A.B. Stoddard: Liz Cheney Groupie

Alright, folks. Happy Easter. A couple quick housekeeping notes for you. I was gonna do a mailbag today, but me and AB Stoddard, just spent like, ten minutes just loving up on Liz Cheney at the end of his podcast. And so, we didn’t have time to get to it.

So I will do a a mail back on Monday. After the Bill Crystal episode. So if you have questions, email Bulwark podcast at the bulwark dot com, want some policy and politics questions, but ask you about other stuff too. You know, let your freak flag fly. One of the mailbag questions that many people ask is Can you please tell us what the closing song titles are?

Blah blah blah. Yes. We do. I have a Spotify playlist. We are gonna put the playlist in the show notes of every Friday’s episode.

And if you’re in the comments section, share it with people who ask, so I don’t have to keep doing it. And, just a reminder, if you wanna just troll me in the comments instead of sending emails, that is a special feature for our Bulwark Plus members. So just go to the Bulwark dot com slash free trial. To get a thirty day free trial of the Bulwark Plus, we would appreciate your support up next Alexandra, a, b, stuttered. Hello, and welcome to the Easter weekend Bulwark podcast.

I’m your host Tim Miller. I’m not showing any Sac religious Swindler Bible. This weekend. We are spending Beyonce’s new country record. I’m here with a b Stoddard.

Hello, a b.

Hi, Tim.

Or should I call you Alexandra? I was able to have a beer at the great kingpin bar in New Orleans with your daughter recently. And we started talking, and she was like, when did you meet Alexandra? And I I looked at her. I I was thinking, who are you talking about?

I need to back up for everybody that when Tim graciously showed up to meet my daughter in New Orleans with a family friend in our company, Slack, Tim says, I just met ABy Stodder junior. And I said, Tim, oh, you’re the best. Thanks for showing up. And I think the whole company, Tim thinks that I sent you out of your marathon and whirlwind of work duties out to a bar to, like, babysit my twenty two year old daughter. And not that you just happened to join up with her meeting up with a good family friend, but, she was thrilled to me you cannot stop talking about how hilarious you are and how hip you are.

Okay.

That was awesome. She was she was great. She’s great. It’s a it’s a good family. You’ve been you’ve been a good mother, I think.

It’s good parenting. So it was it was very lovely to meet her. And as a gift, I have a little audio present for you. I haven’t told you what we’re starting with today, but it’s kind of like a little little Easter treat, like, something you might find in your Easter basket, but in your ears. Let’s take a listen.

So don’t think just jump. You can give a know that anything is possible. Say. We leave just

Oh, this is the short version.

You will see anything Okay.

I can’t do it. Jason, please stop. Please save me. Stop it. Oh, my god.

That’s the new co chair of the RNC, Lara trump. Yeah. She’s got a single out today. Anything is possible when you marry the stupidest Trump child. You know, you can become the cochair of one of our great political parties.

You can you can become a top forty artist. It’s a nice life.

Mhmm.

And I think she does exercise videos with celebs, Tim, I think I learned from you or who did we learn from that Ed Henry helped her put that album out? Or that single.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s Mona. Mona Mona was doing a, investigative journalism on that, I think, and reported to us that, Ed Henry, who is booted from Fox for sexual harassment allegedly. And, is now, I guess I don’t know.

I guess, Maga Yeah. And I think also the January sixth choir, I believe. At Henry’s also also has some some imprisoned clients Wuff. You know, I don’t know. What do you think it says about the state of the Republican Party now that the co chair is putting out just cringe tastic singles.

And they’re hosting fundraisers where the for the RNC or the money first goes to her dad’s legal fund.

I just loved the conversation you guys had on the next level about this. Like, it’s just full on third world, dictator, you know, style. I mean, as JBL said, you only trust the family and They get to run everything. No one has any visibility into the funding, the future plans for the funding, the formulas for how it’ll be defeat up. In terms of what goes to the mass of the legal defense fund, what’s left for down ballot and state parties and candidates that are supposed to be creating the Republican party of tomorrow.

Like, there’s ever gonna be a post trump family republican party. So donors wanna believe

that

there’s this is the last hurrah for Donald Trump that he’s gonna be a lame duck, second term, come back a president if he wins, and then that will be the end of it. And they are giving to an organization that’s now run by him and basically subsidizes his needs. And the money goes, as I noted last week, straight in the new formula. It it can get to the r and c if there’s a mega monster event. But most of it goes first to the Trump campaign, which is struggling.

It’s less than half of Biden’s Hall at the end of February is what Trump ends up with. And then it goes to Save America and Save America literally funds the kids and Melania’s stylist They call it strategy consulting, not strategic consulting strategy consulting. She doesn’t appear in public anymore except for funerals. So it’s not her clothing and her hair. I don’t know what it is that they’re consulting with her about.

Maybe, you know, another stab at the divorce, but it is It is completely out of some bad TV show or soap opera, you know, and it’s it’s like the Dallas dynasty of politics. And and donors are they know this, Tim, and they’re going along. They know that in months and from now and next year, they will have no say and will, of course, never raise any objections into what the RNC does for the Trump family. And for their future. It’s not about the future of the party.

And everyone who’s spending their money on this deserve this because they they’re going in and acquiescing to this pretty soberly. I mean, they know exactly what the Trump family is doing. And this is what they want and they’re gonna get it hard. So That’s how I feel about it.

We have a specific donor we’re gonna talk about in a little bit. I do kind of wonder if Mussolini’s daughter-in-law was kind of an artist, maybe she had an opera, single that she was doing on the side. I don’t know. And everyone had to kind of go to the Italian opera and pretend like it was good. As you kind of, like, sort of imagine this.

I

like the title though. Everything is possible because now at the RNC, everything is possible. Or that’s a part of her refrain.

For the trumps. Okay. On the donor thing, just really quick, Biden raised a bunch of money last night in New York with Bill Clinton and Brock Obama and one of our competitor podcasts, smartless. You know, we’re available also for these bookings guys. I know it was an unrested development.

The Trump campaign, has attacked biden because there’s a a officer funeral was happening at the same time Jonathan Last Diller. The trump went to. And so I’m curious what your thoughts are that critique, but also I do think that it is no again, like, the gap in fundraising here is is pretty significant. I’m, like, pretty pessimistic on how much money actually matters the presidential campaigns, but we’re getting to a point where Biden has so much more than trump that it is a real advantage. What do you think?

I’m with you. Tim, I think that we lost so many traditional building blocks of politics in twenty sixteen. And I think the metrics that we used to pay attention to and value have really gone away and eroded, retail campaigning, endorsements, and television advertising and I think I think money. I mean, I I watched those senate races like you did in twenty twenty when we were told also in the polling. That we are gonna have all these Democrats just knock it out in red states from Iowa to Montana to Kansas to South Carolina to to Kentucky.

And they all lost badly. And they raised so much money. And so I just I don’t know how far that’ll get Biden. My thinking is I’m really hoping that they have a really sophisticated social media plan of attack because of what we’re seeing on the left with kids. And what they’re being fed about the war in Gaza.

So that becomes the biggest impediment in terms of the coalition, and I don’t know if money can get out of value. Hope that it will. And, you know, it it always will fund, you know, get out on the ground stuff. That is important. But I do wonder like you whether or not that’s gonna be able the biggest challenge right now is the information bubble.

Right? Does money break through that? Or do just fight fire with fire online. So we’ll know that, you know, by next cycle, but not now.

Yeah. I think it’s not nothing. The Biden is able to be up on the air, framing some of this, you know, framing some of his arguments a little bit. We’re we’re seeing modest movement in the polls very modest, but it’s not nothing. I’d rather be in buying a position than in Trump’s.

I guess we’ll put it that way on the financial side of things. We’ll we’ll see the extent. Yeah. We’ll see the extent of the difference. Wanna talk about something happy, and then we’ll get into the sad stuff.

How about that? Do you or do you wanna flip? Do you wanna do happy first or sad?

No. It’s Easter. He’s risen. I can go everywhere. I can go down.

Okay. Yeah.

I guess what’s good Friday, technically. Oh, it’s yeah. Maybe actually let’s do that. We’ll end with Liz Cheney. We’ll resurrect the podcast with Liz Cheney at the end.

It’s good Friday. So we’ll start then in the dark place with the concerns about the Biden campaign that were in the politico article this morning by our friend Jonathan Last Martin Jmart writes that Joe Biden has apparently not contacted. George Bush, Mike Pence, Larry Hogan, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Susan Collins, met Romney, Todd Young, Bill Cassidy, and Lisa Murkowski. He did call Haley the day she dropped out. I don’t do anything on this podcast that I’m not I don’t tell my friends privately.

I’ve told people in Biden world that I think that they should be doing full court press on this. I think many of these people are gettable. I read the article with some consternation. It is only March, but I don’t know, man. I know there’s a lot happening, Gaza, Ukraine, but this should be Vine’s wheelhouse.

Right?

And that’s what Jay Mart does a really good job of articulating that Biden more than everybody in his cohort in the Senate now in the Senate then when he was vice president for Obama. Congressional Democrats during Obama felt you know, ignored by the president, but the vice president was always scrambling around to not only cut the deals and new the negotiating, but the back slapping and the connecting. And that’s his gift and he knows how necessary it is. And so at this great deficit that, you know, that I just noted in his coalition, He knows from twenty twenty. He won with Republicans.

At that point, it was six percent. We’re obviously really counting on that number growing this time after January six among Republicans and the Haley returns even after she dropped out seemed to be encouraging, it’s great he called Haley. It’s great that his campaign according to reporting in the dispatch today have reached out to some Haley donors. But you don’t just go after the Haley money. You have to speak to those voters and you have to speak directly to the people that you just listed.

And I always wondered why once he got into office in early twenty one, he didn’t reach out to Romney immediately. And Romney actually went on the record and said that. You know, I never heard from the Biden campaign. I mean, that’s just crazy. So this is such a gimme.

It’s just such an unforced error, and I obviously hope that that Jay Mart’s column, you know, causes some consternation in people closer to the campaign than you and I are because they’ve gotta take action. Like he said, why not have Chris Christie to launch? I mean, that’s just Chris Christie turns no labels down. There’s only one thing left for that guy in your words. The hammer job.

I mean, that’s that’s it. Right? He’s gotta go on TV and pound every day and he doesn’t have to support button. All he has to do is prosecute the case against Trump. And so there’s no excuse for the Biden people not to come to these Republicans and at least like JBL keeps saying, thank Mike Pence.

He don’t even ask him for his vote yet, but you start by thanking him. Joe Biden knows Mike Pence. This is madness that he hasn’t reached out and said, what you’ve done to up your death threat level in the last two weeks is such a service to this country and it will you’ll take your place in history among the bravest people of great integrity. This is bananas. Okay.

Sorry for my rant.

No, please. Good rant. And ask him for their advice, you know, make them feel like they have an ear, you know. Maybe that makes a difference. Bine’s busy.

Jill’s? I think let’s get Jill a yellow legal pad, and she can start calling through all the wives or calling some of the these folks themselves. Hi, Larry Hogan, take a call from from Jill. So anyway, I mean, in in my fantasy world, for our Biden friends are listening to my fantasy world. Do you remember during the Obama years when when Biden I was never invited to one of these things.

Maybe you are AB, you’re an insider. Or Biden had the, the parties up at the naval observatory where you’d have the super soaker You know, you ever invited to a super soaker party? Okay. Well, by don’t take the super soaker out and, like, spray the the journalists, need a barbecue, like a summer barbecue. I can’t forget what to what to Google.

I forget exactly what was the fourth of July thing. Can’t we all envision that together? You know, Biden out there? Like Scranton Joe with his super soaker spraying Chris Christie, you know, can we?

At least his kids. Yeah.

Go spray mother. You know, spraying mother a little bit. Kinda teasing with her. Like, you know, everybody having some ribs. Like, this seems that seems smart.

I think people would come to that party. Come to the party.

I think

I think they’d come to the party. I think mother would not take will of the super soaker, but I’m so here for it. I really am.

Okay. Well, he’s calm haley. Let’s just let’s just turn it. I guess let’s just not let our imaginations be limited by people. Like, I know.

Hey, by the way, I get it. You gotta work Bernie. You gotta work AOC. You gotta do that too. It’s a busy job.

It’s a hard job. I’m not I’m not saying I don’t need special treatment, but One little party. That’s one little barbecue of people that are having endorsed Donald Trump. It’s all an ass.

Also, I just think that it’s important for the coalition of people we’re trying to put together in keep together that we remind people. It’s not but it’s both and. Okay. It’s not but Bernie, but a o c. Right?

It’s we have to hold a lot of truths together and a lot of disparate people in this coalition at the same time.

Yeah.

But from Gaza to like calling Paul Ryan. Right? It’s both him.

Nobody said you were signing up for an easy job saving democracy. He lost one voter though, Eric Levin. Yeah. His vote in New York on those gonna matter that much, but he’s a prominent fundraiser. I had the just pleasure of getting to meet this gentleman, Eric Levin on daytime MSNBC a few weeks ago, and We’ll put the video that in the in the show notes here.

I think we played it on the podcast once before, and we had a heated exchange. On MSNBC. At the time, he was claiming he was he hadn’t decided who he was gonna vote for, but all of his complaints were about Joe Biden. He’s an Nikki Haley fan, and and he was Happy is praising Mitch McConnell for being a team player and not voting to convict Trump or not opposing Trump even after Trump made racist jokes about his wife. So we kinda had a little bit of exchange about that.

And then afterwards, it got a little heated on set. And then afterwards offset, he said to me that, people like me with my condescending judgmental attitude about Trump supporters and the campus progressives is what’s gonna force people like him to vote for Trump, but he’s not gonna do it yet. That was February. This is March. He sends out an email to his friends that say the exact same thing he said to me, basically.

In the, in the green room, he had some concerns about January six, but as an American Jew, He questions whether there’s a place in America for my grandchildren. If the cancer of the social justice agenda continues to metastasize becoming ever more built into the laws that govern everyday regulations. He goes on to talk about white privilege. He doesn’t like that phrase. He talks a lot about the social justice agenda and how they sided with the Palestinians Nothing about Joe Biden.

Nothing that we’re on paragraph twelve here. Now he finally mentions Joe Biden, and he thinks that Joe Biden’s running a little too much distance between Israel No mention of Ukraine or Putin in here. And then, and then he goes, the real danger to American Jews is the Jew haters running around in the streets on campus quads. No mention of the anti semite. White Jonathan Last that Donald Trump had lunch with there goes on.

Harvard doesn’t like MIT. Doesn’t like the University of Pennsylvania, president. Even though two of those three presidents have been kicked out. And then, he says that the people protesting Biden are the core of his voting base. That doesn’t quite make sense to me.

And then finally, concludes by mentioning that Donald Trump’s grandchildren are being raised as orthodox Jews and that he wants stamp out social justice. So he’s been left with no choice but to vote for Donald Trump. I hate giving this guy so much attention, but there are a lot of these people out there, AB. There are too many of these people in our lives right now. You I know you have some of them in your life.

You’re gonna see them this summer at at the beach in Sarah Longwell? What do you say to them?

I have some super soaker parties. Okay. This is the thing. I remember this, segment. I did not know about the off camera conversation.

I remember watching it. I thought you did great.

Thank you.

And I did not think he could gross me out more than he did that day, but I have a few gems from reading over.

Oh, great. I’m glad you took some notes.

Yeah. That that he’s upset. Eric’s upset that Planned Parenthood and Other Women’s groups didn’t protest to Moss. So women are anti Semitic and women’s groups because they didn’t protest to Moss after the war broke out. And, yes, he says anti semites are Biden voters, not the Proud Boys.

Biden betrayed, of course, Israel. By our vote to abstain at the UN Security Council on the vote for a ceasefire. And Biden is intentionally thwarting its war effort. So Social justice agenda basically threatens Jews and he has no choice but to vote for Donald Trump. This guy from before he got on set with you, it was, of course, always gonna over Trump.

He was gonna say after raising this money, spending this money, whatever being part of the pack, that Republicans for Haley. He was gonna say for a few days that it was very hard for him and he was struggling and he needed a good option. And it’s not fair, and he couldn’t be taken for granted until he was. And this is all just a bunch of b s. I think it’s important.

I’m really glad you raised it. You sound conflicted over giving him airtime, but I think it’s really important for the people who are in our conversations. Right? And care about this mission that we’re on, the fight that we’re in, to understand what we’re up against. I mean, it’s really important for people in the Biden campaign to start a talking about what Donald Trump would do in Gaza.

And we can make passing references to, you know, to Jared’s plans for

condos. You did

the other day, but I think we I think we actually need to raise this and highlight the fact that their record is something that the the Biden campaign needs to discuss and they need to in trying to move to the center of this issue to

support civilians in

Gaza while supporting the eradication of Hamas and also in both supporting, but also holding to account, Vivi Netanyahu, who’s a who’s a not a good partner, and not a good actor. With all this complexity, Right. With all this both and with all this gray matter that Biden is challenged by. He needs to go to the black and white of Trump and make clear to the center of the electorate that we’re trying to wake up. That, no, the Democratic Party is not a bunch of anti semites who are trying to break Israel with our woke social justice agenda.

So I think this is an important conversation, and I and it’s obscene. That someone like Eric Levin is gonna make sort of fine purchase with this, and it’s really important that it be called out.

I think that we probably have some listeners. I have some friends that have messaged me with much less like eye rolly versions of the Eric Levin point. You know, people that I am friends with in the Jeb campaign, People that are concerned about what’s happening on campus, concerned about some Democrats going to distance from Israel. And I wanna get to the campus thing next just as a as a separate item. But in the context of the Biden folks, like, what I say to other people is, like, I just I don’t understand what more they want.

I mean, from the podium, KGP. This hasn’t been that great in my opinion, but, like, she criticized Rashida to leave and Elon Omar. Rashida to leave and Elon Omar didn’t stand up for Joe Biden at the state of the union. It was two people in his own party that didn’t stand up for him because of his comments on this topic. Joe Biden’s Secret Podcast of state is Jewish.

Tony Lincoln, and has been and has been, I think, pretty definitely trying to handle a very challenging situation here, you know, where I think there are legitimate concerns signs, but you also have to, you know, be very clear eyed about what caused this, who was the perpetrator it was from us. I don’t understand why we live in this world. Where where Eric Levin and his ilk can blame Joe Biden and and Tony Blinking for some really gross things that are happening on UCLA’s campus. And yet, Donald Trump is not held to account for the words and language and policies being proposed by the people wearing his hats and going to his rallies. I don’t understand what they’re talking about.

Like, the protesters who are putting up anti Semitic paper mache pigs on campuses, These are terrible people. They’re not Joe Biden voters. And I I know that Erica Vien’s old and these people are young, so he assumes that they’re Joe Biden voters and he’s really scared of them. Joe Biden. They don’t like Joe Biden.

They like Joe Biden less than Eric Levin probably. Okay. Like, these, like, you go to a protest and meet a kid. That is protesting Gaza and ask them what they think about Joe Biden, then go to a Proud Boys event. Go to a Groepers event on campus.

Go to a at TPO Save that go to one of Tucker’s live shows and ask the people who are there who love Donald Trump. What they think about Israel? Okay. So I’m like, look, we talked about this with Jake Tapper. There’s anti semites that are coming from all political ideologies, but, like, the Joe Biden base is not the worst kids on campus.

Right? The Donald Trump base is the isolationist America first America first was an anti Semitic thing, by the way. Initially, the America first, that is the Donald Trump slogan. And if you think at the end of the day, the people that don’t wanna help Ukraine, that don’t wanna provide any aid that don’t wanna welcome any immigrants are gonna come to the Jews defense when they really need it. I’ve got a history, couple history bucks that you should read.

So anyway, that’s my rant about assessing the Joe Biden and versus Donald Trump of it all on this topic.

I appreciate every word, and I particularly loved the concept of Eric Levin. Being scared of young people. So I know they’re younger, so they might scare him. Again, this goes back to the the complexity of this. You can Joe Biden can address the rise, the scourge of anti Semitism, which is burgeoning and exploding in this country right now, and is so enraging and so tragic.

Without, you know, associating himself with BB Netanyahu’s prosecution of of the war. Yeah. And he can And Democrats should call out Donald Trump who’s not talking about anti Semitism. You know why? Cause it makes the Proud Boys upset.

So he’s not actually getting up and saying what Eric Levin is saying that everyone is a bunch of anti semites on on the left. Occasionally, he’ll look to it, but he’s not explicitly saying people are attacking Jews in this country because they don’t like the way the leader of Israel is trying to go after Hamas in Gaza and he’s killing too many civilians. And so We have people calling Joe Biden genocide Joe on these campuses. And then Donald Trump is getting a completely free pass for the fact that he’s not gonna do shit to fight anti Semitism that is like coursing through this country right now.

Yeah. I cannot vote for Joe Biden. Because I’m really upset at the people on campus who are calling Joe Biden genocide Joe because they’re part of his coalition. Like, it doesn’t make any sense. Like, it is nonsensical.

It was an Atlantic article, that the obaker wrote, whereas, like, one of the TAs at Stanford was talking about how Joe Biden should be assassinated. Like, the far left campus activist want Joe Marin assassinated, and and they think that he’s committing an ethnic cleansing, which is nonsense, obviously. And then a bunch of, like, rich right wingers who, like, don’t wanna accept the fact that they’re part of a just a a grotesque populist America first regime. We’re like, I can’t vote for Joe Biden because Joe Biden’s voters are the people that want him assassinated. Like, what are you talking about?

What are you talking about? It makes no sense. Go meet a student. Go meet a student and go meet. I just, like, I have homework for everybody.

If you decide that you do not wanna make a judgment call based on Joe Biden or Donald Trump based on their own merits, but you wanna decide based on their voters and what their voters want because you think they’ll be responsive to the voters. I encourage you to go to a Joe Biden event, go to a Donald Trump event, and go to a campus rally where they’re calling Joe Biden Geneside Joe and actually speak to the people there. And then you can report back which types of voters you think are more in line with your views. The campus thing really quick, AB, and by the way, just I I wanna say this clearly, and I think I have on many podcasts, You can be concerned about anti Semitism and also be concerned about the humanitarian crisis. And guys, those are two things that are not mutually exclusive, though.

I know that a lot of people in our in our discourse want try to force us to have to choose. I would reject that choice, but I spent a lot of time this past week at USC’s campus, because I was doing a class there. I gotta tell you. Students there were great. A couple of them participated in a release the hostages rally, which I attended with them.

They did so freely. And of their own volition, there was nobody spitting at them or yelling at them. It was a nice gathering on campus. I keep being told that these campuses are just just wastelands of anti Semitism. There were Israel flags and people spoke out.

I did also speak to another student who went to a different campus who was expressing some concerns about some language that was said in their classroom about Jews. So I I’m not saying that this isn’t doesn’t exist, that the obaker story is obviously very good. So, like, I think that This is a serious issue that we should be talking about and we should be trying to educate young people about without, like, catastrophy and making it caricature. So anyway, that’s my experience last week, but you have actual young people in your life since you have college children, which we were just discussing. So what what’s your take on the young folks Ron DeSantis semitism?

Well, my children are not around any anti Semitism, and they don’t their friends are not engaged with any of this. They’re not hanging out with people who are building tents and holding protests and stuff, they are aware because of my warnings since the eighth of October that they have to be very careful about the propaganda that other countries our enemies are gonna use to divide us and that, you know, as you guys were discussing the other day, it’s important that people be very skeptical about the pictures they’re seeing that might be from another war from five years ago. So I just want Joe Biden to lean into this both and I want him to be able to talk about suffering in Gaza. His works to champion a two state solution. What he wants for for the area next year or the year after to be really clear about that because He’s the best person to articulate that.

But at the same time, say that there’s no place for anti Semitism in this country now or ever, I mean, I think he can do that so well. I just think he’s afraid to. And it’s the same feeling I have about Ukraine. You know, he starts the state of the union with Ukraine. It was a bold move I want him to lean into this issue so badly.

And Bill wrote about this today. And Bill and I’ve talked about it a bunch. I just so desperately want him to call out the House Republicans and Mike Johnson right now. Be on offense. They’re on recess.

You know, talk about what’s going on. The lights are out in cities and Ukraine. Like, this is going to change the world order. This is literally what a knife’s edge right here. And it’s no small thing, and I want him to champion democracy, sovereign nation, being able to freely protect itself with our help from an invasion by a brutal dictator, and I I feel that he should lead into that contrast.

The administration seems to be completely committed to Ukraine. But and David Frum was right that they have not always tactically done the right thing at the right time fast enough. But to just not abandon this issue with the American people, like, use the bully pulpit more. They just They were in it right away in twenty two and then a little in twenty three and then they, like, sort of they feel like they can’t talk to us about it. And maybe it’s not like a twenty twenty four election campaign.

One of their top five issues. I think it resonates with the middle and the people that we need to come out. Right? The people who believe in NATO who are afraid of it being blown up. And those voters who are often Republicans or independence care about this.

And and I I just think that the Biden people are too afraid of the issue, rhetorically. So that’s another beef of mine.

Yeah. Wonder if they can deploy Obama. Obama was so good at the both ends, and I had a lot of complaints about Obama at times, but like the campus thing Like, who would be a better messenger for talking about, you know, hey, we can be concerned about humanitarian issues. And also concerned about anti semitism. This was literally his two thousand and four convention speech.

Right? And, it would be nice to be able to have that know, I don’t know what he’s doing in Martha’s vineyard or whatever, but maybe we could maybe we could get folks off the sidelines. I don’t know, AB. It’s just you and me and Liz Cheney. They’re like, maybe we should be going balls to the wall on this right now, guys.

I don’t know. Maybe we should be calling everybody into battle. I will say, and we’ll get to is that Biden We critique because we love and because we’re scared. So tell Trump. Biden’s been a lot more active lately.

He said a full schedule And Downtown’s been golfing and in the basement. Yep. And, and they’ve been starting to draw that contrast. And part of the reason Donald Trump’s been golfing in the basement ties back to the money issues we talked about at the I don’t know that he’s got enough money to run these rallies, like honestly. Liz Cheney was in Iowa at Drake University.

She had a big crowd She said there, right on message with us, Abe, our our soul mate. Uh-uh, you never could have told me. I never would have believed it ten years ago. That Liz Cheney who I thought was too conservative for me would be my soul mate. As frustrated as I know, people get sometimes with policy disagreements you might have.

And I certainly have policy disagreeing. So the Biden administration, I know the nation can survive bad policy. We can’t survive a president who’s willing to torch the constitution She committed that she would be campaigning. She didn’t say with Joe Biden, but I’m I’m kinda reading between the lines, against Trump throughout the year. Thank god.

Right? I mean, like, isn’t this all we’re asking for from people? This is all I’m asking for. To acknowledge your policy disagreements and just say, I’m I’m gonna campaign for it anyway so too great.

She, again, I’m gonna just groupie out and try to fight back the tears.

Let’s do it. It’s east or resurrecting.

I remember in twenty twenty too in the summer, a friend of mine who’s, a makeup artist at Fox. We’re together. And she said, I gotta do Liz at, like, six AM. And I said, oh my god. That’s because the hearing is tomorrow and she you’re gonna do her hair and makeup and up.

Will you please tell her that I was overcome. I said, I need you and I’m, like, holding on to my friend. I said, I need you to tell her that she has led with her example that what she is doing is so important. She’s giving so many of us hope. I can remember it’s just like, literally a crazy groupie moment in my life, and I haven’t had a lot.

I was overcome. My mom, I’m sure you saw that event I know she got a huge crowd in Iowa, which I was so excited about. It was a gazillion people in that arena. But my mom, there was one in Hartford, like last weekend or something or ten days ago. My mom was not able to get tickets, but her my mom’s eighty two.

Her bitty friends got tickets and went in person and then the rest of them, like, live streamed at a friend’s house together. They all got together. And they talked to their friends who went to the event and they were all crying in the parking lot. And this isn’t just better than nothing. This is so powerful to me.

I just marvel at her for a couple of weeks after oath and honor, which is still on the best seller list. And I really urge everybody to read this book or listen to it on audio, please and tell everyone you know too. It is amazing. And it’s gripping and it goes really quickly. For a few weeks after that was released, Tim, she did a remember she was like, I don’t know if I’m gonna run for president.

I think it was just all more books, but she shut it down pretty quickly. And ever since then, she’s made it clear, like she said about bad policy. We can live with bad policy. We can’t live with trump during the constitutional order. So she’s been very clear about that.

And I think it’s so so energizing not only for us, but I think it’s gonna break through to people in ways that, you know, we can’t really even count yet. We can’t really, you know, quantify I think it’s amazing. And I also wanna point out to to our community because this is incredible. This woman and her father are friends with Clarence Thomas and the justices of the Supreme Court. Okay.

What they are doing not only to invite threats on their lives, but to break up their inner circle the life that they’ve always lived, the social set that they have been in. For her to say, I trust if you’d talk about the court, And the decision they made to take this on, but not in time for there to be a January sixth trial. She not only goes into this conspiracy theory that the right is trying Carrie Water for Trump on that some kind of evidence was stolen and the committee like, put it in a toilet somewhere, and Trump is always true thing about this. And she’s explicitly telling people repeatedly, no. He has all the damn evidence, and the special counsel gave him everything from the grand jury and everything from the committee.

And he knows that all of it would be so incredibly damaging for him. And he would be so fucked if all these former Trump officials that are basically the bulk of the evidence were testifying an open court and that would be the end of him. And for her to say to the court, I trust their deal in a responsible and expeditious fashion with this appeal, but recognize that taking action that will result in further delay in preventing the American people from seeing the evidence in open court is itself suppression of the evidence that the American people have a right to see. And the court ought to recognize that. That’s incredibly brave.

And it’s no small thing. And I I have to thank her every time she opens her mouth and I have to jump up and down and weep But this is, like, next level to me. Really is.

Same. Same. The social stigma is important. Nelmex. That’s what prevent a lot of other people for doing it.

So, yeah, I didn’t I I I didn’t mean as better nothing. I meant it. It’s like, this is it. This is what we’re asking for. What this Jamie is doing.

This is what we’re asking When you’re when people are like, what do you want from John Kelly and what do you want from Mattis and all the people on that list that Joe Biden hasn’t called enough that he should call soon. That’s what I want. Just look at her what she’s doing. You know, you don’t need to go full live. You know, you just have to be clear eyed about what’s happening with Donald Trump.

Okay. And the threat. There’s one reason she’s go at the thread and I wanna leave us with this. Some people message and say they miss hearing Charlie’s voice. So our friend Charlie Sykes, Ann Liz, We’re attacked on Steve Bannon, my nemesis’s Secret Podcast, yesterday.

And, some couple people texted me about this autoplay. Wanna play just a little bit of what Liz and Charlie had to say about Mike Davis and what Mike Davis said about them on Steve Secret Podcast as a little line yap for the end of our episode.

One of the individuals, has talked about how he wants to he wants Trump to appoint him to be attorney general for three weeks. And at the end of three weeks, he’s he’s gonna leave Washington with a pardon from Trump. And he’s laid out, you know, his plans for those three weeks, which include indictments, detentions. I mean, they’re he’s very it’s chilling, and it’s tempting to listen to these people and think, you know, well, they’re they’re crackpots, and they are. But but a crackpot with power is really dangerous.

So I think it’s important to to take seriously and literally what they’re saying.

Right. You know, the the discussion he’s talking about is a crack pot. But you know, you put crackpots in power. They can be dangerous as I’ve said many times. You know, a clown with a flame thrower is it still has a flame thrower.

I mean, do we all remember where we were when we heard that that somebody was suggesting that the vice president could simply refuse to count the electoral votes, and we’ve rolled our eyes into, well, they that can’t be serious. Well, now we know what a close run thing it was. So, yeah, the fact that people are saying, I’m gonna come in here. I’m gonna override the constitution. And then what are you gonna do about it?

Mike Davis joins us, by the way, Mike Davis Charlie Sykes, he’s a quite bright guy. I mean, hates us, but he’s a bright guy. He fails to talk about the electoral contact of eighteen eighty seven, which gave

the vice president full full authority. They had

to change it in the middle of the night and slip it into an omnibus bill because they had to cover the tracks of the crimes that they did.

Of course, Steve.

As you said this morning, there has to be a a special prosecutor in a mass massive criminal probe of this law fair that’s against everybody. I’ll turn it over to you, Mike Davis, because you put the fear of god in these folks.

Which I love. I would say to Liz Cheney, she needs to keep up. I’ve abandoned my plot to be Trump’s attorney general because there’s that whole pesky senate confirmation thing. My next plot is to serve as Trump’s viceroy of DC, and I’m gonna create a very special who are for the humorless washed up DC politician losers like Liz Cheney Cheney. Well, there you go.

They’ve got Gulog plans. I mean, let’s change it just has these people’s number. Doesn’t she? It’s like, yeah, this is the problem. This is the problem.

A lot of people Eric Levine of the world wanna dismiss this. They don’t wanna listen to this. They don’t wanna look in the eye. But these people might be clowns, but they’re dangerous fucking clowns, and we gotta take it seriously. And,

Jim, I did not mean to suggest that you were the one saying that that it was sort of better than nothing. You were, you know, you were, like, injected into my veins, like me.

Yeah. I

think a lot of Democrats who we are working with tend to think, like, oh, well, like, and then there’s that.

Yeah. Right.

And don’t

and they don’t really understand how potent it is. You’ve taken care of Mike Davis, which I’m really glad. You should do that again. You should continue to remind our readers and our listeners in the best singular way that you do, but he’s terrifying. And he’s really one of the only people that will say it completely out loud and use words like gulag, but but it’s all, you know, of a piece of the retribution agenda, which is to jail, Cassidy Hutchison, and Elizabeth Cheney Cheney.

And, you know, have tanks in the street. And, you know, enforce a crystal Jonathan Last, theocracy, plan for the country. So Yeah.

And by the way, even if their Gulog plan doesn’t work, even if that’s a joke, even if that’s a troll, it’s not a troll for the deportations. And these are the assholes. And maybe it won’t be Mike Davis himself, but, you know, because he’s just too big of a clown to get hired, but probably not, it might be Mike himself. But there’ll be people like Mike Davis that just don’t have as big a mouth that are just as gross as him who are running a a government run deportation scheme. And so I think that everybody should take that very fucking seriously.

Very seriously.

I think everyone should

familiarize themselves with project twenty

twenty five. Yep. If you know, seventy eight percent of the country is in favor of, abortion medication, and that’s One of their plans is to have the FDA ban it. I mean, there’s just a lot in there. You know, I I think there’s a lot that people need to familiarize themselves with.

Yeah. The policy actually matters. Okay. A b Stoddard. Thank you.

Some wonderful friend. What are you doing for Easter? Are you doing a hunt? Are you doing an easter egg hunt?

No. Are you having a

bunny or eating a chocolate bunny?

No. We’ve moved past that. But I have both my college seniors here who are graduating next month or in, I guess, almost next month. They’re graduating in May. And they’re both home for the weekend.

Our baby is over in Florence for her semester abroad. So we miss her, but it’s awesome to have them home and we’re gonna eat drink and be merry. How about you?

I don’t know. I’ve been in LA all week. I’ve missed my child, and I’m just I’m happy to be back in New Orleans. Oh, I may actually am if if you’re in New Orleans, I’m moderating a panel with Rob Reiner tomorrow, actually. Tomorrow afternoon for his documentary.

His documentary in God and Country, which we did a podcast about. But if you didn’t, let’s see. You can go back. But if you’re in New Orleans, that’s tomorrow afternoon at the the Pretania French quarter of Pretania theater. There are two Portania theaters, not the Uptown one.

And, doing that. And then, I don’t know, me and the kiddo, just I don’t know. Ferette Street and hang out and brunch and How

cool.

Eat chocolate bunnies. I think I’m gonna eat a lot of chocolate bunnies.

Yeah. Make sure she has some candy. We’re gonna

have a lot of candy.

Yeah. This is the weekend for that.

Alright. AB Stodder. Thank you so much. We’ll be seeing y’all. Have a great Easter, and, we’ll you on Monday, peace.

Come in around here. Hey, baby. Does she watch my head spin? I I think I go to nothing. You see the people be the kid around.

So why the Oh, they’re surprised by what we see.

Like my table and my

time turn. Look on my bed.

The Secret Podcast is produced Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.