Will Saletan: The Crassness Is the Point

Every Monday, and welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes joined by my colleague Will Saletan. How are you, Will? I’m good, Charlie. We’re well into spring here in Washington.

It’s May. It is May first. That feels like a turning point even in Wisconsin. It really does. So word on the street is that you did not go to

the White House correspondent center? No. I can’t say I didn’t put on the tux and make put on the fake smile and hang out with celebrities. Yeah. I think

people all across America really look forward to watching members of the media engage in this annual ritual of star flicking. I said, start flicking. I just wanna make it clear before you slap on the the e rating. We we may earn it later, but I said, start flicking because it’s like, around these famous people. Okay.

Never mind. I’m just not gonna do it. Okay. So have you ever heard of a thing? Because it’s Monday.

That’s what I’m interested. You ever heard of a thing called bare minimum Mondays? Because apparently, it’s a TikTok trend, so I figured you might know about it because I don’t. My kids might know about it. The bare minimum Monday encourages workers to ease into their week by doing just enough to get by as the workweek begins.

I just love the way that sort of old fashioned slacking develops a, like, thing becomes a meme or or becomes an ideology. Is this followed by the fired Friday? Well, okay. This is where we’re going. So Axios has a has a little thing about this.

Notate recent study from LinkedIn and headspace found that nearly seventy five percent of working Americans say they experience, Sunday Scary’s about returning to work. I’m surprised it’s that that low. Uh-huh. So what’s happening is a woman named Marissa Joe Mayes, a self employed millennial and startup cofounder has been posting about her Monday routine set on TikTok that she keeps the first two hours of her Monday free and schedules just three tasks for the whole day before I started doing bare minimum Monday. I was physically sick with stress and couldn’t produce anything because of the level of burnout I had reached Mesa in a video.

And then it goes on to quote somebody is saying, hey, this trend could totally backfire on

employees. Yeah. You think so? You think it might. She’s burned out.

That’s what she’s saying. She’s burned out from the previous week. Is that it? And then there’s nothing left.

Yeah. Weekends in the long after. I like three day weekends, but the bare minimum Monday just seems like it’s kinda cheating. It’s like, let’s make this a thing. And then, of course, we’ll have casual half day Fridays.

I don’t know. So the burnout part is serious. Like, let’s give the millennials credit. Like, if these millennials

are, you know, burned out from the previous week. That’s a real issue. And you should be talking about that with your boss and your colleagues and having a more sustained work environment, but you can’t. You can’t have, like, every Monday be a bare minimum on Monday. That’s just not a way to live.

Last

year during the summer, I’m gonna wanna, you know, show some sympathy here. I did take off Mondays because know, it is nice to have a three day weekend and a four day. We can only do it part of the week. Right? You don’t, like, pretend that you’re kind of working.

Look, I have a kind of a different philosophy toward Mondays where I wanna get a fast start on a Monday just like dive into it. So I was up at four AM this morning to do morning Joe. So on Mondays, I will get up at a ridiculously early time And then, of course, by noon, you’re looking around going hyphen up it for eight hours. What is that about? So okay.

Maybe that’s a little bit obsessive, but I guess people have different approaches to, like, ease into the week or, like, hit the week really hard, get off to a good start. I don’t know. Okay. So I have to confess something. And I I honestly don’t know the weather was an open mic moment that I had.

Mhmm. This is really, really early. I will also admit that one of the advantages of doing super early Monday is if you actually have a life on Sunday, you’ve heard about that rightly well. People who have lives? Who are they?

Yeah. We were talking about the latest horrific shooting in Texas where family of five murdered after they asked their neighbor to stop shooting his AR fifteen because they had a baby sleeping, and he was so ticked off about this, that he goes over, and he and he shoots and kills five people. What I had not seen, you know, because again, I hadn’t been paying that much attention on on Sunday. I hadn’t seen Greg Abbott’s tweet about this. Oh.

He tweeted, I’ve announced a fifty thousand dollar reward for info on the criminal who killed five illegal immigrants Friday. Also, blah blah blah. And it was like, I actually gasped, like, what? Mhmm. I mean, It’s like we’re not even at the, you know, thoughts and prayers thing.

It’s like you have murder of five people. I mean, that’s one of those moments cries out for a little bit of compassion, a little bit of leadership. And you get absolutely nothing. So, Greg Abbott reminds us that the crassness is the point. I mean, it’s just breathtaking.

You wanna talk about narrative cap which is a really boring way of saying, he is just stuck on stupid here that he has to work in. What is my talking point? We have to, like, you know, keep on it. This can’t be about guns. This can’t be about mass murder.

This can’t be about this climate of fear. We have to make it about what we wanna make it about, which is it’s about the border and it’s about illegal immigrants, but what the hell Will Saletan. Just to explain what Greg Abbott is doing here, he’s doing

pretty much what you described. A story breaks. The politician looks at it and says, how can I make this story about my favorite issue? Right? And so he chooses illegal immigration.

Right. And he’s not just sort of inhumane in the way that he responds to it, but he’s wrong. He’s wrong. There’s at least one of the victims here where we have now seen her green card A picture of it posted on Twitter, and I’m not sure where else. Mhmm.

Not only does she have a green card, she is a successful asylum applicant. Right? She got the asylum approved, and she’s waiting for further but she is a legal permanent resident in the United States. She is not an illegal immigrant or alien, whatever. Greg Abbott wants to call her.

So first of all, he owes an apology for that. Second, just an apology for treating the obviously victims of this murder by their immigration status. But third, Greg Abbott’s not alone in this, because remember when Ron DeSantis sent fifty asylum applicant, we know that most of them were asylum applicants, to Martha’s Vineyard. He’s been calling them Charlie Sykes every speech Ron DeSantis gives. He calls them illegal immigrants.

And he’s been corrected many times. He doesn’t care. So, Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, and a lot of other these Republican governors and politicians use the phrase illegal immigrants. They use it indiscriminately wrongly. They don’t care and they will not stop

until they pay a political price for it. So It’s just the inhumanity of it. Just leaving aside the politics, you have five people who’ve been murdered including a nine year old boy. Okay? It’s two women.

The bodies of the front, you know, trying to shield the children. They’re shot in the head by this guy. And he refers to them as the murder of illegal immigrant friends. I mean, just like, we wanna talk about that. Talk about that tomorrow.

Just leave the freaking politics out of it for just a second. Just the bare humanity. And I don’t know whether, you know, the bare humanity is just like stuff so far down there. You know, whether, you know, that’s chained up in the basement of — Right. Of gray habits, soul, or what?

But you just think that the instinct would be, yeah, you know what? I I just you know, can I go with thoughts prayers, would that be enough? I mean, just for the the human loss here, no one would be five illegal immigrants. I did not just

I’ve seen some reporting that the assailant himself was an undocumented, but part of the problem is not only is it sort of inhumane, but the you can’t just pick out this one case and say, well, this guy is an illegal immigrant or these victims are illegal immigrants or whatever the facts may be in this particular case because This is just one in a number of these crazy shootings, of which the rest are not. You can’t dismiss this as an issue about immigration because So many of these have been, like, eighty four year old white guy in Kansas City, that kind of thing, guy in New York shooting a woman pulling out of a driveway. There

are people who knows that the elections are only interested in the incidents that can fit their narrative. I mean, they look at these things. Instead of seeing human beings, they say, okay, can I score points by saying it’s Natalie Limergan? Or can I score points by saying that this is a black person killing a white person or a white person killing a black person? It is it is so narrative driven, and it’s just like everybody’s got their preset talking point.

And the actual incident never shakes them. They never deviate from the lane

they’re in. You follow me. I mean, it’s just this is what we’re gonna talk about. Right. Can I just read you one line from so, Kaye, I’m from Houston?

This is in the Houston area of this shooting. I know this local station Kaye HOU, their story about the shooting. They were one of the first on the scene. Here’s the line. Nearby residents in this neighborhood said it’s common for people in the area to shoot guns on their property.

One of the residents says, there’s a lot of people here that like to shoot guns. It was just a matter of time before something like this happens. Now, so remember, this starts with a guy just out shooting. Charlie, it was eleven o’clock at night. I think with the baby that I was trying to sleep, this was not in the afternoon.

This was like, what you’re hearing is, there is a problem, not just with people owning firearms. But people out shooting in their yards at all hours. And that’s telling you that you cannot dismiss this as an issue of immigration. This is an issue of the people who live in this area and other areas not handling guns responsibly, and in this case, you know, going on a psychotic episode and murdering people.

Okay. So here’s another one of those stories that may sound same old same old but is also not an outlier. This is the story of upstanding citizen named Mickey Larsen Olson. Follow this one. Mhmm.

She’s the January sixth defendant who wants Mike Pence executed. Over the weekend, Donald Trump went out of his way to embrace her. Nikki Larson Olson, this is the way NBC reports it. A QAnon supporter who said she considers Trump the real president was convicted last year of unlawful entry on the Capitol grounds. On Thursday night, she met Trump for the first time at the Red Arrow diner in Manchester.

Larson Brown believes that members of Congress who voted to certify Biden’s presidential election should be executed. Okay? Just let me let me clarify here. The ones who voted to certify the election, the punishment for treasonous death for the constitutional arsenal and incorrectly said I believe every single person that stole a voice from our collective voice of we the people, of the people, for the people, by the people deserve death, and no less than that. Larson Olson added, she went like a front seat of Mike Pence being executed.

She sounds nice. And then he should be the number one person on her list of those who committed treason. And here’s Donald Trump just hugging her and embracing her and and look, in a rational world, you could write this off as, okay, bad advance work, mistake, one off, this is not a one off as Donald Trump has gone out of his way over and over and over again to associate himself with the January sixth Insurrection to rewrite the history of January sixth, to promise that anyone who participated that, including apparently people who beat the crap out of the cops, you know, our patriots who are fighting for their country and might be pardoned in a Trump two point o presidency. So this is not just a freak show. And I’m sorry, here’s another morning you wake up.

You feel like you’ve taken crazy pills because the Republican Party’s in the process of saying, yeah, This is just fine. Let’s do this again. Let’s do it all over again. Yeah. We see this.

But, you know, if he’s the nominee, it’s way more important to go with the team than anything else. Charlie, how

many times have you seen a quote from some Republican politician anonymously or by name saying that they hope that Donald Trump will set aside the past, won’t try to re litigate and move on into this lesson. Yeah. This kind of episode just drives home the logical consequences of the way Donald Trump actually sees the world he has an upside down view of January sixth in the insurrection. Right? The election was stolen.

The heroes are the people who storm the capital. In this case, a woman who’s convicted, that never mind, like, accused, convicted. Right? Therefore, everybody who stood in the way of that was a traitor. I mean, as she calls it treason.

She’s saying they should be executed. Trump has been saying the insurrectionist were on the other side. The cop who shot Ashley Davitt as the real villain. You know, if you have this upside down view of the world, of course, you’re gonna hug this woman because she’s one of the people trying to save democracy, not destroy it, because Trump really won the election. So it’s an insane worldview and the notion that you can nominate this guy for president and that he’ll stop talking about this issue.

Is crazy because we can see what he believes and it is an inversion of reality. Hey,

folks. This is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark Podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are hired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day, we remind you folks You are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to the Bulwark dot com and take a look around.

Every day, we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a bulwark plus membership free for the next thirty days. To claim this offer, go to the Bulwark dot com slash Charlie Sykes. That’s the bulwark dot com forward slash Charlie Sykes me get through this together. I promise.

Can we take a break from this to talk about something that’s really really important. Go ahead. But I also is part of the crazy for people who go. Yeah. It’s just the crazy stuff.

I just say this, though. It doesn’t matter. We had over the weekend another bank failure, okay, which is like a little bit ominous, but, you know, appears to be in control. Right? Because all the smart people are telling us that.

Meanwhile, we are careening toward another debt crisis. And even the pundits who’ve been writing these, hey, big win for Kevin McCarthy in the house. Look at this. The house has passed. House from public have passed this debt ceiling increase, are acknowledging that Yeah.

That was that was a show vote because literally no one can figure out how they’re going to compromise and avoid some sort of a debt crisis. When they have to raise the debt ceiling. Are you finding a pony in this pile of manure? Because I am really struggling to figure out how Kevin McCarthy is going to be able to deliver enough votes to keep the full faith in credit of the United States going when at the same time satisfying the lunatic caucus that really dominates the Republican politics right now. Yeah.

I don’t have a pony here. And in fact, I think you’ve put your finger on the problem here. One of the problems was just the insanity of Kevin McCarthy’s demands. But the other problem is he got this bill passed with all sorts of crazy promises attached to it. But he’s not gonna be able to get anything that would go through the senate, that his crazy coalition will put together.

And let’s say you decided we’re gonna negotiate for the hostage here. The problem is Kevin McCarthy can’t actually deliver enough votes. See, that’s the problem. Yes. It’s like the people’s front of Judy and the Judy and people’s front and, you know, the this various terrorist organizations, at least speak for your terrorist caucus, but he can’t do that.

So that makes him sort of ineffective in the sense that you can kinda deal with him and then you won’t get it passed. But that sets aside the question of whether you should kinda deal with him in the first place, and I think the answer there is no.

We have a piece in the Bulwark by Norm Orenstein from AEI about the radicalism of this debt ceiling vote. And he makes a great point. You know, all this horse race ponditry, like, hey, what a surprise? Kevin McCarthy was able to pull this rabbit out of the hat and everything. Has anybody noticed the the rabbit has two heads in his radio active?

It’s just one crazy thing after another. It is not a politically winning bill they passed. I mean, I think it was Catherine Rampell who summarized the the bill saying under the plan, most overall non defense discretionary spending would be slashed by nearly one third in twenty twenty four after adjusting for inflation. The cuts would then expand to roughly fifty nine percent on average by twenty twenty three. You run through the things that are being cut or gutted and trust me, there are very few Republicans in even remotely swing districts that wanna go back and explain that kind of thing.

Right? So even this big win like Kevin McCarthy is like, you feel like you’ve taken crazy pills when you read it?

Yeah. I mean, this bill, first of all, there’s Christmas tree of promises for that rough Republican wish list stuff, which is completely extraneous to the debt limit and which is politically toxic. But Part of the problem with this bill in addition is they’re not specifying cuts here. They’re you know, you’re putting percentages on it. We’re gonna get down below this number.

Which leaves it open, what would get cut. Right? And so what Democrats have seized on is things like education and nutrition, but especially veterans benefits. And so their argument is, look, if you drive down the numbers in terms of spending, you’re gonna have to cut the veterans programs by this amount or everything gets cut by twenty two percent. And there were McCarthy’s responses, oh, no, we didn’t say that.

But, Charlie, that is exactly the same argument Republicans make about Medicare and Social Security that if you don’t increase somehow the amount of money that’s available through various changes or reforms, you’re going to end up with cuts of, you know, twenty percent or whatever it is. So Democrats are just throwing this argument back at Republicans. And of course, it’s extremely politically unpopular, including to independents, to be cutting veterans benefits. Except, now here’s the

bad news here. It goes back to what happened when John Behner and Barack Obama were at loggerheads over this. And some of the dynamic was the same, although Behner had a much bigger majority. The Obama folks were pretty convinced that the public would blame the Republicans for shutting down the government because it was the Republicans who were shutting down the government. In fact, the public blamed everybody.

And everybody’s approval ratings went down. Obama’s approval ratings went way down. Was that when the Standard and Poor’s rating was dropped for the the faith and credit of the United States during this whole controversy, even though eventually they paid the bills, they did all that. The damage was done. Stock markets lost billions of dollars.

Politicians were damaged. Republicans did not pay a price for this in the next election as I recall the the off of your election. And if you are the president of the United States, any bad news on the economy is bad news for you. So this is the bad news for Joe Biden that — Mhmm. — he may say, I will keep, you know, the country going.

I will pay all of our bills. The Republicans Will Saletan, we’re with the fiscal Taliban, and we’re just gonna blow everything up. And yet, they know that by blowing themselves up, they may hurt Biden more than they hurt themselves. I mean, it’s not fair, but this is one of

the political realities we have to live Right. So the lesson that the Biden administration and Joe Biden took from that standoff a decade ago was that and the way that they screwed up in their mind was that they offered from the beginning to negotiate. Yeah. They think that if they say we will not negotiate over the full faith in credit of the United States, that puts them in a better position politically. We’ll see how that plays out.

But, Charlie, my beef with the Democratic position here is they have not been nearly clear enough about the distinction between negotiating over raising the debt ceiling and negotiating over the budget. Because Democrats sound like they are refusing to negotiate over the budget, which is not actually true, That helps Republicans because they’d love to shove all this stuff together. They hold the debt ceiling hostage in the name of controlling the budget and they claim that Biden and the democrats are refusing to negotiate over the budget. So we just now have Rocana and Chris Van Holland and some others were out on TV. On Sunday talking finally about how we’re happy to negotiate over the budget.

We’re willing to negotiate a mix of budget cuts and tax increases and whatever is necessary But we’re not gonna negotiate over the debt ceiling. And that distinction is absolutely crucial. Okay.

So let’s play that cut. This is Congress from Roe Connor from California who is talking about definitely making the point that you say Democrats have to make. Let’s play that.

And now you have to stand off over the debt ceiling. If is not a sustainable position for the White House to say they’re not gonna negotiate with Republicans. Is it?

Well, here’s what’s sustainable. They the Republicans should have what I did under Donald Trump, and pay your bills. It’s patriotic to pay your bills. Look, if you’re a family, you have credits

Sounds like you’re agreeing. It’s not a sustainable position. Well,

I

I think we should pay the bills and then negotiate. And we should negotiate on deficit reduction. The last person to leave a surplus was Bill Clinton. I’ll tell how we lower the the debt. Let’s say repeal the Trump Trump tax cuts.

Let let’s repeal some of the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy. Let’s not have all these overseas boards. I mean, let the Democrats have a plan and let’s raise taxes on the top wealthy. But before we get there, we pay our bills. If you’re family of a credit card debt who says let’s not pay the bill.

But the president was saying Kevin McCarthy passed something or at least put out a plan and I’ll talk to you. Now he’s passed something, and the president says he still will not engage with him. I understand the back and forth, but the political cost and the economic one is very real here, and it will stick to the president. Well,

the president’s saying he’s not gonna be hostage in having veterans cuts on health care, in having cuts on K-twelve education, in having cut cuts on food stamps and having cuts on manufacturing to just pay our bills. He’s saying we can discuss that. We can negotiate. But pay your bills. And I think the I think senator McConnell understands this, and I think the president will sit down with senator McConnell.

He knows that we can’t default.

You

think that’s the channel that’s gonna figure this out. That

that’s why I said that or Kevin McCarthy’s gonna come without twenty two percent cuts on veterans benefits. So there

are going to have to be negotiations. Right? I mean, that that’s the one talking point that puts the Biden White House at a significant disadvantage or at least sounded like it in that sound bite. What do you think?

Yeah. And I think I’ll go look at polling to see whether this bears out, but logically, it just stands to reason. You can’t be anti negotiations over the budget, which is — Right. — I think where Democrats have put themselves in a dangerous position And so let’s go to your question, Charlie. How is this gonna play out?

Because you need there to be political pressure on Republicans in order for them to capitulate on the debt ceiling, which is what needs to happen here. And in order to get that pressure, you need to put your party in a better position in terms of how this looks. So the Democratic message has to be very emphatically and clearly. We are pro negotiations. We are here.

We are ready. We’re willing. That’d be a pivot, though. Yeah. I’m gonna sit down and negotiate with Kevin McCarthy over the budget.

The debt ceiling has to be agreed and approved separately.

Since you and I spoke last, many many many days ago, one week ago, think of all the things that have happened, including, shortly after we were done, I think, the dramatic firing of both Don Lemon and, I think, much more significantly Tucker Charlie Sykes. So you had a week to think about the whole Tucker Carlson thing. You know, a lot of questions about which direction does Fox go? How badly will Fox’s ratings be hurt? Also, where does Tucker go now?

I mean, the the conventional wisdom has always been that Fox is bigger than any host and all of the other Superstar hosts who have been fired and or left Fox, you know, have been significantly diminished by that, you know, Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, a variety of others. Tethr may be the exception. What we don’t know is what’s going on behind the scenes with that contract negotiation, does he have a no compete lot of speculation that, you know, Tucker absolutely does not want to be silenced through the twenty twenty four campaign. So given your sense how this is gonna shake out, because, you know, you could certainly make the argument that Tucker will be out as influential, if not more influential. Now, which would not have been the case for any other cable host fired.

What do you think? Well, I think he’ll be influential

with because just obviously he has a huge audience and a lot of his audience will follow him. I believe the stats showed that after he left Fox, the viewership dropped off by like half. In that hour of fox. So those people are gonna reappear some they’re loyalist to Tucker, and they’ll go where he goes. To me, the enduring question about him to what extent is he a liar and to what extent is he a zealot.

Right? This is the question about Trump too. So Tucker made the two minute video after he left was weird. It was very weird video, but he talked about how now that he’s sort of free of, like, shackles of corporate media, he’s gonna talk about the real issues. So that’s sort of like while I was lying to you all along, pretending that these debates I discussed were the real issues.

But I think that video shows that Tucker has a lot of zealotry in him. And one of the lines he talked about what the real issues are that he’s gonna discuss now that he’s free. One of them was demographic change. That’s his turn. Mhmm.

So I think Tucker is quite sincere about the white replacement theory and about, you know, dark people coming into our country, Muslims, and people from Africa and whatnot in Latin America, and that he really cares about that. And I think what he’s gonna do is build a new audience somewhere and he’s gonna push the envelope. He’s gonna go where Rupert Murdoch didn’t want him to go which is further and deeper into this replacement insanity. I

think you’re probably right. We have a great piece up in the Bulwark today by Kathy Young who takes on what she calls the anti anti tuckers out there, the critics who will, you know, say that, well, yes, he, you know, he he did some things that were really, really reprehensible. But you hand it to him and, you know, embrace some things about his success. And Kenny makes the point, you do not under any circumstances, gotta hand it to Tucker Cole. And this is a really interesting point that that I’ve tried to make in different context.

And she writes, I’m gonna read you a paragraph. It also seems to me that you should find Tucker Carlson especially objectionable. If like the anti anti Carlson crowd, you agree with some of his culture war points. If you are concerned about the excesses of Wokeness, such as preoccupation with ferroding out real or imagined racism in every aspect of American society, it would seem to me that the last person you would want amplifying find your views is the guy who dabbles in actual white nationalist tropes. Right?

If you actually care about those things, then he is toxic. He’s undermining your case in a fundamental way. You wanna be leading the campaign to say he’s gotta go. If you think the progressive left is too cavalier about street crime and riots, the guy who makes excuses for the far right, mostly white January sixth rioters is not a great messenger. If you think we’re too cavalier about the dangers of escalation stemming from US military, Ukraine, and its war with Russia, you really want to avoid the ally who sounds like Vladimir Solovyev, dubbed into English, and so on, whatever your issues are, Carlson is the please don’t be on my side guy.

This is really a great point. The problem is that there is that tribal thing that okay. Everybody who’s on my side is on my side no matter how much they undermine my side. No matter how much they discredit my side. I mean, her argument is exactly right, but it seems as if people brush it off.

And, you know, it’s like no enemies on the left, no enemies on the right, and you buy the whole package even if part of that package is destroying you. So what Kathy is applying here and I am

absolutely guilty of the same thing is Cathy is guilty of being rational.

Yes. Exactly. Big big flaw. Yeah. We

only wanna use, you know, this issue insofar as politically advantageous. And the problem is, of course, that the people behind this stuff are not rational. Right? They’re passionate about stuff that you don’t really wanna get into. So, like, a rational version of this anti woke stuff is Rhonda Santos or his guru, Chris Ruffo.

Right? Who are they’re trying to be very politically careful about choosing areas of antiwokeness that they can still keep mainstream. I’m not sure I would use that example. Okay. Well, But the Tucker version is when you sincerely believe in the anti whokeness to the point of wanting to go back to sleep and return to some of the prejudices, of the past, you’re gonna get the Carlson version.

And so I don’t think political rationality will stop them from following Tucker Carlson wherever he goes.

Yeah. I

just wanna put a pin in the distinction you’re trying to draw between Tucker Carlson and Christopher Ruffo, which I’m not prepared to go along with just to hear that I don’t think that Christopher Ruffo is the more rational defensible position there, but I take your point. Okay. Speaking of the scientists in Disney, and I feel like it’s now gone to the point of piling on. What an amazingly bad, Shambolic three weeks he’s had, Ron DeSantis. Including this, what seemed to be almost a disastrous European tour, all the reports suggest that his speech to the business executives in England was a complete disaster.

I mean, they said the guy is just on a a negative role, you would think that at some point, you know, with all the resources behind him that he would be able to do some sort of a course correction, but it does seem like the kids keep on coming. Don’t they? Moving unfair to him? I mean what? On paper, DeSantis is doing the things that

you should do in his position. So for example, he’s a governor. Right? So we’ll go to other countries. We’ll get some foreign policy credit.

Right. The problem is that everywhere Ron DeSantis goes, he still has to be Ron DeSantis. And Ron DeSantis doesn’t really have a personality. I mean, one of these interviews, Charlie, I can’t remember what country. He goes into a room to interview one of these foreign reporters.

And is just an absolute robot. I have never seen a politician so clumsy at just acknowledging the humanity of another person So it’s not surprising that he comes across this way to everyone because that’s who he is. And, you know, it’s one thing to do that if you’re just senator, but to be, you know, as it’s been said before, to be present in the United States, it’s actually a very personal thing. People wanna know who you are. They want a connection and say what you will about Joe Biden.

You know, people’s always, you know, old and he’s he’s lost or whatever. But On a gut level, Joe Biden likes to be with people. And ordinary people when they see him, they pick that up. They can see that he’s a people person. Ron DeSantis were somehow to get by Trump, that would be a very unfavorable contrast to Joe Biden.

Well,

and also have to admit that as time goes on, I understand his Jahad against Disney even less. On legal ground, economic ground, and on political ground. I mean, it seems like a triple loser for him. He now has this big lawsuit in federal court from Disney, which is saying that, you know, you are using government power to retaliate against us because because of free speech, which they’ve essentially acknowledged David French has a great piece in the New York Times, where he looks at the legal strength of this lawsuit, it’s very very powerful. I mean, on the record, they basically said, yes, we’re going to punish you.

Because you opposed a piece of legislation that we passed, which in our country, you’re allowed to actually do. So it’s legally a a problem. It is economically a problem if, in fact, there’s even the hint that you might lose some of those jobs, you know, even a Nikki Haley trolling him by saying they should move to South Sarah Longwell. And politically, it doesn’t make any sense for Liberals, independents, or moderates. I mean, it makes sense for the I have the biggest balls in the room, and I’m gonna fight, and I’m never gonna back down, and I’m gonna kill, you know, what you want is somebody who is gonna, you know, pound on the head, everybody, you hate.

But listen to former Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, who’s running president. I mean, you wanna talk about a small lane, but he’s willing to call out the scientists on this Disney thing. Let’s play Ace Hutchinson from yesterday morning.

What’s your take on leaders in your party, Ron DeSantis, among them, who are actively using the government to change social policy and wage culture

wars? Well, let’s be more specific about Disney. I don’t like what Disney said about the legislation that I would have supported in Florida But — Okay. — it’s not the role of government to punish a business when you disagree with what they’re saying or a position that they take. If that was the view of a Republican, then we’re gonna be in all kinds of trouble in our businesses in blue states.

If they start punishing businesses, for taking a more conservative speech or position. And so I don’t understand a conservative, punishing a business that’s the largest employer in the state. That’s a pretty strong argument. Wouldn’t you say, well, yeah,

first of all, he’s Hutchinson’s right on the Prince all of the thing. Right? If you’re a conservative, you shouldn’t be using the state to punish corporations for speech. Okay. So he’s right on the principle.

But, Charlie, I just wanna point out also in that quote, Hutchison is offered the opportunity to answer that question in general, and he chooses not to. He says, let’s be more specific. Let’s talk about Disney. Now that tells me that not only does Hudgen c one Yeah. He not only is he because normally, it’s you know, she’ll not speak ill of another Republican.

But he’s taking the opportunity to go after DeSantis and Hutchinson’s running in a Republican primary. So he thinks that this is an issue that can get him some traction with conservatives, which is encouraging to me. Right? It’s means that he thinks there are conservative owners out there who won’t just see the DeSantis attack on Disney as our people fighting their people, but who actually believe that the government shouldn’t be intervening and punishing corporations over their speech. But

is he also suffering from the rational fallacy of thinking that these are rational arguments?

Mean, are we back to the same argument with the discussion we had about Kathy’s article about Tucker? He might be, and I I look, the pessimist would say, and I I certainly wouldn’t Charlie Sykes among pessimists. Right? That people will You know, the Ace of Hutchinson has his Hutchinson Hutchinson’s got his one percent lane it’s not gonna get any bigger because he’s banking on, you know, principled conservatives. And there aren’t any anymore.

I can see that argument. But let me just point out one more thing here that is hopeful. I saw a clip from Marco Rubio, the Florida senator, right, from earlier in the week talking about this DeSantis war on Disney. And Rubio said, I do worry that businesses will decide not to come here. Right.

No. I don’t.

Yeah. When you have the senator from your own state, saying, you know what? I think our governor who’s running for president might be attacking business too much and it might hurt our state. That does signal that it’s not just Hutchinson that there’s some unease going on among some Republicans about these attacks on not on just on speech, but on business. And

it feels like a runway train. I devoted my newsletter to sort of catching up on how the the right has decided it’s all in on cancel culture, not breaking news that they’ve decided that they’re pivoting. I remember you and I both remember back in the midst of time in twenty twenty one. When the whole theme of CPAC was, you know, attack on the cancel culture and were against cancel culture, it was America uncanceled. And they wanted to make cancel culture into their new fake news.

Mhmm. Well, now they’ve decided to hell with that. We’re gonna go on to something else, some other grievance. And the list of companies and businesses that the right is targeting for cancellation or boycotts is kind of breathtaking. I mean, it’s very eclectic.

Kandi companies theme parks, beers, books, movies, airline, shoe companies, tampons. Don’t ask me, cartoon characters. Even law enforcement. I mean, it’s and they keep coming, you know, the makers of Amjamimas, you know, Hershey’s, of course, Disney, Bud Light. Honeybird debt lingerie.

I have no idea there’s that woman who’s this model social media influencer who shares a video of herself with a gun shooting up table full of Bud Light cans, handbags, tampons, and honeybird debt lingerie. I’m not even gonna try to figure out why. You have people on the right, you know, wanting to cancel the FBI and the DOJ. M and M’s is a big thing. Steven Miller’s is actually taking legal action against M and M’s.

He’s got a thing called America First Legal. I found a list. There’s an organization called the what is it called the seventeen ninety two exchange? And they have a list of the worst world companies. They have a database of a thousand companies.

And is on Alaska Airlines, Allstate Comcast, CVS, Ford, Kohl’s, Kroger, Marriott, Mattel, Pfizer, At a certain point, it’s gonna be like, guys, we have to keep the state open. We have to not attack every single company that has a an internal policy that, you know, they don’t like at Fox News. I mean, it’s there is a point at which you push Ron DeSantis’ however, kind of made himself hostage to the Christopher Ruffo’s of the world or the, you know, Tucker Carlson world where if they say, you gotta go after this company or this person has said this sort of thing, it’s like, you know, how how do

I jump? How fast do I run after them? Whatever. Madness So what DeSantis is selling is I’m not as crazy as Trump. I’m gonna be more effective than Trump, but I’m gonna give you the thing you Republican voters really want, which is liberal tears.

Right? I have the same enemies. I hate the same people. Right? But and I’m gonna punish them and hurt them more effectively than Trump did or would.

Right? The problem, of course, is that there are no ethics. There’s no institutional principles involved in that. Whatever you you know, Jesus said, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Ron DeSantis says, do unto others what you think they’re going to do unto you or what they tried.

It’s all about revenge punishment and it’s about adopting and accelerating the same means that you attribute to the other side. They have no scruples they will do anything to hurt us. So let’s do anything to hurt them. And this is where you end up. You end up with an attack on on business and

on speech because we are victims. Because they are just so mean to us. And of course, this is interesting. And I do think that historians and psychologists are gonna have a little bit of fun with this. That Donald Trump at the same time is basically say, you know, I am the, you know, man on the white horse, the colossus stride, wickedness.

I am your retribution. I am your justice. But also, I am the biggest, soriest victim in American history. And he says this, you know, without any sense that there’s a contradiction here. In case you were wondering whether or not Fox News was going to, you know, had that, you know, slow ban on Donald Trump.

No. He’s already back. Mark Levin sits down with the former president for another softball, you know, tongue bath. And Donald Trump asked and this is kind of interesting because there’s at least like a little hint that he knows a little bit about American history. But he’s going through American presidents who had tough times and argues that, you know, yeah, things were tough for Lincoln, but nobody is treat I’m not kidding you.

Okay? You can listen to this. But I’m treated worse than Lincoln who, by the way, was assassinated. This is like the other than that, missus Lincoln, think was Joe and Goldberg had tweeted this out. Other than that, missus Lincoln, you know, how was the play?

It’s like the don’t come to life. It’s like right there. Let’s let’s play a little sound bite from Donald Trump claiming that he was the worst treated president ever, although also the most successful.

They say that Andrew Jackson was the most vilified precedent. It was his wife died during this thing, and they said such horrible things. And he had a very tough presidency. He was a very good president. He was a great general and a good president.

The senate Abraham Lincoln, they say, was

you know, he had a civil

war going on. Alright? But the Abraham Lincoln had was just exemplified. He was But now they say Trump got treated the worst time.

Because what they do, they came up with phony Russia Russia

Russia. Russia. It was all hoaxes.

The way we were trying to the board turned

out to be no collusion. After two and a half years, no collusion. I could have told him that the first day, And they had the laptop, they could have figured that out. Because on the laptop, if you look at it, you could

have figured that out easy. But there’s never been anything despite that. People are saying it was one of the most successful presidency’s

in history, and I believe it was. So

people say that, you know, he Lincoln had a tough, but Trump much tougher. It was much more vicious than Trump because it was Russia, Russia. Okay. So we had the hundred south Americans killed during the civil war, and they killed him the molybdenum investigation, you know. And despite that, people say that I was also the best and the most

wonderful president. So Oh, boy. So I believe Charlie Sykes the term for someone who claims to have been treated worse than the Lincoln who was assassinated is theatrical. That is a theatrical claim. Neuro Neurocysts.

Neurocyst. Exactly. So the Neurocyst. Yeah. But part of what I love sorry.

I shouldn’t say love, but part of what fascinating to

me

about the narcissism, which is obviously on display here in in its purest form, is the way that this political party. The Republican Party maintains its loyalty to a man who has no loyalty to any he doesn’t even have a conception of anyone’s interest other than himself. I mean, So let’s take a couple of examples. One is, like, Trump talking about how all the people he endorsed one. Right?

He he doesn’t care whether they won the Republicans he endorsed won general elections. They lost in fact that he killed the party in in twenty twenty two. He just cares whether they won the primary because it’s all about Trump and how good his endorsement record is in primaries, not whether he helps the party. The other one is debates. Right?

The RNC is in force to enforce a loyalty rule about any presidential candidate has to promise to endorse the nominee, which, you know, this is a question of whether you will support Trump in a general election if you lose. Trump, meanwhile, keep giving another interview this week. He said, you know, I don’t know why, you know, if you’re way up in the primary, what’s the purpose of doing the debate? Why subject yourself to it? And Ronald McDaniel was was on TV Sunday, and she said she was asked about Trump refusing to commit to the debates.

And she says, well, you know, the Trump campaign. He’ll he’ll decide what he wants to do. So the loyalty only goes one way in this party. It goes to this insane screaming narcissist.

Well, and this is one of those moments where I think a lot of people wake up and hear this and they think, have I taken crazy pills? No, you are not the crazy ones. It is beyond limits of rationality to think of people who care about the future of the country watching any of this, listening to any of this and going, yeah, this is the guy. And we are going to preemptively surrender to him. It was kind of a hilarious discussion with Tim Miller on Friday where we talked about how they’re sort of preemptively going down to the basement and, you know, handcuffing themselves and ballgaining themselves and saying, you don’t even have to, like, hold us hostage.

We’ll do it for you. We’re just gonna completely cave in on all of this. So in contrast,

and I

was gonna gonna avoid the star flicking from the correspondence dinner, but were some pretty good lines from the dinner. Here’s one of my favorite, Joe Biden talking about the cancel culture coming after NPR and what it would really take to to kill NPR. Let’s lay Joe Biden from the correspondence dinner.

Well, not everybody loves NPR. Elon Musk tweeted that it should be defunded.

Well,

the best way to make Empire go away is we allow us to buy it.

I And

that’s more true than you think anyway.

And I’m willing to give in props for that. On a more serious note though, if you wanna get a little bit of a contrast between these two visions, that the country is going to have to choose between. The president did talk about freedom of the press, and he he made an appeal for the release of the American reporter who’s being held hostage in Russia. But let’s play a little bit of a sound bite a Joe Biden talking about his view of the role of the press and freedom of the press.

Let me start in a serious note. Jill, Kamala, Doug and I and members of our administration are here to send a message to the country, and quite frankly, to the world. A free press is a pillar. Maybe the pillar or free society. Not the enemy.

Enemy of the people. Thomas Jefferson

wrote,

you all know this quote. Thomas Jefferson wrote were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government. I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.

I haven’t actually thought about whether I agree with all of that, but We appreciate the sentiment. It probably doesn’t do to dwell too deeply on a country with lots of newspapers, but no government whatsoever. Just leave that aside. But there’s a pretty dramatic contrast between these two candidates and for people who think it’s gonna be really boring next year. I think I said this on a previous podcast that I’m torn between thinking this is going, oh my god.

We have to go through this again. That’s sort of that that sense of like it’s gonna be the same thing over. Over again, it’s kind of exhausting versus but also quite terrifying and incredibly clear. I mean, the clarity will be kind

of You wanna talk about bright lines? Part of what’s interesting here to me about this quote from Biden. It’s a cliche. It’s a cliche to say the free press is a pillar of of free society. This is what president said at the correspondence dinner every year.

And then came Donald Trump. And so suddenly after the Trump years, to have the American president stand up and say, that the press is a pillar of a free society, not the enemy. That’s no longer a cliche because we’ve seen what it’s like to literally have the person in charge of our country, attack the press, and call it the enemy of the people.

We’ve we’ve

seen

an authoritarian president. We hadn’t seen that for some time. And so I think that’s what twenty twenty four is gonna be largely about. Of course, the Republican Party has their issues they’d like to run on. And they’re very basic issues, inflation, crime, border security.

But if they nominate Donald Trump, they’re not just gonna be able to talk about that stuff. Because they’re gonna be nominating a guy who literally attacks the press and all other institutions of a free society.

Okay. And I’m starting to loop back here, but I wanna go back to Kathy’s point about, if you care about x, then you should stay away from people who undermine and completely discredit your position. This seems to be writ large now for the Republican Party that if you genuinely care about every issue you just mentioned, then why would you want to be associated with the one guy who might lead you to defeat? Why would you be associated with the one guy who makes every one of your legitimate concerns something toxic. And yet, they’ve accepted that.

We’re concerned about the border. I think people of goodwill can be concerned about illegal immigration. So what do you do? You associate your self with somebody who’s, you know, goes for ross and refobe who talks about building a wall, all of, you know, Mexican rapists, when, in fact, what you’re doing is you’re undermining your case. I think this is also the trade off that the pro life movement has made.

You know, they wanna create a culture of life and what do they do? Vambray somebody who has embraced the culture of cruelty and brutality as a way of life. And yet they’re willing to make these trade offs even though they are facially irrational. Right? And so we have a common theme here

of the failure of rationality, but I guess if I had to guess, Charlie, I would say, first of all, there’s obviously an epidemic of cowardice in the Republican Party. People just lack the courage to stand up in in the primary, which is difficult in the name of winning the general election, which would be the rational thing. The other thing is, I remember doing research at one point about what was then called battered wife syndrome I think there’s a lot of that going on in the Republican Party. Mhmm. Trump I mean, what has he been doing for the last three or four months, beating up Ron DeSantis, you know?

I will stand here and pummel this guy to reassert my dominance. Rationally, you would say, Jesus, we don’t want this guy to Trump to be our nominee. This will play terribly in the general election. But I just think they’re bullied and they’ve allowed themselves to be mentally crumpled. And they’re just capitulating and they as we’ve seen coming up with all sorts of rationalizations why if we nominate Trump this time and he loses, then next time we’ll nominate, but that rationale can go on forever because the rationalization is not actually serving rationality.

It is giving you an excuse

to do what you wanna do, which in this case is to capitulate. I think that’s absolutely correct. So as listeners of the podcast know, we’ve done a couple of special things recently. On Thursday, we launched a new, I would say, flex on the podcast. The trials of Trump were gonna be joined by Ben Wittis and the folks from law fair every Thursday so that we can catch up on all the legal issues surrounding the former president course, we’re gonna continue doing Will and Charlie Mondays, and Tim Miller will join me on Fridays.

And a week from today will we’re going to do something kind of special as well. It’ll be you and I, but I just want people to just mark it down, little appointment podcast listening, next Monday’s podcast, I think, is going to be quite special, and we’re going to be rolling out something else that’s new. Okay? Do you wanna be more specific? Or should I just leave it till the teas hanging out

there? I’m I’m a go in for the teas. I like the teas.

I’m going for the cheese. Alright? So we’ll we will talk a week from today to try to keep it on the on the down low, try to not have so much stuff packed into one week because we have so much to catch up on every single Monday, so have a great week, Will. Thanks you too, Charlie Sykes thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes.

We will be back tomorrow and we’ll do this all over again. Bulwark Podcasts produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

Dissecting politics with exclusive interviews, commentary, and humor, useful lady’s with Katie Halper and Aaron Mate.

I really don’t like sharks and I think we live in a very sharky gandistic world. Quote, one thing to keep in mind is sharks are not out there trying to eat surfers and swimmers. They’d much rather eat fish, but in many cases, they mistake us for their actual prey When they do bite, they usually move on. That’s supposed to make us feel better?

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