A.B. Stoddard: Dead Ends after Iowa

Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is January sixteenth two thousand twenty four. This is the morning after the big big Iowa caucuses. The suspense did not kill me last night.

I think we kind of knew how it was going to turn out, you know, short version, Donald Trump wins. He gets fifty one percent of the vote in an incredibly low turnout election. I think he got something like fifty six to sixty thousand votes. There are some legislative races that get more votes than that. But a win is a win.

He wins Iowa. He wins Iowa by thirty points. Ron DeSantis keeps hope sort of barely twitching alive, says he got his ticket punched. He finishes second. Nikki Haley finishes third.

Declares that there’s a two person race and then says she’s not gonna be debating anymore in New Hampshire. So after all of these big events, I’m always joined. I’m always I’m always lucky to be joined by AB Stoddard, our new colleague at the Bulwark, AB. How are you this morning? I No, Iowa hangover?

Yeah. I’m disappointed, not surprised. It is a weird numbness, Charlie. Right? Like, I don’t know how many months I’ve been saying that New Hampshire wouldn’t matter.

Because he would say it was rigged and diluted by rhinos and socialists and globalists. And so it is weird though, right, to be here now that it actually officially begun and officially kind of ended. After all the time we’ve spent talking.

Yeah. I mean, we’ll sell it tonight. You talked about yesterday, you know, before even the first vote had been cast, the Republican normies had already surrendered. But but let’s pretend, you know, this let’s engage in some of the obligatory punditry Where should we start? You know, the obvious place to start is with Donald Trump.

So let’s start with Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis finishes thirty points behind. By the way, he visited all ninety nine counties. In Iowa, he did not win one, not one county. Here’s a guy.

Had the endorsement of the governor had the endorsement of some of the major evangelical leaders in the state with lots of evangelicals, and he doesn’t win one county. And he gets, what is it? Twenty one percent of the vote, but he limps on. So give me your take on on Ron DeSantis the morning after.

Look, you know, unfortunately, this is the worst place for him to be. If he had finished behind Vive, he could crawl home, in humiliation, but it would end. Now he’s going to a town hall. He’s flying to South Carolina. He’s pretending that he’s competing in New Hampshire.

When you’re in second place, but thirty points away. Like, you’re not a contender. Right? So he obviously hoped at one point to win Iowa.

But he comes out with the Aya, the Tiger and all

of that.

Thunderstruck. And, I mean, you’d think that, hey, second place winner and

He’s got a punch ticket, and we’ll see what that means. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised. I don’t think he would be either Charlie Sykes he dropped out in forty eight or seventy two hours. This is just a painful slog for him Nikki Haley refusing to even debate him anymore, like he’s such a has been. So if I were him, I would cut this off as soon as possible.

I know. I know. I’m not in.

Okay. So why isn’t he? I mean, this is an interesting question. He’s thirty points behind Iowa was his best shot. He put all of his resources into Iowa.

I’m trying to think where does he go from here? You know, what is what is the next chapter? So Rhonda said this is my ticket is punch. I’m going to New Hampshire where I have done pretty much nothing South Carolina where I’m not even really a major factor. So what is what would be the just hand to spin be?

About why he’s in the race and where he goes now.

Right. So that is a huge mystery. If if donors are telling him he should hang around because he and Nikki each got four delegates out of the Hawkeye state, and they need to stay in it through the convention, and they’re gonna all succeed in taking Trump down. He’s gonna get convicted. He’s going to something horrible to be exposed in a trial.

There’s certain of it. That will change the hold trajectory.

Okay. So this is the meteor unicorn strategy. This is the magical thinking that that something something something Will Saletan, and then you get the nomination. Right? The these things that have not happened so far will happen.

You know, deadly big mac, something like that.

Charlie Sykes, even Casey DeSantis knows this morning. There’s no path for Ron DeSantis. So That’s the only line of thinking that would keep him in the race is unicorn.

Okay. So he’s been going through some interesting things over the last few days. Probably noticed kind of, you know, belatedly noticing that, hey, the right wing media is kind of less than an honest broker here. That they’re they’re in the in the bag for Donald Trump. It’s kind of I’m trying to avoid the term deeply ironic since irony has already dead, but seems deeply ironic that Ron DeSantis is going, hey, you know, this right wing media.

It’s, it’s a little bit screwed up. You know, who knew, or why are all these people always sucking up to Donald Trump? Having spent much of the last year running against Donald Trump while trying to suck up. I mean, you wanna talk about fancy gymnastics, Ron DeSantis’ efforts to suck up to Donald Trump while running against him, And it’s like he’s looking around going, boy, this this doesn’t work. We know what what happened here.

So what’s he going through in the last couple of days?

It’s difficult. And it’s sad. I think, you know, Tim Miller, our colleague had a great take on the pathetic ad. That Nikki Haley released where she showed all of the footage from his own commercials when he ran for governor. Doing, you know, Trump suck up with his little kids at home.

And so Some major subjects. Her dad doesn’t really do anything but help Trump. Which Tim noted, but it was painful and so cringe to watch it. So he can’t dump on Trump because he’s afraid of alienating his voters, but dumping on Fox is pretty interesting. If you think about the fact that he we think wants to preserve some kind of political future for himself or his wife down the road.

So that I thought was sort of a little bit desperate. Of course, it was weak. You blame the media instead of Trump. You don’t tell the truth about Trump. But really, if you’re thinking about what is his long term plan and his exit ramp, that’s kind of a strange place to Yeah.

I in my newsletter, I had this bookmark, this, one comment where he says you can be the most worthless Republican America, but if you kiss the ring, Trump will say you are wonderful. And, Noah Smith tweeted that out and said, save this clip for when DeSantis kisses the ring. Yeah. Because you know how this plays out. So he may be lashing out right now.

He may be having going through this this disillusionment, now. But we know where this plays out if he wants any future in the Republican Party, if Casey wants any future, you know, there’s going to be some serious groveling followed by humiliation. Right? He’s going to have to, you know, crawl through broken glass tomorrow, lago, beg forgiveness, and and then show up at various events pretending to be enthusiastic. I’m standing at the back of the stage in the spot that was once reserved for Chris Christie.

I’m sorry to bring that up. Right. I mean, this is going to be there’s going to be the the obligatory photo of him looking like Ted Cruz back in twenty sixteen making the phone calls, you know, that sort of thing. There’s no other path.

Well, no, I don’t really agree. Looking like their underwear is too tight. I think that the best thing for him to do after he gets some sleep and thinks about this, because he knows he has to do what you just described.

Yeah. Yeah.

Is to tank Nikki Haley and say she’s I’m getting out now. She has no path. I have no path. Trump’s gonna be our nominee. Let’s fight Joe Biden, and she’s a wimp for refusing to debate me, and she’s in denial pretending that she’s in a two person race.

And the truth is that you know, she wants to fight a Trump Biden nightmare, and I don’t wanna fight Joe Biden. And that would be the best thing for him to do, but to compete with her in New Hampshire and try to crawl towards South Carolina is such a futile, injurious path for him. I mean, the best thing for him to do is just get some sleep, have some beers, shake it off, and just kind of screw her on the way out the door, SES to travel to Trump.

Okay. So let’s get to Nikki in a moment. Let’s talk about the VVAC. Jeez. Vivec’s gone.

Yeah. No Vivec. I said he was unlimited and, you know, preparing for a career, you know, seeking attention in the fibril swamps of the right wing fringe, but Evac went through some things over the last couple of days. You know, again, having embraced Trump as hard as he could. Did you see those t shirts save Trump vote Vivec?

And even the Trump people said that’s just stupid. You know, play stupid games win stupid prizes. And so Trump’s beating up on him saying you’re just a spoiler. Vivek is out. He’s endorsing Trump.

You know, just another reminder though that, you know, that that you’re either, you know, at Trump’s feet or at his throat, and, you know, he’s gonna be groveling for a while too now.

The fake is such a fake, and I like you and many others took great pleasure in Trump giving him the boot right on time because Trump was pissed that Vivek’s eight percent might keep him under fifty percent, looking at the results of the cell cycle. Right? And Vivakes kind of feeding the conspiracy, drunk, bots with this thing about how Trump is going to be, I don’t know, assassinated. He’s gonna be taken out. And so that’s why you had to vote for Viveq, was it was too cute.

It was a stupid game, and he got kicked in the teeth right before the ballots were cast We knew all along. He was gonna be a Trump surrogate. Right? He has this great rap.

Right.

Maga loves him. He’s gonna have the future in the trump sphere. It’s all gonna be fine. But it was a stupid ending for him, the way it was like too slick and fucking weird. To run around making the case that Trump was gonna get killed and he or everyone was gonna join.

Republicans were gonna join even with the deep state and he was gonna get buried by Jack Smith. Something was gonna happen, and he was gonna be taken out. And so you had to support Ram as well. That’s nuts.

I have a confession to make, this morning when I was writing my newsletter, before I’d had sufficient caffeine. I wrote Vivec is out, unlimited, and soon to be forgotten. But that’s completely not true. I mean, he’s unlimited, but but he’s not going to be forgotten because he’s got a place in Moggle World. I mean, he’s exactly the kind of person who’s going to find a place.

If not on the fever swamps, you know, at least on the the OANs or the newsmaxes or or something or perhaps even in the in the Trump orbit because he’s exactly the kind of unhinged demagogue that has real place in the Republican party these days. It would be naive to say, I mean, you look at your Chris Christie, on the way out, people like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, they have no place in this future Republican Party. Guys like Vivec, even with the conspiracy theories and the really raw racism. I mean, can we just mention that that one of the notable events of the Iowa caucus was that Vivek Ramaswamy pulled disgraced bigot Steve King, the former Republican congressman, who was too racist even for the Republican Party who was excommunicated pulled him out of obscurity and was campaigning with him. And, unfortunately, that wing of the party is still gonna like Vivi.

Aren’t they? Aren’t they?

I think Vivek is gonna try to give Tucker Carlson a run for his money. He’ll have his podcast. He’ll be running around Mar a Lago and Bedman her and doing whatever he can to ingratiate himself. He wants to be, like, an Uber influencer. And then, you know, I think even being in the administration is right, is, like, probably too compromising for him.

He wants to be the anointed one after John Junior or whatever. So, yeah, he’s, he’s gonna make sure that we’re hearing about him for a long time.

He’s got the perfect skill set, actually. Right. I mean, he’s glib, he’s demagogic, and he’s utterly without principles of any kind. You know, and I think we saw this during the campaign. He’s somebody who’s prepared to say absolutely anything.

And then when he’s called on it, you know, the name day. He will deny having said it and will say something else. I mean, so he’s that perfect shape shifting, unprincipled, extremist, conspiracy theorist demagogue. So, of course, he’s got a great, bright future ahead of him. The other thing about him dropping out of course, as you look at all of this, this is clearly good news for Donald Trump because the VVAC voters are gonna go to Trump.

So to the extent that there’s some consolidation that benefits Trump, get to Trump in a moment. So Haley, Nikki Haley did not get that surprise second place bump that her supporters were hoping that she was hoping. So give me your take on on Nikki Haley at the moment. Underwhelming performance, would you say, underwhelming in Iowa in an underwhelming caucus?

You know? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think that she was counting on, you know, the Salzer poll had her surging, had her in second place,

But

But in the end, the the experts did give Ron DeSantis, like, between three and five over performance points for the infrastructure that, let’s say, Kim Reynolds, the governor and Bob Vander Platt’s evangelical leader provided him in terms of ground games. So I think she’s disappointed. I mean, you know how I feel about her. She’s a total phony, and so she gets up there and knows in the that in Republican America, you make your own reality. Like, Trump’s saying over the weekend, he was gonna win Iowa for the third time.

She just gets up there and says she’s in a two person race and she, of course, told the audience they have to stop the Trump by nightmare yesterday when Neil or two days ago or I don’t know when it was. Over the weekend when Neil Cabuto from Fox interviews her. She says, of course, she would take Trump over Biden any day of the week. And she congratulates Trump and Kylie McEnany tweeted today that or last night that that was great. She was congratulating Trump.

She’s lined up for VP and politics is a game of edition. And she can bring a bunch of moderate, suburban, like, different types, maybe not so strongly pro life voters, in, you

know, way she’s gonna be VP that I’m I’m sorry. This is board pundit syndrome to think that that either she thinks she’s going to be VP or that Trump would ever name her VP?

I think as we watch her in the next seven days before New Hampshire, it is instructive to consider that she is preserving herself for that. And it just might be that she’s not gonna be asked. But if you listen to what she’s saying, She’s not going to start a two man race with Donald Trump Charlie Sykes not gonna fight him.

No. No. But I I think it’s more likely that she’s preserving her viability for twenty twenty eight because, you know, Donald Trump Yeah. Didn’t even think of Nikki as in a VP spot, and she’s not stupid. You have to completely misunderstand Donald Trump’s psychology.

That is a position that he is going to be looking for the absolute predictable loyalist. No unpredictability, no independence, a willingness to say and do anything far more likely to be in a least demonic I’ve said this before. If he had his brothers, he put Don junior Uravanka in there. No way that he named somebody who’s run against him and said some of the things she’s doing. Okay.

So that’s number one. But I I think her performance her performance in Iowa was actually even weaker than it looked. The seltzer poll was not wrong. In fact, the seltzer poll, I think, identified exactly the dynamic of this race, even though it had her, in second place. Anne seltzer said that it was close to jaw dropping how low the enthusiasm was for her.

A caucuses is all about enthusiasm. I mean, who’s gonna leave your house in twenty five degree below zero weather, you know, during playoff football season? I don’t get that at all. To go stand in a, you know, elementary school gym, you know, listening to people in red hats, give speeches. She had a lot of support from Democrats and independence and, you know, not hardcore Republicans.

If you take out that segment, The Donald Trump vote is way more dominant than just fifty one percent. And the reality is that going forward, especially into some of these closed primaries, where only Republicans can vote. She’s really weak if she is relying upon, you know, the non Republican voters here. Chris Christie, when he dropped out last week, said, you know what? She’s gonna get smoked.

She’s just thought up to this. And Chris Christie was absolutely right.

He beat her. Trump beat her yesterday with moderates and college educated Republicans, and that’s supposed to Bulwark. Coalition. So, yeah, again, she could surprise us in New Hampshire. Democrats could play in New Hampshire into a nonaffiliated larger than the Republican electorate in New Hampshire, anything can happen.

But again, Trump was always gonna tell us, and he’s even said it. I guess to Brett Bear last week, you know, New Hampshire doesn’t count. He’s so much has said that. And that’s what he’ll say on the twenty fourth. If she romps there.

And so it is to me insignificant. If Trump’s party if the Magabase is not eighty percent of the party, it’s enough to deny her because she’s not mega. So it was always an illusion that she she could make it dramatic for a few weeks, but that she was really any threat to him on behalf of the nomination.

I think that’s right. I think dramatic for a few weeks because, you know, now, New Hampshire, Look, there’s long history of New Hampshire being contrarian. Right? You know, doing the opposite of what they did in Iowa. So it’s possible she will do extremely well.

It was possible she might even win. I don’t think so. Well, let’s say anything’s possible in New Hampshire. And ultimately, though, and this is the deep breath, it’s not going to matter because New Hampshire will be bracketed by her underwhelming performance in Iowa Ron DeSantis stomping that lies ahead in her home state of South Sarah Longwell, and in Nevada and other places like that, which means that, you know, this is pretty much over. I mean, you’re seeing the the anticipatory surrender of Republicans like Marco Rubio.

Okay. Tell me about Marco. What’s going on with Mike Lee and Marco Rubio and all of these other senators, you know, Barrasso, decided they were gonna endorse Donald Trump even before the first vote was cast. Give me your sense of what the dynamic is because I’m just guessing they’re sitting in a room going, it’s over. Might as well begin the suckage.

Right. Well, Mike Lee has been jockeying with JD Vance to be, like, chief trump suck up. I mean, he’s there’s a group of about seven Republicans who are openly opposed to Mitch McConnell and the Senate. And voted for Rick Scott for majority leader and are in open defiance of the the old crow and the establishment. And Michael is one of them.

So it’s like Holly Cruise Lee Scott, your old brother Ron Johnson from Wisconsin and, like, a couple others. Right? So Mike Lee wants to be, like, chief asks kisser if Trump wins a second term. So he rushed out.

He’s at the pole position.

Yeah. And so What I loved about Marco Rubio’s endorsement, because he’s the most fucking tortured person in the entire Congress, both chambers. Is that he tried to write an endorsement where he believes he didn’t compliment or praise Trump in any way. He said when Trump was president, I achieved major policy accomplishments like this, that, and the other already as a list because we had a president who didn’t, like, let the bureaucracy get in the way, something like that. And it’s time to get back to that.

We need Trump to be president again because we have to get rid of the disaster of Joe Biden. So he’s not sucking up to him. So he believes Charlie deep down that he is somehow remaining true to some shred of himself, which we can all watch on Twitter this weekend because everyone’s sending the twenty sixteen videos back. Where he’s on stage with Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, and they’re endorsing him because Trump is a cancer and a con man and everything else. And so there’s gonna be gradations, right, of these endorsements.

So it’s gonna be wholehearted. Baraso is a total trumper. He’s from Wyoming. There’s not a never trumper in the state of Wyoming anymore now that Liz Cheney’s gone. Maybe Alan Simpson, but you know what I’m saying?

Like, there’s like five of them. And so Barrasso wants so badly to replace Mitch McConnell, and the three contenders are John Corn and John Barasso and Jonathan Last John Cornen and John Thune can’t stand Donald Trump. Cornen tries to be a little more, you know, he’s like somewhere between Barrasso and McConnell Thune. Gets the tight underwear look in his eyes. He’s a totally sane person.

And I don’t know that he probably in the end wants to replace McConnell because he’s gonna be having to deal with the trumpification of the Senate conference. So so that’s where we are. Barrasso had to get in there and win the badge of you know, pre Iowa endorsement. And that was why it was so rich that Christie called him out.

In morning shots this morning, I I dwell perhaps too much at length on, Joanie Ernst’s, you know, vacuous appearance on on meet the press where She essentially says she has no problem with Donald Trump pardoning all the January six insurrectionists. She has that case that we’re a Republican case of amnesia where she doesn’t remember ones called them insurrectionists and everything. But my takeaway from that was in, you know, looking at what we just talked about here, the these other Republicans falling into line. That anyone who thinks that a Republican Senate would stand up against, you know, an out of control Trump two point o presidency is incredibly naive. These guys are not going to be guardrails, bulwarks checks on Donald Trump.

They’re not going to turn down. His crazy cabinet appointments. They’re not going to push back against his pardon of felons or his self pardon or his weaponization of the Department of Justice. Anyone who thinks that, well, you know what? The institutions will will hold.

The adults will be in the room. The adults have either left the room. Or they’ve gotten on their knees, and institutions are made up of people and look what the people are doing.

No. It’s such a good point. They’re under the table. Was, like, shaking in fear. Joanie Ernst is another she’s a perfect, show emblematic of this.

She’s deeply, deeply conflicted. And obviously loathed Donald Trump, she took herself off the VP shortlist. It was just reported recently in twenty sixteen. She was showing up at Yeah. DeSantis events, Haley events.

She said repeatedly, and she could hide under the leader in the Hawkeye state, the prize first in the nation contest, neutrality that she couldn’t endorse before Iowa, neither to Chuck grassley. She could hide behind that She repeatedly said that she would not reveal who she was gonna support and that she didn’t even know if she would endorse right away after the caucuses that, you know, we have to see what’s going on.

Profiles and current.

But what you got to was the big reveal. She made it clear that she doesn’t wanna be taken to the gulags when Trump officially becomes the nominee and might win, that she wanted to be clear that she never called insurrectionists, which she did. It’s just so tortured and so embarrassing and so painful that she felt the need right to, like, throw out that lifeline because the Trump camp knows she’s anti trump. Yeah. She won’t be.

I mean, you know, within how we know, days or weeks, she’ll she’ll endorse them. But She’s been on the list, if you will.

We went Bulwark our way up to Donald Trump. And I feel that there’s not a lot more that we can say at this point, except that You know, it is interesting. There’s just a few I named this. I also wrote this this morning. Just a few days ago, just take picking one little thing because we get overwhelmed by it.

The other day, just a few days. Donald Trump is sitting down in Mar a lago, and he’s about to go to trial again for defaming the woman that he raped, Eugene Carroll. And he put out forty forty truth social posts. His own age were stunned at this fuselage of in fact, attacking this woman that he sexually assaulted forty of them, And, of course, this is in the same week in which he refers to the, you know, January six protesters as hostages, you know, when he, you know, compares himself favorably to Abraham Lincoln because he could have negotiated the civil war, I don’t know, let them keep slavery or something like that, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. He made it exactly clear what he’s doing.

And Republican voters look at that. All the insanity, the rants and raving in courtroom, the ninety one felony, and they go, We are all in for this. We love this. He wins ninety eight of ninety nine counties, beats the status by more than thirty points, I mean, we can all pretend, okay, it’s Iowa, it’s weirs, low turnout. You know, but this is the Republican party right now.

I mean, They look at all of this. The big lie doesn’t bother them. The sedition doesn’t bother them. You know, the threats that he’s making in the future. The fact that he is almost every day he puts out something that’s absolutely fucking demented.

And they’re going, he’s our guy. It’s making president again.

Well, I mean, I think that what last night showed us is that Donald Trump is stronger in the Republican Party than he ever has been. And we’ve known that for a while. We were looking at pulling over the summer that showed that stronger than sixteen, stronger than twenty twenty. But I want to, not like, hug a pony, but something between total darkness and, like, my little pony Mona Charen with Lavender hair. Let’s look at what Mona wrote today.

Yeah.

Let’s think about the fact that Sixty thousand people voted for Donald Trump last night. Yeah. It’s an evangelical state. It’s an evangelical electorate. Of course, he was gonna win it.

The party is more magnified. But does that mean that once he gets into a general electorate, that a conviction or a threat of conviction. I don’t think today, Charlie. He goes to that courtroom, and he thinks that what is he doing? He’s gonna get some twenty dollar checks from the people who already love the facts that he’s under ninety one felony counts.

I don’t think anyone in the general electorate today is gonna be like, I feel really bad for that guy. That judge already said he’s a rapist, but look at him and and leaving that courtroom in the snow. Like, let’s decide he’s persecuted. I think he’s preaching to the choir. So he thinks that going to all of these court rooms and having his fucking victim mentality is gonna juice the middle of the electric.

Right.

I’m not buying that. So I think as he marches towards the general election, we know and we’ve talked many times that Biden’s weakness could give him strength. But I think that we’re not entirely certain yet about what the foundation is he brings into a general election after he gets through the next couple weeks. I I’m not entirely certain of it. And actually, he finally looks old.

I didn’t think he looked old for a while, but he finally looks old. And I wanna say one more thing. Watching Liz Cheney, speak at the Ebonese or Baptist Church in Atlanta. On mlk day about what Donald Trump has done to democracy and to the vision of people like Martin Luther King. I’ll drink to that.

It’s pretty effective.

Well, okay. So there’s a couple of things here, and it’s not new that Donald Trump is playing the victim card. But what is, I think, quasi new, and I was trying to separate out what’s new enough, is that he’s clearly decided that he wants to use the trials as a springboard. That he’s gonna show up at all of the trials. He’s gonna show up at the eugene Carol trial.

He says. He’s showing up at the New York trial. So he wants to use that. Now That has worked in his favor in the Republican primary preaching to the choir. Your question is, okay, Once now we move to the general electorate, does spending time in the dock actually benefit you?

Does it convince, you know, other people going I didn’t vote for him in twenty sixteen or twenty twenty, but but goddamn it. You know, he just, you know, a man who’s charged that many felonies has gotta be my guy.

He’s looked like a winner now sitting next to all those lawyers.

And Mona’s piece that you referenced, you know, she did find the silver lining here and, you know, points out this Des Moines register, Precock poll, found that at least twenty five percent of Iowa Republican caucus goers said they will not vote for Trump in the general election. And, obviously, that’s significant because We have a lot of swing states where the elections decided by a few thousand votes. Now Iowa is not a swing state, she said. But what does that suggest about Republicans in place like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia. And our good friends at the Wall Street Journal editorial board are also noticing they’re saying, this vote actually revealed some weaknesses that could pose problems in a general election.

You think? So Republicans, New Hampshire should think hard if they wanna gamble on another Trump run. He could be a convicted felon by the summer when he shows up here in Milwaukee. And the IO entrance polls show that no fewer than thirty two percent of GOP caucus goers said that a conviction would be disqualifying But by then, it may be too late for Republicans to choose another candidate. Well, no kidding.

I mean, thirty two percent’s a huge number. If it was twelve percent of Republican voters, that could be decisive.

Right. And Charlie Sykes, that’s why with all the work that Sarah and Bill do, in that space. Any erosion of Republican support, even if they don’t support Joe Biden. The effort to get them to stay home or to come on board in this anti trump coalition is so critical. And that that skepticism, that red line.

Look, this guy, he’s really been entertaining. Maybe some of the stuff they come after him with is Bulwark. But, like, if he’s convicted, no. I’m not gonna vote for a convicted felon who can’t vote for himself as president of the United States. I think that’s real and material and enough of those people drawing that red line and we’re okay.

Yeah. I mean, several different categories. I know some folks, you know, are insisting that if you don’t vote for Joe Biden, then you’re not really defending democracy. Look, I think there will be republicans who vote Joe Biden, but I think the decisive votes may be the under vote for president in a state like Wisconsin. If Donald Trump got the same number of votes as Republican Kennedy congerson, Wisconsin, he would have won Wisconsin in twenty twenty.

He didn’t, which means that you had a lot of Republican voters that voted for Republicans down ballot but then did not vote for Donald Trump. That is going to be crucial. Hey. You and I have not spoken since Chris Christie dropped out. And I know that both of us had become maybe sort of late converts to, what a magnificent beast he was in the campaign.

I was hoping that he would stay in. He got out to clear the way. Your thoughts, did he make the right decision?

I think he did. I didn’t want him to get out, but I see why getting out and having people wanting to lodge a protest vote, you know, will just flock to Haley despite what he said about her, you know, at that an event, that is closing speech.

Yeah.

I was, of course, cheering him on because he basically eviscerated the two remaining candidates and the race. Called the Mattis frauds, called Barasso and Emeratus frauds. And just also Charlie Sykes you and I have watched them closely it’s just worth noting that that speech, if anyone missed it, is really worth, like, actually finding on one of the smartest people I know in town texted me in in the middle of the speech and said, only political hero that this is the only hero we have in politics right now is Chris Christie. I think that’s a powerful statement. Mean, he just really he really came around.

He admitted in that last speech again Charlie. Almost he didn’t use the word haunted. He made it clear he was haunted. By his twenty sixteen. Support of Trump and his continued support of Trump until Trump almost killed him with COVID and then told him not to tell anybody.

So it’s an incredible incredible story. And we obviously hope he goes and has some quiet time. And then endorses Biden. I think it’s entirely realistic that he will. I think it’ll be a long time from now.

But that’s better than now. So it’s really hard not to have him to listen to every day because he gave us kind of, I don’t know, Did he give us hope? He gave us something. I think he finished as a real class act, and I I do expect more from him.

I don’t disagree with you on all of that, but while he was a candidate, we did hear from him. And it wasn’t just that he gave us hope. He was dropping truth bombs in a party that has become allergic to truth. And and and I think that was useful. And so if we think of it in normal horse race terms, Yeah.

He needed to get out to clear the way. Okay? But at some point, we acknowledge this horse race is a looser rate. We know how it’s going to end. So How do you evaluate a candidacy like Christie?

The impact he has on the horse race or the impact he has on pounding the message about Donald Trump. And I guess I was leaning toward the ladder, which is that as long as he’s in the race, we are hearing something from him that might break through to a small number of Republicans. And he was also clearly enjoying himself. I mean, the contrast between him and say Nikki Haley and and Ron DeSantis. Nicki and and Rhonda Sanders are so programmed.

They are so tight. They’re playing not to lose. It’s like watching a quarterback who’s just, you know, kind of freezing up. You know, he’s got the yips. And his formulaic, you know, Chris Christie went out there and he goes, I’m a little f’s to give.

I’m just gonna lay it all out there, and it must have been incredibly liberating for him. I mean, frustrating that he wasn’t getting traction politically, but I think to just sort of let it go. And the speech that you referenced, He’s not reading from a teleprompter or notes. He’s just out there talking, and you can tell he was telling people exactly what he was thinking, which is so, so rare in politics.

He had thought deeply you can tell that day about what he wanted his closing message to be. He he includes horrible references. Very, very interesting that he went off on kind of the beauty of our melting pot about immigrants coming here wanting to find the best life on the planet. I mean, It was very anyways, very deep. I highly recommend everyone go there, but that was a liberated man.

That’s why we enjoyed him so much because he was so authentic. And I miss the truth bombs, but Charlie, I don’t think he’s gonna stifle them. I really believe that once we go to trial, that guy is gonna be on TV doing Joe Biden’s work for him. Just pounding about Donald Trump. I don’t think he’s gonna be quiet somewhere in New Jersey.

I think we’re gonna hear a lot. More from him.

Oh, no. No. No. I don’t I I don’t think he intends to, you know, open up that lawn chair to sit down and be sure a lot, you know, He’s not going back there. I I gotta mention that.

Okay. So I was gonna write about this today, but I felt that the need that we had to do, the obligatory punditry here. Yeah. I don’t know if you saw this piece in Political magazine. Why the world is betting against American democracy?

Ambassadors in Washington warned that the GOP Democratic divide is endangering America’s national security. It is interesting we sometimes forget that the rest of the world is watching us way more closely than we watch the rest of the world, and they are really worried about where we’re going as a country, what a Trump presidency might be, what this kind of political peril, you know, political paralysis might be, what it means for the Western alliance, for the global economy, for the future of Taiwan, and China, not to mention Ukraine and the and the Middle East. And I don’t know how heavily foreign policy is going to weigh in this particular race, but it it is really a b hard to overstate the stakes here. And it’s kinda grim to realize that the rest of the world is going, yeah, we can’t count on American democracy anymore.

I’m so glad you raised that. I read it. Last night. And it’s it’s so heartbreaking and disturbing, and I recommend everybody read it. Because you kinda need to slap in the face of diplomats and ambassadors on background, like, freaking out.

And saying that even if Trump loses that the corrosion that he has brought to our system, Will Saletan, and that Republicans will be trying to stay in a knife fight over every single spending bill and tying up military funds and not supporting Ukraine, anyway, even if Joe Biden wins a second term. It is so sobering and I really recommend it. What is so upsetting to me when I was reading it was not just the reality of it, which I think about all the time. The fact that now this has become another unmentionable. You think Nikki Haley can stand up when she’s trying to win over Republican primary voters and say, the world is watching us and is worried that we’ve given up on democracy, she can’t say that.

She ought to say that. If you’re gonna run against Donald Trump, you ought to say that because there’s a substantive difference between the two of them when it comes to foreign policy. When it comes to supporting our allies, you know?

You know what, the Republican primary voter would say to that, screw the rest of the world. Screw them America first.

See, this is part of this hangover. Even if Trump loses the Republic party will continue to be an isolationist party because you can see that, you know, Nikki Haley is still an internationalist, still believes in the Western Alliance. And she’s gonna get smoked. Mitch McConnell is this lonely, elderly voice in the United States Senate, and we cannot abandon our allies. But you can tell which way the tide is going.

You can tell that they are on the losing tail end of the intra party fight. And a Republican party that is isolationist is really kind of a return to the Republican Party before nineteen forty. I talked about this with will yesterday. We’ve had this eighty year run where we’ve had parties that disagree fundamentally on a lot of things, Vietnam war, everything. But they’ve also fundamentally been pro western and internationalist.

And that I think is very likely to come to an end in twenty twenty four for the Republican Party.

Right. No matter who wins that they’re gonna stay that way.

Right. Right.

Just just digest that the speaker has announced that he can’t do any immigration policy attached to the security and military funding

isn’t that something.

He they just can’t do it without Trump, while Mitch McConnell is telling his conference we have to do a border deal to secure the border because we will never get one under Trump if he wins a second term. And then, of course, separate from that, we’ll connect to that is the security aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, that they refuse to give And that’s why they’re saying, you know, we can’t do border because they don’t wanna do any of it. And it’s really dark, but McConnell is in the last nine months of his career. I don’t even think that he’ll stay in the Senate. He’s gonna be ousted as leader.

Whether Biden wins or not. Absolutely. Absolutely. I can’t see a scenario. When Donald Trump loses and says the election was stolen, and calls for violence and Joe Biden’s president, McConnell can’t hold on as leader.

They’re all coming for him. I just don’t see it at all. I think he’s not even gonna make it to twenty six or whenever his term runs up. So I think that it’s really important to acknowledge what that means in the macro sense and take that out a year, two, three. You know, Vladimir Putin being given permission if we withdraw from NATO, in a second trump term to invade another country in Eastern Europe.

This is something that really needs to be pushed in the faces. Of Republican elected supporting Donald Trump all year long.

Exactly. Now it’s important to mention that Congress did actually pass legislation that would take away the president’s power to unilaterally withdraw from NATO, but the president is commander in chief. And if you have a commander in chief that does not support NATO,

It

doesn’t matter what’s on paper. That alliance is badly badly damaged. A b stoddard. Thank you so much for joining me the morning after the Iowa caucuses. Thank you, Charlie.

We’ll keep doing these morning after shows. Okay. And thank you all for listening. Today’s Bulwark podcast time, Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow.

And we’ll do this all over again. Secret Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.