The Bulwark Podcast - Tom Nichols: Jack Smith Is Not Screwing Around

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

Going after a former president for an attempted coup had seemed like 'mission impossible,' but the special counsel is going big. Meanwhile, Republicans defending him don't seem to care about their country or the Constitution, and the only job Trump could get now is POTUS. Tom Nichols joins Charlie Sykes. show notes: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/rock-me-on-the-water-ronald-brownstein?variant=39387579023394 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, I picked a hell of a day to come back from vacation. Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. I have been gone for about two weeks and thanks for all the folks who are sitting in for me. And I've been making notes, believe it or not, even though I've been on vacation, of all the things that I wanted to talk about. I mean, I wanted to talk about the Supreme Court. I wanted to talk about no labels. I want to talk about Ukraine. And there were so many other issues that I wanted to talk about this morning with our guest, Tom Nichols. By the way, good morning, Tom. Good morning, Charlie. Welcome back. And then the news gods dropped this bomb on us this morning. This is from the New York Times.

Donald Trump says he is a target in special counsel's investigation into January 6th. It would be the second time the special counsel has notified the former president that he is likely to face indictment, this time in connection with the criminal investigation into the events leading up to the Capitol attack. So there are so many possibilities out there. And by the time people listen to this, they will have been subjected to hours of speculation. Here's what we do know. There will not be an indictment before Friday because Trump has been given an invitation to testify before the grand jury. He's not going to do that. But he has four days, so nothing will happen before Friday, but this is imminent. He's going to be indicted on the January 6th charges, and as Aaron Blake tweeted out this morning, it is entirely possible by this point next month that Trump will have been indicted four times. It is also possible the Republican Party will not give a shit about this, but again, we don't know,

Tom, what the charges are going to be. We don't know what kind of evidence is going to be. We don't know whether or not Jack Smith is going to do one of these detailed talking indictments as herelated charges, wire fraud-related charges. Jack Smith does not need to connect Donald Trump directly to the violence. He can build cases around all of Donald Trump's attempts to defraud the government, overturn the election. He is going to have to prove, perhaps, an intent in some of these cases. My initial reaction is, thank God they've finally gotten around to doing this. And thank God it looks like Jack Smith is going big, because if you're going to go after the former president of the United States, you better have

something gigantic and substantive. And it's taken a hell of a long time, but here it comes, Tom Nichols. Yeah, and as Walter Shapiro tweeted this morning, at this rate, with this many indictments, most Americans are going to get a chance to serve on a jury where Trump's involved. I'm going to check my mailbox. It's clear that Jack Smith isn't screwing around. And as you say, that's important because prosecuting a former president,

not just for petty larceny, the kind of, you know, graft and things that brought down people like Spiro Agnew, but really going after a president for a coup is something that until now was like, you know, Mission Impossible or science fiction. And you almost wondered if the American justice system, you know, when all this happened, everybody kind of looked at each other and said, do we even have a toolkit for dealing with this? Like, can we actually do this? And I think the answer from Jack Smith is, yeah, we actually, you put together a grand jury and there are real charges involved with this. And let's just add to Trump's bad news that the Georgia Supreme Court, where Trump said, throw this out, you know, this good, tell Fannie Willis I'm not doing this, you know, and the Georgia Supreme Court said, no, we're not doing that. We're not throwing this out. Unanimously. Unanimously, right. You know, for some reason, this just seems to keep happening to Trump's lawyers. They keep throwing stuff at courts and the courts go, yeah, no, you're not even close. We'll see what happens down in the Mar-a-Lago case. But it is interesting, some of these motions that they're making,

and here's the tell, here's the tell, Tom. You know, we went to the Georgia Supreme Court basically saying there should be no investigation at all of me in the court because now that's crazy. You're not even close to making a coherent argument. He's also made the motion down in Mar-a-Lago, right, that we shouldn't even set a trial date because, hey, I'm Donald Trump. I'm running for president and we'll see what happens there.

But I think it's extremely unlikely he will win that. These don't strike me as the kinds of motions that serious lawyers make as part of a serious defense. But it does strike me as the kind of thing you might do if you want to keep throwing up smoke and dust and delay. Because right now, Donald Trump's best chance to avoid being a convicted felon and staying out of jail is to be elected president of the United States next year or have another Republican be elected who will basically nullify all of the charges and convictions against him. Isn't that the strategy at this point? Yes. And more than that, or in addition to that, it's also a way for him to keep presenting his faithful in the Trump cult with the storyline that not only am I untouchable, I should be untouchable because I'm me. Right. It's not just red meat for the rally goers. I mean, when you've got guys like Trump's former lawyer, Ray, I was on a segment with him on television. He said, you know, basically, you shouldn't be able to prosecute presidents at all.

And it was like, oh, okay. Sorry. I didn't realize we were back to, you know, divine right of kings. Right. But that's part of that whole storyline of, because it gets people past the problem, the ugly problem that they know he's guilty of all this. And instead it gets them to where they need to be emotionally and mentally of saying, it doesn't matter. He's Donald Trump. He's the president. Presidents can do whatever they want. If the president does it, a certain president of our common acquaintance once said, it's not illegal. And he really wants to establish that. If you think of America as the giant jury pool, he's tainting the jury pool by creating this theory that there is a special carve out, not just for presidents, but for presidents

named Donald Trump. So some of this is the same old, same old, you know, Republicans will rally around the president and everything. But I think it's important to notice how incrementally they go further and further and further. And this is happening in real time, watching Republicans figure out new ways of rationalizing Trump's behavior, new ways of delegitimizing the rule of law. And listen to Kevin McCarthy this morning. I mean, look, we haven't even had the charges. Again, on Earth 2.0, the prudent thing to do would be to say, well, let's wait to see

what's in the indictment, right? You would wait to see what is the evidence? What are the charges? What is Jack Smith? Of course, that no longer exists. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to them. Right.

But listen to Kevin McCarthy. And Kevin McCarthy has now basically bought into a, I would say, a talking point that it feels like five minutes ago, you only would have heard, you know, really on some fringe media, maybe Steve Bannon or something. But here's Kevin McCarthy. He's asked about what do you think about the fact that the former president is going to be indicted for trying to overturn the January 6th election? Well, I guess under a Biden administration, Biden America, you'd expect this. If you notice recently, President Trump went up in the polls and was actually surpassing President Biden for reelection. So what do they do now? Weaponize government to go after their number one opponent.

It's time and time again. I think the American public is tired of this. They want to have see equal justice. And the idea that they utilize this to go after those who politically disagree with them is wrong. Okay, so there's Kevin McCarthy. And I think what's really interesting is it not only is he now completely channeling, you know, the I'm going up in the polls line from Donald Trump. But the whole idea that all indictments, including, say, the indictment of the informant in the Hunter Biden case who turned out to be a Chinese spy. It's all about retaliation, right? It's all about Joe Biden going after political opponents. And once you've established that as kind of the go-to default setting of Republican leadership, you know that there's literally nothing that will be in that indictment that will make a difference to them. Yeah. And you know, when you were talking about McCarthy, there's this weightlessness

to the speaker, you know, listening to this kind of childish babble, you know, well, what do you expect from the DOJ and Biden's weaponizing? I was thinking back to, you know, 30 years ago, more when I worked on the Hill. And I remember, of course, I was working for a Republican at the time, but I felt like even the people we disagreed with, everybody walked around with this kind of sense of real gravity that, you know, you were doing this great thing within our majestic community. Maybe I was young and naive and impressionable, but it seemed to me that even some of the silliest members of Congress felt the weight of the constitution and their duty and, you know, just their day-to-day work. And I listened to this stuff and it's like,

it's like a model Congress in a mediocre, you know, college somewhere. Not college, middle school. Yeah. Okay. You know, but kind of not very good high school with a model Congress with, you know, the guy that wants to be elected class president, you know, constantly just trying to kind of stay ahead of the pack. You were saying we're not dealing with serious people. Yeah. I mean, it's worse than unserious people. You know, we ought to retire grownups because I mean, like there are, we're not talking about grownups anymore. You know, I guess what I'm edging toward here is really, there's a question

of patriotism here. I mean, do these people care about their country and the constitution? And clearly what they care about are their jobs and television and podcasts and this kind of psychic gratification of just being in the game all the time. And there's no point at which they stop and say, hey, we're defending a guy that went on an anti-constitutional crime spree and is still doing it and is vowing that if he gets reelected, he'll do it again. Well, you know, it's interesting because when I was making notes before this news broke, I was listening to Brian Kemp, the, you know, I would say Trump's skeptical governor of Georgia, who stood up to Donald Trump when he tried to coerce him into overturning the election,

who has been, you know, outspoken in his criticism of Donald Trump. And yet, he's sitting down with Caitlin Collins of CNN and says, yeah, you know, if Donald Trump is the nominee, I will work to elect him president. Okay, but what I wrote down my notes was, Jesus, literally, this is putting party before country to the point you're making. Literally, here is somebody who tried to overturn the government, was facing multiple felony indictments, who is clearly, in any respect, unfit for office. And yet what he's basically saying is, this may be terrible for America. This may be terrible for the country. This may be terrible for the free world. But I'm going to do it because my number one loyalty is to the Republican Party. I mean, so we joke about the limits of party loyalty. We're now

seeing that the litmus test is you have to put the loyalty to the Republican nominee ahead of the constitution, ahead of basic decency, ahead of honesty, ahead of anything. If I just say Kemp is a particularly egregious example because he knows better than most other leading Republicans exactly what Trump was willing to do to overturn the will of his voters, the people whose rights as the chief executive of Georgia, he is required to defend under the constitution. And he's about to be indicted in his home state. And to be indicted in his state, his Supreme Court has let that go forward. And yet, because of this, I would add to it just political cowardice about, you know, I cannot envision a career outside of politics, so I can't

do anything to endanger that. Oh, see, I'm way past giving them credit for cowardice. I mean, there's something deeply venal about all of this. Okay. I think those go hand in hand, cowardly and venal and simply saying, well, this is just my default setting because the other thing they've done, and you and I've talked about this, they have all internalized the dogma that any Democrat winning anything anywhere is the end of civilization as we know it. That's the retreat position. And even though they know better, the dogma in the Republican Party is Donald Trump, David Duke, Benito Mussolini, Juan Peron.

Hey, as long as the guy is not a Democrat, you know, we'll take our chances. And I think it's so they can look at themselves in the mirror and say, gosh, I'm not really this venal and craven. I'm doing something important and big. But they know. I'm going to make some distinctions here that some people might not like, and that even I am uncomfortable making. That there's a certain mindset that was necessary to vote for Donald Trump in 2016, which I rejected, but you could at least hope that

he might be something different, right? Right. Okay. By 2020, you knew completely who he was and what he would do. Okay. But certainly there's the, I guess, the inertia of going along with the incumbent. But think about the mentality that it takes now to support Donald Trump for 2024 after his shambolic term, but also after his attempt to overturn the government. To say after January 6th and everything we've learned about January 6th, everything he has said, all of his bleeds, to say now that we would support his return to the Oval Office requires, I would say, a much more corrupted mentality even than the vote in 2016 and 2020. It's a moral failure.

And I took a lot of flack, as you did vote in 2016 and 2020. It's a moral failure. And I, you know, I took a lot of flack as you did in 2016, right? People like you and I were saying, look, we get it, but this really is a test of character, you know, that you got to be able to see through this guy, but okay, fine. Even I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt for a while. I mean, I, when he struck Syria, went on television, I defended him. I thought, you know, that first state of the Union, a little shaky, but I said, okay, he seems like he's... But as you say, by 2020, you know who he is. By 2021, by January 7th, 2021, you know exactly who he is. And now in 2023, after two more years of this, this is where I just find myself. I hate it because it's so destructive to our sense of community and citizenship. But somebody today who says to me,

I'm gladly voting for Trump in 2024. I feel like I'm turning to them and saying, maybe you're not a good person. Yeah. You know, and I, and I don't want to do that because there's people that love their families and they're good to their kids and all that. But there's almost like there's this moral blind spot or this kind of moral trap that says, I'm a good person, but I'm going to vote for this horrendous, dangerous sociopath simply because it's going to annoy other people. And it's going to make me feel like I'm part of a club and I'm going to go wave my flags and, you know, put my Trump flyers on my truck. These are not the actions of a civic and serious people. So let's talk about what this next term would be and why I find what Brian Kemp is saying just sort of mind blowing. I mean, look, this is not a referendum. 2024 is not a referendum on Trump's first term as president, which I think was horrific and terrible. But, you know, people can disagree about this. But 2024 will also be a referendum on what we want

the presidency to be. So the New York Times had this story over the weekend, which I think is very, very detailed and also reflects exactly what Trump and the Trumpists have said openly and repeatedly. It used to be the party of small government. Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands. You know, people get, well, that's the New York Times. No, this is exactly what Donald Trump and his closest allies have been saying they want to do. This is literally what they're saying.

It's almost as if, you know, the Tom Nichols of the world say, you're, you know, an authoritarian, you know, and the Trump people are going, yeah, and your point, you can't handle it. That's what we want. You could even argue that the New York Times was soft peddling it, that that headline was like a new theory of government, a sweeping realization. No, it's an authoritarian power grab. And if the New York Times were really that woke, they would have said it a lot more clearly. I mean, I read that story and I'm like, wow, the headline writers are really putting the brakes on this because this is not a sweeping change in the nature of presidential power. This is an authoritarian power grab. And for people listening who, you know, where some of the details are getting lost, Trump

basically wants to turn the entire federal executive service into his private royal bureaucracy. He wants to completely end the idea that, you know, civil servants serve the people of the United States and the Constitution first, and that they basically all serve as if they are political appointees at the pleasure of the president. And by the way, this applies both to the Justice Department and to the military. What could possibly go wrong? That was the first paragraph of the story. Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president's recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control. I think that's a given. Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal to alter the balance of power by increasing the president's authority over every part of the federal government that now operates by either

law or tradition with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him. Now, okay, that's pretty powerful stuff. And you do wonder at some point, even Kevin McCarthy, whose testicles have long since been, you know, FedEx to Marjorie Taylor Greene, would go, okay, wait, Article I in the Constitution has something about Congress? You know, like, fuck no. You know, I mean, like the senators, the congressmen going, hey, this was fun while it lasted, but no, we are not potted plants. And yet, nothing.

Well, because Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik and the rest of them are like, okay, but I get to stay in Washington and eat in good restaurants, right? I was really smart in high school and I did good stuff in college. So I get to stay here in this good city and go out and eat in good restaurants. I can do that, right? They will survive under Trump or anybody else because they will simply mold themselves to whatever that is. But I think the thing that's so incredible is when people say, well, we're conservatives. These are Republicans acting like radical left-wing totalitarians. People are going to say, say fascist. No,

Peronist, Caudillos, authoritarians, corporatists, you know, whatever it is. But whatever this is, it's not conservatism. This is big government, not small government. And I think to underline that point, and I keep thinking that we're living through this simulation, you know, thinking that somebody's going, well, what if we did this? Well, how would people react? And so what if we actually had conservative Republicans who sounded like code pink loony leftists. Okay. And then it's like, well, you know, we have Putin's most useful idiot down in Iowa being the person grilling all the Republican candidates. I mean, my, my newsletter day, my morning shots newsletter, it's getting worse, isn't it? And in part of what I'm thinking is that, and then I'm trying to think

about how to actually say this, because we're not post Trump and we're not going to be post Trump for a long time. But I think the recognition has to be that the post Trump Trumpism is going to be even worse than everything is getting worse. So, you know, you have Christian conservatives down in Iowa who want to have a big forum for all the Republican candidates to come and kiss the ring. Who did they pick? They picked Tucker Carlson, who turns the entire event not into Christian values, family values, right to life, anything. No, it's all about, can we suck up to Vladimir Putin? Can we dump on Ukraine? And if you did not say exactly what Tucker Carlson wanted, you would be booed. And as the New York Times account is, Jesus is out, Vladimir V. Putin is in. Great.

Then you have the TPUSA conference. I mean, this is the id of the Republican Party right now. I know Charlie Kirk, I quote Nick Cattagio saying, you know, you thought CPAC was bad. This new generation is even worse. And what was the big theme? How much we hate Ukraine, how much we love Donald Trump, how it is a cult of personality. So what you're having is the radicalization, the crazification of the Republican Party, which we've watched over years. This is accelerating in real time. And the funny thing about Ron DeSantis is he's been trying to trace the crazification. He's been trying to get out in front of it. It's becoming even crazier than his ability to keep up with it. You know, even when he puts out the Westboro Baptist Church anti-gay videos and everything,

he's trying to be as right-wing as possible. And it's almost impossible to keep up with the way this party is crazifying itself. Compared to TPUSA, CPAC is like, you know, the Second Continental Congress. Exactly. Because again, this is all part of the attention economy. All of these people have figured out that being media personalities is easier than working, especially these younger folks who have never had a job other than being outrageous. That's their job.

They've monetized being nuts. As you point out, that leaves everybody scrambling. So how do I capture that instead of leading, instead of saying, I'm not going there. I'm not going to kiss that ring. Maybe they fall behind in the primary, or maybe they put themselves at danger with the base. Although I actually think that a sane Republican, a lot of Republicans who will be pissed about everything, well, we've seen it in every election. The Republicans come back, the Democrats come home. But the acceleration here is also turning inward on MAGA World because they're starting to eat themselves.

Because they can't keep up. There was a great piece about Jim Jordan and his multiple gish-galloping crazy speeches and pointing out that these conspiracies are now actually starting to overlap on each other and are going to devour themselves because there is only so much anger and so much attention before they start cannibalizing each other's theories. And I think it reinforces the idea that none of this is about getting anything done or finding the truth. They don't care.

This is all performance art. The Republicans have given up on governing, which again, as a conservative party, right? What does it mean to be a conservative party? Small government, rule of law, you know, governing, nah, nah, screw all that. That's all gone. Come on. You know, enough of the logic in the history. It is all gone. You know, it does, enough of the logic in the history. It is all gone.

You know, it does strike me as you're going through all of this, I was reading one account of a recent TPUSA conference, and Tom Cotton, of course, you know, always wants to pander. He, you know, felt the need to tell everybody in the crowd, turn off your porn and get engaged in the world. One of the thoughts that sort of, you know, inappropriate thoughts that came to me was, no, actually, that's the analogy for a lot of these folks. Politics is porn and porn is politics. It's something where you don't actually have to engage in a real way with other human beings, and there are no consequences to any of your decision. And you constantly need to up the level of stimulation, right? And it's all about gratification, right? It's all about gratification. It's all about self-gratification. There is no sense of duty or deferred gratification or community service. It's what makes me feel good right in the moment.

And also, what keeps me... I'm just going to be a total grumpy old man here and say, especially with a lot of these younger conservatives, what keeps me from having to go and move out and get a straight job? Because the Trump era has been a godsend for people whose only talent is being famous. Well, it's also a lifestyle. And, you know, you and I both remember back in, back in the sixties, there were people who, you know, went into, you know, various really exciting social movements and, you know, built their lives and their identity around all of that. And they never came out. You know, interestingly, I just finished reading Ron Brownstein's book on 1974 in Los Angeles.

It's a really interesting book. And he points out that, you know, a lot of the people in these radical politics were able to do that because they had the money to do it. Jane Fonda, right? It's easy to be a radical when you have that money to be able to do it. And he talks about Tom Hayden having to kind of drop out of things for a while because he was broke. And he had to move from San Francisco, and he moves to Los Angeles, and he tries to start over again. These kids have figured out, hey, screw all that. Screw all the prep work and the grunt work and the door. Just say something insanely offensive and then charge your advertisers. And it works. So let's go back to today's news about the dropping indictment, because I think this is the moment that had to come.

And I'm not going to claim that I was I was prescient here, but I did circle this week on my on my calendar, figuring that that if something happened, it was probably going to happen this weekend. I really wanted to be here because you look back at your point about the criminal justice system finally getting around to being able to hold Donald Trump accountable. I don't know that we have the full answer to that yet because it has taken so freaking long, but it feels like we're climbing the ladder. I mean, we started off with the weakest possible case, and I'm sorry for people who believe the New York case was the most important because it wasn't. You know, it may be laid down a marker that you could indict a former president. The Mar-a-Lago case, considerably more serious. But if we would have come to the end of this year with just charges and paying off porn stars and taking the classified documents and violating the SBNA, if that was all it was, it would have been a huge

failure of the criminal justice system. It would have set a precedent. And Jack Smith, I think, has understood this in a way that maybe Merrick Garland didn't understand. I don't know why it took so long, but he's going big. All of these other cases have their importance, and I hope he's convicted of them. I'm not going to pretend that I don't. If the evidence is there, I hope he's convicted of them. But this is the crucial case. This is the big one. This is the one that will actually decide whether or not the criminal justice system, the rule of law in this country, can stand against a president of the United States who is trying to attack the Constitution. This dwarfs any case. This dwarfs any of the charges that would have been brought in Watergate. I'm sorry, go on. of a scene in one of my favorite movies, The Verdict, where Paul Newman is this broken down lawyer and he looks like he's going to lose. And his colleague says, don't worry, there'll be other cases. He says, there are no other cases. This is the case. He keeps repeating, there are no other

cases. This is the case. There are no other cases. But I want to give one cheer here for Alvin Bragg, because I think you're right that it kind of broke the ice to say, hey, I may just be a city prosecutor, but this guy broke a whole shitload of laws in my city and in my state for what I think are felonious reasons. And I'm going to indict the guy. He lived here. He did all these crimes here. Imagine the alternative world in which Bragg had declined. Trump would have said, see, everybody knows these cases are bullshit. Everybody's afraid of me. And then Jack Smith or Fannie Willis would have looked

like they were trying to make up for or somehow compensate for Bragg being intimidated out of chasing down Trump's earlier crimes. And I think the law is the law. If Trump broke those laws in New York State, then he ought to be held accountable and convicted in New York State, if the evidence is there. But I think that breaking that ice and saying, look, I don't care if the guy was a former president. He broke a whole lot of laws here in New York State, and you don't get a pass. So I think Alvin Bragg did something that was both legally justifiable and politically important. In the broad sweep of American history, this is the case. This is the case. You look back a hundred years from now,

and it's not going to be about the document case. It's not going to be about the porn star. It's going to be about whether a president of the United States who tried to defraud the government, tried to obstruct an official proceeding, all of those things can be held accountable by the criminal justice system. And I mean, this is huge. Georgia will be equally important. It will also be important. With one difference, if Smith draws a link to, because in a way, January 6th and Georgia are kind of the same case of chief executive in the United States tries to overturn an election and thwart the will of the same case of chief executive in the United States tries to overturn an election and thwart the will of the people. The Smith case, and this is where we'll just have to see what happens with the charges. The Smith case is, and incited a seditious insurrection against the

government that could have resulted in the actual murder of the officers of the government. We don't know. Yeah. We don't know if he's going to go that far. But I mean, clearly, to even be implicated in anything related to January 6th puts you in proximity to that event. And I also think that the injustice would have been monumental had you had hundreds of people who followed Donald Trump's lead. And said so. And said so. And were convicted and did jail time without the instigator ever facing any charges. The other question we don't know is who else besides Donald Trump is a target of all of this? Because if there is a conspiracy, if there was an effort to

overturn the election, obstruct justice, defraud the government, etc., then there are other people in and around Donald Trump who need to be held accountable as well. And as we saw it down in Mar-a-Lago, there can be some surprises. I mean, I think the thing that we've learned about Jack Smith is that he may have more cards than we know, even though this is not an undercovered story. So we are going to find this out. I do feel, as I said before, I think we are climbing the ladder. We are going to find out. I think the timing is concerning because it's almost certain that it's not going to be litigated before the election. But also, I think now we are getting answers to other questions and, you know, maybe not a surprise because I remember when there was the question, you know, several months ago, well, would the Republican Party nominate somebody who was actually indicted? And I remember saying, I think Jake Sherman and I were

on a show and we both said yes. But at that point, it was like, yeah, think about how crazy that would be. I mean, think how crazy it will be if Donald Trump has to wear an ankle bracelet to Milwaukee when he's re-nominated, which is not impossible. And now we know that yes, the Republican Party can nominate somebody who's indicted, almost certainly will. And they just seem to have locked themselves into this because it doesn't seem, I mean, I'm getting bored with this commentary, but I don't the Republican Party is going to go into 2024 with a man facing four separate indictments for dozens of felony charges. What world are we living in here, Tom? And part of the treadmill that you and I always end up on, you know, part of the hamster wheel we're in together is the problem is the base. Yeah. Because they don't care. You know, it's a kind of a mass psychosis among 40 or 50% of the Republican base. And I was, you were talking about January 6th.

The other thing that happened over the weekend, I was more gobsmacked than anything else. The story that I think sums up so much of this, the woman who was probably sentenced in Florida, the Florida school teacher who stands up and says, before you say anything, judge, let me just blow up the whole agreement to get some reduced time and basically tell you all that you can go F yourselves here. And the judge kind of shrugs and says, okay, six years. I suppose you could say this is like nut picking, right? And say, well, this woman maybe she had issues she's maybe there's an emotional problem but there are so many people like this who are like yes my life for you i would go to jail for donald trump and i'm like she thinks she's going to get pardoned see they think that she's going to get a pardon for all of that so and she might what i'm

about to say may be a little bit naive and i understand why you're correct we have a base problem however we also have a leadership problem and And I think that what all of these Republicans are looking around for is somebody else who's going to stand up and provide the leadership. So for example, there have been all of these off ramps where if certain trusted voices would have said, okay, you know what, we've been with him up until now, but this is too much. We cannot do this. Now you had it with Bill Barr. There was a moment there when Liz Cheney broke with him. It was a moment when all of these other, you know, Trump administration people broke with him and it hasn't made any difference whatsoever. And it looked like after January 6th, that you had all of these

Republicans who were resigning or saying, this is it where we are done with him. But I think it's now naive to think that even with this indictment coming down, and I'm basing this on what we heard from Kevin McCarthy, is that Republicans will take this opportunity to say to the base, look, we know how you feel. We are with you. We hate the same people you hate, but we can't do this. Now, Ron DeSantis has a chance to do that today. Right. He's he's on. I'm guessing by the time people hear this, they'll realize, you know, that Ron DeSantis whiffs once again. Who knows? Again.

But if they don't do this now, there is no off-ramp, right? If they don't say, give him the gold watch, but we cannot do this. I mean, we can make one more point that I made in your publication, The Atlantic. It continues to amaze me that we have saved the lowest possible standard for the presidency of the United States because there's no publicly held corporation in America. There's no school in America. There's no rank in the military where you could engage in this kind of conduct and keep your job. There is no place where you could be facing these criminal charges where you would not have to step aside, step down,

drop out, do something. Only for Donald Trump running for president of the United States can you behave this way and be indicted for it, be arrested for it, face felony charges, and it still not be considered disqualifying to what, X millions of people. I i'm sorry my rant is over it is a ghastly reality that the only job left that donald trump could get in this country is president of the united states that's it you're absolutely right no people are they well that's no i mean think about you apply for a job of managers at arby's with that record you think you didn't get the job no only president or you know donald trump said okay i'm Do you think you're going to get the job? No, only president. Or, you know, Donald Trump said, okay, I'm out of politics. I'm going to be the, you know, chairman of, not his company, but, you know, publicly held company. I'm going to be chairman

of a company. Not a prayer. No board would take him. Well, I want to be appointed as a diplomat, not a prayer of Senate confirmation. You know, let's try and be constructive, and I'm going to indulge in a moment of fantasy. Imagine if the Republicans, every Republican candidate, led by Ron DeSantis, right? Ron DeSantis steps forward and says, as the guy with the second most possible votes, he calls Christie, he calls Hutchinson, he calls Haley, he calls Tim Scott, whatever. They all get together, they take Ronald McDaniel by the ear and they all stand together and say, look, we're not going to share a stage with him. We're not inviting him to the debates. We're not going to spend any money on him. There comes a point where this is simply

beyond what the Republican party is. And while every one of us standing on the stage hopes that you pick one of us and not the guy next to me. We are all Americans first and Republicans second, and Donald Trump is simply beyond the pale. And now we're going to have a real primary, but it's not going to include Donald Trump. The voters, if you feel that strongly about it, if the Republican base wants to do that, we've made our case. We've done everything we can do. I had a fight about this with somebody back in 2016. You had a fight with somebody? Wow. Yeah, I don't want to say who it was, Charlie. All right, John Podoritz. Anyway, look, and the answer was, yes, but you can't just tell 30%. And I said, if the party as an institution cannot preserve itself against a populist wave of 30 or 40 percent of its voters saying, give us Barabbas, you know, or, you know,

send out the gimp, then what's the point of being a political party? And I think it would be a remarkable show of patriotism to have these people get together and say, we all disagree. This is never going to happen. I was living in a very happy moment and you blew it up. I'm sorry. But, you know, you had to give me one minute of saying, boy, wouldn't it be great if all these Republicans got together because this is an argument.

I know you made it in 20. We met because this is the kind of thing that when I've taken the, with the good stuff I will fantasize about, but I've been doing it for seven years. I know. And now my immune system is built up and just kick them off the debate stage. That's all you need to do.

Kick him off the debate. Just Ronald McDaniel becomes right. Ronald McDaniel.iel gets mitt back on the phone says okay if i put romney back in my name can i be invited to you know i understand that her spine you know is a plastic tube full of helium plastic actually has resilience as a kind of a you know full of helium but at some point what is the point of being a political party? And again, this is the David Duke moment. This is what I, maybe because of, you know, age and all that stuff. You remember this, where he's not one of us. He's not a Republican. And it was an easy choice. They used to be able to do that shit.

Right. Right. And not only that, but to say, yes, Republicans, you should vote for the Democrat. Let me tell you two things that really worry me. All right. And we don't have time to get into them. I am worried about the grifters from no labels because I can certainly understand their appeal right now, you know, especially, you know, saying, well, you know, should we have a third choice? And the answer is yes, absolutely.

We should have a third choice. But this is and I'm sorry to repeat myself, people, this is a real existential threat. I mean, this is the heart attack right now. We can have the seminar on various treatments for cancer later, okay? But right now, we're on the pavement, and this is going on. That's number one. More, I have to say I'm worried about the Joe Biden thing. I am worried that the Democrats have locked themselves into pushing a guy who is maybe one of the few people in American politics who might lose this election. But somebody asked me to write a piece saying, you know, making the case for why Joe Biden should drop out of the race.

You know, give him the gold watch. Good job. But, you know, move on or whatever. And I couldn't do it because I can't get by the Kamala problem. And this is where it's like you're checkmated. Joe Biden is too old. I think there's a real danger that I mean, he's one fall away. He's one thing away from from just absolute disaster. And yet, if he's not there, I guess I don't have enough confidence in Democrats and the progressive base not to nominate Kamala, who is, I'm sorry, I can't decide whether she's a parody of being there or a veep. Well, what do you think? One comment each on the labels. First

of all, let us just say with clarity, any third party run that is not a third party run by Donald Trump, which would be, I would welcome a third party run by Donald Trump, which could happen. But any third party run by any candidate against Donald Trump guarantees the election of Donald Trump. The end. So all this bullshit about we want another choice and Americans not binary and I don't have to make hard choices. That's just rationalizing bullshit. And a lot of it comes from anti-anti-Trumpers who would be happy to see Trump come back because they'll get policies they want without having to dirty their hands on actually being involved in him being reelected. So this whole third party ruse is a way for people to get stuff they want without having to soil themselves in the ugly business of

putting Donald Trump back in power. But any third party run like that risks a very high risk of putting Donald Trump back in power. As for the Biden problem, you know, I'm going to push back. Yes, he's old, but a lot of presidents are just one fall, you know, or one trip down the stairs from their vice president. And the problem is, if you looked at Joe Biden's record in complete isolation, we have a successful foreign policy, a soft landing. We're not even talking about that. Remember the big recession and out-of-control inflation and the economic disaster? And this morning, we're reading reports about, yeah, basically the economy is in really good

shape. We managed experts, much detested though they are, apparently have managed a soft landing in the economy, which nobody thought was really possible. It's a great record to run on. Joe Biden has an excellent four-year record to run on. The problem is everybody's worried that sometime between now and 2028, nature will take its course and Kamala Harris, the Biden problem, I guess is what I'm saying, Charlie. And I think you and I agree about this. The Biden problem is not a Biden problem. It's a Harris problem. You know, if Joe Biden were just running on his own with, you know,

vice presidential candidate, I don't know, Gretchen Whitmer, people would say, yeah, all right, he's old, but you know, he'll be fine. The problem is that the Harris pick was a problem from the beginning because she didn't really bring that much to the 2020 vote. There was a lot of baggage there. Supposedly, I seem to recall reading that Jill Biden was not a big fan of this choice. And now, as you say, they're kind of trapped in it. But I still think just based on the record alone, Joe Biden deserves reelection. Now, in a better Democratic Party, somebody would say, let's do a shuffle here. Let's make Kamala Harris, I don't know, Secretary of State or whatever it is, do the Hillary Clinton shuffle down the line.

And once again, just like with Republicans banning against Trump, I'm living in a fantasy world that made me feel good for a minute because it's not going to happen. You said that Biden is the one guy who could lose to Trump. I think he's actually the one guy who can still beat Trump. If Donald Trump was on the ballot, I'm going to vote for Joe Biden. There's no question about it. I don't have to defend Joe Biden. I don't have to say that Joe Biden is the best thing since sliced bread. I don't have to say that people who do not applaud him are stupid. I don't have to make any case about him even deserving reelection. The case I have to make is America cannot take another term of Donald Trump.

Associopathic, ignoramus, right? That disaster is so imminent. It is so real. And it would be so much worse than Trump won that frankly, I'm going to vote for him even if he is whatever. I'm not going to even go there. So you know what I'm saying? I think there's a distinction. And I think that never Trumpers need to remember this distinction between saying, we are never Trumpers and we will do everything possible to keep him out of the White House without

feeling the need to become fanboys for the other guy. But I want to amend that one bit, Charlie, because it's not like, you know, when people say, well, I don't want to vote for Trump either, but I can't vote for somebody as terrible as Joe Biden. The problem is you're not voting for anybody terrible. You can say, look, is he Thomas Jefferson or George Washington? No, but he's been a pretty good president, well within the parameters of normal and actually a reasonably good job. You don't have to be a fan boy, but you don't have to hang your head and say, well, he's not great, but he's not Trump. I think that's the

problem that a lot of these anti-Trumpers and Republicans keep trying to back everybody into. It's like, oh my God, you actually want me to vote for Joe Biden? Yeah. I mean, a perfectly plausible case. I'm just going to, I don't want to vote against Donald Trump. I just want to make that clear that that's, that is my priority is voting against Donald Trump. You know, when I voted for Hillary, you know, pinching my nose, but I did vote for her. I did it in part to throw one more vote on the popular vote tally. In my state, it didn't matter. But, you know, Trump actually was really, I'm pretty chapped about the popular vote.

And I think it's really important to send a message to say, yes, you know, this is the thing I would have done. But you're absolutely right that this that to even flirt with the idea of voting for Donald Trump at this point, or even to think about countenancing is insane. And I think, by the way, the moral calculus is different. If you live in Wisconsin, in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, or Nevada, the moral imperative is much greater than somebody who lives in, say, Maryland or lives in California because your vote matters. Because your vote matters in a real way. Listen, we have to have

you back because I have to say, I wanted to have a long discussion with you about the U.S. Supreme Court and the decisions and the coverage of the court because I think you and I agree and disagree on certain things. I wanted to have a really long discussion about your back and forth with David Sachs on Ukraine. I wanted to talk about J.D. Vance and his demagoguery. We don't have any time for all of this because, once again, we're consumed by this indictment news. So can we make a date to have you back to hash out all that other stuff? It's a deal, Charlie. Okay, thank you. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes, and yes, I am back. We will be back tomorrow, and we will do this all over again. Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.