Dana Milbank: The Chair Is Already Vacant

Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It’s October third two thousand twenty three. And where do we start? Donald Trump is back in court.

John Kelly is confirming a lot of things as, his experience is the former White House chief of staff. And, of course, We have the incredible dysfunctional house of representatives and what’s gonna happen with Kevin McCarthy. Well, we are joined by Dana Millbank Washington Post who is live on Capitol Hill, but they put you in a box over there. I’m looking at you in this in this box. Where are you right now, Dan?

I put myself in this box Charlie Sykes fact, you have to get here early. You have to write your name on a a board and reserve it. So this is a a very high privilege that I’ve acquired this morning. So, yeah, I’m about three feet to my right through this padded wall is the house chamber. And then reporters are the here on the other side of me.

And it’s a another Zany day on Capitol Hill, and nobody knows what the heck is going on. Least of all Kevin McCarthy.

Least of all Kevin McCarthy. We’ll we’ll we’ll get to that in in just a moment because, of course, by the time people listen to this podcast, they might probably know what’s going down. I wanna talk about this yesterday, to the surprise of absolutely no one, Matt Gates went to the floor of the House of Representatives and filed the motion to vacate. Here’s the way it sounded.

For what persons do the does the gentleman from Florida now seek recognition?

Mister speaker pursuant to clause two a one of rule nine, I rise to give notice of my intent to raise a question of the privileges of the house.

The gentleman will state the form of his resolution.

Decaring the office of speaker of the House of Representatives to be vacant, resolved, that the office of speaker of the House of Representatives is hereby declared to be vacant.

Under rule nine, a resolution offered from the floor by a member other than the majority leader or the minority leader as a question of the privileges of the house has immediate precedence only at a time designated by the chair Within two legislative days after the resolution is properly noticed. Pending that designation, the form of the resolution noticed by the gentleman from Florida will appear in the record at this point. The chair will not at this point determine whether the resolution cons constitutes a question of privilege.

And then as he’s leaving the floor according to Jake Sherman from Punch News Democrats broken to loud laughter. I mean, how could they not watching this particular clown car Dana? Again, by the time people listen to this, they might know what what’s happened. Is it fair to say though that there’s kind of a bipartisan consensus that everybody hates Matt Gates?

Yes. I think there’s two bipartisan, consensus here. Everybody thinks Matt Gates is an ass, and everybody’s kinda wondering where Kevin McCarthy these leadership is. Now it may not be as unanimous on that. Obviously, he has allies on the Republican side, but it’s just the same way he sort of bumbled through the, the lead up to the shutdown doing nothing at all at the last minute sort of requiring the Democrats’ assistance here.

He’s done the same thing with this that he, you know, he, yeah, he finally belatedly made a phone call to Kim Jeffries. But, yeah, he said he’s not, you know, doing anything to ask for Democrats, vote. So, of course, why would they, in fact, do that? You know, it’s this leading from behind if he’s leading at all. That we’ve seen throughout the entire year, and that’s why we’re just lurching from crisis to crisis.

And that doesn’t change after today. Whatever happens, whether he survives or doesn’t survive. It’s going to still be the same story. Right? I mean, we’ve seen this movie.

Yeah.

It’s right. And and, you know, survival is what, you know, how do you even define that? You know, like, when Matt Gate said, I talked about a resolution to declare the the office vacant. It already is vacant. There’s nobody doing anything.

It’s certainly hollow. Okay. So I apologize in advance because I didn’t say that it was gonna be mathematics here. But but let’s let’s do a little bit of math. Okay.

So the first thing that happens is there was a motion to place on the table. So does it take two hundred and eighteen votes to do everything? Is that the magic number or does it move around a little bit?

It moves around depending on who shows up. So, I think there’s a there’s a couple of, you know, who won’t be here because of illness and, you know, whatever else is unexpected. And then, of course, you know, people can vote present and that reduces the the threshold you need. But, yeah, two eighteen in general, is the magic number or a simple majority.

So Kevin McCarthy can only afford to lose five Republicans. And if he does, if he loses more than that, then he needs Democratic help. First of all, we don’t know, you know, how that’s gonna turn out. But so it comes down to the Democrats. Kevin McCarthy calls the Democratic leader Hakim Jeffries I don’t know what what what he asked for.

So just run through, Dana. Why would Democrats want to bail out Kevin McCarthy? If Matt Gates wants to stab him in the back, if they wanna set the clown car completely on on fire, why would Democrats might they want to save Kevin McCarthy?

So the hypothetically, the reason would be if he’s offered some sort of a power sharing arrangement, which he clearly hasn’t offered them. And Right. You know, as Jim McGovern ranking Democrat on the rules committee said he’s not a cheap date. I mean, you he’s asking for their help, but he’s not actually willing to offer anything in advance. So that’s really not a a reason at all.

Kevin McCarthy’s every other word out of his mouth is the institution. And, you know, the Democrat should and the institution. Now, of course, yeah, that would be easier to say if his majority hadn’t been trashing the institution for the last eight months and change. So I the only remaining argument for the Democrats is he’s the devil, you know. So, you know, I don’t know Jim Jordan where the speaker would things be worse.

I think that’s kind of a weak reason for, Democrats. Are you? Because, you know, How much worse could it be? It’s already utterly dysfunctional. They’re already trying to impeach president Biden without any, evidence whatsoever.

So Right. It seems to me they they might as well roll the dice. It’s gonna be just as dysfunctional no matter who’s in charge.

If he would have called up McCain Jeffries and said, okay, I’m gonna drop the Biden, impeachment not gonna be doing hundred, Biden’s laptop. We will have bipartisan votes going forward on everything. But, of course, that’s not gonna happen. Right? I mean, he’s in he’s not going to do that.

Now the reasons why Democrats would let him sink. This is a much longer list, isn’t it? When you think about it? You know, it’s like, hey, you guys fight among yourselves. We’ll break out the popcorn, Kevin.

Nice knowing you. Have a great life. I mean, Democrats are not in a mood to to bail him out at all. Are they?

Well, of course not. We may be having a different discussion if this were before he came back from the August recess. And the first thing he did, you know, with Matt Gay holding a gun to his head is announce m p proceedings, impeachment inquiry. But, you know, as I’m sure you’ve discussed before, once you start down this path, you’re heading towards an impeachment vote. At the very least.

So he lost any goodwill. He had that way. And he’s never worked with the Democrats. Now you think of the two times he’s gotten democratic vote on the debt ceiling and then on the shutdown. In the first instance, he was negotiating with Biden in the White House, but when it comes to the shutdown here, he didn’t strike a deal with Democrats.

He didn’t even tell them what he was doing until, you know, an hour or so before, and he’s just assuming that he would get their votes because he’d sort of caved in. But there’s been no cross aisle cooperation or participation. So they they wouldn’t really lose anything there either because it’s already zero.

Your colleagues put together a pretty long list of the reasons why Democrats might not wanna save Kevin. I mean, just go through this list. It’s it’s a very, very long list. You know, they’re reminding themselves today that, McCarthy did not vote to certify the election on January six two thousand twenty one. A lot of Democrats are never gonna forgive McCarthy voting against certification after the mob was cleared from the building.

McCarthy said former president Trump was responsible for the right, and then scurried down tomorrow, Lago, for that infamous picture with Trump with their thumbs up. Democrats have not forgotten that. McCarthy worked against the creation of the January six Select Committee McCarthy gave the January six security footage to since fired television host Tucker Carlson without releasing it to other news outlets I can’t remember that. McCarthy delivered votes for the Cares Act, but later became highly critical of pandemic relief legislation He has worked with Democrats to help put together the microchips manufacturing bill, and then he whipped his party to vote against it. So there’s a lot of bad blood here.

He backed out of the spending deal. He reneged on the spending deal that he cut with president Biden. And he said in August, he would hold a vote on the floor to open the impeachment inquiry against Biden in September, first day back, as you pointed out, He opened the inquiry, without a devote. And then even this this last, CR thing, he didn’t give lawmakers seventy two hours to read, the short term spending bill. And then he goes on CBS’s Face the Nation and charges Democrats with wanting a shutdown.

So the Democrats are really in kind of an f u mood for Kevin McCarthy. So whatever happens today or tomorrow or the next day is not gonna change the dynamic of the House of Representatives. Is it?

Right. And what you’re hearing from, Democrats and and and Republicans for that matter is that Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have any particular principles. He can’t be trusted. So even if he were to say to Democrats, I’ll do x, y, and z, there would be no reason to believe them. And that’s another area where there is some sort of a bipartisan consensus here.

I was just talking with other reporters in the basement with, Tim Burchett. And, you know, he’s gonna be one of the five at least who will, the Republicans vote to vacate the chair. And he said he was talking with McCarthy the other day, and he said that McCarthy told him I really wanna be speaker. And he’s like, that’s the problem right there. You’re really, really what if he’s That’s really what it’s all about for him.

You know, there’s no particular principle there. And so he’s gonna do whatever suits Kevin McCarthy in the moment. And that’s what his critics on the left and the right are unified by.

These divisions really seem to be intense. They seem to be personal. I mean, obviously, there’s some substance. You know, on the substance level, Matt Gates is leading them down a a a dark alley. There’s there’s no there’s no successful endgame.

He’s putting vulnerable members at risk when he does all this. He’s putting the whole agenda. So politically, they’re pissed off at him for derailing whatever was left of the Republican agenda. And they obviously just don’t like him. So I guess the question is, you have these splits within splits.

You have splits within the conference. You have splits within the freedom caucus. You know, going forward, I mean, you’ve been around a long time. You know, we’ve seen parties that have been divided, but this strikes me as the kind of division that is not going to be easily healed. It is deep.

And there are people saying things on television about one another that I don’t know how you walk back from. I don’t know how you come back from from all this. And again, this is not liberals versus conservatives. This is not I mean, this seems to be breaking down in a lot of burn lines when you have Marjorie Taylor, green, fighting with Lauren Bober. Freedom caucus, people fighting.

But just talk to me about the depths of the feeling. I mean, these guys really hate one another at this point. I don’t and I’m talking about Republicans.

Oh, yeah. No. The the names stated being hurled around Charlaton is is the latest one being hurled at Met Gates. And in in fairness, there’s certainly an element of truth there.

Yeah.

We’ve often said, you know, the House Freedom caucus is shorthand, but that’s not really what it is here. They’re split on this. I think it’s the ones who, you know, wanna burn the whole place down, which is in fact, Kevin McCarthy phrase and those who don’t. And how can you count that? Well, there were ninety Republicans who voted to shut down the government rather than take the one alternative of continuing resolution at the same spending level.

So, okay, so maybe there’s ninety out of a two hundred twenty two who wanna burn it all down, or maybe there’s, you know, twenty one, the number who are pretty consistently opposed to McCarthy from the beginning for the speakership votes. Now through this. So it’s somewhere in there. I mean, the good news I suppose is that’s not a majority of the House Republican caucus. There are actually still, you know, a hundred odd saying people there.

The bad news is that’s a pretty huge number. So it doesn’t really matter. Who the speaker of the house is. There’s no way to govern here. They’re taking up a a couple more, appropriations bills this week.

No idea if they’re gonna pass or not. You know, the decision was made by Kevin McCarthy with a gun to his head from the extremists that he had to work only with Republican votes, and that’s given him five votes and everything, and that’s why you’re seeing the defense, the Pentagon appropriations bill. You know, they had to take four tries before they could get that through. And that’s you know, that’s motherhood and apple pie.

And meanwhile, of course, overlaying all of this is the is the orange god king, who is, seems to be on track to be the next Republican presidential nominee, with the almost prohibited lead in the polls. I don’t know what what your reaction was. I was struck by how unhappy Donald Trump seemed yesterday. Now, like, by now, he’s used to being around rooms. Right?

He’s facing ninety felony charges in four different venues, but there’s something about this New York civil trial that seems to have gotten under his skin. And He had a very interesting day. He he shows up at this trial. This is the case brought by attorney general Leticia James, seeking two hundred and fifty million dollars in in damages, discorging his ill gotten gains. The judge in the cases already essentially Will Saletan your fraudster.

Now we have to just determine the the damages And because Donald Trump always hires the very, very, very best people, his lawyers apparently forgot to file the paperwork to get a jury trial, this case will be decided by this one judge So Donald Trump begins the day by before they go into court, standing on the steps, attacking the prosecutor and the judge this way. Let me just play the the audio this.

This is a judge that should be disbarred. This is a judge that should be out of office. This is a judge that some people say could be charged frequently for what he’s doing. He’s interfering with an election at his discretion. Thank you very much.

While this should go well, Dana, this bar, disgrace, should be criminally charged, and then he walks into the courtroom where that judge holds his entire business empire in his hands.

It’s a terrific tactic. He probably hasn’t consulted with his lawyers. I mean, I thought it was terrific that he’s you know, out there railing about them denying him the jury trial when it’s his own lawyers who did that in the first place. Look, his brand is anger, but This seems to be less performative anger and more genuine anger.

I thought

Maybe that goes to the notion that you know, as you were saying, he has already been declared a fraud. So this goes to the very basis of who he claimed he was, this, you know, successful real estate billionaire, the whole basis of the Trump brand we now know is a house of cards. You know, he has already lost this. And, you know, it’s a little bit different from rallying, you know, Republicans to his side over election cases. This isn’t an election case.

This has nothing to do with his political standing. This is the fraud he committed as a businessman. So it really gets, I think, underneath the Trump brand, and he can’t rally Republicans in the same way on this.

I think you’re absolutely right on this. When you think about how much of his image is based on the that he’s a successful savvy businessman, you know, even though he’s got this long, long list of fake frauds and failures, you know, trump university, Trump vodka, Trump Airlines, trump Mortgage, you know, go trump dot com, Trump magazine, all of these things. And yet somehow because of his time on the apprentice, A lot of people think, well, you know, he’s not a politician. He’s a businessman. They believe all of it.

I don’t know that this trial changes it, but for Donald Trump, I did think that the rage was particularly raw. I think that that sense of humiliation was particularly raw because I think it was David k Johnson who said Donald Trump is his money. And this is an attack on his money. There’s part of him that is more upset over the possibility of being exposed as not being a rich person than of being sent to prison, which seems bizarre, but he seems more upset about this case and what it could do to him than the other cases where he could actually end up having to wear an ankle bracelet.

Yeah. No. No. I think that’s right. It does come down to money, and I we’ve learned from the fourth coming, Michael Lewis book that, you know, he he had his price, but it was at five billion dollars not to run for president.

Did you believe that story that amazing. I mean, can we just need to stop there the story that that that there was a plan to pay him off? Like, if we give you five billion dollars when you go away. Right. Is this real?

Right. Right. Real life, Tina?

Throw in an island in the Caribbean too. I mean, instead of all billionaire is trying to raise money for Nikki Haley. Just give him the five billion and be done with the whole thing. So, yeah, I think that is a lot of it. It’s who Trump is.

And also this case, you know, goes after his family as well. So that’s another big trigger for him. And who knows, you know, since we don’t actually know, how leveraged he is, the the the extent to which this exposes overvaluing, reducing his net worth, his ability to pay his debt. So we don’t know what financial pressure is under either.

So the other big story of the day, well, there are actually so many. John Kelly, the former White House chief of staff, former general, confirms a lot stories that we’d already heard to CNN. The details are are really quite dazzling. You know, what can I add that has not always been said, Kelly said? When he was asked to weigh in on his former boss, a person that thinks those who defend the country in uniform or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat or spend years being tortured as POWs are all suckers because there is nothing in it for them, a person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees, because it didn’t look good for me.

A person who demonstrated open contempt for a gold star family, for all gold star families, on TV during the twenty sixteen campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are losers and would not visit their graves in France. By the way, this confirms the reporting from Jeffrey Goldberg. And then he goes on to say, a person that has no idea what America stands for. And has no idea what America is all about, a person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for forty years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason referring to Mark Miller. In expectation that someone will take action, a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators, a person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our constitution, and the rule of law, there is nothing more that can be said, Kelly concluded, god help us.

So, wow. This is the guy that was Donald Trump’s own chief of staff.

Yes. And it’s profoundly damning. But can I just say, John Kelly, I mean, come on? He’s a little late to the party here. I Pretty still going on.

A profile encouraged to be doing this. He could have done it when he was chief of staff, and at Homeland security. He could have done it by not being anonymous with, Jeffrey Golberg. So but I’m not gonna hold him up and Bill Barr and whoever else is now. Excorriating the president, that they served, you know, his profiles and courage.

But that said, it’s good to have one more piece. Of it out there. Of course, the the Trump supporters who would have dismissed the anonymous allegations are now gonna dismiss the Rhino General Kelly’s, claims as well. But look, it’s it’s certainly better to be on the record and to be as forceful as this, you know, better late than never.

It is remarkable, and I don’t think there’s any historical precedent. You correct me if I’m wrong about this. Of this many members of the cabinet, this many close advisors of a president. Coming out and publicly saying, this man is unfit to serve. He’s a monster.

Now I’m so jaded. I don’t know that this moves the the the needle. But somebody ought to put speaking of money, you know, the people who had the five billion dollars lying around to pay off Donald Trump, put this on the air. This man you know, is a decorated general who was the chief of staff. This is what he says.

This is what Bill Barr says. This is what and you got a long list. You know, former secretaries of defense, And at some point, you would think that’s gonna shake some confidence. You know, perhaps even just the the anti anti trumpers were saying, yes, you know, we’re against Trump now, but, of course, we’ll support him in a general election. I mean, it is kind of amazing.

It’s not just that he says I won’t support him. It’s the how horrific it was to see this man up close and realize what a menace is.

Yes.

And it’s not just us. I mean, this is This is Trump’s own appointee. This is the guy that Trump put in charge of homeland security and then made chief of staff.

Right. The god help us is particularly evocative. Yeah. I I like your idea. Maybe they could sort of reenact, you know, the the the praising of Trump around the cabinet meeting, but actually select all of the former advisors.

And all the horrible things they’ve said about him that they could have said at the time, but, at least you’re saying now to his supporters, it just again confirms that there’s a conspiracy, presumably. John Kelly is now part of the deep state, like, like, all the others. But, of course, there are other people out there who are sensible and perhaps a few of them have not made up their mind about Donald Trump. And for those three Americans, I think they should be made aware of general Kelly’s remarks.

My colleague, Tim Miller, has an interesting piece in the Bulwark today about, you know, trump two point o. We’ve talked about trump two point o. You know, I mean, I I’ve made the case that Trump two point o would you think the first Trump term was bad. Trump two point o would be exponentially worse. There’s a guy out there named, and it this is one of those, like, you take it seriously or literally, or is it a joke?

Guy named Mike Davis. Who goes on as some interesting things to say, you know, about mass firings, indictments of political foes, detaining a lot of people in Gitmo. As Tim writes, okay, Mike Davis, there’s not some random caddy, you know, that Donald Trump drummed up at Bedminster to issue foreign policy discreet. He’s a guy. Who had serious jobs in the Bush Department of Justice.

He worked for newt gingrich. He worked for Judge Gorset. He was chief counsel. For Senator Grassley when he was senate judiciary chairman, where Davis says he oversaw the floor votes for two hundred and seventy eight nominees including the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. So this is Mike Davis.

Let me just play a little sound bite. Mike Davis has now become you know, kind of a feature on right wing media. You know, you’ll show up on real America’s voice and newsmax and Bannon’s war room where, you know, he preaches the gospel of Trump, but But listen to this conversation that he had a few days ago about his plans. Mike, I’ve never called for lava to rain down from the heavens. But maybe upon Washington, DC, would you be that sweet red hot lava for us?

I’ve never been cold sweet at call me sweet ginger. So I I think on that then, but during my three week reign of terror as some acting attorney general, before I get chased out of town with my trump pardon, I Will Saletan hell on Washington, DC. We’ve talked about this, but I have five lists. Ready to go and they’re growing. List number one, we’re gonna fire.

We’re gonna fire a lot of people in the executive branch of the deep state. Number two, we’re gonna indict. We’re gonna indict Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and James Biden and every other scumbull, sleaze ball, Biden, except for the five year old granddaughter who they refused to acknowledge, for five years until

the

political pressure got to Joe Biden.

Yeah.

Number three, we’re gonna deport. We’re gonna port. A lot of people, ten million people in growing, anchor babies, their parents, their grandparents, what can I help? But kids in cages, it’s gonna be glorious. Gonna detain a lot of people in the D.

C. Gulog, and Gitmo. And, list number five, I’m gonna recommend a lot of parts every January sixth defendants, is gonna get a pardon, especially my hero horn man. He is definitely at the top of the park list.

Okay. So Dana, I mean, obviously, he’s trying to be inflammatory there and he’s trying to back off from this. Hey, I’m just having a little bit of fun, but But, whoa, this guy is again, this is not some just random guy. This is somebody who has played a significant role, and the kind of person, quite frankly, that is going to end up in trump two point o. So do you so do you take this seriously?

Do you take it literally? Is it a joke? What do you make of a guy of his stature? Saying shit like this.

Well, Charlie, on the positive side, he’s I don’t hear him calling for summary execution. So we should

Not yet.

We should establish that line.

Not killing people stone cold dead at the border if they have the wrong color backpack.

Right. No. I mean, I I think you have to take this sort of thing at face value, particularly in light of all that we’ve seen about the plans underway to you know, to do right in Trump’s view or the trump advise advisers view the second time what they couldn’t do the first time and that is decimate the civil service and essentially roll down all of the safeguards that they weren’t able to roll down the first time around. And there is this I pick it up a lot on the hill here too. They sense this desire for vengeance, for punishment.

Marjorie Taylor Green, who might as well be the speaker of the house was saying, you know, she wanted a shutdown to punish Washington because Washington punished the rest of the country with COVID shutdowns like, I I live in Washington. I didn’t I didn’t try to punish anybody, but the notion that vengeance must be exacted on people who live or work in this city. So I, you know, that’s a very common thing we’re getting. And it often is accompanied by intimations of violence.

It is interesting. What passes for humor now, you know, over the weekend, do you all this. Donald Trump goes over to California. I’m speaking to a Rockets group of Republicans. We talked about this on the podcast yesterday.

Expands his list of people that he wants killed shoplifters, that if you if you come out of a store and you’ve been shoplifting, you can expect to be shot. Apparently, he has a different standard for people caught, you know, frauding people are stealing or lying about some eating. That’s true. But also he’s joking about Nancy Pelosi’s husband being beaten up, and the crowd loves it. They think it’s funny.

I mean, there is something that’s cultivated, cruelty, and taste for brutality, which we can say, oh, they’re just joking, they’re trying to troll us. But these sorts of things do have a coarsening effect, don’t they? I mean, at a certain point and, you know, the fact that he this guy goes on the Benny Johnson show and you know, talks about locking kids in cages as if somehow that’s triggering to the libs that will cause liberal tears we’re gonna rip families apart. We’re gonna put people in a gitmo.

Right.

And, you know, there’s there’s a price to be paid for this, isn’t there?

Absolutely. This is sort of the normalization of cruelty.

Yes.

You know, the Paul Pelosi thing in particular, you know, I mean, yes, he’s doing a whole lot better from, but what from what I understand, He’s still not fully recovered from being attacked by a madman with a hammer in his home. Yeah. It’s it’s worth pausing. That’s why I said earlier there, the fact that the, you know, he didn’t mention summary executions. That’s that’s not a joke.

That’s some okay. So that that shows you. The state of where we are here. So we haven’t had as much political violence as I might have expected.

I guess.

I don’t think we’re out of the woods by any stretch here. But we may be in a little bit of a lull here, but, it I think it’s very valuable that you’re playing these reminders that this is, this is a constant threat from this language.

Well, the the normalization of the language of violence, I think, can lead to the normalization of violence, especially given what’s going to be happening in twenty twenty four. Okay. So I’ve tried to avoid too much of the rank, horse race punditry, but what do you make of the sort of last minute wishcasting by the donor class that maybe Glen Youngen will come riding over the the Hill and Save Republicans. How seriously should we take that kind of, like, Okay. We need somebody if it’s not going to be DeSantis, which it’s not going to be.

If it’s not going to be Haley, which it might be. But what do you make of this, the Young buzz?

It’s bizarre. I, you know, I think we have a we all have this sort of thing that we assume that wealthy people are smart because they’ve made a lot of money. It’s like the Elon Musk affect. But what planet are they on? What they they they think this is a possibility.

Look, I admire their aspirations. In theory, it is a good idea to try to narrow down the field to have one alternative. One alternative to Trump. Trump or this, not trump

or, you

know, half a dozen people yammering at each other, on the stage. So they’re correct about that. It would be a good idea generic down. But it’s yes. Something could happen, with Donald Trump’s health or maybe something happens in the judicial system that takes things in a different direction, but, you know, you also just have to look at what’s obvious out there and the Republican voters by and large have made their decision.

And this seems like a continuation of the magical thinking that we’ve seen really from the beginning, which is that we’re not gonna attack Donald Trump. We’re not gonna break with him because something something, something magic unicorn, maybe he dies. There was never any plan to take him out. It was just this assumption that somebody else would come along and do it. And so this feels like a continuation of that kind of magical thinking.

So, you know, Nikki Haley is having her moment. But unless you have that consolidation, it’s not gonna actually go anywhere. And I’m trying to think of, like, what would change the dynamic? What surprise could happen other than the meteor striking? And, you know, in the movie, Donald Trump takes the stand in one of these cases and completely melts down.

Right? I mean, in the movie, and people go, oh my god. Okay. So I’m trying to imagine. He says, by the way, do you think he’s actually gonna testify in this New York case?

Do you think he will actually he says he’s going to do it? Guy’s taking the fifth amendment every time they’ve asked him about this stuff.

I am sure I don’t know. If past his prologue, somebody will actually talk sense into him at some point.

So In the movie of, you know, on on earth two point o, he goes on. He has some, you know, spittle flecked meltdown, and everybody goes, oh my god. The guy belongs in a padded cell. Carson? But we’ve been through that.

We’ve we’ve had this little flag thing.

We’ve had sequels. We’ve had three quills.

Yeah. That’s right. And people go more. We want more of that. Thanks.

I I just don’t see that happening. Okay. So I talked about this with Will Salatin yesterday. What is your gut sense on the r f k junior running as an independent? Because people are all over the place on this.

There was one poll I think it was the Echelon poll that showed that it would actually increase it that if he ran, it would increase Donald Trump’s, a margin. There are a lot of Republicans who are engaging in their own version of bedwetting about this thing and what a disaster it is because this will siphon off all the anti vax crazies from Donald. And what do what do you think? I mean, what is RfK junior on the ballot do?

Well, first of all, I don’t think he’ll be on the ballot by and large. I think I can say this objectively. The man is dark raving mad. It’s not an ideological challenge to Biden or to Trump. It’s a challenge to common sense.

I mean, and this isn’t just sort of election denial. This is saying that, you know, they’re they’re spying on us with five g, and they’ve put things, in the water supply to control us and to turn people into transgender. I mean, it’s just it just beyond. We saw that one that, you know, Republicans tried to bring him up here to the hill, which basically became a a forum for his anti Semitic statements and and the craziness. So I just think I don’t see this as one as the usual sort of ideological challenge.

I just think it’s challenge to, sanity, which, of course, we can well, they can right. Does that

can break this to you, Dana?

But if you’re interested in having your your sanity challenge, you already have a man in this race.

Yeah. That’s right. If if you want crazy, go with the real thing. Do not with the knockoff.

It’s a cheap imitation to talk about, you know, the water supply.

See, I I’m sorry to you to resurrect the phrase, low information voter But let’s be honest, there’s a lot of people out there who will go, Hey, Kennedy. I like the Kennedy’s RfK. I remember how great he was. And they go into that meeting booth. I just don’t know.

And I I just think that there there are some of these things that we know we we go through all of the crazies, but you have to know about it. You have to hear about it. You have to care about it.

Yeah.

And we have millions of Americans that are on Google right now looking up, I don’t know, the latest Bachelor episode. I don’t know who it was who was doing the analysis. I think Peter Baker, like, what are people actually listening to? I mean, a lot more interesting than than this. So I don’t know.

By the way, should, Joe Biden pick Taylor Swift as his VP? No. I’m just I would I would Testing your sanity.

From your lips to god’s ears.

I I know we live in crazy times, and I know that the right has its own incentive structure, and that they have to have somebody that they, you know, target and get people outraged about. But the choice to go after Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey just strikes me as, like, do you guys have any sort of sense that, okay, maybe that’s not the person that you wanna go after that maybe this is not going to be a maybe there’s they’re so they’re so jazzed up by what they did to Bud Light. They’re thinking if we can do to Taylor Swift, what we did to Budlight. Taylor Swift is not Budlight. This is not the same thing.

It’s not gonna play out that way.

And where is their man, Donald Trump weakest in the American electorate? Well, it is with young voters. So

you you

can see them getting together and saying, How are we gonna get right? How are we gonna get back young women? We’re gonna, make a demon of Taylor Swift. Good luck to that. I I hope it, propels Taylor Swift to be more active.

You saw that, you know, she puts out something on Instagram and forty thousand people register to vote. There’s an incredible untapped potential there. I, you know, it’s just the same way we used to talk about Oprah, I think. You know, she is larger. Than life here.

Well, let me throw out one other random topic because I the here’s something that I don’t understand that maybe you can explain to me. So the US Supreme Court has series of really hot button cases they’re gonna be taking up the abortion pill case. The question about whether people who have been charged or convicted of domestic abuse can have firearms. I mean, there’s gonna be a lot of very, very controversial decisions coming down there have been, and yet the the court faces this crisis of public trust. You know, Justice Roberts has, you know, tried to be the institutionalist who’s presided over this I guess the thing that I don’t understand Mhmm.

Is it seems the easiest possible thing for the court to do is to adopt an ethics code that puts them in line with the rest of the federal judiciary. This doesn’t seem hard to me. In fact, I I think it came as a shock to people to realize that the Supreme Court doesn’t have the same ethics code. And these things are embarrassing. They’re not defensible unless you’re just sort of locked in.

So why doesn’t the court just on a buy ideological basis say, hey, listen, we have a problem. If we’re gonna be waiting into these things, we need to shore up our image the consensus of support and the integrity of the court by doing x, y, and z. Why don’t they just do that?

Man, it makes sense to me, Charlie. But I’m

not I’m,

you know, they haven’t let me in on their, internal deliberations there. So I don’t know what power it is that Clarence Thomas or Samuel Oledo hold over the rest of them. It may not work that way. It may not be a okay, a five or vote there for we adopt an ethics policy. But, man, it it does seem to me that Clarence Thomas and the Koch Brothers or whoever is currently manipulating him, having a extraordinary sway over the rest of the justices there.

Yeah. You would think that they would do it for their own sake, but I mean, the loss of trust, the loss of confidence in the court. Yes. That the Clarence Thomas stuff certainly isn’t helping, but I think those people are already lost confidence because of the Dob’s decision, which is still red hot out there. And, obviously, another another abortion decision could be just extraordinary.

As much as Clarence Thomas is the focus of this. I I think that Alito is probably the problem because he has gotten his back up and seems to, you know, be in that sort of, like, you know, I’m not giving an inch. The fact that he tries to pre butt a story by going to the Wall Street Journal and, you know, talking about these things. And remember when justices, you know, kinda kept their heads down and, you know, didn’t open the robes that much, And the lido seems particularly bitter and particularly rigid on all of this. But again, you know, if we sit around waiting for people to do the rational thing, we’re going to be appointed, and we’re gonna be waiting a long time Dana Millbank.

Thank you so much for joining us. From Capitol Hill, on an amazing day. So, hopefully, you’ll be able to exit that soundproof booth and go see the the clown car in action for the rest of the day. We’ll we’ll talk again soon.

Charlie, I’ve enjoyed these few minutes of rationality before plunging back into the madness.

And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again. Secret Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, an engineered and edited by Jason Brown.