BONUS: The Next Level Takes Over The Bulwark

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. It is Monday, December nineteenth. I am JVL sitting in for Charlie Sykes joined with my best friends, Tim Miller, and Sarah Longwell of the Bulwark. It’s like we’re doing a next level on Charlie’s show.

Can you imagine? It’s so crazy.

It’s

just the next level with a bigger audience.

It’s significantly bigger. And maybe there’ll be like one or two people that’s like, wow, I should maybe consider going to the next level now and not just doing the board podcast. You people

should all be listening to the next level because it’s a very although we’re not actually gonna do the next level. We’re gonna do it like it’s Charlie’s show. And we’re not gonna do the next level of it. You you to get the real next level, you’ll have to come and sign up on Wednesday and get the show. Alright, guys, the big news the big news this morning is that George Santos who for people who were not familiar is really the future of the Republican Party.

He was just elected to a Biden district in New York. And he is young. He’s thirty four years old. He’s openly gay. He is the son of immigrants.

An amazing self made success story. And really pointing towards what could be, you know, a bright post insurrection future for the Republican Party. Slight problems.

It’s very handsome. Tight

Now he is not handsome.

I I think that you are looking at his Kari Lake filter. Picture. No. Not his not his

actual

I’m just

looking at what Sebastian said right

now. I think maybe Sebastian found his filtered photo. Nothing I don’t, you know, I don’t wanna pick on him for his looks that I don’t. Oh,

no. He’s not horrible looking. I’m just saying, like, when you look at guys, Adam Kinzinger, very handsome. Right? Sort of rugged Tom Selic like

sort of thing. Not my type, but objective.

Santos more like an average guy. You know, but every man. If you will. I

disagree, but, you know, whatever. Keep going. We don’t have to turn the center rate my fingers. Here’s the problem.

The

New York Times is out with a piece today in which it turns out that George Santos is basically Tom Ripley. Everything in his life has been a lie. He said that he had worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. They said that they had no record of him ever working for them. He said that he graduated from Baruch College, they do not have any record of him having graduated from there, said that he had this nonprofit animal rescue group, friends of pets united.

It does not seem to have been registered as a charity anywhere. They can only find a single event this charity had ever done and the woman who was who was supposed to benefit got stiff and after collecting money from people he never gave it to. The woman who was supposed to be the beneficiary. And then his financial disclosure forms are weird because he went from having eviction notices just a few years ago to somehow lending his campaign more than seven hundred thousand dollars during the midterm. You’ve missed a couple of my favorites.

You can fill in the blanks Tim as an OPPO guy. But the first thing I wanna ask you is, as a former OPPO guy, is this the worst political malpractice you’ve ever seen on the part of any political party that the democrats have gotten this story out now two weeks before representative like Santos is to be sworn in instead of, say, back in September, given especially that this was Santos’s second bite at the apple. He ran for the seat in twenty twenty lost.

I know. So I actually was planning on coming to their defense, you know, as a fellow apo person. You just this is your nightmare. This is like the thing of nightmares for this to happen. And so I was like, you know, those poor guys, like, they have a late primary in the redistricting.

You know, it didn’t even get picked till September and, you know, but time you do all the financials, it’s already October and nobody wants to write, but he ran in twenty twenty. So they had three years to figure this out. Yeah. And then if you look at the Opo book, Some of it is in there. They don’t really have it.

You know, they don’t have the nuts like The New York Times does, but, like, they have key elements of it, but it’s, like, page seventeen of eighty seven. And it’s, like, after, like, was too nice to Donald Trump, you know, which is also an important thing to put in an Apple book.

Wait. Tim, I’m sorry. What was in the eighty seven pages of that didn’t contain any of these other things.

You know, it was, like, his opinion on abortion, like, all of the times that he said nice things about Donald Trump. You know, that was thirteen pages, you know. So just was, like, buried. Again, now they didn’t have that he was a total fraud. Like, what they had was his financial disclosures were very suspicious.

And they also had that the friends of pets thing wasn’t real. One thing that they didn’t have than it seemed like New York Times actually did she let the reporting on and deserve credit for. He also was arrested in Brazil. You didn’t mention this? For fraud.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. He is arrested. He’s a fraudster in Brazil. He was arrested there.

He said his mom was like a Jewish refugee from Ukraine, but it seems like mom was just a poor lady in Brazil who was a nurse. Like, his mom was nursing an elderly person and he stole that person’s checks. Yes. And then used it to buy shoes. Then used it to purchase shoes.

And then was arrested in Brazil for this. There was charge in Brazil. Still pending because he he skipped out. Yeah. Because he skipped out of the country.

Right? So it’s like a guy that had to steal an elderly person’s checks to purchase shoes. Is now lending himself seven hundred thousand dollars to his campaign. There’s also the most despicable thing in there. I just I don’t want to get lost, which is he said that one of his fake companies employed four people that died at the Pulse nightclub shooting.

Use that as like a shield to, like, protect him from criticism about being, you know, whatever a gay trader, like, working for Donald Trump’s GOP. You know, that didn’t happen, and that’s pretty despicable. Just trying to, like, use the dead bodies of the Pulse Nightclub massacre as a political shield. Don’t love that. So he’s not gonna resign.

Right? You have a Democratic governor of New York. Like, my interesting question, I feel like this is our Joe Particone job. It’s like, What’s the lunchroom like for this guy? Oh,

I know the answer to this.

He’s a hero.

It’s fine. The failing New York Times is going after him, the liberal feet. New York Times reporters in the media are trying to destroy this great man just because he is a gay American who happens to love the Republican party. You know what? Who among us has not exaggerated a little bit?

Didn’t you know? Shaded our taxes a little bit or said that we won a book prize in eighth grade or something on our college application. That’s

weirdly specific JBL. If you

look at medical

school applications. Behind every great fortune, there’s crime, and it’s all like there will be blood. All the all the real Americans care about is whether

you get the job done for them. Well, there might be an actual crime here, though. Wow. Because since we don’t know where the money is. So I guess, in theory, that could be the thing that runs them out.

It’s like there could be actual consequences with Johnny Locke. I mean, because it’s still unclear. Where the entity paying taxes on the seven hundred thousand who’s giving them the money. Where did the money come from? I think God opened questions.

Sarah, what do you what do you make of all

this?

My biggest thing, Tim, I don’t know if you saw this, gay to gay here, but did you see who the speaker at the law cabin Republican’s most recent dinner was?

Kari? It

was Kari Lake. Oh,

yeah. No. I’ve got we’ve got I’ve got a lot of material in this coming up in segments. Okay.

Well, I don’t wanna preempt that, but I wanna say that there is a a genre. And so this Spirit of Lincoln Dinner was held at Mar a Lago. I used to be the board chair of this organization. Mhmm.

I was

the first female board chair ever, in fact, of the LOGCAP R Republicans.

Charles Moran took over he’s an he’s an upstanding guy. I’m

not

gonna comment on anybody individually. I am just gonna say that one of my greatest disappointments has been the role that the gay Republicans have played in elevating Donald Trump and anybody who supports them. This is the first gay Republican in Congress openly gay, who is a prop he’s probably not the first gay Republican. But the first first openly gay Republican.

Well, elected elected just Jim Colby just died.

That’s right.

He was didn’t

you come out of it? You’re right. But but so who was elected is openly gay though? Right? First elected.

Yeah. And for that person to be this guy, I just think is maybe not what I worked all those years for. Maybe not what other gay Republicans worked all those years for. It’s sad that this is the representation that you get. Yeah.

That makes me really mad, actually. Are you surprised, Sarah? Because I’d say, yeah, for what the LOGCAP R Republicans did during the Trump era, I kind of assumed that when this happened, it would be, like, this is the spirit of the party. Right? It’s the the grifter ethos.

I

just know a lot of these guys personally who are part of that organization and they are lovely people. But I’m not surprised now because now I’ve watched seven years go by. But at the time, when I was still there and I was watching everybody defending him, that surprised me. The one argument is that Donald Trump was the most pro gay Republican presidential candidate of our lifetime, which weirdly is kind of true. He

was pro groomer. Rhonda Sanders is gonna beat up on him for that coming. You’re saying that’s

why these are one of the reasons these guys love him.

Sir, do you think that the rest of Republican caucus will be cool with Santos or no? Do you think there will be Consequent, will he be given committee assignments?

If you recall, Marjorie Taylor Green, And I believe also after she was elected — Mhmm. — is when maybe we found out now now she wouldn’t have had tough competition. But like we found out about Jewish space lasers, and a bunch of other things. She was having an affair with her, what, CrossFit Coach, all kinds of stuff. We found out about Marjorie Taylor Green.

And she was sort of sidelined there for a while. But the lesson that has been learned in the intervening period of time, because now she is standing with McCarthy at events. Right? She is going to have enormous power in the upcoming Congress And so I think that the lesson that McCarthy has learned that unless you’re doing what Madison Hawthorne did and you’re outwardly embarrassing the party by calling out the leadership. Other than that, you’re a member in good standing no matter what you’ve done.

Unless he goes under a criminal investigation, which these scamming charities, I also want to say this He’s not the only candidate that had like one of these scam charities. There were a bunch of these guys. Who was mister violent guy in the Missouri? Gritens? Gritens, he had scammed a veteran.

He had a scam veteran’s charity, and then J. D. Vance had a scam opioid charity And Donald

Trump also had a scam charity?

Yeah. Lots of scam charities now as a part of the Republican sort of fundraising operation. Like, I don’t think that there was an inherently griffy element. I mean, when I was there, for the bulk of my time, it was, like, working towards ending don’t ask, don’t tell, and ending ban on marriage equality and pushing for gay marriage. Well,

and there but there also becomes a vacuum of leadership. Right? Like the people like Sarah Leaves.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Name Doris Trump. And so that makes a hole for people that were chetheives in Brazil and came to America and wanted to, you know, paint a new a a life for themselves. The

thing is the more that the Republicans push into the groomers side of things, the more cachet a group like Luggies can actually have. Right? Because it can sort of provide cover where you see why somebody like Kari Lake would sort of embrace the log cabin Republicans at the same time that and lots of others are kind of doing the groomer thing because it allows them to kind of play both sides of that. Jacob,

I don’t wanna do your job for you, but this is a kind of a nice transition to one of the many things that I saw this weekend. Yes. This perfect transition. I don’t know if you can tell from my voice, but of seven hours prior to this taping, I was drinking bourbon at the Project Veritas afterparty at the TP USA gathering here in Phoenix, Arizona, you might notice on my Twitter feed if you if you are interested in having your eyes bleed this Christmas week. I have a a behind the scenes video of James O’Keefe.

Doing a dance to shuffling. Anyway, it’s a little bit hard to process all of the things that I could share from the past forty eight hours in my life, but one of the things that is just relevant to what you were just talking about, Sarah, there’s, like, this group now. Are you familiar with us? The gays against groomers? Do you know about this?

Mhmm.

They’re on Tucker a lot.

It’s the same thing. Right? Like, they’re a shield, you know, that the more the Republicans go in on you know, k teachers and trans folks and drag queens, strike shows, like the more cachet you have. Right? If you’re a gay person, you’re able to, you know, kind of become an influencer.

There’s a lot of the gains against rumors, like, have have big Instagram followings, etcetera. Among the things I I got to do this weekend, I got to chat with a couple of these guys. And the thing is, it’s sad for me. Like, the thing is pretty sad. And I I got a lot of takeaways from being here.

There were, like, funny things like like James O’Keefe dancing, and there were interesting things, you know, about what is motivating this folks. Or some scary things about what they were saying on stage. But, like, the sad part for me is just they’re getting used. Right? And they can’t see it.

And I broke out of journalist character at one point talking to one of them and just being like, these people hate you. Like, I just had spent twenty minutes launching Matt Walsh. His entire speech was about pronouns and about truth and about heterosexual marriage, And it’s like Matt Walsh would, like, not really care if every one of these guys rights were taken away. And women, there’s some, again, women in the group too. He would not care one witch.

And if he was emperor of the country, he would absolutely do that. And yet like they’re being used as a shield to protect from advancing that and you know, I did my best to have my, like, Robin Williams, you know, Matt Damon, goodwill hunting moment with them. And I just I couldn’t break through. I couldn’t break through. What was the response?

One of them said, yeah, I get it, Matt Walsh, that’s probably hate me. But, like, directionally, I still think that they’re right. Was one of the kids’ responses. Another one, you know, directly said, well, I don’t love the word groomers because of the reasons that you’re laying out about how it’s being used smear, you know, gay teachers. But, like, what I really don’t like is underage sex change operations and puberty blockers and all that.

And I was like, well, okay. Then why isn’t it like gays against underage sex change operations, which I, you know, isn’t really a big problem. I I don’t think in this country anyway, but, you know, at least that’s a more narrow thing about what you’re gonna say. He’s like, well, you know, the gays against groomers that has a nice ring to it. It helps us if it gets viral and, like, it’s, you know, it’s short for gag.

Oh my gosh.

I’m gagging right now. Know, another one of them was kind of silent. And it’s probably, like, why is this why is this weird old guy, like, lecturing me probably? Where are they on gay marriage? They’re there are four.

Okay. Are they bothered by the fact that the majority of the Republican Congressional delegation voted against gay marriage? Didn’t

seem so. Okay. One said to me and then I and I’d walked away after this section. And now I’m refreshing my memory. He was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Like, I don’t I have never met any Republican in my life who would wanna ban me from, like, adopting a kit. Because, you know, that’s that was one of the things I said. I was like, these people hate you. Like, they wanna ban you from like, I’ve never met any Republican in my life who believes that. And I was like, how old are you?

And he said, you know, twenty three. Like, for most of your life, it was illegal. For you to like, what are you talking about? Like, for most of your life, it was illegal in a lot of states for gays to adopt kids. So you have heard of people in your life.

He’s like, well, I don’t know about that. I don’t I just I’ve never actually. So, you know, there’s just this compartmentalization. I mean, a lot of the same themes that I that I go from the book. But, you know, then I started to get a little heated and I was just like, I’m not actually this is not a useful exercise any longer, and so I wish them well we exchanged social media.

Like,

here’s

the thing. I don’t wanna spend a whole time psychoanalyzing, you know, gay Republicans. But I will say, that when we were growing up, Tim, you’re a little younger than I am. For the majority of our growing up, there were a lot of people who made these arguments to me. Will the Republicans hate you?

But until about twenty thirteen, Republicans and Democrats had the same position on gay marriage. Barack Obama did not believe in gay marriage when he was elected in two thousand eight. He evolved on the issue before right before his second term. And so, you know, I think that there was a time where I thought that the the less condemnation of gay Republicans was really poorly thought out and that a lot of the advancements that got made And the reason that seventy one percent of people now support gay marriage across the country is because a bunch of people made the case that this was not a part as an issue. There were a bunch of gay Republicans who worked for these issues and helped work within the party, and that was all meaningful and important.

And first, like this kid you’re talking to says, I’ve never met anybody. Like that. You know, I don’t know where this person grew up, but there are a lot of people, a lot of gay, people who grew up in places, blue places where actually and and on college campuses where their sexuality, like being gay is not a thing people criticize them for. But they’re being a Republican, they get a ton of criticism for. And it does start to radicalize one, where you feel like it’s your Republican identity that you take all the heat for and so you dig in.

I felt some of this in college. I don’t know. I guess I think it’s different now. It’s different now. I think because the environment is so strange with the groomers and DeSantis and the the, like, reinvigoration of the war on LGBT people.

I have a a wide community in this sort of gay conservative sphere. And the puberty blocker, you know, trans kids, trans athletes is very controversial within that group. Where they don’t want to see discrimination against trans people, but they also think that sort of the trans activists you know, or taking it too far in a lot of ways. I think there’s like a reasonable discussion to be had on some of this stuff and then there’s and then there’s a stupid one.

May may I ask a question of the two of you as as an outsider to the community? I imagine that if we jump back eight years, and I were to grab ten gay Republicans off the street and ask them why you’re a Republican nine out of the ten would say because I’m in favor of physical responsibility. I love capitalism. I believe in small government. And the rule of law, and this is a great country, and these are the things which have made it successful.

And I’m not gonna be held hostage by, you know, my my identity and identity politics etcetera etcetera. Am I getting the sense that That is not what the the gay Republican current mindset is that it’s actually like culture war stuff? Yes. This is

important to understand. And this was always a fight with it. Literally, there was a rival to the log cabin that spread it up called GEO Proud, like, over this point. Like, that was initially, wait, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, that was the divide. Like, there was a the long cabin group was more the people that you just described, the fiscal, you know, I I believe in these other issues.

And those geo proud people are like, no. Actually, I’m with the GOP on culture war issues. And, like, these guys are cut. And

that’s, like, who Anne Culture would, like, speak at their conferences and, like, yeah.

Yeah. I wanna just go into we’re we’re we’re really deep on this at this point. But, like, out of what Sarah said, I agree with one thing really a lot, and I disagree with one. And what I disagree with this, even though there is, yes, a difference between, like, o four and now as far as, like, what people trash and alts were for being a gay republican, Like, those race rationales were extremely contorted in two thousand four too. Right?

Like, even though John Carey and George Bush, like, had were both against gay marriage, like, technically, John Carey’s platform was much more gay friendly than George Bush’s. And, like, John Carey was not running a campaign to put gay marriage content institutional amendments on state ballots to help them get elected. And, you know, Barack Obama was running against Donas Dontell and John McCain wasn’t. Right? Like, there were there were meaningful differences even back up.

But I do think that this feeling of of being ostracized, this feeling that, like, you are being judged Right? As, like, if I’m a gay person that has these other beliefs that don’t align with whatever the, you know, popular opinion is of the day, is the motivating factor here. And that is why now these guys to to get back to your question, JBL. So that’s how I started the conversation actually. I was like, what’s motivating you guys?

Like, why are you here? And it was COVID, culture worse, like, masking, free speech on the Internet, pronouns being forced in my face, Right? Like, that’s what they answered. And I said exactly your point. I was like, this is interesting because if I would have done this fifteen years ago, like, the thing I think most people would have said would have been tax cuts America’s strong role in the world, small government.

And I was like, is that what’s motivating any of the people in your group? And, like, they kind of laughed, basically. They’re like, no. Yeah. You’re right.

It has changed. Yeah.

And I’ll just add just to your disagreement very quickly, which is that one of the other motivators for me was sort of like, hey, look, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. And I felt very strongly that if you were somebody who you could have easily been a moderate Democrat, but you were also, you know, a moderate Republican you decide to be a minor Republican because you sort of believe in the free markets, limited government, that frame. I came up through the whole conservative movement, conservative ecosystem, But the idea of being in a position to talk to the audience that needed the most convincing to me strategically always made a lot of sense.

Do you guys mind if I give you a couple other story times from here? Yes. I want more story time from your time. Can you tell the people where you were?

I I think we we sort of missed that. Okay. Yeah. So I’m at the turning point USA, TP USA’s America Fest Conference here in Phoenix. It is all of your favorites from the MAGA — Uh-huh.

— you know, extended MAGA multiverse

are here. MAGA cinematic universe? Yeah. The MAGA cinematic universe. They’re all here.

How’d

you get in there? They let you in?

I called in a favor. And this is an important context. There there are a lot of stories that we could go to, but one of my favorites is Kari Lake, so we can just go into Kari Lake because this is very related. Kari Lake’s speech last night she was the keynote. This was planned to be her coronation.

Like they’d obviously planned this to be in Phoenix. A month after the election, long before the election. You know? And so this is gonna be her breakout moment for the queen of the naga movement, the VP in waiting, etcetera. Obviously, that was not the case or not exactly how things turned out.

And so she dealt with that by pretending that she won. Her entire speech was about how she won. She said her pronouns or i won. Etcetera, etcetera. But one of the there was a funny part of this and then a part of the maybe Sam is that her speech Like, she only has two things that she talks about.

Election fraud and the media being cropped. Okay? And so she has this whole spiel. About how the media is corrupt. You know, she does the Trump thing, turn around and wave at them, and, you know, tell them that, you know, that there are a bunch of liars and they’re fake news, and oh, they don’t ever show the good stuff.

I can see the red light going on and off. So she’s doing this whole shit. And at one point, she says, turn around and tell those bastards what we really think about them and then she gives a middle finger gesture without putting up her middle finger kind of, you know, like the fist in the air with the So I can Why not? Yeah. Why not actually put out the finger?

But the interesting part about this, the funny part is there was no media there. The guys at DBO SA had decided, you know, because they didn’t like the media bugging the students, that they only were gonna credential certain people. The only media there was like Lindell TV, real America voices, news max. There were no cameras on the stage except for the in house cameras that was doing the livestream of the print reporters. They’re about four or five there.

I had to call around and have some very lengthy conversations with some of my new friends here at at TP USA. You know, and tell them that I’d be a good boy and behave, which I feel like I’ve done. And so she’s doing this whole spiel, which is like, I can see the red lights turning off right now. I can see the red light turn back on now that I’m saying this and, oh, those those fake news jerks. I’ll point out them.

There’s nobody there. Like, it was all I talked about k Fave, but it was all it’s all for nothing. Like, they were doing it to nobody. And so, I’m just the kids eat it up. Yeah.

They all got freaked out. That part was kind of funny and mockable, but then then I got sad. So I’m sitting there just in the crowd, right, because there isn’t a media section. And I’m on my computer taking notes. And I do have a badge that says press.

And so when everybody turns around, a lady, about two rows in front of me, middle aged lady, points at me. And he’s like, that’s him. That’s them. Then a handful of people point at me and laugh. Most of them weren’t in good cheer.

I didn’t feel at risk or anything that they were, you know, trying to mock me when I just sat there and kind of waved at them and typed on my computer. But then something made me really sad, which was one of the moms had a girl that was, I don’t know, maybe ten. And this little girl is, like, looking at me and cringing. And kind of being, like, I’m sorry. Like, putting her hands over her eyes.

And then, like, Kari Lake’s out there being, like, bastards, bastards, And this this little girl is like, I can’t even look at me. And I’m like looking at her being like, it’s okay. Like, it’s fine. Like, it’s it’s fine. And that, like, got me very sad.

Well, at least that mom didn’t take her to a drag queen story hour because that would have been really hurtful that would have really been corrupting. The other thing that

this is related to, Republican events have always been very gaudy. You know, there’s no no shortage of wanted to talk about God and talk about and saying Merry Christmas and doing war on Christmas deck that we got from Christmas. Like, that’s always been there. But the emphasis was much much higher. And and I think it was in the face of these losses that, like, didn’t have a lot of answers for why they lost.

And so a lot of the speakers you know, we’re singing the same hymn, so to speak, which was basically that, you know, this is a godless country. The democrats think they are a god. You know, we’ve got to put our faith in and god and and his dominion on earth and we’ve got to be fighters for him and we have to fear not and we we have to, you know, retreat to our families and to our churches and be fiery advocates against the demonic stuff among us. The preponderance of speakers said something to that effect, and so I just I think about, like, all the David French stuff at the Christian nationalism. Like, they’re just the Christian nationalism infused element to this was much more than I expected.

Right? And obviously, there’s gonna be a little bit, but there was a emphasis on it that was quite intense. And and, like, to contrast that, you know, it’s it’s one thing where it’s I was like, in a vacuum, you might be kind of like, well, Okay. That’s a healthy way for people to process defeat is to, you know, focus on their religion and and and their faith and their faith community. But, like, literally within one minute of people saying, like, we need to care about god’s dominion on earth need to put our faith in God.

It’ll then it’ll be like, the pro choice lid ladies are fat, aren’t they? You know? Like, everybody, let’s stand up and cheer for how Ron DeSantis sent those immigrants to Rosie O’Donnell’s house and Martha’s vineyard and and and how about those cut And it’s just like, like, the the counterjuxtaposition of that and then of, like, pointing at me and calling me ambassador and all that. I can take that. I don’t care about that.

It doesn’t make me sad. But what made me sad is just that I didn’t get any sense that anybody was at all put off by that contradiction. Like, there was not one, you know, mod flanders there that’s like, you know, hey,

maybe we should be nicer at least. If we’re gonna talk about God the whole time. Sarah, do you ever see that sort of tension in people in your focus groups? Or is this only when people are in crowds?

All the time. So this is funny actually, as Tim was saying that I was thinking about this dynamic that I often remark on in the focus groups where you will have people upfront when you’re asking them how things are going, and they will say, you know, this was especially true when Trump was president. You’d be doing sort of Trump focus groups. And people would lament at the top about how divided we are. You know, it’s just, oh, it’s just so divisive and Everyone’s so angry at each other and they would lament how much we hated each other.

And twenty minutes into the focus group, they would be like, those communist Liberals. Are trying to do x, y, and z, and I hate them so much. And, like, there was definitely no sort of self awareness about that phenomenon. But it happened all the time. I talk about it frequently.

Whatever. I don’t even quite know what is to say about it, except that it’s it’s not great. And it’s the kind of thing which, you know, like it’s just a little brush fire now. It’s not hard to see how it gets out of hand. Right?

I mean, the history is replete with examples, especially

the demonic stuff. And the other thing is the interesting thing there is the people self select who talk to me. Right? So I I I would love tips from, you know, other people I’m new to being a Tom Wolf, I’m the scene journalist. Unlike how to, you know, best engage with, like, some of the true believers.

Right? So the people that come talk to me self select because they recognize me. Right? It’s either, like, teens from who’s to know the Snapchat show. And, like, don’t really like me, but, like, are interested enough in politics to, like, watch it and, you know, aren’t, like, fully on the deep end of Megan stuff.

Right? It’s them or it’s like the operatives who, like, don’t you know, who’s all fucking game for and they don’t actually care and they’re there and they know me because my Twitter or whatever. Like, those are the people who who come and talk to me. And so when they ask either of those groups about this stuff, they like pretend like they don’t even know what I’m talking about. Right?

They’re like, oh, I didn’t hear that part. I’m just like, I I literally just sat in the hall and listened to James Lindsay and Eric McSTaxes. Talk for twenty minutes about how, like, we are going through a period where the left are de gnostic hermetic demons. And Satan has taken over the country and nazism is, you know, right around the corner. If we continue going down these paths with the groomer teachers in the critical race theory, and everybody’s cheering and then Nat Walsh comes on next and it’s twenty minutes on pronouns and how it’s the size of the end of society and how it’s demonic and Nazis and Satan.

Is in our midst and we need to turn back to God. And, you know, then I’m like, doesn’t that concern you? Like, aren’t you concerned that some of the people in the room are gonna, like, take that seriously? And if you really think that, like, Satan is about to rise and take over America through the Democratic Party that that might radicalize people in a way that is dangerous. And then I can’t I don’t I didn’t hear that.

Was that did he really say that?

And

I’m just like, we’re at we hit the same conference. And so and and so I I feel like my the one thing that, hopefully, I get invited back, I wanna challenge myself to do better next time is, like, go up to the people that are cheering during those parts. Something like, what do you you know, and try to understand what they’re how they’re processing it? Because it’s it’s alarming for me.

One of the things that I have noted over the last five years is that basically from the center left, there was an entire cottage industry of people who looked at the populist rebellion sort of, you know, which was Trumpism, and nationalism, and all that stuff, and basically was asking themselves, so why are these people doing this? How can we understand them and how can we persuade them. And so everyone from, like, really to share a to some of the work that that Sarah did to, you know, like, their New York Times had people on the beat of this. It was pretty substantial. I’ll I’ll never forget, Sarah, one of your Democratic focus groups where you had some Democratic voters from Pennsylvania who were all explaining why their friends voted for Donald Trump and none of it was like that my friends or Nazis.

It was like, no, you gotta understand. They feel left behind and, you know, gonna really mean any of it. There’s a lot of permissive deaths about the nationalism. This is not the entirety of the Democratic side. It’s not the entirety of the left.

Certainly, like, Rose Twitter is on, you know, full crystal knocked Nazi watch, and sometimes they they overstate that. But a large portion of the center left, I think, has spent the last five or six years trying to understand their counterparts on the on the right. Am I wrong that there is precisely zero part of the Republican world, which does the same with the left? Because I I have never once in my my life seen somebody roughly equivalent to the Republican side, not demonizing like, Liberals and Democratic voters. And instead saying, look, you gotta understand why these people vote this way and this is how we can do better to capture them.

Oh, I I disagree. Completely. I would characterize it differently. Republicans have been thinking very hard about how they capture Hispanic voters. How they capture black voters, how they do slightly better with women, and especially especially They spend a lot of time thinking about how to get a bigger share of those white working class voters who voted for Obama and then voted for Trump who might be attracted to Bernie Sanders and they have completely revolutionized the way they talk about economics, the way they talk about trade, to better appeal economically to those voters.

And that doesn’t mean that when Trump got elected, the first thing they did in terms of any economic priority was passed in May a tax cut, but that’s not how they talk really anymore. And so, you know, Trump went to the coal countries and said he’s gonna bring all those jobs back. Now that was a lie. And the focus on immigration was, you know, to mix in kind of the racism with not to the the economic insecurity by placing blame. Economically distressed white working class voters along with Hispanic working class voters and black working class voters have been the bread and butter of the Democratic Party, and it’s where Republicans have been meaningfully eating into Democrats’ margins.

And I do think that was intentional. They just don’t do it in the same way that the Democrats do, which is, like, with empathy. Like, it’s a different it’s, like, a different way of approaching it.

And I would answer this question a little different. I agree with Sarah on the tactical side. I think that maybe your question to you goes more about kind of like the narrative side and like thinking about people’s you know, interior lives. And I think there that there is none of that. Right?

There was none of that here at this conference of, like, oh, you know, there’s a lot of discussion about how other kids, not kids here, are too woke, and how they’re all caught up in gender ideology and all this, but there’s not any discussion of like, well, why do we think that’s happening. Like, what do we think it is that’s making, you know, that more appealing to kids in this generation or less than past generations besides just like, oh, they’re being, you know, propagandized too by these, like, groomer teachers. I think the reason why is that they see themselves as the people at this conference in particular see themselves as the marginalized ones. We are the ostracized We are the targeted. We are the marginalized.

They are the dominant. They are the dominant cultural force. So we don’t need to try to understand them or psychoanalyze them or figure out how to bring them into a fold because they already have everything. So that creates a disconnect and and how that people, you know, they they look at the other side. Right?

Like, the democrats don’t look at rich white guys feel that way, but they do Democrats with empathy do look at working class people and are like, oh, okay. Well, what what what do we think is driving them? What what do I think is motivating them? Like Republicans at places like this don’t feel like they have any need to do that because those people are are getting all of the affirmation and validation that they desire. Republicans did win the

House popular vote, like, last month. Is that, like, do they not understand It’s a bigger picture. That’s a Do they believe that they’re a persistent minority? They do. Is that what that is?

Yeah. Basically. Yes. That’s interesting. A persistent minority who speaks for a silent majority somehow.

Right? This is the tension in the populist world view. Right? We are the victims of grievance even though really we’re the true Americans and you know, seventy percent of the country is with us.

I mean, yeah, the silent majority and the moral majority and all those things like there’s this constant awareness that they believe they reflect the dominant culture in terms of numbers, but they are controlled. I think Tim Tim’s point is well taken. I I still stand by my point, but I think that Tim’s point about the perpetuation. I mean, grievance cultures at the center of Trumpism. It’s I mean, it’s even who Trump is himself.

It’s why he has this sort of persecution complex. Right? And it’s why he

said He’s the center of all populism. Right. I mean, all populism is grievance concern. That’s

right. You see what happens when they search Mar a Lago. The talking point that comes out immediately is if can happen to me, it can happen to you because this is about the deep state and all the big institutions, all of them being controlled by Democratic elites. Sometimes this is a stand in for other forms of, like, antisemitism and other things. I think Tim’s point about the dominant culture is the right one.

People

wanna watch one speech from this because it’s all on their website, Tucker was the only person that tried to grapple with this. And it’s an interesting speech because he seems extremely tormented by that very paradox that you just laid out, JBL. Like, he kind of says this to the top. He’s like, I don’t understand how every normal person didn’t vote out these demons. I don’t think he he doesn’t use word yet.

Right? That didn’t vote out these insane people. And he goes on a extremely stream of consciousness rambling like, speech that that hits on all kinds of different stuff, like, and he’s emoting. And and it was kind of interesting to watch him, try to kinda grapple with this. And, like, one of the points he brings up this.

He’s, like, even in Montana, they voted against us on, like, ballot initiatives stuff related to portion, and and it’s almost like, he doesn’t quite get there. I mean, like, he’s almost there, but not quite there to the fact of like, no, actually. The normal normal, quote unquote, like the mainstream. The center is not with you on this stuff at all, but he’s trying to understand that because he feels like they should be while also feeling aggrieved.

Alright.

I wanna do five minutes on Twitter. It was an eventful weekend on the Twitterverse. We had a bunch of journalists suspended late last week, then we had some of them reinstated, then we had Elon Musk own Twitter account being suspended for fifteen minutes. Unclear why? Possibly because it was algorithmic because he docked his own location in real time.

By reporting that he was at the World Cup sitting with Jared Kushner, which is amazing. And then we had the rollout of a policy in which you could not promote other social media platforms or competitors, but it was a very curated list of platforms, truth social for instance, was deemed a competitor, but parlor and getter were not. Interesting. I don’t know if you guys noticed that. Then this policy was four zero four late on Sunday and disappeared.

TikTok also was not seen as competitive. TikTok also not seen as better. Right? Because I’ve lost. Right?

Everybody would just say, oh,

screw Twitter then. And then we had in place a poll posted about this very question and simultaneously have a poll from Elon Musk asking the people if he should step down from day to day operations, and he says that he will abide by it. Now, I’m gonna give you guys a spoiler. There was no way that Elon Musk was going continue day to day operations of Twitter indefinitely because Tesla shareholders have been revolting, and I don’t know if you guys have seen, but Tesla stock is in the toilet in part because Tesla is widely overvalued, not investing in vice and in part because the Tesla CEO has been off doing other things.

Elon’s been on a, what, two month journey to make every liberal who might buy a Tesla aid in so much. I can’t tell you the number of

people. There’s so many

people who I’ve heard say, like, I’m never buying a Tesla. Like, who might otherwise have been just kind of you know, electric car driving lives. And in

a moment when EVs are being rolled out everywhere.

So somebody might refer you to reply to me and was like, you know, I’m I don’t usually let this stuff get to me. Like, I don’t, you know, whenever, like, Bob participate in boycotts that he’s like, Every time I get in my car in the morning, it makes me think about him and I hate that. And so I’m gonna get a new car because I don’t wanna have to think about it. And it’s like, you know, Matt is how much he’s annoying, like, his his target demo. What

do you guys make of this? I mean, there there are a bunch of things to take away. The one of the more interesting things Taylor Lawrence, the Washington Post, was banned. She then on her substack said that, you know, they have not told me why I was banned, but the last tweet I did was a public ask of Musk because I’m doing a story on him. And I was, you know, I’ve been trying to get comment from him on things.

You know, it kind of looks like maybe the free speech stuff was all code for something else. I don’t know. Sarah?

Here’s the thing. I I gotta say, I really hate Musk Twitter, and I don’t even mean Musk running it. I mean the intense focus on all things must create, like all the discourse. But I have learned a great deal about free speech over the last, I don’t know, couple of weeks. The number one is that oftentimes the most vocal free speech advocates are not in favor of the neutral application of free speech rules.

It is actually I want the people who I like to be able to say whatever they want with impunity and without suffering consequences. But when I am in charge, It is free speech for me and not for the. And, you know, that is one of the most complicating things about free speech is that you know, this often happens. And again, it goes back to this power dynamic that Tim was talking about with the culture, where when you feel like the institution, right, is in charge and they are powerful. You say that they’re censoring your free speech.

And then when you are in charge, when you were in the dominant position, you find yourself unable to resist in your power limiting other people’s free speech especially when that speech is being critical of you. You know, when he did this poll about should I reinstate the journalists, people were like, yes. Like, there are a lot of his I think he has diminished himself there’s a cohort of the Elon folks who are like, but they’re doxing him. They said where his jet was, which of course is not. A lot of the reporters were doing.

They were reporting on that element. And so, you know, there’s there’s that part that doesn’t get it, but there’s another part that was like, yeah, free speech. She was now like, Oh, wait, this guy isn’t this guy is not upholding what he said he was gonna uphold. Can

I say something? Is it about to send all the hubristic? Yeah. Could you guys I I I was about to suggest that you guys keep me in check, and then I and then I remembered that you have assured that this JBL is always right. So maybe you’re not the right person to keep me in check on

this. The people demanded that, Tim. I’m not the person who who was at this time.

Will the contrarian assholes, like, ever just admit that, like, they were wrong. Like, this is the actually thing that bug bugs me about all Like, we’ve had a series of events recently. And these same fucking people, like, I don’t know, are you familiar with this the all in podcast? These fucking assholes that run this that they’re tech bros, they’re on this contrarian, all in podcast. It’s David Sacks, who’s Peter T.

Old friend, and Jason Calick hackedness. I don’t know how to say his name was, like, Elon’s friend and his in Twitter HQ. They were all, like, Jack is horrible. Elon’s gonna be great. Everybody’s wrong.

Elon’s part said, this is brilliant. He’s gonna do this. It’s brilliant. They’re the same assholes that are like, oh, the Ukraine war is terrible. I’m like, oh, maybe we should consider that we were we asked for it.

And, like, you know, we should be dealing with Russia and good faith. And the same assholes who said the vaccine didn’t work. And same assholes who, like, defended Kanye and the other intellectual dark web people. And it’s, like, the normie resistance moms out there listening to this podcast, like, have been right over and over again on all of these hot button issues. Maybe they’ve been wrong about things in the past.

Maybe they don’t have the right opinion on every possible issue and are not pressured. But, like, on these obvious things about Kanye and Elon and Trump and Ukraine, like, normie, regular resistance moms have been right every time. And these fuckers have been wrong every time. We all saw that Elon is gonna be disaster. That is my biggest takeaway from this whole exchange.

And so Elon is gonna literally lose twenty billion dollars and still there’s still not gonna be one person that’s like, yeah, whoops. I was wrong. I just want one person to say that. I

would like to redo three tweets. Three tweets from Paul Graham. From who is at Paul G on Twitter, who is a venture capital and tech bro who on eleven sixteen twenty twenty two tweets, it’s remarkable how many people who’ve never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who’s run Tesla and SpaceX next tweet. In both those companies, people die if the software doesn’t work right. Do you really think he’s not up to managing a social network?

Now here’s here’s apology this weekend. This is the last straw I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on myself. Here’s the thing about being a contrarian. And what people often don’t appreciate about it?

They think, Ali, these are really contrarian thing. If all you are as a contrarian, then you’re gonna be wrong, like, ninety five percent of the time. If your entire mode of intellectual operation is I’m taking the other side of what people think is going to happen. Then you’re gonna be wrong. All the fucking time.

And maybe you’ll be, you know, right every once in a while and then you go right, oh, oh, would you be would you be everyone right? Because another word for contrarian is like, you know, stopped clocked being right twice a day. Contradianism is not a useful frame for evaluating the universe around you. It’s it’s in fact no no better than, like, last in first out. It’s, you know, and if your skepticism is useful.

Right? And and being selectively contrarian can be useful. And this is how all of these people operate. They just sort of take the other way. You know, whatever the whatever the bad guys, whatever the out group is saying, they go the other way.

Did

you see the back and forth between Bari and Elon?

Oh, I did. What did you think about it, Sarah?

Well, I thought Bari was trying. She was even, like, giving him all the caveats. But she was reminding him that, yes, because Elon’s argument was that Twitter, as a public utility, as a town square, that it needed unfettered free speech. Like, yes, it was a private platform, but it should have unfettered free speech. And that’s what he was gonna bring to it.

Now he’s the owner and it is not unfettered free speech. He does not believe in a a big culture free speech. And when Bari points that out, he goes hard at her, hammer and song. He was mad at her. And so do you give her any credit for at least standing up to him?

She barely stood up to him. And then, you know, even in her mealy mouth way. And this is what drives me crazy about her. Her, like, stand up to him is to not say, like, look, Elon Musk is terrible. It turns out any content moderation.

Bari’s version of this is maybe no individual. No private company should be allowed to make these decisions. And you’re like, okay, great. So what do you think who do you think it’s this insane libertarian bullshit? Like, do you think the government should then make these decisions?

Of course not. That’s called communism. This is why actually the old version of Twitter was Wall Suboptimal in terms of free speech stuff was not terribly bad because what it did was it disentangled in terms of moderation, influence from power. And so the people with the most influence over how those decisions were made were the people with the least amount of actual power over the company. Right?

So you had the the line workers in the, like, you know, standards department and the health and safety making decisions. But in terms of the grand scheme of Twitter’s power structure, these people had very, very little power. They can be higher, can fired at will. Right? And the people with the most power all the way at the end of the CEO and board member stage with people at the least amount of influence over day to day operations.

And that is not a bad way to set up a system where there is some tension and which tries to sort of keep things basically even keel. And the most musk version, which is to commingle all the power and the influence of the same place, is of course gonna lead to worse abuses. You just have to cut put your head around the fact that, like, it’s always going to suck because anybody can moderate a platform with a hundred people on it. That’s not hard. Right?

At scale, this shit is incredibly complicated and will always be done badly. And, you know, like, you just gotta make your peace with that or not. It’ll

be done in perfectly. I wrote a whole article about this, so I won’t talk about if you can read it three cheers for content moderation. I wrote it over the weekend. But I just wanna say one more thing about Bari before he let it go. I do give her credit.

I do. I really do. You tweeted at Elon Musk after, you know, he’d provided you all this access saying, no, dude. Actually, you screwed this up. I give her credit for that.

But it still leaves me wanting because again, all of the critics of her We’re right. Like, the critics of her who were saying, you are doing PR for a lunatic that has his own agenda that is not a free speech advocate that actually just wants to target a different group of enemies and wants to let not cease back onto the platform because he sees them as allies and part of this coalition. And you’re doing PR for him unceptically by doing these Twitter files on Twitter, that criticism was right. Okay? And and so this is the this is what I’m saying that is frustrating.

Right? It’s like nobody that is involved in that world from Bari on down, not picking on her everyone in that quote unquote pro free speech contrarian like group from Glenn Greenwald to the all in podcast guys to her. They all were wrong about this. Like, they all said Jack had a unique, like, kind of bias and that Elon is different and better. And, like, that’s why I’m happy to go do this and promote his bullshit.

But, like, that was not right. And that was obvious to anyone who looked at Elon with just an ounce of critical thinking. And so to put yourself in a place where you’re just doing his PR was a big mistake. And so then just to then say afterwards, oh, man, you really screwed this up when you got in charge. I shouldn’t have been, you know, okay, that’s one thing, but there wasn’t like I shouldn’t have been so gullible.

You know what I mean? And I I just I would love to have some kind of acknowledgement. Those, like, you know what? Actually, my critics had it

right on this one. I’m never gonna get it. I know. I know I’m not gonna go. Alright, guys.

Good show, long show. Thanks for being with us. Everybody, we do this every Wednesday. It’s really good. You should go to the next level and sign up go to the bulwark dot com, sign up for all of our stuff that we’ve got there.

If you live in the Pacific Northwest, come and hang out with We’re coming to Seattle on January twenty one. Yes. It’s twenty one? Yes. That right.

Go to the board dot com slash no b s and come sign up. Come hang out with this. It’ll be a good time. Everybody thanks for for joining us. We’ll be back tomorrow.

We’ll do this all over again. Bye.