The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: Sorry, but the Democrats Won the Shutdown

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

The very online crowd is very upset, but Dems did fight like Republicans. This was a longer shutdown than anything the Tea Party pulled and real pain was being caused. And Democrats have now made the cost of healthcare front and center—while Republicans keep showing that they are the party of billionaires, Mar-a-Lago soirées, and golden ballrooms. Plus, President Al Capone pardoned all the people who tried to help him steal the 2020 election, pro-democracy Americans must stay united against the evil of the administration’s deportation policy, and the effort to keep POTUS in a bubble backfired big time Sunday night at the Commanders’ stadium. Will Saletan joins Tim Miller. show notes Will on Trump's disregard for his party Jon Chait on ending the shutdown without ending the filibuster The NYT on Venezuelans sent to CECOT in El Salvador Book referenced by Tim, "Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here" F*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code BULWARK15 at theperfectjean.nyc/BULWARK15 #theperfectjeanpod Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% off your @MUDWTR at mudwtr.com/THEBULWARK! #mudwtrpod

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. Bill Crystal is out. He's sitting Shiva for Dick Cheney. No, no, that's not true. He's just traveling today. He'll be back next week.

And so instead, we've got a throwback for the Bullwark Pod originals that used to be Will Salatan Mondays back in the Charlie Sykes days. And I'm excited to welcome my colleague Will Salatin back. He was known for finding ponies in the pile of horse shit back then. That was kind of the running joke. You'd always try to find the pony. And I've got to warn you guys, I'm seeing a lot of, I'm the only one on the internet seeing ponies this morning.

So Will is, Will is rubbing off on me. Trigger warning for positivity ahead. How you doing, Will? Good, good. I saw you in the Nuggets hat. I thought I had to wear the Rockets hat. How is it, Tim, that our teams are in the so-called group of death in the NBA Cup, which... Luckily, nobody cares about the NBA Cup, but it's going to be fun.

Hopefully, a playoff. And why are we trailing? We're losing to the bad teams and what was supposed to be the group of death. I'm hoping for a trip to Houston with you this next summer, because I think it's two really good teams. All right, let's talk about the shutdown news. There's been a group of weak-kneed Democrats in the Senate. We always knew this is going to happen. It's a big risk always.

I had lunch with somebody that I can remain nameless who is friends with a lot of the Democratic senators, and he's like, you have no idea how weak these people are. The fact that we were able to keep the shutdown going this long is a miracle. What ended up happening is eight Senate Democrats broke ranks to advance a deal. The deal is it's going to reverse the rifts, the firings of government workers, which is not nothing. Real people, the real jobs, funding the government until like January, promising a vote on the Obamacare tax credits. It's just kind of the silliest version of this because the House was never going to vote on this, funding several agencies, funding SNAP, guaranteeing that SNAP gets funded for a couple of years. The eight are Durbin, Angus King of Maine, Tim Cain of Virginia, Fetterman, Shaheen and Hassan of New Hampshire, Mastow and Rosen of Nevada.

Democrats online are Big Mad, not me, but before we get to my contrarian take, Will, what do you make of the deal? Dan, well, Tim, I'm afraid we probably agree more than you'd like. Okay, no, that's great. To me, the key word and what you just said was online. Online. Democrats online are really pissed off. This is not an online thing. This is a real life thing. Okay. And I know that people wish that the Republicans would have folded because of the pain that a lot of people were suffering because of the shutdown. But the sad truth is that the Republican Party doesn't care as much about the pain as the Democratic Party does. Doesn't care at all, I think we can say. Absolutely. It pretty much doesn't care at all.

Absolutely. And you can call that a political weakness, and I guess it is. But if you are doing the right thing, that will always be a political weakness. I don't have a problem with this deal. Okay, I just don't have a problem with it. It ends the immediate pressure on, you know, there was people losing SNAP benefits, people going hungry for God's sake, all the federal employees who are out of work, obviously the air traffic problem.

The Democrats did not sell out forever. Okay? They made this deal until the end of January. That's it. That's it. It went from the four-month period from where we started. What is it now? Two and a half months away. So it's a short-term concession to end the immediate pain. They still have, they got the SNAP benefits extended. I don't have a problem with the deal. Plus, the health care debate. It's not ended. People think like, oh, you know, we should have held out more. We should have had people suffer more right now for health care. The health care debate is front and center. It will main front and center. There's going to be a vote next month. There's going to be a vote in December. Our colleague Jonathan Cohen pointed out the premium hikes are going to go into effect in January before the next time that we have this next shutdown debate. So I don't think it's a terrible loss. I think Democrats are still standing up for what they fought for. And I think only if you are so online that you don't feel the pain that a lot of people are feeling over the shutdown, would you think this is a total sellout? So here's my view on it. If you can

came into this shutdown fight, like I did, which was what was the objectives of it? I thought it was worth doing for this reason. I thought it was worth doing to make the Republicans own something. They chose to be health care. It could have been something else. They chose healthcare. Make them own this. They make them own their own policies. Make clear that the Democrats are on the other side of that fight. They've done that. If the other objective was to demonstrate that the Democrats like have a pulse and are awake and there's blood flowing through their veins, they did that. If you came into the shutdown fight thinking that your goal was that the Obamacare subsidies are going to be restored, I think that you were setting yourself up to be disappointed

no matter what, because the Republicans controlled the government and controlled the House of Representatives. And there was no amount of pain that was going to make these, you can't negotiate with comic Nazis. You can't negotiate with people that don't care. You're playing chicken with somebody that wants to crash. So you were never going to win a game of chicken with somebody that wants to crash, okay? And so if that was your expectation, I can understand when you're disappointed. If your expectation is that you also want to crash, that you want as much pain as possible because you're so mad that Donald Trump won and you're so mad and you need those feelings validated and so you want this to go on forever, okay, I just don't know what to tell you because like that

isn't real. And so from my perspective, put this out this morning, I think the Democrats potentially could lose the shutdown fight if they end up, you know, doing a circular firing squad, over it. But as of right now, they won. What will matter in the next year's midterms is that Republicans shit health care policies, the shit economy, and the tariffs, and the Democrats can run on that now. The Democrats did fight like Republicans this time. We hear that a lot where it's like, oh, the Democrats are weak. Republicans are, this is a longer shutdown than any Tea Party shutdown.

This was longer than any. I remember how crazy the Democrats acted like the crazy Tea Partyers were? Like, these are insane terrorists. They're not in touch with the reality at all. they're extremists. They never had a shutdown that went this long. And I think that the idea that there was going to be the Obamacare subsidies are going to come back is wrong.

Like the idea should have always been people's health care is going to go up. That sucks. And the Democrats need to fight against it. And that's kind of where we stand. So that's where I'm at on it. I agree with that. People who think this is a cell. Look, I am a squish.

Okay. I am the person. I'm like an institutionalist. We're going to get to that. I mean, Tim, I like the filibuster. That's where I am. Uh-oh. Okay.

Okay. We just, 25% of the audience just signed out. Stick around. We have other takes that are coming. You like better. I just want people to have perspective on what the Senate Democrats did here. They did not squish out like me. The blame for the shutdown goes all around. And I would put a lot of blame on Donald Trump for being the first president who didn't give a damn during a shutdown. It didn't do anything to help end it. But it is true that the Senate Democrats refused to sign off on essentially a clean continuing resolution. That was a big step for them. That was like they really went to the mat to fight for this. They pushed it to the point where they got this issue front and center.

They're going to come back to it. They already crossed that line. I want to point out one thing about the Democrats who crossed the line, the eight who voted for this. Tim, I was just looking at the list of senators who were up in 2026. Two of the senators of those eight who crossed the line are up in 2026 and they're retiring. That's it. So nobody who's running for re-election. So this was what I think, you tell me if I'm crazy, this is a conspiracy theory, when you get exactly enough votes to pass the thing and know more, and when none of those people are up, and when like the two senators are in Virginia, one of them who's up in 2026 doesn't vote for this deal. The other one does. All of that says to me that there were other Democrats in the Senate who would have voted for this, but who did not, they wanted to cover their left flank by not voting for it. What do you think?

I know for sure that's true. It's not a conspiracy theory. I know for sure it's true because I've heard from some that are in that boat. So that's just where we're at. Here's where I'm at. I'm a podcaster now, so I get to say what I really think, which is that this is just the Republicans were never going to fold and the Democrats got all they're going to get out of this politically.

And so, you know, one battle after another move on to win the next battle. If I was as strategist still, I would tell my Democratic candidates to rage about this and be mad. It's cynical. I admit that it's cynical. So I understand where they're doing it. People are fucking pissed and you want to demonstrate that you're fighting for them. I totally, totally get it.

I just, I think that when it comes to the actual votes, there's this question about whether the type of fighting you're doing is strategically smart or whether it's just fulfilling the emotional needs of your supporters. And I said this about the New Jersey and Virginia governor's racist where I was like, I love Abigail and Mikey. They're not fulfilling my emotional needs as a support. quarter of them right now by the way in which they're fighting but by the way they fought and they won and they won by 13 and 14 and 15 points so i just i think it's important to have some

perspective on on that sometimes there is strategically smart fighting that is happening and that is not just total you know food fight temper tantrum i'd do anything that you need possible to make people feel better and i literally was texting with a friend this morning who like replied to my tweet texted to me and it was like you're wrong i'm mad And I'm like, yeah, I get it. I get that you're mad. That's cool. I get it.

I get it. Be mad. There's a lot to be fucking mad about. I'm mad. I just mean that like there was not a magical world in which they were fighting so hard that Mike Johnson would have said, you know what? The scales have fallen from my eyes. I want to extend the Obamacare subsidies for people.

It was just not, that was not going to happen. Or he wouldn't have been the speaker anymore. So anyway, I think that there's just, that just might be one way to. If you're mad, I hear you. I'm mad. too. I don't want to, I don't, I'm not, I want to validate your feelings, but there's just ways to be mad and strategic. And for all the people who are like mad, man, like, it's just, it's not over. It's not over. Stay in the fight. Stay in the fight. It's going to be a long fight,

especially if you're a young person, like you're mad you didn't get what you on right now. Guess what? Things take a long time. Civil rights took a long time. Medicare took a long time, right? This is going to take a long time. There was one substantive argument on the other side. It's a mutual friend of ours. I want to grapple with Jonathan Scha. over at the Atlantic, wrote that he agrees with our stated point here that, like, the Republicans were not actually going to fold ever. Like, if your definition of winning was Republicans folding on the substance of the policies, then you were never going to get a win. But the Republicans may have folded on the filibuster. And I do kind of agree with it. That is possible.

If the Democrats kept the pain going long enough, if you got to a point where we are literally at Thanksgiving and Republican senators flights are getting canceled or not theirs actually because you know elites go whatever they want but that their family that their grant that their dad or their uncle or their cousin or their nephew or their kid wasn't able to get home for Thanksgiving maybe some of the Republicans already said fuck it we'll kill the filibuster and we'll just jam this through and that would have been a long-term win that might have happened I don't I don't know I'm willing to say that that was a potential sacrifice and I also think it's possible that some of these eight Senators didn't want that because they like the filibuster.

And it would be a legitimate to be mad at them about that if you're somebody that feels very strongly that you want the filibuster repealed. My other side of that coined to chate is like, nobody actually cares about the filibuster except for these same very online people we're talking about. And if the Democrats want to just make D.C. a state with 51 votes, we've learned from the last year that they could just do that if they wanted to. I think it's a silly fight at this point with which how you've seen how Trump has behaved. But anyway, what do you make of the chate critique?

Here, I get to argue with chate and with you. I think to some extent, I am, it's weird. Like, when I came to the bulwark, I was supposed to be the lib. I'm like, I feel like I'm the conservative here. I like the institutions. I want to preserve the institutions. I especially want to preserve institutions that have any kind of check and balance. It's, you know, obviously they're the ones in the Constitution.

The filibuster to me is another one of those institutions. And yes, Trump's whole argument for the last week has been nuked the filibuster. The Democrats will do it anyway. Let's do it to them. before they do it to us. And that is the whole race to the bottom mentality, right? I just want to argue against that. I just think to get our country back,

we need to restore some of these institutions and we need to lead by example. And so I don't want to give up the filibular. I don't want to give up the redistricting fight. The Democrats are like, you know, everybody's like, the other side's doing it to us. We've got to do it to them. And I understand the idea of retaliation.

But the preemptive argument, like, oh, let's get them to abandon the filibuster. Let's get them to abandon independent commissions doing redistricting, that kind of thing. I'm not with that. I'm against the race to the bottom. I mean, those aren't institutions for me. I'm with you as an institutionalist and the filibuster has been abused to the hilt. I just like, come on, give me a break at this point. Like, give me a break.

I mean, the Republicans are, like, are passing everything by executive fiat right now. Like, that's why they don't want to kill the filibuster because Donald Trump is just doing shit. Like, the president's just, like, literally bulldozing the White House. He's bombing people in the Caribbean. And the idea that the filibuster was some check in anything. And if you went back to the original, if you want to be a fucking institutionalist, a small C conservative like me, I'm an OG on this fight. Make them stand up there and do it.

I'm with you on that. Make them stand up there in filibuster. That's fine. Making it like a 60 vote threshold now, that is different. But we can argue about that another day. Where was I going to this weekend where I was wearing my perfect gene? I was so happy to be trying out the new perfect dad gene that I have. as I've mentioned you all before, it's my baby step away from, you know, the skinny jeans that are

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I mean, for like one day, they'll know how to talk about it process-wise. They'll be like the Democrats are whims. But on the actual policy matters that matter, they don't. You were watching Kevin Hassett, Trump's economic advisor over the weekend. There's a bunch to unpack there. But there's one little clip that I like to the best. Let's listen to it. Under the law, we're not allowed to spend money that hasn't been appropriated.

And there is a law anti-deficiency act that says that if a government official spends money that isn't appropriated by Congress, which will only happen if the Democrats vote to open up the government, then you could even have criminal penalties. And so people are very carefully studying the law. Trump cabinet secretaries could even face criminal penalties in the future? This is the biggest pony I have ever heard, Will Salatin. The Trump administration spokesperson said that their cabinet members could have criminal penalties facing them in the future. I agree with that. I agree with that. They could have criminal penalties facing them in the future.

The law will still exist when they leave. Man, that's just one example. I mean, just broader. They are, I think, really flopping around in how to talk about how to deal at the shutdown itself, but also the policies around it. What would you make of Kevin Hassett this weekend? So, Tim, can you refresh my memory? I could have sworn that when judges told the Trump administration that, their deportations to Central America were illegal and that they could not send the planes.

That they continued, the Trump administration continued to send the planes over there as long as they could argue. And even when they knew that the planes hadn't even left the ground. But the ones that were in the air, they certainly, they stretched as much as they could to get those deportations done against court orders. And Kevin Hassett says that Christy Knoem maybe could face criminal penalties for that in the future. And let me say this for the first time on this podcast. I agree with Kevin Hassett wholeheartedly. I think that's a great point that Kevin Hassett made. Kristy Nome could face criminal penalties for that.

Anyway, he talked about a bunch of other stuff, like their health care plan and dealing with Trump. Trump is like all over the place on this. I was like, I was going to play the audio, but it's so long and it's rambling because they don't know. They don't have anything to say. This is the important to remember. They don't actually have anything to say about the substance of the health care

concerns that people have because they don't know how to fix it. Right. But let me pause just for one second on this. Sure, please. What does this say about somebody's priorities? You know, there's the saying about can believe and must believe. If I want something, I find a reason why I can believe it. If I don't want to, I'm like, do I have to believe it?

And I think the same is true here about the law, obeying the law. We have an administration that stretches every legal definition to the point of defying court orders to do what it wanted to do, which was to deport every migrant to a freaking prison in Central America. When it came to SNAP, when it came to, like, feeding people, this administration went to court to argue exactly the opposite. They were given, Tim, they were given court orders that allowed them to fund the SNAP. And they're like, no, we're going to the Supreme Court, no, we're going to challenge this really. No, we're going to send a memo to the states to, like, to get, tell them that they, so they did exactly the opposite. So Hasse, it's like really deeply concerned that we could face criminal penalties when we're feeling.

feeding people. So let's not feed people. But like deportations, they didn't care. So I just think this is one of those moments where you really see what people are made of, what they, what they care about. And that was really disturbing to me. But I don't want to take away from you wanted to shift over to health care. Yeah, no, no, no. That's a good point. I'm glad you mentioned it. It's true. Especially now, they shouldn't be allowed to get away with that just because like the shutdown is over. Like they literally went, they used every extrajudicial like tool in their belt to not give people food benefits that needed it. poor people of food benefits. It's what we're important to remember.

Yeah, so just on the health care, I mean, has it more broadly in these other guys, you were watching the shows. I guess that one is like they are, the Republicans probably feel good today about like the process arguments, that process, I don't only get you so far in politics, process arguments, but the policy argument that this is going to shift to, especially if there is a vote or even if they decide to, I think this is kind of stupid. The whole thing is like the Democrats gained a vote promise. Like they're getting to vote promise out of the Senate, which doesn't matter if the House doesn't bring it out to a vote. But so even if they renege on that promise, right?

Like still, eventually the topic becomes the actual policy. People are upset that their premiums are going up. Well, how would you judge how Republicans are talking about the way in which they're going to address that right now? Well, they're in total chaos. I mean, you know, so Trump's like tweeting this stuff about like, we're going to give the money directly to the people instead of to the insurance companies. By the way, people, that's not how insurance works.

Like, if you give the money to some people and you say, like, you know, you can buy whatever you want and, like, you have to get people. to chip into the larger enterprise. But the idea that Obamacare didn't solve the problem. This is going to be the Republican argument, by the way, in next month when this is voted on. And it's going to be the argument going forward for the next year. Obamacare didn't work. So these subsidies are a bad idea.

We're against these subsidies. We're not going to extend the subsidies. We're not going to extend the plus-up, so the additional subsidies. Nobody, no ordinary person is going to be like, okay, so health insurance is really hard to afford. And the Republicans are going to solve this by defunding the subsidies. Like, that just makes no sense at all. And Trump is out there. Like, he's like, flay. I just look at his bleats, if you wanted to die. He's flailing talking about how, oh, the insurance companies are taking too much money. I want to give money back to the people. But, like, there's no actual policy behind

that. It's just, he's emoting himself. And none of the Republicans in the House of the, the Republicans in the House in the Senate, there are a handful of them left that do actually have some genuine in ideological views and that it's that they don't want to provide more health care subsidies to poor people. Right. Like that is, that is a view that John Thune and Mike Johnson and many, many other people and the Congress share. And so they're sort of in a pickle.

Totally. And like, just for context here, you have this week on Sunday, we had Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary and Kevin Hassett, the Economic Advisor, they're on to represent the administration, and they're asked, both of them, what the hell is this thing that Trump is bleeding about. Like, we're going to give money directly the people and defund the like. And neither one of them knows. They're like, is this the Republican position? Like, no. They both, like, we don't know. Hacid is like, yeah, no one's really discussed this in the Republican caucus in the Senate or the House. Like it's just, and he says Trump, his word was brainstorming. I mean, Tim, I used to call this

shit posting, but apparently now it's brainstorming for the president of the United States to throw out a completely unformed idea on social media that he hasn't consulted with his own party about it. Here you go. Your health care is going up 400% your premiums are going up. Well, good news is the president's brainstorming about this on truth social. Like, we're working on it. We've got concepts of the plan. I should say, I wanted to do one, one boot to the Democrats who cut this deal after giving the positive defense of them. And that is, similar to Kevin Hassett, they should not be on television. I watched Gene Chahein and Angus King this morning and like everything that a

rabid online resistance or leftist person believes about the Democratic establishment who is like, these guys are cowards, they are weak, they're not fighting for me. The senators that cut the deal are affirming that position every time that they open their mouth. Angus King literally went on Morning Joe and was like, we lost Donald Trump Donald Trump beat us again and it's just like what

no no if you're going to cut the deal then go on TV and be like guys we fought for you for 40 days and 40 nights and we demonstrated that we are going to lower your health care costs next year and we gave Republicans

every chance to come to the table and you know what they said they said we like higher health care premiums for people actually and on top of that we want poor people to starve okay that's what they said And so the best we can do now is say, good luck with that, guys.

We'll take that argument to the midterms. And I look forward to majority leader. Okay. Well, don't say the Chuck Schumer part. I look forward to a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. There you go. That's a free talking point for all the Democrats that wanted to do the deal. So anyway, that's just a Tim rant.

But if you have anything to, if you have any defense of the Angus King performance, you're left. It's a good rant. Not only is it a good rant, it is better than that. I mean, when the podcasters are making better arguments than the politicians, it tells you the politicians are probably in the wrong job, at least as speakers. Angus King is definitely in the wrong job. I'll tell you that much. One in five Americans has learn a new language on their bucket list.

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I've got two more ponies and we'll get to the bad news. Okay, guys, you know who else gets it besides me, besides Will Salatin? Steve Baird, which should be a little bit concerning. Tim Dillon, I'm not going to make you listen to Steve Dens. Tim Dillon, who's people have heard me mentioned before. before. I'm a loyal listener to his podcast now because he's the best maga comedian bro podcaster out there because he actually tells people what he really thinks. And when Republicans are fucking up, he says so. He also does some racist stuff on there and some far right stuff.

So just trigger warning for anybody that wants to come with Tim Dillon fan. But he was out over the weekend talking about the state of play here and how bad down the Republicans are on their economic messaging and health care messaging. And I want to listen to it. The only one who seems to get it, as crazy as he might be, is Steve Bannon, who goes, no, no, no, we're in deep trouble. Bannon is talking about that, and he's telling the people on his side of the aisle there in real trouble because the pendulum is now swinging back to economic concerns.

Public Party's talking about shit, nobody cares about. And they're having, it's infighting, it's squabbling, it's all this stuff, and the Democrats are ascendant. Because, by the way, why not? No one's life is better since Trump took office, by the way. So at the end of the day, it's like, why not? You know what else would be a better message to what Angus King is saying out there? What Tim Dillon, the MAGA podcasters are saying, like, literally going on TV and being like,

nobody's life is better. Trump is having his truffle party down at Maralago and bombing boats in the Caribbean, and maybe we should focus on helping people. That's what the Democrats are up to. That's a pretty good message. It is. I got to, all. So first of all, the pendulum is swinging back to economic concerns. Go with me for a minute. What if it was always there? What if it's not, what if the 20, like Republicans thought the 2024 election was this big mandate for this big agenda Trump's doing. You can see from the approval rating that that's not true. You can see from the election results last week that that's not true. It was negative. People were unhappy. There was a party in power. There was a party for change. They voted for the change. Okay. Some of the that Republicans ran on, like, they're surprised, Tim, that the trans stuff didn't cut so well for them in it last week, right?

Like, what if, go with me. Remember the ad that Trump ran against Kamala Harris. She's for they, them. We're for, Trump's for you. What if, go with me for a minute. What if people didn't really care about the they, them? What if that was the whole point? They weren't like, like, some people, you know, some boy or in a girl's sport, blah, blah, blah.

That was just wasn't a big deal. But they thought the Democratic Party was obsessed with that. which wasn't true, but they believed that. And what they cared about was pocketbook stuff. And what if what happened last week was Republicans are like talking about boys and girls sports. And again, people are like, I don't care about that. Care about me. Care about my life.

Like, I feel like that's the simplest explanation for both elections. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, I'm just on top of, like, to the Tim Dillon's point, the one part that was better is people's lives aren't getting better. And I do think that was true, like, about the last election was that the, the, the main failing of the Harris campaign, like the original sin was the unwillingness to borrow a phrase from Jake Tapper, was the unwillingness to distance from Biden because people didn't feel like their lives are getting better. Just fundamentally, again, whether that's fair or not,

whether it's true or not. And so, like, there was no message that was saying to people, hey, if you're unhappy with inflation, if you're unhappy with this, like, we're going to fix it. Here's how we're going to fix it. This guy over there is an insane person. He's not going to But that just didn't sink in. And there was an attempt at that, but it was hard to do when you were defending the status quo so much. Right. And so now the status quo is them. They them, if you will.

Right. And like they are, you know, Trump is out there being like, I'm not even going to talk about the affordability. We're going to go to Marilago, but we're going to have an event on Friday that featured beef fillet, truffle, daffinua, panseared scallops, and a trio of dessert. it's including Trump chocolate cake. That's what they're doing. And I think that Tim Dillon and Steve Bannon are on to something. Maybe they should focus on health care and pocketbook concerns. Or maybe the Democrats instead of fighting about whatever Senate procedure

and the cloture vote should also be talking about that. One man's idea. One last pony from me. The Supreme Court this morning rejects a call to overturn its decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. and the Kim Davis case that went to the Supreme Court. This was something, again, I don't want to dishonor people's fear and anger because they're legitimate feelings and legitimate reasons to be scared about this administration.

They're doing a lot of scary stuff. But as a gay person, I got asked about this a lot. And I said to people, I have a lot of concerns. I'm concerned for migrants. I'm concerned for trans folks. I'm concerned that he's going to ruin the economy. I'm concerned that he's going to start bombing random people. I'm not concerned about the gay marriage case.

I don't think they're going to change it for a variety of reasons. Some on the left were like, well, what about the abortion case? And I was just like, they're different in various ways. And so I'm happy that I was not wrong to not focus my concerns on that. So there you go. That's another pony for people, same-sex marriage. They're not going to try to unmarry me. Yeah, so I'm with you on this.

Let me take these in reverse order. The same-sex marriage thing. Again, I want people to consider the possibility of indifference, that what's going on is indifference. So like, there's not going to be a mass movement to roll back gay marriage. There's not going to be a mass movement to go forward on transgender stuff. There's going to be like, people are just like, look, focus on me in my life. That's a reason why you should feel a little bit more at ease about worrying about that there's going to be a big push on the all the sexual minority stuff. On the truffle party stuff. This is a big deal. Like, it's not cutting so much

yet, but the more people become unhappy with their own lot, the more things will stand out. like the Gatsby party and the truffles and all this stuff. And especially, Tim, all that can go away. What's not going to go away is the massive golden ballroom, right? And all that, like, that imagery is, and I saw Adam Schiff was out talking about the golf and the ballroom. And, like, Trump didn't care about anything else, but he built this monstrosity. And that is going to be this enduring symbol. It's certainly going to be a symbol in the midterms. It's going to be a symbol for longer than that of this party, the Republican Party that always was portrayed as the Party of the Rich, said it was like under Trump going to be the populist party, but never came up with

in a decade, a health care plan. And we'll just see an illustration of that in the coming months. And instead, built this monstrosity of a ballroom and it symbolizes that they were always about the billionaires all along. The ballroom thing, it's early. The data, though, is showing this. And I think I said this on the next level maybe one time where I was like, I'm open to the possibility that maybe it's just I'm the outlier and not having strong feelings about this sort of stuff that a lot of people really do have, you know, emotions tied up in this or that is a real symbol for people. And I don't know. I like that early data on it seems really bad, like kind of shockingly bad to me. So great. I love that. Whatever, whatever it takes.

I'm a little bit more mad about the masked agents and all this other sort of stuff. But if like the people out there are going to be mad about the ballroom, great. Awesome. That's a good thing as any to be mad about. You're a little bit of a gold squish, right? Like, you're, you like, yeah, his design tastes aren't terrible for me. I mean, the oven pan, the Rose Garden is a nightmare. And this, the Oval Office thing that is like in cheesecake factory font and the outside of the wise house is horrible. So, and I just, you know, anyway, I said after the last election, I was like, my promise to people was, I was going to not do fake outrage.

I was like I would be mad about what I was mad about and I'd be mad about what I think was actually hurting people and in this case I just I just couldn't muster it JVL was mustering all the outrage for everybody I just I didn't need to carry any of it because he was carrying it all for us but it turns out people are pissed so that's great

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We're going to end with the pony, too, so everybody knows. So it's not just bad news from here or not. We'll end it with the pony. The pardons. There's another round of pardons this morning. 77 people received full, completed unconditional pardons, including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sydney Powell, Boris Epstein, and a slew of other people that were involved in like the fake electors plot that we talked about with Carol Lennox last week, Jonah Goldberg over the dispatch. I think post of this was a pretty insightful point. He said, this is an important signal to future allies. I think that's the scary. To me, that is the scarier part of this. That's that. I mean, these people don't do.

deserve this and it sucks that they're getting pardoned because they were complicit in a plot to end our democracy. But I think the even more ominous part is as Trump's political prospects get worse and as he starts to think about other other shenanigans in the coming years, this is a signal to people that want to be a part of those shenanigans that he'll let them off the hook. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we forget, of course, that Trump pardoned all of the people who committed violence on his behalf on January 6th. I don't, yeah, we don't forget. Some of us don't forget. But, like, I mean, I was shocked there wasn't more outrage. So at this point, he's just pardoning the kinkments. It's like, Tim, this list of people he just pardoned is like if you

went through the Jack Smith indictment on the fake electors case and he just like literally everybody in there. Trump said a lot on the campaign trail last year. He was like, I got indicted more than the late great Alphonse Capone. And Capone was a joke. But if Capone had been elected president, this is what he would have done. It's just like, I'm going to pardon all of my accomplices. And you're totally right about the signal. Remember, the two guys who worked at Maralago who helped Trump with the cover up the classified documents thing, they didn't buckle. Well, the investigators tried to get them to turn on Trump. They wouldn't do it. I'm sure Trump promised them. Look, stick with me, and I'll bail you out. And he has. And that was a big signal.

I think Jenna Ellis actually did plead guilty in Georgia, right? So she already lost whatever protection she was going to get. But all these other people, if you don't turn against the crook, phone, Trump, whoever it is, and he gets elected president. Yeah, he's got this pardon power and you're good to go. I guess the one pony, I got my little pony over my shoulder here, it's that these are only, he can only pardon for federal crimes. So the Georgia case, I think Fannie Willis is out of it, right? But the case can still go on, could still go on. I don't know. I don't have a lot of hope for that. Do you? Yeah, yeah. I don't want to like get people up. But like in Arizona, that case still technically exists against Giuliani and these other

guys. But we're kind of left with, I am grateful. We have Nancy Pelosi. I don't know if you wanted to get to her, but like Nancy Pelosi, among the great things she did, she's going to be retiring. Among the things she did was she made sure that there was a brief moment in history when we had a January 6th committee that could tell us the truth, investigate and tell us the truth about what happened. And that turns out to be really important because since then the crook and all of his accomplices have been elected and there's a massive campaign to pardon them, to exonerate them, to rewrite history. So at least we have that report to remember the truth by.

One other pardon thing is Jared Kushner. It's important to always just at least bring up how bad the corruption is in this family because it might be the thing that ends up sticking over the course of the years ahead. Of violent felon and either friend or friend of a friend of Jared Kushner, somehow in the Jared Kushner circle, got a pardon on the very end of the Trump first term. and was Jonathan Braun. Since then, he has sexually assaulted a nanny, swung an IV poll at a nurse, threatened a congregant in a synagogue, and made usurious loans to struggling small businesses. He will get his new sentence today. So this stuff all has longer ripples, you know, than just the

initial news cycle. I just felt like I was worth mentioning. Yeah, yeah. And this is a point that Trump and other people around him have made about criminals in general. Oh, don't let them out. Look, an illegal alien got out and look what he did. And like, that's bad, but that's little, knowing that that is a problem, that recidivism is a problem, they did this. They sent people, the January 6 people, Jonathan Braun, when the criminal is on their side, when they commit their crimes for Trump, the Trump people put them back out on the street, and this is what happens. Moving on to immigration, on the list of things that I had genuine an outrage about the four months that we sent folks to that hellhole in El Salvador.

There's a New York Times article on this, four months in an El Salvador prison. I'd encourage everybody to read. It's brutal, though. It's a tough read. It's all the kind of stuff we were expecting, but it's interesting to kind of hear the stories. They interviewed 40 of the men that we sent there. They said they're shackled, beaten, shot with rubber bullets, and tear gassed until they passed out. They were sexually assaulted.

They're driven to the edge of suicide. One of the folks that they're interviewed, he's a father of three. He had been working as an Uber Eats driver in Milwaukee before being detained and sent to the foreign prison. His low point came on the day of his oldest child's seventh birthday. He said this, we had heard that if there was a person who died among us, they would let us all go. He thought maybe he should be that person. He climbed on a bunk bed and tried to hang himself with a sheet. The other men pulled him down.

So there you go. I don't want to go too far with drawing an analogy, but there are other countries in this world that have gone through periods when their nations, when their governments did evil. This is a period when our government has done evil and this excellent story about what these atrocities that were done to people, that the United States government deliberately sent people into a prison where we knew this kind of thing had happened to other people and would happen to these people. It is a moment of shame we should never forget. With no due process and ethically racially profiling, I mean, just like these people got sent there just because they happened to be Venezuelan or they had the wrong tattoo or whatever. It's just unbelievably heinous and remains the most heinous thing on a long list of heinous things that we've seen so far from Trump 2.0. Obviously, there's so much other stuff and I could like, we could do a whole segment on various like immigration atrocities that we've seen every show. You know, there's a picture of the guy that really struck me sitting outside the detention center at Broadview.

detention center in Chicago, just kind of like with his head in his hands, his wife, I guess they were going through the legal process. They keep doing this fucking thing where people that are going through the process trying to do it the right way, show up to their court date, and then they get taken and disappeared, you know? And so, and there are a million of those stories. And because it was El Salvador, it made me think I was reading this weekend, the book that Peter Hamby had suggested on a podcast a couple weeks ago, everyone who is gone is here. It's by Jonathan Blitzer. And, you know, kind of starts at the, like, original root cause of all this, the Cabla Harris job trying to solve the root cause of the outside crisis.

It starts in like 1930 in El Salvador, and with the mass murders there. And then kind of fast forwards up to the 70s in El Salvador. I'm talking about this, the archbishop there, Oscar Romero, who, it's interesting. I wanted to bring this up to you today, in part because we have this story from the times about El Salvador, but also because, like, I was reading the book, and then that sent me down a Romero Hive this weekend, so I was watching a documentary about him, and I was like, okay, because he was very bulwurkey. He's kind of very well salatinny. He was like a moderate consensus choice to be the Archbishop there, right? Because like a lot of the establishment types in the

government, I thought, like, did not want, like, one of the radical priests that was speaking out against the way in which the government was cracking down on unions and agrarian farmers and dissidents, et cetera. And then his his friend a Jesuit priest gets killed and then another friend a Jesuit priest gets imprisoned and like electrocuted and gets treated the same way that now

these guys were treated in the El Salvador prison 50 years later and like he slowly radicalizes and he ends up he's now sainted Oscar Romero I remember watching him and it's just like sometimes our instinct like moderation can be a vice and Romero

like lives up to the moment at times it made me kind of think about like how I sort of reflect on that like about like my instinct towards you know just as we're arguing earlier about like moderation these institutions and you know it feels good sometimes to be the radical but other times call for it you know and I just wonder if you've over the course the first year as like a stated institutionalist at the bulwark if you've thought about that at all well it's a really interesting question about what radicalization means and what moderation means right like you can be

there's moderate temperament. There's moderate positions. What I would personally argue for, and I'm willing to have this discussion with you or anyone else, I am not radical in my politics. But that doesn't mean you should just roll over when bad stuff happens. When your country commits or sanctions or is complicit in torture, you have to stand up. That is just wrong. Romero was, he was conservative in the sense that he was a Catholic. He was a Christian and he stood for those principles and he stood for them against the government and he stood for them against the left when the left was violent and committed atrocities, right? You could call that moderate, but the radicalization that you're describing here is coming forward to speak out against evil. I'm not just

going to hang out and not speak out about political matters because I'm a religious figure. I'm going to, I must speak out. So I am for the courage. I am for the standing up. It's a question of what you're standing up for that kind of, in my mind, divides the institutionalist from the non-institutionalist. That's fair. It is true. Romero also did the, they're like the vigilantes that were also killing and that he spoke out against. It was just, to me, it was interesting because it was about the tone. And it's something I do feel like we're missing now for the moderates. That's why maybe it was between the El Salvador story and watching Angus King this morning. I don't know, like the Romero lesson was really hitting for me because it was like, he went from.

being a moderate in the sense of, like, his first speeches were about how, you know, sermons, not speeches, sermons were about kind of being opposed to radical solutions, right? Like, and the need for, you know, being cautious, judicious, I don't know the words in front of me. It was the radical difference in tone, right? To your point, it was not necessarily, oh, I'm throwing in league with the vigilantes. We should start killing people, right? But it was more of, no, actually, like, it is incumbent upon us, even if it is not our traditional role in these moments to have moral clarity and to be unapologetic about it and to fight.

And I don't know. I think that we're seeing a little bit of that now, but not enough. We kind of need more of our people that have moderate temperaments to not to dispense with a moderate tone, I guess, would be my lesson from it. Yeah, I can only speak for myself here. I mean, I've never done anything as brave as what Romero did. My whole history, and I know, and I have been a squish. I've been like a person who believes in practical.

I'm like an Abigail Spanberger type of person in terms of my politics. But we are not living in normal times. We are living in times of evil. And as a moderate squish type person, I have to look at the reality. The reality is the United States of America is in the middle of an authoritarian takeover. It is partial. It is incremental. It's on a spectrum of authoritarianism.

But that is what it is. And it extends to the point of this torture that you were just talking. about. And in moments like this, all of us have to stand together, the Mamdani's, the Spanburgers, the Sheryls, we've all got to be united against the evil. And you can say that's not our moderate position. I don't think I'm abandoning my political views when I say that I'm going to join arms with the Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party against the Trump administration. That is just, I think that is a very practical thing to do. Concurring. All right. Final topic. What are you wrote this morning, no one matters to Trump, but Trump. And one of the examples about that is

sort of talking about how after Tuesday's election, he's not reflecting on the ways in which Donald Trump could do things that would better support the Republican Party or the people that voted for him or anything. One example of that is how apparently he's demanding that the commanders named their new stadium after him in Washington as part of the deal to get, you know, to get approval to move the stadium out of that God-forsaken spot in Maryland. into uh back into washington dc and then on the heels of donald trump wanting to get a stadium named after him he went to the commander's football game this weekend where i think he was expecting a huge positive reception and from the box there he was giving to the whole stadium the oath of

enlistment and i'm not sure that many people could hear the oath because well let's listen together hands. I and say your name. You shall always swear? Not great. Doesn't seem like things are going great for Mr. Trump. It is a free country still, which is nice to see. So Trump lives in a bubble, obviously.

He's like got his own people around. He got rid of anybody who told him the truth. And so he thinks that everybody loves him. I think, Tim, that he thought, and maybe the people around him, being sick of him, also thought, if I go to an NFL stadium, those are my people, right? Those, like, the NASCAR thing, like, they think Biden's a jack. They love me. And he got like, like, you know, he didn't pay attention to the feedback he got in the election, right? But here he is in the stadium and he's being directly boot.

So there's no question. This is about you, Donald Trump. I think this is a reality check. And sometimes, Tim, when I worry that we are Trump, that Americans are okay. with Trump. It consoles me to see things like the election backlash, and it consoles me to hear things like that forthright repudiation of him in an NFL stadium. I like Pete Higgs has stern-stabed view behind him standing there. It's like trying to play the role of Secretary of War, fake Secretary of War, the weekend co-host. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Maybe pick the wrong stadium.

I don't know. Maybe you could have found a better stadium. But I don't think, I'm trying to think, like, what would be the most Trump-friendly stadium? Jacksonville, maybe? Yeah, it's a good question. Probably not a stadium that might be inhabited by lots of people whose relatives, whose loved ones have been fired or have been furloughed because of you. Maybe that would be a good move.

Yeah. Maybe the Titans, maybe the Tennessee Titans, their fans are so upset with what's on the field that they'll take Trump as an alternative. I don't know. Pretty bad. Pretty ugly. Enjoying the booze. It's a great pony.

A booing pony. for everybody at the end of the show. The only podcast in America where you'll have a heated agreement about how the Democrats did the right thing on the shutdown. Will, thanks for seven for Bill Crystal. We'll be talking to you soon.

Thanks, Tim. All right, everybody else, we'll be back for another edition of the podcast tomorrow. See you all then. Peace. I'm just a better. I'm looking for a partner. Someone who knows how to ride. being falling off

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