The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: Trump’s Pee-wee Herman Moment

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

Trump wants you to know that he remembers who the president is. Plus, the asymmetry in the hostage-prisoner exchanges, linking reform of asylum rules to aid for Ukraine and Israel, and is Christie helping Haley? Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday.

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes with Will Salatans. Would this be technically the post-Thanksgiving hangover Bulwark Podcast? Yes. It's been a while since you and I have done that. Well, we do once a week, but it feels like a long time since we've done that. I figured you were up at like, what, three o'clock in the morning standing out in front of Walmart on Black Friday. I'm joking, of course. Do people still do that? I just kind of lost track of it. Do people still actually do that? Or does everybody buy everything online now? So everybody buys everything online, but some people still as a residual kind of ritual, they go to the Walmart or whatever it is on the Friday. Yeah.

The bonding experience. Yeah, they did it when it mattered. And now that it doesn't, they go anyway, just to be with their friends. Yeah. Brings back memories, go with dad or grandma. Remember when we would stand out here in the cold and the dark, and then we'd rush the doors and fight somebody for the big screen TV? You know, Charlie, though, as a couple of guys, we forget that for some people, shopping is recreation. And so, yeah, some people do it. It's not a matter of forgetting. It's a matter of never knowing that. By the way, I do know people for whom shopping is recreation. That is true. I mean, I think part of the problem

is that Black Friday starts about a week in advance. And then, of course, I get all these emails saying, take advantage of the Black Friday deal. Black Friday deal is a week in advance. And then, of course, you know, I get all these emails saying, you know, take advantage of the Black Friday deal. Black Friday deal is about to expire. And then five minutes later, you get the, hey, Cyber Monday deals, which probably pretty much like the Black Friday deal. So I hope you had a great Thanksgiving in any case. I did, Charlie. I hope you did, too. I did.

Okay, so let's start with some breaking news here before we get into the weekend and catching up because we have all of this stuff to catch up on. We have now reached the Pee Wee Herman phase of, I was going to say the Trump presidency, the Trump, what do we call it? The Trump era. Remember Pee Wee Herman and not the incident in the theater? Okay, I'm not going there. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about his famous line, I meant to do that. Okay, you think I screwed that.

I meant to do that. Pee Wee Herman, signature line, I meant to do that. Okay. You think I screwed that? I meant to do that. Pee Wee Herman, signature line, great moment in American cinema. I meant to do that. Okay. So Donald Trump, former president of the United States, Republican candidate, leading Republican candidate for president of the United States, put out a truth social bleat this morning. Would you like to hear it? Absolutely. Apparently, he's a little bit touchy about people saying that he's kind of losing it, that he's confusing who the president is, this whole, you know, when I beat President Obama, we throw President Obama, that sort of thing. So we want people to know, I meant to do that. Whenever I sarcastically insert the name Obama for Biden

as an indication that others may actually be having a very big influence in running our country, comma, Ron DeSanctimonious, that's back, and his failing campaign apparatus together with the Democrats' radical leftist information machine go wild, saying that, quote, Trump doesn't know the name of our president, crooked Joe Biden. He must be cognitively impaired, end quote. No, I know both names very well. Never mix them up and know that they are destroying our country. Also, and as reported, I just took a cognitive test. A little bit protesting too much here.

Okay, so it's sarcastic when I do it. I mean to do it. Okay. And as reported, I just took a cognitive test as part of my physical examination, and this is all in caps, aced it. Also, aced, all in caps. Aced it. Also, aced, all in caps. Aced, which, and then in parens, in case you didn't know what the word aced meant, means a perfect score, exclamation point, close parens. Also, aced, one taken while in the White House. Biden should take one so we can determine why he wants open borders, no energy independence, a lot of this capitalized, which I'm not going to bury you with, a woke military, high inflation, no voter ID, men playing in women's sports,

only electric cars and trucks, a weaponized DOJ, FBI, and so many other, all caps, crazy things, triple exclamation point. So in case you were worried about Donald Trump appearing to forget who, in fact, is the president of the United States, he meant to do that. It was sarcastic. And actually, it's four-dimensional chess because he's reminding you who are the powers behind the throne. You think Joe Biden is actually sitting there in the Oval Office, but really, maybe Barack Obama. Right. And where was he really born, right, is pulling the strings. So there you have it. Happy Monday morning.

You and I have talked about Joe Biden's age. And obviously- Have we? Yeah, we certainly have. This has come up. We've gotten a lot of crap for it. And Donald Trump, of course, is aging as well. But one of the things, for anyone who's had a relative, a parent or anyone else who is aging, very often the aging, it varies depending on the personality of the person, right? And for Joe Biden is basically a nice guy.

So his aging takes the form of he stumbles over a word, he can't think of the right word, and he apologizes. He feels bad about having screwed up in front of other people, having let people down, having failed to communicate. Donald Trump is a bad person. He's mean, he's nasty, and he's a liar. And so his dementia takes the form of screwing up and then vigorously denying it and accusing others of misrepresenting his screw up. Right. So what we're seeing is Trump's dementia is exposing the difference between Trump and Biden, between a bad person and a good one. That's my take. Well, so, yeah, I mean, it is true. I mean, Biden does mix things

up. You know, he's like he's like the old grandpa that calls Mary Julie and stuff like that. Donald Trump is the grandpa sitting on the porch with a shotgun saying, yeah, get those vermin off my lawn, that sort of thing. Okay, switching gears here, over the weekend, Mitt Romney actually drew an interesting red line, said that he, in fact, would vote for Joe Biden over both Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy, probably vote for other Republicans. But this is the furthest I think that he's gotten

so far in saying that. And I know that people will say, well, he needs to commit to vote for Joe Biden no matter what. But you have to understand that this is quite a stretch for the guy who, in fact, was the Republican nominee for president in 2012, which when we refer to the before times, that feels like the before before times, right? Right. That Mitt Romney was actually the Republican nominee. Let's play this. He's on with Nora O'Donnell.

You know, I would, I'd be happy to support virtually any one of the Republicans, maybe not Vivek, but the others that are running would be acceptable to me, and I'd be happy to vote for them. I'd be happy to vote for a number of the Democrats, too. I mean, it would be an upgrade from, in my opinion, from Donald Trump and perhaps also from Joe Biden. Look, I like President Biden. You know, I find him a very charming, engaging person. There's some places I agree with him, but most places I disagree with him. I think he's made all sorts of terrible mistakes, but I would like to see someone else run. Okay. So I think one of the significant things there is that he completely rules out

a third party race, either for himself or voting for a third party candidate. He's kind of shutting the door on that, which I think is mildly interesting. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that he says he could vote for any of the Republicans other than presumably, I didn't hear it in that clip, Trump or Ramaswamy, because that really only leaves three people. Yeah. We're basically down to Christie, Haley, and DeSantis. Yeah.

Now, it's not great that DeSantis is still in the running for Romney because Romney is a supporter, for example, of aid to Ukraine and Ron DeSantis seems not to be, right? Ron DeSantis seems to be on the wrong, although not as much as Vivek or Trump. But we're getting down to a small number of Republicans who are still eligible for the Mitt Romney vote and for the votes of people like him. What is Romney saying when he says, I would vote for other Democrats other than Biden? Who was he talking about? Marianne Williamson, RFK Jr., maybe Dean Phillips, I suppose. Oh, I mean, when he announced he wasn't running for reelection, he basically also said, look, I'm too old. We need to move to a different generation.

And then he said that he thought we needed to move on past Biden and Trump. So he's already called for Trump to move on. I don't think he's talking about, but you know. Right. I have no idea what other Democrats he's thinking of. I don't think anyone's talking about Marianne Williamson. No one, no one anywhere. In fact, until you said that, I forgot she was even running again. And RFK Jr., is he still running as a Democrat? I'm confused. I guess he's nominally, he's like Bernie Sanders. He's nominally a Democrat, but running as an independent. So in terms of this, and I don't want to engage in too much rank punditry here, but, you know, to the extent that pundits have to pundit. I mean, this is the thing is if you're calling a football game, you don't say, hey, there's

no point in even watching the rest of this game. It's over. I mean, pundits have to say there's a little bit of suspense. By the way, did you watch that Michigan, Ohio State game over the weekend? Wow. No, no. I missed that game. I watched it on an airplane. It was pretty amazing.

Okay. I mean, if you're a Michigan fan, that had to be one of the high points of your life, considering that you live in Michigan. I'm sorry. I'm just kidding. The Ohio State fans are very, very bitter about this. I have so many friends who are Michigan fans and just out of visceral contrarianism. I don't exactly root against Michigan, but I'm not going to watch Michigan games because they're all watching it for me. What was interesting, though, was listening to the commentary because they kept saying, okay, this is the game of the week.

No, this is the game forever. The next few plays will establish your legacy. They will be remembered for all time. What? Wait. It was like somebody said, hype this game up. This is the biggest, freaking game and you do not want to turn off. OK, so so pundits are kind of in the same situation. And this Republican nomination is pretty much over. Right.

But we got to sort of like go through the motions like so Haley is making a game of it. Is she is there some Haley moment? Because I do think that there is developing a soft consensus that she is going to be the last woman standing, that it's not going to be DeSantis. It's not going to be anybody, none of these other candidates. So it does seem as if the focus has come down to her. What do you think? Yeah. Okay. So I did not see the Michigan-Ohio State game, but I did see Justin Tucker miss a field goal from the 27 yard line last night. Which we will be talking about for decades. Yeah, right.

So anything is possible. Yeah, that's right. It is possible for somebody to beat Donald Trump. And it's clearly, if it's going to be anyone, I think it's Nikki Haley. And Charlie, I feel terrible because you and I have discussed this. Chris Christie is the guy who is saying what needs to be said in the Republican primary. He is going right at Donald Trump. He is making that case.

And Nikki Haley is letting him do that while she waffles and weaves her way through. Right. However, however, she's the one who has the chance because she hasn't pissed off all the Trump voters or half Trump sympathetic voters. There are a lot of signs. It's not going to be DeSantis. He's, as my friend Chris Saliza said, he's the dog food that the dog won't eat, right? People have already decided that.

Christy, God bless him. I hope he can do it. I don't think he can. Haley has the possibilities and she has movement. She has movement in the polls in her favor in the early states. She's clearly in second now in New Hampshire. Of course, she has South Carolina in her back pocket as the former governor she can at least make a run at trump there maybe maybe maybe but she's come up to about a tie with desantis and he's been coming down and she's been coming up i expect the

next round of polls will show her ahead there so she's not moving in the polls she's got the donors the tim scott people a lot of them are moving to her. These are people who are looking for electability in the first place. They thought Scott was that. They've decided now that it's her. And they're right about that. And then there are some operatives in the early states who are moving to her too, similar to the donors, the smart people.

The people who are making intelligent electability decisions are moving to her because she's the dog food that people will eat. The dogs in the Republican Party are willing to eat Nikki Haley dog food. They're not willing to go for Ron DeSantis. Work on the metaphor. Keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Just to be clear about the metaphor. I love this. This is Chris's metaphor. The point is it's about Ron DeSantis. All of this money went into Ron. All the smart people were behind Ron DeSantis. All the research behind Ron DeSantis. And the research behind Ron DeSantis. And you put the dog food in front of the dog, and the dog won't eat it. Forget it, right?

And that's what happened to DeSantis. Yeah. Right? The voters just didn't like him. He just doesn't have it. Does Saliza have a dog? I assume so. Okay, because I have a dog, and we put food in front of him, and he'll go, no, I don't want it.

You know why he doesn't want it? He wants one of those fried liver treats as a bride. You put the fried liver treats on and he goes, huh, I kind of like this. Maybe there's some more here. He eats the bowl. It's not that simple. It's not a binary choice. I just want to know whether Crystal actually has a dog. We'll follow up. I don't have a dog, so I'll follow your lead on this, but I'd like to hear more about how dog food actually works with dogs. Yeah. We could devote an entire podcast to it, of course, you know, inducing dogs to eat the dog food. Okay, so they might eat Haley. Why did I just move off? I don't want to talk about Nikki Haley as dog food. It seems like

I'm going to get canceled if I go too far on this one. By the way, if Silliza does not have a dog, I mean, really seriously, there are too many pundits out there who like, here's my political analysis without actually having a dog or talking to voters. I'm not saying he's one of those guys, right? It's going to be bad. There was a good story in Politico within the last few days about what's going on with Haley. And one of the things that they mentioned was she's got about $10 million worth of ad time booked in Iowa and New Hampshire between now and the caucuses. That used to be a lot of money.

It's twice what DeSantis has booked. DeSantis has spent a ton of money and wasted a ton of money. And when I say her, I mean her campaign and her super PAC versus him and his super PAC. So a lot of money has moved to her and the money is going to be manifested in ads between now and Iowa, New Hampshire. So I think we're going to start to see more movement in her direction in those polls. And that's going to be a cycle, right? As she moves up, people start to think, okay, if I'm going to knock off Trump, which a lot of Republican voters and donors would like to do, she's the one I'm going to get behind. So we could start to see a cycle based on that ad spending.

I think that's likely. And also because the conventional wisdom is going to start to shift in the way that we're doing right here, that it comes down to her. The focus was scattered. Now there are people who are saying this is the time for Chris Christie to drop out because he's splitting the anti-Trump vote. My good friend Matt Lewis has a piece saying, hey, thank you for your service. You need to go. I'm not talking about Matt here, okay? But there's a bastardization of political analysis by the horse race consultant class who are constantly just looking for, okay, the smartest thing to do is to hedge and fudge and to be able to do this and everything. And you do think that there's some useful sort of non-consultant-y punditry out there

saying, yeah, but you know what? There's value in telling the truth. There's value in being honest, even if it is not politically advantageous. Chris Christie is not going to win this. I think he knows this, even though what he says, he could do well in New Hampshire, but every single day he's in that race. He's going out, and sometimes he goes into the lion's den, and he says he's in that race. He's going out and sometimes he goes into the lion's den and he says the truth about Donald Trump. He says things that no other Republican is saying about Donald Trump. He is using that bully pulpit. I mean, as much as I love, say, Liz Cheney. Liz Cheney is not out there every day doing this. OK. And so he is, again,

pounding, pounding, pounding. Now, Nikki is doing the, quote, conventionally smart thing by hedging and fudging and dancing and being soft because that will provide her a lane. So to a certain element of the pundit class, she's the smart one. And what is Christie doing? I mean, what is this whole truth bullshit? right? You know, taking it to Donald Trump. I mean, that's kind of naive, you know, you think that actually calling Donald Trump out for his role in stoking anti-Semitism and everything. I That what is a smart thing to do, what is a dumb thing to do, say on February 1st, might be a smart thing to do earlier or not so dumb. So I get it. I hope he stays in. I hope he keeps bringing it. I hope that voice is out there. But then at some point,

there has to be the consolidation. We all know that. He's a smart guy. He knows that. The question is whether or not momentum, ego, you know, makes you not see that moment when you need to consolidate. I don't want him to drop out yet. That's just me. Okay. Now, first of all, I'm dying to pose a challenge to you. Let me set

that aside for a minute. I got a question for you. Before I get to that, I wonder whether Christie, I mean, he's not helping. He's hurting Haley to the extent that he says that she's soft on Trump. She is. Maybe, maybe not. See, well, this is what I wonder. Is Haley able to triangulate off of Christie? Is Christie actually helping Haley by being the voice of truth? Not just another pretty face, Will. He's saying what needs to be said about Trump so she doesn't have to, and she can pose as the moderate so that the Trump voters can choose her and not choose Christie. That's one theory.

Here's the challenge I want to put to you, Charlie. Would you take this deal? Nikki Haley beats Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. Beats him. Becomes the Republican nominee. Yes, I take the deal. Absolutely take the deal. And remember, because remember, one of the deal. Becomes president. Okay.

Remember, because remember, one of the things that Chris Christie says about Nikki Haley is that she has said she is inclined to pardon Donald Trump. Yeah. The deal is she gets the nomination, takes out Trump, becomes president, and pardons him on all federal charges. Gone. The classified docs, the January 6th. You know how I feel about that. You take the deal.

I'm sorry, what is the deal? As opposed to what? As opposed to Donald Trump runs, wins the nomination and becomes president again and pardons himself. I mean, so what? There are choices here. I don't get what I want. I understand this. Okay. So I am not getting a pony for Christmas. So I'm going to have to figure out what do I want? Do I want the rat or the snake? I mean, it's just like, what am I going to get here? But wait, Charlie, it's not that simple. It's not, it's a risk proposition because you're forgetting the other scenario, which, well, you're not forgetting it, but just let's focus on it, which is one is that Trump becomes president. That's the one we're all trying to avoid. But the other one is that Biden wins. Biden beats Trump with a nomination and Biden doesn't pardon Donald Trump.

And Donald Trump faces legal accountability for his crimes. Okay. So at this point, I'm only focused on the nomination because I don't think that a Nikki Haley, who then pardons Donald Trump, is better than Biden, if that's what you're asking about the deal. No. I think a pardon of Donald Trump would be an error of historical magnitude. The more I think about it, the more I think about the lost opportunities, how did we get here? And without getting too deep into wonkiness, I actually, okay, this is how bad it is. I was actually going through a McDonald's in Southern Maryland the other day,

and I actually said out loud to my wife, you know, the more I think about it, the worst mistake it was that they did not impeach Andrew Johnson. The Nixon-Ford pardon seems like a much worse decision, I think, going forward, because we have created this situation where the presidency is not only endowed with massive powers, but it is effectively immunized from any sort of legal accountability. The founding fathers believed, I think in retrospect naively, that impeachment was going to be valid. I think they also assumed that public opinion would be strong enough that there would be a check and a balance. We now know that the president of the United States really is never going to be impeached, really, very, very unlikely. He can't be indicted

while he's in office. And there is a huge clack out there that believes that this is a violation of some sort of something or other, noblesse oblige, that he's held accountable after he leaves office. Donald Trump, if he gets back into office, will absolutely believe that he is untouchable, that he's above the law. And I think that the precedent of pardoning him would be totally horrific. For the people who are naive enough to believe that that would heal the nation, no, that would not heal the nation. That may postpone other fissures, but it wouldn't. So no, I don't accept that deal. Because I believe that Nikki Haley, if she becomes president, will pardon Donald Trump. Yeah.

I believe she'll do it. Well, she ought to be asked that everywhere she goes. It's exactly the kind of thing that Nikki Haley would do. We're going to put this behind us. We want consensus. We don't want a division in this country, yada, yada. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But to guarantee that Donald Trump would not be president, at least in this election, would it be worth it? It's a tough call for me. Tough call. Well, I mean, I'd rather have her be the nominee because it gets rid of Donald Trump in the

nomination. And then we deal with that in the general election. At this point, everything is episodic. Everything is conditional. So if you ask me, would I take a deal in which Nikki Haley becomes the nominee instead of Donald Trump in a heartbeat? With every other thing you could possibly say about her, I would say yes, absolutely, because the world becomes an instantly better place. And I think that's clear. Okay, so before we get into some of the talk shows and major developments in the Middle East over the weekend, I mean major, we actually do have a ceasefire. Biden administration apparently played a significant role. We are having the release of hostages and it is truly remarkable watching how that's playing out. I just wanted to bookmark one thing that stuck with me over the weekend. And I wrote about it in my morning shots newsletter. So if you want more about this, we won't go into it a lot.

This car accident at the rainbow bridge on the CanadianAmerican border, a guy in a Bentley was going too fast, blows up his car. I mean, terrible accident. Fox News reports it as a possible terrorist attack. I mean, they dove deep down the rabbit hole of disinformation. And of course, all the usual suspects decided they were going to exploit it. I describe it as kind of a case study of this motivated reasoning and how you have a fake story that is suddenly seized on if people feel they can exploit it ideologically or politically. So one after another, we had, you know, whether it was Ted Cruz or Vivek Ramaswamy or Elise Stefanik or Carrie Lake and just keep going down the list of people who were like, this looks like a terrorist attack. It's a perfect sign of the way Joe Biden is failing. This is why we need Donald Trump back in the White House. You had this congresswoman from Florida who said, this is

why we need mass deportation. And it turns out, of course, that this was not a jihadi. This was not a pro-Hamas Gen Z activist. This was not an immigrant. This was not an asylum seeker. It's some guy who was coming back from a KISS concert. Right. And yet it was interesting watching this Pavlovian reaction of all of these politicians and these media types who thought, aha, we have something we can use. And this is the world we live in, how one incident then becomes the flashpoint, even if it's not true. Right. It's somewhat naive to think, well, you know, this

sort of thing happens. But once again, all the shit flows right down from Fox News with no consequences. All right. So let me broaden this out for a minute. Yeah. There's a general phenomenon and I forget it's an in academic literature. There's a general phenomenon, and I forget, in academic literature, I think they talk about can believe versus must believe. Things you don't want to be true, right? If you don't want it to be true, you wait. You're skeptical. You demand evidence. If you want it to be true, you go right to the conclusion, right? Confirms all my priors. Yeah. Yes. So for Fox News, it's, oh, this is terrorism. It's probably a jihadi. It's probably, you know, some Muslim or whatever. And then on the reverse for progressives is hate crimes. Remember the Detroit synagogue president who was murdered after October 7th and people were like,

oh my God, it's a hate crime. And it turned out to be, as far as we know, unrelated. She just happened to be president of the synagogue. It wasn't because of that. But hate crimes are the left's version of this, where they're very often, a lot of people are very quick to assume something is a hate crime because it confirms their priors. And sometimes it's true, just like sometimes it's true that it's a jihadi behind the wheel of whatever it is. I mean, yes, let's rag on Fox News. They deserve it. But let's all be a little bit careful about just because it confirms your priors, wait, wait a little. Like we just have this other incident now.

The three Palestinian guys, Palestinian Americans. I was wrestling with this exact question this morning. Okay. It's funny because it's going through the same mental process that, okay, what do we know about this case? If we just wait 24 hours, it may turn out to be something completely different, except that there is this desire to fit it into your template, right? And part of the motivation, and I will say, I've seen this over time, is that even when people find out that the incident they're trying to exploit is not true, they won't actually feel chagrined about it. They'll say, yes,

but it revealed a deeper, higher truth. Truthiness. Yeah, so the truthiness that, okay, so this hate crime did not take place at Yale, but it could have because there's hate out there. So this called attention to the problem in a positive way, as opposed to, no, it's the crying wolf phenomenon that it devalues all access. Yes. So this is something that I have learned through long and bitter experience, you know, being on live radio for many, many years. One of the things that scared me the most was the incredible pressure to immediately leap to a conclusion about something that is just playing out.

And I've learned over and over and over again, how many times those initial reports are misleading or just wrong. And yet the political class and the new media class, they don't give a shit. They just go with it. They just go with it. And this is something that social media has made so much worse, right? Because we have access to quote information much quicker than we used to, but the information is often, as we were just talking about in this case, partial, perhaps not indicative of what the outcome will be. And we pounce on it right away. And all of a sudden there's this firestorm of everyone agreeing that this was a hate crime or it was a jihadi or whatever. And like you, Charlie,

I've learned from experience a couple of times recently, I just sort of held off like one was the beheaded babies in like there's massacre in October 7th. It was absolutely a slaughter of innocent people. There was these stories about beheaded babies. And I was like, wait, I kept not finding evidence for it. And then it turns out, I mean, what they did was horrific. They burned people, their corpses, there were babies who died, but that particular claim seems not to have been borne out. The other one is the Detroit synagogue president. I know people who belong to a congregation, people who are presidents of their synagogue. And I held off on this because I thought, you know, this might not be related to her being Jewish. And it wasn't. So if everyone would just wait 24 hours. So here we have the case of these three Palestinian Americans.

What we know about this case at the moment is these guys were apparently walking by the apartment building of the killer. The killer appears to have had no information about them other than that they were wearing keffiyehs and they were speaking Arabic, some English, some Arabic. Maybe it's not a hate crime, but the preliminary indications are consistent with that. But they're going to, I guess they're going to interview this guy and they'll find out what they can from him. Okay. So let's talk about what happened over the weekend, because there was a, in many ways felt like sort of an against the odds moment. I don't know whether

you were surprised by it, but the fact that they did have a ceasefire and they actually did have multiple exchanges of hostages. Now, I want to just comment on the asymmetry here, which is, I think, required. The Hamas hostages are often children, women, grandmothers who had been kidnapped from their homes, had committed no other crime other than to be Jewish and Israeli. Okay. Many of the Palestinian prisoners who are being released are convicted terrorists. The New York Times is getting a lot of crap for having a picture of disfigured Palestinian woman, you know, whose story was well known is released. Well, she's disfigured because she was driving a car bomb and it exploded prematurely. Okay. So you have people who are convicted terrorists on the one hand versus people who are utterly innocent who were kidnapped.

So there is an asymmetry here. But the deal was cut. So here's Jake Sullivan on one of the shows yesterday talking about whether there might be a longer ceasefire now that they've been able to broker this one. Whether or not this particular deal gets extended, that's really up to Hamas, because Israel has been very clear as part of the deal. It is prepared to continue the pause in fighting for every day that Hamas produces an additional 10 hostages. So the ball is in Hamas's court. If Hamas chooses on the fifth day and the sixth day and the seventh day to continue to produce hostages,

to return them to their loved ones, to return them to safety, then Israel is prepared to continue the pause in the fighting. If Hamas decides not to do it, the responsibility will rest squarely on Hamas's shoulders. Will, is you right? Yeah. Well, let me make a larger point here. I love what Jake Sullivan is saying here. And I love the way that Israel is presenting this. Just to put my cards on the table. I am what is, I guess you could call a hard ass about terrorism. I am tired of terrorists imposing consequences on the rest of us. The terrorists, like Osama bin Laden's message was always, when you do things we don't like, we're going to kill you or we're going to take you hostage or whatever, right? That's the way terrorists function. They

intimidate you, they scare you, they impose what they claim are the consequences, but they're actually the ones doing it. Israel is turning the tables. Israel is saying, hey, the consequences are up to you. If you keep releasing hostages, we'll suspend our attack on you. If you don't, we'll go back at you. This is the first time in my memory that the victim of a terrorist incident is imposing consequences on the perpetrator and is stringing that out as a regular basis. Because the result of this will be, if it works, that more innocent people, as you were describing them, get released from Gaza. So that's all great. And I don't know how long they can make this work, but I love the fact that the bad guys

are having to do something good in order to postpone negative consequences for themselves. I'm not so happy about the fact that those negative consequences are being imposed on innocent people. All right. So Charlie, you talked about the asymmetry of the release of the hostages versus the Palestinian prisoners. And I fully agree with you. I mean, just to remind people, here are the ages of some of the Hamas hostages that have been released. 11, 10, 9, 9, 8, 8, 8, 4, 4, 3. Those are children. Those are children. You won't see any numbers like that in the Palestinian prisoners released by Israel.

They may call them youths. They are 16 to 17 years old. Okay. They are teenage boys who threw rocks. They could. And yes, we can argue about whether they were tried by some military court, whether they were detained without proper due process, but that's totally different from these three and four year old victims who did nothing other than live on a kibbutz and watch their

parents be murdered by these Hamas butchers. I don't know whether you can see this on the YouTube video. I don't think so. It's blurry, but it's pictures of six of the nine children released yesterday had one or both parents murdered by Hamas on October 7th. Some of them may only find that out today. I think that that's worthwhile as opposed to, you know, people saying, hey, maybe the fact that some of these hostages are smiling or something is a sign that maybe the, you know, Hamas was far more humanitarian and kind than we were giving them credit. Like, I mean, what the hell?

What the hell is that about? Can I point out, though, the other and there are a couple of other asymmetries. Yeah. One is in Israel's favor. Israel, to the extent that it's killing civilians, is doing it inadvertently. And Hamas has done it deliberately. But but the significant distinction. It is, it is. But we have to acknowledge that there is another asymmetry, and it goes the other

way. And that is that the number of Palestinian civilians who have died now in the war in Gaza is roughly 10 times the number of Israeli civilians who died. And again, not being targeted, but that number matters. That is just a massive amount of casualties. And again, not being targeted, but that number matters. That is just a massive amount of casualties. And it is an open question, Charlie, after we get through, we're in the fourth day of this truce or pause or whatever you want to call it. If it ends, if Hamas stops releasing hostages and Israel resumes, yeah, Hamas faces the consequences, more Hamas guys are going to get killed, but more Palestinian civilians are going to get killed. And we do have to ask, at what point is it no longer worth it? At what point are we doing more harm than good by killing these innocent people?

Okay. Just in terms of the information flow, how do we know that number is true? Are we relying on Hamas? I mean, who's keeping track? Who's reporting these numbers? Because I'm skeptical of everything I hear out. And I've written in the bulwark that I'm skeptical of the Gaza health ministry. I know you have. But that brings our particular numbers to a particular strike. The general phenomenon, I think it's all of the international agencies and everyone. It's clear that there are thousands. There are thousands. I was really struck by a post by an actress named Patricia Heaton. Glad you know who Patricia

Heaton is. But I mean, the fact that she's an actress is irrelevant Heaton. Glad you know who Patricia Heaton is, but I mean, the fact that she's an actress is irrelevant to this. It's her challenge. The frustration that's building up and watching the international reaction to all of this. Let me just read it. I feel like I have to say that I know I might be boring the pants off of all of you lovely followers with my incessant tweeting and retweeting of the crisis in Israel, but I am so alarmed by it all. Alarmed at the horror Hamas perpetrated upon innocent people. Alarmed at the biased anti-Israel tone of so many media outlets, especially BBC News and Sky News. The very people whose country fought the Nazis so valiantly. I am alarmed at the immediate and well-organized pro-Hamas protests

that sprung up all over the West. alarmed at government organizations like the UN who are clearly anti-Semitic, alarmed at universities and students' embrace of terrorism and oppressive cultures, alarmed at citizens tearing down posters of innocent hostages, alarmed at so many seemingly nice integrated people, especially in the medical field, revealing genocidal beliefs against Jews, alarmed at law enforcement officers for not lifting a hand to stop public calls for violence and death to Jews, alarmed at the silence of supposedly feminist groups who refuse to condemn Hamas raping women. By the way, not just raping women, but raping women to death. Alarmed at the silence from so many in Hollywood who are normally so quick to jump on any social bandwagon.

In 2015, Jay Sweet Charlie was on everyone's lips and social media platforms after the murder of innocents in Paris, particularly at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices. What has changed? Why is there now such a reluctance to condemn this barbaric and murderous mindset? What are people afraid of? How did so many get brainwashed? Isn't this something we all need to be deeply concerned about? Or have I just been out of work too long and have too much time on my hands looking forward to your serious and thoughtful comments? There's a lot to be alarmed about in watching this. And I keep coming back to the real distinction between sympathy for the Palestinian innocents and what really does

sound like the number of people in the West who are quite sympathetic with Hamas, despite Hamas's overt and explicit genocidal agenda. Yeah, it's really important to keep a clear distinction between the people who are defending Palestinian rights and the people who are specifically defending Hamas. Sometimes I feel like that gets lost. But I think the larger pathology here is there's a philosophy of dealing with controversies like this that starts with picking sides. So in our case, like Israel is the good guys, Hamas is the bad guys.

Okay, you start with that premise, and that's fine as long as it's based on a distinction that's about rules and behavior and morality, but you still have to focus on the rules and the morality so that when you start doing bad things, if you start bombing, I mean, Israel is dropping massive, massive bombs, bigger than the bombs that the US dropped on Mosul when we were going after ISIS there. And yeah, you're going to hit tunnels that way. You're going to be able to destroy Hamas infrastructure, but you're going to kill a lot of people. You do have to be able to ask yourself, at what point are you violating the moral rules that supposedly make you the good guys?

So I'm a little bit concerned about being so focused on the evil of Hamas that you just blur out all of the moral questions about the way that you conduct the war. But I'll agree with her about this. I think there is a very sick culture on the left of what I would call punching up. The philosophy is, as long as I am defending the side that is, quote, punching up, that is the oppressed people, which is anyone associated with Palestinian rights. The resistance is a classic term, right? I'm defending resistance, including armed resistance. Well, now you're supporting violence. And I've heard people defend the attacks on the kibbutzim, saying those people who live in those kibbutzim are actually in

Palestinian territory, and so they're not really civilians. Now you're rationalizing the murder of on the kibbutzim saying those people who live in those kibbutzim are actually in Palestinian territory and so they're not really civilians. Now you're rationalizing the murder of civilians. And I think that she is right to raise concerns about universities and other places where folks on the left who are so focused on defending the side that is punching up forget that that side is committing immoral, gravely immoral acts. Okay, so let's switch back to what's happening here in this country, including in Congress, because I think it's very easy. And I will confess that my eyes start glazing over when they get into these various kabuki dances about government shutdowns and funding bills and all of

that stuff. But there's rather fierce negotiations going on now for aid to Ukraine, aid to Israel, and the linkage of the Ukrainian aid package with border security. And I think ultimately, there has to be some linkage, just politically, in order to get this thing through. Do you agree with me? Yes. They're going to have to come up with some sort of a formula. Yes. Michael Bennett, who's a Democratic senator from Colorado, and I would say a pretty reasonable guy, was asked about this, about what is going to happen with the border dealing with asylum rules, and how does it relate to coming up with absolutely desperately needed aid for Ukraine. Let's play a little bit of Senator Michael Bennett from Colorado. If your leverage

here is the border, tell me what is the sticking point at this stage? Is it still that Republicans are pressing to tighten qualifications for claiming asylum and there's some Democratic resistance? Is it resistance to including DREAMers? What are the specifics that you're actually able to tackle? Well, obviously, I would love it if we could include the DREAMers in this package. 90% of the American people believe that the DREAMers should have a pathway to citizenship. There has been a discussion about whether or not we ought to think about changing the asylum standard. One of the things we all have to recognize, I think, as Americans is that over the last 10 years, gangs south of the border have created a billion dollar business

that's smuggling human beings across the entire world to the southern border. And the southern border, as a result of that, is being undermined and is being much more difficult to manage. That's been a problem in Republican and Democratic administrations. And if we can find a way to help fix that in a bipartisan way, that would be great. The point I'm trying to make is that whether we succeed or not in terms of getting to that agreement, this Ukraine funding has to happen for the sake of democracy and for the sake of the Western world. Okay, so Will, I thought that was a pretty sound analysis. And the reality is that we do have a problem on the southern border, and public opinion appears to be shifting rather significantly on this issue. And so it is now in

Democrats' interest to show that they take those concerns seriously. What do you think? I'm delighted that Michael Bennett said this. Michael Bennett, of course, is a Democratic senator. He's a progressive. And as you can hear in this response, he supports the dreamers. He supports a lot of reforms that a lot of folks on the left support. But he's making a point that a lot of my friends on the left need to hear. And that is, look, Charlie, 10 years ago, when I saw Ted Cruz and these other Republicans going at immigration, I thought, oh my God, I can't believe the racism of these Republicans. But what I've learned over the last few years is this is not just about the racism. And I don't mean to belittle that. There are certainly

Republican appeals to racism that are woven into the immigration issue. But there is a real thing going on. And that is what Michael Bennett is talking about. There is a giant global business now built on exploiting the United States asylum system. You come here, you claim asylum. The businesses, the gangs, they tell you what to say when you get here. We'll let you stay in the country. You'll get a hearing. It'll take some time. By then, you claim asylum, the businesses, the gangs, they tell you what to say when you get here, we'll let you stay in the country, you'll get a hearing, it'll take some time, by then you're

established. It's a business that is exploiting an American policy, and we need to change the policy. And it's not racist to say that. And it's not humanitarian to have this chaos of just shoving people up the Western Hemisphere and bringing people all over the world, outside of the channels of legal immigration. We need a legal immigration system that works and that helps people come in, and we need to stop the illegal immigration. David Frum wrote a piece back in 2019 that he got a lot of blowback for, but his point was, if liberals won't enforce the borders, fascists will. In other words, if the American people decide they cannot trust humanitarian liberals, Democrats, to enforce the border, if there's chaos, they will turn to say this is an ominous number, Will. I'm not trying to be, you know, doom casting here.

But support for actually building a wall, which I think is a profoundly stupid idea, is actually higher than it's ever been before. Yeah. You know, because people are like, do something. Right. You know, I do think that they need to address it. Meanwhile, you have what you described in a memo to me as the fake posers out there. Yeah. Describe what you mean by the fake posers. What's the category here?

So the category here is watch what the politician does, not what they say. And the specific thing is when there is a negotiation in Congress about we'll give you this if you give us that, right? What is being traded? And that tells you what the person offering the trade really cares about. So that's what the point is here. Okay, so let's play Tom Cotton. We want to help Ukraine resist Russia's war of unprovoked aggression. So in return for providing additional funding for Ukraine, we have to have significant and substantial reforms to our border policies, specifically asylum and parole, the processes that are being abused at our border for millions of illegal migrants to come to this country over the last three years. Okay, what's fake about that? That sounds like Bennett.

Cotton starts this off saying, hey, I'm all for funding Ukraine, right? I'm all for it. But in exchange for funding Ukraine, you have to give us changes to border policy, right? That's an acknowledgement and not an explicit acknowledgement. That's a tell that he doesn't really, I mean, if you really think it's urgent to fund Ukraine, you fund Ukraine. If instead you say, we'll fund Ukraine only if you give us concessions on this other issue, then you're saying you're willing to lose the Ukraine funding. You're willing to give that up. It's not really that important to you. And that is the position of a lot of Republicans now, including Lindsey Graham,

who claim to be supporters of Ukraine, but are willing to use it as leverage to get something else. And if they don't get the concession on the other thing, there's not going to be Ukraine funding. Or it's just a negotiating tool. You're saying it's fake posing. It sounds like politics is broken out in Congress. No, no, I think there's going to have to be a deal, right? I mean, there's going to have, it's give and take. You want Ukraine, give us this. And sometime in the room, they're going to go, okay, so we all want Ukraine. What is it going to take? Let's come up with this deal. We get the Ukraine aid. We've all got the Ukraine aid.

And we come up with a border idea we like, right? Isn't that a win-win scenario? Is that that terrible? Charlie, would you take this offer from the left where somebody says, oh, I believe in funding the police. But in return for funding the police, here's what we expect you to give us on these other policies. That's a confession that I don't really support funding the police. Not really, right?

Because I'm willing to lose it. I mean, if I really care about it, I just do it. Isn't that the essence of the negotiations is you don't know how much you're willing to lose. Do you think they're faking it? Do you think that if the Republicans don't get the concessions on the border, that they're going to cough up the Ukraine money anyway? Because the Democrats clearly believe that Republicans won't pony up the money for Ukraine unless they offer the concessions on the border. And nobody's talking about anything that sounds truly horrible. Now, if the negotiation was if, you know, in order to get Ukraine, you have to build a wall or you have to deport 10 million illegal immigrants. Well, that would be unacceptable.

But what they're talking about doing are things. And that's why I think playing it back to back. Bennett was acknowledging we're going to have to come up with some sort of a deal. I think they might get this done. Who knows? Hey, why am I being the optimist here? Why are you being the cynic? I don't know. Okay, so Ken Buck, who I'm still trying to figure out, Ken Buck, who's been calling out his colleagues on the election lies and is leaving

Congress, he was also on. Let's listen to what he had to say about these negotiations. To expect that the Democrats help us find ways to pay for the Israel aid and the Ukraine aid. I think it's absolutely fair for the Senate. We've already sent the Israel aid to the Senate. It is sitting there, has been for weeks. They have done nothing. I think that's irresponsible. We need to work together to find ways to pay for this aid and then to make sure that both the Israel aid and the Ukraine aid are sent to those countries.

That seems reasonable to me, right? Does that mean Speaker Johnson has been working through the break and has a plan to do this and a way to pay for it in the next three weeks? Yeah, absolutely. The Israel aid was conditioned on the 87,000 new IRS agents. But that's dead on arrival in the Senate, and the President said he would veto that as structured. Well, and the Democrats are going to own that. If we don't get aid to Israel, they haven't sent a package back to us and said,

we don't agree with all of these cuts. We agree with some of them. And if the Democrats want to hold up Israel aid, that's up to them. I think it's important that we find ways to pay for the needs that Israel has and Ukraine has and to do it in a responsible way. Okay, now that strikes me as the fake posing because to link aid to Israel to this IRS idea, which first of all does not actually save any money because, you know, as the CBO and every sentient analyst has noted, if you make it harder for the IRS to collect revenue that it is legally owed,

you will get, wait for it, less revenue. So I, yeah. And he did seem to think that, yeah, I'm looking for somebody to blame. We don't get the Israel aid done. We're going to blame the Democrats. Right. Yeah. He says, you know, we really care about the aid to Israel, but then he says, you know, we've attached the IRS thing. And then he's that line where he says the Democrats are going to own that if we don't get the Israel money. That says he's using the Israel money, he and the other Republicans, as a tool to score a political point against the Democrats. So again, if you want to fund Israel, fund Israel. Same with Ukraine. And also that is far less serious. It doesn't seem like serious good faith negotiating just to throw up some hot button talking point about the IRS in exchange. Okay. One last point. There was an election over the weekend in the Netherlands where right-winger anti-immigration activist, Geert Wilders party scored some significant gains, not clear whether he will

be able to form a government, but people looking around going, okay, this appears to be kind of a, an international phenomenon where we have these right-wing fire brands, um, many of whom had been considered out of the mainstream who are now winning elections. So it's not just in this country. And of course, look at a picture of Geert Wilders, and he kind of has a Trumpian vibe, the guy down in Argentina, embraced by Maga. So what's going on here, Will? What does it mean for the Netherlands, which always strikes me as a very sober, serious, rational, moderate country? Right. Well, Charlie, I think this goes directly to the point you made earlier about immigration, right? Immigration is a serious issue in the Netherlands. A lot of people are very concerned about there's like housing issues, not enough

housing, and a lot of immigrants coming in. It's not a big country. And again, people on the left say, you know, don't play to the racism, but there is a point about if you don't find ways to control immigration, at least make it orderly, then the right wins. And Geert Wilders is an Islamophobic right winger. His party had a statement about no mosques. By the way, in the Trump spirit, this guy's party essentially consists of loyalty to him. It's not clear, but there is some sort of a document. The platform says the Netherlands is not an Islamic country, no Islamic schools, Qurans, and mosques. Well, they don't have a first amendment here, but still. Now, just to be clear, this is not like Trump winning 45 or 50% of the vote.

Geert Wilders has got only 25% of the seats in the parliament, but it makes them the biggest party. So they still have to try to form a government, and it's not clear who will work with them. But it is a warning that those of us who are not racist, those of us who believe in democracy and in civil liberties and in pluralism, do need to find ways to win elections so that the builders and Trumps don't win elections. Well, it goes back to the David Frum piece from 2019, that if liberals are not perceived to have a rational immigration policy, the voters will turn to the extremes. And we are seeing that in places like possibly the Netherlands as well. Although, as you point out, it's not clear that he's going to be able to have a majority. So, Will, thank you for motoring through this program.

People who are watching us on YouTube are going to wonder, you know, what have you been popping the whole time? And I appreciate this because the odds of us getting through the show without you losing your voice or coughing because you are so sick was very, very high. And you have been, I'm guessing that those were cough drops. You are just mainlining cough drops. Yes. So do not, in the comments section, it's like, what is he eating throughout the entire podcast? It is Will taking one for the team, medicating in real time during this podcast. And I appreciate it. And hopefully you get some good bed rest the rest of the day, Will.

Thank you, Charlie. And we'll do this next week. Thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.