The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: A Wannabe Coup

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

After this weekend's mutiny in Russia, the world is suddenly seeing Putin in a new light. Meanwhile, America's wannabe authoritarian goes full martyr, and Chris Christie is making it safe to say Voldemort again. Will Saletan joins guest host Mona Charen today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Mona Charan, Policy Editor at the Bulwark and Syndicated Columnist. I'm also the host of a different Bulwark podcast called Beg to Differ, which is also free and available wherever you get podcasts. And I'm sitting in today for Charlie Sykes.

And I'm delighted to be here, as usual on Mondays, with my colleague, Will Salatin. Well, happy Monday, Will. Thanks, Mona. It was quite the weekend. We all witnessed an extraordinary event, mostly on Saturday. By Sunday, it was over. I don't know if you'd call it an attempted coup, a coupette, I don't know. But Putin has relied for the last number of years on this private army, the Wagner Group, to do his dirty work around the world in Africa, in Syria, and of course, in Ukraine. Oh, and let's not forget, he also was in charge, Prigozhin, the head of this Wagner Group, who was in charge of the troll farm effort to help Trump in the 2016 election. Over the weekend, it looked like this little private army was turning and

marching on Moscow. And so we were all sort of, I'm sure you were, we were all riveted to this news watching what was going to happen. Of course, you didn't have a rooting interest, right? Because Prigozhin is the kind of, he's a former criminal. He spent something like 10 years in a Soviet prison. He's the kind of guy who, you know, he has people murdered and tortured first. He spent something like 10 years in a Soviet prison. He's the kind of guy who, you know, he has people murdered and tortured first. He murders people with sledgehammers on camera. I mean, it's, so not a great guy, but, Will, dramatic testimony to the weakness of Vladimir Putin's regime, right? Yeah. First of all, this was just the craziest thing to folks who are on vacation or doing something reasonable. You were out at your kid's soccer game or whatever. I mean,

you missed all of this and then life sort of returned to a relatively normal, but this was insane. Here's Vladimir Putin, who has put like 90 plus percent of his army in Ukraine. He's entirely focused on how much of Ukraine can we capture and keep. He's kind of emptied out his country, right? He's conscripted a bunch of people and sent them off there. And here is his, you know, chief commander. Well, I can't say his chief commander. Prokofiev wasn't in the defense ministry. He hated the defense ministry, but he's running the Wagner group. He's like the guy who's in all the videos. We're taking Bakhmut. He's the hero of the front for the Russians. And he turns around and invades Russia, and there's nobody in his way. He goes in, he takes over Rostov-on-Don, he takes over the military headquarters there. Then he just immediately proceeds up the highway to Moscow, and there doesn't appear to be anybody stopping him. They were cheering him. They were cheering him, we learned today, Will. You know,

the people were saying, we're behind you, and they were serving them coffee, and kind of amazing. It was. For folks who haven't seen, you can find videos online. So here's Russia, this sort of, you know, authoritarian, totalitarian state where the government's supposed to control all the media. And instead, what we have all over the internet is videos of ordinary Russians in Rostov-on-Don welcoming the Wagner group. And even after this is all over, they're cheering Prokofiev on his way out. This guy just mounted, I guess, Mona, I wouldn't call it a coup, maybe a mutiny at this point.

But they're cheering the guy who threatened Putin. And you're exactly right. It really changes everyone's understanding of what the heck is going on in Russia and what is the future of Vladimir Putin. Right. While one wouldn't want Mr. Prigozhin to stray too close to any open windows in the near future. At some point, Putin released a video in which he said that Prigozhin was a traitor, and the implication being that he should be arrested and charged. And yet, just a short few hours later, we learned

that Alexander Lukashenko, who was supposed to be Putin's little puppet in Belarus, was now Mr. Negotiator, negotiating in between Prokosian and Putin. And Putin agreed to a deal that will allow Prokosian to go to Minsk, and that promises no prosecution against any of the Wagner troops who participated in this little coupette or mutiny or whatever, which does represent a climb down, I would say. And let's listen to what Michael McFaul, former ambassador to Russia, said about this over the weekend. But on your escalation point, Chuck, I think it's a really important one because we've been debating this now for many, many months. And even the Biden administration from time to time has made decisions not to provide weapons to the Ukrainians, certain types of weapons, because they worry about escalation. But let's remember what we just witnessed here. Putin had the opportunity to escalate. He told the world and his people he was going to escalate,

and then he blinked. And I think that, to me, may be the most important lesson from this mutiny in Russia for the war in Ukraine. That this notion that he's going to double down and escalate, one, he may not want to, and B, he may not have the means to do so. So isn't that interesting, Will? I mean, yeah, I don't know about whether he would want to, but the second half of McFaul's point is really interesting. I mean, this may reveal that Putin just more. So the reason why Biden has held back was fear that, you know, Putin would escalate. And that's McFaul's point. We've been self-deterring, right? We're afraid of Putin becoming, that he's a tiger. And the message here is he's kind of a paper tiger. I can't draw a straight line from the way that Putin handled Prigozhin to the way

that Putin would handle more resistance from NATO or more threats or more weapons being sent to Ukraine. But this is kind of a Wizard of Oz moment, right? The curtain's been pulled back, and here's Putin with a guy staring him right in the face, threatening him directly and backing down. I mean, Mona, can you imagine what would be said about Joe Biden if there were some general who seizes a military base in Tampa or whatever and marches on Washington. And then Biden, you know, issues a big speech about like, this is a, you know, a revolt against the Republic and we must put this down.

And then Biden negotiates so that this guy can walk away, having shot down a bunch of American pilots. I mean, Prokofiev has shot down a bunch of helicopters up, I think one plane. Blood has been shed of his own people. So Putin negotiates to let this guy go. Then Putin gives the big speech about how there's going to be, this is a big confrontation. And then he doesn't follow through on it. And then, as you point out, Lukashenko, his puppet in Belarus, does the negotiating. And Mona, I'm of the opinion Lukashenko still is a puppet. And I literally have this image in my head of Putin

holding the little Lukashenko puppet and pretending to be negotiating by somebody else, but it's really Putin. And so it's just more cowardice on his part. Like he won't even be the person who comes out and says that he's negotiating. He's got to have his buddy do it for him. It's a pathetic image. And I just don't know how Putin gets out from under it. Well, it would probably be a mistake to over-interpret this little event and to think that Putin is a total paper tiger. He still does command a lot of nuclear weapons, for one thing. And so you have to take him seriously. But at the same time, this is a story as old as humanity, right? I mean, I kept thinking over the weekend about

Caesar being in charge of his legions, and then what did he do? He turned around, he marched his army toward Rome and crossed the Rubicon famously. This is the problem. When you empower private armies, you can be at their mercy. And because Putin has eliminated all possible ways to challenge him from within Russia, he's destroyed any little green shoots of democracy that had been there when he first took power. He has left only the possibility of a coup as the way to get rid of him. And what is revealed now is that there's a real appetite for it within Russia. So Russia is greatly, greatly weakened by the events of the weekend, and Ukraine is advantaged. And we do see some encouraging statistics that people in the United States

still broadly support maintaining aid to Ukraine. One of Putin's gambles was that we would tire of supporting Ukraine before he would tire of sending his troops into the abattoir. You know, it looks like people are maintaining in the West and even in the US, although there's a lot of weak knees in the Republican ranks, but it seems that the West has not tired, at least now. So far, I mean, I remain concerned about the situation inside the Republican Party. There was just a poll out this weekend that showed that within the Republican Party, a majority of the party, a majority of the rank and file is actually against. I think the stat was that they would be less likely to support a candidate

who favors continuing aid to Ukraine. So that is a particular problem inside the party. You're right, generally across America as well. It's a weird thing, Mona, isn't it? That the so-called conservative party is the party of, I mean, we've gone back to the isolationism of the old Republican party way back. Yeah. And the Democratic Party has likewise changed dramatically, now being in favor of a robust American role in the world. Yeah. So there is, thanks to the support in the Democratic Party and among independents, still an American consensus to stand strong. And I hope it's heartened by the events in Russia. But the problem inside Russia has been that the people of Russia have been insulated from the war. And Putin has taken great care to try to make people feel like they can still conduct normal life,

the economy is still doing okay, they sell stuff to China if they can't sell it to the West. And what's happened with this mutiny is it's been really hard to disguise this, right? The people of Russia have seen this. And so the war is coming home. This is literally a warlord, as you're pointing out, a privateer who was elevated by Putin, attacking his own country. And it's going to be really hard for Putin now to pretend that the war isn't affecting their country. And that's going to cause some consternation and perhaps some loss of support in Russia for the war. Yeah. And of course, in our country, the Republicans have tended, at least Republican leadership has done a really good job of attempting to undermine support for Ukraine and for traditional

Western values of self-determination and democracy. So for a long time on the Republican side, there were no voices, or almost none, at least not prominent ones, expressing dissent. But that is changing. We've got Chris Christie in the race, and we have a new entrant, Will Hurd. Let's hear what he had to say about the Republicans' approach to this question. It's unfortunate the two leading Republican nominees for president, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, policy on Ukraine is wrong. I wish they would stop fighting with American companies like Disney and be more interested in supporting our allies against attacks against democracy. It's good that those voices are speaking up. Yeah. And that's a great point

from Will Hurd, who I really like. This guy has not a snowball's chance at the Republican presidential nomination, but he is just such a fresh voice. He's the sane guy. Look, Christie is pretty sane. Asa Hutchinson is pretty sane. Now we have a third. We might have an outbreak of sanity on the margins of the Republican Party. But that is such a great point he makes about Disney. I'm just drawing here a little lineup here of where the Republicans are, the Republican presidential candidates on Ukraine. And there's actually been a pretty decent number who have now come out and tried to reassert the traditional muscular Reaganite view of foreign policy. And that's Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie,

now Hurd. I think Hutchinson is on the same page. But the people at the top, Trump and DeSantis, have been sort of peddling the isolationism. And of course, Vivek Ramaswamy, who's just sort of trying to be a Trump wannabe. And what Hurd is saying, he's going right at DeSantis, right? This is kind of a gutless, cheap version of the Republican party that DeSantis is peddling, where I'm not really going to stand up where it's difficult, like where there's a democracy is on the line and there's an evil empire taking over another country in Ukraine, right? I'm not going to stand up there because that would entail real costs. That would require some courage. I'm going to do this fake courage thing where I go around and tell

Republican audiences that the big enemy is Disney, right? It's Ariel. It's this woke corporations. It's a cheap kind of fake cultural conservatism that doesn't take on real enemies. It just tries to make a minor issue into a major one. And God bless Will Hurd for calling it out. And look, when people like DeSantis train their fire on an American company, rather than addressing true geostrategic geopolitical events in the world, they diminish themselves. He looks like a tiny little man engaged in a little fight with a mouse, literally Mickey Mouse, as he becomes kind of a Mickey Mouse candidate rather than sort of bestriding the world and thinking through long range American

interests, world interests and values. And it is hurting him. He is sinking for this and other reasons. I can't leave the topic of the coup, the wannabe coup, whatever, without quoting from one wag on Twitter who said, in January 2022, Russia's military was considered the second best in the world. A year later, it was considered the second best in Ukraine. And after this past weekend, it's the second best in Russia. Yeah, nobody showed up. So Putin is still around because they did a negotiation, right? They offered concessions, you can escape.

But there were, you know, a few aircraft that showed up, not even the whole Russian Air Force. They put some sandbags on a road to Moscow. Sandbags, Will. Yeah. So never mind what the Russian army is capable of in terms of defending its president internally, but whether Vladimir Putin even controls it anymore is now an open question. It's bizarre. Very, very, very crazy weekend. Hey folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to

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through this together. I promise. Well, another thing that has recently come to light, Will, that we should discuss is this new NBC poll about the state of things, including the state of Biden's popularity. Now, from an objective, like how is the country doing perspective, you might think that the incumbent president and incumbent presidents always have a big advantage going into a reelection race, that things should be looking pretty good for Biden. I mean, admittedly, inflation is a president killer and inflation has been taking its toll, but inflation has been dropping pretty dramatically. It's certainly going in the right direction. So is the murder rate. The murder rate has been dropping.

Unemployment is at record lows. There was a border crisis that we were all bracing for that was going to happen after we repealed Title 42, but nope, it did not materialize. Not saying that the border isn't still a huge issue, but we were expecting a big catastrophe that didn't materialize. And neither did the recession that we were all worried about. Now it still could, you know, anything can change. But as of June of 2023, those things are all pointing in the right direction for Biden. But Will, the results of this poll, NBC News, the percentage of Americans who think that Biden lacks the mental or physical health to serve out a second term, 68%. And as you pointed out on Twitter, that includes 43% of Democrats. Yeah. And that Democratic number has doubled. That has literally doubled in what, two and a half

years. And I have to say, Mona, it's logical in the sense that we're talking about an 80-year-old guy, right? I mean, at this age, everybody knows that the declines become, if not precipitous, they're quite visible, right? Everybody can see that Biden physically doesn't look up to it. And so it's reasonable for more people to say he's not up to it. But I have to say, it's really weird to me to compare the Biden numbers to the Trump numbers in this poll. We're going to get to that. Okay. So the exact nature of the question was 68% of people in the poll said they had major or moderate concerns about Biden's mental and physical health. So mental and physical health

is all together here. Can I throw in the Trump number here? Sure. So the Trump number is 55%. 55% of Americans have major or moderate concerns about Trump's mental and physical health. Now, physically, Trump, you know, his activity consists of some golf, and he's overweight and all that. But I have to say, anyone who watches Donald Trump speak or reads any of his social media posts must have serious concerns about the man's mental health. So it is amazing to me to see that Biden is 13 points worse on the question of mental and physical

health when Donald Trump, whatever his physical condition is, is kind of manifestly melting down on truth social. He's been just bizarre, absolutely bizarre. And that doesn't seem to figure the same way that Biden's physical decrepitude does. No, it doesn't, Will. But you ready for the statistic from this poll that is the most shattering for me? Sure. Okay. People were asked whether the prospect of another Biden term or another Trump term was either a moderate or a major concern. Okay. So the percentage that said that another Biden term is either a moderate or a major concern,

60%. 60%. The percentage who said that another Trump term is either a moderate or a major concern, 58%. So, I mean, admittedly, you can go too far reading these tiny differences, but let's be clear. More people said that they were alarmed or upset about the prospect of another Biden term than who said that they were upset about another Trump term, when Trump is literally running to be dictator, to expunge the Constitution. Yeah, I feel like we have to spiritually call in Charlie Sykes here to put his head down on

the desk, because this is one of these moments when you lose your faith in humanity, if you still had it at this point. The only consolation that I will suggest here, because I always promised Charlie that I will deliver a pony in the midst of all the you know what, is I would like to look, and I will look more carefully, at the intensity numbers in this poll. Because it is one thing for people to say they're not happy with the president or they don't look forward to him having another term. But it's another thing for people to express such strong intensity of disapproval of the president that they will vote for him or that they will vote for anybody against him.

And my general impression of Biden polls up till now has been that people are dissatisfied with Biden, but it's a relatively small number of people who really hate Joe Biden. He's not the kind of person you hate. You just sort of think he's inadequate. Even on Fox News, Mona, the rap on Joe Biden is that he doesn't know what he's doing. It's the Marxists and communists that he appointed who are really running the government because the Fox people know they can't get enough people to hate Biden. With Trump, the intensity, I think, is much stronger. And the strong disapproval with Trump has always been a very high number. So I would like to think that when push comes to shove, the intensity of the opposition

to Trump will dictate. And in fact, in this poll, when there was a head-to-head, just to reassure everyone, Biden beats Trump 49 to 45. Now that's not greatly comforting. It's way too close. Within the margin of error, they pointed out. Well, it is. And the other thing that I have to remind people, because I fell for this in 2016, Donald Trump lost to Hillary Clinton in the popular vote 46 to 48. So if he is losing 45 to 49 against Joe Biden, even if those numbers are accurate, even if there's no more error in the poll, he's just one point away from being close enough to win in the electoral college. And I think you and I would agree, Mona, in the actual real world, a second Trump term is way, way more dangerous than a second Biden term. Oh, yeah. Okay, so let me inject a little gloom into your optimism. And that is by pointing out that you're right, people don't tend to really hate Joe Biden. They tend not to have strong feelings, but that has a possible downside in that if you look at why Hillary Clinton didn't win in 2016, you could

say, well, people didn't like her, but a lot of Democrats just weren't enthusiastic enough to show up, especially a lot of black Democrats in places like Milwaukee. And, you know, it could be that these numbers, this dissatisfaction with Biden will lead people to stay home rather than troop to the polls. So that's the gloom on that one. I agree with that, that that's a problem, but I think it's a much greater problem if Trump isn't there as the opponent. And the evidence of that is in this poll that one of the other things they tested was Biden against DeSantis. That was a 47-47 split, right? So in other words, it underscores that Biden does have a serious problem in terms of generating enough

support on his side. But it also suggests that Trump's presence in the race does provide an extra boost of people who will turn out and vote probably for Biden, who wouldn't otherwise. But which is not a good reason to want Trump to be the nominee, because there's always a chance that he could then be the president if he's the nominee. Now, speaking of that, looking at just the Republicans in this poll, 50% were open to another candidate as president. Okay. So 49% said they wanted Trump to be the nominee, but 50%, which was the combination of 21% who said Trump was a good president, but it's time to consider other leaders. And 29% who said the GOP needs a new leader with better behavior and a different approach. So you put those two together, you get 50 who are open to another candidate. The only problem being that the rest of the field is split. So there was 22% were for DeSantis, 7% for Pence, 5% for Christie, and then a smattering of

other candidates, none of whom got more than 4%. And so, you know, do we have a reprise of the, you know, Trump has a hold on his section, which is now larger than it was in 2016, and the others are dividing up the rest of the field. And if DeSantis is unable, as he seems to be, to consolidate the non-Trump supporters, who would be? And isn't it time to be aggressively seeking some other Republican? Yeah. I mean, part of the problem with this field is, and maybe you felt the same way I have, Mona, I watch more and more candidates get in, and some of them like Christie and Asa Hutchinson and Will Hurd. I'm like, yeah, you go guy. And even people like Nikki Haley, there's a lot of things I don't like about her, but she is trying to defend the idea of standing up for Ukraine. The problem is every time I'm happy that one of these folks gets in the race, that's another

person splitting the vote. And we're up to what, about 10 candidates now? I can't remember exactly. Yeah, you start to look at this poll and you see them cannibalizing that percentage of, so let me come back to the numbers that you quoted there. 29% of the Republican party says they need a new leader. The party needs a new leader. All right. So that's a good base for somebody, but if you've got six or seven, somebody's dividing it up, you end up with what you have in this poll. Nobody's above seven,

right? And then you've got DeSantis sitting there at 22, but again, he's copying a lot of Trumpism. And Chris Christie, who I like a lot here, is going after Trump, but can he really consolidate enough of that 29% early enough in the race to keep going? Or is it much more likely that we end up with a choice between Trump and DeSantis, and nobody is representing a new different kind of Republican Party. My only concern about another candidate is that they be able to block Trump from getting the nomination. And DeSantis doesn't seem to be fulfilling that role. He had a bad weekend in New Hampshire where he alienated the Republican Women's Club or somethinga Hutchinson, these other candidates are leaving so many things on the table, Will.

For example, Trump is constantly saying, and he refuses to stop saying, that he was robbed in 2020 and they stole it from him. Has anybody said, well, Mr. Tough Guy, you were president of the United States. You were in charge of the country. How come you couldn't prevent them from stealing the election out from under you? And how would you do it now when you're not even president? Right. Okay. So forgive me. I'm going to go there. I shouldn't really do this, but I'm going to compare Trump and Putin on this because we've just seen. Do it. Go there.

Okay. So it is somewhat comforting to see that these guys who in their different ways aspire to control their countries and ways aspire to control their countries and have tried to control their countries. And believe me, Trump is a Putin wannabe. He's operating in the United States with many more institutional constraints, which is why he can't do what Putin did. But if he could be Putin, he would be and is pretty much said he admires him and sees him as a model. It is comforting to see that in Russia, even Putin can't control his country, that there is enough resistance, or at least there are some seeds of opposition that are still out there.

And also that in the United States, Trump can't control his party. And we saw in the January 6th commission, we saw in that investigation that Trump tried to pull every lever he could to stay in power after the voters had turned him out. And he failed. He failed. People stood up to him. So it's just comforting about human nature and especially about American democracy that this wannabe authoritarian just didn't succeed. You know, in a better world, of course, in a sane world, Republicans would recoil in horror from the idea that Trump would try to exercise dictatorial powers in this democracy. But since they're not doing that, maybe the only way to go at him with a certain kind of base Republican voter is to say, hey, Mr. Top Gorilla, you didn't do it. You were defeated. You lost. So speaking of his competitors and of his appeal, we did have this Faith and Freedom Conference over the last number of days.

This is something that's run by Ralph Reed. And so we saw what the various candidates are doing in the attempt to appeal to the evangelical, you know, Christian base voter. Let's hear first from Cheeto Jesus. Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists, and fascists indict me, I consider it a great badge of courage. I'm being indicted for you, and I believe the you is more than 200 million people that love our country. They're out there, and they love our country. Yeah, bring out the crown of thorns. Let's just quickly hear Chris Christie's response to

this. Frankly, when I listened to Donald Trump's speech last night, he had the audacity to say that he got indicted for us. Now, I don't know how it benefited the American people for him to take highly sensitive intelligence and secret documents out of the White House to stonewall the government on returning them for over a year and a half to subject himself to a raid by the FBI, even though they had asked him voluntarily to return this stuff, and to then be subject to an indictment, which is obviously going to be one of great trouble for the country because no one wants to see this happen. So, yeah, it is refreshing to see Christie saying the things that ought to have been said for years and with all acknowledgement that Christie was among those at fault for this in the first place.

But now he is he's playing for the good guys. So hurrah. So here's Trump doing the full martyr. And speaking of the things that they don't say in response, again, I guess logic doesn't really matter in this context. But he said the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists, fascists. He throws everything in there, Will. Why doesn't he just pick a villain, right? I think Trump has pretty clearly been studying the authoritarian playbook. Other authoritarians around the world talk about how they're the only thing standing between the country and the

Marxists and the communists. And Trump, for those who haven't been paying attention, I understand you want to live a normal life and not subject yourselves to this guy, but he has been talking much, much more aggressively, much more frequently about Marxists and communists. He is pretty much saying if he gets reelected, if he comes back into the White House, he's going to purge the civil service. And he specifically claims that it's full of Marxists and communists. This is bull, but it's the kind of thing that you say when you are, you know, trying to justify claiming authoritarian powers. And that is what he is claiming about suspending the constitution, purging the civil service. He's been claiming that he has absolute rights, but it is particularly remarkable to me that Trump is claiming and that crowds are cheering and that particularly this so-called Christian

crowd is cheering the idea that Donald Trump and getting indicted for withholding classified documents, failing to return them to the government, that he did this for us. There can't be anything that is less for you than this guy. He's explicit about this. He's done interviews with Brett Baer and others and said, you know, my golf pants were in these boxes and I didn't want to hand them back. All right, he can make this argument. It's ridiculous, but he can make it, but it's not about you. Him withholding boxes because his golf pants were supposedly in them

is not him doing anything for you, right? He's doing it for himself. And then he's going to have to argue in court that somehow he was warranted in withholding those things, which he wasn't. But the idea that this is for you is just absolutely absurd. And you would think that some other candidate, Republican candidate would say, what the hell? I mean, you endangered national security, which is about all of us. Because of your ego and your stubbornness, your childish stubbornness about returning things that didn't belong to you. But you endangered national security by revealing attack plans, by revealing vulnerabilities of our nuclear deterrent, by revealing things that

God knows protect every American man, woman, and child. You were unbelievably careless and reckless about us. Far from protecting us or standing in the way of something, you made every American less safe. I guess we still have to wait for that. I want to say one other thing about Trump's speech to this crowd. It is one of the enduring absurdities of the Trump years that self-styled Christians have been holding these events celebrating Donald Trump.

As you put it, Cheeto Jesus. I mean, there can't be anyone farther away from the model of Jesus than Donald Trump. And it is particularly preposterous the way he talks to these crowds. So Donald Trump doesn't really understand faith, right? First of all, he worships himself, so he can't have a God who's above him, right? So he says things like he talks about religion like it's an interest group. And if you watch these speeches, he says things about religion. He talks about religion like he's talking about corn. I mean, like chicken. It's a thing. He says to this crowd, isn't it great Saturday night,

we're here for religion. Isn't that nice? What kind of believer, what kind of Christian or Jew or Muslim says we're here for religion? You might be here for God, you might be here for goodness or faith, but you're not here for religion. And at one point he refers to devote Catholics. Oh, great. Because clearly Trump doesn't know the word devout. He doesn't. It's completely foreign. And it's just amazing to me that people who actually believe in a thing higher than themselves follow this man around as though he understands faith. Yeah. There are, though, some voices on the Republican side who are saying things that need to be said.

And so I do want to highlight some of those. J. Michael Luttig, former appeals court judge, has been fantastic. And he had an op-ed over the weekend where he was talking about the state of the Republican Party and the complicity of leading Republicans in the Trump phenomenon. And he said, you know, the major blame goes to Trump, but a big share of blame goes to the Republican Party for not pushing back. He says, this ought to be a moment now that Trump has been indicted for Republicans to reflect. And he said, and instead, they're barreling headlong into the 2024 presidential election. By all appearances, I'm quoting, it certainly hasn't occurred to them yet that any reckoning is needed as only the Republicans would ever

conceive of running for the American presidency by running against the Constitution and the rule of law, unquote. So that is out there. Not that listeners to Fox News or Breitbart or, well, I don't know. Does anybody watch Tucker Carlson's Twitter show, Will? I don't know. Obviously, I'm not, although I do worry about audiences that I'm not in. Am I out of touch with America? These people certainly seem to be out of touch with America. I think this is a problem of the increasing isolation, the increasing echo chamber on the right. Everybody has an echo chamber, right? The left has its own echo chambers, but there seems to have developed on the right, this sort of unhealthy culture of whatever the other side is against, we're for, right?

And so every time Trump gets indicted, that does galvanize, you know, well, you don't want us to nominate Trump. So yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to nominate Trump. But I think a lot of folks on the right are just out of touch with how much Trump is despised in large parts of America. I think it is more than 50%. I think it is enough to deny him the nomination. But the point is that if Republicans who like Donald Trump understood how hated he was in the rest of America, I think they would think twice about the electability questions, but they're not focused on that. They're just focused

on you're against him and so we're for him. I would also observe, not to stray too much into your optimism vein, I do actually believe that these polls where significant numbers of Republicans say that the charges against Trump do not trouble them at all, 75%, something like that, said that. I think we need to take those with a grain of salt because a lot of Republicans don't even yet know what the charges are. And over time, and especially as a trial unfolds, they will learn. And a portion of them will be surprised because they hadn't heard before about what Trump actually did. And when they do, I'm not, you know, there's that 29% that already thinks they need new leadership. And if you're looking at a general election, and God forbid Trump is the general election nominee,

but let's just for the sake of argument, say he will be, you don't need a lot of Republicans to be convinced that he endangered national security. You just need some, you know, to say, well, I'm not voting. And that could make a huge, huge difference. I agree with that very much. And I just want to echo you on the point of questioning what the poll means. And this is something actually Charlie mentioned when we've talked about this before. Trump's support went up after the Mar-a-Lago indictment. And I was all worked up about this.

More people said they would support him afterwards than before. Charlie said, you know, those are people just saying F you. They're just, they're like giving the middle finger. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And I would just want to add this to people. When we think about interpreting polls, I'm a kind of a rational person. So I look at the poll and take it literally, people will support Trump. But I think you're right. There's a lot of emotion being expressed in the polls. And so a lot of people who sound like they don't, I agree with you, people who say, yeah, this is not that important.

Some of those people are saying, not that they don't think it's important, but that that's what you and the media want us to think. So we're not going to say that. And you're right. When we get to an election, it's an open question. But if enough of those people are not serious and are willing to actually think twice about it, then Trump loses. Let's close with one sort of fun quotation from over the weekend. Again, along the lines of how people ought to be reacting to Trump, I just could not resist this Chris Christie clip because in true Trumpian fashion, he has, of course, gone after Chris Christie

for being fat. Okay. And so here is Christie's reaction. Once Trump started hitting back at you on a number of fronts, he took aim at your weight. What was your reaction to that? Oh, well, like he summoned on us. I mean, please, you know, look, Howie, there are tens of millions of Americans out in your audience watching right now who, like me, have struggled with their weight. I continue to struggle. I continue to try to do better. And so do they. And what's that got to do with my competence for office? I ran the governorship in New Jersey for eight years, I think, in a very energetic, successful way, responded to Hurricane Sandy,

working 20 hours a day for weeks. I don't know what his point is. You know what it is? It's like a child. It's a bully on the schoolyard who teases you and makes fun of you. But here's my message to him. I don't care what he says about me. I don't care what he thinks about me. And he should take a look in the mirror every once in a while. Maybe he dropped the weight thing off of his list of criticisms. What do you say, Will? Isn't that the way to react? It's hard for me to say this because I'm still so angry at Chris Christie for having helped hand Donald Trump the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. But Chris Christie in his present incarnation in this election, in this race, has been exactly what we needed. He's the guy who stood up when everyone else was a coward. He's the Progozhin marching on Moscow. And unlike Progozhin, Christie has not turned around. He's still marching on Trump.

And he's just going right at Trump. And the other thing is, Christie has just been really honest. If you go watch his Q&As with audiences, he's very clear about like, yeah, I really screwed up with Trump in 2016. You know, I, and there's a lot of other things. And what he says here about his weight, like he's not like denying that. Yeah. I struggle with my weight. Yes. It's absolutely true. You can see that. Yeah. So it's just very refreshing, the honesty that I'm seeing from Christie in this race. And I think it helps him, you know, as he gets to other issues, people will see that there's like nine fake candidates running around trying to hedge what they're saying.

And Chris Christie is just telling it like it is. Right. And you know, it's unpredictable what kind of an effect that will have on the others. And arguably, I don't know whether there's a good thing necessarily or not, because in light of what you were saying earlier about the crowded field, but, you know, Will Hurd being emboldened to step up and also sort of take it directly to Trump, others being willing to speak out after the indictment. I mean, I do think that Christie has made a notable difference in the tone of Republican discussion, don't you? What we needed was somebody to break the ice. We needed

somebody who would say Voldemort. Literally, Chris Christie, he did an event, I think it was in New Hampshire a couple weeks ago, when he announced his campaign. He used the Voldemort example. He says, just say it. There was just an exhalation when he did this. And I don't know whether he affected Will Hurd, but maybe so Asa Hutchinson, who has been such a gentleman, you know, I guess there's a place for that, but I'd like to see him be, you know, increasingly vocal and clear. Well, no, no, I disagree with you there.

No, I think Asa Hutchinson has been taking it to Trump right from the beginning too, but he doesn't have that pugilistic personality. You're right, Mona. Sorry, I apologize. Asa has been doing it. The problem is he's been doing it Arkansas style and what I wanted to see was New Jersey style. And that's what we're getting from Christy.

That's exactly right. All right. So, Will, this has been great. We've gone long. Let me just close with one quick thought. I love your reaction. And that is, there's one other thing that we all have to remember as we discuss these polls and the outline of the race. And that is that a presidential contest is a series of state contests, state races, and it unfolds in a very dynamic fashion so that if Trump wins Iowa and New Hampshire, then the race is over. But if somebody else wins Iowa and New Hampshire, or two people win Iowa and New Hampshire, and it's not Trump, then everything that we've been hearing about these national polls and the rest of it is thrown into a cocktat because then it's a real race and momentum can shift very quickly. So let's just keep that in

mind as we see these kind of alarming polls in 2023. Yeah. And the way that could unfold is DeSantis having been written off, if he comes back in Iowa and they're focusing heavily on that, that will be a story. He'll get the benefit that Bill Clinton got when he came back. Bill Clinton finished third, I think, but it was a comeback. And so people like that. There is a potential comeback story for him. And if we get to New Hampshire and Chris Christie, who was heading towards double digits last time I looked in the polls, if he does well there, he could gain a foothold and that would be really interesting too. Exactly.

Okay, Will, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks, Mona. Thank you all for joining us today. Don't forget to check out Beg to Differ, also where podcasts are heard. And we'll be back tomorrow and do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.