The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: Trolls and Liars

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Today's GOP is not a governing party—it's a grievance and trolling party, and Trump has the nihilist vote all locked up. Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham and others are pushing a Hiroshima model in response to Gaza. And because we all still need to laugh, the pod now has a new segment, "The Right Stuff." Will Saletan joins Tim Miller today. show notes: Jonathan Karl on Johnny McEntee CBS News segment on the mother rescued from Gaza

landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. Hello and welcome to the Borg Podcast. I'm Tim Miller. It's Will Salatin Mondays. They're back. Happy Mother's Day weekend, all the mothers out there. I have the best mother, so I'm sorry for everybody else, but I'm sure your mothers are great too. Will, do you have any mothers you want to shout out? My mom is deceased,

but I've loved her very much. And like everyone else, I thought my mother was the best mother in the world. And we will eventually have to get together and debate this. I'm sorry. It's not probably not really that close, but I'm sure your wife is a wonderful mother as well. And that your mother seemed to have done a very good job. So that's she's got that going for we have a lot to discuss. You know, there was a Nuggets masterclass last night means order has been restored in the NBA playoffs. Order is not restored in the presidential race. There's a terrible New York Times poll out today we'll get to inspiring protests in Georgia, the country, the Israel debate is still roiling ESH, the actual Israel attacks are still roiling.

Bob Menendez is on trial, so is Donald Trump. Nikki Haley was bloated as VP and then shot down. I mean, Will, we're not going to have enough time to get to everything, but I feel like it's Monday. We have to start with a little buffoonery. Is that okay? Let's go for it. We have serious business to get to. We have sad polls. We have much to discuss in the Middle East, but we need to do a little buffoonery. Donald Trump on Saturday held a Jersey Shore gym tan laundry rally. During the rally, he had some weird praise for Hannibal Lecter. He mixed up Jimmy Carter for Jimmy Connors, the tennis star, and then he couldn't pull

Jimmy Carter's name for a little while. But for all of those lowlights, I wanted to dial into this little clip. I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate. So there you go, Will. Donald Trump won't give a penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate. Mr. Operation Warp Speed is now not just anti-COVID vax, but any vax. And this is the degradation of the party. Feel free to take any of that.

If you had a Hannibal Lecter riff, that's fine, too. But the vaccine thing is pretty alarming. Yeah, the vaccine thing is this whole other dimension of Republican insanity. So normally we talk about Trump and his authoritarianism and how Republicans will go to any length to excuse it. And the vaccine stuff is this kind of science denialism, which is another way in which the party has just descended into lunacy. And as you point out, like, first it was masks, then it was COVID vaccines. And now it seems to be spreading to vaccines generally. So you wonder what's next in the parade of anti-science garbage. But there seems to be just like a political competition within the party that the base is moving in that direction and that so you know trump is going to follow it huge applause for that by the way you can hear and this is another example the bottom

up there's this debate that we have right was he a cause or effect you know and he's both right on certain issues he was cause and others he's effect this one he's like effect donald trump i think would be happy to not i mean i guess he did dabble in some autism vaccine conspiracies back in the day he kind of he dabbles in all conspiracies but like his heart isn't in this one but the people the people want this i mean overwhelming cheers there from the from the crowd that gathered on the jersey shore hopefully nobody with measles mumpslla in the group because they were packed in kind of tightly. Right. Here I would argue Trump is a follower, not a leader.

Follower, there you go. And the reason Trump is following, the reason we know that is, what was the best thing that happened in the Trump administration? What was the best thing he did? It was Operation Warp Speed. It was the vaccine, right? And it wasn't him doing it, but at least he was in favor of it. He defended it. And then there was that moment when Candace Owens, who like confronted him, like they had a conversation in a podcast and there was something where he was on

stage with Bill O'Reilly. He was in Alabama. Yeah. And like he gets booed by his crowd and he realizes, wait, the party has moved outside of me on vaccines. I can't be out anti-vaxxed. So yeah, he's now saying at the rally what the base wants to hear. All right, we're going to pop through just the greatest hits here of the crazy and just kind of slowly make our way towards seriousness. Here's Kerry Lake. There are a lot of things to pick from

on the Sunday shows this weekend, and we're going to get into some of the substantive ones. But Maria Bart-Romel, I don't know if you've noticed this. This lady was on CNBC, right? And she has now cornered the craziest of the crazies as now her little domain on Sundays. And so she had Carrie Lake and Marjorie Taylor Greene on this weekend. Let's listen to Carrie Lake first. How confident are you then that we will have a fair election in November?

If it were today, I wouldn't be all that confident. But I know we have a lot of people, including myself, fighting to improve the laws and make sure they're following the laws. We've got many lawsuits running, one of them in Arizona, fighting to make sure illegals aren't voting. Not confident right now. They had four years to fix the laws, didn't they? The imaginary fraud, couldn't they have come up with some imaginary laws in the meantime? What they have is, and this is an illustration of it, what Kerry Lake is saying, they have a laundry list of election integrity measures that they want to pass, right?

And they're all, you know, stuff, some of which replicates current law, making sure, you know, illegal aliens can't vote, and some of which is like unnecessary and harmful. And they're going to either pass all of it or they're not. And if they don't, then that's their excuse for why they're not going to accept the election results. Oh, I would accept a free and fair election. I mean, even J.D. Vance said that on Sunday, right? I'll accept a free and fair, but it's not free and fair unless we get all these measures passed. So that just gives them an out. Well, it's not free and fair unless we win. Right. I mean, that's like really what this all is, right? Like we're now in a situation where one of the parties just, they're just not going to accept elections unless

they win, unless it's an absolute blowout. I mean, you know, Doug Mastriano ended up doing the right thing because he had no choice. He lost by like 100 points to Josh Shapiro, friend of the pod. But with Trump on the ballot this time, and these guys all know that they are going to have full cover to like let their, you know, their freak flag fly as high as possible on on election fraud claims, right? Like the midterm, they didn't, you know, you weren't sure exactly how that was going to go. But this time, you know that if Trump loses, that he will shout fraud. And so if you're on the ballot with him, there's no downside to this except for the risk to the republic, which they don't care about. Okay, Tim, you're talking about the reality, which is if Trump doesn't win, they won't accept the results. So that's true.

But the cover story is we have a list of election integrity measures, and including what's the one that Johnson stood up and demanded. We stood next to Trump and said, we're going to pass this and that and the other thing. And they're not going to get all of them. And that's the point. The point is they can't get them all. So the cover story will be we didn't get this or that measure passed, just like they did in 2020 when it was they said some election laws were changed in some way we don't like. I mean, Elise Stefanik is out there saying if there's gerrymandering, that's that's our out. You know, that's that's election interference. election interference and that makes the election illegitimate. They just need an excuse. They did change the laws in some places, Georgia.

This is how you also know it's all bullshit. I mean, it is obviously bullshit, but it's nice to sniff out the specific ways, right? Like in a world where they had substantive critiques about election administration, you know, there would be, you know, in these sorts of interviews, you'd hear somebody saying, well, you know, look, I'm feeling pretty good about Georgia, right? Because they did those election reforms that Democrats howled about, you know, sometimes a little bit overkill. There are some elements that Georgia law disagreed with, some of the elements were fine. But, you know, if there was a substantive debate here, then we could debate that. You never hear that. I mean, you watch all the Sunday shows. Do you ever hear any JD or Lindsay

or any of these people say, well, you know, we're feeling good about the way that they've changed the rules in Georgia, but we're worried about that Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan. I mean, that would be bad faith too, but at least it would be like, like the premise of their complaint would be supported if they were saying that, but they don't do that. And this just goes back to the larger point that today's Republican party is not a governing party. It's not a party that has a problem and comes up with a solution and says, okay, we've solved that. They're a grievance party. They're a trolling party. They propose things that are on, like the Georgia thing. You and I, I think we'd probably agree about the Georgia

election reform law was actually fine. It was completely reasonable, right? Yeah. And then, but then there's these other stuff that they want to put out there. election reform law was actually fine it was completely reasonable right yeah and then but then there's these other stuff that they want to put out my one complaint about the georgia law is like it was reasonable but the arguments for it were unreasonable you know i did not like the way in which it gave cover to the people who wanted to believe the fantasy about the election lie like i felt like the election lie needed to be stamped out among the responsible republicans and annoyed me a little bit that brian ke was like, yeah, there were some problems we really did need to crack down. Like that, that was, I think, a fair complaint.

Some of the Jim Crow stuff was a little overkill. The point of the freaking out about election fraud is they, they, Republicans want it to be unfalsifiable. They don't want there to be some election measure that they actually pass. And then they go, okay, it's a clean election now. If we lose, we lose. Right. pass. And then they go, okay, it's a clean election now. If we lose, we lose, right? So yeah, they passed the Georgia one and they've got to like pretend that, you know, there's this enduring problem that they haven't solved. Well, there might be one man that is aspiring to be part of a governing party within the

Republican Party, strangely, the new favorite Republican on this podcast, Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson comes off looking good again. Here's later in the Maria Bartiromo crazy Cuckoo power hour She brought Marjorie Taylor Greene onto the show Imagine sitting there on a Sunday morning and being like You know what I need with my morning coffee before church I need a one hour show That has Carrie Lake and Marjorie Taylor Greene

Interviewed Anyway here's MTG talking about Her negotiations with Mike Johnson I asked Mike Johnson. I asked Mike Johnson this week, I said, look, if you'll defund Jack Smith, then I'll reconsider this motion to vacate. And he told Playbook last week, no, he will not defund Jack Smith. The weaponized government is one of the most terrifying things we're seeing. Well, how about that? One more cheer for Mike Johnson. I'm not

exactly sure what's happening there. Maybe it was just Marjorie Taylor Greene was like, he just refused to give her anything. And it was more interpersonal than principled. But yeah, great. We're not going to defund Jack Smith. I'll take it. The tiniest of wins, the tiniest of wins, but I'll take it. Is that a pony for you, Will? So it is. But Tim, is there a term for this? So triangulation, when Bill Clinton did it, was an active thing. You went out and found Sister Soulja and rebuked her, right? There's something going on with Mike Johnson that's like passive triangulation, where he doesn't even have to say anything.

He just, Marjorie Taylor Greene goes on. By the way, Maria Bartiromo, a treasure, a national treasure. So what happened was Fox created the Fox News Sunday show, which they wanted to be like a normal network show. And then of course, the crazies on the right were unhappy because like, what's this? You're like doing objective journalism. And that's what the Maria Bartiromo hour is like complete lunacy, the craziest people. So here's Marjorie Taylor Green saying, you know, the government's being weaponized, we have to defund it. People, the meaning of weaponized government, if it has any

meaning at all, is that you're breaking the rules to serve a political purpose. Well, that's what defunding Jack Smith would be. That would be weaponization. So, you know, good for Mike Johnson, it's a low bar, but good for him for rejecting that weaponization in the form of defunding Jack Smith. Speaking of weaponization of government, Bob Menendez on trial today. Interesting. He's a Democrat, right? Is he a Democrat? I got to check. He's a Democrat. That's a Democratic government that's charging him. That's interesting. Well, Will, what do you want to do? I had a new segment that was going to be a dessert, a fun segment that I'm looking down at our show map here and we got to go to the new york times polls first should we do the fun first or do you want to do the new york times poll first what do you want to do the polls dreadful so we want to

do that and then go to the fun or do you want to okay yeah we'll do the poll and then and then we'll go to the fun before we get before we it's real it is this extremely dreadful poll biden is just to run down the states really quick uh this is the New York Times, Sienna. These people are going to be out there and be like, oh, this is crap. This is crap. The New York Times, Sienna was pretty close. All right. In the midterms.

It wasn't perfect. You know, polls are not oracles. We're going to get to oracles in a second. But it was at least directionally close in most of the big Senate states in particular. Biden plus two in Wisconsin. That's good. And then Trump, plus three in Pennsylvania, plus seven in Arizona, plus seven in Michigan, plus 10 in Georgia, plus 12 in Nevada. Woof. Biden is doing better among likely voters. If it's just the likely voters that are registered voters, he's winning Michigan

and Wisconsin. He'd need to win also Pennsylvania there to actually get to 270, but he'd get two of the three. Disengaged voters remain his weakness. He's essentially tied among 18 to 29 year olds and Hispanic voters. He's down a bit with black voters. Well, it kind of feels like our people, the RVAT folks are pretty solid in most of these polls. Now you can, you know, you can get into your colon a little bit going through these crosstabs, but directionally speaking, it's not like the Romney Biden voters that are the problem, at least at this point, it is part of the core Democratic coalition. And in some ways, you can see that as potentially a good thing, right, that those folks will get

back in line. And other ways, you could see it as a deeply concerning that we're in the midst of a realignment. Where do you fall on that question? Okay, so you've done the pony part of this, I'll do the anti pony part of this. Okay, great. There's been a debate about Joe Biden and whether Joe Biden is the best nominee the Democrats come up with. We're going to stick with our guy. He's the incumbent. Incumbency helps if we refract to the party, yada, yada. This poll is very ominous in part because let's say you don't like this poll. You don't like the sample. You don't like something about it. You should worry about when you start rejecting polls. But in the same poll, where Biden is trailing in these states, the Democrats running for the Senate are leading. I have those numbers in front of me here. Let's

just pull that up. So we've got Jackie Rosen plus two in Nevada. So remember, Biden's down 12, Rosen is plus two. So it's a 14 point swing. Diego, plus four in Arizona, Biden's down 12, Rosen is plus two. So it's a 14 point swing. Gallego plus four in Arizona, Biden's down seven. So it's an 11 point swing. Let's put a pin in that. I do think Gallego will end up running quite a bit ahead of Biden for a couple reasons. You got Casey plus five in Pennsylvania, whereas Biden's down three. So it's an eight point swing.

And then you got Baldwin plus nine, where Biden's plus two. It's a seven point swing. We don't have a Michigan head-to-head yet. So, across the board, seven or more points, the Democratic Senate candidate is running ahead of Biden. So, talk to me about what that says to you. Well, it says it's not a Democratic problem. It's a Biden problem. What is the distinction between him and these candidates? They're incumbents, aren't they, Tim? I mean, Rosen, Casey, Baldwin. But Gallego is a congressman and Kerry Lake's an outsider. So like even there, it's sort of, so the incumbency is doing fine for them, but not for Biden. Is there something weird about Trump that Trump is a former incumbent? And so

he's benefiting in the way, I mean, if you look at who are these people, you know, Kerry Lake, Brown, McCormick, I don't know this guy. Is there something that Trump has that people trust him because he was president? Like no matter how crazy he was as president, at least he did the job. I don't know what it is, but I think there is something about Biden. I think Biden is not presenting well. And we've had this debate at the Bulwark about whether to stick with Joe or whether, you know, he needed to be abandoned. Bill Kristol was on the other side of that. Maybe Bill's right. Maybe there's something about Biden that's just sinking him and going to sink him. The people were so excited that Bill Kristol was on vacation for one week, so they didn't

have to hear that maybe he was right about Joe Biden's age. And there you go, just making the argument for him. I was always just neutral on this. I kind of felt that whole debate was kind of silly because it was hubristic. It was like, we don't know. None of us know. Okay. None of us freaking know how that was going to shake out.

Like we can all make our best guess. I have some concerns about Biden's age and how he presents and health events, which I've talked about. On the other hand, you know, we always do this counterfactual where it's like, imagine where we are right now. If there was an open Democratic primary, Biden is the president and we get into this Israel debate we'll get into later. Like, imagine just how toxic that would be right now with these candidates maybe trying to get to his left in certain ways. I think that the alternate option also presented a lot of problems that people don't really think

through. All that said, you can really look at the Democratic Senate numbers both ways, right? That there is this unique problem with Biden or that like the polls are really just people that are going to vote for Biden eventually just expressing frustration. And it's really kind of hard to know. And I think this is part of Sarah's work and the focus groups and part of, you know, what we're going to continue to learn more about over the year. But it is somewhat encouraging the people that are most engaged are Biden's best group, right? Because they are the most informed. And so other people you presume will get more informed, at least marginally over the course of the year. And maybe that pushes them more towards Biden's camp. The abortion issue hangs over this stuff, I think is really a huge issue for the generic Republicans in these states. The Trump thing, I think the main question is, on the economy, are these voters like blaming Biden and remembering pre-COVID Trump? And then

the second level to that, are they not blaming Trump for the overturn of Roe and kind of seeing him as more of a moderate? You look at polls and people still do think that. Those are the two concerns. So if that's true, then the question is, can Biden untangle that, right? That there's some percentage of low info voters or disengaged voters, maybe less pejorative way to say that, disengaged voters who like just blame him for the economy and don't blame Trump, blame the Republicans generally for the row, but don't blame Trump. And, you know, then it's the job of the campaign to kind of change those perceptions. Right. The abortion thing drives me crazy. And this goes back to your point about will voters come home or just basic information. Will that move people? Because

in this poll, they said almost 20% of the respondents blamed Biden more than they blame Trump for overturning Roe v. Wade. So it's like how ill informed these people are. So that's good news for the Democrats because you can just tell people, by the way, the guy who did that was Trump. It's why Democrats now show up better on election day than we expected in some of the polling. Yeah. And I think that Trump has some appeal to people who think that the system sucks no matter what race no matter what age and like these are the types of people that just by definition you think the system sucks you don't care about it you're not likely to vote right and Trump with his just nihilism and like just and there's no bullshit he's full of bullshit. But that they perceive him to say what he really thinks because he says offensive things.

And to them, that codes of saying what he really thinks. There's something about, I've got to find the right words for this, but there's the human character trait that if you don't trust anybody, that Trump is appealing. I think that is part of this, too. Right. But that raises another problem, which is here we are out there telling people that Trump is going to destroy democracy. Trump is a threat to everything. He's institutions, right? We're institutionalists. Part of what this poll suggests, and they talk in the New York Times analysis about anti-system voters, voters who just want to tear down. They're like, the system's not working for me. The political system, the economic system. I want somebody to go in there and tear it down.

And overwhelmingly, this poll shows these people support Trump. This is a major driver of Trumpism. So here we are telling people Trump is going to destroy things. And these voters are like, yeah, that's exactly what we want. And this seems to be happening in other countries, right? In the West generally, like these populist anti-system candidates are thriving. And here we are feeding that. Are we making a mistake? It's a good question within the context of the general election, because it's not a mistake for Democrats in every other election besides the presidential election, right? Like a big part of why, you know, responsible, former republicans have realigned towards democrats like is because of this message right it's not because they changed their mind on

health care policy or government regulations or whatever and so it has benefited the democrats like i always say like in my mind's eye when i think about i read about the red dog democrats like the core red dog it's like my high school buddies, wives, who like go to the PTA meetings and like have kids and live in the suburbs and grew up Republican and like they're conscientious, right? They score highly on a conscientious scale, right? And now they've switched to Democrats. What do conscientious people do? They vote in school board elections. They vote in off-year state Senate elections. You know what I mean? So it's been, I think, useful for Democrats to get to them. This year in November, is it going to be useful to get to the people they need to get to? That's a good question. I

think that's a real open question right now, because I think you're right. Like if you just look at these polls, the people that Biden's struggling with, that's probably not going to resonate with them. Yeah. We use this word conservative, like it still means something, but these are radicals. These are people who like, they want to tear the system down. And Tim, are we going to end up with a very unhealthy, I think a very unhealthy situation in which we have sort of an institutionalist party, a party that believes in rules and, you know, attracts the suburbanites and whatnot. And then we have a populist party that's just about tearing things down. I mean, that's kind of, if you look at the way Republicans behave in Congress, that's kind of what we have. And certainly nominating Trump and Trump's power in the

Republican primary was, he was, I mean, it was the cult, but also he was the guy who was going to most likely to tear things down. He's the guy who's violated laws or he's being persecuted by the system in four trials. And I mean, I think, answer that is yes right like the counter answer to that is could the republicans reorient around you know being a party that is actually responsive to the needs of those types of folks right and so then they can be a governing party because they're meeting the needs of people that are you know not doing well in the globalized economy in various different ways. But like, these guys don't seem interested in that.

So like that would be the healthiest. Now that wouldn't have me going back to the Republican party. Cause that would, you know, it'd be a protectionist party. Like there'd be a lot of issues in which I'm still misaligned with them, but it would be healthier. It's just hard to see that happen.

Okay. We can do deep talk on the future of the Republican party later. We have too much stuff to get to. And I've changed my mind. I'm saving the new segment for the very end. It's just hard to see that happen. Okay, we can do deep talk on the future of the Republican Party later. We have too much stuff to get to. And I've changed my mind. I'm saving the new segment for the very end. It's dessert. So if people are like, I can't do any more of this, you know, you can just fast forward to the final segment for the newest addition to the Borg podcast. Something a little fun for people, you know.

Landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. We have Michael Cohen also today. This is also kind of a deep question, you know, but just in a different manner. How do we deal with a guy like this? And he's advised by Lanny Davis. This guy sucks. Like, let's just be honest. Like, Michael Cohen sucks. Like, the testimony from

David Pecker of the work that he was doing with michael cohen was like as gross as anything i've ever seen and i worked in opposition research the types of stuff he used to do to vendors for donald trump where he'd intimidate people this would be like a fucking d-rate mafioso like threatening people so that you know trump got cheaper you know whatever piping or whatever the fuck he was doing for him back when Trump was just a real estate guy and not trying to ruin our democracy. And Michael Cohen is not a great person. And yet, a lot of people that don't like Donald Trump are like really, including maybe me, I don't know, are kind of rooting for him today. Like he's testifying today. And he needs to give a compelling testimony to the jury. How do you process the Michael Cohen of it all?

Well, first of all, if you're going to take down a crime boss, the people who are going to flip on him are criminals. That's the way it works. So hopefully the prosecution will just make that point. You know, you got to prepare the jury. This guy is unlikable in a lot of ways because he was involved in the crimes. But also he wasn't given any deal. He wasn't given like a break in his sentence for this testimony. He's doing it of his own volition. So at least he doesn't have that against him.

And the other thing, Tim, is Cohen is just narrating. They have lots of records to show all the financial transactions that Trump did. There's Cohen paying, there's Cohen being reimbursed. There's kind of an obvious chain of events. And he's the one who's going to say, yeah, I was told this and I did that. And as a juror, I'm not going to look at Michael Cohen and say, well, he's not credible. He's a scumbag. And therefore, I'm not going to accept this chain of records. The chain is there. So I don't think he's essential to the case in that way. I think he's going to be credible because he's describing something that's obvious. I guess. I think that is true in a

narrowest case for the jury itself. What about for the broader discussion here? Is it not a bad look that the resistance that the people out there trying to stop Trump are, you know, championing this person? Maybe I'm just in my own head on this. but I do. I think that there is a category of people out there that like think that Donald Trump's getting railroaded. And like, does Michael Cohen being front and center here contribute to that? Or no. And the other side of the story is Michael Cohen literally went to jail for this crime. So you know what I mean? Maybe that's the best way to frame him. Well, I would say that this concern about the appearance of Cohen and how it looks for Trump is just a species of the larger problem with this whole case, which is this is not a particularly Trumpy case. This is a case about a scummy politician who cheated on his wife and then paid it off to hide it from the public.

And a lot of voters are going to be like, OK, that's gross, but that's not a crime. And then Alvin Bragg is going to be like, here's what the statute says. And they're going to be like, come on. So, I mean, on the other hand, I will say there can't be any doubt here about the scumminess. I mean, like Trump's public position is that he never boinked Stormy Daniels, right? This never actually happened. And there she is in there describing the contents of his toiletry kit. Like, you know, he has like a gold manicure set or something like that.

You can be sure that if anything she described was wrong, the Trumpers would have been out there with the attorneys were like, oh, she's wrong. But she's got him dead to rights. And so he's a scumbag. But is that sufficiently criminal? I don't know. He's a scumbag. And again, I think I've said this last week, but it's worth repeating. It's like kind of rape adjacent.

And it's worth repeating it's like kind of rape adjacent and it's not rape but like he pressured her in a way that was very uncomfortable you know that if this was your sister or your mother you're hearing this story and it's like she's in a bathroom they come out a very powerful man is in his boxers you know what i mean a security guards outside he's offering her work i mean you know it was consensual but it was just pathetic and gross and like very disgusting. Yeah, but we already went through this with the Carroll verdict. I mean, here's like Trump, the jury says by overponderance of evidence, Trump stuck his finger in this woman against her will. Like, come on. It's like the Access Hollywood tape vindicated it actually happened. The jury found it and voters seem not to care. So, I don't think they're going to care more

about Stormy than they did about that. Yeah, maybe. I think they might. I don't know. I think that there's been a really, like, a sense of fait accompli on all this because Trump won after the Access Hollywood tape. And everybody's like, well, nobody cares. I don't know. I think that, again, you go back to this group that we were talking about at the Times, Paul, the disengaged voters. Like, does everybody really know?

Or do they just perceive him as like a cool playboy you know if there was a concerted effort to put these women front and center between now and november might there be some people that are moved by that i think maybe i just i think that throwing it away and saying no i just i hope it's not no because that would say very bad things about the American people. But I think that a lot of people haven't really internalized. I know it feels weird to us, right? Since like, we're just swimming and all this, but I think a lot of people haven't really internalized just how bad it was. One more thing on the Times, probably forgot to mention,

the person that's not here today, Bill Kristol. He also got another poll that he was looking at that didn't turn out as good as we hoped. He's on vacation in Greece. And he asked the Oracle at Delphi who our next president would be. She said he'll be of good age, will have lived in the House of White before, and of letters his name has five. Now, you might say that could be either of them. But editor Adam Kuyper points out that in Greek, Donald Trump has five letters and not Joe Biden. So there's your other bad news sign besides the New York Times poll for the day. Lastly, about the court, Trump's family, which has not been with him throughout this case,

he does finally have some loved ones there that are supporting him today. J.D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville will be joining Trump in court. is weird right it's weird like this whole thing is weird but it's pretty weird that like melania is not there ivanka is not there you know he's on trial for 34 felony counts the only people showing up are rick scott and jd vance and tommy tubberville so correct me if i'm wrong i'm going back to the clinton years when bill clinton had to admit that he had sex with or whatever he called it, with Monica Lewinsky, he couldn't even get his wife. No one was standing beside Bill Clinton, were they? Right?

That's true. This should be more you than me. I'm going from memory. Hillary did do that joint interview with him, but that was during the accusation phase. Like, that was during the campaign, right? That was, like, during Jennifer Flowers, I think, when Hillary was doing the joint interview. I can picture Hillary's haircut for some reason. I just just like a very 90s image I have in my head. Was it Diane Sawyer? I don't know. he's talking about and lying about his sexual escapades. But J.D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville will. Part of the general thesis that these Republican politicians will do for Donald

Trump what his own wife won't. I'll leave it there. We'll leave it there, actually. I was about to say, and even Eric wouldn't, but you would know. Back to the Sunday shows. A lot of Israel discussion, of course. And, you know, the Republican senators, I don't know, you know, circling back to our original topic, like you'd think that they would have some substantive critiques here, some governing critiques, potentially, of how Biden handled, you know, the discussion of whether he's providing offensive weapons to Israel, if they go into Rafah, you know, it was a little strange. There's been some mixed messaging, you can critique him on that. It's like, you know, Biden kind of offhandedly says it in an interview

with CNN, and then Tony Blinken is giving some kind of hedged answers in a different interview. There are ways that you're supposed to be doing this as president, where you're, that's why you give speeches on matters such as this, where the text is written, so there's no openness to interpretation. And I would be open to some criticisms of Joe Biden on this that are substantive, even though I directionally basically agree with him. But the Republicans, they don't like to deal with reality. Let's first listen to Lindsey Graham's discussion of what he thinks we should be using as a model for Gaza. So, when we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons.

That was the right decision. Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can't afford to lose and work with them to minimize casualties. Can I say this? Why is it okay for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it okay for us to do that? I thought it was okay. To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Nuke Gaza? Yeah, I shouldn't laugh. I'm hoping this won't actually happen because Joe Biden's president won't. First of all, Lindsey Graham is hyperventilating in this interview. He's not just casually invoking the Hiroshima model. He's hyperventilating and you can hear him, Tim, he's pounding something on the table while he's like, he's really excited about this. And

this is where the Republican Party has gone on this issue. Joe Biden, as you're pointing out, is taking the middle ground. And I think Chris Murphy, Senator Chris Murphy was on TV saying, you know, this may be unpopular what Biden is doing, but it's the right thing to do. We're standing by Israel. Israel is our ally, but there's a degree of going too far and killing civilians that we're not going to support. By the way, Ronald Reagan, Dick Nixon, you know, all these other presidents did the same thing. That's the responsible thing.

The Republican position is all in, no holds barred, Hiroshima as the model. It's a crazy, crazy position. It's not humane and it's extremely dangerous. I would be open to a Republican critique that says maybe do a little bit more. But this thing about Hamas is responsible for every death in Gaza, therefore Israel can do whatever the hell it wants. Hamas started it, therefore Israel can do whatever they want. No amount of dumb bombs, 2,000 pound bombs with a thousand foot blast radius, you know, being dropped on civilians is too many. It's a dangerous, unreasonable position. Does he have a post-nuke plan for Gaza? We have diversity of views of the bulwark on several issues, maybe more than any others.

This one, wide range. I will say back last fall, the two of us held the most cautious view of Israel's offensive in Gaza. And, you know, we're wondering if maybe there wasn't exactly a plan here, and there wasn't really an approach, and there was going to be a lot of civilian death that was going to cause Israel a lot of medium to long-term problems as far as support from allies, support from the region. I don't know. I'm feeling pretty good about that position. I don't know about you, Will. Yeah, so this conversation, just to be fair, is unrepresentative of the bulwark. You and I are the left wing. Oh, yeah. I'mrepresentative of the bulwark. You and I are the left wing. Oh yeah, I'm not saying anybody at the bulwark is on Nagasaki's view. I'm just,

I was transitioning into it just by saying, just so I can be clear, I don't want anybody to feel like I was misrepresenting them. My main critique was that they have not offered a plan. Like, if you tell me we're going to eradicate Hamas and then, okay, we're going to work with Arab partners and we're doing this. Okay. But the problem is none of these guys seem to be offering that. And so anyway, I'm not saying that that's what the Bulwark folks are saying, but I think that none of the Republican senators seem to be offering anyone. But go ahead. No, I think your position is completely sensible. And look, honestly, you're younger than I am. You got there earlier than I did. When I was younger,

I tended to like trust the authorities, particularly on foreign policy. I was like, they probably know what they're doing. And the number one thing I have learned trust the authorities, particularly on foreign policy. I was like, they probably know what they're doing. And the number one thing I have learned over the years is they don't know what they're doing. They don't. This is not speculation. We had on TV Tony Blinken and various senators who have talked with the Israelis saying, I've talked with them, and they don't know what they're doing. They don't have a plan for what comes after.

It's an intra-Israel debate within Israel. In Israel, they're doing this. But look at what's happening on the ground. Israel started from the north of Gaza, and they moved south, and they cleared areas, and now they're in Rafah. And like, we're going to get the last bastion of Hamas. What is going on in north Gaza right now? They're back fighting.

Hamas is reconstituted. Hamas is reconstituted. Israel is back in there fighting. There's a lot of evidence here that the Israeli strategy is not succeeding in the stated objective of wiping out Hamas. It is succeeding in killing more than 30,000 civilians. And to Israel's credit, it has slowed the pace of civilian death. But the objective is not succeeding and there is no plan. We should say, and the UN came out this weekend and said

that the Hamas numbers have been exaggerated. And there's still been just unbelievable amount of civilian death, but not as many as has been claimed. Right. But Blinken and others have been very clear. They've talked to the Israelis. The Israelis do not have a post-war plan, one that makes sense. This is why they're at Hiroshima. Honestly, isn't this why Republicans are like, we should just fucking bomb it all? Because that's the answer. Like, that's their real solution. Like, they don't want to say that, really. Lindsey Graham will say that. But Bibi doesn't want to say that. And a lot of people that are on the sides of, that are on the pro-eradicate Hamas side, it's hard to get them to say explicitly, no, like, really, we just want to level Gaza, because that's the only way to

do it. Right. We probably don't have time to play the clip, but Rick Scott was on one of the shows. Let's play Rick Scott. Let's play Rick Scott. Let's do it right now. Israel has no choice but to destroy Rafa. I've always believed that Biden is unfortunately now part of the pro-Hamas wing of his party. That's all they're worried about is he's worried about winning the presidential election. Thank God for President Trump. He is one of the most pro-Israel presidents in our history. And I hope he wins so we can get somebody in there that's going to support Israel. This is, it's disgusting. Money that goes to Gaza is going to Hamas. Whether we like it or not, it's not going to the Gazans.

It's going to help Hamas. Those tunnels were built with money from America. So at the end of that, you heard the part about, if we send any money to Gaza, it doesn't go to the people, it goes to Hamas. Therefore, we're against aid to, I mean, people are starving, people are starving. And that's an argument against all the aid. So that's inhumane. But the thing he said at the beginning, he literally said, Israel needs to destroy Rafah. Then later, he sort of screws it up. He's trying to say destroy Hamas in Rafah, but he gets them confused. And this is where the

Republican mindset is. Destroy, destroy, destroy. And you just blurt out that you need to destroy the city. You know, that is what Biden is afraid of. He's afraid they're going to go in, drop the 2,000 pound bombs, kill some Hamas guys, kill a lot of civilians. Because what is it? One million, a million and a half people who fled from other parts of Gaza are down there concentrated. And if Israel goes in with a big operation, that's what's going to happen. Yeah, CBS had just this horrific, I mean, just very moving story. We'll put it in the show notes. It's like 19 minutes, super long of a mother whose sons are in America. She was living in Gaza and her husband had died and one of her sons in

the military. And there was this ex-Phil group. God bless all of them. A lot of ex-military guys that came and got her out. Anyway, listening to her talk about this, I just really put a lot of perspective on it for me. I just want to mention eradicating Hamas sounds great to me. I wish that there was a plan for it. Joe Walsh is going to be on the podcast later this week. I think he's more bullish on this. One more thing from the Sunday shows on this topic, just exposing the Republican lies. I think it's important to just be specific about this sort of stuff. And you

wrote about this in Morning Shots in for Bill this morning. Here's Tom Cotton talking about the arms embargo, the supposed arms embargo. So what Tony Blinken says on the show cannot be credited when Joe Biden is out there imposing a de facto arms embargo on Israel at the same time he's letting arms embargoes on Iran expire. You know, $26 billion in emergency funding was just approved by the president. And there is not an arms embargo on Israel. And there is not a block on intelligence sharing with Israel. You know that. Joe Biden said last week that he's going to stop supplying offensive weapons that can be used in

an urban setting. That is the only setting in Gaza. That is the only setting in Gaza. And they have to go into Rafah. Tom Cotton is such a shameless liar. I mean, you didn't grow up a Democrat like me, Tim. This is just, it just drove me crazy how Republicans, there was nothing they wouldn't say. They were on message about this stuff. It's not true that Biden's banned offensive weapons to Israel. Specifically, these 2,000 pound bombs. They held up one shipment temporarily. So the point is, it's a restriction on the size of the weapon, because these are weapons

that kill too many civilians. It's on a particular location in Rafah. It's the manner in which it's done that you can go into Rafah. You just can't drop these bombs. And it's a temporary hold. It's not even a permanent thing. And for Tom Cotton to compare this to the arms embargo on Iran, which is comprehensive, it's just a total outrage and an abuse of the term.

Tom Cotton, full of shit, News at 11. Okay, we've got our exciting closing segment. But before that, just really quick, what are you wearing? Are those rosary beads? Is that a black pearl for people that are listening? You know, our YouTube crowd can see this, but for the pod listeners, can you explain to us what you got on there? I wore these with Mona last week, but I wanted to say thank you to the person who gave them to me. My daughter was in Cameroon this semester and she was in a village called Batufam and the chief of the village, whose name is Roger, which is Roger, gave her these to bring to me.

They're just black beads with a lovely necklace. So I wanted to say thank you to Roger and wear them in his honor. I love that. So is she back? She's back. That's great. Will she be at the Bulwark Live event on Wednesday? Go to thebulwark.com slash events.

I would love to meet her. Anyway, I'll be in D.C. later this week as well. Okay, here's our final bit. Do you know who Johnny McIntyre is? You know that name ring a bell to you? Oh, yeah. The body man. Yeah, you might remember him from my porn segment during the Kinzinger episode last week. If you guys missed that, you can go check it out. For people who don't know Johnny McIntyre, I just want to give you a little little backstory here. He first gained fame when he was the backup quarterback at the University of Connecticut. He did a viral YouTube video where he did trick throws with MGMT's kids playing in the background. He copied this idea from the women's basketball team and ended up getting more views from it, which speaks to the patriarchy.

He goes on after his failed football career to become Trump's body man, gains huge loyalty of Trump. He rises up the ranks quickly. He becomes the key man running the personnel office in the White House. He was the point person on vetting as the administration went on when they realized they had too many cucks in there and they wanted to get more serious about employing only loyalists. Because of his experience in doing a purge inside the White House, he is now a senior advisor to Project 2025. He was so influential in the White House, people began calling him deputy president.

He flexed this influence in the lead up to January 6th. Did you read the Jonathan Karl piece on this? This was an excerpt from Jonathan Karl's book. We'll put this in the show notes too. Johnny McAtee was like 29 or something at the time, like wrote a memo to Trump about how he can remove cabinet secretaries. And like that memo was one of the things that sparked the removal of Mark Esper and other officials who weren't involved on board with the coup. So anyway, some of this is going to be funny, but it's serious that these are the kinds of bros that are going to be in the White House if Trump gets back in again. fast forward to now he started a dating app called the right stuff tagline a dating app for the right wing profiles not pronouns now this this app has struggled to attract women color me shocked about that uh buried in a nauseatingly fawning profile on the washington

examiner which will not be in the show notes but if you're just a total sicko you can google it was the fact that the site only has 60 000 members unclear how many of those are boys but a vast majority it has succeeded in one way though it has three million followers on tiktok and instagram and let me tell you trump's deputy president's tiktok and instagram is as gross as you could possibly imagine so i want to share some of the content from his TikTok in our newest segment, The Right Stuff. Here's Johnny McIntyre on the homeless. So I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car.

So when a homeless person asks for money, then I give them like a fake $5 bill. So I feel good about myself. They feel good. And then when they go to use it, they get arrested. So I'm actually like helping clean up the community, you know, getting them off the street. Boy, that would have been a funny joke. And if you're 15, that's like a 15 year old rich kid prep school joke, but from somebody that's the deputy president. Any thoughts about that gag? Yeah, I got one thought. First of all, it's disgusting, but pardon me, but didn't George Floyd die after he was confronted by police for

passing a fake $20 bill at like a drugstore or someplace like that? I'm pretty sure it was the accusation was counterfeiting. So congratulations, Johnny McAtee, you might get somebody else killed because of your bullshit money. Boy, that's dark. I do want to say we're doing a fact check really quick on going back through history. It was 60 minutes. It was the stand by my man interview that I was mentioning earlier with Hillary Clinton. I like to close the loop when I mentioned stuff. Hillary Clinton and Bill, they sat down, it was a post-Superbowl interview with Mike Wallace. That's the one that I had in my mind, but that was not after Monica. That was

92. I was Jennifer Flowers. Anyway, that's a history lesson for people who, like me, were 10 when that happened. Okay, we've got one more. Write stuff. Viral. I guess we call it viral. I don't know. Write stuff video that's getting pretty good engagement on tiktok if you already weren't concerned enough about our youth here is uh johnny mcinty on mother's day just a quick reminder mother's day is for moms not for men in dresses your day is april 1st i mean these people should probably come up with another joke at some point. But that was the Mother's Day message. Donald Trump's Mother's Day message was like some kind of Mother's Day message to the freaks that are ruining the country and he hopes their moms treat them better. I don't know.

At least that one had a little bit of joie de vivre involved in it. What say you about the Mother's Day message from our deputy president? You know this. There was a Republican spent decades going after gay people, and then the polls moved, and it was no longer popular. And so now they've just transplanted all their bullshit anti-gay stuff to anti-trans stuff. So to speak. is that it's only for mothers, then you're also making a dig at women who don't have babies, women who are single or women who are married and choose not to have kids. Like, please don't make Mother's Day an attack on people who are not pregnant or not having babies. Let's just let us all enjoy our mothers, you know? See, I feel like that's a nice contrast,

you know, just arguing over who's got the best mom that seems like a better way to celebrate mother's day than me than uh than kicking trans people on tiktok but hey i never rose to the level of deputy president that will salatin was our new segment the right stuff i mean this feed is gonna give i gotta tell you need it. Okay. We need it in our lives over the course of the year. It might be depressing, but we can also laugh and point as well while we get sad about the future MAGA Americans. Will Salatan, any final words of wisdom for us? Any final ponies?

You know, the nuggets are back. Maybe all's right with the world in the end. Maybe all's right with the world. Amen, brother. God, just a beautiful game. Ugh, I needed a cigarette after that first half. It was so good last night. Alright, folks, we'll be back tomorrow with another

episode of the Bulwark Podcast. Thank you, Will Salatin. Will Salatin Mondays, as good as they ever were. We will see you all tomorrow. Peace. on your knees toward it Make your mama so proud But your voice is too loud We like to watch you laughing You pick the insects off plants No time to think of consequences

Control yourself Take only what you need from it A family of trees wanting to be haunted Control yourself Take only what you need from it Be haunted Show yourself Take only what you need from it A family of trees, ma'am Be haunted Show yourself

Take only what you need from it The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.