The Bulwark Podcast - Tucker’s Latest Lies

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Tucker's attempting to white-wash Jan 6, Trump and DeSantis have a thing against prosecutors, Kari says we'll have world peace again with Trump capitulating to Putin, and Michael Knowles intentionally used eliminationist rhetoric about transgenderism. Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is March 7th, 2023. And even though it is not Monday, I'm joined by my colleague, Will Salatan for Charlie and Will Tuesday. So we have a lot of catching up to do, Will. We do. Although I will say this weekend, I had the pleasure of hanging out with one of my favorite people at the Principles First Conference. No, we had a good time there, didn't we? I think I mentioned this yesterday. It was just great seeing all of the Bulwark types. And even if they weren't Bulwark Plus members, they were our people. Do you know what I mean? They're definitely, yes. yes. They were our people, and it was good chatting with you. So we do have a lot of catching up to do, including the very dark rhetoric of CPAC. I

devoted my morning shots to the rhetoric of CPAC, the words of CPAC. And I know it may date me to say things like, words matter. But even in the Trump era, words actually matter. And it was very interesting that Donald Trump, who sometimes just sort of riffs, you know, he had some specific words that he wanted to use. You could tell they were in his prepared remarks. Words like retribution, obliterate. We had another guy from the Daily Wire who's talking about transgenderism. Instead of saying we should push back against transgenderism or we should resist it, he said we

should eradicate it. I think the choice of language was revealing. But you know where I want to start here, Will? What? Unless you have a different preference here. No, go for it. I want to start with the Tucker tapes. You know. Tucker got all of those tapes from Kevin McCarthy. One of his big reveals is that Josh Hawley was not the only guy to go running for his life on January 6th, which I don't know about you, but it changes every freaking thing for me. Well, what's interesting is you can tell the MAGA right is going all in on these tapes. And by the way, there's a lot of fact checking on them. We're not going to get deep into it. But Tucker Carlson, I know this is going to come as a shock to people. Tucker Carlson is lying. I know, Will, you're shocked. But, you know, including about how people got into the building, this retconning it into a tourist visit. And of course, Donald Trump is jumping all over this. What a surprise. He actually put out one of his social bleats saying, let the January 6th prisoners go.

This is all in caps. They were convicted or are awaiting trial based on a giant lie. A radical left con job. Thank you to Tucker Carlson and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy for what you both have done. New video footage is irrefutable. Three exclamation points. All in on the insurrection. Yeah. All in on the insurrection, Will. Yeah, yeah.

So normally in politics, you're supposed to recognize when you have a loser of an issue and you're supposed to stay away from it, right? And so January 6th, a physical attack on the capital of the United States, violence, an attempt to overthrow the government. You really want to move on, right? People died. Yeah, yeah. Attacking the cops. You're on the wrong side of law and order. You're on the wrong side of everything. So the conventional approach would be, don't talk about this. It's a bad issue for you. Talk about inflation, talk about crime, talk about the border. Don't talk about January 6th, But Trump won't let go. Well, neither will Tucker Carlson. And apparently he's decided that it's not enough to simply move on. He has to go back and whitewash the whole thing, including footage that claims to show Brian Sicknick, who died the next day,

was completely OK. There's no problem. See that whole Brian Sicknick who was, you know, bear sprayed and then died the next day. This had nothing to do with January. This is all a myth. And Tucker Carlson's very, very concerned with making sure that we have a complete revisionist history. I have here, Will, a statement issued by Brian Sicknick's family. Would you like to hear a little bit of it? Absolutely. The Sicknick family is outraged at the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called news network of Fox News, who will do the bidding of Trump or any of his sycophant followers, no matter what damage is done to the families of the fallen. Okay, so you can see where this is kind of going, right? The families of the fallen, the officers who put their lives on the line,

and all who suffered on January 6th due to the lies started by Trump and spread by sleaze-slinging outlets like Fox. Tucker Carlson claims that Fox has been looking over the video feeds from the Capitol with full access supplied by our disgusting excuse for a House speaker for the truth. Carlson's truth is to pick and choose footage that supports his delusional views that the January 6th insurrection was peaceful and that Ashley Babbitt was some kind of a murder because she was shot in the process of breaking into the Capitol building. While making a criminal out to be a martyr, he is also

downplaying the horrid situation faced by the U.S. Capitol Police and the D.C. Metro Police, who were incredibly outnumbered and were literally fighting for their very lives. One officer, Brian Sicknick, lost that fight the following day, and several more officers lost that fight in the following week, committed suicide. On video, Officer Sicknick looks like he managed to shake off the chemical irritants and resume his duties. That he did. But his sense of duty and incredible work ethic were the driving force which sent him back in spite of his injuries and no doubt contributed to his succumbing to his injuries the following day. And then this family statement concludes,

The Sicknick family would love nothing more than to have Brian back with us and to resume our normal lives. Fictitious news outlets like Fox and its rabid followers will not allow that. Every time the pain of that day seems to have ebbed a bit, organizations like Fox rip our wounds open, and we are frankly sick of it. Leave us the hell alone. Instead of spreading more lies from Supreme Leader Trump, why don't you focus on real news? This is reminding me of a couple of things.

First of all, you know, these Senate hearings, when someone's accused of, like Brett Kavanaugh, you're accused of having abused, sexually assaulted a woman, or Clarence Thomas. The Clarence Thomas hearings actually are a good example. They can always bring forward, right, a whole bunch of other women who don't claim to have been sexually harassed or physically assaulted by the nominee. And here, what you have in the Tucker Carlson video is, hey, look at all the hours of footage of people just walking around and taking pictures of the Capitol, the ones who weren't physically assaulting police, the ones who weren't breaking windows, the ones who weren't smearing feces. That's always going to exist, but it's, you know, it's kind of an almost irrelevant

denominator. But the other thing is, you have to be really careful in politics of who you end up on the wrong side of remember like the little sisters of the poor where you had republicans saying that democrats and their zeal to protect abortion rights were attacking nuns you don't want to be on the wrong side of nuns here what you have in january January 6th in this Tucker Carlson footage is Republicans on the wrong side of police, right? We're the ones claiming that police, that the officer who died wasn't really injured in this attack. We're the ones who claim that they're exaggerating the injuries. But it's a political loser from the beginning. Maybe this is a backhanded acknowledgement by Tucker Carlson that he knows that the reality of January 6th is a huge blot on the MAGA world and that it is a uniquely disqualifying moment for Donald Trump and that somehow he needs to do something about it.

No problem with all of this. And again, we're going to go back and forth and, you know, the truth is going to have a hard time catching up with the lies, particularly when they're these selective video edits. But January 6th was not about that day. It was the culmination of a long and elaborate plot by the president to use his power to defraud the American people, to overturn an election and to seize power undemocratically. And we need to keep reiterating this. I mean, there is the, and I hate to use this word because it's so overused, but we've kind of just normalized the whole process. And part of the responsibility that we have is to constantly remind people, do you know what is right in front of your nose? Do you know what happened? Do you know who this guy is? Do you

know what the record shows? And despite all of the bullshit being thrown out by Fox News, remember all Carlson, his whole model of TV and his business model is he's counter-programming virtue. Counter-programming virtue. Okay, this is good. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Whatever you think is true, he's going to claim as false and vice versa. Whatever you think is good, he's going to claim as bad. He's been doing that the whole time. And that makes him politically dangerous to his own side. Because instead of recognizing that this is an unwise place, an unwise issue on which to take the other side, he just reflexively does it. He doesn't care that law and order is on the other side. He doesn't care that police are on the other side. He doesn't care that this reminds everyone

of exactly what you said, the number one reason why Donald Trump must never be president again, that he literally attempted a coup and a violent attack against the Capitol of the United States. Tucker is just going to take the other side. He's going to say, give me that footage that shows all of the violence, all of the mayhem. And I'm going to argue with that footage that the opposite is true, that the sky is not blue. And his partner in this, lest we forget, is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, who gave him exclusive access to security footage that has not been released to the taxpayers, the public, other members of Congress, as far as I know, and certainly not other news media outlets. Which is, again, extraordinary because what you have here is a thoroughly dishonest piece of propaganda, but it is aided and abetted by Kevin McCarthy, who is doing this on behalf of Tucker Carl he can put Marjorie Taylor Greene on the Homeland Security Committee and make her his best friend.

He can give this stuff to Tucker Carlson, and Carlson will run with it, but that won't be McCarthy. I think that bet is going to fail. I think that the entire party is going to get branded with the extremism of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson, and McCarthy is going to go down with it. Yeah, well, I don't know whether that's the bet he's doing. I just think that he's playing the only cards that he has, which is that, you know, he is not leading this. He is following it. You know, he is, he's Fox's bitch. He's, you know, he's the extremist caucus bitch, and he's going to continue to play it that way. Okay, cancel me if you want. All right, so let's go back, and I played this briefly on the podcast yesterday, but I want

to go back to this very, very, very dark speech that Donald Trump gave. And this is, I think, only like the fourth event that he's spoken at, right, since he announced for president. And John Hendricks in The Atlantic said that the address was among the darkest speeches he's given since his American carnage inaugural address. You know, Trump warning the United States has become a nation in decline, a crime ridden, filthy communist nightmare. You know, he talks about an epic battle against sinister forces on the left. But let's play this key line. And the reason I'm doing this, because I know that there are some people who think we should just ignore him. We shouldn't give him any attention. I think this is a fundamental mistake. I think people need to stop being in denial about this. He actually is surging in the polls, and right now, barring something very unusual, something we haven't seen before, he is,

I think, a strong odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee for president again. So I think I personally will think it's advisable to pay attention to what he is saying and the messages he is putting out there. Let me play for you. I think the money shot here from that speech is CPEC. I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. I will only obliterate the deep state. I will fire. I will obl the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system like it has never been weaponized before. Sick. These are sick people.

I will put the people back in charge of this country again. The people will be back in charge. Well, some people will be. We'll sell it. So this is authoritarianism, right? This is the core of it. I am everything. I am the warrior. I am your justice. That's I will lead my people against domestic enemies. Who are the domestic enemies? Why, it's what he calls the deep state.

I will totally obliterate the deep state. What he's talking about is eradicating the civil service. And this is something that he has said in a couple of speeches quite recently. In a second Trump term, it will not be the same as a first Trump term. Because Trump has learned. And what he has learned is that there were people in the United States government who were not loyal to him. They were loyal to the United States, to the constitution, and they got in his way and taking a cue from Steve Bannon, Trump intends to purge them if he gets back in power. So it will not be the

same as a first term where he was unable to get things done. He will start by getting rid of these obstacles. And Lord knows what will happen after that. So Americans need to be very aware. We are not protected if we elect this man from having our institutions pushed aside and becoming basically an authoritarian country like many others. Yes. I am your justice. And for those of you who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. So as I wrote in my newsletter this morning, Ronald Reagan proclaimed its morning in America and Trump is declaring I am nemesis. And I think it's worth pointing out this is not normal political rhetoric, at least in English, right? But it gives you an indication of what's coming, what we are

talking about. What I thought was interesting was his choice of the word retribution, the fact that he was so pleased with it, he repeated it twice. What is he getting at there? Why retribution? There's a lot of softer ways of saying that, right? I can make sure you get justice. I want fairness, you know, but retribution is essentially saying, you know, elect me because vengeance is mine, saith the Trump. Pure threat. He's betting on a dark view of American character. He's betting there are enough voters out there to elect someone whose stated mission is to hurt people, to hurt your domestic enemies. It's an alarming message and it's going to be really, really alarming if it works. Can I mention a couple other things in this speech that along this theme of authoritarianism, and sometimes you and I

and the bulwark, we get accused of obsessing too much about this, but people, it's right out there in the speech, right? So in this speech, he talks a lot about Marxists. We're in the United States of America. Donald Trump said in this, he used the word Marxist quite liberally. He said that the leadership of the FBI were Marxist radical left, right? This is a key part of how fascists on the right come to power in a lot of countries. We know this from Latin America, but he's doing it in the United States saying that he's going to protect us from the Marxists. You mentioned that he's going to talk about obliterating the deep state and that he has signaled that he would fire a lot of, you know, bureaucrats and government employees and,

you know, people who are normally protected by civil service. But I also hear him specifically targeting the Justice Department, the justice system, that he's talking about the FBI, the Department of Justice, U.S. attorneys. Ron DeSantis is already trying to make his chops by firing prosecutors, right? Firing DAs. This seems to be a new thing around the country on the right. Go after the prosecutors who are not doing your bidding. And of course, Donald Trump has a very, very different view of justice than I think the traditional mainstream American. He has a different view of what judges are supposed to do. He has a different idea of what juries are supposed to do. He has a very, very different

idea of what the Supreme Court. And I think he's signaling that he's prepared to do an all-out attack. And also just one more point here. I was on a panel, a TV panel yesterday, and that was Peter Strzok, I think, who made the point. This threat is not just about what he would do in 2025 if he was president. This is a threat for right now. He is threatening retribution right now for anyone that crosses him. He's threatening the prosecutors, the Department of Justice, the juries. He's threatening any Republican that might push back against him. He's basically saying, look, I am retribution. You know,

this is going to be a vengeance tour. Defy me at your peril. And we should mention that in the speech, in this speech to CPAC, Trump explicitly referred to a recent Washington Post story about dissension in the FBI over the search at Mar-a-Lago. And that story, by the way, said exactly what you're talking about. It said that the people inside the FBI were reluctant to proceed with the investigation at all of Trump's classified documents, much less the search of his property, because they feared exactly this, his retribution, the blowback from Trump and his supporters. So Trump already knows that this rhetoric of

retribution, that his style of threatening his enemies, anyone who would oppose him, has worked. It has worked within the FBI, and he perhaps believes it will help him avoid an indictment or fight an indictment. I think that strategy is perfectly clear. I also think that with regard to January 6th, and I think I've said this before, you know, he's beyond the denial phase and he is now fully into the damn right. I called the code red. You just can't handle the truth. I called the code red and I'll do it again. Not subtle about all of this. Now, meanwhile, Ron DeSantis wasn't there.

He was giving a series of other speeches. You met with the Club for Growth. He gave a speech out at the Reagan Library. Did you have a chance to track what DeSantis is saying, what his counter-programming is, if he's got any? Yeah, well, I mean, DeSantis is basically talking like a normal conservative Republican. Yeah, no, he's, I mean- What passes for one now. Yes, yes.

Yeah, okay, low bar, but compared to Trump, DeSantis is just trying to sound relatively sane. So DeSantis goes out, he speaks at the Reagan Library. It's much closer to Reaganism than the people who claim to be speaking for Ronald Reagan at CPAC. But DeSantis there is basically talking about his record in Florida. And some of it is that, you know, the people are doing well economically in Florida, but some of it is that he's got this agenda for freedom.

But when you parse his agenda for freedom, I mean, DeSantis talked in his speech at the library about how he's protected the rights of people not to have to get COVID vaccination, right? And he named a couple of things that he did, protecting them from having to get vaccine certificates and also protecting them so they could be hired without having to get vaccination. But if you actually look at those measures that DeSantis signed, one was an executive order, one was a bill. They were interference by the state government in business. These were employer mandates. If you want to work for this company, you need to be vaccinated or you need to have some kind of certification. But that's DeSantis' style.

It is exactly his style. He's going after private companies. He's talking about freedom. But what he's really saying is, it's a little bit like Trump. I'm your retribution. I am your weapon against private enterprise because you are my people. You people who refuse vaccination are my people. So I will make sure that no private business can restrict its employees or its customers

on the basis of vaccination. People need to understand what a complete reversal this is from like five minutes ago, where five minutes ago, every conservative in America was saying, we can't have too much government regulation of private businesses. Private business should be able to choose what they do and what they don't do. A private business should be able to determine whether or not they make a cake for a gay wedding, right? Or what sort of birth control they provide. Now it's like, no, you know what? We can use the power of government as a cudgel to beat you up if you are woke or if you have diversity, equity and inclusive programs. is one of those amazing things like, wait, really? That's what we want governors and politicians to do? Go after private companies to punish them for their content, punish them for their political speech?

This is the new small government conservatism? Right, right. That's why I was pushing back against your, he was more like Reagan. That's like, shit, no. I mean, you can't get less like Reagan than some of what Kerry Lake and others said at CPAC. But let me say one thing about, you know who, this is going to kill you. This is going to kill me. You know who was really, really good at CPAC on exactly this message of traditional conservative principles, limited government, keep the government out. Mike Pompeo. Mike Pompeo

actually gave like a conventional Reaganite Republican speech. He said, we shouldn't have the government interfering for our people because then the government will interfere for their people. And it's, it's bad. We don't believe in it. He spoke out against election denial. He spoke out for morals. He spoke out against Trump's kowtowing to China. He spoke out against Trump accumulating more national debt. Did he say his name? Did he say Trump's kowtowing to China. He spoke out against Trump accumulating more national debt. Did he say his name? Did he say Trump's name? I believe he did say, I'll check the transcript. I believe he said the Trump administration added $8 trillion to the debt. And those of us in the, so I believe he spoke his name,

although not criticizing him directly, but Pompeo's speech is what Republicans used to stand for. Yeah, and probably he was speaking to, what, about 20 people, you know, standing in that cavernous hall. That kind of message, though, doesn't get the kind of raucous cheers. You know, somebody says, we should eradicate transgenderism. That's cheering, jumping on the chairs and everything. Somebody who talks about, you know, smaller government not adding to the national debt, that's really ho-hum stuff. Okay, you mentioned Carrie Lake. So CPAC was very much a Carrie Lake kind of event. She actually won the straw. I mean, think about this. This is an election denier who failed spectacularly, was defeated for election in Arizona, refuses to acknowledge that. I mean, the woman is delusional, keeps putting out this bullshit,

various conspiracy theories. And yet these folks looked at her and said, yes, we should put her a heartbeat away from the presidency if the nearly 80 year old Donald Trump gets back into the White House. So let's play some of the things that Carrie Lake had to say at this particular conference. And I got a message for Joe Biden tonight. Joe, if you are not strong enough and if you are not smart enough to sit Putin and Zelensky down at a table and broker a peace deal, then I've got a friend who can do just How would that go? His name is Donald J. Trump. And then, of course, Carrie shares her deep thoughts on how the Donald brought peace to the world, right? Just, you know, through strength, just like Ronald Reagan said.

Let's play that second bite. It's called peace through strength, right? It was a term coined by Ronald and perfected by Donald. And we need to do that again. Oh, my God. OK, so it is not exactly the same thing for Ronald Reagan to say, Mr. Gorbachev, take down that wall. Donald Trump wanting to build a wall on the southern border and then Reagan to say, Mr. Gorbachev, take down that wall. Donald Trump wanting to build a wall on the southern border and then sucking up to Vladimir Putin. I think

one of the undercover stories of the weekend is that Donald Trump continues to praise Vladimir Putin, continues to say that, you know, his his friendly chumminess with this genocidal war criminal monster somehow is an asset. And, you know, the crowd at CPAC, you know, applauding, you know, I mean, how do you have Ronald Reagan's name in your mouth when you're doing that stuff? In addition to which, this was literally the Ronald Reagan dinner. That was what this event was called as part of CPAC that she's speaking at. So you can just hear Reagan turning over in his grave at this. So the Republican party is trying to deal with this problem of, they used to be the party of peace through strength, but now they're the party of isolationism because they went with Trump,

right? So how do they still look strong? So what you hear in this speech is Carrie Lake trying to redefine strength. How does she redefine it? That Trump is strong enough, but Biden is not, to make Zelensky sit down with Putin and broker a peace deal, right? So the strength is in capitulation, the way she's describing it. That is not peace through strength. That is peace through appeasement, right? Now, it's fine if you want to be a pacifist, if you oppose a strong military and you think

that just by being nice, we can get somebody like Putin to agree to an acceptable peace and then not invade the next country in Eastern Europe. But that is not the position that she's articulating here. What she's trying to suggest is that she's not actually calling for capitulation. She's calling for some kind of courage, some kind of courage to capitulate. It is absolutely perverse. The courage to capitulate. Well, remember when she famously said that she thought that Ron DeSantis had BDE, big dick energy? She's backed away from that, I'm guessing, right? I'm guessing there are no lines in her speech about Ron DeSantis' big dick energy because there's apparently only one big dick in the party.

She said that Trump also brought peace to North Korea. I mean, he did nothing. Trump gave away a summit with Kim for nothing, for nothing at all, against the advice of all the hawks. Then he had all the love letters with Kim. So Trump has never been strong in foreign policy. He has been about appeasement. He has been about capitulation.

And to call that strength is an obscenity. Well, you sat in on my conversation, speaking of foreign policy, you sat in on my conversation on Saturday with former Ambassador John Bolton, who I asked, what were you thinking when you went to work for Donald Trump? I mean, what were you imagining he was going to be like? Because he's like, well, I thought we could discipline him. And I quickly realized that he has the attention span of a gnat. And, you know, the critiques of the insiders just don't even seem to register with Maga. But what do you think of Ambassador Bolton and his many rationalizations? I saw you jumping up in your seat. You were engaged. I thought in the middle of this, oh, my God, Will's going to jump up and start yelling at us. First of all, for anyone who missed it, just get yesterday's podcast, get the Monday Bulwark podcast. You will hear the whole interview of Charlie because Charlie asked all the questions

that you would want him to ask and did all the follow-ups you would want. And he exposed a number of things. And one of them is that Bolton is one of the many self-styled hawks who worked in the Trump administration or who are leaders in the Republican Party, they're very, very vigilant about and very concerned about authoritarian leaders in other countries, aggressors in other countries. But somehow when it comes to the United States, all of these hawks turn into doves. And specifically, there was a coup, as we've just been discussing, against the United States by an incumbent president trying to stay in power. If this had happened in any other country, John Bolton and all these other hawks would have said, this is a very dangerous man. You must beware of him. You certainly must not let him back into power. And yet,

in his interview with you, Charlie, after talking about foreign policy and all of the regimes he wanted to change. You asked him about January 6th, and he said that you gave Trump too much credit, that Trump had no idea what was going to happen on January 6th. He said he's not capable of thinking it through. He's a very limited man. This is after the January 6th committee has laid out all of Trump's conspiracies, how he incited the attack on the Capitol, how he engineered the pressure campaign on Mike Pence to overturn the election, how he tried to get DOJ to say the election was corrupt, how he's calling up Brad Raffensperger in Georgia. He's discussing, Charlie, he's in the White House discussing with Mike Flynn and Sidney Powell the idea of using the United States military to seize voting machines and redo the election? How much clearer could it be? And yet John Bolton says you gave him too much credit.

Yeah, I could have gone down that rabbit hole. Actually, you said I asked him all the questions that you need to be asked. And of course, that's not the case. You always have that day after like, oh, I should have asked him this. I mean, part of it was, and I have to say that I was struck by the irony of the fact that I'm talking to this guy who decided to write a book as opposed to testify about what he knew about Donald Trump in front of a big sign that says, principles first. I should have turned to it and said, we are sitting here talking about principles, and I want to know about your principles. And I did ask him about this. The way he sucked up to Donald Trump before he got the job was defending Donald Trump's meeting in the Oval Office with the Russian foreign minister and the ambassador, defended

the fact that Donald Trump was leaking Israeli intelligence to the Russians. Or in Hamburg at the G20 summit, when Donald Trump kicked all the aides out of the room and had a one-on-one with Vladimir Putin and then took the notes away from the translator, it was John Bolton who rushed onto Lou Dobbs' show on Fox News to say nothing to see here. And in fact, the aides who expressed concern about that should be fired. And you would think that now knowing who Donald Trump is and what he is, you know, to have expressed all that confidence, well, no, we should absolutely trust Donald Trump alone in a room with Vladimir Putin. Why would we think that it's dangerous or that it's concerning

that Donald Trump is giving away intelligence? And yet he wouldn't say that even in retrospect, knowing all those things that he would take back, you know, his call to have the whistleblowers fired. And his argument was, and I have to tell you, it was a lot like Paul Ryan, this ingrained belief that, well, you know, somebody had to be the national security advisor. Somebody had to be in the room. You know, if it wasn't me, it was going to be Steve Bannon. And in retrospect, when he said, well, somebody had to be the national security advisor, what I should have said was, but why did it have to be you? Why were you campaigning so hard for this job when you clearly had a guy in office? There was plenty of evidence of who he was and what he was about. He ran on an America First platform. He ripped your

other bosses. He ridiculed the George Bush administration. He attacked everything that you advocated for. He attacked Mitt Romney, who you advised. And yet there he was, John Bolton spent a year on Fox News kissing up to Donald Trump to get that job. So this whole idea, well, somebody had to take the job, you know? Right. And there was no one better position to take down Donald Trump during his term than John Bolton. As we all know from the Ukraine episode, John Bolton had eyewitness testimony about Trump doing the quid pro quo in Ukraine, and he didn't testify. He was no longer national security advisor at that point. He was out. He had no such obligations. He did not come

forward when he could have, and that will forever be a blot on him. I think so. And also, the irony or maybe the lack of self-awareness when he says the Democrats committed impeachment malpractice. I actually am willing to agree with a lot of the criticism. The Democrats rushed that through. They should have done other things. But one of Bolton's main complaints is that they should have broadened it out. They should have included other things like Trump's obstruction of justice when it came to Erdogan from Turkey. And as I said to him, that's ironic coming from you, considering that, you know, you had evidence of all of these things. You put them in your book, but you evidence of all of these things. You put them in your book, but you wouldn't share them. And then you attack them for not pursuing them.

So a tale of two governors. We'll just briefly talk about this because I thought this was interesting. Dueling interviews over the weekend. Larry Hogan from Maryland and Chris Sununu from New Hampshire. Larry Hogan from Maryland was thinking Sununu from New Hampshire, Larry Hogan from Maryland, was thinking of running for president. I think he was expected to, decided he wasn't going to get out, didn't want to clog up the field. But he's asked, would you support Donald Trump if he's the nominee? And Hogan drew the line. Hogan said, no, I'm never going to support returning that man to power. Chris Sununu, on the other hand, who has said all kinds of things like, yes, Donald Trump is crazy.

Donald Trump is doing all these nutty things. When he is pressed on the question, says that he would support Trump if he's the nominee. He rationalizes it by saying, well, he's not going to win. He's not going to be the nominee. But ultimately, he will support him. Which seems to me, Will, when you say, knowing everything we know about Donald Trump, knowing everything that Chris Sununu knows about Donald Trump, when he says, if he's the nominee of my party, I will support him for president, that is literally putting party over country.

I mean, it is breathtaking when you think about how stark it is, my partisan loyalty trumps the fact that we're putting this unfit, seditionist, narcissistic liar back in the White House. Right. I mean, Sununu is saying what he thinks will help him politically or won't hurt him. He's trying not to alienate anybody, right? And in this contrast between these two guys, between Hogan and Sununu, you see how sick our political incentives are. The guy who is willing to say, I won't support Donald Trump because I put my country first, gets out. He gets out of the race. And he gets out not only because he doesn't want to do that. He also doesn't want to clutter the field.

And I think Larry Hogan said on his way out, if we want to prevent Trump from getting the nomination, the best way is to have fewer candidates, not more. And I'm just sort of dividing things up, right? That is an entirely practical, selfless, patriotic way of thinking. Conversely, in Sununu, you have a guy who is thinking about himself, a very conventional politician. And so he who will not renounce Trump is the one who stays in the race. So our political system keeps in the running the people who do not put their country first. Well, I mean, you know, look at the Republican Party, what it looks like right now. You have Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who have been completely excommunicated, whereas you have Marjorie Taylor Greene and Elise Stefanik, who continue to rise,

rise to glory, right? I mean, this is the world we live in. And also, I mean, just a word about Larry Hogan. I mean, Larry Hogan is a smart, decent, principled guy who was a successful governor of a major state and was very popular. He was a Republican governor in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, and he had extremely high approval ratings, despite being a conservative. And yet, I think what he's acknowledging now is that the Republican Party as it exists today has really no place for him. Right. Has no place. He doesn't, that Larry Hogan, who's proven you can win in places like Maryland, who's been an effective governor, who's a principled, honest guy, realize I'm the odd man out. There's no place for me. No lane for

me. I should say, I am a Larry Hogan voter. I live in Maryland, right? I vote Democratic, but I voted for Larry Hogan. He is the kind of Republican who can win somebody like me and win in a very blue state. But the Republican Party obviously doesn't have a place for him right now. And I think that my job as a sort of middle of the road person is to continue to punish this version of the Republican Party through successive defeats until it decides that it is willing to resort to somebody more like Larry Hogan. And I will point out that both Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo at CPAC made the point that Republicans have been losing elections. There are a lot of Republican

candidates out there denying that they lost elections, denying that the party has a problem, but there are some who are willing to tell the truth, including Haley and Pompeo, and they're not willing to do it of their own volition. It's not because they're particularly moral people. It's because the evidence has piled up to the point where it can't be denied. I believe the statistic is seven of the last eight presidential elections, they've lost the popular vote Republicans have. So my job, and I implore anyone listening, your job is to make sure that this version of the Republican Party keeps losing elections convincingly until they become sane again. And you'll know they're sane when they come back to somebody like Larry Hogan.

I don't even know if that's going to work for them. By the way, at the principal's first conference over the weekend, I had a chance to meet Larry Hogan's successor, Wes Moore, who was a rising star in the Democratic Party. And interesting that Wes Moore spoke at this conference. He was there. Larry Hogan was there as well. But I think that's an indication that there are some Democrats who recognize that, hey, there are some political orphans out there and I am willing to talk with them. Right. Okay. So while we're talking about the language and the vocabulary of CPAC, Donald Trump talking about retribution, obliteration, you know, the sinister enemies that we are going to destroy. I'm not going to even spend any time on the fact that Don Jr. called John Fetterman a vegetable and then doubles down on it. Right. And said he should be bagging groceries.

That's a reminder that Trumpism isn't just post-truth and post-shame. It's also post even a shred of decency. But also there was a big controversy over one of the biggest applause lines of the weekend. Many of you may not know Michael Knowles, who is a commentator for The Daily Wire, one of Ben Shapiro's guys, used to be BFF of Ted Cruz. I think he was the host of Ted Cruz's podcast. And he speaks to CPAC and declares

there can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. And transgenderism, obviously a big freaking issue at CPAC and among the MAGA base, but listen to the language. And it became very, very controversial. I want to get your take on it. His choice of words. We'll do that on the other side. Let's Michael Knowles. There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing. If transgenderism is true, if men really can become women, then it's true for everybody of all ages. If transgenderism is false, as it is, if men really can't become

women, as they cannot, then it's false for everybody too. And if it's false, then we should not indulge it, especially since that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of so many people. If it is false, then for the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely. The whole preposterous ideology at every level. Eradicated. Now, just before we get into this, you know, he was accused of using like, whoa, that's eliminationist genocidal language. He threatened lawsuits and he indignantly insisted, I'm not talking about eradicating people.

I'm only talking about eradicating people. I'm only talking about eradicating transgenderism. And the Daily Beast actually changes headlines. So I think he's not talking about eradicating the communities, talking about eradicating transgenderism. And he said, nobody's calling to exterminate anybody because the other problem with that statement is that transgender people is not a real ontological category. It is not a legitimate category of being. So, Will, you know, you and I take language seriously. It struck me that eradicated is a distinctive word with distinctive connotations and associations. And I'm familiar with Knowles's work, and I'm willing to pay him the compliment of thinking that he chose that word

carefully and specially for this occasion. I mean, the guy could have said, we need to challenge transgenderism or confront it or oppose it or push back against it. Instead, he chose the word eradicate. Your thoughts? Well, if he had meant eradicate people, of course, that would be a kind of genocide. Clearly, yeah. But let's assume he didn't mean that. He just meant to eradicate the idea of transgenderism, to deny that anyone actually is transgender. Let me just step back from this particular issue because this is a really good illustration of a larger point. In the real world, something like transgender definitely exists in some people, may exist in others, and then there are other people who think they might be transgender, but who

turn out not to be, right? And this is true of sexual orientation. It's true of lots of things. There are people in the trans community who get upset when you say that there are teenagers who think they're trans and who talk about beginning some kind of therapy, and it turns out later on that they were wrong. They changed their mind. But those people exist.

Okay, you can make that argument. If you wanted to be a conservative party, you could say, let's be sure that we don't have kids starting this before they know for sure that they are transgender, that they don't go into therapy. This eliminationist position that you're hearing from this guy,

this eradication is extremely dangerous. And if it were implemented, it would be horrific. Marjorie Taylor Greene at CPAC, she said, I have a bill that will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender affirming care for children. That is not that this is excessive. That is not an argument that some kids shouldn't have this. That is, even if you know for certain that some kids shouldn't have this. That is, even if you know for certain that your child is transgender, your child is certain, and you, the parents, are certain, if your whole family is in agreement, that will be outlawed. It is an illustration of the horrific results of this eliminationist mindset. Well, is it an eliminationist mindset? Because, I mean, he's just saying that I'm being treated very unfairly. I was only talking about getting rid of an ideology. I actually spent some time thinking about this, and I read about it in my newsletter today. Two things. I mean, try this thought experiment. must be eradicated from public life, or Judaism must be eradicated, or Zionism must be eradicated

from the Middle East, I think people would understand the connotation of all of that, right? I mean, he could say that, okay, I'm not talking about the extermination of actual Jews. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about something else. But I think people would understand where he's going here, because I mean, the word eradicate. And look, Michael Knowles knows language. I actually have him in the footnote in my book. He actually wrote a really interesting piece back in 2016 about what the alt-right was about. This guy gets it. He knows. Back then, he was willing to say they were racist, they were anti-Semitic, they're not Christian, they do these various things. Now he's feeding the words that he knows the fever swamps want to hear. And I don't think that he's talking

about killing anybody. I don't think that. But I also think that Michael Knowles, he knows what the applause line was. He knows how to feed the beast and the beast likes this extreme, violent language. And I don't know where it leads to, but it's not good. It's not a good place. No, I mean, at best, at best, if we just suppose he's not trying to eliminate actual people, he's trying to eliminate the idea that you can express this aspect of yourself. It could be your Judaism. It could be your sexual orientation. It could be your gender, right? So when he says that this has to be eradicated, he's certainly telling all of the trans, let's suppose that a half a percent,

half of 1% of the United States is transgender, which is a reasonable estimate of people who are definitely transgender. He's telling all of those people, you can't be who you are, right? You're going to have to go into the closet, like we said to gay people for so long, right? You could tell Jews the same thing, right? You can be born Jewish, but I don't want your Judaism in my face. First of all, it's a violation of human rights. It's atrocious. And the implementation of this idea in any way legislatively would be an absolute abomination, and it would just destroy people. It would destroy families. Imagine the suicides if people who are gay or transgender are not allowed to be themselves. I actually think I want to go back to something you said. I think you put your finger on it, Will, a little bit earlier talking about the language that Donald Trump was using. When you think about retribution, eradication, obliteration, all of this, it's all about hurting your enemies. It's all about who is going to be meaner and more cruel and more

confrontational. Who's going to be more bellicose about all of this? I mean, it is not a bright and sunny, optimistic, forward-looking thing. It is about what pain can I inflict on this group or that group? And it may not be specific. I mean, there may not be a specific agenda here. They get that, well, I don't mean to hurt that person. But the overall vibe of all of this is to attack, to punish, because the cruelty is the point. Yeah. What you're bringing to mind for me is Nikki Haley, who is trying to be an optimist, right? She's trying to say, Democrats, liberals try to tear our country down. I'm affirmative. But then she does exactly what you're talking about, Charlie. She goes to the, what is now the sort of Republican red meat about, we have internal domestic enemies and they're tearing our

country down. They're destroying our country and we have to fight them. So it's very difficult to be an upbeat, optimistic party and be talking constantly about internal enemies, whether they be liberals or transgender or whatever. So what did we not talk about that we were supposed to talk about? Because I just feel that we're in that moment where there's just so much going on so quickly. What are you keeping an eye on now this week? So, you know, Donald Trump lost an election and refused to go away, and he's running for president again, right? But he's far from alone in that, right? We have this whole lineup now of Republicans who refuse to accept that they lost elections. Kerry Lake is one of them. Remember, we had

Christina Karamo who lost badly for, what was it, Secretary of State in Michigan. Now she's running the state party. We have Doug Mastriano who lost. Another January 6th guy who lost. The losers are coming back. And so, you know, like normal politics, right? The losers, they go away. They lost. Get somebody who can win. Except when you have this party that's so full of denial, it's in a culture of denial. You have these guys coming back. So Kerry Lake is a featured speaker at CPAC. Trump's running for president again. Christina Caramo is running the Michigan GOP. And Mastriano is talking about running for the Senate so he can lose again in Pennsylvania.

It's just unbelievable pathology. You can just imagine Pennsylvania Republicans waking up today and opening up the paper and Doug Mastriano thinking, yes, I'm asking God for his advice on whether I should run again. Oh my God, no. Oh, one big story that happened since you and I spoke last was the issue of Washington, D.C.'s criminal code and the fact that a Republican bill would overturn it and the administration had opposed it. But then over the weekend, President Biden said that he would sign this, citing the fact that this legislation would have reduced the penalty for carjacking at a time when that is a very high profile crime in Washington, D.C. Democrats in Congress are incandescently angry about all of this. Did he make the right decision? Because, I mean, clearly you have the Biden administration says it favors home rule for Washington, D.C. On the other hand, they're saying, yeah, home rule, but this soft on crime

measure. No, we're going to go along with overturning it. Did he make the right call? He did make the right call and he should have made it earlier. Biden waited until House Democrats walked the plank on this and voted for home rule and on the wrong side of the crime issue. Then he bails out the senators by saying he's going to sign this thing and therefore they can support it. The way I feel about this DC crime thing, Charlie, is the actual reform in DC, not only did it sort of get rid of some mandatory minimums, right? So you're letting judges have some discretion. It imposed a constraint on judges on the upside, right? It reduced the maximum penalty for carjacking and for robbery. And that is a pretty much indefensible position because at the very least, you ought to let the judge decide whether the crime merits more than what

was it, 24 years for a carjacking. Well, it's also political. I think that in the wake of what happened in Chicago, I think the Democrats would be extremely naive not to realize how big an issue crime is going to be. Now, even with this, the Republicans are going to, you know, go after the Democrats and saying that they are soft on crime. But even though they're making that case does not mean that it's not something the Democrats ought to pay attention to. I mean, look what's been happening around the country. Look what happened in Chicago. And they're going to have a big election that I think is going to have tremendous national significance between a centrist Democrat and a much more progressive Democrat on this issue of crime. Look what happened in San Francisco. Look at the ferment

around progressive prosecutors in places like Philadelphia. This is not an issue that Joe Biden wanted to roll into 2024 on the wrong side of. And so it was a prudent political decision on his part. I'm not sure that all Democrats get the crime issue, but Joe does. We need to make that distinction. Joe Biden understands the importance of not looking soft on crime, and he's willing to stand up to the progressives in his caucus who wanted him to go along with this bill, which, by the way, would have given Republicans a massive issue next year. And to any liberal out there who's upset about this, and I understand the principles of home rule and all that, but think about the issues.

First of all, would you like to have Joe Biden for president rather than a Republican for the next four years? If so, here are three issues Republicans are obviously running on. Inflation, the border, and crime, right? Inflation has been coming down. If Biden can bring it down further, then it will remove one issue the Republicans have. Crime is another one. Taking the wrong position on this D.C. bill would have given Republicans that issue. Biden is taking it away. Third issue is the border. What is Biden doing on the border? He is actually bringing back a lot of those Trump policies that liberals hate, but they will reduce the influx of people. They will deter some migration. If Biden can control those three issues, inflation, the border, and crime, he wins.

Will, when you are right, you are right. Thanks for joining me again. We'll do this again next Monday, all right? Thanks, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow, and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.