Tim Miller: Trump Keeps Telling Us
Episode Notes
Transcript
Trump is glorifying insurrectionist prisoners, Bannon-world is using Confederate code words, and Republicans and a lot of the media are just pretending this radicalizing talk isn’t happening. Plus, Mike Johnson’s thoughts on dinosaurs and gay people. 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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Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is Friday, and we are back with Tim Miller. Tim, how have you been?
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Charlie Sykes been too long, man. You know, we have stuff to cover. Stuff has happened. You had COVID in the house? You know, I missed you that you could’ve used a purple drink.
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I promised you. Yeah. In New Orleans, you could’ve used a purple drink. So do it, you know, a rain check.
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You think about it? It’s been, like, you know, a couple of weeks. All the things have happened. We have a new speaker. We have a couple of new wars.
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We have a new slap fight going on in in Congress. We can talk about all of that. I I want you to explain some things to me. I want you to explain Ken Buck to me. I wanna talk about the Nikki Haley surge.
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I wanna talk about you and Steve Schmidt, and this whole Dean Phillips campaign. Hey up for that. We’re gonna do that.
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Yeah. Let’s do it all.
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Oh, and Tommy Tuberville? Whether you agree with me or not, that Tommy Tuberville is the Senate’s dumbest member. I understand that’s a controversial position, competitive category. It was interesting watching the other night where finally after nine months, the other Republicans called bullshit on him for holding up all of those promotions for no particular substantive reason. And it was not just the substance.
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It was also the tone. They were exasperated and disgusted with the guy. And it’s like, They’ve been holding it in. Right?
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Yeah.
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They know how stupid Tommy Tuberville is, but also how reckless and dangerous and demigodicy is. And finally, it just poured out of them.
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You reminded me of how pissed the closet normals, house Republicans work, Matt Gates. Yes. The same thing happened, right, during the McArthur thing where Gary graves from up here in Baton Rouge is on, you know, is that IQ is an establishment guy that went along with Trump, and he’s out there going, man, gates is the worst. He’s the worst person. He’s a grifter.
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And it’s just like all these guys just have had to push it down. For like seven years now. Right? They can’t say it about Trump. They can’t say it.
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They’re really thinking they can It’s
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been sucking it down for a very long time now.
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They can whisper it in the Capitol Hill Club Basement. But finally, when they let it out, you know, it’s like the hot steam popping out of their ears. And Matt Gates and Tommy Toberville, I guess our safe spaces. They feel like they can express their real feelings in a way that it won’t cost them primary. And so you get to see the true face of what these guys think about the monster that they have created and enabled the past decade.
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Again and again and again. You know, they create the monster of Marjorie Taylor Green, and they are amazed that she’s turned on them, or you’ve gone along with Tommy Tuberville and you realize, hey, there’s actual consequences to attacking the military. It was a little bit, like, the word ironic is overused, but I’ll use it anyway here that they were willing to go along with Tommy Tuberville kneecapping the US military up until the moment where the commandant of the Marine Corps has a heart attack because they’re making him do two jobs. And there’s a war in the Middle East where, obviously, US military is going to be affected in some way. So it actually took a war and the heart attack from the top marine for people to say, hey, maybe this Tommy Tuberville holiday from reality is not a good idea.
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Yeah. I mean, you would have thought on the merits. You know, the at least the vestigial neo cons, right? The vestigial strong national security types of the Tom Cotton and Lindsey’s. And finally, they broke with Dan Sullivan, I guess, to Galita, Alaska.
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I Will Saletan I’m hoping that the Democrats use this to play hardball on this. I’ve seen the last couple weeks. I feel like the Democrats are whipping out. They went down on the George Santos thing. Several of them went along with this.
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I know we can talk about the mic Johnson, Israel funding tied to IRS gambit, and, like, even a couple of them went along with that.
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Yeah.
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I would love to see a little more hard ball out of them. And hopefully, this could be example, I mean, the Republicans, digging Sullivan and Lindsey Graham just gave them free ad material for next week.
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Holy. Absolutely.
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It’s republicans on the senate floor that are saying our party is hampering military readiness. I and that is a that’s a useful material.
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Oh, yeah. I mean, when he was talking about how the Chinese generals and admirals must be, you know, pinching themselves. How could they possibly be so lucky? What a great gift to de Xi and of Vladimir Putin. This is coming from Republican senators on the floor talking about another Republican senator.
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So Yeah.
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It’s like Tammy material that, like, just really quick. These swing voters, like, in Georgia. Right? Who are the people we’re talking the suburban white college educated dads. Right?
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Like, these are national security types. Wanna strong military, the Brian Kemp, Raphael Warock voter. Right? Like, that demo that’s gonna be thirteen twenty twenty four. This is really effective, grist, I would think, for motivating that audience.
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There’s so much we have to talk about. And I’m gonna double back and talk about con and I want you to explain a lot of this stuff to me. But this is one of those moments where I go, okay. We have been talking about Donald Trump for so long. That there comes a point where you go, can we talk about anything other than Donald Trump?
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I mean, look, you and I both feel this way. Right? You kinda get numb. You kinda get bored by it and like, you know,
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I literally quit reading a book last week because Donald Trump turned out to be a character. And I was like, nope, can’t do it. It was going out trash. I need a break from this.
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Well, because you were reading it for leisure time. Right? It’s like it’s like suddenly this other world comes in. You know, it’s I guess I’m gonna do that a little bit because Donald Trump went down to Houston, Texas, to have a rally, and he did something that he’s done before. And I just think it’s worth paying attention to what he’s actually saying because this is not the first time.
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That he has played the January sixth prisoner anthem or that he has praised the insurrectionists. This is not the first time. In fact, as I wrote in morning shots, this is not a gaffe. This has become a foundational theme of his reelection campaign. This is a guy that started his reelection campaign in Waco, Texas.
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We can get to that in a moment because there’s a great quote from Steve Bannon about all this. But I want you to listen to this. This is Donald Trump comes out on the stage, and they start playing this. You have to know, these these are the January sixth day. Right?
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The prisoners, they’re singing over a phone, I guess.
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Well, thank you very much. And you know what that was? That was, I call them the j six hostages not prisoners. I call them the hostages. What’s happened?
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And it’s a shame. And, you know, they did that, and they asked me whether or not I would partake and do the beautiful words. And I said yes, I would. And you saw the spirit. The, the spirit was incredible.
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And when that came out, it went to the number one song. It was beating everybody. It beat Taylor Swift, It beat Molly Cyrus who was number one and two. They were number one and two. We knocked them off for a long time.
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That song was out there for a
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long time. Then, of course, they had a problem with the internet. Right?
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Yeah. He’s the guy that couldn’t identify Alexander Hamilton in the lineup, but he knows Taylor swift and Miley Cyrus. Look, here’s the thing. I don’t know whether you’ve read Jonathan Last has has a new book coming out and it’s excerpted in in the Atlantic. And, And he talks about that first rally where Donald Trump goes down to Waco, the scene of the Branch Dividian anti government fiasco.
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And he gives this speech. And afterwards, He asked E. Bannon, what was this a coincidence that you’re down in Waco? And Bannon is like strutting and saying, yeah, we’re all trump Davidians now. And that was the first time that he rolled out this anthem from the January six protesters.
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I mean, Tim, do I have to remind people? We’re talking about people who attacked the Capitol who beat up cops, who tried to overthrow the government. Their crimes were so serious that they are locked up in jail. Donald Trump is not just saying, I think they’re being treated unfairly. He’s actually promoting their song and referring to them I hope you just didn’t have breakfast or lunch or dinner.
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Yeah.
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Hostages. There, by the way, are real hostages in the world, in Gaza, in Israel, this guy, this brutally fucker Yeah. Is referring to the people who, yeah, beating up the cops, not as prisoners, but as hostage. You know when he’s gonna he’s gonna pardon them Yeah.
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Oh, of course, he’d pardon them. He had a hostage thing. This is pretty obvious on the nose, but it’s just worth saying explicitly. He’s doing this to parallel Biden and the Democrats to Hamas. That’s what he’s doing.
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Right? He’s like Biden and the Democrats are holding these people hostage. They are Hamas and, you know, the January sixers are the innocent Israelis who were terrorized by Hamas. I know you’re you’re trying to make the Secret Podcast now, but There’s nothing else to do except for to cuss at it. Yeah.
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He’s a piece of shit. And, you know, he picked up the endorsement of Rick Scott this week on the heels of that you know, there was a lot of highfalutin rhetoric from some of these guys like Mitch McConnell after January six, you know, even the ones that didn’t vote to convict. Yep. And and these people are absent. And they they wanna pretend like this isn’t happening.
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They’re doing the hostage strategy, head in the ground, Yep. Pretend like Downtown doesn’t exist. He exists on this other plane of existence. He has his own social media feed. He has his own media network that people watch these things, RBS, and bands, podcast.
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Right? Like, there’s this whole alternate world over here Yeah. That not everybody, but much of the Republican party wants to just pretend, like, doesn’t exist. And the stuff that’s happening in that other world is deeply scary. It’s deeply radicalizing.
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You know, we’ve been doing some mid week YouTube videos because missus during Friday, but it was something I was talking about this week on YouTube. It was just like the media has to talk about this. Yes. And everyone’s tired about it. We’re tired.
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You’re tired. I’m tired. Everyone’s tired. I get but he’s out there, glorifying insurrectionist prisoners. In addition to all of his, like, weird gaffes that he’s been making confusing World War two and confusing Obama with Biden and all this stuff.
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Nobody talks about it. It’s not on the nightly news, the Lester Holt. It’s not on the day show. Right? It’s on MS.
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Right? It’s on certain places,
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Because the news is about something that’s new. Right? And all of the crazy is not new. The fact that he’s a seditionist, the fact that he’s all of this. Come on.
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We’ve reported that. Like, wait. Maybe the standard for news shouldn’t be just novelty. It should be. He’s actually an insurrectionist.
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Who’s talking about suspending the constitution.
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Yeah. I could imagine it’s like other people. Like, what are the equivalents to this? Some pro crypto candidate sings a song to s b f or Joe Biden sings a song to the, you know, Jesse Smolep song. Like, if any other politician was out there doing a Sarah Longwell, with people who are in prison for attacking cops.
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Law and order. Back the blue.
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Yeah. Back the blue. That’s the real law and order candidate. But it would be wall to wall, but he gets treated differently. And he shouldn’t be.
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This is like on par with as the top of the most outrageous shit he’s ever done.
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Okay. For the people who say I’m so sick of hearing his voice There’s another little dazzling detail in Jonathan Carl’s new book that he got from Steve Bannon. I mean, it’s very clear that one of the themes of the Trump campaign. If it’s not the only theme of the Trump campaign is I am your retribution. This is the revenge campaign.
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I’m gonna do to you what you did to me and all of this. He un really unveiled that retribution theme during that weird Waco rally where he was seeing with the January six insurrection So John and Charlie Sykes about. This is in the Atlantic, but I excerpted into my morning shots. John and Carl goes up to Steve Bannon afterwards. He’s talking about the speech.
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He writes, when I spoke with Bannon a few days later, he wouldn’t stop touting Trump’s performance, referring to it as his come retribution speech. Come retribution? Come retribution. That’s the phrase the band uses. Mhmm.
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Carl writes. What I didn’t realize
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was I’m sorry. I’m sorry to interrupt and be a child. Just hearing the word band and next to come retribution is just making me uncomfortable. But, okay, let’s con I’m sorry to interrupt.
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You’re gonna hear it several times here. Okay.
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I’m gonna try to brace myself.
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Carlwright. What I didn’t realize was that the phrase comma retribution, the phrase the band uses. Carl writes, what I didn’t realize was Come retribution was the code word that Confederate Secret Service used for the plot to take hostage and eventually assassinate Abraham Lincoln. The use of the key phrase come retribution suggests the confederate government had made a bitter decision to repay some of the misery that had been inflicted on the south. Historians, right, bitterness may well have been directed toward persons held to be particularly responsible for that misery in Abraham Lincoln, certainly headed the list.
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In case you’re wondering, well, Kay, but Bannon didn’t mean that when he kept using COM retribution. Charlie Sykes. Steve Bannon actually recommended that I read that book, erasing any doubt that he was intentionally using the Confederate code words to describe Trump’s speech. So Trump’s speech was not an over call for the assassination of his political opponents, but it did advocate their destruction by other means. Success is, quote, within our reach, but only if we have the courage to complete the job, gut the deep state, reclaim our democracy and banish the tyrants and Marxist and political exile, forever, Trump declared, this is the turning point.
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Come retribution. This is not a gap.
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I, I can’t imagine any punishment worse than being a victim of Steve Bannon’s come retribution, but, I avoid look. It’s a gotta move on from
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it too.
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Yeah. The virtual image is tough for me, but I’m doing my best. Look, I think that the underlying thing here, I mean, beginning is so just you know, with all of his, like, historical, self important references, you know, some of the stuff is over the top. But I think that the important element to this is you don’t have to have read the nineteen eighty eight book, about Confederate retribution to get the message if you’re a rank and file, Magga person. Right?
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If you’re a Magga, that is radicalized.
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Yeah. And
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you are listening to Donald Trump sing with prisoners. How about how they were hostile now he’s gonna let them free once he takes over. And we’ve done this on this podcast before, but it’s not a long step, logically, especially for somebody who’s got a screw loose. And it’s got a lot of weaponry. It’s not a chronological step to think, okay.
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Well, I can go take my retribution, and this guy will take care of me on the back end when he wins.
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Well, and this is what Carl is writing about. And it turns out that John and Carl wrote a book about the Branch Davidian siege and assault back in the nineteen nineties and how this became the theme for the right. This was government overreach. Fifty people died as a result of all of this Timothy Mcvey used what happened in Waco, Texas, with the branch Davidians, as one of the pretext for blowing up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, and one of the worst domestic terrorist attacks ever. So this is not a random moment.
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This is reaching back into sort of these visceral anti government war with the government motif. And Carl’s entire point is that Again, this was not unintentional. That’s why Steve Bannon says we’re Trump Davidians. The implications of that are even for us, I think, is a little to get your head around because you can’t talk about this and separate it from violence.
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Right. And certain people hear that key, right, in their ear, right, if they’re schooled in this stuff. Have you ever had, a very popular memoir as, educated about this woman who’s, like, Mormon family or father’s radicalized. Right? And she’s living on it’s been a while since I read it.
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I think Idaho. The people that are on these message boards that are listening to stuff that have read about the Vidians that have read about McVey that have read about all the one off folks out of Montana and Idaho that had other little smaller government skirmishes. They’re picking up what you’re putting down on this imagery. And it’s not subtle. No.
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Right? At all. And so that is at the heart of the threat, and there’s no one in that world that is speaking out about this. There’s nobody that that has any trust with that group that is trying to turn down the temperature.
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Well, and it’s hard to imagine who that would be. Okay. So I wanted to dive deep into the craziness that’s going on in the rest of our politics, putting it in this context. The problem of talking about the craziness in the House of Representatives or the Senate or any place else is that everything is under this cloud of the craziness of Donald Trump. And so there is that alpha craziness, the kind of smothers all the others.
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So we could talk about, hey, isn’t it crazy? What’s going on in the house? Well, yeah, but you just got done talking about the former president of the United States who is the alpha male apex, predator of the Republican party, but let’s do it anyway. Okay?
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Yeah. Okay.
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This Mike Johnson thing Yeah. Gets more interesting all the time. I still think it’s extraordinary that every single Republican voted for him despite his record. I don’t know about you. I had to Google him.
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I never heard of the guy before. He’s never been vetted.
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A really brief anecdote for you. This is the only reason I had heard of him because he’s relatively new, even here in Louisiana, but when I wrote, I went to the Louisiana Republican
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Oh, yeah.
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And he piqued my interest there because as I wrote in the article, the crowd is insane. I just think it’s important for, you know, liberal listeners, right, to distinguish. So you can go to Republican party functions, and it still kinda feels like the old days sometimes, just like It’s the gray hairs. It’s the same party chairs and they like Trump now. So they’ve gotten a little weirder, but like the the general feel is the same.
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That was not true in Lafayette. The crowd was crazy. Like, they were super trumpy, and they were only cheering for the most insane things, the election fraud, the vaccines, all the conspiracy stuff. And then Mike Johnson goes to speak. We’ve all seen him speak by now.
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It’s a little kind of howdy doody kind of like mister Rogers milk drinking vibe. And but people are really into it. Bill Cassidy is getting food there. Yeah. You know, and people are into it and he’s using very religious language and iconography.
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He’s also using mega, very comfortably speaking in kind of mega election fraud stuff. But then he also talks about, like, swamp maintenance or whatever. You know, I get a couple of, like, logistical things of actual governance and people are into it And I watched that and I was like, man, this guy exemplifies this sort of mega establishment thing where he’s being able to blend at least coming off as someone that can handle basic competent stuff unlike Louis Gilmore while also being, you know, very radical in his rhetoric.
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Right.
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I just kind of filed that away. And so when his name popped up again on that list on Monday, I was like, it’s like I predicted him coming, but I sensed that he had it’s been tough to find people that can do that bridge, you know, and he’s bridged it for now. We’ll see how long
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he can he can I mean, you usually, you have a chance for people to get to know who you are before you become second in line to the presidency? Now it’s been reversed. It occurs to me. One of the things we’ve talked about, and both of us have written about is is the danger that when you keep saying, hey, these guys are whackadoodle extremists, Christian Jonathan Last. I mean, the crazies are in charge.
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The problem with that is when a real extremist, a guy way out there comes into power and you say, wait. You understand this guy’s way out of the mainstream. That a lot of including our listeners will go, well, yeah. I mean, they’re all like that. But, wait, wait, this guy Mike Johnson.
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I mean, not only was he a full throated election denialist. He actually wanted to get his colleagues to sign on to that letter asking the Supreme Court to throw tens of millions of votes. So, I mean, this is at the far edge. Okay? Others went along with that.
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We’re now finding out that this is a guy, and I am not mocking his Christian faith. I am specifically talking about the specific brand and taste of it where he apparently thinks there was no such thing as evolution that men and dinosaurs were coterminous. They were round the same time. The Earth is six thousand years old. He is into the most extreme anti gay ideology out there.
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He believes the Roman Empire fell because of homosexuality. He’s been involved
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in No. We can do everything, Charlie Sykes got so much power of the gays. It’s unbelievable. Taking down empires.
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I it’s one thing, you know, to talk about because we’ve had these debates about while, you know, there’s a lot of hate a lot of anti gay sentiment and everything, but it’s like, wait. Now the real guy has come rolling into the room. And it’s like, All the rhetoric about no. You understand this guy is, like, really, really from the woolliest part of the fever swamps to mix my metaphors.
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Yeah. I don’t think we have. I think that it is important to talk about this distinctions and the difference. Look, there is reason for literals to look at the Republicans and think they’re all like that because they’ve all gone along with it. In some ways, right, what you go along with is who you are.
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In other ways, it is different. What are the gonna be things that motivate him? What are gonna be things that put him for them? Are people gonna be able to slow down his more extreme views, maybe, but we haven’t heard a lot of people speaking out about it. It’s pretty telling about the nature of the Republican conference.
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That Tom Emer, who voted for that gay marriage, compromised bill.
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Yeah. There was one
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Republican congressman who specifically said Georgia. I’m, like, on the guy’s name, but he’s probably from Georgia. He specifically said that I cannot vote for this guy because he supported gay marriage. He’s gotta get right with god before he can be the speaker of the house. Okay.
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So that was a deal breaker for somebody, the time or his four year marriage. Mike Johnson, thinking that gay sex should be illegal. It was not a deal breaker for anybody. Now, some of them might say at all, I disagree with them on that, but it wasn’t a deal breaker. I do think that’s telling about the nature of where the conference is, where the power is within the conference.
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There’s just no pushback on this. I mean, it would have been easier to define Johnson, I think, in the pre trump era because he just fits right in in the mold of a Santorum of a, kankucianelli, of an Allen Keys, you know, at the far edge of the religious right.
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Is Mitt Romney compared to this guy.
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Right. Yeah. So that’s what I’m saying. And the pre trump error would have been easy to find him because he would that would have been his brand. Right?
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I would have been the most extreme Christian conservative. Okay. But now he’s gone along with all the trumpy stuff. So now we’re adding that on top of it. That is a little bit harder for mule to
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wrap throughout throughout. I don’t underestimate the power of exhaustion. That the reason why everybody rolled over was they were just tired of not having a speaker. They were embarrassed. It was the real prospect that they might have to cut a deal with Democrats, and at a certain point, everybody just threw up their hands.
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But it is amazing I wanted to get your take on this because you are our whisperer in all of this. Even the ten bucks of the world, there was, like, five minutes there. Do you remember this where it looked like the moderates or the, quote, unquote, moderates, the normies were gonna draw the line. They weren’t gonna go along with Jim Jordan. They stood up against Donald Trump.
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They stood up against the threats of seemed like there were antibodies. And then they all rolled over. Not one of them voted against this guy. So is it all exhaustion or what else does it tell
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Yeah. Exhaustion is part of it. I don’t know that I can be your ten buck whisperer. I think he needs to see a psychiatrist. It seems to me that he has got going some things personally.
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Just to remind people, because, I mean, this was the guy who’s saying that his standard was you cannot be an election denialist. I will not vote for you if you do not acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election. So he votes against Steve Scalia. I think he voted against Tom member. No.
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No. I don’t know who he voted.
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No. No. He voted against Jordan. He gets through the cable news rounds. He’s on CNN.
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He’s on MSNBC talking principle. Yeah.
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And he’s on the way out. Yeah. And he announces this last week that he’s retiring because He’s so sick and tired of the Republicans embracing election nihilism. This a couple of days after he vote for this full throated election denial. So Ken Buck is on the way out.
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He doesn’t have a career to say necessarily. Right? He’s headed to cable news commentary. And yet, the last important thing he does is to vote for Mike Johnson. Explain this
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to me. Yeah. I mean peer pressure and psychiatric requirements. I think is the ISS bin of Kenbach. The rest of them, here’s what I really think.
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I think that it’s important to really understand the house conferences of high school cafeteria. These are grown children. You need attention. And I don’t know if you saw the memo from Nancy Mason. They don’t wanna sit alone.
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Yeah. They don’t wanna sit alone with table. We even heard from Romney. You’re a great interview with Mckay Cuppence yesterday. But, like, even for somebody like Romney sitting alone is to wears on you.
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Nobody wants to be the outcast. So that’s one element of the cafeteria. The other element is these guys really hated Jim Jordan.
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Right.
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Like, at a very personal level. Jim Jordan had screwed them over for years. He had, you know, gotten in front of the TV cameras and pulled the rug out from under them, and he tended to be more right wing and they were sick of them. And I think that despite the fact that Mike Johnson and Jim Jordan are pretty much indistinguishable policy wise, Mike hasn’t been around long enough to grind any of these people’s gears. And so they just did what they’ve gotten accustomed to doing, which is just folding to the real power center of the party, which is the Maga Wright.
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That’s how I assess it. Some of it was they’re embarrassed and tired, but others of it was the Jim Jordan thing wasn’t actually based on principle. They used the rhetoric of principle, but it was really more based on personal and abuse.
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Yeah. Okay. So I wanna move on from Mike Johnson in just a moment. Actually had to stop myself, Kaye. Is it Mike Johnson?
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Is it Mike Jones? Because I I haven’t gotten quite used to it.
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I had to save Nicole on live TV the other day. She looks at me and she just spaces out like, what’s his name again? And I was like, Mike, Mike Johnson?
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I I do not judge anyone on all of this. Okay. So his first big thing, of course, is to link Israel aid to this slash and IRS, which was, of course, you know, a big manga talking point that we, you know, have to roll back Joe Biden’s enforcement measures kind of blew up in his face when the CBO comes back and says, yeah, that’s not actually gonna save any money. It’s gonna actually add to the deficit. He goes ahead with it the house didn’t ask if he got the votes including Democrats.
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Just really quick, do we need to go to CBO on this I mean, it’s like, hey, but what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna stop collecting taxes from tax cheats. Do we think that that’s gonna give us more revenue or less? Like, it didn’t really take a macroeconomist. Figure that one out. But I I’m sorry.
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Continue.
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So I think that’s dumb politics. How bad a mistake was it? He did get the votes. He did get it through the house. I was DOE.
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It’s not gonna go anywhere in the senate. It turned out, I think, not to be the talking point he was hoping. It’s an indication that, you know, here’s a guy who has been thrust into a job that perhaps he doesn’t fully grasp
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Yeah. He bought himself some time with that, I guess. Yeah. No. I don’t think it’s good talking, but he brought a new comms director, former colleague of mine.
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Rasha, who was,
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Oh my goodness. Right.
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From the Trump White House to Fox. And at Fox, he was the mastermind behind helping them navigate the post election fraud hysteria and dominion work and how to deal with that
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worked out well for them.
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Oh, yeah. A lot of emails from him. You saw on the Dominion lawsuit about how they’re getting their ass handed to them by newsmax and stuff and they need to do better to accommodate the base. That really worked out well. So Raj was just one of the many people costs the Rupert Murdoch family almost eight hundred million dollars.
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And and Mike Johnson looked at him and he’s like, you’re my man for talking points. So I don’t know that they got the best and the brightest working over there. Far as talking points or How
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do how do you think that happened, by the way? You would think that, you know, on Earth two point o, got like like that would be kind of discredited radioactive. Did the Trump world folks call him up and say, this is the guy we want. We want him to be your comms director because somebody must have been his rabbi.
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Partially probably and maybe Fox. I don’t know who knows. All these guys have built relationships with Fox because they wanna get on TV. Right? So I don’t exactly know who his rabbi was.
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I’ll tell you this though. The binder full of resumes for Comms people on the hill on the Republican side is pretty light.
-
Yeah.
-
We’ve had on this podcast before, my friend Brandon Buck who’s on an there’s Paul Ryan’s got. In a different world, you bring on somebody like that and a more senior role and they bring on some younger people who competent to actually do the day to day, those people don’t want this job. So the pool that you’re picking from are like mega calms people or you know, you go to somebody like Raju who doesn’t have shape. So I think that’s what happens. He’s
-
got an eight hundred million dollar defamation thing on his resume. Long.
-
I mean, it’s not just on his resume. It was many many hosts. I think it’s easy for Rajio and they’d be like, sorry it’s mister speaker. It was not my fault. That was Maria Barrett’s fault.
-
Point being, I don’t think it’s the best and the brightest over there. And I don’t think that the best and the writers are applying. But I I think the thing that he has going for him is that the Jim Jordan’s already been rejected. Unless Matt Gates wants to shop for himself, there’s nobody like to his mega right who could take it. And we’ve already just finished discussing how the moderates aren’t gonna throw them over.
-
So I think that as long as he continues to kind of hold the hard line edge on this stuff. He’s gonna be fine within the conference. Now push is gonna come to shove on the budget eventually. And so, my guess is that he’ll get a past Kevin McCarthy. He got a past twice before they threw him over, you know, to cut the deals necessary to keep the government open, but he’s in over his head.
-
There’s no doubt about know, I had Adam Kinzinger on the other day and he was describing the the dynamic in a similar way is that you’re sitting around the room and everybody’s holding a hand grenade. The most power person in the room is the one who’s willing to pull the pin on the hand grenade. You know, Matt Gates was willing to pull the pin. As you pointed out down in New Orleans, Tom Emma is not going to be the guy to pull the pin on him. But the other problem though is that it’s not just Mike Johnson is the fact that his caucus is still completely fucked up.
-
I mean, the dysfunction was a preexisting condition, but just like in the last couple of days, and you did a a great YouTube short on all of this. You have this slap fight going on with Marjorie Taylor, Green and Chip Roy. I mean, if you had to take, you know, a couple of people from the far edges of the right of this caucus, these people hate each other. There is so much personal bitterness. I mean, they’re going back and forth.
-
You have Margery Taylor Green, What did she say about Lauren Bobert? Me so
-
She’s a girl bird.
-
Audrey Taylorgreen hates Lauren Bobert. This is what’s amazing about these personal animus is that it’s not about issues, it’s not about principle. But when you have that kind of a volatile situation, don’t be surprised when things just blow up over some unpredictable shit. Right?
-
Yeah. There’s the old Simpsons gag from like the nineties where it was like the democratic convention and it said we hate ourselves we can’t govern or the signs. And it’s like the Republicans have just totally embraced that ethos. They do not like each other and they are not capable of governing. They were barely capable of choosing a team captain.
-
I mean, like, think about this. They took them a month to choose a team captain. That’s where they are. They finally chose one. And now the, you know, captain’s gonna make decisions.
-
All of those are gonna be a cluster. These people do not like each other. They’re blocking each other on Twitter, Nancy Mason, and and another guy like from North Carolina Murphy, Greg Murphy. She called him a pussy. He blocked her on Twitter.
-
N t g, I do gotta give her credit. She called Chip Roy Colonel Sanders. I thought that was a good hit.
-
When she refers to CNN wanna be Ken, but she doesn’t care about that. And vaping, groping, Lauren Bobert.
-
Yeah. That’s a deep cut.
-
And then Chip Roy says, why don’t you go chase the Jewish space lasers? I mean, how do you walk back from that shit?
-
You know? Yeah. This is not happening on the other side. So look, these poor children. It’s a cafeteria.
-
And and again, who are doing these tweaks? This goes back to the question of, like, Ken Mike Johnson put this together. Can you come with the good talking points? I just wanna shout out Kenzinger. Kinsinger’s old college person.
-
Morey gillespie. Awesome. Chaney’s comes guy, a guy named Jerry Adler. Both these people are out. Who were you recruiting from?
-
You’re recruiting from the people that have decided. I wanna go work for Marjorie Taylor Green and Chip Roy and Nancy Mace while they call each other names. And fight over who can suckle on Donald Trump’s toes the hardest. Right? Like, the types of people that sign up for those jobs are a certain brand of person.
-
And, like, they are not people that play well together in a group. They’re not people that care deeply about policy and helping the country. And so this is what you’re gonna get.
-
I just had a flash of, like, a group therapy session with Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bulwark, Nancy Mace because they’re all going through something. Right? I mean, they’re going through some stuff. And I don’t think you can analyze it on political level. You there’s some psychological stuff going on here.
-
And by the way, I don’t mean
-
to pick on just women. Once over the cookie’s nest, maybe. And who’s Jack Nicholson here? Don’t know. Matt Gates maybe.
-
Alright. We have so much else to talk about here. Speaking of interesting back and forths, I am way not interested in the whole Dean Phillips primary challenge to Joe Biden. There’s only
-
one element that I’m interested in.
-
Okay. You were in Fuego on this. And I wanna let you go on on this because Dean Phillips himself poses no threat to Joe Biden. He’s gonna get, like, seven percent of the vote in some places. I don’t know.
-
It’s just not gonna happen. But there is that little twist, our old friend Steve Schmidt of how do we describe Steve Schmidt? Big McCain guy? Guy who gave America Sarah Longwell was on MSNBC with both you and me. Big guy in the Lincoln project until things blew up in a rather spectacular fashion.
-
He The main man for Howard Schultz.
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Okay. So you bailed me out on that one. Here’s one about how deep a dive you wanna go. Remember when Howard Schultz was running for president? No.
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Yeah. But Steve Schmidt remembers because he got a lot of money from Howard Schultz. Right?
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A lot. So this is the thing. Nothing pisses me off more than bad. Strategy and overt self regard in defensive bad strategy. And like as a former political professional, I still have some, you know, trade craft that I have some respect for, people that don’t wanna do things the right way.
-
And this Dean Phillips thing is just doing it such the wrong way in the most grifty and obnoxious way That’s the thing that pissed me off about it. Not because I’m like you. I’m not really worried it’s a big threat to Joe Biden. Frankly, I’ve been in the bill crystal camp for, like, Not recently, really, but for a long time, I wasn’t thought maybe it’d be good for Joe Biden to have somebody that ran a good faith campaign against him. That was not trying to undermine him.
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That was not being the
-
Yeah.
-
Turn the punch bowl, but was just offering voters a generational change option There’s much in the Joe Biden mold. I think that probably wouldn’t have worked. You know, you need the magic the white whale to do that. Probably the non white whale really to do that. I would have been open to that.
-
This is not that. This is just all about ego mania, and it is an effort that maybe Dean Phillips, fifty schmidt. Maybe Dean Phillips intends this to be a good faith effort, but it is not. Like, the actual actions of it are only gonna serve to harm Joe Biden. Luckily, I think they’re gonna be selling that it won’t actually do anything to harm Joe Biden in the end, but running a campaign at this late of a date where your message is that Joe Biden has dementia and that everything costs too much.
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That’s not a helpful message to Joe Biden. And and when Joe Biden is our first line of defense against the man we were just talking about earlier, singing about insurrectionists, healthy criticism, helpful criticism, you know, helpful efforts to say, hey, here’s something you can do better, Joe Biden, but trying to undermine him for no reason, except your own ego mania is crazy. And the last thing on this, just I got called by Howard Schultz. I didn’t get called by Dean Phillips, but if I did get called, I’ll just have the same thing with both of them, which is, a, I am not gonna do anything that will help Donald Trump. Period end of story.
-
Number two, if you have a third party or democratic primary effort that you think might actually help the effort to defeat Donald Trump, I’m happy to give you some free advice on that, but you need to go find a fucking Democrat to to help you too. Right? Like, you do not need a former Republican as the front man about this. And I’ve had calls from other folks. Like, that is just the only logical Yeah.
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Advice that somebody in Steve Schmidt choose should be able to give. That is not what they did. Instead, Steve Schmidt out there giving press conferences for Dean Phillips that that he’s claiming to Tim Alberta that they’re gonna attack Joe Biden every day. Yeah. Luckily, it seems like it’s incompetent and they haven’t got off the launching pad that it’s super dangerous.
-
And I felt like it was my role to just wave the flag and be like, guys, This is a grift. Let’s not do anything to get sucked up into this in a way that might help Donald Trump.
-
I agree with almost all of that. However, on the other hand, I do think, you know, that in a democracy, you know, the more the merrier you get in, you make the case. It’ll be, a low pressure test, I think, for Joe Biden, he’s going to have to deal with those issues. This will be a way of, you know, maybe tuning up the engine. Dean Phillips is not going anywhere.
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But, you know, in a Democratic society, we run-in, but but there are all the mixed motivations that people who ought to be more behind the scenes. Let me put it that way. Okay. So you had a very very
-
easy Just obviously, I hold that. Just really quick. One sentence. I agree with that. I’m just saying, don’t tell me you’re trying to save democracy when you’re actually harming the guy that’s at the front line defending democracy.
-
That’s my only point. Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining. Yeah. If you wanna get in the race, go for it. But I I just I don’t like being bullshit.
-
Okay. So you have written about these elections
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that are coming up that
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I think are not on most people’s radar screen. How real is the possibility that you have this Democrat Brandon Presley who might win in in Mississippi?
-
I think the Kentucky race is more realistic is sitting governor. It’s interesting race, Andy Bashir. He’s winning in the polls. Democrat. He has, you know, done a lot of the same things as Presley, but he there’s been a lot of coverage
-
Yeah. So I
-
was interested in the Pressley race. Because Mississippi’s even redder than Kentucky.
-
Yeah.
-
Mississippi still mississippi. And so I think this could be a situation where just the math doesn’t work out. Up short. Like, right now, even in a good pulse for him, he’s at forty six. Getting from forty six to fifty, I think might be hard.
-
But even if he ends up in a place where the incumbent wins thing. Fifty three forty seven. There’s a lot to learn from that because there are a lot of other red states that aren’t quite as red as Mississippi. And I think that the Democrats have done a poor job recently of recruiting the types of candidates that appeal in these states. You know, that maybe you’re perfect down the line on progressive values.
-
Actually, they shouldn’t be. And I think that, you know, there is a way to combine. I’ve always said this about Georgia. I have a lot of Christians of Stacey Abrams, but I do give her credit on the on the voter reg thing. And I think if you’re combining registering voters of color, with finding candidates that are heterodox that could be a winning formula.
-
And I think that Mississippi that Pressley’s done a good job of being heterodox. I don’t know the be done as good of a job as they should on getting Bulwark voters registered. That might end up being the thing that that harms them. But anyway, I find that to be interesting. And as a long term effort, I think that there’s more opportunity there for centrist candidates to do what Presley’s doing in the Democratic party.
-
For right now, maybe this will change in ten years, that in the Republican party where all the centrist candidates just get slaughtered in these primaries by MAG candidates, even in blue states, as we’ve seen with Hogan and Baker in Massachusetts. So I’m just I’m trying to be constructive and encourage candidates that are doing the right thing.
-
This is constructive. Now, by the way, when you say heterodox, He takes a lot of positions that are quite socially conservative. But the point you make, though, is one of the differences between the parties is the way that The centrists are being wiped out in Republican primaries. Centrists continue to do relatively well in Democratic primaries. And I actually think that that’s going to, you know, happen going forward.
-
I mean, I was just looking at the numbers of, you know, for example, Elon Omar barely won her Democratic primary last time.
-
Yeah.
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And that was before a lot of stuff happened.
-
I think it’s something to watch. Just I’m glad you mentioned that these squad primaries are gonna be something
-
to watch.
-
Again, I’m not putting a crystal ball. I’m just saying it is interesting that Jamal Bowman is getting a primary. I believe Omar’s getting another one. I believe Corey Bush is. Summer Lee, I think, is getting a primary.
-
So this is interesting. We’ll see if they all faceplant, maybe there’s nothing here. I think that at least one difference that we know is there. Is that within the Democrat Coalition, the center candidates feel like they got a shot
-
Right.
-
To do these primaries. Right? Like, you’re not seeing this in the Republican like Marjorie Taylor Green is getting a primary from the center. Like, that would be an absurd thing to do. Nobody would think that person wouldn’t have a chance.
-
No matter how insane she is. Right? And so in the Democratic side, there’s a feeling that this is possible. We’ll see how it works on practice, but we have seen a lot of primaries. I’ve mentioned this before, but even in San Francisco, the the recall you don’t wanna just rely on this one example, but but, you know, there are certain examples out there that you’ve seen where this has worked within the democratic coalition because of the nature of the coalition, which that includes a lot of older, more conservative voters of color, moderate, conservative, if they’re on word, but more small c conservative, and now includes a lot more independent suburban types that that have been
-
gotten grossed out by mag and pragmatists. Yeah. Exactly. Because we saw in the twenty twenty president. Okay.
-
So briefly in the time that we have left We haven’t, spent much time on the Republican primary fight, mainly because I think Oh, good.
-
I knew I had one more rant in me.
-
Well, okay. I think we know where this is going, but, I mean, the story line of the day, and, of course, there has to be a story line of the day because otherwise political reporters and pundits get bored, right, is Nikki Haley’s surging. Tim Miller. Is she? I mean, it looks like she’s picking up endorsements, money edging on the polls, No indications she’s gonna be Donald Trump, but what do you think?
-
I just can’t. I look. It’s fine to say that Haley would be a better candidate, that that she’s the best hope a really uphill battle and, like, Murphy had a thing for us. So it’s like, Ron DeSantis dropouts at least ten years momentum. I don’t necessarily disagree with that.
-
I I think maybe me and Murf would have a different assessment and the likelihood of success of that, but I just wanna be clear. That is now what I’m saying. It’s fine. I I think it’s always good to be out on the field and try. And Haley beating trouble would obviously be great.
-
It’s worth trying. What bothers me is like the horse race industrial complex, and that’s a lot of how people can come to the Bulwark for real political analysis. Here’s political plan today. I woke up this morning. And I was like, am I still dreaming the subject line in my inbox Haley’s moment?
-
Yep.
-
And then it begins with every four years that happens, canada get some surge of momentum and is treated to a few weeks of the spotlight. For a short period, it feels like they might actually take this top spot, but then there’s a crash and burn. And the spotlight inevitably cycles over to one of their competitors. I was like, oh, okay. Playbooks finally got it right.
-
This might be something that happens to Haley. Right. So but then they go, every once in a while, the momentum sustains. It feels real. That’s where former gov, Nikki Haley is right now.
-
Whoa. This
-
is a little premature.
-
What are you talking about? The examples they gave of the people that didn’t sustain Herman Caine, New Gingershark, Perry. All these people got up into the twenty five, thirty percent range in national polls. There was real reason for them to have the spotlight Herman Caine was winning for a little while in the primary. And Nikki Haley isn’t winning.
-
She’s losing by forty points.
-
Yeah. To
-
tell him, even in this Iowa poll, where she gained ten points. No. Okay. Great. She’s gained ten points.
-
She’s up at sixteen. That’s worth noting. She’s losing to Trump by gotta do math in my head here. It’s so many. I’ve gotta, like, count on my fingers.
-
Twenty seven. And the DeSantis voters when you ask them what their second choice is more than like Trump than Haley. So if you added that in, he he’s down by, like, thirty points to Trump in Iowa, which should be his weak state. So the idea that that her momentum feels real. I I I’m hope.
-
Fine. Hope hope is fine.
-
Look, I’m not a Nikki Haley fan. I have written it better. But in terms of you look at the field, it gives you close your eyes and you hope for a unicorn hard enough.
-
Sure.
-
You can imagine that she becomes the all I mean, DeSantis is just blown up on the lunch pad, you know, multiple times. So Should you see
-
his mind about wearing a boot on his head? It’s getting really bad.
-
He is the best people working for him. Right? I mean, you can tell. His comms folks they sat around that room on the whiteboard. What do we say?
-
Okay. We will eat our hat. No. Anybody else got any ideas? No.
-
Ron should say. The governor should say I will put a boot on my head. If Donald Trump debates. If Donald Trump shows up, I will put a boot on my hand.
-
Yeah. That feels like it might have come from Casey. I don’t or maybe Ron himself, he’s not that good. But yeah. Okay.
-
No. I hear you on the unicorn and on the hope. It’s political though. They are supposed to be offering you insider political news. That gives you a speak behind the curtain about what’s really happening.
-
And and they’re totally wrong. And so it’s like, okay. Have hope for Nikki Haley. I don’t wanna take anyone’s hope away. No.
-
You know, hope. I love people. I love hope. You know, hope dies last. But don’t fucking gaslight Don’t write me a memo about how Nikki Haley has real momentum in newt gingrich didn’t.
-
New gingrich almost won that primary. I’m a no on Nikki. We meant, from an objective standpoint. I’m a yes from various unicorn standpoint. If you wanna if you wanna have a purple drink, and dream a little dream about Nikki.
-
That’s cool with me.
-
Well, again, I’m not a Nikki fan necessarily. I’m, like, all kinds of stuff about her, you know, the incredible lightness of Haley in the way that she went back and forth. She hadn’t couldn’t decide what she wanted to be. However, if we were to wake up tomorrow in a world in which Haley was the nominee instead of Donald Trump, leaving aside the partisan horse race, it would be a fundamentally better world. It would be so much better.
-
And don’t DM me about how she put a position on this or position of this. If we didn’t have to deal with Donald That’s why I keep invoking the unicorn because how do you get to that? You get to unicorn something something something, meteor Donald Trump dies
-
of Right.
-
Because I I don’t I don’t see how it happens otherwise.
-
I could open a bar. I could start writing about other stuff, you know. I could start for exploring new interests. If if that was that world happened.
-
See, Tim, you’ve just given away you’ve given away a huge secret here. We I’m not even sure we should publish this because I think people say, oh, you never trumpers. You love trump. Trump is, you know, what is is the is the wind beneath your wings and the And the real the real truth is that, you know, we wanna be done. And, you know, we feel like other
-
interests that I’d like to explore.
-
We feel like we are chained to this rock last to the mast of all of this. If Donald Trump were to go, we could move on into the sunny uplands of the future of our lives. Right?
-
That’s great. And my little brain, I just I’ve I’ve areas of my brain that I can’t even explore, you know, because they’ve been locked into in an orange dungeon for eight years.
-
That is
-
so you
-
know what? That is exact it’s so funny you should say that because I’ve I think so this is our therapy session. It’s like just imagine what your life would be like. Maybe that would be the thing to do sometimes to sit around and go Okay. Now close your eyes and just imagine we’re not making a prediction, but what would your life be like if you never had to think or write about Donald Trump?
-
See, the problem is you know, that’s never gonna happen. Is is that is that it’s it’s never going to be that moment where the sun rises, the the leaves are green. The birds are chirping. And the name Trump will never have to leave your lips again because there’s always Eric and Ivanka and Don junior. And that vast ecosystem.
-
The top one.
-
Bear with me. Alright.
-
So I was hoping to end this, go into the weekend with a little bit of a dollop of hope, but here we are.
-
I’m sorry.
-
Okay. I’m gonna go off into my into my happy place, and I’m gonna imagine that. A world without Trump. Just for, like, five minutes. Just think about that.
-
Sounds good. I will I’ll join you there for five minutes. That I’m gonna d get distracted myself, turn to LSU Alabama this weekend. Go tigers.
-
Hey. You know what I’m doing tonight? I’m going to the Milwaukee Bucks game, Bucks versus the Knicks. Than advisor.
-
Oh, nice.
-
With my French grandson, who this will be his first American basketball game, his first NBA game. So I’m taking him down.
-
That is huge. Tell him to send me a text. I want an update. Janice Daim, the little Pick n roll. Oh, that’s gonna be good.
-
He’s gonna be learning Janice Jersey. Little little French guy. W we’re in the honest Jersey. Okay. Tim, we’ll talk in a couple of weeks.
-
Alright.
-
I will see you, John.
-
And thank you all for listening to this weekend’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes, we will be back on Monday, and we’ll do this all over again. The Bullbrook contest is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.
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