Will Saletan: Nice Little Democracy You Got There

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Welcome to the Bullework Podcast. It is Monday. I am Charlie Sykes. He is Will, Salitan, and of course, we’re both taking a break from watching the Queen’s funeral. My wife’s been up since I think three thirty watching the Queen’s funeral.

It is interesting. I don’t know. Well, anyway, first of all, happy Monday, Will. Thank you, Charlie. It is this bizarre kind of split screen where you’re watching all of this dignity and tradition in Britain.

You know, and I’m not necessarily a royalist, but watching all that. And the split screen of American Democratic curtage in no doubt. It’s just like, I you know, now I’m not gonna suggest that we rethink that whole independence thing. But the the experiment’s not looking great today is all I can say.

You know, it’s really funny because last night, I finally you know, I do everything years late. I just finally got to see Hamilton the show. And so there’s all this stuff in there. We’re obviously got King George taunting America saying you’ll be back with is truly relevant. No.

Well, hey,

congratulations catching up on Hamilton. I think that’s a I think it’s a great show. Okay. So I know that people would like to start off on a Monday, you know, with with the porridge, but I think we have to give them the we have to give them the spinach today a little bit. Yep.

Actually, it’s more like an eMedic. You know, stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Donald Trump’s rally over the weekend was just pure undiluted craziness. And I I write this morning, you know, this storm is coming for people who are like, oh, you know, how bad could it be? Or, you know, you know, he’s he’s done all the damage he could possibly do. Right?

Or if we could just if if we just ignored his mean tweet. So so here you have Trump retruthing. He doesn’t retweepies. He’s not on Twitter. He retruths an image of himself.

With this Q1 on slogan, the storm is coming for the picture himself, actually wearing a Q button. Now I I know that we’ll say, okay. He’s just trolling us and all of that, but then there are the rallies in the finger salutes and the music. The a AP story captures this. After winking a q and on for years, Donald Trump is overtly embracing the baseless conspiracy theory even as the number of frightening real world events linked to it grows.

New York Times tweeted out, Donald Trump appeared to more fully embrace queuing on on Saturday, playing a song at a rally in Ohio that prompted attendees to respond with a salute in reference to the cult like conspiracy theories theme song And I can’t really even capture the weirdness of this that Donald Trump is now having the somber music as he narrates his themes, did I mean, you heard this. Right? I mean, where he’s he’s he’s clearly reading his his speech, but but now he has he has like a background music. It’s like a soundtrack. He runs his own soundtrack during the rally.

And I have to give people just a little taste of this. Okay? A a taste of the weirdness and for, you know, there should be no doubt about it. This guy’s running for president again Republicans are probably going to nominate him again, so that’s why the storm is coming. So this is Donald Trump.

With his own personal soundtrack from Saturday night.

We are a nation that allowed Russia to devastate a country Ukraine killing hundreds of thousands of people, and it will only get worse. It would never have happened with me as your commander in and for four long years it didn’t happen. And China with Taiwan is next. We are a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political part like never ever before. We’ve got a federal bureau of investigation that won’t allow bad election changing facts to be presented to the public where Hunter Biden’s laptop was rushing to confirm a and when they knew it wasn’t, and a Department of Justice that refuses to investigate egregious acts evoting irregularities in fraud, and we have a president who is cognitively impaired.

And in no condition, to lead our country, which may end up in world war three. We’re a nation that no longer has a free press and has no fair press any longer. Fake news is all you get and they are truly the enemy of the people. We are a nation where free speech is no longer allowed, where crime is ramped it like never before, where the economy has been collapsing, where more people died of COVID in twenty twenty one than in twenty twenty. We are a nation that is allowing Iran to build a massive nuclear weapon in China to use the trillions of dollars it has taken from us to build a military to rival our own And just two years ago, we had Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, and all of the rest in check.

They weren’t going to do a thing against us, and everyone knows it. They respected the United States and they respected America.

Jesus, man, Joseph, I know he donkey, can we just move this thing along before it drives us all run the bloody band? So will I I I turned to you to explain what the fuck is with the music.

Charlie, can we get that music for the podcast? I I’d like to have that playing in the background while I’m saying something. Go for three. Can I can I play this in my own household? My wife and I are working out the grocery list.

Can we play that? I mean, he’s got it playing over every single thing he’s saying, most of which is, you know, ridiculous. I mean, it’s it’s not he’s not using it for dramatic effect. It’s just constantly there. It’s bizarre.

It’s completely bizarre. Into

his own TV commercial. It’s like it everything’s like TV show, and it’s like, okay. So I’m going to run an ad that will make people nostalgic for the good old days and and and and weep for the terrible fate that has befallen America. And I’m gonna use this theme from some hallmark movie that Melania was watching the other night. And it’s gonna make it so much better.

I just Okay. I’m sorry.

Yeah. So there’s the drama and the ego, right, and the the ridiculous pump. And but also sort of, has it been resolved yet whether this is literally Q and A music or or just I mean, in any event, what what I would just tell people who only hear the audio is while this is music is playing during the rally, the people in the audience are all raising their fingers in the queue and on salute. I mean, just lots of people in the crowd with the salute. So they clearly I think this is queuing on music.

In any event, it’s unmistakable If you are working for Trump, if you’re Trump, if you look out in the crowd, you can see that everybody is hearing this as a Q and ON signal. So it’s the music, but it’s also the signal the crazies that Trump sympathizes with the crazy?

Well, and and and, of course, this is all gonna get worse. I mean, the one symbol is that what is that slogan? You know, where where we go, when

we go

off? Yeah. Exactly. Where we go, and they they hold up one. Where we go, when we go all.

So this comes a week after the former president offered his not a very veiled warning against indicting him. He said, I don’t think the people in the United States would stand for it. I think if it happened. I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.

I heard a lot of people, you know, triggered by this saying, well, he’s trying to incite violence. I I I think, yes, there’s no question about that there’s that element. But it’s also, again, it’s this attempt at intimidation, this sort of low level mafia. So nice democracy you got there, be a pity if anything happened to it. And that’s the way, you know, Mago World sees it.

Right? I mean — Right. — and they sort of picked this up. I mean, the former acting attorney general under Trump, this guy named Matthew Whitaker, is on NewsMax. Saying that though there’d be mass chaos and energy if if they applied the rule of law to his former boss.

So, I mean, this this comes as as as Trump is ratcheting up the the threats of violence.

Yeah.

And in Trump’s case, it’s different from anyone else. And the reason is that January sixth happens. So, you know, for for any other politician to be talking about, oh, there’ll be violence in the streets or, you know, if there will be mass uprising or people won’t stand for it. You might look at that and say, hey, be careful because if you talk that way, there might be actual violence. In Trump’s case, you don’t have to you can skip that step because there already was actual violence incited by the president.

And it’s hilarious to hear Republican politicians deny that Trump intended the incitement when not only did he intended in the first place, but having witnessed it, having lived through and not done anything about it when it happened, on January sixth. He now goes out and repeats similar language, which he knows will trigger the same reaction. I

mean,

will it also events put this a little bit of context. I mean, this also comes at the same time we’re getting these reports from around the country, you know, that support for false action claims runs very, very deep in the twenty twenty two GOP field. Nearly one in three Republican candidates for state wide office to play role in overseeing certifying or defending elections supported overturning the results of the twenty twenty election. One in three Republican candidates and then the New York Times goes around the ask candidates who are on the ballot. Would you accept the result of the election?

And according to the New York Times, six Trump backed Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in battleground states would not commit to accepting this year’s election results. So, I mean, this has gone way beyond Donald Trump, and I guess we’re finding out what the downside of humoring him was. Right? Remember people were we’re suggesting that, hey, you know, what’s the harm? And just humoring him for a little while.

Well, I think we’re living in that world right now.

Yeah. And a lot of these politicians who were humoring him and who were parodying some of his, you know, BS about the the election. They think that they can say this stuff. It is innocuous, they he will gradually go away. They they will, in the meantime, have appeased him.

Charlie, he’s not going away, and this rally was different. From all prior rallies in my opinion because Trump said several times during this rally something he has not said to my knowledge before, at a rally, which is he was focusing again and again and again on his standing in the polls. Yeah. Not just relevant not just relative to Joe Biden, but relative to other Republicans who might run for president. So he he talks about being up eighteen points on Biden.

And then he talks about how I’m leading all the Republicans. The Republicans he says the Republicans are not doing well, meaning the Republicans who might run for president and he says this usual thing about we may have to run again and stay tuned, but that is different. Yeah. Yeah. And, of course, the Republican Party wants to keep Trump out of it.

They’re gonna send these signals to the election deniers and his supporters and help to get them out to the polls, but they don’t want Trump announce the president for the election because obviously that’ll scare the dickens out of Democrats and independents will show up to vote, you know, for the Democrats. But I view this rally as Trump essentially signaling that his campaign has begun. He’s not explicitly saying it. But when he talks about his standing in the primary, he’s signaling that he’s going. And if you are a voter out there who thinks you can stay home and don’t have to worry about Donald Trump, you you’ve just had your notice that you need to get out now.

Well, I also think that there’s, you know, it should be obvious by now that Republican officials are not going to stand up against Trump. They’re not gonna block Trump. They will rally around him no matter what he says. And you can see this in in what’s happening at at the state level. You have Kerry Lake who is an absolute nut job lunatic election and liar candidate running for governor in Arizona.

And I see now the Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin is hitting the trail for Republican candidates, and he’s going to be headlining one of the events in Arizona, you know, Doug Ducey, who’s been a Trump skeptical Republican. He’s he’s onboard. Other Republicans rallying around Doug Mastriano. I mean, when it comes right down to The incredible gravitational pull of party loyalty is so intense. And Trump is watching this And in the, you know, we’ve asked that stupid question, you know, over and over again.

It’s not a stupid question, but it feels now in retrospect. You know, what’s the red line? What will cause people to break with them? And the answer is absolutely nothing. And you’re seeing this at the state level where no matter how bizarre the conduct of the candidates is, the Republican Party still rallies around him.

They are still rallying around Hershel Walker. They are still rallying around, you know, people like

Blake Masters. That is such a great point. It’s like, I don’t know how to describe this. There’s sort of first order Trump there’s Trump himself denying the the twenty twenty election. Then there’s this sort of first order denialism coming from people like Cary Lake.

And I think, you know, Tudor Dixon is one of the same people. Right? Right. In Michigan, spread Michigan spreading this this stuff. Now we have this category of people who are sort of second order denied.

They’re not actually themselves denying the election. This is Glenn Youngkin, Ron DeSantis. But they’re out there. They’ve already committed to campaign for the Kerry Lakes and the Tudor Dickson’s and the Doug Mastrianos. And I don’t know exactly how we should view this except it is a form of cowardice and it is a form of promoting and and condoning and continuing the spread of this nonsense and this craziness inside the party.

Okay. One more little tidbit from the Trump rally over the weekend, which was in Ohio where obviously he is boosting the candidacy of his endorsed candidate for senate and J. D. Vance. There was this extraordinary moment where the former president of the United States gives the shout out to this grown ass man, JD Vance,

who

used to have his own career. It was a best selling author and this is what Donald Trump had to say. J.

D. Is kissing my ass. He watched my sequencer.

I’m

sorry. You know, the humiliation is the point. I mean, I suppose to go your JD bent and you’ve signed up to be the next Lindsey Graham. Right? This is what you expect.

But here you have him say, Judy Vance is kissing my ass. He just relishes it. He just says it. It’s just that d you know what? And JD is what?

He’s sitting there ducking his head. Yeah. That’s right. I used to have some pride. I used to have some dignity.

Yeah. But I wanna be a senator more than I wanna have any pride or have any dignity?

Yeah. Poor JD. You know, it’s really so sad. I mean, everybody who signs up with Trump at this point They know what they’re getting into. This is not a marriage.

This is a dominant, submissive relationship. The not that there’s anything wrong with that? Not that

It

is gonna be king. It is. You know, it is. Yeah. And so Trump gets off on this.

First of all, it’s now a filter. So the people who are sucking up to Trump like Nikki Haley, you’re you’re already signaling to everyone that you’re a coward. You’re I mean, it’s not just about Trump at this point. You’re signaling that you’ll set aside principles. You have no backbone.

You’ll degrade yourself. You and you want the degradation. You’re gonna get this J. D. V.vance treatment.

But, you know, the other thing is on Trump’s side, this is just more of a signal that it’s all about him. Right? It’s not about the party. It’s not he’s sucking up all the money. He’s out degrading the candidates at that rally.

He’s again bashing Mitch McConnell. He’s campaigning for J. D. Vance. And in the course of the rally, telling J.

D. Vance at the microphone, I want you to stick it to Mitch McConnell. So he’s destroying the part well, he’s not destroying he’s tearing at the party even as he’s pretending to support it.

So I wanna come back to Lindsay Graham in just a moment and get your thoughts about because I know you’ve been working on a piece on Lindsay Graham. You’ve written extensively about abortion, and of course Lindsay stepped in at last week. But but let’s take a moment to to focus on the would be successors to Donald Trump, the whole Iran DeSantis stunned with with sending some of the asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard. It I I don’t I I go back and forth on Maureen Dow. I’m you know, but she had a great column over the weekend.

Said Donald Trump will be remembered for many things. He injected absentities into the New York Times’s White House coverage. He turned conspiracy theory into Republican orthodoxy. And he cut out the middle man on ugliness, happily doing the political wet work himself. And then he goes on to say, you know, it used to be that you’d you’d you’d have a hit man like Lehigh Atwater who would do the, you know, the the the dirty tricks.

Trump dispensed with the idea that the candidate was above it all. He was excited to show that he was beneath it all, the naked ead of the Republican Party. And his soulless followers like Rhonda Santis and Greg Abbott, are happy to mud wrestle and perform this all as well. So, yeah, no, there’ve been a lot of discussion about what Miranda Santos did. I think it’s safe to say though that Republicans and the conservative media is all in behind his that’s exposed the hypocrisy of the liberal elites.

Let’s stick it to the blue states. This is just an epic troll. They love this. Even though and I wanna come back to this, these are not illegal immigrants. They are asylum seekers.

But I thought an immigration wearing a racial self. Who’s representing some of these folks. Really put this in some context. Let’s play a little sound bite from. This is immigration where Rachel self of from Martha’s Vineyard talking about what Ron DeSantis did with this group of fifty migrants who we put on an airplane and dropped off in Martha’s vineyard last week.

Accounts from

the migrants who arrived last night make it clear that they relied to again AND AGAIN. AND FRAUDULINGLY ENDUSED TO BOARD THE PLANEES. THEY WERE TOLD THERE WAS A SURPRISE PRESENT FOR THEM. AND THAT THERE WOULD BE JOBS AND HOUSING AWAYING FOR THEM WHEN THEY ARRIVED. THIS WAS OBVIOUSLY A SAGISTIC LINE.

NOT ONLY DID THOSE CONSIBLE FOR THIS STUN KNOW THAT THERE WAS NO HOUSING AND NO EMPLOYMENT AWATING THE MIGRANTS. THEY ALSO VERY INTENTIONALLY CHOSE not to call ahead to any single office authority on Marcus Vineyard so that even the most basic human needs arrangements could be made. Ensuring that no help awaited the migrants at all was the entire point.

So, Will, a sadistic lie. I think that

that cuts through a lot of this. K? This topic to me is enormously complicated. Parts of it are not complicated, but as a whole, it is complicated. I am extremely sympathetic actually to the concern that propelled this.

That is to say, we do have unsecured border. We do have, like, two million people coming across it on an annual basis. It is out of control. Liberals generally are outside of these states are not paying attention to it. And there is every reason for the governors and the people of these states to say, hey, we need to share this burden, and some of the burden is being shared already.

Having said that, they have a well founded concern about redistributing the burden. This is not the way to do it. And furthermore, the way in which Abbot and DeSantis have done this is deeply, deeply immoral. It is a kind of human trafficking for the reason that this lawyer illuminated they lied to these people. They treated them the way the coyotes treated them.

They told them something was waiting for them that wasn’t. In some cases, they put them on buses with not enough food, with no access to medical care, and some of them are COVID positive. These are This is endangered endangered the people. When coyotes do this, we call it human trafficking.

So while

I am while I agree with him about the underlying problem, I am deeply disturbed about the way that this was done. Well,

I agree with you on this. And again, bear with me for a second here. People need to under you know, why this has been effective as a PR stunt because it does highlight a legitimate concern. It is a legitimate concern to talk about the border. It is a legitimate concern to talk about the the question of who should have to share in the burden of handling these people.

I would point out though that I that it is crucial to note and not enough people have made this point. My understanding, tell me if I’m wrong about this. Is these are not illegal immigrants. These are asylum seekers, which means they are here legally. They are people who presented themselves at the border.

Have not had their asylum requests denied. These were people fleeing a communist stick government, if not a communist government in Venezuela. But again, there is a legitimate issue here. But you’re right. I mean, there there’s something deeply immoral about using human actual human beings, including children as props.

But it is precisely the immorality that seems to have excited so many Republicans, including many conservative or anti Trump who nevertheless think of this as, oh, this is a coup. Oh, this is a great PR thing. Because it’s all about the winning. It’s all about the narrative. It’s all about the LOLs.

And so Rhonda Sanders knows exactly what he’s doing. And has decided that I will allow no one to be more cruel than than I in order to be the very clear heir apparent if anything happens to the Orange God King.

Yeah. Yeah. And to your point, first of all, Charlie, about the illegal immigrants, it is true. These people are asylum seekers. In fact, I believe it would be a violation of the law for Abbott and DeSantis to go get people who are illegally here.

And ship them within the United States knowing that they are illegal. So they had to be asylum seekers legally. As to the larger point, This issue is one of those places where we are seeing the void that is created by the absence of a serious conservative party. Right? You can imagine a serious Republican party saying, you know what?

The Liberals are not taking border security seriously enough. This all this burden is falling on those border communities. We have to redistribute it. Right? And then they might go about it in a more sensible way.

First of all, you would tell the communities where you would consult the places you’re sending it to you would work this out with the federal government instead of just dumping these people in a place, like out in front of the vice president’s residence which is what they did, a place where obviously that this is no good for the humans that you just put on the buses. But a serious republican party would do that. Instead, we get this stuff that is designed to own the lips. And the people who suffer for it are the migrants themselves who are being sent to a place where they don’t in fact have food clothing shelter waiting for them. Okay.

So let’s switch gears a bit because I wanna spend a little bit of time talking about the get the abortion issue and and what happened last week. Earlier in the week, it looked like Republicans it it it finally it had finally dawned on Republicans that the abortion issue was not working well for them. There was a Fox News poll showing that virtually two to one that American voters disapproved of the supreme court decision overturning Roe versus Wade. And and there’s a lot of data, a lot of reports, a lot of anecdotal reports suggesting that this issue was was hurting Republicans with Republican voters, with independent voters, aimed at it was mobilizing Democratic voters. It certainly seemed as if the mood had changed on Capitol Hill not to push ahead with a national ban, not to try to nationalize the abortion issue.

And then you’re good friend Lindsey Graham. Steps up to the podium and proposes wait. No. No. I propose a nationwide fifteen week ban with exceptions for rape and incest and the health of the mother.

And almost every other Republican regarded that as kind of this massive turd in the punch bowl. So what was what was Graham trying to do, do you think? What was he thinking?

Charlie, if all other explanations fail, I’m gonna go with since severity. Yeah. Okay. I think Lindsay Graham believes that, you know, we need to save the babies as from his point of view. And he’s gonna save them any way he can.

And he’s not gonna do what is the politically sensible. He does think that he has a sensible political strategy. He doesn’t. But to his credit, he says, I’m not gonna worry about the electoral consequences. This is an important cause.

And this is why we’re elected to do the things we believe are important. So I think that’s what’s going on in his

head. I don’t disagree with that, but also It seemed to me that one of his calculations certainly might have been that he saw the way that Republicans were increasingly being seen as streamest on this issue and state after state, they’re passing these, you know, close to absolute bands of West Virginia being the latest, you know, some of them being you know, at at conception or six weeks. And that he might have thought that he was presenting a more moderate alternative because as you and I have discussed, fifteen week bands pull much, much, much better than the absolute bands. And also, he wanted to include the exceptions. So as part of his thinking, was it that I’m actually going to try to come up with a national moderate alternative to what’s been happening at the state level?

Yes. Yes. The answer, Charlie, is you’ve exactly described what he’s trying to do. Lindsey Graham thinks.

He thinks

that what he’s setting up is a contrast. Between a democratic position of abortion up till the ninth month, whatever, which is not true. But let’s say twenty four weeks the row standard, okay, or the third trimester versus his standard of fifteen weeks. He thinks the debate is between, you know, fifteen weeks and twenty four or whatever weeks. That is a misunderstanding of the many many complexities of this issue.

He’s introduced into it. You know, what he’s done is he’s federalized the pro life position in a way that Mike Pence was already doing, but this sort of underscores it. And the democrats are all over it. They love for this to be federalized on the right because then they can be the party that says, you know, we’re for your local control. Okay.

So

let’s talk about this. A state rights issue because this seemed to be a flip flop on Lindsey Graham’s part and he was he was confronted about this last week and I wanted play a clip of this as as he tries to explain, you know, what his position used to be and whether or not he’s changed his position. So this is a little bit more extended clip of Lindsay Graham defending himself against charges that he had reversed himself from his previous position that this should be a state’s rights issue. Play that. Let me

get you to this. This is what you said back in June. This is around the time that the Supreme Court was getting ready to overturn Roe v Wade, which you guys had argued for to send it back to the states. There’s what you said.

There’s

nothing in the constitution that creates a right to abortion as a constitutional principle. This was judge made out of law Now what this court has done is taken us back to pre nineteen seventy three where each state can decide through their elected official shows when life begins and how to treat treat

life. You’ve got to

explain the pivot. Okay. Number

one, if you know anything about me, Shannon, for twenty years, I’ve been so HORTING FEDERAL LEGISLATION BANNING LATE TERM ABORTION. BUT YOU SAID THERE

ARE STATES TO MAKE THESE DECISIONS. THE

STATES, HERE’S WHAT DOP SAYS, ELECTED OFFICIALS. Can make the decision. State or federal. I’m not inconsistent. In twenty twenty, I had a bill on the floor of the United States Senate.

Sent it right across the capital that banned abortion at twenty weeks because the baby can feel pain. I had fifty one Republicans voting with me and two Democrats to suggest that I’m new to the game, opposing late term, abortion is ridiculous.

No one’s averse.

Listen. I was the author of the unborn victims of violence that that made it a crime to hurt a baby. If you attack the mother, you’d be charged with two crimes. If you attack a mother and you hurt the baby, It passed seventy two votes in the United States Senate. I never suggested there’s no place for the unborn in Washington DC.

If you tell the pro life movement that we’re out of business in the nation’s capital, that we can’t set some minimum national standard prevent Chinese abortion policy in Maryland or California, they’ll be revoked by the pro life community. Okay. The people with me, what am I saying? I will not sit on the sidelines and watch this nation become China when it comes to boarding babies up to the moment of birth I reject that. I will continue to introduce legislation at the national level setting a minimum standard.

Okay. At fifteen weeks, no abortion except for life. Rape say the life of the mother, rape and sex. Yes. Okay.

So, Will, break that down for me.

Okay. This clip that we just played is just crystallizes so many problems for the Republican Party that Lindsey Graham is introducing into this issue. First of all, the the party’s position about Roe versus Wade. And after the fall of Roe versus Wade was, we’re the state’s rights party. We’re the party that lets you it’s essentially a pro choice argument, Charlie.

It’s your state can choose how to regulate

abortion. Lindsay

Graham’s taking that away. He’s saying, you know what? Dobbs, the overturning a vote, was not about state’s rights. It was about taking this away from judges and giving it to as he puts it in that, quote, elected officials. In other words, politicians, you and I both know, Charlie — Mhmm.

— telling it’s telling voters that we want politicians to choose to decide how your life has lived. Certainly, federal politicians. Yeah.

It’s a

losing position. Right? And he says, I support federal legislation. Second thing he says in that quote, he says he talks about this bill he had in twenty twenty that was a twenty week ban. So now he’s got a fifteen week ban.

So the signal is we’re not stopping at fifteen weeks. I was at twenty, then I’m at fifteen, we got states where we’re pushing eight, we’re going to go to zero, So the whole slippery slope comes into play. Third thing, he says, about a minimum he says this will be a minimum national standard. Another signal that they want to go further. They’re just starting at fifteen weeks for now.

And the fourth thing is, I don’t think you said it in that clip in this interview, he talks about the fourteenth amendment. The fourteenth amendment is the pro basis that pro lifers have for saying, unborn babies are human beings. They are persons. And they have to be protected like other persons. That principle, fourteenth amendment, does not allow for stopping in fifteen weeks.

If you are a fourteenth amendment, pro lifer as Lindsay Graham is. That is a signal that you are want to ban all abortions starting at conception.

So how

is this playing out right now on Capitol Hill? I I was struck by the fact that senator Mike Rounds, who is a Republican from is it South Dakota? Yep. I’m always gonna get the Dakota’s wrong. I’m I I apologize in advance.

I don’t mean to offend you Dakota and listeners and everything. But, yeah, for from from South Dakota, he was asked yesterday. So what do you think? And his again, rounds is very, very conservative, very, very, you know, pro pro life. They he was at, well, what do you think about the Lindigram’s idea to have this this national ban?

Here’s what Mike Brown’s had to say. Do you support the bill? No, I think

right now, we should allow the states to explore the different possibilities about the appropriate way. But at this point, to have Congress step back in and to tell all of the states that we know better than them, how to handle this is probably not the right direction to go.

So pretty much dead on arrival at the at at the moment. What do you think?

Yeah. That well, that’s the message. I mean, during this interview Shannon Bream said to Lindsey Graham, you don’t have the votes. You can’t pass this. And the reason is Mitch McConnell already said last week, you know, my members don’t want a federal solution because Charlie, you and I both know that the one thing that all politicians can agree on about abortion, certainly on the pro life side, is that they largely don’t wanna touch it.

They don’t wanna be responsible for this issue. They’d rather punt it to somebody else. So the senators want this to be handled at the state level so that they don’t have to handle it. And what Lindsey Graham is saying is no, you are gonna have to handle it. And Charlie, in this interview, he not only said that, he was talking on Fox News to pro life citizens and saying, don’t accept this from these Republican senators hold their feet to the fire.

So in an election year, he is telling the people who are most exercised about this issue to put more pressure on the Republican Party to take what is according to polls on unpopular position. Well,

I

I still think that if in fact Republicans were to get control of the senate and of the house that they would vote on a ban like this and they would pass something like this. The big question on my mind is how divided will pro lifers be about this? You know, Graham, in that in that sound but he’s actually talking about the possibility of pro life a revolt that that he feels that, you know, pro lifers are feeling this this incredible momentum. Would they be even be willing to accept a fifteen week ban. I I’m not sure they are.

I’m not sure that you would get the militant pro lifers to accept a fifteen week band with exceptions for rape and the health of the mother or the life of the mother. At this point, you’re seeing that kind of split at the state level already. Aren’t we? Yeah.

Well,

in Graham’s case, in his defense politically, there you know, he did a press conference last week about this bill. And the pro life organizations were there with him, and they they signed on to it because pro lifers have generally been sensible about, you know, let’s have some legislation that we can pass. And as you point out, fifteen weeks is a popular enough position that if they could just make the issue about the fifteen weeks that would work. So the pro life groups are there with him. The pro life voters may be not so, but Charlie, I think the big problem is not pro life groups and whether they will tolerate this.

It is the pro choice voters. And it’s the signal that Graham is sending because we’re, you know, you’re you’re coming up on the election. And if you are a Republican politician, you want all the voters who are unhappy with inflation and crime and all these other issues. To come out and vote against the democrats, and you want all of the voters who are afraid of abortion bans to stay home. And what Lindsey Graham is doing with this is telling all those voters We are gunning for you.

We are coming for you. And that if you wanna stop this, if you wanna protect abortion rights, even if you wanna protect your own state’s right. To decide what your abortion laws will be, you’re gonna have to come out to the polls and stop me and McConnell and the other Republicans from banning it federally. Yes.

I think that’s the way it’s been playing out around the country. There’s no question about it. So why did Lindsey Graham decide take the lead? And why was he the only senator at that press conference? It’s a good question.

I didn’t think

to ask that at the time when you only have one senator doing there have been other press conferences where Graham has done abortion bills with multiple senators. They didn’t show up on this occasion. The the simplest answer would be that Mitch McConnell already said that Republican senators have conferred about this, decided they don’t wanna do it. So there’s a split emerging between Graham and McConnell. And you you and I know that this has there’s been a split between Graham and McConnell over Trump himself Right?

McConnell trying to maintain more distance and Graham putting the heat on him to have as Graham puts it, a better working relationship with Trump. And now Graham is adding to that pressure on McConnell and his colleagues to be more extreme on abortion, to be to federalize the issue. So Yeah. I think the simplest answer is it’s not smart to do this, and so Lindsay Graham is doing it because he believes in it.

Alright. So let me tell

you something I’ve been thinking about. I wanted to get your your take on it as well. After the last couple of of election cycles in which we’ve seen the polling failures. I guess I’m inclined to not obsess over, you know, daily tracking polls to take all the polls that I’m seeing with the grain of of salt. And and I and I say this is somebody that normally at this point during the the election cycle would be including in my newsletter, the latest NBC poll, the latest New York Times, Seattle poll, the latest Emerson poll, or Trafalgar poll, or Echelon poll, or whatever.

And yet, I’m I’m now so skeptical of the polling that that I’m I’m kind of pulling back a little bit sort of like you know, thinking that the healthiest patients are not the ones who sit and look at the heart rate monitor every single day. So Tell me how you were thinking about the polls right now. I mean, I I I think it is safe to discount these summer polls to also take the polls of registered voters with a grain of salt. Now we’re moving into a period. We’re getting closer to the election.

We’re also seeing pulls that are higher quality, that focus on likely voters as opposed to, you know, all adults and everything like this. So how are you looking at the polls these days?

Well, first of all,

I just wanna point out that all the polls are moving, and you just point you you just named some of them, including the Fox News pull, which is a very good poll. All the polls have been moving in the direction of Biden and the Democrats. Not enough, but they’ve been moving in that direction. So I think there’s some consensus in that, including some of the polls that are designed to overcome bias. The example would be, let’s take your state, let’s take Wisconsin.

So I was looking at polling in Wisconsin over the last week or two. Things can’t get a lot worse for Mandela Barnes, the Democratic nominee, but he He’s all.

So you you have faith because you

and, Charlie, since you know the state, I defer to you on this. However, I looked at the polls in Wisconsin and I’d like really Matt Barnes is up in all the polls. Do I trust that? And then I noticed that one of them was the Trafalgar poll, which is a poll, you know, by a guy who’s like, it’s he was the guy who said, don’t trust the other polls. My poll is designed to take account of Trump voters who are not showing up in the other polls.

Right? And his poll also showed Barnes Up. So I took that as a sign that some polls can be relied on and when there’s a consensus of all the polls. Yeah, I I guess I’m willing to take him seriously. Well,

except that Johnson’s ahead in the Market University law poll, which is considered the most reliable poll in

Wisconsin. Right. The

the most right. He’s he’s now one of the head and — Yeah. — and

I agree

with you that I think think but but as an index, I think the polls, first of all, they’re useful to us. Right? And discerning movement. I think everyone can agree the movement has been in the Democratic direction. And then the question is, how many, you know, Trump voters are still not showing up?

And the other thing, Charlie, is POOLING error varies from election to election, and pollsters try to compensate in between by changing the way they do their samples and their weighting and all that stuff. So I think every cycle we have to look backward and see, you know, what what we got right or wrong, it’s entirely possible that there is pulling error this year and that it’s going in the other direction.

So sort of, like, a kind of way to that is Josh Cashour and Axios is reporting this morning Democrats’ midterm reality check. And he’s pointing out, you know, after Democrat surge in political momentum over the summer, there are new signs indicating the midterm environment is tilting back in the GOP’s direction. It matters because Republicans are not likely to ride in the historic wave to power, but they are well positioned to comfortably win back the house comfortably and are on a sure footing than just weeks ago to net the one seat necessary to capture a narrow senate majority. And he’s looking at things like, you know, Inflation is not slowing down. Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is actually opposed by a lot of Democrats, especially in swing states, Republicans, hold momentum in several key senate races.

He says, this is crash hour, most notably in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Now I’m very skeptical about Georgia, and I still think that doctor Oz is going to, you know, underperform. But clearly, they’re getting a little bit more footing, you know, in in Pennsylvania. Oz is pressuring John Federman to debate. And of course, there are questions about Federman’s health.

I have to tell you that here in Wisconsin, you have this Market University law poll suggesting that the this massive ad blitz painting Mandela Barnes’s soft on crime is working. Johnson has closed a seven point deficit within a a month. But, you know, we’ll see how that plays out. I guess that’s why, you know, you you would think that by this point, you’d have a much clearer view of of all of it. But I I just I just have a lot of questions about these various cross currents.

I saw that political playbook suggested that instead of a wave that you might have waves, differing waves in different parts of the country with different segments of the electorate. But it’s very very confusing for me at this at this point. Yeah.

I don’t believe in in waves, plural elections, either there’s a wave or there isn’t. And if there’s a diversity of results, that’s not a wave, but it can still benefit the Republican Party. You know, I think there are cases like in Wisconsin where you can argue that there is an underlying vulnerability in say Mandela Barnes that has not yet been exploited. And now there are pointing it and now we’ll see the real terrain materialize after that. So you can I don’t think that’s true in a state like Pennsylvania.

It might be true in Georgia because of the electorate, but we saw that Biden won that state. And so Georgia isn’t what we what we used to think. To me, the million dollar question is, to what extent can the Republican Party nationalize these races? Right? If there’s a bad environment, generally, people unhappy with inflation, unhappy with the economy, can they do that?

Because, you know, the candidates obviously are bad on the Republican side. They’re just not. They could have found much better candidates if they were a sane party. Running against a relatively unpopular administration. So if they can nationalize it, yes, there will be a wave.

But I’m not so sure, especially in those senate races. I gotta disagree with Josh here. I’m not so sure that in a senate race, the national mood is strong enough to overcome the the really, really poor quality of some of these candidates like Hershel Walker. And also there there is going back to

where we started. The Trump factor if Democrats want to nationalize this campaign, they can use Trump as as a rallying cry. Because normally, the the party in power, it would be a referendum on their president. This may be different. And every once in a while, there are different midterm elections.

And they’re very rarely seen in advance. You know, for example, in two thousand and two, Republicans were expected to lose seats. They picked up seats because of the fallout from from nine eleven. Nineteen ninety eight was supposed to be a disaster year for the Democrats with all of Bill Clinton’s problems, and they did relatively well as part of a backlash. So, you know, every once in a while, the the conventional wisdom has some catch up to do after the results are in.

Then we’ll

say Yeah. Yeah. And as to waves that didn’t happen, I think you’re making a really good point about the years when the wave didn’t materialize and it should have. Let’s go back for a second to Georgia, the Georgia runoffs in twenty twenty one right before January sixth. Normally, what should happen is Joe Biden is coming in.

The Democratic party is coming in. They have the presidency. They will have the presidency. You should be able as the republican party to run as the out party. What they’re doing now in the, like, midterms, right, and win, and especially in a state like Georgia.

What happened was Donald Trump made himself the story for those weeks denying the election threatening to stay and all that stuff. And so I think that undercut the Republican Party’s attempt to run as the out party and they lost those two seats. Charlie, that could happen again on a larger scale in this election. Trump signals that he’s running again. Democrats are scared of him.

They turn out to vote like they did in Georgia. Yeah. I mean,

I I think that’s certainly that is certainly possible. And again, as Mitch McConnell has pointed out, candidate quality actually matters. Anything else you’re keeping an eye on this week. Well, I wanted to just add something about

that, you know, Joe O’Dea, the Republic of Nominee for Senate in Colorado. Was on one of the Sunday shows. I can’t even remember which one. And here’s a guy who is not a Trumper. Right?

Who’s trying to model how Republicans could run you know, and and win the center of the electorate. And he’s being asked questions about Trump they’re playing clips of Trump saying crazy stuff about pardoning the January sixth defendants and that kind of thing. And he’s having to answer questions about this. To me, that is an illustration of the the what a burden Trump is still to his party as they’re trying to, you know, as they’re trying to win these seats in the midterms. Well, and also the fact that a

lot of these candidates continue to feel that they are held hostage by the most extreme elements of the party. And, you know, again, I I think that Ron Johnson is likely to win, but I wrote a piece over the weekend. About his very strange inelegant flip flop on gay marriage. Legalized same sex marriage is overwhelmingly popular here in Wisconsin. Seventy two percent of the voters are in favor of it, including fifty eight percent of Republicans.

So even Republicans are okay with legalized same sex marriage. And you’d hear you have Ron Johnson in a general election pivoting flip flopping to come out against gay marriage because he doesn’t want to antagonize this very loud extreme element of the social conservators. That’s pretty much the opposite of what you normally see in a political season where hot candidates try to move toward the center in the general election or certainly if they’re going to flip flop flip flop from unpopular positions, to popular positions, and Johnson’s doing the opposite. But again, this is part of the dynamic. Everyone’s afraid of moving too far off that rabbit base.

And so you’re seeing it again. And again, by the way, Rhonda Santos was in my home state of Wisconsin last night. Kim, meaning for Republicans? He said you if Tim Michaels during Wisconsin is elected Wisconsin will follow the Florida model. I’m not sure that’s the aspiration of most Wisconsinized.

But in attendance at at the at the rally, Michael Gabelman the former supreme court justice who has been fired by fellow Republicans after conducting this bogus election denying, you know, clown curve and investigation. The guy has completely discredited. He’s gone completely Trumpist, you know, decertified the election. And the the assembly speaker actually canned him because of this. And yet he’s still showing up as a fixture fixture at Republican rallies.

So they’re not able to police the, you know, far reaches of of the party in any way. Yeah. The politicians

the Republican politicians are playing to their what they think of as their base, which is the Trump base. So they they think that they can’t go too far in this direction. They won’t actually get punished for it. And they’re not gonna change till that happens. What you said about Johnson and same sex marriage is really interesting to me because that is an issue where Republican politicians you know, you get you get this mindset as a politician.

This is this issue was a winner. This issue was a loser. My party likes this issue. They hate that issue. And sometimes, you’re just behind the times.

And if you look at I did this piece in the Bulwark last week. If you look at polling on same sex marriage, that is now by many indices, support for same sex marriage is now a majority or a plurality position within the Republican Party. I mean, the Republican electorate itself has sort of said, you know what? This isn’t hurting anybody. Maybe I don’t I wouldn’t do it, but, you know, it’s fine, and it’s just not like abortion.

And politicians like Johnson who are think that they are gaining even within their party by taking a stand against same sex marriage are making a political mistake in addition to a moral mistake.

Well, always good to talk with you. I know you’ll be off next Monday, so we’ll talk again in about two weeks. Okay? Great. Thanks, Charlie.

The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Seres. I’m Charlie Sykes. Thank you for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. We’ll be back tomorrow. We’ll do this all over again.

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