, it is not perfect, but the way he finessed it is pretty impressive. I mean, just the simple fact that he managed to avoid a that insider game, not boasting about it. And yet, it has to be settling in to the consciousness of the right, that this guy that they have been deriding as, you know, in cognitive decline and completely senile,

just pants to them in this negotiation. And all of the energy, if you notice all of the energy, before the fall of Joe Biden stuff, all of the energy on if you notice all of the energy before the fall of Joe Biden stuff, all of the energy on the right is right now attacking other people on the right. It is fascinating watching this kind of crack up right now. Yeah, I'd add another point. In addition to Joe Biden not being, you know, senile and dementia ridden, he also is not a radical far left socialist. Again, it turns out.

I don't think that that is settling in because I think that most people on the right are living in hermetically sealed bubbles where the only thing that they're seeing is the takes from the pundits like your friend Scott Walker that are focused on the fall. But the reality is that Joe Biden

cut a very practical deal, and so did Kevin, on your podcast and on The Next Level. We've praised Kevin for this this week. It was a low bar. My expectations were really low, but Kevin stepped over it and that should be acknowledged. So the deal that Biden cut, you said it's not perfect. It's pretty damn good. I mean, it does keep spending flat. It did not include any of the things that were actually bad that were in negotiation on both sides. Republicans wanted, you know, work requirements for

Medicaid as one example. I think certain areas work requirements are okay, but for Medicaid, that would have been an insane and frankly immoral policy to include. That didn't end up in there. On the left, you have Ed Markey was tweeting that he was mad that Biden was fast-tracking the pipeline that Joe Manchin has wanted that has been approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers since 2017 that was part of the IRA deal that Schumer and Biden and Manchin cut last year, which included a ton of great investment in green energy and climate stuff, but it also included the pipeline that has been approved. The left went after them for including that. So it was a completely, once again, Joe Biden, a completely sensible, practical deal that was

gettable, just like he did on guns, just like he did on infrastructure and chips. And yet somehow this fake image of him, this fantastical image of him as a puppet, a Trojan horse for the radical socialists is just required to sustain the conservative media industrial complex. And this is an important point because you had two memes that were central to the right-wing critique of Joe Biden. Number one, that he's senile, he's too old, right? And that's number one. And number two, that he's, you know, is a communist, socialist, Marxist, et cetera. Well, here's the problem. He obviously skillfully negotiated this. That's number one. Number two, they just made a deal with the guy that they've been saying is this socialist Marxist. So they're in the room

with him. They're voting along with him. And I have to say that for the moment, everybody's saying, you know, hey, Kevin McCarthy pulled this off, which he did against expectations. But I guess I would just suggest, wait a few minutes. Watch as this sort of percolates out there when people kind of realize that Kevin McCarthy made a deal with this guy that you've been saying wants to destroy America, right? There's not a lot of incentive structure to compromise in the Republican Party right now. And right now, the Taliban 20, which is what Puck calls them, you know, they're kind of, you know, nursing their wounds, and they're not going to try to oust Kevin McCarthy. But they have to be pretty pissed about all of this. And by the way,

Kevin McCarthy, my Kevin, before we give him too much of a tongue bath here, you know, he's still held hostage by the the outpatient caucus, and he is throwing, he is throwing a few scraps to them. Did you see that he actually is giving John Solomon, who is one of these conspiracy theorists on the right, access to the January 6th surveillance tapes? I mean, McCarthy knows exactly what he's doing here. I mean, he's giving it to one of the freaks of the right-wing fringe. He's still withholding it from legitimate news organizations, and he knows what John Solomon's going to do with it. He knows he's going to use it to push bogus conspiracy theories about what happened. But I think he's feeling the need right now to throw the fever swamps, all sorts of scraps to sort of distract attention from the fact that

he just sat down and got taken at the poker table by Joe Biden. He's got to keep Marge happy. I mean, part of the reason why he was able to get this deal done, which is, you know, why you can be a little bit moderating in the complimenting of Kevin McCarthy is that, you know, he kind of had to make a deal with the devil to do it, right? And he needs the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and Jim Jordan's, you know, to have endorsed these deals, which Marjorie was doing even on Twitter, like rather aggressively in order to kind of have the cover to be able to do a deal like this. And part of that deal with the devil is doing this January 6th, you know, retrofitting conspiratorial, you know, BS. So, I mean, that's part of it. I always thought

if you go back, I'm pretty sure this would stand up. I don't have the exact tape, but, you know, after McCarthy survived the 15 speaker votes, I was always of the view that he was going to have one get out of jail free card on one of these big deals. And that the real question of his strength was always going to be what happens when he's got to do it again, right? Like what happens if a Ukraine emergency happens after this, when you're not going to have Marjorie's cover? Maybe he's not, like maybe we're not going to run in because part of know, part of this deal is extending the debt ceiling through to pass the next election. You know, maybe he's not going to reach another crisis and he'll be able to survive. But I do think the test of whether he can hold that

coalition together will come, you know, after he gets his first freebie. I think that's right, because he had three tests and we really haven't gotten through, you know, all three of them yet. Number one, could he make a deal? He did. Number two, could he come up with the votes to get it passed? He did. Number three, would he be able to survive the inevitable blowback? And we still have those outrage machines out there, which always target the rhinos.

We'll have to see how that plays out. And I think you're exactly right. What happens the next time that he does all of this? So there's another word that's worth bringing up here because we talk about Donald Trump and say, this is not normal. Just reminding people that this is not normal politics. This is not normal in American culture. What we saw this week was actually pretty normal, wasn't it?

It was kind of a normal moment where you had Republicans and Democrats disagreeing about spending levels and sitting in a room and coming up with an actual compromise that reflected some of the priorities of both parties that felt normal. And it does seem as if this was also one of the contrasts of the week, the normalcy, the pre-fall normalcy of Joe Biden versus the just, it feels like the escalating dementia of the orange God kid. Demented, maybe. Demented. Do you pay any attention on a regular basis to the Trump bleeds on Truth Social? Because they're getting worse and worse and worse. And I think David French made the point that if you saw a family member

or a co-worker saying these kinds of things, you would make a call for a wellness check. You would ask for an intervention of some. It is so bad. If you were the assistant to the regional manager of, you know, some kind of like paper selling company and one of your subordinates was doing this, yeah, you'd be like, this is insane. We got to call HR.

Then the contrast, Joe Biden may be boring and low key and old, but he's normal. So the question is, what do Americans want next year? If next year becomes a referendum on normal versus crazy, how does that play out, Tim? Because there is so much abnormal, you know, within kind of the Republican Party, kind of the post COVID fallout that we are still dealing with, particularly inflation, you know, Ukraine war, shootings, right? Like, there's always something in the news, right? Like, it's never going to be the most boring year, still going to be things happening in the world that feel abnormal. But really, ever since the – now, inflation hasn't completely ebbed, gone back to where it was before, but ever since it started to tick back down, pretty much everything has been pretty normal, at least within the auspices of what the White House can do. And I think that if that continues going into next year,

that sense around people can start to build. And I just, in casual conversations, I don't know if you feel this way about people I check in with who are not political obsessives like us, that feeling of anxiousness and anxiety about the world and about Biden that was really, I think, kind of strong last year and the beginning half of last year in particular is starting to ebb. Like I am hearing less of that anecdotally, and it hasn't really shown up in his polls yet. And so, you know, I'm interested to see if maybe that changes once it becomes clear to people that he's really not going to get primaried, because I think that casual folks are still kind of hoping that maybe, you know,

the Democrats will find a younger person. But I do wonder if his numbers will start to tick back up as a result of that, because he, particularly in dealings with Congress, but just also generally, like the management of the country has been pretty normal. We didn't mint a coin. No, he didn't do that. He didn't take any of those extreme steps. So I don't know whether he'll get any credit for it, because I do think that next year, I think, is going to be, if it is Donald Trump, it's going to be a referendum on Donald Trump, not on Joe Biden, which is, if you're Republicans, that's the worst case scenario. So let's talk about this. We've been waiting for the Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump slap fight to begin.

We've asked questions, would he be willing to throw punches? Can he take a punch? It does feel like it's escalating. I see some media outlets referring to it as a brawl. I think that's overstating it. That's why I'm thinking of it as more of a slap fight rather than a brawl. But you can feel the intensity level and the personal animus really coming out. And when you have two, I think, rather aggressive assholes, you know, in the bag there, in the ring, in the cage, it can get nasty. So give me your take on how this is playing out so far.

Yeah, well, I'm going to start with a quasi-compliment of Ron DeSantis, which is unusual for me, out of character. But don't worry, I've got a criticism coming behind. His initial attacks on Trump, just grading them not on the merits of the arguments, but on whether he's willing to do it and whether he's willing to do it directly, whether he's willing to engage from positions of strength, have been better than I think people in the pundit class have been grading him on. And I think that particularly there's one I saw just yesterday, for example, where he's asked about this question about how Trump said,

oh, if I'm in there, I'll vanquish the deep state in six months. And DeSantis kind of replies and says, well, then why didn't you do it already? If you're so great. That was a good reply, yes. Yeah, it was a good retort. And it's the kind of thing you can see him kind of finding his sea legs a little bit. It's the kind of thing he's going to need to be able to do on debate stage. I still have doubts.

Everyone still has doubts whether he can stand there and do it. But he's starting to demonstrate it. And he does still have time. The announcement was brutal and rocky, and all the criticisms were worthy of it. But he's got time. There's a YouGov poll out. It's the first one post-announcement, and he has lost a little ground. And so that's obviously a terrible sign for an announcement.

I mean, you want to be gaining ground. And, you know, we'll see. I want to see a couple other polls before you render a verdict on that. But, you know, he's now down 28, I think, and was down 24 the last time YouGov did a poll. So he actually lost ground. So that's not a good sign. But I think that if he continues to be able to fight Trump from positions of strength, then that's his only chance.

And I think that to actually bury him and put dirt on his grave misunderstands how these primaries work. And I think that obviously, there's a lot of reasons to think that he won't be able to do it. But I think that there's a tiny ray of light for him versus, you know, maybe how people were analyzing, you know, the campaign last week. As a slight digression here, I noticed that some New Hampshire legislator has withdrawn his support of Donald Trump and endorsed Rhonda Sanders because he was just absolutely shocked, shocked, shocked that Donald Trump would insult Kayleigh McEnany, his former press secretary.

And he says this kind of vitriol, there's just no place for it. And I say, okay, where have you been the last seven years? These people who are, you know, on Twitter, who are shocked. I have a poem for you, Mr. Legislator. It's called The Snake. Yeah. They're shocked, shocked to find out this guy's he's being insulting. He's being a boor. He's being juvenile. I mean, you know, where did this come from? Okay, whatever. All right. So you see a ray of hope. And yet, Donald Trump is also getting exactly what he wants and having a crowded field. And that field is getting more crowded. Mike Pence is going to get in next week. Chris Christie is going to get in next week. Chris Christie is going to get in next week.

So you see, people misunderstand how the primaries work out. My understanding of the primaries is going to be that if the vote is split nine ways, that Donald Trump is going to win. Yeah. None of these people are above 3%. That same YouGov poll doesn't have anyone else above 3%. How much does that really matter? Maybe it matters on the margins. Alec, for DeSantis to win this primary, he's going to have to get up into the mid-40s. That's just it. And if he can't do that, then none of this other stuff matters. And so I think that worrying about these guys being at 3%

at this point is a little premature. My point about how these primaries work is that a lot of people tune in at the debate times. A lot of people tune in late. Not as many in the Republican primary as the Democratic primary, but there are strategic voters out there, people who change their mind, people who like both candidates and are trying to decide who the best horse is. We saw this very clearly in the 2020 primary where there's a ton of Democrats who popped around from Warren to Pete to Amy and then landed on Joe. Joe looked dead after New Hampshire. And presidential primaries are just different than Senate primaries, right? These ideas get baked in and then people don't really know the candidates that well. And, you know, it's tough to change. Like you do have time.

There is unending earned media coverage about this. Like the people will not be able to escape discussions of Trump versus DeSantis and conservative world. And so I just think that he has a clear message that is a winning message if he can deliver it, you know, and that is that I can win, I can give you all the maggoties you like. And so I think he has a chance to do that. And he hadn't even shown that he was capable of that before this week. And so all I'm saying is, he's now at least shown he might be capable of it. That's all. I don't know whether you've seen because I have not had a chance to actually read it through in great detail. But Axios got their hands on this polling memo from a Trump affiliated pollster, really going after DeSantis, saying that DeSantis is not more electable than

Trump, and then zeroing in on some of the areas of his weakness, including his support for a six-week abortion ban, his fight with Disney, and then most fatally his position on Social Security and entitlements. And so they're about to unload a lot of stuff on DeSantis. It's a very clear and not altogether stupid analysis. But what is interesting is that DeSantis is trying to run to the far right of Trump. And Trump seems to be carving out kind of, I hesitate to say this, kind of a middle road to run against Ron DeSantis. I mean, can Donald Trump actually run saying Ron DeSantis is too extreme to be the nominee? Yes, he did it in 2016 against Ted Cruz, and it worked. Now we get to my criticism, the substitute.

I have seen this poll. I do think that's legitimate. And DeSantis has this tough line he's got to walk. You know, that good case that I said that he has to make is that I am a guy that can win and deliver you the stuff that you want. Trump is a loser, right? Like that's his strongest argument. But if he doesn't seem like a winner, then what does he have left? You know, it all becomes vaporware. And so just like I think there's a ray of hope for DeSantis winning, I think there's a ray of hope that the thing collapses. I know he still has his base of support of college educated, you know, conservatives. But after that, like, how do you gain? And so I think that this legislative session where he went way

to the far right was a mistake. I think he was in the sweet spot for the Republican primary on abortion before this. I don't think he needed to go down to the six weeks. Forget just like the fact that I disagree with that policy on the merits as well. And then look at his message. I have an article I'm working on writing, Charlie, so we can give people a little behind the scenes. We can sort of workshop it together. And it's like everyone is out, you know, all the DeSantis supporters clutch their pearls,

so to speak. Anytime somebody, you know, an ever-Trumper or somebody on the left suggests that DeSantis, you know, might be more extreme than Trump. They're like, oh, you said Trump was Hitler. And now you're saying DeSantis is more extreme than Trump. You're a hypocrite. You're a grifter. And it's like, wait a minute. I'm not saying that DeSantis is more extreme than Trump. I'm observing DeSantis say that he's more extreme than Trump. Here's a prime example of this. So yesterday, Trump's in Iowa. And there are two clips that jump out at me. In one clip, Donald Trump defends Ashley Babbitt, calls the cop that shot her a thug.

We back the blue. And it does the whole January 6th was a historic thing. This was a good person. He does trutherism about whether five people really died there. Okay, that was one clip. Another clip was he gets confronted by an anti-vaxxer in the crowd who says that people have died because you supported the jab. Trump responds by praising the COVID shots and doesn't say anything about adverse effects. So those are two clips from Donald Trump yesterday. Which one do you think the DeSantis campaign attacked him on? His attack on the cop who killed Ashley Babbitt or his defense of the COVID jab?

You know the answer. I know the answer to this one. They went after the vaccines because they're not going to touch January 6th. Right. So DeSantis, the DeSantis campaign, this is not some surrogate. It is the official DeSantis campaign account that attacks Trump for defending the life-saving COVID vaccine. Then there's been a string of these these week.

The DeSantis campaign went after Trump for being too lenient on dreamers. The immigrants who are brought here as children. I wasn't even sure how to read that because it was written pretty badly, but they're actually attacking Trump because Trump considered providing some sort of relief for the dreamers. Yes, the dreamers. The dreamers. Yeah.

And then he's also gone after Trump on the First Step Act, which wasn't perfect, but was, I think, a very reasonable, probably the most reasonable thing that the Trump administration did as a tribunal justice reform is bipartisan. So this is the DeSantis campaign, right? Like it is them saying, we think Trump is being too lenient to immigrants. We think Trump was being too lenient when it comes to criminal justice issues. And we think Trump was being too pro-vaccine. So, okay, you can do that. And maybe that's the right thing to do in the primary. I'm sure they've got polling that reflects this, but you can't run to the right, to the nutball right of Trump on vaccines, immigration, and law and order, and then get mad when we notice that you're doing that. So the vaccine thing is fascinating to me because you could argue, and please just bear

with me as I'm working this out, we're doing this in real time. That among the best things that Donald Trump did, I can't believe these words are even coming out of my mouth, was the development of the vaccine. By far. And it was always puzzling to me that he did not embrace this. This is my vaccine. I am the one who did that. Because he's flirted. He understands how strong that anti-vax sentiment is. But what is the breakdown in the Republican base about pro-vaccine, anti-vaccine? I mean, how potent is it? I mean, obviously, DeSantis has made a calculation. This is a really potent wedge issue to use against him. Is he right? Yeah, maybe. I don't know the numbers in front of me. I think here's the

bet DeSantis is making. And I think this is their strategic gambit, and maybe it'll work out. I'm just going to explain to you the logic. They think that the National Review, Wall Street Journal class of Republican is going to support him no matter what. I think they think that they have no risk of losing anyone from that part of their already existing support base, and that they need to find issues that can help them claw away at Donald Trump's support among his base, non-college MAGA voters, and then also among evangelicals, who I think are a swing potential group here. And so I think that explains the six-week abortion ban, and I think that explains the vaccine thing. If you look at the polls right now, DeSantis is actually narrowly defeating Trump among college-educated Republicans and then just getting slaughtered among non-college.

And I think they look at that group and they're like, how do we get to non-college secular voters and how do we get to non-college evangelicals? And abortion and the jab are the way I think they think that they can do it. But at the same time, in my view, they're deeply undermining the electability case for DeSantis, which might be the strongest case. I think it's a very risky tightrope to walk, but I think that's their strategic mindset. Before we switch gears and get away from it, because I want to get your thoughts on Pence and Chris Christie. We can just skip ahead. Well, I mean, we don't have to spend a lot of time on all of this because, you know, I'm going to repeat what I've said before. I just do not understand what Pence thinks is his path to this nomination, what he imagines is going to happen. But again, having met some Republicans who still seem to be living in 2015, it is hard to overstate the

degree of denial about how much the party has changed. And so if Mike Pence is looking around and thinking, okay, you know, this is me, it is 2015, this is what the Republican Party is, then he can convince himself that there is a path, but there's clearly a flaw there, isn't there? Yeah, Mike Pence has, I think the last poll I saw has upwards of 40 plus percent of the Republican electorate has an unfavorable view of him. 40 plus percent. So that's where you're starting. Like forget people that have a neutral view of him or think that he's a nice man that can't win. Like unfavorable, there's 40 plus percent that he has no ability to reach. That, by the way, overlaps probably completely with the Trump 40 percent base.

That's going to be hard for DeSantis to puncture. There's Pence. So, you know, what is your path when you are probably less popular than Kyrsten Sinema with the Republican base? You don't have one. And I think that to explain Mike Pence, why he thinks this way, I just go back to the conversation I had with Karl Rove a couple months ago. We were on that panel together and, you know, he said that he brought Pence to a room full of folks in Texas that gave him a standing ovation. Like, what room? And it's like, donors? It's like, oh, okay.

So there are enough people in his circles, elite evangelical circles, elite rich guy circles, who are still living in 2015 and want the party to be what the 2015 party was to give him attaboys to make him feel like in his little bubble, there might be a path. And I think that's why he's thinking about getting in. Okay. I think that you and I have a slight disagreement about this. And I think the audience is going to agree with you and disagree with me. Okay. I like that. I want Chris Christie to get into this race. I am looking forward to Chris Christie getting into this race. Great. And I endorse that. I think that Chris Christie should come on your show. I've said that multiple times. I don't, man, I just don't know that it matters. I guess I'll just say, let's wait and see. If Chris Christie does a good thing, then I'll come on this podcast and be like, way to go, Chris Christie. But A, I don't trust Chris Christie. And B, even if I did trust him,

I'm not sure Trump's going to get on a debate stage with him. There will be no debate stage with Donald Trump. I think everybody's thinking about, well, what will they do when they're on the debate stage? It's not going to happen, people. It's just not. The rules are already very Trump-friendly. Ronna, I think this is kind of an under-told story. Ronna, I assume intentionally, but maybe out of stupidity, set the debate stage rules that are going to make

it very hard for anybody besides Trump and DeSantis to make the debates. And I think that Trump, you know, the only way that some of these other people get on the stage is if Trump decides he'd rather have a bigger stage and negotiates that with the RNC and threatens to not debate unless they change this rule or that rule. And so we'll see how that plays out. But I don't see any reason to believe at this point that Chris Christie and Donald Trump will be on the debate stage together. Okay, so let's switch gears for a moment. I wanted to get your take on all of this. I have to admit that I think it is really remarkable watching how much of the right wing media ecosystem is now deeply invested in not just going after, you going after corporate boycotts, but targeting

the whole idea of Pride Month. It felt as if a few years ago that this was a settled issue, that we were a tolerant, live and let live country. And now the right has decided that it is going after you, going after your marriage, going after companies that even sell products that have rainbows on them. And it feels as if it has moved at warp speed to any acknowledgement or embrace of gay rights. And I have not seen any polls that would suggest that an overwhelming majority of Americans have decided they want to roll back these rights. In fact, absolutely the opposite. What's going on here? If people are going, why are you puzzled about this? I can remember distinctly Donald Trump in 2016 accepting the Republican nomination at the convention in Cleveland, specifically endorsing gay marriage, specifically endorsing gay rights. And yet now this has become the beating heart of the culture war on the right. Yeah, a lot there.

One observation I have that's kind of funny, I guess darkly funny, is that the critics of Pride, like even three years ago, were mostly on the left, right? It was like liberals were like, these corporations are trying to use us. You know, they're trying to gaywash and they don't actually care about us. And like, it's phony. And I liked it better when pride was, you know, just authentic and like,

you know, bears and chaps or whatever. And like, that was like the big discourse for a while was people, you know, in the gay community on the left, I thought that pride was becoming too corporate or whatever. You know, now in some ways, I think everybody's kind of been thrust into the defense of the corporations that are standing up for gay rights because of these attacks coming from the right. And what undergirds this change, this shift, is that the people on the right who had animus towards gays, lesbians, trans folks, they didn't change their views. I mean, some people did. Some people evolved over time, folks that had meet gay people in their lives, etc. But the ideologues, the politicians, most of them, did not change their views. It just became impractical to be against gay marriage. It was not. You know, gay marriage was overwhelmingly popular among the electorate. You saw the bathroom bill in North Carolina, the original one, backfired dramatically on Governor McCrory. So they saw it as a losing

issue. But because of what was happening with schools, you know, because they saw that they had a line that was working, which was that they are grooming your kids. You know, there's too much talk about gender identity and sexuality in schools, that this is becoming faddish. Once they saw that this was a winning political issue, that opened the floodgates to kind of like for folks to, you know, bring back out this hatred, you know, that had maybe lay dormant. And I really think that is kind of what explains the shift over the past three years. And I got to tell you, Charlie, I hope I'm wrong about this, but I'm genuinely concerned about violence at Pride stuff this month. I think that

it is as hot as I really can remember it since the Pulse shooting, people were on high alert around the Pulse shooting because that happened, I believe, in Pride Month. Since then, I've not felt, you know, kind of this level of potential threat. And I think that with the drag bands, you know, with the rhetoric coming from the right, you know, it's something that I worry about. It's going to, you know, dampen these celebrations. Well, I don't think that's an irrational fear because you are, in fact, stoking this animus and this fear and this target. And this is what feels like it's a throwback 30, 40 years that it's not just that homosexuality

is banned by Leviticus or whatever. So it's worth mentioning that the guy that gave Ron DeSantis his invocation did quote Leviticus, the Leviticus line, which is like, worth mentioning that the guy that gave Ron DeSantis his invocation did quote Leviticus with, you know, the Leviticus line, which is like, you should be put to death on Twitter this week. So, you know, there's also the Leviticus. He made my deplorables of the week list this week because of this.

No, no, no. I mean, but let me just stop right there. I mean, it's so Ted Cruz, of all people, you know, tweets out a condemnation of this new law in Uganda, which actually has the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality. And Ted Cruz says, you know, this is a violation of human rights, etc. I mean, weirdly enough, woke Ted Cruz puts this out. This pastor, who is all in for Ron DeSantis, basically says, well, what are your standards, Senator Cruz? Because Leviticus, you know, basically says that people should be put to death and all of this. And as you point out, this guy is a key supporter of Ron DeSantis. So these people who would

normally think are on the far fringes are really very much part of the mainstream. But the point I was making is it's the attack on homosexuality is not just that it is, you know, anti-Christian or immoral. It is that it is a threat to your children. And that's the throwback to 30, 40, 50 years ago, that gays are trying to recruit your children. That's the whole groomer thing, which has become, you know, basically part of the talking point of people on the right. And once you believe that, in fact, that there are these pedophiles who are targeting your children, then the potential for really serious action rises rather significantly, including violence. And there's no indication that there's

any pushback, anyone saying, hey, listen, we need to dial this down. We need to be careful about this. We need to distinguish between the gay community and the people you are talking about, or that you are trying to get people to fear. I mean, we've seen over and over again, you know, it doesn't take a lot of people to be convinced that there is this massive existential threat, you know, facing them. And especially when you have so many, you know, people who are heavily armed and paranoid at the same time. So, I don't think it's irrational for you to express that concern. Yeah, yeah. And it's also going the other way as far as just this notion of how they're not

limiting anymore to, you know, just concerns about young children. I mean, just look at Florida, for example, the original, you know, don't say gay bill was, you know, K-3, and they've expanded it to 12. My new state, Louisiana, has basically a copycat bill that's kind of worse than the Florida bill, really, because it includes some elements that were in the original Florida bill that got stripped out about how, you know, teachers can talk about their own, you know, relationships, kind of the don't ask, don't tell element to all this. So, and then obviously, you know, the drag bands, which expand outside of, it's not like they're just banning drag queens from schools or whatever, right? Like they're having blanket bands in a place like Tennessee, anywhere besides strip clubs, you know, essentially. I think that, you know, this is going

to continue. I think that the corporate America element of this, I think a big part of why Target, some people in the love for criticizing Target for, you know, I guess, wimping out in the face of these attacks from the right. I was actually a little bit sympathetic to this. I mean, the Target stores, the pride t-shirts that they sell and whatnot, are usually at the store when you walk in. You know, it's kind of that first section, at least in the Target that I went to. They were nervous and I think had legitimate threats from, you know, weirdos who walked in and were triggered, you know, by seeing a rainbow shirt, right, when they walked in the door and started threatening employees. And if your Target, like your first priority has to be protecting

your employees and you have these states with constitutional carry and all this, I think that that's, it's very legitimate for them to have these concerns. It's a legitimate concern, but also then do you give the crazy veto? Do you give the veto to people who come in? I mean, it's, it is kind of interesting. Some of the same people who are, you know, saying that, you know, we need to crack down on any sort of antisocial behavior. I mean, look what's going on in these stores. And yet somehow they had a level of tolerance for people who are trashing Target stores and threatening employees when the first line of reaction should be, let's call the cops if anybody is behaving in this particular way, as opposed to, okay, if some bigoted nutjob comes in here and starts screaming, by all means, let them get their way. There's danger both ways on all of this. And I wonder which way it's going to play out because, as you know, these are not just spontaneous campaigns. There are people out there on social media saying, we need to keep picking targets. We need to go after Bud Light. We need

to go after Target. We need to go after maybe Chick-fil-A. That kind of blew up in their face. But you know that corporate America is looking at this going, do we want what happened to Bud Light to happen to us? Do we want what happened to Target to happen to us? And you're talking about people giving into this kind of pressure. And I can see that happening. I agree with you on the crazy veto. And I think it's sad, but I'm saying that I think that the fears of corporate are legitimate and what Target is dealing with. And here's the thing about all this. I also think that sometimes there are less so because of just how visible the attacks have been on the gay community and the LGBT, the trans community in particular recently. But a lot of

the people kind of have this tendency to be like, you know, the kids are all right. And history is moving in the right direction on this. And this is going to blow over. And the Republicans will be punished for this at the ballot box. And I kind of agree with all of that in the medium term. I really do. I think that the normie voters that voted for Democrats in the midterms, that voted for Joe Biden in Atlanta and Phoenix and all this, they look at this and think Republicans are insane and crazy and that the Disney fight is ludicrous. That said, there are still really big pockets of this country where there are young men and women that are trying to deal with their sexuality, that are trying to

understand, that are confused, and that are now going to be in very fraught situations again, like to a degree they haven't been in a while. And I think that while this is definitely a losing issue in the Atlanta suburbs for Republicans, kids that are in Shreveport and in these red pockets in red and purple states, I think it's really ugly right now. And it's a very serious, serious thing that these crackdowns. And I don't think that can be overstated. And I don't think that people ought to just simply assume that there's an inevitable arc to history. I think that's one of the myths that we tell ourselves that the arc of history bends a certain way. If you read a lot of history, you realize that the arc of history can bend back and can become kind of a dangerous spiral at some point. I know you need to catch a plane, have a great weekend. Congratulations

on the Denver Nuggets. And we will do this again soon, Tim. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Charlie. Happy Pride. Go Nugs. Nugs and four. And thank you all for listening to this weekend's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back on Monday, and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.