The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: What Are You Grooming These Kids to Be?

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

At the annual NRA meeting, Kristi Noem bragged about her 2-year-old granddaughter's rifle, while other young kids handled guns. Plus, the GOP is challenged on abortion from inside, DeSantis gets punchy, and Dianne Feinstein digs in. Will Saletan is back for Charlie and Will Monday Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It's hard to believe that it is another Monday. It is April 17th, 2023, which happens to be the day before Tax Day. I don't know, how did they decide Tax Day? They just kind of move it around, Will, and it's kind's kind of arbitrary now. Somebody throws a dart at a board or something. What, it was the 15th, but the 15th would have been a weekend. Maybe if it's a weekend, they shove it to, why do they shove it to Tuesday instead of Monday? I don't know. It's crazy. Exactly. So there was once a time when I would have had a whole monologue about tax day, but no, because there are just so many other things that you and I have to talk about, Will,

including another mass shooting. I don't even know whether we should set aside separate time for it because like any given Monday, we could say, okay, let's talk about this weekend's mass shooting. There's another mass shooting. Big news this morning, or actually broke late last night, the Murdoch media trial of the century delayed by one day. Lots of speculation, lots of rumors that it's been delayed by the judge because there are settlement negotiations going on. The Fox News has finally decided, hey, maybe this trial would be a freaking nightmare and we ought to try to settle it. Of course, it's not up to Fox whether or not it gets settled. It's up to Dominion whether they want to

accept all of that. So I don't know, Will, do you want to engage in any speculation about all of this? I mean, I think we'll know within 24, 48 hours whether something's happening. Yeah. So of course the media is in a total panic, Charlie, because nevermind the money going on between Fox and Dominion, all these media outfits have sent reporters in there and they're counting on weeks and weeks of this trial and getting to watch Tucker Carlson get interrogated and all this stuff. And so if the trial settles, if the case settles, that's going to be a huge disappointment to the press. But as you say, we'll know very shortly. And my guess is the media need not worry because

what I read is that the judge basically asked the parties to look at this and for 24 hours, which does not tell me that there's some great incentive going on that suddenly Fox has decided to come to Jesus and tell the truth and all that. Well, there's tremendous incentive for them to come to Jesus and settle it, but it's not clear that there's any formula that Dominion would accept. If you're Rupert Murdoch, at some point, you write the check. You do not want to sit and testify. You do not want to go through that trial. But I have to say, I share the bias that I would be somewhat disappointed if we didn't have the trial of the century.

I'm looking for the media version of the Scopes Monkey trial. As I said on Friday's podcast, this is going to be like the big trial because it's everything. It's all of the issues. It's the whole era, the age all boiled down to this one amazing trial. I mean, forget the Gwyneth Paltrow trial. This is going to be a big deal. Charlie, can I accuse you of optimism? This is a rare chance for me to accuse you of optimism. So it would be extremely optimistic on the part of Fox to even think that they could write a check of any magnitude and get out of this. Because what Dominion wants is not just the money, right?

They want Fox to be issuing statements for a month or whatever it is on air. Have Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and everybody else say, we were wrong. We said something that was not true. Gravel. Gravel, exactly. That's what they want. Well, we'll find out. We'll come back to this as I promised we will wrong. We said something that was not true. Gravel. Gravel. Exactly. That's what they want. Well, we'll find out. We'll come back to this as I promised we will do. In fact, I was, you know, spent some of the weekend thinking like, what is our coverage plan going to be?

How are we going to handle that? And I have some ideas, but maybe they'll have to put them on hold. Okay. So what else do we have? We actually have Ron DeSantis showing signs that he understands that he cannot just simply sit down there in Tallahassee and run out the clock, that his rather supine reaction to all of the attacks from Trump world are not actually working for him. So he is hitting back, whether or not it's on point or whether it will be effective. We'll have to talk about that a little bit later. But I want to start with a couple of other just interesting developments over the weekend. You have been working on a long in-depth dive on Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham really went off on Marjorie Taylor Greene over the weekend, in case anyone missed it.

Marjorie Taylor Greene rushed to the defense of this traitorous 21-year-old Air National Guard traitor, leaker, because he's a victim because he's a white male Christian. So she actually defended him. Lindsey Graham just wasn't having it. So let me just play a little soundbite. Here's Lindsey Graham on Marjorie Taylor Greene. What they're suggesting will destroy America's ability to defend itself. That it's okay to release classified information based on your political views, that the ends justify the means. It is not okay. If you're a member of the military intelligence community and you disagree with American policy and you think you're going to be okay when it

comes to leaking classified information, you're going to go to jail. And this is Lindsey responding directly to Marjorie Taylor Greene. There is no justification for this. And for any member of Congress to suggest it's OK to leak classified information because you agree with the cause is terribly irresponsible and puts America in serious danger. Hmm. OK, so, Will, this feels like the old Lindsey Graham. Yeah, I mean, this is what we used to call patriotism. This is the idea that you owed allegiance to the government that you elected and that we're all in this together and that you don't leak national security secrets that endanger our troops and our allies and our spies. And I have a kind of a weird take on this, Charlie. So the

Republican Party has been infected with, obviously, with election denialism, right? We didn't really lose the election. We have Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and others peddling that. But there's this other stage that we're now into, which is even after you sort of grudgingly acknowledge that you lost the election or you deny that you lost it, but you're going to, now we have this kind of government denialism, which is, all right, we have what Marjorie Taylor Greene calls the Biden regime, which having been illegitimately elected, we don't really owe any allegiance to. And in the Marjorie Taylor Greene denier world, the idea is that we Americans, she describes

this leaker, Jack Teixeira, as white male Christians. So that's the real America, white male Christians, right? And this government that didn't really get elected, we don't really owe any allegiance to that. That's not really America. So you can leak national security secrets. What Lindsey Graham is trying to do here, and I applaud him for it, is just to reestablish the idea that this is the government that got elected, even if you didn't vote for it, even if you disagree with some of its policies, even strongly, we still as Americans do not betray that government, that country and the people who work for it. So over the weekend, we also had some interesting comments from Congresswoman Nancy Mace. I'm still

trying to figure her out. She's been sucking up to Trump. Trump broke with her, right? He endorsed her primary opponent. Then she went up to New York to sort of grovel in front of Trump Tower. But clearly there's a certain amount of independence here. She's another one of these Republican members of Congress that has no time for Marjorie Taylor Greene. She was on Fox News talking about the Dobbs ruling and how it's been at this tectonic shift in politics. And she's responding to criticism of her from this pro-life group, the Susan B. Anthony group. Let's play Nancy Mace number one. I find it ironic that Susan B. Anthony would attack me. I'm a victim of rape. I advocate for women who've been raped and that

organization will no longer talk to my office about pro-life legislation because I'm talking about birth control. I mean, some of these groups have gotten so over the top and extreme. We need to find a middle ground on this issue. And I have a great pro-life voting record, but some of the stances we've taken, especially when it comes to rape and incest, protecting the life of the mother, it's so extreme. The middle, the independent voters, right of center, left of center, they cannot support us. Yeah, no kidding. So here's Nancy Mays talking about how the politics have changed since Dobbs. I represent a pro-choice district, and I saw the tide change after Roe was overturned. We went mildly pro-choice district, and I saw the tide change after Roe was overturned.

We went mildly pro-choice to being vast majority of voters being pro-choice after pro-V-Wade. It changed the entire electoral environment in 22. And I will tell you, based on Senator Graham's comments and some of the positions I've taken, we have not learned our lesson from the midterm election. Okay, Will, this is also in your wheelhouse. What's going on here? Well, Nancy Mace is absolutely right. I mean, she's right that there has been a post-Dobbs backlash.

And that was to be expected, right? Because it was very easy to talk about how abortion should be illegal when everyone knew that the Supreme Court was not going to let you do that. So when the Supreme Court said, you know what, we're going to stand back and let you guys do what you want, now it gets real. Now it's very real. And so for people on the pro-choice side who just didn't vote this issue, there's lots of evidence, Charlie, I wrote a piece about this, others did in the midterms that this issue hurt Republicans. And that's what Nancy Mace is trying to convey, a political message. And it's not just that she's

right on the political analysis. What she's doing there is she's standing up, she's representing the middle, she's talking about middle ground, and she's standing up to the people on the right. She's calling out the Susan B. Anthony list. She's calling out pro-life groups that will not accept moderation on issues like she talks there about birth control, about rape cases. And that tells me that there are some people, at least in the political firmament, who understand that there is some political juice now to speak for the middle, and that there's enough of a base there that you can stand up to the right, even in the Republican Party, and gain some traction. Well, we'll see whether she gains any traction. We will see this because, again, we're talking

about a conservative pro-life Republican who is basically saying, hey, these other pro-lifers, they're way too extreme and they're killing us here. So this is another reminder that, and I think this is true on the gun issue as well, that we're not just talking about, you know, appealing to the base. We're talking about a portion of the base. Maybe it's not even a plurality of the base. It's a faction of a faction. And the dynamic that we've seen so far, though, is on one issue after another, guns and abortion, the Republican Party has ceded basically the podium and all of the agenda to what may actually be a minority of its own base. I mean, there's a real split among Republicans here, which is worth

thinking about. So who is really calling the shots? What is the actual sentiment of the quote unquote Republican MAGA base? Right. And for someone like Nancy Mace, let's look at it from her point of view. She's a member of Congress. She represents a district. She has to get reelected every two years. And she's talking in that clip about her district, right? There's polling in her district. And one of the things she's saying there is, look, if I don't represent these people, my voters in my district, who are telling me that they don't support this right-wing extremism on abortion, I'm going to lose my job. So what we're seeing is an assertion of voter power, people showing up in the election, people showing up in polls saying we're not going

to stand for that. And so Nancy Mace, it's not even politically rational for her to do whatever Susan B. Anthony wants if that's going to cost her her seat. Now, again, Charlie, this depends on the existence of swing districts. So it is possible that if we have fewer and fewer districts where the voters in the middle can make a difference, that you will end up with a Congress full of Republicans who are representing the right wing of the Republican Party on abortion and many other issues. But hopefully, voters can reassert their power through elections and in the House, that's every two years. Okay, so we had a couple of interesting developments on this issue over, you know,

since you and I spoke last, you had Ron DeSantis signing a six-week ban into law, but he did it at like 11 o'clock at night, and he sort of tweeted it out, not saying what it was. And then he goes and he speaks at Liberty University, which is this big, you know, pro-life campus, does not mention the bill at all. Okay, that's number one. Number two, Tim Scott launches his presidential campaign and completely fumbles the issue of abortion. I mean, he stumbles over, he cannot figure out how to answer it. You would have thought that he would have given some consideration since it was completely predictable he would be asked about it. And so it occurred to me, I was thinking about this, and I know you've written about it as

well, but the pro-life movement slash GOP has had 50 years to prepare for this moment. They've had 50 years to prepare for, okay, so what if you actually catch the bus? What do you do? What do you say about rape and incest? How do you create a culture of life? Should it be state or should it be national? What about abortion pills? And what I think is increasingly apparent is that even though they had 50 freaking years to think about this, that they never really came up with an answer for all of this because it was never real until now. Do you disagree with that, Tague?

No, I think that's exactly right. I think we've been functioning in a politically artificial environment of Roe v. Wade. You could tell yourself, hey, we're going to appoint justices, we're going to overturn Roe, and then we're going to do all that. But until you're actually living in that world, you're not seeing it. So for example, we have all this data from years and years of elections under Roe that says pro-life voters care more about this issue than pro-choice voters. Why? Because Roe was there, right? All that data becomes kind of defunct the minute that Dobbs comes down and suddenly all these pro-choice voters who took this issue for granted can't anymore. So now you're going to see an elevation,

and we did in the midterms. We saw all the data show a dramatic elevation of interest on the pro-choice side on this issue. I'm going to vote this issue even though I didn't. Or people who didn't even show up at the polls showing up. There were marked turnout effects. Charlie, one of the differences we may be seeing in the youth turnout in Wisconsin and other states, we've seen significant increases in youth. It may be this issue that is a significant driver of that increase. And that increase, as you know, has been decisive in a bunch of elections that was not

expected. So we're in this unprecedented world where turnout is up, youth turnout is up, and it may be this issue that's doing it. Well, and also the gun issue seems to be having some traction. Of course, when you think about this generation, they have grown up in the post Columbine era. They have grown up in the world where school shootings are a thing where they have to go through these active shooter drills, which by the way, continues to blow my mind to think that we're doing that in schools. And we think this all makes sense. And of course we have more shootings over the weekend, more tragic shootings. And then you have the split screen of all the Republican candidates at the NRA convention. And I think it was Politico Playbook that said the 2024 gun debate is already settled because there was not a single Republican that went in front of the NRA and suggested an openness to any sort of compromise, any sort of middle ground, any sort of accommodation or recognition that we have a real serious problem. This is not really about guns, but

interesting that Mike Pence showed up at the convention, which was in his home state of Indiana, and he was booed. Donald Trump gets a standing ovation. Kind of tells you who the NRA folk are these days, that they would boo Mike Pence. And I don't know, Charlie, if you saw the Christine Nome speech. So the governor of South Dakota is there and she brags about how she has already provided, I believe, a rifle and a shotgun to her granddaughter. Her granddaughter is less than two years old. Okay. And this is an applause line because there can't be too many guns. And again, back to Arnold Schwarzenegger, it is in your nature to destroy yourself. And this goes to your question about

abortion, Charlie. The party will just keep going until it encounters a backlash. So it got some backlash on abortion in the midterms and Nancy Mace is saying, apparently they didn't get the message and they're going to keep going on guns. And I don't know exactly when the backlash becomes too great on guns, but we have in this country. So obviously there's mass shootings and we're almost, you and I are almost numb to it at this point. There are a couple of cases that I just wanted to mention about the guns though. In the last couple of days, there have been a couple of shootings, not mass shootings. So one was in, I think, New Mexico, the police go on a domestic violence call, they accidentally go to the wrong house, right? And they know it's the wrong house. And the homeowner is there and he's freaked out.

And he came out with a gun or he raised a gun. Anyway, he gets shot, right? They killed him. Yeah. In his own home. I don't know what he thought, but like he sees people out there. So he gets shot because he has a gun and they have guns and there's an accident. It's terrible, right? Another one was in Kansas City, a black teenager. The cops don't at this point think it was racially motivated, but he goes to pick up his siblings and he accidentally goes to the wrong address, right?

It's the right number on the wrong street. And the homeowner has a gun and shoots him. Okay. And so this is increasingly what we are seeing and we're going to see. Nevermind the crazy people with the guns. When everybody has a gun, there's just going to be more and more accidents where somebody's like, oh my God, you're trying to attack me. Who are you? And their guns start getting fired and somebody shoots back and you have dead people, which wouldn't be happening if we didn't have

all the guns. That brings up the Greg Abbott pardon case. You have the case of a guy just convicted of murder for shooting a BLM protester in Austin. He had a gun. The BLM protester apparently had an AK-47 across his chest, which he's legally able to do with open carry. So the guy shoots him because he thinks, well, the guy has a gun. He's going to do with open carry. So the guy shoots him because he thinks, well, the guy has a gun, he's going to do something about it. And so what we are exactly to your point here is that in Stand Your Ground, open carry, you have two guys come up, it's a matter of who shoots who first, and they will all claim justification. And in Greg Abbott's world, if you see somebody and they have a gun, which you've defended the right to have,

and you don't like that person and you shoot him because you think he's going to shoot you first, you could say, well, hey, it's injustice to charge that person with homicide when he was just simply standing his ground and exercising his second amendment right. I mean, this is almost beyond parity. Now, by the way, that case, since I wrote about it, the Greg Abbott pardon being even worse than it looks, now the court has released a lot of the social media posts from the shooter, a guy named Perry. He's talking about, you know, calling black people monkeys in the zoo and how he's going to go shoot some protesters. And this is the case that Greg Abbott has chosen to take his stand in favor of gun rights. I mean, you want to get an idea of how dystopian this is going to be. Just pay attention to that story.

Yeah. Although that's more of like, it's not just that Abbott is sort of taking a stand for guns. He's taking a stand against BLM. But white guys can shoot black guys. That's going to be okay. You know? Yeah, that's exactly, exactly.

But let me come back to what you said about open carry. That's a really good point. So I was talking about a couple of cases that happened at homes, right, where somebody's literally in their home with a gun and there's tragedy results. You're pointing out that the open carry stuff takes this outside the home. So now we have this mobile crisis of people being armed. And because you have a gun, I'm allowed to shoot at you. You know, you and I have talked about this, but you can argue the second amendment protects the right of individuals to carry guns. You can make that legal argument if you want, but just to be clear, this is the world that we increasingly live in where everybody can have a gun. Everybody does have a gun because you have a gun. I can shoot at you and vice versa. And you know, we're going to have to decide at what point the violence that results from just everybody having a gun, setting aside bad intentions, just everybody having a gun becomes so great that we decide we need to change the gun laws in this country. Well, that assumes that they'll become a moment of rationality. So you mentioned, you know,

Kristi Noem talking about her, you know, one or two year old granddaughter already having a shotgun and a rifle. I put that in my Morning Shots newsletter under cheap shots right at the bottom of that story. But also, these pictures, I don't know whether you saw them coming out of the NRA convention posted by Reuters, of these very small children handling the guns, little girls holding the pistols. And in one picture, you have this little boy, you know, with glasses. He couldn't be more than seven years old. He's got a baseball cap turned around the back way and he's holding a handgun and he's aiming it straight at the photographer. And you go, what are you people thinking? You know, photos of children handling guns at the

NRA annual meeting. It is kind of breathtaking. You juxtapose with the fact that children are being killed by these guns, but it's a chasm in this country right now on this issue. I look at that picture, I'm thinking, this is madness. And you want to talk about groomers. What are you grooming these kids to be? That is such a good point. The gun is way more dangerous than anything else that you're introducing the child to. There is not an epidemic of grooming going on. There is an epidemic of violence and deaths of children. And Charlie, what's really sad is you're reminding me of a story that I once wrote.

It was in Florida, and it was exactly what you're talking about, but it was kids with guns. Many, many accidents of kids. They're playing with guns because that's what kids do. They play with toy guns, except these are real guns. And the kids were dying and getting killed. Charlie, this was like 25 years ago. So that's what kids do. They play with toy guns, except these are real guns. And the kids were dying and getting killed. Charlie, this was like 25 years ago.

So that's what depresses me is that this has been going on for a really long time and still we haven't done anything. This is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark Podcast. Thanks so much for listening to this show where every day we try to help you make sense of the political world we live in and remind you that you are not the crazy one.

If you enjoy this podcast, I'm sure you're going to find my free Morning Shots newsletter, sense of the political world we live in and remind you that you are not the crazy one. If you enjoy this podcast, I'm sure you're going to find my free Morning Shots newsletter, a great companion for understanding what is happening to us. And every morning as I prepare for this show, I share with my readers what's trending and what to pay attention to, including my latest writing and essays on the events of the day. To sign up for my free Morning Shots newsletter, go to thebullwork.com slash morningshots. That's thebullwork.com slash morningshots. And I look forward to seeing you in your inbox soon. I want to get to what's going on with Ron DeSerson, Donald Trump, including about guns in just a moment. But just a brief comment on this growing controversy about Dianne Feinstein, a California senator who clearly is going through some things.

She's 87 years old. There have been lots of I'm not trying to make fun of her here. I mean, it's just she's gone now from the Senate has been gone, has missed, you know, dozens and dozens of votes. She's been hospitalized with shingles. But even before that, there was a lot of speculation that she was not all there. And more and more Democrats sort of quietly were pushing her to retire. Now they're being less quiet about it. You have Congressman Ro Khanna saying she's got to resign. She hasn't been showing up. She has no intention. We don't know if she's ever going to show up. She has no return date. And he says it's one thing to

take medical leave and come back. It's another thing when you're just not doing the job. And the reality here, there's the sense, well, you need to have deference to these senators who've served so long. And he said, well, how about deference to the American people? And this is having real world consequences because as long as she's gone, it may be impossible for Joe Biden and the Democrats to get judges confirmed. I mean, so this actually has real world consequences. And you could just see from the Sunday shows how many of the Democrats are dealing with this with kid gloves. You and I don't have to have the kid gloves, but it feels like this sort of raw narcissism of power, or Jonathan Chay calls it an act of almost sociopathic

indifference to the people she's supposed to be serving. What do you think about this? Yeah, I mostly agree with that. One of the things that strikes me about this, Charlie, is there is so much attention on the right to the fake dementia of Joe Biden, who has some trouble talking, but does not have any, there's no evidence that he has trouble thinking. And of course, the right focuses on that because they want to hurt Biden. They're seeking political advantage. In the case of Dianne Feinstein, we have real dementia. I mean, there's lots of firsthand evidence of her just not being able to think clearly, remember things, just to function as a representative of the people and to vote intelligently. And there's not so much focus on the right about this because it's not

to their advantage. It's to the advantage of the right for her to be incapacitated and stay in her job and not provide the votes Democrats need on the Judiciary Committee. So it hasn't been such an issue. But Ro Khanna's basic point is, instead of focusing on what we owe this esteemed senator, we should focus, as you put it, Charlie, on what we owe the people. She's elected to represent the people. If she's not voting, she's not doing the job. And Charlie, I think what this speaks to is that these senators have very large staffs. Yeah. And they have committee staff who depend on them.

And the minute that Dianne Feinstein is out of that job and somebody else is in it, all those staffers lose their power. They're still exercising power, not in votes, but in committee and in legislation. But unfortunately, she really just can't do the job anymore. She's not running for reelection. So you already have a primary shaping up there with some pretty high profile candidates. But if she resigns or leaves in some other way, the governor has to appoint somebody. And Gavin Newsom has pledged that he would name a black woman. Right. I mean, do I have that correct? Right. So that's going to be a real dilemma for him. So they're trying to finesse this, or at least Dianne Feinstein is trying to finesse this,

or whoever is calling the shots here, saying, okay, I will step down from the Judiciary Committee. I will resign so that they can move these judicial appointments ahead. The problem is, weirdly enough in the Senate, you need unanimous consent to change somebody's committee assignment. And the Republicans have already signaled, you know what, we're not doing it. We're not going to let her off the hook. So we're going to object to this. So balls back in her court, maybe she thought she was going to be able to finesse it by just getting off the committee. Republicans are going to go, no, we're going to go full asshole on this. We're not going to let you get off the committee and put somebody in there. So we'll find out what she does. The only way to solve this is for her to resign from the Senate, apparently. Yeah.

And I got to say, the Republicans, I mean, they don't owe it to cooperate here. And given that it's kind of fake, pretending that she can step down from the committee, but still do her job, they got a point. You know, she should just like fess up and say, I can't do this job anymore and step down. Okay. So my newsletter today, Morning Shots, is GOP Shots Fired Sort Of. And the sort of being that we finally have, and I'm willing to make some concessions and stipulations right off the top of the bat, that the criticisms of Trump still fall short because they're skirting the main

issue, which is that the man is fundamentally unfit to hold any position of public honor or trust ever again. And I'm also willing to concede that given Trump's lead in the polls and the proclivities of the MAGA base, that these attacks on him are unlikely to be effective. I mean, all granted, but still, I thought it was interesting that Ron DeSantis has finally realized he needs to punch back. Okay. So for people who've missed it, Trump's political action committee fired pretty harsh attack on DeSantis last week, the putting fingers attack where, you know, Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don't belong. DeSantis has dirty fingers all over senior entitlement, like cutting Medicare, slashing Social Security, even raising our retirement age. Tell Ron DeSantis to keep his putting fingers off our money.

It's actually kind of funny. Also kind of weird for a Republican candidate to be running this ad because the Democrats can just use this, you know, just cut and paste this. So Axios broke the story last night. DeSantis' super PAC is launching its own ad. What happened to Donald Trump? I think they have this on Fox News. This is a group called Never Back Down, pro-DeSantis group, launches an ad, fight Democrats, not Republicans. And they ran this on Fox News Sunday. Donald Trump is being attacked by a Democrat prosecutor in New York. So why is he spending millions attacking the Republican governor of Florida? Trump's stealing pages from

the Biden-Pelosi playbook. Repeating lies about Social Security. Here's the truth from Governor Ron DeSantis. We're not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans. What did Trump say? Entitlements ever be on your plate? At some point they will be. We will take a look at that. Trump should fight Democrats, not lie about Governor DeSantis.

What happened to Donald Trump? Never back down. He's responsible for the content of this. Okay, so shots fired. I mean, that's a pushback. And by the way, that was the second shot at Trump from this pro-DeSantis super PAC. The other one, which was, I think it was an online buy, and it was geo-targeted to Indianapolis for the NRA convention.

And it goes under the title, Gun Grabbing Trump. Let me just play the NRA convention. And it goes under the title gun grabbing Trump. Let me just play the beginning of this. I don't have the whole thing because there's a scene where he's Donald Trump is in a room with Dianne Feinstein saying, you have these great ideas. Let's put your idea to ban these guns, you know, in legislation. But the headline of this is Trump, the gun grabber doesn't deserve a second chance. This is from the DeSantis folks. Play at the beginning of this. Trump promised NRA members he'd have their back.

But when Second Amendment rights came under attack, Trump abandoned us and stood with liberal Democrats. You guys, half of you are so afraid of the NRA. We have to fight them every once in a while. That's okay. Some of you people are petrified of the NRA. You can't be petrified. They have great power over you people. They have less power over me.

I don't need it. What do I need? That is why I have called for red flag laws. Or might take the firearms first and then go to court. I like taking the guns early. Take the guns first. Go through the process. Okay, well, I'd forgotten about some of those sound bites. So I don't know. We've been asking when are other Republicans like Ron DeSantis going to punch back? Will they punch back? Look, this may not work. This may not be sufficient. But this seems like, I mean, a recognition that this thing is on. What do you think? So I keep waiting for one of these Republican PACs to call itself the 11th Commandment PAC, because there was famously the Reagan's 11th Commandment. You're not supposed to attack your fellow Republican, but apparently your PAC can.

So we have the Trump PAC attacking DeSantis. I mean, actually, Trump's right out there doing it. But DeSantis notably won't do this in his own voice. DeSantis could get a lot more traction if he went on TV and said, you know, I'm tired of Donald Trump coming after me. And he said, make the same points. We're supposed to be standing against the Democrats. It's fratricide. He's going to, but DeSantis won't do that. So we have this weird spectacle of my pack is doing this ad. You have all the little, little code words, Biden, the Biden Pelosi playbook. Can I just say on the gun ad, that attack on Trump, that's the first thing in I don't know how long, Charlie, that's made me like Donald Trump.

I mean, that ad. The attacks on Trump in that ad, that's not for grabbing guns. That's Trump saying he kind of likes red flag laws. He's for some background checks. He's against bump stocks. I mean, this is extremely basic stuff, right? This is just extremely marginal. So the message is that Trump is too reasonable on guns, even being a supporter of the second amendment. So, but to the Fox audience,

I guess that's a winner. We'll find out whether it is, but it was also a reminder watching that, that Donald Trump is a man of actual, no deep values and principles. He hasn't thought about this. All of his positions are transactional. And this was one of the rare lapses, one of the moments where he clearly was feeling that I don't need to go along with the most extreme part of my base. But 99% of the time, that's what he does. And it's the same thing on abortion, where here's a guy who was pro-choice his whole life, probably paid for abortions, and now suddenly becomes the pro-life hero. Whatever he actually personally thinks is kind of irrelevant here. Same thing on guns.

You know, New York guy. He's not one of your redneck Markinsaw type thing, and yet he's willing to go along with them. So if anything, it's the, this guy is a shapeshifter and you have to keep him on a short leash. Trump's going to turn around and basically say, it doesn't matter what I actually say, look at what I do and I'm going to suck up to you. So, I mean, it is interesting on the abortion issue where, you know, it sounds like he is trying to distance himself from the extreme pro-lifers that he personally thinks that this issue hurt Republicans. But if he actually continues to break with the hardline pro-life segment, he'll do something that he really hasn't done before, which is to allow daylight between

himself and those folks. What do you think? This transactional stuff, you've really got me thinking with this because this is, you know, you and I, we ridicule Trump for being transactional and having no values, but there are places where this is why Democrats thought when Trump got elected president that they could work with him because he was transactional. You can hear him in those clips talking about, you know, I'm for gun rights, but come on, you know, I'm here and there. I get, you got to stand up for the NRA now and then naming some sort of practical restrictions that he could support. There are places where being transactional is helpful as a politician.

This may be one of them. On the abortion stuff, it's really kind of weird to me that DeSantis would think that he could sort of run to the right of Trump, that he's going to be the reliable pro-life guy and you can't trust Donald Trump. I mean, maybe that helps him in the primary and maybe that's the whole ball game, but I just think that is so lethal in a general election. I mean, can I pause on that for just a moment? I don't want to pull us off the topic of the ads completely, but Ron DeSantis has set up this very nice shtick that he had for himself in a general election and that he's the guy who, when the

Democrats were locking down your state, right? And, you know, vax mandates, mask mandates, shutting down your schools, he kept Florida open. And that message has a lot of appeal to people because COVID has faded. We're not thinking about it so much anymore. They resent that their kids were held back. And he's kind of pissing that all away. Because if DeSantis is the guy who's going to ban abortion, at six weeks, you are basically making abortion functionally illegal because so many women don't even know they're pregnant until that point. That just makes it so easy for Joe Biden to say, whatever disagreement you may have with Democrats on other issues, we're not going to take away your basic rights over your body. And there are a whole lot of women

who will vote on that issue. This is kind of the dilemma is how do you win a Republican primary without making yourself unelectable? On the other hand, you know, for people who think that this is a magic bullet, I just would caution people to understand how closely divided this country is, you know, the structural imbalance, and also the fact that Joe Biden has some real problems out there. He's got some real polling problems. It might not matter if it's Donald Trump again. Speaking of Donald Trump, I keep coming back to this, and I apologize in advance, but did you see his true social bleat at 2.39 a.m. today? Sorry, I was asleep.

Yeah, well, I only saw it after I woke up and wanted to figure out what was going on with the Fox News Dominion lawsuit. So he put out, in all caps, can I do a reading of it? Oh, I would love it. This is the former president of the United States' advice to Fox News. Okay. The day of the trial was supposed to begin. So at 2.39 a.m., so he wakes up in the middle of the United States' advice to Fox News. Okay. The day of the trial was supposed to begin. So at 2.39 AM. So he wakes up in the middle of the night and he types this out all

in caps. If Fox would finally admit that there was large-scale cheating and irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, which would be a good thing for them and for America, the case against them, which should not have existed at all, would be greatly weakened. Back up those patriots at Fox instead of throwing them under the bus. And they are right, exclamation point. There is so, there's three O's, so much proof like mass ballot stuffing caught on government cameras, FBI colluding with Twitter and Facebook, state legislatures not used, et cetera. So his advice to Fox is you should double down on the lies. If you just said, yeah, absolutely.

Darn right. We believe all of that stuff that the court, by the way, has already found as a matter of law to be completely false. So here he is in the middle of the night, you know, bleeding out this stuff all in caps. And I just look at this going, what rational human being would look at this going what rational human being would look at this and go yeah that's the man we want to put back in the oval office yeah let's put

him back in charge of the department of justice the fbi the cia and give him the nuclear codes that you know what could go wrong there charlie you made the main point here, which is the judge has already ruled in this case that Fox lied, that it knew that this was all bullshit about the election fraud. I mean, not that any election fraud, but that there was enough election fraud to overturn any of these states, right? It's already been factually and legally examined. So Trump is going out against all of this. And Charlie, this is the kind of thing that makes me think, again, is Trump lying or is he deluded? This to me feels like part of the delusion that in the face of all of that, he's telling them to defy all of the evidence that's been presented in the court ruling and to stand for the myth of the stolen election. But as you point out, this goes to the

question of, can you believe, can you believe that this party is about to re-nominate this guy who not only is completely unfit, but is choosing to focus on issues and disputes that are factually bullshit, right? And everyone knows it and it's just not rational. And yet that's what they seem on the cusp of doing. Speaking of not rational, I tweeted about this over the weekend. This is a story out of Louisiana, Tim Miller's new home state. Republican state officials in Louisiana are asking lawmakers to ban the study of racism at universities, saying that it's one of those divisive, inglorious aspects of U.S. history. You know, and in many ways, this is the logical culmination of the demagoguery of people like

Christopher Ruffo, who said, I want people to pick up a newspaper, and if they see anything that makes them uncomfortable about race, that they immediately blame it on CRT, right? That they immediately go to all this. So now you actually have these Republican officials wanting to ban teaching of racism in state universities. I don't know how they're going to cover reconstruction. I'd be interested to know how they cover the Civil War, whether or not it will be illegal to talk about Jim Crow. Kind of interesting to know how they'll cover the Civil Rights Movement, any of those things, if you're not allowed to talk about all Crow. Kind of interesting to know how they'll cover the civil rights movement, any of those things, if you're not allowed to talk about all of that.

But we're not talking about deep thinkers here, are we? But here we are. Yeah. GOP resolution claimed the inglorious aspects of American history were just too divisive and make us uncomfortable. So I kind of want to reserve judgment on this particular case because I haven't read about it.

And I'm always wary that sometimes we say they're trying to ban the teaching of history when in fact it's some theory about history. But let me just back up and agree with the larger point, which is, I'm sorry to say this, but in the Republican Party, for as long as I can remember, there has always been a version of white resentment. And sometimes it was more overt before, it's gotten subtler, it's gotten cleverer, craftier. So now we have the attack on so-called critical race theory. And the problem is that because it's always about white resentment, there's this animus under it, there's this resentment under it. And it's creepy. And they're going to keep going with this stuff. They're going to keep pushing on critical race theory and restricting this and that curriculum until they get to the point where if it's not this case, it'll be the next one

where they're outright banning the teaching of history. And maybe it is this case. I just haven't read enough about it, but it will happen or it has happened. I think it's inevitable. Yeah. And it's a form of madness and you just have to pull back and recognize that you're in it. And I keep waiting, Charlie, for the backlash to happen. It's not going to be enough if it's black and brown people.

It's going to have to be enough white people who get pissed off about it. And I have not yet seen evidence that enough white people care about this to make it a voting issue against the right. Okay. So speaking of backlashes, I drew you into some controversy last night. I apologize for that. I tweeted about this story of the hundreds of teenagers flooding into downtown Chicago, smashing car windows, just, you know, full scale kind of, you know, disorder. The newly elected progressive mayor said, you know, of course, you know, we condemn any kinds of violence, but then he went on. However, it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities. And I thought, wow, you know, with all these images of these teenagers running amok and terrorizing your city, that you have to do that. But let's talk about the root causes of what are these young people

trying to tell us? So I did a WTF and I thought you made a great point. And I know you got ratioed on it. If Democrats won't offer voters a firm response to mayhem in the streets, there's another party that will. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. It's like, when you have your downtown area being terrorized, maybe save the sociology 101 lecture for tomorrow? First of all, these cases always piss me off because for every one of those kids that was running around, you know, breaking windows, there's some, a guy got beaten in his car. I don't know how many people got physically assaulted in this, but it's a total rampage for every one of these, you know, disadvantaged youth.

You can talk all you want. There's another disadvantaged youth, you can talk all you want, there's another disadvantaged youth. There are 10, there are 100 other disadvantaged youths who are not going out and committing violence. So don't tell me that this is just a natural byproduct. That's insulting. People make immoral criminal decisions and they should be treated accordingly. And this is not some right-wing idea. This is basic human intuition. We have rules in society. You don't go around attacking people and their property. And it's perfectly legitimate to say, we want these people locked up. We want them at least to face enough

punishment that they stop doing it because this has happened how many times before, Charlie, in Chicago? I don't know. There was at least one prior episode that was like this, right? And if the mayor sends a message, and remember, in this Democratic primary, this mayoral election in Chicago, this was the progressive guy who won the election, right? So he's talking like a progressive. And I had people saying on Twitter, you know, they just had the election, so there won't be another election for a while. There are recalls, people, and there's another election that will come down the pike. And if the Democratic Party will not represent the natural response of voters to want some law and order in their community, the Republican Party will win. Right-wing candidates

will win. And you will not like their solutions. They will not have midnight basketball. They will only have incarceration. This is Chicago mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, who said, you know, the city needs a comprehensive approach to improve public safety. And so his first sentence was, in no way do I condone the destructive activity you saw in the loop and lakefront this weekend. But then he went on to say, it is unacceptable, has no place in the city. However, it is not constructive to demonize the youth, which got all the attention. Interestingly enough, the outgoing Chicago mayor, Lori Lightfoot, who was overwhelmingly defeated for re-election in large part because of the crime issue, she issued a statement making the point that parents

need to instill proper values in their children. She said, parents and guardians must know where their children are and be responsible for their actions. Instilling the important values of respect for people and property must begin at home, which is kind of interesting that that came from Lori Lightfoot, who has apparently decided that they need to talk about those things when you're talking about this, as opposed to, can we have another seminar on root causes now? Yeah, I mean, this is kind of a weird segue, but in the case of Donald Trump's indictments, here are all these liberals, here are all these progressives saying, let's stand for law and order. A guy broke the law, let's have him punished. I agree, right?

It's a white collar crime, punish white collar crime. What about blue collar crime? That too should be punished, right? We don't want a double standard on the right where we punish blue collar crime and not white collar crime, but we also don't want a double standard on the right where we punish blue collar crime and not white collar crime. But we also don't want a double standard on the left where, you know, somebody like Donald Trump who commits financial crimes should face the music, should go to jail if that's the appropriate penalty. But people who break into cars and attack other people physically should not.

All right. Anything you're particularly keeping your eye on this week? I must admit that I was planning on strapping in for the Fox Dominion trial, which may still take place. What are you watching this week? I'm watching the Supreme Court and the ruling they're going to issue on the abortion pill. They're going to just have to decide how much of the lower courts to stay. Yeah, that'll be huge. And I'm really interested in this to see what kind of Supreme Court we have, because we know

at the district court level, the judge who issued this initial ruling against the abortion pill is a kind of a right-wing fanatic, went out of his way to try to justify overturning 20 years of FDA rulings. Then this went to an appeals court and then the Supreme Court, they're going to have to decide whether they are conservatives or radicals, right? Yeah. The radical approach would be, you know what? We don't like abortion. We already made that clear. So this ruling makes it harder to get an abortion. So we're going to support it. I don't think they're going to do that, Charlie. My prediction is this is a conservative Supreme Court and they won't like the idea of overturning two decades of FDA policy. They won't like the idea of judges

interfering in scientific decisions and that they will strike down all of the lower court ruling. We will see. It was certainly a strange moment when it was Justice Alito who put a hold on the lower court rulings and allowing the abortion pill to be sold for a few more days. But I think you've stated it correctly. There is a difference between being an actually conservative court and a radical court. This is a court, though, that if it is conservative, it may be conservative only like on a 5-4 vote. But you're right, this will be the most consequential ruling on this issue since Dobbs itself. And it will have massive implications for constitutional law, but also

for the regulatory framework, which is freaking people out about what this means about the regulation of drugs. And we'll obviously have tremendous political fallout as well. It's very interesting the way that Republicans have distanced themselves from this ruling. They have not been enthusiastic, rushing out to say, yeah, this is what we promised. This is what we're going to do. We're going to make sure that you can't take this pill or order this pill in the privacy of your own home. It is interesting that with all the radicalism that we've seen at the state and local level, that this seems to be too much for a lot of conservative Republicans. That's kind of a tell, isn't it?

Yeah, you know, this is of a piece with the whole Ron DeSantis using the government to mess with Disney and other companies. There is a species of conservatism that is, you know, the government should not be getting involved in a lot of these private decisions. And the pharma industry has been working with FDA for decades about here's how we get our drugs approved. Freaking out. And so there's this larger conservative point that if you decide just because you don't like abortion that you're going to uphold this lower court ruling and, you know, suddenly all of the FDA drug approvals are in question. Now you're attacking industry. You're attacking the whole free market system.

I mean, it's regulated, but it's based on sort of an orderly relationship between these companies and the government. So the Republican Party would be attacking its donor base. It would be attacking all the business groups that support it in the name of fighting abortion. And I don't think they're up for that. Yeah. Speaking of which, I haven't paid too much attention to the whole, you know, woke beer controversy, because I think it's just too stupid. And I feel like it gets stupider the

more I watch the various videos of the people who are upset with Anheuser-Busch, you know, Bud Light, because they had a, you know, a trans influence or whatever. But what was interesting is that the Republican Party itself, the Republican establishment, was tiptoeing toward this Bud Light boycott, but they've deleted all of this. It's like somebody picked up the phone and go, hey, you know what? You really don't want to be pushing this particular boycott. And they backed off, which has created a real rift on the right. People saying, establishment Republican isn't going along with our obsession about woke beer. It shows that they're a bunch of cucks and rhinos and things like that. But this seems to be one of those, again, those decisions

about, you understand these are big corporate donors to us and we probably shouldn't be pissing in our own beer type thing. Pissing in the beer. What a metaphor. Perfect. Yeah, that's right. If you're going to be drinking beer, do not be pissing in the beer. It's just not a good idea. All right, Will, good talking with you. We will do this again next Monday. All right, Charlie, thanks. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.