The Death of Glenn Youngkin’s Career

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level. I’m J VL here with my best friends. Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the Bulwark. Happy Take Day.

Happy post election day. Take day for all who celebrate. We are here to over interpret a bunch of races that were decided by ham I’m kidding. That that’s not what we’re going to do. I myself is funny.

I in my locality, I had a couple friends who were running for office, and so I was eagerly refreshing the the thing And these are races which people have devoted, like, four months in their lives to in order to get three hundred and fifty votes. Three or fifty votes to win, like, to win their little, you know, city council thing. And I just thought, at that level, if you just knew who the voters are, you could literally just, like, have them all over for dinner to talk to them. That’s that’s all. Big barbecue.

Just do a single big barbecue. Anyway, democracy. Isn’t democracy great.

It is. So

So, you know, I’m back on Pacific time. So if I’m feeling a little punchy this morning, I’m in Las Vegas. I was with Steve Vander and Carrie Lake last night. Show tie the circus is over. The circus, they show time, cancel it, and they’re and they’re great wisdom.

So watch me on Sunday be the last one. Hopefully, if if we have any streamer executives here, it does seem like kind of a silly time to cancel a show given that it’s like the most important of election since the civil war is happening next year. But just me, I don’t know. I don’t I don’t see the P and L sheets, but, so anyway, something to something to mention to suits if you’re if you worked with a streamer, but I’m here in Las Vegas and while you have my boring hotel room, I get to listen to your to over interpreted takes. Well, I stare out at the luxor and MGM.

It’s beautiful. Are you

at the north end of

the strip? Sarah Longwell, Sarah’s gotta be jealous right now.

Well, yeah, I am jealous, but You’re at the Locksmith?

Yeah. Are you at the Nandalay Bay?

Spinks is right there. Can we see it? Can we see it? Can we see it out the window?

Which which place are you in?

None of your business.

Oh, it’s the Mona Charen, isn’t it? I’m so sorry.

I don’t I don’t I don’t want any I don’t want any fans or haters gathering in the lobby.

So are none of you gonna say anything about this? I put I’m I’m wearing a prop just for purposes of this show. We’re in a red vest. Glenn Youngkin rip

Yeah. It doesn’t look like a young and red vest. I’m sorry.

Yeah. It’s funny.

But I didn’t notice. It just looks like you’re dressed normally. Okay.

And donors all Republican donors across the country were the big losers last night because their fantasy candidate. The guy, they went to the vest summit with. Wasn’t that what that what it was called? Like, three weeks ago.

Yeah. The Redvest summit.

The Redvest summit with to plot their glory how he was gonna he’s gonna jump in late having turned Virginia red, and he was gonna challenge that bad orange man who keeps saying all the mean things. And, oh,

I mean, look, Glenn Youngin was never gonna be the savior. He was never gonna run.

Right.

The Redvest summits are about Glenn Youngin. It’s just like What’s up with St. Larry right now? You know, people love being asked by rich donors to run for president. They cannot resist that.

Lending. Nothing is rich too. This is what I don’t understand. No. Row, you’re already very rich.

You need to be with people who are extra super rich?

No. It’s not about their richness. It’s about they seem like serious people who are telling him, like, you’re the one. You’re our great hope for the country.

I just floppy hair, Glenn. You’re not the one.

I just think that’s intoxicating for these guys. And, you know, he wants to keep that fantasy alive, but it died last night. I’m not sure if it if his twenty twenty eight ambitions died with it. I think that’s an over read on it, but I do think he, like, went pretty hard. He, like, state territory, on winning this and on having a winning message on abortion, the fifth, the fifteen week with the exceptions.

And to have it get rejected, You know, just disrupts his narrative by quite a lot.

Yeah. I never really understood that strategically, actually. Like, why were you staking your political career explicitly. It wasn’t it would be one thing that was like an implicit thing. I wanna see how this turns out, you know, and then I might decide what to do with myself, but, like, you’re going to political and on the Sunday shows and you’re like, I’m gonna decide what happens after a state senate race in Henrico County.

It’s like, who can I mean, Who cares about State Center Eiko County except for the people of the commonwealth of Virginia? This ended up being a big difference because, you know, Glennan can now can’t do anything. Part of the reason why Glenn’s popular in Virginia is because he doesn’t do anything. Right? He has a democratic legislature.

And so it’s hard to become unpopular if you’re not passing you know, the far right cultural bills that he wanted to pass. So I never really understood why he he was staking his political fate on on random State delegate races in an off your, election. So I thought that was strategically dumb, but he was, and it was very explicit. So when I was with Bannon yesterday, This is not gonna make the cut of the show. So it’s kinda funny behind the scenes things.

Bannon, like, didn’t exactly say he was rooting for the Democrats in Virginia, but, like, pretty much said it. You know, he was just like, if Youngkin has a good night tonight, that’s gonna be bad for Maga, right? Because the counter force within the party, we’ll have some momentum and we’ll have some vigor and and maybe, you know, there’ll be a fusion type candidate. Maybe Young can compete that candidate. You know, Like Sarah I’m pretty skeptical that Youngkin really was ever capable of being a mega normie fusion candidate because he’s just he leans too far in the normie direction.

Like, just by the way he looks. But, anyway, I I I did think it was interesting that that Bannon was at least You know, you never know. He’s full of shit. So, like, but but at least he’s paying lip service to the notion that Jonathan Last night was meaningful. In kind of this intra party conflict and that it was a big l for Youngin.

Yeah. Because, look, this is, you know, when these Republicans, right, they have a bad night, Bannon and Trump can turn around and be like, Trump’s not on the ticket. And as long as Trump’s not on the ticket, it’s just like you can’t win without him. And frankly, I’ve had a lot of emails this morning with people being like, What does it mean for twenty twenty four? And I’m like, disaggregate, disaggregate this from twenty twenty four because right now everybody wants to make it about the poll this weekend.

And then how this is a repudiation

which we’re gonna talk about. Okay. Stay tuned for the rest of the show. No. No.

No. I’m just I’m not staying for for listeners. We’re gonna get to that poll to continue his era.

I don’t wanna step on our our path here. I just think that the people who are saying that it’s different when Trump’s on the ballot are correct. Like, that is just the dynamic of right now is very different from what the dynamic of twenty twenty four will be, and I don’t think you can extrapolate that much. I think what you can extrapolate from it is that Glen Yonkin was ran at a perfect time where suburban normies were pissed off about COVID closures, especially around schools. And inflation, which he focused on, and that’s why he won.

He wanted a very particular moment. People are down on Biden, whatever. And he had the right issue.

And a weak opponent.

Yeah, and a weak opponent. And then because he had presidential ambitions, he started to sound a little less normie. He still looked normie, but he sounded a little less normie. He ran on the abortion thing, which is clearly toxic for Republicans. And, like, he misread everything.

Like, he sort of squandered the one real narrative advantage he which is like a Republican who can win in a blue state. And he sort of did the same thing that DeSantis did. Like, they have this narrative where like, well, I’m a Republican who can win, I’m a fusion candidate, and then they feel pulled to Maga and to the base because they’re all in their ear once they went and then they lose the normies and it’s all over.

Can I read something to you guys?

Yeah. Yeah.

I’m gonna read something to you. I’m not gonna tell you who it is first. I’m just gonna read it. We can discuss it, and then then I’ll tell you who it is. Rich Lowry.

Ross douthett.

The reality is that the GOP is a national party is dead. It is now a conglomeration of several regional parties in parts of the country, Republicans run wrapped in the manga label as Donald Trump candidates. In other parts of the country, they must run as far from Trump as possible. That renders the GOP of a regional party of divergent views that must then assemble coalition of disparate and often incompatible values. For all the polling that shows Joe Biden doing a terrible job and people not like Biden, the GOP might just be too divided to win nationally at this point.

In fact, Joe Biden is hugely unpopular and that should spell doom for his party but that is not happening in the actual elections. I am

Eric Erickson. Eric Erickson.

It was Eric Erickson. It was good. I I I saw that last night.

Were you cheating?

No. I saw it.

Are you cheating Sarah? We’re on Twitter. JBL. We’re on Twitter. We see what he says.

That’s my buddy at Eric Garrison, who whose stuff I read constantly

I think is a little overstated, but, but I think that the directionally, it’s right. And, I think this is particularly true and off your elections, and this relates exactly what Sarah was just saying about trump Trump being on the ballot doesn’t help Republicans necessarily because he’s, whatever, popular, more popular than so the candidates, but it helps solve this problem. That you’re talking about. Well, I, if you have an election where Trump is on the ballot, and then, you know, you also have whatever Dave McCormick on the ballot in Philly in Pennsylvania, you know, Dave might be able to get the trump voters because they turned out to vote for Trump. And maybe Trump doesn’t get all the Dave voters, right?

But but it but it kind of helps the party. It lifts the boats, right? And in these off year elections, You know, the Trump people aren’t turning out for Dave. Right? And and and a lot of the normies are actually not turning out for Dave because they because these candidates, I’m just using Dave as a generic candidate.

He wasn’t on a ballot last night because these candidates are like trying to appeal to the Trump voters by being overly animated about these maga issues and and you end up in the sour spot. Right? That that Sarah’s talking about the Santa’s and and and Youngin coming where you’re turning off the people you are appealing to. In, you know, just your generic, suburban swing voter types, and you’re not actually motivating all, maybe some of the trump voters, but not all of them, are turning out. And so I I think you saw this last night.

And the the other side of this coin, I mean, Bill talked to us a lot last night on YouTube, which you should go check out if you’re not monitoring our YouTube fee. But the inverse of this queen is the Democrats now have a really good off your coalition because they’ve added into their Possy, a bunch of suburban moms and dads who are conscientious and who vote and who do bail ballots and who care. You know what I mean? And so So so I I do I think Eric’s point is definitely right about off your elections. Not I think it’s a little overstated for presidential elections.

So But but doesn’t Trump solve that problem to a large degree? And this is I I’ve been ringing this bell for a long time, though. I actually think it turns out that Trump is very important for the Republican Party. Terrible for the Republican Party. And maybe Trump himself can’t but Trump is actually better for down belt Republicans when he is on the ticket.

Because at the top of the ticket, he brings out his voters. His voters will then just vote for whoever’s underneath him. And the normie ours might for Biden at the top, but they will still vote for for Dave McCormack. And having somebody like Rhonda Sanchez at the top of the ticket might not do that for for them. Having Nikki Haley might not do that for them.

Now there are other ways they can win. Right? Nikki?

I think Nikki and Ron are different. In this regard.

But Totally hard, but not in regards to the Maga voters. Right? So if Nikki Haley were to be the Republican nominee, which she isn’t going to be, She would have to win in a different way. Right? She has to win by actually winning a whole bunch of those those middle voters to make up for the the magus who don’t show up

for her.

Sort of, but also, let me just say that the big difference is is that Trump is turnout fuel on both sides. Right? So Trump has turned out fuel for the Republicans who love him, who don’t turn out any other time, but he’s also he takes a bunch of people who are really not that into Biden, right? There’s not a pro biden coalition that can any way rival an anti trump coalition. Right?

So he turns out all the people who really hate him. And so, the, if Nikki’s on, what happens is, is the lack of enthusiasm for Biden suddenly becomes a really big problem because they don’t hate Nikki enough to turn out against her.

Not because of the ballot number, but I just wish for political science purposes we could run trunk twenty twenty four and Nikki twenty twenty four to see what the total vote count number would be. Totally. The way down. Right.

I mean, by like twenty million.

Which would be fantastic for America.

That would

be a sign of health. It would be

a side of health. Yeah. It would be a side of health.

Democracy.

This is a myth. This idea that when turnout is high that it means democracy is healthy. I remember tell this story all

the time

I was in the Czech Republic one time, and a and a senator there said to me, from the Czech Republic, she’s like, I knew we had really entrenched democracy. When the number of people voting went down because it meant people didn’t think things were on fire, and they could check out of politics. That is actually healthier politics. People were like, we need everybody to vote not true.

That’s always one of my big rants with liberal donors and liberal activist types who are always like more voting, more voting, more registration. I was like, do you know the demographic with the largest number of non voters, non college white people. Are we are we sure? Are we sure we want every single non every single person to vote because the biggest demographic, I just I don’t know. The non voting non college white people are the demo that you’re looking for.

Just I want everybody to have access. Everybody should have access to. But I don’t want everybody to feel so freaked out that they feel like they

yeah. Everybody ought to feel like if they if they just skip an election, like, the fate of the world is not on the line. Right?

Right.

Like, and the, like, the they can vote in the next and the next election will be the same kind of choice between the two uni party candidates and everything will be fine. Kentucky Andy Bishier, did Randy as you just did a focus group with them. Right? Sarah Longwell lots of people talking about Andy Andy Andy?

I’m not saying the shirt. I’m just saying, if you listen to the focus group pod, it’s all right there. Okay?

Absolutely.

It is it is it is the these these Sheer, Trump voters, okay, these are people who voted for Trump. They called a Mandy. They liked him. They talked about how responsive he was. There’s one guy in there talking about how they don’t see eye to eye on the issue of life, but he still likes Andy because Andy is a good guy with good values, and he can overlook that one thing.

I mean, This is why Andy Busy are just one by five points, and I wish that I could, like, bobble it and force feed it to the rest of the Democratic Party.

One of the points Bill made with with Tim last night is that there, you know, we we talk all the time about asymmetries between the two parties. Where you have, like, Larry Hogan succeeding in a blue state, you also have the Republicans in Maryland trying to ride him out on a rail because they hate him so much. Yep. You do not see like AOC coming down to Barnstorm against Andy Bishier because he’s not progressive enough. In Kentucky.

Right? I mean, the Democrats and that used to be a problem in Democrats. Actually, during the the w years, this is a big thing. Like going around trying there were There were a bunch of Democrats who wanted to get rid of John Tester back in the day because he wasn’t, you know, and and the democratic party basically came around to, no, actually, we’re gonna to run candidates who kinda look like their electorates in their places. And the Republicans have then switched places with them on Republicans now have like purity tests that they’re running everywhere wanting primary people.

Yeah. I I wish both parties would learn a little bit more about this. Frank, it could be better for the Bulwark crowd. And I think the could do even better on this. I think the democratic problem in a lot of these red and purple states is more.

We run candidates like Amy McGrath that fit the district, but then they fit, then in order to get online donations, like Amy McGrath instead of running like a military person who moderate, you know, runs indistinguishable from the national party. Right? And that and that doesn’t work. Right? Now, their difference between Senate elections and governor’s elections and At least in fact, my favorite Sarah focus group ever was with Alabama and Georgia voters where they were like, the same voters were talking about how they liked Kemp, and K IV or whatever, even though they weren’t Maga because they got things done, you know, they did whatever in their communities.

And then when we got to the federal offices, they were you know, I like MTG and Matt Gates because they get things done, right? Like people, the voters conceptions of what a governor should do and what a federal person should do is there is very different. So I do think governors races land themselves to these types of candidates a little bit more, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work in Senate races. For more heterodox candidates to to try. And I and I think that the Democrats really could use more of that.

They have a couple right now with Tester and mansion. But, you know, swing voters exist is my main takeaway of the Kentucky thing. I mean, Donald Trump lost two counties in Kentucky. Two. He won sixty two thirty seven or something, I think.

And, you know, Andy Bashir wins pretty comfortably last night. So a huge swing vote. And, and so, you know, persuasion matters.

Yeah. Can I I have a question for you, Tim, because one of the things Bashir did that Presley in Mississippi didn’t do, was he ran he just ran as a pro choice candidate? Right? He didn’t try to be a pro life candidate, even there in Kentucky, which Presley ran as a pro life Democrat. Which I think both you and I, or maybe all three of us might have said, that’s a good move.

Like, we need more pro life Democrats to kinda meet the moment. I’m not sure it didn’t hurt Presley though, not to have. I think that abortion is one of these issues that if you make it a high salience issue for people, you pick up, especially at a local level, where they are the decider about what’s gonna happen, or the ballot initiative is the decider. Suddenly, as we saw in Ohio, you get tons of Republicans who vote for these things. And I think that bashir running unabashedly on pro choice actually probably helped him and didn’t help Presley.

What do you think?

I do agree with that. I mean, again, now we’re getting into really over and purpreting. Well, let’s have, you know, we have an incumbent governor, bashir’s incumbent. Tate is incumbent, right, at Mississippi versus Kentucky. Sure.

Which is different. I do One of the things I didn’t get to in my article about Presley that I should have is, you know, one of the things I was thinking about was In order to kind of navigate this, right? Like, how do I win over enough Trump voters while also benefiting from what we were talking about earlier, which is the Democratic Coalition’s turnout advantages. You know, their answer to that was Medicaid. Right?

Like Medicaid access was the big kind of issue that they were running on. And I was just kind of, you know, the whole time I was like, I just know, there’s this little doubt in my head that was like, is that enough actually? Is it does there need to be something? Does there need to be another fig leaf? And maybe that’s simply six week abortion access, right?

Or something like very, you know what I mean? Some very, some pretty pro life view, right? That was something, but something that people could grab onto. Like, is because Kentucky ads, the one ad with the young woman who got raped by her stepdad or whatever, And that was really powerful, and that’s like a seven, you know, eighty twenty issue. I think even in Mississippi.

Maybe even if it’s a sixty five thirty five issue in Mississippi, right? Like, you know, maybe that maybe there’s a way for Democrats to balance this more. So when John Bell Edwards ran as a pro life Democrat in Louisiana, it was in a pre dobbs era. Right? And so he could be kind of pro life in a hand wavy way, you know, in a way that kind of like signals to the socons.

Like, you can trust me. I’m I’m not one of those bad Democrats. But maybe in a post ops world, I do agree that it might have helped Presley navigate that swing voter plus turnout advantage to have not been so hard line on that.

Alright. This segues is something I wanna talk about in in a minute, but first, this show is sponsored by Better Help You know, the holidays are coming up and regardless of how much you plan and prepare to deal with all the craziness of shopping and cooking and family. It almost always ends up being a chaotic mess. True story. That’s why adding therapy to your life can be a bright spot amid all the stress and change.

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You know I’m pro, very pro therapy, and that is good. One other thing to think about, one other personal change I made about the holidays. Mhmm.

It’s

few years back. You know, right when I when I in my twenties, since I turned twenty one and were adults together, we were doing a lot of drinking and Thanksgiving. And that that led to some questionable, you know, evenings. And so I just I just say one change I’ve made to deal with the holiday stress is also just to kind of dial back drinking a little bit. So I think there would be plus dialing back the drinking.

It’s a nice just a little pro tip from me.

Good to know. Alright. So here’s what I wanna talk about. I, I have a controversial take.

Oh, boy.

Donald Trump is the Republican best positioned to run on handle abortion in the post dobbs era because he is like Nixon going to China He can piss all over pro life Incorporated. He will get a lot of credit for pro life voters for appointing the justices who overturned Roe v Wade. And then he can absolutely fuzz up what he wants to do by saying what DeSantis did in Florida was terrible, You always need exceptions. And when I’m president, I’m gonna bring everybody together in a room. And in twenty four hours, we’re gonna have the best deal.

The greatest deal deal that everyone in America is gonna be happy with and that we can then put aside this this very difficult issue for forever. And that’s all he’ll say. And he will get away with saying nothing but that in the same way that he got away with saying that he would fix, the trade deficit and build the wall and balance the budget. And it’ll be fine. And when you look at that New York Times poll, One of the very interesting deep questions down into it was they asked voters, is Donald Trump too conservative or not conservative enough?

And suddenly fifty seven percent said that just ideologically, Trump was just right, not too conservative or too liberal. Just right. I actually think he’s kind of in the sweetest spot that exists for a Republican on abortion. Discuss.

I agree with this. I my focus group pod. We were talking to, that same group that we did with Tim Ryan, actually, for last week’s episode where we were really talking about the moderate Democrats and how they would red states, and we asked the Sherrod Brown Trump voters, if they thought Trump was extreme on abortion or moderate on abortion or somewhere in between. Everybody said moderate on abortion. So I agree.

He reads as a moderate, and this is, like, kind of actually an old Tim point that I’ve really adopted because I think it’s true about the extent to which Trump codes as a social moderate. Like, there’s a bunch of sound in there for a bunch of these voters being like, he probably paid for abortions, like, We know that he just did this because he feels like he needs to cozy up to the evangelicals. Like, they’ve got his number. They know what he’s doing. And so, like, they don’t either people, like, except that he’ll do the thing for them, like he put people on the courts tactically, but they also don’t believe that he’ll go so far in the other way because they read him as a social model.

Here’s what I think. This is like the challenge for Democrats. Democrats are gonna have to, I think, weave a story about Donald Trump that’s totally doable, though. Which is that you cannot trust this person. He is only about himself, and he is the one, like, they’re gonna have to say, like, he’s the one who made the Roe v Wade repeal happen.

Like, they’re gonna have to hang those three justices around them. It’s gonna be a little tougher because It’s not prospective, right? It’s retrospective. You have to blame him for what he did, not what you think he will do. And that’s always harder.

You wanna scare people about what he will do. But I think the, like, he is crazy and he will put other crazy people in charge who will do these extreme things. Like, I think you can get there. I just think it’s not as straightforward and easy as with a DeSantis or somebody else.

I basically agree with that with a caveat that Another thing that the Democrats need to do that is a little harder than it would be for a DeSantis or whatever, but I think is doable. Is pairing Trump with our new friend, Megan Mike Johnson. And, and I think that this is where if we have a liberal big donors listening. I think this could be a good project for an outside group right now, is I think that defining Mike John, like Mike Johnson wants a federal abortion ban. The Republican Congress wants a federal abortion ban at I’d have to go back and look he has three different proposals, but, like, that have basically no to them.

And, and, and I think that, you know, a concerted ad campaign that is if Republicans, you know, now you’re going into Wisconsin. Right? Wisconsin, you know, maybe there’s a reason to feel we have a democratic governor. There’s nothing to worry about on the abortion issue. Right?

You need to go into Wisconsin and say to those voters Oh, there is something to worry. That if Trump and and the Republicans control the house, if Magamike Johnson is there, and you better believe that Trump will sign that bill. It’s his judges. So it’ll figure out what you gotta test to figure out what the exact thirty second message is. But I that’s gotta be I’m I say fear mongering.

What’s that? It’s not really fear mongering because I think it’s a legitimate fear, but that that is gotta be what you have to do to raise the samoyance because I do agree that Trump personally doesn’t code as an ab crazy on abortion, and just doing the Trump did this to you, that’ll work for some people, but that’s not gonna that’s not an there’s gotta be a prospective fear that you would do that it would get worse, particularly in the swing states where the abortion laws haven’t really changed that much.

Kinda just say on the abortion thing to, to Tim’s point, there’s gonna be a lot of local people on these, like, I think that Democrats are gonna have to think bigger. And by bigger, I mean, smaller and more localized about not just about building a bottom up coalition as opposed to a Biden down coalition. Which is putting abortion everywhere you can, right, putting it on any ballot initiative, any place you can do it to help juice turn out. But like, The problems that are showing up in the crosstabs of the poles around enthusiasm directly for Biden, the one way you can offset it is by getting people out on these issues in a more local way so that they will do sort of the reverse of what the Trump people will do. Like, they will tick the box for Biden while they’re in there, but they will also vote unfortunately.

Like, this is how you get to young people. This is how you get people over whatever they’re mad about with Biden and, like, actually have them turn out.

Alright. Last thing about the elections, school boards kind of fun to see that the moms for Liberty not quite the electoral force that they had hoped to be, Tim.

Owned. Owned. I I this is talk about over interpreting, but I this is a trend that that is nationwide. Okay. In in in loudoun County, which was in Virginia, the basis of this, you know, all of the moms probably where this all started, really because it’s a grass, it’s it’s the DC suburbs, and this was a, you know, this was a grass top thing funded by rich donors and and put in place by, political strategists in Washington, to get people mad In loudoun County, the school board flipped from from Republican Democrat.

This happened in Bucks County PA. It’s a battleground County. The demos took all five seats. They turned a six to three Republican majority into a six to three Democratic majority on the school board. In Iowa, moms for Liberty chapters endorsed thirteen candidates.

They were one in twelve. The one one was in a rural district with that has one thousand students. In Douglas County, Colorado. Which is a pretty red channel needs X urban Denver. It’s basically between Denver and Colorado Springs, and, had been traditionally Republican stronghold.

That school board flipped, and and and flipped back yesterday. There are some other examples of this. And, you know, my big takeaway is that Essentially, it happened here, was parents were mad about the COVID restrictions. Maybe they weren’t, you know, and, and I think that a lot of partisans, you know, did didn’t disaggregate these issues. Right?

And just like there’s swing voters in Kentucky, there’s swing voters on school board issues, and there are a lot of parents who were not happy about how schools were closed and school masking that I’m not generalizing. This is not every parent, but something that was, I think, a majority of parents that were upset about this. And and the mountains for Liberty started on this. And when I wrote about that candidate in Colorado Heidiigan All who ran for governor, this was how she kind of got activated. Was into this mom’s for Liberty Group, and it just you can just see it in the Facebook group when I was doing my research.

It morphs from COVID to once the COVID thing is over, when schools are open and the kids aren’t being masked anymore, you know, these these groups, these grifts need to continue, and so they morph into this c r t d e I, gay penguin books, drag queen story hour.

Child porn,

child porn, right? All this sort of stuff. And these people start taking over the school boards you know, on on the backs of of people being upset about, about COVID, and, and then they get into power, and they’re like, I’m I’m gonna ban you know, whatever. My angelou

Right.

And people can’t have the

color purple in our libraries.

Yeah. People are like, who are these fucking freaks? Like, that are now in charge of the curriculum and, and and there’s been a huge pendulum swing back. And so that just brings a lot of joy to my heart.

Sarah, any thoughts?

No, I mean, Tim covered that one well. It feels good. That one does feel good. And it happened all over the place. There was a lot of school boards swinging back.

And I think that, I guess, To extrapolate it up, it’s a little bit too of an explainer on why DeSantis also sort of failure to launch. I think, like, this is just one of those things where people care about it some. And, like, they might have a thing they’re mad about here and there, but, like, the reaction of pulling books off shelves, the reaction just of being annoying. Honestly, like, look, my kids need to go school and, like, I don’t have time for all this stuff. And, like, they’re gonna read, what they’re gonna read.

I read that book when I was there, like, everyone settled down. It’s just it’s a real over read. Like, it’s just the transgender stuff too. So, like, Danica Rome in Virginia last night is the now the first sort of southern transgender candidate to win at a state senate level. She’s been at the she’s been in the house for a while.

And, like, just like not the galvanizing issue people think it is. Like, yes, can you get a applause line over like no boys and women’s sports? You can. Can you turn people out to vote on that? Can not be like the centerpiece of a campaign?

I think it can’t. And I think this is where DeSantis overread this moment. A lot of Republicans have overread this moment.

I just love thinking of the parents in my life, like the normie parents who don’t listen to this podcast, like my friends who are like, You know, they’re like, yeah. I I do think it’s, you know, that they didn’t love having to do Zoom parenting. And then they were like, yeah, I do think it’s pretty weird. Some every once in a while, my kid gets a homework assignment and I’m like, we’re going a little bit overboard here on some of the whatever, you know, whatever the Wogue thing is of the week. You know, like, do we really need to, you know, I remember going in to look at schools for Toulouse, and one of the schools was like, you know, we teach them about the Bulwark Panthers in kindergarten.

And I was like, is that really necessary? I mean, Bulwark Panther maybe, but the Black Panthers, I don’t know. Do we, like, are we trying a little hard here? And right.

And who they’re talking about?

You can see you can see parent. I can see these parents in my life being like, yeah. Maybe they’re right. Maybe we do need to shake things up at the schools. Maybe they are going a little far to the left.

Then all of a sudden, these new parents come in, and they’re like, as, like, the church lady is deciding what books my kids can read. And I’m getting memo and and I’m like, oh, in the Facebook post, and I’m like, oh, my god. I was like, what did I do? No. Get these people back.

Whatever. The Bulwark Panther homework assignment’s I’ll deal with it. Not that big of a deal. Alright.

The, New York Times had a poll with Sienna College that came out, what, Saturday, Sunday, Monday to make everybody lose their minds. I wrote about this. I I don’t expect you to have read it, Sarah.

Hundred percent read it. Hundred percent read it.

I don’t know if I read it, actually. I’m I’m I fit on both this week.

Where were you guys on this? Because I was not on, like, hair on fire. But I thought, yeah, this is direct consistent with everything we’ve been seeing for many weeks at this point. And, like, does the poll have wonky things in it that I, you know, don’t believe Like, for instance, Trump probably won’t get twenty two percent of the African American vote. Sure.

But directionally, especially in the crosstabs with questions about age and mental competence sea and handling the economy, it lines up with everything else. Like, it may be an outlier, you know, a little bit on the final top line numbers. But this seems like basically where the race is. Correct? Incorrect, Sarah?

I think it’s sort of where it is. I just think where it is right this moment doesn’t matter that much. And I am in the everyone should chill out about this pole camp. Look, I just think the time to panic was a while ago. Like, we are where we are, look, I I think, listen, I think it’s really risky to run an eighty one year old who’s one slip and fall away from a hip replacement surgery and making somebody who’s deeply unpopular, the president, against, like, a surefire autocrat who’s literally planning right now how he’s gonna punish his enemies by wielding the DOJ against him if he gets back into office.

So, like, let’s yeah. Like, we should nobody should be sanguine about anything. I just think that, like, even some of our close friends being, like, he must step aside right now. Like, this is the case of What is it that that meme of like Biden resigns? No idea what comes next, you know, then Everything’s great.

Trump loses. It’s like, okay.

Josh Shapiro is handed the the presidential nomination. Gretchen Whitmer is his running mate, and everything’s fine.

Guys, it’s really silly. Like, here’s the thing. You know what happens if Joe Biden steps down? Come on.

Come on

Harris is the nominee. Like, I don’t know what people think. You think you’re gonna start.

White guy is gonna strip Kamala Harris of the first black woman, vice president, a white guy is gonna strip that from her in the next two months. Give me a break.

Like, it’s just not gonna happen. Okay. Like, like, he could now if and and, like, some of it is, like, timing. Like, if he does slip and fall right now, She will a become the SIP sitting president, but they they were people would run against her. Like, there would be an open primary.

But she would win.

That she would probably witness the sitting president, but let’s say even she doesn’t. It’s still like, no, you’ve run this crazy brutal pry I mean, like, there’s just no good outcome here. So I think you’re taking and this is where JBL, I think you’ve been right in your triads, which course, I do read, that like Joe Biden is your least bad bad option here. And, we need him stay healthy, and we need him to be okay. And those cross tabs are frightening, but that poll let me tell you, this is my main takeaway.

That poll is about Biden. Mhmm. The twenty twenty four election is gonna be about Trump. And those two things are really different. And you’re gonna hear me talk about this a lot, which is that you are not building a Pro Joe Biden Coalition.

You are building an anti trump coalition. It’s why the no label stuff is so bad because they fracture the anti trump coalition which is a dominant coalition. And they turn it into a pro Joe Biden pro Donald Trump, like, Coalition battling themselves, that’s bad. That’s really bad. Because Joe Biden’s not that popular, and this is this poll is about people registering their frustration with his age, about, young people being mad, about his remarks on Israel and him feeling out of touch and not connected to them.

It is people expressing that they are not happy about the economy. All of those things. But twenty twenty four will be about Donald Trump, and so, like, this poll just doesn’t take a million things into account. Even though those crosstabs are deeply frozen, people, those are just forgotten. I see this a lot too.

People right now, Joe Biden’s the president. They remember what they don’t like about Joe Biden. They’ve completely forgotten what they don’t like about Donald Trump. And by I don’t like, I mean hate hate hate about Donald Trump. And when he is back in their face, I’m not saying everything’s solved.

I’m just saying that is not what this poll is testing.

Tim? I have nothing to add. That’s right. I agree with all that. I guess my my panic is slightly higher.

Just, like, I panic about every poll and any poll that has Donald Trump at zero, I’m paying the where he’s not at zero makes me panic and, like, the whole, the whole prospect of all this, like, makes me have bad feelings in my belly, but, like, I I I agree with Sarah’s assessment of the state of play.

Alright. So I I kind of agree, but I do wanna to push back a little bit. Which is that we have never had a race featuring two presidents in it.

Two incumbents. Two incumbents. Yeah.

Two incumbents, basically.

We’ve also never had a race where one of the candidates is going to have seven trial dates True. During the during the election year.

My concern is that Races move as information sets in large. Right? You learn more things about a candidate or, you know, another issue becomes more salient. You learn about it. There is no more information.

Right? This is, like, we’ve we all know. We we all lived through it. We lived through the four we all have the same nervous breakdown as a country because of the the Trump administration, you know, the same every morning waking up to see that he start a war, going through a global pandemic in which the country had hundreds of thousands of excess deaths because of his handling of it. And, like, we we live through it.

We all know it.

And it’s people have the memory of a nap. People have no memories. I don’t I barely remember COVID, was COVID like? I I I was thinking the other day. I was like, what was I doing all day during COVID?

I I I don’t people’s memories are short and and voters memories are especially short. Politicians are you just see this in the Donald Trumpos throughout his whole time that he’s been around. This this is infuriating. I’m not I’m not I don’t like this, but this is just reality. His poll numbers go up and down, his favorability, you just watch it.

Like when some when for some reason Donald Trump said everybody’s face again, his numbers go down a couple This isn’t every voter. Right? But like, it’s a it’s a noticeable number of voters who changed their view on Trump week to week based on how much he’s annoying them. And, like, And right now, he’s not the he’s not the sender of attention. So I do think the information, you know, arena will expand.

Can I just make a pitch here for why I like focus groups instead of polls? Yeah. Because while the polls measure these snapshots of these specific questions, which agree there’s a lot of frustrating things in the specific questions, like people view Biden as extremely old, Trump, who is three years younger, they do not think his age is a problem. People have to Tim’s point about memory have basically like memory hold the bad economy from Trump’s mishandling of COVID, and then put all the blame of the repercussions of COVID this economy on Joe Biden. Right?

Because he’s the president. And that’s bad. Right? That’s not good. Not great.

Not great. And and Joe Biden’s got a tough pitch, right? Saying like I kept us out of a recession and like the economy’s not as bad as it could be, is not, that’s not a great pitch. But the focus groups measure, like, the sense of urgency or the sense of top of mind ofness of things, right? Because when you ask a question, somebody’s like, Oh, okay.

Here’s how I feel about this thing, but the question is, like, what’s driving them emotionally at the time that they go into the ballot box? And the extent to which Trump will I assume have demonstrated a level of batshit craziness that will make Joe Biden look positively I don’t know. Like, he could do the New York Times cross with huddle in five minutes. I don’t know. Yeah.

But yeah. Right?

Typically alive. Yeah.

Look, it’ll some of that’s gonna depend on Joe Biden too. I just think, like, we can’t see right now. We can know that the age is a problem and the age is really a problem. But he is up against a lunatic who we also know will not be able to hide that lunacy. And so, like, when the focus groups, we just if I can call me with one anecdote, it is this.

This happens all the time. Talk to a bunch of Democratic voters, and they are like, Oh, Joe Biden’s not really gonna run again. Like, they still don’t even know. He’s gonna be he’s running for, like, he’s gonna be the person. And they hate it.

They don’t want him to be the nominee. They’re worried. They think every time he talks, they get scared that he’s gonna fall off the stage or lose his train of thought or not be able to get the words out? Okay. That’s what people say.

They talk about being afraid for him. And a bunch of them were like, I don’t even know if I’ll vote. Then you’re like, well, what if he’s gonna be against Trump? And everyone’s like, well, that’s not gonna happen again. And you’re like, yeah, let’s just say, trump’s the nominee.

Gonna be the nominee. The nominee and everyone’s like, oh, whoa. Yeah. Well, I gotta vote. I gotta get a can’t get trump beat the nominee.

So, like, you know, I just think that you, JV, if you gotta listen to these voters to get that sense of How checked out they are. They have not groked these two people are running again that we are rerunning this election. And when they do, the hatred of Donald Trump will be there, and that will matter. There’s also a whole new set of voters, like COVID, that’s a whole bunch of people have died, And then there’s a whole bunch of new people who are coming into the vote, who’ve, like, have no experience with Donald Trump. Like, for all they know, this like guy is what?

But like they’re gonna get introduced to the real Donald Trump here. And I suspect they will not like him when they do. Just me.

Okay. I got we gotta move on. I can’t. I’m, like, I’m starting to I’m starting to hyperventilate over here. We need to put a time clock on how long we talking about.

I was

I was trying to make you feel better.

It was. No. No. It’s the whole topic. Like, the whole, like, there’s a poll where Donald Trump’s beating Joe Biden.

And I can only do, like, eight minutes of that per per week. I just kinda like I just need to ration it out.

Let’s move on. Kim Reynolds, the formerly popular governor of Iowa, has decided she is no longer neutral. She has endorsed Ron DeSantis. Really? For president?

Wait a minute. Who did? Kim Reynolds, the governor of Iowa.

Did that really happen? I didn’t see anything about that this week. A lot of other stuff in the news, I guess.

This is a real thing that happened.

Oh.

She has endorsed the guy who was probably two weeks away from being third in Iowa. The guy who is simply roadkill whose campaign is over except for the shouting. And it’s interesting. I don’t quite understand why she would do it because she’s now marked her card against Trump. Please go ahead, Tim.

You didn’t talk much last time.

That was a bit I was doing, by the way. It got no news. Okay. Like, literally, there was no coverage of this. I just, I, like, you think we’re in such a different world.

You just think back to twenty team that Nikki Haley Tim Scott endorsement of Marco obviously didn’t. So this is right. It got the proportionate amount of news to how how newsworthy it was. Like back then, that was like wall to wall coverage, front page of papers, the picture of the three of them, no big momentum. And this happened, and it’s like, I wasn’t even in the newspaper.

And and, like, in the national newspapers, my little hotel USA today, maybe I just didn’t make it to page thirty six or whatever. But, And I’m sure the local TV it was on, but, like, there’s just not a sense that this matters. Right? And I think that’s right, because it doesn’t. And, that’s a different world.

Like, the idea that the Iowa governor would endorse somebody. Why did she do that? In the old days, used to be just, anyway, I think that’s very telling. The state of play. She did it as a CIA.

She doesn’t like she doesn’t like Donald Trump. These people don’t like Donald Trump, and she doesn’t want to she wants to be able to say to her non trump friends in her social life, you know, like our buddy, her consultant, and, like, other people. She wants to say, I did what I could. Endorse trying to say she wants to say to DeSantis and to other people in her circle in her ear that know that it shouldn’t be Trump. I did it.

I I endorsed Ron DeSantis. I did the thing I was supposed to do. Like Ron DeSantis. We have a relationship. I I do think that’s weird.

I’ve never got to hang out. I was Ron DeSantis. Maybe he has another side of him. He shows behind the scenes. But, but I I think that my understanding based on People that know Kim is that she does genuinely like him.

And she’s like, and so now she can say to her friend and to other people that hate trump in her world, I did what I could. And then in four months, when she endorses Donald Trump, she can say to all the Magga voters and all the Magga people in her life. That she was never anti Trump. She was never hard on Trump. But, you know, she, she was four of them.

She helped him. So it’s just I I it’s just the it’s just a CIA move as my assessment.

I have a different take.

Okay. Great.

Oh, okay. So I think what’s happening so she had a chance to endorse around the state you’re Tim’s totally right. Everybody will tell you who knows them that knows that they’re close and she likes them and she wanted to endorse Ron DeSantis, which she could have done several months ago when the race was tighter and where she declined though to endorse him over Trump because It’s not really a thing like Tim said Iowa governors do. Here’s why it happens, though, in my opinion, is not because of Trump, but because of Nikki. Ron DeSantis is really close potentially to coming in third in Iowa.

And if he comes in third in Iowa, his political career might effectively be over. And I think because they’re friends, he went to her and said, I, you have to do this for me. Like, I think he let her off the first time because he thought he could maybe do it on his own. Now he’s sure he can’t. He might slip to third.

And, like, this is the one play he’s got in Iowa to stay in the race. And I think he put the hard hard sell on her. And then I think there’s a little bit of Tim’s stuff of, like, that is what she wanted to do, but in, like, so she just said, forget it. I’ll do it. But it’s too late.

Look, she can do whatever she wants. But I really hope that Trump holds a grudge here because if he lets her off for this. I hope Donald Trump understands that he needs to make an example out of her, and it shouldn’t be good enough for if any of the the manga types listening to this, shouldn’t be good enough for her to just hop on board in four months when she has to.

Hello. Hi. I I I hear you. I see you.

He he should exact a price for this. And we should make sure that she gets primary when she runs for the Senate seat. And whenever whenever that becomes available, And, and I hope she is primary very hard for her very unfair and disloyal treatment of our great president probably your favorite Donald Trump.

I do not I do not root for Donald Trump retribution or Donald Trump success. I will note this. Even though the endorsement just happened, it’s all been brewing. Like, Trump’s been crapping on her on truth social or whatever. Oh, yeah.

And there’s morning consult governor polls that come out where you just they do like a monthly check-in on every governor’s rating. It came as like at the bottom now. I don’t I don’t I don’t remember if she was last, but she was near the bottom, because there are some mega voters that are upset at her.

And As they should.

You know, I mean, she’s still above. It’s all. She’s twenty percent or something, but her numbers, you can see that there’s been a meaningful decline in her numbers because there are mega voters in Iowa that are all like, I’m mad at you for not getting on board.

It’s a cult. Yep. There’s more.

Weird weird weird stuff happens in a cult.

Alright. We do have time. I thought we weren’t gonna be able to, but But here we are, we can talk about Peter Mayor.

Myer. Myer.

My. Who can say? My Nobody knows.

How do

you pronounce it? Impossible. Sure. So, what do you guys think? I wrote a whole whole lot about this, the other day.

Everybody seems to be if I could just set this up, he did a local radio interview earlier this week in which he said of course. He defended his vote to impeach Donald Trump, said that, of course, he would support the Republican nominee. So he voted to remove Trump from office and bar him from ever becoming president again, but of course, he is now happy to support making this man president again. That’s not what freaked me out. What freaked me out was him in the middle of this interview saying that the things Joe Biden has done have been much worse and much more serious.

Than the January sixth attempt to overthrow the American government. And I just listened to that. I’m just like, what the f?

Hey, before we rant on Peter Meyer, can’t point out, because me and Sarah Longwell. All of us are very upset. Peter Meyer. So you’re about to hear rage. Like righteous rage happen.

And I’ll let Sarah take the first swing. And I’ll just gonna kick them eyes down. But before we get to that, can I just do one funny thing? When you said, I wanna get to the last topic. We have one more topic.

I was like, wait a minute. I felt like we had two more topics on the show map. What was the other topic? And then I went and just looked at our little note and it was, there’s a debate. There’s a debate tonight.

Yeah. There’s a debate tonight. There’s a big time. Nobody remembers. I if I I could be thing that anybody has said to me about the debate this week is, oh, wait, there’s a debate this week.

You know, like, several people are like, I’d forgotten about that. So I just think that that’s amusing. We don’t really need to do anything on that, but it’s like, it goes I

would like to talk about the debate tonight. I’m doing the New York Times debate coverage tonight. On where you’ve rue their little writing thingies. And I have many thoughts about the debate tonight, except I agree. I have also seen the of people be like, there’s another debate tonight, because Trump’s gonna be like down the road.

Counter programming again. So can we just do a little debate after we do Meyer?

Sure.

You gotta save Meyer for the end. If you wanna do the debate, do it now. Myer is the is the cherry on. Meer is

the my take on the debate is I’ve already given LOL that there’s a debate tonight, and I won’t I will be on an airplane home, and I won’t be watching

I wanna hear your debate take so I can incorporate it into the Thursday night live stream that we do for members of Bulwark Plus ding ding ding

I don’t know, guys, you guys don’t think it is at all important tonight whether Ron DeSantis finally, like, succumbs to Nikki Haley. Tonight’s the night where people decide whether the Nikki momentum is real, and everybody should move, all the people who have fantasies of somebody taking him on who see the the narrow, but then squint, you can see it. Bath, for her to come in second in Iowa, second in New Hampshire, and then I don’t know what happens since I don’t know. You gotta do two two one. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, she could put a fork in the status. I don’t know if you saw the story. There’s a great story in, financial times Ron DeSantis’ biggest donor, who is now saying he’s probably gonna move to Trump because Trump’s He said something like trump’s the alpha dog Ron DeSantis is the food? Trump is the big dog Ron DeSantis is the He also, it’s just like tossed in at the end that he, believes strongly in extraterrestrial life, and also that human sentience lives on after death.

Whatever. He’s just like he’s and he also do he’s Ron DeSantis biggest donor because he found out someone else was gonna give DeSantis twenty million. So he gave him twenty million and five dollars so that he would be the biggest donor. Anyway These

people should be taxed at ninety percent. Full Bernie. Right? And I’m full Bernie. Like

I just think that the Nikki Hold on.

I have a question for you though about Nikki. She doesn’t need to kill DeSantis because she needs DeSantis in Iowa.

She does. It’s true. I mean, she

she would like him to be third, but she needs him there keeping Trump close. No.

She does. Yeah. So she needs here’s the thing. The path for Nikki is pretty straightforward. Right?

Yeah. Just write this down. Write this down. She needs Christie and Acea and Scott and all of them to drop out. Right?

Cause those votes go to her. She

has to

be nice to them so that she doesn’t alienate their people.

Yeah. Like, I don’t know what We’re

up from we’re up. Okay. We’ve got Christie and Aces folks. We’ve gone from seven to nine. Alright.

You’re wrong. No. No. No. No.

No. No.

No. No. No. No. No.

No. They’re doing better than that. No. I’m not ASA, actually, but Christie’s got Christie’s got a little more than that. And so she picks up.

She needs to Santa sustain in Iowa, but she needs to beat him in order to beat both her ex, beat the expectations. Right? That gets her momentum when she beats the expectations. It also splits, yeah, the, or at least DeSantis peels off, you know, that ten, twelve percent or whatever he’s gonna get. Of, otherwise, trump y voters, because it’s true if DeSantis drops out his voters go to Trump.

So, but she over performs in Iowa, k? And then now these guys are out, she goes into New Hampshire. She goes into New Hampshire where Christie has eight percent. Where they’re the and and where all these unaffiliated independents can vote. Right?

And so if they turn out at a much higher rate, She gets within she gets she runs a real close race with Trump, right? Maybe like forty five thirty seven.

Thirty seven.

Yeah. She has to stop accepting me.

She has to I I I have to push back on this. In our fantasy scenario, which is fantasy to begin with. She has to win New Hampshire. Donald, if Donald Trump wins Iowa and New Hampshire, the race is over. Right.

Nikki can’t come inside.

You have not heard the last part of my plan. Then Donald Trump going into South Carolina either dies or goes to jail. Even goes to jail is not not a sure fire thing, but my point is is that it matters, and this is why it matters. Just this is my this is my, whatever. Cree’d occur.

Nikki needs to be in second if something terror, if something happens to Trump. I’m not rooting for this the way that Tim does. I would like it though if Donald Trump were gone for some reason and that Nikki Haley were in the poll position.

Okay. I I just, I do wanna say I received a nice note from somebody who’s out there, and may even live in New Hampshire who wants hope for Nikki and was upset at some of my commentary mocking this. And I just I want everybody to be happy. Oh, if you wanna have hope for Nikki, I wanna have hope, and and I just this is just the numbers aren’t working for me. I took the note And, like, the numbers just aren’t there.

Thirty seven. I, like, what? Thirty seven? I, like, wait, from who? I, I, you know, I mean, just look back at the twenty sixteen

Unaffiliated Independence who are not Back

at the twenty sixteen primary. And it’s like Kasek had seventeen or something, and Mark. Yeah. But if

you add up case but if you add up Casey, Marco, Christie, Christie, and Jeb, you run Thirty five

to thirty five.

You run about you run about even withdrawn. In New Hampshire.

Oh, okay. I don’t know. Who knows? Maybe maybe maybe hope dies last as they say. I Will Saletan went to the Aniki event at at a venue where where we had John Hudson and Jeb events, same venue town hall in New Hampshire, and it was like, wasn’t even full.

Like the upstairs of the balcony wasn’t full. I know you can’t judge these things, but I just if if the momentum really was real, you could feel it in some way. I’m not saying you crowd sized the matter Joe by and one with small crowds, but you could feel it. And, you know, I sent a picture of it to one of my buddies. It was, like, I was at a Teapaw event in two thousand eleven that had a bigger crowd than that.

And it just I just I just maybe it’ll happen at tonight’s debate that no one’s gonna watch. So anyway, I’m I’m sorry. I derailed us from Peter Meyer. I did think it was funny that we forgot, though.

Meijer, Mayer, who can say? Again, nobody knows how you say his name. I go to, I Sarah Longwell

sure. I’m short on this one. Yeah. Yeah. No.

It’s just nothing this is the one these are the ones that make me the saddest. Because he is going to trade away, what he had of his integrity, which he demonstrated when he voted to impeach Donald Trump and then lost his seat over it. I think he must have gotten pissed at Dems for running against him, or for helping out his primary opponent. And has decided now that, you know, he’s he’s using that as a justification to, to be mad and, and, cuddle up He doesn’t drop him this way.

Pissed off at the Republicans who wanted to murder him though.

No. That’s right.

It’s very strange. It’s very strange. People want to murder him. He can forgive and look past that. But the people who ran some some attack ads helping his primary opponent, that is the sin that would I

don’t even have to be that mad at him, though, because and I’ll let Tim kick him just because, like, this isn’t gonna work. Like, he is, not gonna win the Republican primary. In Michigan because Mag of voters will not vote for somebody who voted to impeach him. I don’t know if people realize this Everybody who voted to impeach Trump is gone. They lost.

And so, like, he already, I watched him already kind of try to change his tune during the last primary. Didn’t work for him then, then it’s not gonna work for him now. And the only thing is he’s gonna wake up one day and realize he traded his soul and got nothing in return, and I’m sad for him.

Here is why I’m angry though, Sarah, before we get to Tim. It’s because guys like Pete Mayer, doing this thing where they then, endorse Trump anyway. What that is is they are contributing to the permission structure for the marginal Normandy Republicans to pull the lever for Trump anyway. And they’re doing it even while the Maga guys are destroying their careers. And this is what I don’t understand.

Just on just on the most, you know, on the grounds of spite. He ought to be anti Maga and anti trump and be like, you know what? I’m gonna vote for Joe Biden with a song my heart because these assholes destroyed my career. Right? I mean, he could he could why not do that?

But they they don’t it’s this weird I don’t know if it’s a DS thing or if this is if this is the way it looks in never mind. I I don’t want you to blush. It I don’t it’s like in the midst of revolutions when the, you know, the the dictator goes and decides that the guy who’s lieutenant to the Secret Podcast is now an enemy to state. The guy who’s was the lieutenant is as he’s being dragged away instead of saying f u, you know, mister Chushashu. He’s like, he’s screaming, but I was loyal to the cause, and I remain loyal to the cause.

You know, and I, like, why What is wrong with them that they don’t, see the people who hate them and want them dead and don’t want them in their party? Why do they see those people as their allies and not their enemies?

I’m gonna start by saying I appreciate Pete Myers’s impeachment vote and his service star military.

True.

But I am not sad for him. I’m filled with the rage of a thousand suns, fiery rage of a thousand suns, and this fucking entitled little rich kid brat who thinks that he deserves to be in Congress or deserves to be in the fucking Senate because he can spend Daddy’s money on a fucking campaign or granddaddy’s money, is like absurd. And, and the fact that he is just so full of resentment. It’s like the thing that bothers me about people, like, the most, like, the one trait that I really cannot take is people that have good lives who are successful who are for whatever reason so embittered and filled with resentment that it didn’t go exactly as a plant. Like, you poor little baby, Peter Meyer.

You were supposed to be in Congress. You were supposed to be able to get to be in Congress because you have a trust fund. And it’s like, no. You’re not entitled to that. You have a great life.

You can do whatever you want. You can go start a charity. You can just build a big house on the beach. You could sleep with broads. You could have a fulfilling life and have a family and have kids and do that.

You could be on boards. Like, you have a million things that you could do. You are not entitled to be in the Congress. Okay? You did the right thing one time, and because you were not then exalted onto high by the, like, what Democrats were supposed to exalt you, and and Democrats were supposed to give you, like, grant you that your congressional seat in perpetuity because you had one good vote.

I I just come on. Like, the fact that you can see it in this interview, how angry he is that the Democrats ran that that the Democrats ran some ads, you know, for John Gibbs in a primary. That that worked, by the way. Okay. The the the I was against that ad campaign on principle, but, like, it worked.

Welcome to the fucking big leagues. The Democrats have that seat They didn’t get Also, do you know

who didn’t defend him and help him during that primary campaign? Anybody in the Republican Party?

Certainly not Donald Trump. Certainly not Donald Trump.

Not Kevin McCarthy

sent a mob to kill you. Donald Trump sent a mob to fucking kill you, and you’re so mad that you lost your congressional seat to the Democrats who who, you know, who outmaneuvers you. And by the way, you didn’t lose it to the Democrats. You lost your seat to a bunch of mag crazies within your own party before you lost it to the Democrats, but you lost your seat, but you’re so mad. You blame the Democrats for the fact that you lost your seat that now out of some, like, weird, spiteful revenge.

You’re like, I’m gonna run for Senate in a hopelessly quixotic campaign and and and the whole basis of this is gonna be like spite at never trumpers and spite at Democrats. And I’m gonna talk about how Joe Biden in far, far worse than Donald Trump, and do exactly what you’re saying, JBL, give people permission to say, okay. Well, maybe maybe that’s right. Maybe John, maybe Donald Trump isn’t as bad Biden. Maybe I should I mean, at the guy that almost got fucking killed by Donald Trump’s, actions, thinks that Donald was better than Joe Biden, maybe he is better than Joe Biden.

Like, you’re you’re you’re participating in that. Totally undermining. All the good that came from your vote. Like, just out of this petty resent not out of any actual principle. I just, like, the whole thing is is is preposterous and it’s fucking maddening, and I get way more pissed at people like that than I do at, like, misguided crazies, like Lauren Bobert.

So there’s there’s one deeper point here, though, which is, and I I did tease this out a little bit. Peter Mayor’s worldview clearly is Republican voters are just a bunch of animals who do what they do and you can’t ask for anything more from them, you can’t expect them to do the right thing or to understand anything. The only people who are rational and who can be expected to do that are Democrats. And the fact that the Democrats knew and did this to me is why I hold them accountable for it, and I don’t hold the Republican voters accountable because, like, you know, look, they are what they are. Like, isn’t that the actual message of this?

Well, yeah. Maybe I

mean, and also as a factual matter, he may be blessed.

He’s there in his class, by the way. Again, this goes all goes back to resentment. Like, again, he’s a rich kid that went to fancy schools. He all served in the military, which I appreciate, and I do appreciate his service. But, like, the people in his social class are democrats.

Right? And so he does hold them to a higher standard. He’s like, he looks at the, like, Republican fucking Neanderthals who are like throwing poops smearing poop on the wall the capital, right, and, like, calling death threats in. He’s not mad at them. Right?

He’s mad at, like, the the it’s like a class betrayal. Thing that he feels mad about. He feels like he is betrayed by his own people. And, and, and so, like, that’s literally what this is all about. And then, and then, I guess, Afghanistan.

I get get I I also thought Afghanistan was bad, but like, come on. So, like, the whole thing is, Donald Trump wanted to fucking leave Afghanistan. It was Donald Trump’s plan to leave.

Donald Trump is the one who’s selling Don’t

try to jump by. Don’t try to give me this. Oh, Afghanistan is the reason why Joe Biden is way worse than Donald Trump. If Nikki Haley was the other candidate, okay. Great.

Go. Run percent at b for Nikki Haley. Awesome. It’s she’s not. It’s Donald Trump, the guy that that resulted in your death threats that set the that set the Afghanistan in motion that tried to end our democracy.

Unneville for fucking Donald Trump. Fuck you.

Alright. No one’s gonna top that. Guys, good show. Very long show, but I let you have it anyway. I let you have the long show that you people always tell me you want.

There you go. Happy holidays to you. Tim Sarah Longwell. Thank you. Tim, amazing interview with Tom Arnold last Sunday.

Absolutely astonishing. Anybody who hasn’t listened to it should a hundred percent run to it. It’s so good. Hit the subscribe, hit the like, come over to Bulwark and sign up and get our dinner. Get Charlie’s email every day for free with no ads in it or anything.

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