Biden’s Kyiv Moment

Welcome to the Bullework Podcast, and happy Monday. I am Charlie Sykes. It is February twentieth two thousand and twenty three. And if you thought that this president’s day was going to be a slow news day. Forget about it because if we woke up this morning to find out, the president Joe Biden is in chief pledging his support for the Ukrainians.

This was the president this morning.

One year ago, The world was literally at the time bracing for the fall of Keith. Seems like a lot longer ago than a year, but think back to that year. Perhaps even the end of Ukraine.

You

know, one year later, Keith stands, and Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with

you. With those words, you had the president of the United States in an act of war zone for one of the few times in history. So joining me, of course, because it is Monday to break all this down

will, Salette, and how are you, Will? I’m excited, Charlie. I had no idea he was going. I guess nobody else did either. So

very

proud of our president in our country today. Okay.

So let me just read you from political’s playbook to put this in a little bit of of context. It was a trip months in the works but president Joe Biden and the small cadre of administration officials made the decision final in a meeting on Friday. Sitting in the motion a complex plan with substantial risks for Biden’s safety, political standing, and international relations. While many presidents have gone to active war zones, George W. Bush Barack Obama both went to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Donald Trump made a thanksgiving time trek to the latter country in two thousand nineteen. Those visits have typically happened within sure military installations were in territories under US control. Kiev, my contrast, is the ongoing target of a missile offensive by Russia. One expected to increase in ferocity as the two nations mark the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion later this week. The message of the visit was unambiguous.

Ukraine is safe enough for an American president to visit despite the missile strikes drone attacks and trench warfare initiated by Vladimir Putin, right Alex Ward and Jonathan Lamir. It was risky, and it should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that Joe Biden is a leader who takes commitment seriously, the White House said. So, you know, I always try to separate the the hype from the reality, but this is a big deal. And there is considerable risk, and I am trying to think of any time when an American president has gone into an active war zone that was not controlled by the American military. And I have to tell you while I’m coming up short.

So Joe Biden has done something rather extraordinary to mark the anniversary So you were saying make sure proud given your thoughts on it?

Well, first of all, we needed to go and signal to the world that the alliance behind Ukraine, the largely western alliance is solid, and Biden did that. In terms of the courage of going, there’s an interesting contrast to me, Charlie. You might recall that in the Republican response, to the state of the union message. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Republican governor of Arkansas, bragged about how Donald Trump flew with her to Iraq and how the the plane came in and how they turned off all the lights. Right?

Because they didn’t want the enemy to know that they were landing there. Apparently, the United States government notified Russia hours before Biden landed in Ukraine — Mhmm. — that he was gonna be there. And the Russians obviously didn’t strike although there were air raid sirens. There were Russian fighter jets nearby apparently.

To

me, it’s an interesting contrast between Trump going in and trying to and they’re trying to protect the president. I understand that. But to notify the enemy, the enemy that we know has these you know, very fast, very lethal missiles that they have used on, Kiev, they’ve used on apartment buildings in other countries. He told them he was coming he arrived, and he basically said, if you wanna come at me, come at me, and they didn’t. And I think that’s an important message too.

Well,

I think they obviously wanted to avoid the worst possible scenario, which would have been a miscalculation and error. This is why we have these deconfriction protocols out there. But even with that communication, there’s no such thing as risk free going into a war zone. And and Joe Biden had to do that. And I do think that the anniversary is so important because the big question that hangs over everyone is what is the nature of our commitment?

How solid are we are we going to give them everything they want. And this was certainly an unambiguous as dramatic adjuster as president of the United States actually has. So let’s put this in context. I’m gonna get some of the reaction a little bit later because we finally had Rhonda Santos come out of his Florida bunker and comment on Ukraine. This is one of the things that I’ve sort of had the big question mark is when is Ron DeSantis wants to be apparently leader of the free world.

When will he actually lead? When will he say anything about this? Also, Nikki Haley’s comments on Ukraine. Well, I wanna get to that in a moment. But over the weekend, we had a couple of other interesting interviews, and I know that you highlighted those, and I wanted to share that.

You had Secretary of State, Anthony Lincoln, talking about the possibility that China will provide lethal weapons to Russia for its war in Ukraine. New York Times reported that If they did that, that would transform the nature of the conflict. Secretary of State Anthony Lincoln appeared on three network Sunday morning shows. To share that the Biden administration thinks that China is very close to crossing that line. So here’s Lincoln on face the nation

with March bracket. The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing legal support. And we’ve made very clear to them that that would

cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship.

Leasal support. What would that entail? What do

you think

is? Weapons.

That’s ammunition. That’s primarily

weapons.

Primarily

There’s a whole gamut of things that that that fit in that category for everything from ammunition to the weapons themselves.

Alright. So Lindsey Graham, your good friend Lindsey Graham, also commented on this. He was part of a very large bipartisan delegation to this annual security conference in Munich. And he also was responding to some of the things that secretary Blinken said, let’s play Lindsey.

But what secretary Blinken said is big news to me. He believes that the Chinese are on the verge of providing lethal weapons to Putin. Now if that happens, the world needs to come down hard on China. Because if you believe as I do and the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harrison believes that Russia is engaged in crimes against humanity in Ukraine, any country that comes to their age would be a heavy price. So that’s why we should designate Russia’s state sponsored terrorism because if you do that under US law and China provides lethal weapons, they will get sanctioned.

And to the Chinese. If you jump on the Putin train now, you’re dumber than dirt. It would be like buying a ticket on the Titanic after you saw the movie. Don’t do this.

So well. I have to say that. I’m I’m having a bit of a flashback. Having a bit of a flashback to the old Lindsay Graham, the Lindsay Graham who used to hang out with John McCain, but that was pretty forced if there was any doubt that there’s still some Republican support even even with Lindsey Graham who’d spent the last four or five years being Donald Trump’s fluffer. That was a pretty unambiguous US term.

So give me your sense what’s going on here because you have this major statement from Anthony Lincoln backed up by Lindsey Graham, and then this gigantic exclamation point of Joe Biden landing in Kiev today. Right? Okay. So first of all, let me defend Lindsey Graham. Who

has not changed any of position.

It was appraising. Yeah.

Instagram has been an internationalist. He has been a hawk the whole time. And in fact, he’s been trying to cover for Donald Trump’s towerless and Donald Trump’s complicity with Putin. Right? Mhmm.

It is Lindsey Graham and other Republicans in the Senate who stood up and provided the backbone against Putin when Trump would not. So he’s been consistent about this. On the whole China situation, China providing weapons to Russia, which as far as we know hasn’t exactly happened yet, although they’re on the way to doing that. Charlie, this is one of those stories that suddenly explains something we’ve been going through and it’s been mysterious. And the thing that it explains to me is why the heck has the Biden administration been so nice to China after China sent this balloon over us.

Right? And there’s a lot of complications about the Balloon story and the extent to which China really understood that it was gonna go over the United States mainland, etcetera. But The US government has been surprisingly kind, gentle, and diplomatic. We’re the ones who’ve been trying to, you know, call up the Chinese military and they wouldn’t take our phone calls. What the heck was that about?

Now I feel like I understand that. And the reason is that we knew that China was heading into this acceleration of its alliance with Russia, and we wanted to head that off. And so there seems to be a giant geopolitical strategy game going on. Where the United States government is trying to dissuade the Chinese government from forming more of an explicit military alliance with Russia because the administration understands that the big fight in the world is not about some balloons floating over countries. It is about Ukraine.

It is about the mass murder in Ukraine and the threat to world or the threat to the principle of sovereign borders. And whatever we can do — Mhmm. — to keep China from joining Russia in that fight is worth doing.

Okay. I don’t disagree with you, but what can we do? What leverage do we have?

Well, it’s not exactly clear. It’s been reported we don’t have a lot of leverage. There are trade relationships etcetera. We have to keep TikTok. I mean,

what do we say to them? Okay. We won’t shut down TikTok. Are we happy?

Yeah. It’s Charlie, it’s really awkward for a whole bunch of reasons. I mean, we just set up this whole China committee. Everyone in the United States Both parties have been in agreement that the number one enemy is China. China is the biggest threat.

Right? And at that moment, suddenly, we need to deter China. We need to dissuade China from going in on Putin side. I don’t begrudge Lindsey Graham saying, as he said, look, we’ve shown you that Putin is a loser for your own benefit.

Don’t climb onto that ship. It’s going down. Now, this really is interesting. This dynamic you just described the The one thing that does seem to have strong bipartisan support is that everybody is prepared to be tough on China. Now what that actually means we don’t know?

We have seen this new isolationism. Lindsay Graham, I was I’m defending Lindsay Graham because his statement was so forceful. And you know a lot more about Lindsay Graham. You’ve been working on this massive piece I’m very anxious to read. You know, if we had Lindsay Graham in a secure room somewhere and, you know, looking him in the eye, and, you know, pumped him full of a truth serum and asked him, okay, so all of the sucking up to Donald Trump.

Is it because you think you need to stay close to him? Is I mean, does he rationalize in his own mind that he can pick up the phone and dissuade Trump from abandoning our allies, crossing some red line with the Chinese or with with Vladimir Putin. Because if that’s

the case, he’s had only shall we say mixed success? Is that his motive? Does that what he tells himself? That’s certainly what he tells himself. But to be fair, okay, there’s the part that’s just BS.

The part that’s BS is that Lindsey Graham or any other Hawk in Congress was going to change Donald Trump. That just didn’t happen, didn’t work because Trump is who he is. But the part where Graham and other Hawks in Congress you know, they made sure that there were sanctions on Russia when Trump didn’t want there to be any sanctions on Russia. They made sure a lot of folks made sure that the aid went through the Javelins and such went through to Ukraine when Trump plainly didn’t want to send them and wanted to use them as leverage to get an investigation of Joe Biden. So the part where other Republicans just went ahead and did the right thing with respect to Ukraine, regardless of what Trump said.

That held true. It’s the part where you’re gonna change Donald Trump that just was unrealistic from the beginning. Conspiracy theories. Paranormal, UFO’s. During the entire nineteen seventy one debacle of this red die number two, parents all around America were buying Frank and Berry, so only a few days after the cereal was released, kids all across the country.

Started being rushed to hospitals. All of them had one symptom in common.

Theories of the third cop on YouTube or wherever you listen.

Okay. So let’s look at some of the reaction to this. Usually, when the president of the United States is in harm’s way or I don’t know what you what the word usually means anymore, there was once a time when the president of the United States if he was representing his country in a war zone at the moment like this, that there would be a cessation of of partisanship. Right? That old Canard about, you know, partisan politics ends at the nation’s shoreline, which of course hasn’t been true for, what, fifty, sixty years.

But I thought it was interesting that this was the moment that we heard from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Now Ron DeSantis is not quiet. But generally, he addresses himself to culture war issues. He gets himself worked up about going after Walt Disney or going after, you know, college board threatening to eliminate all the AP courses and everything. He’s been very noticeably reticent in addressing national issues in including this big one of Ukraine.

And yet, this was the moment that Rhonda Santos chose to say something about our support for Ukraine. Okay? Now, so here’s the split screen. Because it’s a twenty twenty four, perhaps. You have Joe Biden in Kiev.

Pledging our support for Ukraine and for the cause of democracy. Here’s Rhonda Santos.

Thanks first. On the president’s unannounced visit, is this a good move?

Well, you know, Brian, I’m reminded of when he was vice president Obama and Biden opposed providing lethal aid to Ukraine during those years. And then I’m also reminded that I don’t think any of this would have happened but for the weakness that the president showed during his first year in office culminating, of course, in the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan. So I think while he’s over there, I think I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves. Okay. He’s very concerned about those borders halfway around the world.

He’s not done anything to secure our own border here at home. We’ve had millions and millions of people pour in, tens of thousands of Americans dead because of fentanyl, AND THEN OF COURSE WE JUST SUFFERED A NATIONAL HUMIATION OF HAVING CHINA FLY A SPY ALONE CLEAR ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES. So we have a lot of problems accumulating here in our own country that that he is neglecting.

Okay. So let’s leave aside the the Obama Biden policy back in twenty fourteen because I I actually don’t disagree with him about that. And you can push back in a moment. He basically did the Trumpian knee jerk response like, you know, what why are we over there when our border is blah blah

blah blah. Your thoughts will. Well, I think both parts of what DeSantis said are important. And one of the big questions going forward is going to be, which way does he lean? And let me clarify a little bit.

So the first part of what DeSantis said, about Obama and Biden opposed lethal aid. If DeSantis were to pursue that critique of the democrats, that would position him with sort of Mitch McConnell wing of the Republican Party that is internationalist and serious about defending Ukraine standing up to Russia. The second part of what DeSantis said about, hey, we we should be protecting our own borders instead of Ukraine wars. That that is the J. D.

Vance Marjorie Taylor Green America first wing of the Republican Party. And it’s gonna be really important to see which of those two directions DeSantis moves into. Because if DeSantis becomes an America firster. And I don’t think he’s figured it out because he just doesn’t have a lot of experience with governor. Yeah.

But if he becomes one of those America firsters and he’s all about defending our borders and you know, screw Ukraine and that, then we’re gonna end up with a Republican presidential primary in which the odds are it’s either Donald Trump or it’s Ron DeSantis and either way you get one of these isolationists, and that is really bad news for the world. It is extremely bad news for the world. And again, we don’t

know where he’s going to come down, but Trump is sitting down there Mar a Lago, firing off the true socials that we saw over the weekend. He’s ripping Rupert Murdoch. He’s ripping Ron DeSantis. He’s ripping Paul and he’s I mean, to sort of act just keeps throwing this stuff out. And he’s looking for any issue with which he disagrees with him on, including, you know, you supported cutting so security and Medicare, you said blah blah blah.

And clearly, you know, had he said anything supportive of Ukraine, Trump would have used that as a wedge issue, which brings me to Nikki Haley. Because as you have been monitoring, Nikki Haley has gone out of the way not to distinguish herself explicitly in any way from Donald Trump. Okay. That’s not exactly right. When she’s asked, can you name any issue you distribute with Donald Trump?

She has the same thing about kicking sideways or by the way, the kicking thing’s already gotten all. That she’s focused on Biden, not on Trump. People say that you’re running for the Republican nomination. Is there any critical thing that you wanna say about Donald Trump? Absolutely not.

She does not want to say anything. But there is one issue that she’s clearly not on board with Trump. I talked to David Frum about this on the podcast. When she was on NBC’s Today Show with Craig Melvin, she was really quite explicit about her aggressive, enthusiastic, and all in support for Ukraine. Giving them all the weapons that they need.

In fact, if anything, she was critical of Biden for not giving them more weapons more quickly. And she was asked specifically what about f sixteen’s and she seemed to, you know, be endorsing that as well. So here’s an issue. Where Nikki Haley could lead if she chose, but probably won’t because this would require her to say, you know, we fundamentally to agree with this. But, I mean, this could set up a real substantive debate about the future of the Republican Party.

And when I was talking to David, I was thinking, you know, getting a little bit wonky here. You know, we we think about the historical significance of Republican presidential nominee Wendell will back in nineteen forty who broke with the isolationists in the Republican Party and provided cover for FDR to prepare the country for World War two. Or Republican senator Arthur Vanderberg from Michigan who became an internationalist as a leading Republican at a time when there’s a very, very strong isolationist wing in the Republican Party, Nikki Haley could play a very considerable role here but she won’t. And I told her it for the podcast. I was thinking of writing a piece about this, about, you know, Nikki Haley could lead.

And then, of course, I came upon this brilliant piece in the bulwark by Will Salitan who talked about how incredibly cynical, opportunistic, and inconsistent Nikki Haley has been on this issue of Ukraine. So Where are we at with Nikki Haley? Because, I mean, you just remind people that she’s been all over the

map. She’s been supportive, but she’s kind of been all over the map. On what she said about Ukraine. So one of the interesting debates about Nikki Haley is, okay, she’s a cynical opportunist to sort of goes wherever the wind is blowing. Is that still better?

Is it better to have a cynical opportunist who knows what the right policy is, which is to defend Ukraine against Russia? Than to have one of these America firsters. And I don’t know which DeSantis is. And I think the answer is yes. Nikki Haley is an opportunist, but The thing about this situation is there’s a split between what the right policy is and what the good politics are in the Republican Party, and I think that’s what you were pointing up there.

The policy and Nikki Haley knows this. Right? Nikki Haley was the ambassador to the United Nations. What she did was diplomacy. What she did was work with some governments against other governments.

Who are the bad guys? How can we assemble a coalition against the bad guys? That is an internationalist perspective, and she understands that the bad guys are, in this case, the Russians who are killing people in Ukraine. The politics are the other way around. Right?

The politics are isolationists. The politics are. Defense America’s borders don’t get involved in the world. So she’s gonna be somewhat constrained by that. And it’s just gonna be a question of courage as to whether she stands up to that.

But the other thing about Nikki Haley is that she has a bad habit of focusing on looking tough rather than being tough. Remember that the job of you and ambassador is a lot about looking tough. You give these speeches about the bad guys, but you’re not actually fighting the bad guys.

Yeah. And so

what Nikki Haley did a year ago. This was I think before the invasion actually began, but also a little bit afterwards. She bitched about the Biden administration trying to make overtures to China against Russia because we knew that the Russia was going in and Russia had gone in at that point. And she accused Biden of being weak by going to the Chinese. And she actually said, you never work with one bad country against another.

That is completely wrong, and she knows it. Right? The whole history of the world, to take the most obvious example, the United States working with Stalin against Hitler. That’s what you do when things are really, really bad. So it’s an open question to me whether Nick Haley will do what she knows is the right thing, but at least she knows what it is.

Well, or whether she’s able to apply the lessons of history there. So there’s an opportunity for her, but this is the thing. In order to lead, you have to be prepared to lead. And there seems to be a trait that just runs through the Republican party that unwillingness to actually take a stand when it, in fact, matters. Okay.

Speaking of the Republican Party, I think this is an amazing story. And I’m sorry if it sounds like, okay, we’ve heard this, like, a million times before, but wait, in Michigan, one of the key battleground states in America. Where Republicans suffered some really embarrassing loss. I mean, look, this is the state that Donald Trump or whoever really needs to win mean, Donald Trump won, but winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona. He lost all of those states.

Things are not going well for Republicans in Pennsylvania. They’re actually not going well for Republicans in Wisconsin. We saw what happened to Republicans in Arizona. Right? In Michigan.

How’s it going down? They had an election for chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, and they doubled down on election denialism and losing. They have elected a woman named Christina Karamo, who is an ultra conservative election denier as the new Michigan Chair. And it’s not just that she’s one of many. She’s a former candidate for Secretary of State.

She ran for Michigan Secretary of State, and she got blown out just last November. She was in a year of many Republican losers in Michigan. She was the biggest loser. And they turned her around and they elected her the chairperson beating ten challengers. In what’s described as a passionate, yet often chaotic eleven hour convention in Lansing, Michigan.

And this is what she had to say after she took the helm of the Michigan Republican Party.

You may not always like me, but you know I’ll keep my word. And that’s what we need as chair and culture of the Michigan Republican Party. We need to fight to secure our elections. It’s the reason I did not concede after the twenty twenty two election. Why?

But I concede to a fraudulent process. Conceeding to a fraudulent process in an agreement with the fraud is which I will not do.

She lost

Well, by fourteen points. She didn’t just know she lost by fourteen points. And in her campaign, she pushed spiracy theories on the campaign trail about Trump winning in twenty twenty ballot mules corrupting absentee voting She sits around obviously and watches Dinesh DeSousu’s movies. She called the, you know, Democrats with authoritarians and tyrants. So she loses by fourteen points, she refuses to concede, and the crowd freaking loves it.

In fact, if this was probably the jet fuel that propelled her to be chairperson of the state party, her refusal to acknowledge her double digit defeat in last November’s election. Okay. I my heads feel a little full here. Yes.

By the way, Charlie, the person that she beat out for this job of chair of the Michigan Republican Party was Matt DiPerno, the other election denier who was, I think, with the nominee for attorney general who also lost right, who also lost big. And as you point out, her distinction against Deepurna was that he I don’t know if she emphasized this so much, but you can hear it in her speech. He had decided to move on from the election denialism, and she’s deciding to stick with it and run with it and deny it. What happened. And

didn’t Trump support him? I mean, so basically, it was, like, again, another contest between MAGA, Super MAGA, and Super Crazy MAGA. And the Republicans went for super crazy man. Right. But

she’s she’s obviously got Trump’s love now because he he trued that you she’s a powerful and fearless election denier Those are his words, Charles. Those are not my no. He does. So, damn right. I’m an election denier.

They’re embracing the term and okay. It’s funny, but it’s sad. Part of the way politics is supposed to work is you have these two parties fighting against each other And if your party loses you, you go and you reflect on what it is that you did wrong that people voted against you. You knew what what used to be called an autopsy. Right?

And then you come back and you you change. Right? And to, you know, to take Nikki Hilli as an example, she’s running for president saying we’ve lost seven of the last eight. Presidential elections in terms of the popular vote. And so we need to change.

What we’re hearing in Michigan, what we’re seeing in Michigan is a party that is so pathologically diluted that they don’t even accept that they lost. They’re blaming the vote counting. Right? It’s a fraudulent. A woman who lost by fourteen points.

Claiming that so if your kid sticks their finger in an electric socket, part of what they’re supposed to learn is don’t stick your finger in the socket again. What we have in Michigan and in the Republican Party in general is a party that keeps sticking its finger in the socket and refuses to accept that it has been shocked. And so it’s just gonna keep going from socket to socket until it learns that lesson. Well, I

sort of like you you put your finger in the socket and and you get shocked. Okay. Okay. Next time, I need to put my tongue in the socket. Right.

It’s alright. Wow. It it is amazing.

Okay.

So I wanna get to Jimmy Carter in a moment, but since we’re in the upper Midwest where American presidential are going to continue to be decided. Let’s go over to Wisconsin. I’m sure you’ve read about the Wisconsin State Supreme Court election. This is one of those where I come to tell you that all of the stories that seem to be like over the top and overhyped are not. This is one of those elections where so much is at stake, it’s hard to run down all of the things that are on the ballot.

Now, some people, you know, I mean, I have mixed feelings about all of this in excluding what it means for judicial independence. I mean, I am obviously not naive. I’ve been involved in these elections for a very, very long time. And so there’s always been the subtext that is liberal versus conservative. Right now, there’s a campaign in which nobody makes any pretense about the fact that it’s anything other than a raw partisan contest, Democrat versus Republican, progressive versus right wing, no pretense whatsoever.

And there’s virtually no pretense that these are candidates running for judge who will not tell you how they rule. It’s basically they’ve all decided If this comes before me, this is how I’m going to rule. All of the right wing literature that we’re getting is all about abortion. The progressive candidates have made it very clear that they would, you know, throw out the redistricting maps, maybe they would toss out Act ten. They’ve made their position how they would rule on the state’s abortion law crystal clear, but it is interesting.

What makes this different from every other state supreme court election that I can recall. And some of them have been pretty intense, including the one during act ten. But national Democrats have never been engaged in in a campaign like they are right now. National progressives have never focused on this kind of an election the way they are now. In fact, we used to we used to kind of joke that, you know, the reason why conservatives always won state Supreme Court elections is because it was only conservatives that we understood the stakes.

That is completely different now. That’s number one. Number two. Tell me if this is confusing. It’s a nonpartisan open primary tomorrow.

There are four candidates. Two of them are conservative. Two of them are liberal. The top two vote getters will go to the general election. So in theory, you could have two progressives.

In theory, you could have two conservatives on the ballot. That’s happened before. Nobody thinks that’s going to happen. You know, one conservative will will will advance. One liberal will advance.

Everybody seems to know who the liberal is, a woman named protevant will advance. What’s amazing, Will, is how really vicious and nasty the fight between the two conservatives has become. The two progressives are not attacking one another. They’re kind of sitting back and watching the Wisconsin right devour itself. And it’s not really about a specific issue because they’re both pretty right wing.

They both went to the same sketchy law school founded by Pat Robertson. Region laws.

But I’m

sort of going this long, but they just set it up. So there’s a former supreme court justice named Dan Kelley who was appointed by Scott Walker who was a terrible candidate and was defeated for reelection, which almost never happens in Wisconsin for supreme court justice. And he’s running against a woman named Jennifer Doro who is a judge in crucial Waukesha County who resided over the very, very, very high profile Christmas day parade massacre case, which was televised live throughout the state. She got very high marks for how she handled that. And she figured that she would use the notoriety and the fame from that trial to sling shot her way into the Supreme Court.

And the reality is, is that she’s probably better known than any other sitting judge in the state of Wisconsin. But Dan Kelly felt it was his turn and he’s got some massive right wing money from the U Line family. And so every single day, I get a stack of mailers. My social media is just filled. You cannot turn on television.

Without seeing attacks on Doro or Doro defending herself on on this or that. And part of the the irony is, and there’s other conservatives we’re going, look, Doro would be likely the most electable candidate in a general election because she’s kind of a rock star and yet all of the right wing energy in Wisconsin seems to be designed to take her out in the primary tomorrow. And and I’m not saying that she’s an ideal candidate by any means. But, literally, I cannot remember a time when they had a primary this vicious aimed at taking out a candidate who probably is the best if not the only chance that Republicans and conservatives have to hold their majority on the court because if they don’t. This court flips to a liberal majority and it has not had a liberal majority in decades.

So I am sorry to have gone on, but Wow. You’re really seeing kind of the post Trump MAGA crack up here in Wisconsin while watching what’s going on in Michigan as

well. So that is a really, really interesting and persuasive a political analysis. It’s really sad to me that it is about a judicial race So I am from Texas and I always thought it was tragic that we had judicial elections and we had, you know, people running for these offices who are are supposed to be just interpreting the law or applying the law. And instead, we’re there are all these political promises. I mean, Charlie, what you are to ascribing here among other things is just this is the end of the judiciary.

Yes. Judges are just like any other politician if they’re running on political promises if they’re running on an ideology and it’s one party against the other, then, okay, we can pretend that we have a third branch government. But in reality, they’re just legislators in the it’s a this is like

some what is it? Seven members on the the Supreme Court in Wisconsin? Yeah. A four three conservative majority now would flip to a four three liberal majority if they lose this year.

Right. And it’s fine if that were alleged slature. You’d have the voters go in and decide which way they wanna go. But the idea that this is a judiciary is is ridiculous. You know, think about the supreme court of the United States.

Like, I am okay with there being a conservative majority on this or being quoted in the United States. If by conservatism, you mean a kind of judicial philosophy. If you believe in judicial restraint. If you believe in letting legislatures act unless the constitution explicitly stops them from I’m fine with that. If you wanna overturned Roe v Wade because you believe it’s not literally in the constitution and there are, you know, this wasn’t what the founders intended.

That’s okay. But I want you to apply that principle regardless of party. I want you to apply the same principles, say, to the right to bare arms. You know, did the founders really intend to bring it every New York’s gun law because of this clause about, you know, malicious. So if you’re just gonna say we’re the party that’s against abortion and four guns and your judges are gonna rule that way, that’s not a judicial philosophy.

That’s just a legislative position. Boy, I am so glad

to hear you say this. Another reason why you’re not just another pretty face, Will. I have been thinking about writing a piece, you know, a requiem for judicial independence. Along the lines that you just said. And of course, you know, everybody’s doing mad at that because, you know, no, don’t you understand the democracy is on the ballot that all everything is at stake.

Well, you’ll it is true that everything is at stake at this point. I I do get that. However, you know, what we are losing along the way is not insignificant. I mean, I have known many many judges here in Wisconsin, including federalist society endorsed judges. And, you know, the vast majority of them were serious legal minds were serious about their job, which was to enforce the law and to read the law and and to make rulings very, very thoughtfully without necessarily starting from the conclusion.

I mean, there’s two ways that a judge can can handle a case. Right? Decide who he or she wants to win, that’s number one, result oriented, or go through in saying regardless who wins, what is the loss say, what is the right thing to do in terms of the law? And I will say the vast majority of judges. I mean, it’s become there’s no question about it.

It’s become polarized. And I’m I’m not trying to be naive here. But what you are seeing now from these judicial candidates is just naked partisanship. There is no distinction between their rhetoric in many cases. Than that running for a legislature.

So something is lost here and I don’t know how easy it is to retain it. For sometime there’s been a debate about whether or not it is a good idea to elect these judges because, you know, this debate pits you know, the independence of the judiciary, which is not supposed to be political, it’s supposed to be insulated from public opinion and partisan pressures. You want them to be independent. But you also want them to be accountable. So this clash between independents and accountability has always been there.

The problem now though is that by continuing to elect judges and campaigns like that, there’s not even a fig leaf left of judicial independence. And I think this is bad for you to share. I think it’s bad for the legal system. And it means that, you know, as opposed to the majesty of the law, it’s going to flip back and forth with every single low turnout spring election. You could flip the majority.

And so there’s no reliability. Even if you get what you want. Right? And what’s going on at the national level, of course, is that Democrats are now so convinced

that Republicans are just basically have packed the supreme court and gotten what they want, that they got rid of Roe, etcetera. And now where, you know, there’s all this fear about Court packing. Court packing is part of what happens when the system loses its credibility and people decide, you know, you’re just sticking your judges, vote your way on the court. So we’re gonna stick some of ours, and then it would just go back and forth at Infinitum. Let me say one more thing about this, which is when Donald Trump was appointing judges, a lot of my liberal friends said, you know, Trump judges, Trump judges, they’re just gonna do what Trump wants.

And I was never really persuaded of that because I believed that a lot of these judges were basically federalist society judges had a view about the limits of judicial interference in legislative action. And they were gonna vote that way, and they were gonna basically uphold a larger philosophy. And when it came time, after the twenty twenty election and Donald Trump going to court and trying to overturn elections. And all of these so called Trump judges ruled against him, I felt vindicated I felt vindicated that they had done the right thing that they had shown they did believe in a philosophy and they were not loyal to a man. They were not loyal to a political party.

And it was amazing to me to watch Trump in his dismay at these rulings because he really thought that because he had appointed these judges as though they were, you know, county commissioners or legislators that they were going to vote his way no matter what his way was. And full credit to them for not doing so, full credit to the supreme court and to the Trump appointed supreme court justices for saying no, we’re going to rule what the constitution requires from us, not what you want.

No. He’s the other guy that does not understand this. You know, I’d be good to spend more time on this. I’m gonna be we will obviously on Wednesday of the primary where I’m gonna be joined by somebody from Wisconsin. We’ll talk about this.

But I think that like so many things that have been happening in the last several years, this will all accelerate. And again, I am certainly not claiming that there has not been an ongoing liberal versus conservative split on the court for many, many years. But those terms have meant something very, very different. And the stakes are different. The lack of any sort of judicial restraint by the candidates.

Okay. So I I beat that dead horse. Okay. So Nikki Haley has been suggesting that she thinks there should be a cognitive test for any candidates over the age of seventy five, which I think is why seventy five? Maybe it’s because Donald Trump is seventy six.

Bernie Sanders pushed back on all this. So what do you think of of requiring cognitive competency tests for people above a certain age will sell it?

So the dispute between Haley and Sanders is she says that there there should be this cognitive test once you’re over seventy five. And this is what Bernie Sanders said. He was on TV over the weekend. He said, We’re fighting racism. We’re fighting sexism.

We’re fighting homophobia. I think we should also be fighting ageism. So that’s Bernie’s position. I disagree with Bernie here. Ageism is not like the others.

And the difference is that each of us hopefully over time will be young middle aged and then old. This is not discrimination between people inherently. And it’s based on a physical fact that your body deteriorates. And part of your body is your brain, and we all know that the probabilities are that as you age, you’re going to lose some of those mental faculties. We all vary in the rate at which we do so and the degree.

Bernie Sanders seems to me more lucid than Joe Biden who seems way more sensible than Donald Trump. So it’s not that you can have some ironclad rule, and I agree with Bernie there. But it is true that we have been governed by people who are very old and part of the problem we’re dealing with is some of the loss of mental acuity. Having said that, part of what you get in exchange for losing your mental acuity as you age is wisdom. And I will say that in the case of Joe Biden, The guy is not particularly good at talking.

And if you look at video of him from years and years ago, you will see that he has lost some of his ability to talk persuasively and cogently and clearly. Has has Donald Trump? Yes. Yes. But Joe Biden’s thinking has not abated, and that’s because thinking is a slower, more reflective process.

It requires wisdom and experience. And I think that in Ukraine and other and other places, we are seeing a very wise president, not so good at talking, but very good at thinking. I tend to agree with

you. I don’t know, you know, what age I would put it at, but it is a fact of life. It is a reality. On the other hand, and I don’t know whether this is completely snarky. If we’re going to be having tests for candidates for president, I would like to raise my hand at the back of the room and suggest, okay, we’ll have the cognitive competency test.

Could we also have like a basic civic literacy test for everybody else, I would like to see margery Taylor Green sit down and take that test. I would like to see some of these people take the test. By the way, the Marjorie Taylor Green to be Did you see her latest tweet out there? No. She’s now favoring the national divorce issue.

Which is basically suspension. Let me just read what she writes here. We need a national divorce. We need to separate by Red State and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talked to says this, everyone.

They come up to with tears in their eyes and say, man, From the sick and disgusting woke culture, she shoved down her throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America last policies we are and then goes on. So she’s actually all in. And by the way, I have been predicting this for some time that eventually because, you know, we have to constantly be escalating. That at some point, this rhetoric is gonna lead to people talking about a national divorce, which means that secession at some point is going to be the new hot thing. Right?

I mean, you go from sedition and serction

to secession. I mean, there’s there’s a logical progression. Right. But I think you bring up a great point cognitive fitness, mental fitness is more than whether you can, you know, say, person, woman, man camera TV. It’s being able to accept reality.

Right? I mean, and this is where I would agree with Bernie. I am way less concerned about Joe Biden’s difficulty remembering where he was in a sense. Than I am about Kristen Garamo being unable to accept that she lost an election by fourteen points. Right?

Being in touch with reality is the most important, the most important cognitive faculty, and that test should apply to you regardless of age. Okay. So this is good. So at some point, if

you’re running for office, you should have to have little flash cards. You know, we can do the camera, woman man thing, okay, for, you know, somebody who’s eighty. But for everybody else, you hold up the flash card and you say fifty eight forty four. Identify the higher number. Okay.

Let’s say that Sally gets fifty eight votes and Jimmy gets forty four votes Who wins? And require them to answer that question? I think we know that we could sift and win on a candidate.

Charlie, I just need you to find me fifteen votes. Just find me fifteen votes. Yeah.

I guess. Okay. So we have to talk about Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter. We’re an extraordinary man.

Ninety eight years old. Am I right about that? Is he ninety

eight? Yeah. Yeah. He’s

he’s now going into hospice care. He’s he’s been in and out of the hospital. Had an extraordinary long and storied life. And and so people are I mean, let’s be honest about it. I mean, what is the media doing right now?

They’re they’re appearing obituaries. I’m sure that we are at the bulwark as well. And the interesting thing about Jimmy Carter and I don’t know. Well, I’ll let you go first. On what is the take on Jimmy Carter, whose life has been so long that obviously the headline on his obituary is gonna be very different in two thousand twenty three than it would have been had it been written shortly after his defeat for reelection in nineteen eighty, won’t it?

Yeah, it will be. I think he’s a good man and it’s it’s very simple. Live a good life. Live a good life and keep learning. So he he didn’t have a great presidency in a lot of ways.

But he learned from it. He continued to pursue peace as a as a as an older person. I mean, the guy went on for, like, forty years. Right? He’s, like, fifty years, then I’m president, then another forty years after that.

And everybody admires him because he was virtuous. It’s possible I mean, Donald Trump is not a fine example of this, but it’s possible after your president instead of, you know, denying that you lost an election and trying to destroy the Republic to go out and do good things. And among the things that I am most proud of Jimmy Carter for is the guy, he gets melanoma. The cancer goes to his brain. They tell him he’s got weeks to live.

He survives it. He breaks his hip. The guy has broken his hip. After he has his hip broken, he comes back, heels up, and goes out, and goes back to Habitat for humanity to build houses again, which is amazing. He’s indomitable.

Endomitable and good. And those are really good lessons for everyone young and old.

So I was thinking about how I would describe and there’s so many mixed legacies here and I know people bear with me because I think that one of the things that he represents is the complexity of human life, particularly a long human life. Because I don’t think he was a particularly good president. I think he showed bad judgment on a number of occasions. And yet he was a good, decent, truthful man. And as you look back on that, that is now his legacy.

You know, I mean, how many presidents will be remembered, and I I don’t think this is Cliche, I think that he will be remembered for his post presidency even more than his presidency itself, which is something that I think that people in politics won’t say forget because I don’t think they ever knew it to understand that that the be all and end all of your life is not the position you hold because he held the most discussed position in American life, and yet he will be remembered with affection and respect because of the quality of his character. And especially as we look back on that era to realize that his Christianity was deep and it was real. And he lived his Christianity — Mhmm. — in a very different way than the performative, mutualistic, national version that passes for Christianity. So I do think I don’t think it’s contradictory to say that he was not as successful president and did exercise bad judgment on a lot of things, but he also showed an ability to pivot and to learn So I’ve been reading over the weekend, you know, stories about, you know, nineteen seventy eight, nineteen seventy nine, nineteen eighty.

Jimmy Carter had a very naive view of Russia and foreign relations for the first few years of his presidency, but he woke up and when Leonard Brezhnev blundered into Afghanistan, Jimmy Carter pivoted. He was willing to say, okay, This is what I believe before. I was wrong. I’m going to change my position and I’m gonna take a much stronger position. And did so.

In fact, it’s interesting the number of articles that I came on where people, you know, writing later, saying that they wish that Barack Obama had been more like Jimmy Carter when it came to a foreign policy, particularly, you know, after Russia invaded Crimea. They were saying, you know, maybe this will be, you know, Barack Obama’s Jimmy Carter moment, whether the scales will all from his eyes and he will take a much stronger position. And I guess as time goes on, my appreciation for judging political figures by their character and has grown. And I’m trying to thank you know how many really good, good, good men have risen to that position and then not completely disgraced and humiliated themselves. And how many presidencies ended in disgrace and essentially the post presidencies were just either obscure, abbreviated, or bitter.

And and Jim Jimmy Carter showed us something. And continues to show us something. And I say that to somebody who really was not a fan at the time and I would trace a lot of my, you know, growing conservatism to that period of time watching the exhaustion of liberalism in late nineteen seventies, and you could certainly argue that liberalism did not recover for more than a generation

after that. But that seems less important now when you talk about him. Yeah. I mean, look, if you are interested in doing the right thing in this world, and you have a political career, then that interest, if that is in your character, will persist after your political career is over. And I think we can say that about Jimmy Carter, and I think you make an excellent point about his Christianity.

A serious Christian continues to live a Christian life. And tries to help others. But the other point you raised is also important about Carter becoming stronger in foreign policy when when he realized it was necessary. Part of what your job is as a human being is to learn. It is to learn.

So you may have an idea. You come in and use. And you you let reality affect you. So there are a lot of people in the Democratic party who, you know, didn’t stand up against the Iranian revolution at the time, didn’t challenge that regime. And there’s now an acknowledgment in the Biden administration.

You know, we didn’t do that. We should have stood up more. In the case of China, there was a belief that, you know, bringing them into the world order economically would reform them politically. And now you see a lot of people in the Democratic Party saying, you know, we were just wrong about that. We got that wrong.

And if you learn Having started out getting things wrong, you will get things right. And I think that’s a lesson from Carter and a lesson from others. So what are you gonna be looking at this

week? Anything in particular? I

was thinking about this age thing. I was thinking that Nikki Hilli is not gonna stop talking about this, and we do have aging politicians, and we have arguments about generational change. And how are we going to respond to this? And is it discriminatory? And I think that those on the left who think that ageism is just like other kinds of discrimination are wrong.

But I also think that we should apply these tests about cognitive ability more broadly if we’re going to apply them. And Honestly, Charlie, what I think is that the cognitive tests don’t have to be administered on some sheet of paper. You can you can see them. You can see them when somebody doesn’t accept election results. When somebody does the wrong thing or just a completely foolish thing.

Well,

let’s close with this. I’m as you and I are speaking, I am looking at video online of the president of the United States and the president of Ukraine, walking side by side headed to honor the memory of the heroes from the heavenly hundred. Who died nine years ago for Ukrainian freedom and democracy the day when it all began and they are walking across the cobblestones of downtown Kiev. It’s an extraordinary picture. It really is.

Yeah. I’ll be interested to see what the reaction is afterwards. Now my advice to Republicans would be, this would be a time to rally around their country I don’t know. I think we’ve seen too much to know that people like Rhonda Sanders are more likely to be the model in their response to all of this. Will Salitan always wonderful to talk with you on Monday.

We’ll do it again next week. Thanks, Charlie. Happy President’s Day and Happy ex President’s Day. By the way, I had literally never in my life if ever had President’s Day off. It’s it’s clearly, it is it is a demonstrably fake holiday.

I mean, I remember as a kid Lincoln’s birthday and Washington’s birthday. But then they made this fake president’s birthday so that some people will have three day weekends. So banks, post office, government workers — Right. — not once

in my entire career have I had president’s day off. So — Right. — my experience as a parent was before I was a parent, you know, a holiday meant you had the day off. And then after I became a parent, a holiday meant that your day care didn’t didn’t have the day off. So you were on a call that

day. That’s exactly right. Well, thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m triple a six. We will be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again.

The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

Former Navy SEAL Sean Ryan shares real stories from real people, from all walks of life. On the Sean Ryan show. This

one’s about my friend call sign ninja. So there

was all these things that I wanted to do in army. He was like, this is it. An army do roads and air fields, and they say, well, they can test and see where you fall. I was like, yeah. But if I could do that and all this stuff too, drive tanks jump out of play.

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