Will Saletan: Dilbert, Free Speech, and Racism
Episode Notes
Transcript
Scott Adams has the right to carry on about white victimhood, and newspapers have the free speech right to drop him. Plus, after the Ohio train wreck, is Biden — with his global leadership — showing shades of Bush 41? Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday.
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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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Happy Monday and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is almost the end of February, February 27th, 2023. And of course, because it is Monday, I am joined by my colleague, Will Saletan. Good morning.
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I hope you had a great weekend. Good morning, Charlie. I I did. I did. And I guess we’re getting
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towards Spring. It’ll be groundhog day. And every every week, I’ll come out of the ground and try to tell you that some wonderful thing has happened in the world. I
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really could use that. Okay. We have so much ground to cover. We have to talk about the lab leak story. We have to talk about what’s going on in East Palestine, I wanna talk about the anniversary of the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a fantastic piece you had about Fox and the the GOP.
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We also have, you know, the Scott Adams rant, which I wanna get into. We have so much many other things here, but it turns out that Ron DeSantis has a new book out. New York Times review is less than enthusiastic. Can I just read you a paragraph here? Go for it.
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It’s called the courage to be free. For the most part, the revere says, for the most part, the courage to be free is courageously free of anything that resembles charisma or discernible sense of humor. Much like the author.
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While his first
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book was weird and esoteric enough to have obviously been written by a human being, this one reads like a politician’s memoir churned out by Chat GPT. And for People Web and Pay attention on Friday, we got half a victory for common sense. Puffin, the publisher, has decided that they’ll back off from simply having the sanitized whitewashed version of Roald Dahl’s book, so they’re they will publish the original versions of Roald Dahl’s books after this spat over the stupid censorship so you get to choose. Readers get to choose. You want the White Wash version or you get the the classic version.
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So what is that? One and a half cheers for that
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That’s kind of wild. I mean, I love that. It’s kind of like a PC liberalism where you can have the woke version or you can have the unwoke version. It’s freedom. I like
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who
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are they coming for next? Did you tell me right before we started? Ian Fleming. Apparently, they’re coming for James Bond. You know?
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Because misogyny, sexism, and all this stuff is so baked in that there it waits. Everything that’s been written has some of this. Right? So I’m assuming that it’s about the misogyny this time and not about some other
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kind of prejudice. They’re coming for Ian Fleming neck. No. This is a parody. Right?
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You’re you’re just kidding. I mean, everybody who’s ever watched the James Bond movie. Like, it’s
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a given, right, that bond that the women are gonna be derivative characters and that, like, it’s it’s all of that is gross and you just bake it in.
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Right? I don’t even know how you do that. Can I tell you my my favorite story of I don’t know what category you put this in? I’m gonna put it in the category of of academic bureaucracy and AI just together. Mhmm.
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Did you hear the story about Vanderbilt University? I did not. So Vanderbilt University, like, every other college, in America has an office of equity diversity and inclusion. And so after the tragic shooting at Michigan State University, the the Department of Inclusivity ever up, you know, issues that touching statement of of consolation to the students. Mhmm.
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Nice. Right? I mean, it was very heartwarming. I mean, they wrote Another important aspect of creating an inclusive environment is to promote a culture of respect and understanding. And then the letter goes on.
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Let us come together as a community to reaffirm our commitment, to caring for one another and promoting a culture of inclusivity on our campus. And finally, we must recognize that creating a safe and inclusive environment is an ongoing process that requires ongoing effort and commitment. Right? So it sort of goes on like that and I’m, you know, ninety percent of our listeners going, what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with that?
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Absolutely nothing. Mhmm. I mean, the sentiment is repeated over and over again. They use the word inclusive seven times, the word community five times. The word safe three times.
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And as Noel Boles notes in her newsletter, it kinda worked except there was one problem at the bottom of the statement was this reveal. Paraphrased from open AI’s chat GPT, AI language model, personal communication, February fifty. Written by AI. So these humane bureaucrats care so deeply about the tragedy, but not deeply enough to actually have a human being. Right.
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That’s kinda perfect. I’m sorry. It’s kinda perfect.
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You know, Charlie, I always thought that the humans were going to manage machine intelligence. That was gonna be our job. We were gonna be the higher level but in fact, it’s the other way around. So the humans write the boilerplate diversity statements that actually, you know, written by us, and then the AI comes along and just synthesizes. The statements because they’re that’s what it does, just boilerplate.
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And, yeah, we shouldn’t be surprised that we just bypass the humans this time and let the machines do it. But
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if the machines do it in a way that sounds exactly like the people, maybe we’ve kind of stumbled on something. Maybe we could replace all of these bureaucrats with with
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AI. Oh my god. If we need to just start replacing university administrators.
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I mean, internationally.
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We have all the professors in our audience are standing and applauding right now. In
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Nelly Bulwark writes, this great thing said, maybe this is like the discover of Penicillin. You know, sometimes accidents make genius. You discovered, wait. You know, if you just like throw these words, these words salads in, and people go, well, that’s that’s great. That’s that’s fine.
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You know, do you actually need all the high paid bureaucrats. Okay. Let’s take a deep breath because we do have some serious stuff to talk about, including the one year anniversary of Ukraine, particularly as some of the Fox hosts double down on their either pro Putin or anti anti Putin rhetoric. And by the way, last Thursday night, we’ll do this tomorrow more, but I sat down with Paul Ryan and we had a, I would say, a friendly but challenging discussion about politics and one of the questions I asked was, what is his responsibility as a member of the Fox board? When you’re dealing with people like Tucker Carlson and it’s an interesting exchange.
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So stay tuned because we will we will turn that into a podcast I promise that will be coming. This is the paradox of Paul Longwell I’m embracing myself. I still like Paul Ryan. I mean, we’ve taken a break from one another, you know, seeing other people, but he’s earnest, he’s sincere, and yet the contradictions are still there. I mean, the contradictions that have existed since two thousand sixteen where he says, yeah, this guy is a textbook racist but but yeah, he should be in the White House.
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Or we need to move past Trump what happened on January sixth, what’s terrible I did everything I could to support Liz Cheney. But, you know, you’re asking about Kevin McCarthy and yeah. I I was on the phone with with Kevin six hours ago. And, you know, and I’m not gonna second guess, Kevin McCarthy, the guy that orchestrated the excommunication of Liz Cheney. I mean, it’s
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my head exploding. The Ryan and McCarthy will be interesting to talk about things go on because — Yeah. — McCarthy is the guy who stays in the system. Right? And therefore, it does all the dirty work of trying to work out a compromise between the cool guy, Trump, and the party, and and the moderates.
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And Ryan is now outside the system. And so he gets to say things that McCarthy can’t say. But you can see that they’re thinking alike.
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Well, yes, no. And and that’s the thing. It’s the actually having the courage of your convictions to do what you believe, you know. So for example, you know, he’s talking about how he supported all the people like, you know, Peter Meyer and Liz Cheney and etcetera, you know, who who voted to impeach Donald Trump, and yet he’s unwilling to criticize Kevin McCarthy. So we had an interesting exchange about Marjorie Taylor Green, which I will let that speak for itself.
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I think there was a division of opinion with people in the audience. Mhmm. This was sponsored by the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee distinguished lecturer series wasn’t intended to be a debate or anything, and it was sponsored by the Tommy Thompson Center, which is sort of Republican oriented. So I think that there were people in the audience that thought that I was really mean. And there were also people who thought I was too soft on him because, you know, like, didn’t call him an ass hat to his face or something.
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I don’t know. So people can make up their own minds on this. Right. I’m guessing that most of our audience will think I was too soft, but then there are a lot of people who are writing me like, I can’t believe you were so tough on
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him. It was his event, and you said all these terrible things. First of all, I think you said what you believe. And secondly, I think that it’s important for people
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to exist in the part of the political spectrum in between Paul Ryan is the devil and that’s burning hell eternally. And, you know, Donald Trump is is the king. Paul Ryan is not the worst person in the world. He has spoken out pretty clearly at least in the last couple years about, you know, Donald Trump more so than a lot of other Republicans. Yeah.
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You know, he’s been honest about a lot of things about fiscal things as well as political things. So I’m glad that you’re not just throwing grenades at him.
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No. But there there were a few grenades. It was one time ago. I think I really got under his skin, but I just I don’t want to get ahead of myself here. Okay.
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So the Scott Adams story. I know that some people will think this is another one. These completely silly culture war issues. I, once again, begged to differ about all of this. For people who are just catching up.
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Scott Adams is the cartoon is behind Gilbert, which at one time was pretty good satire, kinda smart and edgy. And Scott Adams though has been decompensating in public over the last few years. He’s running super Trump gotten involved in every single culture war he has his YouTube video where he went off on a rant, and we’re gonna play a little bit of of all of this, which resulted in hundreds of newspapers. I don’t know. Was it hundreds It’s like lots of newspapers dropping his cartoon, Gilbert.
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And for most of them, this wasn’t a hard decision to do because I think they were probably kinda sick of him anyway. And I was slightly surprised that newspapers even run cartoons anymore. Whatever. Right? And, of course, Elon Musk has now come out in defense of Scott Adams, not just for his free speech rights, but kind of because he I’m sorry.
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You can disagree with me on this one a little, but kind of because he sort of agrees with this Scott Adams. So we’re now going to have this debate about Scott Adams. And there’s going to be confusion between whether or not it’s about free speech or You know, maybe he’s right. He’s taking these ideas into the mainstream. Anyway, here is Scott Adams, the author creator of Gilbert sharing his deep thoughts about race.
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Rasmussen
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asked, you know, white and black voters. And probably others. Do you disagree or agree with the statement? It’s okay to be white. Twenty six percent of blacks said, no.
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It’s not okay to be white. Twenty one percent weren’t sure. Adding together that is forty seven percent of Bulwark respondents we’re not willing to say it’s okay to be white. Nice. So I realized, as you know, I’ve been identifying as black for a while years now because I like, you know, I like to be on the winning team.
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And I like to help And I always thought, well, if you help the black community, that’s sort of the biggest lever. You know, you could find the biggest benefit So I thought, well, that’s the hardest thing and the biggest benefit. So I’d like to focus a lot of my life resources — Right. — bullshit in helping black Americans. So much so that I started identifying as Bulwark.
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But as of today, I’m gonna reidentify as white.
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Oh, jeez. Because
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I don’t want to be a member of a hate group. I’d accidentally joined a hate group. So if if, you know, nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people, according to this poll, not according to me, that’s a hate group. That’s a hate group.
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And I
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don’t wanna have anything to do with them. And I would say, you know, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people — Okay. — is to get the hell away from black people — Okay. — just to get the fuck away. Where wherever you have to go, just get away.
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Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed. Right? This can’t be fixed. You just have to escape.
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So that’s what I did. I went to a neighborhood where, you know, I have a very low black population. Now, of course, Twitter
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and Tesla GP, Elon Musk, defended Scott Adams in a series of tweets blasting media organizations for dropping his comic strip. Replying to tweets about the controversy, Musk said it is actually the media that is racist against whites and Asians. He offered no criticism of Adam’s comments. In which the cartoon is called Bulwark people, hey. Hey, Goopa said I don’t want to have anything to do with them.
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And in the clip, Scott Adams goes on, basically says you should get as far away from them as possible. You should not do anything to help them. He is completely done with Bulwark. I mean, it is just on and on and Longwell, what do you make of this?
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This latest burp of the culture wars? So I actually think that this is a very useful teaching moment about a kind of what you’re watching in this video in Scott Adams video is a kind of meltdown. And this is how prejudice gets accelerated. Yes. Let me back up for a minute.
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So Scott Adams is working from a poll, a Rasmussen poll. And just so people understand what the numbers are. He talked about a couple of them. The question was, do you hear or disagree with the statement? It’s okay to be white.
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Now that’s a really weird question to ask. What exactly does that mean? Right? But here are the actual numbers that came back. Eighteen percent of the black respondents said that they strongly disagree.
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There was another eight percent that sort of somewhat disagreed. There was twenty one percent that wasn’t sure and then fifty three percent. So a majority of the black respondents disagree. Twenty one percent are like, I don’t know what this means. I’m not gonna answer this question.
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Right? So what’s Scott Adams does in this video is he goes from eighteen percent of blacks to twenty six percent of blacks. He throws in the twenty one percent who are like, I don’t know what question means to get to forty seven. He’s still at a minority. Right?
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He still got fifty three percent of blacks on the other side. He just ignores that, Charlie. He just goes straight to get the hell away from all black people. Don’t live in
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black people. Don’t live in their neighborhoods. Don’t do anything to help them. White should basically segregate themselves from Whiteville. Mean, it’s a bullshit poll with a bullshit question.
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But so the heart of this is Scott Adams basically saying, I’m done with black people. White should all be done with black people. There’s nothing we should do. We shouldn’t be around them. It’s just Okay.
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So this is going to be cast in some circles as a free speech issue with it, which is, of course, Elon Musk claim. There’s two sides to this. Right? Number one, the Scott Adams have the right to say that yes. We reiterate that simply because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean it’s right.
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So because his free speech, but also the newspapers which have decided screw this were not carrying his comic strip. There is no obligation implicit or explicit for a newspaper to carry a cartoon strip. None. One of the fundamental things of the first amendment is that they get to decide what they publish and also what they don’t publish. So that’s free speech to.
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But to your point, I think you put your finger on it. What you’re going to see over the next several days? Is, you know, the usual suspects saying, well, you know, poor Scott Adams. Scott Adams is a victim. And lots of people sort of, you know, furloughed their browns saying, And was he right?
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Did he have a point there? So again, we are normalizing the kind of racist speech that used to be on the far fringes that used to be isolated. And I think that one of the things we’ve seen with the Tucker Carlson of the world with a great replacement theory and etcetera, is that they’re essentially creating that permission structured people to indulge ideas and impulses that I think we had thought, you know, had been you know, that we’d move past, but we haven’t. And so I I actually think this matters. I think it matters for the millions of people who will listen to this and go yeah, you’re right.
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We should be done with those people. We should move away from those people. We should not support any programs. And the racism in society is not directed against black people. It’s white people.
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We are the victims. They are the oppressors. We are the oppressed. And we know where that came from and we know where it’s going. Or we can fear where it’s going.
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So that victim mentality, you can see it and
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hear it in in his video, and Scott Adams is talking about how I get called a racist every time I try to help. So now I’m not gonna try to help. In fact, I’m gonna resegregate society to the extent I can. I’m gonna move away. That so that that victim mentality, that resentment just feeds.
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I mean, our discussions about race in this country have sort of advanced from originally from just cold blooded prejudice to systemic racism and we get to critical race theory and there’s all this subtlety. What Scott Adams is rationalizing in this video is not any of that subtle stuff. It’s the old fashioned racism. It’s just explicit bigotry. So — Yeah.
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— he’s saying that on the basis of some poll where some relatively small percentage of black people said something, a white people should get the hell away. And not only is he just rationalizing prejudice, I mean, he’s telling you upfront judge people on the basis of their color. But beyond that, his idea of a solution, which is segregation, it’s part of a self fulfilling cycle, you white people should get the hell away from black people, have no black people in your life, which only accelerates this idea that you because you don’t know any black people, you start spinning wild theories about black people in general based on he talks about his social media feed. He’s like, in my social media feed, I’m always seeing black people beating up white people. Well, maybe you should pause and think about where your social media feed is coming from, and how the hell it is that you got to a point in your life where you’re converting every day online with people who circulate videos of a relatively small percentage of violence because violence is overwhelmingly against people the same race, not that different race.
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If you’re seeing in your social media feed, black on white violence all the time, then you’re hanging out with people who are trying to feed on and promote this, you know, bizarre idea that America is full of black on white violence.
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Yeah. I mean, I I’ve said this before Ron DeSantis I think is the real tragedy. And I know that some people are saying, well, you know, this is the way people have always been, this is what they’ve always believed. It’s way more complex than that. I don’t believe that people are all good or all bad or all black or all right in terms of their thinking about all this, which is why thought leadership is so important.
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It is the better angels of your nature. There are people whispering in your ear saying, okay, we need to we need to move past this. We shouldn’t be dividing one another in this particular way versus the people who are saying, you know, that resentment, that doubts you have, you ought to feed it. We ought to pour kerosene on it. They are coming for your job there.
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Coming for your women. They are the enemy. You should fear them. You should resist any impulse to see them as fellow citizens or be compassionate. So people respond to that, and there was a period of time where I think there were people on the right who said, okay, we need to change the narrative we need to appeal to the better angels.
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And then there were the voices who said, no, I can stoke of this fear. I can stoke of this resentment. And those voices are getting louder and louder and louder. And there will be consequence, so there are people who might have gone in a very different direction. Who are going to listen to this and go, yeah, damn right.
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And that doesn’t mean they’re always like that. It means that we are always capable of these things And the question is whether we’re incentivized, encouraged, and stoked to be this. Are you following me on this one? Because I find it exhausting. They No.
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No. People have always been racist. They’ve always been big. It’s Okay. I concede that there’s always been that element.
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And I’ve said, that I think it was a recessive
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gene. It’s hard to say it’s a recessive gene anymore. In fact, it’s impossible. Look, our country has advanced in lots of ways. You know, ever since the Voting Rights Civil
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Rights Act, we have pushed back a lot of the explicit racism. And that’s great. But there is now a backlash that is based on a kind of resentment. And it comes back to you. I mean, in that video, Scott Adams says, I wanted to be on the winning team, and that’s the way a lot of these sort of white people who sort of feel victimized are, like, just for some perspective, average Bulwark household wealth in this country is like one tenth of average white household wealth.
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So this idea that you’re on the losing team is just completely factually false. Right? But you get into this idea that we’re the victims and you circulate stuff in social media that’s all about, like, the latest crime we can find with a black person against a white person or some black person getting a job that I wish I had gotten or something. And so you work yourself into this mentality where you’re the victim. And that’s a whole new stage.
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That’s a whole new stage where now you rationalize because we’re the victim, we have the right to push back, and we can talk about white nationalism, and it’s not mean anymore because we’re the oppressed Conspiracy theories, paranormal, UFO’s. During the entire nineteen seventy one debacle of this red die, number two, parents all around America were buying Frank and Berry, so only a few days after the cereal was released, kids all across the country. Started being rushed to hospitals. All of them had one symptom in common. Fairees of the third kind on YouTube or wherever you listen
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Let’s change gears here because last week was in a rather extraordinary milestone, the one year anniversary of the war in Ukraine or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you did a really interesting piece. I thought, I mean, you you threw yourself on the media hand grenade of watching a lot of Fox News, which means you’re a better person than I am, which we kinda knew this Longwell. You went through various Republican politicians. The ones who pander to the anti Ukraine Fox line versus those who were willing to push back against it. So Talk to me about that because this is interesting because this this is one of those rare moments where you have, of course, as you’d expect some Republicans take the bait and go along with it, but some Republicans pushed back on it.
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So what did you hear? What did you see what’s happening? I
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got into this because I like a lot of other people saw Rhonda Santos going on Fox and Friends and saying some stuff that sounded pretty isolationist to anti Ukraine war. Let’s pull back. We don’t wanna get involved in this. And I was like, what the heck? And since then, of course, there’s been a lot of reporting about Ron DeSantis’ history as a congressman and how he you know, actually was a hawk and now he’s sort of, you know, trying to reposition himself.
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So I looked at these interviews of Republican politicians twenty twenty four presidential hopefuls, senators, congressmen, on Fox News. And I expected that I was gonna see more isolationism and what I actually found Charlie was that a lot of the Republican politicians who have had a history, at least in office from last few couple of decades, are still hawks. They’re still hawks, but they’re grappling with pressure within the Republican Party. It’s coming up from the base. It’s being stoked by people like Donald Trump.
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By Marjorie Taylor Greene towards isolationism and towards well of Biden is for defending the Ukrainians, then we should be against it. Right? Right. And so what I saw in the interviews was it’s the Fox News hosts who are channeling that resentment and encouraging that resentment encouraging the anti Ukraine pro isolationist sentiment. And they’re pushing the politicians.
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They’re pressing them and trying to send a message you are in a politically dangerous position in a Republican primary. Maybe you need to back off on supporting the war. And some of the politicians like the scientists we’re kind of folding in that pressure. But some others like Mike Pence, like Nicky Haley, were pushing back. And so I think it’s important when we see Republicans standing up for principles that the party should stand for to commend them for it.
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So I do. Okay. So let’s let’s talk about this because this is important. This is in some ways this is the pre primary entertainment wing primary. Right?
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Who are the biggest, you know, panderers? You have Ron DeSantis. Right? I see Tom Cotton is pandering, but you had Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, senator Roger Wicker, how did he do? Terrific.
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Roger
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Whicker. What
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was the radar in the politics? I did not see that comment. It was not on my Bingo card.
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What Roger Whicker said and I think the is really interesting. He’s on TV. He’s on Fox. And they’re sort of, you know, giving him the what the polls are and all that. And Roger Wicker says, you know what?
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Part of what we need to do is push harder to help the Ukrainians faster, let them advance on the battlefield, push the Russians back. He said, we can change the Poles basically. We can move American public opinion by showing that the Ukrainians are prevailing. And that’s this old fashioned idea. I don’t know what else to call a Charlie Sykes leadership.
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Where you actually do what you believe to be the right thing, and then you hope that the public will follow Longwell, and the pressure is going to continue
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to be intense on Fox. I don’t know. Do you get the sense that Tucker Carlson is dialing up the dopamine hits or whatever it is that he’s becoming more extreme,
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more shrill. Let me play a little clip from Tucker Carlson over the last few days. It is calling to be lectured about democracy by a man who took power in an election so sketchy that many Americans don’t believe it was even real. Joe Biden has never had the majority of Americans support for a single day of the Ukraine war. In fact, Joe Biden is far less popular in the United States than Vladimir Putin is in Russia.
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That is not an endorsement of Putin. It’s just true. And it says everything about Joe Biden’s tenuous legitimacy. Occupancy? Please.
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We’re adults. Stop lying to us.
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Wow, there’s so much. He’s bundling election denialism in with sort of Wink, wink, I’m not pro
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Putin, but here’s some pro Putin talking point. It’s so full of shit. Right. Although The election in nihilism seems to be confined to the United States and Ukraine, not to
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Russia. So Oh. Joe Biden is sketchy, but Vladimir Putin is way more, you know, has much bigger mandate. Really Tucker. What do you got in that bow tie, man?
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Seriously.
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So let me come back to the idea of of what’s teachable here. Like, Tucker Carlson, okay, he’s vile, but he’s also a useful teaching tool. Right? Okay. Because this is where Tucker Carlson ism leads you.
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Right? You start off with the idea of America first. We’re we’re gonna like pull back from the world because we believe in America. But where you end up is you’re actually America last. You’re anti American because what Tucker Carlson is basically saying is that I trust elections in Russia and polls in Russia.
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Right? An authoritarian country where people literally get thrown in jail for descent. I trust that more than I trust American public opinion. Right? That Biden has less support than Putin.
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He
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actually believes. Does he Charlie, that that Putin has that support in Russia? Does
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he no. No, sir. That’s an interesting question. I occasionally ask the question, well, do you guys really believe it? I don’t have any idea anymore.
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I mean, based on that Dominion lawsuit dump, you know, they say and put on me or lots of stuff
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they don’t actually believe. Right. And then at a certain point, that’s almost beside the point. Okay. To be cynical here, let’s say he just believes that propaganda Bulwark.
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Right? Tucker
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Carlson, that’s his job. Right? He’s a propagandist. He’s a propagandist for Putin. He’s a propagandist against Ukraine.
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And maybe he believes that, you know, that the same propaganda that Putin’s putting out in Russia has worked. And there is some evidence for that. Right? A lot of a lot of Russians believe falsehoods about the Ukraine world Ukrainians or Nazis. They they started the war, etcetera.
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But that’s not a vindication of Vladimir Putin. That’s not a, you know, the people support Putin, and therefore, we should trust him more than we should trust Biden. That’s a vindication of propaganda.
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So help me with this. Seriously. Because a year end of this war, it is hard to look at Vladimir Putin and and this war is anything other than than than an act of genocide of one war crime after another just horrific atrocities. And yet, Tucker Carlson, we know as a propagandist, but he’s also afraid of his audience. So he’s giving his audience what they want.
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How does this happen? How does the audience want to hear that Vladimir Putin in some way
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is more legitimate than Joe Biden? I mean, what is happening to people’s brains will? Charlie, I just think it’s negative polarization. I just think it is that human beings are
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very tribal We ought to see ourselves as beings in need of civilization, and we try to teach our children to be good. Right? But there’s a dark side of human nature. It’s very deep. This tribalism, this we’re against the other guys.
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And what has happened in the modern Republican Party is and this has happened to some extent in the Democratic Party too, but it’s really prominent a Republican party is that the bad guys, the enemy, is not, you know, the rapist and murderers in Ukraine. It’s not the Russians, it’s not Chinese. It’s not the CCP. It’s Joe Biden. Right?
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And it’s the Libs and the Democrats. And once you make that commitment, then you find yourself aligning yourself
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with everyone who is on the other side of Joe Biden, including Vladimir Putin, you are completely right. That was that was excellent. So this does matter. There are consequences to
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this. They’re paying attention to this in Russia. If you watch Russian state TV. You’re gonna see it a lot of Tucker Carlson. Yesterday, CIA Director, William Burns, was on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.
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And he talks about a recent meeting with Russia’s head of intelligence. And and about like, Vladimir Putin’s belief that he can wear us down, that that’s political fatigue is gonna set in, that Americans just don’t have a long attention span. So this is the head of the CIA talking about his conversation with the Russians. What the Russians are thinking right now? What Vladimir Putin is thinking right now?
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Let’s play a little clip of that. There was a very defiant attitude on the part of mister Norishkin Longwell, a sense of cockiness and hubris you know, a sense, I think, reflecting Putin’s own view, his own belief today that he can make time work for him, that he believes he can grind down the Ukrainians, that he can wear down our European allies, that political fatigue will eventually sit in. And in my experience, Putin’s view of Americans, of us, has been that we have attention deficit disorder, and we’ll move on to some other issue eventually. So basically, the Russian position is that time is
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on their side and time is not on our side. So what do you think about Longwell, it’s really important to take this seriously. This is Putin’s long term strategy.
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He can lose in twenty twenty two. He can have failed in twenty he can fail in twenty twenty three. As long as he can count on the United States and Europe to get tired of the war, and eventually one of these years he will win. Right? And he can just keep throwing people at it.
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So it’s really important and I know this is hard for people to hear not to buy into the idea that eventually we have to put Ukraine on a clock. Because the way to actually break Putin’s will, to break the will of the Russians, is to convince them that we’re not gonna let up. The mantra from Biden and the democrats and the government has been, we’re gonna stay, quote, as long as it takes. Yeah. And what you’re seeing now politically is a lot of Republicans saying, wait, we can’t just stay as long as it takes.
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We have to win now or the Ukrainians will start to lose. And as soon as Putin believes that we believe, we have a limited time to do this. That just gives him more heart, more spirit to to continue the fight. So I as hard as it is to hear, I think we have to be willing to make good on that commitment as long as it takes.
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Big story over the weekend, generating a lot of the story in The Wall Street Journal. Saying that there is a new evidence or that there’s evidence. There’s there’s strong evidence. There’s because I’m I’m pausing here is because there’s a caveat to it. But the Department of Energy now believes that there is a possibility or probability.
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You correct me on all of this. That the COVID pandemic came from a lab leak from China as opposed to something that was created in an open air market. And of course, you know, this is generating a huge amount of I told you so from people who say, see, it was a Chinese lab leak, and the media covered it up what do
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you make of this story? How big a deal is it? How seriously should we take it? I wouldn’t make too much of it. And I wouldn’t have made too much of the previous you know, so called consensus that COVID arose naturally.
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We have very limited information to make any of these judgments, and that to me is the takeaway. So This assessment comes from one agency who’s coming from the Department of Energy. Most of the departments and the government have come to the other conclusion. We’re talking of small numbers. There’s like four agencies that think it’s that it arose naturally.
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There’s a couple that think it arose from the lab. All of these judgments are pretty much low confidence.
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Literally, their term. I mean, the energy department assesses with low confidence that this might have originated from the Chinese lab lake. And yet, the intelligence community is still in disagreement about the origin. So — Right. — again, low confidence seems to be, I mean, like a red flag.
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Right? I mean, we don’t know what we don’t know. Right? So what
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you have is a lot of Republicans people on the right saying, we told you so, we told you it was a lab leak. That’s the wrong conclusion. The right conclusion is the negative one, which is you said that you knew for a fact that this arose naturally, but that may not be true. And they’re right about that. We have very limited.
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So to me, the bottom line here is we could get higher confidence, Charlie, in understanding which way COVID arose. If the Chinese government would give us access to data from their labs, they haven’t done that, and they’ve resisted that. So the bottom line here is that the Chinese government is making it impossible for us to get a better read on how the virus arose. That is a major problem regardless because we need to understand how this pandemic happened, right? And it may have come from eleven, may come from a wet market, but if we have authoritarian governments controlling much of the world and hiding the information that allows us to do retrospective analysis that’s very dangerous going forward.
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And
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you know, we actually have a very unusual moment in American politics as you were talking about negative polarization and, you know, the hypertribalism of our politics in yet, the bipartisan sweet spot seems to be being tough on China. Right? I mean, there does seem to be at the moment. A bipartisan consensus that we should take a hard line with China. And this week, we’re gonna be seeing the first public hearings of the House select committee on China.
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And I’m gonna be very interested to watch that, you know, only in part because, you know, Wisconsin Congress when Mike Gallagher is the chairman. So Where does this go? Because China is making it clear that it is aligned with Russia on Ukraine. So, you know, that pact seems to be tightening at a time when the US China relationship seems to Longwell, deteriorating. What do you think?
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Where are we going?
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One of the interesting divisions that I think is emerging now inside the Republican Party for sure is, I don’t know whether to call it, lumbers versus splitters. So they’re talking here about Russia and China. Right? So there are a lot of Republicans who look at the situation in Ukraine, and they’re looking for a a wedge they can use against Biden. And their wedge they chosen is China is the real enemy.
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China is the real threat. We shouldn’t be wasting our time in Ukraine fighting the Russians. Right? The Russians, this is sort of Ron DeSantis why. Yeah.
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DeSantis basically said Russia is a third rate power. They can’t even take over Ukraine. We should worry about China. So that’s the idea of splitting them and focus on China. But there’s another camp that says that we should view Russia and China as a common problem.
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So in particular, we need to stand up to Putin in Ukraine because the number one thing that Xi Jinping is looking at right now in terms of aggression is does Putin succeed in Ukraine? If Putin takes a terrible beating in Ukraine and fails, right? That is chastening xi in terms of his ambitions for taking over Taiwan. So that if you want to stand up to China, one of the first things you need to do is to defeat Russia in Ukraine. It’s all part of the same package.
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I think that’s a persuasive argument.
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I think it’s a very persuasive argument. Okay. Let’s switch back to domestic politics. Last week, Donald Trump went to east Palestine in Ohio after the, you know, trained derailment. A story that has taken on a life of its own and become part of the culture war, Pete Buttigieg has been really kind of the main target for Republicans and the right for his alleged failures on all that he also visited East Palestine.
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Joe Biden did not, of course, because he was in Ukraine. So what do you make of this?
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And why a train derailment has become such a partisan flash Longwell, it’s captured. We were talking earlier about Scott Adams and the idea of victimization, particular white victimization. So
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this idea has sort of arisen on the right that the people of East Palestine, I mean, voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Right? And that this is sort of rural Ohio and it’s white America, and therefore, you know, the Democrats in Biden are neglecting it because they hate white people, etcetera. That’s the Tucker Carlson line. So it has cultural utility, political utility to the right in that respect.
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I do think that Biden should have gone there by now. Buttigieg should have gone there sooner than he did. But, Charlie, it’s really weird how the Republican position on this is you need to show up physically to show that you care but really not much else. Right? It’s not like the Republicans have some big solution to this.
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And one of the weird things to me about the whole East Palestinian question is, okay, it’s about rail safety and it’s about environmental disasters and cleanup. Both of these issues kind of play to the democrats. Democrats are the party of regulating the railroads. Democrats are the party about environmental protection and environmental cleanup. So I
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don’t understand how Republicans expect profit from this issue in the long run. Okay. But this is a really interesting point because this ought to be the Democrats issue. So why
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haven’t they made the point that you just made more forcefully? They’re starting to make it, but the problem is you know, we’re creatures of immediate. Right? And just showing up and showing that you care is kind of the first stage and Biden kind of flunked that. I mean, It would have been so easy.
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What you know, when we talk about Biden, Charlie, sometimes I wanna put my head in my hands. Here’s a guy who campaigned for president from his basement. He’s done so much of his political career without showing up. I mean, look to his credit. He went to Ukraine.
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And in the big picture, that’s way more important.
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And I’m willing to give it a, you know,
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yes, standing ovation here for that. But but, certainly, this is weirdly and I’m dating myself. This is reminding me of nineteen ninety one Longwell ago. And George h w Bush, the first Bush, you know, fighting in Desert Storm and the the Iraq war that everybody could agree on. And it didn’t matter because he had neglected America in the minds of so many people.
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And so even though he was doing the globally right thing, Nobody gave him any credit for that politically. So I wonder if the Democrats are just
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a little tone deaf here. Okay. Now that is a really, really good analogy, Will. You are not just another pretty face. That is really good.
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People need to be reminded that George H. W. Bush had what a ninety one percent approval rating a year before the nineteen ninety two election and he loses the election because you cannot be a hero internationally, globally and then the like domestic issues, the domestic issues will always trump the global issues. You know, I was thinking about, you know, gerald Ford here to all date myself. Do you remember when they rescued the Mayaguez?
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I’m probably mispronouncing it. They actually and people thought, well, that’s it. That’s Gerald Ford has has assured his reelection. Nobody remembered it in nineteen seventy six. They don’t remember those things if you screw up the domestic politics.
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Again, this train thing is so weird because this thing ought to be the gimme. Right? I mean, this is the case for better government infrastructure spending. Let me start right there. This is the argument for stronger safety regulations, environmental regulations, and yet for some reason, they’ve kinda gone quiet on it.
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I mean, Nellie Bowles, I quoted her a little bit earlier. I’d love her newsletter, by the way. She check it out. Is there something I’m missing here? Why did the train derailment get coded as so conservative that no one could talk about it?
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Why did the cameras have to be off? Why is it Michael Moore there? To me, this whole thing is it give me for the Democrats. Right? You know?
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It’s kind of a political mystery, isn’t it? Maybe
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they ceded this thing. This ought to be their issue. Charlie, can you imagine if Bill Clinton were still present in the United States, if him not going to Ohio, tell me, Bill Clinton would have looked at this and said, because he was such a political creature. Right? A campaign oriented person, he would have looked at this and said, you know, We’ve been having a lot of trouble in Ohio lately.
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I’m gonna take me and my whole freaking cabinet up there, and we’re gonna be the ones handing out water. It’s not gonna be Trump waters. Gonna be Clinton Water or whatever whatever he would have done. Right? And even if he didn’t have a solution for them, he would have been there.
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And instead what you have in Joe Biden is a guy who he just doesn’t have that. Look to his credit, Biden is trying to do the job. And the biggest job of the president of the United States right now is to hold together an international coalition against the the violation of sovereignty and democracy, but it wouldn’t have
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been that hard to show up. Okay. This is a really important point, Will. You cannot say that someone is a fantastically good president except that they are not communicating with the public or showing up because that is a fundamental part of the modern presidency. Right?
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I mean, you you cannot separate that. We have a very interesting provocative piece in the Bulwark today about Ukraine by Daniel FATA. I apologize by mispronouncing that. And he prases the administration for what it’s done with Ukraine holding together this coalition. I mean, he I think Biden deserves tremendously high points, but then he makes the point.
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While the Biden administration and Congress have continued to support Ukraine, the Biden administration has declined to engage the public both experts and average voters about what it will take for Ukraine to win the war and to maintain post war peace. I mean, there’s good reasons for sensitive conversations. You don’t happen in private. That’s what made last week’s visit so dramatic because it was such a public facing affirmation of his position. But there’s been no address to the nation yet Remember when presidents would have primetime oval office addresses and things like that, and he just hasn’t used the bully pulpit.
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And again, there are people who say, well, you know, now you’re just talking about PR versus the substance, to all be about substance. In modern American politics, substance and the communication of the substance are inextricably linked. You cannot decouple. Right? And and I think this is the problem you are speaking to.
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And it’s going to be a problem going twenty twenty four.
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You know,
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I mean, people need to be reminded twenty twenty was a very close election. And doubts about Joe Biden’s aid will continue to grow. Right. And, you know, stuff can happen. I mean, it’s just It it is — Right.
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— it is a it is a it is an issue. And this sort of I’m not going to prioritize showing up at domestic tragedies. Is I think might come back to haunt them. Just a thought. Yeah.
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So that we have a couple of things going on with Biden here. So one is we’ve talked about this before. Biden is just not a good talker. He’s he’s never been a particularly good talker. And as he gets older,
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he can be, he had
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a good state of the union. I give him that. That’s a prepared speech. That speech in Poland was pretty good. Right.
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But that goes to another point, Charlie, which is what if Joe Biden is a lot like George h w Bush in this respect? George h w Bush believed that his job was to be leader of the free world. He thought that was the most important. He was right he was right, and Biden thinks the same thing. And what if Biden just cares more about holding together the coalition — Oh, good.
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— in Ukraine than he does about? I mean, we talk about middle class but what if Biden actually thinks that’s the job? Even if we accept all of this about Biden, he does have an out standing talker on his team, a guy who happens to be the secretary of the Department of Transportation. And that is Pete Buttigieg. And I have seen Pete Buttigieg on TV making some of the points that you and I are saying should be made by the Biden administration.
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Why the hell wasn’t he in the East Palestine two weeks earlier, making those Do you
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have any idea what the answer to that question is?
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I do not know. It is somewhat baffling to me, and he’s he’s usually very good at this. I freaking love Pete Buttigieg. I think part of what I love about him is he’s so good on the actual substance of the issues. Maybe that in this case, he just failed to put the politics a little bit higher on his list of priorities.
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Okay. Longwell, you are so good today. I wanna read a piece from Will Saletan. Is Joe Biden George HW Bush? This is good stuff.
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I mean, really, when you start thinking about it in those terms, it gets a little bit difficult, doesn’t it? But where they can see the office, the contrast between success globally and more mixed record domestically, you make a really compelling point there. Well,
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you know, the the big mistake that George h w Bush made, of course, is that he won his war. Too quickly. Yeah. He pushed the Iraqis back out of Kuwait in no time. And by that, new people were like, they moved on to the next thing.
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Charlie, that’s like COVID. That’s like Biden coming in with the vaccines. And then everybody gets their scenes and COVID subsides and we’re like, okay, next thing, inflation. Who cares about COVID? Nobody gives the president credit for problems they solved.
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So if the Ukraine war is still going on, maybe that’s a little bit different from the George h w Bush nineteen ninety one scenario.
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Okay. So in the few minutes that we have left, we haven’t spent much time talking about the Republican race for president, mainly because it’s February of a year before the election, which I mean, at least remind people, like, it’s February the year before the election. But there’s a lot of maneuvering already. They’ve set the first debate for this August here in Milwaukee, which is interesting enough. And Rana Roni McDaniel was asked about loyalty pledges.
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And you know this whole issue of loyalty pledges, will you pledge to support the nominee no matter who it is. That was a big deal in twenty sixteen. It basically broke Ryan’s pre business soul, and it’s going to be an issue again this year. And, Rana, Romney, but Daniel was asked about this yesterday. Let’s play that.
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At the same time, what you hear somebody like Ace Hutchinson who is he’s no moderate. He’s a tried and true conservative Republican effectively saying is you would be asking him to put party over Oh, I don’t think see it that way. That may be how he sees it. I don’t see it that way. I think if the voters choose Donald Trump to be the nominee if they choose Mike Pence, if they choose Mike Pompeo or Asa Hutchinson, everybody should support the will of the voters.
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And we’re not gonna defeat Joe Biden if we get in this tip for tada I’m not going to support this nominee or not going to support this one. So that’s why we want to put this too badly. This is a pledge that’s been in existence. It was there in twenty sixteen.
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Yeah. And how did that work out for the republican party? Longwell, your thoughts about this. It is interesting that Mesa Hutchinson is one of those who were saying, yeah, I think the loyalty of this is not a good idea. It’ll be interesting to see how many other potential
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candidates gonna take that stamp. Intuitively, just if someone asks you to answer in five seconds, does this loyalty pledge make sense? The answer is yes. Like, well, of course, you’re running in this political party, whoever gets nominated, you should support them be part of the team. But then ask yourself the next question, which is if David Duke or Nick Fuentes or somebody like that ran for president Which they can?
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I’m a Republican. I’m running for president. And they win. They win the Republican nomination. Are you committed to supporting that person for president?
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Right? If the answer is yes, then please get out of my line of sight. I don’t want you anywhere near power. But if the answer is no, then you’ve already amended this this rule. Right?
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So I think asa Hutchinson is just fine to say, yes, I am part of the team. I’m running for this job within this party. I will support anyone. Accept someone who has attempted a coup against the United States of America. Right?
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That should be fine. It should be fine to draw a line against David Duke against Nick Fuentes and against Donald Trump.
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Well, this is one of the the issues that I discussed with Paul Ryan that people can be able to hear about later this week when Nias you were not never Trump, but you say that you were never again Trump. I mean, define the terms never, never again. And he said that he would not worked on Trump even if he was the nominee. But he stopped short of, you know, wanting to make the full throated argument that he is unfit for the reasons you you mentioned it. His whole argument is, well, it’s because we can’t win with him.
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The problem with the argument that I oppose Donald Trump because he can’t win is the moment he looks like he can win, your argument evaporates. If you refuse to make you know, the the key case that someone who was responsible for, you know, an attempted insurrection, you know, should never be anywhere near politics. But again, you know, people rationalize these things by saying, well, you know, this is the compelling argument. I’m gonna make this argument because I think this is what is going to move, you know, the Trump voters. I understand the the logic there.
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And yet, I don’t know that your ever going to move past Trumpism until you confront Trumpism. And that’s just I’m sorry my head’s starting to hurt again. Guys like Paul Ryan have, like, basically set themselves on fire within the Republican Party, and yet they’re not willing to take that next step. Saying I’m doing it on fundamental principle as opposed to simply a calculation of who wins and who doesn’t win. If you’re going to set yourself on fire, set yourself on fire for some fundamental principle.
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But, I guess, the habit of the Faustian bargain is just too deeply ingrained that once you’ve made all of these compromises, you’ve made all of these things because you believe in the tax cuts. And by the way, I asked them about what the tax that’s added to the deficit and all that stuff. But then it’s very hard to say, yes, that was a disaster. I was wrong to look the other way when all of that was going on. Because when I thought we were going to win, I was willing to swallow everything.
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But now that I don’t think we can win, now suddenly we’re gonna take a different position. You’re going to go that way. If you’re going to light the match, just you know, light
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the match for something. Right. What if Charlie Sykes if principal actually has political power. Mhmm. What if, you know, Vladimir Zelensky by standing up and saying, I will defend this country, I will defend democracy, you know, rallies the world in this country.
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To his side and changes the course of history. What if what if Republicans did what Roger Wicker did about Ukraine, but they did it about Trump. They said, you know, Well, look, here’s the principle. The principle is democracy and the rule of law. And anyone who tries to subvert democracy in the rule of law, I’m gonna stand up.
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What if that is Chainx had a a line of other people with Asa Hutchinson and Larry Hogan and a bunch of other people. I mean, if she doesn’t? No. She doesn’t. But I think that’s a numbers game.
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Charlie. I think that if more of these Republicans who know that Trump is evil would stand up and reject him for that reason and would even at the cost of the careers of a couple of them, I think that would start the ball roll. I
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think that that is an incredibly interesting question, but I will also tell you that the vast majority of Republicans apps we believe that standing up for principle is not good politics, that that, in fact, standing up for principle, we’ll get you basically a Liz Cheney like treatment. They look around and then there are these cautionary tales, you know, look at all of these people who stood on principle who are hanging from lampposts. Many people do need to hang from lamppost in order to stamp out to send not that many because everybody else looks at it and they’re all hanging around the lampposts out there. And so, you’re right. This is the question.
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The first person that stood up and said, you know, this is where I stand, this is what I believe and is rewarded for it, changes the dynamics, but it is deeply internalized on the part of Republicans, including the Nazi Republicans, that you basically commit political suicide if you stand on principle. Right? You’re reminding me now of the of that possibly
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apocryphal episode where Zelensky Longwell, it’s certainly true that the United States offered him a a ride out, you know, it will get you out of out of your country. And he decides to stay and fight. And what we have in the Republican Party is a lot of people who would take the ride out of town?
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Yes. Exactly. So what else do you keeping your eye on this week? What are you interested in?
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Well, I’m very interested in this China hearing. I’m really, really interested to see whether the Republican and Democratic parties, I saw that the the chairman and the ranking members, they were on TV together yesterday talking about this. And they were making all the right noises that this is gonna be a bipartisan operation. And we’re gonna stand up together against the Chinese Communist Party, but but it is really difficult to do that when you have so much of the Republican Party viewing China as an opportunity to stick it to the democrats politically. And I think it’s gonna be really hard for Gallagher to navigate that.
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I think you’re exactly right as you you really brought your a game today, Will. This is Mark’s the tape on this one. Will Saletan. Thank you so much for joining me this Monday. We’ll talk again a week from today.
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Thank you, Charlie Sykes 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 or something kind of like Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, an engineered and edited by Jason Brown.
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Former Navy SEAL Sean Ryan shares real stories from real people from hall walk of life on the Sean Ryan show. This
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one’s about my friend call sign ninja. So there
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was all these things that I wanted to do in army. He was like, this is it. An army do roads and air fields, and they say, well, they can test and see where you fall. I was like, yeah. But if I could do that and all this stuff too, drive tanks Chapada plan.
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