An Incredibly Weak Field

Welcome to beg to Beg to Differ, the Bulwark weekly roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I’m Mona Charen, syndicated columnist and policy editor of the Bulwark, and I am joined by our regulars, Will Saletan of the Brookings institution in the Wall Street Journal. Damenlinker, who writes the sub stack newsletter notes from the middle ground and Linda Chavez of the Nesh Ganen Center. Our special guest this week is Peter Weiner, contributing writer to the New York Times and the Atlantic.

Thanks one and all. Well, it is a very smoky East Coast that we greet you from. That’s the first time that I’ve experienced this kind of thing where you walk outside and you think, wow my neighbor must have some sort of bonfire going that’s blowing right into our yard but nope. It’s A lot bigger than that and very, very eerie. But anyway, so we’re here to discuss the shape of the GOP field.

Probably this is the final set, though we can’t be certain of that. This week we saw Mike Pence declare his candidacy. And he said a number of things that he has not said before about Donald Trump. And I’m going to ask Pete Weiner to comment first. He said, President Trump’s words were reckless.

They endangered my family and everyone at the capitol. And he said, the American people deserve to know that President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the constitution Now, voters will be faced with the same choice. I chose the constitution and I always will. So that sounds great. And I hasten to add that Pence deserves full credit for what he did on January six that could have gone very differently.

He’d made a different decision. But Pete Weiner, you know, when he was asked whether if Trump were the nominee, he would support him. He said yes.

Yeah. That’s that’s a problem. It’s a very Mike Pence thing to do. I should I should say, and that’s emblematic of what a lot of the Republican candidates and party is like these days. More and more of them are willing to criticize Trump though gently for the most part.

But Bill Barr did the same thing when he was on his book tour. I said, in a blink of an eye, he would go Trump over the Democratic nominee which shows either that they’re morally deformed or that they’re utterly cynical or some combination of both I think the important thing to say about Pence who’s not a particularly talented political candidate. Is what his candidacy and what’s happened to his candidacy says about the Republican Party, which he did choose the constitution, as you said, and he deserves credit for it. And the fact that he chose the constitution decimated his chances to be the Republican nominee. And the fact that That is the case once again is an illustration of the sort of depravity that’s overtaken What was once and impressive and in some respects a a great party?

Linda Chavez, I’m sort of at a loss to figure out what Pence thinks he’s doing. Do you think it might be that he genuinely does believe that God wants him to run and will arrange things on his behalf because looking at polling, looking at what Pete just mentioned about the nature of the Republican Party, a significant part of the Republican Party thinks Pence is a traitor because he didn’t do what the god king instructed. And then there’s another big chunk that regards him as the Lickspittle vice president who couldn’t say enough good things about Trump’s broad shouldered leadership despite all of the depredations of the Trump years. So

Well, I’m probably not the best person to answer this question, Mona, because I do think there is sort of a strain in evangelical Christianity born again Christians who believe that God speaks to them directly And you know I was reminded of this watching a show about Pat Robertson, who died this week. And There was a clip played from the seven hundred club in which Pat Robertson said that Mitt Romney was going to be elected President and he was asked by the person on the program, well how do you know that? And he said because God told him. And maybe God has told the former vice president that he is going to be president. I don’t understand it.

I do understand the instinct to try to make something of the Republican party again. I do think it is important to have a two party system and that the parties ought to be differentiated by their ideology, by their policies, by their platforms and Mike Pence clearly represents a very different vision for America than Joe Biden does. So I can understand his wanting to be president. I could understand his hoping to rebuild a space within the Republican party for his kind of conservatism but it seems to me sisophy and task I don’t see it happening and part of it is because He’s not all that appealing, a character. And I think personality, the ability to connect with people, Again, he may connect in certain communities, but I don’t think he connects with people who are not part of that community.

Right. And then there’s the irony that Mike Pence is the guy who was chosen exactly because he would make Trump kosher to religious conservatives. He put his hands on Trump and blessed him and said you really need to put side, all of your moral concerns about this guy. It’s fine as an evangelical Christian to support someone with such low character And now he’s saying character really matters, and he certainly did persuade them the character didn’t matter. Now they believe that, But anyway, let’s turn to somebody who has a slightly different personality.

And Bill Gelson, I’m coming to you on this because you mentioned that you thought Christie’s entry into the race would be interesting. So he’s in. He gave a town hall in New Hampshire for two hours. He really didn’t hold his fire toward Trump. So, your reaction.

It’s exactly the Chris Christie that I expected to show up at the opening bell of fists flying. You know, there’s some boxers who go to the center of the ring and then sort of try to size up the opponent, you’ll throw an occasional jab. But is just trying to figure out the optimal way of of going into the real fight? Well, that’s not Chris Christie’s style. You know, when the bell rang, he began throwing uppercuts and and jabs to the jaw.

And it’s very clear that that is exactly what he’s going to do from the beginning of his campaign until the end whenever the end comes. If I were Chris Christie, I would barely set foot in Iowa. Christy, I think, will be at his best in New Hampshire. He loves town halls. New Hampshireites love town halls, whether there are twenty people in them or two hundred.

He could easily meet most of the Republicans in the state, one on one, more than once. During the course of, say, a six month campaign. I think the jury’s out on what kind of reception he’s going to get at New Hampshire, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were somewhat better than expected.

What do you think, Damon? Here’s just a sample of of what Charlie Sykes said and the kind of the way he said it in his usual pugnacious style, said the person I am talking about who is obsessed with the mirror, who never admits a mistake, who never admits a fault and who always finds someone else and something else to blame for whatever goes wrong, but finds every reason to take credit for anything that goes right is Donald Trump?

Sure. That’s nice. I mean, it’s well stated. He’s an articulate guy. He’s good at thinking extemporaneously.

In other words, he’s a competent politician. My attitude about Christy entering the race is that if he’s getting into it in order to be a kamikaze candidate who’s going out there to kind of redeem himself. After let us recall, he dropped out of the twenty sixteen race in early February. And by the end of the month, he had become the first high profile Republican to endorse Donald Trump. Long before it had been settled, that Trump would be the nominee.

He got to the head of the line and he stuck with him till the end until January sixth.

Sorry. I I I have to correct you, Damon. He stuck with him until election night when Trump refused to concede.

Okay. Alright. So Alright. Until

—

Twenty twenty. — let’s call it the broad election period.

Yes.

Yes. From the moment the votes began recounted and we started to see the closest of it and so forth. But the problem here is not that he’s kind of tainted messenger. It’s that it is very unlikely. He’s actually gonna be president.

So if he’s gonna jump in and be a common Cazi candidate and be the one guy on stage who has nothing to lose and he’s gonna go try to take down Trump in order to allow a more viable option to rise above Trump, probably Ron DeSantis, but we’ll see. That would be a very noble crusade. The problem is that he’s already said some harsh comments about DeSantis. They were about DeSantis’ waffling on foreign policy issues. But that is an indication that actually he’s going to try to win, which means He’s going to use that articulateness and that ability to think on his feet and to stick a knife into his opponents, which he used against Marco Rubio, at a key moment of the race in twenty sixteen.

He’s gonna use it to everyone around him, including DeSantis. And my real fear is that that is just going to be one more variable in the dynamic that’s going to make it more likely that Trump ends up prevailing. Would Rubio really taking down Trump in twenty sixteen? I very much doubt it. But he certainly was not helped by the New Hampshire debate in twenty having Christie choose to go after Rubio above everybody else on the stage.

It did damage. And so say, if he hadn’t done that and Rubio had done several points better in New Hampshire, the dynamic coming out of there might have been a little different. And who knows? So Christy being in there doesn’t give me a tremendous amount of happiness. It makes me a little more nervous than I would be without him in there.

Because he’s a wild card and his very ability to go after the other candidates could really end up just doing Trump’s work for him yet again.

Yeah. Pete, I mean, Damon makes a good point that Christie’s motives are always open to scrutiny. I mean, This is a person who was willing to even after everything we saw in the Trump years after the total degradation that Trump visited upon this country. Christie was one of his advisors, but he was one of his debate coaches where he almost certainly caught COVID from Trump. Trump didn’t reveal that he had it, and it nearly killed Christie.

But he was all in in twenty twenty. Now he says that he has had an awakening, and maybe he has. But as Damon points out, his history here of being A principled Republican who stands for the rule of law is weak. And he did say that he’s not a paid Sasson. He is in this to win.

So if that means attacking other people who might stand a better chance of unseating Trump, it’s really an open question as to what he would do there. Right?

Yeah. I think it is. I agree with your critique of Chris Christie. Because he was supporting Trump up till the twenty twenty election. Chris, if that was true of Liz Cheney as well

That’s true.

She was not as close to. Trump, but she was supportive of him. And so you have to you have to deal with the world in which we find ourselves. And if Chris Christie has seen the light or whether he’s embrace this posture for other reasons, self interest, trying to redeem himself, a, I don’t know, b, I’ll take him. Whatever his motives are, because I guess for no other reason than it’s emotionally cathartic for me to listen to the man — Yeah.

—

he’s he’s making arguments that I felt like it should have been made for years and years, and he is he is effective. But he’s not gonna win the nomination. I hope he keeps his focus on Trump. I think he will. And that doesn’t mean that he won’t go after DeSantis or or others as necessary in his circumstances dictate.

But there’s no question that the person that he’s locked in on is Donald Trump. And I think he sees that as his mission, and he also sees it as the only way that he thinks he could win the nomination. Again, that’s not going to happen. He’s a he’s a skilled politician and and I will say that in terms of this field generally, this is a stunningly weak field when you look at the people that are that are in it. And at the end of the day, whether Christie is effective or others were effective or not.

I think the key figure here is Donald Trump and just what the attitude of the Republican base is toward Trump. It’s a magnified party, and if they don’t turn on him, it wouldn’t matter how effective any of his challengers would be. But if the base of the party begins to wander away, whether it’s because of the indictments or other reasons, then it’s a different ball game.

Is there anybody out there who you think would be a strong candidate to get the nomination, wrench it away from Trump?

No. First, not anybody that that I could support. But I don’t think so because I appreciate the fact that these candidates have a puzzling task ahead of them, which is you’ve got a guy with a thirty point lead And so you’ve got to take him down to defeat him. But anybody who goes after him seems to implode. And that’s a difficult task.

So again, I think more than in most elections, Trump is is the key figure. And I don’t see other candidates. We candidates are strong and talented candidates who are going to, on their own, be able to defeat him. Other circumstances would have to intervene.

Will Saletan, you wanted to make another point?

I do. And Pete and I could have a long discussion of just how weak this field is. But let me tell you how Trump could be defeated. As you know, we’re not talking about a single national contest. We’re talking about a sequence of contests in which what happens early on has a profound effect on what happens later on.

So here’s a thought experiment for you. Ron DeSantis does not endear himself to the good folks of Iowa, But a fellow by the name of Tim Scott does for all sorts of reasons that I think are obvious at least in principle to everybody on this podcast. And to the surprise of everyone, he comes in second in Iowa. What do you think the story is gonna be for the next week? I can tell you what it’s gonna be because I lived through it in nineteen eighty four as the issues director for Walter Montell’s presidential campaign.

Mondale got forty eight percent of the vote in Iowa. Gary Hart got seventeen percent, beating out George mcgovern for second place. And suddenly, Gary Hart was the anointed challenger.

Mhmm.

And a real dynamic developed where suddenly all of his his virtues such as they were, which were boutique virtues became retail virtues. And he deep Walter Mandale in the New Hampshire primary. And if Modern technology existed back then, so he could reap the financial rewards of his second place finish in Iowa followed by a stunning upset victory in New Hampshire, he would have won the nomination. So don’t assume that we know what’s going to happen in the early contest. But what we do know is that what happens in the early contest has a profound shaping influence on what happens afterwards.

Well, that is right. Linda, I just met you saw the exchange that Tim Scott had on the view, which I thought was great, but I have my problems with Tim Scott. So what did you think?

Well, I did see the clips. I’ve never actually watched the view. Maybe I shouldn’t admit to that, but I never have. But I did see the clips It was all about race. It was about a comment that had been made by one of the regulars on the program who basically said that Blacks who succeed are exceptions and Tim Scott took great offense at that.

And I thought he did a very good job there. I wish I felt more enthusiastic about Tim Scott. Bill may have to work on You know, I would be delighted if Tim Scott emerged as the number two in Iowa and that propelled him onto more of a center stage, but I’m not entirely confident how he’ll perform there. And you know there is this tendency in the Republican Party to look for a great black hope I mean we’ve gone through this over and over again with candidates emerging, I mean whether it was in a Senate race or a presidential race. You remember Alan Keys?

You know, he was

Slabor of the month for

a long — Yep. — for a long while.

Yep.

And I just worry a little bit that Tim Scott may be

Let me suggest the why I think Tim Scott is not not the next term in King.

Okay.

I mean, you know, Alan Keys was you know, great guy. And brilliant guy. Brilliant or inter Brilliant orator. Never got elected dogcatcher. Okay?

Had no political experience whatsoever and

Did worse than I did in the US senate rich in Maryland by myself.

Right. And permanent Cain was a flash in the pan. He was a, you know, businessman. Again, not a politician. Right.

People think, well, the voters are looking for a businessman, but

a lot of skeletons in his closet.

There were that too. Right. But you need you need skills. Now now Scott is different. He is really an old fashioned a politician who has climbed up the Greasy Pole from local office to national office, he is very good at this.

And he has lots of money in the bank because he has attracted donor interest and people like him personally. He’s thought to be the most popular guy in the senate.

Mhmm.

And so all of those things suggest that he isn’t just a flash in the pan There are a number of problems though. And one of them is that people suspect because of things he has said, including when he was asked about January six, he said that the one person he does not blame for January six is Donald Trump. And when he was asked whether he would consider the vice presidential slot, he said, yes. Anybody would be honored. Right.

Yeah. That’s what he’s running for. Right? That’s what that sort of sounds like.

Yep. I agree.

Yeah. Okay, let me see. Should we have a word or two about Ron DeSantis. I mean, I do think it’s bizarre, Damon Linker, that DeSantis has decided to take on Trump to a degree, but he’s criticizing Trump for the pretty much the only things that Trump did right president. He’s he’s going after him on the vaccines and on the first step criminal justice reform act.

Which changed the sentencing guidelines for nonviolent offenders. He’s calling that a jailbreak bill.

Yeah. I have a friend who has ties to some of the libertarian groups that really push the first step back, and they’re all sort of, like, gear in the headlights right now about this fact, like, oh my goodness. To Santa says, go on after that because now they’re like, well, wait a minute, we were going to maybe support Ron DeSantis and now he’s going after our signature thing. It goes along with what we’ve seen from DeSantis from the beginning. The only time he ventures forth any kind of criticism of the Trump administration, it’s from the right, which is his MO.

In a way DeSantis is running his own kind of post twenty twenty version of Ted Cruz’s twenty sixteen campaign. I am miss your conservative. I am any issue you think of. I will adopt the most right leaning variation on it. Even if it’s against Trump on the assumption that that’s what the Republican electorate wants to hear.

Now, I’m not entirely sure that that’s right. And one bit of evidence for that is the fact that DeSantis is not leading. So clearly, they’re not immediately hearing what he says and going, yes, what we need is someone who’s willing to hit Trump on vaccines, even if a lot of Republican voters lean in the direction of vaccines skepticism So DeSantis is actually so far a remarkably consistent candidate. Now, of course, he only officially launched his campaign a couple weeks ago, but you know, he’s been sort of pseudo running for at least six months through the flurry of hyperactivity and Tallahassee passing a million bills and constantly doing things to get the kind of Fox News world all revved up for his launch And throughout that, there have been no real changes of course. He seems to have sat down with his staff months ago and gamed this out.

And one of the elements of their game plan is we will only go after Trump if we’re trying to hit him from the further right. So that’s I think where we consistently are and Will Saletan to be until the DeSantis camp decides that it really isn’t working. They’re not getting any traction. And then that’s when things will get interesting and we’ll see if he takes a different tact, either against Trump or in terms of the policies that he’s really leaning on.

Yeah. One of the pieces of conventional wisdom that came out of twenty sixteen was that The Republican Party was less conservative than intellectuals and thought leaders imagined, and the proof of that was that if you wanted the pure conservatism injected straight into your veins. There was Ted Cruz who was available and Trump was anything but a pure conservative and yet he mopped the floor with crews. And of course, as president, Trump has been all over the map on many issues And you wrote a piece, Damon, saying that the GOP is kind of post ideology, but let me just suggest and anybody is welcome to jump in on this, but There is a difference between not caring about conservatism and just being sort of insourceled by Donald Trump. Look, most Republicans will tell you that they liked the policies of Donald Trump.

And they’re not imagining things. They liked the Muslim ban. They liked the judges. They like the tariffs. They like the wall even if they’re misinformed about whether it was finished or not finished.

They liked the let’s torture our enemies, torture the families of terrorists. They liked all that. Right? That that’s not post ideological.

Well, I mean, my posts that I’ve written on this are not meant to be absolute statements of the way the Republican Party is or will develop. But it’s more a way of sketching two tendencies. And I think that Trump and DeSantis campaigns give us a good opportunity to see variations here. Now obviously there’s a lot of overlap between the two. But there is a real difference in attitude where I do think DeSantis is running a campaign that is very policy focused.

You can tell that his thinking and the thinking of his staff is that the reason Trump is popular the reason the party has evolved the way it has since twenty sixteen is that the Republican voters were tired of a whole bunch of elements of the Reagan ideology and they wanted another ideology and that for want of a better summary statement is anti wokeness. That that is the new ideology, and everything else sort of has to follow from that. And from that, follows as a series of policy commitments that what we need is a very efficient manager or leader like Ron DeSantis, to enact those policies to go after the left and defeat the woke mind virus as he so elegantly puts it. Whereas, Trump, I think, is actually practicing a slightly different variation of right wing politics, which is actually not very ideological. Even if on particular issues, he sort of ends up haltingly and inconsistently sort of where DeSantis is too, although not on everything, but his as much more about individual judgment.

Basically, vote for me trump. I alone can fix it as he famously declared in twenty six teen, he alone can fix it. And that means you need me personally to sort of look at the world’s size up every situation as it is, and in the moment just decide to do x, y, or z based on my feeling. Based on the last person I talked to based on some polling I saw based on some Fox News segment I just watched and got me all revved up. Or what some loon on Twitter circulated.

Has said and retweeting it and so yeah. Exactly. And so you know, there’s a way in which this is a difference in outlook about how to conduct oneself in politics. Ideology is a form of principle. It’s rules.

It’s saying, we as a group, people who belong to this party, believe in certain principles, and we will adhere to them, and then do the work of applying them to policy initiatives on the basis of those principles. Whereas Trump is purely in favor of relying on the individual judgment or prudence of the statesman who, again, sizes up each individual thing based on a million considerations in the moment. Now if you have churchill, In office, then relying on the judgment of the statesman is a perfectly fine thing to do. If it’s Donald Trump, I think it’s incredibly reckless But I do think there’s a large faction of Republican voters who very much want to sort of put themselves in the hands of this great Strongman, savior protector who is Donald Trump. And in that respect, no one else can equal him.

That partly explains Why Trump just keeps doing well, and it never seems to take a hit to his numbers. And no matter how much Ron DeSantis is basically saying, I’m Trump plus. I’m Trump who can get things done. It works okay. It gets him up to around twenty, twenty five percent in the polls.

But he doesn’t really overtake Trump because he’s still not that guy. So again, is this an absolute schematic thing that unlocks everything about the Republican Party these days? No. But I do think it gets at something important about what is distinctive about.

Okay. And listeners are fully entitled to substitute the term mob boss for statesmen in what Damon just said.

Hi. Since Bill doesn’t agree with what I’ve just said. So why don’t we hear from Bill at some point?

Oh, okay, Bill. Yeah, go ahead. I mean, we’ll have less time to talk about the coming indictment, but that’s alright. Go for it. Oh and Pete, yeah, I’ll come to you too, Pete.

So There’s no way of addressing what Damon just said quickly. So I’ll address it all too briefly. The assumption underlying your remarks statement is that Trump’s populism is devoid of ideological tent. And I think that’s just wrong. And I would be happy to explain why at considerable length, But I will content myself with saying that Trump in a way has been the most consistent of the candidates for the longest time.

He has been American firsting for the better part of four decades. And America first is an organized way of thinking about domestic and foreign policy and their interaction. He has never wavered on issues of trade or immigration or international alliances or the role of morality. In politics, domestic, or international. And only if you believe that populism has no ideal can you believe that Trumpism has no ideological content?

It is a counter ideology to Reaganism.

Okay. Pete Weiner.

Yeah. Just as quickly I largely agree with Bill on that. I’ve understood Trump not as a conservative but as a populist. He’s incidentally conservative, like, on the judges and some other issues. But that’s not based on any kind of ideological belief that he’s developed over.

Over the years. So the way to understand him is is part of those. And to the degree that there’s an ideological construct, you actually need to go back to Pat Buchanan in nineteen ninety two. That’s the closest that there is because Buchanan was in a sense of canary in the coal mining. He preshadowed a lot of of what we see with Trump.

Trump went after entitlement reform, which was not a conservative policy. Paul Ryan had set that up, is spending. Was enormous. International relations, he certainly wasn’t a conservative the way that he played footsies with so many dictators. But I think his populism is is not intellectual as much as it is dispositional or temperamental.

He is just tapping into the ferocious anger at the so called establishment. And I don’t think he’s ideologically committed even to populism. I think his view is whatever gives voice to the anger, the rage, the sense of grievances, he’s going to to use that. The last thing I wanted to say is the conservatism is more than a set of policies. Indeed, I think in its most fundamental sense, it goes deeper than that.

And Trump in terms of disposition and sentiments is the most anti conservative figure imaginable. He taps into mob passions, promotes mob violence, the lawlessness, all of the the elements from sort of a Berkey and oak shot. View of conservatism. He’s the antithesis of that. The Republican party is not a conservative party anymore.

It’s it’s a populist party and it’s the ugly side of populism.

Alright. We’re gonna have to leave it there for this week because I want to get your reactions, all of you to the coming indictment. It is getting very real. There have been tremendous numbers of speculative stories, but this week, we did see that Jack Smith has sent a letter to the Trump attorneys informing them that, yes, Don Trump is the target of this investigation and that means that he is likely to be indicted very soon. So I will start with you, Linda.

It’s not clear as of this recording how broad this indictment will turn out to be so your reaction.

I think if there is an indictment handed down soon, my suspicion would be that it would be focused on the documents case and would not include January six investigation because I think that One is going to include multiple indictments. It’s not just going to be Donald Trump who will be indicted because that was a real conspiracy and there are a number of people I think involved there. You know there’s a lot of speculation about what going on with the grand churries because most of the activity has gone on in Washington DC and suddenly there’s now a small flurry of activity apparently going on in the southern district of Florida. And you know there are a lot of people who wanna get Donald Trump, including me. Who say, oh gee, but the jury pool is so much more favorable in the district of Columbia.

You know, for that reason alone, it might not be a bad thing to have it come out of Florida because I think the one thing you do when you indict the president of the United States is you have to make sure that it looks to all of America as something fair. And having a jurisdiction in which you have so few people who have voted for Donald Trump. Sort of looks like you’re stacking the deck. Besides which it’s certainly on the obstruction charge, bad activity It seems mostly if not entirely took place in Florida. And as I understand it, I’m not a lawyer but spend all too much time listening and reading about this case.

My understanding is that the law pretty much requires that the obstruction part of the case be charged and tried in Florida. So Look, I think it’s not a good day for America. I think it’s a very sad day for America. But the fact that it hasn’t happened here It’s happened in a lot of countries. I mean there are a lot of democracies in which former presidents former chancellors, former prime ministers have been charged with wrongdoing.

And have gone to prison.

And have gone to prison. That’s right. So I think it is one of the strengths of democracy and the rule of law. I mean, the whole point is no man is above the law. Will Saletan, I know you’ve gone back and forth about the whole indictment matter.

Do

you think it’s a sad day for America or do you think it’s a ratification of no man is above the law?

Do I have to choose?

No.

And I don’t. I think it is a sad day when a former president of the United States is indicted for a serious crime, and that is what we’re talking about. On the other hand, it would be even sadder. You know, if we set aside the rule of law, in deference to some political calculus. Because in this case, we are not dealing with I think a tough call.

The facts seem to be clear beyond a reasonable out, and that’s what we know in public. And I suspect there’s a lot more in private that tends in the same direction. So you know, I fully acknowledge and continue to buy into my previous political fears, but I don’t think there’s a choice at this point. Certainly not from a legal point of view and certainly not from a moral point of view. And I might outsmart myself if I tried to calculate the long term political impact of this.

So when you’re in doubt you might as well do the right thing.

Yep. Pete Weiner, what do you say?

Yeah. I think they have to go forward with it. I don’t think there’s much question about it. I am gonna be very interested to see a couple of things. One is the effect that it has on the base of the republican party?

Does this help Trump? Does it not? Is it a neutral thing or does it hurt him? Is there a sense of fatigue that grows I don’t know, but they’ve never taken an exit ramp so far. Second, the politics of the country more broadly, what this going to do.

We may have to buckle our seat belts up even more. Third thing is, of course, we need to see the specifics of of the indictment. But I’ve always wondered whether you had those documents because he was thinking about selling it to somebody. I don’t know that obviously, but we’ll know more once the indictment comes down.

Well, not to engage in too much irresponsible speculation, but it did cross my mind that he took the documents apparently. It’s been reported regarding Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb And he is awfully close to the Saudis as we’ve seen even this week with the golf thing. So that is something that is deeply worrying and one of the things that by the way, the special counsel is investigating asking for documents from the Trump organization vis à vis their relations with a series of foreign countries including Saudi Arabia. Okay. Damon Lincoln.

Sure. Well, my my long standing position is that this isn’t a good idea, but I fully agree with Bill and Peter and pretty much everyone that At this point, there is not much that can be done because Trump just seems to have broken a lot of laws all over the place. And at a certain point, there is a kind of internal logic to the rule of law that you can’t just flagrantly upscone from the White House with classified documents, refused to give them back. And then even when the feds come to take them back, you keep a few more. Eventually, you got to make a move.

I just really worry about what this is going to do to the base of the Republican Party, I think, we have no idea how far out there they could become. We could look back on the last six years of the Republican base as the moderate phase compared to what lies ahead.

Alright. Okay. With that, we will turn to our highlight or low light of the week, Will Saletan.

I have two low lights, unfortunately. Let me begin with the obvious one. The abject surrender of the PGA, the Professional Golf Association, to the lure of Saudi money. As many people know at least a little. I’m a golfer, so I know more than a little.

The Saudis established their own golf circuit, the LIV circuit as an alternative to the professional golf association. Its offer is very simple. To the golfers, you’ve got more money for less work. A lot of people said yes to that, but it meant going along with all sorts and bad things about the Saudi regime, including the fact that this was a deliberate effort on their part to launder their public image and recover from the continuing fiasco of the Khashoggi murder. My second low light of the week, a little bit more obscure, except from my colleague, Damon Blinker, is the publication of Patrick Dineen’s latest anti liberal screed, this one called regime change, and he means it.

And this is a very intelligent conservative intellectual, adopting the worst of the populist critic of liberalism and providing the veneer of respectability to a political movement that could do a great deal of damage at home

and abroad.

And by liberalism, he doesn’t mean progressivism. He means like liberalism in the sense of nineteen century liberalism.

He means everybody from John Lockon who has the temerity to offer a political theory based on individual rights and limited government.

There you go. Okay, that’s where the right is going. Okay, Linda Chavez.

Well, I have a highlight I’m not sure that it is a highlight because I entirely agree with the decision but nonetheless it’s my highlight of the week and that is Supreme court decision that was handed down this week in a voting rights case involving the state of Alabama that state which is heavily controlled by Republicans in redrawing, districting maps created essentially six majority white and very difficult for anyone but a white to be elected in the districts and one majority black district and the Supreme Court this week handed down a decision that was written by chief justice John Roberts, joined also by Justice Kavanaugh and the three Liberals on the court. And there are a lot of people who are saying, oh gee this is very bad news for those of us who want to see a decision knocking down racial preferences and college admissions in the Harvard and North Carolina cases I don’t read it that way. I think this decision was one that says whether you agree or disagree with the way a law is written. If it’s written in a certain way, we as justices of the Supreme Court don’t have a right to change the words and the clear meaning of those words.

And in this case that means that in the state of Alabama, there may have been an intent to essentially force most black voters into a single voting district meaning that they would likely only be able to elect one member in the Congressional delegation and in that case that left the other six districts being able to elect Republic. Yeah.

And even though by population they should have been entitled to too. Right?

Right. Yeah. Right. By population and and the clear meaning, I mean, of section two of the voting rights act. I happen not to like the language of section two of the voting rights act as opposed to the amendment that put that language, the effects test in in nineteen eighty two.

But if you don’t like a law, you got to change it. Right. Don’t want the Supreme Court rebride

Okay. Very good. Damon Lincoln.

Well, we have a bit of a problem here because Linda stole my highlight of the week. I would have gone, like, extemporized and gone to the Denine book, but Bill mentioned that. So Let me just let me just re emphasize the awfulness of the Denine book and the very good news

of the to bring for

a decision. I’m especially pleased that this decision not only confounded the assumption that, oh, everything is predetermined on the court. You’ve got six conservatives and three liberals. Therefore, all controversial decisions will lock out that way. Shows that is not true.

And it also Ron DeSantis, once again, as we’ve seen on selected issues, Robertson Kavanaugh do make up a somewhat less ideologically conservative block on the court that are reachable and willing to make alliances with the three liberal So that I think is an encouraging sign for future cases as well. So there, I added a little bit, but it’s still not a fresh new highlight.

That’s more than fine, David. Pete Weiner.

Yeah. Much on a high line or a low lot. It’s just a personal reflection, a bit tribute. Our beloved dog Romeo was put down a few days ago, yet inoperable cancer. And I had never before owned a dog.

And I must say I was not prepared for the grief that it that it brought. And we had him for a dozen years and one of the things that struck me was his love was so simple and uncomplicated and limitless, and there was a guidedlessness to him. Seems he was really, really special. And I was talking to my daughter, Christine. And she said that Romeo was so consistent that his love was so pure.

And it and it was. And I’m no expert on canine’s Materialology, and and I’m not not a Catholic, but I agree with John Paul the second, who said that animals have souls, and Romeo had a particularly beautiful soul, and I feel like our family will see him again.

I remember when I was once at a luncheon where Father Scalia, one of Justice Scalia’s sons, who’s a priest. Was present. And the children around the table were asking him whether there would be pets in heaven. And he said, well, I don’t know whether they get there on their own. But he said, if what you need to be happy in heaven is a dog, you will have a dog.

Which is very sweet.

Amen.

Alright. I would like to do two quick things. One is I want to note that the Freedom Forum is honoring this year some people who don’t get nearly enough attention. There are rare spirits in this world who show superhuman courage for the sake of things that matter and they are honoring some of them. I won’t name them all but several, I will name.

Alexei Navalny, the opposition figure in Russia who voluntarily after being poisoned by Putin, nevertheless, went back knowing that he stood a very, very strong chance of being imprisoned and losing not just his liberty but potentially his life he is languishing in prison. Freedom Forum is honoring him. He didn’t have the greatest, most perfect record before, but since returning to Russia, he’s been a true hero. Also, they are going to recognize two journalists who are being held Austin Tyson and Evan Gerskovic. I hope that we all remember them and don’t let their imprisonment fade from our consciousness.

So, that’s one thing. The other thing I want to mention is a piece by Maddiglasius on his sub stack, slow boring, where it’s titled misinformation isn’t just on the right. And it’s a really good piece. We rehearse on this podcast all the time. The siloing of information and the misinformation that is so rampant among conservatives these days.

But he points out that there’s a lot that’s on the left as well and also in the center and he gives examples of all and it’s worth remembering that all of us have to be on guard against misinformation and confirmation bias. And with that, I want to thank Pete Weiner for joining us today and of course my regular panel. Our sound engineer today is Jonathan Last. And our producer is Katie Cooper. And I also wanna thank our wonderful listeners, and we will return next week as every week.

The Bulwark podcast focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties.

The real sense of deja vu sprinkled on our PTSD So things are going well, I guess.

Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes speaks with guests about the latest stories from inside Washington and around the world.

You document in a very compelling way. All of the positive things have come out of this, but it also feels like we have this massive hang of.

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