The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: The Crassness Is the Point

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Greg Abbott chose to be breathtakingly inhumane, MAGA cancel culture is a runaway train, Biden gets in some good digs, Trump is the biggest victim of all, and McCarthy still doesn't have the votes on the debt ceiling—just insane demands. Will Saletan joins Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy Monday and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes, joined by my colleague Will Salatan. How are you, Will? I'm good, Charlie. We're well into spring here in Washington. It's May. It is May 1st. That feels like a turning point, even in Wisconsin. It really does. So, word on the street is that you did not go to the White House Correspondents' Dinner. No, I can't say I didn't put on the tux and put on the fake smile and hang out with celebrities. Yeah, I think people all across America really look forward to watching members of the media engage in this annual ritual of star flicking. I said star flicking.

I just want to make it clear before you slap on the E rating. We may earn it later, but I said, star flicking because it's like, oh, around these famous people. Okay. Nevermind. I'm just not going to do it. Okay. So have you ever heard of a thing because it's Monday and that's why I'm interested. Have you ever heard of a thing called bare minimum Mondays? Because it's apparently it's a TikTok trend. So I figured you might know about it because I don't. My kids might know about it. The Bare Minimum Monday encourages workers to ease into their week by doing just enough to get by as the work week begins. I just love the way that sort of old fashioned slacking develops a thing, becomes a meme, or becomes an ideology. Is this followed by the Fired Friday?

Well, okay, we're going a little bit late. So Axios has a little thing about this. Notes a recent study from LinkedIn and Headspace found that nearly 75% of working Americans say they experience Sunday scaries about returning to work. I'm surprised it's that low. So what's happening is a woman named Marissa Jo Mays, a self-employed millennial and startup co-founder, has been posting about her Monday routine, said on TikTok that she keeps the first two hours of her Monday free and schedules just three tasks for the whole day before I started doing bare minimum Monday. I was physically sick with stress and couldn't produce anything because

of the level of burnout I had reached, May said in a video. And then it goes on to quote somebody as saying, hey, this trend could totally backfire on employees. Yeah, you think so? You think it might? She's burned out. That's what she's saying. She's burned out from the previous week. Is that it? And then there's nothing left. Yeah. Weekends are no longer out there. I like three-day weekends, but the bare minimum Monday just seems like it's kind of cheating. It's like, let's make this a thing. And then of course we'll have casual half-day Fridays. So the burnout part is serious.

Like, let's give the millennials credit. Like, if these millennials are, you know, burned out from the previous week, that's a real issue. And you should be talking about that with your boss and your colleagues and having a more sustained work environment. But you can't. You can't have, like, every Monday be a bare minimum Monday. That's just not a way to live. Last year during the summer, I mean, I want to show some sympathy here. I did take off Mondays because, you know, it is nice to have a three-day weekend and a four-day week.

You only do it part of the week, right? You don't like pretend that you're kind of working. Look, I have a kind of a different philosophy toward Mondays where I want to get a fast start on a Monday, just like dive into it. So I was up at 4 a.m. this morning to do Morning Joe. So on Mondays, I will get up at a ridiculously early time. And then of course, by noon, you're looking around going, I've been up for eight hours. What is that about? So, okay, maybe that's a little bit obsessive, but I guess people have different approaches. Do you like ease into the week or like hit the week really hard, get off to a good start. I don't know. Okay. So I have to confess something. And I honestly don't know that whether it was an open mic moment that I had, because it's

really, really early. I will also admit that one of the disadvantages of doing super early Monday is if you actually have a life on Sunday, you've heard about that, right, Lowell? People who have lives, who are they? Yeah. We were talking about the latest horrific shooting in Texas where a family of five murdered after they asked their neighbor to stop shooting his AR-15 because they had a baby sleeping, and he was so ticked off about this that he goes over and he shoots and kills five people. What I had not seen, you know, because, again, I hadn't been paying that much attention on Sunday,

I hadn't seen Greg Abbott's tweet about this. Ooh. He tweeted, I've announced a $50,000 reward for info on the criminal who killed five illegal immigrants Friday. Also, blah, blah, blah. And it was like, I actually gasped. Like, what? I mean, it's like, we're not even at the, you know, thoughts and prayers thing. It's like you have murder of five people. I mean, that's one of those moments cries out for a little

bit of compassion, a little bit of leadership, and you get absolutely nothing. So Greg Abbott reminds us that the crassness is the point. I mean, it's just breathtaking. You want to talk about narrative capture, which is a really boring way of saying he is just stuck on stupid here that he has to work in. What is my talking point? We have to keep on. This can't be about guns. This can't be about mass murder. This can't be about this climate of fear. We have to make it about what we want to make it about, which is it's about the border and it's about illegal immigrants. But what the hell, Will? All right. Just to explain what Greg Abbott is doing here, he's doing pretty much what you described. A story breaks. The politician looks at it and says,

how can I make this story about my favorite issue? Right. And so he chooses illegal immigration. Right. And he's not just sort of inhumane in the way that he responds to it, but he's wrong. He's wrong. There's at least one of the victims here where we have now seen her green card, a picture of it posted on Twitter, and I'm not sure where else. Not only does she have a green card, she is a successful asylum applicant, right? She got the asylum approved and she's waiting for further, but she is a legal permanent resident of the United States. She is not an illegal immigrant or alien, whatever Greg Abbott wants to call her. So first of all, he owes an apology for that.

Second, just an apology for treating the obviously victims of this murder by their immigration status. But third, Greg Abbott's not alone in this. Because remember, when Ron DeSantis sent 50 asylum applicants, we know that most of them were asylum applicants, to Martha's Vineyard, he's been calling them, Charlie, in every speech Ron DeSantis gives, he calls them illegal immigrants. And he's been corrected many times. He doesn't care. So Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, and a lot of other of these Republican governors and politicians use the phrase illegal immigrants. They use it indiscriminately, wrongly. They don't care and they will not stop until they pay a political price for it.

So it's just the inhumanity of it. Just leaving aside the politics, you have five people who've been murdered, including a nine-year-old boy. okay? It's two women. Their bodies are found, you know, trying to shield the children. They're shot in the head by this guy. And he refers to them as the murder of illegal immigrants. I mean, just like, we want to talk about that. Talk about that tomorrow. Just leave the freaking politics out of it for just a second. Just the bare humanity. And I don't know whether, you know, the bare humanity is just like stuff so far down there, you know, whether, you know, that's chained up in the basement of Greg Abbott's soul or what, but you just think that the instinct would be, yeah, you know what, I just, you know, can I go with thoughts and prayers? Would that be enough? I

mean, just for the human loss here, no, the five illegal immigrants. I don't know. I've seen some reporting that the assailant himself was an undocumented, but part of the problem is not only is it sort of inhumane, but you can't just pick out this one case and say, well, this guy's an illegal immigrant or these victims are illegal immigrants or whatever the facts may be in this particular case, because this is just one in a number of these crazy shootings, of which the rest are not. You can't dismiss this as an issue about immigration, because so many of these have been like 84-year-old white guy in Kansas City, that kind of thing. Guy in New York shooting a woman pulling out of a driveway. People are, you notice that the politicians are only interested in the incidents that can fit their narrative. I mean, they look at these things, instead of seeing human beings, they say, okay, can I score points by saying it's an illegal immigrant? Or can I score points by saying that this is a black person killing a white person or a white person killing a black person? It is so narrative driven. And it's just like everybody's got

their preset talking point. And the actual incident never shakes them. They never deviate from the lane they're in. You follow me? I mean, it's just, this is what we're going to talk about. Right. Can I just read you one line from, so Kay, I'm from Houston. This is in the Houston area, this shooting. I know this local station, KHOU, their story about the shooting. They were one of the first on the scene. Here's the line. Nearby residents in this neighborhood said it's common for people in the area to shoot guns on their property. One of the residents says, there's a lot of people here that like to shoot guns. It was just a matter of time before something like this happens. Now, so remember, this starts with a guy

just out shooting. Charlie, it was 11 o'clock at night. The baby that was trying to sleep, this was not in the afternoon. This was like, what you're hearing is there is a problem, not just with people owning firearms, but people out shooting in their yards at all hours. And that's telling you that you cannot dismiss this as an issue of immigration. This is an issue of the people who live in this area and other areas not handling guns responsibly. And in this case, you know, going on a psychotic episode and murdering people. Okay, so here's another one of those stories that may sound same old, same old, but is also not an outlier. This is the story of a upstanding citizen named Mickey Larson Olson. Follow this one. She's the January 6th defendant who wants Mike Pence

executed. Over the weekend, Donald Trump went out of his way to embrace her. Mickey Larson Olson, this is the way NBC reports it. A QAnon supporter who said she considers Trump the real president was convicted last year of unlawful entry on the Capitol grounds on Thursday night. She met Trump for the first time at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester. Larson Brown believes that members of Congress who voted to certify Biden's presidential election should be executed. Okay, just to clarify here, The ones who voted to certify the election, the punishment for treason is death per the constitution. Larson Olson incorrectly said, I believe every single person that stole a voice from our collective voice of we, the people

of the people for the people by the people deserve death. And no less than that. Larson Olson added, she would like a front seat of Mike Pence being executed. Sounds nice. And that he should be the number one person on her list of those who committed treason. And there's Donald Trump just hugging her and embracing her. And look, in a rational world, you could write this off as, OK, bad advance work, mistake, one-off, except this is not a one-off, is it? Donald Trump has gone out of his way over and over and over again to associate himself with the January 6th insurrectionists, to rewrite the history of January 6th, to promise that anyone who participated in that, including apparently people who beat the crap out of the cops,

you know, are patriots who are fighting for their country and might be pardoned in a Trump 2.0 presidency. So this is not just a freak show. And I'm sorry. Here's another morning you wake up. You feel like you've taken crazy pills because the Republican Party is in the process of saying, yeah, this is just fine. Let's do this again. Let's do it all over again. Yeah, we see this.

But, you know, if he's the nominee, it's way more important to go with the team than anything else. Charlie, how many times have you seen a quote from some Republican politician anonymously or by name saying that they hope that Donald Trump will set aside the past, won't try to relitigate and move on? It's his lesson. This kind of episode just drives home the logical consequences of the way Donald Trump actually sees the world. He has an upside down view of January 6th and the insurrection, right? The election was stolen. The heroes are the people who stormed the Capitol. In this case, a woman who's convicted.

Never mind, like accused. Convicted, right? Therefore, everybody who stood in the way of that was a traitor. I mean, as she calls it treason, she's saying they should be executed. Trump has been saying the insurrectionists were on the other side. The cop who shot Ashley Babbitt is the real villain. You know, if you have this upside down view of the world, of course, you're going to hug this woman because she's one of the people trying to save democracy, not destroy it because he, Trump really won the election. So it's an insane worldview. And the notion that you can nominate this guy

for president and that he'll stop talking about this issue is crazy because we can see what he believes and it is an inversion of reality. Hey folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day, we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to thebullwork.com and take a look around? Every day, we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bulwark Plus membership free for the

next 30 days? To claim this offer, go to thebulwark.com slash charlie. That's thebulwark.com forward slash charlie. We're going to get through this together. I promise. Can we take a break from this to talk about something that's really, really important? Go ahead. But also is part of the crazy for people who go, it's just the crazy stuff. I just say this stuff. It doesn't matter. We had over the weekend another bank failure, okay, which is like a little bit ominous,

but, you know, appears to be in control, right is like a little bit ominous, but you know, appears to be in control, right? Because all the smart people are telling us that. Meanwhile, we are careening toward another debt crisis. And even the pundits who've been writing these, hey, big win for Kevin McCarthy in the House, look at this, the House has passed, Republicans have passed this debt ceiling increase, are acknowledging that, yeah, that was a show vote because literally no one can figure out how they're going to compromise and avoid some sort of a debt crisis when they have to raise the debt ceiling. Are you finding a pony in this pile of manure? Because I am really struggling to figure out how Kevin McCarthy is going to be able to deliver enough votes to keep the full faith and credit of the United States going when at the same time satisfying the lunatic caucus

that really dominates Republican politics right now. Yeah, I don't have a pony here. And in fact, I mean, I think you've put your finger on the problem here. One of the problems is just the insanity of Kevin McCarthy's demands. But the other problem is he got this bill passed with all sorts of crazy promises attached to it. But he's not going to be able to get anything that would go through the Senate that his crazy coalition will put together. And let's say you decided we're going to negotiate for the hostage here. The problem is Kevin McCarthy can't actually deliver enough votes. See, that's the problem. Yes. It's like the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front and, you know, this various terrorist organizations, at least speak for your terrorist caucus, but he can't do that. So that makes him sort of ineffective in the sense that you can cut

a deal with him and then you won't get it passed. But that sets aside the question of whether you should cut a deal with him in the first place. And I think the answer there is no. We have a piece in the bulwark by Norm Ornstein from AEI about the radicalism of this debt ceiling vote. And he makes a great point. You know, all this horse race punditry, like, hey, what a surprise. Kevin McCarthy was able to pull this rabbit out of a hat and everything. Has anybody noticed the rabbit has two heads and is radioactive? I mean, it's just one crazy thing after another. It is not a politically winning bill they passed. I mean, I think it was Catherine Rampell who summarized the bill saying, under the plan, most overall non-defense discretionary spending would be slashed by nearly one third in 2024 after adjusting for inflation. The cuts would then expand

to roughly 59% on average by 2023. You run through the things that are being cut or gutted. And trust me, there are very few Republicans in even remotely swing districts that want to go back and explain that kind of thing. Right. So even this big win by Kevin McCarthy is like, you feel like you've taken crazy pills when you read it. Yeah. I mean, this bill, first of all, there's a Christmas tree of promises for that rough

Republican wishlist stuff, which is completely extraneous to the debt limit and which is politically toxic. But part of the problem with this bill, in addition, is they're not specifying cuts here. They're, you know, you're putting percentages on it. We're going to get down below this number, which leaves it open what would get cut, right? And so what Democrats have seized on is things like education and nutrition, but especially veterans benefits. And so their argument is, look, if you drive down the numbers in terms of spending, you're going to have to cut the veterans programs by this amount, or everything gets cut by what, 22%. And McCarthy's response is,

oh, no, we didn't say that. But Charlie, that is exactly the same argument Republicans make about Medicare and Social Security, that if you don't increase somehow the amount of money that's available through various changes or reforms, you're going to end up with cuts of 20% or whatever it is. So Democrats are just throwing this argument back at Republicans. And of course, it's extremely politically unpopular, including to independents, to be cutting veterans benefits. Except, now here's the bad news here. It goes back to what happened when John Boehner and Barack Obama were at loggerheads over this. And some of the dynamic was the same, although Boehner had a much bigger majority. The Obama folks were pretty convinced that the public would blame the Republicans for shutting down the government because it was the Republicans

who were shutting down the government. In fact, the public blamed everybody and everybody's approval ratings went down. Obama's approval ratings went way down. Was that when the standard and poor's rating was dropped for the faith and credit of the United States during this whole controversy, even though eventually they paid the bills, they did all that. The damage was done. Stock markets lost billions of dollars. Politicians were damaged. Republicans did not pay a price for this in the next election, as I recall, the off-year election. And if you are the president of the United States, any bad news on the economy is bad news for you. So this is the bad news for Joe Biden, that he may say, I will keep the country going. I will pay all of our

bills. The Republicans will say, no, we're the fiscal Taliban and we're just going to blow everything up. And yet they know that by blowing themselves up, they may hurt Biden more than they hurt themselves. I mean, it's not fair, but this is one of the political realities we have to live with. Right. So the lesson that the Biden administration and Joe Biden took from that standoff a decade ago was, and the way that they screwed up in their mind was that they offered from the beginning to negotiate. They think that if they say, we will not negotiate over the full faith and credit of the United States, that puts them in a better position politically. We'll see how that plays out. But Charlie, my beef with the democratic position here is they have not been nearly clear enough about the distinction between negotiating over raising the debt ceiling and negotiating over

the budget. Because Democrats sound like they are refusing to negotiate over the budget, which is not actually true. That helps Republicans because they'd love to shove all this stuff together. They hold the debt ceiling hostage in the name of controlling the budget. And they claim that Biden and the Democrats are refusing to negotiate over the budget. So we just now have Ro Khanna and Chris Van Hollen and some others were out on TV on Sunday, talking finally about how we're happy to negotiate over the budget. We're willing to negotiate a mix of budget cuts and tax increases and whatever is necessary, but we're not going to negotiate over the debt ceiling. And that

distinction is absolutely crucial. Okay, so let's play that cut. This is Congressman Ro Khanna from California, who is talking about the debt ceiling, making the point that you say Democrats have to make. Let's play that. And now you have the standoff over the debt ceiling. It is not a sustainable position for the White House to say they're not going to negotiate with Republicans, is it? Well, here's what's sustainable. The Republicans should do what I did under Donald Trump, and that's pay your bills. It's patriotic to pay your bills. Look, if you're a family, you have credit card debt.

It sounds like you're agreeing it's not a sustainable position. Well, I think we should pay the bills and then negotiate. And we should negotiate on deficit reduction. The last person to leave a surplus was Bill Clinton. I'll tell you how we lower the debt. Let's repeal the Trump tax cuts. Let's repeal some of the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy. Let's not have all these overseas wars. I mean, the Democrats have a plan and let's raise taxes on the top wealthy. But before we get there, we pay our bills. If you're a family, you have a credit card debt. Who says let's not pay the bill? But the president was saying Kevin McCarthy passed something or at least put out a plan. And I'll talk to you now. He's passed something. And the president says he still will not engage

with him. I understand the back and forth, but the political cost and the economic one is very real here. And it will stick to the president. Well, the president's saying he's not going to be hostage in having veterans cuts on health care, in having cuts on K through 12 education, in having cuts on food stamps, in having cuts on manufacturing to just pay our bills. He's saying we can discuss that. We can negotiate, but first pay your bills. And I think that I think Senator McConnell understands this. And I think the president will sit down with Senator McConnell. He knows that we can't default. You think that's the back channel that's going to figure this out? That's what I said. Or Kevin McCarthy has got to come without 22 percent cuts on veterans benefits.

So there are going to have to be negotiations, right? I mean, that's the one talking point that puts the Biden White House at a significant disadvantage, or at least certainly sounded like it in that soundbite. What do you think? Yeah, and I think I'll go look at polling to see whether this bears out. But logically, it just stands to reason. You can't be anti-negotiations over the budget, which is, I think, where Democrats have put themselves in a dangerous position.

And so let's go to your question, Charlie. How is this going to play out? Because you need there to be political pressure on Republicans in order for them to capitulate on the debt ceiling, which is what needs to happen here. And in order to get that pressure, you need to put your party in a better position in terms of how this looks. So the Democratic message has to be very emphatically and clearly, we are pro negotiations. We are here. We are ready. We're willing. That'd be a pivot though.

Yeah. I'm going to sit down and negotiate with Kevin McCarthy over the budget. The debt ceiling has to be agreed and approved separately. Since you and I spoke last many, many, many days ago, one week ago, think of all the things that have happened, including shortly after we were done, I think, the dramatic firing of both Don Lemon and, I think much more significantly, Tucker Carlson. So you've had a week to think about the whole Tucker Carlson thing. You know, a lot of questions about which direction does Fox go? How badly will Fox's ratings be hurt? Also, where does Tucker go now? I mean, the conventional wisdom has always been that Fox is bigger than any host. And all of the other superstar hosts who have been fired and or left Fox, you know, have been significantly diminished by that.

You know, Bill O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly, a variety of others. Tucker may be the exception. What we don't know is what's going on behind the scenes with that contract negotiation. Does he have a no compete? A lot of speculation that, you know, Tucker absolutely does not want to be silenced through the 2024 campaign. So give me your sense how this is going to shake out because, you know, you could certainly make the argument that Tucker will be as influential, if not more influential now, which would not have been the case for any other cable host fired.

What do you think? Well, I think he'll be influential without, because just obviously he has a huge audience and a lot of his audience will follow him. I believe the stats showed that after he left Fox, the viewership dropped off by like half in that hour of Fox. So those people are going to reappear some, they're loyalists to Tucker and they'll go where he goes. To me, the enduring question about him is to what extent is he him is, to what extent is he a liar? And to what extent is he a zealot, right? This is the question about Trump, too. So Tucker made the two-minute video after he left.

Which was weird. A very weird video. But he talked about how now that he's sort of free of the shackles of corporate media, he's going to talk about the real issues. So that's sort of like while I was lying to you all along, pretending that these debates I discussed were the real issues. But I think that video shows that Tucker has a lot of zealotry in him. And one of the lines, he talked about what the real issues are that he's going to discuss now that he's free. One of them was demographic change. That's his turn. So I think Tucker is quite sincere about the white replacement

theory and about dark people coming into our country, Muslims and people from Africa and whatnot and Latin America, and that he really cares about that. And I think what he's going to do is build a new audience somewhere and he's going to push the envelope. He's going to go where Rupert Murdoch didn't want him to go, which is further and deeper into this replacement insanity. I think you're probably right. We have a great piece up in the bulwark today by Kathy Young, who takes on what she calls the anti-anti-Tuckers out there, the critics who will say that, well, yes, he did some things that were really, really reprehensible, but you got to hand it to him and embrace some things about his success. And Kathy makes the point, you do not,

under any circumstances, got to hand it to Tucker Carlson. This is a really interesting point that I've tried to make in different contexts. And she writes, I'm going to read you a paragraph. It also seems to me that you should find Tucker Carlson especially objectionable if, like the anti-anti-Carlson crowd, you agree with some of his culture war points. If you are concerned about the excesses of wokeness, such as preoccupation with ferreting out real or imagined racism in every aspect of American society, it would seem to me that the last person you would want amplifying your views is the guy who dabbles in actual white nationalist

tropes, right? If you actually care about those things, then he is toxic. He is undermining your case in a fundamental way. You ought to be leading the campaign to say he's got to go. If you think the progressive left is too cavalier about street crime and riots, the guy who makes excuses for the far right, mostly white January 6th rioters, is not a great messenger. If you think we're too cavalier about the dangers of escalation stemming from U.S. military aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia, you really want to avoid the ally who sounds like Vladimir Solovyov dubbed into English and so on.

Whatever your issues are, Carlson is the please don't be on my side guy. This is really a great point. The problem is that there is that tribal thing that, okay, everybody who's on my side is on my side, no matter how much they undermine my side, no matter how much they discredit my side. I mean, her argument is exactly right, but it seems as if people brush it off. And, you know, it's like no enemies on the left, no enemies on the right, and you buy the whole package, even if part of that package is destroying you.

So what Kathy's applying here, and I am absolutely guilty of the same thing, is Kathy is guilty of being rational. Yes, exactly. Big flaw. Yeah. We only want to use this issue insofar as it's politically advantageous. And the problem is, of course, that the people behind this stuff are not rational, right? They're passionate about stuff that you don't really want to get into. So like a rational version of this anti-woke stuff is Ron DeSantis or his guru, Chris Ruffo, right? They're trying to be very politically careful about choosing areas of anti-wokeness that they can still keep mainstream. I'm not sure I would use that example. Go ahead.

Okay. Well, but the Tucker version is when you sincerely believe in the anti-wokeness to the point of wanting to go back to sleep and return to some of the prejudices of the past, you're going to get the Carlson version. And so I don't think political rationality will stop them from following Tucker Carlson wherever he goes. I just want to put a pin in the distinction you're trying to draw between Tucker Carlson and Christopher Ruffo, which I'm not prepared to go along with just here, that I don't think that Christopher Ruffo is the more rational, defensible position there, but I take your point. Okay. Speaking of the Santas and Disney, and I feel like it's now gotten to the point of piling on what an amazingly bad shambolic three weeks he's had Ron DeSantis,

including this, what seems to be almost a disastrous European tour. All the reports suggest that his speech to the business executives in England was a complete disaster. I mean, the guy is just on a negative roll. You would think that at some point, you know, with all the resources behind him, that he would be able to do some sort of a course correction. But it does seem like the kids keep on coming, don't they? Moving unfair to him? I mean, what? On paper, DeSantis is doing the things that you should do in his position. So for example, he's a governor, right? So we'll go to other countries, we'll get some foreign policy cred. The problem is that everywhere Ron DeSantis

goes, he still has to be Ron DeSantis. And Ron DeSantis doesn't really have a personality. I mean, one of these interviews, Charlie, I can't remember what country, he goes into a room to interview one of these foreign reporters, and he's just an, it's one thing to do that if you're just a senator, but to be, you know, as it's been said before, to be president of the United States, it's actually a very personal thing. People want to know who you are. They want a connection and say what you will about Joe Biden. You know, people, oh, he's, you know, old and he's, he's lost it or whatever. But on a gut level, Joe Biden likes to be with people and ordinary people, when they see him, they pick that up. They can see that he's old and he's lost it or whatever. But on a gut level, Joe Biden likes to be with people. And ordinary people, when they see him, they pick that up. They can see that he's a people person. If DeSantis were somehow to get by Trump, that would be a very unfavorable contrast to Joe Biden. Well, I also have to admit that as time goes on, I understand his jihad against Disney even less

on legal grounds, economic grounds, and on political grounds. I mean, it seems like a triple loser for him. He now has this big lawsuit in federal court from Disney, which is saying that, you know, you are using government power to retaliate against us because of free speech, which they've essentially acknowledged. David French has a great piece in the New York Times where he looks at the legal strength of this lawsuit. It's very, very powerful. I mean, on the record, they basically said, yes, we're going to punish you because you opposed a piece of legislation that we passed, which in our country, you're allowed to actually do. So it's legally a problem. It is economically

a problem if, in fact, there's even the hint that you might lose some of those jobs. I mean, you have Nikki Haley trolling him by saying they should move to South Carolina. And politically, it doesn't make any sense for liberals, independents, or moderates. It makes sense for the, I have the biggest balls in the room, and I'm going to fight, and I'm never going to back down, and I'm going to kill. What you want is somebody who is going to pound on the head everybody you hate. But listen to former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, who's running for president. I mean, you want to talk about a small lane, but he's willing to call out DeSantis on

this Disney thing. Let's play Asa Hutchinson from yesterday morning. What's your take on leaders in your party, Ron DeSantis among them, who are actively using the government to change social policy and wage culture wars? Well, let's be more specific about Disney. I don't like what Disney said about the legislation that I would have supported in Florida. But it's not the role of government to punish a business when you disagree with what they're saying or a position that they take. If that was the view of a Republican, then we're going to be in all kinds of trouble in our businesses in blue states if they start punishing businesses for taking a more conservative speech or position. And so I don't understand a conservative punishing a business that's the largest employer

in the state. That's a pretty strong argument, wouldn't you say, Will? Yeah. First of all, Asa Hutchinson's right on the principle of the thing, right? If you're a conservative, you shouldn't be using the state to punish corporations for speech. Okay. So he's right on the principle. But Charlie, I just want to point out also in that quote, Hutchinson is offered the opportunity to answer that question in general, and he chooses not to. But Charlie, I just want to point out also in that quote, Hutchinson is offered the opportunity to answer that question in general, and he chooses not to. He says, let's be more specific. Let's talk about Disney. Now that tells me that not only does Hutchinson- He wanted to.

Yeah. Not only is he, because normally it's thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican, but he's taking the opportunity to go after DeSantis and Hutchinson's running in a Republican primary. So he thinks that this is an issue that can get him some traction with conservatives, which is encouraging to me, right? It means that he thinks there are conservative voters out there who won't just see the DeSantis attack on Disney as our people fighting their people, but who actually believe that the government shouldn't be intervening and punishing corporations over their speech. But is he also suffering from the rational fallacy of thinking that these are rational arguments? I mean, are we back to the same argument discussion we had about

Kathy's article about Tucker? He might be. And I think, look, the pessimist would say, and I certainly would include Charlie Sykes among pessimists, right? That people will, Asa Hutchinson has his, Hutchinson's got his 1% lane and it's not going to get any bigger because he's banking on, you know, principled conservatives and there aren't any anymore. I can see that argument, but let me just point out one more thing here that is hopeful. I saw a clip from Marco Rubio, the Florida Senator, right? From earlier in the, talking about this DeSantis war on Disney, and Rubio said, I do worry that businesses will decide not to come here. Worry.

Right? Yeah. When you have the Senator from your own state saying, you know, I think our governor who's running for president might be attacking business too much, and it might hurt our state. That does signal that it's not just Hutchinson, that there's some unease going on among some Republicans about these attacks, not just on speech, but on business. And it feels like a runaway train. I devoted my newsletter to sort of catching up on how the right has decided it's all in on cancel culture, not breaking news that they've decided that they're pivoting. I remember you and I remember, back in the mists of time in 2021

when the whole theme of CPAC was, you know, attack on the cancel culture and we're against cancel culture. It was America uncanceled. And they wanted to make cancel culture into their new fake news. Well, now they've decided to hell with that. We're going to go on to something else, some other grievance. And the list of companies and businesses that the right

is targeting for cancellation or boycotts is kind of breathtaking. I mean, it's very eclectic. It's candy companies, theme parks, beers, books, movies, airlines, shoe companies, tampons, don't ask me, cartoon characters, even law enforcement. I mean, it's just, and they keep coming, you know, the makers of Aunt Jemima's, you know, Hershey's, of course, Disney, Bud Light, Honey Burdette Lingerie. I have no idea there's that woman who's this model social media influencer, shares a video of herself with a gun, shooting up a table full of Bud Light cans, Ampex tampons, and Honey Burdette Lingerie. I'm not even going to try to figure out why. You have people on the right, you know, wanting to cancel the FBI and the DOJ. M&Ms is a big thing. Stephen Miller is actually taking legal action against M&Ms. He's got a thing called America First Legal. I found a list.

There's an organization called the, what is it called? The 1792 Exchange. And they have a list of the worst woke companies. They have a database of a thousand companies. And it's all Alaska Airlines, Allstate, Comcast, CVS, Ford, Kohl's, Kroger, Marriott, Mattel, Pfizer. At a certain point, it's going to be like, guys, we have to keep the state open. We have to not attack every single company that has an internal policy that they don't like at Fox News. I mean, there is a point at which you push back.

DeSantis, however, kind of made himself hostage to the Christopher Ruffos of the world or the Tucker Carlson world, where if they say, you got to go after this company, or this person has said this sort of thing, it's like, how high do I jump? How fast do I run after them? Whatever. Madness. So what DeSantis is selling is, I'm not as crazy as Trump. I'm going to be more effective than Trump. But I'm going to give you the thing you Republican voters really want, which is liberal tears, right? I have the same enemies. I hate the same people. Right. And I'm going to punish them and hurt them more effectively than Trump did or would,

right? The problem, of course, is that there are no ethics. There's no institutional principles involved in that. Whatever you, you know, Jesus said, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Ron DeSantis says, do unto others what you think they're going to do unto you or what they tried. It's all about revenge, punishment, and it's about adopting and accelerating the same means that you attribute to the other side. They have no scruples. They will do anything to hurt us. So let's do anything to hurt them. And this is where you end up. You end up with an attack on business and on speech. Because we are victims, because they are just so mean to us. And of course, this is interesting. And I do think that historians and psychologists are

going to have a little bit of fun with this. That Donald Trump at the same time is basically saying, I am the man on the white horse, the colossus astride wokeness. I am your retribution. I am your justice. But also, I am the biggest, sorriest victim in American history. And he says this, you know, without any sense that there's a contradiction here. In case you're wondering whether or not Fox News was going to, you know, have that slow ban on Donald Trump. No, he's already back. Mark Levin sits down with the former president for another softball, you know, tongue bath. And Donald Trump actually, and this is kind of interesting because there's at least like a little hint that he knows a little bit about American history, but he's going through American presidents who had tough times and argues that, you know, yeah, things were tough for Lincoln, but nobody is treated. I'm not kidding you. Okay. You can listen to this, that I'm treated worse than Lincoln, who, by the way, was assassinated. This is like the other than that, Mrs. Lincoln.

I think it was Jonah Goldberger tweeted this out. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, you know, how was the play? It's like the joke come to life. It's like right there. Let's play a little soundbite from Donald Trump claiming that he was the worst treated president ever, although also the most successful. They say that Andrew Jackson was the most vilified president. It was his wife died during this thing. And they said such horrible things.

And he had a very tough presidency. He was a very good president. He was a great general and a good president. Abraham Lincoln, they say, was, you you know he had a civil war going on all right but yeah Abraham Lincoln had was just vilified he was but now they say Trump got treated the worst time because what they do you came up with phony stuff Russia Russia it was all hoaxes the way we're trying to support turned out to be no collusion you know after two and a half years no collusion i could have told them that the first day and they had the laptop they could have figured

that out because on the laptop if you look at it you could have figured that out easy but uh there's never been anything despite that people are saying it was one of the most successful presidencies in history and i believe it was so So people say that, you know, hey, Lincoln had it tough, but Trump, much tougher. He was much more vicious on Trump, because it was Russia, Russia, Russia. Okay, so we had hundreds of thousands of Americans killed during the Civil War, and they killed him by the Mueller investigation, you know, and despite that, people say that I was also the best and the most wonderful president. So, oh boy.

So I believe, Charlie, that the term for someone who claims to have been treated worse than the Lincoln who was assassinated is theatrical. That is a theatrical claim. Ignorant narcissist. Narcissist, exactly. Exactly. But part of what I love, sorry, I shouldn't say love, but part of what's fascinating to me about the narcissism, which is obviously on display here in its purest form, is the way that this political party, the Republican Party, maintains its loyalty to a man who has no loyalty to any, he doesn't even have a conception of anyone's interest other than himself. I mean, so let's take a couple of examples. One is like Trump talking about how all the people he endorsed won, right? He doesn't care whether they won, the Republicans he endorsed won general elections. They lost, in fact, that he killed the party in

2022. He just cares whether they won the primary because it's all about Trump and how good his endorsement record is in primaries, not whether he helps the party. The other one is debates, right? The RNC wants to enforce a loyalty rule about any presidential candidate has to promise to endorse the nominee, which, you know, this is a question of whether you will support Trump in a general election if you lose. Trump, meanwhile, he gave in another interview this week. He said, you know, I don't know why, you know, if you're way up in the primary, what's the purpose of doing the debate? Why subject yourself to it?

And Ronna McDaniel was on TV Sunday, and she said, she was asked about Trump refusing to commit to the debates. And she says, well, you know, the Trump campaign, he'll decide what he wants to do. So the loyalty only goes one way in this party. It goes to this insane screaming narcissist. Well, and this is one of those moments where I think a lot of people wake up and hear this and they think, have I taken crazy pills? No, you are not the crazy ones. It is beyond the limits of rationality to think of people who care about the future of the country, watching any of this, listening to any of this and going, yeah, this is the guy.

And we are going to preemptively surrender to him. It was kind of a hilarious discussion with Tim Miller on Friday, where we talked about how they're sort of preemptively going down to the basement and handcuffing themselves and ballganging themselves and saying, you don't even have to hold us hostage. We'll do it for you. We're just going to completely cave in on all of this. So in contrast, and I was going to avoid the star flicking from the correspondence dinner, but there were some pretty good lines from the dinner. Here's one of my favorite, Joe Biden talking about the cancel culture coming after NPR and what it would really take to kill NPR. Let's play Joe Biden from the correspondence dinner. Well, not everybody loves NPR. Elon Musk tweeted that it should be defunded.

Well, the best way to make NPR go away is for Elon Musk to buy it. And that's more true than you think, anyway. All right, I'm willing to give him props for that. On a more serious note, though, if you want to get a little bit of a contrast between these two visions that the country is going to have to choose between, the president did talk about freedom of the press and he made an appeal for the release of the American reporter who's being held hostage in Russia. But let's play a little bit of a soundbite of Joe Biden talking about his view of the role of the press and freedom of the

press. Let me start on a serious note. Jill, Kamala, Doug, and I, members of our administration, are here to send a message to the country and, quite frankly, to the world. The free press is a pillar, maybe the pillar of a free society, not the enemy. The enemy of the people. The President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, wrote — you all know this quote. Thomas Jefferson wrote, were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government. I should not hesitate to prefer the latter. I haven't actually thought about whether I agree with all of that, but we appreciate the sentiment. It probably doesn't do to dwell too

deeply on a country with lots of newspapers, but no government whatsoever. Just leave that aside. But there's a pretty dramatic contrast between these two candidates. And for people who think it's going to be really boring next year, I think I said this on a previous podcast, and that I'm torn between thinking this is kind of, oh my God, we have to go through this again. That's sort of that sense of like, it's going to be the same thing over and over again. It's kind of exhausting versus, but also quite terrifying and incredibly clear. I mean, the clarity will be kind of, you want to talk about bright lines. Part of what's interesting here to me about this quote from Biden, it's a cliche. It's a cliche to say the free press is a pillar of a free society.

This is what presidents said at the correspondence dinner every year. And then came Donald Trump. And so suddenly after the Trump years, to have the American president stand up and say that the press is a pillar of a free society, not the enemy, that's no longer a cliche. Because we've seen what it's like to literally have the person in charge of our country attack the press and call it the enemy of the people. We've seen an authoritarian president. We hadn't seen that for some time. And so I think that's what 2024 is going to be largely about. Of course, the Republican Party has their issues they'd like to run on, and they're very basic issues, inflation, crime, border security. But if they nominate Donald Trump, they're not just going to be able to talk about that stuff, because they're going to be nominating a guy who literally attacks the press and all other institutions of a free society.

Okay, and I'm sorry to loop back here, but I want to go back to Kathy's point about if you care about X, then you should stay away from people who undermine and completely discredit your position. This seems to be writ large now for the Republican Party, that if you genuinely care about every issue you just mentioned, then why would you want to be associated with the one guy who might lead you to defeat? Why would you be associated with the one guy who makes every one of your legitimate concerns something toxic? And yet they've accepted that. We're concerned about the border. I think people of goodwill can be concerned about illegal immigration. So what do you do? You associate yourself with somebody who's, you know, goes for raw xenophobia, who talks about building a wall, all of, you know, Mexican rapists, when in fact what you're doing is you're undermining your case. I think this is also the trade-off that the pro-life movement has made.

You know, they want to create a culture of life. And what do they do? They embrace somebody who has embraced the culture of cruelty and brutality as a way of life. And yet they're willing to make these trade-offs even though they are facially irrational. Right. And so we have a common theme here of the failure of rationality. But I guess if I had to guess, Charlie, I would say, first of all, there's obviously an epidemic of cowardice in the Republican Party.

People just lack the courage to stand up in the primary, which is difficult, in the name of winning the general election, which would be the rational thing. The other thing is, I remember doing research at one point about what was then called battered wife syndrome. I think there's a lot of that going on in the Republican Party. Trump, I mean, what has he been doing for the last three or four months? Beating up Ron DeSantis, you know, I will stand here and pummel this guy to reassert my dominance.

Rationally, you would say, Jesus, we don't want this guy, Trump, to be our nominee. This will play terribly in the general election. But I just think they're bullied and they've allowed themselves to be mentally crumpled. And they're just capitulating. And as we've seen, coming up with all sorts of rationalizations, why if we nominate Trump this time and he loses, then next time we'll nominate. But that rationale can go on forever because the rationalization is not actually serving rationality. It is giving you an excuse to do what you want to do, which in this case is to capitulate. I think that's absolutely correct. So, as listeners of the podcast know, we've done a couple of special things recently. On Thursday, we launched a new, I would say, flex on the podcast. The Trials of Trump, we're going to be joined by Ben Wittes and the folks from Lawfare every Thursday so that we can catch up on all the legal issues surrounding the former president. Of course, we're going to continue doing Will and Charlie Mondays and Tim Miller will join me on Fridays.

And a week from today, Will, we're going to do something kind of special as well. It'll be you and I, but I just want people to just mark it down. A little appointment podcast listening. Next Monday's podcast, I think, is going to be quite special, and we're going to be rolling out something else that's new. Okay? Do you want to be more specific, or should I just leave it? Tell me the T's hanging out there. I'm going for the T's. I like the T's. I'm going for the T's. All right. T's. I'm going for the T's. All right. So, Will, we will talk a week from today. Try to keep it on the down low. Try to not have so much stuff packed into one week because we have so much to catch up on every single Monday. So, have a great week, Will. Thanks, you too, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's

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