Ron’s Junk Science

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level. I’m JVL here with my my best friends, Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of The Bulwark. And the three of us are coming to Seattle. We’re gonna be out there on January twenty first taping this show live if you were in the area in the area, come out and hang out with us.

It’s gonna be a lot of fun. We’re gonna have Dan Savage come out as a special guest buddy. He and Tim will do very blue talk about politics and sex and all sorts of stuff afterwards. And then we’ll all hang together and, like, meet one another and have fellowship Oh, how I love fellowship and company and being with people?

You know, Seattle is like the, I think, maybe biggest city in America never really spent time and I’ve been there, but I haven’t I I’ve not gone to the Pike’s Peak market. I’ve not gone to the needle. We could

just Like, twice a day together. On Pike’s Peak.

Whatever it just pikes being caught on a swing. That shows you how little I know about Seattle. It’s not a swing state.

The barcades. Seattle is, I believe, the pioneer of the barcade which is an arcade with

a ball. I don’t wanna go to You don’t

wanna go and play like nineteen seventy’s era pinball machines while you have a beer? I’m gonna provide a list of

tourist destinations I would like to go to, and then you guys can go to the barcode when I peel off of the gay bar.

Okay. Well, I’m sure that there is a gay barcode we can go to

or talk. I don’t know.

Are there gay video games? Are there specifically, like, arcade games that are just referred to as super

gay? Because I gotta say I always looked at tempest and thought, it’s a little gag. So I’m not familiar with that culture, but yes, not only are there gay video games, there’s like a specific brand of gay that says that they’re a gamer, but they put the y in gamer. And and they have, like, little communities. I I don’t

have a lot

more info that I can provide at Sebastian. We have one camera on the production side here. Yeah. The camera right

here with us. Yeah. Anyway, it’s gonna be great. Go to the bulwark dot com slash no b s or click on the thing. It’s right there when you hit all of the subscribe and likes for this and all the other things we do.

Guys, Ron DeSantis is making his move. He did a big announcement this week. About how he is going to take on all of the terrible vaccine people. I will just do this really quickly. He is empaneling a grand jury to investigate the mRNA shots and big pharma, capital b, capital p, I guess, for all of the terrible things that they’ve done in saving lives.

He is going to investigate cardiac related deaths tied to the vaccines. We’ll talk about that in a minute because he’s quack surgeon general Joseph Filippo has published an anonymous study that he did in which he doesn’t reveal any of the important details of his methodology and blah, blah,

blah. I’m glad we have you to take us through that with your Johns Hopkins background.

Yeah. He’s wanting

the doctor. One eight.

I’m I’m one eight. Basically, I’m as much of a doctor as JoseFledelba as. And and he’s forming a public health integrity committee to oversee the medical establishment because as governor DeSantis says, we’ve reached the point. Sadly, where anything coming from the CDC or NIH or FDA is not worth the paper it’s printed on. Thoughts because I’m gonna be honest.

This sort of thing makes me angry. It makes me into an angry

Not

you. Not you. I have a thought on this, which is that, I guess, this is the play for DeSantis against Trump. Right? The play for DeSantis is Trump was too accommodating of the public health community, made a bunch of bad decisions, shut things down, and Ron DeSantis knew better AND HE KEPT FLORIDA OPEN AND THAT’S WHY HE’S AMERICA’S GREATEST GOVERNOR AND THAT’S WHY HE SHOULD BE PRESIDENT AND DONALD TRUMP SHOULDN’T.

SO I GES I NOW HEAD CHECKPOINTS ALONG HIGHWAYS IN FLORIDA. During COVID. Florida literally set up checkpoints on long highways to control access from, you know, people coming from the north who may have not Yeah.

Well, so other well, because other governor, like Christie Noam, has taken side long shots at DeSantis for some of his early day activity. But now he’s arguably the biggest branding exercise for him. The reason that he became popular and talked about as a potential presidential candidate is because he was bucking the trends on COVID, because he was bucking the public health community. And so I guess I’m just not that surprised to see him lean into it, although he is doing something that I’m not sure is strategically wise. Dan, Santa’s whole pitch for the National Review Crowd is this is our fusion candidate.

Right? Like, this is a guy who can appeal to normies in a general election. And I don’t know that becoming like a A SERIOUSLY INTENSE ANTIVACCER IS THE PATH TO NORMALOWN.

TIM YOU WILL TELL SARA, RIGHT? HE’S NOT ANTIVACC He is just asking questions.

He’s just asking questions. Look, he’s

not prosecuting the the big pharma. He’s just empowering a grand jury. He’s not saying that, you know, that he would disband the CDC. He’s simply setting up an oversight panel so we can all have a discussion. The anti Antis are all gonna look at this and say, well, he doesn’t really mean any of it.

I would ask your just

generous discretion to not start another podcast by immediately getting into the meta conversation about how the anti Antis are are processing their support around DeSantis in the face of

his

obvious agonist. So I have a couple other thoughts about Rhonda’s Sandoz’s move. It’s funny when I saw the press conference yesterday because over the past few days, From Oakland, I’ve been having some let’s just call them very pleasant conversations with people that worked for an organization called Turning Point USA. And that’s because I’m trying to I would like to attend the turning point USA Conference happening this coming weekend. I think I’ve gotten there.

I think I’ve

finally gotten in to the t shirt cannon?

I I I was hoping to. I told them I’d be a good boy. I’ve been trying to get a credential. You’d think that, yep, they don’t wanna silence people. It’s a big part of their messaging.

Over there and not canceling and silencing people. So I hope that I’ve I’ve got that. I don’t have a final final decision yet, but people will know by next week’s podcast because I’ll I’ll give a recap if if I am able to go. But it was interesting to see Ron DeSantis press conference yesterday because during one of those conversations, I was just having a casual just kinda temp check one of the gents about, you know, kind of the DeSantis Trump thing. And the feedback was that A major animating thing among the turning point MAGA crowd is COVID still, and that this is DeSantis’ big position.

So to Sarah’s point, like, this is obviously a political and positioning move. So I was interested to see the press conference yesterday because It’s very blatant. Right? Like it is it’s not even at all subtle. Right?

Like the this is attempt to get to the other side of Trump not to care about what meaningless national review people think, but to solidify the maga crowd, the people that will be at turning point USA events because this is something that they are animated by and the other folks will just, you know, figure out a way to get on board and justify it. And so I think, like, from a political standpoint, there’s no doubt. That is what’s happening here. And so, you know, I think that that we can take that as a as a data point about what around DeSantis’ plans are. From then a strategic point and a public health point, but the merits of this.

I’m not sure he needs to do this. Maybe he really believes it. Don’t know. Maybe Joseph Lidopa has gotten in his head and like he thinks that he’s the one person that sees this thing clearly. I don’t I things are kind of going to Santos’ way right now.

Like, why inject into the cycle this, like, pretty clear anti virus or for how any normal people will process it? You know, the vaccine was a magic. It was lifesaving. It changed the whole our whole society. Thousands upon thousands of people are alive because of the vaccine.

The reason why America is doing so well and China is going doing so poorly right now is because China’s vaccine is a piece of shit. And our vaccine actually worked. It should be a moment of celebration of the free market system, celebration of American ingenuity. And I think this shows a just horrible judgment. I think it it will not appeal at all in the general election, but I think it also is a sign of where the party is.

Is going. Right? That, like, you could imagine a situation where, you know, maybe somebody who took a more libertarian bet. Said, Trump listened to Fauci too much, too many lockdowns. But, like, hey, the

free market is great. The vaccines are great. America is great. Whoo. Whoo.

You know, a whole cogan writing of a loss after. That’s not what this is. Like, this is

populist bullshit. You know, the bulwark, we crushed Donald Trump. All day every day throughout the pandemic. With the exception of Operation Warp Speed, before it produced a vaccine, we ran pieces at the bulwark dot com. Saying that the operation warp speed the way it was constructed by bringing in people from the industry and not just making it researchers and academics.

Was well constructed and was likely to lead to a good outcome. You know, there are a handful of things that the Trump administration was basically right on. Banning TikTok is another one even though they can go go through with it. This is one of the few things that he got right. We have a study out this week by the Commonwealth Institute.

Suggesting that the vaccines in the US saved a little bit more than three million American lives. Wow. I

was under understood.

Wanda scientists is going to be out there. When this is not I’m sorry. I’m full of busterings, Sarah. This is not a dead issue. This is a live issue.

Four hundred fifty people are dying from COVID every day. Still, every day. And the vast majority of them are people who refuse to get vaccinated? Okay.

So I’m looking at this report from the scientific American. It says three hundred and thirty five.

I’ve been looking at the daily death tables and it’s our rolling seven day average is about four fifty to four seventy, four eighty.

Okay. Yeah. K.

These are these are daily deaths we’re talking about. Daily deaths. Daily deaths. And it’s almost entirely among the unvaccinated population. If you have the the full the full spectrum vaccine

with the virus, actually.

Which not.

Old old people. The old old vaccinated people are also a big part of that number.

Old people, but old people who’ve been vaccinated and boosted are still a very very small percentage. Your outcomes, your case fatality rate regardless of age. Are much much lower if you are vaccinated boosted versus unvaxed. I

just read something about this. Like, because so many people are vaccinated, like, in raw numbers, you know, there actually is a significant percentage of people who are vaccinated who are dying because so many old people got vaccinated. Thank God and some old, you know, some old people. So in raw numbers, they’re star. But by percentage, you’re you’re

right. Of course.

And so this is a this you know, this is a thing which Ron DeSantis cannot possibly believe. Rhonda Sanchez’s wife had breast cancer. She had to undergo surgery. She underwent long treatments. If Rhonda Santos truly believes that nothing which comes out of the CDC and the NIH and the FDA is worth the paper is printed on, then what was he basing his medical decisions upon over, you know, he and his wife over her fight with cancer?

And thank God, she’s cancer free now. She’d be cancer, which is great. But this suggests to me that Rhonda Sanders does not believe that these things are are not worth the paper that are printed on. And that this is like so much else of his administration it’s performative governance, which is terrifying. Right?

This is the the the stop woke act, which was his attempt to to strike down you know, the evil CRT has been basically gutted by the courts, you know, stripping Disney of its really creek special privileges that is now being unwound in the Florida legislature. And the climb down excuse is, oh, well, now that Bob Chapeck has gone and Bob Iger is back as CEO, This was really about the CEO. It wasn’t really about the company itself, which is an insane position. All of these things, they’re just nobody’s gonna be indicted by the grand jury in Florida. Right?

Nobody’s going to jail because of this. And it’s purely performative and it’s disgusting and evil. Too far? Too much no?

Well, I guess, here’s the thing. The CDC does go overboard. Sometimes. Like, I have been critical of the CDC in the past for lots of their recommendations that are far too conservative and that are like, you know, around like women in drinking or what are like WHO. A lot of these public health can be they can they can go too far and they can make recommendations that, like, sensible people can say, I understand in a perfect world we’d all be eating like all these vegetables and like we’d never drink and all of this stuff.

But like when it turns into legislation that impacts people’s lives, we should be pretty light on how much we’re, like, demanding that people do This is just my conservative libertarian instincts. Sears going to

be like Dental government recommendations by the CDC go a little too far for you. I like to make

we will not this is not we’re not with dance adage. And when we are, I won’t entertain these conversations either. No. But, like, you know, we’re not we don’t have, like, mandatory vegetables. Like, vegetables are good for us.

Like, smoking is bad for us. People will kill us. And and I think that DeSantis could lean on the fact that he said, like, we wanna keep things open. But going down this rabbit hole, on the sort of the anti vaccine to outflank Trump. And I’m sort of surprised you’re doing it because I feel like there was a real lesson to be learned from this last election which is that people are putting a pretty high premium on like normie good governmenting and a pretty low premium on like being a weirdo anti vaccineist.

And so Tim’s point, I think, is correct, where he’s gotta figure out how to separate Trump. From his voters. Right? And so he’s trying to outflank him here. I just think it’s actually kind of a dangerous play for him like, he’s wrong on the science of the vaccines are good.

Like, the idea is, like, the vaccines are bad as a as a proposition is very silly.

I put a finer point on your argument. Because there are legitimate criticisms of some of the CDC recommendations, because like the FDA, like there are legitimate, normal, smart free market, even center left, like, criticisms of the FDA approval process or even public health criticisms of it. Right? The like, they say that they’re too conservative holding things back you know, it’s sort

of a booster rollout. Remember, there was a surge in criticism of the of the FDA over over the approval of boosters and it was too slow. Saying

with the monkeypox vaccine, there were fair criticisms that were happening. Right? But that they were being too conscious. This was approved in Europe, and it’s like this thing was spreading very quickly. Like, why not get it under control quicker than they did.

They ended up approving it decently quick. But I they’re fair to so the the point though is that you could do the the soap box.

Right.

You know, him in Florida campaign of, like, oh, these CDs. These elite, like, you know, pencil pushers wanna tell us what to do, and their recommendations were wrong, and they were overly, you know, their mask recommendations, like, didn’t meet with the actual science was and not, you know, we we should have have more access to medicines. Right? Like, there there are plenty of, like, legitimate criticisms. Like, So to do this is just, like, wildly irresponsible and madness, and it’s a specific effort to, like, reach the Kansas Owens crowd.

So, like, him saying, like, these legitimate criticisms of Trump’s FDA or CDC, I’m gonna jump over those, and those are kind of implicit and my explicit criticism is gonna be how do I get to Candice Owens’ voters. Right? Who are anti facts and who are unhappy with Trump over the backs? And like that is what’s so gross about this really.

So let me throw two things at you guys. One with why it will work and one one with why it won’t. And the reason it could work is because, again, all of this is phrased in just asking questions. So LODELPO who, you know, puts out a statement yesterday as his unbelievably irresponsible study is being picked apart. And he says, I love the discussion that we’ve stimulated.

Isn’t it great when we discuss science transparently instead of trying to cancel one another? This fucking guy. Mhmm. And that’s you know, it’s like, my study is junk science, Well, but look at the great conversation we’ve stimulated. Right?

And this is what the scientists will do. Because I was just asking questions, you know. We don’t wanna cancel each other just for asking questions. So that’s why it could work. But the reason it could not work is because again, DeSantis doesn’t have the courage of his own convictions.

He is not doing all of his medicine with eitherectin and pills. Right? Like, he he got vaccinated, while he refused to answer the question about whether or not he was vaccinated. His wife underwent cancer treatment, presumably with the best oncologists and medical teams that that exist in Florida. And so this is it is like the Marlboro man not smoking cigarettes because he knows that they’re bad for you.

But going around, you know, doing the was, you know, taking a drag with his lariat and posing for pictures and doing the advertising. And don’t voters smell that? Or are they such rubbs, such idiot Bubba’s? That they can’t even understand that they’re getting getting pandered to?

That was definitely a question for you, Sarah. Any question about whether the voters or rubbs I think you’re the you’re the go to.

Look, I think that this plays I mean, like, this is the thing, not all the voters, not all republican voters, but the folks who are at turning point USA, the folks for whom fighting is the highest level prerequisite beyond, you know, any actual policy position. Right? There’s a decent chunk of those people who now represent the base of the Republican Party, and that’s who he’s trying to been like, look. But this is why I think it’s a gamble. It’s because actually think for a really big chunk of normies, they think the vaccines were good.

Although, I mean, I guess, the the piece that I would offer as wide I’m not sure this is so risky for desantis. This is in retrospect. The public health community doesn’t look great. Right? Like everyone was wearing cloth masks, for all this time.

And, like, it’s hard to not sort of go back and judge these things and think, well, this was stupid. For a year, we were all wearing these cloth masks that offered basically no protection. We’re making kids wear them. The kids keep it being kept out of schools like there’s gonna story after story after story about the mental health and learning fallout from the kids not being in schools. You know, I just I think that There’s a reason he wants to circle around.

The I was right about this in the public health community was wrong. And also, you know, it’s not I think a lot of reasonable people can say, Look, they said that the vaccine was gonna, you know, was gonna solve this in a lot of ways. Like, and they did get a little oversold in the beginning. Like, it turns out you needed a ton of boosters, and then you were still gonna get COVID. At the end of the day, it was not gonna keep you from getting COVID.

It was gonna just it was gonna help keep you from dying. Especially if you were under the age of sixty five. Yeah.

I mean so I I guess I’m

gonna have to disagree on on just the on whether I think that that is a working message it comes to twenty twenty. And again, maybe in the primary, I wanna set aside the primary. I think we all agree that this is a good play just practically speaking for the primary voter. Yep. It’s gonna work.

Primary voter cares about this. It’s an it’s an easy wedge with Trump. Okay. So let’s set that aside. The other element about just this whole, like, COVID debate in the public sphere and like

the narrative around COVID and what was right and what was wrong. I

think everybody has has real things that we wish we’d have done better, you know, like the perfect. Like, matched against the perfect. We didn’t do great. Match against China. We’re doing pretty good.

Match against letting three million more people die. We’re doing pretty good, matched against Florida, like, weirdly having a spike in the COVID-nineteen after the vaccine became available. I think we’re doing pretty good compared to that. States where people got vaccinated. So we’re in December

of twenty twenty two. So twenty months from now, in September of twenty twenty four,

when, like, some people are getting their COVID fall booster, and some people are getting their flu booster, the like, that’s just our new reality. Is this gonna be work? Right? Like, are people really gonna wanna be, like, here Ron DeSantis in the debates in September of twenty twenty four? Be like, I was right, and Joe Biden was wrong.

We shouldn’t have masked the kids. We shouldn’t have had so many vaccine boosters. I don’t know. I think most people are gonna be kinda like, dudes. I don’t know.

Well, no. Because

this is well, this will be a test. And I think this is one of the things we really don’t know about around the scientist. Right? Is is what quality of politician is he? Like, is he good at this?

Yeah. And

it could be that he’s actually, as I suspect, it’s just on the Guardians podcast, and they were like, what’s your prediction for twenty twenty three? Something that you think would surprise people. And I was like, Rhonda Santos. Totally gonna fall apart. He won’t be the main challenger to Trump.

And I think part of that is because I think looking at him, I’m not sure that he’s particularly good at this, but let’s say he was. Let’s just take the affirmative case. Brondesantis is a relatively good politician. He’s not arguing in the general election to normally voters that you know, he’s not talking about, like, you shouldn’t vaccinate people. Whatever.

What he’s saying is he’s lamenting the Democrat’s entire approach to education. Including how they kept our kids out of schools and how look at the fallout that we’re dealing with, and he sounds concerned. He’ll say, I have a young family. And watching the mental health struggles of these kids because of the Democrats overzealous big government policies. We cannot have people like that running our like, that’s how what he’ll do.

And, like, for the normies, that’ll play a little bit. It played for Youngkin. That’s how I think

They don’t really work in the midterms. I think the salience of this is just is, like, by the week, is, like, I think this is a high salience issue for Bethany Mandel and, like, the twenty two people that moved to Florida. You know, because they were spending too much time reading top conservatives on Twitter. But I just I I think if this is increasingly a low salient issue for for

other people. So he might he might turn out to come off like a crazy person, a crazy obsessive person about this.

But you’re right. In theory, sure, it could be one data point. That’s not what he’s doing right

now. And I don’t think it’s this whole campaign. Yeah. No, I agree with you on the reduced like, we are living with COVID in a way now that is totally different and where assuming that nobody starts, like, capping our kids back out of school and there’s not, like, constant remasking policies. Ten

percent of society COVID made them go crazy. And, like, half of those people, like, moved to Florida and are still talking about microcardiitis and and the Ivermectin, like Grand DeSantis, and five percent of those people are still weirdly masking in, like, outside of the park for some reason. And but I I don’t neither of those, I

don’t think are winning political strategies for the normies, but I I do think probably he’s working for him with the TP USA crowd. Let’s hope so. So this leads us

into the twenty twenty four perspective polling. We have four polls out over the last week or so. They are DeSantis plus twenty, DeSantis plus fourteen, DeSantis plus five, and DeSantis plus two. These polls are very in quality. Head to head with Trump.

And very in quality, you look at polling for the last month, and it’s literally all over the map. Some of them, you’ll have Trump plus thirty six, some you’ll have DeSantis plus twenty. It is hard for me to get a handle on all this. But what I guess what I was trying to drive at when I asked about the phony stuff, was that, like, Republican voters smelled the phony on Ted Cruz. Right?

They smelled the phony on Marco Rubio. Will they smell that with DeSantis? Or will they accept him as as authentic in the way that they accepted Trump? Right? I mean, Trump was accepted as an authentic whatever he is, maybe an authentic phony.

But, like, you know, as being real, and authenticity is is the coin of the realm. And so which way does

the Santa’s break? And what do you think about these numbers? The short term impact of the numbers is, I think he’s obviously running. Right? And I I don’t think that this was obvious a month ago.

Right? That he was gonna run. And maybe that’s wrong. Maybe decided two years ago, but I I think at least there were there were some doubts about whether or not that it was smart friend to run. And I think, clearly, if he’s winning head to head polls and he’s trying to outflank Trump on anti Vax bullshit, then, like, all signs point him running.

So I think that’s the short term impact. Whether he wears well, I don’t know. I don’t I guess I would disagree. I don’t think that he will totally fall apart in twenty twenty three. I think that he can at least spend the first half of the year doing what he knows how to do.

Stay on Fox, criticize them of the elite media, like kind of like duck and dive around the craziest Trump stuff. Like, eventually that will, you know, have to come to a head. And whether he survives that is a totally open question. I would go so far as to say, I’m trying to think about twenty sixteen. I think as strong as anybody has looked ever against Trump in the head to head.

I I guess may there was a brief moment in the fall of twenty fifteen when our campaign was tanking, and it looks like Rubio was kind of consolidating. And it looks like going up in the polls, like, before the you know, kind of debates hit where he, you know, got turned into little Marco. So I think that is probably the most akin to this. Like, in that moment in the fall, I think you would thought. It’s a fifty fifty coincidence that probably Lien Rubio right now of twenty fifteen, and that’s probably what we’re at on Trump now.

So he’s about as weak as as he’s ever been in in one of these situations.

Yeah. So I wanna tag on to the Trump is right now in this moment extremely weak. I’m very interested in what the dynamics look like once these indictments come Like, the January sixth committee is gonna do a referral on Trump to DOJ almost certainly Georgia, the investigation there, is almost certainly gonna manifest an indictment. And then the Mar a Lago documents that were with the special council are also almost certainly gonna result in an indictment. And so one of two things can happen.

Because I I I wanna say that the midterms changed everything. I said DeSantis wasn’t gonna run. Like, I did a whole thread on why I didn’t think DeSantis was gonna run before the election, and I don’t think that anymore because of how weak Trump is. Right? And the total diminishment of Trump’s strength, both by the complete and total loss, and also because of how wobbly the party’s gotten now because it is It is so uneven with the MAGA fact.

Like, everybody who’s in leadership positions is facing challenges. They are going into their new role or this much much weaker than they would have thought. Ronald is much weaker. McCarthy is much weaker. McConnell is much weaker.

They are fielding challenges from within their ranks or — Mhmm. — with crazier ranks. And so I just think that with Trump as weak as he is, it’s enticing not just for us to say, so I think it’s gonna entice a lot of people into the field. I think we’re gonna end up actually with a big crowded field. My big thing is I’m not sure that DeSantis under scrutiny, and also now as the front runner, as the perceived front runner out of the gate, everybody’s gonna attack him.

Right? And we’re like, I just think the dynamics of the twenty three, the shadow primary that’s gonna happen in twenty three, are super interesting and wildly unpredictable. Maybe everyone’s attacking DeSantis and not Trump. And they weirdly line up with Trump because he’s being attacked unfairly by the deep state. And it actually helps Trump sort of regain kind of a foothold and some power from which to attack.

Or Trump is done. And I’ll tell you, I’m the focus The polling doesn’t surprise me. The focus groups, I’ve done several since the election. I’ve I’ve just been sort of collecting this evidence, but I’ll share because I I don’t wanna just an inside thought here, but I wanna segment these groups out better than we’re doing. So right now, we’re just doing Trump twenty sixteen, Trump twenty twenty voters.

And I’ve only found one person who’s excited that Trump is running again in twenty twenty four. The rest of them are like, and they’re excited about to see it this. Like, DeSantis is the number one name. One of the Georgia groups talked about how there’s already DeSantis twenty four sign lawn signs in her neighborhood. Like, she saw a lawn sign.

And so There’s no doubt he is in this position of strength in this moment. But I wanna know if I segmented by people who think about Trump very favorably, versus people who who think about him just, like, okay. Right.

Like

you put in

a focus group request, Trump — Yeah. — twenty sixteen primary voters. Trump

wants to see primary voters. Like, are they still with him or are they migrating away? Like, those are unanswered questions. I don’t think there’s been like, these pollings are garbage. Like, they’re reflecting, I think, a shift in overall sentiment, which I’m seeing too in the focus groups, but I don’t think they give us a good sense of what proportion of the megabase remains intact for Trump.

And I just think that’s like a key piece of information that we don’t know. Yeah.

I mean, I think it’s pretty clear that at this point, head to head polls with Trump and DeSantis are really Trump or somebody else. Like, DeSantis is just the stand in for not Trump. Don’t you think?

No. I

don’t think that. No. You don’t think that? I don’t think

No. I think DeSantis has emerged as a the the Trump without the baggage, the Trump with brains, you know, the person who is like Trump, but not have all the bad stuff.

Right after that?

Heads head to head would be Trump plus fifty.

Yeah. Totally.

It’s Close to that. There is a Trump head to head. Yeah. But Pence is, of course, like, isn’t unperson. Yeah.

Sure. So Alright. So You know?

Alright. But can the guy can I just say one last thing on this point of it? Just twenty twenty three because I’ve been thinking a lot about it. I will say, again, on the midterms, changed everything I do think it’s an opportunity, you know, people are feeling a little dejected because of all the losing. Right?

And so there’s this weird moment where I actually think suddenly anything’s possible again. I’m gonna just be like optimistic, Sarah, for a little bit, and I’m not saying like, Larry Hogan, twenty twenty four, like, remains like a huge thing. But like Chris and Nuna. I’ve seen, like, him talk about getting in. Now he is an interesting person.

He’s he’s in our kinda anti Trump vein, although he’s played nice with him fine, and he supported Baldwin, I think, horribly as a as a horrible judgment call, but he did but that guy has an early primary state advantage and in that region quite a lot of name recognition. And, like, maybe it’s quite a good politician. Like, I’m just I am now in my mode of I think lots of people should run. I think there’s specific appetite for DeSantis, but I think it’s shallow. And I think that people could move to somebody else.

Even somebody kinda norm me because they’re sick of losing and one of the things these focus groups keep saying is like we gotta win. We need somebody who can win. And right now, they think that’s DeSantis, but that may not hold up. He may be too polarizing. You

know.

Although the Biden head to heads were Trump losing to Biden by seven points to Santa’s beating Biden by seven points. I

found that very hard to

believe. Yeah. I saw that in one of the polls. I’ve seen others other things showing it basically a coin flip with DeSantis Biden and but it’s basically a coin flip if it’s Trump Biden anyway. I mean, you know, maybe, you know, we’re we’re nailing around the edges.

Alright. Now for that, the Twitter files God help us are still happening. We have a great piece on the bulwark dot com today by Kathy Young about this and Kathy and her printer naturally even handed way tries to see both sides of it and comes away thinking like, jeez, this is these two things are not like the other. I just wanna preface this by saying, I have seen a lot of people on the left. Who are engaging in some revisionist history in which they make the Twitter as it existed twelve months ago into this this lovely golden age, which Elon Musk has ruined.

And Twitter has been a a doomsday machine for American society from the beginning. It was terrible. Under the old regime was

really cute right in the beginning when we just thought it was we were telling our little friends where we were You know?

Maybe it was cute when there was a hundred thousand people on.

That very first summer when I was like, hey, I’m at CloudNine, everybody. Come hang out. And it’s like, you know, and it would be like a blurry picture of your one friend making out with a stranger and their other friends can get to see it live. I don’t know. That was great for, like Maybe that was a big story.

It was, like, eight week golden era in two thousand and seven.

Terrible for forever. And everybody should be off of Twitter. And if you are a liberal who needs to tell yourself that Twitter is now uniquely bad in order to get off of it. I’m not gonna begrudge you that, but you should get off of it anyway and you should not get on to TikTok. You go go to post news or go to Reddit or Go to Substack.

You don’t need Twitter in your life. There. I said it. There are.

Stay on Twitter. Twitter’s great. Twitter’s fine.

I’m addicted to my life. I’m addicted and I don’t and I don’t care. I’m an addict and it’s fine. I’m like the all I’m like the lady that they interview is a hundred and two smoking marbarrels on her front porch. The local paper comes to talk to her and they’re like, what’s your what’s the key to your life’s success?

She’s like, I knew these things are supposed to kill me, but I’ve been doing a pack a day. Ever since I was eighteen, and that’s gonna be me with Twitter. I’m gonna be doing twelve tweets on

TikTok. You might as well just go all in with the

ChikTok. I am on TikTok. I don’t care. You can have my data. I am concerned with TikTok algorithm.

That’s another topic. Here’s my thing on the latest since we last spoke of the Twitter files, the the most recent little batch. Has been about the Trump takedown. Taking Trump off with Twitter. I just like, once again, I just wanna

say, to the people, to my friend, Barry Rice, and and Glen Greenwood and Matt T. E. V. And other people, we agree. I we kind of agree.

I don’t know. Not everybody J. V. L. Was for the take to of Trump off Twitter.

I was kind of against like, I think we had mixed views on the Bulwark. It was totally kind of ad hoc and crazy for them to take Trump down, but leave Ayatollah Khomeini up there, like, they didn’t have any clear policies. Like, agree. Agree. What I don’t understand is, like, is the subtext of the PR that these guys are putting out for Elon?

Is that, like, this was all, like, a horrible scandal that was that was an attempt to help the Democratic Party, and they were

like violated international law. I mean, there are Geneva courts written about how the process is supposed to go. And — Yeah. — private company can’t do it. I mean, it’s not like the process that we have in place now under the new regime for keeping Alex Jones off of Twitter.

Mhmm.

Right? That — Tanya. —

well thought out rigorous process, which is totally transparent, and everybody Yeah.

Or Elon’s jet. He just cut up, like,

some

guy has a a account

some guy’s account where he follows Elon’s jet and, like, that just

got canceled. You know? So it’s, like, Okay. Like concur. Like, it was they didn’t have clear policies.

But they’re a private company, they could kinda do what they want. I I think they were flawed humans trying to make judgment calls. Trump did just Also,

it’s always been a shit show from the beginning.

Yeah. Trump did just burn an attack on the capital, so it’s kind of a and and here and where we are today, Like, usually, when you have these sorts of things, it’s like, oh, okay. Well, we’re gonna review all this so we learn more for the future. Like, that’s okay. Maybe we need a Blue Ribbon Commission to study this stuff of But, like, Jack has already said that this was wrong.

Jack sold the platform to Elon. Elon’s running it in his own fucked up way. Like, shouldn’t we be investing giving Elon? Like, who can like, what, you know, what what do you guys want? I I still don’t understand what they want.

The I think

because I now log the list

in the public

space. Attention.

Attention is what they want attention. Okay.

And so and that’s not a issue with it. And when

you get close to Elon, because when you get close to Elon, you get money. Okay. This is

But they also I’ve told I’ve talked to JBL about this, but it’s also about providing, I think, their audiences with this sense that they were justified to tolerate the last seven years of what’s happening with all the Trump stuff because the left is doing these things. Right? Like, there is this. This

is the safe space.

Yeah. This is the safe space for people. And and it’s how they what about, it’s how they both sides, it’s how they create the illusion for themselves that, like, well, of course yeah. I mean, Trump is bad. I don’t like Trump, but, like, look at this.

Look at what the left is doing. Look at what they’re doing on Twitter. They’re shadow banning people.

Look what happened to Charlie Kirk when he was de visibleified writer have his village of visibility reduced on Twitter. He just disappeared. He was unable to get his viewpoint across in any form, anywhere in America, and he went out of business. Well,

Charlie, I don’t know if you’re listening, but JBL might be sounding sarcastic then, but I do. I’m not being sarcastic and I do agree with your plight and I I would like to be credentialed for the turning point USA Festival this weekend in Phoenix.

But here’s what I here’s what really grinds my gears here is the self righteousness of the people who are presenting the Twitter files in the most slanted And, like, the the people who are, like, oh, just asking questions. Good faith. Are The manner in which the entire thing is being conducted is, like, a parody and

they’re all terrible. They still haven’t released I mean, Matt Tyebe in the very first thread said, oh, by the way, also we have evidence that the Trump White House requested things to be taken down. But that’s the only note of that we’ve had. Still, there there have been, like, hundreds of tweets across a dozen

thousands. There’s multiple

different

characters, and they’re all, like, you know, getting new followers off of this and nobody’s followed up on, like, even that one point. They’re not

even trying. Like like, you would think that even if it was a PR attempt for Elon, but they were, like, trying to seem even handed. They might throw a few bones and be, like, oh, and here’s one thing that we uncovered they did that hurt conservatives. Like, I made a joke on Twitter, justice for the Crafts and Steens. Like, where how have we have we found the email internal emails between y’all l’Roth about why the liberal crafts and stream brother stole a band for Twitter.

Like, just throw them in the mix just together for testing. Guys, what happened to those of you. Ban for Twitter. They got actually the platform. They live in Miami now.

I sent that tweet out as a joke. AND THE PLANT CRESTINSTEIN’S WIFE DEEMED ME AND ONE OF THE CRESTIN’S BROTHER’S MESSAGE ME ON LIKTON, LETTING ME KNOW THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO TELL ME THE BACK STORY of how they got deplatformed. And I my point is,

I don’t care. It was Jack’s judgment call. You guys had other things, like, whatever. I’m sorry. Anyway, but they’re

not even trying to do that. It’s it’s just all it’s just total supplication to, like, the Elon narrative.

Yeah. But also, here’s the thing. So I just think people should care less. About Twitter in general. Mhmm.

Like, I think we should I likes to wanna tweet, but I just, like, all the machinations around Twitter, like, I don’t know. Donald Trump was texting with the whole Fox News primetime lineup about the coup, and they were like, I I just like, the the extent to which that president’s like, doc like, Donald Trump has his own media apparatus, but she totally controlled. And and it was, like, a major cable channel. But I also am just Noah Smith had this thread on Twitter that I thought was I sort of thought was good ish in that or I guess it’s a little how I’ve been thinking about it. But Jack was probably more sympathetic to the left when he was running Twitter.

Elon is clearly like Elon wants it to be a platform that right wingers use. Right? Get her. Right? Yeah.

No. He wants it to be and so, like, he’s in charge now and he’s gonna make it a place in which conservatives are more likely to thrive than they were under the previous regime. And it’s up to us. I I don’t know if you read pop hat, you know, left Twitter, which I’m super disappointed about. I liked his tweets, and I thought he was red.

It’s good for America that he liked his last tweet. He’s good. Yeah. So I I I was in white. I’m saying I’m sorry.

Left. Him is great.

And look, he can, and that’s what people will do. Like, either an alternative will spring up in the face of Elon’s, what is just like an incredibly unbelievable mismanagement of this product. And like people will leave and start a competitor that is for journalists that and others where people feel like they’re on a responsible platform. Either that’ll happen or people will stay

on the border and

they will accept like Elon Musk’s like, insane Mago regime. But, like, it is his and, like, this is what’s happening.

One final thought for me on this is concerning, and I I put it on the newsletter. And here is where I get really worried. Is I don’t know. Did you see Tucker last night, Sarah? NewsHour came came out as we were speaking, so I wouldn’t expect that you would have read it, though.

I would expect you would have read it. Had you had the chance because you read my material unlike some other materials. But I guess newsletters are, I know, key reading for you. But Tucker, last night, he did a long kind of Russia conspiracy rant about all the unknown things we don’t know about. Like like who really did the Nord Stream pipeline?

Damage and, you know, who really hacked the DNC and all this? And he’s like, well, you know who probably might know now is Elon Musk. Because a lot of the people who are involved in these things DM each other on Twitter, and now we have the largest trove of important data ever in the history of man, in the hands of one private person, Elon Musk, and I would like for Elon to start releasing some of that information. So Like Tucker very explicitly called for Elon two, weak people’s private DM’s, including journalist source DM’s, I don’t think that he’ll do that because I think that would be an extinction level event for the site probably. But, anyway, I think I hope he does do it.

Well, I generally concur with you and Noah and Tom’s views of how to handle Twitter and how to care about it versus PoP hats. I do think that potentially we could have some pretty red line y type behavior in front of us. I

hope he does do it because anybody who is conducting sensitive stuff over Twitter GM in the assumption that this for profit company would protect their privacy for forever was basically playing with matches from the beginning. You

don’t Gmail any send you don’t send any sensitive messages over to your Gmail? Fuck no. Okay. What

was that? End to end encrypted. You’re you’re a

you’re a very strange person then.

No. This is why people use WhatsApp or signal. Right? They do end to end encryption for a reason. The Elon Musk once upon a time, tweet it out, use signal when everybody got onto it.

Remember this?

You

know, these things are dangerous. And anything that gets people off of Twitter is good. Because here’s the truth about this. I have all for the accountability of the decisions that Twitter made to make America worse. Which is, you know, pushing people together and creating a mechanism in the user experience, which specifically rewarded combat.

And which is part of what has torn us apart and made everybody crazy and made us think that Twitter is real life. All those things are terrible and are much worse than oh, you know, they took away Donald Trump’s Twitter account. That’s small potatoes compared to all the horrible things that Twitter unleashed on the world. Kill it with fire. Okay.

We have the passing of the let me get this right. The protect marriage act. Earlier this week? Correct. That

was called the respect for Maraj Act.

The respect for the respect for Maraj Act. Which was essentially a repeal of the defensive marriage act? Yep. Because the way we name legislation is totally orwellian. And anyway, and Tim, you wrote a little bit about this.

Would you like to say something?

Yeah. So people can just read it, but I thought me the most interesting element of all this is I was reading my

friend Sasha Isenberg’s book the engagement about kind of how the fight for gay marriage happened. And there was a section that I didn’t know, which is that when Bill Clinton signed Doma in ninety six, he did it at twelve fifty AM. He was still in his leather jacket and cowboy boots from a West Coast campaign trip, took Air Force one back to DC, signed it in the middle of the night, no cameras. You can’t, like,

go into the White House archives and can find a picture of Bill Clinton signing the Defense Ameri Act. So he did it in secret. As kind of a sign of his own White House staff, which included many gay peoples like shame over the fact that they were doing this.

That bill like past eighty five fourteen in the senate. So even more overwhelmingly than this build up. So I just thought about I was watching yesterday’s event first on TV, and then on every single homosexual in Washington’s Instagram feed, who all you know, gave me the same picture of themselves, which is God bless them. God bless those gays. They deserved that picture.

They worked for it. So I got to see many pictures of it. And I I I find that, like, contrast to have been particularly poignant and interesting. You know, this was pretty much a procedural legal move. Right?

Like, nobody’s marriages were really in threat in the short term. Like, it was a it was a protection of a hypothetical future threat. And to me, like, the most interesting thing about yesterday was just that, like, our cultural victory over the closet. And over the fuckers who wanted to, like, make us feel ashamed about our marriages and the fact that, like, Bill Clinton had to, like, sign this thing furtively, you know, away from eyes because he knew it was bad even though he had an even bigger by part of the majority. And Joe Biden, meanwhile, got to, like, do it, like, next to a gay secretary of transportation and next to a VP who, like, talked to Proposition eight when she was attorney general of California.

And, you know, next to, like, I don’t know, twenty five hundred of my gay Instagram friends, I that was nice. I thought that was the meaningful part for me of yesterday. And so I appreciated that and enjoyed it.

Sarah, seventy one percent of the country is in favor same sex marriage. Only twelve Republican senators voted for this. Of them, most of them are either retiring or they’re the people who are on outs with the party like Romney and Murkowski. And there are still like, the heritage foundation is still against same sex marriage and puts out reports about how support for it is actually quite shallow and people wanna get rid of it. What does the Republican Party do with this?

Because presumably some large chunk of their voters are in favor of same sex marriage and some large chunk of their voters are not. Are they gonna litigate this or just hope that it goes away?

They’re not going to litigate this. No survey, Bob. I’ve talked about this before, but I wanna I’m gonna say it a lot, which is one of the things we’re watching happen in the Republican Party. That’s interesting. Twenty nine percent of the people who don’t support it.

It actually sounds about, like, the thirty percent of, like, super committed hardcore. Right? Magas. Right? Even though the Trump was sort of culturally moderate, like, there’s just this faction and it is the faction that is murdering the Republican Party.

This just happened. Right? So part of the story of twenty twenty two is that the base Republican voter, which is MAGA, but it’s also just sort of extreme overall. They are extreme on on abortion. They’re extreme anti gay marriage.

Right? This is who Doug Mastriano was talking to. They’re kind of big enough to control a lot of Republican primaries. Right? And and that’s why Trump got his people in these swing states.

But the gap between those people and the normies who vote in general elections, is getting bigger and bigger for Republicans. It is why they’re desperate for the fusion candidates, and it’s why I think Ron DeSantis is playing a little bit of a dangerous game because these normies just told us in twenty twenty two that they do not like this extreme faction of the Republican Party, and they will reject it even when all the other factors are telling them they’d like to vote for a Republican. And so that gap has become, to me, one of the most fascinating elements of the Republican Party, And so on the marriages, she looked as a reason they went and didn’t blame Duck. And it’s because nobody wanted to do this publicly and have a big public fight about it. I bet there’s actually more Republican senators who are for it, but who were just like, alright, they got their ten.

Like, I don’t need to go fight this because it’s it’s primary bait is what it is. Right? It is it is a thing that you can get hit on in a Republican primary, but like a perfectly good and safe place to be in a general Same with being very accommodating on the issue of choice. Right? Like, you sort of need to be, like, on pro life, but, like, we need all these exceptions and all this other stuff.

Like, good place for the general, but you might go harder. In the primary, the problem is, is that made you unelectable in a general election for a bunch of these people. That

reminds me of a made me think of Jeremy Corbyn and Labour. We need to align me to write about how Labour went through what the Republican Party is doing right now. Like that same description of what is happening with the manufacturing.

Well, the series, you’re talking about the normies not showing up for maggos. But what about the adverse of this? I mean, how committed are the people who are against same sex marriage, who want abortion, outlawed from you know, conception, are they gonna show up to vote for a normie candidate who isn’t willing to take on those fights for them? And maybe the answer is yes. They just will.

I mean, they’re not gonna switch over — That

was Donald Trump. — because they don’t cross over. That was Donald Trump. Right? Like Donald Trump was a secular, thrice married, not particularly concerned with gay marriage.

Everyone knew probably paid for abortions kinda guy. And they voted for him because he had other assets.

That’s a deadline. They voted for DeWine. They showed up for DeWine in Ohio. Yeah. No.

I guess I’ve done it.

Points more than they did for J. D. Vance. Yeah.

Your cheap dates. Speaking of looking at numbers before we leave, nobody’s commented on my zippy my zip up. This is a

it’s the collector’s item. So I did not know that Project Orca manufactured their own brand of ware that’s amazing. Yeah. Is that a fleece

Yeah. It’s a fleece

it’s

a fleece quarter zip project Orca. This is a political collector’s item. There was only I don’t know. I think probably a couple dozen made. I did not get one because I was not on team project Orca.

But after Orca beached in twenty twelve very dramatically when it didn’t work, and the Raffy campaign didn’t have any data on election day. That’s what for people who don’t know. That’s what project Oracle was. That’s what I called their big data team. We had no data on election day.

And so after that I don’t

know what you’re talking

about. You don’t know this story?

No. Can

it just show this name? In twenty twelve, the Romney campaign had something called Project Orca. It was supposed to be the big data response to the Obama political nerd. In two thousand and eight, there are all these articles I can mention Sacha Sisberg again. This author book, The Victory Lab, about the Obama data nerds.

And so the Republicans were like, we need our own data nerds. And so we hired some people from Silicon Valley, and it created a little project. It was secretive. It’s called Project Orca. Wasn’t even revealed till, like, a month before the election, and then there was, like, all these interviews around it.

We’re, like, oh, you guys didn’t know. We’ve been working on this and secret their Republicans are coming back to get them. And then on election day in Boston, or kinda, like, overheated. And so the the whole thing was the data that was supposed to be so bad.

The whole point was that, like, at three o’clock, we were

gonna know which pre syncs we need to get more people out at because all this data was gonna come in via Project Orca. And then at three o’clock, we’re gonna send everybody to the target areas to juice the vote by the one percent the mid round they needed. That was the theory behind it. And so the people that were on the secret team got the got this flip one of these very nice fleece zip ups. And for years, I wanted one.

Occasionally, I’d see someone wear one at a Republican party. I knew that they existed. It was like my personal holy grail to get one. And finally, as part of the deal with a friend of mine, I made a trade. I made a trade of of goods, not services.

And and before she moved, she she gifted me the project Orca Zippy, which is one of my prized

possessions now. What did you give up? Did you give up a piece of political

memorabilia? No. No. It’s private. So it was a private exchange between two closed fronts.

Okay. So I was just wondering if you gave up some amazingness of memorabilia or side of it. Okay.

I gotta tell you, when I saw you wearing that when we got on, I was, like, I didn’t know Tim was, like, so into saving the whales. Like, I didn’t know

the whale thing. I thought

it was, like, a charity. Yeah. That I even when you started explaining it. They were like, when the Orca beach, I was like, when did this happen that they couldn’t get that Orca back in the ocean?

Yeah. Twenty twelve. That’s memories. This has been whale watching.

Okay. If we’re just hold on. If we’re just talking about things here, can we just go back to gay marriage for one second? Yeah. Because just to Tim’s point, I I think

we’re just awesome. Plenty of

time. An incredibly long show. But go ahead.

Well, Tim’s talking about all his, like, lefty homero Instagram friends. I

hope that I can’t say that.

Why do you always try to police the language Tim and I use for our own community? Thank you. Tim and I are allowed to hear better.

They’re not your community. You were forever telling me that gay men and lesbians are different communities.

No worry. Oh, yes. But broadly speaking,

we’re rivals

within the same community.

Yeah. A key key fact. I am not responsible for what these people are saying on this show. Go ahead. And

I guarantee you if we were talking, nobody would be of whatever. I’m not kidding this with you. The point is, so I used to be the head of the log cabin Republicans, the gay Republican group, the LGBT Republican group. Right.

Invite it?

Well, no, I don’t think I was invited if I I missed the invitation. Right? But this is not about it’s not about a personal invitation. The reason that seventy one percent of all people believe in gay marriages, there was an enormous concerted effort. In the eighties and the nineties and the early two thousands, like, by the time I hit politics.

Like, we were focused on don’t ask, don’t tell a repeal. We were basically trying to undo all of the things the Clinton administration had put in at a time when he needed to do it to sort of signal culturally that he was for swing voters. And so, you know, we were working on on repealing of don’t ask until, but, like, marriage was just like, a glimmer in the eye. Like, it like, Rick Santorum was a big political figure, was making his bones all on gay marriage, and a whole bunch of groups, a bunch of conservative groups, and a bunch of conservative and Republican gay people, like worked really hard to win over that faction of Republican voters and as disappointed as I have been in the Trump years around some of the been the wall cabin, my old group that I that I like very much. As disappointed as I’ve been, like, a lot of those people did tons of work that I think wasn’t quite getting recognized in this moment.

Like, Cynthia Loomis from Wyoming, very culturally conservative voted for this bill. And part of it is that she said she felt like it struck a good balance between the religious liberties and the respect for marriage. For gay people, and I think that there have been a ton of groups doing really hard negotiations behind the scenes for decades around finding that right cultural balance. So I just think they should get I’m just gonna give them a shout out. Yeah.

Shelley

Moore Capital. I’d like to Shellley Moore Capital too, voted for it, West Virginia, not an easy vote there. I will tell you, I’m sorry, you didn’t get an invite. You deserved one and you didn’t have. And I’m not we’re not gonna talk about that.

And if if you’re listening, I know we have White House friends who listen to this. Please, can you just gonna nudge the Social Security? I I think that your snub, so to give you a little insight, was more about let your lesbianness than about your Republicanness. Because the Social Secretary is a gay and I was just just monitoring my feed if I was if I was looking at who the there were some high impact lesbians and and transgender folks there. You know, people who are at HRC, things of this nature.

But all the low impact, like, whoa, how did they get an invite? You know, all happened to be vaguely handsome came in. So I’m

not I’m uning the Social Secretary, but I’m just saying maybe some

of our friends at the White House, you can kinda let them know at the next day holiday at the White House, maybe you could get included. Will say Joe Biden did mention because Joe Biden is fucking good at this. He did mention Republicans explicitly. Though I was kind of surprised, maybe they were there and I just didn’t see it, but I did not see you

know, like Tom Tillis or whoever was the Republican co sponsor. I didn’t see any of them there.

Alright. Good show, long show, come and hang out with us. January twenty one at Seattle. It’s gonna be amazing. Go to the bulwark dot com, sign up for all the newsletters, read the great pieces we’ve got listening to the podcasts.

Bye. Peace.