The Bulwark Podcast - We Are Living in a Post-Rational World

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

A disconnect from reality has descended on the US: Republicans practice fantasy politics day and night, Trump is out to paint Biden as corrupt, and Americans think the economy is in the crapper. Plus, family love and loss, and gratitude for a good ending. JVL joins guest host A.B. Stoddard.

Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. Charlie Sykes is enjoying a well-deserved early Thanksgiving day, and I'm thrilled to be here in his place. I'm A.B. Stoddard, columnist at the Bulwark, and I'm delighted to be joined by JVL. We've missed him. We need some JVL content. He was terribly missed at last week's Bulwark Live event. So it's really exciting to see you, JVL. The only good thing about your last week of your life was that you were, I believe, on a Trump cleanse. And I'm really happy about that for you. Oh, yeah. Did anything happen? Does he still exist? Is that a thing still? Unfortunately, he does. And he didn't make much news, but we're going to grind through what he's doing. I want to open just with a sort of a pre-Thanksgiving level setter that James Comer

said on Maria Bartiromo's show that he believes that every American is angry about Joe Biden's corruption. So just thought that would just get us in the right place as we begin. Donald Trump, as we debate all the time, is not in hiding, but it's not as visible to the American public as he once was. And over on Truth Social, he's been making a lot of videos and the latest ones are very strange because he's not wearing the makeup and the hairdo looks a little bit different. And I don't know what's going on with that. The lighting is weird, but he's not wearing the makeup and the hairdo looks a little bit different. And I don't know what's going on with that. The lighting is weird, but he's not in like, you know, his mango state. I don't know. Maybe he lost his makeup guy. Maybe that person got sick. Maybe Donald Trump can't do

his makeup anymore. I thought it was interesting, but he wants JVL for the debates to stop and the candidates to get out. So he's very excited. The audience should know, in case they've been tuning out, all of the polling remains the same. Nothing has changed. Joe Biden loses to Trump in every single solitary matchup. And Trump is very excited about this. Great polls just released, best ever. And he cites a Harvard-Harris poll, which is always, always biased to Trump. Trump, 67 to Sanctimonious, 9. Birdbrain, Nikki Haley at 8. Ramaswamy at 5. Christie dead in the water, a total loser.

And then he says he's up 7 to 10% on Quirka Joe Biden. And he says the RNC must save money on lowest ever rating debates, use it against the Democrats to stop the steal, revamp the RNC now. So that's where he is. And any of us wanting to hear more about the useless force race on the Republican side are going to be really sorry, because I'm sure the RNC will do his bidding soon and find a way to shut this all down. And I know Nikki Haley is having her wonderful surge and she's feeling so good, but we all know JVL the most. If we've paid attention to the polling that Donald Trump obviously pretty much has this thing locked up unless something completely crazy happens. So

JVL and I spent a lot of time looking at the general election matchup. And there is something, JVL, that really freaked me out. And I'm going to play it for you. Donald Trump is now talking about democracy. So we're going to play this latest clip. Nothing about Crooked Joe Biden and the anti-democratic party has anything to do with defending democracy. So if Crooked Joe wants to turn this election into a question of which candidate will defend our democracy and freedom, then I say, bring it on. Let's go, Joe, bring it on, because you are a corrupt person. You're the most corrupt president in our history. And by the way, the most incompetent president

in our history. The delivery is always good for a giggle, but most incompetent president in our history. The delivery is always good for a giggle, but this kind of freaks me out. What do you think? Well, that poll that freaked everyone out like three weeks ago, the New York Times poll of swing voters in the Midwest states. One of the questions buried in there was about corrupt Joe Biden versus corrupt Donald Trump. And Trump leads Biden on the corruption stuff. People think he's more corrupt than Biden is. But I'm going by memory here. It was more than a majority. It was like 51% of those swing state voters said that Biden was corrupt too. So all of the Hunter stuff has penetrated the groundwater in ways which like, of course, nobody can explain. Like they're just like the laptop, you know, or, or the files in

the court and people are horrible. Maybe happy Thanksgiving. People are terrible. It is interesting to me that Trump has switched from sleepyy Joe to Crooked Joe because he has decided that he needs to, and this is, my God, if the guy who's under 91 felony indictment counts can successfully brand Biden, who has basically been scandalous as a president, as crooked, and the public buys that, spoiler, they're going to buy that. I don't know. Like, I just look at it and I think, how, how is this close? How is this close? Why, you know, and yet there we are. And here's a real question, a real question for you. I think the RNC can't shut it down because they need to have just a process in place in case, like, the magic ham cheeseburger hits, right? In case he drops dead.

Oh, okay. So that on January 10th, if something awful happens to Trump, they actually have other people running in races and appearing on ballots who can then gather delegates. There will be pressure, a lot of pressure, onto Santas to drop out. I have always thought that it's possible he doesn't go to Iowa. If it looks like he could finish third in Iowa, then he should pull the plug on that. He should not finish. I mean, it may not matter. His political future may be over as it is. But, you know, he has to think about Casey. Casey's got a political future. Might help her if he doesn't finish third in Iowa, actually. But the rest of them, this is the question, just as a substantive matter, Nikki has said that the most important thing facing us right now is Ukraine, that this moment requires strong leadership from America in the world, that it will impact our strategic competition with China and the entire global order, and that Donald Trump is untrustworthy on this. And she is basically, as a matter of policy, in 95% alignment with the Biden administration. When she loses the nomination to Trump, who again, she's also said it's serious that he's been indicted 91 times, what will she do? Is she just going to go ahead and, and i mean and the answer is of course we know

what she's gonna do she's gonna endorse trump right and at some point at some point ab it's not gonna be enough like the rest of this coalition which has held off trumpism for like four straight elections at this point is gonna need some help from republicans and i'm sorry and i know we've all just decided, well, the Republicans are a lost cause. You can't ever expect any of them to do anything. But it's going to have to happen, or else we're toast.

Yeah. So I thought in August that DeSantis should take your advice and he should get out to preserve his future. And I don't think Bob Vander Plaats' endorsement is going to turbocharge what's going on with what plays Rhonda Sanders. And I also agreed with you that she will turn around

and abandon her agreement with Joe Biden on Israel and Taiwan and Ukraine being a unified urgent matter, and that she will endorse Trump. I think about these Republicans all the time. This is a good segue into this really upsetting reporting that we all just read about these former administration officials who are now completely appalled. Poor John Kelly just went on the record like seven weeks ago after all these years. And he's very upset that he's told the American public all these disgusting and shameful

and pretty much in my book, evil things that Donald Trump says about people in the armed services, especially ones who gave their lives and that it didn't do anything to budge the polls. John Kelly's very upset. Now he's speaking out and people like you and i've been begging him for years to do this so these republicans that you are mentioning that six percent or whatever we need that we needed in 2020 they're telling us now like they're not gonna vote for joe biden i mean they're just gonna sit this out so this this resistance, I think Chris Shea is a former congressman from Connecticut,

was quoted as saying this. Christy Todd Whitman, the White House didn't reach out to them. They supported him. Obviously, Jeff Blake is happy he's an ambassador under the Biden administration. But these Republicans that we need to come around, do you have like a unicorn fantasy like I do that somehow next late summer, Chris Christie will be on a stage with John Kelly and all these people and that we might be surprised by the inclusion of some of them? I don't know. So Philip Bump did this piece in the post where he talked to a whole bunch of former administration officials and they're all talking not about like stopping trump in the primary they're talking about keeping trump out of the white house yeah these are people who worked for trump at the highest levels who say that it is dangerous for america for him to attain power again

and i am told by people who are like you know very smart like our friends sarah and tim that you cannot expect republicans to simply like go on stage and endorse a democratic president like that this is something which simply can't happen that's fantasy politics that only happens in the west wing right in west wing alan alda's character decides that he'll break with Republican orth the entire executive federal workforce and impose loyalty tests on them. It is fantasy politics that you could have a presidential candidate who says that he's going to build a wall all the way across the southern border and get Mexico to pay for it, or that he is going to create vast systems of prison camps to put his political enemies in. The Trumpers are doing fantasy politics all day and all night. And it's not like,

I don't understand why it only goes one way, right? This is what I don't quite get. Yes. And the best example of that is just the RNC debates and this idea that there's this other field where they're just going to be there to catch the falling body there's no nominating fight there's no contested primary there's no real race for the nomination and so it's just but when you watch ramaswamy and desantis and nikki haley i think chris christie's doing something, all line up on stage and carry on like this. I mean, that's fantasy politics. They barely talk about Trump. There's a guy who's at 60% nationally, and they only talk about him when asked. And I don't understand that because

it's like they're not living in reality. I'm writing a little bit about this today. I'll talk it through with you. There is this way in which the inability of the other Republican candidates to even properly understand the world that they live in, it's like they're the citizens of an authoritarian state. The government controls all the media. They don't know what's true and what's not true. And so they can't tell what's what. And, you know, I don't get it. This thing can only be fixed from the inside, is my view.

I don't think that there's anything that the media or academia or Democrats or independents can do to change the character of the Republican Party. The Republican Party is either going to turn its back on Trumpism or simply like, you know, switch to something else, right? A new shiny object will come along that they'll like better and they'll just build over top of it, right? They'll never apologize for the Trump thing. They'll just move on to something different. But it's hard for it to get fixed from the inside when the people who would be charged with, you know, displacing Trump, when those people can't even understand the world around them in an accurate way. And like the DeSantis challenge to Trump is the perfect example of this. Like DeSantis had no

idea what he was doing when he got into this race. I mean, for the longest time, I didn't believe that he was actually going to declare because I thought he was smart. And I thought that he would understand that if he gets into the race, he's going to lose and that this isn't the way it used to be where coming in second meant that you were starting in the poll position for the next time around,

that when Republicans challenged Trump, their careers are ended because it's a cult. And DeSantis didn't get that. You know, he didn't understand either of those things. And then once he got in, he didn't understand that he would have to actually try to take Trump's voters from him. I mean, the whole campaign that he's run has been incomprehensible in any meaningful way. And it's because he simply didn't understand the electorate. I don't get it. Roger Stone has a few words for Ron DeSantis this morning that everyone needs to hear before Thanksgiving.

Trump voters will never, all caps, vote for Ron DeSantis under any circumstances. And he tells Bob Vander Plaats, you need to be exposed as the grifting whore and total piece of shit that you are, but he uses POS. So just wanted to update everyone on that. I guess Ron didn't get that memo when he got into the race. Before we move on, couldn't the same be said for Nikki Haley? Like she does it well, but what is she doing, right? We know she's the best political performer in the field. So

again, I put Chris Christie. I think he's on a mission that's completely separate. She's performing so well. She won't be outworked. She's so cheerful. She's so prepared. She's so knowledgeable. She is ready to finesse these opinions and that opinions that might upset MAGA voters.

She knows how to spin and bullshit everybody. But what is she doing? Do you think in the end it is possible that he breaks down, even though she would outshine him and picks her for VP? No, because he can't trust her. Okay. So what is she doing? I mean, Nikki's running for corporate board seats, I think. Okay. Because she's, again, she's not trying to

take voters from Trump, right? She's trying to take voters from Chris Christie and take voters from DeSantis and consolidate's trying to take voters from Chris Christie and take voters from DeSantis and consolidate. I mean, she's playing for 20%. Her best case scenario is like 20, 25% maybe. And if you're not playing to win, then you're doing it for some other reason. And I think it's because her career was at a dead end. Right. You know, like she had washed out of the Trump administration and then she had emerged basically unscathed, but then she flip-flopped on the January 6th thing and she,

you know, she got crossways with him, then she got uncrossways with him. And the only way for her to be relevant in Republican politics again was by running for president. That was it. That was the only pathway available. Right. So she's just playing a longer game. If she finishes second, she's going to be perfectly positioned for... Whatever she wants to do, right? Yeah. Okay. So it was actually Josh Dossi's reporting in the Washington Post about the former Trump administration.

Ah, I know. Sorry. Sorry, Josh. What was really not fun to read in there, but of course we knew it, is that long-suffering Mike Pence does not plan to come out publicly and be a part of this. Neither does James Mattis, by the way. Before we turn to Joe Biden, what are your thoughts on the January 6th tapes? I hope no one spends any time on this in our audience without having to just know that if Tucker Carlson could have found something

in the freaking mass of tapes, we would have heard about it by now. But Speaker Johnson is trying to keep people at bay and has released the J6 tapes to get people really excited with more conspiracy theories. What do you think by putting this front and center, JVL, does this help the Democrats? I mean, is the jury back in for the average sane swing voter that like this is a disaster for republicans and that they don't want election deniers in petitions like secretary of state and governor because we saw that last november in 2022 in the midterms

is this risky for republicans or do you think no i don't think so i mean i i honestly don't think there's any price left to be paid for them. I think it's probably the opposite, right? This is a way of just chumming the water for the Republican base and keeping them happy. It's like the Biden corruption thing, right? It doesn't matter that there's no proof or evidence there. It's just sort of in the water around you, right? You're swimming through it and it's like, well, we got 40,000 hours of tapes. Maybe we'll find something, right? Mike Lee gets to do his like, here's a guy flashing a badge. The fibbies did it. And it's all alternate reality, fact-free vibes stuff like everything is these days, you know, like the economy stuff is. And it's like we're in

this post-rational world that I don't understand. And I feel the way I think very old people do sometimes. If you're 90 years old, you were born in the 30s, right, in the Great Depression. That was the world you knew and understood. And then we put a man on the moon. And now people have computers in their pockets and people have tattoos on their faces. And everybody at Starbucks has purple hair and a nose ring. You just look and you're like, I don't understand this world. This isn't the world I figured out. And that's kind of how I feel, but I'm not 90. And the newsstand at the Philly train station doesn't sell newspapers anymore I know that I've cited that before but I keep coming back to it

it's a little traumatizing okay so I know there's something that you and I are both thankful for which never gets any thanks and that is the presidency of Joseph Robinette Biden. Today, we have a temporary truce and a hostage deal for which he will get no credit from any material part of the electorate, certainly not any part that matters. Even if the Wall Street Journal is clapping for Admiral Kirby as he gets out there and fights against the disinformation about Palestinian genocide. His numbers go down because of this. That's so prevalent on our left. And that's punching Joe Biden in the nose over his near perfect management of this conflict. So as we head into this, and these polls keep coming, JVL, and the response from the White House and the DNC is always

to stop bedwetting and that when Americans tune in, they use this word, these two words, when Americans tune in, that these polls will change. Now, I completely believe, I don't want to cling with everything, but I believe the results in Sarah Longwell's focus groups that find that Americans refuse to believe that Trump and Biden are the nominees and that when they accept it in March, they will, a lot of them ultimately, stop stomping their feet and they'll probably support Biden. That's prevalent enough in the responses that I'm not jumping off building, but I don't know when Democrats and people in the White House tell me what tune in means with the fact that none of the criminal charges make a difference. No Americans keep the four criminal cases

distinct in their minds. They haven't learned about them. They won't. They don't care. And so I want to ask you, before I talk to you about the electorate, what the anticipation is by Democratic elites that will happen. Will they be suddenly shocked by Trump? Like, what is the tuning in process that they're counting on when Joe Biden is a year older. Yeah. Did you know how old he is? In fact, AB, Joe Biden is even older today than he was yesterday. This is a scandal. I don't know why the liberal media refuses to cover it. Why won't New York Times ever write anything about Joe Biden's age? They're heads in the sand. I know. It is a scandal. Okay. So what is tuning in? So I think this is born of their experience during the Obama administration, I think. And if you'll recall, polling for Obama was very, very bad at this point in 2011. And in that case, it was that the recovery was too slow. that a lot of democratic policy types, economist types, one of the lessons they overlearned from the Great Recession was that they were too stingy with stimulus, and that that was why the recovery took, you know, we were essentially in like a six-year-long recovery, seven-year-long recovery. And that was part of the thinking that went behind the American Rescue Plan. And, you know,

now, of course, people say, well, actually, they overspent, they spent too much, that then contributed to inflation. But this is why Obama's poll numbers were pretty bad. And by most of the metrics, people thought that Obama should lose re-election. We didn't have a Republican nominee yet, but just, again, just going from the economic modeling and what people were saying. And then once people tuned in and Obama was able to make the case in a pretty good way. I don't know if you remember the Democratic National Convention that year. Bill Clinton gave this absolute barn burner speech on the next to last day, which was like a 90-minute masterclass in politics about how the Biden administration had fixed the economy and et cetera, et cetera. And they were able to wind up with a comfortable victory, a smaller victory than they had in their initial election, which is, again, sort of historically anomalous. Normally, when presidents win re-election, they actually expand

their coalition. So you're always either growing or shrinking. It's hard to shrink your coalition just enough to still hang on to win. Obama did that. It looks like Biden will have to do that. Although I don't know. I mean, it's entirely possible he could wind up with the same five-point margin and then lose because electoral college shifts keep happening. So I don't know about the wake-up part. Here's the thing. I am constantly getting in fights with my colleagues over this, and I think they misunderstand me. So I'm going to try to, do you mind me filibustering here for 30 seconds? No, I want to hear this. Okay. When I say that people's views of the economy are misaligned, I am not saying that the economy is perfect and everything is great and you people

out there ought to be grateful for what Joe Biden has let you have. That's not what I'm saying. The economy is a mixed bag, as it always is. It is very hard for working families, as it always is. It is very hard for people on fixed incomes in their retirement years, as it always is. It is hard for people starting out in their professional lives, as it always is. It is hard for people starting out in their professional lives, as it often is. It is hard to buy a first home, always. What I am saying is that when you look at the data and then you match it up against the consumer sentiments as measured in a whole vast number of surveys, the misalignment is catastrophic. Basically, the consumer attitudes today are the same as they were in the worst moments of the Great Recession,

late 2008, early 2009. There is no way to match this up. And I don't understand it. It is irrational. It is definitionally irrational. And either this irrationality is going to continue or it will stop. And if it stops, then Joe Biden will be reelected. And if it continues, then he won't be. I agree, because the gap has never been wider between the economic reality and the perception, as you said, since polling began. Every outlook from the voters of Joe Biden's entire presidency is all on prices and perception. Polls showing that Americans think we've lost jobs when we have clearly gained more in less than three years than the last three Republican administrations combined. And then there's other things, record small business creation,

rising consumer confidence, lowering inflation, wages catching up, all the things that you have written about extensively. It makes no sense that they feel that we are in the crapper. Part of the problem with this tune-in concept for me is that Americans have no idea what he has done with the CHIPS Act for semiconductor manufacturing, the PACT Act for veterans health care, the Infrastructure Act. The IRA, the inflation reduction was partisan, was not bipartisan, but the $35 insulin and a massive, massive climate endeavor that brings new manufacturing, and you've written about all this, to red areas, to people, non-college workers are

going to get great salaries at new plants in tight labor markets in red areas. These people who didn't vote for Biden and they won't vote for him again. But as these projects come online, JVL, do you have any hope that Americans will see this in their community, you know, kind of mid-late next summer and say, this is actually happening to my friends and family and neighbors or me. And this is really great. Government is doing something effective and revitalizing my community, an area left behind by globalization. This is so exciting. When the administration talks about tuning in, they're going to run commercials about this. I don't know if these disaffected young people are going to give a crap about a TV commercial or if they'll ever see it. But do you believe that

the green shoots will be seen or felt? I mean, they should be. But somehow I have a hard time believing they will be. Think about early on in the American Rescue Plan, one of the big parts of it, the parts that I was excited about the most was the child tax credit, which was the kind of, because I've written a lot about demographics, the kind of like super populist, pro-natalist, like help working families thing that makes a real difference in people's lives the kind of thing that like every mitt romney mike lee type republican once upon a time like five minutes ago was super into biden passes it and they all they all demagogue it and whatnot this is the thing that like is giving actual real help to every parent in America, almost. There's a little bit of means testing at the top and it goes down, but in a way that just straight dollars into your bank account every month. It goes away because the Republicans refuse to reauthorize it. Republicans never pay any price for that. No price. There is not a single person

in America who voted against a Republican congressman because like, crap, they took away this money that was coming into my bank account every month. And if they won't do that, then like, I don't know, like they're going to see an ad about the CHIPS Act and decide that they're going to vote for Joe Biden because he passed the CHIPS Act. I don't know. How does that work? I just need to throw some of this out there that a recent Yahoo News and YouGov asked respondents, have you heard in the media much over the last few years? And this was the response. Over enabling Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, 23% had heard.

Congress passing infrastructure investments in 2021, 20%. Congress passing climate and clean energy investments in 2022, 18%. Congress passing a gun safety law in 2022, 14%. That's why less than a quarter of Americans, 24%, think Biden has accomplished a lot as president. So when you talk to young people, and I know you don't have 22-year-olds in your house, but when you inform these people in their 20s about the climate effort, they think it's really great. They just didn't know about it. So I think that on the margins, if there's some way to break through in targeted ways, when people find out about it, they actually like the policies. So just wanted to throw that out there.

Yeah. But does anybody voting on policies? Right. Voting on vibes. Right. I mean, look, I mean, Trump's entire 2020 reelection effort was policy free. Yeah. And he almost won. There were no policies in my darker moments when I'm when I'm like extra special dark. I joke that Joe Biden is both like the most successful liberal president and the most successful conservative president since Reagan. And just in terms of passing stuff and doing foreign policy hawkish stuff in the world that conservatives find really important and then liberals find really important. And it turns out that nobody cares about any of that stuff. It turns out nobody cares about the centrism.

Nobody cares about the bipartisan stuff. Nobody cares about legislative accomplishment or handling foreign policy crises well. They just care about the vibes, maybe. And if that's the case, then, like, I don't know. We're screwed. Okay. Final question. Is the electorate changing out from under Joe Biden and you and me?

So Phil Bump did write at the Washington Post about younger voters recently, and he said they're increasingly registering as independents. They don't give a crap about party. They are not loyal to any institutions. They don't join unions or the military. They don't marry and they don't go to church in large enough numbers. The way that we did as we grew from young voters into middle-aged voters. And so this manifests as a decline in any way attachment to either party. But even though there are kind of leanings of our younger voters for towards Democrats, they just look so disheartened with the process that they might just tune it out

and not show up at all. So that's the fear. I am concerned that Republicans in these pollings have an advantage also on every single issue, that support for the border wall now is majority support in a Quinnipiac poll, and that Americans believe that between crime and immigration and the economy, they have to reelect Trump. So that is policy-based immigration, much more of a vulnerability for Joe Biden than it was. So maybe non-college whites and Latinos and young people are just moving more to the right. What's your thought on that, on substance? Yeah, I mean, I don't know that they have any idea what they're saying they're for. You know what? It's a terrible thing to admit it out loud, but this is my view as well. Yeah, but the polls show that people think that Donald Trump would do a better job handling the

war in Israel right now. I don't understand how that's possible. There are no facts and evidence to suggest that Donald Trump would be handling this better. Biden is, again, just one of the most successful foreign policy exhibitions in recent American history. And yet Biden is like underwater on it. And I don't understand it. I don't get it. I had a conversation with somebody I love who was a Trump voter over the last few days. And she was telling me, and this is a, you know, I don't know exactly where she gets her news and information, but I suspect it's like from like her little sewing circle. And I mean, she believes there is absolutely no way that joe biden will be the nominee and that the the big rumor she told me was that michelle obama was going to run she was going to have gavin newsom as her vp and then as soon as she was elected she would resign so that gavin

newsom could be president that was the big rumor about what was going to happen i just look and i'm like okay like if this is what people out in the world think i don't understand it i don't get it That was the big rumor about what was going to happen. I just look and I'm like, okay. If this is what people out in the world think, I don't understand it. I don't get it. But here we are. Yeah. This is the worst show ever. I know.

Happy Thanksgiving, people. We're all going to die. Increasingly, it is clear that you and I should never do anything together which is a shame jvl i'm thankful for you and i want to turn to um one of your loved ones if you just want to tell the audience where you've been and heading into thanksgiving just a few words about your family and about jack if you'd like sure i, as much as you have patience for it. So we moved up to officially New York City, but in reality, Jersey, a year and a half ago to be close to my in-laws, Jack and Peg. They're lovely, wonderful people, and I love them. But they have also been deeply integrated in my kids' lives since day one. And they're getting older, and Jack had been fighting cancer

for a long time. And once the pandemic made it so that like, basically I was working remotely all the time anyway, we just decided let's go get as close to them as we could. And the answer is we got like two miles away from them. So it's a, you know, less than a five minute drive. And we just see them literally every day, you know, and the payoff to not have to plan to see the grandparents is immense. Like they call you and say, we're having trouble with the remote control. And instead of trying to talk them through it over FaceTime, you just say, yeah, I'll be over. You know, you just, you just pop over, right? You know, you're somebody, one of the kids has a tough day of school uh she just

goes over and sits and has a cup of tea at the kitchen table with her grandmother for 20 minutes doesn't have to be a you know well we're gonna go over for a visit right and we got like a decades worth of of time with the grandparents in over the course of like 18 months. So Jack, you know, he was in decline and had been in hospice and he passed away a week ago. Yeah, a week ago. And it's very sad and it's, you know, there's a lot of grieving and, you know, especially hard for his wife and my wife and my kids. I am in the strange position of almost entirely only being able to see the joy in it, which is so weird and off-brand for me, because he had just a very beautiful and good death, right? This is so he up until the final week, really, he had been slowing down quite a bit. And, you know, there were things he couldn't do, but he was mostly able to do what he wanted to.

He was always fully together mentally. In the final week, things got really hard, but he was never in any pain. And in his final days, around the clock, he was surrounded by his wife, his children, and his grandchildren. When he passed away at one in the morning, he had two of his grandchildren sitting vigil with him at his bedside. And what more can any of us hope for, right? There are bad deaths and there are good deaths, and he had a very good and beautiful death. And this is a guy who, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds, but who had never had any religious belief until about a year ago and came home to the Catholic church. And at his funeral mass the other day, you know, I was a pallbearer, something I've never

done before. And walking into a church and down the aisle carrying a casket is a very strange view of the church. Like it's, it did a number on me. It was very weird, but this church was packed, packed with people who's, you know,

whose lives he had touched or, you know, cause he was a teacher and a coach. And so there were people who were there for him. There were people who were there for his kids, you know, or his wife's friends and then friends of his grandchildren. So like, you know, one of my oldest kids' best friends volunteered to be an altar server for Jack's funeral mass.

As I sat there with this very beautiful service, I thought, this is as good as it gets. The sadness is that, of course, everybody wishes they could have more time with somebody, right? You know, you always, well, if we only could have had 10 more years. And totally understood. But in everything else, Jack had it great. My kids were so blessed to have had that time with him that they will never forget, right?

And to then to be able to even be a part of his death and like, you know, we didn't like try to hide it away or make it antiseptic. We were like all sort of in it with him together. I don't know. I just I felt incredibly thankful for the whole thing. And I thought it was beautiful. And I hope that doesn't make me sound like a ghoul or anything like that. For me, like grief was really overwhelmed by all the gratitude and happiness. I love that because I think for anyone who has been through a good death,

as I have, you realize afterwards what a gift it is because it helps counter your grief. And so anyone listening who hasn't been should know that a good death can really, really heal you and energize you and bring you into touch, not only with the preciousness of life, but with the power of people being close and staying close and being realistic

and facing the bedside and having the bed in the middle of the living room and everyone come and face it. In the end, it's the most healing thing. It's the most important thing for our path forward, how your kids will now live their life, having known that, having seen it, how they will appreciate their grandmother in the years they have left with her, and every level, it is so powerful. And so I'm so appreciative that you shared it. And I could sit here and take up too much time reading the sparkling, beautiful obit that your wife wrote about her dad, which is filled with so many incredible details. But he did have an amazing life. He had an amazing life. So I will send you the eulogy she did for him. And it was amazing.

This is a little unfair. So my wife is a professional speechwriter. And having her do a eulogy for a normal person is the equivalent of bringing an NBA player to your pickup basketball game with your buddies. Yeah. Right. You're like, wait a minute. Hold on. Why is that guy throwing down 360 dunks? And it's a tight six minutes. And it has like very large themes in it and an arc.

And then she delivered it like a professional too. I'll send it to you. You'll, you'll really like it. I'm so glad she has that gift and that she could share it with all those people. I mean, you know what it's like sitting and having someone be able to capture a person in a really moving, compelling, powerful eulogy and then being able to sort of survive standing up and giving it.

It helps all of those hundreds of people and it stays with you forever. Yeah, it was amazing. She was a rock star. I want to remind people that if you are grieving during the holidays, do what you can to be around people who make you laugh and remember that the life is precious. And at the time we have here, the people who leave us want us to spend it in the best way possible.

And I am thankful for you, JVL, and the Bulwark community and the Bulwark team. Just in a couple months, you guys have given me hope when I've really not had a lot. It's very awesome. And I'm obviously grateful for my family. And I want to throw it to you. Give me some gratitude. Yeah, all the same. I guess somebody somewhere in Bulwark land had said that Jack had died. I really have been just off the grid for two weeks because in my inbox are hundreds of emails

from Bulwark readers sending their condolences and people sent me, one of our very good friends, hi there, Holly, sent me a piece of art that she made for me and we were just so touched by all of this. And I understand, I lost one of my aunts on 9-11.

I understand like hitting the Thanksgiving holidays with a lot of grief. Gratitude can be an act of will, right? I mean, sometimes it flows naturally and sometimes you've got to just like grit your teeth and make, I'm going to be grateful for the things I have. And this is, you know, depending on where you are in life, this may be a moment where you have to grit your teeth and make gratitude an act of will, but it will help if you do.

I am convinced that gratitude is the absolute king of all the virtues. Yes. So I am grateful to you, A.B. I'm so happy we get to work together. Yes, me too. Yeah. And for all you guys who listen and read us and watch us and email us and support us and our friends to us, I'm grateful for you guys, too. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Happy Thanksgiving. That's a perfect way to end, JVL. Thank you so much. We missed you so much. Have the best Thanksgiving that you can. Hug that mother-in-law for all of us. And Charlie will be back in the chair on Monday. Everyone tune in then. Thank you.

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.