Savoring Kevin McCarthy’s Suffering (with Will Saletan)

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level. I’m JVL here with my best friend. Tim Miller, and also kind of a very good friend, Will Saladin sitting in for Sarah Longwell, Will and Tim are from the Bulwark. So am I?

You should hit the subscribe button right now follow us along. And and then go over to the bulwark dot com and sign up for our free newsletters written by our buddy Charlie Sykes sits out every morning. He does it every day. It’s fantastic. We have great articles and stuff to read and lots of if I were to summarize the bulwark over the last week, I would use the gronk spike dot gif.

Tim, you seem like you were in a little bit of a little bit of a mood today. So I would like to give you the opportunity to get happy over the news, the Kerry Lake, we’re just gonna humor her for this little bit more in what could be the harm of it, but that she’s actually lost.

Are we human? Who’s humoring her? I think we’re humoring her.

I think the the Republican position now is, well, it doesn’t look good for her, but you have must understand there’s going to be an automatic recount triggered, and and Michael Flynn has said if we get a livestreamed hand count of every single ballot, but he can watch with his own eyes, then he brought as he’ll leave this whole election stuff thing alone.

I

don’t know. Charlie Kirk was pretty sad on his livestream last night. I don’t know how much How could you tell? Don’t know how much the

guy was looking to

be. No. He looked especially sad. He was a sad puppy dog sad, and I was made me happy, which is how I could tell that I

was sad. There’s there’s some kind of sense, kind of animal sense you have when someone else is someone that you dislike is is suffering. And that that that can allow you some joy. Will does a good person, so Will doesn’t know this emotion, but there

has no idea where to talk to other

people. Many listeners understand this emotion. And and so I could tell you a sound. You know, I mean, Carrie is even doesn’t seem like her heart is in it. This is the this is the big this is the thing about Trump as awful as all these other people are.

Every time I say these people go, like, oh, you’re defending her. No. As awful as all the other Republicans are. Trump is a special kind of sociopath. K?

It is very challenging. And we’ll we’ll maybe talk about my ban in exchange no matter how insane you are. K? It is very hard as a human to to tell a hostorous lie over and over again and to get thousands and thousands of people to believe it. Millions in Trump’s case.

You know, to stand up there while people are storming the capital and be like, yeah, I’m sticking with this lie. I’m not giving an inch. You know? And and even and and all of the other election directors have been very bad at this. Kerry, I thought was the one that might have it.

And even old Carrie, you know, the Arizonans are seeing through this BS tweet. I don’t know. It didn’t have the same Juan Aviv that she had before the election. No. I just didn’t have the same kind of performative quality.

I just I don’t know that she’s even that she’s got the jean. It’s a uniquely Trump jean. So, Will, I have

seen over the last five hours, I’ve seen people will say, hold on, Katie Hobbs only has a hundred thousand Twitter followers, and Kerry Lake has one point two million. You’re gonna tell me that that if plausible that Katie Hobbs could win an election against her. I have seen Fox News, a reporter on Fox News, not a head, a reporter. Saying that, quote, somehow Katie Hobbs acquired one more than one point two million votes acquired being an amazing verb choice there. I think all of the the tables set for a little bit.

Who is the who is the Fox News, has it said that?

I’m sorry. I I don’t keep their names in regular rotation. I just you know, I see them posted by on on the tweet deck and I think Like Jesse Waters or someone was No. No. It was a reporter.

It was it was not a head. It was a reporter. Oh, okay. Anyway, will what do you think here? Are we gonna are we gonna keep denying reality?

Or are are Republicans

developing a taste for reality here? Well, they’re not developing a taste for it, but the the thing about reality JBL is that it doesn’t care about your feelings. Right? And so Oh. So over time — You ought to put that on a month.

— so over time, you know, I mean, you can lie I I mean, I’m surprised how long they got away with lying about the twenty twenty election. But over time, as reality accumulates and you try to maintain the I mean, I agree with Tim. I I think there’s there’s friction when you try to lie. It’s harder to sustain your lie. In the face of accumulating evidence.

So every election that goes by where they deny the results makes it harder on them. It’s just a little bit of restraint. The

George Kistanza. It’s it’s the George Kistanza, you know, kind of that maximum. Right? Well, you know, it’s It’s like it’s not a lie as

you believe

it. Right? You can continue a lie as long as you believe it, but the more and more reality that

interferes, the harder it is for you to kind of pull that trekong.

Right. And I’d look, here’s the way I would put it. If you I can lie about gravity. I can toss something in the air and it falls. The more things I toss in the air and fall, it’s just gonna get harder and harder for me to sustain that.

But JBL, I wanted to come back to what you said about the Twitter followers because that is a classic mental defect on the right, which is you look at the number of people in the room, in your room. Right? I mean, the notorious example of this was every rally Trump would say, look at all the people we have here. Meanwhile Biden is in his basement. How could he possibly win?

And then after the election, how could he possibly have one? Look at this enormous crowd we have. The problem is that these people who talk about the crowd, the size of the crowd in their room, or who talk about their number of followers, are paying almost no attention to the other population outside of the

room. And

that was the problem for the Republican Party in this election. They focused entirely on who they were mobilizing on their side. Not all the people they were mobilizing on the other side. Certainly true of the twenty twenty election, which was a story of eighty one million people coming out to vote against a presidential candidate. Something we’ve never seen the likes of.

And so eventually, they will either learn the lesson that there is a population outside that doesn’t like who they’re nominating, and they’ll fix it, or they’ll just go on losing. And it’s just gonna get harder and harder for them to pretend that isn’t happening. Alright.

So I have a question here. With no dob’s decision, does Carrie Lake lose?

I think that it’s close enough in that race as we look at it now that Cary Lake would have won it without dogs. Kind of what I think too. There are a lot of races guys that we looked at on election night and the two days after that we thought were close and are now five point races. Right? I think Pennsylvania Senate’s a five point race.

I

think Arizona

Senate Yep. Also a five point race. There’s

a few. Nevada right. Nevada, Georgia — Mhmm. — the Arizona governor. I mean, there there are a handful of very close race says, though, that I think it’s pretty clear, Dobbs what’s the deciding factor?

You wrote the piece on this. Will? You you have. Right? The Yeah.

So I don’t know. I I don’t know that this means that if they keep doing this over and over again, they keep losing. I think that they have to figure out what they think about abortion. That’s one of the interesting things I mean, o

four eight o four eighteen is not nothing. I mean, there’s a pretty strong trend here. Look, we did this last week. I had some people in the comments on my my my just sort of rally around the democracy flag, RARA article, which I believe, I do believe every word of, but there were some legitimate pushback, which is like, Tim, you can’t get over. Over exuberant.

Right? Like, some of these things were a coin flip. Like, we got lucky. We talked about this last week. We did get lucky.

Like, there is there is an element of luck in all of this. Like, you know, there was an element of luck that Trump won in twenty sixteen for him. I’d like these things were that close. There was an element of luck in this one, and that Dobbs obviously played a factor. But, like, not it’s not nothing.

I mean, you you can compare it. One way to look at it is that she’s up by, what, nineteen thousand votes now. Hobbs, so this huddle — Yeah. — end up being, but somewhere around there, probably. And and so, you know, if not Hobbs could with that of maybe changing up votes or or damp and turnout enough for the Democrats.

Sure. But as I wrote in an article, if you look at the treasurer’s race, which isn’t which has no domes, no democracy, none of that at play. It’s it’s basically just a pure ballot on do you like the Republicans of the Democrats, the treasurer’s race. Nobody cares about any of the particulars. The Republican won by ten.

You know? So so, like, the the penalty that that that Lake paid for the crazy you know, and it’s impossible to bite for catering and that we’ll try it. And I think it’s worth looking at the Hopstom, but it’s possible to totally, you know, split apart the two biggest elements of the crazy, which is the the extreme abortion restrictionism and the and the election denialism. Like, was punished a a significant. I mean, that that one in ten people, like, that’s a very significant number that had impacted.

And so I, you know,

that shouldn’t be dismissed. It’s so what does what does Carrie Lake do now? Does she go back to does she just hit the OAN circuit does she realize that she can make a

private private label? Like Lyondell

does. What’s your theory, Tim? I have

an idea. You know how you know how I don’t mean to turn her. Was, like, the hype girl for Bernie’s campaign. And she, like, basically, just traveled with him and, like, was the intro for Bernie and, like, was just this little prag, media star, and hype person, hype woman. Excuse me.

I think that Carrie could be a hype woman. I think she could be a really strong hyped woman for Trump presidential race. You know, just sort of like the intro, the lead in. And she’s she is a presenter. Right?

You were both cheating.

I was cheated just like

he was

cheating.

Very unfairly. You know? She’s good at that. So that’s one thing that she could do. And she’s certainly not gonna be hired by the NBC affiliate in in Tucson.

I don’t think.

So

nothing I don’t think she’ll be hired by

Fox either. Right? This is

is this

isn’t on our show map, but can we take two minutes here and talk about this? So Murdoch World has decided

to read the show map. So

I’m doing live anyway. So we’ll fuck it. We’ll do it live. So Murdoch World has turned against Trump and we saw this in a coordinated way with Fox and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal all going after him.

I’m

interested to see if Fox continues to do this pivot if they start losing some ground to NewsMax. The way they did post January sixth. I’m I’m just curious. What do you guys think about this? Do you think that the The Republican base is going to buy all this very weak anti Trump talk from these rhino elites in their Manhattan high rises?

Or what what do you think?

This is

a really interesting question. I so you have to look at the Republican base. Here’s the way I would break it down. How much of the Republican base is about winning? How much of it is about the cult that’s specific to Trump?

And how much of it is about tears.

Those

are

all different things. They’re all mixed together. Right? So if it’s an open question to me, we’ll we’ll find out in in the course of history. If, say, the Murdochs turn against Trump, and a bunch of people start going with Ron DeSantis or people start fracturing to other candidates.

Who has enough of a combination of winter, cult, and tears? Trump is losing the winner thing. Right? The parts of the base that care about winning are looking for someone else right now.

There is

some cult that will just be with Trump. And then if you’re gonna try to run against that, you’re gonna have to figure out how to win a general election without alienating all of those folks. Right? But the tears thing is really important. And what I think is that what we’re seeing in the emergence of Rhonda Santos is a guy who has the winning and who has the tears.

And that’s a big deal. He get he’s get he gets the tears constituency. And if he can take that away from Trump and I believe he can, he can wait. He can win the Republican nomination for president, and the Murdoch would be right to bet on him. Alright.

We’ll we’ll get to the Trump twenty twenty

or can under him later. I guess we’re done with Cary Lake. I

just I just wanna say one thing on the Fox News Network thing because we don’t the the real answer is It’ll be interesting to see in the next month. Right? I I The the because it’s hard to to separate out. And I’ve always thought Right? Like, the the there’s a logical fallacy.

Right? They’re just because something that hasn’t happened. Yeah. It doesn’t mean it never will happen. Right?

And so And all he said for years, I was like, eventually, the people made fun of Joe Biden about the fever will break. But, like, eventually, like a series of events happen that people do get sick of this shit. Right? Like, eventually that happens. Like, eventually it happened for every cult leader.

Like, eventually it happened for crash. People laugh Right? Like like, there is a breaking point. So it’s always been bad to bet that there’s gonna be a breaking point. There’ve been a lot of dumb pundits betting four breaking points over and over again.

But I think that there’s this question now of, like, like, do people have it in them to go through another round of the the ballots and the fraud and the jeans. I mean, like, there’ll be some people that do that. Right? But are there enough of those people to move over to NewsMax? Like, the precipitating event of twenty twenty was so shocking to people.

Like, this notion that sleepy Joe Biden and his basement could have won, felt so ridiculous to them. That and then Trump on the in front of in their face every day on Twitter and on TV and on all their outlets saying it was stolen, it was stolen, you could see why people got mad, it got emotional and it was like, fuck you, Brett Baer. I’m not gonna I’m not gonna watch Brett Baer. Tell me this is wrong. Okay.

I’m gonna move over here and listen to Sean Spicer. Tell me that that it’s right. That it was stolen from me. And so that makes sense. Right?

What percentage of those people are still mad enough to do that? Two years later after another round of beatings. Some, but like a lot, a little half? I don’t know. TBD.

I don’t know, man. If

Fox is telling him that it’s their fault for

silent Trump that reports to stop the loss. That’s how many I don’t know. Right? That’s That will be interesting to find out.

Alright. We’re gonna move on. We’re gonna talk about Kevin McCarthy and Rona Romney and all that in a minute. First, I wanna talk a little bit about Bolen Branch. Our our very favorite sponsor who make luxury betting and will I believe you have not had the pleasure of sampling, Bolen branches, long staple, cotton goods.

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five percent off. That’s really good. Guess you could do that. Alright. You know, I’m a

little bit

upset. Many months ago, we talked about if you could have only one person lose this cycle. You get to reach down like the finger of God and pick one loser. We

all said

it would have been JD Vance. I don’t think you were here for that

well. And

of course, of course, JD

Vance is the one guy who wins. Right? The one who sneaks through. And I find that very disappointing, and it really to be honest, impacted my ability to enjoy the last seven days. Mhmm.

But on the

other hand, watching Kevin McCarthy

has been

amazing because it looks like he may not get to become speaker. And if he does somehow squeak through, to to win the speakership, it will be hands down the worst job anybody has had as speaker of the house. In modern history. How wonderful is that?

Tim? It’s really

wonderful. And I this is just now that it’s probably gonna happen, I can just admit to this, but I just wanna let you know, I I’m very, as you know, as Will know, sometimes to his dis discomfort. I’m very yellow these days. You know, I just I’m an open book. I tell y’all what I think.

Right? I don’t I try not to have secret thoughts. It’s like, you know, you guys wanna know un you want unvarnished, Tim. Okay. That’s that’s what people come for.

But I had a secret thought that I didn’t wanna share because it was I understood that it was banned for the country, and I knew that it was like that it was with the devil on my shoulder. And the secret thought as we got later and later on election night was boy. I kinda want Kevin McCarthy to have a two hundred and nineteenth seat majority rather than Nancy Pelosi. I mean, the speakership. I mean, it would have been sad for satisfying supposed to beater too.

And it would have been better for the country to and it would have been better for Hunter Biden. I get all that. I get it. I get it. I get it.

I’m not saying, in my mind, I get that order even better. For the Democrats to squeak it out. But boy, is it gonna be satisfying? The pain that Kevin McCarthy has to deal with margery, Taylor Green, Matt Gates, if she sneaks through Lauren Beaubert, there’s some crazies that everyone’s gonna get introduced to. In the next two years, there’s a, I believe, Internet celebrity from Florida who has one, a young woman who’s gonna be a new member of the house.

I think we’ll start to get attention Andy Biggs. I

bet she’s one of the really smart and impressive

Internet celebrities. She is impressive. Yeah. And Andy Biggs is now challenging Carthy as we as we tape this right now. I think that’s in that tells you a lot about the state of the party that, like, people people looked at what happened.

In the house. The members looked it out in the midterm. So, like, oh, we don’t love mister Trump’s hurting us. Maybe somebody should challenge Kevin McCarthy’s leadership hasn’t worked out. Who might be a good person challenge him.

I don’t know. Should it be Don Behnken? You know, should it be David Valle Deo, voted for impeachment? Maybe we should put David Valle or Dan New House no. Andy Biggs who spoke at them all is the one that is challenging him on January sixth.

And and so all of these lunatics are gonna now think they’re Joe Manchin, and and they’re gonna extract every insane concession. Imagine a lot of Kevin McCarthy.

And

it’s gonna be fun to watch. I can’t I can’t lie. I’m gonna enjoy it. And I’m I’m gonna I’m gonna really try to keep reminding myself to enjoy it, you know, anytime you know, the the doom scrolling wants to take over.

Will do you think he even gets the gets the brass ring here? I

do. I do. And I think he gets it because — but I think he suffers, but he gets it just because of the absence of an alternative. I mean, we’re sort of living in a time when everything’s bad, but there aren’t alternatives available to make it better. So after they’ve done up the right wingers and the maggot people have done a protest against Mcarthy unless Steve Skolese can pull them together and say, McCarthy will get it and and the job the job will suck and the job will suck because of all the concessions he had to make and has to make to keep it going.

I mean, if I’m Marjorie Taylor Green, I’ve got a list of committees that I wanna be on. Right? And the power will be in the hands of of those who are most willing to to wield it or most willing to threaten the majority.

You

know,

I’m listening to you guys though. What I’m hearing from you and I’m hearing I’m seeing this on Twitter and I’m hearing it from my friends, there is so much pent up shot in freighter in the non maggot world. Right? The the maga people had the shot in freighter for

years. And

a bunch of normies sat there and watched it. And we didn’t want to become like them, but I look around and see all my friends including you guys. And me, Secret Lease, just savoring the suffering of Kevin McCarthy, savoring the humiliation of Donald

Trump. Is that

bad? I would like to be a better person, Tim. I’m trying to, but, like, I feel it like you do. Right? But I wanted to come back to McCarthy because here’s an example of where as sweet as that feels it’s bad for the country, and it’s bad for the world, it’s bad for everybody.

If we have Kevin McCarthy beholden to Matt Gates and people like that, that’s not a House of Representatives that’s gonna work. And what if we have a dysfunctional house? You can tell yourself, well, they can’t do anything, and that’s great because what they wanna do is evil. But, oh, they can do a lot by inaction. They can refuse to raise the debt ceiling.

Right? They can they can screw with aid to Ukraine. Just by standing in the way, they can do a lot of damage. So I worry a lot about McCarthy with a, say, a two twenty seat majority. Yeah.

They’re just really quick just on this. Two well, just two things. One,

I

hear you. One thing that I said, when I when I started my yoga practice JBL is one of the things I’ve been working on is just accepting the good things happen to bad people. It’s something you get taught as a child, but I just we had to be reminded so just this rolling. It’s the last seven years and to see bad things happen to bad people. She’s kinda nice.

She can’t enjoy it for a week or two. Can’t have been working on acceptance on the good things happening to bad people, but bad bad things happening to bad people. It’s kinda nice. Okay. That’s one.

Just one other thing really quick for the listeners, because I don’t know that people that don’t follow this stuff extremely closely understand this. I think this is important to understand how weak Kevin McCarthy’s position is. Mitch McConnell is gonna also have a challenge in the senate. Right? But he only needs to get a majority of Republican senators to stay as the as the senate leader.

Alright? That’s pretty achievable. Right? And, you know, you get and and maybe he gets booted still, but, you know, you only have to get, like, twenty five out of forty nine or whatever.

For because of,

you know, the Speaker House elections rules constitution, Kevin McCarthy needs two eighteen to be speaker. So if they have two hundred and nineteen members of the House of Representatives, He needs all of them except one. Two of them can can prevent him from winning the speaker chip election when they have the public ballot next January. So he could be hold on to his role as private as leader in this vote today. But if he only gets, like, two hundred votes, let’s say, he’s got eighteen people.

He’s got to win over through concessions between now and then and then and commits them. And that makes his position just so much more precarious, you know, than if you just had to win a majority of us caucus. And and I think that, you know, if if you’re not because Historically, this is not something that, you know, we’ve had to deal with very much, right, which is like a a crazy element of a caucus being able to overthrow their speaker. Like, you know, people it’s not was there’s not a Westwing episode about this, you know. So people might not might not be familiar with quite how just how precarious this situation is.

I wanna

push back on two things here real quick. The first is to temper our shot in Floyd. The kind

of guy

Kevin McCarthy is, he won’t care if the job sucks.

All

he’ll care

is that he’ll get an official portrait as speaker of the house. Right? If he gets the ring, then all will be fully done. Right? He’s gotten it.

And and it’s done. He’s there in history. He’ll be remembered. People feel like he won. And he’s the big winner and we’re all the losers.

Is it possible will that an unworkable house could actually be better? Because a workable house is obstructed by partisanship and all that sort of stuff. But all these things that we we constantly say, hey, look, there’s sixty five percent support for issue x, whatever issue x is. Right? We’ll get sixty five percent support for for, say, Ukraine aid, then you’re gonna have because you can’t manage party discipline in the house, you’re gonna have people who just feel like they are free to vote for how their constituents want them to vote and not for how the party requires them to vote.

Because the party isn’t strong enough to enforce it.

Possible? That’s possible. I wanted to say one thing first of all about your point about McCarthy. I think that’s a very good point. Because a lot of us who talk about Kevin McCarthy suffering as speaker, if you can’t get anything done, are actually projecting ourselves into that role, we would be frustrated.

But understand MacArthur, you have to understand the as J. F. L. Is pointing out, the absolute emptiness of this man who if he has the office, if he has the official power and doesn’t get anything done for the country, That’s fine for him. That’s fine from his point of view.

So I think that’s true. But I agree that things could get better and the way that they could get better in an ungovernable house is if we are essentially moving into, I don’t know what else to call it, a parliamentary system, you know, in in Israel, you have to it’s it’s held to put together a coalition, but anybody can be in that coalition. If this party won’t give you the votes you go to that party. Right? So let me just drill down a little bit on Kevin McCarthy going to Henry Quayar and asking for his vote.

That’s one guy. Right? He’s on officially the right wing of the Democratic Party. He’s just a he’s just a Democrat who believes in border security the way that a lot of Republicans do. But if Kevin McCarthy has to go to Henry Quayar or other Democrats, if he has to go to Jared Golden or I don’t know who else.

Right? You can imagine some set of Democrats who, because Kevin McCarthy, needs their support, are getting some kind of leverage. And if they are part of kind of majority, they wouldn’t be like, you know, voting for Republicans the way that actual Republicans would. But if they have leverage, then we start to talk about a parliamentary kind of system that might actually be better than being governed by a mega Republican majority. So that’s one optimistic centric.

Here’s the

problem. He’s gonna get tossed out. I mean, that works for, like, three months max. Right? I mean, Bainer Bainer survived this for years.

Right? We’re he did have to do that. It was way more than just Jared Golden and Henry Claire. I mean, Bainer didn’t get anything passed deal, like, especially on budget matters back when the t part the Freedom call you thought that their voters cared about cared about spending. That was cute, actually.

And retrospect, like, that was really nice. And that’s when that’s what they were demanding, not like investing in the FBI. Pilotedization. Hunter Biden’s underwear. You know, so back then, Bainner needed big chunks of the Democratic party to get budgets past that stuff.

And and Atlas is undoing eventually. Right? Like, they were just like, okay. You know, they had very lengthy speaker votes here, and that’s how Paul Ryan gets in. Speaker.

And so I just I think that the wick on that is much shorter now than it was back in those days. And if McCarthy is passing controversial things with Democrats, like, that that his days are numbered. And they’ll they’ll very quickly throw him over for McCarthy got

one hundred and eighty eight votes.

In

the party election. It just happened moments ago while ads were

taken. So then

so that’s

a lot short. Good luck, Kevin. Oh, sir. That is that is thirty. And he’s gonna get thirty more votes between now and then.

And let me tell you. It’s not well, there aren’t any normies left. Name, but it’s not it’s not Patrick McHenry. Right? It’s not like closet normal over there.

It’s one of the thirties. Like, well, Kevin, I’ll I’ll support you in January if you just commit to supporting the bipartisan Ukraine aid. No. No. Those thirty he’s gonna he’s gonna have to to to give some really crazy stuff.

Just really quick. I mentioned this on Twitter, but it’s worth talking about on this last thing on this point. I got invited to this Twitter spaces with Mick Mulvaney. Oh. And I was kind of like, I almost never would do this because I was like, why would I do something with Mick Mulvaney?

But a friend asked me to do it. I was like, I don’t know, maybe maybe there’ll there’ll be some fireworks with the mix. It ends up being a very boring kind of round table, and I didn’t I didn’t really get the chance to kind of have a back and forth Maybe they were warned about me. One thing that was interesting from this was Mulvaney is asked about the priorities of the next house. And he he volunteers investigating the politicization of the FBI and the deep state.

As one

of their

as one of their priorities. Gotta get on that. That’s just extremely telling because Mulvaney, like dumped Trump essentially an ish. Right in I guess much as much as much as you can want, not enough for the bulwark, but, like, you know, Mulvaney was always like, we need to move on. Like, oh my god.

This guy’s crazy. I’m quitting over January sixth. So I’d presume Mulvaney is the kind of guy Kevin McCarthy calls. Right? Like, so I thought that was an interesting insight.

You know, for for as much as the lesson of last Tuesday has been, okay, Trump a little nutty and maybe we should move on. It doesn’t seem like any of the lessons have sunk in about, oh, maybe we should move on from all the nutty stuff associated with him. And I think that tells you, if Mulvaney is already there on saying, oh, we’re gonna do the Durham reports, part three or whatever, like that, then that’s what Kevin’s gonna have to give into. To get these extra thirty votes. Tim,

when we say that they are learning the lesson about moving on from nutty, all of these people still want to fly Venezuelan refugees out of Texas and dumped them in Martha’s vineyard. Right. They all think that’s amazing. So, you know, it gets a sliding scale. Who who is gonna who is gonna pay a a price.

Is Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, Rana, McDaniel, is she is she gone though? Is Lisa and gonna replace her because everybody’s so excited about how New York Republicans over performed. I have one tip on

this. I received a text from an anti Rana friend of the pot who is still in Republican and in good standing, Republican and bad standing, but he’s a Republican and standing. Still, which makes him one step more Republican than me. And he thinks Rhonda’s gonna survive too. He thinks Rhonda survives, which is which is insane to me.

Would think that she they would throw her over. I mean, she’s lost three in a row. Oh, no. Three consecutive elections.

Right? Mean, three three consecutive

elections. You would think that they would throw her overboard, but but, anyway, my the closest thing I have to an insider on their public National Committee anymore texted to to tell me that he believes that she survives. Well, what do

you think?

I I don’t know

in particular to her. I don’t think any of these decisions can be clear until until the party knows who the big boss is. Right? To what extent Trump gets overthrown or not drives everything else? If he goes I think she goes, I think a whole bunch of people who attach themselves to him are vulnerable.

I mean, the whole process is being impeded by a couple of things. One is denialism in the party. I mean, a business can’t survive if it just denies that it’s losing customers. The Republicans are trying to deny the results FTX would

beg to differ.

Just yeah. Some be up. Yeah. But they they can’t not forever. It can’t go on forever.

Right? The other thing is though, how long can the party hold itself together through sheer animosity. Right? I mean, what Tim’s talking about, this the Mulvaney de investigate the deep state, investigate them. That’s kind of what’s left of the Republican Party.

If you don’t have affirmative principles, what holds you together is animosity and investigating the other side. You’re you’re a you’re the party of Ben Ghazi. You’re not the party of, you know, some other principles. So the reason why they may not let go of that stuff that we think is crazy is because they got nothing else to hold them together. The tears, the investigations, affirmatively, what do they have?

I mean, Rick Scott is out there complaining that Mitch McConnell isn’t talking enough about that a lot of Republicans are talking about, we don’t have ideas. The reason they don’t have ideas is they can’t agree on them. They haven’t agreed on them for years.

How about how about Rick Scott? It’d be sort of funny if Rick Scott was the only one of these four who paid any price. So we’re we’re talking about McCarthy, Rona, Rick Scott, and then Mitch. I suspect three of the four of them survived their post rep spot will, I think, be checked aside from the NRC? No.

One of the

most glorious things I have seen in the week after the election is Rick Scott, who the chairman of the NRC, who’s job was to elect senate candidates. Right? Coming out and saying, we lost all these senate races. Therefore,

I should

be somehow the new Senate, the minority leader, the senate the senate Republican leader. I mean Yeah. Yeah. I I’m just I don’t know in what other line of work the guy whose division just spectacularly failed, comes forward and says, I should be CEO. In all of them, this is capitalism, will This is how it

works. Do we

I don’t

think we have the Ted Cruz clip pulled up. But so do can either of you do a Ted Cruz impersonation? No.

Not really. Jim Swift does good Ted Cruz. Going, Ted.

Oh, we should have brought Ted Jim. Here’s Ted Cruz on his podcast. I well, you were in Ted Cruz as a highly well, not as highly rated podcast as a billboard podcast, but a mid medium high rated podcast. It’s where I spent most of his time. He’s good in an armchair, I have to say.

He strains the armchair quite a bit, but yeah. I’m so pissed off. I cannot even see straight. We had an extraordinary opportunity. We had a generational opportunity.

This should have been a fundamental landslide election. He said he goes on to say, we would be it would be insane for us to keep the same leadership in charge. Can I just say, this

is a classic example of people simply not saying what they believe.

Because there

is no way in which this ever looked like a generational change election. Unemployment is three point five percent.

There

was there was never a universe in which it looked like Republicans were gonna do more than thirty five. This is even, you know, pre dobs and all that stuff. Right? The the grand hope was they might get as many as thirty five house seats and they could maybe pick up three senate seats, maybe a

fourth. That

that’s a a generation know like that, as if this is a once in every twenty year to twenty five year opportunity, that’s an insane thing and Ted Cruz does not believe that. I think he does. No. He there’s no way that guy’s been around politics for twenty five years. He was here for the twenty ten election.

Convinced themselves of their own bullshit. This is this is really important to understand. They are the the epidemic closure is costing them. It is probably I know you like to say it isn’t JBL, but it is. Like, they they all genuinely believe that people are mad, that fourth graders are wearing cat tails into school, And and that, like, you know, there about all the other, the election fraud, and the FBI, and the canceled culture on Twitter, and Disney kisses.

Like, they believed this shit. They believed that people were mad about all this shit. They believed that people were furious at Joe Biden because of inflation. They think that Joe Biden is like a weekend at Bernie situation. And, like, they thought that they were gonna win New Hampshire and Colorado and maybe Washington and get fifty four fifty five set up seats and set themselves up for a sixty seat majority next time.

They did. They did believe that. They thought they’re, you know, got a Steve Bannon was out there going. We’re gonna we’re gonna rule for a hundred years. I I think that they

I think that they

believe that This is the

same psychosis that had them thinking that Mitt Romney was actually ahead. Yeah. Close Yes. The twenty twelve campaign. Right?

This is Because, again, as I say, at no point in this race, even pre dobs when things were as as good looking for Republicans as they could pay. Did this ever look like something like that? And you had to be an insane person to believe it.

When that Florida number dropped and Rhonda Sandes was up twenty. As you polled the Republican senate caucus, all forty nine of them that are left, and said, how many seats do you think we’re gonna have? The median answer would have been fifty four. That at that moment, at that at that for that second, they thought they thought that this was happening. Was all on all their Twitter’s.

I it was this was not Ted is not putting on an act I mean, now what they what they are putting on an act about is when they’re assessing what the problems are. Right now, like, that is all bullshit. Right? Like, this is all posturing. They just wanna get rid of Mitch and get and have more power and stuff.

Like, they don’t none of them really believe it’s Mitch. McConnell’s fault. Or or if they do, they didn’t believe it for the wrong reason. Like, if Mr. McConnell’s fault, if you’re not being tougher on Trump, but none of them believe

that. This

is actually the smart manga play, though, is to blame it all on Mitch, I think. And because if you start blaming it all on Mitch, then if you’re maga and you are you want more Trump, then if the scientist declares he’s on Mitch’s side. Right? Oh, here comes Ron DeSantis. The tool of the elite Republican, I went to Harvard Law, you know, with my short little arms.

He’s the he’s the one who who, you know, is right there. They just lost this for all of us. You know, while he was patting his margins down in Florida, The rest Republican party was going up in smoke because of the old crow, Mitch McConnell. Do we think Mitch

McConnell survives

this or no, Will? Well, Mitch

McConnell survives everything. He is the turtle. And he yeah. I I I think he’ll survive. I don’t think they they have an alternative to him.

Also, he has the good fortune, of course, of Rick’s Scott being the guy who’s offering himself to run against him. And there’s no way. I I I don’t know how many people in the rep the senate republican conference would would would turn in Mitch McConnell for Rick Scott who had singularly the dumbest idea of anyone running of any of any senate republican that his his plan to sunset Medicare Social Security. That was, like, such a huge talking point. That it was amazing.

In an in an election where’s where some, like, race were decided by one percent. I mean, that that could be it right there. And Mitch McConnell was the guy who sensibly said shut up where the out party. Don’t give them anything to shoot at. Just let them vote against Biden.

And so I think in a contest between those two guys, if I’m a senate republican, I’m easily choosing McConnell. He’s not to blame for the crazy candidates. The crazy candidates are much more a function of Trump and endorsing the worst people in primaries. I mean, I don’t think Mitch McConnell is responsible for the He

has kind of a blame, actually, but not for the reason there is saying. Which is that in twenty fourteen, I was there. I keep saying that nobody says intended to have that I lit. I was there. I was a Republican still in good standing.

I met with Mitch McConnell’s team. We brought the fucking heat against the lunatics. In Mississippi, they tried to put up Chris McDaniel. It was like a racist radio show host. And had we done nothing?

He was gonna win that primary. And and with Stewart Stevens over at Lincoln Project and a bunch of other people, and Mitch McConnell and Josh Holmes back then we are all friends.

I’m not that good

at friends clearly. You know, that we ran a a very aggressive campaign to take out that racist nut bag in in favor of, oh my god, I’m having a senior moment. And he was having a senior moment looking at pain. That was Eureka and a burning situation.

Who is that Mississippi senator that

we kept in there? Sebastian left for that while you talk. You just keep going. Yeah. Please please Sebastian ever that.

And and and he wins that primary in the end by, like, two percent. And we had to pull out every card in the book Apo, we’re out there turning out conservative black voters into the Republican primary dad, Cochrane. I got I got it before before Sebastian’s dad Cochrane. We kept dad Cochrane. Coming in there, but not before you used effort as

a verb, which I won’t forgive you guys for. Okay. And

and and and Chris McDaniel might have lost that general election in a roy Moore situation. Now the MSNBC wanna come back six years later, but that could have been a roy Moore type situation. That dude was so crazy. Mitch McConnell didn’t do that this time. Because he scared of Trump.

And so he complained about the candidate quality. Yeah. But he let Hersha Walker win. He didn’t he signed on to the Hersha Walker experiment. They didn’t try to he didn’t try to primary Herschel Walk.

What was the alternative? He didn’t and Mark Byrne I don’t know how about Jeff Duncan? It was the fucking lieutenant governor.

Jeff Duncan was part of the camp we’re refusing to overturn the election and Counseling

the primary against David Purdue. Why couldn’t have Jeff done it? I could try it. Like it or couldn’t somebody else? Why couldn’t they recruited somebody to try this?

Like, oh, we couldn’t have done this? Because what do you mean? Brian Kemp did it? Brad or Evan Berger did it? They won.

Mitch didn’t even try. So he gave that seat up. How about New Hampshire? Don Bullock. They let the general.

Like, why didn’t they try to recruit somebody else in that one? Mitch out. I don’t wanna get involved. I don’t wanna deal with Corey Lewandowski’s territory. Christian Nunes doesn’t wanna do it.

As soon as he doesn’t wanna do it. I’m out. Doug Ducey was scared to run-in Arizona. So Mark Bernovich was in. I hate Mark Bernovich.

He’s terrible. Better than Blake Masters. Was was Mitch out there putting his tongue on the scale for Mark Bernovich? No. No.

He he let Peter Teal put us on the scale for Blake Masters. So Mitch McConnell sat on the sidelines while all well, and let the Maga wing nominate all these people. And now he’s the minority leader. He should be blamed for it, but none of these assholes are blaming him for that because the mega people would have to admit that they put up bad candidates and the establishment people that gives away the whole game. The whole game that I wrote about in my book, which is that we had no choice, guys.

Didn’t have any choice. We had we had to just let the lunatics win because that’s what the voters wanted. Well, bullshit. Now you lost every fucking race. And so Mitch McConnell should be punished for that.

But he’s not gonna be because because it’s not in the interest of anyone in the Republican party to say it. Only somebody like me who has no hope or career future can say that and

speak truth. Not every race. JD Vance won. So can I second everything Tim said, but just to add, can we agree that if it if there is a an election, a lopsided election between Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott, that is a that is an election between a fool and a coward I mean, McConnell’s send his powers — Oh, yeah. — he’s not a

fool the way

that Scott is. Yeah. For sure. But

could Marupio, Peter?

Rupio just won by

John because there are too many

people who don’t want Rubio to be a threat. Right? This is you you can’t be somebody who How about

John Thoon? John Thornton, do you

know? John Thornton? That’s an interesting question. But would John Thornton want the John? Yeah.

Right? I mean, it says the Right. Probably not. You know, like, in the world of people who, you know, let me say this for Scott though. You know, say what you didn’t want about cutting Medicare and such security, but at least it’s an ethos.

Right? I

mean, he

unlike unlike your McConnell, he decided, like, look, I’m gonna give a I’m gonna tell the voters what we might wanna do. And McConnell refused to do that. I don’t know. Shouldn’t we sort of applaud that? Isn’t that what we want out of politicians as to tell us what their ideas are?

We can vote about their ideas?

No. I agree with

that. Yeah. Yeah. That’s

all clap

for Rick Scott. There’s something to be said for that.

But on Rubio, I if I’m a senate Republican, why would I replace an old coward in McConnell with a young coward in Rubio? I mean, I have seen nothing from Marco Rubio’s since the whole small hands thing, you know, six years ago, that suggests to me he’s got any more courage than the old man. Probably right. I will say to your the at least

there’s an ethos just on a totally random tangent bit relevant today because it’s one of the topics of the next level gay stuff. I feel the same way that Ben Shapiro. Who sent a tweet today, he is mad. Ben is mad again because there’s a Disney movie where a gateway is a crush on a boy and the dad is supportive. The dad is supportive.

I know. I know. Ben did a series of tweets today, a false tweet thread about the gay agenda, and now don’t let them don’t let them deny that they have one. Disney has a gay agenda, and they’re out. And I gotta say, he’s good to you, Ben, Shapiro, to disarm these other anti gay bigots who now kind of pretended like they changed their mind?

No. Like, I’m I’m happy that Ben Shapiro is out there, fighting the good fight and letting the American people know where he stands, which is no gay love stories, no supportive fathers in gay movies, cut social security in Medicare. I I think that this should be the run to Santa’s agenda for twenty twenty four. Fuck Disney. Fuck dead space and gay gay people.

Cut social security in Medicare. We have an ethos. We are consistent principled conservative. Conservatism? And I think Ben and Ron should just take that role with it.

Can can I just throw in one more thing?

The So

Rick Rick

this is a Rick Scott gave an interview on Fox News over the weekend, and just a portrait of what a sort of what this affirmative alternative would be JBL. He said the Republican leadership caved in on the debt ceiling caved in on a gun bill caved in on a fake infrastructure bill. We make it difficult for our candidates. That’s what Rick Scott is talking about. So it’s not constructive — Yep.

— rejecting any cooperation with the other side on some extremely bipartisan things like like a very mild gun bill and an extremely popular and useful infrastructure bill.

So this this leads us to the Trump twenty twenty four part of the program. We’re taking this before his announcement. Maybe he has announced he’s running for president, maybe he’s announced just the formation of an unexplory committee. Who can say? I have been surprised at how poorly Trump has reacted to the last week.

By poorly, I don’t mean that he’s, you know, behaved badly. I don’t mean that as a value judgment. I just mean as a as a matter of strategic, he flying off the handle to attack Glenn Youngkin and Rhonda Santos seems counterproductive to me. And seems like the kind of response that makes him weak and that what he should have been doing was attacking Mitch McConnell. Because if he attacks the scientists, you’re gonna have some percentage of conservative elites from public elites.

We’re gonna use that as a pretext try to distance themselves from him. But all those people hate Mitch anyway. And so he ought to make this into a Trump versus Mitch fight And for all of these reasons, right? This is Mitch McConnell. He’s been working too much with he’s the reason.

Why did he sign on with all of those socialist Democratic Biden agenda items that he he voted for, how dare he, and he can set up what I think is Trump’s combat story, which will be the debt ceiling fight. I I think that Trump will sort of turn the debt ceiling vote in to, like, what Reagan did with the Paymark to seventy well, seventy six or seventy eight. Okay. Well, no. You remember this is like, you know, Reagan Reagan was like, hey, we can’t possibly give the Panama Canal back, and that became, like, this,

you know, really, I’m not offended by sensibility. It’s okay. I don’t know. It’s still

I’m sorry. A lot

of them because it happened before five minutes ago. I mean,

it’s kind of a canal. You know, you can see how it Anyway, so what do

you guys think about how Trump is playing his hand? Because I I have to say it looks like a guy who is maybe losing his fastball. Did he ever have

a fastball? Yeah. I

think he did. A real a real sense for how to exploit weakness. We met Trump I mean, most of America, people who weren’t watching the apprentice

or weren’t like focused weren’t looking at his political career before he ran for president. We met him as two things: a narcissist and a winner. I mean, very quickly from when he announced. He he shot to the top of the polls. He pretty much stayed there a little bouncing around with Ben Carson, but he what he had to get through Iowa, very few moments of Donald Trump being a loser.

And that was really important to him because it masked the narcissism. And people people follow Trump because he was a winner. We don’t really have a lot of experience dealing with Trump as a loser. He, you know, he lost the general election in twenty twenty, had to deny it. That’s how much he couldn’t deal with being a loser.

And now that he’s sort of clearly lost with his candidates and people are defecting from him, the Murdochs and others defecting from him, people turning to Rhonda Santos, This is the first time we’re actually seeing how Donald Trump behaves as a clear pretty consistent loser. And it’s what you would expect from a guy who is fundamentally a narcissist who doesn’t work well with others and has nothing else to fall back on. So I guess I’m not surprised by the way he’s behaving this is the way someone who doesn’t care about other people, doesn’t think about other people, and is essentially less than twelve years old. He’s a child the way he insults other people, demeans them, tries to tear them down. So all that’s consistent with his personality, and unless he somehow starts to win, I think we’re just looking at more

of this. Yeah.

This is my not my party this week, so I’ll do a brief version of it

for this.

But I’m a little bit surprised with how poorly he’s game he’s game this out because he had these guys with the with the twenty twenty front thing basically checkmate it. And then he just walked himself into a new trap. Right? I mean, it was this sense was things were great when

I was president. It

was stolen from us because of the fraud. Let’s make us great again. Right. Like and and it was hard to defeat that challenge. To to defeat that rhetoric.

It was gonna be very hard. As long as people believed the fraud lie, it was gonna be very hard to push back on that if you’re on to Sandoz. Here’s here’s where he fucked up. By by because he’s a narcissist to Will’s point,

he couldn’t

he couldn’t just hang out

in Mar

a Lago, which is really what he needed to do. Was just hang out. He didn’t need to fucking place any bets on this race. You know? He just he just need to hang out, talk about how awful Joe Biden was, and how awful the Chinese were and whatever.

You know, how terrible the border is and and inflation and just not just kinda see not be involved in the midterms. The

midterms, he didn’t he didn’t have any role to play. He injected himself into it. And by doing that, he saddles himself with this loss. And then it was just a total miscalculation. He assumed it was gonna be a big win for Republicans.

It was a bad bet. And he is he he gave Rhonda Santos this opening now.

By

by engaging in that and by now giving people an opportunity to pivot off to a winner. And I think that cheat was really good on this point, I I think, which is

ever since

Marco and Trump were arguing about their decks. K? From from that point until now. If you

wanted to defect

to Trump, you kinda had to just be for the Democrat. Right? You could do the dance and a handful of people on Twitter do. But, like, mostly, you had to be the the off ramp was a Democrat. Like, mostly.

And now, the off ramp is a Republican. And Trump has

given them

this off ramp by by being a loser, by attacking Ron DeSantis, by attacking Duncan. So I I agree. I I think that he’s he’s made his bed now. I think that that there’s a lot of sandpits ahead for anyone who wants to challenge him. I I still am skeptical of DeSantis’ ability to go toe to toe with him, but he’s starting from a much stronger position than he would have had Trump just just shut his fucking trap for a few months.

I

think I disagree with this about Trump disappearing. I not disappearing, but not not engaging in an intro fight. Yeah.

You know what though?

By being involved in this, he made sure that win or lose, if he if his candidate’s won, then he got the credit for it. And if they lost at least we didn’t have new Republican stars being created independent of him. Right. Which is there would be no no Republican West Moore rising up who could look be looked at as a potential challenger to him. And I think it was a mistake for him to elevate DeSantis publicly.

Right? And this is actually he’s always been you know, in game theory, game theory, they call this tit for tat. Right? The classic game. And Trump has always practiced this with pretty pretty good discipline.

Right? He doesn’t attack you unless you attack him. And then if you attack him, he he goes after you with a hammer. And to to start out that way with DeSantis, I think, is problematic. And again, his true enemy here should be McConnell.

I mean McConnell’s perfect. Right? And McConnell’s a perfect foil because all the other Republican based voters hate McConnell too. Right? It’s it’s an easy thing.

And so if you set it up as Trump versus McConnell, and then DeSantis gets in, DeSantis is just as a matter of objects on McConnell’s side. Right? Oh, so here here’s Mitch McConnell’s Cat’s paw in the race. And I’m not gonna you know, I’m I’m still on you the side of the people, and they stole this election from me once and

I’m the winner

and what he should be saying is look at what happens when I’m not on the ballot. Right? When Trump is on the ballot, Republicans do better across the board. And I think that that’s a a pretty a pretty cogent argument for him to make. And if we were if we were putting odds

on this, we’ll

I think you’re we’ll go from what I think is gonna be low to high. Give me the odds that Trump is a twenty twenty four Republican nominee. Oh hell,

I I I don’t know if I could give you a number on that. I’ll I’ll say low lower than fifty percent. So I’ll I’ll say lower than fifty. Yeah. I’ll say four out of

ten. So you would you

would take the field over Trump. Yeah,

I would take the field over Trump at this

moment. Tim? I take Trump

over the field. He’s about as low as I’ve had him, though. I I would’ve had him eighty percent I think eighty five percent even really three weeks ago. And I I’d probably make it sixty now. I think it’s right sixty forty Trump versus Field for me.

Yeah.

I think

I’m almost exactly in that place. And but not because of the election results, more just the way he’s reacted to them. His reaction. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. His

his reaction looks like a guy who maybe doesn’t. Again, what what he has always had was a sense of weakness and an instinctive knowledge of how to exploit it. Can

I, like, can I follow-up on Tim’s point though? Because I — Yeah. — I agree that he should have just hung out if his goal was, if he’s thinking long term. Trump’s not good at thinking

long term.

Here’s the best construction I can give you Tim for what he was thinking to the extent it was strategic, which in Trump’s case is often not strategic at all. But what if he thinks I don’t have to have my people, my endorsees win in the general election. I just have to control the Republican Party. I have to be able to punish you within Republican Prime Centers. He has done that.

He still kind of has the power to do that. If you don’t care about governing, that’s sort of an acceptable strategy to you.

The quest the

open question to me is will enough Republicans decide that it doesn’t just matter getting through the Republican primary that if you don’t win general elections you don’t actually win the senate, if you don’t win enough of the house, we’re gonna return away from the the path and the person that caused that. Right? If Republicans actually start to care about general elections, more than they care about primaries or enough that they are willing to lose some primaries in order to get on a on a path that leads them to winning general elections, then Trump’s strategy fails. But more importantly, the country is saved I mean, if we could get Republicans to care about general elections and we can make general elections effective in punishing this kind of Republican extremism, this insanity, then we’re done. I mean, as far as I’ve concerned, we’re back on the path to sanity.

Yeah.

And then on

a Sarah optimism note, thank you for stepping in for Sarah today. Well, this was that was you you’re due to exactly what this podcast needed for ballet. I

wanna take a blowtorch to everything Bill just said, but but I’m not going to. It’s been a good show, but a long show. It’s time for us to get out of here. Everybody. Thanks for being with us on the next level.

Hit the subscribe button

really quick. JBL. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah. If you were in New Hampshire, Yeah.

I’m in New Hampshire tonight, Wednesday, depends on when this is an in New Hampshire at St. Anne Somes. Come hang with me. Gonna do a little talk. Sign a book, we can make fun of people, you know, it’ll be a good time.

So if you’re in New Hampshire or in the sort of the greater New Hampshire region, Vermont, not a far drive over Saint Ez or Northern Boston. Bring the general with you.

Bring the general yeah. Come on

by. Maybe we’ll run into Corey Lewandowski. I’m hoping to to I might while I’m there, I might try to do a little bit of kind of investigative work on the stabings, the Korlylundowski claims to have committed in the in the region. So anyway, Hope to see you at St. N.

S. Sorry to interrupt that awesome closure. You’re about to do J. V. S.

Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, listen. Go subscribe to all of our stuff.

Go to the bulwark dot com. Get more of this. Hot fire every single day on the web, on the podcast, and on the YouTubes as well. Will, thanks for being here. Tim, good to see you.

Next time, beef out.