The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: We Are Not the Crazy Ones

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

DeSantis tries to pretend he's normal, James Comer can't find his Biden informants, Republicans are disappointed there's not a bigger crisis at the border, Trump wants Mike QAnon Flynn back as an adviser, and Lindsey can't stop rationalizing. Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday. https://specialto.thebulwark.com/p/the-corruption-of-lindsey-graham?itm_source=parsely-api Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, happy Monday and welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We are actually doing this live from Washington, D.C. We are in the Bulwark studios with my colleague, Will Salatin. Will, how are you doing? Doing great, Charlie. Happy Mother's Day. I can't say happy Mother's Day to you, but happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. Speaking of Mother's Day, I spent the weekend with the family and everything, so we could talk about Disney movies and all of that sort of thing. A lovely Mother's Day. So I was actually driving in the car when I saw the former president of the United States' really heartfelt Mother's Day greeting.

Did you see this? This is, I'm driving in the car reading this, and I'm thinking, okay, this has got to be a parody, right? I'm going to look and I'm going to find it's a parody account and everything. But this is what Donald J. Trump tweeted out on Mother's Day. By the way, I don't think he ever wished Melania Happy Mother's Day, but, and all is in caps, in particular, the mothers, wives, and lovers of the radical left, fascists, Marxists, and communists, who are doing everything within their power to destroy and obliterate our once great country. Please make these complete lunatics and maniacs kinder, gentler, softer, and most importantly, smarter, so that we can quickly, all in caps, make America great again, triple exclamation point. I don't know about you, Will, that brought a tear to my eye. The real spirit. Wait, that was real?

Because I saw that and I thought that was fake. I thought that had to be fake. This is why I put this in the category in my newsletter of, is this real life? I mean, having spent the weekend watching Disney movies, and by the way, you know, they can be kind of dark. I watching Disney movies, and by the way, you know, they can be kind of dark. I don't know why people are obsessed about, you know, people kissing other people. You know, there's a lot of death and destruction there. I mean, do you know what happens in beginning of Finding Nemo, Will? Tell me. The mother is killed along with 399 brothers and sisters of Nemo. It is a viciously cruel terrorist attack by a barracuda.

And it's like, wait, wait, I'm looking at the kids going, did you just see this mass slaughter of this mom? You know, not to mention Bambi. And we're not getting to get into what happens in The Lion King. So it was dark. So my sense of reality was a little bit blurred. And I'm reading this and thinking, there's no effing way. No, this is it.

So happy Monday. Happy Monday for people wondering, is this real life? Do you want another is this real life moment? Sure. Okay, so Donald Trump blows off a rally in Iowa because of bad weather. This was like one of the few sort of slick moves by Ron DeSantis who decides, well, I'm going to go to Iowa to show that I can campaign and I can be a normal human being with normal expressions and everything.

But meanwhile, Donald Trump calls into this weird conspiracy, you know, seminar run by Michael Flynn. You've been keeping up with Michael Flynn, the latest conspiracy oh my god man's completely lost his mind okay so donald trump calls in and michael flynn is on stage with the phone and trump is just lavishing him and all of his crackpot friends with praise and then he says this okay i was like because this is real life i have to actually play this because otherwise will you will think i'm making this up okay this

is the former president i will say general flynn he's some general he's some man he took abuse like nobody could have handled and he came out bigger better stronger than ever before we love him he's a leader and you just stay wealthy and healthy and well and everything. I want you to have great lives in general. You just have to stay healthy because we're bringing you back. We're going to bring you back. Well, that's something to look forward to. We're going to bring Mike Flynn back.

Yeah. Something to look forward to. What can I say? Can I just remind everybody a couple of things about Mike Flynn? Please. So Mike Flynn was, he was forced out of the administration at the beginning of the Trump years because of- He fired his ass because he lied. Yeah. He lied to the FBI. He lied to Vice President Pence about his conversations with the Russians, right? The Russians just helped elect Trump. And Flynn has a conversation with the Russian ambassador about how we're going to, you know, ease up the sanctions on you guys. So it's kind of a quid pro quo thing going on. Anyway, he lies to people about it. It's a crime to lie to the FBI. He gets forced out over this.

By the way, Michael Flynn was working for Turkey as a secret agent, basically. As one does. Right, as one does, while he's advising Trump on national security. So let's remember what happens at the end of the Trump administration. Mike Flynn goes on, this is after the Electoral College has certified Joe Biden's victory. Mike Flynn goes on Newsmax and he says the following about Trump. He could immediately on his order, seize every single one of these machines, voting machines around the country on his order. He could also order within the swing States. If he wanted to, he could take military capabilities and he could place them in those States and basically rerun an election in

each of those States. Okay, that is a verbatim quote from Mike Flynn. We're going to take the military, block the peaceful transfer of power, and rerun the election until we get the result we want, basically. We're going to bring that guy back? Well, and then it got bad. Then it got worse for Flynn. And I'm actually not joking because he went down every QAnon rabbit hole you could possibly imagine. I mean, this guy is certifiable. I mean, he's, you name the crazy conspiracy theory, hey, the bio labs in Ukraine are really what's, well, all this is about. That's Mike Flynn. That's the guy that we're bringing it back. So we'll put this in the category of, is this real life? One more,

is this real life moment to get us going on, a Monday morning? Turns out that the hunt for the great white whale is not going well. The hunt for the Biden crime family, huge bombshell smoking gun. The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, has been promising just on a regular basis, I got the goods. This is going to blow you away. He goes on Maria Bartiromo's show yesterday, which gives you an idea how this is going, first of all. And he has to admit, and I'm not making this up. This is all in the category of none of this is a parody. I'm not making this up.

He goes on to admit that he somehow has mislaid his key informant. Okay, so basically he's going on. So, yeah, you know, Joe Biden leaves this, you know, massively corrupt international business and people are saying, well, where's the evidence? Well, he doesn't have any evidence, but the whistleblowers showed us all of this stuff and it's really, really bad. And people are going, OK, so could we see these informants? Could we see these whistleblowers? And Comer goes, ah, kind of lost track of them. Even Maria Bartiromo is going, wait, what? Listen to this. Hold on a second, Congressman. Did you just say that the whistleblower or the informant is now missing? Well, we we're hopeful that we could find the informant. Remember, these informants

are kind of in the spy business, so they don't make a habit of being seen a lot or being high profile or anything like that. Nine of the 10 people that we've identified that have very good knowledge with respect to the Bidens, they're one of three things, Maria. They're either currently in court, they're currently in jail, or they're currently missing. Okay, well, I have really, really, really been trying to be my better self, you know, to be better. But what the fuck? I mean, really? So this investigation of the Bidens is kind of, first of all, I'm glad that Comer's doing it, because you get to find out what is the evidence

against the Bidens. And the answer is, there's a lot of sort of, you know, fishy financial transactions around Hunter Biden, because Hunter Biden is a fail son who's like, he's like Billy Carter. You know, this happens to politicians and their family members do embarrassing things. But the Republicans have tried to find everything they can on Joe Biden and they found buckets. They got nothing on Joe Biden because Joe Biden's basically an honest guy. But this whole thing about the whistleblower and the informant, I love this story because this is what Republicans used to call in the case of anything related to Trump, hearsay. We got this whistleblower and the whistleblower told us about this informant. And we can't find the informant, but that's because something nefarious seems to have happened, right? And

do we have the clip of Maria Bartiromo going nuts about the disappearance of the informant? She goes on to say, and it's with that wonderful Maria Bartiromo intake of breath. She says, it's astonishing. It's amazing that this informant has disappeared. And she implies, of course, that the Biden crime family has disappeared this person whoever it is right and i don't even know if comber knows who this has any idea who this is right this third hand connection to some information that they don't have but this person has disappeared my girlfriend's brother's cousin knows a guy exactly who is at the tasty freeze machine and he thinks that he knows the sister of his friend who thinks.

So the original source can't be found. So the natural response you would think, Charlie, is, okay, this is a fraud. This is a prank or whatever. Somebody told you that they have a source. Now they can't produce them, right? There's nothing there. But instead, we get these wild, elaborate conspiracy theories about the whistleblower says the informant isn't there anymore. And therefore, there's this elaborate organized crime operation going on to disappear all of our precious bodily fluids.

Yeah. The astonishing part about this is that Maria Bartiromo still has a job after the Dominion lawsuit. I mean, can we just like put a pin there that they still put her on the air that she still has a job? But yeah, this is the perfectly hermetically sealed universe. So do you have evidence? No, we weren't able to find any evidence whatsoever. Ah, that proves it because it proves that the deep state is covering it up. So this was one of those weekends and there were some more lucid moments. And it is worth reminding people that all of this stuff has happened less than a week after the jury found that the former president of the United States had sexually assaulted a woman and then maliciously lied about it. And among Republican circles, including even certain media circles, it doesn't seem to register.

There was just a fantastic interview on Meet the Press yesterday with Russell Moore, who is an incredibly courageous leader of the evangelical movement, who has just not gone along with all this. He's now the editor-in-chief, I believe, of Christianity Today. today. And he was on with Chuck Todd, just sort of reflecting on how bizarre it is that something like this happens. And the reaction is pretty much zero. This is Russell Warren. Meet the press yesterday morning. What's primarily shocking is the fact that here we are in a week where a former president of the United States is found liable for sexual abuse and sexual assault and defamation of a woman who survived such abuse and assault. And the country just yawns for the most part. That tells me that something has really, really badly gone awry in this country. Yeah, something is broken.

See, that's what I thought was so powerful about your piece last week, Will, that is a book, and people can actually get it on Amazon, about Lindsey Graham. Not because Lindsey Graham is so important, but as a perfect example of the way an entire movement can be corrupted, that the same individuals who just a few years ago would have looked at this and said, this is horrible, this is unacceptable, this is a violation of everything we believe in, somehow have convinced themselves that it's okay. And I have to say, you know what's remarkable? As I was reading your piece last week, actually I was rereading the piece, is that we have been doing this now for six or seven years, and people think, well, you talk about it every single day, and yet it still blows our minds. It is still a puzzle how people can look at this and go, yeah, we're okay with this. Yeah. Okay. But it's healthy that it blows our minds. It's healthy

because, I mean, Russell Moore says in that clip, the country is yawning at this. Of course, the country as a whole is not yawning. The Trump supporters, a large portion of our country is yawning, and that's scary. But it's really important that the rest of us don't get numb to it. So it's good that you and I are still upset. And it's good that Russell Moore is speaking. I mean, Russell Moore has established this really clever niche in the media sphere. And that is he is the morally conservative Christian who decided to remain a morally conservative Christian and to

apply the principles that he applied against Bill Clinton to Donald Trump when all about him lost their heads, when all about him went over to the Trump side. The point that he makes there in that interview, he talks about character. He reminds the audience that in the case of Bill Clinton, conservatives said character mattered. They said the character of the man will manifest itself. If you have a bad president, somebody who does bad things, he will do other bad things. This is just a very basic insight about the way people are. It used to be something conservatives believed in. And one of the things that happened to Republicans over time is that they stopped worrying about character.

They nominate and then elect this president, Donald Trump, who is, you know, as I've said, one of the worst human beings this country has ever produced. When you elect this president- That's not hyperbole. Yeah. A genuinely bad man. He will do bad things. And what they fell into was they started to excuse every bad thing he did. Well, okay, he fired the FBI director. That's bad. He separated families at the border. That's bad. But they would find ad hoc excuses for each of these things. They blinded themselves to, they denied the basic reality that he was going to keep doing more and more bad things until he tried to overthrow the government. And if he gets back in, of course, there will be a whole series of other bad things. That's the basic insight about character that Russell Moore is speaking to here. And also beyond that, though, is then what it does to you, what it does to the observer, because it's not just that you accept what Donald Trump, that guy there is doing. It's what it's done to your conscience, what it's done to our culture. And that's hard to say. So this was a rough weekend. I wrote in my newsletter for the vestige of normals in the Republican Party

who just have to sort of pretend that it's not crazy, pretend that they have not, you know, gone through this, you know, bonfire of sanity. And so here's Nikki Haley, who at one time was being thought of as, okay, here is somebody who is going to move us into the post-Trump era, who is every once in a while, she has tiptoed into the waters of holding Trump accountable. She is on yesterday and given a chance to comment on the fact that Donald Trump was just found by a jury to have attacked, injured, sexually assaulted a woman. And I want you to listen to Nikki Haley, the way she dodges saying anything negative about Donald Trump, even in the case of sexual assault. Do you think it undermines your party if the Republican frontrunner is someone who was just found liable, legally liable for sexually abusing a woman? I have always said that anyone that feels like they have been sexually assaulted in any way

should come forward and have their voice heard. I also think anyone that's been accused should be able to defend themselves. I was not on the jury. I am not the judge. I think that both of them had their voices heard. There's been a verdict and there's been an appeal. President Trump was offered to defend and that's Trump to decide that he gave a deposition, but he didn't go in to defend himself. And it was a jury that came to this conclusion. Are you drawing into question the legal findings? No, I said there's a verdict and I think there's been an appeal and I think it stands where it stands. And I think the American people need to make a decision based on that. Okay.

So, Will, Nikki Haley is not really running for president, is she? Has she just like pivoted? Like, maybe I can be his vice president because what? What was that? Okay. She's not running for leader. Let's put it that way because a leader would draw a line here. I kind of love how she says, you know, I wasn't on the jury.

It's like, remember how like the line about climate change is, oh, I'm not a scientist. I can't write. I wasn't on the jury. I mean, there's- Who am I to say? So she's trying to duck it that way. She's also, I love how she goes to the fact that it's been appealed. So remember, ask yourself the question, at what point would Republicans turn against Trump based on any finding of legal liability or guilt, right? So when there is a jury verdict, in this case, it is liability, not guilt, right? It's preponderance of evidence, I think is the standard. That is not enough because there is still this appeal process. She mentions twice, oh, he's appealed it. So there will never be a point at which Nikki Haley and the others

acknowledge that Trump is actually did this. And trust me, Charlie, if they run out of appeals, if every appeals court upholds this verdict, then the Trump defenders, including Nikki Haley and the others, we'll move on to the fact that this was not a guilt finding. This was a liability finding. They'll always have an excuse. And they'll come back and say, well, but at least he didn't rape her. At least he's not a rapist. I should have pushed back on this a little bit. When I was on Morning Joe this morning, they were talking about the Comer investigation and discussing, you know, why are Republicans continuing to talk about these investigations? So they were talking about the Durham investigation, which fell flat on his face,

you know, didn't uncover anything. And the question was, doesn't it seem like political malpractice that you keep bringing up these investigations, but it just sort of reminds people. And I thought that missed the point that I believe it was our colleague Mona Charon who wrote about how the Hunter Biden investigations and all of this other stuff is psychologically necessary for people in Trump world, because at some point they don't want to defend Donald Trump as much as they want to say, well, everyone is corrupt. Everyone does it. See, this is the flex is to be able to say, well, what about this? So they need, deeply need to have Hunter Biden so that they can claim to have some

sort of a moral position and suggest that all of the attacks on Donald Trump, you know, are, are motivated by politics. And what about this? So it is essential, if you're going to defend and support the Trump crime family, you must invent the Biden crime family. If you are going to look the other way at the incredibly horrific character of Donald Trump, you have to create something else that is more fearsome and fearful. And so that's why they are so obsessed and why it is so necessary for them to stick with all of this. Right. That's an excellent point. That's absolutely true. And I would add to it the remarkable double standard that they apply. So in the case of Donald Trump,

we have a jury finding of liability based on the presentation of evidence. And that is dismissed. That is, well, there's still an appeal going on and people have to make all their financial transactions. We think there's something suspicious. We found a second or third hand connection to China. And then one of the things that James Comer says in that interview with Maria Bartiromo is he says, when he's sort of pressed for what is his evidence against Joe Biden, there is some financial transaction, some folder that just has the name Biden on it. It doesn't have any specific name on it. Remember, he's been talking, what did he say? Nine Bidens. It doesn't have any specific name on it. Remember, he's been talking, what did he say, nine Bidens? They've got every member of the Biden family. But the fact that this just has the name Biden on it clearly means to him that this is about

Joe Biden. So there is no standard. The standard is dropped as low as necessary to implicate Joe Biden. But the standard is raised impossibly high in the case of Donald Trump. Well, and you know what? If they do make the decision that they're going to charge Hunter Biden with tax evasion or whatever, then fine, because I believe, and I think you believe, that no one is above the law and people are not going to take to the streets, you know, about Hunter Biden. It won't be that. Hey, folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy voices

on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to thebullwork.com and take a look around. Every day we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bullwork Plus membership free for the next 30 days? To claim this offer, go to thebullwork.com slash charlie. That's thebullwork.com forward slash charlie. We're goingbullwork.com forward slash charlie.

I'm going to get through this together. I promise. Okay, so speaking of politics, interesting little dance over the weekend with Ron DeSantis going to Iowa. Donald Trump was supposed to have this big rally. There were tornado warnings. I'm going to be agnostic about whether or not the weather was really all that severe because I'm not in Iowa. I wasn't even in Wisconsin. Ron DeSantis was, you know, trying to show off his skills. I mean, it was an interesting play. In the back of my mind, I was wondering, and I asked somebody this last week, is it possible that Ron DeSantis won't run? He's still signaling. He understands that he's running behind. He's got to reset the campaign. So what did you make of the fact that he sort of jumped in and said, okay, Donald Trump's afraid to go to Iowa.

I'm going to go. I'm going to go and hang out at a pizza place and show that I am a fellow normal human being with all of you and not completely phony and stiff. Well, he's got to get out there, right, and try his hand at retail politics. You know, in Ron DeSantis' defense, I saw him. He's wearing one of those nice blue shirts that all the consultants tell you to wear. He looked fine. He started to look a little bit normal, less in a suit. He's wise to get out there and practice dealing with humans because he's going to have to do that if he's going to run.

There's a good reason for him to go to Iowa, and that is Donald Trump is vulnerable in Iowa. So DeSantis needs to jumpstart his campaign, and if he can get a win in Iowa, which remember, Trump lost Iowa in 2016. He's always been weak there. Because it was stolen from him by Lion Ted Cruz. Right. Yes. Sorry, that just drives home the point. Donald Trump didn't just lose Iowa.

He lost it to Ted Cruz. And claimed that it had been stolen from him. Just want to make the mark that Donald Trump can never lose. Right. So I think for a bunch of reasons, DeSantis was wise to go there. And three months ago, DeSantis didn't need to jumpstart his campaign. He was in a better position. Now he needs to jumpstart it. And everybody knows that his fundamental problem is not connecting with other humans. So I don't know if it's remediable, Charlie. I'm guessing it's not, but he's got to get out there and practice. The one good piece of news he has was this poll showing that he does relatively well

in some of the swing states against Joe Biden while Trump gets annihilated. So in states like Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Ron DeSantis, or at least the generic Republican is competitive with Joe Biden, but Donald Trump is not. This is the entire rationale of the DeSantis campaign, right? I can win, he's going to lose. And you're going to see this again and again and again. And he has some data points about this. I mean, I think that ultimately what this comes down to, I was going to bounce this off of you, you know, that those numbers don't show how popular DeSantis is. They just show that if there's any other Republican who's nominated, the 2024 election will be a referendum on Joe Biden. If Republicans decide to nominate Donald

Trump, the 2024 election will be a referendum on Donald Trump. So you get to choose your adventure. Republicans, do you want to have a referendum on Joe Biden? Because then you got a shot. Or do you want it to be a referendum on Donald Trump, which means that you will spend every waking hour from today, May 15th, 2023 to November, whatever, 2024, defending, rationalizing, and enabling that guy. And if you want to know what that guy is, just spend five minutes reading his truth social posts and think, this is your life. This is the adventure you have chosen. Right. The people around Biden are pretty explicit about this. They do want to run against Trump. They know they can beat him. They know they have beaten him. Think back to the 2020 election. 81 million people came out to vote against Donald Trump.

They did not come out because they love Joe Biden. Some of them did. Some of them did. But that was the most amazing turnout in history. And Democrats can count on mobilizing those people again. Without Trump in the picture, I mean, all DeSantis has to do is not be Donald Trump. And a lot of those people will stay home. So there's a good case to be made for him or for anyone other than Trump.

That assumes that the Republican primary voters, donors, establishment will behave in a rational manner. And, you know, so far they haven't. Obviously, we have plenty of time to talk about all of that. I want to get to the border issue because I know you have some things you want to say about all of that. Can I just comment on Elon Musk and what a complete phony he is? And by the way, I don't think phony is a strong enough word, but in my reformed world, I'm just, you know, Elon Musk, who has claimed that he is this free speech champion, that he is this free speech purist. Over the weekend, the authoritarian government of Turkey basically squeezed him and said, Elon, we want you to start censoring tweets in Turkey, you know, in the run up to this, you know, very hard fought, very, very close presidential election. And Elon Musk rolled over. I mean, he just rolled over and let Erdogan, you know,

scratch his belly. And he's called on this by lots of people, including, you know, Matt Iglesias, who tweets out the Turkish government asked Twitter to censor its opponents right before an election, and Elon Musk complied, should generate some interesting Twitter files reporting. Yeah, exactly, because remember, that's when we were supposed to be really, really concerned that there was political bias going on. This guy just basically says to an authoritarian, yeah, we will absolutely shut down any of your democratic opponents. And Elon Musk fires back and says, did your brain fall out of your head, Iglesias? The choice is to have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want? Oh, really? So here's Elon Musk, champion of free speech, rationalizing how if an authoritarian

dictatorial government tells me to shut people up, I'm going to do it because I have to survive. Well, to say that Elon Musk is a hypocrite seems kind of mild. But what I also think that it exposes is the fact that this guy has no fundamental understanding of what free speech is about. I mean, his understanding is like an uneducated 12-year-old when you press him on, okay, so what does free speech mean for you? What are your standards of free speech? Thoughts? Well, free speech means to Elon Musk what it means to most people, which is I get to say what I want, and you don't, or you get to say as much as I feel like letting you say. Can I pause on that choice that he poses to Iglesias? Please. So Musk thinks that

it's a no brainer that if the choice is letting the Turks not see any of Twitter, having it shut down there, or just censoring the tweets that Erdogan wants to censor, that you should censor the tweets, right? So people can have access to the service. That's wrong. That's wrong because it deceives the people of Turkey into thinking they're getting access to all the information that's out there on Twitter when in fact it's being screened. If they don't have access to Twitter, then they know something is up. They know that it's been shut down, right? So I think it's much more insidious to censor the stuff the government wants censored. The difference, of course, for Musk is if the Turks don't have access to Twitter, he loses money. So he's losing audience.

So he's doing what's good for Elon Musk, not actually what's good for the Turks. Exactly. And he will do the same thing when the Chinese squeeze him. He'll do the same thing if the Russians squeeze him. He'll do the same thing if the Saudis squeeze him. Any place he has business interests, where he has a contract, he will do their bidding. And Mehdi Hassan had a great point about this that's almost too obvious. He said, you cannot crown yourself the grand poobah of free speech while also cravenly caving into the

demands of foreign autocracies, where you also conveniently happen to have other business interests. So I am sure that in his world, he's continuing to look in the mirror and say, yes, I am a champion of free speech, but just in terms of the weakness and the hypocrisy. But again, this was also predictable. I mean, there were people before he took control of Twitter who said, you know, he is deeply compromised in dealing with the Chinese government. Maybe we should raise, you know, some questions about all of that. And so I find it ironic that so many people on the right have decided that, you know, Elon Musk and Kanye and Trump are their champions when these guys have basically shown that they are, you know, Vladimir Putin's bitch or Erdogan's bitch or the Chinese communist government's bitch.

See, I told you I wasn't going to be my better self today. I just, I knew it was coming. I'm sorry. No, no, you've been very good, actually. I mean, we started off with Mother's Day, and I thought, as long as Charlie doesn't use mother as part of a longer word, we're in good shape here. I have not done that. All right. So one of the surprising stories of the week,

because I was actually figuring that you and I were going to really have at it because this was going to be the week that we had massive chaos at the border and that this was the gathering storm because you had the expiration of Title 14. You had these pictures over the last several weeks of thousands of migrants clustering at the border and that this was going to be an absolute disaster. It was going to be a disaster economically. It would be a disaster for the border communities and it would not be good for Biden. Now, I still think that this is a real problem. I keep coming back to David Frum's adage that if liberals will not enforce the border, then

fascists will. That if liberals prove they're unwilling to or unable or incapable of enforcing the border, then the American people will turn to people like Donald Trump and maybe even worse. But the undocumented migrant crossings have actually dropped unexpectedly. Give me some sense, Will, what's happening? Why did the gathering storm not explode on us today? This was pretty wild over the last couple of days because you could see in the responses of prominent Republicans how disappointed they are that there hasn't been a bigger crisis at the border. They've been predicting all along, Title 42 goes away, the Biden administration is not prepared, there's going to be this enormous flood of people.

And largely, it hasn't materialized. There's been an increase, but it hasn't been what was expected. So that's kind of a shame on the Republicans that they're openly disappointed about that, when we should just be rooting for any solution to the problem. On the Democratic side, there's this curious thing going on where they're boasting about how Biden has acted to control this and to stop the flow of people. And they list some of the policies that Biden has implemented. And the hilarious thing about these policies, I shouldn't say hilarious because it's a serious issue, but the ironic thing about this is these are Trump policies. So Chris Murphy was on one of the Sunday shows yesterday, Senator Chris Murphy, and he's making this case about all the things that the Biden administration is doing. Let's play Senator Chris Murphy, who is defending the

Biden administration against complaints that they have not done enough. The president has not been sitting on his hands like Republicans would allege. The president has been actively engaged in trying to manage this crisis. He has negotiated important agreements with Mexico so that Mexico takes more of these migrants. He has surged thousands of troops and asylum officials and border patrol to the border to handle this emergency. And he's put in place a really tough new rule that some, frankly, say goes beyond his authority to say to migrants, if you don't apply for asylum before you get to the United States, we're going to turn you right back around. OK, so, Will, is that the kind of thing you're talking about? Yeah, that's he just named three things. They're all Trump policies.

And the Democrats will never admit this. Look, you and I, Charlie, agree that Donald Trump is a terrible person. But you know what? He cared about the border. And because he cared about the border, sorry, I should say cared about border security, not about immigration, right? He implemented some policies that actually were well designed to limit the flow of people. Now, you can argue about the rest of immigration. The Republicans have done jackal about- I'm sort of getting past a sentence that begins, Trump cared about. Okay, so if you could just rework that for me, I get my head around this, okay? You know, look, it's really hard for those of us who understand how awful the Trump era has been and how awful Trump is to keep this in mind. But we

have to go where the evidence leads us, even if sometimes it leads us to a Trump policy was correct. Now, not all the Trump policies were correct, right? Trump policies on lots of issues were terrible. And on immigration in particular, family separation was a terrible policy. And even Republicans now largely agree that that's wrong, right? But this stuff, like making people apply for asylum in other countries first, Ali Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary, is on TV these days saying, if you show up here without having gone through the process, we're going to deport you. We're going to give you a five-year ban. We have more flights flying people out. There will be consequences for you. We need to disincentivize people.

This is all Trump era kind of talk. And there is a logic to it. You have to disincentivize people being trafficked all the way up the Western hemisphere and into the United States to jump the line, to abuse the asylum system when most of them don't qualify. Okay. So why did the number of undocumented migrants go down? Are you saying that these steps that the Biden administration has taken,

these kind of Trumpian steps, were successful in dissuading people from rushing the border? The administration has been trying to put out the message, the border is not open, and if you come here without going through the process, without using the app or without applying in another country, etc., when you get here, this will not go well for you, right? And we're going to deport you. I don't know to what extent that has factored into it, but it's really important to send that message. And this is a thing that a lot of people don't understand when Democrats and Republicans argue about whether the border is open.

When Republicans say the border is open, what they mean is people are in fact getting through. A lot of people are getting through. And that is true. When Mayorkas and the Democrats say the border is not open, what they're actually trying to say is our policy is we are trying to close the border. We will not just let you walk in. It's not okay. You should expect consequences when you get here. And that is a message designed to deter the migration of people who do not have a legitimate asylum claim. It's a deterrence message. And so there's a slight difference there. And it's possible, Charlie, that that deterrence message is part of why the numbers haven't gone up. Do you think the Biden administration

has done a sufficiently good job in dealing with this border crisis? Because this strikes me as a real point of vulnerability for them going into the next year's election. No, no, I don't think they've done enough, but we'll see. The numbers this past week have already been lower than was expected. If that continues, being able to say the numbers have gone down will be good for them. What kind of blowback has he been getting from the left wing of the party? And has that been a problem in being flexible in the way that you're describing of the party? And has that been a problem in being flexible in the way that you're describing on the border? What's going on internally? Is there a breaking point for him on all of this? I don't think so. First of all, he's been sued. The ACLU has sued

him, right? So there is a legal action that's manifesting what you're talking about, the objection that this is inhumane. Remember, the ACLU said the Trump policies were inhumane. Biden has actually modified them. They're not as severe as the Trump version. But yeah, he's already being attacked by civil libertarians. I think that, to go back to your earlier point, if the alternative is Trump, objections to the left about immigration or any other issue will not be enough to keep people home, I don't think. In the time we have left, you published something rather extraordinary for the Bulwark last week. It was about a 30,000-word examination of Lindsey Graham, which was really also a

meditation on the corruption of democracy, how it happens. I mean, you made the point that this was not a biography of Lindsey Graham, wasn't a profile of Lindsey Graham. This is how it happens. I mean, you made the point that this was not a biography of Lindsey Graham, wasn't a profile of Lindsey Graham. This is how it happens. You got a tremendous amount of attention for this. So talk to me a little bit about the kinds of reaction you got to the piece, which again, people can go back and read on the bulwark, or if you go to amazon.com, I think for $2.99, you can get it as a book. And by the way, I have ordered your book, Will. So what was the best reaction you got? And tell me what the worst reaction was that you got to that. I'd have to think about the best and the worst. Part of what I wanted to accomplish here was, and I'm very pleased that people picked up

this from it is, this is not supposed to be just a story about this one guy, right? Everybody's always interested in Lindsey Graham and what kind of dirt does Trump have on him? And why did he, you know, turn in his weird sort of complex with McCain and Trump. I focused on this guy because I could tell the story because there was all this material on him. But the transformation that he went through from 2015 to now is a transformation that a lot of Republicans went through, right? And it's this process of rationalization. So the reactions that I'm most happy about are people saying, now I understand. I understand how they rationalized embracing this guy and all the dangers he represented. And it's the gradual process. So it're excusing the Muslim ban. Then you're excusing him firing the FBI director. Then you're, including by fomenting violence and trying to intimidate Congress. You end up with Lindsey Graham literally justifying this and warning people, warning Congress, don't impeach Trump because

then there will be more violence by his supporters. And now you've reached this bizarre point you never thought you would get to where you're justifying political violence in the United States as a United States senator. And how did you get there? By this series of gradual steps. So what pleases me most is people who said, now I understand how you can end up there in a series of gradual steps. How much does the phenomenon of sunken costs play into this? That after you have made the first five compromises of your conscience and your principle, that you're in too deep to back out. Is that part of the rationale for not just Lindsey Graham, but for others? That, okay, I bought this, I bought this, I bought this, I bought this. Okay, I'm in. I can't back out now. Well, the sunk cost idea is a way of describing rationally how someone gets invested in something and then can't pull out. But there's another way to look at it, and it's the way you talked about earlier, Charlie, about character.

When you justify the bad character, when you excuse it, when you look away, when you defend it, it doesn't just change the world. It changes you. It changes you. You become morally weaker. You get in the habit of rationalizing. So that's a lot of what happened to Graham and these other folks. So we get to the point where we're seeing it every day, right? We see it in the Jean Carroll verdict. A jury says that the former president is liable for having committed a sexual assault, then defaming the woman he assaulted. And you have Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and all these other people out coming up with excuses for this. And this is the result of so many years of excusing everything Trump did. And you get the feeling,

Charlie, there's nothing that Trump could do at this point that would turn them away. And also Lindsey Graham himself has made it clear that he thinks it's important to stay relevant and in the room because, you know, if, and again, this is what they tell themselves, you know, if I am not in the room, then somebody else is going to do something. There are some things that Lindsey Graham seems to care about. He does seem to care about issues of foreign policy. I mean, to what extent is his belief that I have to keep doing all of this? Otherwise this guy will pull out of NATO or this guy will betray Ukraine, or this guy will do something else that would be so horrendous that all of my suckage is worth it. If I can stop this

terrible thing, because a lot of them have that I must be in the room because otherwise it's going to be Steve Bannon or it's going to be Mike Flynn. So, okay, yeah, I humiliate myself. I defend everything. But this is the price I have to pay to play that role. Right. That is a rationalization. It is a rationalization. If you read any account of the Trump books and other articles, lots of people who worked in the Trump administration, excuse their complicity, this way.

I had to be in the room, right? In the case of Lindsey Graham, it's really clear he was making a transaction between the authoritarianism in the United States and stuff going on overseas. Charlie, while he's defending Trump around the Ukraine impeachment, simultaneously, he is fighting tooth and nail to stop Trump from pulling troops out of Syria. So it's a transaction for Graham and it was, but Charlie, the thing that really kills me is at the end of this story or later in the story, Trump loses the 2020 election, right? And here's his opportunity. Here's Graham's opportunity to let go. And he knew it. Yeah. So he doesn't have to be in the room anymore. This guy's not going to be president. You can let go of him. But by this point for cost or for whatever psychological

reasons, Graham is so dug in that even though Trump won't be president anymore, he's insisting on defending everything Trump did from this point out and on clearing Trump's path within the Republican Party, purging Liz Cheney, trying to purge Mitch McConnell, because the party has to unite around Trump, even though it is no longer true that by being in the room, Graham is influencing foreign policy. This is where you need, I think, to turn to psychology rather than political science to understand what's going on here. Because, I mean, we all remember that moment where Lindsey Graham stands up and says, I'm done. It was a great ride. I'm out of

here. A few people yell at him in the airport and I'm back. So yeah. Yeah. He never actually left though. People misunderstand that speech. I would encourage people. Everyone remembers what Graham said on January 6th. You know that part about I'm out. Go watch Lindsey Graham's press conference the next day. Lindsey Graham stands in front of reporters and he says several things. He says, Trump will never accept that he lost the election. Right. He's asked if Trump will stop trying to foment violence and will leave. And Graham says, I don't know. I hope so. I mean, this is amazing. And he's going to bring Trump back to power. Today, Lindsey Graham is trying to bring back to power a man who he says will never accept that he lost and tried to use violence and might use violence again. That's amazing. that's a good thing because we cannot, I think, step away from the fact that what we are watching is genuinely amazing. It is shocking and amazing and it is not normal. And even though we've said

this over and over and over again, here we are. This is the world that we live in. And hopefully the people who listen to this podcast, listen to this podcast because they want us to tell them you are not the crazy ones, okay? Just because, you know, these people have taken crazy pills does not mean that you are the crazy ones, but man, it is disorienting and it's going to be more disorienting over the next year and a half and I wish I could have better news the day after Mother's Day. Yeah, well, I'm sorry there isn't, but you know what? 100% of us don't have to be sane. We just need 55% of us to be sane and to vote. I'm at the point now where I would settle for 55. You know, I'll settle for 53% sane. And I'm afraid I'm going to be disappointed.

Will, it is great talking with you. If you have not yet read Will's fantastic piece on Lindsey Graham, go look at it on The Bulwark or download the whole book on Amazon.com. Fantastic job, Will. Just a remarkable piece of work. Thank you, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow again from D.C.

And we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.