The Bulwark Podcast - Tom Nichols: Citizen Trump

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

The Supreme Court's legitimacy would really be on the line if it took up Trump's completely lunatic immunity theory after the D.C. Circuit's airtight rejection of it. Plus, the four Republican Parties in the House, and not-a-journalist Tucker's suck up to Putin. Tom Nichols joins Charlie Sykes.

landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. Welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. One of the themes of the podcast, unfortunately, is this is why we can't have nice things. And midday yesterday, when that DC Circuit Court of Appeals opinion came down,

and I had a chance to read it, I thought, okay, maybe we can have some good things, but I'm going to put an asterisk behind it. So I wanted to talk about that with my good friend, Tom Nichols, Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College, now a staff writer at the Atlantic, author of the Atlantic Daily Newsletter. Books include the death of, oh, you know who he is. Tom, I was actually going to look up how many times you've been on the podcast, but I lost count before I could get to the number. So welcome back on the podcast. Well, thank you, Charlie. It's good to be with you. This is one of those days, we're standing in front of the fire hose, right? Because I mean, there's so much going on. We have the court decision on Citizen Trump. We have the Ukraine and the border bill hanging fire. We have Romney McDaniel thrown under the bus. We have Tucker Carlson doing his useful idiot routine with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. And we have J.D. Vance being J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance. Yeah, I just don't have enough energy to get to that right away. So can we start with Citizen Trump?

Let's just start with the good stuff, okay? Because there was a lot of griping and a lot of hand-wringing, like, where's the Court of Appeals? When are they coming down with? And it really turns out in the end that they were not dragging their feet. They were just getting it right. They were coming up with an airtight slam dunk of Donald Trump's claims of presidential immunity. And it is a thing of constitutional beauty. Your thoughts about it? There's so many different aspects to touch on. I thought this unanimous decision by the court

was definitive. And I don't think it could have been stronger in many ways. What do you think? The thing I liked most about it was that it was a ringing constitutional case, you know, ringing endorsement of the separation of powers and accountability and democracy. I mean, it's just, it said everything that I would want it to say, but it said it in a way that you don't have to be a lawyer or an expert to understand. And since I am neither now, I appreciated that. I'm not a lawyer and I'm certainly not a constitutional expert, you know, unless the Russian constitution that that was my old bailiwick, but I read it and I thought, you know, you could take this and just send it to every American and they could read it and completely understand it.

I mean, there were such great moments in it about the lunacy of Trump's argument that, well, you know, the other two branches. Yeah, I know. Branch two is supreme and, you know, the president's king and he can never be held accountable. And, you know, with this very, again, very ringing endorsement of our constitutional principles, these three judges shot it down. And I wonder if they did it so effectively that the Supreme Court simply refuses to even hear this at this point. Well, I think there's a real good chance. And I want to get to that because I think that's maybe the most important part of all

of this. And there's so many parts, but we know what Donald Trump's strategy is, which is to delay, to delay, to delay. And I think he's been hoping that he could stretch this out. And the court did something, and I hope people stick around for this, that I think makes that much more difficult. So his defeat was more comprehensive than simply losing this case. But your point about the average person can understand this. Amazingly, Tom, it turns out that the president is not a king. And I love the fact that they use the term citizen Trump. For the purpose of this criminal case, former President

Trump has become citizen Trump with all the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution. And then I love this line here. It would be a striking paradox if the president, who alone is vested with the constitutional duty to, quote, take care that the laws be faithfully executed were the sole officer capable of defying those laws with impunity. That was the money shot. That was the money shot. I mean, that one jumped out at me too because every time people defend Trump in the convoluted ways that they do, that always comes back to me about the one person who must take care that the laws are faithfully executed.

And I always think of Lincoln in the habeas corpus matter when he says, are all the laws to go unobserved but one? That at some point when it all falls down, then we get into this game of which laws we're going to. And, of course, Lincoln was speaking out of desperation in wartime. And so I thought it was great for the appeals court to kind of call back to that to say, no, let's like saying the only guy in town that doesn't have to follow the law is the mayor and the police chief. And apparently it also clears up the question about whether or not the president can send SEAL Team 6 to murder a political opponent. Now, of course, Trump's out there saying, hey, if I can't do that, then I can't be president. So he's not taking this well.

If I can't use SEAL Team 6 as my personal murder squad, I mean, I thought this was America. What's the point? Yeah. What did he say? This was like a country-destroying decision. Save presidential immunity. Okay. You and I have talked for many years now about the mind of Donald Trump, that reptilian instinct that he has. But I have to tell you that save presidential immunity is not the ringing political winner that he perhaps thinks it is. If he wants to die on that hill, let him. You know, you're right. He has this, we both noticed it, right?

This lizard brain. I mean, the one thing I've always said about him is that he is the dumbest human being ever to be president, but that he has a genius for marketing. He has a genius for putting his name on stuff and getting people to buy, you know, crappy vodka and cheap steaks and, you know, all that other stuff. In this case, even the people that are inclined to support him may very well hear when they hear presidential immunity, it means save my ass. Legal.

I'm above the law. Well, more than that, I have to be above the law because I did some pretty shady things. And if I'm not above the law, then I'm going to be in a hell of a mess. And it's your job, faithful cult members, to make sure that I can never be held legally accountable. We can't really argue about what's a good sell to his base. They'll take anything. I mean, he can sell them that the moon's made of green cheese. But I think for a lot of the people who might have been inclined to support him or were on the fence about, is he really that dangerous? I mean, this really does come across as your duty as a citizen is to save me from the legal consequences of my own criming.

Okay, so I know it's never a good idea to read, you know, court decisions, but I just wanted to just highlight the key section here. At bottom, they write, former President Trump's stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the president beyond the reach of all three branches. Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that as to the president, the Congress could not legislate, the executive could not prosecute, and the judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter, which, by the way, is really what he's claiming.

Careful evaluation of these concerns leads us to conclude there is no functional justification for immunizing former presidents from federal prosecution no functional justification for immunizing former presidents from federal prosecution in general or for immunizing former President Trump from the specific charges in this indictment. And so holding we act not in derogation of the separation of powers, but to maintain their proper balance. So again, this is a fundamental constitutional question. Nicely written, by the way, As a former writing teacher, let me just say. Nicely written. It was really well written.

I thought so too. Okay, so the question now, and this is an important one, is what happens now? Can Trump drag this out? Now, I think the assumption had been that Trump would do, and again, within his rights, that he would ask the court to review its own decision, which they're not going to change. Then he would ask for the court of appeals to rehear it en banc, which is all the judges. You have a three judge panel that made this ruling. He could ask that delay, delay, delay, and then he will appeal to the U S Supreme court where he needs four votes to grant cert to take

it up. People following me so far? So all these things delay. And the real key point here is that he just, whatever tactic he does to push this trial back is a win for him. If he pushes it back past the election, it could be an ultimate win for him. The judges on this court, and I'll talk with Ben Wittes about this tomorrow because Lawfare laid this out. One of the key things is they made that a lot harder. They basically said, you don't have forever to appeal this. You have until Monday. You have till Monday to appeal this. He can't go to the armed bank. Trump can only stop the issuance of the mandate by petitioning the Supreme Court for a stay pending a full application for cert, not by seeking rehearing. Okay, so a little bit

of math here. I apologize in advance. You need four justices to grant cert, which is we will hear this case. It takes five justices to grant the stay to stop Judge Shutkin from going ahead. You know, it may seem like we're parsing, but that could be decisive because the stay actually could delay this case into the election or past the election. But if he doesn't get a stay, if the court looks at this and goes, you know what? We got enough shit to deal with. We're not dealing with this. Then this mandate goes into effect right away, and we're going to have a trial. Donald Trump is going to stand trial. Let's back up and point something out for folks that don't spend their lives following politics. There's no real constitutional issue here after that Court of Appeals decision. Well,

I mean, you know, there is in the sense that Donald Trump believes that we should simply negate the Constitution, but there's no serious argument here. People should realize presidents already have a certain amount of immunity. It's kind of hard to sue a president for an official act. President vetoes a bill that you don't like within his constitutional role as the chief executive and vetoes a piece of legislation. You can't sue him because you didn't like the veto. So what Trump was saying is the constitution functionally doesn't exist. And I'm wondering the nightmare scenario for me is that four justices know it and know this is crap. And they, they go ahead and grant cert anyway, just to drag out the clock. But I wonder if after the way that that Court of Appeals decision was written, you know, let's try and be cheerful for a moment. You know, they all have their partisan beliefs. But on this, you know, this was two Democrats and one Republican, and they were unanimous on this. A very conservative Republican, by the way. Yes. This is not a squish conservative. She's well known. Okay, go ahead.

Right. So, you know, they may be sitting there saying, wow, how insanely partisan and in the tank for Donald Trump do we really want to look? Which is why my gut feeling is after this, what are they left with but to say, the appeals court said it all. We're not going to review this. We're not going to grant cert. That would be the honorable and legally sensible thing to do. But there's a part of me that worries that a couple of them are saying, yeah, you know, we just have to do this and help the guy out and get him past the election. But I hope that's not the case. We can talk about the, you know, arguments that's going to take place tomorrow in front of the court

on the 14th Amendment disqualification, the Colorado case. Justice Roberts just doesn't want to be in the room. They do not want to deal with this. They will do any, you know, legal pretzeling they need to, to find an off-ramp from this. So I personally believe that they should disqualify him, but I don't think they will. Okay. But so now they have these two things, the two things. And I think that not granting cert, you know, not taking this case up, dragging their feet on,

on the immunity case is the safe way for them. They're going to be thinking, how do we get out of this quagmire of shit, political shit. We just do not want to be in the middle of this, you know, take an off not want to be in the middle of this. Take an off-ramp on Colorado, leave the appeals court in place, because ultimately, this has got to be the worst nightmare for Justice Roberts and even institutionalists. Look, there are two hardcore ideologues on that court. I mean, I could see Alito and Thomas, who are basically saying, we have to save. We have to crash the plane into the mountain to save Donald Trump. But that's two.

And I think, you know, for them to take it says, this fantastically rendered decision is bad somehow or needs review. And I think you're right, Charlie. I think the ripcord poll is to say, everything's been said. We're not going to take this up. If there is any concern about the legacy of the court, I mean, my God, to take this up and to let this completely lunatic theory of government dominate the Supreme Court's proceedings through a presidential election would really, I mean, I think even the conservatives have to recognize it sort of

threatens the legitimacy of the system because there's nothing to take up. I mean, I think even the conservatives have to recognize it sort of threatens the legitimacy of the system because there's nothing to take up. I mean, the appeals court was so clear that this is a complete nutball. If Donald Trump hadn't been a former president and, you know, this is the kind of letter you get from some, you know, from some crank somewhere in America. You know, the president shouldn't have complete godlike immunity for everything. But you have to take it seriously when it's a former president arguing it for himself. Going back to the beauty of the decision in the Court of Appeals, it's like it reminded you, no, you're not crazy. This is stupid. You know, this is ridiculous. That's right. This is really, really dumb. And they said it in respectful language, but it was definitive. Look, nobody in the court, with the possible exception of, say, Alito and Thomas, wakes up and is thinking, you know, you know what this court needs?

You know what I need for my legacy? I need another Bush v. Gore case to deal with. I want to jump into that. Okay, so let's move on. Okay. Because I thought that this was going to be the only story that we would be talking about today. But then, of course, we have the incredible shambolic House Republican show yesterday, the failure theater. I mean, this is kind of amazing. Look, the part of this is entertaining. I mean, like, who does not enjoy

watching a clown car crash into a dumpster fire? I mean, right? You kind of want to like, you know, the dysfunction is pretty amusing. On the other hand, as I said on Morning Joe this morning, unfortunately, the collateral damage is going to be immense. And it's going to last a long time. The collateral damage for Ukraine, for the Mideast, for the border, for our image in the world. Your thoughts watching this party, which simultaneously, I mean, for people who aren't glued to C-SPAN, they not only then fail with their bogus impeachment of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Mayorkas, by a couple of votes. By the way, they'll try it again next week, but it's still a sham trial. Then the new speaker

also then fails to pass the Israeli aid bill stand-alone. He had two embarrassing, catastrophic defeats in a row while they're in the process today of killing their own freaking border bill. Can't make this shit up. You know, Charlie, for years you and I have had a friendly competition or a friendly reminder to each other about which one of us is going to be the first to drop an F-bomb. So this time I will be the first because I was watching this and I was thinking of a movie I really liked called A History of Violence with Viggo Mortensen and William Hurt. William Hurt is this Irish mobster who has put out what he thinks is a very simple hit. And by the end of the movie, there's like bodies everywhere and there's blood and his

mansion is a shambles and he's wandering around with a gun yelling, how do you fuck that up? All I can think of the Republicans sort of, you know, running their hands through their hair and all these shell casings and all this damage and fire and water. It was a simple vote. You needed a majority of the members voting and you screwed it up. Mike Johnson is managing to make Kevin McCarthy look like a great tactician, a strong and muscular speaker in comparison. McCarthy is getting like Tip O'Neill status compared to this now. But it shows you that, first of all, on a more serious note, I think it says within the GOP, they don't

talk to each other. There's not one unified Republican Party. There's like four Republican parties inside the House at this point. And each of them is a kind of mini caucus, and they don't level with each other. Because there was once upon a time, Charlie, when you and I were Republicans, you know, one of the things Republicans were really good at was not self owns, like this one that it was, you know, once the party decided to march in one direction, they didn't have a lot of backbencher revolts, they didn't have a lot of unexpected moments where votes fell apart. I mean, remember, we used to chuckle. No, no, we don't do that. That's Democrats that do that,

you know, that go and get shanked. Democrats in disarray. Right. You know, they're the ones that go and get shanked by their own members on the floor. Even Tip O'Neill had his problems here and there. Pelosi, I think this is another case where we just have to say she was a really strong House leader. She was really good at counting votes and keeping people in line. Well, and that's being underlined how effective she was with every passing day, right? Because she had the same majority at one point. Even if you didn't like what she was passing, even if you were her opponent, you had to step back and say, damn, she's kind of good at this. And so that's one lesson from it. The other is that most of this Republican party that you saw at work yesterday, they

don't care about policy. Issues don't matter. It's all performative, no interest in actual governance, which again, take the border. They've been telling us that there's this existential immediate crisis, right? We finally have legislation. They get almost everything they want and they're not interested. But what they are interested in is doing a sham show trial for Mayorkas, but then they can't even pull that off. This is like going to Moscow and having, this is like Vyshinsky, you know, putting Bukharin on the stand and then like the judge and the

tribunal acquits him and says, you know, Stalin went a little too far this time. I mean, this should have been a railroading that they were planning. They cared about it. They wanted it. Well, they shouldn't have done it. I mean, the fact that they have hardly any majority. Look, OK, so one of my favorite moments was Marjorie Taylor Greene afterwards basically complaining to reporters that Democrats tricked us because they had this sick guy who we didn't think was going to come in. And they kept him. And then at the last minute, they were watching the votes. And last minute he came in and he voted. Al Green. What? Wait, he's a congressman. And he voted. OK, Marjorie. Now, I am going to make a prediction. OK, I'm trying like I'm going to go with the better angels or the more realistic angel? I was quite surprised that my fellow cheesehead, Mike Gallagher, was one of the key people who voted against this impeachment.

And he made a very principled statement about how this was a misuse of impeachment power. I was very surprised because Mike Gallagher is one of the many, many, many Republicans who has been part of that, what Jonah Goldberg has described accurately as the invasion of the body snatchers, or as Ionesco would have said, turned into a rhinoceros. But he did the right thing. So kudos to him. I was surprised by that. But I'm sorry, Tom. He's going to cave. You know why I'm saying he's going to cave next week?

Because that has to be the default setting that we've learned from the last seven or eight years. Anytime we're asking the question, will Republicans hold the line or will they cave? What's always the answer, Tom? What always happens? And that's my prediction. It's careerism and opportunism. And on this one, I think you could make the argument that, first of all, Trump didn't get deeply involved in the Mayorkas thing, and that you could at least kind of bank a principled vote here

without really hurting yourself. I don't know. They're going to be all over his ass. Just watch. Okay, but then he can cave on the border legislation and say it wasn't enough. It's not hard enough. But that's what I mean about there's no way you cannot negotiate

with an opponent who doesn't want anything. Right. See, that's the key thing. Okay, what do you want? We want this. Democrats get nothing out of this bill. And by the way, I mean, if you want to be really, really cynical about it, Biden gets kind of the best of all possible worlds. He looks like he's addressing the issue. He gets Republicans to own the issue without having to sign a bill that would have antagonized people on his side of the aisle. There would have been a lot of progressives, you know, who would have been outraged by that. So now he's got the talking points, got the issue. But Mike Johnson, you look at him, you look at the Republicans, the way they've handled this. And I mean, this is really three-dimensional

chess for idiots. I mean, it's like we're being so clever in our rank cynicism. But as entertaining as I find this, and I do find this highly entertaining, I have to say that the real world consequences are horrible. And you correct me going to be an historic break in American faith. Now, it won't be the first time this has happened. But Vladimir Putin is winning a victory in the American political world that he was unable to obtain on the battlefield until now. And as a direct result, these games, these fuckers are playing. Ukrainians are dying. More Ukrainians will die. And the consequences of Vladimir Putin rolling to victory in Ukraine are so grave. And we will live with them for so long.

And it comes down to one thing. It comes down to a Republican Party that is so enthralled with Donald Trump that they've abandoned everything that even they thought six months ago. I would even say it's not that they're enthralled with Donald Trump. It's that they're enthralled with living in Washington and keeping their jobs. They don't want to go home. It's so sad to watch, you know, Stefanik and Vance and Hawley and others and realize that, you know, there's this undertone of, hey, I'm not going back to Missouri. I'm not going back to upstate New York.

And I think that that's a big part of it. I don't think any of them have a deep enough commitment to any principle to even be in favor of Russia. That requires a decision, right? I mean, this is more like instant oppositional defiance disorder. Well, what would be good for Biden? Would aid for Ukraine help Biden? If Ukrainians start winning, well, then we can't do it. Biden wants it, so we're not going to do it. And I think you're lowballing how big a betrayal this is. Because I also think that it's a betrayal that could eventually, you know, down the line, four, five, six years. I mean, it could pull us into war in Europe. Oh, I think so. I mean, this is a betrayal of our, not just of Ukraine, but of our allies.

It raises questions about our commitment to NATO, which will then be underlined even more dramatically if Donald Trump becomes the president of the United States. It emboldens the Chinese. You don't think that President Xi is watching this and thinking, you know what, maybe I'm kind of hungry for a little bit of Taiwan. There is so much that unravels from this one stupid, cowardly, opportunistic, morally vacuous moment that the Republicans are in, that it is existentially chilling to think it through. Not only do you have to worry now about what happens in Asia, but I think one of the things Putin has been trying to prove for years is that NATO is a paper tiger, that NATO doesn't really matter. And if he wins in Ukraine, I could see him saying,

and now I'm going to take a small chunk of one of the Baltic states where there's a lot of Russian speakers, and I'm going to replay the crimea thing and because he doesn't understand that nato is real article 5 is real that the biggest military alliance in the history of humanity will take it seriously you know i think we could end up in a global disaster and for what i feel like the guy at the end of Band of Brothers, remember the guy who stands up in the truck and he's yelling at the Nazis? I feel like I'm yelling that at so many of these people. For win. You have unified Republican government. Donald Trump is president. Both chambers are controlled by Republicans. What do you want? And I can't tell you how many people would shrug. And basically the answer was, well, as long as you're mad, mission accomplished. People may think you're exaggerating. I have to tell you, as being part of this, I think that's actually true. What do you want? I want us to be in power, not you in power.

Okay, so you used the term morally vacuous before, which is a great segue either into discussing J.D. Vance or Tucker Carlson. Why don't you choose? Who do you want to go with first? You know, J.D. Vance's moral vacuity is now just a matter of, you know, ongoing record. I mean, I think what's interesting about Tucker is that he's combined that. I mean, J.D. Vance has got what he wants for now, right? He's in the Senate. He's got the office. He's got the driver. He wants to be VP really bad.

Now he's just kind of doing fan service, right? Customer service. Oh, no, no, no. Really? Go ahead. No, he's running for vice president. He's running for vice president. That's his Stefanik. Oh, no, no, no. Really? Go ahead. No, he's running for vice president. He's running for vice president. That's just the fanic. Well, yes. And what they're doing is they're in competition. Who can be the most slavishly loyal? Who can mimic the same words? But I thought that

when J.D. Vance went on ABC and started suggesting that, you know, presidents can defy the U.S. Supreme Court. Remember, you know, when Andrew Jackson, you know, wanted to, you know, begin the genocide of Indians, you know, he said, Justice Marshall has made his opinion, now let him enforce it. Okay, that may be that little cloud on the horizon, Tom, but you and I both know how that comes. And a guy like Donald Trump, you know, let's say he loses in the Supreme Court. How long will it take? Ma going to go, you know, exactly why should we follow Justice Roberts's rule? Now let him enforce it. So that's dangerous. So we've taken about J.D. Vance, his vacuousness is dangerous because he is a sitting senator.

You know, maybe I've just gotten numb to it because it's his metamorphosis from, you know, sort of, I'm the kid from the tough town that's going to say these hard moral truths. And I'm going to refer to Trump as, you know, cultural heroine and bad for my people to this thing he's turned into now, this kind of parody, this kind of caricature of himself. Just before we went on, I tweeted something about, I said, somebody made a, had a picture of Stefanik and Vance and saying, these guys have sold their souls. And I said, there was actually a Kolchak the Night Stalker episode about a senator who sold his soul. And it wasn't as over the top as what's actually happening in Washington right now. Art couldn't approach life at that point. Okay, let me just give you a little digression about why I worry so much about what J.D. Vance is now saying about ignoring the Supreme Court.

Because, and again, it's the analogy of the little cloud on the horizon. Because I remember pretty much the exact moment that I first heard in late 2020 after the election that crazy Paul Gosar, remember Paul Gosar? You know, one of the dumbest members of Congress ever. Still in office. Was behind a lawsuit that was, and I'm glossing over some of the details, obviously, but put in a lawsuit saying that the vice president can actually refuse to count these electoral votes on January 6th. And everybody thought it was a joke. I remember I thought it was a joke. I didn't take it seriously at all. But now think where that idea, which seemed so fringe at that point, think of the consequences now for January 6th and the big lie to the moment we're in right now. Okay, so let's talk about Tucker Carlson.

Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin's most valuable, useful idiot. Let's stipulate that, okay? But Tucker Carlson going to Moscow to suck up to Vladimir Putin, and while he's there, suggesting that, well, if Western journalists had done this sort of thing, when there are Western journalists who are actually in Vladimir Putin's prisons for trying to do the kind of honest reporting that Tucker Carlson is no longer capable of doing. Evan Gershkovich is a Russian speaking, on the ground, get the story firsthand, has been living there, works for the Wall Street Journal, not exactly a raving lefty rag. And he's been in prison for months. And by the way, Tucker Carlson, well, I'm a journalist. No, you're not. I mean, this is why when we started talking about Vance and Carlson,

the thing that I think really defines Carlson is his needy ambitiousness that, you know, he has to be, and this is a guy who started his career saying, I'm going to be the next George Will. I wear bow ties. I write serious conservative articles and has now turned into this kind of pathetic propagandist who swears that he's a journalist. I mean, it's really something to see a horrifying transformation. Again, people that knew him back in the day say he was never that nice of a guy, but at least in a public persona to go from, you know, a moderate conservative to one of Putin's scribes is quite something. But there are Russian journalists who have had to flee Russia and are living in the West

who can't go back because they won't just go to jail. They'll be killed. Right. Now, if Carlson asks Putin about that and tries to get Gershkovich out and puts him on the spot, good. I'll applaud Tucker Carlson for using his in with Moscow. I don't think that's going to happen, but I hope it does. But the fact that you would go over there because there's no way to get there. And I'm sorry, I know I'm going on, now I'm doing my Russia head thing, but there's no way to go over there without a whole bunch of preconditions. The Russians just don't do things that way. This is why people never understood what

was going on with Edward Snowden. They probably don't understand what's going on with Carlson. You don't just show up in Moscow. You don't just go get a visa and hop a flight to Donbass. If you're coming, they know you're coming and deals have already been worked out. And I'm sure that was the same with Snowden. And I'm sure it's the same with Carlson. And it's really obscene when you think that one of Carlson's own fellow citizens, well, a few of Carlson's fellow citizens, because let's not forget Paul Whelan and others who are in jail on Trump death charges. Let's say charges that cannot be decided in a Russian court and that have been gigantic sentences that are clearly political statements. So, you know, for Carlson to do this, and then to have the balls, to have the pure brass

to say, well, I'm a real journalist and I'm just doing this because Western journalists won't. No, Tucker, Western journalists don't do it because they tried to and they're in jail and Russian journalists can't do it because they're over here trying not to get killed. Well, okay. So I'm going to beat my horse one more time here because, you know, I remember shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the public opinion polls were showing that the rank-and-file Republicans were overwhelmingly in favor of our aid to Ukraine, were supportive of Ukraine, were opposed to Russia. And yet there was still Donald Trump out there. And I remember at the time thinking, don't look at the numbers, don't listen to the leadership. What's going on

with the id of the right wing? What's happening in the entertainment wing? So Tucker Carlson seemed like an outlier and is still kind of an outlier, sucking up to Vladimir Putin. But now look where the Republican Party is. Where is the leadership of the Republican Party? You'd like to think that it's the grownups, you know, who were saying we will not abandon Ukraine. But the modern Republican Party, just know, and again, this is true over and over again, you have to take those ideas seriously. You have to understand that Donald Trump is not always leading the band.

He's sometimes seeing where the band is going, and then he tries to get out there in front. This is just crucial to understand about these guys. Should we do a slow trombone for Rana McDaniel? Well, let's add one more thing about the adults in the Republican Party, because Ukraine and Israel could have been funded through the border deal that a couple of grownups in the Senate worked out, because the Senate, I think, is always the more responsible bunch. That's why we have a Senate. And once again, the Republicans can't take yes for an answer. You ask them what they want, and what they want is whatever, the opposite

of whatever they think you want. Yeah, well, that's true. So not the most important story of the day, Ronna McDaniel, who sold everything. I mean, even gave up her name. Gave up her name. I mean, really, you want to say, in the terms of the competition you know how will i abase myself most people don't actually have to like okay i won't mention that i'm related to the romney family but you knew she was dead the moment that donald trump withdrew the favor of heaven so it looks like she is out and so now the harrowing of the rnc will continue apace. And I think the smart money ought to be on some kind of Trump loyalist election denier. In fact, if you are not an election denier, if you do not think that the January 6th rioters are hostages, you have no chance to get that job. So, you know, by process of elimination, you know, it's going to be someone like that. Yeah. You know, it's interesting that one of the things this tells

us about the modern Republican party is it hasn't internalized being a national minority. And this was, this is just amazing because in 2016, when Republicans would complain that, you know, oh, we're frozen out and the culture, I'm like, look, the numbers say that Republicans have a majority of the elected seats across this country. You are the majority party. But the idea that they could then lose elections is now so alien to them. Yeah, right. If we lose, it's catastrophic and it must be because of cheating. You're right. But let me play with another idea here that letting the other side get into power is so catastrophic that we don't care whether there was cheating or not.

The allegations of cheating are pretextual. It is a pretext. So this is one of the reasons why with the big lie, it's like you can refute this lie. Well, this didn't happen in Detroit. This didn't happen here. This didn't happen here. Look what the evidence actually says. And it doesn't matter because they will always shift it because ultimately they didn't really believe that there was cheating.

What they really believe is that they have an entitlement to power because the other side is so loathsome and dangerous that they must be kept out no matter what, no matter what it takes. These are two delusions that mesh well. You're right. It's now power by any means necessary, which of course is undemocratic, anti-constitutional, anti-American. But there's a comforting myth behind it of we really are the real Americans, the real majority, the real people. You know, this is a classic authoritarian and even fascist belief that there is a real people, that the nation has a real people and that everybody else is just, dare we say, vermin. I mean, Ronald Reagan leaves office talking about

the importance of immigration and the American idea and shutting city on the hill. And now we have this Republican party that says that basically, you know, we are a hardcore of anti-democratic cranks who refuse to lose an election because only we understand what's best for the country. And our opponents are criminals and communists. And, you know, this point about the real people, that these are the real Americans, and then there's this alien presence out there that is trying to take our country away from, this is visceral. This is very real. This is very, very real. It's growing among people who don't spend a lot of time among their fellow Americans or among those who are different from them. Part of that big sort,

it's easy now to avoid being around those other Americans. It is. We've had this massive demographic sort, and then we, of course, we now live in our own silos. So it's easier now than ever before to not engage with them. Especially if you choose to, and that your pipeline to reality is your television and your computer screen.

Yeah. This is the inevitable, not the inevitable, but a likely outcome of years of the bowling alone problem, of people not moving to places because they don't like the political environment in one place opposed to another. But it's incredibly incredibly exceedingly dangerous but i just want to add you know charlie that uh i have no sad trombone to play for rana mcdaniel i think you know she will vanish now and into an obscurity that she deserves because richly deserves richly does i mean it just was incredible what a kind of a moral nullity she was. I mean, she made Reince Priebus seemed, you know, like an old iron-fisted party boss by comparison. I mean, the RNC became an appendage of Donald Trump. But I think the other thing that they're going to look for is not just an election

denier, but someone who is going to turn the considerable financial resources of the Republican Party to Donald Trump's personal use. Oh, absolutely. Including paying legal bills and perhaps settlements. Legal bills, you know, all of that stuff so that the party will function basically as a support system for Donald Trump rather than, I mean, it's one more chapter in the Republicans ceasing to function as a political party. It is. And I think there are more chapters yet to come. And hopefully you and I can talk about them in some different form. But I wanted to thank you, Tom.

You know, as we were planning this final week, I told our fantastic producer, Katie Cooper, I said, you know, let's get in some of our mainstays. And I don't know anybody who is more of a mainstay to this podcast than you have been from the very, very beginning. And I have to say, and I'm not exaggerating, that in this very stressful period, a period of isolation, it has been a lifeline to me to be able to sit here and talk with someone like you. And I appreciate not only your insight, but your friendship, your advice, and they mean a great deal to me, Tom. And I appreciate not only your insight, but your friendship, your advice.

And they mean a great deal to me, Tom. And I hope you understand that. And by the way, you once said to me the most flattering thing any podcast guest has ever said, which is you and I were at a bar together once, actually in person, which is weird. And you said that when we do the podcast, sometimes you forget we're on the podcast because we're just talking to each other. I thought, wow, that's that moment where you don't even think that there's other people out there. And you and I have had that

relationship. I'm very, very grateful for it, Tom. Well, you know that I feel the same way, Charlie. And I wanted to tell you, one of the things that I found most important about our friendship was the way it began. Because when the Never Trump movement began, when we were all guys like me, right? I was not in the political world. I was a professor, kind of occasional gadfly, publish an op-ed here and there. But I was a lifelong Republican and worked in Washington for a Republican and all that. When the time started to come to say, my God, this is really going to happen. What am I going to do? You were one of the people where the price you were willing to pay, because I think this is something people don't understand,

that a lot of prominent conservatives, not people like me, yeah, I got, you know, people threatened to fire me and I got death threats and all that stuff. But that, you know, the people who were mainstays of the conservative movement really paid a price professionally, personally, you know, in every way. And it was inspiring because you were one of the people where I could look and say, okay, I'm not crazy. We're not the crazy ones, you know, like this sensible guy from, from Wisconsin, this right winger, you know, this guy who's very wisconsin this right winger you know this guy who's very far on the right and and in some ways you know you were on some issues you were further the right than i was we we would have had disagreements about those things but i was able

to hear you and watch you as you did these things and took these chances. And I could say, I'm not crazy. This is the right thing to do. There are sensible, conservative people, very conservative people who are not going to do this, who are not going to get on this train. And Charlie, I can't tell you for a lot of us, you know, who were coming to the never Trump realization and, you know, back in the day, that was really important to have examples of sensible guys like you saying we don't have to do this and in fact we shouldn't do this and it's the and it's the wrong thing to do and i want to thank you for that charlie because over the years you know maybe we've played the same role for each other but i feel the same way about you

that every now and then i come on here and we talk and I go, yeah, right. We're not crazy. This is actually a sensible thing because I think the attacks on the Never Trumpers in those years really were kind of gaslighting that you just don't understand that it's not going to be like that. We turned out to be more right than we knew, sadly. And I'm glad that we maintain this kind of, you know, this kind of circle of sanity that I think is really important for helping all of us stay, you know, stay on the right path. And I wanted to thank you for that and for this show, Charlie, because that was an important part of it. Well, thank you so much. The circle of sanity. I just think that is so important. And I wanted to reiterate that, you know, given how frustrating and disconcerting and soul crushing the last seven years has been for some of us to be able to realize that we're not alone, which is why I think there's a tremendous appetite

for a community. What happens is, is that, you know, one by one people get picked off because they realize, okay, I would be willing to take a stand, but I'm not going to go off the cliff by myself. Well, we're not going off a cliff, but you're not alone. You're not the crazy ones. And I think that that's very, very important. I think that's going to continue. Whatever happens, whether we're in the twilight or whether we're at the new dawn of the restoration, don't be ground down by it because it is so easy.

And I think these personal ties, these personal connections, and this is what I'm really grateful for. You know, since 2016, when I left the radio, the number of people that I have met now and been able to establish relationships with that I never would have encountered before. And then we've had these conversations that I don't think we ever would have had, has been a good thing, has been a valuable thing. I'm grateful for that opportunity, although horrified by what created that opportunity, if you understand. So thank you so much, Tom. And I think we all reorganized ourselves

and rediscovered what's important, Charlie. We rediscovered and we rethought about what it was. I mean, that's part of that clarifying moment. What do we really want? What is really valuable to us? And you clarifying moment. What do we really want? What is really valuable to us? And you sorted it out. What do we believe in? Other people had very, very different answers. So Tom, see you around very soon. Thank you for everything, Charlie. And for all of you, I think you know that coming Monday in this seat will be my colleague Tim Miller, who's going to

be taking over the daily podcast. And I don't need to introduce Tim to you. He is a supremely talented individual. And I think he's going to have a lot of Daily Podcast. And I don't need to introduce Tim to you. He is a supremely talented individual. And I think he's going to have a lot of fun here. And as you know, he's got more than a few hot takes. So Tim Miller will be taking over the podcast on Monday morning. I'm going to be back for one last show on Friday. So stick around for that. The Bullwhip Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.