James Hohmann: DeSantis Joins the Surrender Caucus

Welcome to the Bulwark Secret Podcast on Charlie Sykes. It is March fourteenth two thousand twenty three, which means that we are almost halfway through the month of March, which is kind of remarkable, welcoming on the show James Holmes in Washington post editorial writer in column is specializing in domestic policy and politics. James, welcome back to the podcast. Good to

be with you, Charlie. Be aware of the odds of March. You

know, I was gonna make an eye March. Joke. But then I realized this was one of those cultural references that about, you know, point eight percent of the world would actually get Well,

a hundred percent of your listeners. We’ll get it.

I think maybe that’s true. So I’m still reeling from the fact that Tim Miller had never heard of Annette Foonicello. So I am I all that. That was great. I kind of am burned on making any sort of cultural references and — Yeah.

— you know, and mentioning theides of March. So, Charlie Sykes, joking with his guests about the assassination of leaders, you know. And I’ll get all those direct messages do better. Which next I’m sorry. My absolute least favorite.

So we have a target rich environment wanna talk to you about what’s going on with the banks and the stock market. As I mentioned to you beforehand, I’m very, very interested at all of this, although very conscious of my lack of actual sticated knowledge. So I will trade very, very lightly. It is worth noting today that the stock market did not melt down, that the sky did not fall yesterday, which I think is good news. I mean, a little bit of good news.

Well, I have a mixed feeling. I mean, it’s obviously good news in the stock market. That I’m very revealing about this. I think it’s sort of the least bad of a lot of bad options.

You mean the bailout that’s not a bailout? Yeah. The bailout. Yeah. Yeah.

You

know, moral hazard, bail out nation rewarding recklessness on and on.

Okay. Now you see you’re hitting my buttons on all of that. Because I am having flashbacks to the financial crisis and the more you learn about it, the worse it gets, the the recklessness that led to it, and then the fact that nobody was ever held accountable and that we actually bailed out the most reckless class of financial assholes in the world. Yeah. So I’m still a little touchy about all of that.

So you think this is the least bad option? There is the the moral hazard, though, still.

I do. You know, I I’m very nervous about what’s next. Mean, if it was up to me, I would have made the corporate depositors take a ten or fifteen percent haircut just so that there was some cost. Everyone knows that FDIC is only supposed to insure two hundred fifty thousand dollars of deposits. And, you know, we are this have become this bailout nation, and it’s sort of like socialism for the Wall Street in Silicon Valley elites and rugged American style individuals and for the rest of us.

And you understand how this plays into populous anger at powers that be and, you know, after nine eleven, there was a bailout after the two thousand eight financial crisis. After COVID, now no bank is too small to fail. You and I have talked on your podcast before about the student loan bailout. Now everyone’s gonna expect that their student loans are gonna get forgiven eventually. It’s just — Yeah.

— because this is not what government should be doing. On the other hand, you don’t want a cataclysmic financial collapse. Yeah. And you don’t want to destroy all the the smaller banks. And on and on.

So it’s frustrating that

it’s come to this, but it it has. It has. And I think as I was listening to you, the the fact that we’ve now really internalize this sense that mom and dad will come and bail us out no matter how silly we are. We know we can we can in crypto. We can, you know, put all our money in bitcoins.

We can do all of these sorts of things. And and at the end of the day, we know that nobody’s really allowed to fail if it’s really, really bad. There’s always somebody in Washington who’s going to sweep in and, you know, wipe away our tears and make everything good. Right?

I wonder, you know, if this was in the southwest, if this wasn’t Silicon Valley with such kind of politically well connected depositors, you know, whether the the reaction would have been different. I don’t know the answer. But I do think that there is this, yeah, mom and dad are gonna save us mentality, and that’s very unAmerican. Well,

but also, let it’s now become quintessentially American because Yeah.

That’s true. You’re right. It’s

also a a spiraling effect, which is that once you bail out one group. Everybody else goes, wait. Wait. Wait. Why did you bail them out?

So you saw this with the student loan bail out with people who were saying, well, wait. You bailed out all those people with the PPP payments. If you’re willing to give money to them, how about us? And then somebody also in the corner goes, well, wait, if they’re getting money, where’s my bailout? Where’s my bit of all of this?

And essentially, Washington on a kind of a bipartisan basis has decided, yeah, screw the whole deficit debt thing. We’re gonna take care of anybody. If you’re loud enough, if you raise your hand enough, if you are connected at the moment, there’s going to be something for you. Right? I mean, there’s always going to be something for you.

Yeah.

And that’s what’s so frustrating is the bipartisan element of it that there really is not a constituency for tough loss And there’s no leader in our national life who’s willing to say, like, no. Everyone is just sort of advocating for their what in the past, we would call sectional interest. Their constituency — Yeah. — and sometimes they see it as an either or zero sum game. Sometimes they see it as letting everyone at the trough, but it is just very depressing that no one, you know, our national politics is is saying cut it out.

No. And I don’t see that ending anytime soon. Look at a nation where everybody thinks of themselves as a victim. Right. Then there always must be some sort of an aid for every victim in America.

So we’re all there. We’re all lined up to somebody who should read a book about this. I I don’t know. So James, the story that that I’m most interested in this morning, and I know that you are as well, was the announcement that Ron DeSantis is now aligning himself very, very tightly with Donald Trump of all people on the issue of Ukraine. He has now joined the the Ukraine surrender caucus, and he did it on the Tucker Carlson Show.

You know, I mean, apparently, with everything that’s happened with Fox News and Tucker Carlson, he’s still the go to guy and he sends out a survey and everybody goes, yes, Tucker. Let’s give you the answers that you want. So Tucker Carlson who has been probably You can disagree with me here. You know, one of the most reliable pro Putin or anti anti Putin commentators out there who actually went on the air and said, no, I’m rooting for Russia. Is the guy that Ron DeSantis chooses to make this foreign policy announcement that you Crane is not part of America’s vital interest.

So I suppose it’s not surprising. You know, James, that that DeSantis would do this since he’s clearly running in the I’m the purest form of Trumpism out there without Trump. He he is just not gonna allow any daylight between himself and Trumpism. Let’s talk

about the substance of it, and then let’s talk about the politics of it. Because substantively, it’s perhaps not surprising, but Ron DeSantis nose better. I interviewed him a bunch of times when he’s in the House Freedom Caucus. He’s someone who served in the Navy. He understands what’s at stake in his heart of hearts in Ukraine that doesn’t defend him at all.

In fact, it makes what he’s done more shameful because this is obviously core to our national interest. If we lose in Ukraine, China’s gonna be emboldened to take Taiwan — Yeah. — you know, this is freedom versus autocracy. Ron DeSantis is trying to present himself as the Freedom governor that is all about freedom. And this is the fight for freedom of our time.

And he wants to unilaterally withdraw from that fight and pull defeat from the jaws of victory On the politics, I actually think it’s bad politics. I mean, you’re right. This is just craving pandering to Tucker Carlson, who supported, obviously, craves. He hasn’t given a lot of interviews, but he talked to a British newspaper last week and really kind of struggled when he was asked about Ukraine. And so let’s talk about something else and change the subject, shut it down.

Interesting. Yeah. And

so,

I mean, it shows that he’s obviously calculating I mean, I think it shows that he’s on serious. If Ron DeSantis wants to emerge as the alternative to Trump, I really do think it’s a minority of Republicans who want to surrender and let big nations, gobble up, small nations, and but, you know, there’s a lot of the Trump people who like Trump and aren’t gonna stop liking Trump. I think that it’s a mistake to try to — Yeah. — just be Trump without being named Donald Trump because if DeSantis really wants to establish himself with the donor class and with the activist base is sort of the the consensus alternative to Donald Trump. This makes that a heck of a lot harder because it shows that he’s not serious.

You know, I think he could thread the needle a little more, he could nod to concerns about our southern border and how we should defend our southern border and, you know, help Ukraine defend theirs. But this kind of just saying, no, I don’t support what we’re doing in Ukraine without really any nuance. It just makes it that much harder for him to consolidate the republican party vote that is not for Trump because I think that at least half the party still sort of gets you know, in a rage and ask way why this fight is our fight?

You mentioned that he, you know, a statement is without nuance. It it really is quite extraordinary. I mean, he goes on a great LinkedIn. He uses some of this boilerplate language you hear among Republicans about, no, I’m not writing a blank check, but he actually goes beyond that. I mean, ruling out specific weapons and at one point seems to dismiss this brutal illegal invasion as his words, a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia, which is like, oh.

I mean,

it sounds like bottom your Putin wrote that or Sergei Labrock.

Yeah. I mean,

it’s It’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing that the governor of a major US state would say that. And the person who wants to be the standard bearer, you know, the party of Ronald Reagan, that shows the lack of seriousness about the big issues. I’m of the school that DeSantis sort of has a glass jar and like Trump’s struggling with how to attack him. That’s interesting.

He’s had this rapid political rise and he hasn’t really had to do the give and take and he’s isolated himself to friendly audiences and friendly media. And, ultimately, I think that this shows that he’s maybe not as ready for prime time as as certainly he thinks he is.

Okay. This is interesting because, you know, his game plan has been pretty clear which is that, you know, he’s gonna identify where the the conservative Republican it is and then he chases that he follows at night. I think this is this this creates an authenticity problem because, you know, you can just see, you know, how, you know, he’s looking at, you know, the surrender clock over there and he has to rush to them and say, I’m gonna be your leader as well. The politics of pandering, you know, has its short term benefits, particularly if you stay within the bubble, but ultimately, I think you’re making an interesting point here that if you wanna be the leader of the free world, if you wanna look strong, you know, simply transparently and unseriously pandering to every talking point out there is not necessarily early the way to do this. It’s going to be interesting because so far people have been able to project on Ron DeSantis whatever they want to believe.

Right? In in many ways, he is an unknown. He is a blank slate on the issues like foreign policy. So you have, you know, folks in the, you know, anti anti Trump wing over the Republican Party like for example, singling out the, you know, the the fanboys at National Review who decided to go really, you know, heavily in on Ron DeSantis. And yet are not anti Ukraine or not pro Putin.

And so they have been struggling to kind of defend the Sandoz. This is gonna be an awkward moment for them because they’re all in on on Ron DeSantis. And now Rhonda Sanders has cut them off at the knees on the, you know, fight for freedom in our time, which they would agree with. So to your point that this may actually complicate his bid, I think it’s gonna be interesting to see how this plays out in the short term. On the other hand, maybe people have just decided screw it.

Donald Trump is just awful to say this is the only guy that can beat him. We just are going to assume that he knows better that he is insincere and that he’s kind of pulling our chain That’s

one of the big differences between you know, for Trump, we know who Trump is now. Obviously, you and I knew who he was in twenty sixteen, but you can sort of put yourself in the shoes of a lot of voters in twenty sixteen who sort of when Trump was undefined and he sort of thought, well, he doesn’t really believe the stuff he’s saying, he’s gonna grow into the job. Yet, joking, joking. You know, this is All what all this you know, everyone knows all that stuff. And with DeSantis being a blank slate has its advantages.

And we saw that with Barack Obama too. Yeah. You know, like, Obama could be it worked to his advantage in two thousand and eight. He could sort of be what people wanted him to be. Which was not Hillary Clinton, not the Clinton’s, not of Washington, and he could sort of use Babylon and stay generic enough that it It helped him win a majority of votes.

But campaigns are about definition. And Trump’s gonna define Ron DeSantis needs to define himself. Ron DeSantis is refusal to engage in the most basic ways with the mainstream media means that the mainstream media will define him not on his own terms. And so he’s going to get defined. And this is one of the first real things that he’s done to define himself in the in the non generic Florida is for freedom sort of what?

So going back to your your point about that he knows better because back in the, you know, in the before times and before Trump, he was He was very much in the Reagan foreign policy mode. And back in twenty fifteen, he he was very vocal in criticizing the Obama administration for not giving crane both defensive and offensive weapons saying if you had a Reagan’s policy of strength, I think you would see people like Putin not wanna mess with us. You know, he he had been very very, you know, engaged on this particular issue. But if he does know better, Then he has to know the consequences of his comments. Right?

I mean, he knows what’s at stake at some level. So he has to know that this morning, Benjamin Putin wakes up in the Kremlin and is looking at this going, okay, so I have the two leading Republican candidates who, you know, between them have sixty to seventy percent of the Republican vote, basically saying that if they come into power, I’m gonna get what I want. I mean, how does he not know that the politics and the substance collide here? And the substance being that statements like this send a message to Vladimir Putin. If you just hang on long enough, the help won’t keep coming.

The Western alliance will break if either one of us gets in the White House. I mean, that has real world consequences right now. Oh,

totally. And in fact, it also not just Vladimir Putin waking up with the Kremlin, but European leaders waking up in NATO countries, see this too and think, well, the US isn’t committed to this fight. Why should we make sacrifices why should we take all these refugees? Why should we be dealing with these high oil prices? And even just the mere comment, you’re absolutely right.

Of course, Charlie, that putin is is sort of seeing that I just have to drag this out for two more years and then I win. But this has immediate consequences in terms of it’s gonna embolden people like Macron in France to push for a negotiated peace, which is surrender. And won’t be a long term lasting piece because Russia will just keep pushing. It’s not just reckless in a two year sense, it’s reckless in an immediate short term sense, which is that it weakens America’s position on the world stage. And it it really is exactly what the right accused the left of for so long.

During the cold war and false moral equivalency and all that. And now that you’re right, the two leading candidates for the Republican nomination are are falling prey to that exact really dangerous rhetoric. There does seem to for a moment

to be as somewhat think of a bipartisan consensus about being tough with China. And as you said earlier, one of the reasons why Ukraine is is the central fight of our times is that if you want to stand up to China, you have to stand up to Russia first. And if we’re signaling that we’re not willing to do that, if we are turning into this sort of America first, we have to, you know, deal with everything at home. That also sends a very, very clear message to the Chinese to embolden them in a guess. I’m gonna keep emphasizing, this is not about what happens in January twenty twenty five.

If if they get back in the White House, it’s what’s happening in March twenty twenty three because decisions are being made right now with the question, how strong is Western resolve? How strong and reliable is the United States as an ally? And this has to call it into great question.

Totally. You know, it was I think it was Stalin. It was some Russian leader who said if you, you know, you feel most, you keep pushing. If you feel that there’s mushy resolve in the lead supporter of the effort, then you’ll keep pushing. And this is what happened Ron DeSantis was right in twenty fifteen.

The Obama administrations drawing the red line over Syria and then not enforcing a terrible And then you know, giving blankets to Ukraine when Russia invaded. And those are the darkest chapters of the and, I guess, the Iran deal too, but that’s more controversial and debatable. But even the lack of response to Russia is incursion into Georgia in two thousand eight, From Vladimir Putin’s perspective, he sort of has gotten away with all this stuff.

And reasonably expected they would continue to get away with it. Right. I mean, once you are allowed to get away with it, So, there are some pretty clear ideological lines now forming in the Republican primary between those who see Ukraine as they fight for democracy and freedom in our time. This would include, you know, Nikki Haley at the moment, he never lived with Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, and Mike Pence, taken very strong pro Ukrainian positions.

So how will this debate play out? Because so far, they have been reluctant to say, I disagree with Donald Trump on these issues. Now we get to the phase where you have the lineup, you have to Sandoz and Trump over here on the surrender caucus, you know, are we going to see a robust debate about this? I wrote this morning that the the number one divide in the Republican Party is pro coup versus anti coup. I still think that’s the major one.

But how do you see this playing out? Will Will Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and and and Mike Pompeo bring a gun to this gunfight? Two

thoughts on that. The first is I I agree. It’s the Roku NTQ is still the dividing line. David McCormick has a new book out today. The Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate who barely lost to memoize.

And he writes that, you know, he went down and tried to convince Trump to state neutral, and Trump said that he wouldn’t see neutrals. As long as McCormick wouldn’t say the election was stolen and So that that very much is top of mind. To to your question, which is an important one, I fear the answer is no, which is that you know, you’re not gonna see Nikki Haley come in guns blazing and that you’re gonna hear a lot of equivocation, which is that, you know, we can’t give them the blank check. We need strong oversight, but we shouldn’t support the civil society. We should just support the military effort and it should be limited in scope and, you know, you’ll hear nuance.

The flip side of that and the reason I’m hopeful is that these candidates who are pulling poorly there is a big opening for them to seize on this issue and to be outspoken and to say, this is our fight. There is a constituency for that. I fear that a lot of these candidates are sort of milling mouth as they showed themselves to be during the Trump administration when they were in it. But I think that there is an opening. The question is whether they kind of try to muddle the issue because they don’t think people are actually gonna be voting on Ukraine.

But I think there’s a big constituency of donors and and others who care very passionately about this issue and do recognize just how this is the fight of our time. So speaking of this, what did you make of

Mike Pence? You know, the more outspoken Mike Pence at least at the gridiron dinner where there are no cameras and there are no microphones. But he said the words. He said the name. He puzzles me.

And I’m sorry to repeat myself. It puzzles me because, you know, it’s a profile in half courage. The fact that he blocked the coup is a defining moment of his career. It’s also the reason why he will never be president. He will never be the Republican nominee.

And he’s willing to say it, but he’s not willing to do it. He’s, you know, waiting for the verdict of history. Well, history is a record of what people do in real time. Right. In real time, he’s not testifying, he’s resisting this subpoenas.

What do you make of Mike Pence? Well, I think

half courage is better than no courage. Okay. So And so I admire what he did on January sixth. I admire that he said that at the I mean, he’s clearly what he feels. But I it is I rollie that he won’t go talk to the grand jury, and that he’s, you know, he’s not hiding behind executive privilege.

He’s actually hiding behind speech and debate clause. I don’t know if you’ve Yeah. Very easy. He’s using the legislative privilege, which you can argue it, but I think it’s sort of absurd. He I think he clearly still wants to be president.

That’s the thing. Meaning, clearly, believes that there is a path —

Yeah. — to

what I we were just talking about with Ukraine. Here’s Nicky Hill gonna be outspoken in defense of Ukraine. The reason I don’t I’m not confident that she will be is because it’s the same dynamic with Pence, which is sort of if I kind of just mumble through this thing where I have the difference with Trump, then it’ll all be okay. I could see Pence changing as he actually announces sort of using this as more of a wedge in a contrast. But the problem is, as you said, the biggest dividing line in the Republican Party right now is pro coup versus anti coup.

And I think that for political reasons related to his future, Mike Pence doesn’t wanna cross that rubicon. He’s basically He has crossed through Rubicon. I mean, you know, I I know. But he’s I mean, he said it in, like, fifty different ways, and it is sort of funny because because he’s so cautious about the language, every little variation of saying what actually happened on January sixth, whether it’s his book or whether it was that speech at for the federalist society or there’s there’s been six or seven other times where it becomes big news when he slightly varies on the wording.

Mhmm. And

maybe his calculus is that the people who do care will sort of get what he’s trying to do and and know that his heart is in the right place, but I’m I’m not sure that he can thread that needle. And I’m not sensing any clamoring even at the elite level of the GOP for like the Penn’s presidential chaos. I don’t know who his constituency is. Well, that’s the mystery, isn’t it? If he

thinks that his constituency is going to be the Washington media elite. Right. That’s not gonna work out for him in in this republican party. What I thought was new in his remarks on Saturday night was not just his criticism and was not I mean, he’s he said, you know, the Trump behaved recklessly and endangered his family. He’s written that war.

What I thought was as interesting was the very clear swipe at Tucker Carlson and Fox News for trying to do the revisionist history of January six. And saying it’s, you know, it doesn’t assault on decency to say that it was just a tourist visit, you know. And then very forcefully saying, you know, tourist visits do not result in the injury of a hundred and forty cops. That was strong. And that seemed to me to be, you know, as risky or riskier than going after Trump’s role on January sixth because he’s clearly aligning himself with folks who think that what Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson is doing is dishonest and disingenuous.

It

is dishonest and disingenuous. And it is the overwhelming feeling among Republicans on, you know, certainly on the senate side is that those two things, even if more people aren’t willing to say it publicly. The thing about the grid iron for those who don’t know, you don’t have to give a serious part of the speech. It really is supposed to be a joking funny speech. And he made a lot of jokes and then he turned serious toward the end.

He didn’t need to have that riff. And I do think it’s great just to call it Tucker Carlson. Yeah. And it’s coming against the backdrop of of everything else that we’re seeing from the Dominion lawsuit. And Mike Pence remember was up against all of that.

He’s the one who’s trying to do as constitutional duty and the desire of Fox News to pander to their audience into Donald Trump meant that he was getting a lot more pressure than he should have been getting from the grassroots.

Let’s switch the focus a little bit and talk about the Democrats right now. It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. You have Joe Biden hacking toward the center on crime, on immigration, now on energy policy, green lighting this this drilling program up in Alaska. Progressives, the liberals, I mean, in some cases, beside themselves, disappointed, they feel betrayed. On the other hand, he just came up with a budget that was just packed.

With progressive goodies. So give me your sense of how Joe Biden is trying to thread the needle in his own party tacking toward the center with an eye toward twenty twenty four while keeping the left wing of his party at least only minimally unhappy.

Yeah. What matters is what people do and say that I think that this actually is closer to where Joe Biden really is. Mhmm. In his instincts, and the triangulation takes him to sort of more closely match the mood of a country. I certainly think that, you know, these issues like, drilling, crime, you know, these are eighty twenty issues.

You know, he obviously did the student debt forgiveness. He’s made a, you know, a big deal about the abortion stuff. He’s still giving the left reasons to vote for him. I think that what this does indicate the triangulation is that he does not anticipate a serious liberal challenge in the primary for the nomination. These are moves you make to prepare for general.

And I think that the calculus is that the left is gonna be there for him because I think a lot of Democrats really believe that Donald Trump will be the nominee at the end of the day, including a lot of people in the White House. And so their sense is that the left is gonna turn out against Donald Trump. And Biden’s done enough for the left. Yeah. You know, he did it on climate change.

He did all this stuff with the Inflation Reduction Act, and so he can do things on drilling to sort of telegraph to the the middle, the Republicans who voted for him in twenty twenty that he is a serious pregimentist. It does seem as if he’s going

down the list of the most potent Republican talking points, and he’s trying to sort of cross them off, you know, soft on crime, you know, not engaging with the chaos on the border, responsible for, you know, high energy gas prices because he shut down pipelines and and drilling. And he’s working through it. So at least he’s got an answer to all of that. And I think that sometimes there are progressives who underestimate how potent those lines of attack are. And clearly, he is not in a bubble where he doesn’t hear those things or doesn’t understand how that plays in swing congressional districts.

And the swing states that we’ll decide the twenty twenty four election. I’m

really glad you said that because that’s absolutely right. And one of the problems in Washington is that there’s this generational divide — Mhmm. — where Joe Biden’s obviously been around a long time. I was reading about the endangered species act yesterday, which passed in nineteen seventy three. And it’s like, oh, yeah.

Putting words to that. Yeah. It was fifty years ago. Wow. I think he has, you know, through lived experience of watching, you know, the many years Democrats spent in the wilderness in the eighties because they were too liberal and the collapse of the liberal coalition, you know, after nineteen eighty, I think Biden sort of intuitively gets it, but a lot of the younger people in his administration and in kind of the liberal interest group sort of firmament, they really have internalized this belief, which is wrong, that Republicans are going to attack you no matter what you do.

Mhmm. And Republicans are going to call you socialist no matter what you do. So why not embrace socialist policies? Exactly. And I don’t think they think of these things as socialist, but that is the mentality of sort of like you know, why is Biden rejecting the crime law from DC because they’re gonna attack him as weak on crime anyway?

And I think that just reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of politics. That substance does matter. A lot of voters, especially voters in the middle, especially persuadable people, do care about the substance of sort of what you can’t just say, well, they’re gonna say we’re evil no matter what. So let’s just do the the most liberal thing. But that has been very internalized by a lot of people, including Democratic members of Congress, and Biden knows that that’s long.

And so I think that’s part of what we’re seeing in the last couple of weeks. So

the corollary to that is what REIT to share our calls of the Fox News fallacy, which is also that if there’s an issue that is highlighted on Fox News, they must be wrong, and we have to ignore it. So if the Fox News is highlighting crime or is highlighting the border, therefore, that’s, you know, that’s not something that we should be talking about. We should react against that. And then as a result of that, you have that reinforced bubble that you were just describing here that, okay, it’s like, you know, hey, you know, urban prime people actually are concerned about, oh, you know, that’s just a talking point on Fox News where Tucker Carlson, well, sometimes y’all the the worst people in the world have good points. And, you know, that’s Okay.

So I have to ask you this because I’m gonna write about this later this weekend. I know you’re on the editorial board and you’re all like anonymous. Right? I’m sorry. I just you you all assume the editorial position.

These are not personal opinions. These are the opinions. It’s the institutional position. That’s right. This is the institutional position.

So was very interested that the Washington Post editorial position. You took a shot at Gavin Newsom on the abortion film. I think it’s interesting because as you point out, Republicans are not the only ones, finding opportunities to bully private companies in culture war battles. And you wrote about, you know, Newsom, asked a fifty four million dollars contract with Walgreens over abortion because they were not gonna be offering the abortion pill in the twenty one states where the attorney generals hit threaten them. So talk to me a little bit about this because I’m sure you’ve got a lot of blowback both sides as him.

Yeah. He’s not nearly as bad as Ron. I mean, Ron DeSantis is kind of the symbol of putting the bully back in bully pulpit in the bully states. But Gavin Newsom is and California seems to be trending in that direction. I mean, that was rather extraordinary.

So talking about Gavin News and why he took a shot at him.

The Washington Post is against Coorsively using the power of the state. To get things that partisans want. Mhmm. And so the Washington Post editorialized against the takeover of the Disney tax district and punitively going after Disney. And — Mhmm.

— what’s going on in California is very much similar. It really is Gavin Newsom taking away contracts from a company that is working in good faith to comply with local laws. I mean, it’s one, it’s unfair to put this on Walgreens. Mhmm. These are complicated hard legal issues and Walgreens is sort of squeezed in really a federalist fight between state and federal government and Walgreens is trying its level best to comply.

And I think Walgreens got extra scrutiny because they actually replied to the letter from the attorney’s general. And the other pharmacies just ignored it. But they’re they’re caught in this really difficult place. And so it’s deeply unfair for Gavin Newsom to then say we’re gonna take away the state contract, and it’s basically to provide prescriptions to people in prison because we’re angry that you’re comply with local laws and other jurisdictions that is an abuse of power. And, you know, and what’s particularly annoying is that Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom have been shadow boxing with each other for a year, and they’re both trying to call themselves the Freedom Governor, and they both are trying to fight over the language of freedom.

And both of them often want to use the state as a coercive power that is very odd with freedom. Whether it was when the cruise ships wanted to require vaccination, they blocked them from being able to do so. That is interfering with private business trying to manage itself. This fight is played out over abortion and COVID vaccines and all that stuff. But neither Ron DeSantis nor do some when the sort of the rubber hits the road or whatever analogy you wanna

use is really taking the side of true freedom? No. But what you have here, and again, the spiraling effect and or maybe the ratcheting effect, which is that as one party decides it’s going to use, you know, the course of power of government to get its way, that becomes pressure of, like, wait, should we bring or I’m sorry, overuse this now? The knife to the the gunfight, isn’t this whole he fights thing basically a reaction to the sense that, well, we’re tired of losing, we’re tired of rolling over. Therefore, Both of us now are going into so you have this mutual escalation of aggressiveness.

Otherwise, you’re accused of, like, wait, they’re accomplishing this. They’re winning over here. Why are we not using the same weapons over here to fight for the things that we believe in? And that’s what you’re kind of seeing in this shadow boxing between Rhonda Sanders and Gavin Newsom. I

couldn’t have said it better, and that’s a lot of the pushback. To the editorial too. Sort of like, well, what do you expect? Mhmm.

They’re

using these tools of the state. Why wouldn’t we use these tools of the state? And Obviously, neither side should be using the tools of the state. But that’s where we’ve gotten and the problem is that politicians aren’t punished for that. They’re rewarded for it.

And so they’re responding to incentives. They see that This has helped Ron DeSantis with his base, use some I think this is gonna help him with his base even though it’s a misuse of power and and bad policy. So it goes on and on and it is this escalation ladder. We only climb off of it when the American people reject it. You know, and if Ron DeSantis is the nominee, it worked politically.

And so then more people are gonna do it, and then we all of a sudden drift down a a very dangerous path of becoming a less free country. And in

the meantime, you have companies, private companies that are caught in the middle. As you point out, you’re a pharmacy and you do business and say, Arkansas and in California. If California says you if you follow the law in Arkansas, we’re going to punish you you have these pharmacies, these private businesses that are caught between a rock and a hard place over. And and you wonder whether or not if this ladder of s escalation continues. Whether we’re actually gonna wake up one day and realize, okay, we don’t actually have a civil war.

There’s not gonna ever be a civil war. But we’re kind of having a cold civil war right now, a cold civil war between dueling bully states.

Yeah. It does feel that way. You know, one of the things I’ve been paying a lot of attention to is this Eric database. Oh, yeah. I actually think it’s like the this epitomizes not just cutting off your nose despite your face, but also this cold civil war, which is that in twenty twelve, seven states got together and it was actually four Republican states and three Democratic states, and they said it was basically a deal.

It was like Republicans care a lot about election integrity, Democrats care a lot about registering people to vote. So we’ll have this deal where all the states will pull together their voter registration data And then in exchange for that, it becomes much easier to know. It’s the closest thing to a national database for whether someone has voted twice. But then at the same time, The states that participate in this consortium also agree to send a postcard to new Ron DeSantis. People who are eligible to vote that are not registered to say, hey, you’re eligible to register to vote.

Ron DeSantis actually worked quite well. Kids caught thousands of cases of people trying to vote twice for people registered in two states. And a lot of times, it’s not nefarious. It’s just someone moves from Wisconsin to Virginia and, you know, you don’t call the Wisconsin, you know, election officials to say, hey, I’m moving. You’re still on the list.

And so makes sense. You wanna clean up your lists and that kind of thing. And so this was working totally fine, and it was a great sort of model in the fees for the states that really loves, like, twenty thousand bucks a year. And it was all fine and tell people like Khita Mitchell, the former Trump lawyer, and always be Michael Lindell, are out there turning this into just a complete lie that this is like some George soros thing. And so now, five states have pulled out of this consortium, including Florida, even just a few months ago, Ron DeSantis was talking about how great this program is because it’s caught all these cases of voter fraud.

And the very day that Florida announced it was pulling out, they actually arrested someone who voted in twenty twenty in Virginia and Florida, and they only discovered this because of this Eric system. It’s an acronym. And so this is kind of that national coming apart, which is like, here’s this thing where if you actually wanna cut down on voter fraud. Here’s the obvious way to do it, but this is falling prey to the conspiracy theory minded craziness of the fever swamps, but also this idea that, like, Florida doesn’t wanna cooperate with liberal states. And so all of a sudden, voter fraud is gonna become easier, not harder, but it’s a result of this aspiratory logic and this is sort of coming apart.

And you’re right. It’s not gonna be people, you know, fighting in fields. It’s gonna be stuff like this where they’re just the nation becomes more and more fragmented. And that’s ultimately sad, but it’s also bad. So

remind me whether I’m remembering this correctly, Donald Trump called for states to drop out of the ERIC program.

You can

then the next day or the same Ron DeSantis pulled Florida out of the program?

Yeah. The the next day.

So here’s another example of Ron DeSantis just being this kind of little lapdog, you know, Donald Trump says, jump, he says, how high? That’s not the way to take him out. Going back to you to our original discussion here. You

look weak. You look soft, do you look like a follower, not a leader? Yeah.

It’s like I mean, where I understand it’s basically trying to cling as closely as possible. No daylight, But at some point, it’s like governor, you’re not going to beat Donald Trump by being his bitch on everything. You know, you are going to look weak if you keep doing that sort of thing.

Gold color is not pill pastels.

James Home and Washington Post editorial writer and column is specializing in domestic policy and politics, James. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. I appreciate it.

Always a pleasure, Charlie Sykes. It’s fun to chat.

It is always fun to chat with you. James will have to do this again soon, and thank you all for listening today’s Bulwark Secret Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again. Secret Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper.

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