The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: The Purest Distillation of Trump

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Down in Waco, Trump was on double duty: Blowing up the DeSantis' campaign on the launch pad, and clearing up any ambiguity about who he really is. Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I am great, Charlie. I was doing, like many other people, the NCAA March Madness Bracket, and I want to congratulate somebody. This is obviously a crazy, crazy tournament. There is a guy, somebody, a Bulwark subscriber who's in our Bulwark pool, somebody named Dave, with Dave's winning bracket, picked five of the eight insane, upset Elite Eight schools. That's spooky. Amazing. Just an amazing, whoever eight insane, upset, elite eight schools. That's spooky. Amazing. Just an amazing, whoever you are, Dave, congratulations. Wow. Very, very impressive, but another indication of the kind of people that we attract to the

bulwark. So I want to read you just something that Michael Bender and David Goodman wrote in the New York Times about this weekend. And then I want to just ask you something else. This is kind of like where we are at the moment. In the last 28 months, Trump has been voted out of the White House, impeached for his role in the Capitol riot, and criticized for marching many of his fellow Republicans off an electoral cliff in the 2022 midterms with his drumbeat of election fraud lies. He has embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, described President Putin of Russia as a genius,

and used a gay joke to mock a fellow Republican. He has become the target of four criminal investigations, including one in New York that he warned might result in potential death and destruction. Still, Mr. Trump remains a strong frontrunner for the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nomination. Find the pony in that pile there. I don't have a lot of ponies for this one. I mean, we'll get into this. But in general, what seems to be happening is that Donald Trump is signaling as loudly as he can that he is an authoritarian, that if he is reelected, he will continue to govern, in fact, as more of an authoritarian than he did before.

And the Republican Party shows no signs of being willing to stand up to him. Well, this is what I wrote in my newsletter this morning about morning shots is maybe he thought he was being too subtle. I mean, he's called for terminating the Constitution. You know, he's had dinner with any Semites and Holocaust deniers. You know, he said that, you know, Mitch McConnell is more dangerous to America than China or Russia. He's gone from inciting to celebrating the January 6th insurrectionists. I mean, he even recorded a song with a choir of imprisoned rioters. And maybe he thought, you know, this is just not clear enough. My threats, my anger is not clear enough, so I have to go down to Waco.

And in Waco, stand there while they play footage of the insurrection. Standing, you know, while they play the song Justice for All. It's just like in case there was any doubt or ambiguity about all of this. We'll come back to this in a moment, okay? Will, there's an extraordinary event taking place in Israel right now where it looks like Benjamin Netanyahu is blinking in the face of massive protests and the firing of his defense minister. And really, it is kind of a remarkable moment because this is really about the rule of law. It's about the independence of the judiciary. Netanyahu, who has his own legal problems, has been trying to strip the judiciary of

much of its independence. So talk to me a little bit about this, because I can't recall a moment in which Israel's domestic politics, which has always been lively and unsettled, has ever been quite this much of a mess. So what's happening today and describe its importance. Well, just to be brief about what's going on, there's massive unrest, there's huge protests, there's fires being set, roads being shut down, calls for strikes over Netanyahu basically trying to roll back the power of the judiciary to interfere with his ability and his legislative majority's ability to do whatever they want. It's a complicated issue, but the overall theme from my point of view, and I would encourage others to think about it this way, is authoritarianism is happening in many countries at

different points, including some democracies that we thought were immune to it. So, the United States obviously was one of those. Israel is another, and it's a different system. It's a parliamentary system, and there's lots of complications about the court, but the common theme is this guy who is in charge of the country wants to do things his way. We've heard that in the United States. And he has the ability through the legislature to change the Supreme Court. And so he's run up against the last ditch barrier, which is the will of the people, people rising up, hundreds of thousands of people. Somebody said 6% of the population of Israel was in the streets protesting against this, trying to stop him from tearing down the

last barrier between him and getting his will any way he wants. And the tipping point being the firing of the defense minister who warned that the entire controversy was a national security threat. And then Yehoah's only got like a four-vote majority in the parliament, right? So he can't afford to be firing members of his cabinet. He can't afford to be losing members of his coalition on this issue. Right. I mean, think about, you know, in the United States, we said, you know, we need some people to stand up against Trump. It just takes a little bit of courage. Well, here are the defense minister in Israel, who is a member of the government of the ruling coalition. And honestly, the problem there is that this unrest in Israel is now tearing apart inside

the Israeli military. And in Israel, the military is a huge, huge deal. The country depends on it. Huge security issues in Israel. So to have that kind of dissension inside the military was a major problem. And the defense minister spoke out, said, let's slow this down. Let's think about this. Netanyahu fires him.

So he's just exploded even more the unrest inside the country. So let's go back to our own authoritarian menace here in the United States. Trump goes down to Waco the week after he threatens death and destruction if he's indicted after he tweets out a picture of himself wielding a baseball bat against the Manhattan DA. And he declares either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state. That's the way it's got to be. Let's go through some of the highlights of all of this. In case any of you think that we exaggerate his fascination with strongmen like Vladimir Putin, he really doubled down on all of this. For people who think that, oh, Donald Trump would actually

take a different line, maybe he's learned his lesson. Let's play the Putin sound bite where he praises the genius of Vladimir Putin and seems to be predicting that Russia is going to swallow all of Ukraine. I used to talk to Putin. I got along well with Putin. I used to talk to Putin about it. It's something he certainly had in his mind, never even talked about. For four years, you didn't even hear about it. As soon as I was out or left or however you want to describe that catastrophe, they started putting soldiers on the border. But even then, he didn't want to do it. He wanted to get a peace. Now it looks like he'll end up probably getting the whole thing. But I've never seen anything like it, what's happened. And if you saw the other day with President Xi, smart, top of his game.

President Putin, smart. Very smart. Very smart people standing there talking about the world order for the next 100 years. That's one of the saddest things you can imagine. One of the saddest. It is sad, Will. So what's going on there? Well, a couple of things.

One is Donald Trump talking about how well he gets along with, how well he identifies with these foreign dictators. At the same time, by the way, that Trump is talking about his domestic enemies and how we need to destroy the deep state, which basically has come to mean anybody in the United States government in the civil service who gets in the way of his authoritarian ambition. So it's an alliance with foreigners against Americans. That seems not to be enough to alienate enough Trump voters. And at the same time, he's getting into the Ukraine war. We can talk separately about that. Well, speaking of Ukraine, one of the biggest applause lines throughout this rally was anyone

who attacked Ukraine or said anything nasty about Vladimir Zelensky. I mean, in case you missed this, here is Ted Nugent. Yeah, Ted Nugent. The fact that Ted Nugent is still appearing at these rallies. Here is Ted Nugent describing the president of Ukraine. I want my money back. I didn't authorize any money to Ukraine to some homosexual weirdo. What? I'm a little confused, Charlie. Can you help me square the Ted Nugent portrait of Zelensky as a homosexual weirdo with the Tucker Carlson portrait of Zelensky as a schlub in a tracksuit? I don't know any homosexual weirdos in tracksuits.

It's just I'm having trouble with the stereotype clash there. Yeah. They need to make up their mind. Come up with one narrative, one meme here. But the homosexual weirdo and nobody blinks. I mean, really, in terms of, you know, the fact that this guy is leading off the former president of the United States' rally. The homosexual weirdo. I mean, I, whatever.

I just, I'm. This line seems to be emerging about that Ukraine is losing the war, which is not true, but it's really interesting to see Trump and Ron Johnson and several other Republicans falling for this line. What you quoted there from Trump, he says, it's only going to get worse for Ukraine. He says, now it looks like Putin is going to get all of Ukraine. What world is Trump living in? There's nobody who thinks that Putin is taking over all of Ukraine. At best, he might get this one city, Bakhmut.

That's it, you know? And then the question is how far Putin could be. So this defeatism line, though, is helping Republican politicians rationalize withdrawing support for the Ukrainian government. And that is really scary. You would think that that would be a line that would encourage us to speed up our support. You know, speaking of cognitive dissonance, the whole idea that we will be credible as a world power and be able to stand up against China if we abandon Ukraine. I mean, how does that work out? If you want to stand up to China, don't you have to stand up to Russia first and Ukraine?

And this is not rocket science. And the crazy thing, Charlie, is these Republicans who are saying this stuff, they're the same people who said that because Biden pulled out of Afghanistan, right, which Trump actually forced him to do because by signing that deal with the Taliban. But anyway, pulling out of Afghanistan and somehow invited Putin to go into Ukraine, but withdrawing support for Ukraine won't then invite President Xi and China to go into Ukraine, but withdrawing support for Ukraine won't then invite President Xi and China to go into Taiwan. It's an obvious connection that they just refuse to acknowledge. The other speaker at the rally that was ripping Ukraine,

of course, was Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Trump went out of his way to suggest that she run for United States Senate in Georgia because he's got such a great track record recommending Senate candidates in Georgia, because he's got such a great track record recommending Senate candidates in Georgia. Trump praised her advocacy for January 6th defendants, told the crowd that people don't realize how brilliant she is, which is true.

He also said he'd like to see her run for higher office. Would you like to run for the Senate? I would fight like hell for you, Trump said to Greene. And of course, hundreds of thousands of Georgia Republicans, you know, threw up in their mouth just a little bit. Okay, so there's debate about how much Donald Trump cost the Republican Party in 2022 by supporting all these wackos, these election deniers who lost winnable seats for Republicans. But it's hilarious that he comes back and suggests running Marjorie Taylor Greene for the Senate. I mean, Trump really should at this point be getting paid

by the Democratic Senate and House campaign committees for his ridiculous control of Republican primaries. No, I mean, the Trump vision seems to be, put Carrie Lake up for Senate in Arizona, put Marjorie Taylor Greene up for whatever. Okay, so he's also talking a lot, devoted much of his speech, if not 80, 90% of it, to his own grievances of focusing on himself.

Believe it or not, there was once a time when Trump would go through the motions of saying that he cared about other people's problems. Now it's all about his own problems, legal problems. And, of course, he addressed it in great detail. His version of the New York case involving paying hush money to a porn star, a porn star that for some reason he's obsessed with calling horse face. Let's play that soundbite. Always a gentleman. Always a gentleman. The district attorney of New York under the auspices and direction of the Department of Injustice in Washington, D.C. was investigating me for something that is not a crime, not a misdemeanor, not an affair. I never liked horse face. I never liked it. Yeah. I know it's just not terrible.

Never do a port star. No, that wouldn't be the one. There is no one. We have a great first lady. Good save there. It wouldn't be the one. The campaign of intimidation that he is running against the New York DA is really extraordinary. I mean, I know that people have mixed feelings about this indictment or this charge or, you know, what the consequence of any criminal charge against Donald Trump might be. It strikes me, Will, and I'm interested in getting your take on this, the worst case scenario at this point would be if the Manhattan DA or any other prosecutor actually decided not to go ahead with the charge because they have been intimidated, because they have been threatened, because in fact they are afraid of acts of violence. I mean, that would be an extraordinary moment of the triumph of this anger and menace and stochastic terrorism over the rule of law. What do you think?

The background here is Trump is an authoritarian and he's trying to destroy the institutions that would get in the way of an authoritarian. So he attacked elections before and now he's attacking all of law enforcement. In that quote that you just played, Charlie, you know, he used the phrase Department of Injustice. So, he's branding the whole justice system as fundamentally unjust and biased. I am your justice. I am your retribution. Right. But, you know, the description of prosecutors as human scum in his social media posts. Animals. Right. He called, didn't he call Bragg a Soros-backed animal? Yeah, twofer there. Right, doing the work of the devil. So, he's just stirring up hate against the justice system. He's basically just trying to destroy the faith of half he framed in this speech, he framed investigations by law enforcement of him as a form of cheating in elections. There were several points in the speech at which he made this point. that the former president, possibly future president, could be tried, prosecuted, convicted by law enforcement,

and the country would trust in that verdict, which is obviously extremely dangerous. Yeah, you know, I mean, strictly speaking, none of this is new. In fact, Donald Trump has been remarkably consistent, you know, in his narcissism and his bullying and his, you know, faith in obstruction of justice because he's gotten away with obstructing justice so often in the past. But it does feel like you're getting the purest possible distillation of Trump and Trumpism. I mean, it's like being boiled down. You eliminate all of the actual patriotism and actual programs, which he doesn't talk about. And all you get is basically Trump or death. You know, it's a you either elect me or America is doomed. You know, this is the last election we will ever have. Any prosecution must be politically motivated.

And by the way, I could just remind people, this was why he announced he was running for president so early, so that he could say that any criminal charge against him would be designed to derail his candidacy. I mean, his whole candidacy at this point is about finding a way to derail the prosecution, finding a talking point to be able to say, well, I'm a candidate now, I should be untouchable. I'm untouchable as president, I should be untouchable as an ex-president, and I should be untouchable as a possible future president. I mean, he's kind of worked this out in a way that is kind of hermetically sealed. But I'm really struck by the degree to which Republicans, at least in the House of Representatives, seem to have bought this. I mean, if you watch them on the Sunday shows, I mean, they've totally internalized this idea that they need to defend him against any possible prosecution or indictment.

Absolutely. Absolutely. First, let me just pick up on one thing that you said there about Trump or death. For those of us who've been watching a lot of these Trump speeches, and I understand ordinary people have better things to do with their time, I can tell you that he has become increasingly extreme in his use of rhetoric about communism, about Marxism. In this speech, he talked about his Stalinist enemies. So what Trump, we were talking earlier about Israel. What Trump is doing is he's picking up from other autocrats around the world the rhetoric that they use to justify their right-wing authoritarianism. And so you increasingly hear Trump talking about, he said in this speech, we will cast out the communists and Marxists. So he's figured out that if I frame this as Trump or death, as the enemy is these left-wing lunatics who want to destroy your life, that that will justify him. But let me come back to your point here, because I think you're on the main point, which is the failure of the

Republican Party to respond to this. And you are absolutely right that the Republican Party, in response to this speech, has been silent, lacking, or complicit. And that is, to me, Charlie, the most worrying thing about the whole speech. I was watching, was it James Comer on, I think it was Jake Tapper's show. So Jake Tapper's asking him, why is Congress interfering in a local prosecution? And he said, well, this shouldn't be a local prosecution. This is somebody who's running for president. You know, this should be handled by the Department of Justice, which is kind of amazing, isn't it, Will? Because you know that when the Department of Justice, if and when they move ahead with their charges, this same guy will say, this is totally inappropriate for the Department of Justice,

right? So these guys are for states' rights until they're against state rights. They're for local control until they're against local control. There's no fixed standard for these guys except whatever it takes to protect the orange Caligula. You're exactly right. So the most alarming thing to me about this Trump speech is the speech is crazy, but as you point out, Trump has given other crazy speeches. What's that cartoon again, Charlie, the wolf, you know, saying the sheep are talking about the big billboard in which the wolf says, I'm going to eat you. So this is another one of Trump's I'm going to eat you speeches. And the sheep out there, so the Republican leaders, you pointed out James Comer. That's one, right?

Another one was Tony Gonzalez, right? Tony Gonzalez is the Republican congressman in Texas who is supposed to be a moderate. He's, you know. Yeah. He's supposed to be one of the normies, right? He's supposed to be one of the normies, right? He's supposed to be one of the normies. He's on TV this weekend, and he gets asked about this insane rally

where Trump is playing, you know, the insurrectionist tabernacle choir and all that stuff. And Gonzalez refuses, under questioning from Margaret Brennan, to criticize Trump for this. He said, oh, it's great to have President Trump back in Texas. Trump's policies worked. He's being attacked. He's being demonized. He says, none of this stuff, Gonzalez says,

all that matters is Trump is going to solve people's problems. Then you have Mike McCaul, right? Mike McCaul's a veteran in Congress. He, again, supposed to be one of the- Another normie, yeah. Exactly. Supposed to be one of the normies. He's being interviewed on Fox and he says, you know, about Trump, you know, we'll say what you like about Trump. When he was in office, our enemies feared him. And he gets asked about Trump being so unpredictable and chaotic. And McCaul says, oh, you know, unpredictability helps provide the fear and deterrence that we need. So what you see is Trump being really clear about his authoritarian agenda if he gets back in power and the normies in the Republican Party looking the other way once again.

There's a lot of muscle memory there, isn't there? Charlie, I would love to find a pony for you. I don't see one here. All I see is a giant pile of manure. 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 thebulwark.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.

Okay, well, speaking of a giant pile of manure, let's talk about Ron DeSantis because the media pundit herd has really changed direction in the last seven days, I would say, about Ron DeSantis. In my newsletter in Morning Shots, which I hope people will subscribe to, I tried to compile all of the latest, you know, what is wrong with Ron DeSantis hot takes. And it's like everyone's doing it. You know, I mean, NBC had this report about the donors and allies questioning if he's ready for 2024. You know, some of the big donors backing off a little bit. You know, The Hill reporting that DeSantis is looking to revamp his strategy amid signs of political strain. You know, Politico, Ron DeSantis is one very big problem. Donald Trump, really? And, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

You know, he's slipping in the polls. He's flip-flopping. He's looking like he has a glass jaw. Let me just play a bit of what Trump had to say, because Trump has decided that right now, in the midst of the Trump indictment watch, is when he is going to hit DeSantis the hardest. I think it's very interesting that, you know, even though you would think that he would be kind of obsessed and

focused on what's about to happen to him, he's decided this is the moment to take down Ron DeSantis. So let's start with the tears in his eyes as he tells the touching and moving story of how Ron DeSantis asked for his endorsement the first time around. But I'm a loyalist. And when a man comes to me, tears in his eyes, he's at almost nothing in the polls. And he's fighting somebody that's at 42 and he's got almost $30 million in the bank. He's at almost nothing. He's got no cash. And I say, I can't give you an endorsement. There's no way you can win. You're dead. But he fought a little bit, like 150. He was certainly no Jim Jordan, that I can tell you.

He fought a little bit, just a little bit on impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two, meaning on television, because I didn't know him very well. But I saw him. So he came and he really won it. I said, you can't win can you how do you can win sir if you endorse me i'll win please please sir endorse me okay then he goes on to explain why he is really not a fan of ron desantis but when you're getting a guy so he gets the nomination because of you he wins the election because of you. He wins the election because of you.

Two years later, the fake news is up there saying, will you run against the president? Will you run? And he says, I have no comment. I say, that's not supposed to happen. I have no comment. No. So I'm not a big fan, but I love, I love, that's right, he's a disciple of Paul Ryan.

He is actually a disciple. That's why he wanted to cut Social Security and Medicare. Okay, so, Will, what's going on here? Why at this moment? Can you explain the timing to me? Because it seems really interesting that he's decided that this is the moment when he's going to destroy Ron DeSantis' momentum. DeSantis is the only serious threat to Trump, I mean, in the polls, right? So that's logical. I don't know if I have an answer for why at this moment. I mean, DeSantis is obviously just emerging. And right now there's this fight, you know, inside the Republican Party for control of the influencers and control of the consultants and that sort of thing and the donors. This goes way, way back. The history of like Joe Biden, for example, when he ran for president in 1988, Michael Dukakis' campaign knew that they had to like knock off Joe Biden early in the process, and then they won, right? And then so Trump realizes that if he can just take down DeSantis,

he's got it. I think it's that simple. But maybe you have another theory. No, no. It's always difficult to know what's going on inside his mind, but he's got this reptilian instinct. And I'm thinking that he thinks that at the moment he's got the Republican base emotionally engaged with him, that because he can play that victim card, that sense that they're coming after me, that you need to rally around me, that this is a moment when he has the attention, he has the stage, and he has this connection, and he's going to try to blow up Ron DeSantis on the launch pad. To your point, I think he also understands that he needs to keep him from launching.

You need to blow him up right there, because once he begins to get some momentum, he could get away from you, and that's what's happening. Now, just talk about this, because we talked about this a week ago, about DeSantis and whether DeSantis is in fact flailing. You know, his first big foray into foreign policy was to join the appeasement caucus with Donald Trump. And then he walked it back a week later in that interview with Piers Morgan or kind of walked it back or tried to walk it back. You wrote a very, very compelling piece, DeSantis versus DeSantis, saying that even though he's getting credit for changing his position, he didn't really. So where is Juan DeSantis right now on anything?

But let's start with Ukraine. Well, on Ukraine, obviously, he gave this interview to Piers Morgan and it was widely interpreted as he's walking back his opposition to the war in Ukraine. And in fact, he didn't. He walked back one thing, which was he had said it was a territorial dispute between, he implied there was a moral equivalence between Russia and Ukraine. That, DeSantis clarified, because apparently it is not acceptable outside of Tucker Carlson to pretend that Russia and Ukraine are morally equivalent, but it is thoroughly acceptable, in fact, is politically popular in the Republican Party to say that we need to stay home, avoid

the warmongers, stay out of foreign wars if we can. DeSantis made clear in this interview with Piers Morgan that he does not view Ukraine and the invasion of Ukraine as a sufficient case for United States intervention. And that's really the bottom line. If you are Vladimir Putin and you are going through the checklist of people running for president in the United States and asking who would we like to help, who would we like to hurt, as obviously the Russians did in 2016, you would now put a checkmark next to DeSantis, along with Trump, as guys who, if they get elected president of the United States,

that's good for us in the Kremlin, right? Because DeSantis pretty much said, we should not be, quote, escalating. We should not be sending more arms to Ukraine. We got things to worry about here at home. And if you're Putin, that's all you need to hear. Okay, so I mean, obviously, this is part of the initial strategy, which was not to allow any daylight to appear between him and Trump to keep, you know, that he would be mega candidate number two, that, you know, Trump without the baggage. Is that working out for him? Because Donald Trump is now playing the loyalty card that no matter how much DeSantis might take the same policy positions he does, he is going to try to find ways to attack him. And I guess I hate the cliche, and so I apologize in advance, Will, but is Ron DeSantis ready for prime time yet?

Has he figured out how to deal with this torrent of insults, of jibes, of policy attacks that are coming his way? Has he figured that out yet? Because I'm not sure that I'm seeing it. I have a pony for you now. I have a large pony, which you are going to absolutely disbelieve. Okay. Okay. I believe, and I'm prepared to be proved disastrously wrong.

I believe that Trump will lose this fight with DeSantis. And the reason I believe it is that Trump. Okay. So you played that clip from Trump's rally and Trump's language about DeSantis. Oh, he's got two lines of attack. One is the attack on, it's a democratic attack, basically on Republicans and Paul Ryan, that DeSantis is going to destroy your social security and Medicare.

Now that might work. It might work because that's worked for Democrats against Republicans. Right. But the personal attack, the personal attack on DeSantis, the whole tears story, you know, he,

he betrayed me. That's not about you, the voter. That's not about you, the public. That's about me, Donald Trump. So it's a very narcissistic message. So if DeSantis runs against that, if the contrast between Trump and DeSantis is a guy who says it's all about him and DeSantis being insufficiently loyal to him and how Donald Trump personally gets Republicans elected and everyone should be grateful to him. And on the other hand, if DeSantis can be doing what DeSantis is doing so far, which is talking about how it's not about me, it's not about Trump, it's about you, the public, and the things that I do for you as governor of Florida and can do for you as president,

I think fundamentally DeSantis is on the politically winning side of that fight. What do you think? I was struck by Trump's very detailed critique of his record as governor of Florida. You know, walk through where Florida ranks on education, on crime, on COVID deaths. It was not a distinctively Trumpian critique because Trump generally doesn't care about governance or doesn't care about those sorts of things. But it also struck me as another indication of all the different fronts that he's going to use, that he's going to go after DeSantis' strongest card, which is that he's been a successful governor of a successful state. So how will that play out, that Donald Trump's basically saying that, yeah, I moved from New York to Florida, but he's not that great a governor. He's just sort of an average governor,

and a lot of things suck here, and he's responsible for that. Well, every time a governor runs for president, you know, George W. Bush, Dukakis, whoever, we have these debates over how good or bad the government, I mean, DeSantis has basically got some pretty good stats to work with, certainly relative to the rest of the country. Remember, by the way, this is a country that elected the governor of Arkansas as president. So, I'm just saying, my apologies to the people of Arkansas, but I mean, the governor of Arkansas. Okay, I'm sorry. Well, I think we can agree that Florida is doing better statistically relative to other states this year than Arkansas was when Clinton ran.

I don't think this will work, especially because there's just too much of Trump and other Republicans on video talking about how great Florida is. And as you point out, Charlie, the greatest testament in the world is Trump himself moving there. And I don't even remember what he said at the time, but the idea that Florida is a mecca, you can argue about it, but it's been a Republican talking point. And I don't think he's going to be able to undermine that. Can we come back to the entitlements thing for a minute? Because I'm fascinated to see, we have this realignment going on, right, between the parties, where Republicans decided we're going to go get the white non-college voters who have been voting Democratic, and we're going to play some of their resentments against wokeness, but also some of the class stuff about the rich. And I kind of wonder how, in this new Republican Party, Trump's attack on entitlements,

and what did he call it in that thing though? The Paul Ryan Republican establishment. I mean, Trump is running a democratic class oriented campaign inside the Republican primary. I'm totally fascinated to see how that works out. Well, it worked out for him last time. I mean, this was one of those reptilian instincts that he had back in 2016. you know, when he broke with the rest of Republicans on all of that. I think we found how thin the fiscal conservatism was in the Republican Party. I mean, you know, that was the head-spinning moment where you went from this is the party that is following Paul Ryan's lead to basically essentially just throwing him out, just casting him aside with somebody who's rejected it. Yeah, no, there's no question about it. So I'm thinking through your prediction that DeSantis can actually unseat Trump.

The one big question mark I have, although it's maybe not that big a question mark since we know how Republicans always react to these sort of stimuli, is watching the reaction over the weekend to this Waco rally where people are going, you know, he's nuts. He's crazy. This is terrible. Rupert Murdoch's New York Post has this long editorial. He hasn't changed. He has no shame whatsoever. You know, he's continuing to, you know, make, you know, stir up a violence and all of this. This is terrible. He can't win. And so we're back to that moment where all these Republicans, you know, including the donor class and including the, you know, anti-anti-Trumpers are looking at one another and saying, you know, who knew? If only we'd been warned. This guy's just really terrible. You know what?

He's really, really, really bad. Whether or not that's going to keep DeSantis afloat a little bit longer, because there is a desperation to move past Trump. Now, whether they actually have the will to do it or know how to do it, I still don't know. But it is one of those interesting moments, you know, watching people like the New York Post suddenly realizing that this guy is really genuinely deplorable. You know, after eight years, it's like, man, you know, I wish we'd known this before. Right. But the problem is these people don't just need the insight that this is going on. They need some courage. And I have yet to see courage from the Republican Party.

So, for example, if DeSantis were to rise in the polls, as he has, but to stay high and to stay above Trump, then all of these cowards could sit there and just support DeSantis, not support Trump. And I could see that scenario. But if Trump can knock DeSantis down, what Trump is now challenging Republicans to do is to muster some courage, right?

Then they've got to go either resuscitate DeSantis or find somebody else to raise up. But that involves risk. That involves taking somebody who is below Trump when Trump looks like he's going to have the nomination and standing for that person at the risk of alienating Trump and antagonizing him. And I think Trump is betting that the Republican Party is led by cowards and he was right before and there's a good chance that he is right again. So I'm a little bit contradicting myself. Well, because all of these things are true at the same time. I mean, they're actually not

that contradictory. I mean, they all exist in the same universe. So this is the second consecutive Monday that we have begun thinking, is this the week? Is this the week that the indictments are going to come down? One of the most overused media cliches are the walls are closing in. I never want to say those words, actually, again. But I have to admit that I sort of heard the echo. You know, we know that the grand jury might be coming back in the next few days. The expectation is that there will be charges. But awfully interesting developments going on in the Jack Smith investigation where he's got a federal judge who has found a prima facie case that Trump has violated the law. Trump's team has been losing a series of challenges against forcing people like Mark Meadows to have to testify. And Bob Costa from CBS reporting yesterday that Jack Smith seems to be moving at a pretty good clip towards strengthening this January 6th case, that this is really live.

So do you have any sense of where we're at? I mean, I guess I feel like Lucy in the football, this has been going on for so long that I no longer have much hope or expectation. But the next two months could bring a lot of developments. I mean, we're talking now about, you know, hush money to a porn star. Next week, we could be talking about Georgia. Week after that, we could be talking about the Department of Justice. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, obviously, all of these cases are in play. And the questions are what the sequence will be and what the most significant ones are.

I think, Charlie, you put your finger on the most significant development, which is that in the documents case, by certifying that Evan Corker and that Trump's lawyer has to testify, we already have a reflection of a judgment by the court that there is a prima facie case. I forget what the standard exactly is, but there is sufficient evidence that they decided to break open the attorney-client privilege, which is remarkable, remarkable. So, that took something. Not routine. Right. Without telling you what the evidence is, it shows you that they believe they have enough evidence to force the lawyer to testify. And although that's not as significant as the January 6th stuff, in my mind, you know, the classified documents aren't, they're more than

adultery, they're less than insurrection. But it does show that I think they're going to be able to make a strong demonstration that Trump lied to, that he knowingly deceived his own attorneys about the documents. And so right now, you know, we've been dealing in the documents cases with the idea, oh, there's Trump, there's Biden, there's Pence. This will differentiate the cases because in neither the Biden nor the Pence case is there this kind of evidence that the principal, the politician, lied to his attorneys. Well, that's right.

And I have to say that I'm a little bit surprised because I was going along with the conventional wisdom that the Mar-a-Lago document case was probably a dead letter after they found those documents in Biden's garage. But the Bob Costa report involves the January 6th committee. I mean, he says, he went on yesterday on Face the Nation and said there's been a highly significant development in that investigation of Trump on January 6th as Jack Smith begins, his quote is, tightening his investigation around Trump and building what Bob Costa called a possible conspiracy case, which strikes me as very high up the ladder. You know, where the big question has been, are they going to go big? Are they going to go small? Are they going to go for the low-hanging fruit?

Or are they going to take the big shot? And I've been arguing, look, if you're going to go after the king, you might as well go after the biggest shot. And a possible conspiracy case strikes me as, you know, top of the mountain type stuff. What do you think? What Kost is talking about reminds me very much of that meeting in the White House about, you know, getting the military and overturning the election. We don't know because Mark Meadows never had to testify and because others never had to testify the details of what Trump did in those last days that he was in power to try to use the levers of government to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Costa's language is vague, but if it turns out that he involved the military in that,

that is going to be, you know, the most significant of all of these cases because it's a threat to the ongoing democracy of the United States. I know I've said this before, but I keep coming back to the question of the cumulative impact of all of these charges. I don't think that the charge out of New York is going to affect Trump's standing with the base. I think it's relatively easy for him to spin that. Then, of course, you have Georgia. I don't know that that will be the breaking point, but this Department of Justice one, do you think that at that point, if in fact we're looking in the middle of May or late May and he has been indicted in New York, he has been indicted in Georgia and

he is facing federal charges of conspiracy or incitement, what effect does that have on Trump standing in the Republican Party? I mean, because a lot of people will say that just makes him stronger, that they will just rally around him. That will just, every other Republican will say these are politically motivated attacks and that they're coming for him. What do you think? So I'm skeptical that an accumulation of cases against Trump without clear evidence that even Republicans are forced

to acknowledge of guilt. I'm skeptical that that's going to hurt him. But I will say, Charlie, that seems to be the Ron DeSantis bet. I mean, in every appearance that DeSantis has done recently, he has talked about winning. He says, I'm a winner. Don't have dissension among my aides. I don't hear a lot of drama. And I win elections. And he's drawing a contrast with Trump. If Republicans start to get the impression from these legal cases that Trump is carrying baggage, and we know that that has happened before. Just exhaustion, pure exhaustion. No, that's a different thing. But you're right. Fatigue, people get tired of Trump.

But the sense that other people are tired of Trump, he's pissed off too many people. He's got too many legal cases against him. That seems to be the DeSantis wager. It's kind of gutless, Charlie, because it doesn't address the merits of the cases against Trump, but maybe it works. Well, and because DeSantis will want to have it both ways. He'll want people to think that this is in some ways discrediting, but he will never defend the prosecution. He will chime in. He will never actually say that, you know, January 6th was an insurrection. It was a riot. I mean, he can't really, you know, differentiate himself from that. He's not going to double down on the validity of the election in Georgia.

Or maybe we'll be surprised. I think we needed a little bit of a dose of humility here that even though we know what's happened in the past, and even though many of us, you and I, are suffering from PTSD having gone through this before, the humility ought to stem from the fact that we just don't know what's going to happen because nothing like this has ever happened before. We use the word unprecedented way too often, uncharted waters. We're like at that moment where you realize that the maps don't go there anymore. It's like, I'm sorry to talk about that. There'll be dragons out there, but we really don't know. Right. And you know, it drives me crazy to hear Republicans talk about how unprecedented this is, you know, a sitting president, a former president,

they're going after a former president. People, the reason why this is unprecedented is we've never elected someone as awful as Donald Trump as president. So, you know, of course, we're unchartered territory. You put us there. And all of this talk about double standards, they don't do this to other former presidents. They only do it to Trump. They don't do it. That's because he's so terrible. And it's really embarrassing that you Republicans don't recognize that that is what's underlying all of this. Well, and it's also depressing that so many Republicans do, in fact, understand that and yet won't do anything about it. And I'm sorry for people who've been hearing that same story for

the last seven or eight years, but that's been the consistent through line. So, Will, what are you going to be watching this week? So, one of the things I'm really interested in, Charlie, is this debate over social media. Obviously, this has become a huge deal. And in Utah, they just, you know, the governor, the Republican governor signed a couple of laws restricting social media use. And I am kind of fascinated to see where this is going to go, because these laws in Utah are really, to my mind, extreme in cracking down on access to social media. So with some of its parentals, they're requiring parental consent for minors to use social media apps, but they're prohibiting children, anyone under 18, from using social media between 1030 and 630 in the morning. So now you've got to stay up while your kid could be using the internet. But Charlie, this is like a national curfew. It's like an

online curfew. I don't think there's a precedent for this. And I don't know how, as you say, I don't know how they're going to enforce it. So, there's a lot of stuff that's supposed to make us feel good about controlling children's access to this stuff. And metaphors being drawn to that, it's like fentanyl. It's like, what do they say, digital fentanyl for your kid to have this. But it's a little creepy to me. It's really triggering some of my libertarian hackles. Well, I also, I mean, there's a danger, I think, that there's a moral hazard in passing laws that you have no intention of actually enforcing. Because there's no way that the state of Utah is going to be able to enforce that. There is not a Utah, you know, Bureau of

TikTok investigation that's going to go into your house if your kid is on social media after a certain hour. So, this seems to be a pure messaging piece of legislation. But passing laws that everybody thinks is a joke or the people most affected think is a joke that will never be enforced is just not good public policy. It is not a way to enhance support for the rule of law. I guess the one thing that surprised me is the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, is kind of a reasonable guy, isn't he? I mean, he's not one of the screaming hair on fire folks, and yet he went along with this. Right. Well, I mean, he went along with it because we have these emerging consensuses. Consensi, what is the plural? They're bipartisan,

right? So one is China, the Chinese Communist Party, and we have a bipartisan committee against it. And some people say we're developing groupthink against China. But anyway, that's happening. Another one is social media. And there is this convergence of the right, the left, the Spencer Cox middle, that we're all in agreement that social media is destroying our children, and we need to control it somehow. And I really feel like the guy in the room, I just want to stand up and say, do you really want to be, you know, restricting liberties to this extent? Do you really want to be drawing analogies between literal drugs like fentanyl and, you know, something that is sort of addictive in online behavior? I don't know.

Well, also, it does seem like there is this bipartisan consensus that we're going to use the power of government to ban all sorts of things. Where we differ is what we want to ban. See, everybody's got their, you know, list A or list B, but there seems to be this consensus. Yeah, absolutely. If we get political power, we're going to use that political power to get rid of things that we don't like. So it does feel as if there is this libertarian sliver that needs to stand up and go, okay, guys, really, are we all going to go ahead and you're going to be banning TikTok and you're going to be banning gas stoves? And okay, you know, I've just triggered a whole bunch of people. And you're going to be, you know, prohibiting sixth graders from seeing Michelangelo's David unless he's wearing shorts.

I mean, really, is that really what we want to be about right now? And the answer to a lot of Americans is, yeah, those other guys are assholes, but we know what we need to ban. Right. And obviously, people are not orderly in their thinking. People generally don't think in terms of principles. It's like, I want to ban that thing. No, I'm against you banning this other thing. And it's very rare for people to say, all right, you know what?

Even though I'd love to ban that thing, if I do that, if we do that, then that sets a precedent for you banning a bunch of things. So, Charlie, I proudly stand for you in that libertarian sliver against all of this banning. It'll be just you and me probably. So, Will, thanks for joining me. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes.

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