The Shape of Things to Come (The Secret Podcast PREVIEW)
Episode Notes
Transcript
Sarah and JVL talk about the DeSantis launch, his January 6 pardon weasel words, and the norming of soft-authoritarianism.
To get the full episode—and The Secret Podcast every week—join Bulwark+.
Go to: https://thesecretpodcast.old.thebulwark.com/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
-
Hey there. It’s J VL. On the Secret Show with Sarah Longwell today, we talked about DeSantis in the shape of the Republican field to come. Here’s the show. Alright.
-
So,
-
I get we have to talk about Rhonda Santos. I’m sorry everybody. We have to do it because it’s important because he is the big story right now. Because there’s been some news between his his Twitter debacle announcement and and this morning, that twenty four hour period. First, I would like to say that I was vaguely impressed with Ron DeSantis campaigns, a, decision to hang a lantern on their Twitter thing.
-
They they immediately rushed out merch about how you vote for Ron DeSantis because he breaks things. He breaks the Internet. Right? They’re not gonna hide from this. This is my belief in, like, all crisis comes, you know, like including, like, how the Biden administration should deal with Kamala.
-
Like, no. I see friends with a I I think it’s from clear and present danger. Is he friends with that? No. They’re best friends.
-
He was his best man at his wedding. Like, you know, just just lean into it hard. And since Santos has done that, they were everywhere yesterday. If you were a conservative podcast host with more than ten ten listeners, you got five minutes to interview Ron DeSantis yesterday. And that was pretty pretty good, I guess.
-
And then he did the January sixth thing. Where he said that and it’s very mealy mouth. He said that he would consider pardons for people that he believed were politically prosecuted. For January sixth up to and including president Trump. Do you have thoughts about this?
-
Yeah. And you can look at it two ways. Right? So I can look at it as an American citizen who very much wants a president who is clear about the fact that January sixth was bad. Right?
-
What he is doing here is trying to signal to Republican based voters, that he is gonna fight for them. And that if people come after them, he’s gonna be on their side, even if that means that you broke into the capital and tried to overturn an election, I’m gonna get you a pardon and he I listened to his interview and he’s like, and I’m gonna not gonna wait until the end. I’m gonna do it right up front. First thing. But if you listen really closely, he is inserting the weasel words of and I actually call them Weasel words with a negative connotation, but actually, it’s good in the sense that he was like, he would look at each case and where there was political prosecution.
-
But I did, so like that’s right. So he’s not saying anybody of Kisbade in January six, like I’m not hardening the head of the oath keepers who just got what, eighteen years in prison.
-
Yeah.
-
So, I guess, that’s that’s the optimistic read on what he was saying.
-
The optimistic read is he’s only cynically pandering
-
to the
-
amount of voters. That’s
-
right. That’s right. So I I just and I also like, this is this is the outrunning Trump on the right. Like, the extent to which Ron DeSantis will make seems to be making it an issue that Trump, he hasn’t done this explicitly yet, but I think he’ll get there. Trump didn’t pardon.
-
These people. Right? Like because this is a place where Trump is weirdly sort of vulnerable with the base. Is that, like, he could have pardoned all of these people before he left office, but he did not. Now they weren’t Could he have?
-
I mean, it was he had four fourteen days, they hadn’t identified. Most of them, they hadn’t raised cases against I mean, it would have been a weird I preemptively pardon anybody who is
-
I don’t know. Wasn’t that what Matt Gates was after? That’s preemptive blanket pardon?
-
I think that is what he was after. But that’s gonna be a hard sell, I think, for others.
-
Like, he’d be pardoned Paul Manafort and Roger Stone and
-
Yeah. But they were named people have been given this would have been like, I I pardon anybody who does wind up getting prosecuted.
-
Yeah. It’s true. I guess I I don’t I wonder how that plays with these people. Right? Or like, you know, he he wasn’t out there agitating on their behalf until quite recently.
-
Like, now he’s out there with the January sixth choir, but, like, for a year and a half during the meet of the prosecutions, it’s not like he’s been tweeting defenses of them or helping pay money or any of those things. I think he’s like a little vulnerable on that for the hardcore folks. And so I think that’s where Ron DeSantis is trying to go with this. I have been and and I maybe maybe this is just me. But are you shocked by all of the people who love Ron DeSantis who seem to not have much to say about him suggesting he would pardon people on January sixth.
-
I I am not shocked because they will say nothing about it unless they have to. And if they have to, they’ll say, yeah, listen really carefully. I mean, he’s not saying that he’s gonna pardon everybody. Yeah. They’re they’re they’re gonna hang their hats on the the Weasel words.
-
And that’s fine. Right? That’s I mean, I my concern about this from as somebody who would like to see Donald Trump not be the nominee. And so that means, you know, hoping that any any other the other Republicans running against him can find political advantage. I just don’t think this cuts it.
-
Like, this is trying to this is a this is a traditional politician trying to have it both ways. Against a guy who just says what he thinks. Right? Donald Trump is like, I’m gonna pardon the January sixth choir. Here these these thirty people who are unfairly locked away in a DC hell hole and with all of those thugs.
-
Wink, wink. You know what I mean by thugs. And and I’m gonna pardon them. And Ron DeSantis says, I promise you that I will look at pardons for anybody who I feel has been prosecuted for political reasons. And it’s like I don’t know.
-
Like, the one guy is pointing to the thirty people. He says he’s going to pardon and the other guy is, like, being a politician.
-
Yeah. There’s also the part of this that is like, okay, so Ron DeSantis used his Weasel words, so people like, baseball crank, worst, by the way. Is gonna go out and defend him. But like, are we as conservatives? Are we just cool with the king Ron?
-
The king Ron deciding What is politically motivated? How is that? And also, like, there seems to be this weird what about. Right? So he’s doing not weird.
-
This is, like, very common. It’s he’s saying, even if you did something technically wrong, Like, this is what he said in his thing. Even if you did something technically wrong or illegal, if you were prosecuted for that, but People who did those similar things for like Bulwark lives matter, if they weren’t prosecuted, then like, I’m gonna let you off because there’s not to see collaboration law. I don’t know where everybody gets the impression that people who were caught you know, destroying things during the black that they were all just let off. People absolutely went to jail.
-
Hundred percent.
-
I don’t like, and like people who were, you know, some of the high level agitate, like, people absolutely went to jail. All over the place for destruction of property, for theft. And so, there’s this like it’s like the people on the right think, literally, everybody who did anything bad during Bulwark Lives Matter during the protests, like, they’re all walking free.
-
Also, this is I mean, I’m sorry. Like, many Liberals used to make a version of this argument over drug sentencing, like twenty five years ago. Right. And the people on the right who are pro law and order went crazy. When people on the left would, like, you know, look at drugs and say, why why is it that black kids getting pinched for crack?
-
Are getting sentenced to ten x what a white kid doing, you know, getting pinched doing cocaine is or Samsung. Because we had all these weird sentencing laws around this stuff. And conservatives like, ugh, look at you soft on crime liberals. And it’s one more one more way in which that The conservative view of law and order is really and maybe it was always thus. But is really just I just have to make sure that we can use the law to punish the bad people.
-
And if the law punishes our people, then we gotta find ways around that. Sorry. And this is not a weakness for DeSantis, but it is the fact that DeSantis is all in on this view the law and the application law, and all of conservatism has decided that they’re all in on it too.
-
Yeah. And Ron DeSantis actually knows what the true true conservative position is. Right? He is smart enough and was a conservative who existed in these spaces. He’s just decided he just under he does understand, I think, as an intellectual matter, but not as a, like, deep in the gut matter.
-
He understands where these voters are, he knows that the base wants to hear that he’s gonna pardon the people who attack the capitol on January sixth, because that is a piece of political posturing that is necessary in the current political environment, rule of law, be damned. I know I was right, but I wanted to just check. Okay. So more than there were more than three hundred federal cases stemming from the protests against George Floyd and a hundred and twenty defendants plead guilty and were convicted of federal crimes, including rioting, arson and conspiracy, seventy of the defendants so far, I’ve gotten an average about twenty seven months behind bars, at least ten received terms of five years or more. Okay, like, that’s the one’s about to sound like, What is this idea that, like
-
Somebody set it on Fox once, and so it becomes dogma. Right? Like, oh, the BLM Antifas were never prosecuted for anything. Like, I don’t know. It kinda looks like like a bunch of them were.
-
Right?
-
Yeah. A bunch of them were. So I just this idea that, like, there there were there were political prosecutions. But more importantly, like, I think there’s something deeper here, which is that, this is like the normalization of what happened on January sixth. And I think that if you stop for one second and you think about the fact that these were people trying to overturn an election, that they were threatening bodily harm to members of Congress, that they were talking about hanging Mike Pence, and that people were killed, that cops were being beaten, and tased, and stabbed the flagpoles, And and it was breached that we have both major presidential candidates on the Republican side.
-
Saying, not just like kind of white washing what happened that day, but like actively running on a platform of letting people off who are a part of that that day. And even if the technicalities of what Ron DeSantis does aren’t or would be like, more responsible than the ones that Trump would do. The point is that he’s running in a way to signal that all of that was okay. Not only that, proves it okay, but it is unjustified that people were punished for it. And that is genuinely shocking.
-
I mean, especially, you know, the people who are getting convicted, they like, juries have sat and listened to all the evidence and and it it is like the the the pardon in Texas with Greg Abbott over the the guy who who killed the the Bulwark lives matter. Like, you know, it it’s just I don’t understand it. The the con conservatives is suddenly the conservatives who want to lock everybody up. Right? Lock her up.
-
Lock him up. Now go and when juries reach verdicts, putting people to putting and here’s the thing, what they’re saying is that the crimes are okay as long as the crimes are committed against the bad people.
-
Right.
-
That’s what it is. Like, it’s not like that that, like, crimes are okay or even that they like you know, Cletest von Ivermectin who has been pinched for this stuff. It’s not really about that. It’s about we gotta make sure that the people don’t get in trouble for doing crime against the people we hate. Yep.
-
And I I mean, that is just dangerous as fuck.
-
So this is when people talk about the slow slide into you know, people throw around words like autocracy, authoritarianism, you know, fascism, I think these terms can be like sort of silly sometimes, But the erosion of liberal democracy, like, this is where it happens. When you undermine the rule of law, when you decide, and you tell people, and like, it’s weird. This is it’s just it’s happening like, right now, you know, you the the the the idea that the left says, like, the Supreme Court has no legitimacy. And, like, I find that I may not like how the Supreme Court’s ruling, But I do not like the idea that people would say that it has no legitimacy. I am deeply concerned about the entire a public party deciding that free speech is actually something that applies to them, not their opponents, that the rule of law is something that applies to their opponents and not to them.
-
What is it? What is that old phrase that is like for for for my friends, something, but for my enemies, the law?
-
Yeah. Yeah. I I know exactly
-
Anyway.
-
My friend’s understanding or something like that.
-
But yeah. Jeremy, my friend’s charity and understanding for my yeah. My enemy is the law. And, like, this is this is how we get to the bad place.
-
This is yeah. And you know what? Look, you know, as dark as I am. The fact that the justice system has ground in slow and unspectacular ways against like the Stuart Roads and the Enrique Tarios of the world. That’s a sign of the guardrails holding.
-
Right? This is, you know so what you had was you had a bunch of paramilitary organizations who were quasi taking directions from the president of the United States directions laundered through like Roger Stone and stuff. So it wasn’t it wasn’t full brown shirts, but it was like, you know, an eighth of the way on the road to brown shirts. And that was really bad and dangerous. And the guardrails are in the process of holding.
-
Right? In ways which are unspectacular, but are are measured and you’re like, okay, look, this is when we talk about the institutions holding. This is this is good. Then he have Ron DeSantis who comes along and his campaign pitch is yeah. We gotta we gotta, like, you know, undo the institutions holding.
-
And here’s here’s where I I get really, really mad. So the the Ross doubt that baseball had argument is, Ron DeSantis doesn’t mean any of this stuff about dismantling the institutions. But he has to say it because that’s what Republican voters want. Republican voters demand that. So he has to he has to say that.
-
Yes. If Republican voters demand those things, and will not elect a politician who is in favor of those institutions and guardrails. Then why do we not see Republican voters as an incredibly dangerous force in American politics? Yeah. Is it because you don’t like Target having like rainbow pride signs when you walk in.
-
Is that really the calculation?
-
I don’t know, but I see this as part of So, this is like the way that anti antis I’m like putting some things put things out in the world about Ron DeSantis, the focus groups have turned Ron DeSantis completely, and so I’ve been talking I’ve been talking to someone about Ron DeSantis, I also You know, I have been publicly I find his his current strategy inexplicable. Why when there is an available chunk of the Republican party that wants to move on. And then why there is another group, another sort of standard deviation over of sort of like maybe Trumpers who could be persuaded to go for someone like Ron DeSantis. And instead, he’s trying to wrestle Trump for his cult, like the people who are always with him, and I don’t understand that. So when I make those points though, I gotta say, I have never blocked people on Twitter, but nobody has been more upset, more rude like name calling, you know, you’re a grifter, you need Trump, trumps your immediate financial interest, you know, So, like and sorry, like, I’ve just, like, the extent to which they will say like and they’ll make fun of me.
-
They’re like, yeah, you want Larry Hogan, who can’t win. And like the way they’re willing to accept basically what anything that Ron DeSantis throws up that they will never say, he’s wrong, he’s not good. Like their level of investment I actually don’t understand it, because I’m like, Why not just move on to Yankin? Like, why not just be like, you know what? This guy doesn’t have it.
-
Like what what is the thing that makes them like you always make, say, you can’t criticize the Precious, which is exactly how they are. The vitriol, I don’t get I’ve never gotten those level of vitriol from It’s always the anti antiques. It’s never like the trumpers that come after us.
-
I I think I know the answer to this. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. So the the word they use is support. Yeah. They they you’ve got to support DeSantis.
-
And that’s a weird word because it’s it’s unclear what it means. You and I have made clear that we we will maybe not happily, but we will support Ron DeSantis with our votes. Right? Which is like the only material thing you can do. You, depending on positioning, like, may spend spend money to try to stop Donald Trump from being nominated and
-
Mhmm.
-
What they what the anti antis mean when they say support is they mean be willing to lie for them. I think that’s what they mean. Right? In in supporting somebody in their mind means being willing to say things you don’t believe. In order to publicly position yourself as as being a supplicant to the fear.
-
Yeah. That is what support means. And that’s the thing we’re not willing to do. Like, I you know, like, if Ron DeSantis pulls down his pants and takes a crap on the sidewalk. I will not say that this is a bold strategy in which he is showing the media how what he really thinks of them or that he is disrupting the mechanics of presidential campaigns.
-
Like, I I you know, I was like, I don’t know, seems crazy. The dude just took a deuce on the sidewalk. Right. Not a great campaign strategy. And what the anti antiques and I think this is all because of how like what the Trump years did to them where they felt like they had to.
-
They could make some noises about like, well, I don’t necessarily agree with it. But you know, their view of what it meant to support a candidate ran to, you know, making excuses for this guy they hated. And it was embarrassing to them.
-
Yeah. I think that’s right. I just it it is like the level of intensity is really ratcheted up from them. I give it, I guess, that’s panicked about this I guess they tied really hard to him and now if he goes down, that’s What do you think? Do you think that after making the rounds, with Eric Ericson and every other podcaster as you and going on News Max, do his poll numbers go up now that he’s announced?
-
Hey again, it’s JBL. The conversation goes on from there. If you want to hear the rest of the show, head on over to the Bulwark and subscribe. We’d love to have you.
Want to listen without ads? Join Bulwark+ for an exclusive ad-free version of The Next Level Podcast! Learn more here. Already a Bulwark+ member? Access the premium version here.