So You Want To Be A Menace?

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level. I’m JBL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of The Bulwark. Before we get started, hit the like button, hit subscribe. But Secret Podcast app, give us five stars.

Leave a review. You’ve done better. You have to be keeping tabs on it. You’re doing better, but I expect more. Guys, big news this week.

I guess we now have real I mean, not not official, but non official confirmation that Rhonda Sanchez is running because otherwise he would not have released his statement on Ukraine. So DeSantis is gonna get in the race. That is a basically a done deal thing now. I believe And he filled out a questionnaire for Tucker Carlson in which he called the war in Ukraine a territorial dispute — Mhmm. — and said that it was not an America’s vital interest for us to be prolonging the war over there and that peace was the most Go to the Bulwark dot com and read Will Saletan piece about this in which he unpacks the line by line, lawyerly thing Ron DeSantis put out.

But this is interesting for lots of reasons, the first of which is because it tells us where does Santos positioning himself and another of which is that I think it hints that the potential for finally a schism in the Republican and conservative world in which maybe some people will realize they are closer

to Democratic politics than their Republican politics. Sarah, talk to me. I don’t know about a schism where people say that they’re closer to Democratic politics. I think that would be an overstatement. I do think that this is a real cleavage point, like a genuine cleavage point where you’re gonna get to see who believes in things and who doesn’t because Boiler.

Mhmm. Well, here’s the thing. Does Nikki Haley believe that America has a leadership role to play in the world? I think she does. I think that genuinely matters to her.

It’s sort of been a big part of her career. And so if she says as she has already done, she’s been kind of swimming in the Santos’ wake. Right? She’s trying to do things like, oh, no. Not third grade.

That doesn’t go far enough. Fifth grade for no woke stuff in the classroom. Don’t say gay.

No discussion of homosexuality in the classroom. Right.

And honestly, I’ve been a little bit, I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been a little bit cheered up by some of the pushback that DeSantis is getting. I think that this is an actually an interesting thing where, you know, Donald Trump And this I’ve been thinking about this a lot. One of the things that we didn’t we never talked about it enough is some of the menace that came with Donald Trump. The extent to which people were genuinely afraid of him and afraid of his followers, more specifically, Ron DeSantis does not have the same kind of menace. And and and the people are not afraid of him.

His colleagues, his his fellow Republicans are not afraid of him, yet because he doesn’t have juice the same way with the followers. Right? They are not going to commit crimes on his behalf. You’re not

gonna bomb your congressional office.

And so I think that people are much more willing to push back onto scientists. In fact, this has been Trump’s position and nobody’s really pushed back against Trump, but they are willing to push back against Ron DeSantis. And so that’s gonna create an opportunity I got a call from reporter being like, is there an opportunity for one of these candidates to really define themselves by taking the, you know, anti rub, the firmly anti Russia position? And I was like, there is room for candidates to do that. The problem is those candidates are Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, who are out of step with the base.

Like, Rhonda’s dentist, is in step with the base of the party by doing this. He just also knows better. This is not what he truly believes. So, Tim, one of the things that it strikes me

when we look at, so, like, Lindsay Grant and Mark Rubio have rushed out to sort of gently criticized Ron DeSantis. And as Sarah Longwell, you know, they’re willing to go crosswise with him. So Sarah sees that as a lack of to Santa’s juice, and I think that’s certainly part of it. But I wonder, is the other part of it or another part of it? The fact that Part of conservatism inks and the Republican elites planned for DeSantis involves convincing voters that he doesn’t really mean the stuff he says.

Because that’s what I sort of take the the Lindsay Graham and and Marco Rubio thing to be, is them going out just sort of hinting that, like, He’s just the governor of Florida. He hasn’t really studied this stuff yet. And, you know, look, you can you can look past all this this you see me, ah, past all this stuff. Because he doesn’t he’s just saying it to get with the, you know, those those ribs out in the panhand.

I think that Jim Garrity is doing that. The national review. I think that there are some desantis fans on in the Internet that are doing that. I

don’t think

that that’s what’s happening with these senators. I I think that there are two things that are happening. I think that that, you know, they would that that a few of them are just desperate for, like, one of their testicles to descend from their abdomen and, like, come back into reality and, like, demonstrate that they’re still a man. And I think that, like, they’ve got they they despite the fact that, you know, they were happy of the the deal they made with Trump, they they still would like to be their own their own little boy. They’d like to be a real boy for once, particularly your Markos and your Lindsay’s.

Right? So I think that there is that. There’s a little bit of an ego element to this. And I also think that there’s a little bit of gamesmanship with DeSantis. I I think that this is a little bit of bullying is maybe the wrong word, but kind of like trying to keep them on side.

Right? Like, I I I do I do think that they kind of think that, you know, hey, buddy, you know, we’ll give you a little leash to kinda go out there and do what you need to do on on this MAGA stuff. But like, we really need to we really need to, like, be against Putin on this Russian invasion. Right? And, like, kind of signaling to him that because a big part of DeSantis his deal.

Right? And we’ve talked to this in this podcast is that he thinks he can go as hard magg as he needs to and still have the establishment bros because they’re just so desperate to get rid of Trump. Right? And so I think this is them signaling to him that, like, yeah, that’s true. Like, we’ll go ninety two percent of the way with you there.

But, like, calling this a territorial dispute was like leaning over into Ron Paul territory and, you know, we’re far enough out from these primaries that will kick the tires on some of these other people if you’re gonna if you’re gonna go this way. And so I think that there is a little bit of that. I think that’s the only explanation for why so many of them. And if you looked at at the at the statements and the times and and from the folks running around the hill, there were, like, nine senators, Republican senators that the rebuke I mean, when was the last time nine people rebuked Donald Trump for anything? I’m literally, besides January sixth, you couldn’t remember it.

Right? And and so I I just think that that shows that there was kind of like a a strategic effort there to kind of send send a send a little message down to meet Balran about about where, you know, kind of where their line was. And and and by the way, maybe Ron says, I know you guys don’t actually have a line. Fuck you. I need to do this.

I’m gonna go with it anyway. But I think there’s that a gamesmanship is happening a little bit, and that that’s how I read it.

Sarah, the the line is ultimately drawn by the voters. Right? Yeah. It’s not drawn by, you know, Little Marco and Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell will all eventually put up with whatever the voters demand they put up with. The voters like are moving pretty substantial.

Right? You see this in the polling? I think you’ve seen it in your focus groups. Right? Yeah.

How would you characterize it? Anti anti Ukraine? Or anti anti Putin? Or, probably, what would you say about it? Yeah.

So

here’s what they say. And it it’s real clear and, like, this is this is what they’re getting a lot from Fox News folks too. Is the, you know, we’ve got a lot of problems here. Our border is open. We’ve got our own security concerns.

We need to take care of our own people. And this is very much America first. And and I’ve I’ve talked a lot about what I say. People always say, you know, I don’t know he’s like Trump’s tweets, but I like his policies. You say, okay, what policies?

They’ll say America first policies. And America first, the policies contained therein tend to be both, like, no forever wars is how they would say it and immigration. So we tend to be That’s right. Well, these are these are the things that this kind of America first pivots around. And so if it’s the isolationist or not isolationist, the protectionist trade policies as well.

Right? Which basically is what Biden is pitching too. It’s like we’re gonna make everything in America and forget the rest of the world. So anyway, that’s that’s what they say. And I think that then and the the these are people there’s a whole bucket of these people that are that are pro Ukraine, that were very pro Ukraine at the beginning.

But it’s gone on too long for their patience level. And they are this has been the big shift in the Republican Party over the last two decades is the extent to which the Iraq War and Afghanistan and, like, how long they went on has just completely like, now the Republicans are the ones saying, I don’t want any engaged in foreign conflicts, and I don’t want them to go on a long time, and I don’t have the patience for it, not on the stomach for it. We need to take care of things here at home, and they But here’s the thing about Ron DeSantis. There’s there’s a big bucket of those people who believe that strongly. There’s another bucket of those people that with a little leadership, if DeSanta said, we gotta do something about Putin, because this relates to China, this relates to America’s strength in the world, and we gotta be strong, and we gotta tell these dictators know, and there was a whole bucket of people that would have gone with DeSantis on that.

There

is somebody who does that. His his name is president of show Robin and Biden. But I’m just not gonna count. I’m

just saying, like, he could’ve he could’ve taken the anti the Biden’s not being tough enough position. And show Tom, you’re talking in a Yeah. Right. And a bunch of people, a bunch of these voters would go with him. And instead this is I’m sorry.

But this is Republican Triangle of doom stuff. Where now you’ve got DeSantis who’s supposed to be, you know, the more sane version of Trump. Every

time you do the triangle too, I’m I’m thinking you’re about to do a different man. Segment, I’m

like,

See, here’s the thing. I actually don’t know what you mean. I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Oh, I

keep continuing. I

apologize. Oh, boy. But now you listen to this on the podcast and not get to YouTube have just been cheated. I’m sorry, guys. Have to

go. And now I’m gonna ask you out afterwards, what do you think that I’m doing and is does everybody think I’m doing that all the time?

Me. I’m sorry.

Okay. Great. It’s just a triangle of doom. Does the toxic and symbiotic relationship between the right wing infotainment media the elected officials and the voters. And this is where Ron DeSantis coming out and taking Trump’s side of this now means that eighty percent of the Republican Party is going is their preferences for twenty twenty four president are or more than that.

Believe we should not be involved in helping Ukraine against Russia. Yeah. And that’s insane. Like, that is so wild. And it was actually funny, you know, the lot of the anti edits several people just, like, deleted their accounts yesterday.

It’s, like,

suddenly took that guy.

They suddenly took breaks from Twitter. Productivity breaks. It’s

just silence. Yeah.

Just can I just chime in on this really quick? Because I yeah. I’m sorry. I think but I just think this is the Mark Levin engagement on this is important. Because I do think that this is kind of an open question.

I guess the question you asked, J. V. About what the voters want. Because I kind of signed with Sarah on this. I I I think that there’s a quarter maybe a quarter of the Republican base that really is like I’m seriously basically pro Putin.

Right? Like, I mean, I I want a strong man. We like isolationism. Fuck the Ukraine. Right?

Maybe it’s a third even. Right? And then maybe on the other side, it’s probably a similar amount. Econ guys have a good pull on this. Right?

There is this middle, I think, that could be pushed into a more strong critique of Biden on the weakness. You know, he has dementia or whatever. He’s fatless. Look at Afghanistan’s in and like and like this would never have happened if we would have been tougher. Right?

You could imagine DeSantis going there or trying to at least do a little bit of that. And Mark Levin went it’s Tom in I’m intrigued by this. Like Mark Levin does his long thread this morning. I got how America first is just a slogan, and these guys like there’s a little bit of chickens coming home to roost on some of this or like a lot of these guys kind of thought that they were gonna be able to thought that they had this monkey off their back of Trump where they had to, like, walk on egg shells around all this stuff and do, you know, do the Trump thing and and, you know, kind of, do the seriously but not literally thing. And thought DeSantis was gonna be their pivot out.

And yesterday, it was like a wake up call to some of them. Like, it is not. Like, he’s he’s going the same places Trump and you actually don’t even have the Oh, that’s just that’s just Ron being a little cheeky on Twitter excuse. Right? Because it was like professional statements that run defense.

That was a stupid statement that was professional. Right? And so I think that as will be the interesting thing to watch play out is, is there any juice left in the Lavinz of the world. The people that were in that true con, you know, that came along with Trump late, but came along with him hard. You know, not the never Trump was these, not the Joan of Goldberg’s, the Mark Levin’s.

Like, do they have any juice? I don’t know. So in in DeSantis’ first foray into this

on Fox and Friends. That’s the line he took. Right. Right? He took the it was Biden’s weakness.

If, you know, if Joe Biden wasn’t president, we wouldn’t have this problem. And, you know, I I stupidly thought to myself, boy, this is they’ll never be able to square this circle. Which is it gonna be? But, of course, I’m the one who’s the idiot. Why why do they have to square the circle.

Why can’t they just have them both? Why can’t he say on the one, you know, to one audience, this is all all weakness into the other audience. Yeah. It’s not our interest territory dispute. No Republicans are gonna hold them to account for that.

I’m not sure that that’s true. Like, this is one of those things where right. This isn’t talking about litter boxes and schools. It’s not talking about what the third graders are gonna read and whether tango makes three as the biggest existential threat. To whatever.

This is about the Western world order. And if you caught Marco Root like, Lindsay Graham, people who really cared about foreign policy, they would tell you that one of the reasons they made accommodations for Trump, right, is that they really wanted to pull with him on things that matter. And they would call these the things that matter. Right. Right?

This this would matter to them. This is about does NATO exist? Like, does the post war war two alliance exist? Because Trump wants to undo those things And I think that the idea and for all of our friends at National Review and all those other places, like, this stuff really is supposed to matter in ways that the woke stuff is like trivial. And so I I just I just think that no.

I I

and so Yeah. For some of them, it

is. I’m not laughing at them. I’m not laughing at you, Sarah.

And I know you’re trying to be a dick. And that’s fine. These guys have already made fun of. But like, hey, point that that, like, so many of them said this yesterday, point to them. Like, it was I was pleasantly surprised.

I did not expect that. They could have said nothing. It’s interesting. I went I went back to relook at this to try the Santa statements just so long and and lawyerly like you said. But he really didn’t even do the Biden weakness part at all.

Right. No. Well, like, that’s what he did on the Fox and Friends. He could’ve done both. Right?

In the statement even, he could’ve done both. It’s a long statement. Like, he could have done no, you know, sort of some throat clearing about that. Like, the only time he mentions Biden is here is on the blank check. And on how this policy has driven Russia into a de facto alliance with China.

And that’s like a criticism being too harsh. On sanctions and all the right. The Russians felt like they’ve had to use China. So I I mean, both times you mentioned Biden was from the isolationist kind of critique.

We just also mentioned he did this on Tucker. Right?

In a statement to Tucker.

Yeah. No. And which I know Tucker, like, went out and asked. Yeah. Right?

But, like, these guys, he played Tucker’s game. Like, he went Tucker’s direction for Tucker for that audience. Like, he has decided that it is more important to him to compete for Trump’s base than it is to be like, irresponsible alternative.

Yeah. By the way, just one more thing. He could’ve replied to Tucker with with an eight sentence vague bullshit response. Right? Like, he could you know what I mean?

He couldn’t probably talk to, like, Biden so weak. Biden got us into this. And, you know, I have some concerns about how right? Like, he didn’t have to take have such an explicit, like, Ron Paul, Trumpish line. Like, do they chose to do that?

Let’s talk her too.

One question for both of you before we move on a tiny bit. What do we think the other candidates? The hawkish candidates? The Nikki Haley’s, Mike Pompeo’s, Mike Pence’s due as we get closer to to voting and people declaring, do you think they lean into this? Or do you think when they see the polling on this stuff, they start pulling back a little bit in hedging and trying to downplay it?

I think that they will look at the polling, and I don’t know that they there’s much they could do. Like, this is the problem. Right? If I were them, I would try to pick up the people that DeSantis is leaving on the table by taking this position, by going really hard the other direction. And they’ll do Biden’s week.

We should be we need to send a message to Russia in order to send a message to China. Somebody should be in that lane. And I think it’ll give them a couple points bump to keep them, maybe even get them to double digits.

Yeah. I wish one of them was stronger, and I don’t really wish you enough for them. Right? Because I think you could use this if there was one of them that was just stronger and had more credibility with the MagA folks. I really do think that you could use this to try to get up into the teens and peel off people and then try to demonstrate some strength and see what happens.

Right? Like like try to create a real, you know, you know, and start chipping away at Ron and and and seeing if you can’t become the alternative. But I just don’t think any of them have it. Like, they all just fundamental flaws, you know, we’ve talked about over and over again, but, you know, I with Mike Pompeo’s being his personality, and and Pence being January sixth, and Nikki just, like, just giving off such hard NeoCon globalist vibes.

This to me is Nikki’s slightly if she’s not gonna do it, then she’s got no business here. Because she believes this, and I’ll tell you, Hank, have I told you guys this when we were asking the groups about Nikki how many people say they wouldn’t vote for a woman. And they do it in this way. Some people are just like, I wouldn’t like, there’s like a guy who’s like I wouldn’t vote for a woman. There’s a bunch of people who don’t say they wouldn’t vote for a woman.

They say other people won’t vote for a woman. And they also say world leaders won’t take a woman seriously.

People are saying they wouldn’t vote for a woman.

Yeah. Well And there’s this, like, inherent, like, oh, people wouldn’t think they were tough enough And I was actually a little surprised because oftentimes the Republicans try to, like, overcompensate a little bit on these points and and say, like, we need, like, our margaret thatcher. They don’t usually reference thatcher, but it’s that kind of sentiment. But, like, Nikki could be that person. Like, I think this is an opportunity for Nikki to be like, dictators bad.

I would take on Vladimir Putin and, like, to show that’s her fighter and that’s and she’s in an arena there where she’s comfortable with the subject matter and she happens to believe it which can give her a little bit of authenticity. One of the things that I’m watching Nikki do is try to be somebody she’s not right now and it’s wearing on her terribly. Everybody can smell that on on a candidate. And so, like, I don’t know. This seems to be, like, if she doesn’t grab this type of opportunity, if she doesn’t try to own this lane, then there’s no point to her at all.

Here’s

why it needs to be an outsider to do this. I just don’t think there’s anybody to fix this. Is that she isn’t this fundamental Gordian knot, where if she’s like, Oh, we need a strong leader that’ll stand up to Putin. Somebody like Donald Trump who doesn’t wanna stand up to Putin. The fight here needs to be that, like, oh no, we need our own kind of strong man, like a person that would have intimidated Putin from coming into Ukraine.

But if that character already exists in the universe and it’s Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is out there saying the opposite thing, then how do you appeal to that Trump voter? Almost as if you need kind of a new person who’s like from outside that who’s not stuck in that world to come up and offer a different brand of of strength. It could be a woman, I think. It isn’t necessarily not, but I just think Nikki is just so stuck wrapped around this axel. I I just don’t know how she how you get out of it.

But I I agree that she should try. I mean, but if the three of them are all dividing up their fifteen percent, you know, it’s just like, okay, eight four two. You know, there’s like some strength in being in the teens. Mhmm. But

if she’s running for VP, she can’t go too hard on DeSantis for this. Right? Because then she’d become you can’t have her on the ticket. Right? So maybe it’s Pompeo that has to do that.

I mean,

I just would ignore Trump. Right? It’s the same thing which is, like, generational change. Okay. Well, that’s kind of about Trump.

She’s, like saying, clearly, you don’t have to talk about Trump to say, clearly, like, we need someone who can stand up to dictators. Like, the whole point should be, you know, we can’t cower in the face of dictators. We can’t just pretend like America doesn’t have a leadership role to play in the world. I don’t know. I think there’s like a very obvious way to, like, butch up her candidacy a little bit here by by being a little tougher.

You know, Sarah Longwell you kick, it hurts more if you’re wearing heels. Mhmm. Two points. Yeah. Two things quickly.

First of all, I would just like to say the the other thing that DeSantis does that a lot of the America firsters do these days is they say, we should be focused on China. Not on Russia. We we did it on the Thursday night show, which is only for subscribers to Bulwark Plus. You should join Bulwark Plus. We did a whole thing with some foreign policy people about how there there is a direct line from from Ukraine to Taiwan.

And the Chinese are watching this very closely. And if America ban this Ukraine, the only thing that does is signal to the Chinese that actually making a move on Taiwan is less risky than they think. And so just as a as a factual matter, this is wrong. But even as a conceptual matter, I don’t know if you guys remember this. But one of the things we got from from during the Trump administration was Donald Trump saying, I forget if this was reported in Bolton’s book or somebody else’s, but but Trump laughing at the idea that America would intervene if China moved on Taiwan.

Yeah. Do you remember this he was like, yeah. No. No way. Basis, you know, where was that island over there?

Nobody even knows where it is. We’re not gonna do anything if they they move on Taiwan. And so there is this this fake bravado of, like, yeah, we don’t wanna do Ukraine because we’re ready to go to war over Taiwan. These guys are not gonna go to war over Taiwan. Right.

The America firsters Will Saletan it easier for China to move on Taiwan and then b, if such a conflict happens, they will be against doing anything then too.

Totally. And by the way, they can do this and they can get away with it. Because it’s just too complicated of an argument. Yeah. There’s some foreign policy nerd, which is like three percent of the primary electorate, maybe two percent.

Right? Who might follow this argument and be like, oh, okay. I don’t know. I might move off to Santa’s move on to Pompeo because I actually do legitimately care about American strength and But the rest of people, if you’re up there on that stage making the argument, which is like, we need to be in Ukraine because that makes us tough on China. Because we need to signal to China that that if they intervene in Taiwan, we would beat them back there.

People aren’t following that argument. They actually don’t keep a fuck about Taiwan really in the grand scheme of things. And so these guys can butch themselves up by being like, we’re gonna be really tough China. China is the real threat. There are real foe, and we’re gonna be tough on them while while the reality being, they’re just slowly walking themselves into the Bloomberg foreign policy, like, permanently.

Sarah Longwell like people, you believe in people in their innate goodness. There are a lot of people in our world in conservatism, Inc. Who take foreign policy very seriously, as you guys said, Tim? You’re all done.

We and Sarah. We and Sarah. We and Sarah Longwell never part of conservatism, Inc. Was a hack.

Some of them behaved honorably yesterday. Some of them deleted their accounts, so they wouldn’t actually, give me as a rough percentage of the people who are currently doing everything they can to make Ron DeSantis happen. Should he be the nominee and should he continue with this policy outlook on Ukraine. What percentage of those elites do you think Will Saletan Ron DeSantis and vote for the guy who is on the right side of the single most important issue in the world. Yeah.

I mean, they have, like, no one. And and you can since so so like Ben Shapiro was instructive yesterday. Oh, I missed

it. What did Ben say?

Ben said so amazing to watch all of these people who said Trump was basic Hitler now pivot to say, Ron DeSantis is terrible. And I was like, This is a weird response to what DeSantis did, Ben Shapiro, former Neil Kahn. So, like, what is he doing? He’s basically being, like, oh, I don’t really know how to defend this. So I’m just gonna attack people’s motives for criticizing DeSantis, which by the way, has pretty much been the go to from this crowd.

Right? Which is you guys said that Donald Trump is an existential threat. You don’t get to say that about DeSantis too. You have to line up behind DeSantis because he’s the only one who can beat Trump. And unless you line up behind DeSantis, you’re not serious.

About defeating Trump. Right? This is their argument and basically no matter what DeSantis does, is they’re gonna take our frame of Trump’s existential threadiness and say, well, everything Ron DeSantis says is fine because you said Trump was an existential threat, so you can’t say that about DeSantis too. So when he basically takes all of Trump’s same positions that aid you guys think he was an extra central threat, you have to support him still. And I’m gonna support him still.

Didn’t

Ben Shapiro. Think Trump was an existential crisis that way he started the daily wire because he got kicked out of Breit Bart. I think that’s what happened. Anyway, I don’t know. This goes back to our, like, loving Brian Kemp argument, which is just like, really, are you sure?

We have to get on board with the scientists. Maybe you guys should try somebody

else. Oh, what about my pants? Have

you guys tried someone else? There’s someone else in the field that could beat them. Are you sure? Somebody that like, I don’t know, thinks that we should defend free people throughout the world. Maybe we should have that person and who likes vaccines.

But who also hates trans kids. How about that? Could you find somebody like that?

Sarah, I I laughed and laughed and laughed and the focus group when you had the people explaining all the the evangelical Christians who voted for Trump in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, explaining why they wouldn’t vote for Mike Pence when he clearly should have been the guy for them. And all of it was clearly, like, post facto rationalization for January sixth, but they didn’t wanna say January sixth, they were like, well, I don’t really know anything about him and He’s kinda like Trump’s Kamala Harris and, like, what does he even think about anything? I mean, I just don’t even know.

I don’t know anything about Mike Pence, actually. Turns out I

voted for a true national election, but I don’t know a thing about the guy. And that’s why I can’t support

him. I thought this episode was so good. Oh, yes. This observation that McKay made about Mike Pence gave the permission structure, like built the permission structure for Donald Trump, thus rendering the need for Mike Pence obsolete. Yeah.

Because if if if you have now convinced voters that actually morality doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t matter if you’re faithful, you can be a rice, married, adult, or who pays off porn stars. And Mike Pence told you, that was fine. He stood next to the guy. So I don’t need Mike Pence anymore because you just give me the biggest brasious b s r who’s gonna take the fight and put immigrants on planes. And I was told that that’s morally justified, that that’s fine.

Mike Pence told me that. So that’s what I want. Yeah. So you you can get that show, the Focus Group with Sarah Longwell,

by going to the Bulwark dot com. The Bulwark podcast focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalty. You know, I always try to separate hype from the reality, but this is a big deal. Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes speaks with guests about the latest stories from inside Washington and around the world. How do you spend seven years in this fever swab every single day and not lose your mind.

Conservative, conscientious, and civil. There’s no such thing as risk free going to a war zone. The Bulwark podcast, wherever you listen. Alright. Sarah, you were not prepped for this.

But you you will be able to follow along just fine. In the green room, Tim made a comment to me, which struck me as super interesting, and so I just wanna talk about it.

I am interesting.

So interesting to say doubt it. Tim said that he thought that Trump was doing a high risk strategy by going so agro against DeSantis so early. Yeah. I think the opposite. I think that is his best play.

Tell me why you think it’s risky.

It might be a best way. I guess, I I don’t know that Trump can help himself. Right? So I don’t actually know if this is really like strategy in the sense of you know, Rovian tactics, whatever, like, trying to triangulate. But I think this is just Trump’s, you know, Ed.

But it is a strategy, like whether or not he has control over it’s a strategy or not. And and I just think it’s high risk, high reward because he’s putting in some of this situation, DeSantis isn’t actually gonna be in this race. Now Trump, I don’t know if you saw this Trump super spec is suing DeSantis today because Florida has a resign to run law. And they’re gonna fix that in this legislature where DeSantis could stay governor and run, but but they haven’t fixed it yet. Right?

And because DeSantis doesn’t want them to fix the beginning of the legislature, because everybody’s gonna be like, oh, you’re running. Right? So they were gonna save it for the end of the legislature. So he’s got this period of time where he can’t run for president legally. And so Trump has sniffed that out and they’re suing him over it.

So he’s got this period, assuming this lawsuit isn’t successful. They’ve got this period between now and whatever early summer, the end of the legislative session and then when Ron runs in, where do you can tell? The Sanders is just gonna ignore Trump. Right? You can already see it.

Right? Like the Sanders isn’t gonna engage until he absolutely has to. And so Trump has made the decision, I think, that he’s gonna try to beat him before he gets in. Right? And just like define him, and he’s out there on stage in Iowa this weekend.

Like, attacking him over ethanol and social security and calling him sanctum. I mean, he he Trump is in full on, like, we are two weeks from the Iowa Congress level. Like, I’ve got DeSantis is, like, you know, skin in my mouth, like, level attacks. Right? And I find it just a little bit risky, and I just want I don’t know if he’s thought about this.

Because if it doesn’t work, right? If DeSantis launches in June, and let’s say pops to the lead, which I think is possible. Right? Like, he launches in June and he pops to the lead and Trump’s already emptied the chamber and he’ll just make up shit. And he’ll come up with more shit to attack to send us over.

But, like, It just might give him a little bit of a whiff of weakness. And you can see Ron DeSantis fanboy is pushing this. Right? You know, the the Josh Ham verse. Like, if you’re, you know, suffering through conservative Twitter, you you see this.

Like, that’s obviously not gonna work with Trump’s core twenty percent or thirty percent, whatever that number ends up being. But might that work enough with, like, this kind of, key swing demo? What? It’s like, god. This guy is kind of pathetic.

He’s been, like, he doesn’t have it any He’s been throwing these punches for five months and they haven’t landed and DeSantis is now beating him. I don’t know. I always worried about that in the Jeb campaign. I was like, the super pack, which I did not support this, by the way. The super pack went hard at Marco early, which we didn’t have control over, and I complained about all the time.

A lot of Marco fans still hold it against me. And because my point was that, like, if Marco passes us in the polls, we’re fucked, because it’s like we’ve already shot all these bullets and it looks pathetic. Right? Trump has a lot more strength than Jeb did. There are a lot of other differences.

But that one similarity, it just strikes me as a little bit risky. Sarah,

what do you think? I’ve been talking about this particular point a lot. One of the things about Trump and DeSantis, and this is by design, is that the voters who like I like them both. And so Trump going after DeSantis is like going after a lot of people’s new shiny toy. And there’s a lot of people out there that I hear this.

I hear this in the focus groups, kinda grumbling, like, I don’t really like the way he’s attacking Ron DeSantis. Republicans shouldn’t attack each other. Ron DeSantis has sort of went to the extent that he’s said anything back, he’s like, you know, I’m not out there smearing other Republicans. There’s a balance, right, because part of Trump’s attractiveness and the people who are always Trump, the reason they’re always Trump is that Trump is not a politician. That’s what they love about him.

He’s not a politician and he’s attacking the establishment. And part of Trump’s attacks are about saying that the scientist is the establishment because he wants his thirty percent to hate around the scientist. Right, to hate him, to be after him, probably to throw a little bit of a menace that way. I’ll tell you the kinds of things Trump’s gonna start doing he’s gonna go after to Santos’ wife, and because, you know, in the not to bring up the Focus Secret Podcast again, but when Terrapol Mary was

on Secret Podcast.

It’s it’s Secret Podcast. When Terrapol Mary was on, and we were doing the Trump Ron DeSantis episode, one of the things she talked about is how Trump’s strategy right now is that he thinks that DeSantis is not very good at this game. And that if he bakes him enough and goes hard at him, that DeSantis will, like, crumble. Yeah. And so, like, He’s gonna go after his softest spots like his wife who is basically the only person to Santa seems to get along with and who he trusts as an adviser.

Imagine Trump going after her. She like recently had breast cancer, that is a a highly, highly risky move. For Trump. And I think it is strategic. I think he does know what he’s doing is to bait Ron DeSantis Inn, get him into a a dogfight that nobody can go lower than Trump.

Trump goes low really wounds to scientist also makes him look weak. That’s why he goes out to him as a groomer already. Anyway, I think it’s risky, but I’m also not sure that it’s not also potentially productive for him.

I think it would be a less risky strategy if if there was a chance to say this didn’t get in. Yeah. If there was a chance you could intimidate him out of the race like this. Yes. Right.

And this would have been a very smart strategy then, but that ship sailed. Like, DeSantis is getting it.

I hate to say that I don’t believe these voters when they say things like, I don’t like him. But I I don’t fucking believe them. When they say, like, oh, I don’t like to be spewing other Republicans. Where were these voters over the last seven years when Donald Trump’s entire schtick was not really that he would fight the socialist democrats but that he would fight other republicans. Yeah.

But

they didn’t like any of those republicans. They liked us and us.

So that’s what it really is. Right? It’s a don’t smear the guy we like. Yeah. They liked George W.

Bush just fine.

Not by the end. They didn’t like W. By the end.

The place where the party has changed the most on, like, something that looks like a policy is on the foreign policy, and it’s because of George W. Bush. And that’s why Jeb never had a shot. Like, people didn’t realize how much the Bush legacy was now just a nonstarter with these voters.

Alright. I mean, I I guess that’s the case. But I have another question here, Sarah. So one of the things you you have always said and which I I take very much to heart is that one of Trump’s superpowers was just repetition. You just said the same three things over and over a million times.

Eventually, Republican voters just believed him on it. Mhmm. Is that a danger for DeSantis? The

thing is is like Tim’s question is like, is it a risk? I think it’s highly risky. I also think it can work. Like, I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that works in part because Donald Trump is gonna try to paint Ron DeSantis as a globalist cop. This is why Rhonda Santos is taking this position in part.

Rhonda Santos does not wanna play in to Donald Trump’s framing of him. Because now Donald Trump’s complaining, right, you see what he says? He says, like, he’s copying me. He just does everything that I do because Trump wanted the differential. Mhmm.

Right? He wanted to have that lane to himself. And DeSantis is trying to crowd him out of it, and that’s making Trump angry. Ron DeSantis doesn’t wanna play in any of that establishment stuff. And it could work.

Like, I do hear some of this from some of the truck voters in there, where they’re like, I don’t know. Ron DeSantis is just kinda like a regular politician. And, like, that stuff is just poisoned with the base, the regular politician.

That’s a really good insight on how Trump is like lashing out because he wanted he wants DeSantis to get sucked into the Marco Lindsey element. Like, you know, DeSantis is sort of getting pulled from both sides on this. I

don’t know. It seems to me like a pretty viable line of attack. Right? Here’s this guy who was talking like Paul Ryan five minutes ago, and now he copies me. You can’t trust him.

He’s gonna get in there and he’s gonna be the just like all the other You’re right

back to be in Paul Ryan again.

Yeah? Yeah.

Okay. Silicon Valley Bank goes under because of woke DEI policies. Guys, can we talk about how woke is the worst thing in the world and it’s destroying everything it touches and

Go woke. Go broke. Or

can we talk about how people who say, well, it’s it’s basically a marker of low IQ,

you know? I’m really mad about this, actually. So can I go Say, wait a minute? Look like she was happy to talk about this topic. So Yeah.

I

didn’t even know this topic where

It was in the Slack. Not my party is on this topic this week. So I also I’m not gonna try to pretend on this podcast to be a finance expert.

Wait. Could people go to the Bulwark dot com to get not my party?

They can. It’s out on Thursday,

so it

won’t be out till tomorrow, or they go on snapchat dot org. And so I I had to do a lot of reading about this, and I called my friend Josh Barrell, who’s got a good newsletter as well, and I have him guesting a little bit on my party this week to help explain the math particulars about this. And here’s the thing that that is same as an everyone story with the Republicans is, you could imagine a substantive critique of divided administration that, like, economic experts might disagree or some might agree, some might disagree, but it would be legitimate. Right? They would say, hey, They overstimulus the economy.

The economy got so hot at the jack up interest rates really fast. That caused these banks that made certain bets on low interest rates to go Ron DeSantis maybe these bank CEOs made stupid decisions. But, like, you know, as the Biden inflation economy that, like, really caused them. Now they’re bailing them out and screw these guys. Okay?

Yeah. You know, you could disagree with that explanation, but that would at least be a legitimate critique. I two nerds on the House Finance Committee are making that argument. Right? Like, nobody is saying that.

And you watch Fox all day, and it’s like, these guys are woke. The problem is that they had lesbian awareness day. Sorry, Sara. That’s the reason why this one under was lesbian awareness day. They they did

pride. Day?

Your people have a lot to answer for, Sarah. Or

maybe it was a week. I don’t know. Week. I don’t think something made some kind of lesbian acknowledgement thing at this bank, and that was the reason. Play

a softball game. And

so some of that’s ridiculous that you can laugh at. But really, I just the thing that bugs me is that It’s so ridiculous that you wanna laugh at it. But, like, there’s an underlying, like, overt racism that they don’t wanna acknowledge as real, like, drawn to scientists who is conceivably the nominee goes out there and says that this bank was distracted by their diversity initiatives. And that’s why this happened. Like, what was Enron distracted by their commitment to diversity and inclusion?

Like, where it was fucking, you know, baresterns? Like, this is so stupid. And the Wall Street Journal guy is like, oh oh, I’m gonna take this racist dog whistle. I’m just gonna go straight for it. He writes in the in the journal, he’s like, they’re bored.

Was forty five percent women. One black, one LGBT queue plus, and two veterans. And I’m not saying that twelve white guys wouldn’t have had this problem, but maybe they were a little too distracted. It’s like, you’re blaming this on the one black Like, really and this is in the Wall Street Journal editorial. It’s just like nineteen sixties level shit.

It’s funny, but it also is overt racism. And for some reason, it’s like, oh, if you say that, then, oh, oh, no. You’re a low clipper and blah, blah, blah. But, like, No. Like these guys have now turned their anti woke like nonsense into like making overt racist arguments.

As their go to anytime something bad happens. They could have legitimate arguments for why the Libs fucked something up and it’s a Silicon Valley bank for Christ Sakes and it’s a Democratic president. But instead of that, they all immediately go to no, it’s the one black. That’s the problem. Fuck you.

The truth is, the Silicon Valley Bank thing is not all that difficult to understand. I didn’t

need to call Josh Beryl you’re saying to I should’ve had JBL just do it. I

mean, I could have. Yeah. But but the point is think back to the two thousand eight financial collapse. Like, that was actually quite difficult to understand. It involved tranches.

It involved exotic financial instruments and the way them which subprime mortgages were then repackaged and resold as loans. Like, that’s that’s reasonably hard to understand, I think. I mean, I would assume that anybody who’s capable of living as an adult in the world in America could probably get there if they spent an hour researching it. But, you know, I don’t wanna burden people too much.

I had to watch the big short, like, three times. I

watched the big short a couple times.

The Silicon Valley Bank is a very simple explanation about like how banks work in terms of they take in things and then they give out things. And when they take in things, it is at an interest rate, which is fixed. And when they give out things, it’s an interest rate, it’s variable, and they can get caught at a trap if interest rates suddenly move. Right? It’s not hard.

If the people, the great and good American people, are so flipping stupid. Did they look at this and say, yeah, I guess it was woke. The Wall Street Journal editorial page told me it was woke. So that’s what happened. Bam.

Bam. If that’s what happens with the voters, then, like, what what’s the point of any of this, Sarah Longwell I know what you’re gonna say. You’re gonna say JBL. Real people have real world problems. They they have kitchen table issues that they gotta sit.

They don’t have time to sit and learn about interest rates. The point is we can make them seem

stupid and racist for making that argument. Right? Like, can’t you make that argument to the voters?

Absolutely. I think part of what’s happened over the last few weeks that we’ve seen coming out of elite media, maybe Fox News, whatever. The contempt with which the elected officials and the sort of news media holds these voters is unbelievable. Right? And, like, All I gotta do is say the I love one black.

One black. You say that? To

the other one, get through the editors.

It’s just like, my my

I think maybe find yourself writing one Bulwark. Maybe take take a step away from the Google doc and come back and come up with a different way to phrase

it.

Yeah. It’s wild stuff. But this is this is how stupid they think they are. They can’t because if we get even who you blame, we should be having a conversation about these financial institutions and saying, probably shouldn’t do this. This is a problem.

And somebody said this, made this observation. I think it’s a really good one. That Republicans have been feeding their voters this woke stuff now for so long that they’ve, like, lost the muscular ability, like, or the intellectual ability to make substantive policy points. It’s like, now it’s such a crux. It’s such a — Yeah.

— a place where they go every single time and it’s like, Well, this is just the thing I’ll say for everything, and I no longer need to have, you know, it’s like the woke military. Like, Are you gonna have a foreign policy? Are you gonna have a policy on economics? Are you gonna What do you think

about? Think for them, Sarah, isn’t it? I mean, the crutch is a crutch because it works. It actually helps you walk. This is healthy Republicans.

I mean, they lost the twenty twenty two election despite all fundamentals in their favor. They’re far too many people go for this. Far too many I mean, and obviously, they still did kind of win the House, but they dramatically underperformed with historical factors in mind. In part because they are a ridiculous party that no longer has any affirmative policy beliefs whatsoever, our friend who disabled his account took a mental health break, said that I was on serious in one of my critiques of Ron DeSantis. For this reason, I have articulated, this idea we all have to support Ron DeSantis because we said Trump’s next central threat.

But like all of these people used to be able to write about tax policy effectively. They used to be able to write about foreign policy effectively. Wall Street Journal editorial page, the whole point of it was to talk in-depth about financial

Ron DeSantis. They’re

still like yeah. And now people have lost the ability to govern seriously, and it’s becoming I think a place where you get pretty scared for Republicans to be running anything because they’re not serious people anymore. Can

I ask you guys a question? The asymmetric nature of this bothers me, and I I don’t understand the explanation for it. If we just did the start experiment, if Kamala, let’s say that like a conservative oriented company like an oil company had gone under had a spill or let’s say there’s an oil spill and Kamala comes out and says, you know, I think the reason for this is because they are transphobic. And like they have white privilege or whatever. Structural

racism causes

you. Structural racism was the reason for this oil spill. She would be mocked. There would be withering mocking. On the right, obviously, but even among her own team.

Even CNN would be kinda like, ugh, a Kamala. I don’t know. Like, maybe there’s some other reasons here. We don’t need to follow on the culture war for everything. And she gets this treatment.

Right? DeSantis isn’t getting that treatment. Like, DeSantis went out and gave the stupidest possible explanation for this bank crash. And, you know, some of us are, but, like, people aren’t really out there being like, DeSantis is a dummy. He’s too stupid to talk.

Like, like, you can’t even say a

sentence.

Right? Like, that’s how the treatment Colin would be getting. Why is that? Like, I I really

don’t understand. I

have the answer. There’s some structural racism. No. I have the answer to this.

And the answer is, is because of the voters. Like, Democratic voters would not believe that sort of thing and would make fun of Kamala Harris because they would have serious questions about, like, well, how did the oil spill happen? Who is responsible for it? What can we do to clean it up? Is there legislation we could pass going forward to prevent the next kind of hit one of these accidents?

And Republican voters don’t have any preferences. In fact, in fact, their preferences run the opposite. Why is the Wall Street Journal page devolved into this? Because the readers of the Wall Street Journal page are not interested in that shit anymore. The readers of the Wall Street Journal editorial page want the woke stuff.

And so it’s it’s all market response. This is this is what the people want Republican people. And so that’s what their leaders are giving them. Yeah.

But that’s because they’re all sixty five year old executives in companies that are now dominated by Gen Zers who changing the rules on them and they’re annoyed. Yeah. Oh, it’s not

even annoyed. Them. The people were watching Fox News and the I was fucking annoyed. Sarah, you and I talked about this on the Secret Podcast week — Yeah. — which is the it’s the asymmetric nature of the two parties right now.

Like, the democrats go out, propose a bunch of things and We wanna lower the price of insulin and we’re gonna spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure and we think it’s important to the world order for Ukraine to win and defeat Russia’s aggressive war. And the Republican Party comes back with your local school district has litter boxes in the bathrooms. The Republican Party’s argument is, like, there are trans people performing a drag show at a hotel in Miami, and so you, sir, in Mississippi, should vote for us. That’s it. Right?

And it is an asymmetric political arrangement. And if the voters go for that, then like, I don’t know what to do. I’m

just gonna push back just like I did on the Secret Podcast little bit, which is, you know, why did Hillary Clinton lose the election? A lot of democrats wanna tell you sexism. Then

how do you explain the difference between how this scientist gets treated versus how a hypothetical comma would get treated in a situation?

I do think that some of the desirousism and sacrosanctomy. Like, I do think that some of them, but I also think they have different voters. Like, I think JBL’s right out. JBL and I do agree on, like, the voting piece is extremely important. I tend to blame them less though because I think the leadership and the media is so corrupting and, like, poisoning them all the time and helping to exacerbate things.

Right. Again, like, I think that DeSantis had taken the opposite position. Like, we should be being tougher on Russia. Like, that would have made a difference. Like, all the voters wouldn’t have been like, oh, no.

I’m gonna vote for Trump Ron DeSantis is an idiot. A whole bunch of people would be like America Hell yeah. Yeah. People are influenced by this. When

the leaders do matter just in

the sense of just if you just use this hypothetical, and Kamala had done this. On MSNBC, there’d be some people who would defend her. And so, yeah, that’s right. You know, there’d be a couple hosts. But then there’d be some hosts that would be like, what the hell is Kamala talking about?

Right? Like, there would be a

little

bit of both. Right? And so that’s not perfect or whatever. You know, there’s certainly some group think in any group, but couldn’t find a person on Fox except maybe the one token live on the cycle or whatever it’s called the five. You know, who would go out and be like, Is Ron being a little bit stupid here?

Right? You know, like, there’s no elite effort to halt for accountability on this stuff. Alright.

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