Cable News Is Kabuki Theater (The Secret Podcast PREVIEW)

Hey there. It’s JBL. On the Secret Show today, Mona Charen sat in for Sarah, and we talked about Joe Lieberman and the grace of craziness in in politics and also the Baltimore Bridge collapse. Here’s the show. He texted me that, you were

interested in the, in the, discontinuity between the two parties. Where, you know, you have all of these Republicans going berserk, and you don’t see the same thing, from Democrats. At least not nearly the same degree. There are some extreme Democrats, of course. And I would argue that going back in time, there there were quite a few who became a bit mainstream, but but I did sort of think, alright, let let’s look into this a little bit.

So I have some I have some products of my research.

Tell me tell me all about this because so this is I’m having you ghost write my my newsletter for Thursday. We’re taping this on Thursday morning. I am two thirds of the way through writing this. And, I was holding off on finishing because I wanted to talk to you and have you make me smart.

Well, I don’t know about that. But,

I do this with Sarah all the time. Like, we sit down the tape on Friday, and I just sort of start asking your question and then all this shows up in the newsletter on Friday morning because I’ve had her program my mind.

So, The parties, and, and this is one of the reasons why third parties are, are a danger, is that the parties are very different. The democratic party is much more diverse. And the Republican Party is much more, monochrome. So, and I don’t mean that in the racial sense, although it’s that too. But, so if you look at gallop data, you will find that in terms of ideology, the democratic democratic voters are almost equally split between moderates and liberals.

So fifty one percent identifies liberal and forty nine percent identify as moderate. Whereas in the Republican Party, it’s, a much bigger proportion identified as conservative. The other thing to look at is the composition of the electorate in general. So liberals make up the smallest share of the electorate at, at twenty, sorry, at twenty five percent. So that’s liberals.

And then thirty six percent as moderates and thirty seven percent, the plurality as conservative. So when you look at those data and you think, okay, So Republicans can win. If they bring their base, which is unified, plus a fraction of the moderates. Right. Whereas the Democratic party has to bring a much bigger percentage of moderates to its side in order to win elections.

And that is the discontinuity. And I think that’s why you’ve seen, Democrats responding to incentives and responding intelligently. You know, they are trying to run more moderate candidates in swing districts, and that’s been successful for them. Not always. I mean, they they had a chance to take the, Wisconsin senate seat away from, from Ron Johnson, and they failed by running a very left wing candidate.

So sometimes they don’t, succeed. But you know, there have been another, you know, a bunch of straws in the wind where Democrats have been choosing you know, kind of moderate. People you had, Chantelle Brown beat the progressive Nina turner. You had, you know, Henry Quiar, who’s a who’s the, pro life democrat in the house. You’ve had, he he succeeded in his race.

John Federman, interestingly, though he was perceived to be a progressive and even a Bernie bro, he declined that label during his campaign. He said he was not. And boy, I mean, he’s turned out to be from my perspective as somebody who wants more centrist, legislators. He’s turned out to be a very happy surprise. Okay, one more fact And then I’d like to hear

how you

react to all this. What?

For Sarah used to make fun of me for talking about how great John Federman us back when she was insisting that Connor Lam was gonna win this primary. And then Connor Lam was the best person to win this out. And I was like, This is this guy John Federman’s a rock star. You gotta trust me. She didn’t wanna hear it.

Yeah. I know. I remember. But, okay. So there’s one more factoid, and then let’s hear your reaction.

There is no battleground state in which liberal voters make a majority or a plurality of the electorate?

Yes. Yes. So here is here is my reaction. So I think that what you’ve just said is true. But that’s something else interesting has happened.

As as you go along that continuum. Right? So if if it’s all a horseshoe, I’m drawing in the air for people who can’t say it. Right? As Republicans, you know, as the conservative side of that as you end on the liberal side.

Like, as you get towards the tips of the horseshoe, the really conservative people hate the Republican Party.

Mhmm. Right?

And view it as a, you know, all all the way. I mean, like, the real conservative right. David or Republican Party is a bunch of corporatist elites, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And on the left, same thing. You have a bunch of commies who think the Democratic party is is awful and just as bad, you know.

Al Gore was the exact same as Bobdoll or whatever.

Mhmm.

As the Republican Party, because as you say, they couldn’t rely just on base voters as they moved closer and closer to the base, what they did was they risked being taken over by the people who were actually anti Republican conservatives. And that is what happened in twenty sixteen. And so the it it was really was a hostile takeover. It was the first time in my memory that, a political party was taken over by voters who mostly hated it. And that then caused a chain reaction.

Right? So, you know, nature abhors a vacuum. And as as that pulled the Republican Party close to the center Avety of Maga, which now owned it, the Democrats were pulled as you say, down closer towards the center. And what interests me is You know, like, you always have in in every time there are people who go crazy, you know, either because they go crazy or because they they were always crazy and they were passing. And they they just feel liberated to be who they are.

During the last five or six years, even a bunch of liberals who went crazy, wound up going crazy in the direction of manga, so like Naomi Wolf. Or Matt Tayibi or Bari Weiss. Like, you know, Bari isn’t exactly Maga, but she’s Maga adjacent. Glenn greenwald. And what I find interesting is that you didn’t I can’t think of a single example of somebody who was Let’s let’s say, like Michael Anton.

Like whoever the liberal Michael Anton is. You know, his his liberal analog, maybe it’s Sydney Bloomenthal or somebody who became, an antifa communist. Right? Cause that’s the analog. What you would expect is, you know, the the the analog of a Michael Anton who became Maga would be a Sydney Bloomthal who became an antifa type.

Yeah. I don’t I can’t I can’t think of a single example of that. I just don’t think that happened.

Right.

And that’s interesting to me.

Well, I have a fairly dark interpretation of this, but

Mhmm.

That won’t upset you.

Bring it on me. Oh, I love it. You’re getting into the spirit of things around here.

Which is that these people are taking the temperature of the world, and they’re seeing that these sort of Fascist type movements have the wind at their back in many countries, including our own. And there’s a feeling of, you know, on the march. This is where the action is. And honestly, despite what the Maga people are constantly saying about how the commies are in charge of everything. The commies are really weak at the moment.

They don’t control anything.

The commies got nothing.

They got nothing. Then.

They can’t even hold on to John Federman.

And so if you’re attracted to power, and these people are, then you go where you think the action is, and that’s the spirit of our age.

That is incredibly dark.

Yeah.

Oh, I like it. Well done. Alright. Well, while we’re here, let’s, let’s talk about the bridge collapse in Baltimore, which will impact your life and my life every time travel to see one of it. Right?

Doing going from DC to Philly or anything north of Baltimore is gonna be a nightmare. It’s gonna impact the people who live in Baltimore. It’s gonna impact shipping, terrible loss of life. Although I I feel weird saying this. It is astounding to me.

There was only seven people who who died in it. And this is the thing.

We know for sure how many yet. Because Yeah. Apparently, according to reports this morning, there are vehicles that are underneath all of that steel and concrete. Yeah. And so they won’t know how many people are in those vehicles until they’re able to pull them out.

Well, this is a case where the first responders seem to have done. An unbelievably good job. Like, I don’t know if you tracked the time on us, but it was four minutes from the ship calling in the May day till the bridge collapsing. And the the port authority people getting the message to the police, the police shutting down the the bridge. And when you see the video, you can see Right up until the final minute, you see headlights and taillights of cars crossing the bridge, and then it stops.

And the police were able to keep I think most cars and traffic off of the bridge, you know, incredibly fast. I mean, you can only imagine they, you know, somebody comes over the radio and says, you gotta shut the bridge down and you might think, well, that would take thirty seconds of, well, what do you mean? Say that again. Do you?

Yeah. No. No. Exactly.

And And even thirty seconds in that moment.

At the other and Yeah.

Yeah. It just just an incredible job by the police and the port authority people and the marina, the the the harbor people who who made that happen, because it could have been much, much worse.

Yeah.

So The politicization of it. Yeah. Was it all so here’s my my question to you. Was it always like this? Because I don’t think it was.

But maybe I’m wrong. Right? Maybe maybe if we think back to Timothy McVey, in Oklahoma City or to the Beltway sniper. Maybe those things were politicized the next morning. But I don’t think so.

I think the politicization, it happened. It always happens. But I think it lagged, like, thirty six hours. Maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe the difference between thirty six hours and two hours is nothing.

But, like, it really was about two hours before we got into this is all because of DEI

Yeah. So I do think, there has been a marked change. People are gonna say, okay, give me chapter and verse. And I, and I can’t really, but I’ll just say, every time there was a natural disaster, every time there was a tornado that tore up, a community in Kentucky or Tennessee or whatever, you would have the president of the United States announcing that even though the governor of that state was a, you know, Republican or whatever, we’re going to, you know, clear an emergency, and there would be under you know, there would be statements about concern for the loss of life, and everybody would say, of course, we’re all working together on this. And, you know, there will be full cooperation between the feds and local officials and Yes.

Sometimes they didn’t do the greatest job. That’s life. But the initial response to any sort of a disaster was, of course, this is a moment for putting partisanship aside. And, you know, for example, Chris Christie got into terrible trouble in, in two thousand, was it twenty twelve, I guess, because

Hurricane Sandy.

Because hurricane Sandy hit, and he embraced Obama who came to see and and people were angry at him for for doing it. That was just what he was doing was just, like, it had been normal up until up until then. And, and but there is there’s also a sense what’s lost when that is no longer the norm is that grown ups recognize that accidents happen, that sometimes life just delivers hard blows. And that you have to sort of, you know, be, you know, keep your wits about you, you know, immediately take care of the first casualties and then do long term planning. These are all things that mature adults know how to do, and it used to be the tone in government.

And now with this enormous change in our, in our culture and politics, the immediate reaction is, you know, people co first of all, you know, Lara Loomer, not Lumer. Lara Logan, sorry. You know, gets on one of the right wing, cables cable networks and starts, you know, saying very knowledgeably that, this is obviously terrorist attack, and it’s Biden’s fault, and so on. And by the way, she refers and she says that she’s spoken to lots of national security experts who assure her that this is the case. But she’s clearly making that up.

And, I mean, one of the things she said was, along the I ninety four caught a carter, you know, and whoops, it’s the I ninety five Carter. So for somebody who is saying that others who are commenting on this don’t know what they’re talking about, she, didn’t know what she was talking about. But then the other part of this was, and this, again, is this poison that has become so common, there were images of the young African American mayor of Baltimore. And what did they say about him? They said, some of these.

These were not officials, but they were commenters on right wing sites. This is the DEAI mayor of Baltimore. Now all we know about him is that he’s black. So that makes him deI. So what does that mean that deI means to these people?

It’s like the n word.

Yeah. This is this is a way of saying a late a racial slur without. Yeah. I I, you know, I was on a I was on a flight, not so long ago, a year ago. And, before the plane took off, there was a woman who was very agitated and didn’t wanna like, move her seat.

She was in the wrong seat. Didn’t wanna move a seat, and she was getting into it with the stewardess. And, this woman eventually said, Yeah. Well, I got a b o m b on board. What do you think about that?

As far as I’ve looked at her and she goes, oh, but you can’t do anything about it because I didn’t say the word. I just said b o m b. And it was clear, like, she thought that she had, like, caught her and stuff with the code. But that’s one deI is. Right?

Oh, we’re just gonna say deI, and they won’t know that we mean he’s a dumb Bulwark guy.

Yeah.

And I yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, and the and all the conspiracyizing and look, government cannot function in

this environment

of suspicion and crazy conspiracies

and

constant sniping. I mean, there has to be a certain realm of just basic good faith that most people are just trying to do their jobs and are decent. And boy, it’s the age of the internet is getting harder and harder. To just do the basics of getting along as civilized humans.

Yeah. And again, I don’t wanna romanticize the past because they’re giving after Oklahoma City, there was a lot of political, huge political fight after that. That was true. It it did take a little while Yeah. It was a it was a day or two before rush limbaugh was on the air chirping about it and liberals were making trying to make Timothy Mcvey into a Republican and Katrina became a political thing, but not not the second day, not the first day.

Like, it took, you know, it was it was days into the incompetent response of of Michael Brown, the Bush Administration, which is why people

who said Bush didn’t care about black people?

Yeah. It was. But again, that wasn’t, like, day off. It was, like, two days later. And, you know, and frankly, a lot of those There are two things.

Right? There were there were legitimate criticisms of the administration’s handling of the the FEMA efforts. And then there were things like Kanye saying, well, this is just because W Bush hate black people. So it, you know, it has always been By

the way, he’s another example to go back to your early.

Yeah. Tamaga. Right? Yeah. Kanye went crazy.

He’s a manga guy. Yeah. That’s perfect. Yeah. So yeah.

Okay. It’s it’s not it’s not great. And we haven’t we haven’t gotten to the point where it’s prominent people from their parties doing it. Oh, well, Marjorie Taylor painted it. Yeah.

But, you know, she’s not Mike Johnson, the secret of the house.

Right? It’s, Thank god.

And my concern is that we’re heading to a place where that will be the norm. Where within an hour, it’ll be the president of the United States, Donald Trump, tweeting that out. Right. And, and even if it’s not him, know, ten years from now, we’ll be looking back on this. It would say, remember it was two whole hours after the Baltimore Bridge went down before people started saying deI.

No. But but Trump did do that when he was president, and, and he Will Saletan, if god forbid, he is president again. And, and it was incredibly destructive so that we’re we’re living in the, aftermath of that So It’s

all terrible.

It is. It’s bad.

Okay. So before we get out of here, do you have Do you have any thoughts on the, Ronna McDaniel thing? Because I we are seeing right now what I predicted, which is that all of the anti anti trump types who had never had any patience for Daniel because they said that she was incompetent and she was just a Trump stooge and blah blah blah blah, and she was costing Republicans wins. Those people have all rallied to her side and talked about how unfairly this great patriot has been treated by NBC News, and basically this is why they have to vote for Trump.

I am. Yeah. Look. I mean, so Like, the one example that I could think of where the right had a true, pretty good grievance, the most recent example is Kevin Williamson was hired by the Atlantic and then fired right away because the, because the Atlantic staff were could not tolerate somebody like him. And, so but she you know, there there is this sort of muscle memory on the side of Republicans where would they’re always ready to say, oh, it’s the bad, you know, liberal media who will never allow a good old fashioned servative to just get their point across.

No. You know, they they there’s a double standard and so on. And, you know, it’s okay for George Steph monopolist to get hired by ABC. He was a flack for Bill Clinton, but it’s not okay for Ron. I’m gonna use C.

It’s a double standard. Well, no. There is a huge distinction between somebody who just is a republican. Oh, by the way, there are lots of them on all the cable shows. You know, there’s

Scott’s a confirmed action program for them.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. No. There are tons of them.

But this is a person who, spread lies about the election. And and contributed to a scheme, the fake elector scheme, that would have undermined the peaceful transfer of power, etcetera, etcetera. Somebody tweeted. I thought this was funny, that that NBC should just explain to her that it was that the decision came after a different slate of executives was in battle.

That’s funny.

But Look, I mean, this is this is a a line that cannot be crossed. It is it it goes to the health of our civic republic. She lied in a way. It’s not just that she exaggerated the, you know, the un deployment rate under Biden, which is standard. You know, she she participated in something that was truly subversive and therefore absolutely, the NBC executives made a terrible mistake in attempting to hire her.

And, so That’s

yeah. I I have to say though, I I blame the entire cable news system for the impulse the even that they need to hire Iran and McDaniel because this is I mean, the the corruption of cable news, is that they don’t actually want they say we’re gonna have a Republican analyst. They don’t actually want an analyst. No. They don’t want somebody to come on and analyze and try to tell you what’s going on, they want somebody to come in and play a part on Kabuki Theatre.

Hey, again, it’s JBL. The conversation goes on from there. Wanna hear the rest of the show, head on over to Bullworth Plus and subscribe. We’d love to have you.