The Bulwark Podcast - Tommy Vietor: David Plouffe Would Have Murdered Us

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

How Obamaworld views the weird attempt by Team DeSantis to mimic Ted Cruz's failed 2016 campaign. Plus, Dems need to stop worrying about Biden and Kamala gaffes, pols like Gavin Newsom need to go on Joe Rogan, and Tim Miller has a world news quiz. Tommy Vietor joins Tim, who's sitting in for Charlie Sykes on the weekend pod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. It's Friday, so you got me, Tim Miller. I'm your host. Charlie Sykes is still on vacation. I brought in a friend of mine who is here to help us out on the Friday episode. You might have heard of him. His name is Tommy Vitor. He did wonderful in an interview with Brett Baer about 10 years ago that you might remember him from. And he's also the host of the Pod Save the World podcast, which I'm embarrassed to admit I'm a big fan of. I'm a world out. And I asked Tommy to come on so we could talk about the world, what's happening around the globe. We'll do a little politics first. I think he's on another podcast. I don't recall what that one is called. So Tommy, thank you so much for being with us. Tim, it's great to be here. I think he's on another podcast. I don't recall what that one is called. So, Tommy, thank you so much for being with us.

Tim, it's great to be here. I enjoy being your token liberal friend. And I'm glad you were just telling me about how you went on a White House tour recently. You forgot some stuff. You've maybe recovered it by now. Everything good there? I'd never been to the White House. You people never invited me in the Obamas. I guess you thought that who knows what I would have done, maybe plant some cocaine in there. But Ben LeBolt, I was invited to the White House recently. I'm pretty sure I didn't leave anything there. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure I didn't drop anything. I was busy. I had a lot happening. So the jury's still out on that. I want to start, this is, I don't think appropriate place to start, but I'm going to do

it anyway. I'm going to start by betraying a confidence and sharing a private text message you sent me. Okay, you ready? Am I a naive lib duck if I think that Tim Scott is a good guy? I know shit like this plays in the media, but it also seems to be from a genuine place. Links to an article about Tim Scott doing kind of an undercover boss thing. He went on the pod save, I forget what the other podcast is called, and talked about just kind of how hopeful and optimistic Tim Scott is. So my first question for you here on the Bullard podcast, is this your moment?

Are you kind of doing the straight shooter thing and officially getting behind the Tim Scott campaign? I'm just kind of wondering how you feel about that now, a few weeks out after launch. No. So, okay, here's the context. I was reading Ben Terrace's book from the Washington Post. I forget the name, No. So, okay. Here's the context. I was reading Ben Terrace's book from the Washington Post. I forget the name, but it's out recently. It's

very good. I blurbed it. I also forget the name. It's hard to remember book names even when you blurb them, but it's a really good book and you should buy it. Maybe I'll share that private text later in the conversation. I asked Tim Feedred and he said, oh yes, I blurbed it. He DC one up to me in like the biggest way, probably from Cafe Milano or something. But in that book, it makes it sound like Tim Scott is sort of like, has some core decency to him is a guy who, you know, does things quietly, like go work as a. I just said, oh, it was your take on him. And what do you think you'd be for him if you had to vote in the California Republican primary? I'm the annoying liberal here. I'm the one who's supposed to have like strident litmus tests about all conduct towards Trump and not be able to sort of hold two thoughts in my head. What are you doing to me here? No, I'm the never-trumper, okay? We are the ones who have been thrust out of the family.

It's a family feud, and I will not fucking allow anybody to breach anything. Okay. You know, seriously, do people like him? Your core response to me was basically, I don't know that anyone can get elected when you're talking about being a virgin into your 40s. It's just sort of there's a weirdo vibe. I don't know that he's connecting with people,

but I don't know. He's seen a couple of little bumps in the polls, right? He's like 7% some places. I think Ron DeSantis should be worried about him in South Carolina. We're going to get to Ron here a little bit because if he gets passed by Tim Scott and Ron in South Carolina, things are really going down.

I just like the Tim Scott thing. There's just a fundamental disconnect, right? He seems like he is a decent person. I met him he was super nice to me when he hosted uh john huntsman back in 2012 speaking of cucks during an event in south carolina and he hung out with me and huntsman for a while was nothing but gracious was not really our crowd but he you know kind of shined this up a little bit which i appreciate it and people i know that work for him i know a lot of people consult for him. Everybody says he's a good person. The problem is there's this fundamental

disconnect where how do you reach the people that are grossed out by what happened in the Trump years when you're never willing to say anything bad about them? And how do you reach the Trump people if you're never willing to compliment all the things that they like about Trump, which is all the indecency and all the cruelty. And so this kind of leaves him in this sour spot where he has like a 2% support among like Wall Street Journal, Ed Board readers, you know, who are like kind of hoping that 1983 is going to come back around. And so that leaves me a little cold, I guess, is all. Yeah, no, that's fair. And I think his statewide counterpart, Nikki Haley,

has got a similar challenge in that she won't really criticize Trump. And she's going for that niche group of Republicans who like likes the UN General Assembly or something. So there's about four people there fighting over there. We'll see how it goes. Yeah. Pence, I think, got an ad this week. I hadn't seen it. I was supposed to talk about it on something else. So they sent me the Super PAC ad and it says Pence Super PAC. It's like Republicans stand up to despots. Republicans stand up to the evil empire. Republicans don't bow down. And Nikki is also doing this thing. And it's kind of like, is that true actually anymore? Most Republicans actually, I think people feel pretty good about

the way Donald Trump conducted foreign policy. I don't see a lot of evidence that there's unhappiness. No, I think Donald Trump's currently getting paid by despots. He's getting kickbacks from the Saudis and his other friends. So no, it's going quite well for them. And people like it. Yeah, this is the thing where it gets frustrating. You can give them credit where I can't because I was them in 2016. I was there in South Carolina.

I followed Donald Trump around the spin room saying, loves Putin over his shoulder and thinks 9-11 was an inside job. And I just like trolled him throughout the spin room thinking that this was going to land in South Carolina. I was like, there's no way that this guy can win in South Carolina saying 9-11 was an inside job and Putin is his buddy. You remember what the scoreboard on that one, I saw I was wrong. But so I'm awake though. It's been nine years since then. It's kind of like, it's frustrating to hear people that have not woken up on that front. Yeah, I think that's a great transition into the broader 2024 conversation because I'm looking at the strategies

of all these people and wondering, did they learn anything? Were they asleep during that period when you were trying to troll this guy? Yeah, okay, so let's start there. Ron DeSantis, we've had a lot of discussion on the board this week about his like weird, creepy, homophobic and homoerotic ad

with the Giga Chad, an oiled up giga chad and uh just kind of impressed by those muscles and demonstrating ron desantis's white booted strength so we discussed that at length you can talk about that if you want to but i want to get into we haven't discussed as he goes on tammy lorenz podcast on the outkick network and he's talking to tammy and she asked him about the ad and some of the backlash. And let's just play around to Santa's response. I mean, I think, you know, identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants. I think that's totally

fair game because he's now campaigning saying the opposite, that he doesn't think that you should have men competing in women's things like athletics. And so we've been very clear on it that we believe in protecting the rights of our girls. That's enough. I can't listen to his voice anymore. How do you grade that, you know, kind of move? All right. You have this very weird ad everybody hates. And you say it's fair game because Donald Trump has been a pioneer in advancing gender ideology. How do you think that lands with voters? So there's this really smart strategist out there named Sarah Long something. Longwell, I think is her name. And I read a quote from her. Yeah, she's really smart. And she said something like, you can't go around Donald Trump, you have to go through him. And I thought that was very well stated, like this broader Ron DeSantis strategy of trying to outflank Trump from the right is confusing to me. But in this case, he's doing

what all the 2015 2016 candidates who ran against Trump tried to do, which is be like, aha, look at his record from back in the day when he was a liberal and cavorting with the Clintons and, you know, with the Mr. Merrick, like, do any Republicans who watched him for four years in the White House really think that this guy is soft on LGBT rights or is like catering to this community? A pioneer in radical gender ideology. Is this credible to you? It's just a weird word. It's a weird phrase to who talks like this? Who thinks that Donald Trump was a pioneer in radical gender ideology. Is this credible to you? It's just a weird word. It's a weird phrase to who talks like this, who thinks that Donald Trump was a pioneer in pushing radical gender ideology. I don't even know what that means. I mean, my old boss, Robert Gibbs said,

the first rule of spin is it has to be believable. And I don't think that we passed that test there. I mean, I guess like the positive, Tim, is we're talking about this ad. Is that a good thing? I don't know. And this sort of attention economy, of attention economy. But what kind of campaign is finding this weird AI homoerotic imagery in comparison to Patrick Bateman, a literal psychotic serial killer, from an account called Proud Elephant, and then sharing it as if it were their own? This is just a weird new... Out in Proud Elephant.

Out in Proud Elephant. Is that not how the Obama campaign worked? You've been on more winning campaigns than me. So generally, when you're putting out a video, was it kind of like unvetted, you know, sort of fan blogs, fans sent in videos, and then like, mid-level staffers just kind of put them out? Is that how the process worked on the Obama campaign? It's very DIY. Do it yourself. You find whatever you can on the internet and reshare it. I mean, David Plouffe would have murdered us in our sleep while we were awake some way. He would have found us and killed us

if we had done something like this. Even Donald Trump. Even Donald Trump did back in 2016. Remember, he blamed the young intern, right? When he accidentally, or not accidentally, when he tweeted white genocide. 69 or whatever it was.

And he was like, and he didn't realize, you know, that he was tweeting white genocide and it became a news cycle. It's like, ah, it was just a young intern. The same just can't even pull that spin.

Okay. I got one more to Santa's thing for you. And then we're going to, we're going to get to the thrust of this interview, which is the inverse of what I have to deal with on crooked media podcast, which is me quizzing you about what the Democrats are thinking. Perfect. And then we'll close on some world events.

But we have one more DeSantis thing you wanted to talk about. I think that's fair. This is a very long ad, and so I'm not going to subject everyone to it. But here's a clip from another recent ad from the DeSantis campaign. Parents' rights defended.

School choice universal. Critical race theory prohibited. DEI stopped. DOA. Child mutilation illegal. Girls sports saved. Communities protected. Our economy growing. And freedom guaranteed. But winning the fight in Florida is just the beginning.

We must protect parents' rights and the innocence of our children. We must restore sanity in our society. We need every mama and every grandmama in every corner of the country to stand up and fight back by electing Ron DeSantis president of the United States of America. Up until that last second, I thought that was going to be a really awesome Casey DeSantis for governor ad. Once Ron gets term limited out, kind of like a little, you know, handoff situation there. But what was your take? Our sound people, I guess I will say, were not impressed by the mixing quality of that ad. But I'm wondering what your take was on it. With a little drumline. I mean, I just remember a couple weeks ago, I was reading, I think it was

the New York Times, a long story, which is frankly kind of like a genre you see often about the candidate's spouse, Casey DeSantis, going on the trail with him, kind of warming him up to the crowd, making Ron look like a family man, bringing out the kids, telling stories about parenting, sort of like the sweet, softer side of the DeSantis family. Then a couple weeks later, they have her voicing the anti-DEI agitprop. To me, it's just a very weird strategic decision. How do you do both of those things? She's a very attractive person, seems friendly, is clearly good at speaking to

people. She's a beautiful woman i mean like there's a lot about her that's appealing i think to audiences there's a young family element right there's sort of a generational argument they're trying to make about like bringing kids back to the white house and fresh blood and people in their 40s whatever and then but to have her be your henchman in this video in july of 2023 i mean we're not in like the thick of the primary if i were six months out from iowa i just don't i don't get it yeah henchmen in this video in July of 2023. I mean, we're not in like the thick of the primary if I were six months out from Iowa. I just don't I don't get it. Yeah, henchmen is a really good word. It's like Cruella, you know, it's like we're bringing like a tough, strong woman. And that's

fine. That works for you know, women candidates. But as the, you know, I need to kind of be the tough guy, the reinforcement for Ron for my husband. It's a little strange. The substance of it also a little strange. I enjoyed David Jolly's wife tweeted that was like, I'm a mama that doesn't want people to be cruel to my kids' friends. And so, Jamie DeSantis should not speak for me. Like, I don't know that all mamas share your view. Right.

I'm wondering where you land on. One more thing on this. We have an ongoing debate. I mentioned David Jolly and Never Trump World about this whole like Trump DeSantis thing is DeSantis actually scarier than Trump because he's more effective. Where do the pod bros land on that matter? for a long time seemed like a pretty disciplined pretty effective pretty ruthless kind of like engineer behind the scenes uh of accomplishing his political goals and now i wonder if that's just because he had a super gerrymandered state in florida where he could ram through whatever he wants his campaign looks pretty bumbling and effective and like less people think my like comment about casey desantis was gendered like you don't see Doug Emhoff out there like lobbing bombs at you know the Trump family right he's fighting anti-semitism and like going around the world right there's just like there's a it's not the typical role of a spouse the spouse

isn't delivering the the attack ads generally speaking it's hard to think of an example of that these guys rolled out their fundraising reports today right DeSantis raised 20 million and he's got well over 130 million sitting in a super PAC, right? So someone is sitting around doing a lot of focus groups, doing a lot of polling and testing to sort of figure out what their strategy is. Like these are maybe ineffective people, but they're not dumb. The net impact so far is to hurt his polling and to help Donald Trump's. And I'm just wondering, like, do you think they're seeing something in the numbers that suggests

that this attack on Trump from the right is effective? Because Chris Christie is just being like, he lost, he's a loser, he's going to lose again. And that's where I would go. I can answer this. The answer is nobody knows.

Right? I mean, sure, it's been tested to the hilt. Establishment Republican consultants wanted non-MAGA candidates in the Senate primaries, right? And they couldn't even do that. So, like, forget beating Trump himself. They couldn't figure out how to beat Trump-endorsed candidates, you know, in these primaries,

even when it wasn't Trump on the ballot. And so, you know, sure, you look at the numbers, and it's one thing for a voter to respond to a poll and say, yeah, you know, I wish Trump would have fired Fauci, or I wish the wall would have been built, or, you know, whatever. It's another thing,ci or I wish the wall would have been built or, you know, whatever. It's another thing though, when you're executing a campaign, right? Like these people get defensive of their man. Like you have to demonstrate that you can take the mantle from him and that you will fight for them as hard as he did. And like, that's very tough and it might not be doable. I, there just might be a plurality of people within the Republican Party that are so deep

in the cult that like, there's no way to walk that line. The thing about the DeSantis strategy that I don't get, or I do get it, is like, it's the Ted Cruz strategy. Like, he has the Ted Cruz consultants, it's the Ted Cruz strategy, and they're doing it again. And it failed. And I think that their theory of the case is that the Ted Cruz strategy didn't work in 2016 because people hadn't seen Trump. And now that he's actually has a governing record,

there are more substantive things to hit him on. I guess. I think that's the theory of the case. But it's still, to me, it seems like the definition of insanity. I'm with you. Yeah. The Ted Cruz consultants, this guy Jeff Rowe, who's flying around in his private jet paid for by Ted Cruz campaign donations or whatever. Yeah, attacking Trump over the handling of the Miss Universe pageant. I mean, who gives a shit about any of that at this point in time? It just seems so bizarre to me. Okay, let's move on over to the Dems. I guess question number one I have for you is, what's the panic level? Talk to me about the panic level in Dem world about whether Joe Biden is up for this reelect. I mean, I think people are anxious, but like

Democrats are always anxious, right? I mean, people were anxious in 2012 about Obama's reelect because things weren't looking so great. Maybe should have been a little more anxious in 2016 on the other hand. Yes. I worry that the 2016 is the apt comparison here not 2012 but but anyway continue listen that's in the back of my head constantly and for entirely personal reasons about like you know my own credibility and thinking and things i said at the time about how hillary would never lose and you can't lose pennsylvania and right democrats can't lose pennsylvania yada yada yada were you quoted saying that uh hillary would be trump from jail and has that been featured in any mashup youtube videos because so uh uh if not you're you're doing better than me but anyway i can't recall i can't recall but

i mean i i think on the biden front like the weird thing about it is i think if you sat a bunch of democrats down and said what would you think about a candidate who did the biggest investment in clean energy in our nation's history what would you think about the infrastructure, what would you think about a candidate who did the biggest investment in clean energy in our nation's history? What would you think about the infrastructure bill? What would you think about the CHIPS Act and all the ways sticking it to China? They would probably like that. But then when you tack those things to Joe Biden, there is this large sort of negative feeling that comes into the polling. And I think a lot of that is age. A lot of that is probably like frustration with inflation, et cetera. So I think you have time to fix those things. I think the way you fix them is you get him out on the trail, you do more, you worry less about gas and you just kind of like

show him out there doing the jobs. But also listen, like when you look at polling about, you know, are you open to a third party candidate? It's constantly hovering between like sort of 30 and 40 some odd percent. Like we Americans are, I think, are always kind of unhappy with whoever is president, even when we love them like Reagan or Obama or some of the others. So I think once there is a actual campaign being run and you're choosing between Joe Biden and an alternative, my hope is that the numbers will move in Biden's direction because of the record that we talked about and because Trump is manifestly unfit. This is obviously assuming that he's the candidate. But yeah, I mean, listen, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I think the numbers right now look great. They obviously don't. Yes. I mean, i'm torn on this personally because biden has you know objectively governed well you know i had some nets i disagreed with i disagreed with afghanistan

i disagree with student loans objectively he's he's governed extremely well sometimes i feel like the bulwark is like his biggest cheering section even more than the libs maybe not everybody at the board but a lot of us and um like because he has accomplished what nobody thought he could accomplish doing bipartisan, you know, all those, all those things you just listed were bipartisan and could, you could add on to a gay marriage and some others. And so he deserves a lot of credit for that. I mean, he's objectively had a better first term than Obama did. Right. You'd agree with that. I think the affordable care act was a pretty big deal, but you know, the first term is not over

yet. Okay. I tried to slide that one by you so um i concur with uh you know the fact that he's doing great on the other hand he didn't have to campaign in 2020 really you know i mean like the basement campaign thing was like a little bit of a joke but also it was reality like he didn't have to do hello scrantling you know you know how tiring that is right and not that being the president is tiring but it's just it is a different animal like flying flying around. I'm in Michigan, I'm in Pennsylvania, I'm in Georgia. And he didn't have to do that. Like he's looking old. My democratic friends who are not in politics, who, you know, this is the constant thing that they asked me, like, are we sure? Are we sure? And so it is a little concerning given the threat of Trump to me, that sometimes I feel like it's like the pros on the Dem side that are the ones that are like

tamping down that like that legitimate fear and so I'm just kind of wondering if you can reassure me that that behind the scenes the pros have this under control I cannot reassure you I mean I guess it's still like all our cards on the table we share the same anxieties I hear the same things about Biden to age the question you then get to is what do you do about that? Right. Like, I don't think anyone should be primarying Joe Biden. I think he's done a great job, like you said. But let's say you wanted to primary Joe Biden.

Right now, your alternatives are Marianne Williamson, who's on her third campaign manager in a couple of days, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who would rather inject your kid with bleach than a vaccine, apparently. He's running in the wide open Steve Bannon lane of the Democratic primary. You know, it's just like a lot of room to run there. Yeah, no, he's got the, you know, sort of the Silicon Valley general class, David Sachs and those douchebags sort of all in for him and getting their money. So good for them. David Ball Sacks is the was the Bulwark podcast style on that. Just so you know, that's very good. So there's not going to be a primary candidate. So basically, he's going to run the question becomes, how does he address these concerns about age,

fitness, etc. I have not heard from anyone, anyone I know who's encountered Joe Biden, who's worked in the White House, who's ever suggested to me that he's sort of like lacking the mental capability or fitness to do the job. The opposite, actually. I think Kevin McCarthy, in fact, right, recently said, what a great job Joe Biden did negotiating over the debt ceiling bill. They've got to figure out a way to translate that to show him looking active and out on the trail and I don't know, doing rigorous things. I mean, it's going to be challenging, but I do think you show not tell in these cases. And to your point, like that is going to require getting out into the country, doing a bunch of big rallies, doing energy events, lighting up the surrogates, getting Obama out there, getting all the popular governors to like hit the trail

early. So, you know, it's just going to take a huge team effort basically. Yeah. Boy, Josh Shapiro trying to carry us across the finish line. Just burning down other parts of I-95 so he can rebuild them. That's what we're going to do. So we'll talk about the, I guess, elephant in the room here, which is a pun that doesn't really work. But isn't part of this also that, like you just mentioned that we're going to, you know, get the governors out there.

Like, shouldn't it be Kamala? You know, it's just, generally speaking, this is not the responsibility of the vice president. I get that. You know, Joe Biden was just a supportive character for Obama, a good one, a helpful one in certain ways. You know, Dick Cheney basically was the reason for the Bush administration's disaster. So, you know, anyway, I think that he's not exactly a good model. Like there's no model right for this, like a president that people have concerns about at this level. But here we are. Explain to me why.

Why aren't they doing everything possible to to buff her up? I think they are. So listen, let's just be honest. Like Kamala Harris is getting beaten up in large part because she's the vice president. Right. That job comes with all this scrutiny. Far more so than Senator. Happ gore yeah our buddy jonathan martin great reporter over politico wrote this sort of fan fiction about gretchen whitmer and how everyone would love for

her to been the vice president for her to run in primary biden this time around and that that's all you know jaymar can do that and sort of lob these grenades into the west wing if he wants but the reality is the minute do you think g J-Mart can do that and sort of lob these grenades into the West Wing if he wants. But the reality is the minute Gretchen Whitmer... Do you think Gretchen Whitmer liked that column? Just quick aside, brief aside, we'll get back to the column. Do you think Gretchen Whitmer was happy that Politico wrote about, you know, the dreams that she was sitting there in the West Wing instead of Kamala? You don't think she planted that? She's burning J-Mart's book in her backyard.

No, I'm sure she wants to kill that guy for running. But the reality is for Gretchen Whitmer is great. I hope she does consider running for president someday. But anyone who gets into the race, you immediately start getting pummeled and your approval goes down and you get vetted, right? So it's like it's going to happen everywhere. Kamala Harris, from what I can tell, is going to be leading a lot of the messaging about abortion access in this country.

I think that will be the single most important issue Democrats run on in addition to the economy in 2024. Emily's List announced that they're spending $10 million to sort of burnish her reputation and talk about the things she's done. The ads that I've seen that have come out from Emily's List so far are mostly about her fighting for abortion rights and abortion access. I didn't mean to leave her out when I talked about governors and Obama. I was thinking about people who weren't like kind of court of the ticket. But like, I think she'll be obviously key and out in a lot of states and leading a lot of messaging, especially on abortion rights. I didn't I didn't think that you meant to

this slight. It just is. It's an obvious thing that people have concerns about, especially when you talk to folks who are, you know, just watchers of politics. But some of the conventional wisdom is like, OK, so let's say people have like really strong concerns about Kamala Harris and they want Biden to drop her from the ticket and do something unprecedented and announce a new VP. How long do you think that news cycle lasts? Three days? Four days? And who is that person? There's no magic person. It's not not what i'm asking for i'm asking for we are where we are okay if we had had you on this podcast last year maybe there's a conversation about okay how do you you know should there be a biden challenge should there be why old wise men i don't know who that is should it be your old boss obama being like joe like really man like we need somebody else we're concerned about fascism okay but that we are where

we are my question to you is okay let's say that there's a coup inside Crooked Media. And, you know, the Johns decide they no longer want you to be part of the team. And, you know, you get bought out and pushed out. There's kind of like a pregogion style coup inside Crooked Media. Okay. And you get called by the vice president. And she's like, I need one person, the only person I have in the world who can help me right now is Tommy Vitor. Help me burnish my creds.

What could they do? Like, what are you doing for her right now? I mean, I think she's doing a lot. She's doing a lot of like, she's talking about abortion rights. She's doing a lot of interviews. I don't know, just get her out on the trail. Like, I think people in politics worry too much about gaffes and misstatements and missteps. And I think like, you get better by reps and those things get smoothed over when you're out there all the time. And that's what I would do with Biden and with her is just have them out more. Like I know it's like overly simplistic, but that's what I would do. I agree with that. I think more is more. And I get all these and there's certain things targeted things that come was

doing. I think they're smart and I'm on the VP's list and I'm seeing the stuff that they're doing, but it's not breaking through into the news. And, you know, that's Trump's fault and that's our media culture's fault. But I feel like just in general, you need to up the risk quotient, right? Like, what is the risk? Frankly, like there really is no downside risk for Kamala Gaff, you know, like at this point, right? Because like the people that have an ingrained view of her as being not up for the job or whatever, which I think is frankly bullshit for the most part.

But the people that have that view, like what, they're going to feel even more strongly about that, right? Like you need to try to win the people over who haven't seen enough out of her. And that might mean, you know, going into some places that are not quite as safe. Yeah, I think it means going to places that aren't quite as safe. But also, I think like, you know, you and I sort of came up at the same time in politics and communications in DC. And I think our brains are still like, imagine like a big risk for her would be like going on

meet the press i think this day and age the bigger question is like how are you reaching people that have never even heard of what meet the press is they don't even know that the show exists like what cultural shows are you doing what youtubers like that's why i worry about the rfk junior joe rogan sort of nexus of you know sort of like 11 million like young men of all races by the way who think that government is full of shit and everyone lies to you and all politicians are bad so why not just throw your hands up and try the guy who's saying something kind of radical sounding and you like i think you know i'd love to see like gavin newsom go on joe rogan or some like really good democratic messenger go on and start trying to reach those people i've been on this kick for like two years absolutely and barstool and all of that i

think those are all gettable folks and if she's going to talk about abortion like who better to talk about that with like pft like right honestly i mean none of those if you're going to talk about abortion you're going to go to you know planned parenthood and Emily's and stuff. That's fine. That's okay. But reach the dudes who don't want to have to be a dad at 21 to not be too blunt about it, right? Try to reach them and you co-opt the freedom message. Maybe Kamala's not the right person for that, but I do think Democrats sometimes leave that on the table and assume those folks are hostile when they're not. And they are hostile at a certain point, but they're gettable and hostile, if that makes sense. Yeah, you have to do some preaching

to the choir. But I do think there are a lot of sort of barstool Republicans who liked Trump because he was on The Apprentice, and he was a billionaire, and he dated all these people. And it was sort of like, they like that brash kind of, you can't cancel me image of him. They did not sign up for Mike Pence's politics. They didn't sign up for Ralph Reed telling them what to do. Right. And you even saw Dave Portnoy, the CEO of Barstool Sports, saying that overturning Dobbs was a red line for him, that he would vote Democrat because he thinks it's insane to tell women what they can do with their own bodies. Like we should lift up messengers like that and use them to communicate to people who might listen to them.

Okay, so going back to Gavin, this was the one I really wanted to ask you about. What is he doing? Because I guess in some level, like him going on Hannity did achieve what you were just talking about, right? Because I just, just from being a consumer of social media, I saw that in a lot of places that were not like political nerds.

Me too. You know, setters, you know, people were interested by this. Like, you know, it's something you don't see anymore. Everybody's in their own bubble. So, you know, he's fighting it, you know, going toe to toe with Hannity. So I thought that was an interesting strategic move to do that. But so talk about that booking in particular, but also just roughly, like, what is Gavin doing? And is it actually contributing a little bit to concerns about Joe Biden that he's out there so much? And like, shouldn't he be worried about the homeless people in Los Angeles a little bit more? So two part question. Yeah, multi part question there. I think that like,

letting yourself fall into the trap of will X person going out make Joe Biden look worse as a bad one, because then you're just taking all your surrogates off the field. Potentially, if you can convince yourself that they might make the president look bad. Right. So I wouldn't do any of that. I want Gavin out there.

I want Obama out there. I want Michelle Obama, like get everybody out there. First of all, second of all, look, I mean, when I first read that Gavin was going on Sean Hannity,

I was like, that is a mistake. Go on Rogan. Like, what are we, why Hannity of all people?, that is a mistake. Go on Rogan. Like, what are we? Why Hannity of all people? Like you're not reaching anyone who's convincible. You're reaching a dead or dying audience of the most hardcore Trump fans you can find. I was wrong.

He did a great job on that. I've spent some time with Gavin. He's like hyper competitive. He talks about politics like you and I talk about politics. He wants to win. He's frustrated that we don't fight back more. He watches Fox News all the time. He thinks we live in information bubbles and want to push back and reach people in different places. So I think it's like part of that effort. It's part of his fight he's picking with

with the state of Texas, basically in Florida. Yeah, in Florida, too. And he's I think really, you know, finds DeSantis disgusting. So, you know, I like the competitiveness. I like the fight. I think you got to make sure you're sort of doing these interviews and things in focused ways. But I think the Hannity thing was a huge success. I'm not sure what the next act would be. So doing this as a figure skating judge, I thought he crushed on Hannity, real honestly,

like 10 out of 10. Great job. And, you know, maybe he should be, I don't know. Like 10 out of 10, great job. And, you know, maybe he should be, I don't know, like Biden should just name him emissary to arguing with cons. So I just want to grant that. Is he the best messenger though right now? Like, is he doing a good job as your governor? I think he's doing a good job as our governor.

I mean, look, I think there are, we're about 40 million people in this state. It is also, there's a lot of devolution. Like there's a lot of power that's dispersed to municipalities and cities and states that make it hard. One of the best parts about that interview was when Hannity was pushing him on homelessness in California. And he was like, I think it's a disgrace. You know, like he basically was like, we failed on that front. We've done some of what we tried to do, but not all of it. Unfortunately, like, I don't think like Gavin think Gavin rolling his sleeves up is going to be how you fix that. I think you need to build a lot more housing in California and do a lot of things that take time and that are results of years of failures, frankly.

But I think he can walk and chew gum here. I think he can do a Hannity interview and govern the state. I'm not worried about that part. All right. I want to go around the world with you. You are the host of a global podcast, but before we get to our around the world game, I just want to talk about like what your worldview is now, right? Like just kind of stepping back. I have a, I have a running gag with Ben Rhodes, your cohost, but how him and

Bill Kristol are kind of like meeting in the middle right now. Like they're both slowly nudging towards each other and that this would horrify both of them. And if I told both of them this in 2011, they would have spit on me, you know, but like here we are now. And like it almost, they could do a road show like Ben and Bill, where there's very little disagreement, I think. And the crux of this, I guess, is that, well, we know why Bill's gone cuck. But in Ben's case, I think the crux of this is that as you look at the internal threat of Trump and you look around the, and you see a lot of Trumpian threats, and frankly, even worse threats, if you're looking at Xi and other places around the world and Putin, and all of a sudden, like, the idea of like American hegemony is starting to seem a little better, maybe than

it seemed in 2008, when we made some errors, we made some bungles, it's starting to seem a little bit better. So anyway, where do you kind of land on that? What's your foreign policy philosophy these days? And where are you on American hegemony and American exceptionalism and American greatness? Oh, boy. Wow. There was a period of time where because we were in the middle of a Cold War, the United States treated every country like it was a proxy in that war. And that led to supporting coups and backing right wing death squads. Shout out Elliot Abrams, who just got named to some position by the administration. More evidence, by the way, if Elliot Abrams can get appointed to the Democratic administration,

then the Bill and Ben buddy comedy that I'm pitching might be possible as well. Anyway. So I don't think, you know, American hegemony is necessarily the right thing. I think we want a really strong military. I think we want great diplomats. I think we want great alliances and relations like NATO, et cetera. I think where your theory of the case of the Bill-Ben, what's it called when two black holes collide, whatever that is, falls apart is I think Ben and I have been much harder on the actions taken by this current Israeli government than basically any party in Washington would allow us to be. We've both criticized our own boss even for slapping so many sanctions on Venezuela and

basically crushing the economy there to the point where a quarter of the population is left. We are very pro-Iran nuclear deal and diplomacy. And I don't think Bill was the biggest fan of that at the time. I think he might have started a super PAC of sorts with a friend of ours, mutual friend. There's still some remaining disagreements. There's still some remaining disagreements. But the notion that... So tell me if this is wrong tell me this if i'm projecting incorrectly on what the incoming obama view was in 08 but there's this view in 08 that we have all these bungles that the u.s has fucked up in iraq and afghanistan and and that really like a little bit of retrenchment not isolationism you know but a little bit of a retrenchment is maybe called for

and having being more humble and i wonder wonder now, if you look at it, and maybe that was right in 2008. I wonder if you look at it now in 2023, especially with what is happening with Putin in China, and you see the threats of kind of these rising despots in a lot of places. What's the opposite of retrenchment? What's a retrenchment answer? Maybe it's time for a little bit more forward leaning of American involvement. The Obama theory of the case wasn't retrenchment. It was we got to end the war in Iraq. Then he sent tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan in an effort to deal with Al-Qaeda there. And then there was the pivot to Asia, which I think he regrets.

I mean, I regret it. Obviously, the end of the war in Afghanistan was horrific. Like all of us, I think we're shocked by the images. Like we did not do enough to get the people who helped us out of there, etc. But I think what happened there is the result of 20 years of failed policy. And Joe Biden was just sort of like the last man standing in a game of musical chairs. There's some things tactically that I would have done differently, like maybe push out the withdrawal date even further outside of the fighting season.

So there was less of a chance the Taliban would kind of roll through the countryside as quickly as they did. But like Monday morning quarterback from a guy sitting in Los Angeles in shorts, right? I mean, I think basically you had a 20 year nation building exercise that failed and a government that had no legitimacy and a military that decided at the end of the day it didn't want to fight against the Taliban. So more broadly, I think what Obama was trying to do was refocus on the right places, in particular Asia. And then, of course, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has sort of upended everything. So in short, you're saying you wouldn't define yourself as an American greatness conservative right now when it comes to your foreign policy worldview. You love America, but you're just not quite there. The thing that

I learned in the White House is like Barack Obama is the most powerful man in the world. And most of your days are spent responding to events outside of your control. Like he didn't announce in Springfield, Illinois being like, and one day I'm going to plug a giant fucking hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico that BP created for me. You know what I mean? It's like that's every single day. The Arab Spring turned into years of just sort of like rolling crises. Right.

So it's like there's all these events that happen beyond your control. All you can do is manage them as best you can. All right. Before we go around the world. OK, you brought it up. So then one more. So looking back, Arab Spring spring do you feel like in retrospect you know we could have maybe been more you know support like there was a little bit of ptsd from

iraq and maybe we could have been more supportive of you know freedom loving people in the middle east or do you think that it was just there was just nothing that we could have done i know because obviously the arab spring has fizzled and you know as we're about to go around the world you're going to find yeah it's winter in most of these places well you know look tunisia was sort of like the one bastion of hope and that's that's gone south recently in egypt there was a transition to the first democratically elected president in history muhammad morsi and he was booted out by a military coup i mean a lot of the story here is like ultimately the guys with the guns have a lot of power and influence and that was challenging well you do love freedom though we haven't met maybe as closely as i

thought we have but we do we do both love freedom and i freedom and i like that and that's that's what i like about these exchanges of ideas um we both don't like trump fact bad orange man is bad okay all right we're gonna close here with a little game i want to call where in the world is tommy vitor i'm ready well she sneaks around the world from Kiev to Carolina. She's a sticky-fingered filter from Berlin down to Belize. She'll take you for a ride on a slow boat to Chinatown. Where in the world is Tommy Vitor? Okay, that's for all the elder millennials out there.

I really do love Hows of the World. I really do. I feel obsessed with all the stupid response. Like I have to know every micro advancement of the Asa Hutchinson campaign. God love you, Asa. And I feel like it's making me dumb. And so Pods of the World is a refreshing break for me to learn about other things that's happening, to use my brain. Though sometimes, you know, you guys do.

I'm like, I had to skip last. It was two weeks ago or whatever. It's like the trump docs i'm like oh fuck tommy i want to hear about what's happening in peru tim but you know how it goes you put out of a subject that's like the coup in sudan nobody 190 000 listens trump docs 300 right these are my phone numbers it's a depressing state of content in this country dropping your download your download D there. Oh, we heard that. Okay. Where in the world is Tommy Vitor? Okay. We're going to go around. I want to just 60 seconds from you on what is happening in these hotspots. You have a new podcast also called Pod Save the UK. What is happening in the United Kingdom elections go? The next election isn't until January, 2025. Basically, a parliament can last up to five years, then it dissolves automatically, and then an election takes place a little less than a month later. The PM can call an early election, but that has not happened yet. is in charge. He's relatively weak. He was not popularly elected. He was chosen by the 170,000

some odd dues paying Tory party members who are more conservative. After Liz Truss was given the boot, Keir Starmer and the Labour Party is waiting in the wings. They have a huge opportunity to win back a lot of seats because of Tory party weakness and because the SNP, the Scottish National Party, is dealing with some big scandals from its former leader, Nicola Sturgeon, and her husband, who was like the CEO of the party or something like that, or the treasurer or something. So if Labour can win a bunch of Tory seats back and win a bunch of SNP seats back, they could be in a really good spot, but it just won't happen for a while. So you're optimistic. Labour. It's been a long time in the wilderness for Labour. In a weird way, I thought It's been a long time in the wilderness for labor.

In a weird way, I thought there's been some Republican Party labor parallels, you know, sticking to a toxic leader for way too long. Jeremy Corbyn. Obviously, there's some differences, but you think there's a way out of the wilderness there? I hope so. I mean, I think they're kind of trying to decide, okay, what are we going to be as a party?

Are we going to play four corners? Are we going to get really aggressive? Especially when it comes to Brexit, because they're not saying we got to undo Brexit and get back in the European Union. They're saying we have to sort of like fix the mess that it's created. But I think a lot of Labour Party supporters would like to see them go even further than that. All right, next up, Carmen's flying down to Egypt. Tell us what's happening in Egypt. So I mean, things aren't great. The latest news I saw is that they're going to have elections before the end of this year instead of next year.

President, yeah, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi basically ran through a constitutional referendum that allows him to run for a third term until 2030. So this is the guy. Remember, so Mubarak got booted. Mohammed Morsi gets elected. The military stage is a coup. And so el-Sisi has been in charge. He's basically used that time to further entrench the military's power, crush human rights. Not a great guy.

He's illegally jailing our mutual friend, Mohammed Sultan's father. Yes. All sorts of dissidents. Torturing. And so, you know, candidates will have to submit like applications basically to run at some point next year they have to get all these you know approvals or support from a certain number of citizens like kind of getting on the ballot here but there's a big question i think of whether that will be a free or fair election at all okay that's not uplifting all right next uh let's move on up to iran you mentioned it you mentioned the iran nuclear deal

what the fuck is happening in iran give me a i'll give you 90 seconds on iran there were some boats recently i think we think we had a conflict with some boats anyway sorry yeah tim um send me a note being like i want to ask about this story in iran which i hadn't read yet and i want to show you how i prepped for it tim which you can see here during tummy time this is doing tummy time with my daughter so that's time and reading about iran okay well you don't need to talk specifically about that story i'm just like i was i was going through the world and i'm looking for interesting things that are happening and this iran thing happened and i was like what is actually happening in iran i'm not even sure so tommy you you can give me a you can go broad you don't have to talk about the boat if you don't

want sure i mean i do think like there are probably some bulwark fans who were not fans of the Iran nuclear deal back in the day. And I just want them to know that the IAEA says that Iran's total stockpile of enriched uranium is now 21 times higher than the amount permitted under the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal. And they've detected particles enriched up to 83%, which is just shy of weapons grade. So basically, Obama's Iran nuclear deal, limited stockpile to 300 kilograms in enrichment to this lower level, which they could only use for nuclear power. After we withdrew, the Iranians started enriching uranium closer to 60%. There's no civilian use for that. They're also working on their ballistic missile program. So everything is getting worse. Everything that Trump and Mike Pompeo told you would happen, they resumed deterrence, et cetera, et cetera. They would actually deal with Iran's nuclear weapons program. Everything has gotten worse. On the boats thing, Tim, I mean, I saw that too. The Iranian Navy tried to seize a couple ships near the Strait of Hormuz the other day. That's the choke

point in the Persian Gulf where like a fifth of the world's oil goes through on a daily basis. The U.S. Navy intervened to stop them, but this is something they do all the time. I assume these are like, I don't know this. I assume they're like IRGC vessels that steal stuff, sell it as part of their sort of illicit black market economy. Are there any green shoots in Iran right now? No, I mean, there's reports that there may be some talks between the US government and the Iranians to try to get some sort of Iran deal like step in place, but nothing has happened. I should take this moment for the Bulldog fans that do not like Tommy's analysis there, though it's probably unimpeachable. We have a foreign policy podcast here, also Shield of the

Republic, which is the other one I listened to. In addition to Pod Save the World, I should shout out the Shield guys. Eric Edelman is my pal. All right, we got two more. I did prep you for this one. The last one's a surprise, but I did prep you for this one. You're doing Tommy time. I was at a child's birthday party last weekend, and I met with a gentleman who is a Argentina expert, expert, self-proclaimed, you know, maybe not an expert to the level that, you know, not an Eric Edelman, but somebody who cares a lot about Argentina. He started talking about the elections. It seemed very interesting. And so I wanted you to look into what's happening in the Argentina elections. Give me your thoughts. And then I have a follow-up question for you. So just give us your

broad take on Argentina. Sure. I mean, I think the sort of mood music there is that inflation in Argentina is over 100%. I think the official poverty rate is around 40%. So the country is collapsing. The central bank is running out of money. So they have this primary coming up in August, and then there's an election, a general election in October. Both of them, I think, have runoff provisions if people don't meet certain thresholds or whatever. But I think the big thing people are concerned about in Argentina is this guy, Javier Mille, who is running, he's an economist, but he calls himself an ultra libertarian anarcho-capitalist. He calls the state a criminal enterprise that needs to be disbanded. And what that means is eliminating the central banks, privatizing state companies. Argentina decriminalized abortion in 2020 after this

amazing grassroots protest, etc. He wants to ban abortion again. He's out there talking about ending cultural Marxism. This was a great quote I saw on NPR story, Tim. He said, I won't ask anyone for forgiveness just because I'm blonde, blue eyed and have a penis. I feel like I should probably adopt that one. He's a fan of Trump and Bolsonaro. So like, you know, this guy is like super right wing, but kind of, you know, Rand Paulian, like dismantle the state. I don't even know. Yeah. So the interesting thing that my friend wanted me to follow up with you on is we have one of these situations in Argentina, you know, where you have the Peronists, you know, who are the leftist socialist party, and then you have this, and we're going in the broadest strokes here. So if we have anybody listening from Buenos Aires, you know, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on something that I'm not, but then you have, I guess what you consider like a center center right party is the other sort of option here that I'm going to use Macron as kind of a stand in or, you know, like something to that effect and then you have this like trumpy

rand paul bolsonaro character in these sort of situations my friend was wondering what i'm wondering your take on is does the roads and vitor worldview think that understanding what the humility of america we can only do so much. But generally, should you guys be more sympathetic with the Macron-y center-center-right parties strategically in situations, you know, where the alternative might be so dire? Yeah, I mean, listen, I think politics is about sort of binary choices. And so, yeah, I would always take better over worse. I mean, I think I saw a poll in late June that showed that Together for, yeah, I would always take better over worse. I mean, I think I saw a poll in late June that showed that Together for Change coalition, I think you're talking about, there's a couple candidates in that block, are at about 32%. The Peronist sort

of governing party candidate is at 28%. And then this anarchist is around 18%. So by all means, I would love to see sort of a center-right coalition come together to stop the guy who's going to blow everything up but if you had your druthers you'd go with the peronist i mean i don't have strong feelings about any of these candidates to be totally honest with you i'm just fucking with you i'm just teasing you okay our final question on where's the world's time you vitor we're over he's got a parent um is this famously George W Bush in 1999 was asked by a Boston television show host who the president of Pakistan was at that time was the general effect who had just taken over Pakistan he did not know the answer he was

widely mocked in liberal media so Tommy Vitor host Pod Save the World, who is the current leader of Pakistan? And what can you tell us about that person? Well, so the most interesting thing happening in Pakistan right now is the former leader, Imran Khan, who is this like cricket star, Lothario kind of famous dude, was elected, got crosswise with the military, and got pushed out. And he has basically been leading this kind of mini-insurrection, rallying his supporters ever since, and was recently arrested while in court awaiting other charges. The current president is like a scion of a ruling family whose name is escaping me at the moment. It is.

Don't tell me. Don't tell me. I'll get it. Fuck. It's not. You know what? Fuck it. Remind me.

I loved your very long. You're helping yourself. You're talking. You're talking about Imran Khan. You're talking about cricket scores. Arif Alvi? No. Is that right?

No, it's... No? Hold on. What the fuck do I know? Oh, the Prime Minister, Shabazz Sharif. Ooh, Shabazz Sharif. We have a president and a prime minister in Pakistan. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Sorry, the prime minister. Okay, well... The interesting story is Imran Khan, though. That was pretty good. You know, you a prime minister in Pakistan. Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry, the prime minister. Okay, well. The interesting story is Imran Khan, though. That was pretty good. You know, you had Scion in there. You had Imran Khan. It was better than George W. Bush's answer. Not an A+.

Yeah, not perfect. I am still impressed. I do love Pod Save the World. You do do the news roundups, which I highly recommend to people. Thank you. So that is it. Do you have anything else? Do you have any final notes for the Bulwark listeners?

No, I love the Bulwark. I mean, I appreciate you having me on. It's very fun. It's good to get pressed on check your priors, you know, and get pressed on your own bullshit. Yeah, get outside of the bubble a little bit. Absolutely. Yeah, okay. I appreciate you for doing this. That was Where in the World is Tommy Vitor.

I want to thank everybody for hanging with me on this Friday podcast. He, if I haven't mentioned, is the host of Pod Save the World, out Vitor I want to thank everybody for hanging with me On this Friday podcast He, if I haven't mentioned, is the host of Pod Save the World Out every Wednesday You can find me on the Next Level pod on Wednesdays With that Sarah Longwell person that he mentioned And on Sundays as well I'll be back here next Friday with a special guest you'll really like

She'll be better than Tommy And on Monday we'll have the second installment Of The Corruption of Lindsey Graham with Will Salatin See you all then, Have a wonderful weekend. See you, buddy. Later, Tommy. Peace. Peace.

Tommy Vitor. Nashville to Norway, Mané to Zimbabwe, Chicago to Czechoslovakia, I'm back!