Will Saletan: Shrugging in the Face of Threats of Violence

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Thanks. Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. Happy Monday. Hey, before we get started with my colleague, Will Saladin, just a point of personal privilege.

I wanna tell you about an event that we have scheduled. I just get the sense that people are really ready for in person events after the the long shutdown. So put this date on your calendar October twentieth for an evening of politics prognostication, maybe a few laughs, maybe a few tears, we are going to be holding an event in Washington, D. C. That will include not just a live taping of this podcast with a special guest, but also a special pre election panel with Tim Miller Sarah Longwell and Amanda Carpenter, Bulwark founder and MC Bill Crystal is gonna kick off the evening around seven thirty.

And then we will have the live taping of this podcast in person. And then Amanda Tim and Sarah will take the stage to hash out what we know, what we don’t know. About the races, the national and local races that are coming up in a couple of weeks. The doors will open at seven o’clock. Plan to stick around after the program to meet fellow Bulwark members, staffers, and friends have to tell you tickets are going very, very fast to this event.

They aren’t limited. So I would strongly urge the loyal listener to this podcast to sign up today. So it is finally fall Will Salitan. Welcome back. Thank you, Charlie.

It is cold here too, finally. I am glad to hear that. Okay. So I am asked about a number of things including the useful idiots of CPAC, which normally would lead off my my news my podcast. Except that I I think you just need to take a deep breath and talk about that moronic, semi literate, bigoted truth social post from the president.

And I know this seems like same old same old. And I do struggle with it. I mean, I know a lot of people go, oh, come on. Another Trump tweet, are you really gonna be talking about that? I mean, really, same old same old.

This is old news. But I do think that given the fact that we’re talking about the former president of the United States who is and you could disagree with me, the prohibitive favorite to be the Republican nominee for president in twenty twenty four, it’s worth noting that you have Trump from Mar a Lago putting out a statement that can certainly be interpreted as a death threat against Mitch McConnell, and there’s no ambiguity about the the racist slur against his wife, Elaine Chao, who he calls Coco Chao. So, what are your thoughts about this will? I mean, I understand people are going to go, you know, you guys, you have Trump derangement syndrome. When the only derangement is the inability to call him out and the belief that

yeah, but you know, you know, at least we got tax cuts and judges from this guy. Yeah. I mean, the numbing is a problem, but the numbing, it’s not it’s not that we should ignore this. Because it’s the hundredth time he did it. It’s that we should pay more attention because it’s the hundredth it’s the thousandth time he did it.

Let’s be honest. And and because his party won’t stand up to it, it it’s the fact that Republican elites ignore this. In my opinion, actually a bigger issue and the fact that Trump is a racist, which we have known for some time. I mean, let’s be super clear about Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a racist.

It’s not a racist in some sort of fancy Berkeley Harvard, you know, hyper definition of racist. And this is old fashioned racism. So in this, I don’t know, what do you call it a tweet, a non tweet, a truth social post, he he calls Alain Chow mister McConnell’s wife. McDonald’s transformer cabinet secretary. His China loving wife, Coco Chow, spelled c h o

w. Case that was and and by the way, this is the second time last week that he referred to as Coco. He put out a people didn’t notice when he actually linked to an this screed from the federalist implying, you know, Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao, China, etcetera. And he pushes this out earlier in the week and called her cocoa. So he felt the need.

Apparently, he didn’t get enough buzz out of that that attack. So he had to do the, you know, death wish you have been getth wish in your China loving cocoa chao wife, you know? Then here we are.

Yeah. I mean, this would be the equivalent. Just just for folks who are not Asian American and maybe don’t identify with this. I’m Jewish. This is the equivalent of would be equivalent of Trump, you know, saying about Jared Kushner, you know, Jaime Kushner and his Israel Loving, whatever.

I mean, Kevin? That’s that level of ethnic bigotry. It is. And but your other point, I think, is is in Horton. There’s a

certain point in which you go, okay, Trump is Trump, and he’s been Trump for twenty, thirty years. We we know all of that. The more extraordinary thing is the complete unwillingness slashing ability of Republicans to push back against them. So can we just talk about the and this was on display yesterday. The unbearable likeness of Rick’s Scott, who is important to put him in some context, he’s actually heading up the senate republican campaign committee.

So in theory, he is an ally of Mitch McConnell. They’re in the middle of this tensely fought fight over control of the senate. He is the guy in charge of the Republican senate campaign committee. And he was on multiple shows yesterday, and he was given numerous opportunities to push back against this, to distance himself against it, and he whipped every single time. Margaret Bren did an absolutely outstanding job on Face the Nation.

He was also on CNN with Dana bash, and here’s a little bit of his ducking and dodging.

Senator, I know you’re understandably very focused on what is happening in your state of Florida. But I have to ask you about what appears to be A THREAT BY FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP AGAINST YOUR COLLEAGUE, SENATE REPUBLICAN LEADER MICH MCCONNAL. Trump said, quote, he has a death wish for supporting Democratic sponsored bills. He also mocked McConnell’s wife and his own former transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, as, quote, China loving and cocoa chao. You’re a member of the Senate GOP leadership.

Are you okay with this?

Well, Doug, I I can never talk about didn’t respond to why anybody else says what they said. But here’s what is the way I looked at it is I think, you know, what the president is saying is, you know, we’ve there’s been a lot of money spent over the last two years. We’ve got to make sure we don’t keep caving to Democrats. This caused an unbelievable inflation and causing more and more debt. As you know, know, the president likes likes to get people nicknames, so you can ask him how he came up with the nickname.

Trey has a nickname for me.

And this

goes on. And again, when he’s on with Margaret Brendan, you know, he gives the same speech, you know, well, you know, it’s all about, you know, spending and everything. And then Brendan pushes back on him, you know, pointing out the very specific, very racist term that Trump had used. He said, okay, that’s not what the former president said, Brennan said. And CocoCao was the phrase he used refer to the former cabinet secretary, Elaine Chao, and then, of course, he gave the same bullshit answer about Nickname.

I mean, this is one of those extraordinary moments where in any other political time would have been an easy job, they just won’t do it. Will they? They just will not push back. They will not denounce this.

No, they won’t. And and look, Charlie, we talk about a lot of issues on this podcast. In my book, this is at the top of the list. That’s how important this is. My wife and I were with some friends this weekend who were Jewish like us.

And they were asking, you know, or should Jews worry about what’s going on in this country? Like all minorities, you know, is there sort of a rise of, you know, big a tree of fascist movement. And I I said, no. I said, no. We’re not at the level of Weimar German or anything like that.

Let’s not get Which is true. Yeah. Which is true. We’re not at that level. But but but we are seeing something extremely, extremely dangerous.

And that is we have very overt racism, very overt bigotry from Donald Trump, and we see Republican elites unwilling to stand up to it, Rick Scott calling this a nickname like it’s something, you know, kids say about each other. That is a warning that if somebody comes along like Donald Trump and starts to implement policy like say banning Muslims from entering the United States per se. You know, you you need to have elites who will stand up to that. If you don’t have that, if you have an entire political party who says it’s fine to go around calling Asian Americans Coco Chow, accusing them of being China loving, that is a major, major red flag about the danger that this country

is in. Particularly if that party becomes the ruling party, which it it it certainly may do. Interestingly enough, the editorial board of the Wall street journal, which has been more than willing in in the past to carry water for Trump although they broke with him on January sixth. They focused him on the death wish rhetoric. Let me just read you what they wrote.

The death wish rhetoric is ugly even by mister Trump’s standards and deserves to be condemned. Mister Trump’s apologies claimed he merely meant mister McConnell has a political death wish, but that is not what he wrote. It’s all too easy to imagine some fanatic taking mister Trump seriously and literally in attempting to kill mister McConnell. Many supporters took mister Trump’s rhetoric about former vice president Mike Pence all too seriously on January sixth in case you forgot about that. Main senator Susan Collins was not excessive when she said recently that she would not be surprised if a member of congress is shot in this high house political environment a left wing follower of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, opened fire on Republican members of Congress in two thousand seventeen and came close to killing representative Steve Skalise, and then it obviously a lot of other examples as well.

So interestingly enough that even the Wall Street Journal editorial board is saying this is really dangerous leaving aside the over racism. And I have to tell you once again, and this has become a very, very old story, and I’m sorry if I bored people because you’ve heard this before, but we just get crickets from the, you know, political universe. When he lashed out at the FBI agents, nothing much when he made veiled threats of of violence and chaos and insurrection. If he was against the Department of Justice, if he’s ever indicted, absolutely nothing. So, I mean, I I guess at at at this point, you know, this is the story.

I mean, Republicans, long ago, accepted all the insults, the racism, the threats. I mean, look, they they they swallowed Charlottesville, the Muslim ban, Buddhism, you know, they were okay with it when he you know, mock disabled when he when he said the Ted Cruz’s wife was ugly. Ted Cruz was okay with that. When he talked about shit hold countries, I mean, he swallowed every bit of it Why would they stop now? And what line can you possibly imagine?

What do

you think? So I’ll be the skeptic on this one. Alright. So I think this particular post of trumps about about death wish. I actually don’t think Trump meant literally death wish about McConnell.

What’s interesting to me about it is that, you know, it’s one thing to use this kind of language before January sixth. After January sixth, everybody has notice. You know, that this kind of language leads to violence. So what I see from Trump is indifference. He’s gonna use this language about fighting in combat and death wish and all this stuff.

Even when people act even after people have actually died and piled on top of Trump’s indifference, the indifference of the Republic of Republican elites to Trump’s indifference to the use of this language. Everyone is on notice, has been on notice for a couple of years that this is extremely dangerous, and yet it persists. Well,

I’m gonna be less skeptical because I don’t think that it’s a mistake that the Donald Trump and his acolytes continue to words like death and killing and violence that they they are using the terms very intentionally, not just indifferently to it. They they are doing it for a purpose. And let me give you an example of this over the weekend. Margery Taylor Green is an invited featured speaker at a Trump rally. I just wanna think about that, that you have one of the most deranged Christian nationalist conspiracy theorist, QAnon, adjacent members of Congress, who is selected by the former president to be one of your featured speakers at a rally.

Okay? And she’s also talking about killing, but defensively. Like, the other people are coming for you. Those Democrats want to killed you. And again, there’s a long history of this kind of rhetoric.

Well, in case you missed it, because Rick Scott was asked about this on television. He said, oh, he didn’t know anything about it. So this is what Rick Scott missed.

I’m not going to went mess words with you all. Democrats want Republicans dead, and they’ve argued started the killings. An eighteen year old boy was run down by a Democrat driver who confessed to killing the teenager simply because he was a Republican. Even right here in Michigan, just last week, an eighty three year old woman was shot in the back for advocating for the unborn.

Yep. Joe

Biden has declared every freedom loving American and enemy of the state. But under Republicans, we will take back our country from the communists who have storming it

and

want us to disappear.

We

will expose the unelected bureaucrats, the real enemies within who have abused their power and declared political warfare on the greatest president this country has ever had. Well,

I’m sorry. I just don’t detect a lot of subtlety there. No. No. I will.

It’s just me.

I’m gonna draw a distinction between what Trump posted and what Marjorie Taylor Green just said. I I completely agree with you in her case. Look, history shows if you want to incite people to kill to kill

other people.

You one of the first things you tell them is those other people are going to kill you. Those other people are trying to kill you.

I’m thinking it’s for Wanda. Absolutely.

The Hutus and the Hutusis, the great example. And so that’s what’s going on here. The other thing I wanna point out about what she’s saying there is, for all of you folks who don’t watch Trump rallies, and God bless you. You have better things to do. This is this kind of language Donald Trump has been using for years about illegal immigrants.

Right? He he’ll go through the newspaper. They’ll find stories of some illegal immigrant who committed a rape, a murder, and then they want then they’ll use this language to get you to hate all illegal immigrants. Now in that case, there’s the question of whether people are in this country legally. Here, we’re talking about Democrats.

Everybody in America who’s here legally, who, you know, is on the left side of the political spectrum. Marjorie Taylor Green’s language is very explicit Democrats per se want Republicans dead. They are killing you. That is absolutely incitement to go out and murder the Democrats before they murder you.

And again, you don’t need a large number of deranged people to take that seriously and literally. You only need a handful. And and this is something that every same grown up understands. And clearly, the people within Mago World, you know, at best, don’t give a shit, at worst, want to use the the threat of menace in order to get their way, in order to intimidate their opponents. Okay.

So speaking of other deplorable things over the weekend,

I was

I was actually planning on writing about this before the whole CocoCao thing, but the useful idiots of CPAC posted a a tweet and their timing was interesting. I mean, they they waited in the letter of Vladimir Putin, gave that weird in the bunker rant about holy wars and everything. And we’re getting more and more evidence of war crimes, of mass graves, of the bombing, of civilians in a car caravan. And so CPAC posts Friday, I think. Vladimir Putin announces the annexation of four Ukrainian occupied territories, really?

When you think about that, that’s Putin’s line, that’s Russian propaganda, that these are Ukrainian occupied territories. It’s fucking Ukraine. Okay? Then the second sentence is Biden and the Dems continue to send Ukraine billions of taxpayer dollars. Meanwhile, we are under attack at our southern border.

When will Democrats put hashtag America first and end of the gift giving to Ukraine? Now, they deleted that, and Matt Schlap came up with some bullshit about, you know, being on the road and and some of the other. But, you know, that that that once again, This is a reflection of what I think is going on in the maga right, the id of the right. It has has become incredibly hostile to Ukraine and and even with all the evidence of what the Russians have done and even with the war changing hands, they are pushing for I don’t know. They’re pushing out

pro Putin propaganda and encouraging us to bug out. Yeah. Okay. So what CPAC is doing here and what’s going on in Fox News, what’s going on with JD Vance and Donald Trump Junior, and a lot of the right, is they’re finding propaganda. They’re finding spin that happens to coincide with the interest of Russia, of Vladimir Putin.

That CPAC tweet is the kind of thing, if you had political consultants tell you know, who said, here’s how you can frame what’s going on in Ukraine in a way that will serve the Republican Party. You would come up with language, you know, that that that happens to coincide with your interest. They’re doing the same thing here, but they’re doing it in a way that have, like, gift giving. Okay? Really, it’s we we’re giving a gift to Ukraine, to give them weapons, to save their lives, to fight right off the Russians, but that’s the kind of spin a political consultant would tell you to put in your tweet if you were serving not the Republican party but Vladimir Putin.

What will induce people to be less willing to support Ukraine? Well, let’s call it gift giving. Right? What language will make them less willing to defend those Ukrainian territories. Let’s call them Ukrainian occupied.

It’s highly mysterious, highly intriguing to me. That this is what’s going on on the right, serving the interests of Vladimir Putin. I don’t know why they’re doing it, but they’re clearly doing it.

Yeah. Let’s acknowledge that there is something almost mysterious about it, and yet there’s something very transparent about it, which is that anything that Joe Biden does there against. And so therefore, their hostility to the Biden regime is so intense that they are willing to side with our enemies. And we’ve seen this again, of course, We have this long history of Donald Trump’s bromance with Vladimir Putin, which is also on in many levels incomprehensible. So speaking of Ukraine, I can get your sense of what’s going on here.

I mean, talk about whiplash. You have Vladimir Putin announcing the annexation. Of these Ukrainian territories. And the same day, the Ukrainians take back one of the key cities the Vladimir Putin next. Former general David Petreas had some thoughts.

Actually, there’s a lot of good sound we could have on this, but this is this is General David Petrella’s about what’s happening right now in this war. And again, they’re losing on the battlefield and it’s going to continue. The only question really is when do you start to see not just individual soldiers or small units surrender but when you start to see larger units crumble, crack, and perhaps actually collapse.

So give

me your sense of this, Will. Where we’re at, it does seem possible and not wish casting that you might see a wholesale collapse of the Russian army in this area at a time when Vladimir Putin is calling up reservice and rather explicitly threatening the use of nuclear weapons. First of all, A Putin is losing, and it’s the loss is bigger than it

appears at first glance. So he’s losing militarily. We’ve seen Ukraine retake territory, not just retake it, but retake a lot of rapidly, which indicates not just that the Ukrainians are good at this, but that the Russian Army is not particularly willing to fight to defend. That territory. It’s not their territory to begin with.

Right? So they’ve retreated. They’ve collapsed in places highly suggestive. I mean, you you can speculate that that’s likely to continue to happen in a lot of the country. Secondly, there’s a political problem for Russia, which is when Putin calls up, three hundred thousand people.

First of all, I believe more young men left Russia — No. — fled Russia and went — that

are getting called

up. And he’s now taken what was officially in Russia,

not really,

of course, a special military operation and made it a war. We’re gonna draft your kids, your husbands to go fight in this war. Now he’s imposed a real cost at home. That raises the stakes for him because it increases the risk of a genuine uprise in Russia. People say, oh, there won’t be an uprising in Russia.

If they start to conscript every man in the country into a war that everybody’s getting the message, is not going well and where you’re likely to die, that’s gonna create a serious threat to his to his regime. So he has multiple problems. No wonder that he’s playing the nuclear card. Well, and he’s

also making them worse because there’s a history in Russia of emperors who lost Wars and then just simply pretend that they won, you know, just declare victory. And you have essentially state controlled media And, you know, they could have pushed the narrative that things are actually fine, but, you know, facts and truth have broken through. And what I find interesting is the depression, you know, near despair of some of the pro war commentators on on state television. And again, it’s beyond denial. And these pictures you see of all these young men in the cars leaving the country, you know, it’s too big to ignore anymore.

Now it’s it’s a reality for every family, every community, every business in Russia. And so Vladimir Putin has decided that what he’s going to escalate all of this, and he’s going to hold those big alleys and he’s gonna turn it into a holy war. You know, he’s he’s pressing every button and they get more extreme. The question is how far he’s gonna go on, you know, pressing those buttons. But it

hasn’t worked form so far? No, it hasn’t. Can let me pick up on that excellent point you made about past about the Russian tradition of declaring victory when you when you haven’t actually won. That was a way out for Putin. Right?

He could say we did the special military operation. We cleaned house. We got rid of the Nazis or whatever his fabrication is. And then you withdraw. He just cut off that exit for himself.

Right? When Right. And next. So he and next is this is why I’m really where about that.

That’s a very interesting point. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. So the the annexation is is BS. We know this. Right?

It’s a fake these are fake sham elections. We your people are, quote, voting at gunpoint. But but it’s very serious in what it locks Putin into because I believe under under Russian law, you you cannot legally with draw from the territory once you’ve said, this is Russian territory. So now Putin can’t go home. If he goes home, you know, he’s he’s at great risk of having betrayed the country because of what he just did.

So I’m very worried about the fact that not only is he gonna lose this territory, Charlie, he’s already lost it. Right? He lost Lima in the city in the Northeastern Ukraine a day after he he had nexted it. So that is officially Russian territory that the Ukrainians took back. What is Putin gonna do about that?

Is he just gonna suffer it? Or is he gonna have to do something scary to claim that he’s still fighting for

it? Well, he’s hanging on to two threads of hope. Number one, and the most realistic, is that this winter is going to be very, very brutal. It’s going to have a tremendous effect on the economies of Western Europe, which might which might shake their their support for Ukraine. Right?

I mean, he’s thinking that I’ve got them by the pipelines, and I’m gonna squeeze. That’s number one. Number two has got to be his hope watching Mago World that if he just can hang on long enough, that the United States will flip and that he will have an ally back in the White House in control of Congress. And I do not think that’s farfetched that he’s thinking that. I hope it’s Farfetch that it actually happens.

But those two things, I think, give him aid and comfort and support to continue doing this. And and I think that that going back to the CPAC tweet and the things that Tucker Carlson is doing, you know, on the air and, you know, other other hose. Urging NATO appeasement, etcetera, is actually has real world consequences by giving him the hope that that, you know, if he just keeps killing people and hanging on and sending Russian schultz Russian troops into the meat grinder that somehow this will all work out for. Yeah.

Okay. Let me draw a distinction though between and the timeline between I think your point about Trump is is a serious worry. Right? If Trump gets back in, Putin knows he has an ally there who could help him, but that’s a couple years off. The bigger fight to me is the one this year.

So if Republicans take back the house, it is very very important that the the pro Putin caucus in the House Republican Party, which is now significant. I mean, we had, like, And more than sixty House Republicans voted, I believe, against the NATO resolution a few months ago. If that grows to a point where the warehouse Republicans get in the way of funding the weapons to Ukraine, that is a major, major problem. So that could happen this fall. It’s another reason to keep Republicans out of power.

And and then in in two years of Trump gets in, all bets are

off. So, should we

turn to domestic politics for a moment? Sure. We have this this midterm election. I have to say that I I find a lot of it to be very, very confusing. As you know, I have repeatedly expressed my skepticism about the the polling.

The shifting in the polling, the danger of wish casting. I am very tempted to go back to, you know, all of the things that were being written in twenty eighteen and elsewhere. About what was going on, you know, how Democrats were gonna win the governorship of Florida and Georgia. And yes, it was a it was a good year for Democrats, but they got way out over their skis or the wishcasting about senate races that turned out not to be close at all. So you wanna just weigh in on what you think of as the state of play right now?

Well, it’s, like, three layers deep. It’s

a bad year for democrats. Right? Yeah. Be buy buy buy buy buy and buy and buy this number’s bad, inflation environment, crime, yada, yada. Given that on the on the other side, the Republican candidates and a lot of these races are are not good because it’s a sick party, and that’s helping Democrats do better in the senate races at least than than they would otherwise.

However, third layer of the analysis, it’s absolutely true that over the last month, the numbers have moved in a Republican direction. Probably, what we’re seeing is that the national environment is starting to have more of an effect even in races where you have a bad candidate. So even Hershel Walker is doing better — Yeah. — because he’s a Republican and people are voting a Republican. What’s your what do you think?

I agree with you. And and I think that I’m I’m resisting saying something if only you had been warned, but I’m looking at Josh crash hours latest posting in Axios that Democrats are facing fresh problems in two pivotal senate battlegrounds in which their members are facing attacks for being too progressive. What’s happening In Wisconsin, a Republican Ron Johnson has pulled ahead of Democrat Mandela Barnes, the latest wave of public polls. In Pennsylvania, recent polling suggests that Democrat John Federman’s double digit advantage over doctor Oz has shrunk to a statistical tie. Obviously, this is huge because if Republicans hold Wisconsin in Pennsylvania, Republicans would need to unseat just one Democratic incumbent.

Now, this piece talks about facing attacks for being too progressive. I I think it’s more specific than that. Here in Wisconsin, there is an absolute avalanche of ads on the issue of crime defunding the police, ending cash bail, parrolling criminals. It’s happening in the senate race, in the governor’s race, In Pennsylvania, my understanding is that that’s also the focus, crime all the time, focusing on positions that both Federman and Barnes have taken multiple times in the past to make them look weak on those issues. And frankly, it’s killing them.

It’s it and and but again, this was complete fleet predictable, especially when Democrat chose somebody like Mandela Barnes, who is, as I’ve said, and I can’t speak to Federman in the same way. But Mandela Barnes is an Apple researcher’s dream, and there was just a huge amount of denial about that. And I’m sorry, when people would say, well, look, he’s competitive reasons ahead and say, well, wait till they drop the ten twenty million dollars worth of Apple research and all the things he said in the past, and that’s happening now. So surprise surprise. He’s fallen behind in a race that Democrats should win.

But go ahead. Okay.

So let me back off and concede to the Wisconsin expert. You were right about this race, and I was wrong. I mean, I Not yet. It’s not over yet, but I mean, it’s not over, but it’s already worse than I thought. You know, I was looking at a Trafalgar poll from, like, a couple of months ago that, you know, the poll that is designed to unscrew the election.

Right? Mhmm. And that even that bowl showed Mandela Barnes ahead. Since then, underlying factors, the national environment, crime, his op ed researcher’s dream background as you’re pointing out, those factors have come into play. And those are also coming into play in other races.

I think that there is a distinction. I was looking at the NBC polling state by state. Wisconsin was the worst of the three Pennsylvania, Federman still up, Georgia, warnock still up. So it matters who your candidate is. It matters how bad the other candidate is.

You can be doing badly in a national environment, still have a good enough candidate relative to their candidate that when the water comes up, Europe’s still above water. And that’s still true in Pennsylvania. I think still true in Georgia, not true anymore in Wisconsin. But secondly, Charlie, you know, there was a thing called the Bill Clinton Democratic Party. That where Bill Clinton went out of his way to own the middle.

Right? And he would say things like, we’re not a we’re not for defunding police. We’re for defunding police. By the way, Joe Biden has said this, but he doesn’t say it loudly enough, persistently enough, strongly enough, and maybe he needs to do some triangulation about it. But Democrats need to be in the middle of the spectrum saying we are for the police, we are for protecting you, that it’s not a compromise of our values and that would save you senate seats and you would be able to do the rest of your agenda.

Okay. Well, this

is something that we’ve been arguing for some time and Reid to Shera has been writing about this again and again and by the way on just a real quick preview. I’m having him on the podcast on Wednesday. One of the questions I wanna ask him is, why is it so hard for Democrats to come up with an effective message on a, crime, and b, the border? Immigration because I think they’re being hurt on both of those leaving aside the whole Ron DeSantis, you know, cruelty is the point stunt. But his point has been that, you know, your average swing voter is sort of, you know, a fifty year old, you know, white working class voter in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and you’ve been losing them.

And you’ve been losing them at a fairly steady rate for a very long time now. And and yet rather than adjusting the message on some of those issues that are killing you. Democrats, I think, have have retreated into their alternative reality bubble. Do you just agree with me on that? I mean, it’s I just don’t sense that they are willing to engage on some of the issues that Republicans are just hatcheting them on at the moment.

No.

I agree with you on this. I think that Democrats have decided that they can get away with being the party of rights, like the, you know, the rights of immigrants the rights of, you know, of the criminal justice system, criminal justice reform. They think there’s been a sea change in public opinion about crime. I think that’s wrong. People always want security, people always want police.

And if you don’t establish yourself as a party that also cares about security, that will also protect ordinary people from crime. If you were not tough on crime as Democrats many were thirty years ago, you will pay a political price and you will lose not just on that issue, but multiple other issues. Okay. So you you came

up with a with a a a a sound bite that I wanna play here. I don’t watch Fox News at all. I will admit it now. But they have a reporter, an immigration reporter named Bill Malugan, And he was on over the weekend talking with Shannon Bream about the Biden administration and the border. And I wanna play then and get your your thoughts.

And then, again, this is one of those rare moments where we have a Fox News clip that is not Tucker Carlson. This is a reporter named again. Bill Malubin, TALKING WITH HOST SHANAN BRIM.

Reporter: ONE OF

THE DEMOCRATS WHO DID TALK TO YOU IS CONGRESSMAN HENRY KUYA, BECAUSE HE IS DEMOCRAT DOWN THERE IN TEXAS he is seeing this firsthand. Here’s a bit of your

exchange. This is our administration. I’m a Democrat. And, you know, they need to understand they own it now. They own it now, and they have to take the steps to correct this.

Otherwise, you know, when are we gonna see an end to this? And one of the

things that you talked to him about is the DHS secretary’s response in public versus maybe what he’s saying in private or how he feels about this. What can you tell us about the conversation? Some really

interesting comments that Henry Queira made. Essentially, he said he has had conversations with secretary Myorges, where the secretary has told him look I know what’s happening down there is out of control. It’s getting worse. It’s not okay, but there’s not a whole lot I can do about it because immigration activists have kind of been in the White House, and they are the ones calling the shots right now. So Henry Quayar essentially says my organs feels like he’s gotta kinda zip it and just just deal with it as the White House moves forward with their plan.

And remember, last year, we got leaked audio of my York HE WAS TALKING TO BORDER PATROL AGENTS IN PRIVATE BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. WHAT DID HE TELL THEM WHEN HE THOUGHT NOBODY WAS LISTENING. WE’RE LOSING. This is unsustainable. If the border is our first line of defense, we are going to lose.

The numbers have gotten worse since those comments, but he goes out to the American public and says, the border is secure and he testifies under oath that we have operational secure operational security of the border. Those are two separate things. Will,

what do

you make of that? Well, he’s

he’s right now. And, you know, Charlie, you were talking about not watching a lot of Fox News. You you

shouldn’t have to watch Fox News to hear about this issue. And yet you do. That’s really a good point because my sense is that if you watch certain other cable channels, it never comes up ever. It’s like invisible. Right?

Yes. And this is look, this for folks who don’t know this is how a lot of politics

works. Politicians decide, you know, they own that issue. This is our issue. Like, that’s a bad issue to talk about. You watch Republicans on abortion right now.

They clearly decided not to talk about abortion because that’s gonna hurt them. So Democrats have decided we’re not gonna talk about the border. That’s a bad issue for us. Charlie, I just think that’s a fundamental mistake, because when you back off I mean, I love the language that Henry Quayar used. Henry Quayar, a Democrat, a Latino representing a border district, says, we own it.

Right? Own the issue. If you don’t own the issue, look, one of the basic rules in life is if you don’t take control, of a problem. Someone else will take control of it and you may not like what they do. Democrats absolutely need to take control of the problem.

Of border security, a real problem. Sure. How did they do

that? Look, there’s a

large conversation that we need to have about the asylum system and whether we have the resources to cope with the number of people who are coming in at the rate they’re coming in. Right? Trump’s solution was remain in Mexico. If we’re not gonna do that, if we’re not gonna hold them out, we’re gonna have to figure out how we can staff a system and supply the resources to have people in places where they will show up again for a hearing. Maybe I don’t know if we need to have quicker hearings, whether we need to have them.

But clearly, if people have to wait months for their asylum hearing, that is not a system that is managing folks. Don’t know. What is the current rate of people showing up for their hearing? It’s not great. No.

It’s it’s become a joke.

And I think it’s David From who wrote basically making the same point saying, hey, listen progressive. If the public thinks that you will not control the border, they will turn to the fascists.

I know they will

at a certain point, if if you do feel that something is not being dealt with, people will go for the other side, And I think that that’s a problem on crime as well as immigration. You know, that quote of quasar was a paraphrasing. Saying that the reason that the administration can’t speak out more forcefully about controlling the border is that they are listening to the activists. And I I sense the same sort of thing that you have activists who have a veto power or at least the ability to mute or muffled the message, not just about protecting the border, but also on crime. And right now, in real time, you’re seeing the price that Democrats are paying for that.

Yeah. Bill

Clinton just said something about this. I hate to come back to Clinton, but I wish there were more people talking about this. I mean, clearly, we have people flowing to our border and claiming asylum at a rate. It’s like, what, two million people coming to the border and the crossing border in the last It’s beyond what we can handle in an organized way. So we need to have a conversation about our system and whether we need to hold people off, not let them into the country before that process or something.

But the rate is not sustainable and the flow of people in is just illustr and it just makes everyone feel insecure and that lens support to right wing solutions.

Yes. And and

I do think that there’s there is a target out there that that Democrats could use, but they’ve been reluctant to do it. The the the hypocrisy of of Republicans on backing the blue and yet the way they’ve treated the capital police officers and their attitude towards law enforcement, etcetera. But again, it’s just, it’s not in their DNA or something. So I was thinking about this was this amazing piece in Rolling Stone Magazine, the interview with Michael Fannon, the capital cop, who is not all out of f’s to give. I mean, I described it as pure poetry on Twitter yesterday.

Have you seen this thing? I mean, language warning for snowflakes he goes through and he just has this this epic sort of f bomb rant about all of the Republicans and their hypocrisy and their cowardice. And their support for sedition, and it goes on and on and on. And yet here you have right now, Republicans owning the lawn order issue as a is anybody running ads around the country talking about Republicans and of the way they the way they turn their back on cops like Michael Fanone And Harry Dunn, on January sixth, I don’t

think so. No,

I don’t think so. And that is, you know, that’s another example of issue ownership where Republicans claim to the issue of law and order, and they’ve got it locked into the public’s mind that that’s their brand even when as you’re pointing out, they absolutely betray law and order. I mean, just to be clear for everybody what what the the truth is, the Republicans have not been for some years the Party of law and order. They have been the party that’s tough when the people who are objecting to the behavior of police are black or just non white. Right?

They’ve been that all the riots of twenty twenty, the George Floyd situation, they were law and order that. Then when the nice white people, the nice white insurrectionists of January six that attacked the capital and law enforcement stood up then suddenly, not just the cops, but prosecutors, the FBI, everybody who’s investing in it are evil. And Marjorie Taylor Green, in that clip you played, Charlie, she says, you know, it’s a weaponized legal system, the FBI. Right? She said she literally posted defund the FBI.

So Republicans are for law and order when the non white people are are in the other end of it. When our white people are facing the long arm of the law, suddenly we’re all about criminal justice reform and protecting the rights

of defendants. Yes.

And again, not terribly settled. Okay. So, Will, what are you working on this week? What are you keeping an eye on that we should be watching to? So I’m I’m looking

at exactly what you’re not paying attention to, Charlie. I will watch Fox News. So in fact, I have, so you don’t have to. Thank you so much. I’m so I’m totally well, I’m totally into the Fox News spin not everyone on Fox News, but a lot of Fox News, the prime time lineup is surveying a message that’s not explicitly pro Putin, but is Putin gets to impose the consequences.

Putin is threatening nuclear nuclear war. Therefore, we need find out how we can, you know, as Will Caine puts it, turn down the temperature, you know, you’ve heard this from Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, Glen Greenwald, There’s a lot of people on Fox News. Dan Bongino was just doing this. It’s that the minute Putin threatens nuclear war, we have to figure out how to calm him down, which is charlie, that’s appeasement, and that’s what we’re hearing from Fox News. And

sometime over the next couple of weeks, we’ll have to have a conversation about the new Supreme Court term, which began this week. Looks like it’s going to be another extraordinary term of the Supreme Court. Lots of interesting commentary about how shaken some of the justices were by the blowback against some of their decisions last time, but there’s no indication that they that the new majority is going to moderate its ambitions in any way. So strap in because we’re about to have another ride another ride on this GoToS train? Yeah.

Well, I’m sure they’re they’re concerned about the I mean, they were obviously surprised by the impact of of the dobs ruling by how that’s received. And the I’ve been watching, you know, supreme court justices are out there, holding doing their panel discussions and saying that they’re surprised at the attacks on the legitimacy of the court. Well, you know, when you try to, you know, execute a u-turn at ninety miles an hour as they just did on abortion, that’ll happen to you. Know,

just before we we end this, I in the back of my mind, there’s something I I keep meaning to say. And then and I don’t I haven’t gotten around to to to talking about. We have talked extensively about the senate race in Georgia, in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin, we talked about Missouri, we talked about Arizona. And, again, I’m looking at a Robert Costa tweet that went out a few hours ago about what’s happening in Utah right now, which is really an amazing story. Quote a story from the Salt Lake Tribune.

With just over a month to the midterm elections, Evan McMullen unprecedented independent challenge to senator Mike Lee, has drawn national attention and made for the most fascinating statewide race in decades, potentially the closest in forty eight years. You know,

and again, if

you didn’t have Utah on your bingo card for being an interesting race, that’s one of the surprise of twenty twenty two. I’m not predicting, you know, the outcome of that race. But it’s certainly interesting, and particularly for centrist who are looking for some sort of alternative to the duopoly. Keep an eye on what’s going on because one of the most interesting things about Utah is the democratic party there. Was so pragmatic that they decided to stand down.

They knew they could not elect a Democratic US senator so they backed off and allowed senator right candidate, anti Trump candidate, like Evan McMullen, to stand up against Mike Lee, who’s gone totally madame.

I love this case. I love this because you brought this up because because we need to see test cases. We need to see what happens. Right. Experimentally when Democrats are pragmatic and when many Republicans are principled.

That’s part of what’s happening in Utah. Right? There’s There’s look, Utah’s a Mormon state. There a lot of Mormons take characters seriously. They are not trumpers.

If you give them an alternative, that is conservative as they are, but isn’t Trumpy, a lot of them will go for it. And if Democrats are smart and say, you know what, we’ll we’ll We’ll go with this guy who doesn’t agree with us about other things, but we take seriously the democracy. It’s the most important thing, and he’s on our side on that issue. Utah will be a test case of how far they can go with that. Extraordinarily interesting.

Well,

Salahan, thank you once again for joining me on this Monday podcast. We’ll talk again next week. Thanks,

Charlie. And

thanks for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. By the way, we have a bonus for you this week. We have added the focus group to our feed. And this week, we focus on where else America’s Dairyland which is becoming America’s election land. We talk about Wisconsin’s races.

We talk with Focus Group members about the race for governor and US senate and I join Sarah to talk about Wisconsin politics and to react to some of the so we say unexpected comments from members of her focus group. Check it out. 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, do this all over

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