Tim O’Brien: The Hollow Men
Episode Notes
Transcript
Kevin McCarthy aspired to the speakership for his resume, not because of legislative talents. In the end, he was a victim of hubris. And in NYC, Trump is acting like Yosemite Sam, shooting himself in the foot, and fearing the loss of Trump Tower. Tim O’Brien joins Charlie Sykes.
show notes:
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 on Charlie Sykes. It is October fourth two thousand twenty three. What a hell of a day? We have Donald Trump slapped with another gag order in New York. And then, of course, the news is dominated by the fall of Kevin McCarthy.
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For the first time in American political history, a sitting speaker has been ousted by members of his own party, actually, it was bipartisan. Eight Republicans joined with all Democrats to throw Kevin McCarthy out of office. This is the way it went down. This is the way it sound.
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The yays are two sixteen. The nays are two ten. The resolution is adopted without objection, the motion to recon Bitter is laid on the table. The office of speaker of the house. Of the United States House of Representatives is hereby flared vacant.
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And so with that, Kevin McCarthy, who was once the future of the Republican party, by the way, Tim O’Brien joins us from Bloomberg. Tim, do you remember that book young guns? That it might be the most cursed cover ever, Paul Ryan?
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Yeah.
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Eric Kant. Kevin McCarthy. I mean, Kevin McCarthy hung on the longest because he was willing to crawl the furthest, but it kinda caught up with him. Yeah.
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It’s like that. Remember that time magazine cover that had Allie Greenspan, Larry Summers, and Bob Rubin on it, and they were the committee to save the world. And it it came out about seven years before the financial crisis hit. It’s one of those things. If you do a cover like that, you’re gonna doom yourself.
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That’s right. It’s sort of like being on the sports illustrated cover, but on steroids. Alright. So Kevin McCarthy delivers his Swan song last night. You know, this has moved so quickly that that at the beginning of the day, yes, today.
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It was not absolutely certain that he was gonna lose his speakership there, but there was still the possibility that the Democrats were going to bail him out. Democrats kind of, you know, took a look at Kevin McCarthy played a couple videos of Kevin’s greatest hits and said, drop dead, Kevin. So that didn’t happen.
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Well, he also dumped on them over the weekend.
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Well, that’s right. That was the video they played. Yeah. Kevin’s greatest hits are pretty extraordinary. We can get into that in a moment.
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But, I mean, there was still even after he was ousted. There was a non zero possibility that he could make come back because, like, who else. Right? But he came out last night and said, no. He’s pretty much done.
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So here’s Kevin’s post defenestration swan song.
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You need two eighteen. Unfortunately, four percent of our conference can join all the Democrats. And dictate who would be the Republican speaker in this house. I don’t think that rule is good for the institution. But apparently I’m the only one.
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I believe I can continue to fight maybe in a different manner. I will not run for speaker again. I’ll have the conference pick somebody else.
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Well, I have the conference pick somebody else. And, of course, you had to take a shot at Matt Gates. I mean, at some point, the most despised member of the House of Representatives did get a scalp yesterday. And Kevin McCarthy had to address the guy that made the motion the day before to vacate the chair, Matt Gates.
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Do you know it was personal? It had nothing to do about spending. Had nothing to do about everything he accused somebody of he was doing. It all was about getting attention from you. I mean, we’re getting email fundraisers from him as he’s doing it.
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Join in quick That’s not governing. That’s not becoming of a member of Congress.
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It is not becoming a member of Congress. And the thing about it is that Kevin McCarthy seems genuinely surprised to find out that there are people who are not interested in governing that that they actually are attention whores that the incentive structure of, Republican politics actually encourages people like Mack Gates. I mean, kind of interesting that it’s taken this long for Kevin McCarthy to notice that, Tim.
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Well, I know I have, you know, the world’s tiniest violin as I listen to his dulcet tones about his noble quest to retain his speakership and the fact that
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he The institution.
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Yeah. But, you know, he didn’t bother counting votes. Apparently, prior to Monday. Counting votes used to be an age old, you know, congressional practice with smart speakers like Sam Rayburn, going back in the day, the part and parcel of their armory. And then, of course, he defaulted to Gates got me.
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But Gates and that small click of Maga you know, Bulwark had him from the beginning of his speakership. He cut a deal with them to become speaker that always left him beholden to them. And if he ever thought, you know, he could escape their clutches simply by cutting a deal of him, he’s either ignorant or naive or maybe both. I I don’t think he’s a deeply sophisticated indicated man. You know, I think he aspired to the speakership because it would look good on his resume, not because he bought any particular talent or legislative insights of the process.
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And so he’s a victim of hubris at the end of the day, I think.
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You know, he wanted that speakership so badly. He wanted that portrait. He wanted that sign so badly that he was willing to, you know, make one humiliating concession after another I hope that there’s some part of him that has to ask, you know, was it worth it? Maybe it was because now he is that has the shortest tenure of, you know, as speaker. Since the guy who died of tuberculosis back in eighteen seventy six.
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I mean, Kevin McCarthy, let’s be honest about this. You know, I mean, he does his whole life this is what he wanted, and he’s going to end up being kind of an asterisk, if that. So I guess part of the irony of all of this is that This was inevitable. He sowed the seeds of this during that fifteen round vote, right, by by making the concession. It was Kevin McCarthy that agreed to allow one member of the house to make the motion to vacate.
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He immediately basically put the gun to his own head, loaded the bullets in himself, is looking around going, this is really shocking. It’s also interesting that he really did think that he could buy off the lunatic cock He really did think that if he gave them everything they wanted, if he gave them the seats on the rules committee, if he hugged Marjorie Taylor Green, if he said I will never abandon this woman, if he launches the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden that somehow this was gonna buy him immunity from the fever swamp. And it didn’t work. And it’s like, this is just shocking. This baby crocodile that I have been feeding all of this time, It just came out of the bathtub, and it ate me.
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I wasn’t expecting he would ever come after me.
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And now he’s Maga Roadkill.
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He’s Maga Roadkill. I mean, I as I wrote this morning, it would be tragic if he’s not so absolutely pathetic. You know, he turned himself into this hollow man unloved, completely distrusted. So a couple of aspects of this. There are people who are suggesting today that, you know, The Democrats should have been the adults in the room.
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They could have rescued him. And and, you know, twenty four hours ago, there was at least the prospect that maybe some Democrats wouldn’t go along with this. They might vote present. But but your thoughts about this, the the Democrats were unanimous and unambiguous. In saying screw you, Kevin.
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Should they have bailed him out?
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What do you bail him out for? What do they get from bailing him out? Now I think what one logical answer to that is they avoid Steve scalise or elise Defanek stepping into the speakership. And and, arguably, both of them are just more sophisticated versions of the same Kevin McCarthy problem. Right.
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They may be more intellectually adept They may be more widely as legislators, but they’re both shape shifters, to panic, in particular. I don’t see either one of them being able to fend off the Maga, right, that has held the speakership in captivity. I don’t see anything else they gain. From protecting Kevin McCarthy. And if they wanted to just sort of talk to him and have sympathy, the fact that he then went on TV over the weekend and blamed the shutdown and the Democrats, it was the GOP that was holding up negotiations.
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You know, that’s part and parcel of the way that Kevin McCarthy rolls, by the way, he comes up with inane excuses. For why everyone else is creating problems for him when it’s usually germinating from himself. Right. You know, the other thing when I think about these things, when when these politicals of either side are really grasping for officers that famous story of Lyndon Johnson when the civil rights act and the voting rights act were being passed in the early nineteen sixties. And one of his aides said to him, if we get behind these acts, we the Democratic party is gonna lose the South River.
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And according to Robert Carroll, Johnson, turned to his aid and said, then what’s the presidency for?
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Right. Right.
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And I think you want some steel in your politicians, whether they’re Republican or Democrat for them to be in the mix, not simply to hang on to office. But to use the power they accrue in crucial moments to stand up and do the right thing. And Kevin McCarthy, has never done that. He cowed out to Trump. You know, he condemned Trump for thirty seconds after January sixth, and then went immediately back into the fold He hasn’t been able to govern his own caucus.
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And what have they put forward legislatively that would make the GOP look like something other than a bunch of rodeo clowns? Nothing. So he deserves to be left on the curb, I think.
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Well, I think this this whole notion that the Democrats, you know, should have been in the adults in the room because you know, whoever’s coming might be worse. It’s kind of a ludicrous argument, especially when you look at what he’s done. I mean, you know, you run through the way that he’s groveled in front of Donald Trump, the fact that he actually voted against the certification of the election after the the mob attack January sixth. The you know, for about five minutes, He did hold Donald Trump responsible, but then he ran down. And really through Donald Trump a lifeline, you know, when you think back over the last several years, Kevin McCarthy’s decision, to, you know, go on bended knee down to Mar a lago was crucial both for the Republican Party and for Donald Trump.
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Then the way he tried to kneecap the January sixth investigation, Halgie.
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And that was a massive strategic error.
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Right. He was
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on his chart, by the way.
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Well, I remember he also lied. Remember he had his guide negotiate the bipartisan commission, and then he reneged on it, and then he made the strategic error of not appointing anybody to it. But he undermined that again and again and again. I mean, the list of things that were really unforgivable sins from the point of view of the crats. I mean, cutting the deal with Biden and then walking away from it.
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You know, having this vote last week, and then as you point out, going on television, and just this complete bullshit explanation. Well, the Democrats were the ones who wanted to shut down government. There was just no incentive for Democrats to clean up the mess. I feel like we’ve been here before, but the level of dysfunction and chaos it’s kind of amazing. And all these Republicans looking around and saying, you know, to each other, like, jeez, it’s kinda shock that, you know, nurturing and appeasing the lunatic fringe has led to this.
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I mean, who knew if only they had been warned about this? But how bad is it, Tim? And we’re forty four days away from another government shutdown? This is not gonna get fixed, you know?
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No. It feels to me like late stage Rome. Mhmm. You know, with with sort of, you know, Trump is caligula. Yeah.
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Again, the the processes of good governance and of civil society are getting really undermined amid the tragic comic kind of lunacy of events, like, what just happened to to Kevin McCarthy is I think a reminder that we’re heading in twenty twenty four to a very difficult place. I worry about violence. Particularly in the swing states.
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It should be.
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I don’t know where we get voters and the public to focus on the fact pattern and have disagreements about what to do with the facts if you’re conservative or liberal, but to at least acknowledge there’s a common set of facts. I think we’re surrounded by this information. And I think the GOP, really, its energy is tied up in trumpism. I don’t think its voters are I still believe, though, that, you know, the the polling that has Donald Trump out in front is Maga Movement pulling. I think there’s there’s a certain amount of that is informed by the most likely people to respond to polls, who are I think akin to the most passionate voters that come out primaries.
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And I think there’s this, as they’re always using US politics, this broad middle ground of voters, moderate Republicans, independents, conservative Democrats, who trump pierce the veil on that group in twenty sixteen enough to squeak by Hillary Clinton, but he never did again after that. He didn’t in in twenty eighteen, twenty twenty, and twenty twenty two. He and his cohort in the in the GOP are not doing any of it to court that group. You know, even voters who don’t follow this stuff closely as you, and I do on a daily basis. Charlie, they turn on television, and they see this three ring circus.
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They’re not governing You know, the the putative leader of the GOP is in a courtroom attacking a clerk. The speaker of the house is being he attained by his own members and Biden passes Yeah. Drug price control measures. You know? So, like, like, what do you want your government to do?
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Do you want it to try to do something, even if you may not disagree with the policy, or do you want it to simply be a shambolic mess with a bunch of juvenile delinquents willing to burn the house down? And I think that’s what a lot of where the Republicans are right now looks like to moderate voters.
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Well, I wanna get to to the trump trials, but it seems just unavoidable to not think about the way that what’s happening in Congress really is an outgrowth of the trumpification of of the party. Kevin McCarthy did everything imaginable to curry favor with Donald Trump, to the point of even having was it the jelly beans that he had in his office that were Donald Trump’s I mean, it was just Yeah.
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And then Trump called him Mike Kevin. Mike Kevin. That’s if he was a house pet.
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But at the moment when he’s on the bubble, Donald Trump did not lift a tiny finger to save him. He was completely silent, which seems to me so on brand for the orange god king.
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He’s such a mobster.
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You know that Mike Kevin had to be on the phone at some point saying, no, sir, sir, I’m I’m, you know, I’m calling you with tears in my eyes. I know you’re very, very busy. With one indictment or lawsuit after another, but I could really use your help right now. And what? Did Trump let it go to voice mail what?
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And what happened
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You know, and it re I was thinking of that moment in the godfather at the end of the movie when Michael Corlian’s brother-in-law comes in. And they sit down and they have a a little bit of brandy together. And Michael said, you know, I just need you to note it. Did you kill my brother, Sunny? Nothing will happen to you.
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I just need to know. And he said, yeah. Yeah. I did it. He goes, okay.
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Get out of my house. And then they put him in the car, and they strangle him, and he drives off dying. And I think about that. I I have to imagine these conversations with McCarthy and Trump. We’re very similar with Trump saying if you’re here for me now, I’ll be there when you need me.
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Just be here for me now. And then push comes to shove. He’s like, sorry. I’m gonna let these guys push you off the edge because that’s how Donald Trump rolls. Loyalty is a one way street.
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And he will abandon people with the snap of a finger. I think he also had to see what was coming with McCarthy. I think he probably calculated that there was no way to rescue him, Tracy.
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You are a long term student of Donald Trump. And one of the things that I remember, I probably learned this from you, is that even though Trump demands this kind of slavish loyalty, he also despise the people who humiliate them. Self that there’s a level at which the Lindsey Graham of the world, he makes fun of them. He humiliates them in public. So but is that part of this that that here here’s Kevin in thinking he’s going to like me.
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He’s going to support me if I crawl on my belly and Donald Trump is thinking he guy’s a loser. He’s weak.
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Yeah.
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You know, when I don’t need him anymore, I won’t need him anymore.
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I want you to suck up to me, but the second you suck up to me, I will despise you.
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Yes.
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Because it shows that it’s so easy to bend you to my will. And I’m more intrigued by the people who chow with me. It’s one of the reasons he’s so fascinated with the media. He courts the media, but the second journalist you know, kiss up to him. He gets a little bit bored, and he really actually is the most intrigued by the journalists who go to battle with him.
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You know, when his White House, in his first term, There were certainly I I would think of Mattis as a fairly good example. There weren’t many of them, but Mattis never really cowed out to Trump. And he ultimately walked. And I think that Trump respected Mattis. I don’t know that he respected most of the other people in his cabinet.
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I think he respected Barr for a while. Until he thought Barr turned on him, but Barr was strong minded and was his own person, even though he was also a Trump enabler. And so, yeah, I think he had no respect for Kevin McCarthy. What will be interesting now is anybody who watched what just happened to McCarthy. You know, I think of somebody like Matt Gates who in any other world in which social media didn’t exist, his political franchise wouldn’t exist.
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Because he’s entirely performative. And and that’s true. I think of Marjorie Taylor Green alone, Boabard, you know, there’s this group of people who just use video and social media to propagate themselves. If any of them think now, and I think Stefanic will be a very interesting case study, because she also, I think, has cow towed in enormous ways to Trump and has turned her back on her own positions in order to do so. If they think that they’re somehow different from McCarthy, they’re gonna have a lesson in store.
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Okay. So there’s a little bit of fan fiction out there. It’s a quirk of the constitution that you do not actually have to be a member of the house, to be the speaker of the house of representatives. And, of course, there are some buzz. Let’s make Donald Trump the speaker.
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And there are some reports. I don’t know whether this true or not that that Donald Trump is interested in it. Look, Tim, I this is not gonna happen. I mean, he’s there’s not gonna be two hundred eighteen votes.
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Hannity. Hannity’s pushing it.
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Sanity really pushing it. I I missed that.
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Yeah. Hannity.
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Do it. This is this is what you want. This is what you deserve. You really do deserve this. Wow.
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What could go wrong?
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You know, when you asked earlier about like, why didn’t the demos play ball and preserve McCarthy? I think what hakeem Jeffries did might be a sort of awakening on the part of Democrats that how many times are they gonna come to the table to try to play ball when they’re constantly slapped down by a party that never plays ball? And imagine how delicious it would be, actually, if Donald Trump ended up speaker, with a year to go to a general presidential election. I don’t think that’ll happen. I think, you know, but it’s remarkable that it’s even in the air.
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You know, this did seem like a departure for, the Democratic caucus. Because there’s always been this asymmetry in the politics. The Republicans go, yeah, we’re gonna burn it down. We’re gonna blow it all up, and the democrats know, come on. Let’s find a deal and everything.
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And yesterday, it was like, no. We’re gonna do exactly what you guys would have done in this situation. So, I mean, it is interesting that King Jeffries was able to hold together every single member of his caucus, and they decided to go along with ousting the speaker. I mean, this is kind of an escalation, wasn’t it? I mean, this is a is this like a new new swagger for the Democrats?
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I think it’s a new steeliness. I think the Democrats sometimes have been a little bit too much kumbaya. On the American political landscape. And while the Republicans quietly chuckled, sure. Sure.
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Now we’ll rip your face off. So I think there is an awakening around that. The other thing is, you know, they’re gonna get awesome campaign ads out of this of the children in the garage with their matches Oh
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my god.
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Lighting them around the gas cans. I think they they have to be aware of that too.
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So one of the first things that the new acting speaker, Patrick McHenry, one of the first things that Patrick McHenry did as acting speaker. And he, of course, he was chosen by Kevin McCarthy in this weird system we have here, was to send an email to Nancy Pelosi’s staff saying, get out of the hideaway off in the capital. We’re gonna change the the locks. I mean, that just seemed like k. What’s the first thing you do?
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It’s like you escalate the pettiness, but this is seemed to underline how absolutely bitter and personal they’re going to get. So what was that about? Why go after Nancy Pelosi who apparently was not even around she was Dianne Feinstein’s Memorial Service, and they decided to kick her out of her office.
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I’m very curious about Pelosi’s thinking in this. It’s interesting to me. And I don’t know the answer to this. If she really wanted to come back to vote on this, I think she would have. And I think for her, there was a sense of decorum about it that transcended the politics of it that she had been a speaker Yeah.
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She wasn’t gonna come by and and participate in this process that defenestrated another speaker. I may be romanticizing that and ascribing things to her. She didn’t think at all. But in that context, I wondered about that. And if you think about it that way, then it’s okay.
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Here’s someone thinking about the institution and thinking about process. And thinking about being an adult. And what’s the first thing the robber room attendees do? They stripper of office space. It is so pathetic and ridiculous.
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But it shows the new rules, right, that we’re not gonna recognize any decorum, any sort of civility we’re going to find the ways to hurt you at all volume, but it can humiliate you in ways, like, I don’t know. Like, no. No. You’re not gonna get new stationery.
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No pens for you.
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We’re not gonna vacuum your offices anymore. And and if your toy I mean, it’s it’s at that level. Okay. So let’s talk about the other big story because, look, you have been writing about Donald Trump for what we’ve talked about this every time. I keep losing decades.
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Two decades.
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Since nineteen ninety.
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Oh my god.
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Since nineteen ninety.
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Okay. So Yeah. Let’s talk about Trump’s civil fraud trial and the way this is going. Yesterday was kind of dramatic. Right?
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I mean, the New York judge presiding over this civil fraud trial orders Trump not to attack her comment on court staff after Trump posted on truth social about the judge’s principal clerk So Trump is posting a photo of the clerk. A woman named Allison Greenfield, who has apparently had a selfie with Chuck Schumer. Claiming that she was his girlfriend, and the case against him should be dismissed because it was a political attack. So what is going on here?
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Well, you know, I’m reminded of, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, the two Georgia poll workers who got publicly put out as sacrificial Lambs by Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump as part of their campaign fraud narrative. I’m thinking of judge Curiel in the Trump University case. I’m thinking of any number of people over the years going back decades. Where Donald Trump, because he’s a coward, a thug, and a bully all at once, doesn’t hesitate to pick on small fry who lack his resources and presence to defend themselves. And he does it time and again because he enjoys it.
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He does it for sport. That’s part of the reason. I think the second reason is Yeah. The courtroom sitting now in Manhattan, the outcome was preordained. The judge in that matter had already said he was guilty of fraud.
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And that he he was going to recommend that Trump’s business licenses in New York get stripped and that he face a penalty. All that we’re seeing in the courtroom now between now and Christmas, if it goes through its full, you know, court calendar is a decision about how bad the penalties will be. So trump’s in there knowing that At best, he can get a lower fine and may be able to hang on to some of his businesses at very best. So what does he do? What does an adult who’s thinking strategically about maintaining their business position in the great state of New York Do.
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He comes flying off the wall like yosemite Sam, and he’s shooting himself in the foot. And he’s blazing his guns around because he is so angry that he’s cornered that he lacks the emotional intellectual self discipline to stop himself from acting otherwise. So his bully comes out, his cornered baby comes out, and I’ve actually never seen him in a public setting. Repeat this kind of activity this way. And I’ve thought about it.
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You know, he used it when when Atlantic City was burning down around in his Atlantic City casino holdings. He used to do these hilarious press events where the press would talk back to him, and he’d he’d strut off in anger, you know, off the dais or There was famously who’s getting interviewed in the restaurant at Trump Tower, he stripped the earphone out of his mouth and huffed off. But this is on an order of magnitude well beyond that. And I think he’s worried. You know, it’s about his money.
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It’s about his family’s legacy in New York. It’s about his business reputation. And this court case is is putting all of that up for play like a ping pong ball, and I think it’s torturing him.
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So this is really interesting that you would say this because, you know, you’ve been watching him for years and it did seem as as if the the rage was more raw. That sense of humiliation And it is interesting that this seems to bother him even more than the felony charges against him. I mean, you would think that, you know, the other purple walks, but this one, as you point out, you know, This is about his money. This is the about his whole image of his business. So, I mean, he’s going to lose this lawsuit.
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Right? And so Give me some sense of the business damage this does. I mean, it’s it’s obviously huge. Two hundred and fifty million dollars. That’s gonna hurt even Donald Trump.
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It’s gonna But it’s the loss of the business licenses, you know, that putting his the trump tower into the receivership. I mean, this is the most visceral humiliation. I mean, this is it feels like this is worse losing Trump Tower and losing his business licenses is worse than actually being convicted of a felony going to prison for him at this point. Oh, completely. Really?
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Okay. Why? Why? Complete?
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You know, in the early nineties, when he almost went personally bankrupt, he was at the mercy of his creditors and the bankruptcy court sorting it out. And he basically went on his knees, and he begged for three things not to be taken away from him. Mar a Lago, his jet, and his trump tower condo. And he said take everything else you want, but don’t take those because those are Trump Tower was the first deal he did entirely independently of his father. Yeah.
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Every deal he had done before that, his father had to help arrange the financing and the zoning. So Trump Tower was his coming out story, and he was always haunted, by the way, of by the orson well story that orson welles shot citizen Cain, one of the greatest movies of all time, and never really equaled it, the magnum. So Ron DeSantis a great movie. You know, but in the lore, it was that Wells never achieved that again. And Trump always worried that Trump Tower was going to be his last big thing.
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And it really was in certain ways until the presidency came along. The presidency rescued him from the Orson Wells trap. So Trump power has loomed in his mind forever. It’s like it’s coming out property. And then the jet, because he’s a Bozo, and he loves flying around with his name and blazing on the side of a jet landing places.
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He just loves that. And then Mar a Lago is his next door to Palm Beach Society boy at the window pressing his nose up against class, which he also has enormous insecurities about. In practical matters, Most of his wealth is tied up in a small handful of buildings in New York. I think the most lucrative property he owns in New York is actually forty Wall Street. Trump Tower, remember he long ago sold off the condominiums in that building, so he doesn’t own those.
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He doesn’t own the land under the building. He controls some commercial space and his condo. So he gets some management fees, and that’s about it. So it’s it’s largely symbolic now in terms of as well. There are other buildings that are way more valuable.
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But be that as it may collectively, his footprint in New York, is is responsible for a significant part of his wealth. And with those properties that they get put into receivership, And someone has to follow a court order and sell them off. It will be a fire sale, meaning he won’t get top price for commercial properties that are already stressed because of COVID because all the urban centers around the United States, commercial properties everywhere have struggled to get their occupancy rates back up post COVID. So the valuations were already stressed, and then you’re taking a a a property that has stress valuations. And then all the buyers know that ding dong just went into a courtroom and was Yosemite Sam.
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And they’re not gonna rush to pay any big price for those. So he’s not gonna get top dollar for those things either. So it’s a financial blow. And I’m curious. We talked about this over the years to Charlino.
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He hides a lot of his indebtedness. It’s always been hard to figure out exactly how indebted it is, but he is a debt monster. He gorges on debt, the way he gorges on cheeseburgers. And if he doesn’t have enough liquidity, his debt becomes a problem. If he can’t get a good price for a building, the debt becomes a problem.
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And that’ll be an interesting thing to sort out as well as as the kind of financial stressors. Some of this liquidation might impose on them.
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Let’s talk for a moment just about the merits of the lawsuit, without getting too deeply into the weeds. The defense, the from Trump seems to be Okay. So I inflated the values of these various properties, but no harm, no foul. The banks didn’t seem to complain about it. You know, it was up to them to do the due diligence, plus there’s a statute of limitations.
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Everybody does this in New York. This is not that unusual. You know this world. And he’s basically saying, look, nobody was supposed to believe these financials anyway. Don’t I have, like, disclaimers, plus I’m Donald Trump, and I added ten stories to Trump Tower.
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Nobody was gonna believe that. So who exactly was harmed by his fraud? I guess that’s his point. Yeah.
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And it’s a good issue to raise, frankly.
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Yeah.
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And it would be a good issue to raise in front of a jury so you could sort that question out. Unless you recruited your lawyers from a Saturday Live Skit, and they forgot to actually ask for a jury trial. Therefore, you never get a chance to road test your defense in front of a jury. Yeah. It’s only gonna be road tested in front of a judge who you’re attacking everyday in the courtroom.
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That’s genius legal strategy. You know, he came out yesterday after in the middle of the court proceeding during a press conference. He said, look, this can’t be a fraud because it was up to the banks to figure it out themselves, which is kind of like a bank robber saying I couldn’t have committed a crime. Because the teller should recognize that I was a bank robber the second I walked into the bank. That’s just not how the law works.
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If you go in intending to steal, It doesn’t necessarily matter what your counterparty did. Let’s put that issue to the side. The other issue is our damages where the banks harmed. The case is built on the Marten Act. It’s a nineteen twenties New York Act that was designed during the high flying nineteen twenties to go after security firms that were ripping off individual investors, leasing individual investors.
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And it gives the New York State Attorney General a lot of power to just go with them directly on the attorney general’s own bonus feedbacks. And that’s what he’s subject to here. And there’s an argument to be made that the bank aren’t like naive and vulnerable individual investors. They’re sophisticated institutions. It was upon them to do their own due diligence.
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And I suspect, again, if you had put this out in front of a court populated with a jury, you could have said, in fact, they weren’t relying. On these garbage statements of financial condition, they did their own due diligence to see what I was really worth, and the fact pattern supports that. When he and I litigated, he sued me for saying I lowballed his wealth. In the course of the litigation
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Sounds familiar?
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Yeah. Yeah. We got a document from Deutsche Bank. Where he went to them saying he was worth three billion dollars. They did their own due diligence, and they calculated.
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He was actually worth seven hundred and eighty eight million because they did their own due diligence. I think that is an issue with, you know, in terms of determining damages and the banks as sophisticated counterparties. You could make a good argument that they weren’t harmed. And you could mitigate the assessment of the penalties against you if you were in that scenario. But guess what?
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He’s not.
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So is is this vulnerable on appeal? It seems that I was, you know, watching some of the the the trial and some of the speeches that the lawyers were making, which clearly we’re not going to have any effect with this particular judge. The best analysis that I heard is they’re addressing now this now to the appellate courts trying to create some sort of an issue is that his main hope. Normally, on these legal issues, I think that Donald Trump is appealing to the court of public opinion is trying to do politically. This one, he obviously needs to win in the legal system.
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So talk to me about the possibility of appeal. This judge seems to be and again, you know, I’m I’m willing to eat the popcorn, but the judge has been very, very aggressive. Does that make the rulings more vulnerable?
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I don’t think so. Ultimately, I don’t know. But every time he has tried to appeal to a higher court in New York state, to adjudicate on his behalf. He wanted the judge removed. He wanted certain charges dropped.
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He’s lost every one of those because I think The appellate courts are recognizing this as a market, martin act prosecution. They’ve always given a lot of deference to the foundations of that act, you know, Elliott’s bits are used at the great effect when he was attorney general. And so I don’t anticipate them successfully appealing the final result here, but I could be wrong. I sort of imagine the appellate court the same way I think about the people in the Kremlin when Trump got elected. That, like, Putin and his cronies are sitting around going, they just elected that fool, and they popped back a a little shot of vodka.
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The appellate court is like, oh, here he comes again. He’s appealing, but doesn’t this guy understand how the world works?
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Okay. Let’s go back to this gag order because you wrote yesterday that the gag order was a watershed moment. Talk to me about that a little bit. Because this is the first really, you know, very pointed gag order, you know, with a real threat of jail, kind of surprising because I think a lot of us were waiting for this from judge in or maybe the the judge down in Georgia, but we got it in this New York civil case. So why was it a watershed moment?
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I because I think the danger in the way that Donald Trump rolls is that institutions and the legal system and voters in the media, and and everyone to rely on in this fragile community we have right now holds into account in the same way that any other person would be held to account. And that he shouldn’t get special treatment because he’s a former president. In fact, because he’s a former president, the bar should be even higher, I think, for being lenient. And he has been in a number of these cases attacking the prosecution, the judges, and possibly tainted other potential witnesses, and the jury pool. And the court system has an interest regardless of a defendant’s ideology or station in life to make sure the process keeps rolling along.
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And, and, you know, you mentioned judge Chuckkin. She’s got the federal case or the January sixth case. I think she’s warned him now four times. That he can’t post to social media and he can’t talk to the media about his view of the process. Yeah.
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And She hasn’t given him a gag order yet. She’s given him a repeated warning. The next step will be a gag order. If he violates the gag order, the next step is jail. And I think there’s people who argue you can’t put a former president in jail.
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I disagree with that. I think there’s good strategic reasons to say why you would not wanna do that. It could poise in the political process. It could make all of this look like a witch trial, which is what Trump’s calling it. But the law is what the law is.
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And I think finally, in the New York case, the judge had had enough, and he issued a gag order. And I think it is a watershed moment in that he’s using the powers at his disposal. To silence a defendant who’s out of control and is damaging the court process pure and simple.
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And trump did take down the social media post.
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I mean,
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he did we interestingly enough.
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Yeah. After, like, tens of millions of his followers disseminated it already.
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It does feel as if he’s trying to goad the judges into doing it. I mean, is there some part of Trump that wants to be murdered that actually wants a judge to slap him in in jail because he’s behaving that way. For most people, that’s irrational. I mean, who the hell wants to go to jail? But what do you think?
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You know the guy?
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I’m a victim. I’m a victim. I know what it’s like to be a victim. No.
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What they’re doing to me And
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I know how you feel. I know how you working class Joe and Jane.
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Donald on the cross.
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Yeah. Your victims too. You’ve lost your station in the world while these immigrants are crawling into the country. The economy is not working for you. Yeah.
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You’re a victim. And guess what I’m a victim to, and I’m the only thing that stands between you and the woke mob. And so, yeah, this this fits right into that narrative. I think I think it could be miscalculating who, however, that narrative resonates with. Because he doesn’t need to convince his cult anymore.
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Trump is a cult leader.
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Right.
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He won’t get elected at the national level as a cultist. And he needs to be courting moderates and nothing he is doing gets him there.
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So let’s talk about this lawsuit. You’ve given some, some preview of all of this. We’re gonna get the defense witnesses. Eric Trump, Don junior, all the people of the the financial consigliere is gonna show up. So what could we expect?
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This is gonna be a hell of a show. Right? I mean, this is going to be, you know, Donald Trump, this is your fraudulent life. So what do we expect from the Trump family? From the Trump clan when they’re on the witness stand, answering questions.
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Well, if prior behavior is predictive, you’re going to see three buffoons, at least in McDonald Don junior and Eric realm. A final testify, but I think she’s much more self possessed than her brothers and father. You know, last Thursday, after the judge noted one of his rulings that Mara Lago’s valuation was inflated, for example, and that was one of the reasons. He wanted to impose penalties. Eric took to social media to say it’s worth a billion dollars, which it most certainly isn’t.
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And do exactly what the court was censuring the family for doing. So I think the boys are gonna take a cue from dad. And go in there without a strategic sensibility of how they should conduct themselves on the witness stand. They will be easy for a prosecutor to inflame And so that makes all three of them wild cards where they’re on the stand. And they could end up, you know, doing more damage that extends beyond this case, I think.
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So it occurs to me that, I mean, I remember when, Jack Smith brought his case in Washington, DC, you know, the case in front of judge Chuckkin that we were all saying this is the case. This is the one. But in Donald Trump’s mind, the civil case is the case. This is the one. This is the one he cannot lose.
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This is why he is melting that. Now is Donald Trump really gonna testify in this case, Tim? I mean, is he really gonna get on that stand?
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You know, I don’t know. I you know, his lawyers are not restraining him, you know, and they’re because they’re you know, Donald Trump is performing for the judge and his voters and his lawyers are in the courtroom performing for him. And no one’s acting in a strategic or professional way, So I don’t think they’ll restrain him. So I think there is a high chance he’ll be on the Will Saletan, and I think it will be a carnival
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Wow. That will be incredible. That will be the show. And kind of a bonus show, since we were all expecting it was gonna be the other trouser winning show. Tim O’Brien.
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Thank you so much for joining me. Tim, is senior executive editor of Bloomberg opinion host of the podcast crash course. Also a political analyst, MS, NBC, a former editor and reporter, the New York Times, and author of the classic Trump Nation, the art of being the Donald published in checking my notes here two thousand and five. Right. Before he came down that golden escalator, and New York’s problem became the world’s problem.
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Tim, thanks for joining me.
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Thank you for having me, Charlie Sykes
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thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again. Bower contest is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.
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