Irreconcilable Differences

Hello, everyone. This is JBL. Welcome to the next level. I’m here with my best friends, Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of The Bulwark. Before we get started, hit the like button, hit subscribe, give us five stars, all the things.

And then when you’re done with that, go over to the bulwark dot com and sign up for all the amazing free stuff that we just give away. We just give it away like it’s candy. Get Charlie Sykes’ excellent morning newsletter, morning shots, and get Mona Charron’s podcast, beg to differ. We got so much good stuff. Come on over to the bulwark dot com.

Sarah, what an amazing performance that you are here? You just tested positive for COVID, what? Twenty four hours ago? You you are gutting it out, dare I say strapping it by which I mean a football helmet on to do this show. Well done.

I am

the bravest among us. Some might say

you’re the greatest hero of them all.

They might say that. I don’t know.

This is interesting, though. I haven’t seen you recently, so no little, no blaming Tim. No blaming America first, no blaming Tim first for the COVID incursion of your body?

No. But I will say the Tim version that I got considerably worse. Than the

What’s your virulent?

The the version I’ve gotten from my kids here. I

am virile. That makes sense.

Well, the the Tim COVID wanted you to pay attention to it. So anyway, on the next tier down in heroism from, say, if Sarah’s up here, down here, president of these United States, Joe Biden, he’s a great trade. Dash himself over to Keith to, by surprise, mark the anniversary of the war, And I’d say, a, it was sort of amazing to wake up and have this happen on Monday morning. It was pretty impressive seeing Dark Brandon walking around and his black trench coat in his aviators was pretty alpha, pretty boss like air raid sirens going on. He don’t care You know?

He’s just there to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and he was all out of bubble gum. And it was it was a pretty good moment.

No. What about at the Arris irons? What a gift by the wrist keys? I guess the chain of events here was that we actually gave Russia a heads up. The Biden was gonna be there, which is also pretty complex.

Ever in the history of American foreign policy. Like

FYI, we’re going. Go ahead. You know, take your best shots if you want to. See how that turns out for you. Ruskeys, they did not do that, but instead they flew some, I guess, some planes over.

To, you know, flex their impotent muscles. And as a result, some air raid sirens are on. So you have to bind it and then Zelensky walking through a cave with the sirens going off, perfect staging. Just a complete gift from Putin. Thank you for that.

And on the merits, a very cool moment. And and you got in this little bit in the triad today, which I read, g v l n. Oh. Plus one. It it took a little bit for it to sink in for me.

One reason is that just because of the nature of our horrible discourse, like we immediately go into the meta discourse on Twitter and the political tribalism, like you don’t even have a chance to take in the nightly news like it was the nineteen eighties and just sort of appreciate what’s happening before you have to get into everybody’s opinion. So for that reason, it took a little bit longer for it to sink in. But I I think the other reason is, I’ve said this before about how people really, particularly younger than me, like, like, my generation, we have some good foreign policy memories. But I if you’re even like thirty five and younger, there isn’t really even like a single good to foreign policy memory unless you count, like, bush on the rubble. Right?

Which is not a good memory. Right. You know, but I like that, at least, is a patriotic moment. I I it’s hard to come with, like, pure good where, like, the US is acting. It is in the side of righteousness.

There is no moral confusion about it. The action is a good action. It’s helping. And it’s important. And this this moment had that.

And I think that, you know, for me, it might take some of us who cold War babies like a little bit of a moment to be like, wow. This is what it feels like. This is nice. So I almost twenty four hours later, we were taping this from when I saw it. Have more of appreciation than I did, you know, kind of in the moment while I was like trying to be on the ski slopes with my child and also navigating some Twitter battles with the baddies.

Joe Biden turns out to be George h w Bush’s second term. Who would have thung it?

Yeah. I would say, like, I was watching Biden walk It’s like a little stiff.

A swagger or a stiff swagger?

I don’t know. Yeah. But this is one where, like, his age sort of

works in his favor in this regard.

The Russians wanna take a shot at him. He’s like, I have no f’s to give. Like, I’m gonna walk around here. I am eighty years old. And, like, Fine.

I this is, like, if this is how I go out, this is how I go out and I’m

not gonna be talking to me more to fire over here. Okay?

That’s right. That’s right. No. I was it was a nice proud moment. I will say we’ve now seen a bunch of world leaders have met with Zelensky, and so there was a part of me that was like, It’s about time.

I thought his speech was really good. I thought his making like very clear commitments. You know, while he was there, I wonder though, Tim brings up a good point about the eighties. Like, do we get to have iconic moments anymore? Do young people see this and think of it as an unalloyed good because, you know, the discourse overwhelms it and everyone’s like, how good is this?

I don’t really know. It’s not a unifying moment. In fact, you know, the lunatics come out to talk about all the reasons why this isn’t good. I mean, the Republicans just insane stuff coming out of the the Putin pathologist camp around this because, you know, everything Joe Biden does is bad. But, like, so do they know?

You say the young people, Sarah, and I would I’d pay cash money for you to do a focus group with sixteen and under. It’s like thirteen to sixteen year olds. And ask them if they even know that there is a war going on in a country called Ukraine?

Sure. I just I mean, like, twenty nine year olds. Oh,

twenty nine is young. Okay. Well, I don’t know. I I guess twenty nine year olds probably know, but I don’t know. I mean, those people vote for Biden.

They’re pretty politically engaged. I think that this means something.

Our twenty six year old producers went in saying he felt patriotic. Does it matter? I guess my question is

does it I guess it matters. Right? Like,

but my point was more, this isn’t an annoyed good, and it was a historic moment, and it was a moment that you know, ten, fifteen years from now will be played on cable news. And so, like, you know, if if if there are mixed views on it because the kids or, like, spending too much time listening to Candice Owens’s podcast and, like, you know, getting, like, tweets from the pro Russia lefty camp Like, okay. That is what it is. And there’s broad support among Gen Z for Joe Biden, overwhelming support for him, voting. Maybe that was a lot of anti Trump stuff, you know, less than a feel good element of it.

But I think that just, you know, judging this on the merits of the case you know, it was that. We were able to have it. And, you know, maybe it’s the kind of thing that’s a little bit of a grower and the appreciation can build over time. Tim. Well,

just on that, on the growing over time, the process stories have been fun in terms of, like, how they pulled it off. Amazing.

Not really fun. I was exhausted just reading that. Oh,

yeah. Right? Like, the things that they had to do to keep that under wraps where you just wake up and he’s in Kiev. That’s a wild thing. People won’t appreciate how much goes into something like that.

Yeah. And then the final decision was made on Friday. It really was a last minute thing. Okay. I wanna move on then to the meta discussion.

Mhmm. What we wanna talk about is Rhonda Santos. And he rushed on to Fox and Friends for a hard hitting interview to give his thoughts on Ukraine and the war. And I went to throw to Tim to let him Take that. But I wanna put in both of your minds while before we start this conversation.

But I feel like we’re seeing another never Trump cleavage. Which is that the muscular foreign policy establishment within the Republican Party, they didn’t want Trump to begin with. When they got Trump, they basically got on board because they took the John Bolton view of, like, well, you know, we gotta be in room to try to make sure that bad things don’t happen. And now, you know, you see one or two conservative types suddenly begrudgingly saying, yes, this was a good thing by Biden. And they’re they’re very concerned about what happens if Republicans get control.

Because they think Republicans gonna pull the plug on Ukraine because that’s what Republican voters want. So just have in the back of your mind while we talk about this, are we gonna see another cleavage here where people who had been for two generations, Republican and conservative types now realize that their home is actually in the Democratic Party. Alright.

I think we should play it just because it is remarkable when you hear it. Like, you need that context. I

think while he’s over there, I think I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves. Okay. He’s very concerned about those borders halfway around the world. He’s not done anything to secure our own border here at home. We’ve had millions and millions of people before in.

Tens of thousands of Americans dead because of fentanyl. And then, of course, we just suffered a national humiliation of having China fly a spy balloon AND CLEAR ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES. SO WE HAVE A LOT OF PROBLEMS ACUMULATING HERE IN OUR OWN COUNTRY THAT HE IS NEGLLECTING.

So, you know, for me, there’s two things that really stick out from that clip of DeSantis. The first is just in the narrow scope to what we’re talking about. The fact that he would go on Fox and Friends, the morning that Biden is there and not even offer a mild statement of support for the US or for our allies or for the people that are fighting, the people that are risking their lives in Ukraine, the fact that you would not even offer a mild criticism of the Russians and their invasion and their culpability for this incursion, their war crimes. He didn’t do any of that. That is just so far outside of what we had come to expect from politicians in a pre Trump era.

And I think that what we continue to see from Democratic politicians today, this is a norm that is still held on the democratic side. It is impossible to imagine four years from now, let’s say, Brond DeSantis’ president, and he’s traveling to a war zone. Joe Biden, going on to MSNBC, going to Chris Hayes’ show, to the very moment that Ron DeSantis is there to shit on DeSantis. Like, it’s impossible to, like, imagine that. That is now what’s happening?

Sure. There’d be some lefty commentators that would trash him, etcetera. But, like, leaders of the party that is enormous still held by the Democrats. The Republicans are just not doing it, and and you can see that DeSantis is another example where he’s just following Trump’s steps and just totally trashing and shitting on Biden, wow, he’s over there. It’s pretty gross.

And I and I do think it undermines to what you were saying earlier, Sarah, this sense like this was a unifying because it was and it should have been. And and you should be able to, for one day, say, hey, good on our president, you know, for sticking a thumb in the eye of the Russians, for defending our allies, for standing up for the people that have suffered so much, you know, because of this Russian aggression. And I have a couple differences with him on policy. We can get to that. As the week goes on.

Like, that’s not that hard. That’s what every politician, what every leader would have done up until about two minutes ago. So that’s one. The other interesting item of the DeSantis thing for me is this his first real foreign policy comments in

a

modern time? And so it gives us a a view of what he’s gonna be. And I think there’s this question of Is he gonna be more napcon and go at the maga isolationist side? Or is he gonna be more on the Tom Cotton Marco Rubio, you know Mitch McConnell, oh, you know, NeoCon, we’re criticizing Biden for being weak. And Ron DeSantis, as we should be expected, gave his answer, which was I am both.

I have not yet decided, like, within one man, I’m going to criticize by then. And in one answer, I’m gonna Brit be Marjorie Taylor Dream and say we shouldn’t be supporting Ukraine at all. We I don’t know. We should be worried about our border blah blah blah. And then in another answer, I’m gonna be Marco Rubio and I’m gonna say, oh, the only reason this happened is because Joe Biden is weak and because he withdrew from Afghanistan and because he didn’t deter Russia strongly enough.

So I thought that both of those were kind of my big takeaways from that interview.

As a practical matter for somebody who is a Republican, can’t they make both arguments simultaneously in perpetuity? Like, I I don’t think you have to pick one. That’s

a good question. I’ll interested in Sarah’s take. It’s a good question about during the pain, and you can’t make both arguments in perpetuity into your presidency.

Alright. You can’t govern with both. Mhmm. But you can live in both. Because in both, And we’ve talked about this before, and I think this is the essence of how Republicans have internalized discussing foreign policy and trying to paper over the cleavage.

That now is like a deep, deep wedge within the party is just to find Biden bad. Right? So Biden bad is the thing they disagree about. And I’ve been waiting for Rhonda Santos to get this question. Because I have been dying to see because here’s the thing.

We know that inside Ron DeSantis is Nikki Haley. Right? Ron DeSantis is somebody who thinks that Russians are bad. Like, he came up as a normie Republican I don’t think that he is somebody who thinks that, like, we shouldn’t be helping the Ukrainians, but he also knows where the base of the Republican Party is. I’m

sorry to interrupt. I just think that’s a little mean in Haley. And since you’re the biggest Nikki Haley person of all of us out here, like, I I do that Nikki Haley actually genuinely, like, cares about human rights abroad and stay tuned. And and I I don’t think Ron DeSantis does. I mean, I guess, maybe in the yeah.

Maybe in the that on the inside, Ron DeSantis knows what the true and right answer is. Like, he knows what is right. And he also knows what the base wants. And those things are in conflict —

Yeah. —

which

is why you’re seeing him do the two step. And I’m just saying, like, if if Rhonda Santos wanna take troops serum or if you got to Rhonda Santos ten years ago and none of this intervening stuff had happened and he was seeing this right now, he would be talking about how, of course, we have to support Ukraine, and then we have to be tougher. We have to be tough on Russia. Like, he would talk like a Republican of your And I would say, I’m not sure there’s a bigger cleavage within the party other than maybe like where they stand on Trump. Than the foreign policy question.

And Ron DeSantis’ great political strength thus far has been his ability to strategic silence in the face of these very big questions to the point where he is the de facto challenger to the front runner for president of the United States, and we don’t know where he stands on the number one foreign policy issue of the moment. And even after him going on TV and saying a couple of things, we still don’t know how he would govern. But what we’re seeing take shape is how he will handle this, which is to say both things and to pivot around Biden bad. And depending on which audience he’s talking to, he will pick one of two lanes, either Biden’s bad for not doing enough or Biden’s bad because he is too engaged on this issue and we should be focused on issues here at home.

It looked like you were nodding. JBL is talking, when you think that he can keep this up throughout a primary?

Not so sure. It’s a good question to work here. I I think what I just saw of him is like, his early thinking about how he can do this both. Once they get into debates like real things, assuming that those things happen in normal ways, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, would all I think probably say pretty similar things. Ron DeSantis, he is base first.

And also, he’s like, those other guys, like, can’t betray to their credit. They would not do what Rhonda Santos just did. I think Nicky Haley would be much more unequivocal.

I don’t know. I mean, her that don’t say gay law doesn’t go far enough.

That’s not a core thing for her. The foreign policy stuff is.

Maybe. I don’t know. I’m I’m waiting to see a Republican leader who is not Mitch McConnell stand up and say unequivocally that the Ukraine fight is the most important thing happening in the world right now and we have to win.

Lindsey basically did that this week.

Yeah. Yeah.

But this is the question I would ask

back to you. It’s like, can you win a Republican primary right now and be unequivocal in standing up for Ukraine?

I don’t believe so. I

think maybe. I think that’s a known, unknown. Because here’s what I think is gonna happen. I think that Trump is really gonna lean in on isolationist Trump. Yeah.

Mhmm. And and America first year Trump hard. And so that’s what makes me wonder. Now, you know, we’re not sure if old Norma has been on there still has as fast ball as JBL’s been pointing out, and so maybe he won’t be able to corner the desantises of the world on this. But a good Trump could.

Right? And, like, kind of forced them to actually really pick a side. Right? You know, and on the side of, oh, no, we need to pull back. From Ukraine.

And

believe me, when I’m president again, we’ll have peace in Ukraine.

Believe me. We have peace in Ukraine when I was president. Yeah. We’re not gonna keep doing this in def and we’re not gonna do World War three. And if Putin if Putin needs to get some done bus like that’s fine, and we’re not gonna go to World War three over this, we’ve got problems here.

Right? So Trump’s gonna do that. There’ll be more pressure on DeSantis to kind of pick aside than there was on Fox and France, which wasn’t exactly a hard hitting interview. Maybe he can keep this going all the way through next February. But I I’m not a hundred percent sure.

And I think that Trump’s move this week to go to Ohio, you know, the side of this train crash. Is just to play out all this. Right? And you see this on Fox, you know, today. And even the normie Republicans, it was I think it was Dana, pray now.

It was definitely real. You know, he’s on one of the daytime shows, so not Tucker. And they were like Yeah. But

Biden

made a mistake. They were criticizing Biden today. On daytime Fox, he made a mistake. By going to Ukraine and not Ohio during president’s day. And like, you know, this shit pisses me off.

Right? And we don’t need to talk about how phony this all is. These guy like like Donald Trump gives a fuck about these people in Ohio. He couldn’t give us a fuck. Like, we all know that stated.

But strategically, politically, the fact that Trump is doing this. Has he left Florida? And this is like

he

did one event in South Carolina. It’s like his second time leaving Florida in half a year. And and he’s going to this Ohio thing. And I assume that while there, that’s what he’s gonna lean in on. Like, we need to be focusing on these people and on the border, not on Ukraine, And, you know, if that picks up steam, it becomes challenging, I think, for desantis and straddle.

And I think he probably ends up falling tippling over into the Trump side of it of things. Alright,

Sarah, I have a question for you. So in his newsletter this morning, Charlie Sykes, whose newsletter you can get for free by going to the bulwark dot com every morning. So Charlie says he he gives us four categories of of Biden critics from the Republican Party. Since a few are genuinely America first isolationists, a few are pro Putin because they have an authoritarian kink. A lot of them are anti Zelensky because they’re pro Trump, and we have this whole Zelensky Trish.

He’s Jewish. Or that, and then all of them are anti Biden. If you having done a bazillion focus groups, If you were gonna draw that into a pie chart for me, how would you break that out? In Republican based voter types, like, what what per sentage are, like, genuine rand Paul isolationist types, which are, like, really sort of pro Putin because they like the authoritarians stuff, which are just trumpers. They don’t like Ukraine because Zelensky didn’t play ball with Trump, and which are just reflexively anti Biden.

Okay. So this is an interesting exercise, but the thing is is that the first two, the libertarian isolationists, the pro Putin’s very small. Right? That’s a very small group of people. So if you go back, somebody somebody did this a few months ago and it was startling when you saw it, but they aggregated the polling, and they showed had the polling on support for Ukraine among Republicans.

I remember that. I’ve been,

like, just getting chopped down and down and down. Right? So it’s a moving target. And what happens is is like the isolationists, the true believers, it’s very similar to our Republican Triangle of Doom, Right? But they’ve pumped the poison in about why aren’t we focusing on our border?

And actually, Zelensky is a criminal. And over time, right, they get enough of this stuff that your average maybe Trumpers. They went for being, like, god, these grandmothers handing these Russian soldiers, you know, sunflower seeds look at that. That’s so amazing to being like, we should not be sending funding there because we should really be taking care of ourselves. In a way that is just sort of broad based and and it dovetails with other things.

Right? So, like, though coverage, I think America and Navy globally attention spans, our ability to sustain interest even in a in a major war, where we have a lot of stake democracy is a lot of stake. Right? Like, there was this period of time where everybody was interested in it. And over time, like, coverage waned, interest waned, and then the churn of the right wing media.

And so it’s not that they’re pro Putin. They would never say that they’re just like, the right way media is being able to just shift them slightly and sort of, like, anti anti Trumpism, where you’re able to say, like, well, not pro Putin, but, like, we should not be sending all of this money to Ukraine. When we can’t even focus on the border and we can’t take care of our own people. They think that’s totally reasonable because they don’t have a bigger geo strategic outlook of why we would be in Ukraine.

Alright. So back to the question I started this with, what happens to the conservative foreign policy establishment? Like, if they look at the ronda thing at this interview, and they see that the next Republican nominee is likely to either be Trump or DeSantis. And so is is gonna be sitting over there on something like that spot Are they gonna just keep riding that out? Or are they gonna realize that they’re functionally scoop Jackson Democrats now?

So

I think that the realpolitik answer to this is those guys feel like they got out of the first Trump admin looking pretty peachy. Like, they feel like Trump got kinda pushed around by the generals and stuff. They got most of what they wanted out of him. All of his worst ideas they talked him out of. Didn’t actually end up pulling out of Afghanistan.

You know, they did take out the Iranian guy. Right? Like, on Desilates? Like, this was an area where Trump got pushed around a little bit by the other folks and, like, his gut instincts weren’t executed. Now I think we all know that in a second Trump term, that would not be the case.

Right? I think they think right now, let’s play ball here with the scientists. Right? Maybe we can get another situation like that. Where, like, DeSantis goes in, gets in, running Natcon, but, like, we all kinda get these spots, you know, they put us in into the DOD and state, maybe it’s not the perfect you know, but it’s it’s better and it’s still career advancing.

We’re not gonna be Democrats anyway. Who knows what the scenes actually says? This is an unpopular opinion even among than I ever chummers. I was always on the side of let Trump have his people and let Trump fuck everything up. And, like, let’s let’s just fast forward to the end of this game.

Like, let’s let everything shake out. Like, I think that would have been better. I was out. I know. I know you are.

I think on balance, I think that would have been better. Because that didn’t happen, that lets all these guys continue hanging and thinking that actually we’re gonna be the strong foreign policy party eventually anyway and that who knows the local KOCs are gonna take over the dams. And so they’re just gonna live in that world. And so I I think while you are living in reality JBL, just among kind of where the voters are shaking out, I think that that the remaining kind of strong defense, Republican types. With the exception of those who already bailed over Trump, of course, including some of those.

Like, the shield of the Republic son to shield the republic and others. You know, I think a lot of them stick around. This

is where I think his two track ends up working. His

antithesis.

Yeah. DeSantis’. What he says behind the closed doors at the AEI conference will be different than what he says to base voters at rallies. Right? Right.

They get their confidence not by what he says. They get private assurances. And this is where I think DeSantis actually is different than Trump. I think DeSantis will give private assurances to these guys at the AEI conferences that make them believe, like, this guy gets it. He will be fine.

He’s

one of us. He just has to do this to act for the rubs.

That’s exactly right. And this predates Trump. Right, where behind those closed doors, you get a difference. So this is where I think he can play both sides pretty effectively.

Alright. Let’s move on. Margery Taylor Green. Knows something about divorces, has made the case over the weekend for a national divorce. She wants the red states to go their way and the blue states to go their way.

You are a Democrat moving to a red state, you ought to have to wait five years before you’re allowed to cast a vote, which sounds like a really great idea, I guess, perfectly constitutional. Makes total sense. What do you make of the national divorce stuff? Because I at once, you know, fantasy politics JBL thinks Fuck. Yeah.

But the reality of it, like, a, it’s not red state versus blue state. It’s urban versus rural. And every state is highly segregated in that way. But b, even if it was, red states are all basically red and blue states are all basically blue. That’s not how this works.

There is no amicable divorce. You can’t break up. Right? What you’re saying then is like civil war. That’s, you know, to pretend that there’s a — Yeah.

— amicable way that we could all just go our separate ways, that doesn’t work. And so it’s irresponsible.

Wait. You’re kidding. Marjorie Taylor Grant says something irresponsible. Yeah. Who’s

gonna

work at the senior citizens house? You know, here’s the thing. So, sir, your your little comment there. Oh my god. Margetela Green said something irresponsible.

Here’s why I wanna bring up this topic, actually, because we spent plenty of time talking about Margetela Green saying crazy shit. There are a lot of lids that think this. And there’s even a very strongly supportive bulwark member who’s probably listening who pitched me on something to this effect, and I will not I will not say it, but we had a little tada tada tada back and forth over email about how I was like, this is crazy. I think that there are a lot of liberals that think this, and I think that Marjorie Taylor Green in her tweet was representing a lot of Magna voters. I think say that to her.

I don’t think this was like a SIR story where she was making

this up. Didn’t her formulations say something like every single person I spoke to thinks this is true. Yeah.

I mean, there

there was that sort of insane formulation.

I bet she hears this. Why can’t we just It probably does do. You you hear this. I’m sure Sarah does in focus groups just maybe on the micro about states. Right?

Like, can’t we just break up from Atlanta? The rural Georgia people, you know, like, that’s just a completely different place. And and I heard this one I was for the circus and I was covering the Tiffany smiley campaign and rural washing about how different we are than Seattle and how we, you know, we should just break up. So I think that a lot of people think that I find it fucking ridiculous. I’m sir, maddening, makes me very angry, and it is not impractical.

Nobody who who suggests this has fought two steps beyond how it might feel and how it might happen. Like, you can’t do this. Okay? I mean, for starters, obviously, we’re not gonna take up arms against each other. I’m not gonna fight the Fresno Minute Man — Fingers crossed here for the back of California.

— and I don’t and I don’t think the Fresno Minute Man are gonna fight me. Okay? And I certainly don’t think that they’re gonna fight the Oakland Black Panthers. Okay? So I don’t I don’t think that there’s gonna be a a

violent California breakup is not where, you know, folks are. This is all like a cosplay fantasy. And secondly, that’s just as divided as we all are and that’s a clichedo,

we’re so divided. Within everybody’s family, within everybody’s friend group, or, like, people that voted for Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Like, okay. It’s, like, this is all stupid. And our differences are all pretty minor.

Like, honestly, in the grand scheme of things, like, you’re mad that that the kids in second grade are going by they then and, like, we’re mad. Like, you don’t like drag queens

because you attempted a coup because you attempted

a coup. I’m

more mad about the coup. It’s made up tomorrow.

Yeah. We are mad about the coup, but, you know, the coup wasn’t also, you know, a straight breakup of the country. I mean, there weren’t seventy million coolers. They were maybe okay with that casually. It’s stupid.

Margetail Green is stupid. If you find yourself agreeing with Margetail Green, you should take some time to, like, really think about things and reassess.

Well,

one of the reasons that she says it is because, of course, it’s never gonna happen. Right? Like, this is where people are so safe to say these crazy things. Right? Because if they thought for a second that it was really going to happen.

They wouldn’t say it. I’ve always thought this. I I don’t quite know how to articulate it. There’s this perverse thing that happens when you have an incredibly stable democracy. Right?

People think it’s so stable that they’re happy to undermine it for their own purposes because they think we can’t really have a coup even now. Right? You had a coup. You had an attempted coup, an attempt to overturn election. But, like, we’re just like, it work and, like

Very really fine and, like, couple of deaths.

Yeah. So it’s a fundraising tactic. It’s a it’s a tactic to store people up. Now that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have certain repercussions, which is that we hate each other more, that we start talking about ourselves as not the same country, not the same people, that our divisions are so deep somehow, you know because of course, it’s, like, all preposterous, but, like, that’s what it does ultimately is it speaks to people’s sense of how deep our divisions are and how we should turn on each other. And margarita Green’s had a few bangers though lately.

She also while Joe Biden was in Kiev, tweeted about how Americans hate Joe Biden. America hates Joe Biden. Forty

six percent of America hates Joe Biden.

That’s right. And can I just say one thing? So I have seen some harsh critiques of margery Taylor Green, for some of these ridiculous things that she has said, from some of the anti anti quarters that JBL’s friend, but but not mine, Eric Ericsson did this, where they just really lay in the margery Taylor Green. Like, this is a crazy person, whatever, How different is she from Donald Trump? How different is Marjorie Taylor Green and what she’s saying from what Donald Trump has said?

She’s not different. What is it that led people that they’re happy to call out Marjorie Taylor Green and kinda stomp on her for these things? But went along with Donald Trump. What’s the big difference?

The difference is, like, they use her as a proxy. Right. And she is a especially useful proxy because she is tied to McCarthy. And so, you know, there’s this like war for Kevin McCarthy’s soul. Like, it’s not soul, but his ear, right, and his power block, and that’s part of it.

Can I take the other side of this though for a second, the pro divorce side? No. Not the pro divorce side, but thank you for this. I am not convinced that Marjorie Taylor Green doesn’t mean it? But she

can meet it. She just she knows it’s not gonna happen. Okay.

So I’m like, you know, somebody like Josh Holly does this, Like, of course, he doesn’t mean it, and he’s just posturing. There are plenty of people who do that. You gotta

be able to go to Whole Foods. Where’s he gonna get? Like, You know? Where’s he gonna shop? He’s gonna get a skid There’s a national divorce.

But there are people, and I think Marjorie Tell Green is one of them. Who mean it wholeheartedly and who really would like one. They would like a a national war or a civil war. Should that line remember about you know, if she had been organizing that attempted coup, they would have won because they would have had guns. Tim, you said the Fresnomen don’t wanna come into Oakland to fight you.

I think that’s an open question. I think our experience of the last six years have shown that there are there are guys out there in Idaho and, you know, Virginia or, you know, spend their time weekends, training, cost playing, and maybe it’s just cosplay, but maybe not. We have these running street battles in Portland. Right? Where people from rural parts of of Oregon.

We’re rolling into the city to go wailing on antifas. And What I’m saying is, do I think that ten percent of the country would go war with us? No. Do I think, like, half a percent might? Maybe.

And that’s all you need. Right? You know, the Bolsheviks overturned the old regime with, like, thirty thousand soldiers. You don’t actually need to have thirty percent of the country taking up arms in order to cause tremendous problems, which is why all of this talk is so deeply irresponsible. This

is the part I do agree with. There is a small contingent of people that are taking this seriously. And then there’s another contingent that wouldn’t actually take up arms because they’re know, plus the Internet warriors, but like but who are serious about it? Right. Like, they can just press a button.

They’d be

like, yeah, sure. I’ll I’ll I’ll Curtis Garvin would do it. If he didn’t have to, like, you know, get hit.

Yeah. If you do just magically, make it happen. I’m gonna get serious for a second. It’s reading about the nineteen sixty two olemis James Beardith situation in the football team. You know, the football team was at play through that season, and and the National Guard gets called in to Oldness.

To desegregate the school. Man, I guess, you know, it’s in the video of Meredith. Right? But I I had

forgotten or wasn’t really aware that, like, there were multiple deaths in Oxford, like, the the National Guard was on campus for weeks at a time. Right? Like, there was real

fear and this article was reading one of the interviews was with the black guy who lived in the outskirts of Oxford, you know, who is like, when people coming in and out of town, there’s just this one highway that goes in in Oxford to kinda two lane highway. You know, people were singing Dixie and waving the confederate flag and like saying the n word and like throwing shit at his house and Like, if there was a place that was ripe for a national divorce, it was Mississippi in nineteen sixty two. Right? Like, there was an actual bright line, mostly between black and white, a small percentage of the white population that was there that was, you know, supportive of desegregation plus the black population. Like that, do you mind I can read about sixty two in Mississippi?

That is divorce talk. This, you know, like, some dudes in Idaho with

the fucking punisher sticker on the back of their truck talking about how they’re mad

about woke, mind virus. That’s bullshit. We fought civil wars over stupid shit before. In history, people have fought wars over stupid shit before. Right?

But like, the contrast between how stupid this is and how, like, small the divisions are by comparison. Like, that is kind of what leads me to believe that, like, yeah. It’s just performative bullshit. It’s just silly.

Also, the logistics. I mean, the logistics are really tough. Are we gonna have different

money? I don’t think so. Where are the divisions? Where where are the lives? Where are we going?

Yeah. Who gets Austin?

Yeah. All I’m saying is there are enough people who I think do take this seriously to talking about it like this from a position of Order Jill Green, who is not on Internet random. She is an important leadership figure within the majority of the House of Representatives. It’s dangerous and irresponsible. Before we leave MTG, did you see her other tweet about how if she were a black person?

She’d be proud when she saw Confederate monuments?

Oh, no. I didn’t. So when I said she had some bangers, I didn’t even know about that one.

Yeah. I forget her rationale. But it was it was her putting herself in the in the minds of the African American community and just Oh, it’s just

so empathetic.

Speculating that seeing Confederate monuments would make her proud. And so shouldn’t they be so proud? Alright. Last thing, Don Lamont. Don Lamont, CNN is freaking out.

They’re gonna punish him or something. Because Don Lamont said that terrible thing about Nikki Hill. Noting he said that terrible thing about a Republican. And CNN is really upset. I

mean, to be fair, you said it about women. Said it about women. Sir,

you’re offended. You’re hearing your prime. According to Don Lamont. You’re gonna be feeling pretty good. I get a few more years.

I

get a few more years. But did hold on. J. V. L.

And I on the secret pod, we talked about this. And I said, listen. I wanted to call it then that Don Lemmon was gonna get in more trouble at CNN for his women not in their prime comments than any of the Fox News people who flat out lied to their audiences about the election being stolen and has been caught red handed saying, of course, this is lunacy. Nothing is happening to them as best I can tell. No change, no apology, no acknowledgment of it.

And predictable. Don lemon in some real hot water. Is he taking some time? He’s not on right now? What’s happening?

He’s back tomorrow.

He’s back tomorrow. Okay. There’s

maybe a punishment. He doesn’t really seem like he’s enjoying his new show with his cohost. Which may there may be some sexism related to that. I don’t know. But it doesn’t it’s not killing it on the chemistry standpoint.

You know, it’s nothing like the next level. Can

I just

as far as Triad is concerned, so maybe his punishment is having to go back on the show? I don’t know. His studio training. I don’t know exactly what the training is. It’s like, done.

So, you know, women in their fifties are capable of many things. Vision, rush for president, they can be mothers, they can be on television. I I don’t know what he’s gonna learn at this training, but You know, I don’t

Sam, I wanna know something. When you heard Don’s comments, were you like, yeah, that sounds right. Because this to me, Don Lemmon’s comments sounded to me like, easily something coming out of your mouth. Man. Absolutely.

I was like, I was just Well,

I have a father. I’m a girl dad now. I don’t think so. Maybe twenty years ago, me, fifteen years ago me. Uh-huh.

Game in, we do have a little bit of

a

What I’m surprised by that in We do. You know, a little bit. Sometimes it’s a little bit challenging to wrap our heads around. We don’t have a lot of women in our lives. You know?

And so sometimes there’s a little bit of a blind spot, I think. I think that’s a fair criticism of gay men.

GPL didn’t know Don Loveman was gay. This is also a thing we had to cover on the secret pun because I was I was explaining to him that sometimes gay men have this blind spot. And Danielle’s like Don Loveman’s gay. Yeah.

Once I heard that, I was like, oh, this all makes sense now. Yeah. Donsk. Yeah. So I mean, so you can see Dons, like, the wheels are turning.

He’s like, I just I’m I’m talking about, like, when the childbearing age. And you’re, like, can women talk there? What are the words there? Like, can I evolve them? Like, kind of, you know, gay men, we just start to, like, we start to panic.

You know, like, oh my god. I’m I’m talking about I’m talking about girl parts now. Anyway,

I love how we just kept being, like, Google it. They say it on Google. Google it. That’s what

I have to do. Anyway, so Don is gonna have to do a training. But he didn’t apologize. Wasn’t good, whatever. He did apologize.

And to JBL’s point, it is not as if the woke left came for him for, like, you know, the fact that he said something inappropriate about some left wing. Right? Like, it was a Nikki Haley critique Now you did the Fine comparison, which is the obvious comparison about the fact that none of these guys are held accountable for the Dominion lawsuit. But

what about a more apt one? What

about any time that Eric Bowling has made fun of Kamala Harris. Right? Or Greg Gutfeld has made fun of Kamala Harris or said something. Could you imagine one of them going on TV and apologizing? To Kamala Harris?

Never. Never. That would be a much bigger gap on Fox than saying something, which probably helps them. Right? And so that doesn’t piss me off.

The other thing that piss me off about this really do kind of women empowerment, because she didn’t get enough credit in this whole deal, just changing the subject a little bit over the back of the fox. Jackie Heinrich, the woman who’d sent the tweet —

Yeah. — that

was like, no. Donald Trump, you were wrong. About Dominion. Like, there’s no proof. What I I don’t remember what the exact tweet said.

That sparked the internal texts got revealed where Tucker and Hannity these two powerful men are

like plotting behind the scenes to get her fired for doing the job for being the one version there, doing a fucking job of journalism. No matter all of the fuck comps that CNN has had, all the bias, you know, anything on any of these shows that people don’t like, there’s just no comparison to that. Like, it is impossible to

conceive of Anderson Cooper, like, trying to fire someone for saying something nice about Rhonda Santa. I I the whole thing is just so, like, really mad at it.

Sarah?

I agree with all of that. That’s shit.

Good. Big shelves. Long shelves. I

said I said what I said. Have you watched Don Lamont on CNN this morning?

I’ve watched it a few times. You know, I was doing Don’s show semi regularly. They’re at the end or they’re, you know, the night Not

that sexist. He’s having a lesbian on. Not that sexist. You know?

Yeah. I mean, what he said is like really bad, but it’s also sort of funny because it is so it’s such a terrible thing to say. Like, I’m watching him in real time, like, work that out in his head. And also my favorite movie, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, the prime of Miss Gene Brody, JBL makes fun of me because he says all my favorite movies are from. It’s like, guys, go watch the private machine Brody.

It’s

early next week.

Oh, or

fifth. It’s

in Technicolor. It’s set in Edinburgh in the thirties.

I will not be watching that.

Okay. Well, She’s always talking about how she’s in her prime. And I bet she’s in her thirties. I think, give it us the forties. You know, I think that’s a little it’s actually you know, it’s kinda progressive for for all done.

Women are in their prime always.

Yes. Obviously. We all agree with this. Obviously. Alright.

Good show, long show, guys. Thanks for being here. Everybody out there hit the like button. Hit subscribe. Give us five stars.

Thursday night, Bulwark, join Bulwark, plus — Oh, yeah. — this week, I’m

on Thursday night Bulwark. I’m taking over the host chair from JBL. I’ve got Amanda. Got Joe Perticone. We’re gonna have little kids an hour.

We’re we’re all young and in our prime. And we’re gonna take questions from the board plus members do a q and a. We’re also having my friend Barbara Comstock, former Republican congresswoman. She’s gonna be on at the top or gonna Love parties. Yeah.

We’re gonna just do a little little gossip session with her. Joe’s over there in the house doing the reporting. Barbara, it’s all her old colleagues. We’re just gonna do a little gossip session about the house. It’ll be good.

Join four Plus. Come hang with us Thursday night. Alright.

Bye. Peace. Bye.