The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: Popping the Red Balloon

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

It wouldn't have mattered how Biden had handled the balloon — Republicans would have said he was weak. Plus, the art of donning an AR-15 pin to trigger the libs, and Elon Musk is amplifying Russian propaganda. Will Saletan's back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon? Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon? Highway to the candy zone Highway to the candy zone I'm sorry. And there, basically, you have your weekend news. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes, joined once again by my colleague, Will Salatan.

So, happy Monday. Will, did that summarize your weekend for you? Pretty much. All balloon, all the time. Okay, I mean, we could talk about the State of the Union address. I cannot tell you how little I care about. I'm sorry. I am jaded about the State of the Union address. Literally, the only thing I care about is whether or not Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, you know, stand up and start screaming in the middle of the speech

and whether Kevin McCarthy stands up afterwards and rips a copy of it. Yeah. You know, I don't really care. Okay, so the balloon story. I'm sorry. I know that there's a lot of heavy breathing about it. You know what it means for foreign policy and the administration and everything. And Damon Linker, I quote him in my newsletter, the whole response to the balloon thing vividly illustrates how degraded American public life has become. Politicians spouting BS to gain likes and

applause online. Yes. Ordinary people pronouncing on events in utter ignorance, like that's new. And with a total absence of humility, not good. But I'm sorry, Will, as I wrote this morning, kind of perfect too. This more or less low stakes drama with the slapstick comedy, you know, a spectacular conclusion, this ironic plot twist, the writers saved for the end. I mean, you had the great visuals, you had the stupid performative outrage and all those takes that age like, you know, rotting cheese in the sun. And then, of course, you have the balloon from Beijing blasted into Kleenex by America's Top Guns. I mean, it's something for everybody.

It was a great story, wasn't it? It is a great story. And the weirdest thing about it, Charlie, is what could be more boring than a balloon, right? The balloon literally is a round thing that floats in the sky, largely just following the jet stream. So inherently, it's boring, but the attribution of all sorts of magical powers to it and, you know, heroic, you know, confrontation and all that stuff, that's all us projecting everything onto it. It's sort of like the producers of Netflix came up with it and they had to like sit around the room, you know, the showrunners and thought,

okay, well, how can we keep this thing like just going for six seasons? Just like it has to move really slow. It's got to move really slow. It's got to be ominous. It's got to have all kinds of drama around it, but it really can't go very fast. It's got to have different chapters. So am I being too frivolous about this? Because if you watched a lot of cable news, this was a symbol of American weakness. This was the symbol of America in decline and China rubbing our noses in it. I mean, it encapsulates everything wrong with the Biden administration until he blew the fucker out of the sky. And then, of course, the narrative had changed a little bit.

So part of it was Cold War, right? We're bringing back the Cold War and the, oh my God, the commies are sending this thing over us, nevermind that it's a balloon and not a plane or a satellite. The other part of it is, nevermind that it's a balloon and not a plane or a satellite. The other part of it is, Charlie, that we've been talking so much about the southern border and these human beings flooding over our southern border, and that's been the great crisis. And suddenly we have this giant thing floating over our northern border. And it was like a counter-programming of all of the panics that we've had before. You know, I still haven't really gotten an answer to the question, why a balloon? We live in an age of satellites.

The satellites can see what you're having for dinner. What is the point of the balloon? It's like 1876, let's come up with some strategic new weapon. We will float balloons over the enemy lines. I don't know about you, I had to go read up on balloons because I had the same reaction you did, had to go read up on balloons because I had the same reaction you did, right? What's the point of a balloon? This is like, you know, 100, 150, 200 year old technology. But then you read about, oh, they can put these payloads on the balloon

and the payloads are sophisticated and they can operate it from Beijing and there's propellers and stuff and motherboards. And anyway, the point is we're going to find out, right? Because all this stuff fell into the water and we'll find out what was the three busloads worth of payload that was attached to the balloon, and is it some sort of newfangled technology we never knew about before? Well, there are lots of legitimate questions about this, which we'll get to in a little while. Number one, could they, should they have knocked this out of the sky before it got to U.S. airspace? That would be one. Did this embolden the Chinese? Or, as David Ignatius suggests in the Washington Post, was it a big intelligence win for the United States that we were able to recover all of this?

Did this really happen during the Trump administration? Hmm, that's an ironic plot twist. And if so, what did he know and when did he know it? All of those things. So my favorite part of the whole weekend, of course, was watching all of the usual suspects rush out to their social media platforms to demonstrate their shaky grasp both of physics and of weaponry. Carrie Lake posts a picture of herself with a gun going something like, I'm told there's a balloon that needs to be taken care of. Yes, it's a hundred thousand feet in the air. And then of course, Paul Gosar, you know, had to like rush forward, count me in with his little handgun. And so you have this image of these great men. And then of course, Marjorie Taylor Greene, everybody I know, all the normal people want

to shoot it down because, you know, where are those Jewish space lasers when you actually need them? And then all these memes about Donald Trump could knock it out of the sky with, you know, his, you know, with a three wood. We're a deeply serious country. We're really deeply serious. Okay, so I'll just put this serious point on the table. All of this is performative hawkery, right? It's the whole showing up with a pistol against something that's tens of thousands of feet up in the air is a substitute for actual hawkery, right? So these are the people, we can get to all this,

but basically these are the people who are against, for example, sending aid to Ukraine, it was an actual war with, you know, Putin, but they're happy to show up on social media with a gun that can't possibly reach the balloon. On a slightly and only slightly more serious note, let's listen to some of the talking heads over the weekend, including Marco Rubio, who thought that there was a presidential dereliction of duty. Let's play Marco Rubio from yesterday. Your colleague and friend, Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, accused President Biden of, quote, dereliction of duty by allowing the Chinese spy balloon to fly across the U.S. That's a pretty strong accusation. Do you agree with that? Well, I think the dereliction of duty begins with this. Why not on Tuesday or Wednesday? You know

people are going to see this. At some point, you're going to have to disclose it. And they probably didn't want to because they didn't want to have their hand forced on canceling this Blinken visit. And so they didn't want to have to talk about it. But why didn't the president go on television? He has the ability to convene the country in cameras and basically explain what we're dealing with here and why he's made the decisions he's making and what they intend to do. I don't understand. Once they went public with it, knowing the amount of interest this was going to generate, presidents have the ability to go before a camera, go before the nation, and basically explain these things early on. And his failure to do so, I don't understand that. I don't understand why he wouldn't do that. And that is the beginning of dereliction of duty. Okay, so Will, if I hear

that correctly, what Marco Rubio is saying is that the actual dereliction of duty was the failure to have a television broadcast. Yes. The President of the United States did not have an Oval Office address to address a balloon over Montana. Okay. Yeah, that's exactly it. And this response from Rubio is a perfect encapsulation of what today's Republican Party is. It's exactly what you just said, Charlie. It is. So Biden literally shot down the balloon. Right. He literally did that. He literally shot it down. But he didn't, as Rubio says, he didn't go on camera. He didn't go on television. He didn't talk to us. He didn't do the kind of thing Donald Trump would do, which is do a big song and dance and beat his chest about how he's a tough guy.

Right. And so to Republicans, that is the dereliction of duty. It's that you failed to do the performance part, not the actual job. Well, my fellow cheesehead, Mike Gallagher, a congressman from Wisconsin, who's now the chairman of this new select committee on China, also had some some thoughts about what happened and what did not happen. Let's play Mike Gallagher. Let's assume that the balloon was mostly harmless or we neutralized it. Do we think that the timing was coincidental? It's far more likely that they deliberately timed this in order to send a message as Blinken was preparing for his trip. And the message is, look what we can do to you and get away with.

Your corporations, your career politicians, they will come crawling back. And so the message I have for the Biden administration is, don't fall for the Chinese Communist Party charm offensive. It's a farce. It's a bedtime story. They tell out-of-touch global elites at Davos, it's time to push back before it's too late, before something far more dangerous than a balloon is flying over American territory. What is he talking about? I've actually listened to that

several times and I'm really having a hard time. So this is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's totally incoherent what he's saying. Yeah, okay. That's what I thought. Right. So he's talking on the one hand about China sent this balloon over the United States. Intentionally. Intentionally to stick a thumb in our eye, right? To say, we can do this to you. Look what we can do to you. Then he sort of segues to don't fall for China's charm offensive.

So there he's talking about. The balloon is not the charm offensive. It was not like one of the balloons that you put on the flowers that you send. Right. This is not. So he's saying that Tony Blinken, the secretary of state, is about to go over to China and the Chinese are going to put on their charm offensive and the libs, Tony Blinken and Biden or whatever, are going to fall for this

Chinese charm offensive. Meanwhile, Gallagher is saying the Chinese are sending this balloon to stick a thumb in our eye and sort of hold lord it over us. So it doesn't make any sense, right? Why would China send the balloon while they're doing the charm offensive? So he's attacking from both sides because he doesn't know what he thinks. Gallagher doesn't know what he thinks. Okay, this is disturbing because Mike Gallagher is a smart guy. Right. He is not dumb. He's not a Paul Gosar, Lauren Bulber, Carrie Lai. He's a smart guy. And yet what he appeared to be saying is, look, this balloon was a giant inflatable

fuck you intentionally sent by the Chinese to say, hey, fuck you. At the time, they're launching a charm offensive, which you may fall for, which, OK, pick a narrative, pick a lane, Mike. Right. Right. It's either really a, you know, screw you, or it is this giant Valentine. I don't know. It's puzzling. Because as far as I can tell, and I'm going to concede that I am not an expert on all of this, is this seemed And then the administration reacted by canceling the visit. So Gallagher is concerned the administration will fall for this term offensive. And he's saying it days after literally the administration said, we're not going and we're having fun with the balloon story, but this is a serious point. You're right. Gallagher is a serious guy, and that's why McCarthy put him in charge of this China committee. So our colleague Joe Perticone has written about this. There's the Weaponization of Government Committee,

Jim Jordan's committee, which is sort of Fox News content generating partisan circus. This China committee was supposed to be bipartisan. It's supposed to be Democrats and Republicans working together, our country working against China. And Gallagher is supposed to be the guy in charge of this serious enterprise. But here he is joining his Republican colleagues in this performative BS. And as we're discussing here, it's all just about trying to attack Joe Biden politically. It doesn't make sense, as we're pointing out, that he's arguing from one side, arguing from the other. The point is just to attack Joe Biden from whatever angle you can. So it's really concerning to me that Gallagher is playing politics with this because it suggests

that this China committee, which is going to go on for the next couple of years, may just devolve into partisan warfare. That would be a shame because it would be better if we were all standing together, Biden and McCarthy, Democrats and Republicans against China. Okay, so should we have shot this down earlier? I mean, that was the big question. It shows up over Montana. Two questions, obviously, should you shoot it down right away? Or as Leon Panetta, who is Barack Obama's, you know, CIA director, said they should have shot this thing down before it even crossed into U.S. airspace. So what is your take? Why didn't they take it out right away?

Of course, I mean, the explanation has been, well, if they had, you had these, you know, giant busload payloads there that would have put civilians at risk. But as a result, we had to endure what's, you know, six, seven days of watching this Chinese balloon float unimpeded over the United States. What do you think? So I would look at this in two stages. The first stage is this balloon starts floating in over the Aleutian Islands. It comes towards Alaska. It's over our territorial waters. We could have shot it down then. We didn't. And, you know, Charlie, we're all going to find out more about this as more intel leaks about it, right? But I believe my understanding from what I have read so far in the press is that at that point, our military did not think this was different from previous, you know, silly little Chinese balloons that had floated around. So it then floats over Alaska,

it goes into Canada. And apparently, Charlie, at that point, our military kind of stopped paying attention to it. I know that sounds weird, but that's what the reporting so far. Then it floats down into Idaho and starts over Montana. At that point, we're like, holy shit, right? It's coming over, you know, a missile base. And now the military is like, we need to do something. This is not like previous balloons. This is coming right through our heartland. but it's now over the United States. And all of the reporting indicates that, in fact, Biden said, shoot it down. He said, shoot it down on Wednesday when it was over Montana. And the military said, you know, it's not really safe because this could fall on civilians. And it's also not generating a lot of intel for China. We'll find out more about this. But China has satellites. The satellites have good resolution.

They get aerial intelligence on us. So it's not clear the balloon is getting anything beyond that. Plus we could actually hurt people on the ground if we shoot this thing down. And in fact, it did leave a seven mile trail of debris when we shot it down, no matter where you shoot, you know, a seven mile area of stuff falling is dangerous. So we waited until it got literally six miles off the coast of the United States on the other side and shot it down. And as a result, that seven mile field of debris did not, A, hit anyone in the United States because nothing came within two miles of the shore and B, didn't fall outside of our territorial waters, which is 12, well, 12 nautical miles,

14 miles. And so I think this logical explanation is number one, we didn't want anybody to get hurt on the ground. And we didn't think the Chinese were getting anything once we were jamming this. And the other thing, Charlie, is I kind of think David Ignatius is right. I think we were getting more intelligence from this thing, or we thought we could get more intelligence from it than it was getting from us. Yeah. And again, keeping in mind that there's always the fog of disinformation during these events, but there were reports also that we were confident that we had blocked any communication from the satellite, you know, back to Beijing so that they were not getting intelligence in real time. Now we'll find out whether that's true or not. So when I was thinking about this whole thing, the silliness of it, the seriousness of it,

and when you step back just a few feet, even given all of the partisan rancor and the cheap shots and all of this stuff, it is interesting. There was a moment of very rare unanimity about the need to pop that balloon. Because I don't know about you, Will, you may read different things that I do. No one's criticizing the fact that we destroyed the balloon. So, I mean, Politico had a really great piece, you know, pointing out that the, you know, the great red balloon affair of 2023 demonstrated pretty decisively that there's a new geopolitical reality that for American politicians, there's no downside to being a China hawk. I mean, right now, there's nobody that's saying, hey, we were mean to the Chinese, at least in American politics. I mean, this is now the sweet spot that everybody is a China hawk. Right. But Charlie, this goes to the first point you made in our discussion, which is this was stupid on China's part. This was really stupid, right? Yes. It's not a victory by them, no.

Right. And if we go back to our discussion about Mike Gallagher, China did want to put on a charm offensive. There's always people inside the Chinese government who are trying to sort of lure Americans into thinking China's your friend, just open all your markets to us and we'll be good. And there's a consensus that's been emerging that that basically failed failed but sending this balloon right over the united states and trying to take pictures of us and whatnot it just sent a message to every american that china has ill intent against us and it galvanized support among everyone so it's not just the tom cottons and the you know kevin mccarthy's of the world but a lot of democrats

are now united not just against putin which which is what Putin accomplished by invading Ukraine, but against the Chinese Communist Party. So one of the twists in the story, of course, is that after spending the entire weekend saying this never would have happened under Trump and Trump putting out, you know, one statement after another, we now get the statement from the Pentagon that this, in fact, had happened during Trump's presidency, that at least three times, at least three times, Chinese spy balloons had crossed into American airspace in Hawaii, in Florida, in Guam, a couple of other places. So what do we make of all of that? Now, Trump is pushing back,

and all the flying monkeys of the MAGA world are also pushing back, that Trump never knew about this. We don't know whether he was told about it. Even Mark Esper, who is not a Trump flunky anymore, is saying that he does not remember being told about this. And then, of course, you had John Ratcliffe, who is the deeply deplorable former director of national intelligence, who went on the Maria Bartiromo show yesterday. And I have to say, and I'm sorry to be petty here, but I have not listened to this in some time. I would rather have a rusty nail pounded into my ears than have to listen to Maria Bartiromo's voice here. So I just want to say that I'm going to turn this down and play this for you, Will. But I don't remember her. Anyway, anyway, that's just the split. The Biden administration

is trying to minimize this explosive situation in this past week. And the Department of Defense is claiming that there were three balloons, Chinese spy balloons, that entered the United Space airspace during the Trump administration and that they were not shot down and they were not disclosed. Can you please tell us the truth and if that's true? Well, it's not true. I can refute it. Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper refuted it yesterday. Former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo has refuted it.

But Maria, the American people can refute it for themselves. Do you remember during the Trump administration when photographers on the ground and commercial airline pilots were talking about spy balloon over the United States that people could look up and see even with the naked eye and that a media that hated Donald Trump wasn't reporting. I don't remember that either because it didn't happen. What do you make of this, Will? All right. This is hilarious in so many ways. First of all, what Radcliffe is saying there is he didn't know. He's saying it didn't happen because people on the ground didn't see it, which sort of tells you the level of intelligence going on in the Trump administration.

That if people couldn't see it with the naked eye from the ground, then it wasn't real. I mean, the military is saying that this did happen under the Trump administration. So clearly Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, didn't know. Trump didn't know. Trump is out there denying it. It's classic Trumpism to deny that something happened that happened. But it's also remarkable that they tout their ignorance as some kind of shield from the truth. Imagine for a minute, Charlie, imagine that the military says

this happened under the Obama administration and Obama says he didn't know anything about it, right? There would be absolute outrage from every Republican quarter over how is it, there would be an investigation of how the civilians in the Obama administration didn't know about this thing. But that seems to be what happened in the Trump administration. They have no idea. They're at the stage now of denial. Later, there will be excuse making about why didn't the military tell us. There's a new Washington Post ABC poll out. The headline was that there's not much enthusiasm for a Trump-Biden rematch, but actually the numbers are pretty bad for Biden. Large majority of Democrats not enthusiastic about him running. In fact, if you believe this poll, which I have no

reason not to believe, but it suggests that there's less enthusiasm for Joe Biden among Democrats than there is among Republicans for Donald Trump. So your thoughts, how do you break this down? I actually don't read too much into it because if in fact there was a Biden-Trump rematch, I think a lot of those disaffected Democrats would come home. But what do you think? I'm worried about this, Charlie. This poll worries me a lot. It's only one poll, but here's what worries me.

When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, I was looking at sort of the national numbers that Trump had, and I was interested in how high do his numbers go? Because he's got a base, right? He's got a base of 30%, maybe at that point 40%. And the question is, how high can he go above the 40%? Because at some point, you start to get where you can win the electoral college. What happened was Donald Trump got to 46%. And even though he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, who had 48, 46 was enough to get this man elected. The fact that he is at 48

to 45 in a head to head alarms the hell out of me. It says that Biden is not strong, and it says that Trump can get enough marginal additional people to win a general election, and Trump is diminished, that Republicans want to move on from Trump. I think the Bulwark poll showed last week that even though Republicans want to move on from Trump, he still has this iron grip on 30% or so of the Republican electorate. And there's no indication that the Republican Party or Republican candidates have the will to do what it takes to get rid of him. And if you are the nominee of a major political party in a closely divided country, which we are, get pushback on that, we are a closely divided country, however you cut it, then there's a shot that person can win. Now, this post ABC poll also finds that Americans are not feeling the impact of the Biden agenda. Let me just read you the first two paragraphs. Two years into a presidency that the White House casts as the

most effective in modern history, President Biden is set to deliver a State of the Union address Tuesday to a skeptical country with a majority of Americans saying they do not believe he has achieved much since taking office, according to the Washington Post-ABC News poll. The poll finds that 62% of Americans think Biden has accomplished not very much or little or nothing during his presidency, while 36% say that he's accomplished a great deal or a good amount. On many of Biden's signature initiatives, from improving the country's infrastructure to making electric vehicles more affordable to creating jobs, majorities of Americans say they do not believe he has made progress, the poll finds. So that strikes me as the biggest problem,

is that Joe Biden, even this far into his presidency, just doesn't seem to be connecting with a majority of voters. DM me if you want on all of this, but this is what the numbers are saying right now. Yeah, this is very worrisome because let's posit that Joe Biden has basically done a good job. He's gotten a lot of legislation passed. He's managed things pretty well. The economy is recovering. The problem is when things are that good objectively, but the polls are that bad, that speaks to a political problem. The political problem is not that Joe Biden is a bad president. The problem is that Joe Biden is a bad talker.

He's not good at getting out on the stump and articulating what he's done. Compare him to, I'm sorry, compare him to Donald Trump. Compare him to Bill Clinton. Compare him to Barack Obama. He doesn't drive a message. And in fact, he sent Pete Buttigieg out on the talk shows this weekend to drive the message before the State of the Union. And Pete Buttigieg went out and talked about the Biden agenda in a very compelling way.

And that's what it would be like to have a president who can speak to the public effectively. Joe Biden can't do that. He hasn't done it. And it's going to be a major problem going into the election. I think that one of the problems of the Biden administration has been his unwillingness or his failure to use the bully pulpit. I mean, when you think of what are the markers of presidential leadership? Yes. Getting legislation done. Very, very important. Not diminishing it. The kinds of appointments you make, the administration you put together, all of those things quite important. All the jobs created, not insignificant. But one of the things that the modern presidency requires is for the president to communicate on a regular basis and connect with the American people.

And this is not something new. We think back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And yes, the New Deal was his signature accomplishment, winning World War II. But also, he made sure that he was in touch. He was in people's living rooms. He was in their heads. He did the fireside chats. And you think about successful presidencies, and there have not been that many. And these have been presidents who have connected at some level with the American people. Biden, I think, is going to get good marks substantively. But how many of those fireside chats, Oval Office addresses has he made compared to his predecessors? Has he

even attempted to do those things? No, he hasn't. And what you have to remember about Joe Biden is Joe Biden did not become president by winning retail politics. He was losing. He was losing in the Democratic primaries, but he was getting beaten by younger, sometimes older, I mean, Bernie Sanders, but people who were more compelling speakers. And what happened was the Democrats consolidated around him because objectively he was the strongest candidate, not because he was good at selling what

he was able to do as president. That's one problem. Then he won the general election against Donald Trump because that's who he was running against, right? He was the sane guy. He was the relative moderate compared to Trump. So a lot of people defaulted to him as a negative proposition. It wasn't that Joe Biden was compelling. At no point did Joe Biden win because he was compelling. And, you know, now if he faces somebody who isn't Donald Trump, he's going to have to be compelling. And I'm just not sure he's up to it. Okay, so going back to the Republicans and Donald Trump, one of the big stories over the weekend was the announcement by the Koch Network. We talked about the Koch brothers. There's now only one brother. The Koch Network is going to back primary challengers to Donald Trump.

Let me just read you the story from the New York Times. Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Kenneth Vogel. The donor network created by the billionaire industrialist brothers, Charles G. and David H. Koch, is prepared to get involved in the presidential primaries in 2024 with the aim of turning the page on the past in a thinly veiled rebuke of former President Donald Trump. There was an internal memo laying out all of this. The network, comprising an array of political and advocacy groups that have been backed by hundreds of ultra-wealthy conservatives, has been among the most influential forces in

American politics over the last 15 years, spending nearly $500 million supporting Republican candidates and conservative policies in the 2020 election cycle alone, half a billion dollars in that cycle alone. But it has never before supported candidates in presidential primaries. The potential move against Mr. Trump could motivate donors to line up behind another prospective candidate. Thus far, only the former president has entered the race. So let's evaluate this. I am personally skeptical that this is going to change the dynamics because I'm not sure

how significant money is. On the other hand, it does create the permission structure that hardcore, really strong conservatives, including members of the donor class, it creates a permission structure for them to break with Trump. Yeah, but see, I think they're going to need more than a permission structure to break with Trump. The problem is that they also have a permission structure or they're able to invent permission structures to stay with Trump if Trump ends up winning the primary or if Trump starts doing well in the primary. Remember, these people are cowards. They are cowards. If you understand them as cowards, then you make calculations accordingly. And one of the

calculations is, are they trying to stop Donald Trump in the primary because they recognize that he is a mortal danger to the republic? Or are they trying to stop him because they think he will lose? If it is the latter, which it is, then the more Trump demonstrates that he can win, for example, doing really well in this ABC post poll, the more Trump actually wins in primaries, the more these cowards will turn around and fall in line behind him because they have no actual principle standing in the way of supporting him. Well, this is the problem with basing everything on the fact that he's a loser and, you know, want to turn the page. The moment

he starts winning, that argument begins to disappear. And also, it's a difficult argument for some of them to make, you know, that I'm going to be sitting down with Paul Ryan in a couple of weeks. And I want him to flesh out why he's a never again Trumper because, you know, in most of his public comments, he says, because he cannot win, he will lose as opposed to a more substantive critique. But the problem is for Paul Ryan to say, we need to move on because he's a loser. All the Trump people have to do is turn around and say, well, Paul, you are the guy that lost with Mitt Romney. You lost and we won. So, I mean, it is very few people who can carry that message. And I keep coming back to the question of what substantive critiques will they offer? How will

they attack him? Or will it all be simply just turning the page? Also, will the Koch money be used to support candidates or will it be used to break down support for Trump? And again, you know, creating that permission structure by saying, hey, you can be a Republican, you can be a conservative, but you don't need to buy into all of this. You know, aren't you embarrassed by this? I just don't see how it's going to work. But then again, you know, we keep saying, when are people going to take a stand? And one of the largest donor networks in the country is apparently prepared to take a stand. So one and a half cheers. Yeah.

I mean, look, it's like the Iran-Iraq war. If one of these guys is willing to attack the other, you know, and it's not us having to do it, that's great. Look, Charlie, I think it is useful. It is important and it is useful. Anytime a conservative gets out there and says, you know, I agree with a whole bunch of the following Trump policies like the border or crime or, you know, tax cuts or whatever it is, and says at the same, you don't have to support this very dangerous man who attempted a coup against our country in order to get those policies, right? Because what Trump needs is a choice between either you take me and all my policies, or you don't get me and you don't get any of these policies. It's very important to fracture that coalition. So I support that part of it, but you have to

be willing to say the second part of it, which is that the reason why we want the policies and not the man is that the man is dangerous. Not that the man is going to lose because that's a derivative argument and polls can shift that argument and take the sand out from under it. You have to have a moral principle that keeps you from crossing that line. All right, so one of the things that I think is pretty apparent

is that a lot of Republicans, and the Bulwark poll made this clear, are ready and willing to move on from Trump, but whether or not they're willing to do what you just described is still a big question mark. I think that there's a lot of, you know, kind of waiting for the sweet meteor of death or, you know, maybe he'll die. That's that sort of thing. Charlie, it's the sweet balloon of death. Yes. Maybe it's going to be something like that. But sort of hovering over all of this is maybe that calculation that the legal system will do what it has not done to date, which is to hold him accountable, that he'll be indicted in Georgia, that the Department of Justice will move against him.

I had a really interesting discussion with Eli Honig, who's out with a new book about Donald Trump. He's a CNN legal analyst. He agrees that it is absolutely essential that Trump be held accountable for what he did back in 2020 and 21, but he's increasingly skeptical that it will actually happen. And he's very critical of Merrick Garland for taking this long. And I have to say that, you know, as we turn the calendar from January to February of 2023, We are more than two years away from the attempted overthrow of the government, the insurrection. And there is nothing from Department of Justice. There is nothing remotely close to what happened during Watergate, where you had so many members of the president's administration who were charged, arrested, and jailed.

And the more I think about what Eli Honig had to say, and by the way, people should go back and listen to that podcast. He's just a guy who pulls no punches. I am increasingly skeptical that there's going to be that deus ex machina of a legal system or an indictment that's going to derail Donald Trump. What do you think? No, I agree with that. Look, Charlie, we're all cowards to some extent, and we have to overcome our cowardice. So there's the cowardice of Republicans who support Donald Trump What do you think? Garland or somebody, you know, let's blame Merrick Garland. I don't think it's that simple. I think that this is a political problem. A republic has to stand up and defend its democracy. It has to

defend its constitution. And that, you know, it can happen through a court of law if you can prove a crime, but that's very difficult. And if we don't achieve that, the rest of us have to be willing simply to make sure that this guy doesn't get elected president again. That's on us. That's not on Merrick Garland. No, it's still on Merrick Garland. I mean, he he had one job. And if he fails to do this, I think it will be it will be something that historians will look back on and think, you know, how did he get away with all of this? Now, of course, I'm also aware of the possibility that there could be the indictments and that that

will be the trigger to rally around and re-energize Donald Trump. But I don't know. So, by the way, I don't know whether you saw this. And, you know, part of the problem is it's hard to keep up with so much of the crazy and like, what should we ignore and what should we not ignore? I may write about this later, but I think we have a new low for Elon Musk. Okay. He owns Twitter and Twitter has become, as we know, kind of this toxic waste dump of disinformation. But there's a tweet that was up a couple of days ago by some Russian propagandist and it's actually called Russian Market. And it's completely, obviously bogus here. Turkey newspaper reveals the terrible dimensions of Ukraine army losses. And then it has all kinds of, you know, information about, you know, NATO military

trainers who were killed. 234 dead NATO military trainers, US andS. and U.K., 2,458 dead NATO soldiers, Germany, Poland, Lithuania. And then it has a picture of somebody from the EU. This is obviously obvious Russian propaganda. It is obviously untrue. Elon Musk personally responded to this bullshit bit of Russian propaganda by saying a tragic loss of life. So Elon Musk not only permits the disinformation on his site, he amplifies it himself. I mean, it is really breathtaking when you think about it. And David Frum pointed out just this morning, he says, as I write, the owner of this platform, Twitter, has left live on his platform for eight hours the false,

crazy, and dangerous claim that thousands of NATO personnel have died in the battle in Ukraine. If he were just gullible, he'd have deleted and apologized long ago. This is something more. It feels like it's something more, that he's really embracing the dark side of this Russian propaganda. I don't know the answer to that question. I mean, it could be that Musk is amplifying it because he just believes it, but it sounds somewhat sarcastic on his part, the comment that he made. And if Frum is correct, then what Musk is doing is Musk has fallen into this psychology of liberal tears, right? Because we know that Musk loves to tweak the libs, prosecute Fauci and all that stuff. If Musk has decided that undercutting NATO and, you know, helping Putin is a way of tweaking the libs, then he's fallen prey to this thing where you hate the libs, so you take the

other side of whatever the libs are for. Well, what if the libs in this case are just for like, you know, truth, justice in the American way, then you end up standing against the virtue signaling. And what you're doing is a kind of vice signaling. You're saying, hey, you're against Putin, well, I'm for it. You're for NATO, so I'm against it. I think that's kind of where Musk has been for some time, and this is just an extension of that. Okay, so speaking of signaling, the story from last week about the Republican members of Congress basically taking off their American flag pins that they have on their lapels and putting on AR-15s, actually wearing little pins for AR-15. Apparently one of, was it Congressman Clyde who runs a gun store has been handing them out. You know, you want to talk about signaling

what you really value. And I suppose the entire point is that if they do that, they will trigger people like us, right? That who will have to remember that they are actually putting on their lapels a symbol of a weapon that has, you know, been used in one mass killing after another because, what, guns, God, whatever. And I think it's also a tell that our good buddy George Santos is one of those. George Santos is wearing an AR-15 lapel pin. I mean, if you want to talk about a perfect example of tribal signaling, like, hey, you know, I may be a complete liar and a crook, but look, look, look, I'm signaling to you that I'm a member of the complete deplorable tribe here, and I'm willing to actually have this symbol of the weapon that was used to massacre children and, you know, men, women, and children and

everything on my lapel because I stand with the Lauren Boeberts and the MTGs and men, women, and children and everything on my lapel because I'm, I stand with the Lauren Boeberts and the MTGs and blah, blah, blah. Right. Well, this is a sickness. The sickness is, as you're describing it, it's triggering the libs, right? So it's whatever will trigger. I'm triggered. Right. So what upsets libs? The gun upsets libs. Okay. So we'll wear the, the AR-15. Tobacco upsets the libs. So we'll talk about how everybody should be able to smoke everywhere. And tobacco is actually, what was it, the Tucker Carlson version? Tobacco is actually not bad for you. Only marijuana is bad for you.

Putin upsets the libs. So we'll talk about how Putin is a great Christian and America should stand with him. The China balloon, Charlie. I mean, a lot of the Republicans out on TV this weekend were basically saying China has humiliated Biden. And they weren't saying this in a way that's like we need to stand with Joe Biden. No, no, they were actually on China's side in the sense that they were enjoying and promoting the myth that sending this balloon over the United States was a humiliation of the United States and of Joe Biden. So you end up with this very morally warped worldview where you're defending bad things because good people stand against them. I think that's absolutely true. And by the way, this whole thing that Biden was humiliated by the balloon. Here's a thought experiment that just popped into my head. So this may be terrible, but humor me. So let's imagine that it was reversed

and that Joe Biden had sent a balloon over China. What would these people be saying about that? They'd be saying, are you kidding me? This weak, dickless old guy is sending a fucking balloon over red China, red China, which is making all these military moves. And that's what Joe Biden has done. And then when the Chinese blow it out of the sky, who's going to say, yeah, Joe Biden, he showed them. He really humiliated the Chinese. No, they would see that as an incredible embarrassment. If you just reverse the equation, right? We sent

a balloon which gets caught and which gets shredded by a Chinese jet. We would think of this as a Jimmy Carter level humiliation, right? Exactly. So now they're looking at the exact scenario and they're thinking, man, those Chinese, they just pants Joe Biden. I'm glad you brought up Carter. We know what Republicans would do because they did it in the Carter case and they've done it in other cases if you did something like this. So first of all, you're right about your hypothetical, Charlie. But there's also the other hypothetical, which is the military says, you know, it's a little bit dangerous to do this. It might hit somebody on the ground. Biden says, I don't care. We need to do the manly thing and shoot it down right now. They shoot it down. It falls over Montana or Wyoming

or whatever. And everything is fine, except one kid gets killed. I'm sorry about that. You know, this piece of the gondola hit this kid. Collateral damage. There would be months and months of Republican investigations about the stupidity of shooting this thing down over America when they could have waited until it got over the water or something. So we all know that in all of the counterfactuals, Republicans would be attacking Joe Biden because attacking Joe Biden is what they believe in, not any of the ostensible content, not any of the ostensible arguments that one might make about China policy. If a single cow had been killed, that cow would be more famous than Ashley Babbitt

in three months. Right. So, okay, so let's close it out. You have thoughts on the Grammys. I have thoughts on the Pro Bowl games. You go first. Oh, I don't know anything about the Grammys. And one of my thoughts was, my son was watching this and I'm like, I'm such a cultural literate. I'm like, oh, that's Beyonce. Right. So that's my level of understanding. Right. Everything past Beyonce. I'm like, who is that? That's Sam Smith. Okay. So I am at the point where I have to learn from the younger generation who anybody is at the Grammys beyond Beyonce.

Okay. But I almost watched the Grammys because Randy Rainbow was the host. Mm-hmm. What do you mean, uh-huh? Randy Rainbow, who's fantastic. Do not tell me you don't know who Randy Rainbow is. Oh, I know Randy Rainbow, yeah. Okay, all right. So, I mean, that would have been a reason to watch,

although apparently he lost his category to Dave Chappelle. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he seemed a little bit unhappy about that. Okay. So that's your take on, on the Grammys. Okay. I'm going to have to turn in my man card. I'm going to get really, really ripped for this. I know this. The pro bowl has been a joke for years. I've never watched the pro bowl. Nobody takes the pro bowl seriously. It's a waste of time. It's a waste of money. The players don't even like to show up because they might get injured, you know, but it's like a football game if nobody's really, really trying, right?

This year, they tried something different. Instead of having the Pro Bowl, they had the Pro Bowl games, which included, and this sounds like it's a bit from a Ben Shapiro show, and they made it flag football. The manliest sport created an alternative game in which no one's bones are broken. Nobody goes into cardiac arrest. Nobody has a concussion. Why the fuck are we even playing the game, right? So I actually tuned it on thinking, well, I was doing something else.

And I thought, oh, man, is there anything on? I realized, no, there's nothing on, including these stupid Pro Bowl games where they're actually going to play flag football. You know, good grief. Turned it on. I realized, no, there's nothing on, including these stupid Pro Bowl games where they're actually going to play flag football. Good grief. Turned it on. I have to tell you, Will, it was fun. It was fun to watch. You could tell these players were really enjoying themselves. They were playing a game. Nobody got hurt. They weren't wearing helmets, so you could actually see their reactions and everything. They had a very, very short hurt. They weren't wearing helmets so you could actually see their reactions and everything. They had a very, very short field. They weren't even trying to pretend it was real football. You had Eli Manning and Peyton Manning who were coaching the AFC and the

NFC teams. It was really very short, very, very quick, no tackling, no hitting. So it was not, of course, like the real game, right? But it was not terrible. And so, okay, you know, you can cancel me now. Report me to Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens. You know, those guys from the bulwark actually like the panty waist NFL. No, I still like the NFL. I'm going to watch the Super Bowl. I do like it.

But I have to say that I was completely surprised that it was as entertaining as it was. So, you know, whatever. I'm taking out my man card and like burning it right now. So let me come out. Since you're going to burn your man card, I'll burn my feminist card. But my first reaction on hearing you describe the flag football was, oh, they've come up with a version of football that more women might watch, right? I mean, if you're the NFL, you have a largely male audience. You'd probably like to expand it. Will Salatin, people. Will Salatin. So the NFL should do more flag football, right?

Charlie, the fact that you enjoyed this, you should be in the focus group. You should be in the market research because they're not just going to get a larger female audience. They'll get a larger male audience if Charlie Sykes really enjoyed the flag football, and as you point out, no concussions, no cardiac events, right? Why don't they do more of this? Why don't they just, you know, have this? This is the irony, you see, because that's what millions of people, including women, turn in to see, right? It's like the people that go to car races because they want to see the crashes. Okay. Let's face it. There's a little bit of like, hey, you know, we can't actually have people eaten by lions or crushed by elephants. But at least we have playoff football.

Right. So we get to see elephantine people, you know, rip each other apart. But it was fun. It was actually enjoyable. And I have to admit it because I was not tuning in because I thought that it was going to be any good at all. One serious point about this, Steven Pinker has written by now a pretty famous book about the decline of violence over time. And it would be very interesting. I mean, it's certainly true that civilizations over time have gradually tried to tamp this down. And football itself is not gladiators, right? And we've added protective equipment. We've tried

to do things to protect the quarterback. And what if we are gradually evolving away, even from football as we currently understand it, towards sports that are, you're rejecting that. It's like, yes, let's do a timeline of humanity moving away from football. If we ignore the whole 20th century thing, the whole 20th century, yes, man has become less violent. Here is one of the dividing lines between progressives and conservatives. We actually understand how broken humanity is,

and how humanity is never going to get away from what it is, which is why we need civilization to hold us within certain bounds. Okay, so you need to have Tom Brady and Steven Pinker together on the podcast to discuss the decline of violence or lack thereof and how football plays into it. I don't think Tom Brady. Who else would I like? Lawrence Taylor. Lawrence Taylor. Now that would be a discussion.

That's something that I would like. So what are you looking at this week, Will? After our podcast last Monday, you wrote a great piece about the incredible hypocrisy of Kevin McCarthy taking Adam Schiff off the Intelligence Committee. So what have you, Adam Schiff was replaced by Mike Turner, the new chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who then went out and like, made up stuff about Joe Biden and his classified documents. Mike Turner's out again this week. But it's not just Mike Turner, right? Marco Rubio, who is the lead Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is out there saying this crazy stuff about the balloon. And Mike Gallagher, who's running the China Committee. So I'm kind of interested in the larger picture of the Republican Party and how it is, you know, I don't know how to avoid this word, weaponizing all of these foreign policy issues that are supposed to be serious issues where Americans should unite. It is weaponizing them for domestic

politics. I would love to read that because I think we need a more serious take on all of this than the incredibly frivolous take that I've had today on this podcast and in my newsletter. Will Salatin, thank you so much for joining me. We will do this again next Monday. Thanks, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again. The Bullwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.