The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: Pence’s Profile in Half-Courage

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Mike Pence is trying win over the DC press corps but still refuses to do his part to hold Trump accountable for January 6. Plus, the new too-big-to-fail banks, more Fox dirt, and DeSantis is not a natural people person. Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm just kidding. I just, I... How are you, Will? I'm fine, Charlie. You know, this is, so we're in Oscars weekend, obviously, and this is giving me flashbacks to a year ago when I hadn't watched the Oscar ceremony. So I didn't know anything about the slap. And you asked me about the slap and I took the side of Will Smith, not realizing that he had just slapped the guy. And so, yeah, I'm very excited that there was no slap this year.

So I can't screw it up as badly as I did then. I just have no material for you on the Oscar. So people who are tuning in to find out Oscar stuff, I think Sonny Bunch is going to have this nailed, but us, I think we have nothing. Okay. So I assumed that we were going to start this morning talking about Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis, but instead we have to talk about Silicon Valley freaking bank. Yeah, no. So the government has stepped in to bail out a bank in a manner of speaking. And so the trick here is we've had three banks that were either failing or in danger of failing. The second one was the big one, Silicon Valley Bank, and then another one, Signature Bank. So just to make this simple

for people, a lot of depositors started to freak out about the idea that these banks were going under and they started to pull their money. And when you start, as you know, with bank runs, it's self-fulfilling, right? People start pulling their money out. The bank doesn't have enough liquidity to give you your money at that moment, even if it could in the future. So it just spirals out of control. So the government has stepped in over the weekend. That's how urgent it was to reassure everybody that the depositors will get all their money back. How are they going to get their money back? They're going to get it back through charging fees to banks, which the government claims is not you, the taxpayer, bailing them out, but it is you, the depositor, bailing them

out. Because if you have money at a bank, your bank is going to have to pay fees to cover this. That cost is going to get passed through to you. So that's where we are. So I had a couple of questions about this to start off the day. And people who are listening to this later on Monday are going to be smarter than we are, because obviously we're entering into a period of maximum risk. Even though the president came out and said, everything is safe,

nothing to worry about here. We know how panics can be fed. So we're going to find out what the level of risk to the banking system is, what the level of risk to the economy is. The tremendous political risk, I think, to the Biden administration, explaining the difference between a bailout and a backstop. I guess my initial set of questions, you know, started off with, and I had this in my newsletter this morning, are America's banks run by goldfish or people who have the memory of goldfish? I mean, did anybody remember what rising interest rates were like? I was listening to an analyst this morning say, well, you know, the people running the banks, you know, many of them have never actually experienced a period of rising interest rates. What? Did anyone learn anything from 2008? So my second question is,

are we back to this too big to fail bullshit again? It's like, okay, systemic risk. We're not going to bail anybody out. We're going to backstop them. We're going to bail out all of the investors. Forget that $250,000 limit. We're going to do that. Are the people going to be held accountable? The idiots responsible for this debacle going forward, are they going to be held accountable this time?

Because they were not last time. And, of course, we also don't know whether or not calmer heads will prevail. But anyone who is banking on calmer heads prevailing have not been paying any attention to our social media and political universe lately. Well, a couple of things here. Let me defend the government on this. Let me defend what the Biden administration did. They're not bailing out the executives and the shareholders. Or the investors. So the shareholders are screwed. The executives are screwed. Although let's come back to that in a minute because one guy has got some issues with him.

But the depositors are the ones who are... So they're basically telling you, the depositors, you'll get your money back. Even though you were only nominally insured up to $250,000, the government, in effect, will insure the rest of it. The hope of the administration in this intervention is that by bailing out the depositors, they're going to stop the runs because the runs are depositors pulling their money out of banks and shifting them to other banks. Meanwhile, they're hoping they don't get the moral hazard because by not bailing out the investors, the shareholders, the executives, they're hoping that the banks will still feel the sting of this and will not screw up the way that Silicon Valley Bank did. You hope so. And I guess this is the question of whether

or not people are going to be able to make that distinction between the backstop and the bailout. Because essentially what we've done is we've, by government fiat now, that $250,000 limit is gone. We're going to have a lot of, you know, people going back and forth, you know, what caused all of this. I think the stupidest commentary of the day is that this collapse was caused by woke politics. I have no idea what that's even talking about, except that certain people, you know, what is the old adage? You know, a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So Donald Trump is saying it. You have congressmen saying it. Of course, Ron DeSantis, who will say anything that the base is saying, is saying it's woke. It does appear to be a problem of

rising interest rates that they kept, you know, pushing the money out and then figuring that they could make investments that would, you know, keep them liquid, except that the value of some of those investments went down as the interest rates rose. As we have been told, they were going to rise for more than a year now. This is another thing, by the way, that the Republicans are blaming this on. So it's the wokeness, right, which is BS. But the other thing is they're blaming Biden for causing the rise. And first of all, it's the Fed that's raising the interest rate. But secondly, Charlie, it's exactly what you said. Ordinary people figured this out, right?

The interest rates are going up. Make your financial decisions accordingly to the extent you can. Here's this bank. You know, they got themselves locked into this and they didn't hedge it. They just, they screwed up massively. They made terrible financial decisions, this particular bank, Silicon Valley Bank. And it's not the fault of the Biden administration. It's not even the fault of the Fed. It's the fault of these guys, the people who ran this bank for failing to do what everyone else did, which was

to hedge against the rise in interest rates. Well, and also, I mean, there's a lot of people pointing their fingers at this 2018 law that actually eased back on some of the Dodd-Frank capital requirements for midsize and small banks. I mean, some critics are saying that this is, you know, at least partially to blame for, you know, SVB's troubles. Interestingly enough, though, you know, Republicans obviously led the effort to pass the law. Trump signed this rollback, but 33 House Democrats and 17 Senate Democrats also voted for it. So, you know, that's one of those moments like, hey, when did you think that was a good idea? Here's a little bit of a tidbit for you this morning. month, okay, this month, which is March, Senator Tim Scott, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, sent a letter to the Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, urging him to adhere

to the 2018 law and not increase capital requirements, which basically tell, you know, how much of a buffer banks should have on hand in regard against losses. They should not increase capital requirements for midsize banks. So even with this impending crisis, you had politicians telling the Fed, hey, don't require the banks to toughen up their liquidity. Why politicians are engaging in this kind of micromanagement? Why they are engaging in this? And apparently, Tim Scott, who's running for president, and Lord knows what the motivations are here, he's standing by his letter, even though obviously now we're seeing the disastrous

consequences of it. So once again, the involvement of the politicians in Washington is not covered with glory. No, it's not. And Charlie, this gets to one of my favorite topics, which is fake libertarianism, right? So we deregulate the market. We say, you gets to one of my favorite topics, which is fake libertarianism, right? So we deregulate the market. We say, we don't want to require you to have liquidity. We do this in the name of the free market, which is supposed to be sink or swim. You take your risks. You reap the rewards. If the risk pans out, you pay the consequences if the risk fails, right? But in reality, what we're seeing is that when you fail and you're threatening to take other people and other banks down with you because of the panic, in that situation,

we're going to step in and we're going to cover you, right? Suddenly, everybody's a socialist. Everybody's a socialist. Yes. So just to be clear to people, I'm not a socialist about this. I generally am a libertarian, but you have to be honest with yourself about what consequences you're willing to allow people to suffer, right? So for example, in the case of healthcare, if you're not willing to let people die when they need medical care, then you need to socialize the cost of medicine somewhat because you know that when people get sick, you're going to provide the care. So let's be clear about that upfront. Let's distribute the cost fairly and not later on do it under the table. Similarly with banking, right? If we're going to insure deposits de facto above

$250,000, your whole payroll, what was it like 50% of companies in America backed by venture capital apparently had money in this bank, right? If we're going to bail them out and we're going to go over the 250, then let's pack that into the deposit insurance upfront and not later on pretend that didn't happen. This is the upfront thing. Let's understand what the permissible risks are. And if someone wants to engage in risky behavior, I think you should be clear right from the get-go, this is a risk, which means you can lose money and we're not going to bail you out. We're not going to tell you what to do necessarily. Well, maybe we are in terms of regulation, but we're not going to be coming in when you start, you know, screaming for the feds to bail you out because otherwise we get this kind

of situation. And I don't know what role Bitcoin and crypto played in all of this, but I'm telling you that if anybody that had my money in it was saying, hey, by the way, we're diversifying into Bitcoin and crypto. I'm like, I'm gone. I'm out of here. I just don't want to be part of this anymore. So because I understand it. But then I'm not going to call my congressman and say, hey, can you take care of me? Because I was playing free market, free marketeer out here. And amazingly, things went wrong. So everybody else is getting bailed out. Can I get my bail out? Right. And we are getting screwed by crypto. The first of the banks that went was not Silicon Valley Bank. It was

called Silvergate. And they had loans out to crypto companies. And if the government has to step in, that's you and me and every depositor paying fees to bail out the people who bet on crypto. So that is absolutely infuriating. You know, one other thing, Charlie, you brought up social media before. That is a huge new factor, right? So the last time we had these failures was 15 years ago. Now it's completely different because of Twitter, right?

Because the run is accelerated by people just tweeting out, get your money out of these regional banks. And then everybody starts doing it. And Charlie, the feds were out trying to sell this bank, this $200 billion bank over the weekend. They're trying to do this faster than any company can vet the books on the bank. And that's how fast you have to move now. So that's a way in which our government has to catch up to the technology of today. I do think that in terms of which way the populace winds blow, we're going to see how the politics play out. But that's also an added level of risk because I just think that there is zero appetite for anything remotely looking like, smelling like, walking like, talking like a bailout.

And of course, they're saying there's no bailout except that we're doing these things. Okay, so, all right, Mike Pence. So I spent an inordinate amount of time yesterday, as you know, as you were on Slack, looking for audio or video of Mike Pence's comments at the Gridiron Dinner on Saturday night. And lo and behold, as we all now know, there are none, right? There are none. So what do we make of this? I called it this morning. I was on morning Joe. And I said, talking about Mike Pence's denunciation of Donald Trump for his role in the insurrection, that it was a profile and half courage, like, hey, this is great. But, you know, counting on history to judge

Donald Trump harshly when you yourself will not testify in a resisting subpoenas is sort of just kind of halfway there, kind of halfway pregnant, halfway courageous, not quite doing it. Well, I want to give Pence credit for one thing here, which is that he's speaking out after Tucker Carlson has put out his warped version of January 6th. And a lot of what Pence was doing here, I think, was not aimed so much at Trump as it was at Carlson and his lies about January 6th. So one of his lines was, the American people have a right to know what took place at the Capitol on January 6th. What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. It's not like Trump has said anything new. That's Carlson. That's a shot. No, that's a shot at Carlson and his gophers in the

House GOP. And he went on to say, tourists did not injure 140 police officers by simply sightseeing. Tourists don't break down doors to get to the Speaker of the House. Tourists do not threaten public officials. So this was a strong statement. But I guess the question is, okay, you know, choosing to unleash this attack to a group of glittery D.C. insiders, political types, and journalists is one thing. Saying it on Fox News or saying it to a Republican event is something very different. Is he going to do that? You know, Charlie, okay, so usually I'm the one looking for the pony, and you're the one pointing out all the manure.

So I don't have to dig for the pony here. I feel like the pony is right in front of us, and you're focusing on the manure. Now, that's fair. That's fair, like what Mike Pence didn't do here. Because it's a giant pile. So, I mean. He's fighting a subpoena. He's refusing to testify.

He's waiting on the Doris Kearns Goodwin of the future to kick Trump's ass. Oh, yeah. We're going to stick Michael Beschloss' students on you. Those historians are going to rip you anew. Me? I'm just going to hide behind my lawyers. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Okay. All right. I'll give in for a minute here. So let's talk about what he didn't do. The historians. You're bringing up a really good point here. The big line that people loved from this was Mike Pence saying, what was it? History will hold Donald Trump accountable.

Okay. Well, I think that's true and I hope it's true, but I feel like when you're in the moment, you're the former vice president who has been asked to testify first by the January 6th committee, then the special counsel, you've refused both. You could be acting in the present to hold Trump accountable. Instead, you deliver this line about history will hold, which I feel like is a way of kicking the can way, way down the road. You're saying somebody else, my grandchildren will judge this time when I could have acted in the moment. So that does infuriate me that he doesn't act in the present and he passes it off to history.

So where'd the pony go? What did you do with the pony here? The pony is, we're looking at a political party where nobody has the courage to just stand up and state the truth. And so for Mike Pence to do that, which is to the extent anyone in the presidential field on the Republican side is stating the truth, he's the one doing it, right? All right. I am willing to ride this pony at least around the parking lot a little bit here because you are right. He is unambiguous there. When he talks about, I mean, he says President Trump was wrong. He said some of this before. He said a lot of this even in his book. He said, I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words

endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day. And I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable. There is no other Republican that I know of who has been that direct. I don't know what Chris Christie has said. And I guess the tragedy is that Mike Pence, and I wrote this today, and people, I'm going to get some flack from people who don't actually read the article. My newsletter, Morning Shot, says, why not Pence? Why not Pence? I mean, think about it on paper. Former governor, former vice president of the United States, solid conservative, Christian, right? Loves him. He was anti-woke before it was super cool, right? Hyper loyal defender of the Trump agenda. So what's not to like if you're a Republican? And the answer is what uniquely disqualifies him,

why he will never be president, why he will never be the nominee is this one thing because he refused to aid and abet the coup and he's called them out on and they will never, ever forgive him for that. And that's such a commentary on the Republican party. But the tragedy is also that by being mealy mouthed about it, by only these shows of half courage, he's actually kind of putting himself in the no man's land, right? He's neither too hot nor too cold. He's not willing to embrace his own freaking legacy. He's willing to go far enough to disqualify himself from ever winning the Republican nomination, but not far enough for the rest of America to go, that man's a hero.

Right. And to your point, so, you, so people say, well, there's no video of this, right? Because where was it delivered? At a dinner featuring a bunch of Washington insiders and journalists. And incredibly, Charlie, there's a story in Politico about they talked to Pence's advisors about what thoughts went into this. And the thought is exactly what you would expect given the context. This was about Mike Pence's relationship with the press, with Washington insiders. Pence's advisors actually said they're trying to connect with these people and show that he's the adult in the room and that he's friendly to the press. You know, a lot of his remarks were about the importance of a free press and what the press

has sacrificed for and all that. And that's great. They're sort of modeling it on John McCain's campaign. But John McCain's campaign, 2008, that's a long time ago. That's before the Tea Party, right? And the whole Republican Party that we've seen since then and that you're describing is a completely different context in which being the candidate of the press will not get you anywhere in a Republican primary. Well, also, you mentioned this Politico report and, you know, about, you know, Mike Pence's advisor saw the Gridiron dinner as this opportunity to amplify his criticism. And then there's this sentence here. See if you can pick out the flaw.

They also believed it would help Pence win over his most skeptical audience these days, Washington insiders and journalists who have given him short shrift in the early 2024 primary. The flaw is, and I probably should have gone off on this a little bit more intensely, this is not his most skeptical audience. This may be his most irrelevant audience, but it is not his most skeptical audience. His most skeptical audience is the Republican base who will vote in Republican primaries next year. They are way more skeptical. The MAGAverse people, the people in the Trump cult are way more skeptical than the Washington insiders because they don't get a vote in the primary, really. In fact, if you wanted to

pick out like a focus group that is the worst possible focus group in America for a Republican presidential candidate, it would be these folks. These are the people that the Republican base most despises. You wake them up at three o'clock in the morning and they say, who do you hate the most? It would be the Washington elite, the Washington media, the Corp, right? So I'm not sure this was worth it for him. Okay, so Charlie, you've depressed me with all of this. So can I go back to the pony for a minute?

Get the damn pony. We're in agreement that Pence himself has not really covered himself in glory and has cut short what he should have said and how he should have said it. But it is really important in the long term that we defend two things. One is the idea of truth, the idea of verifying truth, as opposed to the lies, the propaganda that people like Tucker Carlson put out. And the other is the idea of backing the blue, the law enforcement,

seriously, in all contexts, right? The Republican Party has largely abandoned that. They're for police when they're fighting black people who are protesting the killing of a black man. They're not for police when a bunch of white people attack the Capitol, et cetera. So in this speech, Pence says the line about, you know, tourists don't injure 140 police officers, the one you read, tourists don't break down doors. Charlie, that's evidence. What Pence is doing is he's saying, Tucker Carlson is hiding from you some very basic facts that show what really happened on January 6th. And it's really important to establish the idea that we're going to settle what happened by consulting facts, the injuries, the damage to property. And then Pence delivers the line about, I'll never diminish the injury sustained, the lives lost, or the heroism of law enforcement on that day. And it's really important that actual conservatives defend law enforcement when it is defending

the country. Okay, I'm going to agree with you on this. I hope he continues to say it. I hope that he continues to speak out on this. I mean, he did do something that we've been waiting for, which is he said his name. We have talked about Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, who refused to say what they disagree with Trump on. To his credit, Mike Pence is saying it.

And I think that's good. And I think the pushing back against the Fox News denialism is absolutely crucial because it has to come from that side, right? I mean, it has to come from conservatives. It doesn't matter what NPR says or the New York Times or what, frankly, you and I say about all of this. It's got to come from somebody that still has some residual level of trust. I mean, it's way diminished now.

So, yeah, it is good that he's saying that. This Fox thing is just not, by the way, continues to, what is the word, deteriorate more text messages, emails over the weekend, where somebody is referring to the audience as a bunch of cousin bleepering terrorists. I mean, the level of contempt they have for their own audience is truly amazing. Actually, not amazing. It is palpable how much they despise them. Have you settled in your own mind, whether in your moral code, it is worse to be lying to the viewers about that stuff or to actually believe the craziness, the crazy lies about January 6th?

Oh, it's definitely worse to be lying about it. I mean, people can be misled. People can be in error. People can sincerely believe something. But the real rank hypocrisy of knowing it's a lie and pushing it out anyway, I think that's worse. What do you think? Yeah, I don't know. I'm just thinking about somebody like Maria Bartiromo who seems to genuinely believe the lies. It frightens me that she has so much TV time to control when she's fairly deranged. And I almost feel more

comfortable knowing that somebody like Tucker Carlson, as awful as he is, actually knows the truth because I'm afraid of like the whole idea of truth unraveling. Well, this is interesting because, you know, in terms of like Dante's hell of, you know, who's the worst sinner, I've always made a distinction between, you know, the people who are just merely dumb versus the people who know better and then who misuse their talents. I, you know, the people who know better and yet continue to spread the disinformation, I think, are far worse. So I guess I would put the people who are just like dumb as a box of rocks, Sean Hannity, and put them in the same category as the merely gullible or the gullible like Maria Bartiromo. And then you have Tucker, who is a consciously malign actor. So I do think he's morally worse. But again, you know, there's a certain danger having morons running around the China shop with hammers, right? I mean, so they can Dominion got all the good text messages that were there to get. They've done all the work. So Smartmatic

won't have the same news value in terms of exposing the dishonesty at Fox. Well, they're asking for more than $2 billion. So you know how it is. It's a billion here, a billion there. Before you know it, it adds up to real money. Right. But you know, on this theme of consequences, if Fox were to actually have to lay off top talent, which of course is the last, right, the top talent at Fox is probably like the executives at SVB, right? Somehow they'll get their parachute and get out. So unfortunately, probably the people who should pay the consequences won't, but it would be great if the financial damages from these suits actually instilled a sense of fear and honor and respect for truth in right-wing media.

Yeah, that's not going to happen. I would settle for a sense of fear, anxiety, and a decision not to cross those lines again because it's too dangerous. That's the most I can hope for. That conscience being that small voice telling you somebody may be watching and they may have lawyers, that's as much as we can hope for. Okay, so Will, this was the weekend that we got our first really, I don't know, first, I think, kind of a good glimpse of Ron DeSantis out in the wild as he's pushing his book, he's campaigning, moving closer and closer to an actual presidential campaign, and he's in Iowa pressing the flesh. Sounds like he's a little awkward, a little not used to that kind of retail politics, but otherwise generating the kind of interest? What do you think? Kind of interest that he would hope for? He's got to be kind of pleased? Yeah. I mean, I guess I would distinguish at this point between DeSantis himself as a performer and

the larger context of what people expect and hope for from him. I mean, he's got a lot behind him because he's viewed as a successful governor who checks a lot of the boxes in terms of why people like Donald Trump. DeSantis has the right enemies. He's attacking the woke and all that. But he's got a governing record. And he isn't a jackass in the same way that Trump is. And he's younger.

And he's younger. And he hasn't lost. He just won a big election instead of losing one, as Trump did. So there's a lot of people who want DeSantis to succeed. But DeSantis himself now has to show up and just be himself on stage., they're playing eye of the tiger as he's in the rope line and all that. So he's trying to project energy. But if you actually watch this guy on stage, it's not scintillating. He's kind of nasal and nerdy. And, you know, he, he's not a natural people person. And as weird as it is to say this, Charlie, Donald Trump being sort of a sociopath, he's good at people. He's good at controlling a room. He's got charisma. And DeSantis just ain't

got that. No, I do think that Trump does give off those fat Elvis vibes these days. You know, I think it was our colleague, Amanda Carpenter, who made the analogy, said, you know, DeSantis is more Richard Nixon than he is Donald Trump. Remember, Nixon was just very sort of awkward and stiff and kind of wonky. Actually, the more I think about that, the more I think of DeSantis being in that mode. Yeah, yeah. And if you think of Nixon as kind of an introvert, that seems to be where DeSantis is. I mean, there's a lot of differences, but the fact that DeSantis goes into a room and he doesn't draw energy from it the way that a successful politician usually does, he kind of wants to end the event. He'll go around and shake hands, but he doesn't light up. I mean,

even Joe Biden, he just connects with people. Even at his age, he seems to get energy from that kind of interaction. And Charlie, people pick this up. Think about George W. Bush. George W. Bush was kind of dumb in a lot of ways, but he was a guy who would go out and say what conservatives wanted to hear in a way that people just liked him. There's some value in having the front man be somebody who's likable and who connects that way. And if DeSantis isn't that guy, that's going to be a problem. Well, also, and I know this is an overused term, you know, authenticity, that people want you to be authentic. And I think that can be overstated. On the other hand, the thing about DeSantis that continually strikes me is that he's playing a role. I mean,

I don't know who the real Ron DeSantis is, but he's clearly decided that the quote unquote Ron DeSantis, who's running for president right now, is going to be a certain persona. And he's not obviously, you know, running as an anti-Trumpist. He's running as the successor to Trump, right? I mean, he is going for the Trumpian red meat that I'm Trumpism without Donald Trump. And you see it. And so there's always that little gap of inauthenticity. Now, maybe he does believe all of these things, but it does feel like he's putting on the kind of, you know, the Trumpian mask every time he goes on, because everything is knee jerk. Everything feels like it's rote. You know, he keeps going back to the same things. You picked out some soundbite. He was in Des Moines

and in Davenport this weekend. Am I right about this? And gave almost identically the same speech. And he's really, really proud of sending the immigrants, the asylum seekers, up to Martha's Vineyard. And apparently the crowds, they're showing up really like that. There's two different soundbites. He says virtually the same thing. This is Ron DeSantis from Davenport, Iowa this weekend. And because I'm sick of, I'm sick of elites imposing their vision on open borders on you and on us with them not having to

face the consequences of it. So we thought it was worth it to send 50 illegals to Martha's Vineyard. They said they were a sanctuary city. They claimed that nobody was illegal and all are welcome. But you know what they did? They deported them the next day. Okay, so you want to fact check that for me? Well, I mean, they did not deport them. Deporting is you send people back to the country they came from.

DeSantis did with the same thing Greg Abbott does, the governor of Texas. They ship these migrants and they just dump them. They dump them. So if you actually care about the migrants, right? Just as a reminder, these are not illegal immigrants. These are people, they were seeking asylum and they may not have qualified for the asylum, but they are then failed asylum applicants. That's a different thing, right? But if you cared about these people, you would send them to a place where there is some kind of shelter awaiting them. And what Abbott does and what DeSantis did is just dump them in a place that was designed, it was a kind of a photo op, right? Oh, Martha's vineyard, a bunch of rich liberals will dump them there.

They did not have facilities there for these people. They did have them on the mainland. So they moved them, you know, in Massachusetts to a place that could handle them. That's not deportation, but DeSantis doesn't care about that. He just wants to score one against the libs. And to me, this soundbite, which by the way, in both speeches, Charlie, I believe as I heard it was the biggest applause line, right? He's totally picked up on this. So he's going to do it. And that just illustrates what you're saying. The DeSantis appeal to the Trump voters is I have all

the same enemies and I'm going to stick it to them just the same way that Trump did, except I'm more electable. So the fact that I sent these people to Martha's Vineyard and that the libs were unhappy about it is something for you to treasure and enjoy their tears. So that's about a 30 second soundbite in which you just identified two pretty fundamental mistakes, two fundamental untruths, let's put it this way. They're not mistakes. They're clearly not mistakes. They're untruths. Number one, when he says they were illegals, they are not illegals. They were legally seeking asylum and then saying that they were deported when, in fact, they were not deported.

So, again, in 30 seconds, his most important, most popular line on his stump speech, he gets it wrong. And he knows he gets it wrong. Right. And to him, that doesn't particularly matter. Just to give people an idea of these speeches, because a normal person is going to want to watch Ron DeSantis. I watched three of his speeches, right? So the two in Iowa, he also did another one in Las Vegas. And it's a similar kind of stump speech, but he's got a list of enemies, a list of tears he's going to extract. So one of them is the liberals in Martha's Vineyard, right? Another one is the woke companies, the wokeocracy. Disney. Disney is like the big company that he's targeting and it's supposed to be a symbol of liberal excess. Faucian dystopia. This is, have you heard this one, Charlie? DeSantis is running against Fauci and Fauciism and what he calls the medical bureaucracy, but also Fauci and dystopia, which is a bunch of scientists and medical people trying to take away your freedom. prosecutors who are letting people out of jail. The United Nations, Charlie, every speech he's

giving now, he talks about how he passed an anti-rioting law and that the United Nations condemned him. And he says, I wear this as a badge of honor. So his message to the Trump voters is all of these liberal institutions and people are your enemies and they're my enemies too. And that's why he's hugging that Trumpian lane so tightly, because he gives them the same rush that Venn diagram where they share the same people. If he rises, if he catches fire, he catches fire at Donald Trump's expense. And so it is going to get really, really nasty. So here's a question. And I know people are going back and forth, you know, is Trump done?

No, he's not done. He's leading in the polls, et cetera. You know, and the confident predictions from people who don't want to make a moral judgment, well, I don't have to say anything about Trump because there's no way he becomes the nominee. My question is, how does Trump lose? What is the scenario in which Trump goes away or is defeated? I mean, if people work that out, which will be the primary defeat that will end his presidential ambitions. And will Trump ever acknowledge it? I mean, if we've learned one thing, Will, it's that Trump can never lose.

Trump can only be cheated. Trump can only be betrayed. So how is it going to work out? What has to happen for them to move past him? I'm trying to work this out. My view about this is I think Trump will lose. Okay. Just to be totally upfront with people.

I thought Trump was going to, I didn't see this happening in 2016. So don't be skeptical. But the reason why I think it is quite plausible that he loses is I don't think much has to happen for him to lose at this point. I hear the story about it's his to lose. He's the front runner, et cetera. But in fact, DeSantis is already at a level where he can beat Trump. So let me give you some evidence for this. We just had a new poll out from the Des Moines register. It's a poll of Iowa Republicans. And in this poll, Trump does have a

higher favorable rating than DeSantis because Trump is better known than DeSantis. So Trump's got an 80%. DeSantis has got a 74. Everybody else is trailing, right? That's very high, by the way. 74 is still very high. It is high. It is high. And like all of, which is one of the problems is that all the people who love Donald Trump are concentrated in the Republican party. So even though Donald Trump is a terrible, terrible human being in the Republican party, he's beloved. But if you look at the net favorables, so obviously favorable minus unfavorable rating, DeSantis is actually already ahead of Trump. DeSantis has a 68 point net favorable. Trump's got a 62 and then everybody else is trailing well behind that. So DeSantis is already in a position where he can beat Trump in Iowa. And we'll have to see what

the updated numbers are in other places. But if DeSantis beats Trump at the beginning, just because people are, even in the Republican party, they're less comfortable with Trump. More people in the Republican party have an unfavorable view of Trump than they do of DeSantis. And that that ends up deciding the first contest. I can see it just cascading from there where people feel like DeSantis is giving us the parts of Trump we want, not the parts we don't. And Trump just falls into a steady second place and DeSantis wins. So let's go back to 2016 and we're going back to Iowa. Donald Trump loses Iowa to Ted Cruz. What did he do? What did he say? He said he cheated. He lied. We should run it over

again. I was robbed. It didn't stop him at all. You know, he loses in Wisconsin. He, you know, denounces the political machine. I agree with you. I just I'm trying to work out the scenario where he loses. And how many does he have to lose? And by what margin for him to actually acknowledge it? Because I cannot imagine a scenario in which Donald Trump says, I have lost. I am dropping out of the race.

I just can't see that particular moment. He cannot allow that to happen. So he's not a conventional politician who, if he consistently finishes second. So again, so what happens? So let's play it out. DeSantis wins in Iowa. Okay. Trump says he cheated. He lied. He'll pick up some, you know, reason for whatever, whatever. They move on to New Hampshire. DeSantis wins again, presuming that Governor Sununu doesn't get into this race. Go to South Carolina. Don't know exactly how it happens, but Trump finishes third. Okay. For you and me and for every other sentient political observer, he's done. What happens though? What does Trump do? This is the thing I can't get past.

Okay, so you're separating it now into two questions, which is helpful. One is, does Trump start winning or does he keep losing? And the other, does Trump concede? And I think the answer is he keeps losing, but he doesn't concede. I agree with you. But that's not my problem. That's the Republican Party's problem. But then he threatens to burn it down. You know, he doesn't go away. I agree with you. But that's not my problem. That's the Republican Party's problem.

But then he threatens to burn it down. You know, he doesn't go away. You know, Trump will try to burn it all down. So I'm just trying to work this all out. And I do think you're right, that these early contests are going to be decisive because the moment that Trump looks like a loser, he sustains more than average damage. On the other hand, if DeSantis underperforms, then, you know, the luster comes off him and he could drop like a stone very, very quickly. Right. If it looks like he is not the real deal, I just don't see anybody else being able to step

up and go, okay, you know, now it's, it's Glenn Youngkin time or it's Mike Pompeo time or it's Mike Pence time. No, it's not going to be. You know, if DeSantis goes, I think it's going to be Donald Trump runs the table. What do you think? It could happen, but let me back up for a second here. In terms of Trump refusing to concede that he lost. So you and I have seen for the last couple of years, polls in which Republicans say Trump didn't really lose the 2020 election, right? They say that. Now, one question is, do they really believe it? I think one test of whether they actually believe Trump lost is when DeSantis presents himself as he is doing as a winner. I believe the stuff Trump believes, but I'm a winner. Do Republicans actually know in their heart of hearts that Trump lost,

that they do, they view him as a loser, which I think they mostly do, and therefore they go with DeSantis because what they said to the pollster isn't what they really think. I hope that's the case, that they accept reality, right? But your second point about what happens if DeSantis fails, I think a lot of the energy behind DeSantis is not about DeSantis. It is about coming up with somebody who is younger and more attractive than Trump. And so if DeSantis falls early in the process, there will be some kind of move to try to find somebody else to push somebody else up there next to Trump. But who?

I don't know if it'll succeed because DeSantis is there in a way nobody else is. The problem is that if DeSantis fails early on, there really is not enough time for somebody else to rise up. And I think what happens is that creates this dynamic that is the most favorable for Trump, which is that a lot of people think this is my moment and they all step in. And as we know, we know what a crowded field does.

So again, we're now speculating. We don't know what's going to happen. So I have another question for you on the indictment watch. And I have to admit, somebody asked me about, you know, are the walls closing in? And I said, wait, we've been doing this game for seven years, waiting on stuff that never happens. Can we just take a deep breath? Maybe what you have is you have criminal charges coming down in New York, you know, followed by, you know, an indictment in Georgia, followed by an indictment by the

Department of Justice. We just don't know. We also don't know whether those indictments will, in fact, be the wind beneath Donald Trump's wings, that the base will coalesce around him, or whether or not the cumulative weight begins to catch up. You know, it's not this or that. It's just the guys, you understand that he faces this investigation and these indictments. I, at this point, I really don't know how it's going to play out. So I am not excited about this New York case for a couple of reasons. It's about sex, Charlie. It's about, you know, it's about, okay, it's about covering up sex, but it reminds me very much of Bill Clinton, right? For Clinton, it's Monica Lewinsky.

For Trump, it's Stormy Daniels. But still, whatever financial crimes are involved, it's still about sex. And I just don't think enough people are going to think that, you know, they're going to support an indictment, a prosecution, a conviction over something like that. And it's just seems like such weak sauce, given that Trump has much greater crimes out there. So I think it won't hurt him. I do not disagree with you. Yeah. And I think, you know, to your point, I think it does help him because he gets to play the victim and being the victim, you know, is a lot of people on the right now are picked up victimology from the left. And it's all about

we're being oppressed and Trump is being oppressed more than anyone and all that stuff. But it might add, it might add to your other point, it might add to the idea that Trump is not just a victim, but a loser that he's got, he's carrying too much baggage. And therefore, whatever the baggage is, we're better off going with DeSantis or somebody else. Well, that's going to be what will be interesting to watch is how DeSantis and the others handle this. Because of course, they will have to issue some sort of boilerplate criticism of whoever issues the indictments of the Department of Justice. But it's got to be boilerplate enough. It's got to be clearly boilerplate. Like, yes, I am shocked and appalled by this. Wink, wink. Let's move on to something else.

They have to find a way to straddle this, to not look like they are piling on, but also to make it clear that, hey, I'm the guy running who's not facing indictment. No former president has ever been charged with a felony before. So we're in uncharted territory. Maybe they don't have to do much of anything. Maybe they just figure that things will happen on their own. These are among the unknowns because we literally have never gone into a news cycle or a presidential cycle like this. I think this is what we need to constantly remind ourselves. Nobody is an expert because this has never happened before

in the long stretch of American history. We have never had a former president who has been indicted facing felony charges, possibly a trial during a campaign for the presidency. I mean, this is not Grover Cleveland's third presidential run, you know, grandpa. So I agree with that. On the other hand, Charlie, we've never had such loss of public confidence, or at least on the right half of the political spectrum, in the criminal justice system. So indictment used to mean something in a way that I'm not sure it does today, because Trump and his minions and the larger Republican party following him have done so much to destroy faith among conservatives in the criminal justice system, portraying it as ruthlessly partisan. And

I just don't think indictment's going to carry the same weight it used to. Well, we don't know. I can't argue with you about that because we'll be a lot smarter a year from now, presumably. So what else are you keeping an eye on this week? You know, I was looking at the situation in Mexico because I follow Fox News. Again, normal people out there, you don't want to be watching Fox News, but I follow it so you don't have to. And one of the things that has struck me is they move in a flock. They find a new issue. So to some extent, it's fentanyl.

But the kidnapping of these four Americans in Mexico and the killing of a couple, this has driven a consolidation of conservative media around the idea. I don't know how to describe it, Charlie. There are people talking about basically invading Mexico. Or bombing them, just firing a few missiles at the cartels. Yeah, that the cartels are terrorists and therefore, and I see some Republicans pulling up short. I saw Senator John Kennedy saying, no, we're not going to go to war in Mexico. But I see Lindsey Graham and others saying, you saying, threaten Mexico, tell them if they won't control the cartels, we'll go in and do it ourselves. What the hell does that mean? What are these people advocating? What are they advocating? Seriously? I don't think

they know. And Charlie, these are the same people who are talking about how we don't want to send our sons and daughters over to Ukraine. We don't want to get involved in any wars. Meanwhile, they're like threatening our neighbor. Look, Mexico is a mess in a lot of ways, but this idea that because there are bad guys next door, that we were just going to go in and take matters into our own hands. Do you have any idea what you're talking about? I don't think they do. We have done this in the past though. I mean, we have a long and storied tradition. Right, Panama? You know, going to Mexico, right? I mean, we went after Pancho Villa. We actually sent, was it General Pershing actually went into Mexico. We say the conservatives seem to believe in sovereign borders, especially our southern border, as long as it's preventing others from coming into our territory. But for us going south, apparently sovereignty doesn't matter so much.

Well, speaking of unintended consequences, destabilizing Mexico at this particular time does not seem like a good idea. I mean, if we were to have relations totally break down, all cooperation break down on the southern border, be faced with a really toxically unstable Mexico at a time when there are other international priorities, including an obviously aggressively competitive China. We haven't even talked about what the implications are for China to have negotiated a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I mean, what is that about? And how worried should we be? We don't have time to get into it. But I mean, there are a lot of other things. And of course, you know, continuing to watch what's happening in Ukraine, where Ukraine is obviously at a, they have been for the last year, more than a year, you know, at a sort of a life or death existential point. But we are at a crisis point there. But will we provide them with everything they need to continue? Because I think,

do you ever notice that we are, and you're part of this group, I suppose, you know, addicted to the rosy scenarios, because you're always playing the pony. Yes. We've been telling ourselves happy stories about Ukraine for a year. And yet at some point, it's like, is there a breaking point? Are we going to continue to just give them enough they need to not lose, but not to win? And how long is that sustainable? And what could possibly go wrong so much?

Well, this is one where I'm prepared to go dark in my analysis of what's going on. What if, Charlie, we're giving them enough weapons consciously to just bleed Putin, just to bleed Russia? I mean, Putin is starting to suffer some serious economic consequences. He's got no more troops to put in there. It's a terrible situation for Russia. I mean, I agree with the people who say, well, if we gave the Ukrainians more quicker, they could win the war quicker and that would be better. But I'm not convinced that there's enough political will to do that. We were just at the principal's first conference and somebody pointed out the important

thing, the most important thing is for Putin to lose and for Xi to get the message that if you invade a neighbor, you're going to lose. That's actually the bottom line. I think that is actually the bottom line. Will, it is so good talking with you. Have a great week. We'll do this again next week sometime. Yep. Thanks, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes.

We will be back tomorrow, and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.