The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: A Rogue Presidency

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

Trump wants to put his knee on the neck of America with a violent, illegal presidency. Plus, the self-abasement of DeSantis and Tim Scott, Nikki waits 'til the 11th hour to punch harder, and Stefanik readies for her close-up. Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday.

landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. Happy Monday and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes, joined again by my colleague Will Salatan. Will, as I was mentioning to you a couple minutes ago, usually on Mondays we have a lot of catching up to do, but oh my God, there is so much

going on right now. I mean, we have the rather pathetic sad trombone exit of DeSantis. We have the New Hampshire primary. We have the weekend with the Edel Don to catch up with. But anyway, happy Monday. Good to be with you again. Always fun. Thank you, Charlie.

You too. It's fun for us because we're covering this stuff. It's bad for obviously America. It's bad for any Republican candidate other than Donald Trump and really bad week for NFL kickers. This was a bad week to be a kicker. Sorry. Sorry for your Packers, but too soon to talk about the Packer game. The bills also, you know, there's going to be a lot of reemployment, a lot of churn in the NFL kicking market. I think it's going to be a boom market for sports psychologists over the next few months. But that is just me.

Okay, can we just start off with one like little bright moment? As we all know, Rhonda Sandis has quit the race and he left. It was so on brand the way he left. He did a sort of a smiling video, which was really awkward. But then he left with a quote from Churchill about something or other, which turns out to be completely bogus. Okay. So his crack staff comes up with this quote, attributes it to Winston Churchill. All the Churchill people said, yeah, he never said that. Here's the really good part though. Okay. This is chef's kiss. It actually,

the quote that was not from Churchill actually came from a 1938 Budweiser ad. Which I'm sorry. It's like, you know, from the shambolic launch with Elon Musk to this sort of pathetic taking a knee, bending the knee to Donald Trump. So give me your thoughts on this. I have my piece up this morning, actually was up last night, the obit for the campaign, which I start off by saying it's almost too easy. With Ron DeSantis, it's almost too easy. Bad candidate, lousy message, awful campaign. And then of course, there's a Republican electorate that did not want Trump light when they had the real thing, right? As somebody said, you know, why would you go see

the cover band when the Rolling Stones are still playing? You know, it's like, it was on Joe Scarborough this morning and he was saying, you know, it's like, if you actually can go see Fat Elvis, are you going to go to Vegas to see an Elvis impersonator? No, they had the real thing. So your thoughts, Ron DeSantis out before the first vote is cast in the first primary, and of course, immediately endorses Donald Trump, who's been mocking him, accusing him being a groomer, calling him de sanctimonious, meatball, Ron. We're just used to all this now, right? Right. In DeSantis' defense, the fact is, I didn't realize this came from a Budweiser ad, but that does make it less filling, if that's any, right?

Pre-woke Bud. Yeah. If you haven't seen the DeSantis video, not that you want to watch Ron DeSantis, but that's as much makeup as I've ever seen this guy wear. I mean, this was a very carefully rehearsed. It's like the exit was planned for some time, right? It was all about the exit. But you're right.

It's all about Ron DeSantis being a beta, being abused by Donald Trump for months and months, and then saying, I endorse Donald Trump, which is, of course, what they're all doing. But he was supposed to be the Florida alpha. Right. Turns out to be, when it really counts, total thorough beta. And this is his life now. Right. The way that he went out actually makes perfect sense. He beats Nikki Haley in Iowa, which 10 months ago should have been obvious, but he managed to sink so low

that he comes back at the end. He just ekes out a second place, which he's going to claim as a victory. And just before he would get absolutely humiliated in New Hampshire in single digits, right? He gets out. So he'll claim I was the strongest candidate other than Donald Trump in 2024. And his idea is he's going to run again in 2028. Charlie, who is going to break it to Ron DeSantis that he was the problem, that people don't like Ron DeSantis for president. And so you can change all the staff, you can change the strategy, but if your candidate is Ron DeSantis, you're going to lose. And then of course, there's the completely unanswerable question now. Well, what if Ron DeSantis had actually run against the guy he was running against? What if instead of waiting six

months after the midterm elections and thinking that Republicans cared about legislation and policy and punching the libs and Mickey Mouse in the face? What if he instead, he'd gotten in right away, capitalized on the momentum, and had actually gone after Donald Trump? Would that have made a difference? Or is the Republican electorate become so Trumpified that none of it would have worked? What do you think? Again, we'll never know because he didn't try. Well, he probably decided that the strategy that you're proposing, which is the strategy that Chris Christie tried, was going to undercut him in the long term. He thinks he's got a long term. So he was either going to inherit the Trump vote, or he was going

to be the second fiddle and get out. I'm guessing that that was his strategy. Charlie, one of the strangest things for me, because I've been watching a lot of Ron DeSantis from doing press conferences in Florida, running the state of Florida. In Florida, he is an alpha. He is the alpha and he handles that role quite well. So it's almost as though he decided he wasn't going to play that role in this race. It was too dangerous to go with Donald Trump. And I think a lot of what we need to talk about today is what we've learned about the Republican Party and the falsification of this idea that you could run against Donald Trump and win. Well, okay, so I think I understand what the strategy was, which is to move to the right to make yourself absolutely acceptable to MAGA world, you know,

Trumpism without the baggage, Trumpism without Trump, because, and the central calculation was that the Republican base would move on from Donald Trump if certain things happen, including the indictments. Now, as shocking as it is to people like you and I, and probably to many of our viewers, that Republicans have rallied around Donald Trump despite 91 criminal charges, despite the fraud case, despite the finding of subsexual assault. He was also shocking to Ron DeSantis and to many of that world and conservatism that we're just thinking, you don't need to go after Donald Trump. You don't need to take a shot at him because he's going to go down under his own weight once they come up with these charges. And that really was, you know, the statement of the case here. So his miscalculation was fundamental. So he's as shocked, I think, as a lot of other people at what's happened to the Republican electorate.

What do you think? I agree with that. I don't know what it is that he thought was going to take Trump down, but clearly he thought some deus ex machina, something was going to do it for him because he wasn't going to do it himself. Right. One of the tells about DeSantis is, listen to what he says now about Nikki Haley and why she can't win. And so even when he was still in the race, it was him, Trump, and Haley. And DeSantis' line the whole time was, Haley can't do it. And the reason she can't do it is because she can't win the MAGA vote. She's alienating the MAGA vote. She's running against that. So that was a way of him telling what his strategy was, which is I'm going to be as

MAGA, more MAGA. I mean, he gets out of the race and says Trump wasn't as anti-Fauci as he needed to be. So he was running to the right of Trump. He was going to inherit that vote. And he believed, DeSantis was betting that you can't win the Republican presidential primaries running against MAGA. And I think he's probably right. Let's just play his parting shot as he is,

you know, taking a knee for Donald Trump. He's taking a shot against Nikki Haley. It's clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance. They watch his presidency get stymied by relentless resistance, and they see Democrats using lawfare this day to attack him. I've had disagreements with Donald Trump, such as on the coronavirus pandemic and his elevation of Anthony Fauci. Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear. I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee. Of course, I will honor that pledge.

He has my endorsement because we can't go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackage formed of warmed over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents. Okay, so Will, what is the warmed over corporatism that he's talking about here? I'm not up on my DeSantis speak yet. So Nikki Haley warmed over corporatism. Well, one of the hallmarks, I think, of the 2024 Ron DeSantis campaign was a rejection of the distinction between public and private. That is, DeSantis has fully advocated state interference in private.

Disney is the classic example. I don't like what this company is doing. I don't like its woke politics. So I'm going to change the tax laws to punish it. Big tech, he proposed going after big tech. He rejected the traditional capitalist Republican Party that said the government should stay out. We may not like what companies are doing in terms of their politics, whatever, but we don't do that.

And so when he's attacking the warmed over corporatism of Nikki Haley, I think that's what he's rejecting. This is the end of the Reagan Republican Party, right? It's a culturally conservative, but not economically conservative party now. That's not just Ron DeSantis, not merely Ron DeSantis. I think that that attitude is going to suffuse, you know, MAGA world, including a second Trump term, that they are willing to use the powers of the government, the regulatory powers of the government to go after, to reward friends, to punish enemies, to bring people into line. Let's talk about what's going

to happen in New Hampshire tomorrow. I want to have a caveat here that New Hampshire has a long tradition of surprising people. The polls would suggest that Donald Trump is going to romp, that even though Nikki Haley did get everything she wanted in terms of a two-person race, it is her. She is the last woman standing. Interestingly enough, it is a woman in the Republican Party, the last woman standing against Donald Trump. But let's do a little quick flashback here, Will. This is from Chris Christie. By the way, I really miss Chris Christie today, but I'm probably alone here. When he was caught on hot mic the day that he pulled out of the race talking about Nikki Haley, this is what Chris Christie had to say. People don't want to hear it, Wayne.

They don't want to hear it. We know we're right, but they don't want to hear it. And we couldn't have been any clearer. We couldn't have been any more direct or worked any harder. Unless we forget she spent $68 million. Well, when you give land to China and places like that. Yeah, that's what you get. I mean, look, she spent $68 million so far, just on TV.

Spent $68 million so far, $59 million by DeSantis, and we spent $12. I mean, who's punching above their weight and who's getting a return on their investment? And she's going to get smoked. She's going to get smoked. She's not up to it. Thoughts on the eve of New Hampshire. So the reason why I wanted to go back to this hot mic moment from Christie is I think he got it exactly right. And I think what we're seeing in New Hampshire is a test of two

alternative theories of the Republican Party. One is the Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire theory of the party, which was if you can consolidate the anti-Trump vote, particularly in New Hampshire, where a lot of independents, aka undeclared, can vote, right, and do vote, it's an open primary, you can take out Trump because the Republican Party is ready to move on, right? What Chris Christie said on the hot mic was basically, we tried this. I'm getting out now because we tried this idea of trying to find enough Republicans, people who voted in Republican primaries to take out Donald Trump, and we couldn't do it. He says to his, I think it's his state chairman, they don't want to hear it, Wayne. They don't want it. We tried. We told people the truth about Trump. They don't want to hear it. I'm not doing

well enough. And he says about Nikki Haley, she's going to get smoked. Now, there are many reasons why Nikki Haley could get smoked. Some of it is the way she's running, right? But some of it is that there aren't enough Republicans for Nikki Haley, that Nikki Haley is winning independence. She's winning the undeclared in New Hampshire, but there aren't enough of them. And Republicans in New Hampshire are voting overwhelmingly and they're consolidating behind Donald Trump. So I think, Charlie, my big picture about New

Hampshire, the Sununu theory about the Republican Party is wrong, and the Christie on his way out theory is right. All right, we're going to come back to Sununu in a moment. So over the weekend, it is interesting that, you know, this thing is pretty much over, it's going to be over in the next 48 hours. And you know, one Republican after another is, you know, is coming and embracing Donald Trump. And I do think that it's worth spending just a moment, you know, attention ought to be paid to what Donald Trump is doing and saying. And can I read something from my newsletter here? I know it's obnoxious to do this, but before we spend the weekend with the addled Don, let's leave aside for a moment, the defeats, the impeachments, the corruption,

the lies, the rape, the multiple felony indictments for the moment. Let's also pass over his calls for terminating parts of the constitution, his claim of total immunity, his malevolence and his bigotry and the hundreds of thousands of people who probably died as a result of his demagoguery on COVID. Let's leave that aside. Instead, let's just think about what he did this weekend. You know, and whether it is, you know, praising Viktor Orban, calling Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, you know, really fine people, they were murderous thugs. What else signaled it again, that he would surrender Ukraine to Russia, he throws Taiwan under the bus, etc, etc. And then, of course, there was this entertaining moment where the stable genius confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.

Let's just listen to that. You know, when she comes here, she gets like nine people and the press never reports the crowds, you know. By the way, they never report the crowd on January 6th. You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley. You know, they do. You know, they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it because of lots of things like Nikki Haley is in charge of security. We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guard, whatever they want.

They turned it down. They don't want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people. Okay, so Haley, obviously, you know, jumped on that. Other people jumped on that. Like Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley are different people. Nikki Haley was not in charge. Nikki Haley was not in government at the time. Okay, now, considering how much investment Republicans are putting into the Joe Biden is senile, and he's losing stuff. It's really kind of extraordinary all of the, you know, the flubs and the addled rants that Donald Trump is going on. But that was that was kind of a classic moment, wasn't it? Totally, totally. So first of all, I agree with you about the hypocrisy of it. They're going to say Biden is addled, but obviously Trump is clearly addled

here. But the second thing about this thing is, remember, Charlie, every time Trump lies about the 2020 election, there's this debate. Is he lying or does he actually believe he won? Oh, I know where you're going here. So I'm still in the camp that he believes he won, right? Donald Trump is actually delusional and that this is more dangerous. This episode that we just saw in New Hampshire is to me more evidence of that. He's talking about Nikki Haley. He's talking about her not having crowds big enough in New Hampshire. And then he sort of in his mind segues to January 6th and what a great day that was. There were all these people who showed up. He's thinking about Nancy Pelosi in the Capitol.

And he clearly in his mind has just segued from one world into another. And he's just transposed the character of Nikki Haley into that world. And you're just seeing this guy who's, I don't know how to describe this. He's detached from reality. He's confused to completely different scenes. And you can see how in his mind, he still believes that there were, you know, ballots in the suitcases in Georgia and that kind of thing. This is extremely dangerous. The fact that this guy is sincere, but delusional is not comforting, right? He could survive the Jack Smith charges of fraud because he actually believed it, right? And it would make it more dangerous to put him back in the White House because God knows what he believes, what he will

believe about himself once he's president again. And in the next election. Anyway, I just think this is a window into the delusionality of Donald Trump. And Nikki Haley, to her credit, actually raised that issue, you know, in the twilight of her campaign. And by the way, you know, my formulation, Joe Biden is old. And what Joe Biden needs to say is, yes, I am old, but so is he. And he's old and dangerous and crazy or crazy and dangerous. Yes, I am old. I am so old, blah, blah, blah. But he's old too. And he's crazy and he's dangerous. Let's play Nikki Haley because Nikki Haley actually waits until the 11th hour to unleash some stronger attacks on Donald Trump. And by the way, she is not going to be his vice president. I don't think there's any question about that.

Here's Nikki Haley going after Donald Trump this weekend, right before the New Hampshire primary. I want to ask you about an ad that you have released that includes video and testimony from the mother of Otto Warmbier, who was an American student from the University of Virginia who was taken prisoner in North Korea and died, as you know, after the Trump administration did bring him home. Why do you think this story is one you need to tell?

This was a happy, smart kid. He went to North Korea. And I mean, the thugs in North Korea tortured him and returned him back in a state that is unconscionable. But what did Trump do? He talked about love letters going back and forth to Kim Jong-un. Cindy would contact me. She was so upset. And he went and said, oh, but Kim said that he wasn't aware of any torture that happened to Otto. All you had to do was look at Otto when he was returned back to his parents. But this goes back to a pattern. I mean, we saw this over and over again. It's not just that. He congratulated China's President Xi a dozen times after China gave us COVID. He congratulated the Chinese Communist Party on their 70th anniversary. We don't congratulate the Communist Chinese Party. I remember at the United Nations, I had to sit him down and tell him to stop this bromance with Putin. I mean, you can't have someone who's trying to buddy up with dictators that want to kill us.

Boy, you know, you got to give her credit. Although she clearly thinks that she is living in, you know, in a time machine that took her back to 2015. That's the way Republicans taught. The larger point here is this is what it would have sounded like, as you're saying, if Nikki Haley had gone after Donald Trump. What we've seen in this campaign is the rightly or wrongly Nikki Haley. Oh, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him, right? Which I don't want to really criticize Nikki Haley for because Charlie, you know, I don't know if it's Nikki's fault, but rightly or wrongly, cowardice has followed Nikki Haley throughout this campaign, right? She has not attacked Donald Trump, but this indictment that

she's delivering now about Trump and the dictators, this is not a rightly or wrongly indictment. This is a wrongly. This is Donald Trump is wrong. This is Donald Trump loves dictators. She names the cases we know about, the love letters to Kim Jong-un, the stuff about President Xi. But this thing she mentions at the end, I had to sit him down at the United Nations and tell him to stop this bromance with Putin. Have you ever heard this storyance with Putin. Have you ever heard this story before? Nope. I've never heard this story. Nikki Haley hasn't told this

to all the people who wrote books about Donald Trump. Seems relevant. She needs to be asked about this. Here is another former Trump official who has a story of directly talking to Donald Trump and his love of dictators and having to talk him out of his bromance with Putin. I want to hear more about this because clearly it's more evidence of why the guy that- Had to wait for her book. Right. And we know, Charlie, that she's going to endorse it. Meanwhile, we should spend some time talking about this, this new sort of denialism that's going on. All of the smart anti-anti-Trumpers, the Ross Douthats of the world, and the Hugh

Hewitts are saying, Hugh, people need to calm down. He is not really dangerous. He does not pose a threat to democracy. You should stop saying this because you are over-caffeinated. You are hysterical. Do not take what he is saying seriously. And yet, here's Donald Trump almost on a daily basis saying, no, wait, I really do want to be a dictator. I really do want to be an authoritarian. I really do want absolute immunity. Let's just play a soundbite over the weekend. Can we just mention the irony of him being the law and order guy, having just said that I want to be exempt from all the laws? Let's just listen to that. You have to give a president full and total immunity. And you know, I liken it to a little bit, police, you have to give them back

their authority and their power because our country is crime-free. You can hold them accountable for killing people, right? So it's like, it is interesting that he links that together with police, which we've talked about before. I'm guessing that if you asked him about, well, what about qualified immunity, he would have no idea what you're talking about. But then he says this. Having said that he wants full and total immunity from the rule of law, he says this. We have to go back to being a country of law and order. Have to do it.

Not for me. And you will have, very seldom, but you will have the rogue, we call it the rogue cop, the bad apple, and perhaps you'll have that also with president. But there's nothing you can do about that. You're going to have to give the president, you're going to have to allow a president, any president to have immunity so that that president can act and do what he feels and what his group of advisors feel is the absolute right thing. Otherwise, you're going to have presidents that are totally impotent. They can't break the law.

And we've had enough of them already. Okay. So, I mean, I get this image of sort of, you know, the Ross Douthats of the world, the Hugh Hewitt's going, nothing to see here, nothing to see here. And there's Trump going, no, wait, wait, wait. I need to have total immunity for rogue presidents because if I am not allowed to break the law, if I am not above the law, then I'm just not going to be able to do anything. Okay. I don't have a funny way of talking about this because this is really serious. No. So dear American people. Dear American people. I don't know how to talk. We're going to have an election in November as to

whether this guy becomes president again. He's telling you he is an authoritarian. This is explicit authoritarianism. This is the definition of authoritarianism. So we have a guy who has literally tried to block the peaceful transfer of power and stay in power after the people voted him out. He has called explicitly for suspending the Constitution to reinstate him. Okay, if that wasn't enough, so he's vowed to send troops into American cities. Again, that's another trademark of authoritarianism. But this thing that just happened, listen to his words, people. I want full and total immunity.

Charlie, we talked about the comparison to cops. He's drawing the comparison. Cops only have qualified immunity. Charlie, you talked about the comparison to cops. He's drawing the comparison. Cops only have qualified immunity. Trump is demanding for himself unqualified immunity, full and total immunity. Those are his words, right? He uses the phrase, he says, you have to give presidents their authority and their power. Again, the authoritarian- Even rogue presidents, authority, power, full and total immunity, rogue cops, rogue presidents. There's nothing you can do about that. He says, and his definition of what will happen once you give the immunity is the president

will have full authority to do quote, whatever he feels is the absolute right thing. What he feels, this is the most explicit, concise definition of authoritarianism you can get. So, Charlie, we can't stop Americans for voting for authoritarianism, but it is real clear. We can make it clear what the election is a referendum is. It is a referendum on this. So if I want to, you know, put my knee on the neck of America for a really, really long time, I should be immune from doing that. You know what the really bad news is?

I just had this flash as you were talking that we could have people saying, look, he's already announcing that he wants to be the rogue president who is immune from the law. can see Milwaukee Republican National Convention, Donald Trump strides out on the stage and behind him in bright lights, rogue president, that he's actually going to embrace and his people will go out of their minds. Women will weep. Children will throw their hands up in the air, the rogue presidency. And so even though we're warning, you understand what he's saying. He is talking about a rogue, potentially violent, illegal presidency. And if he elected, you can't say that the American people were not told exactly what they're getting. And maybe that's what they want. His comments about Victor Orban, it's not just that he has a bromance. Victor Orban, who governs explicitly as an illiberal leader, illiberal strongman.

And I think the quote is something like, yes, Viktor Orban is a strongman and countries need strongmen. You know, he's very explicitly saying that Viktor Orban's illegal authoritarianism is a good model for him, for us. There's nothing subtle about it. Meanwhile, this gets worse, doesn't it? We not only have the denialists out there saying he doesn't really mean it, we're also having the rationalizers and the normalizers. Where do you want to start with this? Because we certainly saw that parade over the weekend should we start with tim scott yeah let's go to tim scott and then we'll go to doug bergham okay we'll work up to that okay here's tim scott who by the way was appointed to

the united states senate originally by nikki haley and then as a thank you note to her uh turned around and endorsed donald trump and put on over the weekend. I mean, if it wasn't for the DeSantis stuff, this is what we'd be talking about. The incredible self abasement of Tim Scott. But here's here's Tim Scott rationalizing Donald Trump's recent behavior. Senator Donald Trump is watching some pretty personal attacks against Nikki Haley, who I know you've known for a very long time. He suggested she is eligible to be president, even though she is. She was born in your home state of South Carolina.

He repeatedly mocked her, given first name, Nimarata, even though she has gone by her middle name, Nikki, her whole life. Are you comfortable with that kind of rhetoric from the president, the former president? Well, I'm watching rhetoric on all sides of the issues facing becoming president. What I mean by that is the rhetoric from Joe Biden is terrible, but it is salacious. Nikki Haley questions whether 70-year-olds should be allowed to run for president. I think there is so much negativity and toxicity in this aim to becoming president again or for the first time that we should be very clear and look at both sides of the comments made. So what was that fuckwad word salad, Will? Okay, what is going on in the Republican Party right now is we have the authoritarian telling

everyone, hey, I'm an authoritarian. I want a mandate for my authoritarianism. And what's going on around him is the collapse of all of these Republican politicians into the authoritarianism. They're finding ways to defend or excuse it or look the other way. So Tim Scott's version of this is the both sides stuff, right? So part of authoritarianism is I want power and authority, and I don't want anyone my way. But part of it, Charlie, what makes it really dangerous in history is targeting minorities. So Trump called for a Muslim ban, going after, quote, Hussein Obama. Now he's going after Nimarata, Nikki Haley, right? They're using her Indian first name. Birther conspiracy theory, which of course kind of launched Donald Trump.

I mean- It is what Trump has always been, the birther guy, right? So ethnic persecution is part of the danger of authoritarianism. So Trump is making it explicit. And Tim Scott is emerging as a minority, speaking out, endorsing Donald Trump, defending Donald Trump as he does this, right? And what Scott is saying is that the ethnic attacks, Trump's ethnic attacks on Nikki Haley and others are no worse than standard political fare. He's just saying that's what, you know, Joe Biden says mean things. Other people say mean things, both sides, all sides. So that's a way of normalizing the ethnic bigotry. And that's

how we start to descend further into a mindset where we not only have an authoritarian president. I think we are way past normalizing it. It's almost like the fact that he's bringing up the birther conspiracy thing didn't even register. I mean, it's barely a speed bump. We've normalized the normalization of these things. And so he's asked about these really vicious personal attacks. And I agree with everything you said here. I just don't want to over intellectualize it, because it's also just the embracing of the total assholery of it. I mean, just the viciousness of it. And Tim Scott cannot bring himself to utter the slightest criticism without shifting into the, well, all of the toxicity. It is so pathetic, but also the

absolute loyalty. And we're seeing this again and again, that it's not just enough to say, I'm supporting Donald Trump. You need to mimic or provide cover for everything he says. You know, like Elise Stefanik asked about immigrants poisoning the blood and she's raising her hand. Absolutely, I'm saying that. Whatever he says, they are going to embrace. So this is a shift from 2016, where at least they would go, all right, well, yes, I disagree with that. I'm offended by that, but it's a binary choice, whatever way they rationalize. Now it's like, no, I'm all in on this. You mentioned Doug Burgum. For people who think that Tim Scott was the most cringeworthy person, Doug Burgum was a presidential candidate for about 10 minutes, right? Just kind of was around. He's the governor of North Dakota. I'm asking this because the North Dakota, South Dakota thing

always kind of trips me up. I mean, Kristi Noem, maybe the VP, is South Dakota. So he dropped out and endorsed Donald Trump, even though at one time he had said he would never do business with Donald Trump. So here's Doug Burgum yesterday. This was one of the high points of your Sunday morning, I understand, Will, listening to this. I almost threw a brick at the TV. I didn't have a brick, Charlie.

I did have a TV. So no TVs were damaged in the course of watching this though? You just thought about it? I thought hard. Doug Burgum. Okay. Donald Trump has taken to referring to his opponent Nikki Haley by her given name, a mangled version of that, Nimarata, the kind of thing he did with Barack Obama using his middle name Hussein. He's also reported, reposted false conspiracy theories saying she is not eligible to run for president because her Indian immigrant parents were not yet American citizens. She was born in South Carolina. Why do

you think he is doing this? Well, all I know is that I believe this election, the primary election, is going to be over after Tuesday. President Trump is leading in all 50 states. No, please answer the question, sir. Answer the question about why you think Donald Trump is doing that. I think it's politics. You know, Joe Biden launched his campaign a couple of weeks ago with a set of personal attacks on President Trump. He talked about President Trump.

He talked about the lawfare that they're mobilizing to try to slow him down as a candidacy. He didn't talk about inflation. He didn't talk about violent crime in our cities. He didn't talk about the open border where we've had a massive invasion. And now we've had more fentanyl deaths than four Vietnams in our country under Joe Biden the last three years. No, he talked about attacking his opponent. That's politics around the world and it's politics in America. So do you think that's the kind of politics that Donald Trump is using going after Nikki Haley's heritage that will bring a country together?

I think that the, I mean, you could ask me the question about, you know, what did Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris say, the, you know, the vicious things they said about Joe Biden, even during debates nationally televised within that party. This is all in the norm inside for politics in our country. But once we agree as parties, we get behind candidates. The Democrats got behind Biden in 2020. I'm confident Republicans are going to get behind President Trump. OK, this is normal. This is normal. Calling out somebody's felony indictments is just exactly the same thing as making fun of somebody's ethnic heritage and implying that they are perhaps

because of their ethnicity are not eligible to be president. Completely the same thing, completely normal will, right? Right. So the line at the end where he says it's all in the norm, that's where I wanted to throw the brick. He's literally saying, you know, it's totally normal. The ethnic bigotry is normal. There's say claiming that someone because of their heritage is ineligible to run for president. Totally normal, right? So you might ask yourself, why should we care what Doug Burgum says, right? As you say, running for president for like 10 minutes, the governor of the, who cares about this guy? And that's what gets me though. This guy is a nobody. I mean, not a nobody. He's, he's a billionaire or whatever. He's a, he's a governor, but he was completely unimportant,

right? And Charlie, we know that all he's doing is running for energy secretary. That's what he's been doing the whole time, right? And then he endorses Trump right before Iowa. He is the kind of person who makes an authoritarian state possible, right? Because he's a businessman. He's normal. You know, he's a family guy. He's a Christian, whatever.

But when he's confronted with an overt authoritarianism and overt ethnic persecution, he just says, oh, it's normal. be in the cabinet. The number one thing on their resume is that I defended the most indefensible thing that you did, which proves that I am absolutely loyal. I mean, this has now become the thing. And so yes, this is authoritarianism, but it's also kind of the cult, the cult of personality. It's also the bending the knee to the total bottomless narcissism of Donald Trump, that it's not enough for you to support me. You must, no matter what it is. So first interview is going to be, yeah, they tried to get me to say that your racist attack was racist, but I didn't, Mr. President. I said it was completely normal.

Right. If this happens, Charlie, if we have a second Trump administration, it is going to be full of people like Doug Burgum, like Elise Stefanik. It's all of these people who simply watch whatever Donald Trump does or says, defend it, excuse it, salute it. That's their path to slightly elevating themselves from governor of North Dakota to energy secretary or to becoming the House Republican chair. To have an authoritarian state, you need these people. This is one of them. All right. So let's talk about this Veep thing. Is it too early? Is it too early to talk about this? Because you can tell that the campaign is really ramping up lots of stories, lots of speculation. What is Will's take on this? So my take is that it's happening right now. So there has been, normal people are not like us. They don't have to watch a lot of this stuff. But what's been going on on the campaign trail for the last week or so has been a bunch of Republicans auditioning to be Donald Trump's vice president.

I mean, and when I say audition, I mean, literally, they endorsed Donald Trump. And the way they endorse it is they go up on stage with him. And Trump stands back five or 10 feet and beams, folds his arms. He's an authoritarian. And the person does their song and dance. So we've seen Elise Stefanik do this. We've seen Vivek Ramaswamy do this. We've seen Tim Scott.

I'm trying to think of who else has done it so far. DeSantis wasn't there in person. Tim Scott even got engaged. He wants it so bad. He got engaged over the weekend. Okay. Yeah. I mean, so bad he got engaged over the weekend. Okay. Yeah, I mean, and he's got a fiance. He's committed to that person, sort of, but he's really committed to Donald Trump. So all of these folks are putting on a show, and I guess Trump is evaluating what, how, by the way, Charlie, I need to get some gift advice from you. So I play basketball and I wear some knee pads because if you go, if you fall on a hard court, you can hurt your knees, right? I have an extra pair that I haven't used. And I'm wondering whether I can just send this. You have a prop. Yeah. Should I send a

separate pair of knee pads to each of these people, to Stefanik and Ramaswamy and Tim Scott and the others? Or can I just send one pair and can they circulate? Maybe I could give it to Trump and whoever shows up can wear the one pair. I think it's completely unnecessary for you to send your knee pads to them because based on their current behavior, they all have their own already. I think that some of those folks have had those knee pads in the closet for a very long time. So I don't think it's necessary for you to do it. But I just keep thinking that you need to understand the overriding priority that Donald Trump will have when he thinks about this, that it's got to be the most loyal, least unpredictable possible candidate. The vice president, and I'm going to repeat this

endlessly, is the one person he cannot fire. He is, I think, still traumatized by Mike Pence's extraordinary burst of independence after four years of being a complete toady. He also knows that in theory, if we actually don't terminate the constitution, if he's elected president, he will be a lame duck president. And that vice president will be the heir apparent, and therefore a potential different center of power. So it's got to be somebody small, unchallenging, and absolutely loyal and dependent. It's an interesting formulation there. If you put a gun to my head today and said, who's it going to be? I'd say Elise Stefanik.

But I'm guessing that in his lizard brain, he's already thinking he knows who Elise Stefanik is. He knows what a shapeshifter she is. He knows what a completely ambitious opportunist she is. And the fact that she's from Harvard might give him pause that here's somebody who is actually cunning, completely without principle, maybe smart, but are they really going to be the toady when I really need them to be the toady? So far, the answer is yes, but. I love that analysis. And as you were laying it out, I was looking at my list of candidates here. So the four people that I remember over the last week or so going up and doing the auditions are Doug Burgum, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, and Elise Stefanik. Lee Zeldin was there, but he's not in them running. And I asked myself the Charlie Sykes question.

Well, first of all, two of these guys are ethnic minorities, and that's a big advantage because if Trump is going to run a campaign of ethnic bigotry, he's going to need a front man. He's going to need somebody with dark skin who can rationalize this, right? And so Scott is already doing it. Ramaswamy, I think, would do it for him. But let me come back to the Charlie Sykes test, which is the next January 6th, or who is the person he can count on to do his bidding when it's staying in power? I have to cross out Tim Scott. I don't think he's trustworthy. He's a little too much in danger of being an actual Christian who might actually defend the Constitution, do the right thing. Who might have actual beliefs buried deep down there inside.

I mean, Tim Scott, don't you think he gives off a little bit of the Mike Pence vibe that he might do the right thing? So I would worry about that if I were Trump. You can't have any pesky conscience lurking down there, right? Right. Burgum's a cipher. I don't know what you would say about him. Ramaswamy is pretty avidly pro-Trump, and he's never been in politics before. He's just a businessman. He's kind of an authoritarian, but she is so avidly pro-Trump and she will defend absolutely anything. She's the only one I think who has said J6 hostages, right?

Yes. The hostages, the poisoning, the blood, she will say whatever she has to say. Right. So I kind of think if I were Trump, I'd bet on her to defend me if I needed to override the constitution at the end. What do you think? No, no. I think, as I said, if somebody had to pick somebody, it would be her. You know, the Kristi Gnomes out there, I mean, I think they're going to look at because also that quirk, that kink that he has, that everybody has to look a certain way. They have to be from central casting. So, okay, I'm going to get ripped for this. But if somebody says to Donald Trump, yeah, Elise Stefanik is great, but you know, she has fat ankles.

That could be enough for Donald Trump, because, Elise Stefanik is great, but you know, she has fat ankles. That could be enough for Donald Trump because this is a shallow, shallow, small man. So you might look at Kristi Noem and say, boy, she just looks better. Now, of course, the fact that she's diddling around with Corey Lewandowski, big negative, but we're in a post shame MAGA world, who knows? I just want you not to be too shocked if it's one of his kids. Do not be gobsmacked if it's one of his kids. I'm just telling you. I will be gobsmacked if it happens, but not many things, but that would be one of them. Who else is out there that's in the world? Well, you mentioned Kristi Noem. She could do it.

But I don't know of many others. Carrie Lake? No, too crazy. I think you need crazy at this point. You need someone who's going to, but he has a woman problem. If you look at polls, he definitely does much better with men than with women. So he needs to fix that. The minority thing is a factor. Another white guy, I just don't know. I think Trump's got the white guy vote. No, at least Stefanik is the logical one. And I think, you know, the question is, you know, because she is incredibly loyal, she will be an attack dog, she will say and defend

absolutely anything. And if it is her job to go after Joe Biden, if it's her job to go after Kamala Harris, she will do it. However, one of the lessons that we always forget, we need to relearn every cycle is that not everybody scales up. Rhonda Sanders was the ultimate alpha in Florida. But what happened when he tried to scale up? And not everybody can make that particular leap. And I don't think that people ought to be tremendously sure. I've watched her in some of the press gaggles and everything.

And remember, she's a, you know, a congressperson. She's not a governor. She's not a senator. She's just a congressperson. And so I'm not sure that she's had the experience on the national stage. But he doesn't want to be overshadowed. No, no, she's an apparatchik and she owes her whole career to him. I mean, somebody who owes everything to Donald, of course, Donald Trump believes everybody, including Ron DeSantis owes everything to him. Right. But have someone who is completely dependent. I mean, if you're Trump and you're afraid of the Mike Pence scenario, Pence was the governor of Indiana. Pence had an independent and, and that's the danger. You don't want someone who actually believes something and who has a base other than you. Okay. That's a very, very good point. And she would be totally his creature.

I'm totally dependent on him. I just wonder whether or not she's too smart for him. You know, that he would be intimidated by that. I don't think smart is relevant. I mean, I think to me, one of the lessons of the Trump era has been that smart doesn't matter. What matters is courage. What matters is integrity. And she has none of it. In fact, that's true. Absolutely. To me, what's perfect about Elise Stefanik is she is the inversion of Liz Cheney. She is the person who would do for Trump what Liz Cheney wouldn't. Right. And she replaced. That's perfect. The whole point of, of Elise Stefanik, what she represents in history is a person who advertised her lack of integrity, right? Liz Cheney had to be thrown out because she believed in something other than Donald Trump. Elise Stefanik said, what she won't

do for you, I will. Now I'm trying not to, you know, there's obviously a misogynist version, but take out gender. It's the same point. The person who will do whatever you ask of them. If you want to call the people who have been imprisoned for crimes on January 6th hostages of illegitimate government, I will say that for you. I owe my job to you. I will owe my next job to you. I just don't see that person undercutting Trump. You're persuading me, but also your point that Elise Stefanik is the inverse, the opposite of Liz Cheney. It's almost as if the symbolism is just too much in our face here, is that the Republican Party replaces Liz Cheney. It's almost as if the symbolism is just too much in our face here, is that the Republican Party replaces Liz Cheney with her. That they look at Liz Cheney and her

integrity and her honor and her commitment to principle, and they say, no, we don't want that. We want this completely cowardly opportunist instead. And they got her. And they got her, you know, pretty good. Right. Can I bring this back to sort of the demise of the Republican, of the Reagan Republican Party? Yeah. Just for people who have forgotten what the Republican Party used to stand for. It's, you know, limited government, fiscal responsibility, a strong role for America and the world, law and order.

Ha ha. Right. So what Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail in 20, he's been doing this 2016, 2020, 2024. It's all a continuation of just obliterating all of that. Trump is on the campaign trail attacking Nikki Haley for proposing to cut government programs, for proposing to cut entitlements. He's attacking her for supporting aid to Ukraine. You know, he wants Republicans to be an isolationist party. He's attacking law and order. He's attacking the prosecutors, courts, judges, juries. Now we're at the point of attacking juries and saying it's all illegitimate. So that is the gradual obliteration of everything that used to be the Republican party. And what you're left

with, of course, is whatever Donald Trump says. So you've gotten rid of Liz Cheney, who had what a 95, 97, 98% conservative voting record by Reagan Republican standards, right? You're just getting rid of all that old stuff. Charlie, I don't think this party can be reconstituted as the Republican party. I don't see it. Yeah, the Reagan Republicans and have left the party or are leaving the party. A lot of them have retired at the elite level, that at the base level, these people are now voting for Nikki Haley. Donald Trump is complaining that half of Nikki Haley's voters are going to vote for Biden in the general. Those are the Republicans who are leaving, right? A lot of those people. And so there may be a conservative party in the future,

but I think we're done with the idea that it's going to be the Republican party. Because as Chris Christie said, the Republican party as presently constituted, people who vote in Republican primaries are not going to vote for a Reagan Republican like Chris Christie. I do not disagree with you at all. In fact, I think that particularly as you think about the generational shift that's going on here right now, again, if you would have asked me about this back in 2015, 2016, 2017, I would have said, you know, there's going to be no youth MAGA movement. I mean, young people are going to be absolutely repelled. But the reality is that most of the people who are, as you described them as Reagan Republicans, they're aging out.

They're leaving. They're retiring. They are, you know, yesterday's. You know, when you see the letters from, you know, former government officials or ex-members of Congress, the key thing is former and ex. There are a younger generation. Again, they may be a minority of young people, a substantial minority of young people. But as, you know, Tina Wynne was describing in her book on the podcast last week, there's this huge infrastructure bringing in an entire new generation into politics. And those folks are going to be around for 20, 30, 40 years in the Republican Party. And I don't see that shifting anytime soon. I mean, there is an historic shift of the Republican Party from being an

internationalist party, which it has been really since 1940. But, you know, after 2024, there will be almost no vestiges of that left. And it may be, I mean, how many years, you know, was that run? It may be, you know, 30, 40, 50 years before this party changes its direction again. I don't know. I mean, I'm sorry to leave on that particular dark note, Will. So, by the way, it is January 22nd. Can you imagine how much smarter we're going to be one year from today? Assuming we're still around.

You know, Charlie, I feel bad because not once today, I've got a pony on my shelf here, and not once have I felt like reaching for the pony. This was not a pony day. This was not pony day. This was knee pad day, unfortunately. I think we're going to have many, many more knee pad days than pony days coming up. Will, it is great talking with you.

We'll do this again next Monday, all right? All right, 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. Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.