The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: Nonstop Shamelessness

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Trump visited an African American church in Detroit and the pews were filled with white people; Republicans keep flooding social media with cropped videos to smear Biden; and foreign policy hawks, like Tom Cotton, now say we should be standing up to our allies, not Putin. MAGA land can't quit its shamelessness. Will Saletan joins Tim Miller, who is back from vacation. show notes: Detroit reporter shared images from Trump's Black church event

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. It's Monday, June 17th. I'm back. Will Salatin. Mondays are back. What's going on, brother? Not much. We're back in the United States. Things are as lousy as they always were, so I'm glad you got some time away. Yeah, I would be lying if i said i was tanned rested and ready uh to come back for this i you know i tell the listeners i'm not gonna lie to you about the state of the campaign or the state of my body um i'm tired those barcelona nights they get away from you i don't know if that if that's true for you but those spanish nights

they kind of go late and disappear and let's just say I'm not exactly, you know, Mr. Rest today. So I might need you to carry me a little bit. That all right? Sure. You know, Barcelona is a place I know well. My wife and I were there a year and a half ago for a week. And Tim, we walked all over Barcelona. What is wrong with you? You should be exhausted. Yeah, there's a lot of walking. I love Barcelona. It was great. Anyway, more on my vacation during a mailbag or something at another time. We've got a lot to catch up on. Much happened while I was gone.

Hunter Biden was convicted by the politicized Justice Department. We're not going to talk about that, but I thought that's worth noting. I tried very hard to check out for the news, but the thing that caught my eye, that most stuck under my craw is what I want to talk about first. And that is the bump stocks decision six three by the Supreme Court to overturn the Trump era, actually the Trump era executive order banning bump stocks as a result of the mass shooting in Las Vegas. I want to shout out Aaron Frichner, who's one of my favorites on X. If you're if you're asking these days, you can check him out. He works for Don Beyer, a Democrat out of Virginia. He had been warning about bump stocks going back to 2013, and he sent this about the

original U.S. code from the early 1900s. It says under the term machine gun, the term machine gun means any weapon which shoots is designed to shoot or can readily be restored to shoot automatically more than one shot without manual reloading by a single function of the trigger this term shall include the frame or receiver of any such weapon any part designed and intended solely and exclusively or a combination of parts designed and intended for use in converting a weapon into a machine gun you know i'm sure some of these gun nerds will talk about how technically the bump stock, you know, there isn't a single function. So like for all practical purposes, anybody reading the existing law, including the fucking

Trump administration could come away with that and say, no, technically these are already banned and an executive action is all that is necessary to, to ban them. All six Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices disagreed with that. What do you think about that, Will Salton? So, Tim, I am not as upset as other people are with the Supreme Court's ruling because the Supreme Court says, the Supreme Court basically said a majority of the justices were either supportive of the ban or said, you know what, if Congress passes that, that's fine with us. You just can't do this through the regulatory process, right? And all that definition stuff was

part of that particular debate. I'm much more concerned about the fact that now that the court has ruled and pretty much said, I think Alito, somebody wrote in their opinion, hey, yeah, if Congress wants to do this, fine by us, right? And now they're asking members of Congress, okay, so are you going to do this? Are you willing to do it? We had two senators on TV this weekend, Tom Cotton and Tim Scott, both of whom are, of course, contenders to be vice president under Donald Trump. Both of them were asked about this pump stock decision and they were asked, you know, okay, so are you willing to do this? And they were like, maybe not really. You know, this was something that in 2018, everyone agreed this was nuts. Like for all the reasons you just named, a bump stock.

If you are a person who shoots guns, like aims at things, like you're a hunter, the bump stock is completely useless to you, right? This is the thing that allows you to fire rapidly, but without any good aim. It's great for murdering, you know, 100 people like in Las Vegas, right? But it's not good for any legitimate purpose of a gun. So you would think Congress would go along. And Tim, what I'm concerned is that Congress has moved so far that both of these senators were like, no, this is an infringement of the Second Amendment. And that's just nuts. This can't be what was intended in the Second Amendment. Ludicrous. Were there Republican statements? I mean, I guess, like I said, I was on the beach, so maybe I missed it, but I'm not seeing a lot of Republican statements about, okay, well, now Congress needs to act on this and take care of this. I mean, I did see an insane Tulsi Gabbard statement. She's kind of on the outer

skirts of the veep stakes, talking about how great it was that the Supreme Court ruled the bump stock ban unconstitutional. She was a Democrat two two minutes ago i don't know what's happening with her she actually co-sponsored legislation to ban bump stocks in 2017 i guess there's like a statute of limitations on people's concern about mass murder and the 64 year old man steven paddock 64 year old man so not you know not at the height of his athletic prowess i wouldn't say fired a thousand rounds killing 60 people wounding 413 he wounded 413 people using this in such a short time span it was as you said just total bipartisan widespread outrage we need to do something about this even the fucking trump administration did something about it. And yet now, nothing. Maybe I missed it. Maybe Mike Johnson

said something that I missed, but I don't think so. No. And I'm looking at the interview that Tom Cotton did with Jake Tapper. And Tapper says, you think banning bump stocks is an infringement on the Second Amendment? And Cotton says, I think it treads close to the line like it's nowhere near close to the line but tim you're the you're the politico if you were the biden campaign wouldn't you be out in force this week saying hey let's let's put this on the table chuck schumer but let's put this on the table are you republicans willing to put this in law yeah chuck schumer has i saw senate has a light schedule this week so i was prepping for the podcast so maybe you could could add it in. I mean, we already have the language.

Sam Alito told you that it would already be constitutional. So, you know, Chuck Schumer could use the Sam Alito language and put something on the floor this week. I don't know. Somehow I doubt that's going to happen. But yeah, I would have done something. Anyway, it's a pretty sick state of affairs that that's where we are. I want to talk about what the Biden campaign is going to do this week. They have a new ad out this morning, framing up the race post-Trump conviction. Let's take a listen.

In the courtroom, we see Donald Trump for who he is. He's been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, and he committed financial fraud. Meanwhile, Joe Biden's been working, lowering health care costs and making big corporations pay their fair share. This election is between a convicted criminal who's only out for himself and a president who's fighting for your family. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message. Well, the money's good for something. That is, you can fit a lot into a 30 second ad, a lot there. What are your main takeaways, Will? Well, obviously, they're going hard at the convictions. Look, there's a lot of complaints about this New York case in particular, right, that they've pushed the misdemeanors together

with these campaign funds. Anyway, the point is, they've cobbled this together, and there's, you know, stuff about Alvin Bragg. So there's all these particular complaints that Republicans had about this New York prosecution. What this ad does though, it says that's not the only jury verdict against Trump. There's also the civil cases. So they say he's been convicted of 34 felonies. Then he's got found liable for sexual assault, the financial fraud. And actually they kind of push them together. So it's not clear what the 34 counts applies to and all that. But I think it's a good reminder to people. It's not just one jury. It's not just one judge or one prosecutor. It's three cases so far, and we got three others in the wings. So to me, I think it's a smart play. It's legitimate. It's true. And I think it'll be effective. What do you think? I also like including the sexual assault part of this.

One of my big bugaboos about the media mostly, but a little bit the Democrats, has been like this conventional wisdom congealed that if the Access Hollywood tape didn't take Trump down, then people just don't care about the fact that he grabs women by the genitals. And I've always rejected that. I don't think that that's true. Trump's poll numbers went down right after Access Hollywood. There was a late break to him in the last few days of the election, post the Comey letter.

Can we know for sure what it was? I don't think so. But new information has come to light. Not just about jane carroll by the way but summer zervos and other women since the access hollywood tape that confirms that that he wasn't it wasn't just locker room talk it was real it was how he acted and i do feel like there has been kind of a dismissal of that as like that can be a useful political message i do think that there are people that that haven't sunk in with i do think a

key demo in this election is particularly post roe is non-college white women you know and maybe roe and sexual assault can help peel off some of those voters that have gone to trump in the past so anyway i like that they included that point and i like that they're not shying away from the conviction stuff we have a new uh poll out that I think shows the reason why they're doing this, which matches, I think, common sense, if not conventional wisdom. There was some bad conventional wisdom about the conviction, but it matches what common sense would have told you. Six percent of Americans say they're more likely to support Trump after the conviction, and it's important to how they'll vote. 22% say they're less likely to support Trump for the presidency, and the conviction is important. So 22 is bigger than six. I think that that, you know, tells us kind of what we expected. I don't know, what were your

thoughts on the Politico Obsessed poll? Well, it certainly refutes the Republican spin around the trial, which was that this was going to help Trump. Remember, they had all the donors, the donors, like we got all these donations from people who didn't donate before. So it's helping us. It's locking in the election for Trump. These numbers are consistent with other polls that show it's a wash at best for Trump. And all the numbers in this poll show that it's a net negative. One thing I like about this poll, they drilled into independence. So they did breakdowns within independence, and then they broke it down to people who said that the trial, the outcome, the verdict was important. And those people broke like two to one, three to one against Trump. So these are small numbers, but they're definitely negative numbers. And all of the general election

polling I've seen in the swing states shows that these states, enough of them are close enough that the numbers in this poll, if they bear out, could swing those states to Biden, enough of them to swing the Electoral College. It'll be interesting, I think, what these numbers look like in the lead up to the debate. And I think obviously the debate in 10 days now will reshuffle things again it will kind of get the clearest picture on on what if anything the conviction did to the head-to-head you know kind of with the polls that come out this week and early next week because it does it always does take a little bit of the time for this stuff to sink in and yeah like you said i think that there's some signs that that this is inching people closer. As our friend JBL says, is that something to get so excited about? That the conviction might inch 1% of people over to Biden? I guess not.

I guess there's some concerning elements about just the persistence of Trump's support in the face of his crimes. But, you know, we'll take what we can get. Yeah. You know, I was concerned. I don't know about you. I was really alarmed don't know about you. I was really alarmed by some of the initial post-verdict polling and the Republicans were out in force saying, you know, this is all a political attack. This is an illegitimate

prosecution. And I thought a lot of people were going to buy it. What this polling shows is at best, maybe half of the independents bought that and And that's not great. But the other half did not buy it. They're not buying that this was purely political, taking it seriously and leaning clearly against Trump as a result of it. And I'll take that half of independents in play, leaning against Trump as a result of this. That's a healthy response from the electorate. The Hunter thing is so interesting in context of this, because if healthy response from the electorate the hunter thing is so interesting in context of this because if we just strip away all the bullshit right about you know concerns about what the prosecutors and all these cases and the politicization of all this like the reality is

like it is true in both the trump and hunter cases that probably had joe biden and donald trump not been running for president this time that like neither of those cases probably would have been brought like if donald trump was still just a reality tv guy i guess a campaign finance case wouldn't have been brought but had he lost in 2016 this case is probably not brought and same with hunter right like had biden not run um i think there's some discussion of this in axios this morning and so on the one hand it's like yeah i guess you can both say well this is unfair this is political but on the other hand like that's like part of the deal if you run for president right if you put yourself in these positions

like there is going to be increased scrutiny, and there should be increased scrutiny. Is there anyone out there that is a gettable voter that is looking at this in a way that that is that nuanced or like kind of not really? Well, I at a minimum, I think a voter could look at it and say they're being treated the same, right? It's dubious that they were prosecuted. But yeah, technically, they broke the law. And that was that was shown in court. So it refutes the two tier thing. The Republicans, of course, have come back with like, no, it's all an elaborate false flag to like pre-Vick Hunter instead of Joe. I don't think people are going to buy that. But Tim, the thing that really struck me was the response, the comparative response to the verdict. So Joe Biden's response is, I'm just going to quote what I saw him say,

I abide by the jury's decision, and I will not pardon him. I'm going to accept the jury. That's his own son. He's like, I'm not going to interfere, and I accept it. Trump's response is- Or commute. Right. And Trump's response is, it's all bullshit, right? It's all political persecution. And he literally, on Saturday at the turning point thing in Michigan, Trump said, I think I have this quote, he said, I didn't do anything wrong. And that is his position. This is not Bill Clinton, like, okay, I did something shameful, but technically I shouldn't have been prosecuted,

or it wasn't perjury, whatever. This is Trump saying none of it's true. It's all bullshit. He doesn't even acknowledge that he had sex with Stormy Daniels. I did nothing wrong. And that is the Republican position, like it didn't happen. He didn't do anything wrong. And that's just nuts. So I would just draw a comparison between the responses of the two parties to these verdicts. The shamelessness among the Republicans is kind of, you know, we'll see, it hasn't really worked the last few elections, but we'll see if it could pay off. But there is this imbalance, right? And there's another example of this, one thing she flagged for me before we started talking was Annapolina Luna talking about Merrick Garland. My old sparring partner, Steve Bannon, looks to be headed to jail pending another appeal for contempt of Congress for not responding to Congress's request to deliver the audio tapes of the HER report, which obviously Congress doesn't need for any reason. They have the transcripts, except for to embarrass Joe Biden.

But Merrick Garland has said he's not going to turn over the audio tapes of the HER report. And so they are now trying to do the same thing on the Trump two-tier justice with regards to Bannon and Navarro and saying, well, if Bannon and Navarro are going to jail, why isn't Merrick Garland? When in reality, the Merrick Garland situation is exactly analogous to Bill Barr and Mark Meadows and Trump administration officials who also didn't respond to congressional subpoenas, but because they have executive privilege. Anyway, despite the fact that there is a total parallel between how Barr acted and how Garland acted. Here's how Republicans in Congress are planning to treat Merrick Garland. Let's take a listen. And Congresswoman, I want to start with

you because the DOJ said it will not prosecute Merrick Garland over these contempt of Congress charges. They sent a letter to Speaker Johnson. Your next move in the House. Yeah, so actually several months ago, I introduced a resolution for something called inherent contempt of Congress. So this is something that Congress has the authority to do, and it hasn't been done since the early 1900s. And essentially what that does is we I anticipated that the Department of Justice would not do their job. And so I had this really teed up and ready to go. I've brought this to Speaker Johnson's attention. And what that allows Congress to do is really be the punitive arm and really hold Garland accountable by using

the sergeant at arms to essentially go and get him as well as the tapes, bring him to the wall of the House and really be a check and balance on the Department of Justice. Again, this hasn't been done since the early 1900s, but that vote will be coming to the floor and hopefully we will be able to bring some accountability. Congressional Sergeant at Arms planning to cuff the Attorney General here. Thoughts on that? Remember, we used to talk about the marshal of the Supreme Court was going to do it. But now it's the Sergeant at Arms. It drives me crazy, Tim.

She says, you know, allow Congress to be the punitive arm. Folks, there is a constitution. Congress is not the punitive arm. You have the power of impeachment. But this thing where you send this, who exactly sends the sergeant of arms? This is like a vote and like he shows up and like under whose authority it's constitutionally nuts. Can I, can I flag two other things in this that drive me crazy? Please. The thing about like the Garland contempt thing. Okay. Garland gave

them, the justice department gave them the transcripts, right? No, no, the transcripts aren't good enough. We have to have the audio tape. So, first of all, what is the argument for having the audio tape? Oh, maybe the transcript was messed with. Folks, Robert Herr exists. He was there. The special counsel, if there's something in the transcript that was not actually said, they can tell you that. That's the whole point of the independent counsel. But also, Tim, they're holding it against Garland and the Justice Department that they actually released the transcript. The Republicans in Congress said, well, you waived executive privilege because you already gave us the transcript. So they're actually trying to punish the Democrats for being more

forthcoming than the Republicans ever were. So that just drives me crazy. And what they wanted to do this for, and this is blatantly obvious, but just to state the obvious is they just want the audio so they can use it in ads, right? Like they want a special counsel on tape saying Joe Biden looks feeble or these news cycles come flying past. What was, what was hers exact quote? I don't even remember anymore. Feeble, elderly, elderly.

So it wouldn't be in the audio because it wasn't in the audio. It was just written in the report. And this drives me nuts too. What Robert Hearst said was, if we take this to a jury and we're down to the question of Joe Biden's intent, whether he deliberately obstructed information, the jury will look at him and say, he's a sympathetic elderly man with a poor memory. So when he says he forgot something, he legitimately did. It had nothing to do with competence. It was about intent, goodwill. And so that's just a complete

misrepresentation of what Biden said. I want to get into this a little bit more in a broader context of a Trump campaign clip from over the weekend. Trump was in Michigan. He went to Detroit for an event that was advertised as a black church event. Now, this is a podcast. Unfortunately, I cannot show you the pictures from the event. But needless to say, looked a little bit closer to a Klan rally than a black church event. But there were some black folks behind Trump. The pews were filled mostly with white folks in red hats.

But again, we're in a church. Let's listen to Donald Trump's pitch. And crooked Joe Biden has done nothing for you except talk. It's only talk. It's all talk. He gets nothing. He gets nothing for anyone who is lost. He's in Europe.

He's walking around. He doesn't know where the hell he is. And he's supposed to help Detroit. I don't think so. But we achieved the lowest African-American unemployment rate and the lowest African-American poverty rate ever recorded, ever, ever recorded during my four years. Okay. So we've got a 30 second clip there that I caught cursing, lying and slander inside the church in that 30 second clip alone. Will, what do you think?

Yeah, just shameless lying, right? So the lowest African-American unemployment and Hispanic unemployment is right now, right? It's under Joe Biden. And I can't go into all of the examples, but this whole weekend, by the way, full of Republicans on the VP shortlist going on TV and just lying. I mean, part of what we're dealing with now is like lies about the crime rate, lies about the unemployment rate. That one's a really good example. And the other thing that I just love from this is he's at the church. They've unveiled the Black Americans for Trump, and they're trying to focus it on Michigan. And who's like the featured guy in Black Americans for Trump? It's Kwame Kilpatrick, the former mayor who's been served time in jail for felony fraud and racketeering. So he should be for Trump because Trump also committed felony fraud and racketeering. So he should be for Trump because Trump also committed felony

fraud and racketeering. Well, one of them he's been convicted and not one not yet. It gets tiresome to like do this complaint. But it was just a couple weeks ago that Trump had the rappers who are out on bail, you know, on stage with him, who, you know, are accused credibly of gang activity, including murder. Now he's got the leader of the blacks for Trump group is somebody that's indicted for fraud. He's a criminal. I mean, you would think this stuff would stick in a little bit. The other thing that I want to pull out from that is, again, Trump's, you know, kind of comments,

not very Jesus-like, I wouldn't say, comments about Joe Biden in the church, including this kind of sense that Joe Biden's lost. He's walking around the G7. He's lost. And man, I don't know what to do about this, Will, because on my social media feed on the flight back from Europe, it's just overwhelming content ofans doing these edited clips to make joe biden look as elderly and old as possible now joe biden does look elderly and old at times so it's not that hard to do it's not like they're deep fake ais but you know they clip the things like in a in such a way that makes it look even worse that exacerbates it and then democrats like showing the longer video where it's like oh you made it look like he just paused, but actually he was sitting down or you made it look like he wandered off at the G7. This is the one Trump's referring to.

But actually, he was walking over to congratulate one of the parachuters or one of the one of the people that was working at the event that they're out of frame. So it kind of looks like Biden's like waving it and giving thumbs up to nobody i don't know that it's necessarily a good thing for people's tiktok x youtube whatever feeds to be just republicans being like oh man look at how demented and delirious and elderly he is and then democrats being like well no actually it looks okay if you the longer video is he just looks old but but he's not you know isn't totally gone. That feels like a losing tête-à-tête to me. Yeah, no, I feel like you'd do a better job with this. I forgot to say one thing about Kwame Kilpatrick, which was that in addition to being a convicted felon, Trump commuted Kwame Kilpatrick's sentence when he was president. And so this is actually payback by a criminal to

another criminal. It's a great point. But on your question, very good question. And I think you would probably probably agree with this. It's much more effective for Democrats instead of saying the longer context show Biden isn't as feeble as the short clip indicated. Better just show Trump being nuts, right? Trump was at turning point saying, you know, Ronnie Jackson, the White House doctor, you know, had me take a competency test and I passed it with flying colors. Meanwhile, he misidentifies Ronnie Jackson, calls him Ronnie Johnson, right? Because he can't keep any of these people straight. The interesting question to me about the Trump Biden comparison on mental acuity is Biden is kind of getting weaker and feebler as a, that's his symptom, right? He's, he has

trouble finishing his sentence and that kind of thing. Trump is just nuts. Trump is just delusional. And he's at this event, once again, claiming that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. And objectively, I think you and I would agree that being delusional about, or lying, some people would just say lying, I think he's delusional about an election, like you said no, but I think you said yes, and I'm going to stay in power and all that. Much scarier than being feeble. But Tim, I wonder if Republicans have the edge in the sense that voters may respond to this sort of primitive appeal that Trump, okay, he's delusional, but he's an alpha. You know, he's nuts, but he's like, he finishes his sentence and he looks vigorous. Do they want that as opposed to a sane guy who looks weak? This is just our reality. And so Democrats have to figure out how to message this. But just to

use two examples, a split screen, if you will, about what you're talking about from the last week. One of the other videos that the Republicans are just giddy to share was Obama and Biden are on stage with Jimmy Kimmel. And at the end of it, Biden's like kind of waving and saying thanks to people and then Obama's kind of like all right buddy let's go and like grabs him by the by the shoulder and sort of guides him off and then it's kind of patting him on the back and whispering it's Obama it's kind of like a bro sort of what you would imagine Obama would do to like your dad if he met them you know what I mean kind of like giving them like a back pat and a little condescending you know maybe like a little bit like Obama alpha biden a little bit which again that's probably

was their natural comportment given that he was his vp you know it's sometimes hard to get out of like old habits i remember seeing this with jeb and w on stage right we're like w kind of alpha jeb one time on stage i was like oh my god we can't have them on stage together anymore so i like sometimes there's the brotherly they got into their natural habit okay it just was what it was obama was kind of and just a primitive alpha beta thing obama was kind of alphaing him and then you have trump going to congress and like mitch mcconnell and all these wimps just genuflecting in front of the man that like sent a mob to kill them. All right.

So I mean, it's not a compliment to say to Trump to say like, he's the alpha in that situation. And these other gimps are just totally submitting to it in the Republican Party. So like, hopefully, like the American people are such that our election is not about the male dominance relationship between Trump and Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but like, it just is what it is. Okay, this is pure speculation and irresponsible of me. So I'll do it. I kind of wonder if this is related to the gender gap on Trump versus Biden. Like if men and young men in particular are responding to the

sort of alpha thing about Trump. I mean, as you point out, the whole spectacle of going to the Hill and McConnell and all these other people fawning all over him is gross morally, but he's showing he's the alpha. And Tim Scott was on TV this weekend and talking about how it's great that Trump is feared. There's a whole psychology of this. He's scary. He does things like send a mob, but he also intimidates the Europeans and the Chinese and whatever. And that's what we does things like send a mob, but he also intimidates the Europeans and, you know, the Chinese and whatever. And that's what we want. We want a scary guy. I wonder, you know, are we monkeys? Is that what this election comes down to? Are we going to respond more to this alpha thing than we are going to respond to which of these two guys is sane and

humane? Yeah, maybe. It's a good point because it ties to the Trump UFC going to those fights. It ties a little bit to one of my friends texting me they're watching the u.s open this weekend and i just to make this simple for people who aren't golf people like there's this splinter golf tour the live golf tour it's funded by the saudis and like weirdly there's something just about like the fact that those guys got money got bag, flouted what was the maybe morally righteous thing to do was to say no to the Saudi blood money. There's some appeal. And so at the US Open, you have kind of bros who are Trumpy, kind of shouting USA and stuff at the live golfers because they're like the heels. They're like the bad boys now. You know, maybe this is just a small percentage of people,

but there is something to it. And the gender gap number gets bigger the further down the age bracket you go. Yeah. We got to talk about our friend Tom Cotton. Let's just take a listen to Tom Cotton. Does it bother you at all when president trump says things like if ukraine wins what will be the benefit which contradict the policy issues you just illustrated well president trump again presided for four years over peace and stability i understand that european leaders and democrats here in america didn't care for some of the language or rhetoric he used. I would say that was necessary to get tough on foreign leaders who are putative allies who had been free-riding off of American

military strength for 35 years. Putative allies. What do you think about that, Will? Yeah. So this seems to be where the Republican Party is going. There was the sort of Ronald Reagan, we're going to defend Europe against the Soviets. And now what we where we are is, Trump is macho, Trump will stand for America against whom? Apparently not Putin. It's, it's all of Schultz. Macron, you know, Tim, was that you know, there was that was another episode from Michigan this weekend, Trump was talking about how we like Macron was going to like tariff our wine or something, or I'm going to tariff French wine to punish them. So that's Trump's position.

I'm going to stand up to the French. Tom Cotton, there are putative allies. Who else? Mike Waltz was on Fox News this weekend also saying, it's not the Eastern Europeans that are the problem. It's the Western Europeans, and they're freeloading off of us. And so Vladimir Putin's number one strategic goal is not any particular piece of territory. He wants Ukraine.

He's fighting for Ukraine. It's to break NATO. Nothing would be better for the Russians than to break NATO, to splinter NATO. And once we're divided, much easier to start picking off territory and pushing us around. And that is exactly what Donald Trump is doing. And that is the number one reason why Putin funded an operation to help get Trump elected in 2016, and why he wants Trump to get elected now, right? And so this whole Republican shtick about how we're going to stand up to the Europeans is part of the Russian playbook to break NATO. Yeah, let's listen to a little bit is part of the Russian playbook to break NATO.

Yeah, let's listen to a little bit more on how the Russian playbook is working. Here's Donald Trump talking about Zelensky over the weekend. But he's the greatest salesman of all time. He walks in. So now here's the beauty. He just left four days ago with 60, and he gets home and he announces that he needs another $60 billion, it never ends. It never ends. I will have that settled prior to taking the White House as president-elect. I will have that settled. That's interesting. I will have that settled. Trump is basically saying that he will broker some deal that concedes to Putin. He said before maybe that Evan Gershkovitz, the journalist that Putin is illegally jailing right now, detaining in Russia, would be released. And Tom Cotton, who's supposedly the military hawk, mostly the foreign policy hawk, the traditional Republican,

you know, strong on defense, anti-communist, anti-Russia, is out there saying like, yeah, this is what we want. This is what we want to attack our putative allies in Germany and give Russia a sweetheart deal that presumably includes a significant portion of Ukraine. First of all, like this is who Trump is, right? Trump doesn't understand anything but money. According to Matt Gaetz, Trump said to the Republicans on the Hill, we should pay our troops more instead of sending the $60 billion to Ukraine. So it's like framing it as money for America versus money for Ukraine. This is a raw deal.

So he's ignoring all of the non-financial strategic implications. And the moral aspect, of course, of a democracy versus being invaded by an autocracy. The other thing is Trump saying that when he gets into office, that thing about I'm going to have this settled, right? Tim, how's he going to settle it? Oh, you know, Putin just said, I want four provinces. I want 20% of Ukraine, right?

So we're going to give him some land. And then it's, trust me, Tim, it's going to be all over because you can remember that there were borders between Russia and Ukraine, right? And everything was settled. Oh, sorry. Then they went in and they took Crimea. But then they had Crimea, right? That's all they wanted was Crimea.

So we gave them Crimea and it was all over, right? We didn't have to worry about, oh, sorry, sorry. Then they invaded the rest of Ukraine. But hey, we're just going to give them a couple more provinces and then everything's going to be fine. Didn't Republicans used to be the people who said this was garbage? This is not the way to deal with an aggressor. This is Chamberlain.

Yeah, I know. The thing that just sticks in my craw about it, to be honest, is just that they think that they have, at least for talking points, and you monitor these guys more than me, but the Rubios and the Cottons, you know, when they go on TV, these national security hawk Republicans, they think that their get out of jail free card is just to be like, well, I just look at the results. Like Putin's gotten more farther into Ukraine when Biden was president than when Trump was president. Like as if, you know, the president of the United States is omniscient and all powerful and everything that happens in the world when Trump was president as trump's doing and everything that happens in the

world of biden's president as biden's doing and like there's no difference between 2020 and 2025 and trump's rhetoric and the people he's going to have around him and his plans it all just flies in the face of reality that trump's policy is objectively pro-Russia when it comes to this engagement. But like, they feel like that, you know, they have this one simple talking point, and it gets them out of having to contend with it in any way. And to add to that, a couple things. There's Republican lie about how like, Putin only invades when Democrats are in power, you know, Crimea when Obama was in, and then Ukraine when Biden's in, he didn't do it under Trump. First of all, under Trump, Putin was

in Ukraine the whole time. They were waging a proxy war in eastern Ukraine, like, you know, so that's bullshit. But the other thing is, Putin was in the United States. Putin had just elected a president who was breaking up NATO, who was constantly attacking the Europeans, who I believe we have pretty solid reporting now intends in a second term to pull out of NATO, right? Like, if you're Putin, why would you mess with that? Like, you're in Ukraine, you're fighting your proxy war, you got your hands officially clean while you're doing it. And meanwhile, you got this guy in the White House and the most powerful, who's doing your bidding, who's doing your work for you unraveling this alliance. I wouldn't invade Ukraine during that time. I'd be like, let's see what this guy can do to destroy the alliance. And then after he's gone, okay,

well, now we'll have to like do it ourselves. One nitpick on that rant. I agree with everything. I think Putin was helping elect Trump. I have to give credit for actually electing Trump to my former colleagues and friends in the Republican Party. One more thing on the change of the Republican Party, you've been monitoring the tariff talking points from the Veep contenders. What have you been hearing from them as far as along the rubric of the 1980s Republicans are no longer around? What are the Veep stakes guys saying about the Trump 10% tariff? Well, I just think it's an interesting recurring theme to see the Republicans having officially abandoned their platform. So they had a series of things they used to believe in, you know, strong foreign policy, economic freedom, morals,

and, you know, family values. And they've just been jettisoning them as we go along, right? Anything for Trump. So this latest one is tariffs, right? Republicans used to be like against our tariffs or taxes. You know, it's the thing that Democrats did. We're going to stand up to the foreign companies. We're going to oppose tariffs. Well, the tariffs just get passed along to the consumer. And that's something Republicans used to say. But now Trump's like, hey, we're going to be the party that's against foreign immigrants and the party that's against foreign products. And we're going to hit him with tariffs. He claims he's going to replace all income taxes with tariffs. You would have to like more than double the cost of everything with the tariffs in order to do that. You think inflation is bad now?

You think that people on fixed income are in bad shape now? Yeah. And it's regressive, of course, because everybody's got to like buy the products, whereas the rich people, you know, income taxes are at least progressive. So Republicans used to be against this. And what I saw this weekend was... Can we just pause on this, though, actually? Because that's a really important point. So Republicans used to be against this. And what I saw this weekend was... gimmick where he's like, oh, we're not going to tax tips or whatever. Meanwhile, the actual policies replacing the income tax, a progressive income tax with a tariff is regressive is almost like almost feels not, you know, not like a strong enough term to describe like who is going to get squeezed the hardest by that kind of tax regime. It is working class people. It is people that don't have a huge savings, don't people. It is people that don't have a huge

savings, don't have huge investments, people that aren't paying that much in income tax right now. It is a total reorienting of the tax system to punish not middle class people, but lower middle class, working class people. And like that is the stated policy of the party that's trying to make this working class pivot. And like, they need to be held to account for that. Like, a lot of people ran a pretty compelling campaign against Romney about a proposed middle class tax hike. And I think that's got to be another element of the argument. Sorry to interrupt you. But I just I think it's really important. You're totally right. And everybody used to understand this when we called it a sales tax,

when we said income tax versus a sales tax. The sales tax is regressive for all the reasons you just outlined. The tariff is a sales tax. That's what it is. And so it would be helpful for conservatives to go back to their position they used to hold on that. But I wanted to say one more thing about this. So you've got these Republicans who are campaigning for vice president. There were two of them on TV this weekend. Tim Scott, Doug Berger. Somebody explain to me why the governor of North Dakota is on the

shortlist for VP. Okay, let me set that aside. But he's supposed to be the businessman, Tim. That's his whole thing. I made a lot of money in business. I'm a smart businessman. Donald Trump's a smart businessman. We do smart business things. What is Doug Burgum doing? What is Tim Scott doing? They were just folding over for Trump on tariffs. They're now saying, oh, you know, when Trump says it, tariffs are somehow a good idea. We need to level the playing field and all that stuff. So these business guys are happy to jettison former conservative economic doctrine and sensible business think for this cynical political play by Donald Trump. Yeah. Do we have to do Doug Burgum? Do you want to do the Doug Burgum clip? I just, I can't decide.

I was going to cut it, but now that we've mentioned it, let's, okay. Here's a clip from a Fox Sunday show over the weekend. It begins with a flashback that Fox played to a Doug Burgum interview with Chuck Todd a couple of years ago. Would you ever do business with Donald Trump? I don't think so. Why? I would, I just think that it's important that you're judged by the company you keep and I. You just wouldn't do business with him? No, I wouldn't. So you have been a supporter of his

as far back as 2016, as I mentioned, and again in 2020, but you did decide to run against him and you said that. So have you evolved on how you view the president? Well, Shannon, first of all, thanks for having an opportunity to talk about this. But as you said, I endorsed him early during my primary. He and I were both business guys running for the first time. I'd never met President Trump when I endorsed him, but I was excited about a business person being in the White House. And of course, when he won that November same same night we won first time running for public office. The excitement that night at our event and in North Dakota when he beat Hillary Clinton,

it was electric. And of course, serving underneath him for four years as a governor was fantastic. It was like a breeze at your back. And then I had to serve under Joe Biden and that's been like having a gale force wind in your face. But during the time that Biden's been in office, I had a great relationship, the First Lady and I, with the White House and with the president during the time as a governor and a president would. A ton of respect.

Cabinet visits to North Dakota, record number 19 cabinet visits. The president was in North Dakota three times. The vice president was there. So a great relationship and gained a ton of respect for him as a leader during that time. But that was prior to you saying you wouldn't do business with him. Yes, and then, but I didn't know him personally, but since January, when we endorsed him, when we dropped out, the first of the candidates to endorse him, had a chance to spend a ton of time with him since January. And I wish every American could see him the

way Catherine and I have got to know him in the last six months, because this guy is tireless. He's committed. He's smart. He's funny. He's nothing like he's portrayed in the press. And so if you ask me that same question today, I'd be like, absolutely, I would do business with him. Because, I mean, think about how successful he's been, whether it's a whatever it is. I mean, whether it's in TV, real estate, politics. Oh, my God. OK, well okay well a couple just observations one fox calling trump isn't the president it's just a little nitpick i have for journalists but trump is not actually the president he imagines that he's the president but former president we can accept and uh i'll say this about

doug he certainly improved a little bit i mean that chuck todd interview was brutal just the way he was stammering and like grasping for an answer so at least he's on his talking points the talking points are bullshit but at least he's got talking points now that's the best i can say about doug i don't know what do you think will uh yeah well in the chuck todd interview he was also being a normal person and saying you know of course i wouldn't deal with this guy he's a scumbag i love the term evolved you know he's how, you have evolved on this. He hasn't evolved. He's collapsed.

He talked about how he served underneath Trump. You ever heard that word, underneath? That's a little suggestive about the whole Trump-Bergham relationship. You can see how they… As a governor also. He didn't actually serve underneath. No. It's not like Trump.

He worked for Trump. He was the governor of North Dakota. Right. He's underneath him now, he worked for Trump. He was the governor of North Dakota. Right. He's underneath him now. He wasn't underneath him yet. So, setting that aside for a minute, I love the whole Bergam Schpiel about how I hadn't met him. I hadn't met him. But now that I've met him, my wife and I have spent time with him and Melania and like, now this is the real Trump. The guy gets, this drives me crazy because this is very similar to what Lindsey Graham has always said about how the real Trump is the one I get, this drives me crazy because this is very similar to what Lindsey Graham has always said about how the real Trump is the one I play golf with. No, no, no, no. The guy you

play golf with, or if you're Doug Burgum, the guy you're having dinner with, you and your wife, the whole point of that context is that Trump is with you, the sycophant and other sycophants, right? Everybody who's sucking up to Trump, everyone who's adoring Trump. The whole problem with Trump and other autocrats is they have to deal with the rest of the country that doesn't necessarily adore them and suck up to them. And how do they deal with that? And they're aggressive, dangerous, threatening, in some cases violent, right? So this context of you and your wife, Doug, having dinner with Trump or Lindsay playing golf with Trump, it's totally the wrong context for evaluating Trump's character. Even if it's true, it's also like bullshit. We see Trump's inner monologue on his stupid social media posts. You know, and Trump is a deranged lunatic in private. We all see it with

all caps, bleats and the personal attacks on people and the strange you know late night posts you know there was also a meeting he had with ceos over the weekend the ceos were like oh you know andrew ross sorkin reported that the ceos were like trump is a little deranged like the way he keeps you know talking about the election fraud and all this all this stuff and like well it's purportedly a meeting with ceos so like even if the pretense was true your point is correct that it is not the real trump how he behaves to people sucking up to him i also reject that the pretense is true you know we might have some more discussions later in the week about undercover tapes i would just like some undercover tapes from the trump uh lindsey

graham golf cart rides because i don't i don't think that I don't think Trump is charming and smart and you know really focused on the issues that matter when he's in the golf cart with Lindsay either I'm pretty sure Trump is just Trump always right right well I had a Greg Gutfeld rant I'm gonna save it for tomorrow I've been worn down you know by Tom Cotton and Doug Bergham and Annapolita Luna and all these fucking people. And if I got to do a re-entry, my blood pressure is just going to explode on Greg Gutfeld. So folks, you can check out. I do occasionally do some hot takes during the week on YouTube, which I'll be doing this week. So make sure that you're subscribed to the Bulwark's YouTube page if you haven't. Will Salatin, do you have any final words of wisdom for us you know what tim i'm sorry that it's hard for you to make re-entry into this into this awful situation

but you have made it better for the rest of us so thanks for coming back i'm i'm doing it i'm happy to be back as the week builds you know my rage is gonna build and so by the live event in denver and friday i'm gonna be back in full form full form. All right, don't you guys worry about it. Thank you to Will Salatin. You're going to be back soon. We'll be back here tomorrow with a little undercover podcast. We'll see what you guys think about that.

We'll see you all then. Peace. Daring and nobody ever knew Rushing away Daring and nobody ever knew My body all gone Evil men make me kill ya Evil men make ya kill me Evil men make me kill you Even though we're only well made so far The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.