David Frum: The GOP’s Obnoxiousness Problem

Welcome to the Bullework Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is February seventeenth two thousand twenty three. And, yes, I did get out with a snow blower yesterday, and I will do later today. There’s so many things going on right now.

We have the redacted version of the Georgia Grand jury report, which Donald Trump apparently either didn’t understand or is just completely delusional about. We have an epic dump of emails from Fox News showing what they knew and when they knew it about all of those bizarre election laws. And of course, this was This was released as a result of the gazillion dollar lawsuit by a dominion voting systems against Fox News. That’s obviously not going well for them. Meanwhile, Nick Gailey is is taking incoming fire from both the left and the right.

There’s one issue that I want to focus this in on where there’s a real distinction between her and Donald Trump even if she won’t draw the distinction. So Because it is Friday, we are fortunate enough to be joined by one of the most preeminent public intellectuals in America today, David Frum, staff writer at the Atlantic, author of ten books, most recently, Trumpocalypse and the Trumpocracy, because you are one of the foremost public intellectuals in North America today since you’re talking to us from Ontario. David, I wanna talk to you about the Austin Powers Swedish penis and larger sketch. Is that okay?

Well, I’m glad that was a comic setup, rather than an actual biographical description. It’s

all in the timing. Okay. The reason I’m bringing this up is because a lot of people saw your tweet and are having a hard time understanding exactly The point here okay. So the Department of Justice said yesterday is that a guy named Garrett Miller was actually wearing an eye was there January six T shirt when the FBI came knocking on inauguration day, and the Department of Justice is saying, well, this shows that he was proud of his conduct. So here’s a guy who answers the door.

The FBI is trying to figure out, like, what was your involvement in January? Because he’s wearing the t shirt that says, I was there, and you tweeted out the Austin Powers Swedish penis in larger sketch predicted everything. And I have to tell you, David, that I felt the need to go back and listen to the original Austin Powers Swedish penis in larger sketch and for the many, many, many listeners who may have forgotten about it, here it is.

Danger powers personal effects. Actually, my name is Austin Pounce. It says your name danger powers.

No. No. No. No. No.

Danger is my middle name. Okay. Austin danger powers. One blue crush velvet suit Hey. Alright.

One frilly laced crevasse. There it is. One silver medallion with male symbol. One of Italian boots — Fun journalism. — one final record album Bert Baccarat plays his hits.

Oh, brilliant. Yeah.

One Swedish made penis in larger

pump. That’s not

mine. One credit card receipt for Swedish made penis in larger signed by Austin Powers. I’ve done you baby. That’s not mine. One warranty card for Swedish made penis in larger pump filled out by Austin Pound.

I don’t even know it. This is the sort of thing, ain’t my bag, baby. One book Swedish made penis and larger pumps and me. This sort of thing is my bag, baby. I Just sign the form.

Okay. Don’t get heavy, man. I’ll sign it just to get things moving.

I don’t know that I can go on right now. So, David, you think that sketch predicted everything? Please explain as as one of the leading public intellectuals of our time,

a smile when you say that.

I am.

It appears in my eyes. I’m I think that’s cash. That’s the master joke of the Trump era. So Donald Trump would, when he was president, would do something. And people would say, he didn’t mean it that way.

And then he would confirm, when I called for the death penalty for anybody who criticises me on Facebook, I meant it. And people would be forced into this endless retreat, well, yes, he didn’t quite mean it. And then, yes, I quite meant it. And so there it is, one of his acolytes. Who took part in that attack on congress wearing the t shirt, confessing it, and then trying to deny it the FBI, that’s the Swedish penis, the larger sketch.

I mean, we we are at that point in the series where Donald Trump is gonna appear at Mar a Lago wearing a t shirt saying, damn right, I could. Yes. He really does make no secret of it at a certain point. I mean, there is that pattern of denial, of shuffling, of rationalization. And then Donald Trump basically comes out and says, look, look, I actually wanted to overturn the election.

We ought to suspend the constitution. Right, Kanye? And I think that’s part of the problem I think for for people who, you know, throwing words like normalize, it’s like for six years, we’ve been going through this with Trump, but thank you for for making it fresh again because it’s been many years since I saw the awesome powers, Swedish penis, and larger, which as you state, does predict everything. So, okay, we are coming up on the one year anniversary of the war in Ukraine. David, I was thinking of writing a piece today, and I backed off because of this huge fox news email, Dom.

About an area in which Nikki Haley could lead, but probably won’t. Yeah. I think people know that, you know, she’s been asked several times. Can you name one issue you disagree with on Trump that she can’t really come up with any. But there is one issue where if she chose to draw a line she might make a difference and and feel free to disagree with me on this.

This is a short clip from her interview on the Today Show with Craig Melvin who’s specifically asking her about what she would do with Ukraine in contrast to what her former boss Donald Trump and would Kevin McCarthy has said, let me just play that for

you. Your former boss has said that he would stop supporting the Ukrainians if he’s elected. House speaker Kevin McCarthy has said that the Ukrainians shouldn’t get a blank check. Where do you stand?

The

war in Ukraine and Russia is not about Ukraine. It’s about freedom. And it’s a it’s a war we have to win. Because if Ukraine doesn’t win this, Russia will go on to Poland and the Baltics and then we’ll have a world war. What we need to do and what Biden should have done was give them what they needed to win early.

We’re not putting troops on the ground. We are not writing blank checks But when they need the ammunition to win, we should give it to them.

President Zelensky’s asked for f sixteenth, should should we give those stamps?

I

think we give him what he needs to win. Not money but equipment. And

you recognize there’s some daylight between you and the other declared candidate for the Republican nomination on that front?

There’s some daylight between me and Joe Biden.

Okay. So, you know, she she dances around that. She just doesn’t want to say that I disagree with Donald Trump. But but David Trump, she clearly does differ from Donald Trump. And at some point, she has to draw that line.

This is an area where she actually could make a difference, especially as the Republican backbone on Ukraine seems to weaken. What do you think of her answer there? Well,

she’s also drawing daylight between herself and another fossil candidate, and that is governor DeSantis of Florida who — Mhmm. — has been conspicuously silent. On this question. If I recall correctly, the only public statement he has ever made about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is to criticize the Ukrainians for not being grateful enough to Elon Musk. For providing StarLink to them at enormous expense and threatened periodically to cut it off.

They use it in a way she doesn’t like. Yeah. And what makes the DeSantis silent so tremendously conspicuous? Howard Bauchner: You might think, well, he said governor, he doesn’t have to comment on it. The day before two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there are about two hundred or so American trainers working in Ukraine, helping Ukrainian master NATO style equipment.

Those two hundred some trainers were from the Florida National Guard, and they were then evacuated from Ukraine to return to Florida on the brink of war. I assume the governor greeted them in some way, but there’s no photograph. There’s no statement. There’s no thank you to them for their work. It’s kinda glaring omission when your own state’s national guard return and the governor of the state has nothing to say to them in these situations.

And he’s never said as I as far as I know, anything in praise of his own national guard and very important work in Ukraine. He has also not taken the Fox News, Donald Trump view of of being on the Russian side, but he’s trying to walk a line between being on the Russian side, which is where a lot of his core supporters in the nomination level of people he wants to support him are. And the line that is espoused by Nicky Haley and Mitch McConnell and and the historical traditions of of the modern Republican Party to support an invaded democracy against some authoritarian invader.

You know, you would think that at some point, if you wanna lead the free world, you ought to lead on something. And this is gonna be interesting kabuki dance, how someone like Nikki Haley or Rhonda Santos manages to to try to finesse disagreeing or or perhaps agreeing with Trump on Ukraine. The reason why I I highlighted the difference over Ukraine is because, I mean, there are long historical analogies within the Republican Party where figures stood up against the isolationists and and arguably made a tremendous difference. Wendell Wilke in nineteen forty certainly shaped, you know, the the pre war political environment as a Republican candidate for president who did not demagogue America first. And then after World War II of people like senator Arthur Vanderberg from Michigan who, you know, rock ribbed Republican at one time in isolationists decided that the party ought to embrace internationalism and along with Dwight Eisenhower certainly, you know, shaped the post war world Nicki Haley at this moment could, if she wanted to, make a real stinction between herself and Trump as well as lead her party out of the wilderness.

I just don’t see that she has the willingness to do that because she’s shown in just a willingness, you know, to chase whatever, meg a bit of candies out there any given day. But but, I mean, there there is an opportunity and there’s a real difference in the party right now on this issue. If

Nikki Haley were a different kind of person, she would behave in different kinds of ways. Since she’s this kind of person, this this is the way she behaves. But you’re you’re quite right. And these are important battles and they’ve been they’ve been had before. I’ll give you a couple of other historical examples that are maybe very precedent here.

Gerald Ford, as a young man, had been an active member of America, an opponent of US entry into the second world war. Then when Pearl Harbor struck, he joined the US Navy, he had a distinguished career and he came back like many in this generation aware of America’s responsibilities. And the issue that drew him into politics in nineteen forty eight was he began in a Republican primary in Grand Rapids, I think it was, challenging and incumbent republican for the Republican nomination precisely on this issue. That’s how he started his his career. In nineteen fifty two, why Eisenhower said to Robert Taft who was sort of the intellectual leader of the Republican Party.

I’ll stand aside if you will endorse NATO. And taft wooden, so Eisenhower challenged him and and beat him and became president on the issue of supporting data. I think right now in today’s Republican Party, you see three main tendencies on these issues. There is the Mitch McConnell, absolute traditional Republican. We, together with our allies, have to stand up to dictators and invaders and aggressors.

There’s a tradition that is, I think, best represented by Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, which is he wants to stand up invaders. But he doesn’t wanna do it with allies. My Pompeo’s whole messages, the allies are almost as much of the big problem as our adversaries. The allies will shut up and do what they’re told, and that’s hardly because of the overbearing unpleasantness of his personality. That’s, I think, just the way he deals with other people, period.

But there’s nothing in intellectual conceit is he he has very little respect for the allies who doesn’t wanna work with them. I’m guessing that’s probably where Ron DeSantis really is. And then finally, there are the outright pro Russians, which are, you know, representative Fox News primetime, president Donald Trump, so many of his supporters they despise Zelensky and the Ukrainians. They’re broadly sympathetic to the Russians. Trump got his first impeachment by trying to blackmail Zelensky.

And many of people around him hate Zelensky so much because Zelensky is really the oh, where a leader can say he stood up to threats, both from Trump and put many people can say that. Not many Republicans can say that.

So how are you feeling about the status of the war one year on? A year ago, we could never have predicted that Ukraine would have been able up this kind of resistance, I personally would not have predicted that NATO would have been so unified or that our western allies with the possible exception of Germany, would have stepped up so dramatically. But now, of course, we’re hearing about a a Russian offensive, and the Ukrainians are as Nikki Hadley mentioned, you know, the Ukrainians are still saying that they do not have yet. They think all of the tools they need to finish the job. So what is your sense about where the war is right now and whether or not

we have done enough so far. Let’s start with the humanitarian tool because this war is ultimately about people and they’re designed to live in decency and freedom. And my god, the scale of inflation of suffering is just so horrific. And I for everybody to piece edited by my colleagues Ann Applebaum and Natalie Gomenshoek in the Atlantic this week where they just tallied the scale of torture and cruelty and murder inflicted on the the Russian occupied zones in Ukraine, especially around Kurdistan. This is like nothing seen since the days of abstalling of just rounding up people, murdering them because they are suspected of being honest and honorable and decent and patriotic.

I mean, they’ve done no overt act to support resistance to the Russian invaders, but they were rounded up and and portrait and killed. And this is the scale of the damage. I mean, re the rebuilding of Ukraine is going to be a trillion dollar project, I think. And one of the fights I look forward to, I hope we can get to this as fast as possible, is the argument about how will we finance how will we the free world collectively from refinance, like reconstruction of the damaged country. From a military point of view, as as you said, and I’m no military expert, things look reassuring.

I am very skeptical of these claims of a big Russian invasion. I’m not sure they’ve got they may have the the troops. They may have the weapons, but do they have the supply capacities? Can they get fuel from point a to point b? Can they get food from point a to point b?

I mean, there’s no trick putting soldiers in a place the trick is keeping them eating once they get to that place. And that I think there’s a lot of skepticism about the Russian ability. The fear is that the war bogs down into some kind of grinding stalemate that leaves Ukraine and perpetual ruin. And that’s why they need the weapons is is to expel the invaders. My assumption about the way the war will end, the best case scenario is that the Russian Army just begins to crack apart and you walk home.

You know, nineteen seventeen scenario where they just realize they can’t win. They’re not being fed. They’re not being paid. Their uniforms aren’t tatters. Their families at home are under economic pressure and they just go back and walk away in the Russian army then begins to disintegrate.

That’s the optimistic scenario. The pessimistic one is years of grinding ore and suffering from the Ukrainian people.

And of course, you know, whether the clock is running on on the West Unity and American support, I’m feeling better about whether the United States is going to, you know, continue to to support Ukraine. I I I think Mitch McConnell’s statement is certainly strong. I’m feeling a little bit more optimistic about that, but I do think we’re probably in for a grim slog, although as you were talking, I was thinking about that old adage about how do you go bankrupt, you know, gradually over a long period of time and then all at once that the Russian Army may lose and lose and then track up all at once that it may happen very, very abruptly if it happens.

And that’s a fact how armies do tend to just integrate, you know, the Russian army and spring of ‘seventeen, the German army in the fall of nineteen eighteen. Yeah. They just start going home. About the allies and about the American commitment. The Ukrainians have done the rest of the world’s enormous service by calling us back to our own best nature.

And while the Europeans have not been as generous with military aid. They don’t have it, partly because they have their own ambitions. Their economic aid has been really substantial. And remember, Ukraine, it has a health service. It has old age pensions to pay and has no economy.

So when you see old people. Like, how do they keep eating? Well, the answer is they are getting pensions from the Ukrainian that are funded by European Union taxpayers. So the Europeans are not doing nothing. The United States has provided weapons and it needs to provide more and faster.

We need to rebuild our own defense infrastructure so that we have the capacity to continue to fund them. We’re going to be giving I think when people see these numbers, but the United States has given x billion dollars. You should be aware that the United States has not written much of a check to the Ukrainian government. What it has done is provided equipment worth a certain amount on the books. But

it’s

not like we’re planning on using that equipment the tanks and the Bradley Viving vehicles, those are things that were on their way to being jumped in five or seven years anyway. They were becoming obsolete. So the United States is giving away its last generations of equipment that that otherwise are going to be turned into scrap metal and valuing them at a certain amount, and that’s the number you’re seeing. Yes, then eventually equipment will have to be replaced, but it was going to be replaced by more futuristic equipment

anyway.

Conspiracy theories. Paranormal. UFOs. During the entire nineteen seventy one debacle of this red die number two, parents all around America were buying frank and berry, so only a few days after the cereal was released, kids all across the country. Started being rushed to hospitals.

All of them had one symptom in common. Theories of the third cop on YouTube or wherever you listen.

So speaking of the pro Hooten Centers of Political Strength in this country. We have to start with with Fox News, and Fox News had a terrible day yesterday.

I wrote,

you know, arguably, they’ve had worse days than yesterday. I can’t think of one of them. I think that there are worse days ahead. They’re being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for one point six billion dollars. And the bar is pretty high to win a lawsuit like this.

You have to show not just you were wrong, but that you acted in knowing disregard of the truth, you know, with malice. And what Dominion has done is you know, put into a court filing laying out in real granular detail. It’s a case that and this is a direct quote from them. That literally dozens of people with editorial responsibility at Fox News from the top of the organization to the producers of specific shows to the host themselves acted with actual malice, and so NPR’s headline, off the air fox news stars blasted the election fraud claim that they peddle CNN, Fox News stars, and executives privately trashed Trump’s election fraud claims court documents reveal New York Times, Fox Stars privately expressed disbelief about election fraud, claims calling it crazy stuff, and then it goes on and on. Oh, and then there, of course, the dazzling detail.

Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, actually tried to get a Fox News reporter, fired for daring to fact check a Trump tweet about dominion and noting that there was no evidence of votes being dis destroyed. I mean, they actually wanted to get her fired. It’s always dangerous to predict anything in the legal system, but it seems pretty clear that there’s a lot of evidence that Fox knew knew that it was pushed eyes about dominion and about the election, and yet they continue to smear the company. They continue to spread the conspiracy theories anyway. And it looks like Dominion has the receipts.

How do you read this, David?

There’s a technical legal bid here that is also, I think, interesting to the nature of the filing. And and what I think was just gone sealed yesterday was it was actually filed a few weeks ago. Yes. What this is is a motion for solemnly judgment. What that means is, Dominion is saying, we should win even without a trial with a motion for summary judgment is.

It’s a motion when you go to the judge and say, look, I’ve got a dispute here. And even if you the judge, where to assume that every disputed fact between me and the defendant is settled in the defendant’s favor. Everything that’s uncertain. We say, okay, let’s take it in the defendant’s way. I would still win because on the things that are not disputed, the the case is so strongly in my favor that I would win even if you resolve every doubt in favor of the defendant.

So that’s what they filed here. Now, it seems to me pretty hard to win a libel case, American Law, so a pro defendant on libel case. Pretty hard to win a libel case on summary judgment. But if anybody’s ever going to do it, dominion could. And by the way, this is not the only one of these liable cases that’s going to there are lots of other people who are liable in the course.

There’s another company. That was also liable, they’ve gone a lawsuit, and they’re many individuals. And just to give you an idea of the scale, as you say, they’re asking for one point six billion dollars. Fox News is the company. Its market capitalization, I just looked it up the other day, is about thirty billion dollars.

They’re asking for three percent of the whole company. I mean, that’s a that’s a staggering blow. And these other claims that may follow, if Dominion wins, then a lot of these things are going to be adjudicated fact and they don’t have to be recontested all over again. I assume that that when Fox begins to pay settlements, you know, it’s it’s coming in a little bit like Exxon after the valdees, you know. It’s going to be left of the company after you pay all these settlements.

You know,

I would like to say this was also, you know, a fatal blow to its credibility, but its own audience might not have that same reaction. But just in terms of any quasi journalistic entity, this is really a nightmare scenario. Peeling back this just sort of onion of the hypocrisy and the duplicity and the media malpractice and watching them shooted each other and admit that they knew they were putting false information. This is really an extraordinary moment, you know, particularly for people who have been concerned about, you know, media bias and everything. I mean, it feels as if they have been exposed in a pretty raw manner.

Yes.

What we have is their own words admitting to conscious, intentional, lying that culminated in an act of violence on a massive scale against the constitution of the United States. If Antifa ever did this in, like, a mayor’s office in a Portland suburb. This is the national news organization organizing self conscious, confessed lying on a massive scale that ended in violence. And I think there’s one other point about this that needs to be made, which is why did they do this? And they did it partly out of ideology, more into fear, fear of Donald Trump, and fear of their own audience.

They are in a situation where they were losing viewers to other more extreme networks. And rather than say, you know what, our viewers will come back, now that if you’re in our favor, we all in the media, and these states tell many of us, are in the media. We all have much more information about what our audiences think than we used to do. There was a famous line of, I think, that found with the first American department store, John Wannemaker, you know, this line, I know that half of my advertising doesn’t work. I just don’t know which half.

Well, we all now know. We know what our viewers, our listeners, our readers want. A piece, many people live in systems where they depend directly on subventions, Patreon, and other such things. To maintain a sense of integrity in that universe, is difficult because you know what the audience wants and sometimes you have to say whatever you want, this is what you need. And my responsibility here we’ve all made a choice.

There’s a there’s a kind of non market element to journalists. We say, I know what you want, but here’s what you need. But Fox, one of the most powerful wealthy corporations in America met that test and said, you know what, we’re not going to give our audience what they need. We’re not going to give America what they need this constitution, these flags. They don’t mean anything.

Was. We’re gonna contribute to a movement that led to an attempted coup against the constitution because we are so scared that we might lose a few viewers to some crazier network, and our stock price might go down a little bit as doctor Carlson said. I think

this is an absolutely crucial point that I think is sometimes misunderstood because I think that sometimes there is the belief that that these things are all top down when, in fact, as you point out what you have here, is audience capture where an organization like Fox is really terrified of losing its audience. And I think you see this in conservative talk radio. And I certainly come from that particular world and watched how other house. When they realized that their audience is demanding a certain thing, they feel tremendous pressure to give it to them. And in the case of Fox News, a lot of this seems to have been fallout from their call on election night that Donald Trump had lost Arizona, and there was so much blowback, there was so much anxiety, and Tucker Karl’s seen, you know, writing to the higher ups.

He’s never seen anything like this. You know, our audience is absolutely, you know, livid that that you accurately reported that Joe Biden had legitimately won Arizona and they’re just, you know, there’s hair is on fire and we’re gonna lose them and they’re gonna go to OAN, they’re gonna go to NewsMax. And that is sort of the the background noise for why they would have allowed people like Sydney Powell and others to go on their air and say things that in retrospect, actually, I don’t think it needs to be in retrospect expect that they were batshit crazy because they were apparently batshit crazy at the time. But what we now know is that they knew that it was completely delusional and batshit crazy. At the time, they were continuing to put them on the air because they needed to throw their audience what they wanted.

So this is not Rupert Murdoch sitting in a castle in the sky saying, I want you to do x, y, and z. That may happen. But this is all about, you know, being afraid of that viewer in Missouri who might turn the channel. This is a dynamic that people need to understand.

And it’s dynamic with large political effects, and we’re going to see this shortly play out in this new Congress. When Republicans get hold of something. They lack the self limiting mechanism that allows them to use what they have and not chase what they don’t have. And I’ll give you a very concrete example. And it’s pretty obvious that over many years, Hunter Biden, the sad, addicted son of president Biden, and now president Biden, then vice president, before that senator, tried to traffic on his father’s name.

And represented himself as having connections with his father and picked up some hundreds of thousands of dollars of of money that, you know, is not very nice to pick up. And in this, he follows a long noble tradition of the sad Republican president stating back to Ulysses Grant’s in laws, maybe even before that, where people, you know, a relative gets president, this is your chance, and you try to pick up a little bit of unclean money that way. That’s bad. And president Biden, vice president Biden, maybe didn’t do as much about it, to stop him as he showed. So that’s that’s a story.

That’s not good enough, however. So now we need to build the idea that Joe Biden is himself leading an international criminal syndicate and has chosen the sad son as his business partner. And the thesis of the investigations are about to have, is going to be so crazy and so untrue and we’ll collapse and we’ll alienate people because you’ll have discover all these messages from Joe Biden expressing love and concerning set about what his son has been up to and inability to to stop him because, you know, he’s grown man. And it’s going to be like what happened with the Clinton scandals in the nineteen nineties. There were authentic Clinton scandals.

But those were never enough unless you made Bill and Hillary Clinton’s serial killers too on top of it. And no Republican is

going to want to stand up or go on Fox and say, these are serious charges, but I’ve concluded that they’re not true — Yes. — or that they are misleading. Because the moment you throw cold water on these, you know, precious conspiracy theories. You’re gonna be accused of selling out or being part of the deep stay. And so there there’s a real fear of basically telling the truth about all this.

So probably the best you can hope for is that they just stop talking about it. They move on to something else. You know, let’s talk about UFOs. Or can we can we talk about Dr. Suss again or something?

They abdicate as a party of government. I mean, one of my longstanding pet reforms has been that any presidential relative who accepts secret service protection. Should publish their tax returns. Then is if you’re close enough to the president that a public is paying to protect your life, then you owe the public an explanation of your financial activity. Now the Republicans after the thermonuclear world historical financial scandal that was the Trump family are not in a position to do this.

But it it’s a fair thing. Like, the the public is entitled to know if Hunter Biden, you know, is trafficking on his brother’s reputation, and if he’s accepting secret service protection from the public, then, you know, we need to have some insight into what, you know, who he’s doing business with. That’s not unreasonable. And that’s the kind of thing that Congress is there to do and and maybe scored some partisan point along the way. But of course, what happened in the Trump years was so thermonuclear worse.

And of course, because Hunter Biden’s misconduct can’t be traced back to his father who did nothing wrong. Does that be over indulgent? You know, we’re not gonna achieve

anything. Let’s talk about the emerging race for president. You had a really interesting piece in the march issue of of the Atlantic. About the the role of a performative obnoxiousness. You wrote about the performative obnoxiousness that now pervades Republican messaging.

This is something I keep coming back to because, you know, many of us grew up in an era where we actually wanted to like politicians. Right? I mean, you know, Ronald Reagan was warm. Right? They’ll Clinton had this down home, you know, charm, you know, George h w Bush was, you know, smiling and affable.

Donald Trump comes along. And as you write, Donald Trump delighted in name calling, rudeness, and open disdain. And that has really it’s not just Donald Trump. It has really been imprinted in the DNA of Republicans. So you are seeing, you know, over and over and again, the Republican Party really embracing its own inner obnoxiousness.

Let’s talk about that because Rhonda Sandes’ theory of the case seems to be that that Americans don’t want somebody who’s gonna take care of their kids or that they wanna have a beer with, that that Americans want the MENA son of a bitch who’s gonna punch the people they don’t like in the face. That is apparently his strategy.

I mean, have you ever seen Ron DeSantis looking like he’s in a good mood? And looking like a good mood in his cause, but something else that he’s doing, somebody else is suffering. I mean, I do occasionally see him smiling, but it’s usually it’s kinda like it’s like they’re really mean, smileys. Like, the kind of smile you would see at very bloody gladiatorial contest on the face of the audience. You know?

Yeah. Wow. They really hacked the arms off that man. Enjoy that. I don’t think it works though.

I mean, I think there’s definitely a market for it. There are people who enjoy it. But I think part of the freakish quality of the twenty sixteen election where Trump won in the electoral college having lost the top popular vote and then persuaded Republicans that he’d actually not fluked into office on a lucky chance with the slimmest possible votes, but that he actually won the historic victory, that he created a false impression that this works. I mean, one of the things that Republicans really a a data point, I wish they would imprint on their brains is from the year two thousand through the year two thousand and twenty, there are, I think, six presidential elections. Twelve major party nominees in those six elections.

If you were to rank them in their share of the vote, Donald Trump ranks tenth and eleventh. So second from the bottom and third from the bottom. The only candidate to do worse than Donald Trump and Chair of the vote is John McCain in two thousand and eight, and he’s the nominee of the party, the president, facing the worst financial crisis since great depression and the worst military quagmire since we’re getting a hug. And so, yeah, the president did bad. But Trump on his own with, you know, none of those problems.

He finished second from the bottom and third from the bottom. We had a lucky election in two thousand sixteen, but set us up for failure in two thousand and eighteen, in two thousand and twenty, in two thousand and twenty one, in two thousand and twenty two. Two thousand and twenty two was the worst election from the out party — Mhmm. — up and down the bout since the nineteen thirties. When you look not just the House of Representatives, the Senate, governors races where the Democrats had a net gain of two among governors.

But look at the state legislatures. There are ninety nine state legislatures. And every non presidential year, the out party picks up some. This is the first election since the new deal. When the out party picked up not one, of the ninety nine state legislatures.

In fact, it lost four — Mhmm. — two in Michigan, and I forget where the other two are. Lost both houses. I mean, so that that is an incredible result for the party present. It’s a warning.

It’s bigger than Trump. There is something wrong with what Republicans are doing. But if you don’t honestly face it, You can’t fix it. Well,

as you point out, a lot of the unsuccessful Republican candidates were weird extreme or obnoxious personas you know, obviously, you had Blake Masters done in Arizona who looked like associate path and you had others. But you tell the story. And in retrospect, I think this is really important. Tell the story of doctor Oz and John Federman, John Federman back in the news again for checking himself in for depression. But I have to admit that at the moment during that debate where Federman was clearly struggling.

You know, I thought, you know, I I went along with the conventional wisdom, you know, mere Copa, they thought this was disastrous. Karen Tumbley and others like you. So I’ll wait a minute. What your seeing here is you’re you’re highlighting the real sort of crass, opportunism, and cruelty of doctor Oz. I mean doctor Oz, It was a successful TV guy.

He was an acclaimed doctor. But he had to tap into that formative obnoxiousness in mocking John Federman. So talk to me about how that actually played out. Because again, you know, in real time, it looks like wow that Federman campaign may be done. But doctor Oz played exactly the wrong card.

Republicans played exactly the card that was gonna lose it in the senate.

Well, I didn’t watch the debate in real time. I saw the reaction on Twitter, which was all, like, as as if Federman had been, yeah, met totally medlian capacity. So I then the next day, I’ve downloaded the thing on I forget how much platform and and actually and I ended up not watching it and listening

to

it. And when you listen to the villains. Okay. Yeah. He obviously sounds not sharp, but he’s getting his points of view.

He he that in a way that being a little under the weather, understand over and over again. You’re going to ban all abortions and you want to get rid of Medicare and Social Security. Okay. You stick to those two things. I was gonna take you pretty far.

So I didn’t think it was as disastrous. Having listened to it, not watched, and having done it the next day. But even more, doctor Oz was a better he was no Blake Masters. And Blake Masters was obviously a weirdo and a crackpot. And in an election that was going to be decided in suburbs, the idea that you would do all these ads you position yourself with these massive arsenal of weapons that a, you know, make you look like you are yourself emulating some kind of disturb person, but also just emphasize just what a small, scrawny, miserable person you are looking for external validation.

Like, this guy looked like you could barely pick up one of these weapons that he was sharing, and it’s pretty obvious why he wanted to have that big weapon in his hands. But Doctor Oz was a quick candidate. I mean, whatever you think of his supplement business, millions of Americans believe in it. He’s very successful on TV, and before he went into that awful pitchman business, he was a genuinely great cardiologist. With a lot of treatments.

So he’s got patents to his name. And he wanted to be a moderate on the issues. He would have been the first Muslims in the US senate if elected into Republican. He had a, you know, a story of creating this extraordinary success for himself. We would think he would be a good candidate.

And the Federman stroke was also an opportunity for him because as a doctor, this was his opportunity to show I’m a man of knowledge and also compassion. Mhmm. And and the statement I would have written for him, if it enables to say, in my practice, I’ve treated many people who have suffered strokes and there’s absolutely a protocol for full recovery. And if the people of the state want to have more crime and higher taxes, I have no doubt that after a complete recovery center, John Federman will be able to deliver to them the policies that they want. But the better policies that, you know, just like but just be a decent human being about it.

And instead he fell into this path of ridicule and when your problems you’re already seeing is kind You’re not from the state. You retain these houses in New Jersey. You’re so wealthy. You’re so far away. You’re still handsome.

All these things that make you far away from the typical voter. To then say, and when someone gets sick, I’m gonna mock them that only reinforces your court route.

See, this is what’s so interesting. The point you made that Doc us could have shown compassion and understanding, but he chose to run as a jerk. And so the question is whether that was more about doctor Oz or what was expected of him as the Republican brand circa twenty twenty two is that you can’t show compassion, understanding, and kindness because that translates as weakness. Therefore, you had to. Go along with this new brand of performative obnoxiousness.

I mean, did you think that’s what happened? Because basically they told him, no, this is what This is what you have to do. This is what the Orange God King is gonna expect you to do down from Mar a Lago. I think

there’s some of that. I think there is a lot of it is now in the DNA, as you say, not strategic. Think of how campaigns are run. There are a few grizzled veterans at the top, and most of it is run by quite young people who are formed by the culture around them and have ideas about what politics is like. And you had this whole generation of Republican younger people were formed by these message boards and by watching Fox News and and worse.

The kind of people end up as writers on the talk of girls. But where are they getting that stuff

from? Yeah.

And they think it’s funny, and they think it’s clever. And there was a big Republican super PAC run by I think Steven Miller, the acts of the Trump White House that would go into swing states and put up billboards that were designed to draw contrast by being jerky. One of their slogans was climate change threatens pregnant men, I think, was one of it. And they would they they were, like, pretending that these were the things Liberals think, and there are clever trolls, and they put them up in billboards. And you just think about, you know, some family on its way to take the kids to a baseball soccer game or choir practice.

And the gasoline prices are high. And they’ve got all kinds of concerns and they think, do I want to find my family security in the hands of get these irresponsible, what’s these loud mouths? What have they got to offer? You know, they don’t seem to care about my choir practice. They’re scoring points.

You just imagine who are the people? Who’s the audience for this? And when you have an audience that is they’re gonna love this on the Fortune message boards. The four ten message border is is not a swing voter. The swing voter is a decent human being.

Well, you can see what the incentive structure right now on the right is when you realize the merger with Taylor Green is one of the most prominent members of the House of Representatives that that in fact this behavior is rewarded. So as I’m thinking, you know, the really bad news here is, you’re right, a lot of these folks are younger, which means they’re going to be part of our political bloodstream for the next thirty, forty years. Forty years from now, we’re gonna look back and think, you know, hey, remember when that person got their start. I mean, look, Think about the number of people, you know, who came out of the the late nineteen sixties, out of nineteen sixty eight, and the role they played over the next several decades in politics. Yeah.

That’s what you’re gonna get from these folks. And because the incentive structure is what it is, there’s gonna be the constant escalation. So I, you know, before we started, I was reading a piece from town hall dot com, written by Hugh Hewitt radio filling host who’s mocking Nikki Haley calling her Nikki Harris as in Kamala Harris, gonna get it. Nicki and, you know, Colin are both women of color, so calling her Nikki Harris is just hilarious. So, I mean, you know, you come for the racism, you stay for the stale sexism, but you have an entire generation that does not recoil from this, doesn’t realize how stupid it is or offensive it is.

They kind of like it and they think other people like it, and then maybe if they traffic in it, this is the way to advance their careers, and we’re stuck with them for decades, David.

Well, they they may be washed out by or they may learn from adversity. And maybe that just through the process of competitive politics, this is the thing one has to hope. And people can learn, you know, the person who’s deciding this election is a fifty year old mother with some college a lot of economic worries. And kind of compassionate concern for other people, but very practical problems that she is hiring you to solve. And I think if more people gotten mad at thinking of elections as job applications, I mean, when you talk this way, if you if you are applying for jobs, in the marketing department of a company.

Would you try to say, you know, let me just tell you how I’m going to revile and ridicule. Everybody around me. And to know if you’re applying for any other job, but when you’re applying to be hired as mayor, when you’re applying to be hired as a US congressman or a US senator, you’re acting like an employee and and people wanna know, you’re gonna be a decent person who can get things done from it.

It feels as if that culture and that tradition has been really eroded because it is remarkable the number of people who think about politicians and public service completely devoid from anybody else. In other words, you don’t look for the qualifications. You do not look for the resume or the ability you know, you tolerate behavior in elected official, you know, congressman, senator, president of the United States, that you would not tolerate from a car salesman Yeah. You know, I mean, is there any American corporation that would put Donald Trump in the c suites right now that would hire him as COO or CEO. No.

The answer is no. I said spoiler alert there. Nobody would do that. And yet — Yeah. — many of these same would go, yeah, no problem putting him in, you know, in the Oval Office, making him commander in chief and president of the United States again.

You see this problem very much with the status. So here is someone who had a record as governor with considerable achievement. You know, that’s why, I mean, he he didn’t get reelected in the way he did. Because he was a troll, although he did a lot of trolling. He got realized the way he did.

Some people liked the trolling, but a lot of people who didn’t like the trolling and say, well, he’s been really active in restoring the everglades. He raised teacher pay. He made the big call on reopening the schools in time of fall twenty twenty. And, you know, that was a tough decision with inadequate information and and there a lot of people were saying it was dangerous. He took the risk and maybe he took it for bad reasons, but he was right.

The schools were reopened and foreign children suffered less of the learning loss than children in other states, and a lot of people voted for him for those reasons. So now is his moment. Use a lot of trolling and obnoxiousness in the elite primary to capture the attention of Fox News to get big donations. But now you would think it’s twenty twenty three. Now is the time to turn yourself into a general election candidate.

And to speak to people who are not part of this core audience. And he’s he’s locked in. I mean, it’s going to be all culture war, all attack, all war on Disney. We may have an election in twenty twenty four. We’re Biden.

This message will be I helped to lead to win the war in Ukraine, and DeSantis is gonna say, yeah, well, I won the war on Disney.

So, Kate, you don’t think he can pivot in twenty twenty four. I mean, my guess is in the high command they’re thinking, okay, you know, we have to run two campaigns. We’re gonna run this hard to the right and culture war in twenty twenty three in order to secure the nomination. Once we secure the nomination, we pivot conventionally to try to, you know, be a little bit more normal You don’t think he can pull off that pivot?

I think he’s not left himself enough time and for and for two reasons. One is when you did the strategy, when you ran as one thing in the primary contest and a different completely different thing in the general election. You were in a much less information dense environment. We’re back in the era of the nineteen sixties and seventies. Today, the information density is so great that you have to start communicating who you are early.

And this is not nineteen seventy six. This is more like Even in nineteen ninety eight, George W. Bush began positioning himself as a compassionate conservative on the ninety one reelection in nineteen ninety eight. And he had done some cultural war things in Texas in his first term as governor, but it’s really worth reading that speech he gave in on election night and when he won reelection with two thirds of the vote as opposed rodents emphasis fifty six percent. And he said, what we’ve demonstrated is here in Texas that our effectiveness and compassionate conservatism to win and we’ve shown we can balance budgets and meet social needs and he needs balancing.

He doesn’t start at the convention. He starts on the night that he really launches his his campaign.

Yeah.

Two years before, two years before. And I I don’t know. I just I I left himself enough time, and he’s he’s gonna be so strongly identified with not just speeches, but actual I mean, despite with Disney so strongly identified with that, I don’t know that he’s gonna have time to reinvent himself as someone that the swing voters would like. Well,

there’s another dynamic that’s emerging is that is that Mike Pence has decided that he’s gonna run as the ultimate culture warrior that he’s going to try to flank Ron DeSantis as being more anti woke, more conservative on on the social issues. So I I don’t know what do you think about this. I think there’s no way that Mike Pence gets the nomination. But that strategy seems to make it inevitable that the center of gravity in the Republican Party for the next year and a half will be to pull it as far to the right on the social issues as possible. And that there’s going to be a bidding war when it comes to the gender issues, to to book banning to abortion and that they’re gonna be bidding against one another on

issues that have already been demonstrated to alienate a huge portion of swing voters. Even if the public is on your side, I mean, I think almost some of these transgender issues, the public probably is more where the Republicans are than where activist elements of the Democratic Party. Exactly. The question you always need to ask yourself, and over this, is how salient are these issues? One of the ways that the British conservatives kept getting into trouble in the Tony Blair era is they would poll and they would say the public agrees with us on our top five issues.

The problem was the when you did deep polling public agrees with you on your top five issues. Yes. But those are not the public’s top five issues. So if you say to the public, do you happen to think x about y? Yeah.

I suppose I do. But what I’m voting on is not that. Like, there are many issues with the Democrats. There was this I was just between this morning. You know, many Democratic controlled local governments are trying to abolish honors programs.

At high schools. You know, try they’re fighting with AP. And so I assume that the parents that the Democrats most need to win are not with them on those issues. And it probably will be expensive for many local Democratic candidates. But that’s not how people are going to vote for president.

Because you that’s not what’s in your mind. You’re thinking about economic management, national security, war and peace and some assurance that your retirement will be taken care of.

I think that’s an important distinction there because, you know, I was I was thinking about that actually this morning, you know, how certain issues play out, you know, for example, the war over transgenderism, which has become really, really, really heated. But what I don’t know is what portion of the electorate will cast their vote on that issue? You know, whatever you may think about it, what actually drives the vote. Okay. So, David, I wanted to give you a a television recommendation.

I don’t know if you have any for me. Television shows you’re watching. Okay?

No. I’ll I’ll speak worse. As worse.

Okay. I stumbled upon this by completely by accident yesterday because I was online and I was trying to watch the new South Park about Harry and Meghan, which I strongly recommend. It’s really, really good. About their worldwide privacy tour. Okay.

So leaving that aside. But as I was clicking through, new series out of Britain political comedy drama called Stonehouse based on and I was not familiar with it. Based on the nineteen seventy story of a labor member of parliament and minor cabinet official named John Stonehouse, who was basically a complete bleep up who ended up faking his death in in the mid nineteen seventies at a time when the Labor Government of Harold Wilson I’m gonna make it sound more boring than it is because it’s actually very funny and it’s very very well done. Harold Wilson had a one vote margin in the House of Commons, so he needed this guy who was a complete crook and a liar and who had fled to Australia, traffic. It’s stolen the identity of some of his dead constituents.

And yet Harold Wilson needs his vote. It’s funny. It’s very, very well done. So so check out Stona. It’s hard not not to think about, you know, Kevin McCarthy sitting there going, okay.

So what am I gonna do with George Sanders? I need his vote. I need his vote. I’m not gonna get rid of him as long as control is, but there was a time when Harold Wilson’s Labor government hung on a single vote in the House with common. So that is my gift to you today, David.

For putting up with a whole awesome hours. Thank you. Alright. Well, you have a great weekend. And once again, thank you Thank you so much for your time today.

David, from the staff writer at the Atlantic, author of ten books, most recently, Trumpocalypse and Trumpocracy. David, thanks for coming back on the podcast. Thank you.

Bye bye. And

thank you all for listening to this weekend’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We’ll be back on Monday, and we’ll do this all over again. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

Former Navy SEAL Sean Ryan shares real stories from real people from hall walk of life on the Sean Ryan Show. This

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

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

Do you guys have a sampler platter? The Sean Ryan Show on YouTube or wherever you listen.