The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: The GOP’s Abortion Quagmire

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Republicans have boxed themselves in on abortion, Elon continues his petulance, the knives are out in the House GOP, and Lindsey Graham sheds tears for America's No. 1 TV addict. Will Saletan is back with 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, the day after Easter Sunday. I hope you all had a blessed Easter holiday. Will, did you happen to see the Easter sentiments, the pure joy coming out of Mar-a-Lago yesterday? Everywhere else, Charlie, but not Mar-a-Lago. You can feel the joy. This is Donald J. Trump among many of his social media bleeds. Happy Easter to all, including those that dream endlessly of destroying our country because they are incapable of dreaming about anything else. Those that are so incompetent, they don't realize that having a border and powerful wall is a good

thing. And having voter ID, all paper ballots, and same-day voting will quickly end massive voter fraud. And to all those weak and pathetic rhinos, radical left Democrats, socialists, Marxists, and communists who are killing our nation, remember, we will be back! I should have mentioned this was all in caps, but I think you knew this. Yes, happy Easter, rhinos and communists. Let us pray. As I mentioned this morning in my newsletter, as a need, I mentioned that this is the man embraced by the vast majority of evangelical voters, who is frequently described as a fierce defender of Christianity, and occasionally even compared to Jesus Christ. And he is the front

runner for the Republican nomination for president. So before we get into all this, I have a present for you, Will. On Friday, I had a present for Tim Miller at the end of the podcast, but I thought I would give you this present. And this is a present not just for you, Will, but I think for all of our listeners in case they missed it. Some of you may have, in fact, watched Saturday Night Live. I don't know, I do other things on Saturday night now. I don't, I do actually, but. So they ran this promo on Saturday Night Live that is supposed to be a lampoon of CNN and the people who watch CNN. And the premise of the ad is that there's a new app titled CNN Zen, which is designed specially for anyone whose entire personality is hating Donald Trump. Not saying that applies to anyone here or any of our listeners. Present company accepted. Yeah.

Present company accepted. So Molly Shannon is on here playing Maggie Haberman and various other actors play various other CNN hosts. And here's a bit of what the commercial for the app titled CNN Zen sounds like. These days, it's hard not to feel stressed out and overwhelmed. Sure, Trump got indicted. But now everyone says the case against him is weak and that he'll never serve any jail time. As someone whose entire personality is hating Donald Trump, you need more.

You need to feel calm and reassured. You need the newest meditation app, CNZen. The only app that suits even the most militant liberals with sensual details from Trump's arrest. Featuring your favorite CNN anchors and correspondents. He's the first American president to ever be indicted. This is truly a historic and humiliating moment. Trump is a sad defeated man. They made him come from Florida where it's 80 degrees to New York where it's only 60 degrees. How depressing for him.

And his motorcade wasn't even that big. I thought it would be bigger but it was so small. Donald was all alone. No family or friends to support him. I shouldn't say this as a journalist, but what a loser. Let New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman soothe you to sleep. This is his worst nightmare, and he's really freaking out. Because now he knows there are consequences. Consequences. Freaking out because now he knows there are consequences consequences

You can also listen to clips of Trump and his allies desperately spiraling Please Donald J. Trump is an innocent man and he needs your help Send him all your buddy Lindsay today Donald J. Trump are you slash fundraising scam? guilty Trump RU slash fundraising scam dot guilty. Trump's next court appearance won't be till at least December. That's why CNN has a whole section of Trump indictment ASMR. Can you hear him getting fingerprinted? And the DA opening his big leather briefcase.

And a little gavel from the judge. Okay, okay. briefcase and a little gavel from the judge okay okay so so when the bulwark podcast is not enough for you apparently there's going to be this app i'm just just saying so can we do a little bit of that just start off here a little bit of of comfort new abc ipsos poll out the Trump's approval rating. Did you see this? Trump's approval rating fell from 29% to 25% in one week after the indictment. Now, with all this, you know, buzz, you know, this is the wrong indictment. This would backfire on everything. Majority of Americans think that he actually should have been charged. Listen to these numbers among independents. 54% said he should have been charged with a crime. 57% of independents said he

intentionally did something illegal. So overall, a majority of Americans, 53% believe he intentionally did something illegal. An additional 11% said he acted wrongly, but not intentionally, only 20% of Americans believe that Trump did not do anything wrong. Of note, this is from ABC News, of note, the former president is enjoying weaker than usual support from his own partisans with only a plurality of Republicans, 45%, thinking Trump did nothing wrong. And the rest of the party split among the belief he intentionally did something illegal, 19%. He was wrong, but it was unintentional, 18%, or simply did not know, 17%. So again, don't overthink this, folks. This just doesn't really help him to be indicted and perp walked, and the next couple aren't going to help him either. So Will, your thoughts? Okay. All right. So Charlie, we're in a season of religious holidays, Easter and Passover and

Ramadan. So let's start with a confession. This poll is what the SNL commercial is about, right? I know. So this is one poll in one week. I would not put a lot of stock in these numbers as a trend necessarily, but you and I are going to sit here and really, really enjoy this poll. And he says last week marked a new low point for Republicans as they prepare for the 2024 elections. Former President Trump, once again, the dominant force in the party, which is showing little indication of trying to appeal to swing voters. And it's beginning to dawn on Republicans this abortion issue is not going away and the lines are hardening. And they're going to be in a world of hurt, especially as we're starting to move to, I don't know, bans on abortion pills nationwide.

Right. I don't mean to say by the fact that we're enjoying this poll that the general theme is wrong. There's a lot of trouble ahead for the Republican Party. Let me stick to the poll for just a minute because you quoted the absolute numbers among independents. I want to talk a little bit about the trend line. So we're in the Easter season and Donald Trump obviously likes to compare himself to Christ, but while Christ may have risen, Donald Trump has fallen. He's fallen in this poll, not just in absolute numbers on the sample as a whole, but specifically among independents, those numbers that you quoted, Charlie, the trend line is from before the indictment to after the indictment,

the percentage who said that Trump should be charged went from 40%, this is among independents, 40% before the indictment to 54% after. Those who said that he should suspend his campaign went from 41% of independents to 52% of independents. So those are trend lines, but they're number one, they're specifically among independents, the people who, as far as we can say about any group, decide elections. And they are movement right at the crux. They're right at the hub. They're going from a minority to a majority. They're tilting independents over to the other side. So that is an important pivotal change that the Ipsos poll does point to. And the additional factor of abortion, which we can talk

about more, does add a larger context where even if the Republican Party can shed its Trump problem, it has this enduring abortion problem. I do want to do that. I want to talk about Elon Musk's performative assholery over the weekend. I want to talk about the Clarence Thomas story. I want to talk about this big Ukraine leak. I want to do all of that. in a race that was completely dominated by the abortion issue. And Politico has a great piece. Abortion was a 50-50 issue. Now it's Republican quicksand, and they can't get out of it. There's no indication that they're pivoting. And just as the evidence begins to mount this is motivating Democratic voters, liberal voters, and it is shedding suburban women voters. Now you have this ruling from a single federal judge down in Texas that would invalidate the FDA's approval

of the abortion pill. And the Wall Street Journal is sounding the alarm. This is the second time this week that the Wall Street Journal is basically saying, guys, you're in a lot of trouble. They write, abortion has been a political gift to Democrats that they want to keep giving, which explains why they sounded almost gleefully furious on Friday after a Texas federal judge overruled the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion pill. So let's talk about that because I was on Morning Joe this morning and saying, I probably was the only pro-lifer on the panel, but I guess the point I was trying to make was the real tragedy here is for the pro-life movement is that after their big victory with Dobbs, instead of basically pocketing the victory, they decided to go as performative and punitive as possible at ramming speed. And that rather than creating a culture of life or coming up with proposals that were pro-child and pro-family, what have they done? They've gone from one state to another to have the most restrictive laws possible. And even the most restrictive laws

possible are not enough because the movement that until five minutes ago, and you remember this, Will, was saying that we ought to return the decision to the states is now going, no, we want national bans on things like abortion pills. of life and what pro-lifers wanted to do, changing hearts and minds. It is all about going as hard and fast, passing as many bills and making them as extreme as possible. And this is not working for them. And my sense, and I really wanted to get your take on this, my sense is this abortion pill issue is really in many ways a worst case scenario for Republicans. It is. It is. And let's step back for a minute. We can talk about various aspects of this, but let's just talk about the timeframe of pregnancy. So the Republican position, the idea of a safe Republican position was, look, in Europe, a lot of countries draw a line at 15

weeks. We don't have to have it be at 24 weeks where Roe was or what, roughly speaking. So we'll move forward to this moderate position. And that was the DeSantis position. What's happened since then is, going back to the greatest political philosopher of all time, Arnold Schwarzenegger, it is in our nature to destroy ourselves, right? So a movement that had gotten rid of Roe v. Wade, had established actually a surprisingly safe position at 15 weeks, just continues pushing. It's going to continue pushing. It is continuing to continue pushing. It is continuing to push until it antagonizes everyone. So in Florida, they're moving from 15 weeks to six

weeks. In lots of states, they're moving to six weeks, effectively banning all abortions. The abortion pill, the mefapristone, this is being used for about, I believe, a majority of abortions in the United States right now. And this is an early intervention, okay? But the pill only works within, what, 12, 13 weeks, the first 12, 13 weeks of pregnancy. So by cutting off the abortion pill, they're going after early abortions, not just legislatively, but they're trying to cut off the method of doing any of these early abortions chemically. And as you point out, in addition, the Republican position was, hey, we're going to be the party of states' rights. If your state wants to have a liberal abortion policy, you can. But this judge in Texas is issuing a nationwide injunction. It's a preliminary injunction. He hasn't even heard the whole case yet, right? But he's trying to remove the FDA approval for any woman in any state to get access to the primary method of early abortion. And so in both

respects, the timeframe and federalizing, nationalizing and attacking every state, the Republican Party and its judges are moving forward on this issue until they're going to trigger a political explosion. And I don't think they can help them doing it. Going back to the Wisconsin vote last week, you know, there's been a lot of, of course, second guessing and hand wringing about, you know, how did conservatives get blown out in such a crucial race? And there are some Republicans who are saying that the conservative candidate, Dan Kelly, should have pushed back harder on abortion. Basically, the conservatives went completely silent on abortion. I mean, they ran on being pro-life during the primary and they went completely silent. So when there were ads saying, Dan Kelly supports the 1849

abortion ban that does not include exceptions for rape or incest, they didn't answer that. Now the smart kids are saying he should have run ads saying, no, no, no, I don't support that. You know what the problem with that is? He couldn't say that without risking losing the support of some of the most militant pro-life groups who had endorsed him and whose endorsement he touted during the primary. I've said this before, I think two-thirds of the mailings that I got during the Supreme Court primary, two-thirds of the mailings I got from the Dan Kelly campaign were all about how he was the most pro-life candidate that, you know, he had babies on the cover that he was endorsed by all three pro-life groups, including the pro-life groups

that do not support and actually oppose exceptions for rape and incest. So he was stuck. There was nothing he could do about it, really. And I think this is part of sort of writ small, but now writ large, this is the problem of Republicans all around the country that want to recognize that this is politically toxic for them, that they are not projecting the image that perhaps they had hoped. And yet they're boxed in. They are boxed in. And this goes to the larger problem that we've seen on other issues, which is the discrepancy, the gap between the Republican base and the general electorate. So most people in the United States understand that abortion is not just another procedure, that it is basically a kind of killing. You have a developing human being, and it would be better if there were fewer abortions.

If you don't want to have a baby, it would be better to prevent it through birth control or some other means. But the problem is that the organized pro-life movement doesn't just believe that there's something wrong with abortion. It believes that every zygote is a person, that from the moment of conception, there can be no distinctions. And so in order to satisfy the pro-life movement, you can't have a ban at 15 weeks or even six weeks, right? If you're purist, right? Yeah, they want you to continue. So even the 1849 statute, I mean, it's very difficult for Dan Kelly or anyone else

to draw a line and say, I'm not going to go any further. We're watching right now as Ron DeSantis is trying to figure out where he can stop, where he can hit the brakes and maintain some satisfaction among the pro-life movement without making himself toxic in a general election. Yeah, and I'm not sure that he's going to be able to finesse this. Okay, so over the weekend, AOC was on CNN with Inabash, and she is suggesting, along with a couple of other Democrats, that the Biden administration should simply ignore this ruling. Now, where we're at is there is a federal judge down in Texas who has ruled against the FDA approval. You have another federal judge in Washington state who has upheld

it. So you have dueling rulings, which means it's going up to higher courts, probably the Supreme Court. But AOC is saying that the administration should ignore the ruling from the district court in Amarillo. Let's just play this. Well, you know, I want to take a step back and dig into the grounds around ignoring this preliminary ruling as well. There is an extraordinary amount of precedent for this. There is a term known as agency non-acquiescence. And this has been used for folks saying this is a first, that this is a precedent setting, it is not. The Trump administration also did this very thing, but also it has happened before. The idea of consistency in governance until there is a higher court ruling is not an unprecedented thing to happen.

In fact, when the Trump administration did it, it was arguably through a much, you know, a very grave issue when it came to DACA. The Trump administration was ordered to fully reinstate DACA, the DACA program. And they, in a complete defiance, did not do that. They rely on, the courts rely on the legitimacy of their rulings. And when they make a mockery of our system, a mockery of our democracy and a mockery of our law, as the as what we just saw happen in this Mifepristone ruling, then I believe that that the executive branch and we know that the executive branch has an enforcement discretion, especially in light of a contradicting ruling coming out of Washington. So, Will, Politico notes that formally ignoring the ruling carries the risk for Democrats by threatening to change the whole topic of debate from the merits of the judge's verdict to a debate

about democracy and the rule of law. This strikes me as a tempting but bad idea. And you could tell it's a bad idea because AOC is citing, the president she's citing is from the Trump administration. Hello? Right. I guess I want to speak to progressives here for a moment because there's a lot of sentiment on the left that they're very frustrated that they don't get their way on policy and they feel that they're disenfranchised and the right is a minority party running the country. And therefore, we're just going to run roughshod. We're going to pack the courts. We're going to do a whole bunch of, we're going to get rid of the filibuster. We're going to basically throw out a bunch of institutions or change a bunch of institutions to get what we want. I just want

to encourage progressives not to do this because Donald Trump and his era, his people launched an attack on institutions in this country, and we really need to be defending institutions. So in this case of the abortion pill rulings, it is one thing to say, and it is perfectly legitimate to say, there is one ruling by a judge in Texas. There's another ruling by a judge in Washington. We need to have this go to the appeals courts and sort it out. That's a totally legitimate, that's how the system works. What AOC is talking about here is basically setting aside the ruling in Washington. We're going to ignore the ruling in Texas. Look, there are a lot of complicated technical issues here, but the language she is using is we don't like this ruling. Donald Trump did this. We're going to do what Donald Trump did. And once you do that, you're giving Trump the victory.

And the victory is to dispense with institutions, to trample institutions. Yeah, be careful what you wish for there, because if you follow that precedent, you're creating more precedents. And in a Trump administration 2.0, which I think is less and less likely, but still is a threat, you can just imagine where that would go. This is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark Podcast. Thanks so much for listening to this show where every day we try to help you make sense of the political world we live in and remind you that you are not the crazy one. If you enjoy this podcast, I'm sure you're going

to find my free Morning Shots newsletter, a great companion for understanding what is happening to us. And every morning as I prepare for this show, I share with my readers what's trending and what to pay attention to, including my latest writing and essays on the events of the day. To sign up for my free Morning Shots newsletter, go to thebullwork.com slash morning shots. That's thebullwork.com slash morning shots. And I look forward to seeing you

in your inbox soon. Okay, so speaking of Donald Trump and his legal problems, I think it's safe to say the Bill Barr rehabilitation tour has come to an end, but he's still out there opining on the Trump issue. He had some interesting things to say about Trump's legal position right now and what might be coming. Because if you watch the Sunday shows, which you did, Will, it was interesting how much pushback we were getting from Trump world about the Mar-a-Lago document case, which I know how you felt about it. But my sense was it was kind of a tell that they think something's coming down. Anyway, here's the former Attorney General Bill Barr commenting on that. And I think it also may accomplish its purpose, which is to get into the middle of the Republican primary process and turn it into a circus. And I think

ultimately the savvy Democratic strategists know this is going to help Trump and they want him to be the nominee because he is the weakest of the Republican candidates, the most likely to lose again to Biden. So, well, what bullshit that he thinks that the Bragg indictment was designed to help him in the primary? I mean, this is the problem of overthinking, right? It's like sitting down and just spending too much time. They indicted this guy. They gave him the purple because in their cunning, they were actually trying to help him. Right. I mean, look, we were making fun earlier of liberals who hate Trump and need the ASMR and all that. Here's where conservatives have their own kind of madness. They've got every base covered with these conspiracy theories, politicization, weaponization of the law enforcement and the courts. So whatever happens, you know, Alvin Bragg pounces on Trump, they're going to accuse him of politics. Alvin Bragg resists the case and finally reluctantly brings it. Now he's doing the same thing. Whatever Democrats do, whatever

prosecutors do, they've got their case. So in Barr's case, right, the argument from the right was that the left, that Alvin Bragg, that liberal democratic Soros funded prosecutors are indicting Trump to hurt him. They're indicting him to hurt him. That was the theory, right? Now the theory is from Barr, you know what, if it helps Trump, that's also a conspiracy because they're trying to, they're indicting him to antagonize his supporters, to bring them out to vote for him in the primary because so he'll lose the general. So it's just one conspiracy after another with these people. Okay. So another one of the Trump lawyers, James Trustee was on Meet the Press and that was, that was lively, wasn't it? I mean, he was getting into it. So here is Trump's lawyer, James Trustee, explaining that Trump gets to decide what records he wants to keep.

This is what every other president in history has gone through. Bullshit. Is a process of communicating and resolving issues as to what stuff he wants to keep and what stuff he wants to give. None of it belongs to him. He has this mistaken feeling that anything class and none of it belongs to him he has this mistaken a feeling that anything class and none of it belongs to him it belongs to the presidency read the personal records at the presidential records act there is the ability of any president to deem things as personal to say i'm going to keep these as personal sure if nara disagrees they can sue in dc okay, interesting little slip there where he calls the Presidential Records Act the Personal Records Act.

This has been Donald Trump's line, the client's line, because Donald Trump is a pathological narcissist, right? He believes that everything that he got as president belongs to him personally. He has no understanding of things that belong to the government and that when he left, they go to the government. So that's why he kept a lot of this stuff and withheld it from the National Archives. And what's really interesting to me about this interview, Charlie, is it turns out that the lawyer that Trump has chosen for this case is parroting the same line. Instead of taking a more reasonable position, the lawyer is basically suggesting that the former president gets to decide what he hands back to the government or not. And his slip

there where he calls it the Personal Records Act, and he does correct himself, but clearly he's buying into this Trump megalomania. And that's extremely dangerous because it's what Trump got in trouble for. He thought he could keep these things. The government goes to the lengths of eventually issuing a subpoena. And despite the subpoena, Trump withholds documents. And they seem to have evidence, according to the Washington Post reporting, that Trump deliberately, knowing he had the subpoena, decides, you know what, I don't care. I'm going to try to keep the stuff that I want to keep. And that's obstruction. And that's what's going to get him in trouble. And this lawyer trustee seems to be inside Trump's

head and inside his pathology. And that is going to lead Trump into some serious legal trouble. So can you explain to me, Will, what is going on with Lindsey Graham? I ask this because you are our Lindsey Graham whisperer. Lindsey Graham has gone on now multiple times with these tearful hang dog oral robbers pleas for money for our president. And I mean, what's happening here? What is he going through? I'm not one of the people who believes that Lindsey Graham has gone completely mad. There are moments when Lindsey Graham talks about Ukraine, he's quite sane. He's quite sensible,

reasonable. This weekend, he was talking about China on one of the shows, again, perfectly reasonable, right? Totally. But there's a mode that he goes into when he goes on TV now that is essentially fundraising. And Charlie, I don't know if you watched a lot of televangelists when you were a kid. I did. And what you're watching is a kind of televangelism. He gets choked up. And the whole goal is to raise money.

And we discussed before that Lindsey Graham has literally just been admonished by the ethics committee for using these TV appearances often inside the Senate, which is not allowed just to raise money. There's no pretense of persuasion going on. It is speaking to Fox viewers and not even speaking to them to persuade them, but trying to part them from their money. Give us money. Send money to Donald Trump for his legal defense. Send money to me for my campaign. It's just a mode he goes into, and the emotion is part of the fundraising operation. You don't think it's real? Because, I mean, it looks like he's about to cry. I think, Charlie, a lot of people can talk themselves in. They can work themselves into an emotional state when they have a strategic objective. And I think that's what he's doing. But what is his strategic objective?

It's to raise money. Allegedly, Donald Trump's a billionaire, which means you don't need to send him money because he has money. So why is it in Lindsey Graham's interest right now to go on, you know, and do Jimmy Swagger tears going down his face for my precious Trump. I mean, like, is he not far enough up Trump? You know what? Yet? I mean, does he have to keep crawling? What's going on here?

I guess I'll add, since you're asking about that, there's an additional element to this, obviously, which is that all of these guys who are shilling for Trump know that Trump is watching. And just to drive home the point, Charlie, I don't know if you saw, real people, ordinary people do not want to spend their time on truth social, on watching Donald Trump's feed there. But one of the things

he does there is comment, I was going to say religiously, on people who go on TV to defend him. So Jim Trustee, the lawyer, is on TV this week. And Trump's basically doing a review on Truth Social of his lawyer and how happy he is with the performance. And Lindsey Graham has said the same thing. He's talking to Larry Kudlow and he says, you know, Trump's probably watching us now and he's probably happy with what he's hearing. So they're all very conscious of that. So the fundraising is in part to raise the money. It's also to show Trump that you're defending him and that you're helping him. Okay. I'm sorry to get stuck on this. Okay. Lindsey Graham is a United States Senator. He's been around a long time.

He's been reelected. Why does he continue to obsess over having the praise and the tongue baths from the precious? What is that about? I mean, he's completely invested now in the precious and he believes the precious is coming back. He's going to do what he can to help him. And remember that during Donald Trump's presidency, Lindsey Graham had, I think it was just a few days ago, Lindsey Graham was talking to the South Carolina press. And he said, I had a front row seat to Donald Trump's presidency. And he proceeds to defend Trump.

The point is to defend Trump. But that phrase about a front row seat is indicative of the way that Graham saw himself. If Ron DeSantis becomes president, he'll have an ally in the White House, but he won't have a front row seat. So the access is part of it. And in Lindsey Graham's defense, he has real issues he cares about. He cares about Ukraine. He cares about Taiwan. He cares about a lot of things. And Donald Trump is an isolationist. Now you, a normal human being, Charlie, might say to yourself, why would an internationalist, why would someone who believes in a strong role for America and the world want to help an isolationist, Donald Trump, get back in power, right?

Yes, I do wonder. And it is perverse, and that involves a lot of other thinking. I'm talking about why that is. But given that Trump is an isolationist, it is really important for someone like Graham to have that kind of access to him so that he can influence his policy in the Middle East and in Ukraine. Yeah, he thinks so. I got to be in the room. So we played that soundbite of Bill Barr, you know, talking about, you know, the brag did this in order to help Donald Trump. But he also had some comments about the Mar-a-Lago case and including his prediction that he thinks there will be an

indictment down there. He does think that Donald Trump is in a lot of trouble. So Donald Trump has just issued another truth social bleat about that. He was also giving his review of Bill Barr's performance on television. Would you like me to share it with you? Go ahead. It is only partially in all caps, unlike the Easter blessing. Slovenly and pathetic Bill Barr, our... That's how it starts. Slovenly and pathetic Bill Barr, comma, our coward former AG, the word coward all in caps, was on ABC fake news, that's in caps, this weekend making statements that he knows nothing about. He was long since gone from the White House. I wanted him out, exclamation point, close params. Concerning the boxes hoax, all in caps, a continuation of Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, all in caps, the Mueller witch hunt and more.

While he correctly puts down the NYDA case, he plays up the equally ridiculous boxes hoax. Again, that's capitalized where Biden should have the problem. Not me. Barr is a weak and angry rhino in caps. Exclamation point. OK, once again, I think you can safely say that Donald Trump is doing this himself, although I would not have given him credit for knowing the word slovenly. The former President of the United States religiously watching all the Sunday shows,

just in case there was any question. And attacking his own former Attorney General. And I love how everyone is a RINO, even people who worked in the Trump administration, even the guy who basically buried the Mueller report for Trump. I mean, even your worst accomplice becomes a rhino the minute he says that there's a legit case. And Barr is right. Barr is absolutely right that the documents case or the boxes hoax, as Trump is calling it, is, I mean, I think it's the most serious case and so does Barr. And one of the interesting things to me is that when Trump's lawyer, Trustee, was talking about this case, so he not only parroted the sort of Trump line that the president is entitled to take whatever he wants, but when Chuck Todd was pressing Trustee about the distinction between the Biden and the Pence cases, right, those guys also had classified documents, Chuck Todd points out the difference, obviously, is the Trump obstructed recovery of the documents. So trustee had no answer to that, right?

He then tried to sort of do a tap dance. That's not good. That's not good because, Charlie, you and I know that in the New York case, in the Alvin Bragg case, there are lots of good arguments that the Trump defenders can bring about the weakness of the case, about stretching misdemeanors into felonies, statute of limitations, Michael Cohen's credibility, blah, blah, blah. But in the Florida case, in the documents case, they don't seem to have any good arguments. If trustee had one, he would have brought it. So that was quite alarming that on the subject of obstruction, which is the thing that Trump would get nailed for as a crime here, his lawyer seems to have no answer. And I think Barr smells that.

Let's talk a little bit about the fallout from Tennessee, where the Republicans were so proud of themselves for expelling two members of the House. Turns out that they were both African Americans. They didn't come up with enough votes for the white woman. Interesting comments. Brendan Buck, who is a longtime Republican aide to Speaker Boehner, and I think to Paul Ryan, was on Meet the Press yesterday. And he had an interesting observation about what's happening, the politics of what just happened in Tennessee. Let's play Brendan Buck. This happened in Congress in 2016. We had a sit-in where Democrats took over the House floor,

and we had members who wanted us to arrest them, wanted us to arrest John Lewis on the House floor. But you realize that's a bad look. But here's another situation where you have a state legislature who is defining the party. No one is in charge. And there's no consequences for any of these legislatures. As you said, their districts are such that they're not going to be voted out because they did this. Half of them didn't face any opponents. Now, see, this is an interesting point. Because of the gerrymandering and the districting, very few of those Republican representatives will face any consequences. But that's not the story nationally, because this Tennessee story, it's an issue everywhere. And there are Republicans who are going to have to answer for it. But this goes back to the point you made before, Will,

that there's no attempt at persuasion anymore. And I think that as you walk through one issue after another, what you're seeing is a Republican Party Graham is talking the way he is, and the way the Tennessee legislature is paying. So while they may think there are no consequences for us, it does feel as if they've created this bubble that is in the long run not going to work out for them if they have to win general elections where there are, in fact, swing voters. Right, right. Let's stay on that for a minute. I think that's a really good point, Charlie, about the bubble. So this thing that happened in Tennessee, the expulsion of these legislators, it's important because of its consequences. As you point out, it sends a message out. It makes the party look racist. At the same time that the legislature is banning drag queens, they're

ignoring guns, and then they're kicking people out who disagree with them. The whole thing is bad in terms of the brand, what it does to the brand of the party nationally. But it's even more significant as a symptom of what you're talking about, the bubble. So in Tennessee, what Brandon Buck is talking about is that the legislature of Tennessee, the Republican majority, it's a supermajority, has insulated itself from the voters. This is a state in which Trump won 60% of the vote in the last election. But through gerrymandering, the Republicans have 75% of the state house. They have 80% of the state Senate. So they can do whatever the hell they want. And they have run roughshod in that legislation. And when you don't face any threats, and I think it was Chuck Toddy pointed out there that these guys aren't even facing primary opposition, let alone in the general election. And there's a lot of other places in this country where the same thing can happen.

Well, including Wisconsin, where you have a two-thirds Republican majority in the Senate. And what happens is that you have the activist base, which begins to say, look, you can do this. Therefore therefore you should do this. And we've seen this again and again. Right. Let's talk about Wisconsin for a minute because it's a similar thing. So Dan Kelly lost, what, 55-45 in this race? Yeah, pretty much. I think it was expected to be pretty close, right? It was worse than I thought, yeah. And there's sort of a question of how bad does the loss have to be before the Republican Party wakes up? I saw an interview in the last couple of days with Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, and she talked about the

situation in Wisconsin, and she talked about abortion. And she was basically sounding an alarm. She was saying, we need to take seriously this message. We lost an election here bigger than we should have. And she's seeing the polling in the suburbs, as you talked about before, right? So there are some Republicans who are awake to the signs of trouble ahead, that the party has gone too far, and that is going to start losing more and more elections. But those Republicans are up against the election deniers and the ideologues inside the party, who even after a 55-45 beating, will just not wake up and are intent on going further in the same direction. Yeah, just think if we just had a different message or if we had more money and by different message doesn't mean actually having a public policy pivot of any kind. Right. Your buddy, Scott Walker, can we just go stick on? Sorry, I didn't mean pejorative there, but Scott Walker, I believe about a week ago was commenting on this. He was looking at the polling among younger voters because this is an enormous problem. And in the Wisconsin election, right, was young voter turnout that was a big factor in what I think was a 50%

increase in turnout, which just overwhelmed the Republican candidate there. So Scott Walker said, you know, what's happening clearly is that the young people are being indoctrinated by liberal professors. And look, I went to a liberal college, liberal professors do try to indoctrinate, but that does not account for this massive turnout. And if people like Scott Walker, who are supposed to be adults in the room, are intent on dismissing changes in youth turnout and these shellackings as the product of universities and liberal professors, then it's going to take the Republican Party an extra decade to wake up and smell a coffee. Well, I think, you know, part of that explanation is that Walker also knows they have a big

problem with women. They have a big problem with suburban voters. You know, he's made a lot of the fact that there were more votes out of Dane County, which is Madison, Wisconsin, than out of Milwaukee County. And he's attributing that to the university vote. You know, the problem with that argument, of course, is that if you take Dane County out of the equation, the liberals still won statewide. But what Walker's doing is, of course, he's marketing his new gig, which is, you know, Young America's Foundation. And so this is the pitch that he makes to well-heeled, you know, elderly Republican donors, that this is how we appeal to the youngs. If we can just have more Dinesh D'Souza and more Ben Shapiro and more Ted Cruz and more folks like this, that we're going to somehow turn around this alleged indoctrination as opposed to this dramatic cultural shift that's going on here. So he's basically playing the cards that he has right now. And he knows better, I assume. Can I follow up on that, Charlie? Because this brings us right

back to the conversation we were having about fundraising, right? So what you're describing in terms of your analysis of Scott Walker's possible motives here is not so much about the Republican Party. It's about his gig, as you put it, right? And what he's selling is, I'm going to go at the professors, I'm going to go at the indoctrination, so give me money, right? What that suggests is, and it's consistent with this larger pattern within the Republican Party of people having fiefdoms, right? So, Scott Walker, he's basically trying to raise money for his operation, which might or might not net out for the party, right? And meanwhile, you have, you know, Lindsey Graham on TV, you know, it's a fundraising operation, whether it's not really a mass persuasion operation. We have Donald Trump,

who after Dan Kelly got wiped out in that Wisconsin race, was on Truth Social saying, hey, you know, Dan Kelly didn't ask for my endorsement. I forget what it was. Did he actually reject the endorsement? He didn't want it. And so Trump wasn't at all focused on whether this was good or bad. It was all him. It's all him. Because it was clearly bad for the party. It was about, how does this look on my personal record? And I wonder whether we have this kind of fracturing in the party because of a loss of any sense of a larger entity, of a larger role, of a larger mission. No, I think that that goes right to the heart of it. Okay, so speaking of billionaire oligarchs, the Clarence Thomas story, which has taken so many just weird little turns.

We have the report from ProPublica last week that he's been taking these lavish vacations and flying on private jets from a very, very well-connected, very, very wealthy individual who is one of the big funders for not just Republican politics, but also for many of the conservative think tanks, including some that are not, you know, particularly Trumpy. So, Clarence Thomas, how do you see this particular thing? Is it just a matter of his failure to disclose it, or do you see something deeper here that goes to the question of legitimacy and the ethics of the court? Well, it all goes to the question of legitimacy, but the disclosure is up at the front of it,

because if you don't have the disclosure, you don't even know this stuff. It drives me a little crazy, the people who are defending Thomas in this situation. It's not just a question of Thomas taking these gifts, these vacations and flying on the private plane and all that stuff. Clarence Thomas used to disclose this stuff. Years and years ago, some of it was reported, and he stopped disclosing it. That's not a position on the merits. That's a position about whether you, the public, should even know about it. And Charlie, I have a real hard time, and I've been defending Clarence Thomas. I've said he doesn't necessarily partake of his wife's insane political theories or participation in the insurrection and all that. But I have a real hard time explaining how it is not corrupt for a justice to have reported this kind of thing. And then after it's disclosed once to stop reporting it. And then we find out that he

was continuing to take it because that speaks to a kind of concealment that is just underhanded. No, and you would normally think that there would be kind of the gene of self-preservation, knowing that this doesn't look good, it doesn't pass the smell test. And there used to be that sense, particularly among judges, that you wanted to avoid even the appearance of favoritism or the appearance that there might be undue influence. And clearly, Clarence Thomas's response to that was, well, we'll simply keep it secret. We'll simply not disclose it. I continue to find it really bizarre that we have ethics codes covering almost everybody in the federal government and in the federal judiciary, but not for the U.S. Supreme Court. I mean, this is just weird. And

this is something that John Roberts, as the ultimate institutionalist, if he really wants to protect the court, he's going to have to move on all of this because the Clarence Thomas story isn't getting any better. And, you know, you put it together with Ginny Thomas and her overt advocacy and activism, and it's just not a good look, no matter how you put it. Speaking of not a good look, can we talk about Elon Musk and his performative assholery? Look, this has almost gotten old now to say that Elon Musk is destroying Twitter and he's making a lot of bizarre decisions. What's really extraordinary are the number of sort of petulant, vindictive decisions he makes that are clearly, the word

irrational is I'm trying to dance around that, are clearlyive decisions he makes that are clearly, the word irrational is, I'm trying to dance around that, are clearly self-defeating. So over the weekend, and this affected us, so we ought to disclose that, he decided that he is going to shut off any Twitter access from Substack, from the millions of people that subscribe to these various newsletters. He wouldn't allow Substack writers to embed tweets any longer. People are looking at that going, how does that help you? How does that help Twitter? Aren't you just cutting off your own you-know-what because you're mad that Substack is doing something you don't like? I mean, it's just, what the hell is going on there?

So, Charlie, I just think this is symptomatic of a general truth about people, which is that personality drives everything. We like to think that, you know, rationality will drive everything. Or sometimes in politics, people will say character doesn't matter, right? What matters is results. But it's pretty clear now over the course of history that character drives results. It drives today's results. It drives the next results. And so we have, let's take Donald Trump, for example. We saw years and years of Republicans defending the latest thing Donald Trump did. The problem was that Donald Trump was fundamentally pathological narcissist. And so he was going to keep doing more and more of this. Elon Musk is very similar to Trump. He's got a different personality, but he's a troll.

He's a narcissist. He's not necessarily going to do the rational thing. He's going to do the Elon Musk thing. And so there were decisions early in Musk's tenure as owner of Twitter that were kind of iffy and they worried a lot of people. People like me try to excuse that or try to to, you know, that's not so bad. But as this has gone along, it becomes really clear that Elon Musk is going to keep doing more and more trollish, selfish, irrational things. So even this, Charlie, even the attack on Substack,

which is nuts, right? There's going to be another one after this. You and I, we have Twitter accounts. We use Twitter, right? Even if I can rationalize to myself that for now, I'm going to stay on Twitter. I'm going to keep trying to use Twitter. Everyone who uses Twitter and wants it to be a sane place should be preparing an exit strategy. Because unless this guy sells Twitter, he's going to keep doing more and more of this stuff. The shift that I've seen take place within the last week has also been that the people who were willing to go along with Elon Musk, because they thought he was a free speech absolutist, that he was a champion for free speech, are now suddenly realizing, no, he doesn't give a shit about free speech. It is the all sort of the unhinged narcissist. Even some of the people

who were involved in his bogus Twitter file thing, like Matt Taibbi, you know, he's dropping off of Twitter and he's been blocked and other people are going, okay, so this free speech absolutist has been accommodating demands by the authoritarian government of India under Prime Minister Modi to disable the accounts of opposition politicians, activists, and journalists. And apparently he's also changed the Twitter algorithm to downrank tweets about the Ukraine crisis, which just happened to coincide with Musk's increasingly pro-Putin position on all of this. So there's a growing disillusionment of the people who somehow thought that Elon Musk stood for

anything or that he would be a reliable ally of theirs. So I don't know whether there's any significance. I mean, when you're richer than God, like Elon Musk, I guess you can do anything, right? They'll let you do anything. You can grab my anything. Right. The algorithm stuff, by the way, we don't know the half of that yet. We tend to understand what just happened, right? So the last thing that happened in terms of disclosures about Twitter was about the prior regime. It's Elon Musk sending Matt Taibbi and others into giving them files about, here's what the prior Twitter regime did. We're now under the Musk regime. Eventually, I hope there will be leaks. I mean, there have been some about Musk himself messing with the algorithm or demanding that others do so.

Pretty much everyone, all the journalists have noticed significant drop-offs in links and following and circulation of tweets. And some of it's been disclosed in terms of links to a larger content cost you. But I think we're going to find out much more within weeks, months about Musk ordering changes in the algorithm that accounts for these visible changes. And it's going to be really ugly and it's going to speak very poorly for him. And it's probably going to destroy the platform. I think that's likely true. By the way, speaking of Matt Taibbi, did you see the Mehdi Hassan interview with him where he just... I missed this. Oh, it's just, you have to look this up. First of all, Mehdi Hassan is kind of

legendary as a tough interviewer. And for some reason, Taibbi was not prepared for this and asked to go on Mehdi Hassan's program. And I mean, he was just absolutely destroyed. I cannot recall the last time somebody who claimed to be a journalist was dismantled as systematically as Taibbi was. And he was asked about things that he actually, when he was shilling for Elon Musk, he made certain claims. He conflated a independent nonprofit organization with a government agency. And he didn't just do it on his tweets. He did it in sworn testimony to the House he just, I mean, so this whole meltdown of Elon Musk and Taibbi comes right after Taibbi probably realized that he had completely destroyed his journalistic reputation and credibility on behalf of Elon Musk. And what has he got to show for it? Absolutely nothing.

Okay, one more thing. Dealing with Ukraine, which we have not talked about. These leaks strike me, and I'm not an expert, Will, but they strike me as a very, very big deal. Justice Department is investigating it, but give me your sense of this and what it represents. It feels like one of the worst intelligence breaches that we've had, maybe in top four or five in the last century. What do you think? We don't know yet. When a leak comes out like this, and you might remember, a decade ago when the Edward Snowden leaks came out, at first, it's not clear

sometimes how bad it is. And sometimes it turns out to be much, much worse. So this Ukraine stuff, it's not so much about sources and methods, but it is about very timely intelligence. And it's extremely dangerous, in particular, Charlie, because it apparently reveals certain weaknesses in the Ukrainian air defense. And apparently, Charlie, there's geographic information. I have not looked at this closely. But if you have information where the Russian military can study locations, weak spots in the Ukrainian air defenses, then they can start bringing the Russian Air Force into

the, which they have not generally done. And the Russian Air Force has not been destroyed the way the Russian Army has been destroyed. That would be a complete game changer. I mean, that's the thing that worries me most. There's also information about supplies coming in. There's information about the coming spring offensive by the Ukrainians. There are some very grim projections that what's going to happen in the East is a stalemate, Russia not gaining any more territory, but Ukraine not getting it back. That's not a good message in Congress, Charlie, where obviously there are a lot of Republicans who, if they don't think that Ukraine is going to make progress, are going to say, why are we spending more money on this? So there are political problems, there are logistical problems on the battlefield.

All of this is really bad. It is dangerous, and we'll have to see what happens, especially now that we're going into the crucial spring potential counteroffensive. Okay, so we've kind of run out of time. We haven't even gotten to what would normally be pretty big stories, the Republican embrace of defunding the police, which I find highly ironic, and also these reports over the weekend. I'm just reading from National Review, stunned House Republicans blast Kevin McCarthy following New York Times leak. And this is, you know, all of these simmering tensions that are now being exposed that, you know, Kevin McCarthy, you know, saying that he has no confidence in the committee chairman responsible for delivering a budget framework, you know, laying out the spending cuts. And so apparently there's a lot of knives in people's backs, which, you know, not that surprising, but for Kevin McCarthy, who's got what I, you know, five vote majority in the house that now there's, there's all of this backbiting

and circular firing squad going on. I mean, it couldn't happen to a nice bunch of guys, but really kind of remarkable how it's exploded this early. And now, so there's open speculation that, you know, McCarthy is not going to last the two years, which again, should not come as a huge shock to those of us who've been following this, but wow, it's only April and there's this kind of speculation out there. Yeah. I don't understand though, what's changed from, remember the first first week of Congress when McCarthy was having trouble getting the speakership. His ace in the hole, his card was, who else you got? You got somebody else who can put together enough Republican votes to get the speakership?

They didn't have anybody who could do it, right? I agree. McCarthy, you know, a lot of them would love to get rid of them. It's kind of funny to me that McCarthy is getting in trouble for saying what everybody knows, which is the Republicans don't have any plan for dealing with the debt ceiling and the budget. They're not serious about governing. So Kevin McCarthy says that now he gets in trouble. But Charlie, who are they going to replace him with? If they boot him, how are they going to even govern the House? I don't see anyone who can put together the votes. Including Kevin McCarthy, which is, again, how they box themselves in. I mean, there was an interesting quote in Politico about Kevin McCarthy that he made a

bunch of promises during the speaker race that were always untenable, but he made them anyway. At a certain point, a lot of that stuff is going to collide and he's getting nervous and looking for others to blame. But as you point out, you know, once everybody's blaming one another, how do you get past the crisis? I mean, this was an easy one to basically say, mark your calendar for, you know, when they have to deal with the budget and the debt crisis to find out how dysfunctional it is. I don't think they've covered themselves with glory so far. Jim Jordan's investigations have fallen flat on their face, but the real test of their ability to run the House would come during the debt limit negotiations. And we're starting to see now that they're about to implode. And you

know, they're about to implode when the Speaker himself is knifing, you know, his colleagues. So I don't know, strap in for this one, you know. Remember, the Democrats, they had a tiny majority before McCarthy, right? I know. But the difference was the Democrats were interested in governing. They had ideas about what they wanted to do and they got themselves together and they did it. And you can complain about it, but they had a plan. The Republicans don't seem to have any plan. They have a bunch of symbolic votes. They have a bunch of issues they want to raise in order to win the next election,

but they don't know what to do with this power and their job. They have the power of the purse, Charlie. They don't know how to spend money. They don't have an agreement on how to do that. And when Biden says to McCarthy, I'm happy to sit down and negotiate as soon as you come out with a budget, he's daring McCarthy to govern, to put together his people, the House Republicans behind a plan. And he knows that McCarthy has no plan. You're right. But in retrospect, it's also we've gone from one of the most powerful and skillful speakers to one of the least powerful and least skillful speakers. I think Nancy Pelosi, in retrospect, looks better and better when you realize what she did with that narrow majority.

I mean, she had this razor thin majority with a lot of people that could have been bomb throwers that could have derailed her time and time again, came close to doing it. But she always managed to pull it out at the end because she was Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have a different dynamic. Kevin McCarthy is no Nancy Pelosi, that's for sure. No, no. And this also brings us back to the topic we were at at the beginning. Because of the Republican bubble, their increasing extremism in the Republican Party, you have too many people who have been elected in what is a very narrow House majority who will not accept some basic common sense, which in the case of spending money and having a budget, you have to have, right? And that is making it impossible for Kevin McCarthy

to govern in a way that the Democratic left, whatever you want to say about them, they were reasonable enough that Nancy Pelosi could govern. Kevin McCarthy cannot. Exactly right. So, Will, thank you again for joining me on this Monday. We will do this again a week from now. Thanks, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We'll be back tomorrow, and we will do that all over again as well. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.