Tim Miller: Down to Clown
Episode Notes
Transcript
Tucker is in some corner of Elon’s basement testing to see what he can get away with, while Elon is cozying up with Putin. Plus, Santos’ oppo on himself, and the potential Saudi deal. Tim Miller joins Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod.
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!
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It is September eighth two thousand twenty three. Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. This is our first Friday after Labor Day. I actually devoted my full newsletter to, deployable, deployable, deployable, kind of filled up the zone here. Normally, Tim, I have this kind of, you know, If you have a lifetime deployable rating, we don’t include you in the weekly ratings, but I I bent the rules a little bit.
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Thanks, man.
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How can you do it deployables of the week without Jim Jordan and the fact that he just got slapped down by Fanny Willis. How do you do it without, you know, the latest George Santos story or And I’m I’m sorry that I keep coming back to Tommy Tuberville. I’ve, you know, gotta put him, you know, on the shelf. He’s gotta, you know, he’s in the clubhouse.
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Don’t want any of those Efflers and their poems in our military, Charlie. Don’t want that. Only want men who can’t read in the military.
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Well, you know, if if literature breaks out among the ranks, just who knows what could happen? People start reading, they start thinking, and You know, Tommy Tubleber. I, you know, look, I mean, Tommy Tubleber as a coach probably realized, you know, the the dangers of having football players read books and stuff like that. So I’m I’m pretty sure he’s been consistent on on all of that. So Yeah.
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I’m guessing a couple of his players write a few more poems than him, but you know, I don’t know.
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Okay. So we have a little bit of, of alignment of the stars here because, in, in my deployables of the week, I think my favorite item was the cool kid philosopher Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson, who both got pooned by this guy named well, I I I don’t even wanna take it away from you because you just destroyed him with a with a tweet yesterday. This is This is the guy who is has the bombshell report that that Barack Obama was gay or whatever, and And Tucker Carlson gave him airtime. And I know that a lot of this is sort of same old.
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Do we call it airtime if he’s fired from TV streamed time. Yeah.
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Okay. Stream time. I thank you. I stand corrected here. You know, part of me is, like, okay.
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It’s same old same old Tucker Carlson, you know, is you know, as a fire hose of Bulwark, but even by these standards, putting this guy, giving this guy any credibility whatsoever. So do your thing because you utterly dismantled all of this. It’s a great moment in American, journalism.
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Thank you. We were ahead of the curve last Friday, talking about how Caitlin Candice Owens talked about this. All the This stuff bubbles up. This is why, you know, we do this. You don’t have to suffer through the right wing media.
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This stuff bubbles up and that and you think it might just be one person sending a weird tweet not that. No. Like, they these narratives develop. And the narrative du jour was was Obama being a secret gay and, also doing crack smoking. This story goal that the Candace was talking about that we discussed last week, you know, was a rehash, you know, for people who have no memory, for people who weren’t alive in two thousand eight in four times or who, you know, were going about their lives and not worrying about the end of our democracy who didn’t pay attention that closely.
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This was around in two thousand eight in the same fever swam. So is this guy His name is Larry Sinclair. And, actually, before I get into this, I just wanna say, because some people are gonna be like, why the fuck are you talking about this? I do think it’s important to just point out. Tucker Carlson is is now in his live stream in the basement.
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Pepen Shapiro, who just jumps on this, is the biggest right wing podcaster. There’s forty percent of the country that is engaging in this sort of stuff. And, like, I like, we learned in twenty sixteen while putting our head in the sand and and and where you end up. So anyway, people need to know how crazy these fuckers are or else, you know, who knows? We might end up with a president Tucker or Shapiro some
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We tried that. Like, let’s ignore them. Let’s not give them oxygen. Let’s pretend they don’t exist. Let’s just treat them as good as clowns.
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And then all of a sudden they’re, like, running the defense department and attempting to change. So, you know, and we we we need to at least, like, make sure people realize the extent of their clownitude. So this guy, Larry, Sinclair in two thousand eight, came forward with a rather salacious story that in nineteen ninety nine, He was in Chicago. And, you know, he was looking for a night of fun, and he asked his limo driver, you know, if he might know a young gentleman that might be it in, you know, maybe procuring his wares and having a night of of debauched drugs and, you know, love making. And, the supposedly this this limo driver knew exactly the right person for this.
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Sure. And he called up a local state senator. Named, Barack Obama. And so they drove from his comfort and hotel to some lounge downtown. The guy can’t remember the lounge’s name.
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And outside the lounge was a strapping young man, you know, skinny guy with a weird name. And he was, like, he was down to, you know, he was down to clown. And then it started from there. And they had two nights of doing crack together, smoking crack, oral sex, oral sex in the limo, going back to the hotel, he has this very long story that he tells. And so, he has his press conference in two thousand eight.
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Where he was gonna share this. And, you know, the right wing media at the time, which was, you know, far less robust than it is now was all was into it though, the alternative one. Fox, not Fox. To the online, right, wing media. If he has his press conference where he rambles and rambles, our friend Dave Wargo has been on Secret Podcast, was there.
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And at the end of the press conference, He gets arrested by DC metropolitan police.
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Let Larry Sinclair gets arrested. Larry Saint Claire
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gets arrested by DC volts and police. Why did he get arrested? Well, you had a warrant or a out for his arrest in Delaware. You come to find out, Penn Smith reported on this in politico that, Larry Sinclair has a lifetime as a Con man in a fraudster. He is, he had sixteen years in jail in Colorado for fraud and credit card charges.
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He had theft in forging a check-in Florida. Theft in Delaware, Colorado records listed with thirteen aliases, including Larry, his Tara, Avia, Muhammad, whatever is lied to courts. In four years prior to that press conference, he he said he couldn’t appear in Pueblo, Colorado, and another theft charge because he had it was disabled at the severe spine injury and terminally ill. Somehow, he he miraculously, Rose like lazarus and was able to walk into the press club in two thousand eight. After that, yeah, the website, White House dot gov offered or at White House dot com, excuse me, offered to pay him a hundred thousand dollars that he passed the line to test verifying these claims.
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He took the test and failed it. Awkward. This is a preposter. If you look at this man, the bar stool sports guy, It was not exactly, you know, where mister discretion. He was like, I met this person in Tucker because I was also doing an interview with Tucker the same day.
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And he’s the least credible person I’ve ever met in my life. I give him a zero point zero percent chance of telling a true story. If you just look at him, I don’t wanna be stereotypical, but he looks like the kind of person that would tell you anything that you need to hear for one more bump of cocaine. I mean, that’s just exactly how he reads.
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Any journalist, any newsroom knows guys like this who wander in. They’ve got the story, and you look at them. You spend about fifteen seconds doing a background check. And you realize this guy’s a nut. We don’t even want him around.
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We’re not gonna talk to him. Tucker Carlson despite everything that you just mentioned, all of the details that show that this guy’s a complete fraud devotes a whole interview to him. So here’s the the tweet that got my my attention. So Ben Shapiroo, you know, the cool kid philosopher, but a major influencer. Destroyer of bad arguments in new times.
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Tweets out serious question. After watching Tucker Carlson’s interview with Larry Sinclair. Why are his allegations significantly less credible than those of, say, Eugene Carroll or Christine Blasi Ford, to which you responded Larry Sinclair had fraud charges in two states, went to jail in three, filed an affidavit twenty years ago, saying he couldn’t stand trial because he was terminally ill, seems to be alive now. Colorado records listed with thirteen aliases, and he failed a polygraph test over these claims. Other serious questions, People I did need to understand that.
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I mean, there are lies and there are Bulwark, but then there’s Tucker Carlson taking this guy and saying, I am so desperate I am so thirsty for attention that I’m going to throw this guy up and Ben Shapiro. It’s a serious question, serious questions. Why would he be less credible than Eugene Carroll? Who would, by the way, found credible by a federal jury and judge Yeah.
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It’s natural. It’s not only was Eugene Carroll found credible by a federal jury, but aging Carol at her defamation trial, in which the jury found that Donald Trump had raped her
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— Rraped. —
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provided eleven witnesses. She provided eleven witnesses at the trial. You know, can I offer another reason, Ben Shapiro, why eugene Carol is more credible than this lying fraudulent crack head? Yeah. How about the eleventh?
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What is it? That’s what happened when you make an accusation like this. You bring corroborating evidence. You bring a diary. You bring the friend that you told in real time.
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You bring something. Sinclair had nothing. He he didn’t he didn’t bring any. He couldn’t even remember the fucking name of the place where they met.
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So serious question, though, serious question. You would think that Tucker Carlson has some residual concern for his credibility or is that naive? I don’t think so. How does this help him? How does this advance any cause that he wants other than I’m going to do some thing outrageous.
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I’m gonna see what shit I can throw against the wall and get away with. I mean, there is part of me that things that Tucker Carlson’s kind of in the mode now saying, you know, it’s like, far can I push it? Can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this?
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Will there be any consequences? Well, he’s out on his asset Fox News. He’s often some corner of Elon Musk’s basement now, but this is holy crap. I mean, even Elon Musk was saying, yeah, this doesn’t sound like it’s real to me.
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Yeah. I think that’s it. I think that he wants to see what he can get away with. I think he thinks it’s a big game now. I, you know, I it’s hard far be it for me to analyzed Tucker, but I think that he gets joy out of this, and that he thinks it’s funny.
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He thinks it’s funny for people’s hair to be on fire, and he thinks it’s funny to you know, dude, this sort of thing. And this story is ridiculous. You know, I didn’t even get into the fact that Larry in this interview, I’m watching. He talks about how Barack Obama was also involved in some murder of another of a gay choir director at his church because they might have had an affair. And, like, Tucker doesn’t ask any of the obvious follow-up questions.
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Tucker’s not an idiot. He used to be talented magazine writer. I just I reread his nineteen ninety nine Bush profile the other day. It’s really well done, actually. I, you know, this is not a moron.
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Like, he he knows how to ask follow-up question.
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Which makes it actually worse. Right. I mean, makes it worse that he knows what he is doing. He knows that he is engaging in defamation. He knows the Barack Obama is not gonna be able to sue him for all this.
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In our defense for for spending time talking about this because you know that we’re gonna get a little bit of, you know, in the comments section, people saying, you know, Tim and Charlie, why are you even talking about this? Then don’t be surprised in the next couple of months when you see a poll showing that forty percent of Americans actually believe that Barack Obama did blink, blink, blank, blank, blank, blank, because this is the world we live in. Okay?
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You have to debunk it and give people something to push back on. Is this a silver bullet? No. But ignoring it’s not a silver bullet. I swear to god.
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I was not I sent that tweet that you’d just read. And then I was like, okay. I’m done with this. And then, you know, you said in Slack, you need to write Nardic. You
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gotta write.
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You gotta do it. I don’t know if I should write Nardic about this. It’s like this fucking guy, like, really, And then two minutes later, I pop over to Instagram, stall a little minute as people do, look through my stories, and there it is. Like, literally one of the first stories I clicked on is somebody that’s not political, old friend, and, you know, it has a little thing that’s kind of cheeky, but kind of serious. It’s like so baroque did.
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You know, gay sex and crack. And I’m like, this is how things happen. This is how this stuff gets out. This is how conspiracy spread. And so, like, for people like that, you have to give them a link that’s like, no.
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Okay. Now I can send this to you. And is that gonna convince the people in the Deep MagA world? No. That is gonna convince that guy on Instagram, right, who maybe was a little bit curious, and does it really matter?
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I guess not. But I I think that this is part of a broader project the flood design was shit project that that Steve Van had said that’s like, we are corrupted. Mhmm. You know, we are going to advance these lines we are gonna advance these bigoted conspiracies and corruption. And as part of the strategy for that is we’re gonna bring everybody else down with us.
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We’re gonna smear them. And so then you can’t judge us. You can’t judge Tucker on his lies and conspiracies in Donald Trump’s if if if Barack Obama was hiding his secret life as a gay lover and and crack addict, and how could you judge Donald Trump for his rapes and his, you know, coup. Right? That is the strategy here.
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So it has to be pushed down. It has to be pushed back upon.
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I agree with you completely. I guess the question is whether you can push back and push down on it anymore because I remember, I mean, we’ve we’ve talked about this. I remember back in the before times when you would get a crazy a conspiracy theory like this and somebody would would forward it and you would write back to them and say, okay. Do you understand where this comes from? Here’s why it’s not true.
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I would send him all the information about Larry Sinclair’s frauds and aliases and and arrests and everything. And they would say, okay. You know, thanks. I’m I’m not gonna, you know, forward Uncleato’s emails like this anymore. But since twenty sixteen, when you do that, people go, well, you know, why am I gonna believe anything from the Washington Post?
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Or, yeah, he was convicted by the deep state in Colorado. It becomes irrefutable. I mean, this this is this is the world that Tucker has helped create in in which he thinks he flourishes, which is that he’s in these hermetically sealed alternative reality silos, and you just can’t break in. And this may be an example of it, but I do think you’re right. We have to push back against dollars.
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I do wanna say it’s sad. My final comment about this. I think Tucker’s life is sad. And I think he’s projecting. He randomly went off on Bill crystal recently, and he was like, Can you imagine what a dinner party is like at Bill Crystal’s house?
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It has to have there has to be no joy there. Like, these people are joyless, these establishment types. And to me, that felt like a confession. Yeah. You never been invited Bill’s house, me neither.
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But it felt like a confession. It seems like somebody that I think would never admit it, but thrived on being invited to write profiles about George w Bush for Talk magazine. And now is pushed out to the edges with these weird freaks. And I think he’s probably somewhere deep inside his soul a little unhappy with himself, because this feels sad. I was watching the interview.
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It seems sad.
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And then again, you’re you’re talking to Carlson. You couldn’t do anything, and yet you choose to do this. By the way, speaking of sad, and that we don’t have to spend a lot of time on this. You know, Elon Musk is it feels like an old story that he’s, you know, he has destroyed Twitter or whatever we’re supposed to call it these days, you know, Exeter or whatever. But this last week, it has just been where do you start?
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You know, the fact that he’s pushing these any somatic tropes about the anti defamation league that he’s, you know, pushing this this idea that, you know, Jews complaining about any Semitism causes more anti Semitism, you know, that tired old thing. I mean, he’s, you know, here’s the guy that that opened up, Twitter to Nazis and everything, and he’s pushing out these things. And yet that’s not the worst thing he did this week. Now basically, he’s acknowledging that he shut off the starlink communications to the Ukrainians when they were trying to disable the the Russian fleet, the Russian fleet that that fired missiles that have killed civilians and children and bomb cities and everything. And, you know, this is in the new biography of of Elon Musk, but Elon Musk is not just a clown.
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Elon Musk is somebody that became a willing ally of the Russians and cut the Ukrainians off at the knees. And there are some pretty significant issues here You know, what role does Elon Musk? This fucking narcissistic crack pot play in national security and issues of war and peace here. This is not a joke.
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Yeah. No. It isn’t. And the excerpt was for was for motorized book, which I’m excited to read and and Walter is, is really unbelievably talented. And the story is kinda crazy.
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He’s like watching this archman in football game here, right down the street from my house. In New Orleans. And, like, Elon’s calling him, talking about how he’s gonna shut off the Ukrainians. And it’s just, like, what a crazy seen, you know, for starters to write about and to think that this is what we are as a society like the Ukrainians are begging Elon to keep these, startling things open and, working. Though to me reading the story, my my big takeaway is, like, it was really a mistake for everybody to let it get this far.
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Boeing does not get to have a setting on their plane when you contract with Boeing that says, oh, we’re gonna turn off the plane. May we’re gonna automatically turn playing around if you get over Russian airspace. Like, that’s not how it works. Like, when you contract with the government, the government is in charge of diplomacy. Of military operations.
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You are providing a service. And I think that the Ukrainians obviously, they’re in desperate times, and it seems like Elon really did help them at the start. That you get in bed with this mercurial figure. And at some point, I guess there was an offer for the US to pay, and Elon spitefully kind of said no. And it was really at that point where I don’t know what needed to happen if I can summit at Elon’s place in Austin with Tony Blinking and a Ukrainian official.
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I’m not sure, but you needed to get to a place where it’s like, no. This guy doesn’t get to decide. Right? Like, either he’s gonna contract with us and provide But if
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you were making a move, you’re writing a movie, you know, about this dysfunctional world where, you know, this this erratic billionaire is sitting there with top government officials making these life and death decisions, you know, somebody would say this is totally implausible. There’s no way that the US government and the Ukrainian government would be held hostage by this iron man, literally out of iron man. Just a a reminder that we we actually do kind of live Olegarchy. But the worst dumbest oligarchy you can imagine.
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Yeah. I mean, somebody was pointing out, and maybe this is true. That, like, there’s that Malaysian and this is another reason why we gotta monitor the crazy shit. Like, there’s some there’s this Malaysian influence or Ian Miles Sean If you don’t know about him, god bless you. Don’t learn it.
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Don’t learn another cent thing about him after this. But he is this far right mega type, but he doesn’t even live in America, but somehow he he got a Twitter following. And and Elon replies to him all the time, and he was he initially people think suggested to you on via tweet that I he shut the these things down. He also is a Russia today. Article.
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Right? So, like, all this stuff is intertwined. This is just again why, like, they needed to have cut a actual military contracting agreement or cut this guy off. This situation is fucking a nuts otherwise.
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Hey, folks. This is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day, we remind you folks. You are not the crazy ones.
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Another, like, bottom story of the day, I wanna get to the more important stories of the day, but you slacked me this this story about George Santos. I kinda thought we were done with George Santos.
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I just started reading this and laughing in bed this morning, and I was just like, we might just wanna just give people a little taste.
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It turns out that there was what what do they call this thing? Like a vulnerability report, vulnerability study. So the campaigns commission a, basically, opera research on themselves to figure out, okay, what’s the worst thing somebody can say about me? Right? I mean, you know, the Yeah.
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Right. CBS News, got their hands on this vulnerability report for George Sandoz. This was by his own campaign, and this was widely circulated And people like Elise Stefanic, who eventually endorsed in campaign for George Santos knew about this. I mean, she saw this. And so let me see if I can do a little bit of a reading of of the top things.
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Again, this is from the Sandoz campaign itself. Before he was elected saying, One victim of the company where Santos worked was an elderly woman living on social security who says she was told that if Donald Trump were elected, the stocks and bonds she was invested in Wood Plumbing. Santos worked for a Turkish based company with a litany of customer complaints and scam allegations. The complaints continue while Santos worked there. Santos says his professional experience is working in finance and helping wealth grow but his personal financial disclosure, filed with a clerk of the house, shows no personal investments or assets.
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Then it goes on. It talks about Sandoz’s driver’s license. This is suspended in Florida.
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He can’t drive in Florida.
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Senos has had multiple civil judgements against him. Senos is running for office in New York, but he he registered a new company in Ron DeSantis says he is socially liberal. To be clear, I am no right winger, and it goes on to, question details about his marriage and things like that. It’s just but it’s all laid out here.
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The marriage one was pretty good. We just have to do this one while married to a woman. I don’t I can’t pronounce her name. Social media indicate Santos’s dated and lived with a man who was an illegal immigrant. The man later said he was fearful of being deported once Trump got elected.
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And then Santos began dating his current partner while he was also still married to Vieira. I like that. And my other favorite one that you didn’t mention was that He said, he criticized the people storming the capital. The campaign team was worried about that one. They’re like, that might.
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That might that might come back to hurt us in the primary. I mean, he can’t drive in Florida. He’s secretly dating a legal immigrant while Mary a man, while married to a woman. His whole career is lie in a ponzi scheme. And at least Stephanic is like, that’s my fucking guy.
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That’s my man.
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Yep. That’s it. I mean, yes. Let’s let’s put him in the Congress of the United States. Let’s let’s go ahead and support him.
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But, of course, this is the Biden regime deep state smear of an American wait. Wait. No. It’s his own campaign. It comes from his own campaign.
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Speaking of your own campaign and self inflicted wounds, Tim, you were also head of the curve with a big piece about the complete uselessness of super packs. They burn through, you know, tens of millions of dollars without moving anything, accomplishing anything. I mean, really, it’s quite extraordinary. That you have these consultants that that are running the super packs and keep asking for more money and they spend these just god awful amounts of money. Accomplish nothing and just keep, you know, stay in business.
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But now there’s, there’s more reporting that, that Ron DeSantis is just pointed in his Super PAC. He was apoplectic about the release of the memo. So your advice has been, you know, donors, instead of giving to these super packs, why don’t you just take your money and, like, set it on fire or, like, give it to some homeless people or what?
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Give it to somebody. And so this is now, just to be clear, I I think that there are certain situations where certain, like, kind of targeted packs and stuff that do certain things, motivate group for various things, you know, reach one to two percent of voters on the margins in a general election. I I do think that matters. It’s these candidate packs. We learned in twenty sixteen.
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I was there with Jeb — Yeah.
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—
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where we had this hugely funded pack, and the campaign didn’t have any money in the candidate. You know, I love Jeb. Great one on one, but you know, dynamism on stage wasn’t like his strength. Right? So we already did this.
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Yeah. Really? I know. We already did this eight years ago. And the DeSantis campaign is like, let’s set up the same program as Geb had, but actually a little worse because Geb at least had Mike Murphy who he trusted on the super pack known for twenty years.
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We’re gonna hire this guy that is just a total stranger. Right? But has a good reputation. We’re yeah. We’re gonna hire somebody.
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Yeah. Jeff Rowe. We’re gonna put him over there. Well, it’s gonna be illegal to talk to him. We’re gonna give him all the money and let him come up with a strategy.
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And Ron is just gonna try to win on the force of his personality. I mean, the whole setup was preposterous from the start. And as I go in deep detail, I have a long rant about this that is maybe more for an insider’s podcast than this one in the article that the of it is, like, these things may be working lower level races. But in presidential races, it just it defies obvious logic. Right?
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It’s like Donald Trump is a brand that all these voters know. They have a deeply held view on him, one way or the other. Maybe some of them are in the cult. Maybe some of them don’t like them. Maybe some of them like them, but are open and moving on.
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But they all have deeply held beliefs about them. Running a thirty second TV ad or having a stranger knock on your door is not gonna change your mind about Donald Trump. And if you’re gonna do that, the thirty second TV ad needs to be, you know, a fucking rip it off his face You know, it needs to be a new piece of information, something to change things up. A generic cookie cutter ad. I can obviously isn’t gonna work in this situation.
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I, you know, the analogy I gave in the article is like, imagine if you’re r c cola and you’re a marketing guru, you’re the Jeff rel of col cola selling. You go to the investors. And you’re like, if you give me fifty million.
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Mhmm.
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I’m gonna run some ads in Iowa that say RC Cole is great and not mention Coke. And then I’m gonna send people people’s doors, and I’m gonna knock on them and say, hey, you should try RC Cola instead of Coke. And then at the end of that, RC Cole is gonna be the number one soda. Coke’s gonna be call. Like, we’re gonna pass them.
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Investors would look at you like you’re insane. They’d be like, that’s fucking, like, that’s not gonna work. And why would that work in this situation then? So the whole thing is just preposterous. And there’s this other political story this morning that really ground my gears, Charlie.
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It was Jeffrow let people into their headquarters and let the reporter meet, good reporter, Sasha Eisemery, meet their data scientists. And the data scientists are we’ve been testing. We tested one ad in Fort Dodge, Iowa, another ad in a Tomua isle. We tested male in this part of New Hampshire. We tested messages in the other part in New Hampshire.
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And we discovered if we do more text messages in this one ad instead of the other ad, then six percent of our target voting audience will be more likely to vote for Ryan. Science. Science. I’m going I’m reading this article, and I’m like, You’re losing by forty. You’re losing by forty.
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Okay. A six percent increase in favorability a, I think this is kind of Voodoo science to begin with, but that’s it for another topic. But even if you are right, it’s like, you need to fucking change up the game. You need to go attack Donald Trump. You gotta do something.
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You have a zero of a candidate who’s lost fourteen percent while you’ve spent tens of millions of dollars from rich people. And now you’re bragging to politico that you can move things six percent on the margins. And people are still giving this guy money. Give me your money. Tell me I’ll tell you what to do with your money.
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You know, we’ll support local nonprofit organizations You know, we’ll have a foreign exchange program to bring more young French boys to Wisconsin. We’ll do things that are useful. We’ll help.
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Yeah.
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You know, underhoused people. In Northern Wisconsin, where where can we spend this money instead of on Jeff Rose Beach houses?
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I wish people would pay attention to you. You know, I mean, there there are, of course, you know, the professional scammers out there who will continue to, you know, try to sell this. And and then there are people who are, you know, some of the bad ideas are driven by donors. And this this is kind of a a digression because as you were talking, I was thinking back to a conversation I was part of reluctantly in the before times where people were talking about one of the campaigns we were having here in Wisconsin. We used to have a campaign, like, every month.
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Remember, it was a period when we were recalling and doing all kinds of things here. And the various ideas for, you know, motivating voters returning out voters. And, there was a an older guy who was a major donor who said, well, let me tell you my idea. My idea is we need to have more billboards. And then he pulls out this little pro thing and he with pictures of billboards that he had put in various locations around the community.
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And it was like, I paid for these and look at these. And no one’s gonna say, Are you kidding me? Like, what a waste of money? It’s like yard signs or, like, handing out matchbooks or something like that. And yet because he was a donor, everybody was, like, that’s really a good idea.
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You know, world’s with these billboards. But
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I gotta tell you, Charlie Sykes, if Ron DeSantis used all the money to buy every billboard in America and have them all say Donald Trump didn’t build the wall. He’s a pussy. That probably would have been a better use of their fifty million dollars. I’m not sure it would have helped her on DeSantis, but it couldn’t have been any worse than what these gurus been dealing with the money.
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Rhonda Sandes is Ron DeSantis is not gonna change. Okay. So this week, and I told you before we started this, that I was I was bored talking about the polls and various things, but I think, you know, at the end of the week, we have to talk about it. And do you tell me whether you you think I’m wrong about the This was the week of the Democratic panic about Joe Biden, you know, probably a rather significant overreaction to a couple of polls, the CNN poll, the Wall Street Journal poll showing that Donald Trump is actually leading Joe Biden that Joe Biden is just not doing well with non white voters. And that when democratic voters are asked, You know, what do what are you concerned about?
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Like, overwhelmingly? Like, I just off the charts, the age issue.
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Really? And and I know that
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there’s a big bag where I’m talking about the age issue. Okay. He’s he’s old. He he’s getting okay. So and you had a interesting back and forth with the poker guru formerly known as Nate Silver about all of this.
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So give me your take on this because, again, I understand people saying stop talking about it, but you know, it is the giant pink dirigible in the room that you can’t have a conversation with voters without bringing up so. Tim. Talk to me about Joe Biden’s age.
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Yeah. I’ve we hear you. We get the comments. I get the emails. I get the replies on Twitter and on threads.
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Understand people don’t want to hear about the age thing. A Joe Biden supporters
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—
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Mhmm. — of which I count myself. But the put in CNN poll was not a poll of, like, podcastors and what you’re worried about. It was the number one issue by far that Joe Biden voters care about. And so on a political Secret Podcast, you know, you’re kind of not doing your job.
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If you don’t talk about the top thing by far that voters care about, it sort of would be like what would be the point would be like turning into a Denver Bronco’s podcast and and having them never mention the fact that the quarterback Russell Wilson isn’t any good anymore. Like, it’s kind of a big problem for the team. So anyway, it is something you have to discuss. Yeah. The other thing, though, on that point about why we’ve discussed it so much that I did wanna just clarify I was thinking about it this week.
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So you’d be like, why don’t you talk about Trump’s age more? Do you want me to tell you my answer to that, Charlie? Yeah. Because I want Donald Trump to die. I hope Donald Trump dies.
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I’m now worried about Donald Trump dying. That would be the best fucking thing. So I I so I’m not concerned about that. I’m not concerned about so I I don’t need to talk about it that much because I’m not con like, I’m talking about things that I’m concerned about. I did I said it out loud.
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That would be great. Yeah. He’s also old. But, like, there’s not a lot of strumming drug among the pro democracy crowd about, like, what would happen if Donald Trump fell over. Like, that would be awesome.
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So fingers crossed on that front. But there is some concerns about what can you do to mitigate the issues about Joe Biden’s age. And so maybe that’s why there’s a proportion conversation, but it’s true that they’re both old. I discussed both. I had my Snapchat show.
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You can watch it this week. It’s about our gerontocracy. And I give more detailed thoughts on this on that. Really quick on neat silver.
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No. Can I get this lay in on you wanting, Donald Trump to die? Because I wanted to, distance myself and associate myself in some ways with with all of this. I would rather say, okay. Yes.
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He’s seventy seven and clearly, you know, has has cognitive issues. You know, yes. There’s no question about But you look at Donald Trump, and it’s like, he’s a crook. He’s a seditionist. He is one of the most fundamentally odious figures ever to be an American policy.
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It’s a bigot.
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He’s all yes. He’s a big and and by the way, he’s seventy seven. It it’s it’s like in the list of awfulnesses, it’s not in the top ten because there’s so much else. It’s like you look at Donald Trump. And if you’re going, know, he’s looking kinda wrinkly.
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He’s like, no. No. No. The point is he’s a would be autocrat. He is a serial liar.
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He’s a man with the with the emotional maturity of a nine year He is I mean, whatever you wanna say about him, you know, all of that, I think, comes before this. If you look at Joe Biden, And, unfortunately, because
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Thank you for advising and extending my remarks. Okay.
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I mean, you look at Joe Biden and you’re going, I agree with him on, you know, policies. I agree with him on this. I, you know, you know, share these values. But I’m really worried that he looks like he’s a hundred years old. So it is different.
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It’s because that that’s a more prominent thing because there’s not a lot of other baggage here. But, of course, I do wanna associate myself saying that I do find myself, you know, hoping occasionally for an errant meteorite. Okay. Go on. I’m sorry.
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Back to Nate Silver.
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It would be nice. I just that’s the one thing. It would be nice. Can’t really think of any person other person who I feel that way about. So it’s not like I’m just sending a lot of people into the sun, just one orange person.
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I’ve just refinanced Silver. I I because I’m stuck talking about Yeah. The whole thing is just the media and the meta media criticism narrative stuff is just really insane to me. It’s like, oh, any Joe Biden supporter is like, All anybody can talk about is the age issue. All Donald Trump supporters talk about is how old Joe Biden is.
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It’s everywhere. It’s all they talk about. And then there’s this small class of anti anti trumpers. Yeah. You know, the contrarian class.
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And they’re and they somehow have decided that, like, the media doesn’t talk about this. And that it’s the media is trying to protect Joe Biden by not mentioning his age. And Nate was advancing this theory this week. And on Twitter, I just had to be like, What the fuck are you talking about? Do you turn on the TV ever?
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Like, are you you’re just playing poker stars all day online? That’s fine. But but then don’t just make these vast claims, but they they’re stubborn. The the the the stubborn egomaniacal contrarians can’t just be like, you know what, Tim? You’re you’re right.
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Yeah. People do talk about That was a mistake. I missed takes. I mentioned it. I’ve been wrong.
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There’s a lot a lot of coverage of this. Yeah. Anyway. So you wanted to talk about this new Saudi deal. I feel a rant coming on about the Saudi deal.
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Yeah. I’m I’m concerned about it.
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Give people the background of it, what we’re talking about.
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I feel like this is the Tim Rant podcast. It’s like, you know, well, some weeks it’s kind of like Charlie Sykes ranting and we have like a rep orte going. I think this week, you’re like, you just wanna wind me up and let me go. Which is fine.
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I like romantic. That was my game plan this week.
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Yeah. That was your notes this morning, wind him up. Let him go. Okay. Saudi.
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Yep.
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So so we don’t so obviously, the Abraham accords, which are these diplomatic deals that were negotiated during the Trump era between Israel and other gulf states. Saudi is not one of them. The Biden administration is now trying to expand on this with a mega Saudi deal that does not just diplomatic relations with Israel. But also, this is not finalized. We don’t exactly know the details.
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Yes. So this is all reporting via leaks, etcetera. But also on the table is allowing Saudi to develop a nuclear program and a security guarantee that is not in the same level of NATO, you know, but as some, again, not all the details are out. So we don’t exactly know what it would be, but but, you know, some junior version, JV version of of the NATO security guarantee, American backed, not not Israeli backed. For Saudi.
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And this is fucking insane. This is madness. And the Biden administration seems before this Lindsey Graham is for this, and Jared Kushner is for this, and MBS is for this. And I I just I am yeah.
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And yes. Of course, Jared’s for it. Right. Yeah.
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Yeah. Of course, Jared’s for this. Yeah. That’s concerning to me just on anything that has that little trio of Lindsey Jared and MBS all excited has me worried, begin with. Another one of the access of vassholes.
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Access of evil. Yeah. So I just don’t know. It doesn’t seem like there are a lot of voices speaking out about this, about about concerns about this. You know, I I have been reaching out to some folks in the hill, but I’m I wanna do something about this next week.
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With other people who are concerned about this, elected officials, not just podcasts, ranchers like me. Just to put a find of one of this, like, You know, in the past, I understood that sometimes, you know, you gotta make a deal with the devil over oil prices and, you know, Saudi, you know, has always had a pretty questionable regime when it comes to morals and ethics. And, you know, you I realpolitik, I get all that. MBS is a madman. Like, they they murdered somebody over a errant tweet sometime over the past two weeks.
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He killed a journalist. Like, he is trying to use his largest to influence, to get his, like, grubby hands into the western world in a lot of different ways. I he’s working. And it’s working. He tried to murder, not necessarily order Kashoggi.
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It isn’t just Kashoggi. He tried to murder, you know, one of his former rivals who was exiled to Canada in Canada. He sent a kill squad to Canada. They got waylaid. There’s a big sixty minutes piece on this.
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So, like, this guy is unstable. He is not a friend. It is not like dealing with a king that, you know, maybe they have some social policies, some anti gay policies I don’t like. It’s they’re generally rational. It’s not like that.
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This guy is a lunatic.
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Okay. But why is this happening? It’s not nineteen seventy five anymore. He doesn’t have us by, you know, by the shorthairs when it comes to oil. I mean, we Yes.
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He’s got a lot of money, but there’s a lot of money in the world. What is the what is the attraction here? Why do we have to suck up to him?
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Yeah. The best I understand it is that there is the oil side of this, and and there’s concerns about gas prices.
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Get that.
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I get that though. I wouldn’t trust MBS as far as you go through them. You sign this deal. He’s still gonna want Trump in there. No, man.
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Absolutely. Heard of a deal. You give him. He’s still gonna prefer trump and Kushner. Right.
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And so, you know, he’s already shutting down. You know, the amount of oil production that’s being pushed out of the middle east of gas prices are already going up because of that. Anyway, that part doesn’t make sense to me. Then there’s another, you know, kind of the graybeards, the old wise men of, you know, national security apparatus that would argue with me. We should have Eric Attleman somebody smarter than me on to talk about this.
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But, like, you know, this would be a big step in peace in the Middle East, and and it would, you know, reduce risk that that there’s a blow up in the Middle East. If there are more agreements between, you know, the gulf countries and Israel, and it also slates, I ran more. There’s some other geopolitical That
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would be the best, explanation that somehow that you use this to triangulate against Iran that that you want to isolate them.
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Sure.
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So you’re always playing those two pulls off against one another. It seems like the most plausible.
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Yeah. But that to me is is more plausible when it’s when it was like, you go back twenty years and you had you know, Akmendina John, you know, versus kind of a client king of Saudi that, you know, didn’t have global aspirations. Like, are are we sure that the Iranian regime and Saudi regime are materially different right now? I I I guess, like, on the margins and and we have a longer ties, Saudi. So I I, you know, people are gonna come on here and be like, Tim, what are you talking about?
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Obviously, I ran I ran terrible. This is not a defensive. I ran, but it’s just, like, MBS is fucking awful. He is awful and he is dangerous and he is untrustworthy, and it is it makes me very uncomfortable. So that’s my rant about this.
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Okay. So let let’s get back to domestic politics and some rank punditry here. Okay. Because I I do think there’s always that temptation to over analyze the various blips in the presidential race. And, of course, I’m gonna succumb to those temptations.
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Is Vivek over? I’m saying this because he had a really genuinely shitty Will Saletan, just one bad interview after another, there’s no indication that his debate performance has transformed his prospects. It it feels as if that whole glow lasted about, you know, three or four days. And then he went out and people realized, he’s kind of a smarty dishonest — Yeah. — disingenuous bullshitter.
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Was he ever under is the question? I, like, like, was he ever actually running for president, or was he just trying to cement your golf as future megastar. And has he heard himself with that? Maybe a little bit. Maybe he’s over I think he definitely is over shopping.
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Medi a son just absolutely annihilated in. Like, he’s kinda the type of thing that even a meg a person watching this has to be like, bro. Like, how did you not come better prepared for this? So I do think he’s heard himself a little bit this week. Gotta tell you, I would love just like the political nerd in me, the political dork scientists in me would love for that thing I was wishing about earlier to have happened.
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And for us to just have to look at what a Vivic DeSantis Haley race would look like. Because I think that tell us a lot about the future of the party. I’m not convinced that Vibank’s week was bad enough that that would eliminate him in that fantasy scenario. I really do think there’s, like, about a third of the party that’s that’s would want somebody like Vivec, about a third of the party that’s kind of like Magalite that could go for Vivec, but could go for DeSantis. Third of the party did want Haley.
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And, boy, I think we’d be having a lot more fun if that was what was happening right now rather than us having to stare down the fucking horror of Donald Trump nomination, but, we’re not. And so
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Okay. So speaking of speaking of Haley, she’s having her moment. Maybe it through the last just today that, polk, out I think was the CNN poll, right, that shows that well, Biden is behind pretty much everybody that Haley is the strongest Republican candidate. So there are a lot of people Some of the anti entities are going, hey, guys. You know, if you’re publicans, if you actually wanna win, you should go with Haley.
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Haley is the most electable. And, obviously, You know, in the before times, electability would have been a real asset. Does it matter anymore? I mean, I mean, how long is she gonna have her moment?
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Just don’t think it’s gonna ever amount to anything. And she she has to survive enough to get to South Sarah Longwell. That’s kind of like how. You know, if you finish distant third in the first two, Yeah. And then what from there?
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So I I don’t think so.
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In South Carolina.
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I said in the age Snapchat, you know, one of my lines in this thing was it would be Great if we are staring down the barrel of a Haley Biden race. And, like, then the age issue I feel like would also wouldn’t be as acute. Right? Like, okay. Worst case scenario.
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So Haley, I would love for Haley to be the nominee. I probably wouldn’t vote for. I certainly wouldn’t vote for, actually, given, you know, her Trump two step is disqualifying for me, but she is that much better than the other ones. But it’s just like if I feel that way, then What does that say about what what the mega folks feel? They’re not gonna get there for her.
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And so I just don’t, like, I don’t see where she goes from here. I think she’s it’s been encouraging. You know, for her team, like her team feels buoyed. But to me, it feels like that eventually she just run into the brick wall of the reality that significant voters aren’t aren’t looking for this. I mean, she’s still it’s all of this.
-
Like, oh, this is so positive. You’re still losing a trump by forty five. You’re losing to him by forty five. So Yeah. I mean, she’s up in the general.
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Just one other thing I thought on the general, that general poll. If you just run this out, if somehow Nikki won the nomination because Trump’s in jail and she wins a delegate fight or whatever and they steal it from. I I don’t know how she’d actually win. Doesn’t Donald Trump junior run his third party? I just I don’t actually really know that that’s true.
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Right? Like, I think aren’t there a lot of other things that happen, then I found it very hard to believe that the Trump called people just vote for.
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It’s kinda magical thinking to imagine that you’re gonna have a Nikki Joe Biden one on one. Okay. Unfortunately, this is this is almost too boring to talk about, but Mike Pence gave a big speech up in New Hampshire. And I actually had to write thing about it. The speech at Saint Anselms, college, which he clearly was billing as this is his major campaign reset.
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He called it, you know, a time for choosing, which is the famous Ronald Reagan speech from nineteen sixty four. And he laid out the contrast between populism and conservatism. Have you have you read the speech? Because Well,
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I haven’t read the whole speech, but I I saw I saw the relevant clips.
-
It’s kind of an amazing document. Because, I mean, it’s got the boiler plate attacks on the Biden administration set that aside. It’s got a lot of, you know, the boiler plate and nostalgia for Reagan set that aside. But then his critique of populism versus conservatism is really very, very pointed. It’s very blunt.
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He’s got some very strong language there. In fact, there there are passages in there that could have been written by, you know, a never trumper, which leads to, of course, the paradox of Mike Pence. Because he said, This is the time for choosing for the Republican Party. This is the big choice. It’s like, Mike, have you noticed the Republican Party has already made the choice.
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And you were there standing by his side when they chose him. I mean, this is part of the problem. You know, how do you go at from standing at Donald Trump side for four years supporting all of the anti conservative populist policies and then say, yes, but this is the existential threat that we face, we need to reject. There’s not room in this party for populism and conservatism. The whole fate of the nation you know, hangs in the balance.
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If we don’t reject this trumpian populism, which I supported until five minutes ago, then we will cease to be the conservative party We will be Republicans in name only. I mean, there’s some really strong language in there that’s hard to kind of reconcile with Mike Pence. So what do you think? Yeah.
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I’m excited to see your article on that. Yeah. I’m excited to see that because, like, when I saw that, I was like, these guys just don’t wanna accept the quences of their own actions in supporting Trump. And I chuckled to myself. My thought was initially exactly what you just said.
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It’s like, we have a battle for the soul of the party right now. It’s like, no, man. We had that battle. It was in twenty sixteen. I was on the field, actually.
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I was on I was on the side that you say I was charging, you know. I was the front line. You know, the light brigade, you know, charging to my death. And and you were on the other side. You shot me, actually.
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You we love our side that you want, you know, lost already. It happened. Like, the battle’s over. And and now you’re kind of, like, running into the wreckage to extend his metaphor to death. Right?
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Like, like, running back in, being like, it’s time to fight. Like, their dead bodies strewn around everywhere.
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It’s
-
like, sorry, bro. You were on the wrong side. It’s over. The fight’s over. Whoever wrote that form, I mean, obviously, I thought this was going to
-
be the manifesto for restoring genuine conservative principles But you read it and you go, this reads more like a eulogy because this party doesn’t exist anymore. It’s like and I had the same experience when I was talking in February, right, when I was, you know, had that event with Paul Ryan, and he’s talking about what the conservative was, like, Yeah. It’s not twenty fifteen anymore. There’s a huge amount of denial about how this party has moved, what it actually cares about. So Pence’s critique of all the things that have been abandoned, you know, American leadership in the world, you know, concern about character, traditional values, all of that stuff.
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It’s true. But, you know, this time for choosing, they chose and they chose Donald Trump, they chose populism over conservatism, You know, and you ought to know that because you’re sitting there as a former vice president of the United States at what? Five to seven percent of the polls, which ought to tell you something.
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He managed to convince himself. It really is amazing. You know, there there’ll be psych could be psychological studies done about this for centuries, you know, just like that he managed to in their Sony, people like him. He’s just an avatar for this. He managed to sit in the Oval Office as the next in line to the presidency.
-
And as the number one cheerleader for Donald Trump, and yet still in his brain convinced himself that he hadn’t really sold out his principles because he was still, you know what I mean? Because he didn’t when he disagreed with Donald
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Trump, he said so.
-
Yeah. He said so behind the scenes and And, you know, and he and he’s like, actually, you know, we did the tax cuts that were very traditional. Like, he convinced himself of that all that Bulwark. He is spreading He he really did convince himself of it. There’s a self delusion.
-
And and the fact that that self delusion is so powerful that it managed to persist even while being in the Trump White House. It’s like
-
it’s pretty remarkable. Jinx. And and especially now that you read the speech where where he’s basically they’re sitting there, and he is describing himself as the polar opposite.
-
Yeah. And
-
he says, you know, there’s time for choosing. That they are irreconcilable. The differences are unbridgeable between populism and conservatives.
-
You’re on the side. And it’s like You’re on the side. Trump pen.
-
You’re you’re sitting there in the same room. And and now he’s saying yes, yes, we were partners and we accomplished a lot. And yet, I represent a tradition that is completely incompatible with what Donald Trump is representing. And he’s trying to kind of have it both ways. We accomplished a lot, and he’s saying, you know, in twenty sixteen, Donald Trump promised to govern as a conservative, but he and his imitators are not promising that anymore.
-
Well, where is your party going here? So it’s kind of a sad I’m debating whether or not to call it.
-
Your name’s on the bumper sticker.
-
Your name’s on the bumper sticker.
-
Trump Pence. It’s right there. Water bottle ice cable.
-
You took the water bottle off the table. I mean, you were, like, fucking hurt. You know,
-
it’s Broad shoulder leadership. And, like, all this happened. You know, it’s almost like a multiple personality disorder. I mean, myself and Irene type situation.
-
Well, I I, you know, part of me is, like, glad you’re coming around. Glad you’re, you know, laying out the distinctions. We have been saying this for years now. You know, in opposition to people like you saying, This is not conservatism. This is a betrayal of all of this.
-
And now you’re coming around, now you’re seeing it, and, like, welcome to the party sort of Do
-
you think there’ll be a single person that, well, when when Donald Trump accepts that nomination in Milwaukee is like Charlie Sykes know, Turns out you were right. You were really right about that. Do you think you’ll get one? Mike Pence, do you think you’ll get one?
-
Actually, I get that all the time. But they never say that in public. Then they go out and they do something Magalike, and it’s just like, okay. This is like, this has become a cliche, what they say in private, what they say in public, and I’m I’m I’m a little tired of it. So, Tim, we made it to the weekend.
-
So thanks for thanks for joining me again. And I hope that you have a great weekend. I’m planning a great weekend.
-
If you don’t, we’re gonna see you in Austin. We’re gonna be together in two weeks.
-
Two weeks. We’re going to be in Austin. Bill’s gonna be down there. Mona’s gonna be down there. We have, panels, and then we actually have a meet and greet.
-
So if you’re down in Austin, you can, you know, just come in Ron DeSantis talking about this stuff. You know, we’re we’re tired of you, Tuck you about this is what you should be talking about.
-
Instead, yeah. Give us a script.
-
You’re saying things on your podcast that make us uncomfortable, and we don’t want that anymore. We were no. I’m just I’m just kidding. So I will see you in two weeks. And thank you all for listening to, this weekend’s Bulwark podcast.
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I’m Charlie Sykes. We Tim Miller and we will be back on Monday, and we will do this all over again. Over podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.
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