The Bulwark Podcast - Tom Nichols: The Cult Around the Sad Boy from Queens

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Trump has embraced the culture war on guns and abortion, but he is somehow being painted as a moderate again. Meanwhile, Giuliani and Abbott served up fresh reminders that MAGA thinks law and order doesn't apply to them. And today's authoritarians aren't anti-elite—it's just that the wrong elites are in charge. Tom Nichols joins Tim Miller. show notes: Tom's piece about Carla, the cat

Hey y'all, a little bit of housekeeping. I want to make sure you know about our weekend offerings. Over on Bulwark Goes to Hollywood on Saturdays, Sonny Bunch interviews people in the movie business. But this week, there's one that's very relevant to listeners of this podcast. He talks to the director of the documentary, The Sixth, which I really recommend. It takes a different look at the attack, focusing on six stories from that day, and I think highlights the scale of the threat that we faced. I really recommend going to check that out. Also, I think highlights the scale of the threat that we faced. Really recommend going to check that out. Also, I'm on the Focus Group podcast, which comes out every Saturday with Sarah.

We talk about what's happening with the youth. I don't know if you've given a try to check out the Focus Group podcast to listen to the people, but I just want to say I think it's a super important part of what we do here at the Bulwark, super important part of our mission, allows us to kind of get out of our bubbles and make sure we're listening to people in different demographic groups. You know, this week, we're talking to the youth, but Sarah's out there talking to MAGA voters, she's talking to black voters, talking to lefty progressive swing voters. And so I highly recommend the focus group podcast out every Saturday. This week, you can hear me, but she's got better guests than me other weeks. Lastly, yeah, I'm sad today. Okay. Congratulations to Darla. Any other Minnesota, St. Paul,

Twin Cities folks out there, good on you. I'm not ready to take shit talk yet. I'm not ready for that. But life goes on. Good luck to our friends in Minnesota and Dallas. And you know, it's just sports. It's just sports. we got real business to get to so up next friend of the pod tom nichols hello and welcome to the bulwark podcast i'm your host tim miller it is monday uh but bill crystal's in greece like you know visiting sisyphus and ruins and such. And so, I've replaced him with another curmudgeonly wise man, Tom Nichols, Professor Emeritus of the Naval War College. He's the author of the Atlantic Daily Newsletter. His book's The Death of Expertise, which now is an updated and expanded edition. And you can get book plates. The book plates

are available. Tom, welcome back to the Borg Podcast, brother. Thanks, Tim. Good to be with you, man. We have an embarrassment of riches today. Well, embarrassment of embarrassments, really. I don't even know if we're gonna be able to get to all of them. Luckily, it's a daily podcast. We can do some tomorrow. But yet MTG, we have Marco, election denial, we have Alito, Mrs. Alito, JD Vance. But we have to start with the most embarrassing. America's mayor, Rudy Giuliani. I wrote about him this morning in Morning Shots where I sat in for Bill. To me, there's some very mockable elements and there's a serious thing. So let's just

indulge ourselves in the mockery first. The dude sends out a tweet with a selfie with him and some heavily made up, maybe a lot of work done. A lot of women who have updated their look, let's say, where he was taunting the officials in Arizona who were trying to give him a subpoena, saying that they were running out of time to do so. Two hours later, they did actually deliver the indictment at his 80th birthday party in Palm Beach. Tom Nichols, what has happened to Rudy Giuliani? I never knew him. I never knew the guy. I was thinking about this because actually about a week ago, I was at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas, small places. Very cool

place. If you've never been, I recommend it. I then got home and I was actually watching some stuff about the mob. Of course, Rudy is everywhere in these histories. I mean, he's the guy who basically, you know, is one of the key guys in taking down the mob in the Northeast. And thinking about even before he was America's mayor, that, you know, he had this reputation of being tough, no nonsense, you know, straight shooter, kind of a nasty streak to be sure, but nonetheless, not this kind of creepy old party animal who's desperately trying to stay in the public eye. And all I could think of was just how pathetic it was and how quickly he had fallen. I remember a picture of him just before Trump was elected. And he's riding around in a limo, smoking a big cigar, smoking a big heater, you know, in Manhattan.

And I remember at the time saying, you know, he and these Trump guys always look like they're on their way to foreclose on an orphanage. He was kind of, you know, future master of the universe. Like, all right, he'd hit some hard times. I think Trump just sucks the blood and marrow out of people, you know, as a loyalty demand. I mean, he just, he leaves behind these sad husks of people. And I don't know why, you know, you wrote a whole book about it, about people need to stay in the mix and they need to feel important, but you know, he's 80 years old. There's no third act here. There's no redemption coming. There's no sudden moment where the whole country is going to turn

around and say, you know what, Rudy, you were right. We're sorry. You're right. They were counting the votes incorrectly in Arizona. Rudy, you were the only one that saw it. You were the only one that saw that Ukraine was actually Nazis and corruption and that it was like joe and joe biden was in on you should have been president back in the 90s we're so sorry and by the way here's many millions of dollars to make you whole again that's not gonna happen no it isn't but he still gets to enjoy himself as you mentioned the book one of the one of the characters my friend caroline friend uh i guess we have an interesting relationship as readers the book would know she was the host of that 80th party and it's like oh my god i you know i'm watching all the videos it's a weird thing you know i i

guess i it's like rudy is singing new york new york, you know, the crowd is like all of these decrepit old guys who are past their prime trying to hold on to this along with, you know, these younger women, including Steve Bannon, who looks like someone destroyed the portrait that he'd been hiding in a closet. And it's catching up. Yeah. And Roger Stone is is there it is such a bizarre thing but i guess this is how in this little bubble right is this even true i guess that's what i'm wondering in this little bubble does he still feel important does he is he still getting what he needs like i almost feel like you know because it's the whole thing is kind of sad right doesn't he feel sad i've kind of gone past trying to psychoanalyze someone like rudy but I was thinking more about your friend who, you know, in a way, this is the coolest party of 2006. It's like if

you were a young Republican operative in 2006, you say, hey, I was at this party and it was Rudy's birthday party. And, you know, pre yikes, Steve Bannon was there and, you know, all these other folks who were up and comers. And I think it's like, I finally got to hold the really cool party that would have made me the coolest kid at GOP school in 2009 or something. That's over. That's not, imagine now going on going on saying by the way i hosted rudy rudy giuliani's 80th birthday party you know and it's like that line in um arlo guthrie's alice's restaurant and they all moved away from me on the bench i hosted rudy's party and they all moved away from me on the bench and i i don't know i mean i think they i think they're strapped in a

kind of early 21st century notion of republican coolness that that has long been destroyed by trump and they just haven't internalized that maybe i don't know i also think it's maybe a countercultural thing anyway we could do a whole episode on this i thought you were going to do a different arlo guthrie reference i was thinking of coming into los angeles you know coming into los angeles bringing a couple of keys don't touch my bags if you please mr customs man because that is the that is the serious part of this so we can laugh like the serious part of the rudy thing that's what i wrote about in newsletter this morning it's like and there was always a little bit of this with rudy you know you go back to people can google this you went to 92 and there's the plainclothes cop riot

that he's part of uh you know because they're upset that democratic mayor at the time was trying to put limits on on the police force and rudy's part of that and so there's always been a little bit of this you know for my friends everything for my enemies the law element to rudy but like his brand was was fighting corruption fighting the bad guys fighting criminals and if you think of law and order republican like rudy giuliani is who comes to you in your mind's eye and for that person to be reduced to taunting law enforcement officials pathetically really you know trying to be like, man, and boo boo, come on, you can't get me, you know, and undermining the rule of law and saying that it's all a fraud, and that it's all illegitimate. That is really nefarious shit. And like that, we can laugh at Rudy, but that is the dark side of this, I think.

Well, and that, you know, ducking subpoenas and playing, you know, tag. I mean, normally you just serve a subpoena to your lawyer. And as you say, this was like a game about subpoenas. And you're right, by the way, just to backtrack for a minute, there are people who will tell you Rudy was always awful. He always had this kind of vicious streak in him. Okay, guy became mayor of New York, not usually something you get by being really nice. He wasn't high on my list of favorite Republicans back in the day, but I sort of went with the whole America's Marathon. If Rudy had been a prosecutor and they'd said to him, hey, this guy who's involved in a really terrible plan to upend elections and fake electors and all this other stuff, he's basically told you that you can take your subpoena and cram it with walnuts you

know imagine how 1998 or you know 2004 rudy would have responded to somebody saying you know i got your subpoena right here pal and instead he's that guy now and he would have been right back then he's that guy now and the tie to me is have you have you followed this this texas story at all and the pardon of uh by greg so sickening so here's the here's the tie for me and i did a longer rant about this on on youtube if people want to go see that these guys that you know got caught up in this law and order you know mindset which you know has some elements to it i'm not you know i'm not a defund the guy, but they've gotten so wrapped up in tying it to the, these culture war fights, right. And like their fight against the deep state and all the MAGA conspiracy nonsense

that, that the Rudy subpoena defying, there's a direct through line between that and Greg Abbott saying, you know, I'm going to pardon this guy who killed a black lives matter protester in cold blood because he's on my side of the culture war right you could not possibly imagine the inverse happening right where some liberal comes out and shoots somebody at a mega rally and greg abbott pardoning them because like oh i don't know it was self-defense or what you know the whole story is fucking sick and absurd there it was self-defense or what you know the whole story is fucking sick and absurd there's no self-defense guy drives the truck into a crowd the other guy's holding a gun legally because it's texas and then he takes out his gun and shoots him five times i

mean like there's no complication to the story so but the mindset is the same right which is like law and order isn't for us law and order is is only for them. That's scary shit. Like that's not just childish stuff, you know? Right. The law is merely an instrument of rule. It's not a founding principle of the nation. The rule of law means nothing. It means only what you want it to mean in terms of whether it's to your advantage. And, you know, I can hear conservatives out there saying, well, wait a minute, you know, the left gets into bed with some really ugly people who've really done some bad stuff. And Kathy Boone and Angela Davis and the whole 70s roster. I think that liberals have this innate distrust of the law and think it's always being misapplied, you know, which is one of my beefs with people on the left for a long time.

And that's a legitimate beef to have, right? Do when it comes to things like the death penalty and incarceration rates and racial disparities and convictions. Great. Let's have that argument. This is a totally different argument. This is somebody saying, you know, if I want to troll people and get reelected, I should just pardon somebody who's committed murder, because that'll be, you know, hilarious. And the law is merely exists insofar as it is convenient to me. And you're right,

that's the scary part, because there is no sense at all, that the whole notion of an independently existing rule of law, you know, before which we all must stand and be equal, is just a fiction. It's just an abstract concept that should be discarded if it's to your political advantage to do it. And then you just think about how things break down and how quickly it could break down and the incentives. You think about a Trump second term and on the merits, like the pardoning of the January 6th, you know, rioters is bad enough. Like on the merits, it's fucking outrageous and absurd. But to me, the scarier part is the incentives. Like, what does it say to future people that want to commit political violence? If they look, if they're looking at this and they're

like, well, Greg Abbott in Texas, they pardoned a guy after he murdered a Black Lives Matter protester in DC of the now new president president pardoning everybody that's torn the Capitol. You know, as long as I wear a MAGA hat, I can do whatever I want. Especially if I'm in the right place. Right. My incentives and my fear of punishment vary depending on what state I'm in, you know, for political mayhem. The other thing to think about with the j6 pardons is like a balkanized view of our country right absolutely one of my friends who studies the balkans my

friend nick vozdev who's a russia guy he's like this is like you know the post yugoslavianization of american politics but um the other thing he's doing is, you know, Trump's going to create a whole cadre of people whose freedom and whose lives basically came from him. You know, you're going to let a bunch of people who've already done violence on your behalf out of prison with a pardon. And, you know, who do you suppose they're going to be loyal to? What do you suppose their incentive not to reoffend or not to be involved in violence again is going to be? And, you know, it's remarkable to me. I was thinking about this with regard to the OJ trial, right?

The same people that back then were jury nullification and, you know, the obvious, you know, and it's like are the same ones now saying, you know what? You know, juries are nonsense. Trump should be out. This is all weapon. These folks in the GOP have become everything they once railed against. They have become exactly who they hated. That literal argument was made to me over the weekend. This some MAGA guy was on social media putting out a bunch of posts about how these bulwark tools don't

understand why Daniel Perry needed to be pardoned and a veteran cannot get a fair trial in austin you know and it's just like veteran can't get a fair trial in austin oh all righty we had a dueling rallies i guess i guess one wasn't a rally over the weekend uh trump spoke to the nra president b Biden spoke at Morehouse commencement, HBCU in Atlanta. The policy side, I have a clip I want to play that's more in the mocking side of things. On the policy side of things, Trump goes to this NRA rally and says that he wants to repeal all of the Biden assaults on the Second amendment, which are like exceedingly modest and supported by 80% of the country.

And it's like expanding background checks, closing loopholes, making a little more complicated for you to get a gun. If you're under 21, you know, straw purchases cracked down with the federal government. And these are not, this is not Beto saying,

I'm going to come to take your guns type stuff. And Trump, it's interesting. I don't know if this is an example of like Trump, just saying whatever the people in the crowd want to hear, which might be as simple as that. But in the past, he had kind of softened his edges a little bit on certain things like this. But he has really kind of fully embraced the right culture war on abortion and guns. And I do wonder if like there's any potential political opportunity for the Democrats there. I don't know what you think.

First of all, I think it's always a mistake to treat Trump as if he has actual policy positions. He is a goldfish who chases food pellets. And wherever he thinks it's advantageous to go, he goes. I mean, you know, abortion's a great case. You know, I'm the guy. I did it. I killed Roe v. Wade. And then, you know, what do you think of these abortion bans?

I think they're a bad idea. I think as long as you always remember that he is running for president for narcissistic revenge and to stay out of jail, everything else becomes clear. So really, how do you deal with someone like that who doesn't take his own policy positions seriously. And I guess I don't really know the answer to that, except to keep pointing out that, you know, he is not a stable and emotionally well-ordered person. You know me, Tim, I've been saying for all these years, every time he goes to a rally, just put it on TV and don't do snippets. Don't do X, either don't cover it at all or put the whole thing on there because so often the media,

and I think, you know, I guess this is a roundabout way of answering your question. I think a lot of times the media says, we're going to take pieces of what he said, you know, like mad libs or something, and we're going to reorganize them into something that sounds coherent. And you can't really understand how crazy pants and just how cuckoo it all is unless you hear it all at once. So I kind of don't know what to do with that, because I think he always baits his opponents into saying, well, now we've got him on the issue of abortion. But you don't.

He'll just say something different the next day. It's tough. I agree with all of that on the merits. That's right. I certainly agree with it as media criticism. I do wonder, if you look at the polls, not the top line numbers, but just the questions of who do you think you're more aligned with on issues. In 2016, Trump was seen as more moderate than Hillary.

I know a lot of people think that's crazy, but he was by voters. I think it's because he was heterodox on iraq and on social security and medicaid again you can say well that was bullshit was he really heterodox he just like spews bullshit true granted but the perception in voters was that he was more moderate than hillary it was the inverse in 2020 and this time it's back to voters thinking trump is more i don't have the poll in front of me so i don't remember the exact language whether it was moderate or more mainstream. You had the New York Times yesterday saying Trump is part of a new centrism.

Who said that? Tim, bro, I wouldn't lie to you. Here, here's a quote. I kind of wrote this down because I was trying to sort of, you know, figure it out. And the quote was, then there is Donald Trump. He is in some ways part of the new consensus, but he is also hostile to basic democratic traditions, including an independent judiciary and the peaceful transfer of power. If he becomes president again, his promised agenda is sufficiently extreme that it may chill bipartisan cooperation. I mean, you do have people, you know, in the media out there in

the world saying, yeah, he is moderate. He is he is bipartisan. Yeah. But that's because he changes his mind every other day. I think when he gets out there and he really gets his head of steam up and, you know, crows about killing Roe v. Wade, then Democrats, I think, have all they need to make their their case against him. But it's very difficult with a guy who without. It's funny we're talking about this, because I'm going to be writing later today about the Republican memory hole, how, you

know, no one seems to remember anything they ever said. But you know, what do you do with the guy say, yes, I'm totally against abortion. Are you? No. Would you ban it? Yes. How quickly would you ban it? Well, I wouldn't ban it. You can't talk to someone like that. I don't want to tar anybody with the wrong byline. Someone years ago wrote that Trump has defeated the traditional political interview because there's no shared reality with the interviewer. And there's no sense of a common narrative that you actually have a position you're putting forward. It's just kind of a big game to see how many points you can score. Yeah. And Jonathan Swan was really the only one to break him on that. And it was, I think COVID was a big part of it because there were a lot of facts related to what was

happening with COVID that he was wrong about. I just would mull on this for a minute. We can revisit it. We've got, we got five months and I think this is obviously something the Biden campaign is thinking about. But I agree with you on the merits that he's nonsensical. I guess what I would say is the people that have assessed that Trump is a crazy person, that you can't trust anything that he says, they're already in the tent here. Okay. So the question is, are we reaching the other people by calling him a crazy person? Again, maybe not. And maybe a more compelling thing is, is for Democrats to be a little bit more aggressive.

They're already doing this on abortion, but across a range of issues to be, take a culture war fight back at him. Because I do think that he is embraced in a way that he hadn't in 2016. Some extreme views. I think that's right. Yeah. And so if you're saying even though it's even though what he's saying is gobbledygook, if you're running a campaign, that's like, this guy wants to make it illegal for women who have ectopic pregnancies to have an abortion in certain states. He wants to make it easier for people under 21 to get guns and reopen the gun show loophole. He wants to deport 11 million people and have camps in Texas. I think that

trio of issues, which have been strong Republican issues in the past, like framed like that, that has like 20% support, maybe 10% support people that are like four teenagers having guns, four deportation camps, and for banning abortion at two weeks. Like that's a pretty unpopular basket of issues. And an important part of that is that once you've adopted those positions, you know, now I'm going to argue against my own point, years of being a professor make it easy to do that. Once you've adopted those extreme positions, it's pretty hard to unring that bell later. He had the room in 2016 to say, well, maybe I don't know, we're strongly looking at it. We're looking

at it strongly. We're strongly going to look at strong looking, but now he doesn't have that presumption anymore. He doesn't have that, that wiggle room anymore. First thing I thought of when you brought this stuff up is, wow, there's still an NRA after all that Trump talks to the NRA says crazy stuff. The buried lead, like, wow, the NRA still exists after all this, you know? That's a good point. All the progressives who are like, we haven't gotten anything. We never do anything. Like, you know, the country is going, it's kind of like, well, there are some wins out

there. Here's another example of a win. Just how weak the NRA is. The fact that these reforms got passed. Anyway, I want to play one more clip from the NRA and it's going to be a little painful. I'm just going to warn you. It's going to be a little painful. I'm just going to warn you. It's going to be a little painful. But to make the point, we're going to need to listen to all of it.

So here was Donald Trump at the NRA. Nation in the history of the world. I want to point out that we're in the middle of the speech right now. When people that are not on YouTube that are listening just envision Donald Trump staring right now at the crowd. Interlude is still going. He's now shaking his head a little bit but now we are a nation in decline what the fuck you doggy it is so weird this shit is so weird it is the q anon music and the

and the talk of american decline is effective you know we only had the audio but i could see people swaying with their hands in the air you know like it's a tent tent revival i mean you know it's a cult and whoever stage managing this knows exactly what they're doing that this is all an appeal to raw emotion and you know the swelling music and all of that stuff i mean it's great on the one hand it's like you know again both of us sitting here going what the hell was that but you know for a lot of people this is like a religious experience for them and what's really striking about it and i and i know i said it before, but I can't help but say it again. This is a, you know, Wagnerian kind of cultishness that's built up around this sad little boy from Queens. This like, you know, weird, blinged out, you know, outer borough mook.

I mean, it's amazing. And it shows that if you really do it right, you can create a cult around anybody. Well, not anybody. I don't think Ron DeSantis or Ted Cruz could have had a cult. All right, Bill. You've got me there, Sonny Jim. But yeah, I mean, you can create a cult around almost anybody,

especially if they have this kind of narcissistic sense of self-importance. I listen to this and I think, wow, people are swaying. almost anybody especially if they have this kind of narcissistic sense of self-importance or it's really i listen to this and i think wow people are swaying and this music's playing and the guy there in front of is donald trump it's like a simpsons episode yeah a down market simpsons episode i kind of want one of our friends in hollywood one of the pod friends rob reiner somebody to do just like a one minute cut of like Donald Trump standing up there with a weird QAnon music on one panel. And the other panel is like the cops getting mauled.

Like, you know, like at some point, don't be about just to be like, this is too weird of a fucking cult for me. All right. I just can't do it. One more Trump thing before we get to you know his various little

hangers on you were invoked in friday's podcast i don't know if you know that uh towards the end i felt tingling with power right out of my mouth so i knew it must have we're discussing a disagreement uh as intra never trump disagree and i joe walsh and we're talking about how jonah goldberg had said you had a long interview with jonah and he was wondering why people like you and me are such cheap dates yeah that's Jonah's line isn't it it's like why are you a cheap date and it's like come on yeah well I don't mean to pick on Jonah again but we we did we did that on Friday and we're using this because he's representative of a lot of people actually in the bullet this morning Caputo is writing about how there are many other people who are making the same point that not maybe not many, but at least a significant portion

of rich donors who don't really love Trump, but they want Biden to give more on Israel or else they'll flip teams. I find this preposterous, as I've said many times, like you wrote for the couple weeks ago about how people have a failure of imagination about Trump and the next term. And it seems to me like that is the answer to why we are cheap dates, right? Like if you truly believe that the threat is that risky, then like little disagreements over exactly what weapons Israel should have, as important as that is, kind of pales in comparison to the threat. That's at least my answer. But I'm curious how you would talk about that. One is that I think for some folks, and I don't include Jonah in this, who I think, you know, is a fair broker and, you know, I respect him and we had a

good conversation about it. But I do think there are people who want to vote for Trump for a whole lot of reasons, including, you know, just because they think it's just a way to stick it to people they don't like. And so there are reverse engineering reasons for stuff they were going to do anyway. Right. If someone says, well, you know, stuff they were going to do anyway. Right. If someone says, well, you know, I wasn't going to vote for Trump, but I don't know, this Israel thing. I'm giving me a break.

You know, first of all, foreign policy is almost never the deciding issue in a presidential election. Probably not since 1984. Maybe 04. Yeah, maybe in 04. But even there, if the war were going that badly, Bush wouldn't have won a bigger share. I mean, in the end, people vote on, you know, their perceptions of the economy, whether they like the guy in office. Usually, and there's a great line about Afghanistan, by the way, that I used in the piece I wrote about Afghanistan, where a political

scientist said, you would have to have an electron microscope to find the influence of Afghanistan in any congressional level elections over the past 20 years. So, you know, when somebody says, well, I don't know, you know, look, that what that means is, I was probably going to vote for Trump anyway. But I know it's about as socially acceptable in my circle as smoking in church. So now I have a reason that I can can do now with the other issue about cheap dates, I think there's a fundamental error in the way Jonah and other folks have approached people like you and me. I'm not a cheap date. I don't agree with Democrats about a lot of things.

But on the other hand, if I have to let one party or the other control a really important issue, if I had to say, well, would I rather have a less restrictive abortion regime under the Democrats in a way that makes me uncomfortable? Or would I rather have, you know, these kind of mean spirited theocrats handling it among the Republicans? That's not a hard choice for me. I mean, that's, you know, I'm in the great big middle of America, which is I think abortion has to be legal, but I think there have to be some restrictions. And I think, you know, people of goodwill have to figure it out. But I can live with bad policies on guns or other, you know, other matters. What I can't live with is a constant attack on the Constitution, the rule of law.

We're not really cheap dates. We're not really just signing on to everything Democrats want and saying, you know, oh, yeah, everything's, I called Cori Bush and, you know, AOC the other day, and boy, they've just got my head back on straight about socialism, you know, that's not happening. But if my choice is, you know, fuzzy headed socialists, versus autocrats who want to torch the Constitution, once again, where's the real choice here? And so I've always thought that was an unfair argument to make against people like you and me that somehow we've just signed on wholesale. Yes, well, you know, open the open the borders. I've had a new revelation, bring them up.

Also, that's not happening, you know, give us a serious alternative. And then we'll start to make a serious, you know, consideration again, between between the policy sides, but that's not what's happening. You made the point about the fuzzy headed socialist versus the autocrats. I have a line that I've used several times about how, like, if you're forcing me to choose between Sweden and Hungary, like, it's not a tough choice for me. Like, it's just not like Sweden is fine. It's not my ideal policy, you know, rubric, but it's fine. And to that point, that choice is different for the Republicans. Let's take a listen to Hungary's biggest fanboy, J.D. Vance, on the Sunday shows this weekend. Well, America's universities still attract talent from around the world, as you've went to one of

America's very top schools. There's still good things about American universities, but it's going in the wrong direction, Margaret. But Victor Orban in particular, as you know, I mean, he rewrote the Constitution. He neutered the courts. He has tried to control the media. These are not necessarily conservative principles. So why would you want to mimic him? Well, look, I'm not endorsing every single thing that Victor Orban has ever done. I don't know everything he's ever done. What I do think is on the university, on the university principle, the idea that taxpayers should have some influence in how their money is spent at these universities. It's a totally reasonable thing. And I do think that he's made some smart decisions there that we could learn from the United States. A lot to learn from about how the feds can take over our

university system. America U, a lot to learn from, from Victor Orban. You know, J.D. Vance, of course, I've written about J.D. Vance and have added some of my own spicy description of him. But, you know, the thing about J.D. Vance is both that he knows better because he is smarter than that, but that he is this kind of giant walking lightning ball of resentment. You can just hear it about, you know, those kids at the universities and like clubs that he feels that somehow he was never a part of him despite having a, you know, Ivy League law degree. And you see that with other guys, with Bannon, with Stefanik, with others, who, you know, are not only no better, but that just have this kind of sneering resentment of an elite to which they aspired and yet felt that they were kept out of. And that's, I think, what makes them so just cringe-inducing. Because you listen to Vance talking about the Hungarian model.

And I love that. Well, I don't know all the things he's done. That very lawyerly thing there about, well, he's done. Oh, I didn't know that. He's always left himself that trap door. But, well, I didn't know about all the bad stuff. It's embarrassing. And once again,

you know, it raises an issue to go back to Jonah's, you know, comment about getting on board with people. It's not a matter of getting on board. It's a matter of trust at this point. When I was a Republican, I sort of trusted that we were kind of the boring party. Where I grew up, Republicans were boring. We were the land of these moderate New England Republicans, Olympia Snowe and, you know, Ed Brook and all these other folks. But I trusted that, you know, that generally speaking, the Constitution and the law and just a more sensible group of people. I just don't trust the Trumpist party. I mean, I don't trust that anything they're doing doesn't have an agenda of basically, as you've been pointing out for this past hour, you know, basically just destroying the Constitution, pardoning their friends, and using the weaponizing the law to kind of institute minority rule. You know, that's a really important issue. I don't trust anything J.D. Vance says, because I don't think he believes a word of it either. Well, there's one other branch of the

government where this is happening. We have to talk about Mrs. Alito. We have to talk about Mrs. Alito. I need to know what Tom Nichols thinks about Mrs. Alito. It's really something. I just don't understand why these conservative Supreme Court justices have wives that seem to keep them out of the loop about everything they're doing. I don't know how it works in your house, but usually if a flag gets inverted on your front porch, is that something that you noticed, you think?

If my wife were exchanging emails with seditionists, I think I'd probably notice. I don't really pry deeply into every aspect of my wife's friendships and her personal life, But, you know, we are we are married, we do share the share a home, I think I would probably notice the seditioning and the upside down flags. And the it's amazing how fast Alito and Tom's just offload this stuff. But I'll you know, women, what are you gonna do? You know, they're emotional. First, they're padding around the house, their bunny slippers, the next thing you know, they're hanging flags upside down. They're trying a coup, you know, you think the coup would come up during pillow talk in the Thomas household. The whole story, though, is also just preposterous. And Alito's never

really, he's never really denied it, even in the Fox News, you know, kind of revamp the view from the Alitos where they're like, well, I mean, what really happened here is that somebody down the street had an F Trump sign and they called Mrs. Alito the c word and i was like okay but then why was the flag upside down again i mean if the story was like sam alito was out in his boxers shouting down a neighbor like okay that would that would be also a little weird for supreme court justice but that would make sense that would be a sensible reaction to a neighbor calling your wife the C word, flipping the flag upside down and doing a January 6th, you know, kind of signal, a signal in support of the January 6th insurrectionists. I don't understand how that follows from being called the C word. Don't you see what we made them do?

See what we made them do again. The one liberal on the block. Yeah, right. My favorite part of the story was, well, she was just upset because the kids could see it on their way to school. Well, except it was during COVID, there was no school. The bus stop was empty. Tomins just adopts this kind of imperial silence, you know, of like, I'm not here to answer your questions. And I'll be here until I die. And that's your problem. That's a you problem, not a me problem. Alino is so thin-skinned that he really just has to fire back. He's got stories. He needs to tell you. I think you're absolutely right that if somebody comes by and calls you or says, F you, you say, old street guy, right? F me, F you, pal. Right, yeah, sure.

But you don't say, oh, fuck me? Well, that's it. Now I'm going to hang a seditionist sign out in front of my house. I think the revealing part of all this with these guys is that if they really believe their own BS about about this country and how they love the country and the Constitution and their devotion to it, then like they would be at least equally as mad at the people that were storming the Capitol, raising Confederate flags and slinging shit inside the Capitol and trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power as they are about the guy down the block who doesn't like Donald Trump. Right? Like you would think that they would be upset at that, but they don't seem to have that that same rage. Well, you know how allergic I've been to using the word fascism. I do. But I did write about Trump finally crossing that line.

And I think one other thing that I think is a really worrisome sign here is that with authoritarian, let's call it authoritarianism for now at least. One thing about authoritarian movements like this, they are not anti-elite. They just think the wrong elite is in charge. Yes. And they want to be that new elite. You know, they're like, no, no, we must have decorum, we must have the rule of law, we must have order, as long as it serves my purposes. If not, then all bets are off until the offending elite is removed from power and disgraced and pushed out. And then we come back in and we say, now we shall reestablish peace and order and decorum. And I think one thing people don't understand is that, and this came up in the unfortunate Marjorie Taylor Greene chaos moment. That was great.

I was going there next anyway. So go ahead. Is that you don't preserve the rule of law and the decorum of institutions and the sanctity of those processes by deciding to, you know, get in the mud and wrestle. And Alito, I think, I mean, in a way, I'm glad Alito did it because, you know, the mask is off. But I still maintain that for the rest of us, a kind of fidelity to principle, to the rule of law, to a certain amount of stoicism, definite amount of decorum is the way you undermine this. Because part of what's happening is all of these people, whether it's Alito or Green or anybody else, they are encouraging the notion that these elites who must be replaced, these terrible people who run the country, they're all the same.

And none of us are any worse than them. Yeah, it's like we did bad things, too. It's back to that old Trump line, you know, about. We're killers. Yeah, we're killers, too. Right. What Green wanted to do was draw the foul. Watch.

Watch this. I'm a terrible congressman. I can make other people be terrible members of Congress, too. So for context, for people that may have missed it, and God love you if you did, what Tom's referencing is that one of these stupid, completely pointless house oversight hearings where they're like going through impeachment theater, where they're pretending they might impeach Joe Biden at some point, even though they don't have any evidence or any impeachable misdemeanors or high crimes, they held an evening session, which is maybe a mistake to hold evening sessions in Congress. I don't know what these guys are doing. Maybe, maybe, maybe there was maybe happy hour might've been happening in Congress. They

held the evening session because it's important to state that some of the members of the committee were up in New York doing another show outside the Trump trial in Manhattan. And so they moved the morning session of this hearing to the evening. And so during it, Marjorie Taylor Greene criticizes or attacks Jasmine Crockett over fake eyelashes, and then AOC and Jasmine Crockett, she's a Democratic congresswoman from Texas that I think is going to be on the pod this week. So we can pre-butt your concerns about her, and I can relay them to her, Tom, that she pushed back that Marjorie taylor green has a bleach blonde bad built butch body or is it botched body butch body i think butch body that was butch that's funny and it's a human thing to do but you and and there was a lot of yes queen kind of uh feeling on the internet

i have to admit that i was i participated in that but tom as is your style kind of you know one to warn everybody that maybe you were actually helping Marjorie Taylor Greene by this. So you were kind of getting to that, but expand on that point a little bit. Representative Crockett did what's, it's a very human thing. I mean, I think AOC's one about just yelling, oh, baby girl, you know. I was like, okay, oof. What Crockett did was kind of clever where she didn't address her remarks to Greene and she asked the chair, you know, if I said that, would it be bad? Green's point is to convince people

who aren't really paying attention to politics. Look, we all suck. We're all terrible. And none of us are better than the others. And I can prove it. I know it sucks to always have to be the grownups. It sucks to always have to be the people that are speaking in measured voices. And I know everybody wants to punch a bully. And but I just think that that, you know, Green is a troll. She's trying to draw the foul. She's trying to turn the meeting into chaos. I was laughing when you were talking about night sessions.

I'm like, yeah, you know, maybe maybe we't have these kind of like the, it's like the after dinner break episodes of the old match game. There's a deep cut for people from the seventies, you know, where they used to take a break and then kind of all wander back in tired and after dinner and a few drinks, maybe, maybe nighttime sessions are never a good idea, but you know, good idea or not. I think that the only way to embarrass people like Green is with kind of an embarrassed silence and a quick ruling, and you move on. Green was never weaker, by the way, than when she tried to kick Johnson out of the chair. And everybody said, yeah, whatever, motion defeated, moving on.

You could tell that that pissed her off. She got no real real video out of it. No real moment, no virality. You know, it was like, I demand the chair be vacated. And like the whole Congress went, Okay, thank you for your interest in national government. We're moving on now. It's a fair rebuke, Tom. Okay, we're gonna end with the mailbag. But I want to talk about an article you have before we get to a final mailbag question. You wrote a beautiful dedication to your late cat, Carla, called The Cat Who Saved Me. As I mentioned, Green Room, not a big cat guy. I didn't read it because I was like, I don't know if I'm going to feel the same feelings and the same emotion that you have about the late cat. But I have to tell you, it was really moving. It was extremely well done.

People should read it. And you can talk about Carla if you wish. But there was one part of the dedication that I'm really curious to ask you about. We'd love to hear some wisdom about. You begin it by writing, I was divorced, broke, drinking too much and living in a dated walk up next to a noisy bar, which is a good lead into an epigraph or to a joke, I guess. Greek Irish guy walks into a bar. But it's interesting. This was in my periphery of knowledge about your life story you know but i didn't have the full context of of what was happening with you as i'm getting into my 40s i have a lot of friends and i hear from a lot of people who are kind of in that place in

their life where they're middle-aged or approaching middle age and they feel a little stuck and they feel like life didn't go the way they wanted exactly and they had some good the good life but you know maybe not as good as their peers or something they hit a road bump they feel like life didn't go the way they wanted exactly. And they had some good, the good life, but you know, maybe not as good as their peers or something. They hit a road bump. They feel like, man, it's too late to kind of, you know,

turn over a new leaf and do something else new. And so I actually am interested in hearing you talk about that a little bit because, you know, look at you now, you're crushing it. Well, thank you,

Tim. You know, first of all, I think in general, as a overall observation about life, your 40s generally suck. Okay. Great. Thanks.

I mean, I'm sorry, but in your 20s, right, you're still in college. You're getting your career started. You have all these rooms to make mistakes. You're still totally, I mean, when I was in college, I had a 31-inch waist. Oh, man. Send me some pictures of that time. I might have a different view. Hey, man, I could wear the skinny jeans.

I was a skinny guy. I was in good health. And then in your 30s, you're sort of climbing the mountain a little bit, and relationships are settling in, and you're not dating anymore. You're getting married. You're trying to make a go of it. And your 40s are when you start to age, you know, and really notice it. Maybe that's when it starts to creep up on you. As you just said, you know, like your friends say, hey, you know, maybe a lot of things like the way I thought life was going to go isn't going to work out the way I'd planned.

In my case, I had a lot of what the Navy would call hits below the waterline. You know, I just took a lot of torpedoes. Well, I had a very amicable divorce, I will say, you know, my, my ex-wife's a wonderful person, and we co-parented well together. But I, I wouldn't wish divorce on my worst enemy. I mean, it's one of the most painful, horrible things there, there is. And, you know, it came with a lot of financial upheaval. And, you know, I was trying to take care of two homes and make sure that my daughter was okay. My daughter was just, just very little at the time. And, you know, of course there I was saying, Oh, I'm a divorced dad and I've screwed up. You know, my daughter is now by healthy and happy and in college, but, you know, 15 years ago,

you say, Oh, I've completely screwed everything up. everything up. I took this big run at my career. I'd already had a big career hit when I had to leave Dartmouth after this bruising, bloody tenure fight. And then I became a government employee and taught at the War College. And as I say in the piece, the apartment had a beautiful view of the Newport Harbor. So that was a good reason to take it. But I find myself sitting there saying, what the hell did I do? How did this happen?

And how much of this responsibility taking am I really comfortable with self-examination? Because that's the other thing. I think a lot of people get to that point and say, oh, it was dealt a raw deal, man. No. No, I sat there and saying, boy, did I make some really stupid moves. But I will tell you, Tim, even though you're 40s, my 50s were the best time of my life. And my 60s aren't turning out to be so bad either. You know, it passes. And I think actually, I'm going to say there is data that actually

tracks with this that most people say, life satisfaction in their 40s kind of dips. It's when you're letting go of all the expectations from those great years when you know like I said when you had a 31 inch waist and you were still coming out of school and um and then my 50s were just awesome but I got this cat because you know instead of just walking around my apartment suddenly there was this cat saying hey I'm hungry oh and by the way here's a mouse you have mice, by the way. She caught a live mouse. That was such a great day. And she always trapped them alive. And we were laughing because it was in the wall. And I was like, okay, you've caught a terrorist infiltrator in the house. And I picked it up and I brought it outside. And rather than be interrogated,

Mousy Bin Laden jumped out of my hands and jumped off the roof. And I was like, wow, Carla, you, you didn't do that. I did. And then she would strut around as if she invented being a cat. So, you know, suddenly it takes you out of yourself. There's this other little living creature who says, you know, I don't want to sit around while you mope. I want to watch some TV or let's eat something together or, you know, play with me, do something. And I think it really, especially with that cat's personality, which was very present, very, you know, sort of imperious, like, you know, good morning, it's time for you to pay attention to me. It really helped to pull me out of just

spending too much time in my own head. But yeah, you know, your 40s. I don't wish this on anybody. I hope other people in their 40s are having a great time. But you go through a divorce in your 40s. And I had another relationship with a very nice person that didn't work out. So I was just kind of sitting there thinking, boy, I'm just not good in any of this right now. Well, I love that the cat helped you. But you know my big takeaway of it is i just think that this is the narcissism of everybody every stage in life you know you just don't think about you don't like think about old people's lives that much right and so it's just like a lot of people i see that are going through what you're going through are like man it's too late to like fix anything and

it's kind of like you man you must look back at that and just be like you've lived a whole life since like a whole nother life since all that happened. My wife and I had that conversation yesterday that the past, I don't know, 12, 14 years, shortly after this, I met my wife and we started to date, that it's almost like it's been an entire other lifetime. And no, it's never too late. If anyone out there is dealing with depression, you know, it's never smart to say, oh, just cheer up, you know, it doesn't work that way. But that life is cyclical. And the idea that, you know, if you're 45 years old, and it's too late, you got a whole other life that could be lived. And that's through luck, and friendship. And as

I say, in the peace, if you have a good doctor and a good priest in my case a good doctor a wise priest a good counselor you can get through a lot but if you have that all that and a good cat you can really cover a lot of ground all right well everybody should read the cat who saved me telling to keep you we're already long that's okay we'll do we're gonna do one mailbag question so mailbag people you can email us bulwark podcast at the bulwark.com the readers of the mail have asked for me to let you know that just like when you're at a public event where you're asked to ask a question it's best for questions to end with a question mark and many of the people who have written in god love you have written very

long essays which we like to read about their opinions about various things. That's nice. But a long essay about something ended with ending with thoughts, question mark, is not actually a question. So please, shorter questions help the hamsters that make all this work, get through them a little quicker. And there's one exception to this, we are still taking life advice that can be longer because you know, I need the full context. But questions should be should be short questions all right we're doing just one today but bill crystal's gone and so we're doing this one in honor of him the loudest listeners on our sub stack and on reddit and all these various places do not like it whenever bill crystal talks about how how joe biden needed to move on okay they do not they're sick sick of Bill Kristol talking about that. But the private mailbag reveals the truth because many private mailbaggers have emailed

like Jim did. Is there anything we as voters can do to pressure Joe Biden to drop out and put the country over its own ego before we are living in the dystopian nightmare of a second Trump term? So with Bill Kristol in absentia, Tom Nichols, how do you answer that question? My answer to that is I actually wrote a piece for The Atlantic a while back to say, look, the GOP would like nothing better than a Democratic primary because it would instantaneously get ugly. It's too late for this now.

But if Joe Biden, let's just play it out. If Joe Biden had stepped down, first of all, Kamala Harris is the obvious heir, and she has to be simply because, you know, byala Harris is the obvious error, and she has to be simply because, you know, by virtue of being the vice president, right? We should just say also, and the fact that she's a black woman makes it very hard to displace her, I think, you know, for certain types of candidates. Maybe that's wrong, whatever. Everyone can have their opinion on that, but I just think that's a reality on the ground. And that's exactly what would have happened. There would have been a gigantic shitstorm

of everybody saying, if she were going to get defeated in this primary, you know, how racist is the party? Why do they hate women? The better arguments about her numbers are actually worse than Biden's would not have mattered to anybody. And the Democrats would have gone into full, you know, traditional Democratic Party behavior that would have been to the glee of the GOP and the whole right-wing ecosystem. But the other answer that other than just being an old guy who sounds old, I've said many times, what exactly in Joe Biden's record would make you say that he has to step down. And I'm looking at this as a political scientist. I'm looking at this as a, you know, observer of politics. If you took Biden's name

off of his record, you have a record that almost any president would want to run on. This isn't Jimmy Carter. And even Carter didn't get displaced. I mean, Carter, Carter had a genuinely dismal record of, you know, an economy in free fall. The Soviets are running roughshod over us. They're in Afghanistan. They're flipping us the bird on nuclear weapons and a disastrous failed rescue attempt in Iran, right? A military failure on top of everything else. And even Ted Kennedy couldn't displace Jimmy Carter. You just don't do it. It's not like Joe Biden's health is failing. He talks funny when he's taught, you know, he's like, he's an old guy. He talks like this. He walks funny because he has a bad ankle. Christ almighty.

You know, if that's, if that's the bar for replacing him, then I don't know, you know, who can survive into a second term. So I understood Bill's point. I think any other Republican would probably be cleaning Biden's clock at this point, simply because we are a country that runs on vibes and optics now. But the idea that a president steps down, you know, by that reasoning, Reagan should have stepped down in early 83. Yeah, I mean, my view on this, I have always been kind of in the middle ground because I just think I was so wrong in 2016

that I tried to have much more humility about my political predictions. And it's kind of like, who knows, right? I don't know. Maybe there's something about Biden's age and the way he presents that is harming him such that changing would have helped. There's no evidence of that in the data,

but maybe it would have. But my thing is like a lot of times the people that suggest this, so you mentioned the Kamala Harris shit show and how race and gender would have been just inserted into all of this. That's one element. But also I throw out, you can't see the future. You don't know what's going to happen. Think about the Israel shit show. Like if Joe Biden was presidenting right now, and then you have a Democratic primary where some of these people are incentivized to criticize Biden on the other side, right? Like, and so you have at least some candidate that would be in this thing that is saying

we should stop giving all arms to Israel. Israel's committing a genocide. Our fracture in the party is even more exacerbated because there's a sitting president trying to do one thing and a primary trying to do another. So I think a lot of times people would suggest this don't think about all the downstream, you know, they just imagine that their favorite Democrat replaces Biden, and it's clean, you know, and they don't think they don't think about all the other stuff. And the one thing we know historically is an incumbent party that has a challenge to the

incumbent president is the party that loses. Well, Tom Nichols, thank you for your wisdom. Thanks for coming back fighting through a cold on the Bulwark podcast. We'll be seeing you again soon. We'll be back here tomorrow. It should be a fun one. Talk to y'all then. Peace. The world and its lies So baby don't cry I love the way you are my open book I see your innocence in every look at my sunshine I feel music in my arms I feel your soft breath See you close your eyes and watch your head rest Right next to mine I feel the rhythm of your precious little light Makes it for when I have my bullet mind Now I've got to give You've made my life complete

Color, I'd give you anything My life, my world, I'll bring The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Breth.