The Opinions - The Right Is Rethinking MAGA. The Left Is Rethinking ‘Woke.’

Episode Date: August 22, 2026

What will the Republican Party become after President Trump? And how can the Democrats rehabilitate their toxic brand? On this episode of “The Opinions,” the Opinion political writer Michelle Cottle teams up with the columnists David French and Jamelle Bouie to dissect party strategy ahead of — and beyond — the midterm elections. Plus, Jamelle divulges the book that fills him with dread. Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Alison Bruzek. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Video editing by Kristen Williamson. The postproduction manager is Mike Puretz. Original music by Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Ali Baluch. The director of Opinion Video is Jonah M. Kessel. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Aaron Retica. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you're watching this, you're listening to it. Your politics sick O2, hate to tell you. I am Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times opinion. This week, I'm here with my co-conspirators, David, French, and Jamel Bowie. And we are all with the rest of America coming up on the end of the midterm primary season in just a few weeks. And what a ride it has been. And what we've seen so far is that both parties are wrestling with who.

represents their future. So before we figure out who inherits the conservative mantle from Donald Trump, the GOP is going to have to decide what conservatism is going forward, while the dims need to decide who they are and what they stand for. So I want to dive in first because they are in charge with the Republican Party. David, there's going to be a new president-elect in 2028. J.D. Vance really wants to be that guy, and he is considered a top contender. So start us off by talking about what the vice president's vision would be for a post-Trump GOP, but then also how that compares to some of the other top contenders. I want to get a sense of the competing factions we're looking at. Yeah. So before we can talk about the factions, we kind of got to set the stage about sort of

what is the Republican Party now. And a lot of people, so, for example, in the J.D. Vance faction, want to say that the Republican Party has just changed fundamentally, ideologically, almost down to its DNA level, to a sort of much more authoritarian statist project that J.D. Vance represents. And then a lot of other people, such as, say, a Brian Kemp out of Georgia would say, no, the GOP is still a party and has millions and millions and millions of voters who are still sort of old-school normy Republicans. They are more interested in limited government. They're more interested in the classic three legs of the Reagan's stool, limited government, strong national defense with international alliances, social conservatism, and that the status authoritarianism of J.D. Vance, that's not

who we really are. And the problem is what Trump did is not really replace one GOP ideology with another. It's like he took the GOP ideology that existed around 2015, nuked it from orbit, and sort of then turned the glowing ruins into nothing but his impulses and desires. So conservatism over time became, well, whatever Donald Trump wants to do. So what that's done is it's left kind of punted the argument over the identity of the GOP until that time in which Donald Trump's desires will not be front and center. And J.D. Vance really is the only one stepping forward with a truly coherent ideological project. And if you've been tracking him over the years, he very much,

has a friend-inemy distinction about how politics are done. My friends are to be rewarded. My enemies are to be punished. And it's a very statist. It's very authoritarian. And it's very much rejects traditional sort of GOP push towards more economic freedom. And what he essentially says is economic freedom is personified by like a Milton Friedman. And I wrote about this for my newsletter. That is for a more Christian country. That is for a country where the citizens are sort of more Christian, more self-disciplined, like they were in, Don't Laugh Guys, the 1980s. The 1980s. So Friedmanism might have worked. Now, Jamel, you're a little younger than us, but Michelle, I know you remember the 1980s, that festival of Christianity.

That's what I think of it as, a time of... Nothing but revival, sweeping the land, you know, wild stuff. But reality, but reality. there is an actual philosophical argument here. And the actual philosophical argument is in essence, you know, for lack of a better terms, is we had freedom. There was an argument when freedom might have made sense when we had strong institutional Christian barriers to libertine behavior. But now we're kind of going to hell. And so we need a firmer hand. There has to be a firmer economic hand. And he's volunteering to be that economic hand? He has volunteered his tribute, Michelle, he was volunteered his tribute. And that firm economic hand is a very powerful cultural

component to it. It's sort of designed to order and shape an economy with far less emphasis on, for example, both parents working. And I think if anyone is sort of stepping forward early on to take that on, it would be a Brian Kemp of Georgia, who has a little bit of that kind of Trumpian swagger to him in some ways, but he's ideologically a pre-Trump conservative and has faith, and it has is a unicorn in the Republican Party. He has confronted Donald Trump and survived. He confronted Trump after the 2020 election. He faced a primary after the 2020 election where he upheld the Georgia election results. He won convincingly. So he's one of the few. He's one of the few that actually has an independent voice. He's already starting to raise it to

object to some of this move towards more stateism, more authoritarianism. And that's going to be the lay of the land. You're going to see an attempted comeback by people who are more in my line of the ideological conservative world. That's never all the way coming back. But the battle lines are drawn. And a lot is going to depend on how popular Trump is after the midterms. Who does he try to annoy this is his successor? But I think we can see where this is headed. I think that's a pretty good lay of the land by David. I'll just comment real quick on Vance. Vance presents himself as someone who is a deep thinker and has this coherent vision of what he wants the American nation to be. And David's right, it is status and authoritarian. It seems to have explicit contempt for longstanding and traditional American values. See how he talks about the Declaration of Independence. See how he talks about notions of creedal nationalism. But the point I want to make, and our colleague Tom Edsel made this several weeks ago, is that not 10 years ago, not 10 years ago, J.D. Vance was a Trump critic, right? Like, not five years ago,

J.D. Vance was a conservative Republican who was like Trump curious, but like not entirely on board, right? This is a guy who will transform and contort himself into whatever form he thinks is necessary to advance himself politically. I think, I think the record shows that the only thing J.D. Vance actually believes in is what can get J.D. Vance closer to the presidency. And so I would just say that whatever form he takes in 2028 is going to be, like, highly responsive to the particulars of what's going on in the Republican Party in 2028. And this, to me, is actually his weakness.

One of the interesting things about Vance as a figure in public opinion is that the more people get to know him, the more they don't like him very much. You know, obviously, obviously, I don't like the guy. But if I put on my objective, my objective little FDR hat and talk about it and think about it, what I think is that that sense that this is someone who can't even feign belief in anything than his own will to power, it turns people off. People notice it. People know when someone is just, just as saying whatever they need to say to you to win.

And in a heavily favorable partisan environment, that's fine. But in what are likely to be the 2028 conditions, which are, you know, maybe a sluggish economy, maybe even economy in downturn, potentially international chaos, then J.D. Vance is not favored to win a general election. And I'm not sure his bag of tricks is going to be all that useful. And the last thing I'll say is if conditions do look that bad, I agree with David that, like, Brian Kemp is probably the single best in terms of like just wrong. Can this guy win a general election candidate on the board? Like, unquestionably. If I were Brian Kemp and I thought 2028 was going to look anything like this year, I'd sit it out. Let, let Vance and Rubio get the poison chalice and go down in fire.

And then I come back for years as this. emissary from the pre-Trump's GOP. Vance, I have always thought, lacks the charisma or fundamental likeability to take over the Trump mantle, which is a cult of personality. He strikes me a little bit like Ron DeSantis, who everybody was so fired up about because, oh, my God, he's the smarter, non-crazy Trump. Yeah, but that smile and that just general creepiness on the trail was never going to go. Not to interrupt, but there is that famous picture from 2022, I think, of like DeSantis and Biden in like the same frame.

And Biden's like chatting it up with this guy looking really kind of Bideny. And DeSantis looks like Charlie Brown. And it's like, yeah, that guy can't win a primary. He needs like a serious glow up. Just some basic lessons on how to look human. But everybody's going to pile in. Who do you see maybe as having the potential to. pick up the Trump mantle, but not have J.D. Vance's crippling charisma problems.

That's a great question. I mean, look, before we just write off J.D. Vance as having a crippling charisma problem, I think he has more charisma than Ronda Santis, low bar, low bar. But I also think that I can run faster than a baby, you know. I think J.D. Vance. I think J.D. Vance. is more shrewd in some ways, and that he's also like Ron DeSantis, too, online. But unlike Ron DeSantis, I think he speaks the language of faith more fluently than DeSantis does. And critically, I think he's better at whipping up religious fervor against his enemies. And if you've carefully looked at the numbers from 2024, I mean, a couple of numbers stand out. One is white evangelical votes in favor of Trump. If you've got up to 30 percent of the country,

that's going to go for you by this more than 80% rate. You have to fight Cratchez's claw to get, uh, claw to get 40, only 40% of the rest. So J.D. Vance has a very, very intentional message to this community. He is very much wrapping it around faith.

And I think the, you know, the next to actually, to answer the actual question, Michelle, um, you know, look, you're seeing battle lines being drawn internally within the

conservative sort of the MAGA movement between Rubio and Vance. And it's entirely possible that Rubio, that this could, this could be the contest. But to Jamel's point, I'm also seeing a lot of people telling Rubio run in 2032, run in 2032, because they're sort of thinking of this more like the McCain-Obama election, that this is the election where the Republicans are essentially, whether they like it or not, want to or not, or believe it or not, are going to be offering up a sacrificial lamb to a Democratic. nominee. I think that's way premature to say, but it's, if the fundamentals continue where they are, there's some real validity to the idea that J.D. Vance may end up taking on the B team rather than

the A team in 2028. It's funny. If I were Kemp, precisely because of my relationship to Trump, I'd stay out of it. If I were Rubio, I would go for it. I think this is probably Rubio's last chance. So if I were Rubio, I'd be like, this is. Interesting. Iron's hot now. Because after four, like, Rubio is very much of, like, his, he was hottest, so to speak, in the 2016 cycle. And that was a disaster for him. And he now is, you know, he might walk away from the Trump administration to be like the least compromised of the people involved. And I, you know, you can't predict who's going to rise in four years. And so I think for him specifically, 2028's probably the, best year for him. I think we could expect some people like Ted Cruz to run, maybe Holly to run. Absolutely. You know.

But the people I feel like would be serious national contenders, again, Kemp, Spencer Cox, in Utah, I think we'll probably sit it out. Nikki Haley will probably sit it out, right? Like anyone who kind of has always been on the Trump skeptical side of things, I think it's going to sit it out. So there's a name not mentioned. the Dolphins, the Prince of Wales, Donald Trump Jr. Oh, Trump Jr., yeah.

I have heard no real rumblings in this direction, but it would not surprise me at all for this reason. The Trump family has been doing very, very, very well financially. They are buckling. In the Oval Office. And so, you know, if a Trump is not in the White House, the gravy train is almost certainly going to end, at least to the degree that exists right.

now. So, you know, I would not be shocked if he enters the fray. So like obviously, until we even see what happens in the midterms, we don't have a real sense of how tired people are or how much they're looking to punish the president's party. From the primary results so far, are you getting any sense of where the Republican electorate is, David? I mean, whether they're feeling still. very magi? Well, look, it's a mixed bag, which is actually from my standpoint of somebody who's long wanted Trump's influence to diminish in the GOP, is progress. So he has had some very notable successes, but many of his endorsed candidates have lost, especially of late. So he's about to hit a point

where he's had more losses of endorsed candidates than I believe he's already past any cycle or perhaps approaching any cycle and might be approaching like the previous couple of cycles combined. So something is happening here where the grip is in some places and at some points is slipping. But it's still the case. It is still the case that is extraordinarily dangerous to confront him politically on the right, which is why a lot of that post-Trump answers keep circling back to Brian Kemp, somebody who has confronted Trump and has proven popular with Republican primary voters still. Jamel, is there anything giving you optimism from the primary results on the our side?

On the our side. I mean, not really. Okay, moving right along. Yeah, it's not as if it's not as if no one, even though Trump, even though Trump endorsee is lost. there's still plenty of people who represent the same kind of like, you know, fundamental politics of grievance, disinterest and governing. I mean, that's, honestly, that's, if I could get Republicans who just cared about managing the government in a competent way, that would fill me with optimism. But like, there's no, there's no indication that that's a priority for Republican voters. So, you know, yeah.

Well, let me stick up a little bit for some Republican voters here. I think at the state level, you have, you still will see at the state level. For example, you know, something that, you know, our colleague Nick Christoff has written about multiple times and rightfully so, the Mississippi miracle in reading, for example, has been. product of state-level Republican innovation. You know, Brian Kemp has been, he governs like a serious person. He has done a lot of things in Georgia that are serious governing things. The national party is a joke at this point. I mean, it's absurd. It's like watching WrestleMania sometimes. It's just absurd. But I will say, and at state after state across the country, there are still serious people doing serious things. And I look forward to the day, hopefully, when those serious people who

have been doing serious things actually become part of the national conversation. This is why I'm always biased toward governor candidates running for president, in part because I think team sports in politics in Washington has just made it such that it's not about governing or about competence so much. And I'm always like, you. If you're a governor, you've got a better story. You tend to have a better record of getting stuff done. You actually have to deliver for your constituents. But that's on both teams.

So, you know, but that's just my personal bias. Okay. So before we pivot to the dams, I feel I've got to do a PSA here. If you're not a subscriber, we have some news for you. You can now explore the Times for free without paywalls during your first month on the New York Times app. You'll get access to the entire back catalog of our fantastic show, along with the rest of the Times' fantastic podcasts. So with that, let's move on to the Democrats. This Tuesday in Florida, the left wing of the party, scored another win when State Representative Angie Nixon, a Democratic socialist, defeated her moderate opponent, Alexander Binman in the Senate primary.

He had a lot more money than she did, the backing of the establishment. But while the party's left wing is, you know, surging in some places like New York and Michigan, it's also struggled in others. And now there's also this kind of kerfuffle among progressives with this new reassessment of wokeism, which has sprung up in part because there's this viral clip making the rounds of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez distancing herself from what has been dubbed woke one. So, Jamal, for people less tragically online than we are, you want to just give us a quick explanation of this woke one controversy. Sure. Before I do, I do want to say two things just to establish them right now and kind of to say where I stand on some of this stuff.

The first thing is, woke is a term that comes from African-American vernacular. It has its origins in the 1930s, and it has traditionally meant something a lot of the lines of be aware of the ways that this society is not built for you. Be aware of the ways that you may face disadvantage and oppression in the society. Again, this is a term that emerges in black vernacular in the 1930s. And that is, as far as I'm concerned, what the term means. And the usage of- You are exactly one of about 20 people who think that's what the term is at this point. I mean, I think a lot of- historical, I always love the historical reference, but that ain't where it's gone.

I think a lot of black Americans would agree with me on this point. I'll say that. I think among commentators, sure, not very many people agree with me. Among the people for whom the term- Oh, wait, wait, no, no, no. You can't pull that as a split between commentators. Yes. I'm- Half of America. has decided what woke is, and it's not. Among black Americans, it still means what I just said. But beyond the commentators, and there's plenty of folks

who have decided something very different. I just would have put that out there. That's the first thing I want to say. The second thing is that, irrespective of what you think of all this, all of this stuff emerged in response to actual problems in the society. I want to make that clear, right?

this emerges because people saw real injustice and had a strong reaction to it. Okay, so what is Alexandra Cutter-Cortez talking about? I think I read her as talking about a response to kind of like the hyper-academic, jargon-y, you know, in the case of Francesco Hong, maybe we shouldn't have Thanksgiving, like that kind of stuff that you saw. I would say you saw principally online, the kind of outbidding people trying to outbid each other in their cultural radicalism in this 2020, 2021 period. I think that's what she's referring to when she says woke one.

And to the extent that that is, you know, a thing, I think it's entirely appropriate to say, yeah, don't, that stuff is silly, right? There's a lot of litigation right now of what the 2020, 2020, 2021 period. was to begin with. And I would describe the two sides as well-meaning, but a lot of silly stuff happened versus there was like a mini-cultural revolution that happened that harmed real people. Except the real people who got pushed out of jobs, of course.

Right, right. That's why, I mean, that harmed real people. And I'm going to see, you've asked me to editorialize, but I will editorialize a little bit. I think that were there people who got an unfairly pushed out of jobs? Yes. I still think, even with that, that we need to be careful about describing this. Not even need to be careful.

It is not accurate to describe this as anything like a cultural revolution. But even when you look at people who received unfair treatment, you have to ask yourself as well, where their lives are irreparably harmed here. And as unfair as some of the treatment was, we're not, this wasn't a Huac. There wasn't a Huac. There wasn't a blacklist.

And by Huac, you mean the House on American Activities Committee. Yes. And I, you know, I have a real frustration with the way that no one can seem to talk about this with any kind of, not context, but like, perspective here. And I have a real frustration, you know, with this conversation in this moment when, you know, the current government was literally sending people to foreign prisons. You know, Americans were literally being deported from the country, legal permanent residence. And so to, from where I sit now, to observe this conversation about the excesses of wokeness while there's a government that has murdered people on the street. and isn't even investigating the deaths.

There is no investigation in the death of Vernanekut by the federal government. That's a thing that's happening, you know? My guess is that you then completely reject the idea that we wound up with this wretched administration in part because the backlash to the excesses of woke, especially alienating young men who were like, told they were the problem, just generally speaking. I completely reject that for like simple reasons of like linear time that like this administration was elected in 2024. At peak woke when like Nancy Pelosi was wearing kente clock, Democrats won a trifecta, right? At the, at the, at the aftermath.

So you reject the idea of a delay. I reject the idea of a delay. Yeah. I think that if you look at the 2024 election and you ask yourself, why did Trump win? The very obvious answer is he won because inflation. was high and people didn't like it. And people backfilled a lot of cultural reasons. They wanted to read the election as a big cultural backlash against woke. But then if that were the case, why is it that in March of 2025, when they're polling on DEI, public support for DEI still

remains pretty high? Like, why is it that all of the public opinion indicators that you would expect to demonstrate a mass public backlash against Woke aren't there? but people are mad about inflation, and that directly tracks the president's declining approval, right? Like, the actual, both timeline and what we're witnessing suggests that, no, 2024 wasn't a big backlash against some well-cultural revolution. It was a narrow election because of inflation. It was 1980 more than anything else. David, I'm going to get you in here. The one thing I just wanted to do. The Democratic brand is toxic in part because they're seen as weak, woke, and whining.

Talking to voters, especially outside of urban enclaves, you get this like, they don't care about me. They care about their individual bespoke identities and their, you know, that sort of thing. So that's a piece of it. But, David, like, you've been sitting there patient long enough. Please. I think, you know, look. I date woke one much earlier. So, for example, if you look at what was happening on campus, there was actually a pretty clear,

sharp break by around 2014, 2015, when the nature of censorship on campus, which is something that I'd been working on for a very long time, switched from predominantly top down, where it might be a dean of students or an administration silencing people. By around 2014, 2015, we began to see. a huge wave of essentially what you might call grassroots censorship on campus, where there were attempts to hound people out of their jobs, to get people fired. And one thing that I want to really emphasize about this, look, we don't have to go to something like the cultural revolution where lots and lots and lots of people died to talk about how horrific it was to be in the

epicenter of some of these firestorms, where everything was taken in the worst possible faith, And then it began to radiate and move from there into a position where lots of just regular folks felt like I may lose my public reputation. I may lose my job. I might be subject to public shame campaigns. When I'm not, I'm just not going along with some things that were actually, part of woke was both a lot of intolerance and ambitious intolerance. tied to a lot of weirdness and strangeness, like weird language changes, very trendy things, like putting your Instagram square all black, you know, weird things like this, you know, that didn't do much of anything in the real world, but were supposedly quite symbolic of your

in-group inclusion. And I think the idea that this didn't kind of permeate America over time, because I think that I hear what Jamel says about 2020. I do hear that. I also think the outcome when 2020 may have been different. 2020, remember, was a lot closer than people expected that it would be. The outcome may have been different had primary voters in the Democratic Party gone with one of the more woke candidates in 2020. They went with kind of the least woke guy in the field, which was Joe Biden, the most normie Democrat in the field, which was Joe Biden. I agree with Jim L also that inflation is the big thing. And I think, though, however, Donald Trump, I don't think Donald Trump is back in office without this.

And now I say, I don't, I say that specifically about Donald Trump. I think other Republicans could have probably won based on inflation alone. But I think Trump, with all of that history, all of that toxicity, one of the things that he rode was this wave. And look, listeners know, I am unsparing. my criticism of this administration, unsparing, okay, to say everything that I said does not excuse one millimeter of Trump injustice, not one bit of it. But I think we do a disservice when we try to minimize what happened in actual people's lives is horrific. It was horrific what was done

to people again and again and again throughout that process. And at some point, you know, I know that some folks were well-meaning, but some folks were just vicious. and gleeful and vindictive. I mean, I was there. I experienced some of it in coming to me. I knew exactly what it was like. And yeah, it wasn't fatal, but it was horrible. And something could be horrible without being fatal

or creating your, or incarcerating you. Can I make a question, we'll make a point to ask question. The point I make is that I agree, internet pylons of that sort are terrible. sort are terrible. I don't want to diminish the real psychic personal damage that does to people. I think where I disagree is to treat it as the particular product of like an ideological formation that we can call woke and more the function of social media. And I say that because,

and this is a question to you, David, you know, you experienced woke. a woke pile on, but you also experience, if I'm not wrong, like a right wing pile on, like an extraordinarily ugly and racist and quite dangerous right wing pile long, right? Oh, yes. I would just say that like the fact that you experience both of those things, and there was no like a wokeness happening amongst right wingers, to me that is, that is not evidence, but like potentially a data point in favor of the view that, like, what we're talking about here are the way that social media platforms through the fact they anonymize people and they can incentivize

the kind of pile on behavior, that can happen from any particular set of ideological perspectives, right? I'm just not certain that one can say, you know, this thing that we call woke was responsible for all of this. Well, I want to jump in and say, nobody's suggesting that woke is uniquely pernicious. But AOC is clearly telegraphing that the Democrats have decided that it is problematic. Because the reason she is doing this, it is widely acknowledged, is that gal is looking at a presidential run.

Right, right. And she knows she needs to do some damage control. I'll say, I want to throw in, at least just sort of like the left wing critique of, of, of wokeness as it developed, which is that, and I, you know, at the start I said this response to real problems, and what ended up happening, and you mentioned the black squares, that's a good example, what ended up happening is that, like, there wasn't really any attempt to make any material change to those problems, right? There wasn't any attempt to sort of, like, deal with the underlying, the fundamental questions that are responsible for things like police violence,

are responsible for things like institutionalized sexual violence. Instead, it was, you know, we can do some symbolic politics and get people off of our backs. And that, that I think from the left is like the failure of that moment. Well, one of the things that happens in these situations is, you know, the people who are looking for change, they attack the people who they think are the problem. Those people don't care. Like Trump doesn't care. Trump's not going to do anything. A lot of the Republicans are like, yeah, come at me. And so then the people who wind up getting caught up in this. are the kind of wokesters allies. And they're the ones who wind up too nervous to say anything

or, you know, like everybody had to go out and buy how to be an anti-racist so that it could be seen in their house and stuff like that. So you wind up attacking your allies. I'll say, you may have felt that way. You had to understand. Part of my skepticism here is that people use his language. Well, everyone had to do this thing.

No, you didn't. No, unfortunately, do anything. I didn't put a black square of my Instagram. I didn't go out and buy a bunch of books. Like, I think I wrote a column in 2020 that was like, white fragility is a bad book, right? Like, you know, you know, there's, part of my frustration is like there's this language of like compulsion. And it's like, I don't know, you know. Well, no, but like the compulsion was there.

It's like if you didn't want to take a beat down, if you didn't want to get fired in certain places, if you didn't, you know, like it's, it's not like somebody was going to come shoot me if I didn't do certain things or, you know, you know, you know. know, certain politicians didn't do certain things, but it doesn't have to come to that. And parts of the right, you worry about that. Absolutely. Again, nobody's suggesting wokeism is pernicious in like some unheard-of way. But what we're looking at here is a Democratic Party and a progressive, you know, a corner of progressives in the Democratic Party even are thinking that it is time to push back and separate themselves from this.

And my question is, like, can they do that? Is that going to be a viable approach? Sure. I mean, just practically speaking. I mean, what's interesting, what's interesting,

this was true in the 2020 cycle. This is true now. What's interesting is that for the most part, like, Abdul Tayed wasn't running a campaign about cultural sensitivity. He's running a campaign about like you can't afford your groceries.

But he doesn't have a huge record that's going to, one, he hasn't won anything yet in a general election. Two, he doesn't have a huge record. huge record, like, say, AOC does. But, I mean, the point I'm... The point I'm making, though, is that there may not necessarily be anything...

Like, AOC might have to, might have to say, you know, some of that stuff is silly and move on. But when you look at sort of the most left-wing candidates, then and now, they tend to run on very material issues. Like, they're not actually, like, part of the... And this gets to sort of, like, a left-wing critique of wokeness. Right. Like, part of the funny thing is that it's the candidates closer to the central left who don't want to offer big transformative material programs who bend towards the cultural politics. Like, I think the people who are going to have a more difficult time maneuvering this are actually closer to the center precisely because they use that cultural moment to try to make themselves palatable to the left without actually having to give any concession. that's that's sort of the challenge well one thing i'm interested in is calling woke one crazy

pretty much assumes there's a woke two on the horizon so have we have we a sense of what this will be it's here it's here is here yeah it's here it's from the right uh i really okay if we're this whole like woke right thing which i know got some currency a couple bucks ago i think is stupid i'll just i'm not even going to be polite about it I think it's very stupid. I think we can just talk about that as like right-wing ideology. Like it's its own thing with its own dynamics. But the other thing, woke two, woke two, I'll just say real quickly, to the extent that

that's a thing, you know, woke one was a backlash to Trump. Woke two is going to be a backlash to Trump. The question is, what is the nature of that backlash going to be? I think in this iteration, the nature of the backlash is going to be less about trying to find, you know, create like a cultural space of anti-Trumpism and more. about what does like political hard-nosed anti-Trumpism look what looks like and when you look at the kinds of candidates that Democrats are going for it's those those candidates that have like a very hard-nosed we want to extirpate whatever this is from the society I think more economic I think

more political reform the fact that you know an applause an easy applause line for a democratic audience is we're going to pack the Supreme Court should tell you I think where Democratic voters all are and what what woke to looks like in practice Okay. We're going to switch to lighter fare. It's time for recommendations. Jamel, go first. I've been reading the book from our colleagues, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan regime change. It's quite good. I really recommend it. And I recommend it just because even if, you know, we're all involved in this, politics sickos. And if you're watching this, we're listening to it. You're politics sick oh, too. I hate to tell you.

And even being people who follow this stuff for a living, it is quite shocking to read some of this inside, inside reporting of what's happening in the White House. It's actually genuinely quite shocking. I'll say the things that have shocked me the most reading are just the total collapse of the information environment inside of the White House. There's a lot of stuff in there that's even more troubling. And troubling is a very, you know, a modest way to put it. Yeah, mild way to put it. Super reassuring, you know. That book, you know, I'm not one for hyperbole,

but that book fills me with dread, knowing just how, how disorganized, how much like that White House is operating in a cloud of delusion. Awesome. Cloud of delusion. There's the phrase for the day. David, please give me something less grim and unsettling. Read the book. It's good. Please. Okay. Michelle, your wish is my command. I have the most heartwarming, the most uplifting, the sweetest show on television to recommend, and it's an absolute freaking hoot. It is hilarious. It is warm. It is joyful. I like it better than Ted Lassen. in all of those regards, it's on Apple TV. It's called Trying. And it's about a young British couple.

They can't have kids. And so they start trying. The trying is to adopt. And we're an adoptive family. It is a beautiful show for adoptive families to watch. It really does illustrate the difficulty of the process and the ups and downs and the heartaches and the triumphs. And so it's a wonderful show. And if you really want something that is going to, quite frankly, show you what love looks like. Watch trying. It's so wonderful. Okay. That's going to the top of my list. So we talked a little about the McCarthy era, which is funny because I'm going to recommend American scoundrel, which is the soon-to-be-released bio of Roy Cohn that Kai Bird has written.

I think it's out early September. it is amazing. It is very upsetting because, as viewers probably know, viewers and listeners probably know, Roy Cohn was this big political figure all through the 50s through the 80s. He was a prosecutor on the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial. But his influence on Donald Trump, as you read through, is just so upsetting. I mean, Cohn was this kind of monster who plowed through life, just through sheer force of will, shamelessness, dishonesty. It was like watching the making of the proto-Trump. And so it is the most compelling read. It's, it's, you know,

for those who will recall the Oppenheimer book, this is a lot of, those same things, not quite as substantial. It is not going to serve as a doorstop in the house, but it is a compelling read. Absolutely put it on your list. Can I recommend two things to wash along with it if you read it? I haven't read it, but they come to mind. There's an HBO documentary bully coward victim, the story of Roy Cohn. That's pretty good. And then the apprentice from a couple years ago, it's Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump and what's his name, Jeremy Strong, as Cohn is actually very good. So I would recommend.

Multimedia experience. Yeah. All right. What's that? I think we're going to land this plane. Guys, always fun. We've solved it all.

Although I do think we're going to have to like do a return to woke part two something in the future. So just brace for that. I would say that we don't have to do that. Chamele is a hard no. I would say that there are there are more important things for us to talk about. but all right guys have a great week thanks thank you michel bye