Bill Kristol: Easter Egg (T)roll

Alright. Hello, and welcome to the Secret Podcast. I’m your host Tim Millerlee of two hundred seventeen days to the twenty twenty four election. It’s Monday. I’m back with Bill Crystal.

Bill. How you doing?

Fine, Tim. How are you?

I’m doing quite well, and I am excited. We we have to start with the most important is the day, which isn’t about politics. We have what I expect will be the most watched Women’s college basketball game in history tonight, a rematch of last year’s national championship, Caitlin Clark’s Iowa Hawk, against the LSU tigers who were demeaned as dirty debutantes in the LA Times who were assaulted by, profile writer who who didn’t understand Kim Mulke’s resilience in the Washington Post. I like you, Kent. That’s just a joke.

We’ve been, you know, kind of turned this into you know, goodness versus darkness, you know, the in the evil empire, the LSU Tigers, defending their title, should be a marvelous basketball game tonight. Are you excited?

I’m not really. Many people in the Bulwark are. The bulwark is divided. A house divided against itself. You and your family there rooting for the tigers and Andrew Edgar and his family.

I think his wife went to Iowa. He told me he was dressing the little, the toddlers, and the infant up in Hawkeye’s gear. So You guys can hash it out tomorrow. I think maybe a special three or four hour podcast, don’t you think?

A special three or four hour, breakdown of the elite eight match tonight, probably. At seven in the east, if you’re looking for, when to tune in. I will say it’s interesting how the, you know, kind of the narrative and stereotypes of the teams are reflected in the Bulwark House divided. You know, people say the Iowa team is like milk and cookies, you know, America’s girls. That’s kind of Andrew Edgar.

You know, the LSU team was slandered as dirty debutantes. I think I fit that role pretty nicely. So it it is nice that even internally, we’re living to type. So we’re pulling for Angel Rees and Flage Johnson tonight, and and I hope everybody enjoys. Take break from politics.

Enjoy that basketball game. Here on Monday night. I I think it’s wonderful for the for the sport. And, I’m excited I got behind my little girl out in LSU gear tonight.

I watched Duke last night out of loyalty to our daughter who and son-in-law who went there. And, like, the only person outside of Durham who actually boots for Duke out of that family loyalty.

It was tough. It was a tough loss.

After after getting there, it’s a four seed and having a kind of clear path. Right? They have four seed playing at eleven. How and that doesn’t happen that often. They’ve probably lost to North Carolina State.

That was a tough loss. I also like that Jared McCain on Duke who paints his nails. He’s got a good TikTok feed. I know we’re not supposed to be on TikTok, but if you are secretly on Tuck. You should check out Jared McCain’s TikTok.

Okay. Let’s get to business. Well, this isn’t really business, actually. We’re gonna slowly get into real business. You know, we’ll we’ll get we’ll go.

We’ll we’ll begin with sports, and then we’ll go to the politics, the WWE element of politics, and we’ll get into actual policy. Those are kerfuffle. Over the weekend about about Easter and about which candidate for president is is more faithful, more reverent takes Easter more seriously. Seems like it’d be an easy call between the weekly church going Catholic and the, you know, guy has cheated on all his wives and likes to play golf on Sundays, but not in conservative media. In conservative media, they were trying to spin it the other way and say that it was Joe Biden who is sacrilegious because The White House put out a statement acknowledging the transgender day of visibility, which has been on March thirty first.

They put out a statement every March thirty first just Easter changes. I know the, you know, the Eastern Catholic Christians don’t don’t really Catholics don’t really realize that the Easter does change days. So they did not turn Easter into transgender day of visibility just happened to land on Easter this year. Also, there was another controversy. The White House Easter egg roll They said they can’t put any religious iconography.

The children cannot draw any religious iconography on the eggs. This does seem stupid to me. I concur that that seems very stupid, but here’s the thing. It’s that’s been the role for forty five years since nineteen seventy six, including all the easter egg rolls that Donald Trump was in there. None of the facts though got in the way of, you know, basically a full outreach cycle, governors, governor, Mississippi, Tate Reeves News, as wall to wall and Fox News tan suit level coverage of of these outrageous on Fox News.

How do you assess this bill and how do you even deal with nonsense like this?

It is hard to know. Just one other little factoid that you would feel stupid even talking, you know, in a way addressing it, but whatever. I mean, Joe Biden put out on Easter or four Easter this year as he has. I gather the last past couple. He was quite a religious statement about the meaning of Easter.

I mean, he is a serious Catholic And he talks about the resurrection and Jesus’s sacrifice, which he’s entitled to do certainly and did. So the idea that Donald Trump takes the meeting of Easter more seriously than Joe Biden is obviously on its face ludicrous. The other thing that struck me about just kind of following it a bit this weekend is, like, back in the old days, I e ten years ago. Like, Fox News might have made something of this and rush limbaugh talk radio. It’s kind of a talk radio thing.

Right? Few back bench members of Congress, the Marcy Taylor Greens of that day would have maybe said something. The idea of the actual semi serious politicians and semi serious positions you know, leadership roles in the house, governors of states would be addressing this, pretending that it’s a real thing. That’s the real collapse of the trump era. And, of course, what shouldn’t be surprised because Trump is in charge of the Republican party in the three time nominee.

So why shouldn’t everyone follow down his path? But the degree, whichever one is just following down his path is I don’t know. It’s not striking anymore, but it is noteworthy, I think.

It is noteworthy. And Mike Johnson speaker of the house, but I know everybody did governors. I thought know, Jonathan Martin pointed this out this morning, you’re talking about backbenchers of the house. Even as recently as, like, three years ago, Did either governors would engage in this kind of thing? Like, the governorships were sort of a the National Governors Association, which is a bipartisan group.

It still kind of existed as a pretty useful bipartisan organization where they, you know, trade best practices, etcetera, etcetera. And this stuff is now trickling down everywhere. To your point on Joe Biden’s statement, let’s just read it together. Joe and I send our warmest wishes to Christians around the world celebrating the power of hope and the promise of Christ resurrection this Easter Sunday. As we gather with loved ones who remember Jesus as a sacrifice, we pray for one another and cherish the blessing of the dawn of new possibilities.

I wanna read Donald Trump’s statement in a second. It’s a little different. I had a event over the weekend. I was monitoring a panel with Reverend William Barber. And but one of the things I was asking him was I do think that sometimes that the Democrats could you know, wear their religiosity on their sleeve, and we talked about, you wrote, I think well about Joe Lieberman over the weekend and his Jewish faith.

Biden does this kind of And I do wonder if there is an opening here just, you know, to kind of counter what I think is a wrong conventional wisdom that Democrats aren’t comfortable talking about faith and religion as a contrast with Donald Trump in an election year, not saying that the democrats should start drifting and selling bibles, etcetera, but Is there, you know, a way to kind of swing the pendulum back a little bit of this? Is this something that Democrats should be just thinking about? At least for Democrats, for whom it’s a genuine and authentic belief?

Yeah. I I mean, I think so. And as you say Joe Biden is is fairly, you know, upfront. I wouldn’t say he he’s that gratuitous in it, but he’s a genuine church going Catholic. And, obviously, it’s very important to him clearly, and maybe people should talk about that more in those communities.

There are also chances if one wants to get a little more god forbid, Machiavellian, or, you know, on the level of operatives, as opposed to the earnest politicians, that statement was a Johnson, speaker Johnson statement singlish Catholics and Christians.

I believe that was actually, Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Longwell at a failed congressional candidate.

So, okay, speaking for trump though. So that’s an old fashioned protestant view that, you know, where the Christians and the Catholics are not really good Christians because they follow the pope in Rome and all this stuff. I don’t know. It feels like that’s a relic of that in there, but maybe a bit of a dog whistle to parts of the, sort of extreme versions of the eventual economy, even more fundamentalist. Right?

And someone, I wouldn’t the campaign shouldn’t do this, but some Biden supporter out there somewhere should start causing trouble among Catholics that, you know, these people don’t think you’re real Christians Biden clearly thinks Biden addresses all of us Christians at one point at one of his neighbors, or we Christians, you know. So he he thinks Catholics are Christians.

He does. Andrew Bates had to put out a statement about that. I think that not Biden and not Biden’s team really. But sometimes other Democrats, I feel, like, seem a little uncertain, uncomfortable with religiosity and overt displays of it. And I don’t know I mean, I think maybe some ads of of Biden and church probably wouldn’t hurt either.

Okay. Just one more thing on the Easter statement. Just as a reminder, folks, it’s Monday. You know, they they might never been paying attention. I just one more time, Joe Biden’s statement, as we gather with loved ones, we remember, Jesus’s the sacrifice.

That was the sentence for Joe Biden. Here is his opponent. Happy Easter to all, including crooked and corrupt prosecutors and judges that are doing everything possible to interfere with the presidential election and put me in prison, including those many people that I completely and totally despise because they want to destroy America, a now failing nation, like deranged Jack Smith who is evil and sick, missus Fanny Fawney Wade. It goes on. I’m seeking him deranged.

Like, what in the fuck? I guess what in the fuck is my question, Bill?

It’s a question that answers itself. I I like the fact that me is in the sort of third line of the statement. That’s that’s somehow says it all too. Right? I mean, let’s forget about all that Jesus stuff here.

Oh, I’m not gonna give you a lot of commentary on second corinthians.

Speaking of people who sacrificed on Easter weekend. Let’s talk about me. Let’s make this let’s make Easter about me. What about the failing nation? Eleman, he just tosses that in there too.

You know, in the old days, it was really bad politically to be on the talking down America side of things. I believe we Republicans, when we were Republicans did a fair amount of attacking Democrats for that, and the King Kerpatrick in the eighty four at the Reagan Convention way back when they always blame America first. Now it’s totally standard that you think conservative Magga talking point that America is a total disaster made more so by Biden, but kind of a disaster anyway because of all these trends that they hate. And, that’s why they root for, you know, for Russia against America, I guess.

Yeah. Alright. Well, insomation, the Donald Trump Easter experience, was hating America separating Christians and Catholic and, selling a Grifty Bible to help for his legal troubles. And Joe Biden’s Peaster was attending mass and sending out a respectful statement about the sacrifice of Christ. Okay.

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We are texting this morning about some senate polling. I think it’s kind of interesting. It’s worth spending a little time about These are pulling averages. You always take pulling with green assaults, but in particular, some of these Senate races you can take with a grain of salt because there’s a lot of undecided vote out there, but it’s it’s still worth noting. You look at Arizona.

Right now on the average, Trump is up four. Gallego is up three. And so that means Carrie Lake is under pulling trump by four on the ballot and by seven by comparison. So Trump has forty eight carry like forty four. In Montana, Trump is at fifty three up by twenty.

The Montana Senate Republican sheehy is down at forty percent. So he’s thirteen percent less than Trump. He’s losing to test her by six. Ohio president Trump is at fifty, beating Biden by ten, Bernie Moreno, the Magacar dealer. He has a thirty seven on the ballot, and, he’s losing by six.

So Trump is not pulling him substantially as well. And Nevada, the Nevada pulling, I don’t really love, but the same thing plays out here. Trump’s at forty seven, the Nevada senate can’t is at thirty seven Pennsylvania. I think really good polling in Pennsylvania. This is a good, maybe a clearer example.

Trump invited her tide, Bob Casey is leading Davos Dave McCormick by eight forty seven to thirty nine. So it’s across the board. It’s also true in Conson, Trump and Biden are tied, Tammy Baldwin, winning by four. The only counter example here is, Maryland, Saint Larry Hogan, is up by four currently in the polls and Biden is up by nineteen. So it’s noteworthy.

It’s a trend. And I think that there are two ways to look at it. Maybe one is that it’s concerning for Biden. Right? That maybe there’s something unique about Biden that people don’t like.

Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s something else. Or, maybe you can look at it about just kind of the weakness of how Trump has fractured the Republican Party and how Trump is unique, really, and the way that he can put together that whatever this coalition is, the Maga coalition. I don’t know. How how do you look at at those numbers?

No. I think both are somewhat true. I mean, so strong Democratic incumbents Casting in Pennsylvania, for example, who’s comes from a family of, you know, that’s the dominated Democratic politics or politics in Pennsylvania for decades. Are running ahead of Biden. Maybe that’s not a surprise.

The degree of running ahead in in Pennsylvania in Montana, in Montana, in Ohio, those are states that Biden wouldn’t win anyway, but it’s just through the the delta, the gap there should be concerning for Biden. He’s underperforming. He’s an incumbent too after all. He’s underperforming strong Democratic incumbents, I would say, Tester and Broward who are much better than a typical Democratic incumbent. I think Arizona is particularly interesting.

And the other thing I would say is the Republicans aren’t well known in some of those states. So you could argue once their name ID gets up, they’ll get closer to Trump’s number.

Sure.

Arizona carry, like, does have hundred percent name ID. She lost by a very small margin in twenty twenty two. So it’s somewhat apples to apples in that case, I would say. And you began with Arizona.

Yeah. So let’s just I’ll just say these again, so then you can kind of dig in on Arizona. So Gallegos at forty seven Cary Lake forty four. So that is Gallego, the Democrat plus three. And then the same average, Trump is at forty eight.

Biden is at forty four. Trump is plus four. So it’s a plus four trump to minus three lake. Forty eight for Trump, forty four for Lake.

So think of it this way. Four percent of Trump’s forty eight percent are deserting when they get to the set of level and going over to Gallego. Yeah. Which is about one in ten, almost one in eleven or twelve trump voters. Yeah.

Aren’t sticking to to vote for Carrie Lake. Right. Which is a pretty big number, actually, when the polar western partners in the world we live in. Lake is a trump favorite. So, I mean, it’s not like there’s a gap between the two, particularly.

Yeah. So I think it shows that some of that trump, and it’s sort of heartening it away. Some of that trump support some not a huge amount, but ten percent. Is really Trump specific. And if Trump ever leaves the scene, does suggest that it might not be that hard to transfer to the next generation of trump is.

And we’ve seen a little of that, of course, in twenty twenty two in the governor’s races there, then senate races of states like Pennsylvania and and elsewhere. And also, we’ve seen it in the primaries where DeSantis and, Ramos, when we tried to beat Trump. And so Trump is a very effective demagogue. One thing it tells me, though, and this would be, I think, dairy for the Biden campaign. I was talking with someone about this very senior democrat over the weekend who, unlike most of them actually agreed with me on this.

Trump is a very good candidate. I mean, it’s terrible in so many ways, and he’s ridiculous. And if he were more disciplined, he might be even better. But Trump is outperforming what a Republican with Trump’s views should be getting. You know, is even maybe outperforming what what normie Republican should be getting Right?

It’s not like Norway Republicans were doing great in twenty twelve or two thousand eight and so forth. So it’s just a cautionary lesson against dismissing Trump or thinking that the craziness will certainly catch up with him or or January six will catch up with him. And god knows it all should catch up with him, but people know all of that. And there’s Trump in the numbers you read basically ahead in the in Arizona and even in Pennsylvania.

So the encouraging thing for me looking at those numbers, I concurring with all of the Biden Ron DeSantis, you know, you can over analyze this sort of stuff, but but just broadly speaking. To me, it looks like what we saw in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty was a lot of the normy ish Republican voters, not we’re not talking about elites now. You know, there was still this delay and kind of moving over to debt. Right? Like, the anti trump never trumpers our people, the actual voter, what you saw a lot of times was they were voting for, say, Gary Johnson, you know, in in the presidential race or third party or something, and then still voting for the Republican for Right?

Cause across the board, Republicans were outperforming Trump, at least in the competitive states in twenty sixteen and and in twenty twenty. You were seeing this where people were like, yeah, they’re leaving the party. You know, in the midterms you’re seeing signs, then all of these people are like, okay, this whole party is Maganelle. You know? And so this realignment me, I look at this and say, a lot of the realignment is happening.

Right? Like, the types of people that don’t like Donald Trump are now saying I’m voting for Ruben Gallego. You can just look at the senate number and say it’s pretty clear. There’s a decent number of DC McCain flake voters. You know, that’s the only way that room might, Guy, could be up by three against Carrie.

Like, they’ve already you know, now they’re not just never trump, but they’re never trumpest. They’re never Magga. You know, maybe they’ll vote for Larry Hogan of Maryland. So I I think that’s encouraging. So that means then who is the problem?

Like, why is Trump doing better then? And and to me, it seems very obvious that it’s low propensity, low info, voters, working class voters, people that used to be Democrats, maybe younger voters, maybe, you know, types that don’t vote in their terms, types that don’t vote in special elections. And there’s something about the trump kind of brand it’s like this cultural signifier, trump brand slash maybe inflation’s part of it slash whatever. Such fines age. Like, it’s these types of voters that are helping Trump in the polls.

Is trump gonna actually be able to turn those people out you know, these are the softest type of voters to have. Right? And and I think that it’s pretty obvious that that is the group that is booing Trump right now. You know, if you look at the crosstabs of any of these polls, I think that’s concerning for Democrats if that’s a permanent shift. Right?

If it is, like, that those low and low propensity working class black voters you know, Hispanic voters, younger voters do kind of say, okay. I’m I’m into Maginet. Like, like, they need to tend to that crop, but I I think that is driving the gap. To me. Those voters are driving the gap.

No. I totally agree. And I think, I mean, the the good news is they’re a little less, less likely to vote. They might be just kind of indulging a kind of whim. They don’t like biting much as eighty one years old and stuff, but they’ll come back home as people say in in September, October.

The bad news is, so far, at least, they’re open to voting for Trump. I don’t know what new information they’re gonna get about Trump. They could’ve scared them away. Then that could be some. I mean, I I was talking to someone about this over actually, I mean, he’s doing pretty well among younger black voters.

Are they really aware of what a racist Trump is and and how much his supporters are just playing the race card flat out? And I gotta think for even black voters who don’t like Biden much and they have some economic stuff in common with Trump and inflation and all. I but I do think it re it requires work I mean, it the idea, and I this worries me a little about the Biden campaign, they do sort of seem to me have a and this is generally very true of sort of, you know, commentators. So they just dis discount those numbers. They’re not gonna stick.

I mean, how can you believe trump’s within six among hispanics? That could never stand up. Well, a, it may not stand up in future races as you were saying, and they were down valid, but could it stand up for Trump in twenty twenty four? I don’t know. The Trump campaign is not stupid.

I mean, they’re gonna be spending a lot of time messaging those voters, and they think that’s their possible margin of victory. They’re looking at these exact samples. You just we’re looking at, right, and they’re they’re having the same thought process in verse. So I think it really does require work by the Biden campaign.

Concur. Okay. One more example of this type of odor. People sometimes like these guys don’t exist. You know, the the people that still need to be persuaded don’t really exist.

Well, they do, exist, and some of them are even in Trump’s cabinet, former Trump defense Secret Podcast Esper. Said, late last week, there’s no way I’ll vote for Trump, but every day that Trump does something crazy, the door to voting for Biden, opens a little bit more, and that’s where I’m at. There is a shocking number of people for whom this is true. To a daily Bulwark podcast listener, who we love, like, this notion that that you need another piece of evidence about Trump’s craziness, but but there’s a lot of people like that. I hear from them former Republican friends.

And, you know, you go through this cycle where something happens, a crazy thing happens. They’re like, oh, we can’t do this guy anymore, and then kind of you know, week goes by, two weeks go by, and they start to come back into, well, maybe I could, or maybe I should just write in Nerdman Burke or whatever. So I I do think that this will be a continual fight keep trump’s crazy on these people’s face. What was your thought about the Esper comments?

Totally. And we need to expand from never Trump to include never again trump voters. And one of the best ways to speak never again, Trump voters is what Sarah’s doing with the testimonials from fellow never again trump grassroots voters. Another way is by telling all these people who have never again, Trump inclination post January six, such as post, you know, looking at the chaos or post supporting Nikalia, whatever, that, you know, what? A lot of respectable people, you sort of admire, are never again trump.

Mike Pence, Mark Esper, Chris Christie. They all supported Trump in twenty twenty. They were, like, but not supported. They were part of the administration. So you know, if it’s okay for you to not vote for the person you voted for twice, you’ve been through this.

I mean, it’s hard in politics. The best thing in politics to have is to one, the same race before. Right? Because voters don’t like to change their mind much. They don’t like to acknowledge they were wrong.

And so if they voted for before, they’re gonna vote for this person against for incumbent. One reason, a compass win. So, you know, such a massive percentage of the time. Trump in this weird way isn’t incumbent kind of. He’s been on the ballot twice in a row.

And so if never again, Trump is a very important, maybe the most important way to pry away some trump voters, some twenty sixteen and twenty twenty trump voters to give Biden the margin he probably needs because he’s gotta be losing some twenty twenty Biden voters. If you’re just an incumbent for four years, people do get annoyed at you in a way they’re not when you’re a challenger. So he needs those never again trump voters.

Finally, let’s move over to the news out of Russia of Kharkiv was under Russian missile attack. Over the holiday weekend. Congress is now finally coming back after a lengthy spring break. And Mike Johnson indicated Sunday night that, he will likely bring the Ukraine bill to the floor, but will include some innovations among the, quote, innovations are that some of the money turns in to be a loan that he wants to see some Russian assets and give that to Ukraine instead of American money. Like, okay.

Whatever. He wants to tie it to natural gas exports. I can once you start getting into the details, that worries me about timing again, but great. Let let’s do more national gas exports on board on board with that. Chip Roy, when he was asked about all this, Johnson survival does not begin with bringing a clean Ukraine aide bill to the floor.

On the other side, Don Bacon says he has a commitment to get a vote. This guy seems way over his head. But the news out of Ukraine, you know, shows urgency once again.

Yeah. Totally. And I gotta say most of the things he’s talking about putting in there. Clean vote on the senate bill just for the obvious reason that Biden Ron DeSantis it the next day, and we could get the aid going. And it doesn’t create all the possible complications that adding stuff to us.

Most of the actual things he’s adding are kind of reasonable. I’ve gotta say at least the ones he’s mentioned so far, including the seizing of the Sarah Longwell, the loan’s kinda silly, but we’ll forgive the loan probably sort of like lend lease, you know. And the seizing of the assets is is not trivial. And, though, I’m for that, and Biden could do it on his own, but it’s probably better than congressional cover. So but look, I’m I wish it were the clean thing.

Congress goes back, the house goes back in the week, and I very much am gonna trust but verify mode on this. And very important to say to Johnson, look, if you can get this through and renegotiate this in a sense with Schumer and get it to the Senate and Biden can sign it. In four days, that’s okay. But if not, you’ve gotta have that discharge petition in reserve. And I think people like Don Bacon has to be willing to say okay.

You gotta wait to work this out, but otherwise we’re going with a clean one of the two clean bills that other bills that are out there, that’s also another complication. But way or the other, we have to get it done in the next two or three weeks.

The good news here is that once again, the Democrats a responsible governing party. I mean, it’s bad news. Actually, the Democrats don’t get credit for this. But, like,

the

good news as far as getting the policy done, is that Mike Johnson could put in, pretty much anything, and it would still get signed. Right? I mean, like, he could include a provision that’s, like, we’re going to repeal the transgender day of visibility as part of this one.

Don’t give them ideas. Of course, I’ll put this in. And then the Democratic base will go crazy and then Biden will be pressured.

I mean, like, literally. I she’s like, he’s throwing stuff out there. He’s throwing showman. Like, what chum can I throw in the water? It’s the same thing as the immigration bill, and the Democrats are like, fine.

Whatever. Given the democratic party’s reputation and what that we had come up with, like, the notion that they’re like, yes, we will be the ones that no matter how irresponsible you are, we’ll be the ones supports our ally with military aid and will go along with your stupid games. That’s noteworthy and deserves to be mentioned. And it’s and there’s a big reason why this could actually happen. Right?

Because otherwise, you get into a cluster, you know, where you’re negotiating back and forth and nothing around.

Democrats could mention this a little more. They’ve already done this. They passed the border bill. I mean, the border plus Ukraine bill in the Senate with, I think, two Democrats’s earning or something like that. Mean, they provided the majority that were not a majority of Republicans for all these border provisions they claimed to be for.

So, I mean, they’ve already swallowed hard past stuff they didn’t like. It’s not even a theoretical question. Right? And so it’s funny how little they talk about that. Does anyone in America know that they actually past tougher border protections.

And people were talking about a few months ago, including even were pretty tough by Republican standards. I don’t know. Anyway, Democrats should talk more about that.

Yeah. I feel like we’ve seen a little bit more. Like, yeah, they did a good job to save the union, and and I do this from democratic senators a little bit more, but yeah. No. More is more is more more is more on this front.

More is more will be true tonight also from Angel Rees on the on the backboards and in the hoop. And, I look forward to that, Bill. I hope you enjoy the the game tonight, and we will see you back here next Monday. I’m on the other side with a mailbag. Thanks, Bill.

Thanks it.

Hey, guys. We’re back with the mailbag segment. We have been getting some great questions. Bulwark Secret Podcast at the Bulwark dot com. If you wanna send it in, I wanna do this as much as I can and try to balance some political questions with some more fun or life advice or off the beaten path questions.

So we’ll do that today. We’ll start with Ray on the serious side. Ray says, Tim, you say that no labels is harmful to Biden and risks electing Trump, even though they might satisfy the wishful thinking of certain moderates. I think this misses the fact that there is some small number of voters who, like myself, have been never Trump Republicans, but are now so turned off by Biden, that we can’t vote for Biden either. People like me need an off ramp.

So where does that leave me? First, Ray. I just wanna say I’m glad that you’re listening to this podcast. I want this to be a podcast that represents everybody in the never Trump pro democracy movement all the way from JBL, Biden fanboys, to people that don’t like Biden on too much. That’s why I had Steve Hayes on recently.

I’m I’m trying to get more people to represent that view on. Obviously, that’s not my view. As reflected on this podcast many times. I think that the bad choices in life happen a lot. I don’t really think this one’s a bad choice, to be honest.

I think this one is a very clear choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But if you are of the view that they’re two bad choices, I like this happens in life. You know, you gotta decide whether to put your kid into a shitty public school in your district or pay money that is that might be outside of your resources to send them to a private school. Those are really the only two options. You can’t just check out.

Right? You I guess you could homeschool. But you can’t but you can’t just say, well, no. I’m gonna path. There’s only gonna be two guys.

It’s gonna be the next president, and you don’t have to. But my suggestion, my strong suggestion is that you have to make a decision between the two choices that are on offer. And here’s the thing, to raise question. And a lot of people say this. I hear from people that are no labels curious all the time that they’re that they want to have an off ramp, right, that they’re looking for some other choice to make them feel good about your vote.

But I hate to borrow from Ben Shapiro. But voting results don’t really

care about your feelings. And the bad news I

have for Ray and for everybody that is in this boat who I love having listening to this podcast, I welcome you, but I have some bad news for you. There is no functional difference. For you between writing in Joe Burrow or having a no labels candidate that you like. There’s no functional difference. Except that it might make you feel better about your vote.

Right? Because the no labels person or Robert f Kennedy Junior or Colonel West or whoever, they’re not gonna be the next president. Joe Biden or Donald Trump are gonna be the next president. So if you wanna, you know, write in the pope, do whatever. That’s your choice, but having a third party option is not really an off ramp.

It’s an off ramp to nothing. Do you remember the bridge to nowhere? It’s the off ramp to nowhere. So what we have here is a real life decision between somebody that tried to end our democracy in January sixth of twenty twenty one, and somebody that’s a pretty normal Democrat that has some policy

disagreements I have,

and and has and has had some failings. Every president has some failings. And no labels providing this quote unquote offering up to people like you is only gonna nudge some of those who might come around to Biden eventually. You say you’re not going to. Maybe we can win you over.

But for people who might come around to Viden eventually. If they’re given an off ramp, they might take it. They might take this off ramp to nowhere. And so that is why we are ringing the alarm bell about no labels having a candidate so often because we don’t want people to feel like they have this fake off ramp. Right?

We want them to, you know, hold their nose and vote for the candidate that they don’t think will bring in an idiocracy autocracy. So Ray. Thank you for listening. We’ve got some people coming down the pike that I can argue with about this again. Alright?

We’ve got some some on the books in the next few So, we can keep hashing this out between now and November. Alright. A couple fun ones. I’m gonna try to keep them shorter. This is from Tim in Baton Rouge.

What’s up, brother? Go tigers. I’d love to know what was the best or tightest widespread panic show you ever attended. Okay. This guy knows me.

People don’t know who widespread panic is. It’s like a Southern rock band that’s like a Alman brothers, Grateful Dead, Masup. And, when I went to college as a freshman coach, I’d been a dork. I don’t know if you learned this about me. I’d been a dork in middle school and high school.

I listened to talk radio. Sports talk radio, news talk radio. Well, you know, I’d listen to music. I wasn’t really big in the music. And so when you guys, which I always appreciate your compliments and your love, And remember, I do have a Spotify playlist.

If you wanna know what these outro songs are, if you wanna know how I became, you know, so into music, it really has to do with widespread And, this was a band that me and my friends would go see throughout college. They did a ton of covers, and so they introduced me to a whole range of music. I’d never experienced. My parents god love them. Listen to, you know, like, smooth jazz.

And so that wasn’t really that appealing to me. And so, it introduced me to the cover people like the talking heads and JJ Kale and the meters and RL Burnside. I learned about blues and funk and and kind of classic rock deep cuts and eighties rock and alternative rock that came out of the Athens, alternative scene, and so I just was exposed to all this new music and realized that actually, I’d I’ve loved music. I just hadn’t hadn’t been exposed to the right kinds as a child. And so, widespread panic is very important to me for that reason.

They’re formative in my love of music and a lot of my best friends for this day. Where the friends I went to see those shows with, what’s up little unit. Anyway, my answer to your question, the tightest one I probably ever saw was before the lead guitarist died, Mike hauser when we were in college. And so it has to be one of the ones before he died. And I I would choose August nineteenth two thousand one in Larkspur.

Great set list. Go check that out. I did see the last Red Rock run with Mikey. I also saw the RedRock show where they did eight live Grand, the whole the whole album altogether. So if you’re if you’re interested, you can go check out any of those.

I wrote about this. This is, I’m sure why Tim and Baton Rouge knows. I wrote about my love of music and widespread a while back. We’ll put it in the show notes. Okay.

Lastly, we’ve got our friend Holly. We had a great question for Anthony in Tennessee. Anthony, you’re gonna be up next, but I want to go to Holly. Holly does the spoofs of the next Secret Podcast. If you follow Holly Fletcher on on threads, go check her out.

She wanted career advice, dear Tim. I’ve been at my job for eighteen years. I’m almost fifty. It’s a good job. It’s interesting.

It pays well. It’s certainly not unbearable, but my five gigs my passion. It’s taken off a bit, but it’s still far from matching with my day job income wise and the chance that ever will is low. However, my husband’s income is enough to cover our expenses generally with some belt tightening required. And I was planning on leaving my job anyway in no more than five years.

So do I work another five years or do I quit and pursue my passion full time? PS, I already asked JBL, and he thinks I should keep my day job maybe until I die, but you seem like more fun. I am more fun, Holly. Thank you for asking. As you might know, I made a pretty severe career switch, maybe not towards fifty, but in my late thirties, and it has been the most fulfilling decision, that I’ve made, maybe not the most.

I guess that should go to my child and husband in case in case he’s listening, but among the most fulfilling decisions I’ve ever made, and, I recommend it. I will say this. People say money doesn’t bring you happiness. That’s kind of true. But if you look at the statistics out there, if you look at studies of happiness, that is true only after you’ve reached a level of financial stability.

Right? And so I think to me that is like the big question. I don’t exactly know what you mean by belt tightening. But if you’re gonna be stressed every time you decide whether or not you’re gonna eat leftovers or order delivery, I that’s a tough life. Right?

Like, if you’re gonna be arguing with your husband about various financial choices that before had been kind of wrote in your life, Sometimes that can bring strain. Right? Sometimes that can bring tension. And so when I people ask me for this advice, I always say, well, look, I was able to make a switch. I’d certainly would be making more money right now if I was a Donald Trump ad man, like some of my friends are, but It wasn’t that big of a sacrifice for me because our life is still good.

Like, our life is still good. We’re we do not we’re blessed. I do not have huge financial strain. We’re not arguing over over little financial decisions in our household. So if you can make this switch, and also still be financially stable and financially stable enough to be happy and to not add unnecessary stress under your life Tell JV on the pound sand.

Go to it. If you need a couple more years to build up the savings, that’s okay too. Two years is not three years. Maybe maybe you can meet in the middle. You know, I’m a moderate squish.

Maybe instead of doing five years, you do two and a half and you split me in JBL down the middle. So anyway, Holly, you can message me. If you want further thoughts on that, I love hearing from you. We appreciate your support for the bulwark. Everybody else, life is good.

Our life is good. Go tigers tonight. We’re gonna be back tomorrow with your friend, Will Saletan. The people wanted more Will Saletan, so we’ll be back tomorrow and with special bonus guest as well. Thanks for listening to Secret Podcast.

We’ll see you all then.

Watching people wonder where they’re going. Me what’s your job. What are you doing? Got into the grocery store. I’m on Oh, my money

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