The Bulwark Podcast - Tom Nichols: Testing the System 'Til It Breaks

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

The Republicans elevated fringe players who have no interest in governing, and now they don't have enough members to get the House functioning again. Meanwhile, the international bad guys are trying to break the system. Tom Nichols joins Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod. show notes: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/left-jewish-suffering-israel-hamas/675621/ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/opinion/columnists/israel-gaza-massacre-left.html

If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our Tread Experts. Ensure each winter trip is a safe one for your family. Enjoy them for years with the Michelin X-Ice Snow Tire. Get a $50 prepaid MasterCard with select Michelin tires. Find a Michelin Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes.

Man, it is Friday the 13th, and what a hell of a news cycle. And of course, he needs no introduction, but Tom Nichols is Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College and now a staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine and author of The Atlantic Daily Newsletter. And his books include The Death of Expertise, which I am told has an update coming this winter. My apologies for bringing you on on a particularly dark and gloomy and cursed day, Professor. You know, I hadn't thought of Friday the 13th because every day is Friday the 13th now. You know, I was just thinking about just the news cycle. And, you know, in my morning shots, I was talking about, of course, you know, the complete utter chaos in the House of Representatives.

Steve Scalise wins the vote for speaker and his candidacy lasts, what, less than 24 hours. He drops out. Every headline in America has some version of the word chaos, turmoil, anarchy, paralysis. Dysfunction. Dysfunction. You know, we are a world power. We're facing one crisis after another. And this is the moment that our deeply serious country, the theme that you've written about, Tom, has decided to be deeply unserious and to shut down the House of Representatives. And frankly, let's be honest about it, okay? Nobody knows what's going to happen now. Steve Scalise couldn't get to 217. Kevin McCarthy couldn't get to 217. That's the number of votes you need. Maybe the second coming of Kevin McCarthy. Well, no, he's not going to get to 217. So we're at a moment now where no one knows what's going to happen.

And the Republican Party, which is supposed to be the majority party, the governing party, is demonstrating in real time, in bright colors, that it is uninterested in the business of government or has lost the ability. So again, it's the juxtaposition of the horrors of the real world and this fucking clown car that we're seeing in Washington, D.C. You said it this morning, clowns with flamethrowers. This is what Republicans wanted. This was kind of I said, I mean, they've been asking for this, right? They wanted the revolution. They wanted to burn it down. They empowered the political suicide bombers. This is what you get when you elevate and you empower the fringe players.

When you hand flamethrowers to clowns and they're like, how did this happen to us? Yeah. I, you know, when you, when you mentioned the problem of, you know, they don't understand governing or they don't want to go, I think this is all the cascading failure that began in 2016 of people who never expected to be where they are suddenly in positions that they both, they don't understand. I think, you know, it's objectively true that Lauren Boebert or these other, they have no idea what they're doing in Congress, but it's also a group of people who, finding themselves where they are, have decided that the most important thing is to stay where they are.

And that removes any possibility for governing, which requires not being on camera all the time, which requires not, you know, just scoring cheat points all the time. But I mean, that's the incentive structure for these guys. Who do I always blame? The voters, we the people who have looked at this clown show and said, well, I'm getting what I want. I'm not getting legislation, but I don't want legislation because the voters, and I'm just going to bang the desk again here.

The voters don't understand how government works. They don't understand how it is that all this happens. So they don't care what their representatives are doing. I'm going to take your point there. But I also think that it's worth pointing out that something like 94% of the Republican caucus did not want to do this. I'm not trying to defend Kevin McCarthy, but you do have seven members of the caucus who decided to blow things up. So you had the crazed, you know, slavering jackal caucus to defend Kevin McCarthy, but you do have seven members of the caucus who decided to blow things up. So you had the crazed, you know, slavering jackal caucus that threw Kevin McCarthy out. Now there's a whole group of others that were saying, we're never Scalise.

There's going to be a group that's never whoever the next name is that comes up. It is this tiny minority in the party, but they've been empowered. They've been given the clout. I'm not going to let you just boil this down to those seven, because after this happened, everyone else in the house should have gotten together. And so we need a speaker, needs to be a compromise candidate, needs to happen right now. And the first thing we're going to do is defang these seven kooks. The fact that you and I are living in a world where it is at least notionally possible that Jim Jordan would become the speaker

of the people's house and in line to the presidency of the United States is so utterly fantastic. Not because Jim Jordan is some trans-dimensional warlock, but because he's an idiot. He was a kind of Carney Barker candidate whose job was to represent some people in Ohio and their cookie conspiracy. These Frankensteins were never supposed to get off the table. And by the way, as another sign of how deeply unserious all this is, the fact that for a few days they were actually talking about electing Donald Trump as speaker. This is how ridiculous it is. And so then, I mean, look, in a rational universe, Jim Jordan would never be allowed close to the Speaker's chair. You're absolutely right.

I agree with you on the, that this is not just the seven. I want to make that clear. Is it eight now, seven or eight? Well, it's a different group. It keeps shifting. I mean, there's a large group of people who, frankly, don't care whether or not they've shut down the Congress of the United States. And, you know, it's, you know, one day it's Matt Gaetz, you know, the next day it's, I don't know, it's always Nancy Mace, one, you know, with one outfit after another. But, you know, look, this is a party that has been losing its mind for a long time, and now it's lost its way. And now it's basically proving that it has no interest in governing. But, I mean, this is

also what you get when you, you know, you sneer at things like compromise, prudence, when you treat bipartisanship or consensus as bad things, you know, when you snark about norms, when you flout the law, when you do all of these things, when you go deeper and deeper into these hermetically sealed alternative realities, you know, and you indulge, you know, year after year of demagoguery and indecency when you take your cues from Donald Trump, really should you be surprised to wake up finding out that, you know, you are being roasted by clowns with flamethrowers? So there is that sort of incomprehension on the part of so many of these Republicans. Look, how did this happen? Well, you've been doing this now for years,

and all of the incentive structures, all of the bomb throwers that you've elevated, the Marjorie Taylor Greene's, really, what did you think was going to happen? I mean, when you said you wanted to burn it all down, when you said you wanted a revolution, when you said, you know, norms are for cucks, and we don't ever need to compromise, or actually, maybe we'll even shut the federal government down. Where did we think this was going? I don't think they really believed that they were going to get away with any of that. I think they thought it was cool stuff to say. I mean, it's kind of like the ongoing discussions about Republicans and Roe v. Wade, right? The dogs catching the car. It's like, wow,

we agitated for that for years and then we had no idea that it could actually happen. And now we're kind of stuck. The other thing that's, I thinkitated for that for years, and then we had no idea that it could actually happen. And now we're kind of stuck. The other thing that's, I think, important to point out, you know, you're right about the media talking about dysfunction and chaos. But it's not the dysfunction of the institution. It's the dysfunction of one party in the institution. surprisingly, was a JVL who said something like, the Republicans turned the Democrats into a better party, that the Democrats are actually holding their coalitions together and, you know, sort of in more fighting trim. You and I are both old enough to remember when, you know, the joke was that they know that the Democrats were not an organized party, right? That they were always

fighting with one another. The Republicans always fell into line. Now that's been absolutely flipped on its head. Do Republicans, I remember somebody saying to me, Republicans are a church, Democrats are a street fight. It is the other way around. That means it's unfair. And I think it's wrong to portray this to the American people as Congress is in disarray. Part of Congress is functioning in a perfectly normal way. Well, okay. So what should Democrats do right now? I mean, where do you come down on this? Okay. So what should Democrats do right now? I mean, where do you come down on this? Okay, so you had the seven bomb throwers who said, we're going to vacate the chair. The only way they were able to get rid of Kevin McCarthy

is that if every Democrat went along with it. So there are Republicans who will say, well, wait, okay. So we had seven bomb throwers who blew up the speakership, but Democrats went along with this. The reason why there is no speaker is because every single Democrat voted to vacate the chair as well. It's just so awesome. That is such an awesome evasion of responsibility. If we do the thought experiment, and let's say Nancy Pelosi were endangered by, if Cori Bush and five other Democrats said, well, we're going to take down Nancy Pelosi. Could you imagine anybody saying in the Republican caucus now, you know, you know, guys, the

constitutionally responsible thing to do here is to help Nancy Pelosi. They'd be laughing their asses off. They'd be ordering pizza and popcorn. It is not the job of the opposition party to rescue the majority party from its own idiocy and internal political squabbles. So what happens now though? At this point, I don't know. At some point, this Republican dysfunction becomes so dangerous that if the Republicans say, look, we're going to have something like a compromise speaker that you can live with. And Hakeem Jeffries needs to give X number of his people a pass.

This happens, by the way, and we both know this, but that sometimes the party leaders will give a set number of their guys a pass to say, look, go vote against us with the opposition on this and we won't hold it against you. It's necessary to do like on on the gulf war the first gulf war i i saw it with my own eyes where guys that were against the war voted for the war and guys that were for the war took a pat you know there was horse trading to basically make it come out that the war could happen so could something like that happen i mean what do you think? I think it could,

but it's unlikely. Every possible scenario is unlikely. So we are left with rule out the impossible and we're going to be left with the improbable, right? But it's going to be something that's a very good. Okay. So what are the various options? Jim Jordan, which I don't think he's going to get to 217 total freaking clown show the return of Kevin McCarthy, I just don't see how that happens, given the fact that they've already blown it up. There's talk about having some sort of a bipartisan compromise that would give the acting speaker, Patrick McHenry, more power to run the House. And Matt Gaetz is very upset about this idea, because Matt Gaetz understands that if there's any sort of a bipartisan compromise, he is completely marginalized. He suddenly becomes irrelevant. So that's possible. Is there somebody

else like a Tom Emmer who's going to come out of the weeds? What's kind of fun, Tom, I don't know if you've done this, but go back and read the insider accounts like an hour before everything happens. And what you realize is that even the insiders of the insiders have no idea what's going on. I mean, honestly, it's remarkable. So I'm sitting here in Wisconsin. You're sitting in Rhode Island. No, not Rhode Island. One of those small states. And yet the people who are in the know don't actually know anything. So what is going to happen? I mean, I thought Jake Sherman's tweet last night really captured it. This was moments after Steve Scalise said, screw it. I'm not going to get to

217. We're not going to have a speaker. He wrote, the House Republican conference is a mess, complete and utter mess. They are no closer to picking a speaker. They are a month away from a shutdown. Israel is asking for aid, which needs to pass in the next few weeks. They are completely lost and they have no idea how they will get out. So one option is that they don't get out, that it becomes the dumpster fire forever. But I don't know how at some point they don't sit down with some Democrats and try to work out some deal, which is mind-blowing when you think about it. Well, and puts the Democrats in a really strong position if they decide to go that road. But I think then you're courting open war within the GOP.

We're close to that right now. Right. They're not there yet, and I wonder if they're willing to go down that road. I want to believe, taking your scenarios, I want to believe that no matter what, enough Republicans say that Jim Jordan in the Speaker's chair would be so completely unacceptable that they just have to either come together on any solution. Like what? Keeping McHenry in the chair. I mean, in some ways, that's the worst of all possible worlds, right? Then they can just have this fight every day over and over and over again.

They'd almost be better off to say, fine, Patrick McHenry is the new speaker, if they could all agree on that. But this notion that they find somebody somewhere and that five Democrats get the Jedi hand wave is fascinating. Maybe I'm having a failure of imagination to say, could things actually get that bad that the situation of separated powers becomes basically like a parliamentary system? Well, I think it can get a lot worse than that. I mean, if they don't do something, the government shuts down, there's no aid for Israel, certainly no aid for Ukraine, all kinds of other bad things happen. But let's say they come up with some sort of a compromise.

I mean, for the Democrats, I mean, there's got to be a few red lines, right? What my proposal would be, you're not ever going to vote for or open the door for anyone who is an election denialist who voted to decertify the results of the 2020 election. I think that would be a red line. Number two, I think that you have to demand that, okay, we're going to keep the government open. We're not going to do that. Because Jordan's already threatened to shut it down again. Exactly. So, I mean, there's no point in making any kind of a deal if you don't have a deal on that. So you have to make a deal on Israel. I don't know whether they make a deal on Ukraine. I don't know whether it's possible for them to say, okay, you want us to bail you out, you have to drop the sham impeachment hearing. But there are some basic

things that they could perhaps get done. But here's the thing. We're talking about all this chaos, turmoil, anarchy, paralysis, and dysfunction today. And probably it's going to last for several, several days. But even when they resolve this, it doesn't change this dynamic, right? I mean, whoever gets in will have the same Republican Party, the same incentive structures, the same need to bow the knee and kiss the ass of Donald Trump, who is the ultimate agent of chaos. They'll still only have a four vote majority. You still have people who want to blow the place up. So, you know, I mean, we're going to lurch from one chaotic moment to the next and the stakes will keep rising, right? So it's chaos about electing a speaker. It's going to be chaos when it comes to keeping the government open. It's going to be chaos when we decide what

kind of foreign aid we do. You know, It's going to be chaos when they continue the impeachment votes. I mean, so there's no resolution at the end of this. The thing that has to get done, I think, before they can move forward is that the Republican conference has to figure out how do we undo the deal, first of all, that created this possibility? How do we undo what Kevin McCarthy did? But also, and now I'm just wish-casting, where is the come-to-Jesus moment where you sit down with these half a dozen reps and say, can't have it anymore? The De Niro and Goodfellas moment, can't have it. I can't have it, Henry. The come-to-Jesus moment may be the

normie Republicans who have gone along with all of this, kept their heads down, you know, been told that you have to be loyal foot soldiers here. The come to Jesus moment may be when they realize, okay, we're out of here. We actually have clout. We're tired of, you know, just watching the extremists get their way. We are going to, you know, sit down with the Democrats. Now, by the way, it's complete fan fiction that any Republican is going to vote for a Democrat. That is not going to happen, right? I mean, can we just like leave this aside? This is deeply unserious conversation. But, you know, you have, you know, a dozen, maybe 20 normally Republicans who could say, you know what, we have the balance of power. We could go find some counterparts on the other side. And then everything changes. The way legislation is drawn up, the way legislation is voted on, the way the

committees are structured. We could run this place if we wanted to. I mean, just as the incentives for the clown caucus is to be as difficult and ridiculous as possible, these people also have an incentive to work with Democrats and to tout that when they run for re-election. When I was a working political scientist and a professor all those years, I was not a fan of parliamentary systems. I will say, though, at a moment like this, this is when you would have what's called a clarifying election, right? You would just say, okay, everybody stop what they're doing. Whole country's going to vote. We're going to say, you know, how many seats do you really want in Congress for this and for that? I don't think that works in this country very well because we are so polarized and because of a lot of structural things. But the problem is

we're not going to get a clarifying election until 2024. And that's dangerous. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your dread's worn down or you need a new wheel wherever you go you can get a pro my tread experts ensure each winter trip is a safe one for your family enjoy them for years with a michelin x-ice snow tire get a 50 prepaid master card with select michelin tires find a michelin tread experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca locations from tires to auto repair we're always there. treadexperts.ca Let's shift to the actual ultimate reality check,

which is the world is still a dangerous place. The world is in crisis. We have the ongoing war in Israel, which is beyond ghastly. I mean, I'm running out of adjectives to describe this, the horror of everything that we have seen, what's being done, the reaction to it. Now we have Israel launching ground operations in Gaza. I mean, the civilian casualties are going to be considerable. So you are a student of international affairs. Just talk to me a little bit about what you've been thinking about since Hamas, which, by the way, is not just one among many Palestinian organizations.

It is an organization that is committed and has been committed to the destruction of Israel for a very, very long time. But your thoughts since Hamas launched this bloody, brutal, barbaric terrorist attack on Israel last week? I think my colleague at The Atlantic, Elliot Cohen, subbed it up really well when he said, this is civilization against the barbarians and not just in the Middle East. I mean, Armenia, Ukraine, that there are parts of the planet where the bad guys are making a run for it. Maybe because I'm not a Middle East guy and I look at the rest of the map, Hamas's attack on Israel, to me, fit into this larger trend of just horrific groups and state leaders who are just deciding to test the international system until it breaks to just burn things to see if they can do it.

Our enemies are really testing all of these things. All of it. But you can see the way that Russia and China and Iran and Hamas are all testing the United States, are all really in a very, very aggressive stance trying to figure out. Hamas planned this for a long time, right? Long time. They didn't plan this saying, gosh, we have no idea what the international reaction could be. They knew. When I used to teach about terrorism at the War College, we always brought up the issue of drawing the foul.

One of the things terrorists try to do is to pull the target state into being as ghastly as they are, so that they can kind of draw the foul and tell the multiple audiences who are watching, see, they're as bad as we are, or our cause is just because they're doing this. I could not even begin to know how Israel should respond. I mean, my gut feeling is the same as everybody else's. This organization has to be destroyed. But as you say, the price, the damage is going to be high. But I think that's, again, part of a trend around the world of saying we are going to push until it breaks. Because you people, you countries who defend the international, what the Americans now call the international

rules-based order, you've actually been pretty good at this. And it's really constrained us. And we want to break that rules-based international order and go back to chaos. And I think that's part of what's happening here is that this is a deliberate attempt in Israel, a deliberate attempt, not just to push back the Israeli. I mean, it's an attempt to create horror and terror and to soak the region in that chaotic terror. And it may work. Okay. So hanging over all of our discussions of the unseriousness of our domestic policies, but also America's role in the world is the possibility that Donald Trump might once again be the commander in chief.

Let me play this one soundbite, which again, I'm not sure has gotten as much attention as it deserves. Here you have Donald Trump, who has dined out for a long time as a big defender and supporter of Israel, but he was unstinting in his attacks on Benjamin Netanyahu. By the way, which I think is very, very interesting that he's broken with Benjamin Netanyahu. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, does it, to figure out why Donald Trump is dumping on the Israeli government right now, right? Because Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the fact that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. And said nice things about Joe Biden. But this is Donald Trump saying something nice about the terrorists who have unleashed this

horror. Let me just play this and get your reaction on the other side. And then two nights ago, I read all of Biden's security people. Can you imagine national defense people? And they said, gee, I hope Hezbollah doesn't attack from the north because that's the most vulnerable spot. I said, wait a minute. You know, Hezbollah is very smart. They're all very smart. The press doesn't like when they say, you know, I said that President Xi of China, 1.4 billion people, he controls it with an iron fist. I said, he's a very smart man. That's smart.

He killed me the next day. I said he was smart. What am I going to say? But Hezbollah, they're very smart. And they have a national defense minister or somebody saying, I hope Hezbollah doesn't attack us from the north. So the following morning they attacked. They might not have been doing it, but if you listen to this jerk, you would us from the north. So the following morning they attacked. They might not have been doing it, but if you listen to this jerk,

you would attack from the north because he said that's our weak spot. Okay. So, Tom, I don't know how to unpack all of the stupidity there. So I'll let you do it. Thanks.

Over to you, Tom. Yeah, that's that's right first of all i'm always struck and it's happening more and more these days how much like a little boy he sounds oh i know like a little kid making the sing-songy voice and i mean he's just like somebody the other day pointed out that even by his standards he sounds like he's really losing his shit. Imagine any other Republican candidate saying Hamas is really smart. And you got to hand it to Hamas, you know, basically. You just got to hand it. And that, by the way, can I just throw in the President Xi who rules a billion people with an iron hand and engages in extravaganza he's smart

i mean it is interesting another tell what donald trump admires what he thinks is smart brutality is smart oppression is smart right admirable it's admirable the thing is donald trump and you and i have said this for years that he has worn us down into just going, yeah, it's, you know, what can you do? Cause I actually brought up the little boy voice with a more serious point under it,

which is that he does the little boy, whiny, sing songy toddler thing, almost in part so that you don't hear how horrific the thing is that he's saying, because if he stood there and said in a very adult, calm voice, so that you don't hear how horrific the thing is that he's saying. Because if he stood there and said in a very adult, calm voice, you know, I think Hamas is very smart.

And you've got to hand it to him. And Xi, look, there's a billion people in China, and he rules them with an iron fist. People would say, oh, my God. But because he does the whole performance art for Rube America that loves the little boy and the hands and the pinky extension and all that, it's almost like you lose sight of the fact that he's saying things that are horrifying. That would be a career-ending comment for any presidential nominee. And just to go back to that Republican base, if any other Republican nominee had said that, the Republican base would destroy him.

Trump gets a pass because, I bet you've talked to many Trumpers who do this, and they say, well, I understood what he meant. He didn't really mean that. I understood what he meant. Or, I didn't see that. I didn't hear that. I didn't hear that. I didn't hear that. No, I mean, to their credit, some of the Republican candidates have been pushing back.

I think Mike Pence pushed back on all of this. Ron DeSantis even pushed back on all of this. Nikki Haley. Good luck with that. Yeah, I know. Good luck with that. The Israelis issued a very strong statement saying, you know, how unconscionable his comments were.

Will it make a difference? I think it's naive to think that it will. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Ensure each winter trip is a safe one for your family. Enjoy them for years with a Michelin X-Ice snow tire. Get a $50 prepaid MasterCard with select Michelin tires. Find a

Michelin TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there at TreadExperts.ca. Okay, so let's talk about Joe Biden's response. It's interesting to me how it has become this talking point that not only is this Joe Biden's fault because he projects weakness, but that in Tim Scott's words, he has blood on his hands because he's had dealings with the Iranians. Now, my understanding is the administration working with Qatar has refrozen the $6 billion, which was the talking point for the last week, that this financed it, that $6 billion in Iranian money that was unfrozen.

This is what was used to attack Israel. Apparently, it's been sitting in the bank the whole time. No money has been transferred, and it's not going to be transferred now. But give me your reaction to the way Joe Biden has handled this so far. Look, I'm an admirer of Joe Biden's foreign policy. The only times I've really been critical of him is when he goes into gaffe mode and he says, my God, we have to take Putin. Putin has to go. And I wrote about that. I'm like, OK, this is the Joe Biden that was always entertaining, you know, and with no filter.

But you're president now. And there are things that you shouldn't just like explode in public about. But I think, you know, he gave his speech on this, his address on this, pure evil. We stand with Israel. I think it should tell you how good the response is that the Republicans have had to resort to lying about it. Like Ted Cruz saying, oh, it was, you know, it was days before Biden said, no, I mean, it's not even a difference of interpretation. It's flat out false. Or Tim Scott.

Can we stop taking Tim Scott seriously insofar as we ever did? That wasn't something of a surprise because, I mean, there was that wish casting that Tim Scott was the more reasonable Republican, and he's the one who gave the most, I think, deplorably demagogic reaction, the blood on his hands, which again, we can have a debate later about our foreign policy, but to say this days after the Hamas terrorists go in and slaughter all of these people, the rapes, the kidnappings, and to say that Joe Biden, I mean, that's the kind of hyper-partisan rhetoric that used to be taboo. And I mean, I certainly remember people were critical of George W. Bush in the days after 9-11. I mean, there was, you know, the Michael Moore video and all of that. But I don't recall any prominent Democrat saying in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center that George W. Bush had blood on his hands. I mean, no one engaged in that kind of rhetoric and certainly not a presidential

candidate, no matter how much they might have opposed his policies afterward. Nobody in the week after 9-11 was saying the kinds of things that Tim Scott is saying this week. You could have seen Scott going down that road if you watched the last Republican debate, because you could already see him saying, yeah, this good Republican shtick isn't getting me anywhere. It's time to head down Crackpot Boulevard. And that's where they are. I mean, I think Benjamin Netany yahoo's gonna have a lot to answer for this was there should be career ending for him uh you know for 9-11 people on the left in particular really wanted to kind of nail bush on well there was this one thing that said

bin laden intends to do something bad well no shit or in other words it's tuesday and he wants to do something bad inside the united states again finding so anodyne that you probably didn't even have to classify it. Compared to that, this is a gigantic intelligence failure in Israel. I mean, massive. You know, these camps showing the photographic evidence. I mean, come on. You could do this with Google Earth. But you know what?

This is not the time. And you've got to give credit to the Israelis who have said, you know what we're going to do? We're going be flexible enough to say, we're going to bring in the opposition. We're going to have a governing coalition. We're going to agree that it's only going to be about certain things. And I think for American politicians to talk about blood on President Biden's hands, when the Israelis themselves, where there is so much more culpability to be assigned, have said, you know what? We're going to figure that out afterward.

For now, we're going to have a government of national unity, and we're going to pass bills that can prosecute this war. And shame on Tim Scott. I agree with all of that. And it is premature to engage in too much of this. However, I have to say that I guess today on Friday the 13th, I just had the sense of the fragility of things, you know, how much in our lives and the world is so fragile and that many of us have taken so much for granted. I think that probably a lot of people took for granted that Israel was this national security state with the best intelligence resources, the best defense possible. And yet, I think that in retrospect, people will go back and

ask whether or not and how Israel managed to squander that. How did they manage to be so vulnerable? Did it have something to do with the fact that they took their eye off the ball, that they engaged in this pointless culture war, that they turned on one another? Because there's a lesson for us too, because we're thinking that America is strong, America is mighty, America is invulnerable. And yet, as a deeply unserious country, we have been squandering one value after another, one resource after another. And is there going to be a reckoning for us? I mean, did we see that? Because it was so incomprehensible that Israel and everything we thought about Israel, that it could have failed so dramatically. What does that tell us about the fragility even of the best and strongest nations? One of the reasons I admire Biden's foreign policy is because Biden

is a serious man when it comes to foreign policy. And he doesn't pay attention to Twitter or social media or culture war stuff. And I kind of like that. I mean, I think that's how you run foreign policies. You say, yeah, you know, I mean, I like the kind of council of wise men approach. And it's not a perfect foreign policy. I mean, Biden's head is Afghanistan. There's the, you know, my, which I've written about as a huge criticism of how he did that. But I think in general, I still think that's the better approach.

The cautionary tale from Israel, and I think it was Haaretz that said something to the effect of this is what happens when instead of running the country, you're trying to stay in office to avoid criminal prosecution. You know, that was really sticking it in and breaking it off pretty early in this war, but it was also a true observation. And I think that's the risk you take if Donald Trump comes back. Actually, even without Trump winning the election, he's already sucked in so much of our national attention and made such chaos out of one of our two parties that we need. Look, whether you like it or not, and I wrote this last week, America needs a functioning conservative party. We just do. For Donald Trump to basically immobilize a political party and millions of voters who can't seem to think about anything beyond Donald Trump. I had a call from an old friend back home here in

New England where I live, and he was talking about a mutual acquaintance. And he said, I can't talk to him. I can't talk about anything. No matter what you talk about, 10 seconds in, it's Biden's a criminal and Pelosi is a see you next Tuesday, you know, and it just goes on and on and on. And that that is corroding our ability to function as a country in an extremely dangerous world. And in a more tangible level of all of this. And again, we've become numb to it. Remember when when Donald Trump gave that speech talking about very clearly how he is going to destroy the deep state, he gets back into power. He is going to dismantle the intelligence agencies, right? He wants to defund the FBI, you know, break down the

Department of Justice. Purge the generals. Purge the generals, if not execute them. Imagine what that will do to national security if Donald Trump does what he is openly and explicitly saying he will do about our intelligence world, about the defense, about our justice system, about the investigative tools. And again, I think there's got to be a major issue. I mean, look, in terms of like weakness, I mean, we're already seeing Republicans, and I've said this several times on the podcast, Tommy Tuberville, even in the face of all this, continues to hold up the military promotion. We still do not have confirmed ambassadors to these crucial countries because of this game playing. And yet, you know, Republicans want us to think that it's the other side that's, you know, showing weakness. You're about to

nominate a guy who might pull us out of NATO, who sucks up to Vladimir Putin, who thinks that G is a genius, who again, wants to tear down 50, 60, 70 years of a national security infrastructure. Everybody's like, yeah, that doesn't project weakness. And for what? For what? Not out of any ideological conviction. You know, I mean, in a way, I respect people of any political persuasion, even if I think they're hateful, I kind of respect sincerity or authenticity. This is the emptiest kind of attack. I'm going to pull out of NATO. Why? Because everybody thinks I shouldn't. That's why. Because I can. There's a Henry Jamestown, I'm going to go all literary on you. He always reminds me of the boy in the turn of the screw, you know, this nasty kid who's being influenced by a bad ghost.

And the governess says, why did you do that? And he said, to show you that I could and that I can again. And that to me, that's, that's all there is to this. Is this just why? Because I can, why am I going to blow this up? Because a bunch of, a bunch of people with some money will send me $25 and keep me afloat and keep me out of jail because I fight. Going back to my earlier point, you keep talking about if he comes

in, he's told us what he's going to do. But just saying those things is corroding us and weakening us right now. Because he's making millions of Americans who should be thinking soberly and seriously about foreign policy, about everything really, about life in America, about the debt, about taxes, whatever. And instead, they're talking about this and they're saying, hey, kill the generals. That's a great idea. Defund the intelligence community. I'm all on board. And our enemies in the world, they know this. They see it happening. And you can't pretend it doesn't matter because the former president of the United States was the leading Republican candidate for president of the United States. It's not like some rando on Twitter. Or a couple of guys on a podcast or some guy on, you know,

AM radio at 3 AM when you're driving through the mountains, you know, and you're picking up a signal from, you know, East Jesus somewhere. Those guys are now in the United States Senate. That is the thing. Exactly. Okay. So we've talked about Donald Trump. We talked about the Republicans. We have to talk about the pro-Hamas left. And by the way, I've spent much of the week being reassured by people that, oh, the pro-Hamas left is too small. It's not significant. We can simply ignore them. And it's certainly true that this does not reflect most of the left. It's not significant. We can simply ignore them. And it's certainly true that this does not reflect most of the left. It does not reflect certainly very many elected Democrats. On the other hand, this is a thing, Tom, and I want to read you, you had one of your colleagues

at The Atlantic has just an absolutely fascinating story, which I would strongly urge people to read Gail Beckerman in The Atlantic. After the brutal violence committed by Hamas against Israeli citizens, I looked around for my friends on the left and I felt alone. The sense of betrayal, you know, the callousness of, you know, folks on the left who said, well, you know, Israel had it coming or, you know, this is what you get for oppression. Michelle Goldberg, writing in the New York Times, very progressive columnist, said, this sense of deep betrayal is not limited to New York. Many progressive Jews have been profoundly shaken by the way that some on the left are treating the terrorist mass murder of civilians as noble acts of anti-colonial resistance.

These are Jews who share the left's abhorrence of the occupation of Gaza and of the enormities inflicted on it, which are only going to get worse if and when Israel invades. But the way keyboard radicals have condoned war crimes against Israelis has left many progressive Jews alienated from political communities they thought were their own. So again, they are certainly not dominant, but they are a recessive gene on the left. And I have to say, among the things that were very shocking, we're watching many of these organizations, including the Democratic Socialists of America and some of the chapters of Black Lives Matter, and many of these student organizations at elite schools like Harvard and California, issuing statements that were just objectively speaking pro-Hamas,

actually embracing and endorsing the atrocities. Morally, a term I use maybe too often, morally vacuous, but also just immoral. Depraved. Depraved, yeah. I think depraved is the right word for this. And I loved the piece that you linked to at Wonkette. Oh, yes. Yeah, you tweeted it, yeah.

That was great. And I set that out about saying, no, you know what? The writer was like, I'm basically a secular Jew. I don't really care about Israel that much. I think Netanyahu's a jerk. But oh, my God, just stop. Just shut the fuck up. And I think, you know, that alienation, not to both sides of this, but to say, to empathize somewhat, that alienation, I think,

is something you and I felt when we watched former conservatives cheering on Russian atrocities in Ukraine of like, they're killing children, they're blowing up schools. Well, you know, hey, you talked about Ukraine joining NATO. This is what you get. You deserve it. It is the keyboard cruelty. It is the people who have decided that I want to be on a tribe and I want to indulge, you know, my two minutes hate with everybody.

And I also think this goes, you know, you asked a question earlier, Charlie, that I think was really good about how did Israel like lose its way Israel lose its way and not – how did this garrison state kind of get to the point where people didn't think there would be a problem having a music festival walking distance from Gaza? And I think it's partly – part of the reason things are coming apart is because the world has been not dangerous for a long time and because we haven't had a sense of threat for a long time. And because we haven't had a sense of threat for a long time. And because it's like, you know, if I type about how, you know, Ukraine had it coming or Hamas, you got to hand it to Hamas. I'm just kind of self-actualizing and that doesn't have any real world implications. And I think we've lost the sense that there was once a time where when adults said things, those things had meaning and potential consequences. Now, college kids, I'm not going to give a pass to the college kids. I'm just going to say college students,

you know, I love Dan Dresner's point he made years ago about college is where you go to say stupid things and then to learn how stupid they are. And hopefully that's happening. Well, I'm not sure. I mean, hopefully this is a clarifying moment where people realize, okay, did I really say that? Well, I'm hoping that there are liberal professors, and I've seen this happen in the past in my teaching career. I'm hoping there are liberal professors taking their students aside and saying, you know,

this is not what being on the left really means. That's not what this is about. And not everything's about you. Yeah. So this could be a clarifying moment and there might be some realignment. It will be interesting to see whether or not this actually pushes some folks on the left

who maybe have been somewhat ambivalent about Israel to look around and go, okay, no, I really don't want to be on that team. I really don't want to be associated with these people. You know, maybe this will serve to completely marginalize groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. You had a congressman from Minnesota, a Democratic congressman, who said, I'm out. I just don't want to be part of you. Even AOC is denouncing this sort of thing. The anti-Semites on the left

can be counted now on one hand, I think elected members of Congress. But it was stunning. And I think that, you know, for people on the left who say you guys shouldn't be talking about this, or they're not significant. One of the experiences that we've had over the last decade that continues to haunt me is the fact that we didn't take seriously some of the fringe figures on the right, people on the far edges of the fever swamp, who then suddenly became in positions of influence. So I'm not saying that's going to happen on the left, but they are there. There's a demographic division. There's a split in the Democratic coalition, where I think most older Democrats are supportive of what the Biden administration is doing, supportive of Israel. But you look at

public opinion polls, and there's been real erosion of support for Israel among younger progressives. And I think that that needs to be highlighted. We need to have the kind of debate. And the article that was in the Atlantic about this, the Michelle Goldberg piece, tells me that there's going to be a reckoning on the left. People are saying, we thought we were on the same side. But if we're not on the same side when it comes to this issue, then we're really not on the same side. One thing about the left and one place I think they are less dangerous than the right is the extremists on the left tend to grow out of their extremism. The extremists on the right tend to grow into their extremism. I hope you're right. Well, I mean, we've seen it on the right. I mean, as the people get older, rather than becoming more mellow and savvy, they become more sealed off from reality.

One of the things that we know has happened, and I say we, you know, that researchers and people who follow social media usage, for example, is that people over 55 who are either, you know, for various reasons out of the workforce or they're retired or, you know, certainly after 65, they have plenty of time. They spend a lot of time just marinating. I mean, this friend we were talking about earlier that, you know, no one can talk to anymore. He just sits and bathes in Fox news, like, you know, like the Hulk taking in gamma rays all day. I mean, it's just, you know, there's just no talking to him. But I do think that, yeah, there has to be a reckoning on the left about this particular issue because there is a inhumanity to it.

Conservatives, we always sort of, you know this, we always sort of reveled in our Spock-like indifference to, you know, Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock, you know, human empathy. It's as useless as the Winter Olympics. It is. You know, that we were the cold-hearted, cold-blooded, you know, realist foreign policy guys. But the left, you know, has always been more about heart and empathy. And this is really cold and inhuman.

And I hope that there are people on the left talking to their comrades about this. Because I wanted to jump on the one point and sort of add to that mea culpa. When people start, you know, and you've seen me play this game with people on social media, oh, this all began with Reagan, it began with Nixon, it began with of us who did not want to look around us to see who we were in a coalition with. That is the great sin, I think. When I was a Massachusetts Republican, I didn't care what the Wyoming Republicans were doing. I just cared that they were Republicans. Right. But also, you also thought they were the recessive genes, that they were never going to really be in position. Right, and they were never going to be the majority. But one of the things that we're describing here, though, is that with these new hermetically sealed alternative realities, it's very easy to be walled off from people who will tell you that's crazy, that's nuts. And we're seeing that accelerating on the right. Hopefully what's going to happen on the university campuses and on the left is there will be this dialogue because it's not you and me telling, you know, the Palestinian Justice Coalition, whatever, that you should not be putting out literature with hang gliders glorifying the rape and murder of those young people at the

concert. It is fellow progressives who are saying to them, okay, this is not part of the left. Hamas is not part of the international left. So, because one of the things that, you know, in these hermetically sealed universes, like university campuses, which you've encountered as well, are the number of people who have never heard a different point of view, who are actually shocked when they encounter someone with a different opinion or a different perspective. And it comes as a shock to them because they assume that everybody shares these views. And so they don't have to analyze them. They don't have to think it through. It doesn't challenge their conscience. I think that what's happening right now is not cancel culture as much as, hey, guys,

we really need to think through which side we want to be on, who we are, what we believe in, what our values are. And I think this is going to come as a shock to some students. It'll be a transformational event, I hope. It's not cancel culture to tell people to grow up. I'm hoping that's one of the places these kids hear about how unacceptable this is, is from the kid next to them in the dining hall. Yeah, right. Look at them and say, dude, what the fuck is wrong with you? Yeah. I think one of the things that has really broken down and created this bubble, but has broken down the ability of people to get out of those bubbles, is that we don't mingle in social places anymore, like the dining hall. Or I don't want to do the bowling cliche, but even bars.

I mean, you think of a bar like Cheers, right? I mean, I know places like that. I mean, I go to a place like that here in Rhode Island. Right. And if you said something like, you know, you got to hand it, there'd be people at the bar would just kind of look down the bar at you and say, Hey, what the hell's the matter with you? Right. That's actually an important function.

It's a social corrective that things that you think sound great, you know, at a DSA meeting or online or on Reddit or something, you know, just think if you walked into a bar full of normal human beings, would you say this stuff? And I think this is what's happened to people on the right as well, that they are in an ecosystem of people on Fox and on radio who say to them, the only problem with you is that you're not extreme enough. You're more right than you know, and there's nobody to tell them they're not.

This is a really good point because I think that there is the whole keyboard warrior type thing where you go, kill them all. Let God sort them out. And, you know, it's easy to say that and, you know, press send on the tweet. But if you actually have to confront another human being and explain why you are minimizing the killing of babies, the killing of women, the abduction of elderly people. You can't do that. People aren't going to do that. I mean, they're willing to say things because it doesn't feel like it's part of reality. And it has no consequences. Right. It's a transitory buzz. It's a little mini dopamine hit that you get from being a total shit online and seeing if you can gather some engagement. This is why, and for people who

follow me on social media, let me issue my plea one more time. You know, it's okay occasionally to mock some of these dumber trolls, but every time you argue with them, you're giving them exactly what they want. Even if you just say, even if it's one response that says you're stupid, they feel better. They're looking for that little microgram of dopamine that comes every time somebody gets mad at them. Don't do it. Just block them and move on. So where are you at now on the website formerly known as Twitter? You've been hanging on. I have to say that this is one of those weeks where I'm going, this is such a cesspool. Elon Musk has so destroyed it. I'm edging toward the exit.

Useless for breaking news. Well, it used to be so valuable. Speaking of people who have a lot on their hands, the fact that Elon Musk dropped many of the controls that would have stopped propaganda and disinformation. So you're still hanging in for the duration because I am looking around, I got to say. I am Radio Free Tom on Twitter and on

threads and on blue sky. So I'm kind of coasting around and on spoutable. I don't use spoutable. I just spoutable and Mastodon, I think are just haven't kind of developed the energy yet. But I'm there. I still post, I move around, but I i think your point about i don't think it can be overstated how much bad elon musk has done for the world i agree i'm sorry you know building rockets that's that's fine you know rich guy tells a bunch of engineers build rockets and then they go and they get government contracts and they do their science thing and push him out of the way that's fine he wants to build teslas i don't happen to i'm not a big fan of Teslas, but you want to buy a Tesla. That's great.

But when you wade into the public sphere, basically as a nine-year-old billionaire and destroy something that millions of people relied on for breaking news for a long time, for a long time, you have really done a terrible thing, you know, for a guy who claims that he was all about, you know, wanting to help the planet and, you know, help let freedom be free and all that other yada, yada, yada. What he really is, is a spoiled kid that nobody liked on the playground. And so he bought the playground and demands that everybody pick him first for, for kickball. I think that's right.

Well, let's keep in touch on that because I saw that Dan Dresner had a really powerful essay explaining why he was leaving the site formerly known as Twitter. I know that David French is spending a lot more time on threads than in the past, and I'm hoping that threads will continue to get its act together. I did experiment with some of those other sites, and at some point, you have only so many hours in the day, only so much energy for social media. I'm not going to try to figure out Mastodon. Please don't DM me about this. I am hoping with all the caveats about threads,

I think threads seems to be the most viable alternative, but we're going to see. We'll find out. The one that's closest to Twitter in structure and feel is Blue Sky, but they're rolling it out very slowly. Yeah, too slow.

Blue Sky has rolled out now. There's a third-party app called Deck Blue, which replicates the old TweetDeck. I stopped tweeting as much as I used to and stopped posting in the way I used to when Musk tried to monetize TweetDeck. Musk does not understand that he cannot force people to pay him money. He doesn't get that. I get kind of annoyed with threads because it's like everybody knew Elon Musk was going to ram Twitter into the ground. And you'd think that a bunch of other billionaire entrepreneurs would have said, you know, there's an opportunity here. Let's be ready for this. Right. And instead they were like all kind of caught off guard saying, well, gosh, we didn't think that would happen.

So I'm kind of with you. I'd like to see Threads get its act together, come out with a desktop app, you know, straighten out the way notifications are seen because I still think it's kind of difficult, especially on a desktop. It's difficult to read. But, you know, no one should forget what Elon Musk and his gathered homunculuses have done to an important part of the public space. Tom Nichols, thank you so much for coming on our Friday weekend podcast. I appreciate it very much. I apologize again for being Friday the 13th and being one of the darkest, stupidest timelines we've ever had. But then again, we've had dark, stupid timelines for a while. Just happened to be that today seemed just a little bit worse.

Just another Friday the 13th in this ongoing thing, Charlie. But yeah, I feel it too. But who would I rather spend a dark Friday the 13th with than you, Tom Nichols? So thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Thanks, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to this weekend's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back on Monday, and we'll do this all over again. Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.