Michael Steele: We’re Way Past Kumbaya

Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is May thirty first two thousand twenty three. We’ve made it through the first five months of this year. How are you, Michael?

I am great, my friend. It is now officially summer. I can whip out the, you know, the short short swimming trunks. And — I want the short

—

you know, I’m just really to let my beer belly do its thing, man. It’s great. We’re, of course, joined by Michael Steele. That is Michael Steele, but you knew this, the host

of the Michael Secret Podcast, political analyst, and now a host you’re like a host on MSNBC. If somebody had missed you Saturday night, you were sitting in.

Yeah. I got pulled into the debt deal. It was fascinating.

I got a text from your producer, but it was, like, in the in the afternoon, and by the way, it was summer on Memorial Day weekend in Wisconsin. And I have to say, you know, what thing about Wisconsin is I mean, to just imagine being locked in a, you know, a freezer for nine months of the year. And then one day, they open the door and it’s warm and sunny out. This is Wisconsin. Every single person is outside for the entire weekend.

It’s part of our culture.

Everybody just starts running. Running into the sun.

Alright. So I do not want to be the one to inject any optimism in our discussion today. But, you know, as I was reading through the prep notes and looking at social media, it occurs to me that we’re in this kind of weird world where most of the energy from Maga World is focused on attacking one another. The attacks between the DeSantis camp and the Trump camp washing Donald Trump, attack Kaylee, mcenany, nanny, calling her a milk toast, a word that did not surprisingly, he misspelled. They are turning on one another.

I mean, it really is kind of I I think it’s Nicole Wallace’s phrase, you know, watching the tarantulas go at each other in the bag. Give me your sense of this. Watching these folks who had, you know, kept their heads down and not broken ranks. And now they’re just throwing shit at each other. I mean, down in Texas, You got Ken Paxton who is so corrupt.

The guy is so squalid that the house GOP can’t even, you know, stand him. They impeach him. Donald Trump is writing in saying, I will fight you. I mean, this is an interesting dynamic, isn’t it,

mister It is, but then Charlie Sykes the main, it’s not. I mean, this is something we fully expected to play out the way it is. And there’s more of the bombastic, you know, name calling and and in fighting to come if, you know, Chris Christie gets in and and Mike Pence who, you know, milk toast. But, you know, we’ll be in the mix. So it’s not surprising that they would do this.

Look, Everybody’s trying to figure out how to take out the king. Meanwhile, the king is still moving around on the chessboard, you know. So he’s in Iowa. He’s in tech He’s in injecting himself into conversations people don’t want him to be injected into. But that’s what he does.

And so this narrative is gonna continue to move in this direction until such time as it is firmly agreed to by all the intelligent inside the GOP that, oh, yeah. Okay. He’s our nominee. A lot of these shots, they’re not landing hard. They’re not moving numbers.

It is part of the performative bullshit that Republicans have gotten used to doing, and they’re so good at it. You know, they just turn it on each other and they just role play until such time as someone decides, okay, that’s enough of that. Let’s let’s you know, Trump is at nominee. Let’s go forward. It doesn’t surprise me that this is happening.

It’s actually rather boring and not that amusing. Because it’s a lot of noise, signifying not much of anything. Except that you also get this I

I have the sense this this image in my head of sort of the vulture coming in and picking over the spoils that that the MAGle world has become so bloated and so sort of adrift now that the grifters are turning on one another. The extremists are turning on one another. Let me come back to that theme in a moment. I wanna get your take on on what is going on with this debt deal because, you know, Mike Kevin is trying to quell a revolt in the ranks. It looks like and, of course, we could be wrong.

And I mean, like they’re going to come up with enough votes, but we will not default. Kevin actually turned out to be a quasi adult in the room. I mean, am I am I actually saying those words Yeah.

You are and that and he had no choice. Yeah. He had to grow up. He had to grow up and he had to grow up in a in such a way because Joe Biden wasn’t giving him any help. So he had to make the first move I mean, when you look at the analysis of this process, you know, everybody was talking about and I admit myself falling into this trap, Why isn’t Joe saying more about what he wants to do?

Well, Joe’s like, well, when the other guy put something on the table, then I’ll tell you what I wanna do. And that happened when Kevin was able to negotiate that vote for the House Republican bill. So now oh, okay. So now I know what the parameters are. And it was such an outlier.

It was so extreme. That it was very easy to kinda put in place something that at the end of the day compared to what else was possible this deal made the most sense. Look, to your point, Charlie, it’s going to pass. These republicans no more want to have a default let alone be talking about this in March of next year. So everything that this bill does moves it beyond the presidential race gives everybody a little bit of bragging right here and there, you know, republicans saying, hey, we got this, this, and this.

And, yeah, the hard writer’s gonna scream about, you know, not being able to destroy the federal government, but okay. And the president’s gonna be able to say, look, we avoided default. We minimized the assault on on the safety net of America and held firm on some things. And, yeah, we had to you know, eat crow and some others, which is what? That’s the art of negotiations.

I think in the end, it’s gonna wind up being a plus for the president. And a plus for Kevin McCarthy. And I think the challenge now is how do we see these two individuals moving forward, I don’t think there’s gonna be much more after this. I’m a big one. No.

This was one big Washington has stomach to do anything after this. So Kevin will basically be managing a frothing right wing. And Biden will just, you know, hopefully, have a conversation with his communication shop and tell them, could you guys tell them what the hell I did? Tell people what I’ve done in this administration. And that’ll be the presidential campaign.

In terms of playing poker, and there there’s a lot of memes out there about all of And again, the I wanna point out the cognitive dissonance of the Republicans were saying that Joe Biden is just so seen island so out of it that he’s not capable of anything. But ran rings around us. And basically, we’re we’re sitting here at the at the poker table, buck buck naked. One of the things that he did though was to call out the bluff the Republican saying, show me your budget. You wanna cut spending.

You know, be specific about all of this. And when it came right down to it, Republican and and this is this is not a new story. This is a very old story. They realized, okay. We don’t wanna cut defense.

We don’t wanna cut Social Security. We don’t wanna cut Medicare. What actually is left? What are we gonna propose? Maybe we should just sort of back away from all this.

He asked them, you know, show me your cards. And once again, we’re reminded that Republicans can talk a big deal about cutting the deficit, but When it comes right down to it, they don’t really have any ideas that they’re willing to stand behind.

They don’t. And I would argue Republicans don’t have ideas and Democrats don’t have balls. So — Yeah.

—

that combination is why we see what we see playing out. And it’s played out where the role switch. Democrats don’t have you know, the policy or the plan in place, then republicans don’t have the balls. It’s just a lot easier, you know, to scream and shout when you’re on the out side than actually having to deal with the prospects of a, you know, debt implosion on your watch. Yeah.

You had a great piece in the bulwark yesterday, which I responded to online — Mhmm.

—

in which you you wrote about, well, who won the dead fight? Which I, you know, because of the the limitations of Twitter and I refused to buy a blue check mark so I can write more. I couldn’t start it the way I really wanted to started, which was I get what you were saying in that piece, Charlie, about, you know, the various factions and and how the game played itself out. But at the end of the day, I asked the question, wouldn’t we just be better off just ending this bullshit charade of the debt Sealia. And I mean, we’re the only nation outside of Denmark that even has a debt limit, and Denmark has their debt limit so high they’ll never reach it.

So, you know, the point is this becomes the same play every eighteen or twenty four months. Where they, you know, commits over the debt. Everybody knows it’s coming. They take us all to the brink. They, you know, push fear into the markets

— So dumb. —

then markets get a little bit rattled. The American people scratch their head and go why can’t we just pay the bills? And then they raised the debt limit. And so, like, can we just do away with it?

It is the most self destructive thing we could possibly do And I’d actually forgotten the fact that, you know, for at least a decade or so, you know, sanity prevailed. And was it the Gephart rule or something that that you wouldn’t have to have a vote on raising the debt limit if we were talking about already authorized spending or something like that. So This was the case until twenty eleven when when the tea party folks decided that they were going to, you know, you strap the bomb of the debt ceiling vote around the country. Wanna get your take though on what’s going on with the right wing. So Kevin McCarthy looks like he’s doing something that a lot of us were very skeptical that he would be able to do, which is to keep the crazies in line without blowing everything up.

Now he had, like, three major tasks. Number one, cutting a deal with Joe Biden, and that was never the hardest part. The harder part is number two, being able to deliver the votes to get it passed. Big question mark there. And then number three, and this is what I wanted to just put on the table here, then survive the blowback.

Because as I said yesterday on one of the cable shows, there’s nothing in the DNA of the modern Republican Party that wants to cut deals with Joe Biden or give Joe Biden, you know, any cover whatsoever. So right now — Right. — it looks like he survived. It looks like he’s holding it together, and yet you and I both know what happens out there in the right wing ecosystem with all the folks who stoke that perpetual outrage machine who are going to rail about this. Now we haven’t heard from Donald Trump from Mar a Lago over the last couple of days as far as I know.

But as soon as this thing has passed, you know what he’s gonna do. He’s gonna say this was terrible. Right? Yep. I mean, you know, after the fact, he’s gonna come down from the mountain, and he’s gonna shoot all the survivors.

So the number three so Kevin is number one. He got the deal. Number two, he’s apparently looking like he’s gonna be able to deliver the votes. But will there be a backlash to this? Because everyone’s positioning themselves, and no one wants to be in favor in the modern Republican Party of a compromise or getting into bed with Joe Biden.

How does this play out going forward.

I think that this will be another example of a whole lot of people wetting and soiling their pants and that’s it. I don’t think Kevin loses his job. A temper tantrum there. A temper tantrum. I don’t think he loses his job.

I don’t think the votes are there and I think the Democrats quite frankly, will backfill any votes that are lost. Oh, sure. And so he has his two hundred eighteen votes the Democrats under Jeffrey’s leadership is sitting there saying, okay, this is better than what we could potentially get. Running the house. So let’s just hold the line here.

It’s very similar to some of the insurances Democrats gave John Banner back in two thousand fifteen, sixteen before he left the house, and they were threatening him that we’ll get through this cycle, and and then you can do what you need to do. But let’s just get to the next congress. And I think that’s pretty much the same attitude right now. Let’s just get to the next Congress. And so I think Kevin’s gonna be fine.

There’ll be a lot of noise There’ll be a lot of money raised by the the MAGa Stupits off of him

—

Mhmm. — which it would be hysterically funny to watch. But the reality of it is they got nothing because they don’t have anyone that they can replace Kevin with who’s going to want to step in. So scalise ain’t doing it. For example, and Jim Jordan doesn’t want it.

So who are they gonna get?

At least Stefanic.

Me me me.

Yeah. Yeah. Paul go Well, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green is always willing to wield that gavel.

And Marjorie Taylor Green would probably be the most logical choice coming up. How she’s trying to fashion her her stupid ass. But the reality of it is no one’s gonna bite on that sour cake. And the reality for Kevin is how do you manage the noise going into a presidential cycle where you’re gonna need those folks at some point to calm the hell down because you don’t need them agitating a base that could wind up hurting hurting the Republican nominee and more importantly, those candidates will be running to build on the house majority. Here’s the other little piece of that, Charlie, from a strategic perspective.

And that is on the point of those house members. If the Republicans play this these cards the way I suspect they will, the problem they’re gonna run into is that they’re gonna have candidates who are gonna be running saying that they won’t support Kevin McCarthy for speaker of the house. They’re gonna have candidates like Margery Taylor Green types that are gonna be out there in Republican primaries, stirring things up, and that’s something he can’t control for. Mhmm. And that will in some races change the dynamics of, you know, how these things flow gives, I think, political advantage to to Democrats, particularly in those districts, those eighteen congressional districts that Joe Biden won in twenty twenty.

This is fraught for Kevin in terms of the politics. The in terms of the management of this issue in the house, I think he’s gonna survive that okay.

I think he will survive short term, but I do think that what you’re pointing out is sort of the long term legacy, you know, whether he be comes the symbol of rhinoism.

If you own a small business, you know the value of time in refunds does too. They’ve made it easy, no matter how busy you are to apply for the employee retention credit or ERC, go to get refunds dot com to get started and in less than eight minutes see if your business qualifies for ERC assistance. Your business may be eligible for a payroll tax refund of up to twenty six thousand dollars per employee kept on payroll during COVID nineteen. Innovation refunds has already helped clients claim over three billion dollars in payroll tax refunds through the ERC, and they may be able to help your business too. There’s no upfront charged either.

They don’t get paid until your business gets its refund. Many businesses believe they won’t qualify based off incomplete outdated information, so don’t let this opportunity pass you by because this payroll tax refund is only available for a limited time, go to get refunds dot com. That’s get refunds dot com.

For decades, Rolling Stone has set the bar for entertainment publications. Today, Rolling Stone Music now takes over in podcast form. Song writer and producer, Jamie Hartman reacts to the Ed Sharon verdict.

You need to create something new. And of course, you’re gonna use traditional to get there, are you gonna sue the rolling stones for making a samba out of sympathy for the dove? Can you sue Elvis Prezi for writing bar, Sonova? It’s like saying, allow me use a pencil to create a piece of art.

Rolling Stone Music Now, wherever you listen.

Okay. So, Michael, Yes. I want you to help me figure something out, which I think has really become extraordinary. You know, there’s been a lot of talk about, you know, anti wokeness and everything, but I I wanna focus on the session of the right wing now with gay rights, the gay issue, and the trans issue, and how intense it has become. You probably saw over the weekend.

I know you saw over the weekend. Ted Cruz, with a moment of and I’m gonna say these words now, Ted Cruz was right. He actually did the decent thing. He on Monday, No seriously. Ted Cruz, tweeted out his reaction to this new law criminalizing homosexuality in Uganda.

And the law includes a death penalty as one of the most punitive laws anywhere in the world. And he wrote, this Uganda law is horrific and wrong. Any law criminalizing homosexual or imposing the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality is grotesque and an abomination. All civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse And then he used the hashtag LGBTQ. Okay.

This is Ted Cruz. Mhmm. What was really interesting was watching the reaction from the cruise base. A lot of them pushing back. Why are you talking about this?

Why are you doing this? Has your account been hacked? Why aren’t you? Standing up for the January sixth prison or

Yeah. Fine.

And then

there were some

who basically were in favor of the Uganda law, and there’s a kind of a mega pastor, who’s all in and Ron DeSantis, who tweeted at him, tell it to god, Ted, quoting leviticus. And I guess the question is, we’ve gone from twenty sixteen where even Donald Trump at the Republican convention said that he had no problem with gay marriage to now This being one of the hottest culture war issues on the right. And it’s not clear to me that that they’re able to control the prairie fire. You know, guys like Ted Cruz, you know, light the fire, and they’re like shocked when it turns into this conflagration. But even Ted Cruz had to be a little bit surprised by how much just really virulently anti gay sentiment there is out there on the base and how much permission people feel to express it now.

So how did that happen between twenty sixteen and now, Michael?

I think the confluence of a number of cultural developments that absent appropriate context, absent smart political strategy, push a segment of the population to a point where they are absolutist rejectionists. There is no explanation. There is no way in which they conceivably can wrap their head around a chance to endurism, particularly as it relates to younger individuals. And I think the narratives that emerged in this space emerged without appropriate context and without medical and scientific affirmation. I understand that the trans is going to be a a hot button.

But that fed the rest of it. That’s the point. They glom it all together. Okay.

See, I think you’re right there. I do think that there was sort of it was like, okay. We’re not happy with gay marriage. We’re not happy with homosexuality, but we’re going to live with it. And then the trans issues seem to have been the trigger for and then all of it blew back.

Okay. I think you’re right.

Right. Then that’s my point. It was like, see, I told you that was the next step. And and so that’s the problem that a lot of these folks see this as progressive small p progressive politics that pushes this issue further and further to what they would deem to be an extreme. And it’s funny Charlie Sykes remember when the whole gay marriage issue finally kind of used the words.

Settled. I remember Yeah.

They felt like it was settled. Yeah.

And I remember telling a group that I was speaking to. This issue is not settled. It is not settled with the American people. And the reason it’s not settled is that there are other issues related to gay rights and the gay community that over time when they are addressed will come back and impact on this and that’s exactly what’s happening. Because, again, a segment of the population, and I would dare say that segment is a lot larger than people may like to believe.

Just never got a hundred percent okay with it. So it was always one of those. Alright. We’ll see. I’m suspicious of this.

This seems like you sort of a backdoor to something else, and that something else is now what you’re seeing come out on a number of other issues. And this is the reaction. So Ted’s response is in one sense a bit ironic, particularly coming from Ted. But the question for him is the base that you have allowed to be stoked in this space Where do you think they’re going to go next with this? You’ve given them no room to really fully understand what you’ve just texted.

Because you’ve talked about this in absolutist terms. And because of your gift with the evangelicals, you’ve wrapped up the bible as the weapon of choice to affirm that narrative that you pushed And so now when I that’s I didn’t even bother to respond to Ted because it was such a bullshit response. Yes. On his face, you would agree with it. But I’m sitting there going, but dude, this is the height of hypocrisy because you live in a state and you have given credence to the very thing that led to what we see happening in Uganda.

What do you think these very same people would do the exact same thing here in America if they could?

Well, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not Ron Santis has anything to say about this pastor who seemed to be endorsing the Uganda law and who’s like all in on on DeSantis. I have it in my newsletter. I mean, this is a guy that actually, back in January, took to the stage in Tallahassee to thank God in your wisdom, goodness, and power you have once again established governor DeSantis to serve the people of Florida. I mean, this guy’s all in.

Lee, can I just give you a comparative now? There is very little difference between this pastor who’s taking an extreme view and wanting to kill an individual because they’re transgendered or gay. And what we saw with the embrace of white nationalism and the Proud Boys. There’s very little difference. You create this lane for these people to emerge.

And when they emerge into it, you can’t control what they say or what they do. You’re very happy, you know, when this pastor is saying, oh God is ordained you to be the next president. And then in the next breath, oh, by the way, let’s kill all the gay people. Then what you gonna do? Yeah.

Bring back Lavinigas.

I don’t I don’t know. I

just that’s

I do wonder what parts of the bible they read and he answered the question because I’m thinking, did you actually read the gospel I mean, is is this your Christianity? And no. If you’re going back to leviticus, it’s a whole different look. Okay. Here’s something else I want you to help me sort out.

The obsession on the right with the wokeness of the military and how far they’re willing to take this, you have Tommy Tuberville. Are you able to send its dumbest member? I know there’s a lot of competition there. You know, putting a hold on all of these, you know, military positions. I mean, this is an stream stuff that actually puts the nation’s, you know, national security at risk, all because the military is woke and going back to Ted Cruz, who is so frequently wrong, remember when he was tweeting out these comparisons about the manly and tough Russian military versus the welcome.

Yeah. Like, how did that play out? But I was thinking about this yesterday. Why is there so much obsession with this? What did the military do trigger this.

And one of the the major initiatives that we saw was the attempt to weed out white Jonathan Last extremist you know, people who might be, you know, pro sedition and everything from the military. And this has prompted a hell of a blowback, which makes you Ron DeSantis I I know I’m getting into a speculative and maybe slightly paranoid area. What kind of a military do these folks actually want? Why are they so intent on not having these potentially violent extremists being in the rank? What is this about?

They nestle in there is how you assert command and control ultimately. If you’ve got allies or people who are more aligned with your view on an authoritarian state or the absolute rule. I mean, which is ironic coming from you know, these small government, you know, sort of quasi libertarian Republicans who advocated for years, you know, a strong national fence to protect us from enemies abroad as well as, you know, making sure that the government didn’t play any role in our in our daily lives, you know, a very little role. To now all of a sudden be advocating for keeping this type of bile inside the the ranks of the military. The military from its beginning has always been about not doing that.

You know? And it’s led the way on a number of social reforms historically. Because at the end of the day, for their purposes of command and control Charlie, they need a fighting unit that’s not at odds with itself. You know? So the reality here is for these guys is look, if I’ve got some, you know, KKKK members and Proudboy and, you know, jacked up former cops who like walk in with their sticks first.

The reality is that changes the nature of that military. And the fact that you have people out here now saying that this is not the kind of military we want. Oh, it’s less manly. Oh really? Well, I don’t consider any of those in to be manly.

That’s not what makes a man. It’s his racism and his hate of others. That doesn’t make a boy a man And so the reality for a lot of Republicans is how do they work in this space when the military does what the military has always done, and that is to be the best reflection of the people. They serve and protect and defend, bringing the best from amongst us to serve with honor and dignity in the roles that the military has. And it is a Michael Cosma, a little experiment if you will on how we all get along.

And the fact that the military is recognized we have a problem because we have too many hot heads now. Too many people who wanna kick ass and take names as opposed to serve, and we need to weed them out. And you got Republicans now looking at this saying, oh, our military’s gone woke. Well, that’s the problem.

Well, let me push this a little bit further, though, because I think that there’s an element of the right that really thinks the military should be theirs that in the culture war, that they want the military to be their ally. And in that QAnon world, this this idea that, really, the Terry is really running things, you know, that Donald Trump, you know, it really, you know, gave them permission to control everything. And during that whole transition up until January sixth, as you look back on how alarming all of that was. When you had all of the former secretary of defense, feeling the need to sign that open letter saying the military plays no role in permitting of an outcome of a presidential election. And this was one of the maybe unconscionable sins of of Mark Million and others saying, we are not play any role in this whatsoever.

I’m just looking at this obsession with deroking or whatever. I just made that word up. The military to what extent it is to say, no. This is ours. You people really do not belong here because our view of the military is very different than what you just articulated, Michael.

It’s been a constant struggle for the military. I mean, you go back and think about before you had the self awareness to desegregate the military. It was nothing to have, you know, these white platoons segregated from the black platoons and reflecting back what was going on culturally and politically in the country. And when the leadership of the military change the course and change the focus and the emphasis. Yeah.

That had some repercussions. And you do have Charlie to your point. This sense among a lot of these right wing hotheads that this is ours. And it’s ours because we need it to do the other things that we want to do.

So my other favorite story of the day, and this is, you know, not one of the most important things in the world. In my newsletter, I asked people, do you remember Tara Reade? Do you remember Tara Reade? I used the term horseshoe politics in this context. Because for one brief and shining moment in our horseshoe politics, she was this heroine about the far right and the far left.

Remember, she was the woman who accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her.

Yes.

And by the fourth night, delegation and her story never held up. It always was weird and I mean — Right. — and and some of us then noticed something odd about her behavior that while she was making these weird allegations about Joe Biden, which never sounded credible at all, she was also writing things like why liberal democrat supports Vladimir Putin and talking about how, you know, President Putin’s obvious reverence for women, children, animals, and his ability with sports is intoxicating to American women. Right. President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with gentlest His sensuous image projects his love for light, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity.

I highlighted at the time, and I remember all these right wing trolls, like, what are you trying to imply? What are you trying to imply Charlie Sykes about Terrerita? I’m trying to imply she’s a nut job, and and also the

she’s a number one.

She’s a Putin show. And boy did did that age well because in case anybody missed it, yesterday, with great fanfare, she announced that she is officially defecting to Russia. And she appears on stage with Russian spy Marina Boutina Boutina, who’s gonna help her get Russian citizenship. And I just think about how weird our politics is, that here’s somebody that was championed by some of the writers at the intercept on the far left, The right loved her. All she had to do was make this bogus allegation against Joe Biden, and she was this hero for a while.

And and I actually posted this tweet from March Taylor. Green at the time, I believe Tara Reade, who who is now officially a traitor. I mean, is it But there’s no Russia. There’s nothing there to see. The Russians have been

There’s no Russia. Right? Alright. There’s not none here and keep and move along, move along, you know, Russia, Russia, Russia. Yeah.

What look, all of that gets exposed at some point on. And the test for us at this hour is how we hold ourselves together. How individuals like yourself in the moment are clear in their expression of what it is we’re seeing and what we’re probably missing or what we need to understand and why this doesn’t sound or smell or look right. Because that’s the difference maker. All these things Charlie Sykes ultimately get revealed.

They just do. And the reality for this country right now particularly given that you have a party that has a knee jerk all in embrace of the Putin lies and the authoritarian narratives that becomes even more important for us. And so, yeah, you should be retweeting the stuff you wrote at the time and reminding people this is why I said what I said then. And this is why you needed to pay attention because this is what you missed. And this is what I tried to show and explain because if unless you contextualize it, people just throw it in a political bucket and they wanna move on.

Not realizing that the ramifications from the embrace of some of these people and these approaches and attitudes and policies have long term dangerous consequences. And I think this is a very good example of that.

Let’s turn to the presidential race. And obviously, I’m, you know, cutting to the chase. I wanna ask you whether you think Trump is inevitable. But before we get to all of that, the field is crowded. It is getting bigger.

Give me your take on Chris Christie because I have to admit. I mean, you know where I come down on Chris Christie. I’m never gonna forget that that moment. On the other hand, he’s the only guy willing to throw a punch at Donald Trump right now. So am I wrong to root for Chris Christie to get into this race and begin throwing some pain makers?

No. I don’t think you’re wrong to do that. I think that you’re right that Chris can be that guy. But I hope he understands and I hope everyone else understands that it’s just not enough to throw the haymaker. No.

That because at the end of the day swinging wildly and even landing so few punches without sort of creating a lane or space for either himself or someone else to emerge to be the beneficiaries of all of that. All it does is reinforces the drama of Donald Trump as victim, the drama of Donald Trump as inevitable. And we’ve seen this already with DA Braggs indictment in New York solidifying Trump’s number. He goes from forty two percent to fifty one percent among Republicans now sitting somewhere around fifty five percent among Republicans. So it’s not just enough to be the guy who can throw the punch.

Once the punch is landed, you gotta be the guy that continues to deliver those punches at the same time moving that base vote or that Republican vote writ large in your direction or the direction of someone else. Here’s the problem. There are too many people in the race. And at some point my hope is that there’s a meeting among the intelligentsia. And they decide who amongst us stands the better chance to survive this primary in a way that they can not only pull from the seventy percent of Republicans who don’t vote in Republican primaries.

Worrying less about trying to get all of Donald Trump’s vote because you won’t. But having a strategy to tap into individuals who will switch parties to vote in a Republican primary for you, draw out more Republicans who otherwise do not vote in Republican primaries, and that’s a big ass number as well as in states where it is allowed getting independence in line with you to support your candidacy. If they don’t do that, this is a fool’s errand and it will end just as everyone believes it will be as Donald Trump with the nomination.

So this intelligenciency of which you speak,

implying that it still exists.

Is there a group of smart rich people with clout who can actually get in a room and make any difference anymore? Or is that world just blown to bits?

I I think that world has been fractionalized by citizens united. And the rise of five twenty sevens and other tools in the finance area The party used to be the central funnel for all of that. Those individuals would go to the party leadership, the chairman of the party, and sit there and say, hey, you guys gonna work this out. What do we need to do? How much do you need?

Who do you want us to get behind? They don’t need them anymore. So if, you know, I’m, you know, a very wealthy donor of Peter Till or, you know, whomever and I say, look, I wanna get behind this candidate or I wanna get behind this cause. I’m running independent of anything within the party structure itself. And even though nobody else is necessarily on board with my candidate because my candidate is a complete ass.

I’m funding an ass. And as long as I’m funding that ass, guess what? He’s in the race. He’s gonna stay in the race. And that that has changed fundamentally.

The way this process plays out. So it’s harder now to get these candidates out when you have billionaires who are aligning themselves with a candidate or worst case more than one because they put the money in a pool and it’s like, okay, I’m gonna give Tim and Nikki. And how do you decide between the two of them which one you wanna sit down and then which one you wanna promote?

And Tim and Nikki are not likely to get out of the race unless they’re told directly that your funding is gone.

Correct. To me. Exactly. Tim comes in with twenty two million bucks and what he ain’t going anywhere in for a while.

So the default setting, I think, of all of us, has been so far because the has been the experience that that every indictment actually bonds the base tighter to Donald Trump might not help him in the general election, but makes his renomination more likely. However, with all these republican candidates, and some of these people are not stupid people. They’re looking at this. And clearly, some of them some of them may be just looking for book deals or looking for vice presidency or looking for whatever. But some of them are looking at this thinking, there might be an opening here.

So I wanted to get your sense. So let’s let’s play out the next several months. The Jack Smith comes down with some sweeping indictments of Donald Trump, either at Mar a Lago or January sixth or both. The charge come down in Georgia, which are gonna come down in August. Do you see anything here that changes the conventional wisdom?

Is there any scenario at which the whatever is left of the tattered mythical Republican establishment or where the base goes. Yeah. Time to give Donald Trump his gold watch because we cannot have a candidate who goes to the nominating convention as a convicted felon wearing an ankle bracelet. This is there anything out there that could change this?

I’m just being straight up frank about it. I don’t see it. I just gave you an example of why I don’t see it. When the man’s indicted his numbers go up, they didn’t go down. And convicted doesn’t make a difference.

And convicted that as a as a total group this past weekend that I I spoke to out in California, that there’s nothing in our constitution that will prevent Donald Trump from being the nominee of this party because he was indicted because he’s on trial or because he’s convicted. In fact, he can actually go on and win the general election and be president from jail. There’s nothing that prevents that. And so the reality of it is you have to know the man you’re dealing with people. None of those are obstacles for Donald Trump.

They’re not obstacles. They’re opportunities. And so they further the victimhood narrative, the witch hunt narrative, the anti government narratives. I mean, you’ve already had his base, particularly the more exerciseable members. Already screening out there about, you know, they’re gonna defend Trump.

Everybody made a big deal where there wasn’t this big march on, you know, Mar a Lago and protest in New York. No. There wasn’t, because Donald Trump really didn’t call for that. He didn’t really excite them to do that. He was like, okay.

Yeah. You know, if you wanna show up, you can. But they’re channeling in a whole different network now. They learned a lot from two thousand twenty. They’ve learned a lot.

And my fear is that we haven’t because we’re still looking at Donald Trump through a conventional presidential lens. He is not. Get over it. You will have to tactically understand what this man is willing to do to get this job. He made it clear to his base.

I am your retribution. This is not about wanting to be president because of a policy of making the country better, this is becoming president for retribution. And there’s nothing that will stop that from his perspective. And we’ll see whether or not Republicans can man up enough to, you know, put someone in front of them that can get the job done. But here’s the problem Charlie Sykes base is not looking for kumbaya.

You know Tim Scott is trying to sound like Reagan. They’ve already kicked Reagan’s ass to the curb. They want someone who’s going to break thing, cuss people out, tear up things. They don’t want someone who’s that, oh let’s all hold hands and see morning in America. They’re like f morning in America, and that’s the problem.

I just had a flashing image here. Which I probably should keep to myself because, you know, any sort of visions like this are probably not appropriate for a podcast. But here’s my vision. It is Milwaukee. It is the summer of twenty twenty four.

And Donald Trump, who is a convicted felon out of New York, steps from behind the podium, pulls up his pants leg, shows the ankle bracelet and says, I wear this as a badge of honor. I wear this for you. For you.

The

crowd would go fucking out of their minds.

Boom. You know, it erupts. It erupts. Women and children passed out weeping. Yeah.

Yes. They’re weeping. It it’s yeah. That’s exactly what happens. That’s exactly what happens.

And that’s what our media and our political class still don’t get about the man in front of them. After all this time, they still don’t understand that,

I think you are right. And I’m sorry that that image is so vivid in my mind right now because

I can really release it. For all the people

out there who are saying, you’ve dealt with these folks, you know, the the wishful thinkers, the wish casters out there. Well, he really wouldn’t win while I mean, he would drop out then. Right? Or he wouldn’t he would he wouldn’t wanna put himself — Oh, no. — have you been paying attention?

Do you understand who this man is?

I mean I mean come on anyone in their right mind would have quit the presidential race in twenty sixteen after access Hollywood. Let alone all the other stuff that was revealed by that point, and Donald Trump was like, I’m not going anywhere.

He is not going anywhere and he’s not going quietly and he’s not going graciously what part of this do you not understand. Michael Steel is the host of the Michael Secret Podcast, the political analyst for MSNBC, the former chair of the Republican National Committee and he was lieutenant governor of Maryland from two thousand three to two thousand seven Michael. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast today.

Charlie Sykes always a treat where we’re together, man. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. And thank you

all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow do this all over again with a new episode of the Trump trials with Ben Willis. Secret Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, an engineered and edited by Jason Brown.