The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Miller: Trump Has Already Ball-Gagged Them in the Basement

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Republicans are so weak and craven: DeSantis has three bad weeks, and they've thrown in the towel—they're not even trying to try to defeat Trump. Plus, Disney reminds conservatives they're supposed to like smaller government, and Tucker is even worse in private. Tim Miller joins Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, happy Friday. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes with Tim Miller, of course. I hope you've had a great week, Tim. I'm doing great, Charlie. You know, a lot of box unpacking, but life is good. I've been hearing from a lot of Bulwark people sending well wishes. I love it. People are enjoying the shtick. They want to know what tune you're going to try to stump me on this week. Yeah, but I'm just not going to do that. I'm sorry. I know we should play the hits, right?

We should do that every week. But it's one of those weeks where it's just too packed. I'm going through the list of things. The box loss, for starters. There's that. It's too soon. It's too soon. I hate the trade of Aaron Rodgers, which I really don't care about.

I'm sorry. I think this is one of the things that happens maybe in certain eras or maybe just because I'm getting old. But there's just a growing list of things that I just not only don't care about, I can't make myself care about, which is kind of weird. That's healthy. I think it is. This is actually one of the things that I do not miss about having a daily radio show, because when you have a daily radio show, you had to care about everything and have an opinion on everything.

And right now it's like, you know, I got nothing. Like, for example, I do not want to talk to you today about the debt ceiling and what Kevin McCarthy pulled off a couple of days ago. I'm just not interested. I mean, you may be interested in it, but can we talk about other stuff? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. You're in charge.

So let's talk a little bit about Tucker Carlson, because you and I have not spoken since he was summarily fired. I will confess, I find that an endlessly interesting story, including that very weird video that he dropped Wednesday night. You caught that a couple of nights ago. He's up there holed up in Maine. He's just been fired. Just quick edit.

We had a commenter that pointed this out, and I did a little recap of this. Maine is part of his personal brand. He's really only up there in the summer. He's in Boca Raton. It's not as cool to say Boca Raton. I think Tucker likes the idea of him as a mountain man and the flannel, but he's actually down there in Boca Raton. It's not as cool to say Boca Raton. I think Tucker likes the idea of him as a mountain man and the flannel, but he's actually down there in Boca Raton with the retirees. Just an important note.

So he's down in Boca, but he's got the bad makeup, the bad lighting. One of the things I speculated about with Brian Stelter the other day was Fox is going to come and take back all of his equipment. Will they, you know, like ding, ding. I like Brian. Brian was very – it was a great podcast. I like Brian just like was very, it was a great podcast. We've all listened. I like Brian just like very seriously considering that question and then kind of coming to after

a few seconds to be like, yeah, I do think they're going to take the equipment actually. Anyway. Mr. Tucker, we're here for your stuff. You know, I'll write you a check. I'll keep it. What was interesting about that was, I mean, obviously he's, he's going through his populist shtick that you need to, you know, have truth tellers and blah, blah, blah, corporate media. He's speaking.

He's clearly threatening to speak more, but we kind of knew that. But there was something flat about it. And I don't know what you thought about it, but it looks like he might have taped that shortly after the New York Times dropped its latest story about him, which everybody was talking about yesterday. By the way, we're doing this on Thursday for Friday morning. So if the world has completely changed, you'll understand that it's not because we're smoking something. It's because there's a timeline. I just think the latest New York Times reporting is so interesting.

Private messages sent by Mr. Carlson that had been redacted in legal filings showed him making highly offensive and crude remarks that went beyond the inflammatory, often racist comments on his primetime show and anything disclosed in the lead up to the trial. Despite the fact that Fox's trial lawyers had the messages for months, the board and some senior executives were just now learning about their details for the first time, setting off a crisis at the highest levels of the company, according to blah, blah, blah, blah. But I really like the formulation. They were highly offensive and crude remarks that went beyond. So the inflammatory, often racist comments on television, that was pretty bad, but not a deal breaker.

Nobody was really sweating that. What a surprise. Once I heard that Suzanne Scott got called the C word. I mean, let's just be real. pretty bad but that that not a deal breaker nobody was really sweating that they you know what a surprise once i heard that suzanne scott got called the c word i mean let's just be like this is all a big euphemism for the fact that his real boss suzanne scotty called the c word i mean i you know it's pretty clear that that was at least one of the things maybe there's some other stuff one of the abby grossberg things that kind of got lost you know there's just this parade of horribles and offenses with tucker and you know it's hard to keep track of all of them. But the one that stuck out to me, and I just wonder if there's more on the tapes, was Abby in her filing referencing how Tucker was talking about a boarding school, teenage girls at a boarding school having sex, and, you know, making some remarks about how, you know, if his daughter wasn't there, that sounds good to him. Something to that effect. I don't have it in front of me.

So, you know, a little ephebophilia also could conceivably be in there. You know, who the hell knows? Could be. You just never know. I mean, he's hiring crisis comms people. You know, and that could be anything. But there's obviously some other stuff in the private emails. I don't know what your private emails look like, Charlie,

if you think that you'd survive your daily podcast. I'm going through redacting almost all of them. I mean, I think everybody needs to go, okay, now what did I actually say or write in that text message? I think the delicious irony, of course, is all the Fox executives finding out that Tucker Carlson was actually even worse in private than he was in public. So we don't mind what you're telling tens of millions of people on the air, but whoa, that private email. Was it maybe a little bit of a tip that Tucker had like three people fired from his staff at Fox because it was revealed that they were posting on like white nationalist websites with like doing racist jokes. And you would have thought maybe that might've been a signal that I tell.

Yeah. That privately that Tucker's conversations were also pretty bad. If, if he was, you know, entrusting his show into people that were like posting on eight Chan, the most disgusting racist bile, you know, it's probably not the case that that guy

and Tucker, you know, weren't doing a little bit of racist banter themselves. It's not a big jump. And I don't want to always go for the, you know, most cynical default setting here. But as I was thinking about the New York Times reporting and this drip, drip, drip that you're going to get about Tucker Carlson, what he said in private and everything. You know, there was that little voice saying, well, you know, maybe this is going to stop, you know, Tucker Carlson's comeback or it will slow it down. I thought, no, are you kidding me? Tucker Carlson's core audience is not going to have a problem with any of this if they even hear about it. Right. I mean, it's just, you know, I mean, how many times do we have to learn this sort of thing?

What is your thinking as a crisis communications manager? Where does Tucker end up? Because he's going to end up somewhere and he's going to be big somewhere despite all of this, right? It's a different world than when I was doing crisis comms, particularly on the right. Just like just how like exponentially the conservative media mega media ecosystem has expanded yeah deplatforming which i'm not really a huge fan of like does work and is important in extreme cases i mean you can look at milo yiannopoulos

as a prime example of this right remember milo yeah you know was the provocateur for bright definitely got deplatformed, deserved it. And now he's like selling China on like an off-brand, right-wing Christian home shopping network. So it worked for him. You know, he got deplatformed. Bill O'Reilly now has some internet show. Nobody knows how to find it.

The only time you ever see it is if the Media Matters guys clip it and put it on Twitter. So deplatforming can work but for somebody like tucker you know he could team up with you know the daily wire world you know you could team up with a you know probably too ideological like a joe rogan but you know megan kelly right like there are these like a step down yeah it is a step down any of those things and the only thing that's not a step down you know the only thing that he could do that's not a step down, running for president.

Or joining the bullpen. We wouldn't have him. Running for president was a better answer. Yeah, that would not be a step down. That video that he gave last night, to me, didn't scream like a political candidate's video. It screamed like, come on back and sign up for, you pay $99 a month to get Tucker unfiltered. like a political candidates video. It screamed like, come on back and sign up for, you know,

you pay $99 a month to get Tucker unfiltered. That's what it seemed like to me. And there will be people who will do that. If you saw the numbers, so there's this, for people who are just, God bless you, you know, I suffer for all of you. So people who don't even know who these names are, there's this big dispute in conservative media world between this guy, Steven Crowder, who is this like, you know, kind of dumpy looking guy that's a little a feat, but like top, but acts like he's a big stuff, tough, strong man. And like he goes to college campuses and fights with kids. And he was in a legal dispute with the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro's outlet over finances. And some of his numbers got revealed and it was like astonishing the number of people that were paying hundreds of dollars for, you know, Stephen Crowder unfiltered and like for his t-shirts, like making fun of fags and like his mugs about liberal tears.

Like, you know, he was bringing in tens upon tens of millions and he has a much slower profile than Tucker. So if Crowder can do it, if the Daily Wire can do it, Tucker could do it. Maybe Tucker could team up with some of them. Who knows? I think that there are potential options out there for him, sadly. I don't know that a deplatforming is going to completely get rid of him. I will say this, and I think this is important to understand, though. There is a crowd. If you look at the numbers on Fox, there is a dip from Tucker's show to Laura's. But it's like, are those the only people that actually go with Tucker? The ones that turn it off? Because there is

like, let's just be real, some attention zombies out there. Turn it to channel 112. The soundtrack of their demented durangelized. Right. And it's just on all day. It's their stories. It's Jesse Waters, and then it's Geraldo, and then it's Brett.

And they're like, oh, I better go cook dinner during Brett's because he's a little too cuckish for me. And then you come back and it's, well, and it's talking, it's Lauren, it's Sean, it's Maria. And, you know, so I'm impressed that you know, the lineup that well, that's a little disturbing. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, I know. I was texting with a media reporter today who was saying that, who do you think Trump is going to want for the Fox debate? You know, because now that he's flexing his muscle and trying to, you know, force Fox and come to the table on the presidential debates, and this person was suggesting Hannity. And I was like, oh, no, no, he's going to go for Maria. And the person was like, is Maria still on Fox? I was like, yeah, she's got three hours every morning on Fox Business.

You know, I turn it on with my coffee to get just a little bit of freak show every once in a while. So, the thing about Tucker, and I'm going to confess that I've given too much thought to all of this. Okay, please do. And I talked about it with Brian Stolzer the other day. The interesting thing about Tucker is, first of all, Tucker's making more money than God. I mean, he was making, what, $20, $35 million. He comes from money. I don't think that money has been the key motivation.

Wasn't it a hot pocket fortune that he came from? Like Swanson Foods or something like that. Yeah. So there's a show. Have I said this on the podcast or the problem is when you talk as much as I do, you're saying, have I said this already? Okay. So there's a show that's massively rated on Apple TV called Hello Tomorrow. And it's basically about a scam where people are selling timeshares on the moon. It's actually very funny. It's very good. And the chief salesman is a genius of human psychology. And he's trying to get this very, very wealthy woman to invest in the non-existent timeshares on the moon. And he realizes that she's figured out it's all bullshit, that there are no timeshares on the moon, but he still wants her to

invest in it. And so she basically calls him out on it and he looks at her and you can see his little wheels turning in his head and he goes, you know, I don't think you are in this for the money. I think you are in this for what you can get away with. And they bond. And that's the thing about Tucker is that there's been this thing where it's like he's sitting there going, okay, I got all these ratings, got all the money. What can I get away with now? What bullshit can I put out on the air? How can I push this limit even further? So that's still going to be as calculated. The problem is that doing your little YouTube channel may bring in

$10 million a year to your, you know, 10,000, 100,000, whatever listeners. But it doesn't have the same, I don't know, tinkle up your leg of doing it on Fox News. I guess I just disagree with that. Okay, sure. We have proof that they disagree with this. And I mentioned this on the next level, so I'll just say it briefly. But we have an example of this. It's Megyn Kelly.

Megyn Kelly got a 60 plus million buyout from NBC after her show tanked. Trust me, Charlie, if things went south with the bulwark, and if Sarah wanted to give me a $60 million buyout, which I don't think that is the kind of money we're bringing in, but just hypothetically, let me tell you, you're not going to see me creating a competing Snapchat show. All right? I'm going to be living a very nice life with that $60 million. Oh, but see, this is my point, though.

It's not about the money for Tucker. He's got some other thing. Right. And so Megan does, too. And so she has this podcast, and she just says outlandish things all the time, like on the podcast, because she wants to get that little thrill up the leg that comes from triggering the elite media. Yeah, I think that's exactly. I think that's what he's going to continue. He will do something.

He will do something. He will do something. Okay, before we get into your very, very provocative triad yesterday, where you talk about the GOP establishment just not knowing how to quit Trump and all the evidence of that. Would you like a tale from the heartland? I would love one. Just for a moment. Because I know you're hanging around with all the cool, beautiful people in Washington, D.C. this week. So I just want to tell you what's happening in the real America out here. Please do not give us the comments, Charlie. There's no real America. Washington is the real America. I'm sorry.

The people I'm seeing on my brief trip to D.C. are not real America. So I'm not offended. Yeah. Please continue. So it's a story from my friend Jim Wigderson's newsletter and a report from the milwaukee journal sentinel about a uh a woman named ollie schweitzer who is the leader of the republican women of waukesha county this is crucial waukesha county and any discussion of what's happening in wisconsin inevitably will can i just guess where this is going to go ollie has seen the light no and um and wants to take the party back to its traditional classical liberal values.

That would be a different podcast story. Okay, sorry. But there is a podcast for that. I know, but this is not that one. Any discussion about Republican politics in Wisconsin always comes back to this question, what the hell happened to the Republican women in Waukesha County? So this will give you a little taste of this okay she's the leader of this group she she lives in okonomawa she which is in waukesha county she shows up at the merton school board meeting to complain about the treatment of a wauwatosa resident by the wauwatosa school board okay you probably lost the thread all the words

i'll walk it on i just Yeah, I pronounced them all correctly. So this woman, Allie Schweitzer, shows up at the wrong school board meeting to complain about another school board in another county. But here's the part, the reason why this story is just wow. Schweitzer brings along props. Here's the story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, okay? Conservative activist Alexandra Schweitzer, head of Parents on Patrol and No Left Turn in Education, shocked those attending a Merton school board meeting earlier this week by pulling out and displaying sex toys while testifying before the board. Schweitzer used the props as part of her defense of board member Troy Anderson, who had been censured earlier in the

meeting for online bullying, using the C word in a a Facebook post and criticizing Wauwatosa's new sex education curriculum in another post. Quote, so let's look at the toys the eighth grade in Wauwatosa has to look at, said Schweitzer, president of the Republican Women of Waukesha County. This is exactly what you are censoring Troy for. For this, holding out a dildo, or as the journal's editors felt needed to clarify, or penis-shaped sex toy, she held a couple of such objects throughout her testimony. Now, this is the same Allie Schweitzer who received a cease and desist letter from the Oconomowoc school board for her behavior in her school district. She also recently, this is the kind of person she is. These are the people shaping our politics here in the heartland. Schweitzer also recently criticized a dog undergoing treatment for cancer in a social media post because she did not like the owner.

Okay, we're just right. If Schweitzer is an outlier, she's in the company of genetic exceptions. The Republican women of Waukesha County famously gave Kyle Rittenhouse's mother a standing ovation just before his trial. And of course, the Waukesha GOP has become ground zero for such craziness as showing documentaries explaining that Trump really won the 2020 presidential election. So she seems like a strong candidate for state party chair. I don't know why she's limiting herself to just crucial Waukesha County Republican women. You are seeing into the future. If you are seeing all of our future, I was actually on a show yesterday where somebody was

describing the politics in Florida saying that, you know, the trajectory that you once had the Tea Party movement, and the Tea Party movement was eaten by MAGA. But right now, MAGA is being eaten by QAnon. Each step gets crazier and crazier. So this was a mood setter to get us into the more less substantive stuff, whatever. Okay, can we talk about Nikki Haley for a moment? I'm just getting riled up for people getting bored like the heater that I've got coming on the Republican establishment we're just this is a teaser we're just saving it for the e-block what do you mean people getting bored I'm just saying if people love the story of the woman showing up at the Merton school board with a dildo I know I'm just saying if anyone you know heard Nikki Haley coming up next and

started to go oh I see you know and I was like trust me I got a heater coming it's inside me. It's building right now. Anyway, but let's do Nikki Haley. She's been great. I thought some backbone from her. Did you a little in my newsletter yesterday, I described this as this quagmire that Rhonda Sandis is like, you know, finds himself in this quagmire of this fight with Disney and all of his instincts are let's go in deeper. Let's go in deeper. That's like, uh, governor, you're up to your neck in this. Now, we're going deeper. This lawsuit they filed against him, that's a banger. In any case, everybody else is dumping on him.

You've had Trump trolling him. You've had Chris Christie making fun of him. And then Nikki Haley goes on Fox. Let's play what Nikki Haley said yesterday. You know, as governor, I took a double digit unemployment state and I turned it into an economic powerhouse. Businesses were my partners, because if you take care of your businesses, you take care of your economy. Your economy takes care of the people and everyone wins. And so that's the way we dealt with it.

We are South Carolina was a very anti-woke state. It still is. And if Disney would like to move their hundreds of thousands of jobs to South Carolina and bring the billions of dollars with them, I'll let them know. I'll be happy to meet them in South Carolina and introduce them to the governor and the legislature that would welcome it. Disney World Columbia. That's right. So she's basically, and the DeSantis people, I mean, they got it. And she threw in like, we're anti-woke, but we're not sanctimonious. And you have the super PAC for DeSantis who, you know, lashing back with her with this montage of Disney employees saying various woke pro-gay things. And they're nailing, you know, what

they calling her, you know, Mickey Haley or whatever. So give me your take on that. Mickey Haley going after DeSantis, inviting Disney to move. I just keep having these mixed views about all this stuff. Like, it was, when I first saw it, like, Mickey calling her on sanctimonious, I was like, woo, that's a good one. There's something

there. They're fighting. Things are getting rowdy. Then on the other hand, then you're like, wait a minute, I'm reliving 2016 again. This is how you get Trump. I'm reliving 2016. It's just like, can she not show the same high heel when she's asked about Trump? She keeps talking about how she's kicking forward and she can kick through meatball Ron. She can kick right through him, but can she kick at Trump? No. So anytime I get to have a little bit of joy about that, you know, it has to be tempered with this reality check. But I mean, I think that it's just to show how weak DeSantis is. The conservative

world, it's in such a different universe, you know, from reality, that sometimes it's hard to judge, like, how will something play, you know, which is why I suffer through all these conservative media outlets, you know outlets you know to you know make sure i'm still in touch with what's happening in crazy land and you know i think that the fact that nikki felt like she could attack him in one of my other fox business forays yesterday i was watching uh larry kudlow just annihilate desantis over this and he had some goomba who i've never seen before you know for some made-up grifter pack on the show who was also annihilating desantis over the disney thing and kudlow gets to a point it's like it's scary when me and larry kudlow are thinking the same thing i said that makes you check your priors a little bit but he said something that i've been saying which is like people don't even really know what this fight is about anymore it's one thing to

be a fighter over a fighting Biden or even a fighting a fake thing like the caravan or the ground zero mosque. It's one thing to fight a fake thing that everybody knows what it is and who the enemy is and they hate it. But it's just like he has this fight with Disney that seems about nothing. It is about wokeness. It's about the fight now. I've said this, that at a certain point you forget what it it's about, and the fight becomes about the fight. Right. And so when it's something like Disney, when it's something like Jobs, or something like Peter Pan, you know, people start to be like, this seems, this is a little weird. You know, and I wrote earlier this week about DeSantis and the comparison of him to Elizabeth Warren.

Now, trigger warning for the Elizabeth Warren fans listening. But it's not a comp in that, oh, you know, they're both equally disingenuous. It's just that they got wrapped around the ax on this stuff that only super online, you know, members of their base care about, you know, and somebody, an old Warren supporter had sent me something that was like, I'm getting flashbacks to this. And they sent me these like clips of Warren, you know, talking about black whim exon, you know, for Warren. and it's like what is that like nobody like no black women you put an x where the e is like even if it's well-intentioned

you're trying to be inclusive it's like weird it's not how normal people talk and like that parallel is starting to be there with desantis where it's like you listen to nicki haley right there and it's like well this at least seems like a normal person that is talking. I mean, she has to throw in the weird woke sentence, but at least it sounds like a human that you could understand what they were saying. DeSantis's Disney stuff feels like it's just like a message board fight that you've come in and you don't know who any of the characters are. Are you like, who's fighting? Why?

The Disney lawsuit, I mean, just calls them out on this. You know, a targeted campaign of government retaliation orchestrated at every step by Governor DeSantis as punishment for Disney's protected speech. And there's a certain economy there, right? I mean, they're just hitting every one of these notes here. Look, this is from their lawsuit. Disney expressed its opinion on state legislation and was then punished by the state for doing so. Okay, take a deep breath. You do not have to be a woke progressive to see that that's a problem. This is why guys like Larry Kudler are going, wait, you know, we've spent our whole lives talking about, you know, smaller government, government not beating up on companies,

free speech for companies and all of this. And DeSantis is saying, that's not what you want. You want me to use this gigantic cudgel to smash Disney for disagreeing with me, for saying something. And the more you get into that, you just go, are you serious that he is spending this much political capital going after one of his state's biggest employers? And I think we've talked about this before. All Disney would have to do, besides this lawsuit,

is put out a press release saying we are actively considering picking Nikki Haley up on our offer. We're actively considering moving to Colorado or, you know, moving some of our operations. This may affect 10,000 jobs. Ron DeSantis is dead man walking the moment they suggest that they're going to move the billions of dollars of economic impact of taxes of employment out of the state of florida and it's like here's a reminder

ron de santis is not a chess player is he he is not thinking he moves down the board here and also you know you don't expect consistency from these people but again like showing doing this video running an ad, a video of random no-name staffers at the Disney Corporation, like from some leaked thing. It's like, can you imagine the shoes on the other foot?

And can you just imagine the pearl clutching and the rending of garments? If like Joe Biden's super pack had sent out a video of like Chick-fil-A staffers talking about Jesus and one man, one woman marriage. And it was like the assistant marketing manager for Chick-fil-A staffers talking about Jesus and one man, one woman marriage.

And it was like the assistant marketing manager for Chick-fil-A. Cancel culture. Just the outrage over this would be kind of legit, right? Because it's like, this is crazy. You're coming down on four random staffers at this massive conglomerate. Anyway, the whole thing is ridiculous. And Disney has been very sort of mild up until now. It's like, okay, you know, we're going to quietly remind you about our economic impact. We're going to quietly remind you about the

legality of these contracts. We're going to quietly mention, you know, various things. And then they dropped this lawsuit in federal court. This government action was patently retaliatory, patently anti-business, and patently unconstitutional. But the governor and his allies have made clear they do not care and will not stop. This is in the court filing. So it's like, I'm guessing that they sat around at Disney and went, screw this, gloves off, we're going, you know? Yeah. You come for the mouse, you better take the mouse because we're, you know. It's a bad sign. It's also a bad sign if your whole pitch is that you can fight the left and win,

you know, that like you're totally unable now to fight this. You take on this big fight and you're just getting slapped around by Mickey Mouse and, you know, you can't stand up to Trump. It's going at his core argument for why Republican voters liked him was the idea that he was taking on Fauci. It's like, okay, well, you took on that little guy, but you can't, you know, Bob Iger's smacking you around right now. So here's the dilemma, because I'm figuring that in your next life, Tim, you're going to be a Hollywood screenwriter, and you're gonna be coming up with, you know, series about, you know, politics, you know, the, the West Wing of the next decade. The problem is, is that if you sat down, you know,

as a script writer or a showrunner and you said, okay, I want to portray this, you know, really asshole politician who picks exactly the wrong fight. Could you do any better than saying, and let's go to war with Walt Disney World? I don't think so. What? I mean, can you make it a... We're going to go after motherhood and apple pie. Let's go after... I want to go to war with... What is the most beloved company in America? I mean, the most... Who does everyone

love? That's a tough one. We're too divided. Not everybody doesn't love anybody. Yeah, I know. That's what I was thinking. I was coming up with some names ago, and none of I can come up with the hatred. Okay, so yesterday, you kind of let it all out. The Republican establishment wishes they knew how to quit Trump. Your good buddy Jonathan Martin also had a piece in Politico. People are asking themselves, is Trump inevitable? So let's talk about that. J-Mart got my dander up okay tell me about it yeah i had started drafting this actually before the jmart article came out because a couple of things happened i

just couldn't believe i could believe it but like when i had some little time on an airplane i was like i can't believe this stuff is just sliding by nobody's mentioning it the two things that jumped out at me were lee zelden who is the republican gubernatorial candidate in new york who by all accounts did better than expectations. New York was one of the few bright spots for Republicans. The Tom Cottons of the world, the closet normal Republicans were like, Lee Zeldin, okay, this is the guy. Maybe we can get him. They're trying to get him to run the RNC over Ronna because they're like, all these Trumpers lost.

Lee Zeldin knows how to do it. He was rumored to be a top official in the DeSantis campaign. Okay, that's Lee. Now we've got steve danes steve danes is the head of the national republican senate committee so his job is to elect republican senators that's the job he's going to run the campaign committee he's the new incoming he's a senator from montana okay these two guys in a matter of a couple days both endorsed trump 2024 zelda was supposed to work for desSantis, changed his mind, endorsed Trump.

Danes went on Trump Jr.'s podcast, The Triggered Podcast, which ranks below the Bullard podcast on the Apple rankings. He went on The Triggered Podcast to endorse Trump in front of his like nepo baby kid while he sniffed on this live stream. It's like, this is lunacy and nobody says anything. And so- Well, hold on. There's a signal of Danes here because, I mean, as you point out, it's his job to manage the campaign committee whose entire purpose is the election of Republican senators, right? And Trump tanked to that last cycle. Right. And as you point out, not to mention that seven of Danes' colleagues voted just three years

ago to convict Trump over his attempt to overthrow the government. It's like, yeah, forget it. We're all in on all of this. Madness, madness, Mr. Miller. Yeah, this is where content synergies come into place. As I'm writing this rant about Zeldin and Danes, I could throw away a line that's like, in a sane world, there would at minimum be people on background in Politico, you know, the Republican strategist types that I wrote about in my book saying to jonathan martin like what is danes doing like maybe we need to replace him with somebody who is not an idiot who is awake during 2022 realizes that like we need candidates like mike dewine who won not freak shows like herschel walker and dr hawes but there was none of that

nobody in the republican orbit was at all miffed it didn't seem like by this there's no evidence of it on twitter and any of these articles and then the next day jonathan's article comes out and it's the opposite these guys are all on background talking to jonathan saying oh we might just need to come to terms with trump one more time you know it's just we just might have to accept it and the quote that i liked the best was this guy who says, you know, we might just need to go into the basement and ride out the tornado. And it's like the shrewd strategy. This is the shrewd opinion. It's like, bro, bro, you've been in the basement the whole time. You've been in the basement since, what do you mean go into the basement? You've been in the basement

since 2015 when Trump put you down there and ball gagged you. Okay. You've been stuck down there for eight years now. All right. So like, you're not going into the basement. You're there already. You're staying there. What is today's date? It is April 28th. We're not even voting for nine months. There's not even any voting. It's one thing if Matt Gaetz endorses Trump, you know, like this is what you expect from these grifter losers, you know, that like the person who's supposed to be in charge of the campaign committee, the person that all the supposed normal Republicans wanted to run the whole party, are endorsing Trump already because Tiny D had a bad three weeks? It boggles the mind. These people are so craven. They are so weak. They're not even trying to fight him.

Well, this is what was interesting is also you pointed out, I mean, connecting all these dots, that is all this is happening at once. You know, you pointed out that this week was revealed that when the Republican National Committee did its autopsy on why they lost in 2022, they were too scared to even mention Trump's name. How do you do an autopsy about 2022 without mentioning Trump? Him and abortion were the whole reason that you lost. You could write a two-sentence autopsy. It's not like Trump is intimidating or scaring them, right? I mean, they are scaring themselves. They're preemptively basically ball-gagging themselves. They don't even wait for him to come down the

stairs into the basement. It's like, no, I got this. DeSantis was beating Trump in the polls like a month ago. He was beating him in a month ago. They haven't tried anything, and they're already giving up. I just, you know. I'm sorry to laugh here. I was listening to the Dispatch podcast. I had Mike Pence on the other day, and Mike's like, oh, I'm confident that people are going to come to their senses. It's like, why?

Nobody's doing anything. Nobody's trying. At least try. Okay? This is my thing about nikki and all these people and i i just i sometimes i get weak and i still make fun of them but like i will compliment you if you at least try to try to beat trump okay like that is the minimum that we're asking for and they're all thrown in the towel already they're just such pussies interesting that you

would say that because i've been actually you know trying to i been having a conversation with myself, because apparently people are talking to themselves a lot of these days about Chris Christie, because Chris Christie is the one guy who is essentially saying exactly the same thing you're saying, which is like, guys, do not give into this temptation to do this. I mean, there is this, he's looking around, he's seeing the fact that there is this, you know, preemptive surrender going on. But I mean, it's gonna take me a while to get around Chris Christie, because you know how I feel about all of that. Sure. But at least he is doing this. Okay. So it's not just the politicians, you know, conservatism, Inc, it was all lined up to, you know, go along with DeSantis. And your number two in yesterday's

triad was a two NRO, which of course is national review. What's going on with national review, Tim? Yeah. So this also got my dander up and which is why, you know, I stepped in for the triad. I was just like, I got to do a newsletter today. I was too angry on the internet. And, and I was just like, I was going to do one tweet about this. I was like, it deserves more.

Jim Swift. I think, I guess tweeted a link to it. And now I don't follow the national review on Instagram, but it's, I'm trying to monitor the other sites, left and right, their social media outlets. Twitter might be dying. We're trying to up the Bulwarks game in other places. We're all Twitter addicts.

So I've been monitoring other sites, seeing what they do. So I go to the National Review's Instagram page, and it's like, I can't do it justice in words. You have to go click on it yourself. They have these memes of trump beating desantis in the polls schlonging desantis in the schlonging i mean i use the word schlonging but here you know here's what they use trump trouncing desantis in his own state trump plus 27 it's like trump with this like badass looking face as you know much as he can make a face that other people think is badass

you know i think he looks ridiculous then there's another meme of Trump waving goodbye at the grave of BuzzFeed and making fun of the dossier. Another one of Trump staring down Alvin Bragg. They have a meme that's a victorious, he's back photo with the triumphant Trump returning to Facebook, like getting unbanned from Facebook.

Why is the National Review doing this? Their own writers obviously want DeSantis. Most of the time, it's a DeSantis fanzine. This is a rhetorical question, right? This is a rhetorical question. Well, I'm going to answer my own rhetorical question. Because it's like, they don't have to do that, right? Like, you could just be a Ron DeSantis fanzine, and we can make fun of that. But at least that's an ethos, you know? Okay, at least that is an idea. You do this because that's what gets the engagement. A lot of the voters still like Trump. And these places that still have influence could be choosing to suffer losing some engagement or getting some angry emails of your Steve Daines, you know,

if they fought this impulse and tried to nudge people. And we talked, it was just last week's podcast where we talked about the fact that 32% of people in that one South Carolina poll were ready to move on from Trump. It was very interesting. Yeah. Could you, if places like National Review, if people like Steve Danes, if people like Lee Zeldin, who had credibility, were out there saying, hey, over and over again, move on. If they're posting to their feeds, memes of Trump looking like a little wimp and other people's, Trump's lost plenty.

There's plenty of memes that you could do to make Trump look bad. You know, just go to some resistance sites, you know, borrow some content. Could that have helped nudge people? Maybe not. Maybe they just lose their readers. That's a risk, I guess. But because nobody has, you know, the courage to try, we're back in Groundhog Day again. You know, we're back in Groundhog Day, another year of this shit. So Renfield does Renfield, Reek does Reek. I mean, this is so internalized. I mean, part of it is that, you know, what you're saying is if there was a little bit of leadership, a little bit of pushback, might this change? People, I think, have internalized so deeply the fact that it's too dangerous to lead in any way whatsoever. So the shrewd thing to do is always

to follow the base, give them what they want, assuming that they never want to be told anything that might make them uncomfortable. So here's the thing about being a thought leader is, you know, two things. I mean, number one, you have to think, number two, you have to lead. And that seems to be like, what kind of a cuck are you? You know, I mean, don't you look at the polls? Don't you understand? Don't you want to be relevant here? So let me ask you the J Mark question. So it's April, nearly May 2023. Is Trump already inevitable? I don't know. No, the short answer is no, he's not inevitable. No, you're saying no. If nobody tries, he's inevitable. You can't beat somebody with nobody. I still believe,

I wrote about the DeSantis-Warren problem at the end of that article earlier this week. I had three paragraphs that were just like, this isn't in stone yet. I'm loathe to give Ron DeSantis advice, but he has an elevator pitch that could work. That could work. And just as quickly as things moved in Trump's favor, things could move back in his disfavor. Republican voters, if you listen to Sarah's focus groups, there are Republican voters out there that like Trump, but could be persuaded to move on because he can't win. But they have to be persuaded.

And the most disturbing poll this week was, I think it was the Wall Street Journal one, because he can't win. But they have to be persuaded. And the most disturbing poll this week was, I think it was the Wall Street Journal one, that asked Republican voters who they thought was more electable, DeSantis or Trump. And DeSantis was winning, but it was with just 41. And Trump was 31, and the rest were I don't know. That's not enough, right?

You've got to make the case that you can win. You can fight. You know how to do it. Trump is a loser. And if everybody out there from Fox to NRO to Tucker to, you know, Daily Wire to all the senators to Lee Zeldin are out there talking about how Trump is this strong man, you know, who can't be defeated, then yeah, he's inevitable. And so if that's what they're going to do, then he's inevitable. Yeah. There ought to be more angst about this because, and bear with me, I'm anxious. Joe Biden is eminently beatable from a Republican point of view. He is weak. The economy is slowing. Inflation is just changing the economics of the

household. There's a real strong case to be made, except it becomes increasingly hard to imagine that any Republican can beat him. So this would be the kind of thing that ought to have people's heads exploding if you're a Republican, right? It is therefore they taking, and yet you are about to go and shoot yourself in the foot, which is, I'm sorry, I should come up with a better analogy here. The problem of making the case for Ron DeSantis' electability, you know, the biggest problem for Ron DeSantis is, okay, so Ron DeSantis somehow, you know, something, something, something happens, gets the nomination, right? There's some unicorns in there. And then Ron DeSantis has to figure out

how to get those Trump voters and Donald Trump not to destroy him. That's the part where you go, all right, imagine it's the Republican convention here in beautiful Milwaukee, and Ron DeSantis has just been nominated. Can you picture Ron DeSantis on that podium with his hand raised, holding Donald Trump's hand up? No, it's not going to happen. The problem is that Donald Trump is basically saying you either nominate me

and go down in flames or you don't nominate me and I will burn you the fuck down well they all deserve that and i would get a lot of joy out of that if it was like if we had a little bit more stability on the democratic side you know because you know we did this already all right so i have ptsd okay you know i ptsd i don't a one percent chance of a donald trump's second term is too high a 0.1 chance is too high. And once you're the nominee, it's a lot higher than that, even if it's unlikely.

So it should be angst. And this is, I think, that was the underlying element of the newsletter. That's how I was trying to get it. It's like, why aren't more people feeling angst? And there's just this resignation that has set in. It's just like, okay, well, Trump again, I guess. Really? That guy?

Well, and also, it's the stories that they tell themselves. So, you know, you were well, Trump again, I guess. Really? That guy? Well, and also, it's the stories that they tell themselves. So, you know, you described, you know, Mike Pence was saying, well, I'm sure that people will come to their senses. No, the evidence is to the contrary. You know, Paul Ryan has been saying, well, no, he's never going to become the nominee. It's just not going to happen. You know, Chris Sununu is saying it's not going to happen. So, they've been telling themselves the story that they don't have to take a really strong stand because there's no way that he becomes the nominee. And then, of course, they will switch to telling themselves the story, well, he's the nominee, there's no way he will become president, which again, for those of us who still have the PTSD of 2016, we have heard this before.

I've said it before. And Nikki Haley has already previewed the key Republican strategy, which I think it was Sarah who tweeted out the formula. They're running against dead Biden, alive Kamala. They're basically saying you can't vote for Biden because Biden's not going to live through the term. So you vote for Biden, you get Kamala Harris as the president. And this is going to be their target. They're going to run against her, basically saying that if Biden gets a second term, he's not going to live. There's going to be a terrible fall. Something's going to happen. And you get her because she's a much

easier target for them than he is. And you know, that's the strategy. And Nikki Haley just said it out loud this week, didn't she? Yeah. And I don't know what they do about that. We'll have a lot of time to discuss the strategic imperatives there, but Buff buffing up kamla is gonna have to be part of the job of the campaign i think over the next few months well good luck with that well i hope you have a wonderful weekend mr miller i am gonna have a wonderful weekend i know i've been in phoenix all week and it was it was absolutely beautiful uh there but you know that there's about six weeks here in Wisconsin where the weather is kind of nice. May is often very, very nice. So when you and I speak next, it will be May in Wisconsin.

And then, of course, you and I will both be in New York City in the middle of May where it should be absolutely gorgeous. If people have not yet gotten their tickets for this because we are taking the bulwark on the road. That is May 18th, right? May 18th. Yeah, get a plane. Make a little weekend out of it. It will be wonderful. Mr. Miller, talk to you next week. See you, Charlie. 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.