The Bulwark Podcast - Tim Miller: Trump Keeps Telling Us

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Trump is glorifying insurrectionist prisoners, Bannon-world is using Confederate code words, and Republicans and a lot of the media are just pretending this radicalizing talk isn't happening. Plus, Mike Johnson's thoughts on dinosaurs and gay people. Tim Miller joins Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod.

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Charlie, it's been too long, man. You know, we have so much to cover. Stuff has happened. You had COVID in the house. You know, we missed you. You could have used a purple drink, I promised you. In New Orleans, you could have used a purple drink. So, do it, you know, a rain check. Well, you think about it's been like, you know, a couple of weeks,

all the things that have happened. We have a new speaker. We have a couple of new wars. We have a new slap fight going on in, in Congress. We can talk about all of that. I want you to explain some things to me. I want you to explain Ken Buck to me. I want to talk about the Nikki Haley surge. I want to talk about you and Steve Schmidt and this whole Dean Phillips campaign. Are you up for that? We're going to do that? Yeah, let's do it all. Oh, and Tommy Tuberville. And whether you agree with me or not, that Tommy Tuberville is the Senate's dumbest member. I understand that's a controversial position. It was interesting

watching the other night where finally after nine months, the other Republicans called bullshit on him for holding up all of those promotions for no particular substantive reason. And it was not just the substance. It was also the tone. They were exasperated and disgusted with the guy. And it's like they've been holding it in. Right. Yeah. They know how stupid Tommy Tuberville is, but also how reckless and dangerous and demagogic is.

And finally, it just poured out of them. They know how stupid Tommy Tuberville is, but also how reckless and dangerous and demagogic he is. And finally, it just poured out of them. It reminded me of how pissed the closet normals, House Republicans were at Matt Gaetz. Yes. The same thing happened right during the McCarthy thing where Garrett Graves from up here in Baton Rouge is up, you know, is an establishment guy that went along with Trump. And he's up there going, Matt Gaetz is the worst. He's the worst person. He's a grifter. And it's just like all these guys just have had to push it down for like seven years now, right? They can't say it about Trump. They can't say it. They're really

thinking they can whisper. They've been sucking it down for a very long time now. They can whisper it in the Capitol Hill Club basement. But finally, when they let it out, you know, it's like the hot steam popping out of their ears. And Matt Gaetz and Tommy Tuberville, I guess, are safe spaces. They feel like they can express their real feelings in a way that it won't cost them a primary. And so you get to see the true face of what these guys think about the monster that they have created and enabled the past decade. Again and again and again. You know, they create the monster of Marjorie Taylor Greene and they are amazed that she's turned on them. Or you've gone along with Tommy Tuberville and you realize, hey.S. military up until the moment where the commandant of the

Marine Corps has a heart attack because they're making him do two jobs. And there's a war in the Middle East where obviously U.S. military is going to be affected in some way. So it actually took a war and the heart attack from the top Marine for people to say, hey, maybe this Tommy Tuberville holiday from reality is not a good idea. Yeah, I mean, you would have thought on the merits, you know, at least the vestigial neocons, right, the vestigial strong national security types, so the Tom Cottons and Lindsays, and finally they broke with Dan Sullivan, I guess, took the lead out of Alaska. I will say that I'm hoping that the Democrats use this to play hardball on this. I've seen the last couple weeks, I feel like

the Democrats are wimping out. They went down on the George Santos thing. Several of them went along with this. I know we can talk about the Mike Johnson, Israel funding tied to IRS gambits. I mean, even a couple of them went along with that. I would love to see a little more hardball out of them. And hopefully this could be an example.

I mean, the Republicans, Dan Sullivan and Lindsey Graham, just gave them free ad material for next fall. Oh, absolutely. It's Republicans on the Senate floor that are saying our party is hampering military readiness. And that is a that's a useful material. Oh, yeah. I mean, he was talking about how the Chinese generals and admirals must be, you know, pinching themselves. How could they possibly be so lucky? What a great gift to Xi and to Vladimir Putin. This is coming from Republican senators on the floor talking about another Republican senator. So yeah, it's the type of material that like just really quick,

these swing voters like in Georgia, right? Who are the people we're talking about? The suburban white college educated dads, right? Like these are national security types, want a strong military, the Brian Kemp, Raphael Warnock voter, right? That demo that's going to be sure to be in 2024, this is really effective grist, I would think, for motivating that audience. There's so much we have to talk about. I'm going to double back and talk about Congress, and I want you to explain a lot of this stuff to me. But this is one of those moments where I go, okay, we have been talking about Donald Trump for so long that there comes a point where you go, can we talk about anything other than Donald Trump? I mean, look,

you and I both feel this way, right? You kind of get numbed, you kind of get bored by it. And that's like, I literally quit reading a book last week because Donald Trump turned out to be a character. And I was like, nope, can't do it. This is going to trash. I need a break from this guy. Because you were reading it for leisure time, right? And it's like, suddenly this other world comes in. I guess I'm going to do that a little bit because Donald Trump went down to Houston, Texas to have a rally. And he did something that he's actually saying, because this is not the first time that he has played the January 6th prisoner anthem or that he has praised the insurrectionists. This is not the first time.

In fact, as I wrote in Morning Shots, this is not a gaffe. This has become a foundational theme of his reelection campaign. This is a guy that started his reelection campaign in Waco, Texas. We can get to that in a moment because there's a great quote from Steve Bannon about all this. But I want you to listen to this. This is Donald Trump comes out on the stage and they start playing this. You have to know, these are the January 6th guys, right? The prisoners, they're singing it over a phone, I guess? Well, thank you very much, and you know what that was? That was, i call them the

j6 hostages prisoners i call them the hostages what's happened and it's a shame and you know they did that and they asked me whether or not i would partake and do the beautiful words and i said yes i would and you saw the spirit the uh the spirit was incredible and when that came out it went to the number one song it was beating everybody it beat uh taylor swift it beat molly cyrus who was number one and two they were number one and two we knocked them off for a long time that song was out there for a long time then of course they course, they had a problem with the Internet, right? He's the guy that couldn't identify Alexander Hamilton in the lineup, but he knows Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus. Look, here's the thing.

I don't know whether you've read. Jonathan Karl has a new book coming out. It's excerpted in The Atlantic. And he talks about that first rally where Donald Trump goes down to Waco, the scene of the Branch Davidian anti-government fiasco. And he gives this speech. And afterwards, he asked Steve Bannon, well, was this a coincidence that you're down in Waco? And Bannon is like strutting and saying, yeah, we're all Trump Davidians now. And that was the first time that he rolled out this anthem from the January 6th protesters. I mean, Tim, do I have to remind people, we're talking about people who attacked the Capitol, who beat up cops, who tried to overthrow the government. Their crimes were so

serious that they are locked up in jail. Donald Trump is not just saying, I think they're being treated unfairly. He's actually promoting their song and referring to them. I hope he just didn't have breakfast or lunch or dinner. Yeah. Hostages. There, by the way, are real hostages in the world, in Gaza, in Israel. This guy, this fucker. Yeah, is referring to the people who, yeah, beating up the cops, not as prisoners, but as hostages. You know what?

He's going to pardon them all. Yeah. Oh, of course he'd pardon them. You know, the hostages thing, this is pretty obvious on the nose, but it's just worth saying explicitly, he's doing this to parallel Biden and the Democrats to Hamas. That's what he's doing, right? He's like, Biden and the Democrats are holding these people hostages. They are Hamas.

And, you know, the January Sixers are the innocent Israelis who were terrorized by Hamas. I know you're trying to make this family podcast now, but there's nothing else to do except for to cuss at it. He's a piece of shit. And, you know, he picked up the endorsement of Rick Scott this week on the heels of this. You know, there was a lot of highfalutin rhetoric from some of these guys like Mitch McConnell after January 6th, you know, even the ones that didn't vote to convict. And these people are absent and they want to pretend like this isn't happening. They're doing the hostage strategy, head in the ground, pretend like Donald Trump doesn't exist. He exists on this

other plane of existence. He has his own social media feed. He has his own media network that people watch these things, RBSN and Bannonn and bands podcast right like there's this whole alternate world over here yeah that not everybody but much of the republican party wants to just pretend like doesn't exist and the stuff that's happening in that other world is deeply scary it's deeply radicalizing you know we've been doing some midweek youtube videos if you guys miss us during on friday but it was something i was talking about this week on YouTube. It was just like the media has to talk about this. Everyone's tired about it.

We're tired. You're tired. I'm tired. Everyone's tired. I get it. But he's out there glorifying insurrectionist prisoners. In addition to all of his like weird gaffes that he's been making, confusing world war two and confusing Obama with Biden and all this stuff.

Nobody talks about it. It's not on the nightly news, the Lester Holt. It's not on the day show. It's on MS, right? It's on certain places. Because the news is about something that's new, right? And all of the crazy is not new. The fact that he's a seditionist, the fact that he's all of this stuff. Come on, we've reported that. Like, wait, maybe the standard for news shouldn't be just novelty. It should be, he's actually an insurrectionist who's talking about suspending the Constitution. Yeah. Could you imagine if like other people, like what are the equivalents to this? Some pro-crypto candidate sings a song to SBF or Joe Biden sings a song to the, you know,

Jussie Smollett song. Like if any other politician was out there doing a sing-along with people who are in prison for attacking cops. Law and order. Back to blue. Yeah, back to blue. That's the real law and order candidate. But it would be wall to wall, but he gets treated differently and he shouldn't be. This is like on par with as the top of the most outrageous shit he's ever done. Okay. For the people who say I'm so sick of hearing his voice, there's another little dazzling detail in Jonathan Karl's new book that he got from Steve Bannon. I mean, it's very clear that one of the themes of the Trump campaign, if it's not the only theme of the Trump campaign, is I am your retribution. This is the revenge campaign. I'm going to do to you what you did

to me and all of this. He really unveiled that retribution theme during that weird Waco rally where he was singing with the January 6th insurrection. So Jonathan Karl talks about this is in The Atlantic, but I excerpted into my morning shots. Jonathan Karl goes up to Steve Bannon afterwards. He's talking about this speech. He writes, when I spoke with Bannon a few days later, he wouldn't stop touting Trump's performance, referring to it as his come retribution speech. Come retribution? Come retribution. That's the phrase the ban uses. Carl writes, what I didn't realize. I'm sorry to interrupt and be a child, but I was hearing the word ban and next to come retribution is just making me uncomfortable, but okay, let's continue. I'm sorry to interrupt. You're going to hear it several times here. Okay.

I'm going to try to brace myself. Carl writes, what I didn't realize was that the phrase come retribution, the phrase the band used, Carl writes, what I didn't realize was come retribution was the code word the Confederate Secret Service used for the plot to take hostage and eventually assassinate Abraham Lincoln. The use of the key phrase come retribution suggests the Confederate government had made a bitter decision to repay some of the misery that had been inflicted on the South. Historians write, bitterness may well have been directed toward persons held to be particularly responsible for that misery, and Abraham Lincoln certainly headed the list. In case you're wondering, well, okay, but Bannon didn't mean that when he kept using come retribution. Carl writes, Steve Bannon actually recommended that I

read that book, erasing any doubt that he was intentionally using the Confederate code words to describe Trump's speech. So Trump's speech was not an over call for the assassination of his political opponents, but it did advocate their destruction by other means. Success is quote, within our reach, but only if we have the courage to complete the job, gut the deep state, reclaim our democracy, and banish the tyrants and Marxists into political exile forever, Trump declared. This is the turning point. Come retribution. This is not a gap. I can't imagine any punishment worse than being a victim of steve bannon's cum retribution but um boy i look it's a gotta move on from that yeah

yeah the eventual image is tough for me but i'm doing my best look i think that the underlying thing here i mean bannon is so just you know with all of his like historical self-important references you know some of the stuff is over the top, but I think that the important element to this is that like, you don't have to have read the 1988 book about Confederate retribution to get the message. If you're a rank and file MAGA person, right? If you're a MAGA that is radicalized and you are listening to Donald Trump sing with prisoners about how they are hostages and how he's going to let them free once he takes over. And we've done this on this podcast before, but it's not a long step, logically, especially for somebody who's got a screw loose and has got a lot of weaponry.

It's not a far logical step to think, OK, well, I can go take my retribution and this guy will take care of me on the back end when he wins. Well, and this is what Carl is writing about. And it turns out that Jonathan Carr wrote a book about the Branch Davidian siege and assault back in the 1990s and how this became the theme for the right. This was government overreach. 50 people died as a result of all of this. Timothy McVeigh used what happened in Waco, Texas with the Branch Davidians as one of the pretexts for blowing up the Oklahoma City Federal Building and one of the worst domestic terrorist attacks ever. So this is not a random moment. This is reaching back into sort of the visceral anti-government war with the government motif. And Carl's entire point is that, again, this was not unintentional. That's why Steve Bannon says we're Trump Davidians. The implications of that are, even for us, I think it's a little

hard to get your head around because you can't talk about this and separate it from violence. Right. And certain people hear that key, right, in their ear, right, if they're schooled in this stuff. Have you ever read a very popular memoir, educated about this woman who's like mormon family her father's radicalized right and she's living out it's been a while since i read it i think idaho the people that are on these message boards that are listening to stuff that have read about the branch davidians that have read about mcveigh that have read about all the one-off folks out of montana and idaho that had other little smaller government skirmishes. They're picking up what you're putting down on this imagery. And it's not subtle, right, at all.

And so that is at the heart of the threat. And there's no one in that world that is speaking out about this. There's nobody that has any trust with that group that is trying to turn down the temperature. Get a $50 prepaid MasterCard with select Michelin tires. Find a Michelin TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Well, and it's hard to imagine who that would be. Okay, so I wanted to dive deep into the craziness that's going on in the rest of our politics. Putting it in this context, the problem of talking about the craziness in's going on in the rest of our politics, putting it in this context.

The problem of talking about the craziness in the House of Representatives or the Senate or any place else is that everything is under this cloud of the craziness of Donald Trump. And so there is that alpha craziness that kind of smothers all the others. So you can talk about, hey, isn't it crazy what's going on in the House? Well, yeah, but you just got done talking about the former president of the United States, who is the alpha male apex predator of the Republican Party. But let's do it anyway, okay? Yeah, okay. This Mike Johnson thing gets more interesting all the time. I still think it's extraordinary that every single Republican voted for him despite his record. I don't know about you.

I had to Google him. I never heard of the guy before. I don't know about you. I had to Google him. I never heard of the guy before. He's never been vetted. A really brief anecdote for you. The only reason I'd heard of him, because he's relatively new even here in Louisiana. When I wrote, I went to the Louisiana Republican Convention. Oh, yeah. And he piqued my interest there because as I wrote in the article, the crowd is insane. I just think it's important for, you know, liberal listeners, right, to distinguish. I just think it's important for, you know, liberal listeners, right, to distinguish. You can go to Republican Party functions, and it still kind of feels like the old days sometimes, just like it's the gray hairs, it's the same party chairs, and they like Trump now, so they've gotten a little weirder, but like,

but the general feel is the same. That was not true in Lafayette. The crowd was crazy. Like they were super Trumpy, and they were only cheering for the most insane things, the election fraud, the vaccines, all the conspiracy stuff. And then Mike Johnson goes to speak. We've all seen him speak by now. It's a little kind of howdy doody, kind of like Mr. Rogers milk drinking vibe. And but people are really into it. Bill Cassidy is getting booed there, you know, and people are into it. And he's using very religious language and iconography. He's also using MAGA very comfortably speaking and kind of MAGA election fraud stuff. But then he also talks about like swamp maintenance or whatever, you know, like a couple of like

logistical things of actual governance. And people are into it. And I watched that and I was like, man, this guy exemplifies this sort of MAGA establishment thing where he's been able to blend, at least coming off as someone that can handle basic competence stuff, unlike Louie Gohmert, while also being, you know, very radical in his rhetoric, right? I just kind of filed that away. And so when his name popped up again, on that list on Monday, I was like, huh, it's like I predicted him coming. But I sensed that he had, it's been tough to find people that can do that bridge,

you know, and he's bridged it for now. We'll see how long he can. I mean, usually you have a chance for people to get to know who you are before you become second in line to the presidency. Now it's been reversed. It occurs to me, one of the things we've talked about and both of us have written about is the danger that when you keep saying, hey, these guys are wackadoodle extremists, Christian nationalists, I mean, the crazies are in charge. The problem with that is when a real extremist, a guy way out there, comes into power and you say, wait, you understand this guy's way out of the mainstream, that a lot of, including our listeners, will go, well, yeah, I mean, they're all like that. But wait, wait, this guy, Mike Johnson, I mean, not only was he a full-throated election denialist, he actually wanted to get his colleagues to sign onto that letter asking the Supreme Court to throw out tens of millions of votes. So, I mean, this is at the far edge. Okay. Others went along with that. We're now finding out that this is a

guy, and I am not mocking his Christian faith. I am specifically talking about the specific brand and taste of it, where he apparently thinks there was no such thing as evolution, that men and dinosaurs were coterminous. They were around at the same time. The earth is 6,000 years old. He is into the most extreme anti-gay ideology out there. He believes the Roman Empire fell because of homosexuality. He's been involved in- We can do everything, Charlie. We got so much power, the gays. It's unbelievable. Taking down empires. It's one thing to talk about, because we've had these debates about, well, there's a lot of hate and there's a lot of anti-gay sentiment and everything. But it's like, wait, now the real guy has come rolling into the room and it's like all the rhetoric about, no, you understand this guy is like really, really from the wooliest part

of the fever swamps to mix my metaphors. Yeah. I don't think we have. I think that it is important to talk about this distinctions and the difference. Look, there is reason for liberals to look at Republicans and think they're all like that, because they've all gone along with it. And in some ways, right, what you go along with is who you are. In other ways, it is different. What are going to be things that motivate him? What are going to be things that put him forward? Are people going to be able to slow down his more extreme views? Maybe, but we haven't heard a lot of people speaking out about it. It's pretty telling about the nature of the Republican conference, that Tom Emmer, who voted for that gay marriage compromise bill, there was one Republican congressman who

specifically said from Georgia, I'm blanking on the guy's name, but he's a Republican from Georgia, he specifically said that I cannot vote for this guy because he supported gay marriage, he's got to get right with God before he can be the Speaker of the House. Okay. So that was a deal breaker for somebody, that Tom Emmer is for gay marriage. Mike Johnson, thinking that gay sex should be illegal, was not a deal breaker for anybody. Now, some of them might say, oh, I disagree with him on that, but it wasn't a deal breaker. I do think that's telling about the nature of where the conference is, where the power is within the conference. There's just no pushback on this. I mean, it would have been easier to define Johnson, I think, in the pre-Trump era,

because he just fits right in the mold of a Santorum, of a Ken Cuccinelli, of an Alan Keyes, you know, at the far edge of the religious right. Rick Santorum is Mitt Romney compared to this guy. Right, yeah. So that's what I'm saying. In the pre-Trump era, it would have been easy to define him because that would have been his brand, right? I would have been the most extreme Christian conservative. But now he's gone along with all the Trumpy stuff. So now we're adding that on top of it. That is a little bit harder for people to wrap their heads around. I don't underestimate the power of exhaustion,

that the reason why everybody rolled over was they were just tired of not having a speaker. They were embarrassed. It was the real prospect that they might have to cut a deal with Democrats. And at a certain point, everybody just threw up their hands. But it is amazing. I want to get your take on this because you are a whisperer in all of this. Even the Ken Bucks of the world, there was like five minutes there. Do you remember this, where it looked like the moderates or the quote unquote moderates, the normies, were going to draw the line. They weren't going to go along with Jim Jordan. They stood up against Donald Trump. They stood up against the threats. It seemed like there were antibodies. And then they all rolled over. Not one of them voted against this guy. So is it all exhaustion or

what else does it tell you? Yeah, exhaustion is part of it. I don't know that I can be your Ken Buck whisperer. I think he needs to see a psychiatrist. It seems to me that he has got going through some things personally. Just to remind people, because I mean, this is the guy who's saying that his standard was you cannot be an election denialist. I will not vote for you if you do not acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election. So he votes against Steve Scalise.

I think he voted against Tom Emmer. No, no, I don't know who he voted. No, he voted against Jordan. Then he gets to do the cable news rounds. He's on CNN. He's on MSNBC, Talking Principle. Yeah. And he's on the way out. Then he announces this last week that he's retiring because he's so sick and tired of the Republicans embracing election nihilism. This, a couple of days after, he votes for this full-throated election denialist. So Ken Buck is on the way out.

He doesn't have a career to save necessarily, right? He's headed to cable news commentary. And yet the last important thing he does is to vote for Mike Johnson. Explain this to me. Yeah, I mean, peer pressure and psychiatric requirements, I think is my assessment of Ken Buck. The rest of them, here's what I really think.

I think that it's important to really understand the house conferences, the high school cafeteria. These are grown children who need attention. And I don't know if you saw the memo from Nancy Mace. They don't want to sit alone. Yeah. They don't want to sit alone at the lunch table. We even heard from Romney. You had a great interview with McKay Conference yesterday. Even for somebody like Romney, sitting alone wears on you. Nobody wants to be the outcast. So that's one element of the cafeteria.

The other element is these guys really hated Jim Jordan. Right. Like at a very personal level, Jim Jordan had screwed them over for years. He had, you know, gotten in front of the TV cameras and pulled the rug out from under them and he pretended to be more right wing and they were sick of him. And I think that despite the fact that Mike Johnson and Jim Jordan are pretty much indistinguishable policy wise, Mike hasn't been around long enough to grind any of these people's gears. And so they just did what they've gotten accustomed to doing, which is just folding to the real power center of the party, which is the MAGA right. That's how I assess it. Some of it was

they're embarrassed and tired, but others of it was the Jim Jordan thing wasn't actually based on principle. They use the rhetoric of principle, but it was really more based on personal animus. Yeah. Okay. So I want to move on from Mike Johnson in just a moment. I actually had to stop myself. Okay. Is it Mike Johnson? Is it Mike Jones? Because I haven't gotten quite used to it. I had to save Nicole on live TV the other day. She looks at me and she just spaces out and she's like, what's his name again? And I was like, Mike Johnson. I do not judge anyone on all of this. Okay. So his first big thing, of course, is to link Israel aid to this slash an IRS, which was, of course, you know, a big manga talking point that we, you know, have to roll back Joe Biden's enforcement measures, kind of blew up in his face when the CBO comes back and says,

yeah, that's not actually going to save any money. It's going to actually add to the deficit. He goes ahead with it. The House did pass. He got the vote, including Democrats. Just really quick, do we need to go to the CBO on this? I mean, it's like, hey, what we're going to do is we're going to stop collecting taxes from tax cheats. Do we think that that's going to give us more revenue or less? Like, it didn't really take a macro economist to figure that one out. But I'm sorry. So I think that's dumb politics. How bad a mistake was it? He did get the votes. He did get it through the House. I was DOA. It's not going to go anywhere in the Senate. But it turned out, I think, not to be the talking point he was hoping. It's an indication that, you know, here's a guy who has been thrust into a job that perhaps he

doesn't fully grasp. Yeah, he bought himself some time with it, I guess. Yeah, no, I don't think it's good talking point. He brought a new comms director, former colleague of mine, Raj Shah, who was, oh my goodness, went from the Trump White House to Fox. And at Fox, he was the mastermind behind helping them navigate the post-election fraud hysteria and Dominion work and how to deal with it. That worked out well for them. Oh, yeah. A lot of emails from him. He signed a Dominion lawsuit about how they're getting their ass handed to them by Newsmax

and stuff, and they need to do better to accommodate the base. That really worked out well. So Raj was just one of the many people that cost the Rupert Murdoch family almost $800 million. And Mike Johnson looked at him and he's like, you're my man for talking points. So I don't know that they've got the best and the brightest working over there as far as talking points are concerned. How do you think that happened, by the way? You would think that, you know, on Earth 2.0, guy like that would be kind of discredited, radioactive. Did the Trump world folks call him up and say, this is the guy we want.

We want him to be your comms director because somebody must have been his rabbi. Partially, probably. And maybe Fox. I don't know. Who knows? All these guys build relationships with Fox because they want to get on TV, right? So I don't exactly know who his rabbi was. I'll tell you this, though.

The binder full of resumes for comms people on the hill on the Republican side is pretty light. We've had on this podcast before, my friend, Brendan Buck, who's on MS, who's Paul Ryan's guy. In a different world, you bring on somebody like that in a more senior role, and they bring on some younger people who are competent to actually do the day-to-day. Those people don't want this job. So the pool that you're picking from are like MAGA comms people, or you go to somebody like Raj, who doesn't have shame. So I pool that you're picking from are like MAGA comms people, or, you know, you go to somebody like Raj who doesn't have shame. So I think that's what happens.

He's got an $800 million defamation thing on his resume. It's not just on his resume. It was many, many hosts. I think it's easy for Raj to go in there and be like, sorry, Mr. Speaker, it was not my fault. That was Maria Barrett Romo's fault. Point being, I don't think it's the best and the brightest over there. And I don't think that the best and the brightest are applying. But I think the thing that he has going for him is that the Jim Jordan's already been rejected. Unless Matt Gaetz wants this job for himself, there's nobody like to his MAGA right, who could take it. And we've already just finished discussing how the moderates aren't going to throw him over. So I think that as long as he continues to kind of hold the hard line edge on this stuff, he's going to be fine within the conference. Now, push is going to come to shove on the budget

eventually. And so my guess is that he'll get a pass. Kevin McCarthy got a pass twice before they threw him over, you know, to cut the deals necessary to keep the government open. But he's in over his head. There's no doubt about that. You know, I had Adam Kinzinger on the other day, and he was describing the dynamic in a similar way is that you're sitting around the room and everybody's holding a hand grenade. The most powerful person in the room is the one who's willing to pull the pin on the hand grenade. You know, Matt Gaetz was willing to pull the pin. As you pointed out down in New Orleans, Tom Emmer is not going to be the guy to pull the pin on him. But the other problem, though, is that it's not just Mike Johnson, is the fact that his caucus is still completely fucked up.

I mean, the dysfunction was a preexisting condition. But just like in the last couple of days, and you did a great YouTube short on all of this, you have this slap fight going on with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Chip Roy. I mean, if you had to take, you know, a couple of people from the far edges of the right of this caucus, these people hate each other. There is so much personal bitterness. I mean, they're going back and forth.

You have Marjorie Taylor Greene. What did she say about Lauren Boebert? I mean, so- She's a groper. Marjorie Taylor Greene hates Lauren Boebert. This is what's amazing about these personal animus is that it's not about issues. It's not about principle. But when you have that kind of a volatile situation,

don't be surprised when things just blow up over some unpredictable shit, right? Yeah. There's the old Simpsons gag from like the 90s where it was like the Democratic Convention and it said, we hate ourselves. We can't govern. We're the signs. And it's like the Republicans have just totally embraced that ethos. They do not like each other. And they are not capable of governing. They were barely capable of choosing a team captain. I mean, like, think about this.

It took them a month to choose a team captain. That's where they are. They finally chose one. And now the captain's going to make decisions. All of those are going to be a cluster. These people do not like each other. They're blocking each other on Twitter. Nancy Mason and another guy from North Carolina, Murphy, Greg Murphy, she called him a pussy. He blocked her on Twitter. MTG, I do got to give her

credit. She called Chip Roy Colonel Sanders. I thought that was a good hit. When she refers to CNN wannabe Ken Buck, she doesn't care about that. And vaping, groping Lauren Boebert. Yeah, that's a deep cut. And then Chip Roy says, why don't you go chase the Jewish space lasers? I mean, how do you walk back from that shit? You know? Yeah, this is not happening on the other side. So, look, these people are children. It's a cafeteria. And again,

who are doing these tweets? This goes back to the question of like, can Mike Johnson put this together? Can he come up with good talking points? I just want to shout out Kinzinger. Kinzinger's an old comms person. Maury Gillespie, awesome. Cheney's a comms guy. A guy named Jerry Adler. Both these people are out.

Who are you recruiting from? You're recruiting from the people that have decided, I want to go work for Marjorie Taylor Greene and Chip Roy and Nancy Mace while they call each other names and fight over who can suckle on Donald Trump's toes the hardest. The types of people that sign up for those jobs are a certain brand of person. names, and fight over who can suckle on Donald Trump's toes the hardest, right? Like the types of people that sign up for those jobs are a certain brand of person. And like they are not people that play well together in a group. They're not people that care deeply about policy and helping the country. And so this is what you're going to get. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble

or peel, your dread's worn down or you need a new wheel. Wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Ensure each winter trip is a safe one for your family. Enjoy them for years with a Michelin X-Ice snow tire. Get a $50 prepaid MasterCard with select Michelin tires. Find a Michelin tread experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Trade experts.ca. I just had a flash of like a group therapy session with Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bobert, Nancy Mace,

because they're all going through something, right? I mean, they're going through some stuff and I don't think you can analyze it on a political level. There's some psychological stuff going on here. And by the way, I don't mean to pick on just women. One floor over the kookies nest, maybe. Who's Jack Nicholson here? I don't know.

Matt Gaetz, maybe. All right. We have so much else to talk about here. Speaking of interesting back and forths, I am way not interested in the whole Dean Phillips primary challenge to Joe Biden. There's only one element that I'm interested in. Okay. You were in fuego on this and I want to let you go on all this because Dean Phillips himself poses no threat to Joe Biden. He's going to get like 7% of the vote in some places. I don't know. It's just not going to happen, but there is that little twist. our old friend Steve Schmidt of, how do we describe

Steve Schmidt? Big McCain guy, guy who gave America Sarah Palin, was on MSNBC with both you and me, big guy in the Lincoln Project until things blew up in a rather spectacular fashion. The main man for Howard Schultz. Okay, so you bailed me out on that one. Here's one about how deep a dive you want to go. Remember when Howard Schultz was running for president? No. But Steve Schmidt remembers because he got a lot of money from Howard Schultz, right? A lot. So this is the thing. Nothing pisses me off more than bad strategy and overt self-regard in defense of bad strategy. And as a former political professional, I still have some trade craft

that I have some respect for, people that don't want to do things the right way. And this Dean Phillips thing is just doing it such the wrong way in the most grifty and obnoxious way possible. And that's the thing that pissed me off about it. Not because I'm like you, I'm not really worried. It's a big threat to Joe Biden. Frankly, I've been in the Bill Kristol camp for like, not recently, really, but for a long time, I was and thought maybe it'd be good for Joe Biden to have somebody that ran a good faith campaign against him that was not trying to undermine him. That was not being the turn the punch bowl, but was just offering voters a generational change option. There's much in

the Joe Biden mold. I think that probably wouldn't have worked. You know, you'd need the magic, the white whale to do that. Probably the non white whale really to do that. I would have been open to that. This is not that. This is just all about ego mania. And it is an effort that maybe Dean Phillips, I don't think Steve Schmidt, maybe Dean Phillips intends this to be a good faith effort, but it is not like the actual actions of it are only going to serve to harm Joe Biden. Luckily, I think they're going to be so incompetent that it won't actually do anything to harm Joe Biden in the end. But running a campaign at this late of a date where your message is that Joe Biden has dementia and that everything costs too much, that's not a helpful message to Joe Biden. And when Joe Biden is our first line of defense against the man we were just talking about earlier, singing about insurrectionists, healthy criticism, helpful criticism, helpful criticism, helpful efforts to say, hey, here's something you can do better, Joe Biden, sure. But trying to undermine him for no reason except your own egomania is crazy. And the last thing on this, just I got called by Howard Schultz. I didn't

get called by Dean Phillips. But if I did get called, I would have said the same thing to both of them, which is, A, I am not going to do anything that will help Donald Trump period. End of story. Number two, if you have a third party or democratic primary effort that you think might actually help the effort to defeat Donald Trump, I'm happy to give you some free advice on that, but you need to go find a fucking Democrat to help you do it, right? Like, you do not need a former Republican as the front man about this. And I've had calls from other folks. That is just the only logical advice that somebody in Steve Schmidt's shoes should be able to give. That is not what they did. Instead, Steve Schmidt's out there giving press conferences for

Dean Phillips that he's claiming to Tim Alberta that they're going to attack Joe Biden every day. Luckily, it seems like it's incompetent and they haven't got off the launching pad, but it's super dangerous. And I felt like it was my role to just wave the flag and be like, guys, this is a grift. Let's not do anything to get sucked up into this in a way that might help Donald Trump. I agree with almost all of that. However, on the other hand, I do think, you know, that in a democracy, you know, the more the merrier. You get in, you make the case. It'll be a low pressure test, I think, for Joe Biden.

He's going to have to deal with those issues. This will be a way of, you know, maybe tuning up the engine. Dean Phillips is not going anywhere. But, you know, in a democratic society, we run in. But there are all the mixed motivations of the people who ought to be more behind the scenes. Let me put it that way. Okay, so you had a very, very interesting— Hey, just, I'm just, hold on, just really quick, one sentence.

I agree with that. I'm just saying, don't tell me you're trying to save democracy when you're actually harming the guy that's at the front line defending democracy. That's my only point. Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining, okay? If you want to get in the race, go for it. But I just, I don't like being bullshit. Okay, so you have written about these elections that are coming up that I think are not on most people's radar screen. How real is the possibility that you have this Democrat Brandon Presley who might win in

Mississippi? I think the Kentucky race is more realistic is sitting governor is interesting race Andy Beshear. He's winning in the polls, Democrat. He has done a lot of the same things as Presley, but there's been a lot of coverage of him. So I was interested in the Presley race because Mississippi is even redder than Kentucky. Mississippi is still Mississippi. And so I think this could be a situation where just the math doesn't work out and he comes up short. Like right now, even in good polls for him, he's at 46. Getting from 46 to 50, I think, might be hard. But even if he ends up in a place where the incumbent wins this thing, 53-47, there's a lot to learn from that. Because there are a lot of

other red states that aren't quite as red as Mississippi. And I think that the Democrats have done a poor job recently of recruiting the types of candidates that appeal in these states, you know, that maybe are not perfect down the line on progressive values. Actually, they shouldn't be. And I think that, you know, there is a way to combine. I've always said this about Georgia. I have a lot of criticisms of Stacey Abrams, but I do give her credit on the voter reg thing. And I think if you're combining registering voters of color with finding candidates that are heterodox, that could be a winning formula. And I think that Mississippi, that Presley's done a good job of being heterodox. I don't know that Mississippi's

done as good of a job as they should on getting black voters registered. That might end up being the thing that harms them. But anyway, I find that to be interesting. And as a long-term effort, I think that there's more opportunity there for centrist candidates to do what Presley is doing in the Democratic Party for right now, maybe this will change in 10 years, than in the Republican Party, where all the centrist candidates just get slaughtered in these primaries by MAGA candidates, even in blue states, as we've seen with Hogan and Baker in Massachusetts. So I'm just, I'm trying to be constructive and encourage candidates that are doing the right thing. This is constructive. Now, by the way, when you say heterodox, he takes a lot of positions that are quite socially conservative.

But the point you make, though, is one of the differences between the parties is the way that the centrists are being wiped out in Republican primaries. Centrists continue to do relatively well in Democratic primaries. And I actually think that that's going to happen going forward. I mean, I was just looking at the numbers of, you know, for example, Ilhan Omar barely won her Democratic primary last time. And that was before a lot of stuff happened. I think it's something to watch. Just, I'm glad you mentioned that. These squad primaries are going to be something to watch. Again, I'm not putting a crystal ball. I'm just saying it's interesting that Jamal Bowman is getting a primary. I believe Omar's getting another one. I believe Cori Bush is. Summer Lee, I think, is getting a primary.

So this is interesting. We'll see. If they all face plant, maybe there's nothing here. I think that at least one difference that we know is there is that within the Democratic coalition, the center candidates feel like they got a shot to do these primaries, right? Like you're not seeing this in the Republican side. We're like Marjorie Taylor Greene is getting a primary from the center. That would be an absurd thing to do. Nobody would think that person would have a

chance, no matter how insane she is, right. And so in the Democratic side, there's a feeling that this is possible. We'll see how it works out in practice. But we have seen a lot of primaries. I've mentioned this before, but even in San Francisco, the recall, you don't want to just rely on this one example. But but you know, there's certain examples out there that you've seen where this has worked within the Democratic coalition because of the nature of the coalition, which includes a lot of older, more conservative voters of color, moderate, conservatives may be the wrong word, but more small C conservative. And now includes a lot more independent suburban types that have been grossed out by MAGA. And pragmatists. Yeah, exactly.

As we saw in the 2020 presidential. Okay. So briefly in the time that we have left, we haven't spent much time on the Republican primary fight, mainly because I knew I had one more rant in me. Well, okay. I think we know where this is going, but I mean, the storyline of the day, and of course there has to be a storyline of the day because otherwise political reporters and pundits get bored, right, is Nikki Haley surging. Tim Miller. Is she? I mean, it looks like she's picking up endorsements, money, edging on the polls. No indication she's going to beat Donald Trump, but what do you think? I just can't.

Look, it's fine to say that Haley would be a better candidate, that she's the best hope in a really uphill battle. Mike Murphy had a thing for us where it's like, the Sanders should drop out because at least Haley has momentum. I don't necessarily disagree with that. I think maybe me and Murph would have a different assessment of the likelihood of success of that. But I just want to be clear, that is not what I'm saying. It's fine. I think it's always good to be out on the field and try. And Haley beating Trump would obviously be great. It's worth trying. But what bothers me is like the horse race industrial complex. And that's why I hope people can come to the bulwark for real

political analysis. Here's political playbook today. i woke up this morning and i was like am i still dreaming the subject line of my inbox haley's moment yep and then it begins with every four years that happens a candidate gets some surge of momentum and is treated to a few weeks of the spotlight for a short period it feels like they might actually take this top spot but then there's a crash and burn and the spotlight inevitably cycles over to one of their competitors i was like okay playbook's For a short period, it feels like they might actually take this top spot. But then there's a crash and burn. And the spotlight inevitably cycles over to one of their competitors. I was like, okay, Playbook's finally got it right. This might be something that happens to Haley.

But then they go, yet? Every once in a while, the momentum sustains. It feels real. That's where former Gov Nikki Haley is right now. That's a little premature. What are you talking about? The examples they gave of the people that didn't sustain, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman, all these people got up into the 25, 30% range in national polls. There was real reason for them to have the

spotlight. Herman Cain was winning for a little while in the primary. Nikki Haley isn't winning. She's losing by 40 points to Donald Trump. Even in this Iowa poll where she gained 10 points. No. Okay, great. She's gained 10 points. She's up at 16. That's worth noting. She's losing to Trump by, I got to do math in my head here. It's so many, I've got to like count on my fingers, 27. And the DeSantis voters, when you ask them what their second choice is, more than like Trump than Haley. So if you added that in, Haley's down by like 30 points to Trump in Iowa, which should be his weak state. So the idea that her momentum feels real, hope, fine. Hope is fine. Look, I'm not a Nikki Haley fan. I have written about her.

But in terms of, you look at the field, if you close your eyes and you hope for a unicorn hard enough, you can imagine that she becomes the only one. I mean, DeSantis is just blown up on the launch pad multiple times. Can you see his line about wearing a boot on his head? It's getting really bad. He has the best people working for him, right? I mean, you can tell his comms folks, they sat around that room on the whiteboard. What do we say? Okay, we will eat our hat.

No. Anybody else got any ideas? No, Ron should say, the governor should say, I will put a boot on my head. If Donald Trump debates. If Donald Trump shows up, I will put a boot on my head. Yeah, that feels like it might have come from Casey. Or maybe Ron himself. He's not that good. But yeah, okay. No, I hear you on the unicorn and on the hope. It, that feels like it might have come from Casey. Or maybe Ron himself. He's not that good. But

yeah, okay, no. I hear you on the unicorn and on the hope. It's Politico, though. They are supposed to be offering you insider political news that gives you a peek behind the curtain about what's really happening. And they're totally wrong. And so it's like, okay, have hope for Nikki Haley. I don't want to take anyone's

hope away. You know, hope. I love people. I love hope. You know, hope dies last. Hope will kill you. But don't want to take anyone's hope away. Hope, I love people. I love hope. Hope dies last. But don't fucking gaslight me. Don't write me a memo about how Nikki Haley has real momentum and Newt Gingrich didn't. Newt Gingrich almost won that primary.

I'm a no on Nikki Haley momentum from an objective standpoint. I'm a yes from Ferry's Unicorn standpoint. If you want to, if you want to have a purple drink and dream a little dream about Nikki, that's cool with me. Well, again, I'm not a Nikki fan necessarily. I just love about her, you know, the incredible lightness of Nikki Haley and the way that she went back and forth. She hadn't, couldn't decide what she wanted to be. However, if we were to wake up tomorrow in a world in which Nikki Haley was the nominee instead of Donald Trump, leaving aside the I keep invoking the unicorn. Because how do you get to that?

You get to unicorn something, something, something, meteor, Donald Trump dies of the big matter. Because I don't see how it happens otherwise. I could open a bar. I could start writing about other stuff. I could start exploring new interests if that world happened. See, Tim, you've just given away a huge secret here. I'm not even sure we should publish this because I think

people say, oh, you never Trumpers. You love Trump. Trump is the wind beneath your wings. And the real truth is that, no, we want to be done. I have a lot of other interests that I'd like to explore. We feel like we are chained to

this rock, lashed to the mast of all of this. If Donald Trump were to go, we could move on into the sunny uplands of the future of our lives, right? That's great. And my little brain, I just, I have areas of my brain that I can't even explore, you know, because they've been locked into an orange dungeon for eight years. That is so, you know what? That is exactly, it's so funny you should say that. I think, so this is our therapy session. It's like, just imagine what your life would be like.

Maybe that would be the thing to do sometimes, to sit around and go, okay, now close your eyes and just imagine. We're not making a prediction, but what would your life be like if you never had to think or write about Donald Trump? See, the problem is, you know, that's never going to happen. Is, is that, is that it's, it's never going to be that moment where the sun rises, the leaves are green, the birds are chirping and the name Trump will never have to leave your lips again because there's always Eric and Ivanka and Don Jr. And that vast ecosystem. The tall one. All right. So I was hoping to end this, go into the weekend with a little bit of a dollop of hope, but here we are. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm going to go off into my, into my happy place. And I'm going to imagine that.

A world without Trump. Just for like five minutes. Just think about that. It sounds good. I'll join you there for five minutes. Then I'm going to distract myself, turn to LSU, Alabama this weekend. Go Tigers. Hey, you know what I'm doing tonight?

I'm going to a Milwaukee Bucks game. Bucks versus the Knicks down at Pfizer. Oh, nice. With my French grandson, who this will be his first American basketball game, his first NBA game. So I'm taking him down. That is huge. Tell him to send me a text. I want an update. Giannis Dame, the little pick and roll. Oh, that's going to be good. He's going to be wearing a Giannis jersey. Little French guy wearing the Giannis jersey. Okay, Tim, we'll talk in a couple of weeks. All right. All right. We'll 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. Ensure each winter trip is a safe one for your family. Enjoy them for years with the Michelin X-Ice Snow Tire. Get a $50 prepaid MasterCard with select Michelin tires. Find a Michelin TreadExperts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations.