It’s All Bad and We’re All Doomed

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level. I’m JBL here with my best friend Tim Miller and sitting in for my other best friend, Sarah Longwell, is an actual real world friend, close friend of mine, Sunny Bunch, also of the Bulwark Hello, boys.

Hey, boys.

Hi. We now have a trial date preliminarily, in the Jack Smith federal election overturning case, distinct from the other three cases, because we now keep track of the criminal indictments against the former president of the United States. And, He says he’s going to appeal and that the judge is very unfair. I don’t even know where to start, except that I assume that it’s all bad. And that nothing good can come for America — To change the dates.

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I was gonna say bad for who, because I think it’s actually pretty good for Trump. Right? He’s short. Trump gets to go out there and say, look, they’ve invited me and they’re trying to do it right before super Tuesday. They’re putting their thumb on the scale.

You gotta vote for me. And I think that appeal works with the GOP base, which is one reason why I’m so depressed all the time.

I have to disagree with that. I mean, I think that he very badly did not wanna have this trial this year as evidenced by the fact that they asked for it to happen in twenty twenty six. I I think that there are certain bad elements that we can talk about. I I agree with Sonny, the take that, you know, having this the day before Super Tuesday, The intuitive take might be like, not great. You know, when you should be flying around to Denver and Nashville and, you know, all the city have super Tuesday primaries and doing your final rallies, like you would think you’d wanna be doing that, not, submitting and raising your right hand in front of judge Chutkin in Washington, DC, you know, as you as you sit docile as you’re forced to be docile and, you know, forced to be like a dog.

I’ll make

you more

in a courtroom. Can they make more color? Maybe.

A sub color?

That would be nice. So you would think that would be bad, but I I at some level, especially, you know, we’ll get into the timing of the primary level in in a second. But, like, especially if people feel, you know, that that he’s already gonna be the nominee, it’s gonna bind them to him even more, you know, around this trial date. That said, not great. I mean, I there was a world in which he was gonna be able to avoid this.

Right? And they they got the very friendly judge in Florida that is, you know, we assume gonna keep pushing this thing back and and keep pushing it back, canon. The Georgia thing, very serious threat, but, you know, doing a repo case during the election seems logistically challenging. With nineteen defendants, that’s Yeah. Yeah.

The New York case is pretty weak, you know, relatively weak. I was for bringing it on the merits, but still relatively weak. I think is a political matter. It’s this one is a real political threat, and for him to have to spend the period between locking down the nomination and being nominated in this courtroom. It’s not good.

It’s not good for him.

We are in such unprecedented that I don’t think you can say for sure one way or the other whether it’s good or bad. I just don’t I I All I can say is that I look at how the GOP base has reacted to Donald Trump’s various legal travail so far. And I say nothing So far has hurt him, I don’t see any reason why this will hurt him.

Well, sure with the base, but I’m talking about with my father. I’m talking about sorry to bring you into dad, but I’m talking about with, you know, your casual, your your retrench your Republican person who is kind of tired of us. Right? Like the, Again, that’s not enough in the primary, but, you know, you add up the Nikki Haley Chris Christie, Acea, all those god, Mike Pence, all those people’s vote together. You get to about twenty percent.

Like, what For those twenty percent of people, you know, is it gonna help bring them aboard the Trump train ahead of the Milwaukee convention to spend eight weeks being reminded of how he tried to end the world’s longest running democracy. I kind of don’t think so.

Yeah. I don’t know, man. I The amount of Biden hatred that I see, you know, Viveik Ramoswamy saying that Joe Biden needs to be imprisoned for life. And Donald Trump needs to be pardoned for for all of his alleged crimes and

And that’s how you depoliticize the justice department.

Yeah. That’s the next thing.

If there’s any questions, that is how to depoliticize the justice for me.

I don’t know, man. Sunny, what do you think? I would say if you’re looking for good news, you can look at the public opinion polling around the January six committee hearings, which did move independent numbers on the question of January six. Well, so that we’re talking about two different things here. Right?

I’m talking about the primary.

I I

don’t think this hurts him at all in the primary. I think it helps him in the primary. In the general, if it peels off, if it convinces twenty percent of independence to remain never Trump, and stick with Biden. I think that is reasonable, a reasonable assumption. And maybe that helps get Biden over the finish line.

This is all assuming that Biden is still the nominee. I mean, JBL, you talked in your newsletters. You kinda game planned out the various situations in which he is not the nominee, and they’re all very bad for the Democrats, I think. I don’t think any of them makes a lot of sense. And In the general, I think it hurts him because it hurts him with independence.

In the GOP primary, I think it helps him. And I think it helps cement his position as the GOP nominee until he is dead because he’s gonna keep being nominated and keep losing.

Now there we concur, but let me be rain cloud wants to be sunshine here for a second. You have to give credit. We have this judge Chuckkin baller. Okay. Points, you know, girl boss.

Is that is that misogynistic to call a judge then? Know? Or is that kind of cool among the zoomers? I don’t know either. Some people report back.

Let me know if that was We’re

just gonna cancel you just to be safe.

Yeah. Just let me know. Just let me know in the comments if that was not cool. But she is holding the line on this stuff. And Trump’s legal team, now I’m just, you know, I’m like the lion of huts of, of like, of lawyer, you know, like, of legal commentators.

So we’re his lawyers. Exactly. And so I I know one when I see one is my point. And, like, his lawyers are god off. And he has the the woman lawyer who’s going on TV, like, making the prosecution’s case for them about why this should be a speedy trial while they are, making motions in court about how they should be delaying this.

I do not expect that he is gonna have a very sterling defense Now we’re not gonna have the cameras in the courtroom, but there is this drip drip drip of news. Again, I just need to keep bringing back up the word surrender, like a dog, and he’s gonna be in the of the court for certain hours of the day. He’s being obligated to be there. This is not an alpha male position. This goes against his whole personal brand.

I mean, I think that there’s a lot to like about that, about that eight to twelve weeks, between, assuming that the trial date holds. I know JBL thinks there’s nothing to like. It’s all disaster ahead. I think I’m just gonna kind of sit on the couch with a big bag of pop corn and kind of enjoy the news trickling out and, and I, I, I think that the, that for casuals, it’s not, it’s not great.

What do you guys make of the proposition put forward by a couple different conservative commentators that actually All of this is really gonna help Trump with black voters because they really identify with people who are mug shotted and accused criminals,

which is the going a different direction with that.

The most racist thing I’ve heard in a very long time or at least a week.

Did you see we should almost insert it.

Did you see

this? The Jesse Waters.

The mugshot has breathed new life into the Trump campaign and broadened his appeal to black Americans over the weekend. With the help of mugshot merchandise, the Trump campaign raked in over million dollars. Today, my garbage man told me he’s buying mugshot t shirts for everyone he knows this Christmas.

Two Prime Time Fox hosts on back to back nights had chance encounters with black people who told them, supposedly, that they were really impressed by Donald Trump’s mug shot. I mean, okay, what are just the odds that two Fox prime time commentators talk to a black person in a given day. I mean, very well. And we need to get Nate Nate Silver on here, but I just I don’t think that they have a lot of day to day encounters with black people. In Jesse’s case, the Bulwark person inquition was his trash collector.

So if this is a true story, Good on Jesse. If it’s a if it’s a false story, I think this is very unlikely. Have you ever spoken to your trash collector?

This is what I I’m just imagining Jesse water’s going out there with his coffee mug, you know, Hey, trash man. What’s going on? Like, I does he know

the trash The only time I ever spoken to my trash collector was when I forgot to put out the can and they drove down the street. And I was like, you know, rolling my can, a block down the street screaming at them. Please wait. Please help. I cannot have this stinky trash in my garage one more week, and they they’re very kind, but we didn’t talk politics.

They’re also busy. You know, they’re moving along the street. They’re very kind to wait for me. I don’t see that happening. The other instance was Raymond Arroyo who is totally straight.

No questions there. I just wanna let you know. I have a very keen radar and that man loves

Straight as a

rail. Oh, he loves them. He just loves the poo tangs to go down the women. Yeah. He just he thinks about it all day long can’t help.

He likes having sexual relations

with women. He really does. Raymond Arroyo, Google him. If you don’t know him, he’s, Laura Ingram’s, kind of side queen. Anyway, in his case, he was speaking to a woman who said that, and I believe at a coffee shop here in New Orleans, who said that now Orleans Parish went eighty five percent for Joe Biden last time.

And so I I I think he’s really finding a needle in the haystack. But he finds a woman who thought that the mugshot was gangsta. Gangsta. I don’t I don’t know that that’s still the kind of term of art.

Hopefully people say that anymore. That’s more of like a nineteen ninety five. Yeah. Nineteen ninety two.

Hello. Cool. J rap era, maybe.

Yeah.

But that’s his story, and he’s sticking to it. So I, you know, maybe these guys are seeing something we’re not. Maybe there’s something to that. Maybe there’s this surge in Bulwark support for for Donald Trump that’s coming after the mugshot because black people just really love criminals. I guess I don’t know though.

It seems It seems a little bit like their wish.

It’s always projections.

It’s a racist racist race of ways.

Always projections like to me. This is their conception of of African Americans. And yeah.

Maybe we’re wrong, though. Are you more in touch with the culture?

Well, no. I’m not. I I would say look, this is one of these things that sounds incredibly dumb and racist on its face. And then six months from now, we see polling that backs it up, and we’re all just like going on because that’s what happens with Trump every time something with Trump happens. I, like, so I, again, I feel I feel very uncomfortable saying for sure that he will not see a bump in the African American vote.

Doesn’t seem likely. I mean, he already if correct me if I’m wrong, he did already over perform with African American men. In twenty twenty. Right? Is that am I am I misremember?

He did. He did.

Maybe this further bolsters the brand with I I don’t know, but it

I will say this. In the Raymond arroyo case, he was speaking to a woman, he said.

Yeah. I don’t believe that

first time. We’ve not seen any we don’t not seen any evidence of that. That he talks to Google.

I don’t believe I don’t believe for a second that Donald Trump being arrested helps him with African American women. That does not does not track with me. But,

this is the problem with this whole theory. And and I think there’s a lot of things to be worried about JBL. You can do your dooms day shtick next about why this is all bad. And maybe Donald Trump could tick up in in a general election with working class Bulwark men may maybe that’s gonna happen. I don’t think it’s gonna be because of the mugshot.

But, like, black women turn out at a significantly higher rate than black men, like two or three x. And black women went, like, ninety eight point nine to one to two point seven to point three for for dot for Joe Biden the last time. And so I just I’m not seeing it. I’m not seeing it.

So you don’t think that having months of Donald Trump insulting a judge who happens to be an African American woman and insulting a prosecutor who happens to be an African American woman down in Georgia. You don’t think that’s gonna convince African American women?

I know. I don’t see it. But, you know, Do you think to happen?

Sunny, here’s your homework. I would like you to go go up to as many African American people as you can find today and say, excuse me, sir. As an African American person of color, what are your thoughts about Donald Trump based upon his mugshot? Does it make you like him more? Because how hard he looks and because he is gangsta.

When you said that whole thing, my eyes started twitching. I just wanted you to I just wanted to know that. I can’t I can’t imagine anything that would make me more uncomfortable in the world than that series of questions. Again, I could come up with

some things. The

world in which Jesse Waters and Raymond of Royo initiated these conversations. Right? Just walking up to hello, fellow citizen.

Fucking assholes. Can I take over the host chair for a second where I thought you were going? I want to talk about the more serious other side of the commentary this week, from our friend Mike Lundig and others that we’re we’re gonna be saved by, the fourteenth amendment, and that Donald Trump might be just all of our problems might just be washed away. How does JVR

terrorism with this one weird trick?

And I just I’m curious JVL. You are so negative this week in your newsletter. And all the outcomes you said were bad. Is not the one good outcome Secret Podcast state across the nation uniting to say, sir, Your your candidacy is unconstitutional, and we shall not accept you on the ballot. And instead, we will elect Joe Biden by commendation.

Ron DeSantis your email dot com?

I think I am basically with David From on this, that that would be a disaster. And maybe the worst of all possible outcomes, and is the kind of thing that could lead to armed insurrections. I’m not gonna say Civil War but I think that would lead to a lot of people picking up guns and going out and shooting stuff. Yeah. I I I just think it’s a terrible, terrible idea.

It’s a terrible, idea.

Maybe Michael Luty could convince me. Like, again, if we had him on the show and, like, he just went at me for fifty minutes, maybe he could win me over. But I don’t think you can rely on a day of sex machina to prevent the polity from destroying itself. Right? I mean, because if if the people are hell bent on destroying themselves, then by god, they’re gonna do it.

Yeah. I think that’s that’s probably true no matter. I do say my one caveat is had on I forget the date of the Republican Senate wussing out and not convicting Donald Trump and and actually doing the one weird trick that would have saved us from all these problems, wouldn’t have saved the party, but would have saved all of us from this. If the next day Litig, like, when certain secretaries of state had, like, filed a lawsuit that then was gonna go up to the Supreme Court that’s, like, actually, okay, the Senate went out, but, like, the courts need step in here. And this because this was an insurrection, because he was impeached in the house under, you know, if they had used insurrection as one of the impeachment articles.

Right? Then we take this to the Supreme Court Maybe there was something there. I still think that that, you know, the staccadic violence element

of this would still be a risk,

but maybe there’s something there. But at this point, like, now, like, with him as the overwhelming front runner.

The only way this could work is if this was initiated by all of the Republican secretaries of States, right, which, of course, is impossible.

Come on, Brad. One more time at the plate, Brad.

Well, like, you know, the secretary of state in Texas and Florida, an Ohio in Georgia, they are not the ones who are going to to go and do this. And so for this to happen, you’d be relying on a bunch of Democratic state. It just seems like the worst possible option. Maybe. I don’t know.

Sunny.

Yeah. I mean, Jamie all, you’re one hundred percent right about the optics of this just in terms of, you know, the odds of increasing people, storming capitals across the country. I feel like that is a very real possibility if that happens. I mean, this is this is a constant refrain in the, Trump era is this wish for somebody outside of the process to step in and say, Trump can’t do this. It’s just not allowed.

And it’s wishcasting. I mean, I’m I’m sorry. The fourteenth amendment thing is wishcasting that has no chance of succeeding in any in any real way. And the the maybe the worst case scenario is you have a state that Trump is going to lose anyway, but only one, like, California, big state. Trump’s gonna lose anyway.

California says Trump can’t be on the ballot, which then gives permission for everyone everywhere just to say, well, popular vote doesn’t matter at all anymore. Popular vote is dead, done. We we don’t care about that anymore because California’s playing silly games with the the the ballot rules. And I think that is also bad. I mean, we’re we’re at a point where the the popular vote has been kind of nullified anyway.

By the last couple Republican victories. So, I mean, it’s it’s, you know, I don’t know. It’s maybe that’s a dead issue anyway, but I I do think that there is a further danger to the erosion of norms to just be like, well, if California is not gonna put the GOP candidate on the ballot, then who cares about popular vote anywhere?

Yes. And I know we have at least one person and Democratic Secret Podcast State World who who is a Bullhorn person. And so please, yes, this this is literally the worst case scenario. My my prayer and message to any Democratic Secretary of State is if they try to do this in one blue state, like, that is by far the worst possible outcome.

You don’t because it plays right

into all of the Trump. Arguments. Right? All the bullshit Trump arguments, obviously, but, like, why give them a credible law

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Yeah.

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to put on the fire of Bulwark?

I do have to say, though, this is, again, like, Ludick is smarter than I am, and, has been — — heroic, been brave throughout all of this. And none of this is a Like I said, if he came on the show and talked at me, I bet he could probably turn me around because again, he’s so smart. But I look at this and I just think, yeah, this is you know what? It is sunny? It’s Commissioner Gordon going up to Matthew Modine’s character in the Dark Knight rises and say, you know, and Matthew Modine says to him, you know, we we have gotta lay low and wait for the the feds to figure this out.

Commissioner Gordon says this only gets fixed from the inside. Right? And that’s what it is.

Again, I think there are two different ways to look at this. Intellectually, I think it’s an interesting argument. I think you could probably make the you could absolutely make the intellectual case for the fourteenth amendment scenario. I think that that is that is a totally reasonable thing. I think the actual practical politics of it end in very ugly violence.

And I I would suggest we not try and go down that road.

I will say I’m sure that our originalist Supreme Court that that truly believes that we need to follow the absolute letter of every word of the constitution, particularly when it’s regards to the second amendment. And, you know, we cannot do any interpretation. I’m sure they would they would rule the right way and be very consistent in their originalist interpretation of of the fourteenth.

So we are a full week out now from the first Republican debate. And we’ve got a bunch of pulling. And Tim is always right. What was it that you said? Yep.

You said there are no stakes this does not matter, and the polling seems to suggest that.

Yeah. I’m sorry. I just wanna say we appreciated everybody. I I mean, I was right about this. So thank you.

We don’t sell the t shirt because, you know, I have some misses too. But I was absolutely right about this. It does call the Sarah Longwell always right t shirt into question but since she’s not here, I don’t know. We don’t need to do that, but, that whole thing. But, all of you who support the Bulwark and listen to all of our content and wanna hang out with us are very grateful, but I gotta tell you, you know, the hours upon hours of pre debate commentary here, l swear, every media outlet, every cable news outlet was all totally unnecessary.

Like, you literally could have just, you know, read the brother’s Karamatsu for something with your time and had it been more useful because the debate was meaningless at which we knew. I the debate was meaningful for one for two people whose candidates are meaningless. So take that for what it’s worth. But Nikki Haley now has solidified, you know, I think as the as the leader in the twenty percent caucus that we talked about earlier. I think that she is gonna she is gonna bring into it.

She has Yep. Higher than five percent before she would be a leader in the twenty percent caucus.

Probably, but she has brought in donor money. If you look at the polling numbers one week out, you look at polling averages, She and Tim’s kind of basically flipped, you know, what you’ve seen is, Rhonda Sanchez got went up by about one point in the polling averages. Vivache’s gone up by about two points. So I’ll try come down by about three points, but, a, that’s kind of noise. And especially if you compare it to the twenty twelve and twenty sixteen campaigns, You wouldn’t see huge jumps right after the debate.

Right? Like these these debates really moved to numbers. Now, not permanently.

Oh, yeah.

You know, but but in the short term, like, Carley Ferrian had that one good debate and she like led in New Hampshire for a poll. Like, for in, in, like, in the immediate aftermath. Right? Like, Ben Carson after one debate. Like, when really high.

Right? Newt had one gigantic debate and he became Newtzilla.

Yeah. As poll numbers went up twenty points. And so so again, that that wasn’t all staying. There wasn’t staying pound with all that, but you would see these huge jumps in the double digits. That didn’t happen for anybody.

And the only person that had meaningful fall and jump Tim Scott and Nikki. And so now they flipped. And so now you have things like in playbook this morning. Some of the, our friend Molly John Fast was texting this morning that the Trump advisors are saying watch out for Nikki Haley’s momentum, which shows you how scared they are,

of her.

You know, and, so you you’re gonna see these stories in politico and elsewhere in these people that places that have to fill content on Labor Day weekend about, oh, you know, watch out for Nikki. Some of our friends have written columns about this. Maybe you can see, but it’s like it’s just an inverse of we already did this with Tim Scott in June. And, and, like, the facts are still there, that there just aren’t enough voters for somebody from that wing of the party to, to make a real dent in in Trump, And so, you know, we ended up with a debate where we’re a week out Trump’s off stage. And, if you haven’t read my fire report from Louisiana GOP Convention, which I went to this past weekend.

One of the first speakers went on stage, and she’s like, y’all, I just got back from Milwaukee. And I gotta tell you I know who won that debate, but I don’t know who you what you guys think. So I wanna hear what you think, and the crowd start yelling. Trump. Trump and she replies.

Well, I have to agree. And, I gotta tell you, those folks at the Cajun dome were right. Essentially, Trump won the debate without going a very minor tick in the polls, but but meaningless in the grand scheme of things as far as denting his his lead.

Sunny, our, our friend, friend of the bulwark, Matt Lewis, read a column this week saying that I forget what his exact formulation was. It was like Nikki Haley is shown that she’s a threat to Trump or something like that. Your thoughts? I mean, Nikki Haley, I think. Nikki Haley wants Nikki Haley is

starting to look like a real threat to Trump.

Nikki Haley had the best debate And she had it entirely by dismantling Vivec in a way that was very entertaining to watch, and, was very satisfying as somebody who dislikes him. And dislikes his his brand of kind of isolationist, weird, whatever is going on there. But I make up approximately zero percent of the GOP electorate, and and as a result, I don’t think it matters that much. I mean, look, I the the question I asked you guys before the show was, does this just demonstrate that Trump was a right to skip the debate and b will skip all of the rest of the debates. Like, if I if you are on team Trump, do you let him go to any of these debates?

No way. Like, what’s the point? What why why we why even bother?

If you do the debates, you acknowledge that it’s a race And if you don’t do the debates and you’re up by forty points, it’s a coronation. Like, there there’s barely of any even choice. Right? It’s just he is He is the de facto nominate.

And the numbers of these things, the numbers of people watching are just gonna crater. I’m pretty sure the next one’s on Fox Business. I’m not a hundred percent sure about that. Maybe Sebastian checked me if I’m to make sure I’m right about that. But I I just I think that the numbers on these things, if he keeps not showing up, you know, are absolutely gonna die.

And so, again, we’ll give more credence to this notion. Like, there’s no point in showing. It is on Fox business, by the way. You made another point in the agreement that I think is worthwhile. Does it bring the general election debates into question though?

I don’t think there’s any reason to have it.

I do think that we’re kind of in a serious place where there won’t be any general election debates. I wouldn’t predict that, but I guess if I was like putting some odds on it, I think that the odds have increased substantially.

Why should we have a debate for the general election? Because here here’s what the debates are for. Right? The the debates are to put two candidates together so that you could get a sense of how they might govern. And sometimes of with the candidates, this is a a notional the how they would govern.

And sometimes it’s only one of the candidates in Azure. Here, both guys have been president. We know how they’ll govern. We’ve we’ve just seen it. Like, what are you gonna ask them?

What thing could either of them possibly say that would move a vote.

What’s gonna be interesting though is that the person who doesn’t want a debate is probably flip. Because in the general, Trump’s gonna be down through the whole race, and he is going to want to be on stage. I don’t know about that, man. With I I think he yeah. I I think he

I don’t know about that.

I mean, I well, maybe I’m wrong, but I I think he I think he will be. And he will say sleepy Joe Biden, what go on the stage with me. He’ll try and bait the Biden campaign into doing it. And the Biden campaign’s responsible be, I would assume Donald trump didn’t do any debates. I don’t see any reason why we should, but also, like, he’s an illegitimate candidate who’s under trial.

Debate

fell in.

I don’t It was short. I mean, look, I don’t know. I I’m just saying I think the dynamics of the general shift slightly in terms of who is who is trying to debate and who is who doesn’t want a debate. I’m kinda curious if the Biden camp decides that it’s better for them not to be on the stage with Trump.

They could do one, I guess. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

I think one. I was just gonna say, Sebastian put in the comments that Mona was saying that Biden is gonna need a debate to show, you know, that he has the the vaguer or whatever. And that’s probably right. I don’t know. I if I’m Biden, I might look at this and feel like I need to do one because otherwise, like, Trump’s whole campaign message is about nothing of substance.

It’s about, like, Biden is too senile to debate. And so you know, the asymmetry there probably works to Biden’s disfavor, but, like, why do more than one? You know what I mean? I do I do think that that it gives a lot of cover for Biden to cut way back.

So I wanna ask something before we pivot out. I wanna ask about Ukraine

because we essentially

have a Republican party that is schizophrenic on the question of Ukraine. We have I’m gonna call it half the party, but maybe it’s a little bit more than half. Maybe it’s a less than half. Which says, at the Ukrainians, we’re kinda down with Poody Poot, and, we gotta cut off aid. Right, send send troops to the southern border so we can kill Mexicans instead of helping to kill Russians.

That’s clearly just more than half of the primary electorate. It’s maybe half of like the total party, you know, because it’s a different makeup, but it’s clearly more than half of it.

Yeah. You then have the other side of the coin, which is the Nikki Haley’s of the world, who won’t say that Joe Biden is doing a good job, and instead attack the Biden administration. They have been a day late in a dollar short and they should have been giving more aid, and we should have had. We they should have been having f thirty fives over there. And I understand that, I guess.

I mean,

Ron DeSantis is doing both.

Right. Ron DeSantis is doing both. But what I don’t understand is so the Republican Party will have a nominee and that nominee will be from one of those two camps. Right? If the party is basically again, maybe it’s not fifty fifty, maybe it’s seventy thirty, maybe it’s sixty pretty.

But if you are of the Joe Biden needed to do more, this is of critical importance. How could he be so weak if Donald Trump is the nominee? How could you vote for him? And vice versa. Right?

If you are on the the the the trump side of this argument and Nikki Haley is the nominee, how could you possibly vote for her? Does anything matter, Sonny? I guess that’s what

I mean.

Once again, you’re you’re positing a scenario that is involves approximately zero percent of the electorate, which is like percent who considers foreign policy to be the most important thing the president does because it’s the only thing he can do unilaterally. Right? So, like, that is a thing that I think about a lot and would sway me to vote one way or the other. But I think the compartmentalization there is very easy for the average GOP voter who’s just like, well, I disagree with Trump or Nikki Haley or whoever on Ukraine, but, you know, they’re still gonna get the right Supreme Court justices in there and blah blah blah. I mean, I, like, don’t think the schizophrenia you’re describing is is a real thing that any GOP candidate needs to worry about.

Yeah. It’s interesting, actually. The inverse would play, I think, JBL of what’s actually gonna happen. Right? If Nikki Haley was the nominee and this is why I kind of reject this whole notion that Nikio would necessarily be stronger than Trump.

Maybe she would be, maybe she wouldn’t be. There would be a significant portion of Mac voters that would not vote for her. Not necessarily just about this issue, but this would be part of a bucket of shoes, where that they have serious, like, actual disagreements on. I mean, I think there are big parts of the the trump base such as nihilist or if it’s on Right? Yeah.

But they’re they’re, yeah, there’d be a bucket of issues where this would be a prime example where they’d be like, no, I’m not gonna vote for this neo con war mongering pro Israel woman for president, and I think that she would lose a certain percentage of the Mega folks. For whatever reason, I do not use the word figuratively, but the neocon class. Like, there have been some, you know, who bailed already in in twenty twenty. Like, there are a lot of, you know, We at Republican voters against Trump did the military, you know, former military members, etcetera, who spoke out. But the people who stuck around, I just think that that the preponderance of them have just made the calculation that that is not important enough to them, I guess.

Tim, I my question for you is, is there any candidate who doesn’t inspire that stay at home factor in the Magga bucket at I mean, there’s, I guess, Vivik, maybe. Or

I think Ron DeSantis would inspire it less than than Nikki.

Unless Trump was openly hostile

to themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I think that there’s a lot of potential questions. Right?

Trump openly hostile, but I think that the fact that Nikki is so strident. Correct, by the way. And I was saying when Bulwark talking earlier about how it was so satisfying to see Nikki, it was kind of reminiscent of that Elizabeth Warren gutting Mike Bloomberg of the of the in the Democrats last time. It was like, this was very satisfying. And it and it’s gonna help her in the polls for a week, but she’s still not gonna be the nominee.

It was very satisfying because she’s so strident and so clearly in the globalist, whatever, you know, wink, wink, anti semitic word you wanna use.

Sixty a a Biden Democrat. She is much closer to being a Biden Democrat. Unformed policy.

She’s a Bush Republican. She’s a w George w Bush Republican.

Which is closer to being a Biden Democrat than a Trump Republican. None of them understand it.

And that’s what the Maga people would say. Wait.

The Maga people would say, and they’re right.

Yeah. So I do think that Nikki just has no chance where DeSantis is maybe able to do a little bit better.

Alright. Last topic, the hurricane hurricane we get well, I guess the

topic is just Florida.

So we had a another horrible mass shooting in Jacksonville over the weekend, motivated by a crazy racist who’s trying to kill black people, It’s horrible. And then we have Hurricane Idalia headed towards Florida, headed for the Gulf Coast, I guess. It looks very bad.

It’s a big bang, really. Yeah.

Yeah. Looks very, very bad. And, so, you know, thoughts and prayers. I hope that people down there listen to I mean, there there is a little bit of cognitive dissonance. Right?

Now the government is like telling people to to leave their homes. And where they should listen to those messages, but they shouldn’t listen to messages from the government about wearing a mask or taking a vaccine. Okay. Cool. Cool.

I do wonder, like, I’m only bringing this up because this is a political show. Right? And so we gotta I don’t know. Like, if it’s really bad, and Joe Biden goes down to Florida to, like, unleash a ton of federal aid, and try to work with the governor of Florida to, you know, help put things back together. Is Rhonda Santa gonna have does he gonna have Chris Christie in the back of his mind and the Chris Christie Obama stuff?

And is he gonna try to pick a fight with Biden over this stuff? To make sure he doesn’t look cut.

Sunny, I want you to think about that. Because it’s an interesting thought, and I wanna say, I think the first nice thing I’ve ever said about tiny d on this podcast. Which is he hasn’t done that yet. And and worked too. It’s it’s early though, but it’s two days in and he had these dual crises And and I think it’s, and this is what my not my party’s on this week.

I think it’s very interesting because he leaves Iowa to come back to speak at the vigil, after the racist mass murder at the Dollar General. And he gets booed, and there’s a lot of dunking on that on social media. And, you know, people nitpick, like, he didn’t say the word racist, but he did say that, you know, that this person was motivated by hatred, you know, of a race or some I don’t have the exact quote in front of me. But he did, you know, say say the word race. And he knew that it wasn’t gonna be a friendly crowd.

And he went there anyway, which is the thing you’re supposed to do when you’re the governor. And he went home anyway, and he’s been having press conferences about the hurricane, which, you know, he hasn’t been suggesting people shoot bleach into the body, you know, or anything crazy during these press conferences thus far. And it’s the tiniest bar, but it is it is at the normal way that our governing should work. It also, and I think this speaks to your question prospectively about what’s to come. But the booze and the way he’s been treated about it also is a bed that he made.

Right. And and I think this is something that a lot of folks, you know, that I’ve just not been able to break through too. My old friends who still do Republican campaigns and, like, still subscribe to the, oh, this is a big game, and oh, this is a troll, and it’s funny. And it’s like, when Ron DeSantis is out there trolling the NAACP, and picking fights about the African American history, you know, whatever the detail, whatever the details are about that, the gerrymandering shit, moving people in Jacksonville, actually, you know, diminishing the power of the Bulwark vote, not doing the stuff Jeb used to do, going to into Bulwark community to talk about schools and how we can improve schools. Not like really.

It maybe does that in secret, but like not like making that part of his brand about how I’m gonna engage when you don’t do this stuff, when you troll marginalized groups and, like, think it’s really funny and, and, and, you know, send people to Martha’s vineyard as part of a big joke, Then when something happens in those communities, the people aren’t gonna fucking listen to you, and they aren’t gonna trust you. Right? Like words do have consequences. Right? There are actual you know, these things do matter.

And I think that to your point, when you’re saying don’t you can’t trust the government about vaccines, oh, you know, I’m gonna Sults, Bulwark history, you know, the won’t go to die here, then certain people aren’t, you know, aren’t gonna listen to you. And and so I think that on the one hand, So Ron DeSantis has done the right thing and and whatever. He should be recognized for that. But, like, the long tail consequences of, like, the Trump brand of politics taking over everything, like, show that, like, in these times of crisis, like, it matters. Like, it matter.

It it does matter. Just so we get the record straight. DeSantis said we are not gonna let people be targeted based on their race. Sunny.

What Ron DeSantis pitch in this election? DeSantis this pitch in this election is I am competent Trump. Right? So he he goes back to Florida and he does, as as Tim says, he does the right things. He’s there to help with hurricane preparedness.

He’s there to manage the emergency response. He’s there to go to the Jacksonville rally and speak, even though he knows he’s gonna be booed. I would suggest that that actually helps him with the GOP base showing up there and getting booed and having the NAACP say bad things about him. I think that’s actually, like, He gets yelled at, and it’s awkward for him for a minute, and he does his teeth grinding homeland or thing. But it it helps him it helps him overall in in with the party.

The hurricane response is gonna be very interesting for the reasons JBL suggests, which is that there will be aid from the federal government. Joe Biden is going to come down and tour the devastated areas. It’s not like DeSantis is gonna say, don’t send money here to Florida. We you can’t do that. That’s not he’s not gonna say that.

The question is, will they appear together at some sort of event? And I can’t Ron DeSantis doing that for the reasons JBL suggests, right? That’s the Chris Christie trap. You you got he’s hugging Obama. Right?

That was the knock on Christie and the the debate from Vivek, I think. I also think DeSantis is a clever enough politician to be like, well, you know, he’s doing an event up here. I’m I’m putting sandbags up out here. I’m not gonna, you know, I I can’t pull myself away from this to go do a photo op. I would assume that’s what happens.

It’s not even the photo opness of it that I worry about. So we had this happen already. Right? This is the the famous, you know, Ron DeSantis and the the high white rubber boots. Was was that a thing that a Biden was there?

You know, there’s pictures of Biden speaking into Santos’s on stage staring into space, then pictures were like, you know, Biden clapping Maga people and the, you know, Maga residents on the shoulder and laughing at them. You could see, you know, you could see DeSantis in the backgrounds like, glowering.

That that photo is so great. If people haven’t seen it, Sebastian put it in the show notes of like Biden, like, backslapping with some bikers while like Ron DeSantis looks like that he’s angry someone didn’t bring his lunch on time. It’s like such a hilarious photo.

Because there’s a lot of cooperation that has to happen between the state government and the federal government during disasters. They have to work together. Right? And is DeSantis going to allow the state government to work together and then give credit to Biden? Or is he going to do what he does and then say biden screwed us.

Biden screwed the people of Florida.

Who knows? I don’t know. But, I mean, again, the the pitch on DeSantis, the DeSantis’ whole campaign is I get things done. I am I am the competent guy who is gonna, you know, and and you can’t You can’t square that with, like, also rejecting aid from from the feds. I mean, it just doesn’t doesn’t Bulwark.

And maybe he tries to spin it later as, like, oh, well, you know, we did this and the Fed sent money to this community that we didn’t want. We needed it over here. I I don’t know who can say. It’s it’s hard to guess.

There is another element to this, that is political, that that is gonna come to a head in the fall, and that is the continuing resolution on spending. Because there’s been some chatter in the Republicans about threatening to shut down, you know, the government coming the fall. And already, Rick Scott was out there saying that he wants a clean disaster relief bill. So I covered disaster. I think he said that already, this morning, Wednesday morning.

Maybe it was Tuesday afternoon. And, you know, already some Democrats are like, no. I mean, like, Ukraine’s gotta be in there. And whatever. Like, funding the ira, funding the stuff that we’ve already, you know, passed has gotta be in there.

Right? There’s a series of other things. And so Ron DeSantis isn’t on the hill, so he’s not gonna run into that question about how to vote for all this. But, like, there will be a series of inflection points where you’re gonna have to figure out whether or not you’re gonna play ball with Biden. Sometimes these things are cleaner, right, where, like, like, the feds send the money in, and, like, you don’t there’s no there’s no really opportunity to kind of, like, to weigh in on on whether it’s too much or not enough.

That’s that’s not gonna be the case this time. He’s gonna have to say something about the Biden Administration spot.

You guys aren’t gonna wanna hear this, but I think that this all winds up being good for Trump because Trump has no obligations to actually do anything. Or to work with the federal government, and he can simply come down and throw out some manga hats to people and throw them some toilet paper or you know, paper towel rolls like you did in Puerto Rico, and say, you know, what what Biden has done is graceful. It’s, you know, we would have handled this much better. And, you know, if I we would have made the hurricane go the other way. We would have blown up some of the bombs.

We talked about bombs many times. The generals their big beautiful bombs and we’d have pushed that hurricane into one of the blue states. And I I just think that Trump is going to try to obama fi and mystify DeSantis on this no matter what, and he will be successful. And it’s all bad. We’re all doomed.

Can I throw out one other thing about this? I don’t know that this has an acute political influence right now, but I I do think that it bears mentioning that the gulf is the hottest it’s ever been. Like, right now, when this hurricane is happening, this area, Florida has not been hit with a hurricane in, like, two hundred years. We discussed earlier how meaningless the first Republican debate is. And I do think that it that was meaningless particularly in the Republican primary, but we spent plenty of time on this podcast and others in twenty twenty, talking about how Democrats had these hand raised questions that, like, hurt the Democrat brand, you know, things like, oh, should we decriminalize the border?

I’m going for memory. I think, like, only Biden and and Pete were, like, I don’t I don’t know which is totally decriminalized for. This happened at the debate Right? Whether they’re like, do you think the climate change is real and something that you deal with? No hands were it.

And it was the question was from a kid who’s associated with the Yaffe, which is one of the super ultra conservative young Republican organizations. This wasn’t like it was from some, you know, nose ring, pronoun wearing hipster or something. It was from a, you know, a trump twenty something.

Yeah. Sorry. And so, you know, no, that’s it. It’s important. And that DeSantis kind of was mean to the kid and the response and and and his response and nobody raised their hand.

Like, is that gonna be the most indelible image ever from this campaign? Probably not. But I I I do think that it it is gonna continue to be something that hurts whoever the nominee is Trump or DeSantis with the types of voters that put Joe Biden over the edge in the Atlanta suburbs and stuff like this. Like people that live And now Florida is not really swing state anymore. But, like, people that live in the Atlanta suburbs who live in the Phoenix suburbs that are doing the hottest summer ever, like, you know, maybe they’re not on board with the whole Green New Deal, but I they think that you’re a lunatic.

They think that you’re a complete lunatic If you can’t just say that climate change is a problem, then we need to do something about. We’re alpha Sunday. We’re taking a break to Sunday. So we know Sunday show for Labor Day. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend.

Read a book. Get Tan, whatever. We will be back. We have a full lineup for September. It’s a good lineup.

We have fun people and interesting people coming your way. If you did not listen to Marie Lewis in Camp Perez, last Sunday. Create a little bit of a stir, you know, Harold, old opponent, Joe Kent, was listening to was tweeting at me about how I called him see during the interview and how the fact that he groveled in front of teenage Nazis does not recognize him.

He just grovels before not see and ask them to be nice to him and support him. It’s a very, very important distinction.

Some of progressive folks are mad at m g m g p for something she said. She voted against the student film bill and some others. So anyway, create a little a little buzz. Check it out if you haven’t. I think she’s super interesting.

And, you know, you can, you can listen to that one Sunday instead, and then we’ll be back on on normal schedule post Labor Day.

Also, go give a listen while you’re on Labor Day weekends to Sunny’s Bulwark goes to Hollywood archive. One of his two shows. I also like his other show across the movie isle. That’s great. But Blorca’s to Hollywood is right up there with shield of the Republic as my two favorite sleeper Bulwark products, it’s really sensational.

And go go just like pull through the archive. It’s full. Sunny gets like these big, powerful, important people to come on his show and has long form discussions with them. And if you care about the entertainment industry, it’s very cool.

Thank you. Concur.

Alright. Good show, long show. Everybody, we will see you next week. Bye. Happy labor day.