The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: The Annihilation of Truth

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

We are in an age where internet randos are beating out reality. Plus, Haley's abortion dance, the cowardice of DeSantis, another Biden panic poll, and the Steve Bannon wing feels like it has the wind at their backs. Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday.

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Loved it. Loved it. Happy birthday, Joe Biden. Can we just say, like, the guy is, what, 81 today? Okay, so you had to go, he's that old again. There are a lot of people there, apparently, who are like, would you guys stop talking about the fact that he's old? So are we supposed to acknowledge the birthday? Okay, speaking of birthdays, it feels like every Monday we have another one of these cataclysmic polls. We get the burden of doing the Monday podcast. So here's the NBC poll. Speaking of birthdays, it feels like every Monday we have another one of these cataclysmic polls.

We get the burden of doing the Monday podcast. So here's the NBC poll. Biden standing hits new lows amid the Israel-Hamas war. So happy birthday, Mr. President. Deep dive in the Washington Post. You saw that. Biden campaign works to ease Democratic anxiety over reelection chances. We could start with all of that. But can we just start with something that may not be on people's immediate radar screen that I think is really kind of amazing? This election in Argentina, bear with us for a moment. You have a guy that makes Trump look pretty normal, guy who shows up at rallies with a chainsaw. He's sort of an anarcho-libertarian kind of guy, far right figure, shocks everybody. Not everybody, but he wins the presidential election in Argentina. And the American right is absolutely orgasmic. So Mike Lee, the senator from Utah, but most of the weekend pushing a batshit crazy conspiracy theory about

January 6th, then pivoted. And it almost his entire jitter or whatever, you know, X timeline is how excited he is about this election of this far right president in Argentina. And the headline in the media, it is leftist sons of bitches be afraid. Trump, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and online conservatives celebrate Argentina's new far right president. They haven't been this excited since Victor Orban was elected and the kind of neo-adjacent fascist prime minister was elected in Italy. I mean, so, Will, this has gone global. So, let's remember, so Jair Bolsonaro was right next door in Brazil, right? So, they got rid of him, but Argentina said, hold our beer. Right. So So like, this is clearly the thing that's happening in our

time, right? There's these sort of far right or authoritarian types getting elected in countries where you wouldn't expect it now. Well, is he authoritarian? He's a libertarian. I see my head starting to hurt. How can you be an authoritarian and an anarcho capitalist, right? Disruptor, libertarian at the same time? I don't know. So Charlie, this guy is like Milton Friedman on economics, right? He's like, cut everything, deregulate vouchers. But then he wants to ban abortion, apparently. He's sort of libertarian, but sort of not. And kind of a burn it all down, blow it all up kind of guy, basically.

That's totally his appeal. Yeah. Like that burn neoliberal globalism to the ground type thing. Right. Which is why Steve Bannon and those guys are less like, you know. This is very Steve Bannon, right? And honestly, this is exactly what Steve Bannon wants. He talks about this, right?

It's not just America. These anti-globalists like Steve Bannon are actually globalists, right? They want a global revolution. They're not really about so much about America. They want to tear down the establishment all around the world in a whole bunch of countries. And Bannon was what in Italy. I mean, they go all over the place trying to generate this. So they're very excited to have another one of these guys who just tears everything down. This is exactly like the Trump election in 2016, when a lot of people who didn't agree with Trump about some things were just like, this guy's going to tear things down.

Let's tear it down. And he's the vehicle to do it. But what comes after is, you know, kind of alarming. This guy has- What could go wrong? Really? The authoritarian angle, Charlie, just to reinforce for people. So his policies are sort of Milton Friedman, right? Milton Friedman with a chainsaw? Yeah, the vibe is not Milton Friedman. It's like Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, and Milton Friedman had a baby. Okay, bear with me. Okay, that's a work in progress, I think. But this guy talks about, he said the election was going to be stolen.

He said the election was rigged against him. He said this about the Brazilian election. He said this about the American election. So he's part of this wave of let's reject election results if I don't win. So that's my definition of authoritarian in this context. Well, clearly the right feels that it's on the march globally. I mean, they feel the wind at their back right now. They're very excited about the Biden polls and everything. So before we get to all of that, let's take a deep breath there. In my newsletter today, I spent a little

time on Mike Lee because I continue to be fascinated by this. And by the way, I was thinking about you, Will, that you did this deep dive into the psychology of Lindsey Graham. I think you're going to have to do this for Mike Lee, too. Now, you help me here because I speculated that in the distant mists of the before times that Lee was kind of considered kind of a serious conservative, constitutional conservative. I mean, he made these alliances with Ted Cruz. So he was never like really orthodox mainstream, but he was, he was plausible. People talked about him as a possible Supreme court nominee. Right. And he spends the weekend putting out this bizarre, absurd conspiracy theory based on these January 6th tapes. They've released all the January 6th surveillance tapes.

Now this is the new speaker. And most of them are exactly what you'd expect to see. Mike Lee, senior senator from Utah, decides to glom on to this one image of a guy in a red hat doing something with his hand. He said, you know, basically implying that he was flashing a badge, which means, you see, it was all a false flag operation incited by feds. Well, it turns out that it's not a badge. It's a vape pen. He's not a fed. He is a rather notorious January 6th insurrectionist who was just sentenced to four years in jail.

Guy broke into Nancy Pelosi's office, stole a photo, was screaming at police officers, calling them traitors and Nazis. And so, no, that turns out to be complete bullshit. But Mike Lee spends all weekend doubling down on it and attacking Liz Cheney like, you covered this up. What did you destroy? Why did you not want us to see this? And I guess it's, again, one of these moments, and you dealt with this in such depth and such brilliance with Lindsey Graham. What happens to a guy like Mike Lee, who wakes up one morning and says, yeah, you know, I'm going to follow the batshit crazy conspiracy

theorists down this rabbit hole. I'm not going to try to be a serious senator anymore. I'm just going the whole Elon MTG, Alex Jones route. Because what? Does he need that to get elected in freaking Utah? I mean, it goes back to the incentive structures and the trajectory. You documented how Lindsey Graham went from the old Lindsey Graham to the new Lindsey Graham being a sucker. I wanted to see what you would do with Mike Lee going from serious conservative to batshit crazy conservative and like how this happens. I mean, do they hand out the red pills in the Senate cloakrooms now?

What? Hand out the red pills in the Senate cloak rooms now what? So you're right to talk about the larger phenomenon of these guys going over into the cult. But I think the way that each of them does it is distinctive. I'm a huge believer, Charlie, in personality. Personality drives everything. And personalities are different. So Mike Lee is just different from Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham, he's basically a hawk and he sees everything through this lens

and his corruptions are more lawyerly. Mike Lee, I think, Charlie, is just a flake. I mean, there's a lot of flakes. Was he always a flake or did something cause him to flake out? This is what I always want to know. I mean, was he like this always? Yeah, I kind of think, I think he had

this tendency. I think he's different from Graham in this way, but he's also more dogmatic. Graham is a more practical guy and Lee is a sort of a libertarian ideologue. I remember Charlie in October of 2016, I think Mike Lee was as strong as anyone in saying that Donald Trump was immoral, was dangerous, renounced to support for him, right? But he toyed around a little bit with the election denialism. Remember, there was some of those text messages and things. He dabbled in it. Yeah. But this stuff with the January 6th defendants and the tapes coming out and, oh, we're going to find something about the government running this, this is not just the flakes. And it's not just Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Kevin McCarthy was on Maria Bartiromo this weekend and was also talking about releasing this video. There's a whole bunch of Republican politicians who, even if they themselves aren't crazy, aren't flaking out, they've recognized that this is a large part of the Republican Party, and they're using sympathy for the January 6th defendants and some of these conspiracy theories. And they're based on, you know, we're going to find something in the video and including fake things that are not, you know, the video doesn't actually show to support that. And once again, I am amazed when I hear these conspiracy theories, like the one you're describing, here's the guy with the vape pen. I'm amazed how credulous people are in the name of being suspicious. They want to believe it.

I mean, this is the psychology that I think has become more obvious that if you want to believe something, if you want the real truth, you're going to glom onto anything, including things that are absolutely contradictory. I mean, so there are people out there who will argue that January 6th was really Antifa. January 6th was really a Fed false flag operation. But it's also true that January 6th was our 1776 done by great Americans, patriots who are now martyrs to the cause of defending democracy. So you can believe all of those things at the same time, right?

And what amazes me is the whole time that people are spouting these crazy conspiracy theories, they think they are being suspicious. They think they're seeing through the facade what the government is telling you. So we're not going to believe what the government or the establishment is saying, but we're going to believe the nuttiest thing that some guy posted on social media. And here's a perfect example of how they don't scrutinize their drinking the Kool-Aid and they're just not scrutinizing what they're told by their friends. Okay, let's just step back from the crazy stuff. There clearly is a significant political incentive or the feeling that it is important to do this revisionist history of January 6th,

to whitewash January 6th, to somehow absolve Donald Trump, to absolve them. I mean, let's leave aside the conspiracy theories and the credulity. Obviously, there is a political agenda here, right, going into 2024, that January 6th was not what you think it is. And it's certainly not the narrative that it was an attack on democracy, an attack on the Capitol incited by Donald Trump in an attempt to overthrow the election is not the correct interpretation. They obviously feel some anxiety about the way January 6th will be remembered and the way it will play in the election. True? Absolutely. And part of what I saw in this McCarthy interview yesterday was

he's trying to change our narrative understanding, our historical understanding of January 6th, right? So he tried to screw up the committee. Liz Cheney spent all that time trying to just nail down the facts. And I thought she did overkill. And now I'm like, no, no, we need more of it because January 6th is in the past, but the lies about January 6th are in the public understanding what really happened and that this is not some government conspiracy, that McCarthy, Mike Lee, whatever theory of what happened is just bullshit. Well, and we thought after 2016 that we were into this era of alternative facts and alternative reality. I don't think we had any idea how bad it was going to get. And of course, we are still at the dawn of the artificial intelligence age, which is going to scramble everything. If we are not insane now, I think we will be at some point. Because I guess one of the things about January 6th is that we saw it with our own eyes, right? We saw the pictures, we saw the video. This is the

strongest evidence. And now we're living in a period where people will look at it and they won't believe what they are seeing. So the question is, what constitutes proof anymore? You and I had this conversation, I think, about Israel and Hamas. Well, here's our evidence. Here's the data and everything. Well, are we living in an age now where people go, I don't necessarily believe in audio tape. I don't believe in videotape. I don't believe firsthand witnesses. I'm going to believe the rando on the internet who suggests that everything I think is completely wrong upside down.

Right. And Charlie, we're sitting here talking about a picture, right? Where Adam Kinzinger and others were able to point to it and say, that's not a badge, right? That's a vape. Vape pen. A vape pen. What happens when it is a badge?

What happens when the picture has already been doctored? Right. And now you're having to argue over which picture is real. Now you're talking about the provenance of images, the provenance of videos. This is going to be an absolute nightmare. And as we know, Putin and other authoritarians thrive on sowing discord and sowing dissension, not just about the way things are and who's your enemy within your country, but what really happened, right? They spread lies. This is the annihilation of truth

that Hannah Arendt talked about. The destruction of people's confidence in their critical ability to determine what is true and what is not true. So eventually you just decide, I'm going to believe what I'm told. I'm going to believe what's most convenient for me. We're going to get to the Biden poll in just a minute, but since we're on this issue of truth, let's talk about social media for a moment and what's happening with that. So last week, Elon Musk tweeted out just, I think, an egregiously anti-Semitic bigoted post. Do you disagree? I mean, I saw somebody saying that this was unwise. This is, you know, Elon Musk steps in. No, no, no. He takes the most vile anti-Semitic narrative and he retweets it to 60 million people saying

this is the truth. Okay. So Elon Musk didn't just step into it. This is not a gap. I described him as the bigot in full. And the reaction to this was pretty dramatic. Lots of advertisers who've been hanging on by their fingernails have said, okay, we're done with X, Twitter, whatever you want to call the jitter.

Well, so you want to talk about Elon Musk and what you thought of that tweet? Sure. Well, first of all, I mean, it was definitely an anti-Semitic tweet, but I think what was underrated was this was also a racist tweet. And I mean, not about Jews, about the tweet actually said that Jews were supporting and bringing in hordes of minorities. That was the phrase, hordes of minorities. That was the phrase, hordes of minorities. The replacement theory. It's the white replacement theory. It's a twofer, that's my point. It's not just about Jews. Then the replacement theory has Jews are the masterminds, the puppeteers, but their tools are the minorities, the people of color, immigrants,

whatever. And that part of it, I think, was actually more central to the tweet that he was responding to than it was Jews. So Musk's response is, oh, I'm not an anti-Semite. I wasn't trying to make a point about Jews. But he's clearly endorsing a point about these minorities coming into our country and threatening white people. So Apple and IBM, two of X's biggest tech advertisers, say they are pausing their advertising. Lionsgate, Disney, Comcast, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Discovery, and other firms also paused their marketing. Elon Musk is not taking this well. He's saying that he's going to file a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters for writing about all of this. But the boycott is gathering pace.

Whether this makes a difference, I don't know. I sense that this may be the tipping point, but I've been wrong about this sort of thing so often in the past. I don't know. Do you have any sense about it? I mean, Kara Swisher's pointing out that, look, the glide path here is pretty obvious. She says, X has degenerated into a toxic stew of grievance, and it is largely now useless as a social media site. I don't see it coming back from this. Well, first of all, there's a business aspect to this. A lot of people a year ago say Elon Musk would do something nutty or stupid or insulting and offensive. And people would say, well, I still got to be on Twitter, right? Because Twitter's the place and it's at. But over the course of a year, year and a half, he's managed to wear down the value of the place. And a lot of people have left. I mean, I hardly post there at all now. And a lot of other people have also bailed.

So it's no longer going to be essential to be on Twitter. And when it isn't essential, when say, you know, the government of Israel or the government of the United States is on threads or sub-stack notes or some other place, and the conversation has moved elsewhere, as it increasingly is, then Musk can't play that card anymore. He's not a utility that everybody needs. So he has degraded the value to the point where the moral factors can play more of a role. I think that's what's going on with the advertisers. They're going to follow eyeballs as the eyeballs are moving elsewhere. Where are you? Because I see you do some excellent stuff on threads. You do stuff on sub stack. I mean, what is your sense of where to go? Because I am actively thinking about this now. I've hung

on to the bitter end, I think. But what kind of reaction and interaction are you getting from the other sites? I'm primarily on threads right now. I don't want to be entirely in the control of any billionaire. So I don't want to be entirely just restricted to threads. But it's been a good place. I think threads is a very good lifeboat to get off of Twitter. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying. And David French is over there big time.

He's basically completely moved from Twitter to threads. Yeah. And again, I'm not telling people to, you people to bet everything on the Facebook empire, right? But Threads is a good place to bail out of Twitter. And then we can sort of see from there, there are other places. I like Substack Notes, but Threads has enough of a conversation going that if you're looking to get out of Twitter, if you're just feeling like, I don't want to be there, then Threads is a fine place. I still think, Charlie, that Twitter is going to be a good place to go to talk to the right, to talk to conservatives, because it's the new truth social,

basically. And if you don't want to talk to them, stay out of it. But if you want to speak to that audience, you're not going to find much of that audience currently on Threads. And we're now hearing Semaphore had a story about how the new CEO of Twitter, Linda Iaccarino, has turned the services Hail Mary better than an imagined $100 million political advertising business over to her son. And her son, their son has apparently been given the job of reaching out to Republican digital advertising firms and spenders, which I think that shows that they they agree with you, that they're going to go all in on trying to get some of that right wing money. It was interesting as kind of a one of these Rorschach tests of where would the right go on all of this? People like Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens don't seem to be bothered by this right wing anti-Semitism. I mean, you and I have spent time talking about left wing anti-Semitism.

But Ron DeSantis, who we haven't talked about a lot on this podcast and probably we'll talk less as time goes on, was on. He was on with CNN, right? Jake Tapper, did I have this right? Yep. Okay. And Jake Tapper asks Ron DeSantis, what do you think about Elon Musk? I thought this was pretty revealing. And right now, major companies such as Apple and Disney are pulling their ads from X because Elon Musk openly endorsed this anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jews are conspiring to replace white Americans with minority immigrants. I wondered if you saw the comment and if you condemn it.

Easy question. I did not see the comment. And so I know that Elon has had a target on his back ever since he purchased Twitter, because I think he's taking it in a direction that a lot of people who are used to controlling the narrative don't like. So I was a big supporter of him purchasing Twitter. I think they're obviously still working some stuff out, but I did not see those comments. All right. Well, let me just show you. So here's a post claiming that Jews are pushing dialectical hatred against whites and are flooding the country with hordes of minorities. And Elon Musk replies, you have said the actual truth. He goes on to say that he's talking about the ADL and other Jewish groups are pushing replacements of whites. Unbelievable. Will, your thought.

OK, so first of all, it was four days in between when Musk posted this thing and everybody was talking about it at four days. But from that to this interview with Jake Tapper and Ron DeSantis says he doesn't know anything about it, right? It defies belief. And in fact, Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman, was on CNN right after DeSantis, and he made this point. It's like, it's just not believable. So DeSantis is lying. But the larger point here is DeSantis is looking for excuses.

We have another clip here. You know, Jake Tapper doesn't let it go. You know, he's saying, look, you really didn't see this. Let's play the Tapper number two. Elon Musk is a pretty powerful guy and he's out there endorsing some pretty hideous anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. And I'm I still haven't heard you condemn it. Well, because I haven't seen it, I know you tried to read. I have no idea what the context is. I know Elon Musk. I've never seen him do anything. I think he's a guy that believes in America. I've never seen him indulge in any of that. So it's surprising if that's true, but I have not seen it. So I don't want to sit there and pass judgment on the fly.

Okay, Will, I really want to get your deep thoughts on this, but here's my not so deep thought on it. Maybe it is the deep thought. Fuck that guy. I mean, seriously, I really want to get your deep thoughts on this, but here's my not so deep thought on it. Maybe it is the deep thought. Fuck that guy. I mean, seriously, the cowardice, the dishonesty, the I'm going to keep my lips firmly attached to Elon Musk's rear end. I mean, just a reminder that Ron DeSantis is so deeply online that he actually announced his candidacy for president with Elon Musk. But what a bottom-dwelling sluggy is on the, I didn't see it. I don't know anything about it. I don't follow the news. Poor Elon. Elon is a victim. I mean, you kind of have Ron DeSantis like in a little nutshell there, don't you? Totally. So here's DeSantis saying, oh, I don't know about this. I haven't read it. I haven't

seen the context. I've never seen Musk do anything bad. Jake Tapper, we just heard it. Jake Tapper has just literally read the tweet to him. He's just read the exact text. Here it is. You didn't read it. Here it is you know the jews have it coming thoughts you know yeah and for those who didn't see the interview while tapper's talking cnn is showing this on the screen so desantis can look right at the text right there in case he can't read tapper's reading it for him right and then after that desantis is saying i't seen this. I haven't seen the context. So obviously the bottom line is Ron DeSantis does not want to criticize his openly racist, openly anti-Semitic friend. And this is a symptom of a political party, a lot of people in the political party, let's put it that way. Ron DeSemitism.

Yeah. Remember, Charlie, when in like decades ago, it was the left, it was the liberals who were like moral relativists who had no morals, no standards. That was the rap on them. We clearly have on the right, a complete loss of any moral background. We did a podcast last week with Peter Wehner who made this point, which is rather extraordinary, that you go back and read The Closing of the American Mind, what conservatives thought about moral relativism, you know, and right and wrong, and how that's been completely upended. They have completely abandoned everything that was an absolute consensus belief not that long ago. Okay, so not to get too deeply into horse race punditry here, but I feel we need to have a

little bit of obligatory punditry going into the Thanksgiving holiday. Sure. Now, when you and I were on stage in Washington, DC, we had the kind of the lightning round asking, you know, what percentage possibility does Nikki Haley have to win the nomination? I kind of regret my answer because it was so absolutist. I said zero percent. I want to walk that. But what did you say? I can't even remember, but it was more than zero. I think you said one percent just because you wanted to like just be right on top of me there. So if you and you could say that you right on top of me there. So if she wouldn't, you could say that you were right and I was wrong. It's like price is right. So I'm going to take greater than zero. That puts me on the good side. Okay. So I feel a little bad about that because defeatism is not a

great strategy. It's not a great look. You know, I, I understand that, you know, despair is a shtick for some people. I, I try to avoid it, but I think it was Mona Charon who said, let's acknowledge this is not the Republican Party. This is Trump's party. But, of course, there always is a meteor could hit Donald Trump, and Haley is there. Haley is emerging. She is having a moment, right? She is moving up in the polls.

The directional line is good. She's overtaking DeSantis in places like New Hampshire. The money people, as if they count anymore, are taking a good look at her. She's done pretty well. I think she stumbled a bit last week. Her thing about banning anonymous posting and stuff was like, what are you talking about? Have you really thought that through? And she's been doing a little dancing on abortion. So I know that you've been following that. So what do you think about Nikki Haley? Is this Nikki Haley's moment? And then I want to get to the Nikki Haley on abortion. Sure. Let's talk about Haley in general for a minute.

I've ragged on her more than you have. I think Haley is a deeply cynical. Which is saying a lot. She's a very cynical politician and abortion is one of those examples. We'll set that aside for a minute. Having said that, it is really important. First of all, we're in agreement that the worst thing is Donald Trump getting elected. We don't even want Donald Trump to get nominated. But if Donald Trump, if the meteor does hit him, if he gets sent to jail or something and he's out of the running, right?

It is still important that the next person in line, the person who inherits the nomination, be one of the, I don't know what to call them, better Republicans. And I think in this race, we now have a pretty clear dividing line. The better Republicans are Chris Christie and Nikki Haley. Chris Christie is substantially better than Nikki Haley, but go on. Yes, yes. He definitely has zero chance, so. Yeah, probably. Yes. So he definitely has zero chance. So yeah, probably. Okay. DeSantis and Ramaswamy are the dangerous candidates if it's not Trump, right? They're the isolationists, right? They're

much more cynical. They're more unhinged. But the point is Haley's momentum, and there is Haley's momentum, is good. And there are several polls now in the early states that are showing it. As Tim Scott gets out, Mike Pence gets out, there's some consolidation going on. And it's an open question, Charlie, whether having Chris Christie still in the race is actually helping Donald Trump in the sense that he's depriving Haley of... Now, I'm sure Chris Christie would say, hey, you guys should support me, right? He's more of a bulwark guy, right? I think everybody at the bulwark is really enjoying Chris Christie saying what he's saying, doing what he's doing. I am. Right. We would prefer Christie to Haley, but I agree with you that Haley has a better shot. I'm not sure that the bulwark was always on the same side on these

issues. There are different flavors, let's say that. There's the 36 flavors of the bulwark, but go on. So I personally, to speak for myself, I prefer Christie to Haley, but I think that Haley has a better shot. And it looks to me when I look at these polls that Haley could come, she's already come up some, she's already consolidated some. And if Christie weren't in the race, look at New Hampshire, for example, the last New Hampshire poll, DeSantis is out of the running in New Hampshire. He's running fourth or fifth.

The last CNN poll that just came out, 42 Trump, 20 for Haley, 14 for Christie. You look at that 14, you say, if that 14 went over to the 20, that's a 42-34 race. I think she needs to beat Trump in New Hampshire to have a shot. And she could do it with Christie's people. Let's understand how political reporting goes. Everyone's assuming that it's going to be Donald Trump. So the big story, if it's 42-34, would be an earthquake because, oh my God, the story would be Nikki Haley. It would not be that Donald Trump won. It would be that Nikki Haley did so well. There's a long history of this sort of, you know, second place. So you're right. That would be a big deal. And of course,

that rolls into South Carolina, where with Tim Scott out, I don't know. She has a plausible maybe a squint. Okay, so talk to me about abortion, because I was actually going to bring this up last week, saying that Nikki Haley, almost alone among the Republicans, has figured out how to sound like a reasonable person. She understands how to frame the issue in a non-threatening way. But then she got caught up in a, where was it where she was asked, would you sign a six-week ban in South Carolina? And she said, yes. So what's the state of play there, Will? Because I know that this is your wheelhouse. Yeah. So Haley is trying to play this double game, right? She's trying to tell pro-choice people. She knows a lot of buzzwords that she uses to appease. She talks

about how it's a personal issue. We shouldn't judge each other. We shouldn't divide the country. And her big message to pro-choice people is, look, no pro-life president, none of us, especially me, I can't ban abortion because we don't have 60 senators who would do that, right? So even though whatever my personal views are on the issue, what I'd like to do, I'm not a threat. So all you pro-choice people can vote for me. But then she goes to these conservative Christian audiences and she tells them what they want to hear. And so Bob Vander Plaats, who's the head of the Family Leader Forum in Iowa, says to her, you know, he had three candidates on Friday, DeSantis, Haley, and Ramaswamy. He says, I'm going to ask each of you the toughest question I hear from my people, from the right,

from the Christian right. And the question for Haley is, you know, a lot of my people say you sound pro-choice because they're watching the debate. They're watching what you and I are watching and they see her saying this stuff. And she wants to reassure the Christian right. So she tells them, he says, would you sign a heartbeat bill? That's a ban on abortion at five to six weeks, before a lot of women know they're pregnant. And she says, yes, without a hesitation, she says, yes, she would do it because she's talking to that crowd. So this is obviously my complaint about Haley. She says different things to different people or she emphasizes different things. And it's dishonest politician like Nikki Haley, but who supports funding Ukraine, who supports, you know, the rule of law in a lot of ways. Chris Christie would say no. Would you rather have that than a DeSantis? And my answer is yes, compared to DeSantis.

I think that's a really easy choice. I'm struck by your saying, you know, that she's dishonest there that, you know, a politician who says one thing to one group and something else to somebody else's group. That just strikes me as politics. Maybe I've just factored in the dishonesty. I mean, there was a story over the weekend that Joe Biden is sending completely different letters to pro-Palestinian supporters than to pro-Israel supporters. So one letter emphasizes the support for Israel. The other letter very, very differently stresses a different point. Is that dishonest or is that like, well, come on, this has been going on for a long time here. I am just not going to get morally offended by that. I mean, I think it's interesting. I think it's worth pointing out. I think it's worth recognizing that there are

different versions of this, that Nikki Haley is going to talk about contraception to one group. She's not going to mention it to another group. Okay. We can call bullshit on it. Hardly distinctive. Let me flag the contraception thing for one sec though. So I agree with you. This is not as bad as, you know, trying to overthrow the government or anything like that. Good. So Nikki Haley has this list of consensus abortion policies. Why? Well, we can't all agree about banning all abortions, but here's what we can agree on. And she says things like, well, we can ban very late abortions. Okay. Everyone can agree on that. Or adoption. We can all support adoption. One of the items

on her list normally is we can make contraception more accessible. When she goes to the Christian right forums, this is like the fourth time I've seen her do it. She skips it. Charlie, she is so slick. She is so smooth. You don't even notice that she has taken it out. You notice it. You busted her on it. But like, I would like to think that in 2023,

birth control, actual contraception, no zygote involved, no like, is something that Americans can agree on. But apparently- I am amazed that it's out there. No, I mean, this is the thing that it's sort of like, this is why this era is so interesting, is that so many, and I'm reading a book that it's not going to come out till next year about the history of illiberalism. And one of the points he makes, and I think maybe he overstates it, but all of these things have always been there and they're all under the surface.

And so we have gone on blithely assuming, OK, you know, there's an arc of history and it's moving away from this and we've refuted this position or this position is fringe. But it never went away and it was always bubbling under the surface. And so we've gone on thinking that, okay, we're this multicultural society. We understand all of these things. We understand that we're not going to criminalize homosexual behavior. We understand that we're not going to criminalize contraception. And like, whoa, suddenly it breaks open and it's there, but it's always been there. This is the thing. So it is disorienting. The thing that really pisses me off about the contraception thing in particular is that if you want to reduce the number of abortions in the world, the number one thing that will

help you do that is contraception. That is by far the number one thing. So all of these pro-lifers who are resistant to contraception or making contraception more accessible, you're undermining your own cause cause and you say that this is murder they are literally saving lives please please follow through and support birth control yeah no and this was not even a debate like 10 minutes ago it feels like okay so since we're talking about the race by the way i get one of those you know emails you know from the campaign, like, here's the state of play from the Christie people who are making the case that it's early, it's not over, and all

these things. So they're not going anywhere. I think the best case scenario at some point is that Christie, because I do think that what he's doing is immensely important. I want him to do it up until the moment it becomes counterproductive. And when he drops out, I don't think he should necessarily endorse Nikki Haley, because I'm not sure that that's going to help her with some of the voters that she's going to need. But I got to say, I want to repeat, I mean, I've given a lot of shit to Chris Christie,

and I know all this stuff. So don't give me the emails and everything about that, well, he did this and Bridgegate and all this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know this. But he's been a magnificent beast in this campaign. And as you flagged for me, and I had not seen this before, so I'm really appreciative of this. He gave a foreign policy address at the quite right-wing Hudson Institute. He's addressing the people who are underplaying or lying about the menace that Donald Trump poses. What's interesting is that this is a foreign policy address, but he ties in the domestic threat. Let's just play it. Let's cut from Chris Christie. If you lie fundamentally about the menace that Donald Trump is, then you have no credibility in describing the menace that Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping or Kim Jong-un or the mullahs in Iran are.

If you are unwilling to stand up to someone in your own country, in your own party, if you're willing to call them the right president at the right time, if you're willing to say that I'd be inclined to pardon him, if you're willing to stand on a debate stage in front of millions of Americans and raise your hand and say, I'd support him even if he was a convicted felon, what credibility do you have to talk to the rest of the world about moral clarity? Damn. Chris Christie has been going through some some things but that is really remarkable when you think about that he actually compares the menace of donald trump to the menace of the worst people

in the world and turns that around it feels like chris christie's own sense of moral clarity is sharpened as this campaign goes on, that rather than having it, the edge blunted by all the shit he's taken in the booing and, and everything that's been thrown at him, he's sharpening, he's sharpening this sword. What do you think? Yeah.

And this point that he makes here is so fundamental. This was what Liz Cheney tried to tell us for two years, right? Yeah. So Liz Cheney tried to tell us for two years, right? So Liz Cheney is a hawk. And what she articulated was authoritarianism abroad is reflected in this case by authoritarianism at home. And you cannot be a true hawk, someone who stands against dictators abroad, while you are coddling someone in your own country, who is a wannabe dictator, who is trying to take on the powers of a dictator in Donald Trump. A very basic point, and everyone is failing the

test. And what I love here is that Chris Christie stands up and he makes his point. He's running in a Republican primary, and he's saying, we cannot ignore the authoritarian in our own midst, right? When he says the quotes that he has there, if you're willing to raise your hand and say you'd support him if he's a convicted felon, if you're willing to say he was the right president at the right time, you know who Chris is talking about there. He's talking about Nikki Haley. I mean, others too, but Nikki Haley, she raised her hand and said she'd support Trump if he were convicted. And she always says he was the right president at the right time. So I love that Christie is standing up to that. Meanwhile, Charlie, at the same time that this

is happening, Donald Trump was speaking in Iowa, I think on Saturday, and he praised all of these guys. He always praises Viktor Orban, the sort of authoritarian in Hungary. Putin, Xi, Kim. Donald Trump said that Xi was, I believe the phrase was strong like granite, I believe. I mean, he sounds like he's doing communist propaganda, right, for Xi. He talked about how Trump had such a good relationship with Kim Jong-un, you know, and Kim respected him. So Trump wants to be part of this club of autocrats. And Chris Christie is saying he does want to be part of that club of autocrats. And you Republicans who claim to stand against tyrants abroad are unwilling. You don't even have the courage to stand to a tyrant in your own party.

Which brings us to the weekly poll that is causing a lot of bedwetting in the Democratic Party. And I think in this case, justifiably, this is this big NBC poll. Biden's standing its new lows amid Israel-Hamas war. Young voters are breaking from Biden, helping give Trump a narrow lead for the very first time in the NBC News poll. The gap is within the margin of error, but you look at these approval ratings and they are horrific. This is Mark Murray's write-up. President Joe Biden's approval rating has declined to the lowest level of his presidency, 40 percent, as strong majorities of all voters, of all voters, disapprove of his handling of foreign policy in the Israel-Hamas war. What's more, the poll finds Biden behind former President

Donald Trump for the first time in a hypothetical general election matchup. The erosion for Biden is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza, and among voters 18 to 34, with a whopping 70 percent of them disapproving of Biden's handling of the war. So talk to me about this, Will, because this is not just the same old, same old. This would suggest that the Israel-Hamas war is having a much more damaging effect on the Democrats' coalition than I think Democrats had hoped. And I'm not sure how Joe Biden extracts himself from this. So your thoughts about this poll, because we could have spent the whole podcast talking

about all the ways in the last seven days that Donald Trump has reminded us how absolutely unfit he is for office, how unqualified he is, how dangerous he is. We could talk about all of his criminal charges against him, but we wake up this morning with polls saying that he is right now the favorite to win the presidential election in 2024. Da fuck. Right, right. Okay. So the first thing I want to say about this poll, I want to talk about the young people in this poll, because these are alarming numbers. So in 2020, voters 18 to 34, and I'm cribbing here from something that Steve Kornacki pointed out about the NBC's poll. So in 2020, voters 18 to 34 went for Joe Biden by 26 points, right? He needs to have a big margin among them.

In this poll, not only did he lose his margin, he lost his lead. Trump was winning voters 18 to 34 by four points. Now, I'm still skeptical of that, but go on. Yeah. Okay. Now, the skepticism I hear a lot, but Charlie, at a certain point, when we have one poll after another, after another, show this, then obviously we have to take it seriously. This is a high quality poll.

Yeah. So I think we need to start taking this problem among young people for Joe Biden seriously. But Charlie, if this is about Israel and Hamas, that is the optimistic scenario. Because Joe Biden is not going to get younger, but the Israel-Hamas war is going to fade somewhat over the next year. It's not going to maintain this level of intensity and this level of coverage. And one thing I want to flag in this poll about that, they asked about Biden's handling of the Israel-Hamas war. And among voters 18 to 34, it was unbelievable. 20% approved of his handling, 70% disapproved. So that makes a strong case that a lot of this young people defecting from Biden in polls

might be about that, about Israel and Hamas. And if that's true, as that issue fades away, they will come back to Biden, I think. So that's the optimistic scenario for recovery. Boy, that is the point. Okay. And what's the realistic scenario? You'd have to come up with some other reason why young people in particular are preferring Donald Trump. It could be the economy, but I don't know why young people more than people on say, older people on fixed incomes facing inflation, it would make more sense that they would be the ones more upset about the economy. This is why I am becoming increasingly invested in negative advocacy, by which I mean, look,

I am not going to try to fluff up Joe Biden, but I'm going to continue to say, yes, whatever you think about Joe Biden, Donald Trump is worse and much, much more dangerous. And we need to keep emphasizing that. What I'm concerned about, and you would know this better than I would, is the fracturing, the schism on the left seems very deep. And I'm wondering how deep those scars are going to be. So that, yes, you think they're going to come back because they won't be thinking about it, but you might have. You're going to have Jill Stein on the ballot. You're going to have Cornel West on the ballot. You might have the no labels on the ballot. There are now more off ramps for squishy progressives by squishy.

I mean, pro Biden progressives. And I just wonder whether or not this has shattered what had looked like a much more coherent coalition. And then it's going to be hard for Humpty Dumpty to pick up all the pieces. Do I have that right? Or Humpty Dumpty was the pieces, right? To underscore your point about the other alternative candidates, I was just looking the other day at the 2016 and the 2020 election results. Donald Trump got 46% of the vote in 2016. He got a little more, almost 47% in 2020. The difference was that in 2020, Joe Biden got 51. He got the remainder with a few exceptions. Hillary Clinton only got 48.

It was the third party candidates. That two point margin is not enough to win the electoral college. So it was the consolidation behind Biden that prevented Trump from getting reelected. If they fracture again, if people go to Cornel West and, you know, RFK Jr. and some of these other candidates, and Biden only polls 48 or less, then Trump gets elected. That's the mathematical problem. My optimistic scenario here is that we're having this conversation in 2023, not in November of 2024. There are opportunities now to adjust. I just don't know that there are those opportunities. So the Washington Post did a deep dive into all the attempts that the Biden team is having to

reassure nervous Democrats who are, I think, justifiably nervous. There was some gathering of the elite in Aspen, and Ron Klain, the former chief of staff, was speaking. And he basically said, look, Joe Biden is the nominee. There is no plan B. Basically, get over it. And so the crowd was grumbling about this. But this is the problem that the Democrats have. There is no plan B. And this is where I get stuck, because I'm willing to say, okay, we really need to think about, is there a better way of blocking Donald Trump? Because that is the priority. And I get shit for this, but I want to just reiterate, 2024 is not about reelecting Joe Biden. It is about stopping Donald Trump. If Joe Biden is not the best person to do it, you know, should we turn?

I just can't come up with the answer. I don't know the plan b is i don't think they have a plan b you know and this this is why i i'm not joining you know in sort of you know the bill crystal parade of like yeah he's got to go you know the david axelrod yeah he's got to go like who who do you got in mind gretchen whitmer is not just going to pop up jared polis is not just going to pop up. I'm not just going to see somebody emerge at the last minute here, I don't think. What do you think? No, it's very hard to get a consensus in a political party behind a candidate. You have an incumbent president. He's actually done a good job. That's not an easy thing to replicate. You bring somebody else in. And to your point about what is the job in this election, stopping Trump

or helping Biden, I am more pro-Biden than you are, Charlie. But I was realizing Joe Biden just turned 81. How much longer do I need him to live as an American citizen? And the answer is one year. One year. Like, it's great if he serves out his term. Oh, Jesus. This is helpful, huh? But seriously, I need this guy.

I am focused on stay alive and healthy and coherent long enough to win this election. After that, we can have Kamala Harris, we can have whoever, you know, but it's really about keeping Donald Trump out of office. And after that, it's all gravy. Yeah, see, I think that this is going to be the Republican strategy is going to say, okay, you think you're voting for Joe Biden, but you're going to get Kamala Harris. I have to tell you that, and I know you come from this world, the deep investment in denial. I mean, I am just watching, you know, all the folks on the Democratic side say, we should just stop talking about Joe Biden's age. We should just not mention it. You, Will, should not mention that he's 81 years old because if we don't mention it,

it will go away. And we should stop talking about the economy because people are too stupid to understand the economy is great. So if we just keep telling them, no, you're stupid, that somehow that will go away as an issue. I just think that at a certain point, when you start investing so much emotional and intellectual energy in pretending that reality doesn't exist, then you're in a bad place. Right. Now, I do think there's answers to all these things. I mean, you know, my answer is with Joe Biden.

Joe Biden ought to like lean into the old thing. I am old. I am so old that blah, blah, blah, blah. But Donald Trump is also old and he's crazy. I'm old. OK, I get this. I am so old that. And then you work in your Joe Biden good line. That doesn't involve, you know, corn pop or something like that. You know, right. And make sure you get this right. Don't let him go on, you know. But you have to emphasize the he's old, too, and he's dangerous and make that the choice. The problem is there's some you and I are professional political pundits, right?

Because we have our licenses, right? We've got, I'm trying to articulate this in a way that doesn't sound completely fuzzy, but in politics, there's an it factor that people connect or they don't connect. And Joe Biden, you and I could sit there and we could run through all of the accomplishments on the whiteboard. And yet somehow he's not managed to connect with the American people. They don't look at him with a confidence. He won 51% of the vote in 2020. He connected. People like Joe Biden as a person, they think he sympathizes with the middle class. They don't think he's a crazy lefty. I mean, enough people.

That's not easy to replicate. I think he does connect. It's just the age thing that's really hurting him there. Okay, so you want to talk about 2020. I would suggest, Will, that we talk about 2024. Yes, he did do those things in 2020. That was then. This is now. I am with you, Charlie, about reality, right? Let's be honest about Joe Biden's age. It's a real problem. Let's be honest about the economy, inflation, real problems. Don't try to deny these things. But there are a lot of other truths and we're going to be talking about them. The media is going to be talking about them. The public's going to be talking about them for the next year. Truths like Donald Trump tried to overthrow the government of the United States. Donald Trump committed felonies. These things

are going to be exposed, prosecuted, tried, talked about for the next year. There are a lot of truths. And these are the reasons why you and I support Joe Biden against Donald Trump. And they're why a lot of voters who right now are unhappy with Biden, unhappy with the economy, can be persuaded to, and I think will be persuaded to vote for him against Trump. So rest assured, we will talk about all the facts. Yeah, but enthusiasm is an issue. And, you know, you're just seeing, I get the sense that the right wing, and I mean, the worst elements of the right wing, I mean, the Bannon, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene's of the world, they feel the wind is at their back. You saw that in the reaction to Argentina. And you're seeing Democrats who are dispirited and divided, at least at the moment, this is temporary. And I understand that people are going to hate this. But did you watch Saturday Night

Live? Yes. They're making fun of Joe Biden. Joe Biden is, I mean, it's like, there's a negative vibe out there that needs to be turned around. And I think the only way to turn it around and say, this is the menace that you face. America does not come back. You know, you may be tired of all this shit.

You may be concerned about all of this, but if you don't just understand exactly the threat, the danger that is out there, you're not coming back from this. So you can get all pissed off about Israel. You can get all pissed off about the price of eggs. And I'm not asking you to favor and think that Joe Biden is the greatest president since Harry Truman, but do understand that Donald Trump represents the greatest danger that we've ever faced. So, I mean, that's where I'm coming down on. Slight difference in emphasis here. Okay. I mean, as the pony guy, I would like to believe that voters can be motivated by positive things. $35 insulin, the infrastructure in your red county that, you know, there are a lot of

things that Joe Biden has done that are good for people, that will help people. I would like to believe the election can be about that. But it is true that in the United States and in lots of other Western democracies, incumbents are in a bad place right now. The public is very unhappy, even if things are relatively good in these countries. It's not exactly clear why, but it's a general phenomenon. If the positive message doesn't work, then the negative message is, we already had Donald Trump as an incumbent president. That was bad. We're going to tell that story to you. It's worse than the incumbent story of Joe Biden. Maybe that works. I'm going to make a variation of your, that there's a pony inside

the pile of manure. Okay. Okay. I am saying that America is seeing the giant pile of manure there. And they're saying, man, there is a pile of shit. What are we going to do? And I want to be able to tell them, yes, but inside the pile of shit, if you open it up and everything, you know what's inside there? Not a pony. What? A demogorgon. And the demogorgon is much worse than anything you have. So you think that the worst thing is the pile of shit.

It is not the pile of shit. It's the demogorgon inside of it if you make the wrong choice. You don't watch. Obviously, you're not a fan of Stranger Things. You would have got the demogorgon. No, no. I'm learning what this is. Okay. If you watch Stranger Things, the demogorgon.

So that's where I'm going on this. Yes. Will thinks there's a pony inside that. I think there's a demogorgon inside the pile of manure. All right? Let's think about these things. As we eat our Thanksgiving meal. This would be a great week at least with everything that's going on and as frustrating and exhausting as it is.

I think that this year Thanksgiving comes at a good time because I think we really kind of need to step back and go, we have so much to be thankful for. There are so many things that are good in our lives. And so maybe taking a few days off of, you know, Elon Musk's hell site, like looking around at your family and your friends and the fact that, hey, it's beautiful fall. You know, I have grandkids and children and dogs and it's life is good. Right. So gratitude. It's beautiful. We'll be back to the pile of shit next monday though but between now and then have a great thanksgiving and everybody i hope you just do to spend some time thinking about what you are thankful for and kind of cling to that because i think that's going to be important going forward Talk to you next week. The Bull Rock Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.