Will Saletan: They Keep Negotiating with Their Own Hostage-Takers

Welcome to the Bow World podcast. I am Amanda Carpenter sitting in for Charlie Sykes for another summer Monday with Will Salleton, but Will, I looked outside today and I fear the summer is winding down quickly.

I I’m so sad that you used the word fear. Don’t you love the fall? I love the fall, Amanda.

I do. I guess, you know what? I’m not ready for my kids to go back school. I feel like it’s been a short summer with them. It’s been so great because they’re getting a little bit older now.

You know, my my son is cooking. He’s nine. He’s getting hungrier, which is alarming. He’s eating enormous amounts, but it’s been very nice for me because I have always done all the cooking for our family. My husband saint.

He does all the dishes. I’ve done dishes very rarely in our whole entire marriage, so that’s our trade off. But it’s become so much easier because they’ve taken an interest in cooking. Like I woke up the other morning and my son is making scrambled eggs for his breakfast sandwich which included an everything bagel, ham, cheese, and the eggs, and I was like, can I have one? And would you believe it?

He cooked it for me, and it was delicious, and it’s probably one of the most amazing things that’s happened, so I don’t want him to go back to school anytime soon.

Well, you may have selfish motives, but I applaud you. First of all, I’m I’m super excited to hear that your son likes to cook, and I I encourage parents all over the world, teach your sons to cook, some of them won’t want to. But some of them will love it and you just will help to rectify one of the great imbalances in the world about men men not cooking.

Well, you are speaking my language. It is amazing. My husband is wonderful. I’m not ditching on him, but it is amazing to me. That some men can go through pretty much their whole lives without knowing or having to cook a meal for a holiday for someone else because that means you’ve gone through your whole life with someone else doing it for you the entire time.

And so I am teaching my son to cook. It’s going great. My daughter loves to cook. But if you can’t get them into cook, men, you better be really good at dishes. Contacting out the trash and the vacuuming.

That’s all I have to say about that.

Okay.

We have a really, really great piece on the homepage of the bulwark today. I really wanna encourage everyone to read it because I could talk about it and I could draw the quotes from it, but it would not do the peace justice. Today is the one year anniversary of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. Of course, remember the the pullout that happened last August. And this is a piece by lieutenant colonel from the Air Force, Will Selber.

And he was involved in trying to get the people out and having to grapple with the moral choices of choosing who gets assistance, who doesn’t, and not only was that hard to go through for him as, you know, a member of the services. But he really talks in great detail about how it’s affected him, how it’s haunted him, and he explores the concept of something that I you know, I knew about, but I didn’t really understand the concept of moral injury and moral trauma when you are forced to make choices about things that go against your values. And it is absolutely gripping It is essential reading, and I really think we don’t talk enough about the impact these decisions have on the troops when we get in these abstract discussions about the politics of whether this will hurt Joe Biden or not. Have you have you had a chance to read it well?

I have. It’s hesitate to use the word beautiful. It is a beautiful piece. It is a terrible piece. Yeah.

It is a recollection of the people he left behind the people he had to leave behind and did not want to. And as you put it so well, moral trauma. And I will tell you as somebody Charlie always gives me grief about saying I come from a democratic background, but I I am very familiar with progressive politics and the way progressive people think and talk. And they are very attuned to pain and anguish and those we leave behind at home. A little bit less so abroad, especially when military intervention is involved.

This is an area where when I came to the Bulwark, one of the things that I noticed was this deep compassion among my colleagues for people in another country where we were militarily involved. And so here we have the United States military leaving a place, and all of these people wrenchingly left behind many of them killed as a result. And one of the things that Will Silber gets into is the triumph of evil in Afghanistan after we left. And I would encourage people, progressive people, people who come from background like mine, read this article to get a feel for the cost of what of leave. And I understand the case for leaving and I support the case for leaving.

But you must not morally turn away from the cost of what that was. And what will sober captures is that moral cost.

And it sounds like the Biden administration will have some kind of memo coming out today. It might be out by the time this podcast is posted explaining the decision, defending the decision. Of course, we’ll all be consumed with that, but please take the time to go read this silver piece. And if you take anything away from it, if you can’t get to it, he talks at one point about going to a cemetery to visit one of his fellow soldiers who obviously did not make it and he’s there. And he talks about how he’s just so used to the idea of people coming up to him and saying thank you for your service.

But something that he took away was a man came up to him as he was at the gravesite and didn’t say thank you for your service. But rather said, tell me about your friend, and he listened to the story, engraved with him. And I think that’s something we need to do a little more of is grieving and understanding the loss that these soldiers have suffered rather than thanking them, shaking their hand, and just simply moving on. So I’ll just leave it at that. It’s a beautiful piece, as you said, well, it’s an important piece.

It’s a gripping piece. And I’m very proud that the bulwark was able to publish it, and very thankful that we’ll trusted the bulwark to post it. And so moving on, you know, obviously, there’s a lot to talk about with the primaries coming up and, of course, the Mar a Lago search, and we will get to that. But there’s a sleeper story that’s been bubbling around I think for the past year that I want to spend some time on. And that is the dominion lawsuit against Fox News.

The New York Times had a big kind of overview piece of it over the weekend. And at the top, it described this this lawsuit as potentially one of the most consequential first amendment cases in a generation. And what’s at stake here is essentially it’s a one point six billion billion with a b suit against Fox News for the lies it spread about Dominion voting systems after the election. And what’s really interesting is that the Dominion folks, when you read the suit, they’ve set up a storyline that makes a lot of sense. This isn’t just that Fox News spread lies, but they spread lies for a commercial purpose.

And I think we saw some of this in the Alex Jones suit. In the previous weeks, but they set up the story that Fox News knew exactly what it was doing. Because after the election, when Trump was making the case that it was stolen from him and Fox News, you know, they made that call for Arizona, wasn’t quite willing to go along with it. They saw a loss in viewership to its competitors like OAN, and news max, and Fox News freaked out. Right?

They’re always the people that people tune into. And so people like and these are people named in the suit, Maria Bartorama, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, and Janine Perro, leaned in to this manufactured story that somehow Dominion had flipped the votes and stolen the election from Donald Trump and that is how Fox News got its audience back. What do you think of of this case? Have you I know you you’ve looked at it. I mean, do you think it has the big first amendment implications that the New York Times is setting up?

Well,

it certainly has first amendment implications and will be the argument that Fox News makes and it’s a traditional argument against this kind of this kind of lawsuit. But I I think you put your finger on how Dominion intends to approach this. And that is that the motive on the side of Fox News was not to express a viewpoint, to to allow others, to express a viewpoint, the traditional sort of first amendment argument. The motive was commercial. Now, that is a an empirically testable proposition and what Dominion is doing in order to verify that the motive was commercial, that is, as you said, to compete with other networks on the right, is that they’ve they’ve done they’ve gone through this discovery process.

They’re getting emails. They’re getting text within the company. They’re they’re getting depositions of Rupert Murdoch and Lackland Murdoch. And what they’re trying to show is that the Fox News executives and anchors and people who who spread the lies about the election knew that they were false, believe they were false, did not care about them, but were basically spreading them because they knew that’s what the audience wanted to hear. I don’t know if this argument will work.

I think it is true, but I’m very interested in the larger purpose of the suit as stated in the company’s original the company’s meaning Dominion’s original complaint. Which was they had a couple of lines in this complaint. They said, one was the truth matters. And they’re absolutely right. And if this lawsuit accomplishes nothing else, I hope it will establish what the truth was, that the Fox people knew that this was bogus, what they were spreading.

And the other thing they said was that in the complaint, lies have consequences. Now what Dominion wants is one point six billion dollars in consequences, and I don’t know if they’ll get that. But if we can establish what the truth was through this lawsuit, through the discovery process, the text, the emails, and if Fox can be forced to pay some large amount of money as punishment for its cynical lies, then we will, you know, that will be part of the political and cultural process of holding accountable the people who have lied about the twenty twenty election. Yeah.

What makes this case different? Is that usually when it comes to a libel law, defamation claims usually have a single statement, you know, a single lie that was told. But what makes this so different and interesting is the fact it was repeated again and again, not just by Maria Bartorama, Sean Hannity, in the top tier host, when something goes on Fox News with that kind of platform, it gets repeated on digital, it gets repeated on social, it trickles down to all kinds of other networks who lean on Fox News for editorial leadership. I mean, really the digital age. And so that one point six billion dollars figure sounds like a lot.

But when you consider the fact about how often those lies were repeated, because of this particular storyline that Fox News, you know, if you believe Dominion manufactured to regain the audience they were losing I don’t know if it sounds so high.

Here’s my argument, Amanda. It’s better than nothing. That’s basically my argument.

Well, it’s proceeding. I mean, the loss doesn’t die. I mean, it is definitely active. Neither side is settling, which is unusual. Depositions, as you mentioned, are being taken now.

From people like Dana Perino, Steve Ducey, Sheppard Smith who’s no longer with the network. And so, I mean, it’s gotta be a weird place to work right now. Right? You are being deposed for the lies your network told while it’s actively telling all sorts of other lies about the so called weapon novation of the FBI. I mean, that’s got to be a real weird workplace to go into.

Well, yeah, and, you know, people over time, what has happened at Fox in similar places is people who care about the truth have moved elsewhere and people who stayed or those who are interested in the entertainment part of the job. I hate to say that that’s part of the job, but it is an entertainment company in which news is a subset. But, I mean, the overarching things that need to be accomplished are one, to establish what the truth was. And secondly, accountability. And I grant you one point six billion Maybe it should be more.

But right now, we have zero. We have very little accountability for people who’ve lied, very little political accountability. Those people who lied about the elections are winning their primaries, and we have very little financial accountability. So some kind of accountability would be helpful. And I think you also put your finger Amanda on a very important another very important part of this, which is this cycle of cynicism where the people, in this case, at Fox News, anchors at Fox News who know that the election lies are lies.

Spread them because they knew the audience wanted to hear them. And Amanda, this is exactly the same thing we have going on in the political context. Where Republican politicians spread lies because they know that’s what the base wants to hear. There’s no leadership. There’s no leadership in the party.

There’s no leadership at the network to say despite the fact that our audience wants to hear these lies, we are going to tell them the truth.

Okay. So in the background behind the scenes, you have this Dominion lawsuit advancing against Fox News. And do you remember was it maybe just a few short weeks ago, when there was all this hub up that the Murdochs were turning against Trump because the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post had published editorials that were sort of critical of him. Mhmm. Mhmm.

I I don’t see that happening now. I see all the top tier hosts talking about how the Mar a Lago raid was a weaponization against, you know, Donald Trump and the FBI should be defunded. I I think that completely disappeared. And then I saw a poll that Trump has a ten point bump after the surge. And I wonder if again Fox News for commercial interest is rallying behind the former president.

Yeah. There’s plenty of commercial interest here. Some of it is at Fox News. Some of it is within the Trump organization itself. One of the interviews that I saw on Fox in the last couple of days was Lara Trump.

Mhmm. She’s on Fox News, and she says she says out loud, you know, the talk about saying the quiet part out loud. She says in the interview that since the raid on Mar a Lago and since Trump exploded on social media and claimed that it was a a raid and a siege and an attack on him, that they had raised more money for his reelection than at any time. Since he’s left office. And to me, that says at all that this is essentially a fundraising operation.

I mean, they’re they’re gonna set the country on fire gonna tell lies about the FBI search of Mar a Lago. They’re gonna do all of this for commercial reasons. Fox, you know, has has done so many of these interviews that end with give money to me. I don’t know. Do you notice this?

I I constantly see the Trump Organization or Republican candidates. I saw doctor Oz doing it. And I you know, they’re not alone. Right? MSNBC does a lot of lefty stuff, but I don’t see the same kind of explicit fundraising going on on the other networks that I see on Fox.

Well, I think

that was shamelessly pioneered by Lindsey Graham. I mean, of course, a lot of them did when I worked for Ted Cruz and he was running for president, he would say, you know, check out my website or text blah blah blah at the end. He would always work it in. But Lindsey Graham was utterly shameless during his last election and begging people for donations on Fox News to the point where I remember the hosts were trying to tell him to tone it down. But it’s a free for all now.

And the idea, that’s a good point you bring up Lara Trump is on. The Murdochs have not turned against the Trump’s. When they host Lara Trump and Eric Trump to go on and give the most blatant kind of spin to defend Trump constantly. I the the idea that that ever was a thing is sort of beyond me. And maybe for more evidence of this.

We have some sound from cash Patel. Does everybody know who cash Patel is? Will he was the, you know, so called intel guy in installed in the final days of the Trump administration. He’s got his hands really in everything. And of course, he was one of the people appointed as national archives representatives for Trump in the final days of his administration along with the don’t know how to describe them.

John Solomon, I used to report to him directly when I worked at The Washington Times, and that’s just been another kind of free fall into Trumpism, but Cash Patel was going to be one of the point persons for these documents, of course, because so they could get first hands on it manufacture news to their liking, but that is sort of falling apart in light of the Mar a Lago search. So let’s just listen to some sound from Cash Patel about how he thinks of how the declassification process for these documents

works. In October of twenty twenty, he issued a sweeping declassification order for every Russia gate document and every single Hillary Clinton document. Then on the way out of the White House, he issued further declassification orders, declassifying whole sets of documents and this is a key fact that most Americans are missing. President Trump as a sitting president is a unilateral authority for declassification. He can literally stand over a set of documents and say, these are now declassified, and that is done with definitive action immediately.

He

just gets out as declassification wand, waves his hand over the documents and poof, declassified. Is that how it works?

It is straight out of Harry Potter. The way the way that these guys talk about presidential authority. So I don’t know where to begin with this. This is, first of all, an authoritarian mindset. Right?

This is remember, these are the same people who complained about Hillary Clinton, not not following procedures. Procedures, things that were outside of her authority, you know, that were about the handling of classified material, the handling of government material. Here, there are no procedures. There are explicitly no procedures. Kash Patel is saying he can stand over them, pronounce the magic words.

By the way, Amanda, there’s nothing written here. Right? None of what he’s describing, what Patel is describing involves that Trump has to write anything down. And and John Solomon, who you were quoting before, actually read out loud a statement from Trump’s office. John Solomon now representing Trump’s office having been a journalist.

Let’s set that aside for a minute. That said that there was a standing order during Trump’s presidency that and this is the quote from Solomon. Documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them. In other words, Trump doesn’t have to say anything out loud. He doesn’t have to write anything down.

He just sort of does it. And and therefore, by fiat, suddenly documents are declassified and are eligible to be taken wherever. So that is a completely Kim Jong Un version of the United States presidency. There is no documentation as far as we know that Trump ever wrote down or submitted any paperwork. To declassify this stuff.

It doesn’t even have to be declassified for him to have violated these laws that he’s accused of violating or may have violated. But the point is that there’s no documentation of it and so the Trumpers have come up with this theory in which no documentation is necessary. I

have an idea. Why doesn’t Joe Biden just get out the magic classification wand and wave it near and say, these are all classified now. You do that. He doesn’t even have to be there. He can just blink his eyes and wiggle his ears and they’re classified once again.

Right? If that’s how this

works. Right. The authoritarianism game is never ending, and that’s why we should not get into it. By the way, there is, in addition to the absence of evidence of written evidence that any of this was classified, the document according to the the search warrant, the documents that the government went in looking for, and then he took out a bunch of them, were in fact, many of them marked classified or various degrees have classified, some of them top secret. And hilariously, hilariously, we had Republicans on the Sunday shows this weekend claiming that even if they were marked that way, maybe they weren’t anymore.

So the written evidence that they can’t be taken out and to your private residence is to be ignored, and then the absence of evidence that they were declassified is just to be granted to Trump under these wild theories.

But I thought

the FBI planted it. The FBI planted all the documents that Trump declassified. Is that is that how this works? I mean, really just trying to play the logic game, it is impossible. But I I am curious as to what you think.

Why do you think he wanted the documents. Was it a part of just the the chaos of people moving out of the building and throwing stuff in the boxes? Was it something more nefarious? Because what I tend to think was he was asked to turn them back over. FBI already went down there, his lawyer, a test, in some kind of document saying we turned all of our all the classified information when they didn’t.

I mean, maybe it’s chaos. Or more likely Trump wanted documents for leverage over people. This is something that he is obsessed with I don’t know what it was. I mean, but nuclear nuclear material that you can show off to your foreign buddies on the golf course, that makes you seem important. Makes you have leverage, if you have the name of a bunch of American spies, potentially leverage over the deep space.

I don’t want to go too far down that rabbit hole but the possibilities to me on that end are endless. So I

would distinguish here between why the government wanted the documents back and why Trump took them. I think the government wanted the documents back for for various reasons. They belong to the government, but I think you’ve put your finger on one of them, which is that a lot of these documents are extremely valuable for anyone doing espionage against the United States. If you can get nuclear documents, you can get signals intelligence, you can get intercepts, you can get I mean, these especially technological information. So it it doesn’t have to be Trump who sells the documents that can be anyone else.

And we know from reporting so far that the government had looked at surveillance video of people going in and out of the room where the documents are stored. So Trump can have paid no attention to this and still That’s a major threat to national security to have people having access in this unsecured or insufficiently secured area to these documents that can be sold. On Trump himself though, Amanda, I’m I’m gonna play defense for him. I don’t believe in almost any case that Donald Trump plans particularly much. In the case of January sixth, we have lots of evidence of him doing conspiracies.

But in the case of these documents, I think he simply thought he owned them. He always thought he owned the presidency. He thought he owned the White House. He thought he could stay there after he had lost the election. I think he took these documents with him because he could.

He paid very little attention to what was in them when the government said, you have to give them back. He thought it was the government’s problem. And the search is the government saying, no, it’s your problem. You lied to us and these documents belong to the United States. Howard Bauchner: Yeah,

I think that makes a lot of sense. And maybe his motive is irrelevant. I really liked how David French framed the choice that the government faces in terms of prosecuting Trump for retaining these classified documents by going back and reviewing how the FBI handled Hillary Clinton. French essentially argues that the Hillary Clinton rule is something that I think he he coined for this piece should be invoked. And what he’s getting at is that Hillary Clinton ultimately didn’t face criminal charges from mishandling classified information because the government determined she didn’t intentionally and willfully mishandle that information.

And, you know, there’s a quote directly from James Comey where he says all cases prosecuted previously involved a combination of a clearly intentional and woeful mishandling of classified information vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way to support an interference of intentional misconduct. Indications of disloyalty to the United States or efforts to obstruct justice. So that is the existing standard for prosecuting people of a political stature is Donald Trump. And when David wrote it,

I think

he’s trying to make the point that Trump has exceeded those standards in a way that Hillary Clinton did not, although I think a lot of people were confused by it. Saying, oh, we should not equate what Hillary Clinton did to what Donald Trump did. But I think he’s exactly right. That is the standard. The FBI has laid out these standards.

And the idea that Trump retained these documents and his lawyers misrepresented what they had to the FBI clearly meets the standard of obstructing justice, I would think. But I don’t do you think that’s a good standard? Or how do you feel about it? Well, I agree with

you about the the overall point here, which is and I don’t have the best recollection of the details of the Hillary Clinton episode. But I think it is true that Moore was done to Hillary than has been done to Trump, that is she was investigated. She came close to being charged. She was not charged. But all we have so far is a search of Mar a Lago.

We haven’t proceeded anything greater in the case Trump and that what Trump has done exceeds what Hillary did as David French points out. I I don’t think there is a parallel in the Clinton episode to the what Trump did, namely an ongoing resistance to request to return documents. Right? I mean, in the case of Trump, we have this long sequence of he takes the documents the government says, we think you have our stuff. The Trump team is sort of negotiating with them.

There’s the government goes in, get some of the documents. At some point, there’s this a statement signed by a Trump lawyer, as I think you mentioned, that says, we’ve we’ve handed over everything. And I don’t think there’s any analog into that in the in the Clinton case. That is a false statement, a provably false statement because they now went in and got the documents. So there is misrepresentation There is ongoing failure to return after they are told to return the documents, and all of that speaks to a level of obstruction that I believe was not present in the Clinton case.

We’re

just bringing up, you know, all these obstruction, things that Trump, that that just pertains to the classified documents at Mar a Lago. I mean, it is stunning. I sat down last night and I tried to think of all the charges that Trump is potentially facing right now. And do you wanna hear this list? I mean, it is insane.

Go. Regarding just January six, you have and I’m not saying he’s gonna actually face charges for all this. But these are the things that are on the table, seriously on the table, insurrection, seditious conspiracy, interfering with an official proceeding, defrauding the United States, witness tampering, violation of presidential records, and violation of the espionage act. That is just with January sixth. Then you’ve got the case up in New York against the Trump organization where they’re talking about fraud.

Tax evasion, grand larceny, falsification of business records. You go down to Georgia for the faulting case, You have solicitation to commit election fraud, attempting to interfere with hinder or delay election administration, racketeering, then you have all the civil suits brought by people like Eugene Carroll and the Capitol Hill Police, etcetera. And I think sprinkled within all of all of those cases, you’re dealing potentially with obstruction of justice. It is stunning, and we keep thinking he gets away with everything. But I just looked at that list that I made for myself and thought, how does he get away with all of that?

Well, one reason he gets away with all of it is that he does all of it. I I mean, so for people like you and me, we look at that and say, there’s a reason why Trump is being investigated, has been investigated for all of these things, which is that he’s a criminal. He’s just one of these people who, you know, goes around breaking the law, doesn’t care about rules, moral rules, legal rules, and therefore he gets himself in legal trouble. But for a lot of people, they go the other way. They’re like, their attitude is, he’s charged with all of this stuff because the government is out to get him.

So this surplus of charges against him becomes perversely the pattern that these people see is is the criminal conspiracy against Donald Trump. And a lot of Republican office holders, like Lindsey Graham, have fallen into that sort of talking about how the FBI is out to get Trump because the FBI is constantly involved because as you and I know, the FBI is enforcing laws and Trump is breaking them. The other thing about this is it would be really weird, but it could happen that the outcome of these investigations is that Trump skates on the big charges, you know, attempting to overthrow the government of the United States. He doesn’t get end up getting charged with that. But that somehow, if he gets nailed for anything legally, it’s this al capone thing.

Right? Capone got nailed for tax evasion. It can’t be a

minor charge. Right. Well,

this handling of government records, Amanda, honestly, does it rate next to staging a coup? I I don’t think it does. What does if he

is hanging out nuclear secrets for his Saudi friends on the LIV golf course. Yeah. That sounds like a joke, but I it could e. Oh, it may be,

but can I wave people away from that To me, this sounds a lot like the p tape. Remember the whole allegation about him being an artist telling him and and a whole bunch of people who hate Trump, went in for this story and it turned out not as far as we know not to be true. And then if you go out with the story about, you know, he’s selling nuclear secrets, and it turns out that there’s no evidence for that, then they’re gonna say that, see, we can’t believe any of it. So I’m a little bit leery of that one.

Well, we

can let all those various stories and conspiracies play out for themselves, but what we do know this is really shocking, but not surprising to see an intelligence bulletin that went out by the FBI and DHS on Friday night. I’m just going to read from some of it. FBI and DHS have observed an increase in threats to federal law enforcement and to a lesser extent other law enforcement and government officials following the FBI’s recent execution of search warrant in Palm Beach, Florida, shocking not surprising. Gosan, these threats are occurring primarily online and across multiple platforms, including social media sites, web forums, video sharing, image boards, and here’s the kicker. These threats include ideas about placing a so called dirty bomb in front of the FBI headquarters in issuing general calls for civil war and arm rebellion.

It also goes on to discuss the Ohio gunmen who tried to enter the FBI’s office in Cincinnati. He was wearing a technical vest. He had a AR rifle. A nail gun. When officers approached him, he fled the scene.

He was chased. He was killed, but what FBI and DHS are telling us is that they expect to see more of this. And then over the weekend, I’m sure you saw the news that there was a man that went to the Capitol, armed, shot into the air, killed himself, and there were armed protesters outside the FBI in Phoenix. And so it seems like things are getting uncomfortably hot. What do you think?

Yeah, they

certainly are, and I’m just gonna come out and say it. This is because the republican party has decided to demonize law enforcement. The guy in Cincinnati is a January sixth guy as far as we know. His social media indicate he was there on January sixth. So he was he was already provoked once to a scene of violence, if not committing violence himself, by Republican lies.

It’s happening again, the attacks time are not on the Congress of the United States. They’re on the FBI, but, you know, we have another we have these cases of attacks on the FBI now. I think it’s important for people to understand that what the Republican first of all, the Republican party’s pretense of being the party of law and order, we can just forget that now. That is that is a joke. The Republican Party is for your local police, but when any law enforcement agency goes after Republicans, namely the FBI in this case, the Republican Party turns on law enforcement.

And the entire party going right up through a lease to find out the number three person in the house and Kevin McCarthy claiming that the FBI is weaponized and politicized. The entire leadership of the Republican Party is attacking law enforcement. They are doing so furthermore, to a far greater extent than Democrats ever did with defunding police. Defund police was a slogan that some activists had, you you had to go to a protest where people would chant it. You did not hear leaders of the Democratic Party in Congress or anywhere else saying that the that the police were evil and had to be quite the contrary.

We have the leadership of the Republican Party spreading this message that law enforcement is is corrupt. And is evil. And it is leading to this violence. And and it is absolutely an extension of what happened on January sixth. I

think you’re absolutely right. It’s not a coincidence that the people who are most in on defending, downplaying what happened in January six are also the most agitated against taking action against the FBI for the search. Paul Gossar, you know, Paul Gossar from Arizona. He he tweeted last week. We must destroy the FBI.

We must save America. I stand it with Donald j Trump. And I just want to play this sound from CBS reporter Scott McFarlane who is doing a tremendous job not only tracking all of the January sixth prosecutions of the writers, which is a momentous task. In itself, but just staying on the overall story and just listen to some sound about how he framed what’s going on. Immediately,

we see this quick acceleration of ferocious chatter on social media platforms, on chat groups, from potential extremists targeting the judge who signed the search warrant. They’re trying to deduce who the FBI agents were, who were part of that search but that’s just an inflammation of an already dangerous situation stemming from January sixth. The prosecution of the capital riots has created its own radicalization. The DC federal judges handling the January six cases are getting vile vulgar death threats. The people who are part of the investigation are getting threats.

The prosecution itself is radicalizing people Now we have a force multiplier, a surge of monologue. Yeah, that’s

really interesting how he described it as a force multiplier. Because I I think that’s exactly right. He had people who are already upset, agitated, organizing, and this just fueled them even further. And now now it feels like they have a direct target. That’s law enforcement and the FBI.

Yeah. And it sort of speaks to the the complete cynicism of the Republican leadership. So we were talking about this in the context of Fox News the way that the the Fox News anchors are playing to the audience by feeding them lies. They know the audience wants to hear. What we now have is in the in the context of the Mar a Lago search is the leadership of the House of the Republican Party feeding their political base, these lies, they know they want to hear.

So they’re spreading this stuff about the FBI. And These are children, these leaders of the of the Republican Party today, and they think that there are no consequences to their acts. And every time there is an attack on an FBI field office or a threat against the FBI or a threat against a judge. That is that is the consequences. That is what happens in the real world when you spread these lies.

And one other thing about this. Donald Trump at his rallies is still he is attacking the prosecution of January sixth he’s attacking the law enforcement officers. He goes around saying, who shot Ashley Babbot? That is absolutely sort of the Republican version of of all cops or bastards of, you know, the cops are corrupt, you can’t trust them, and they are fanning this fire of extremism and violence.

Yeah. There are

some Republicans who are looking around and saying, really, what are we doing here guys? And I saw Larry Hogan on one of the Sunday shows saying how ridiculous and terrible it is that Republicans are attacking the FBI, but you are right. There is not a strong signal pushing back on this. And we talked about Fox News earlier, how they were falling in line behind Trump. And I I will say on this, there appears to be some degree of discomfort.

I’m not applauding them for this But let’s just play some sound from Steve Ducey of all people on the Fox and Friends Morning Show talking about how he thinks it needs to be tamped down.

We just know that

right now, given the fact that there is a suggestion that there are a lot of online, very specific, apparently very specific threats against very specific agents at the FBI and whatnot, it would it would be great for everybody to tamp down the the rhetoric against the FBI because the FBI simply was doing what the DOJ asked him to do. The attorney general is the boss of the guy at the FBI of all the people at the FBI. So you know, with all of these threats going around, it would ultimately be great if the former president who has always been a great supporter of law enforcement imposed with a thousand police departments coast to coast. It would be great if he called for an end to the violent rhetoric AGAINST FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AND IN PARTICULAR THE FBI THAT WAS JUST DOING THEIR JOB. But as Trey Gowdy pointed out last night, for you to look at this situation and think that Democrats and Republicans have been treated the same over the last few years, you’d have to be looking at a different situation.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the big

irons

for the trade borrower. Bill talked about that too. He said,

you know, it’s interesting that the democrats are progressives. They’re now worried about protecting law enforcement when they weren’t, you know, years ago during the raids, but no one is for the violence of FBI agents or you know, any of these individuals that are involved. Right. If you wanna

personify

that search, look at the attorney general of the United States. Merrick Garland is the one who is staked his entire reputation on it. If there’s something if there’s not something really big there, he’s done.

What a

mess that is. We know this is bad. Donald Trump, please do something. And would you please people not focus on the FBI and just go after Barrett Garland. Right?

And did is that is that the play here? Yeah. We we we

give him part points for saying, don’t go after the FBI. They’re only executing the search. But best to do

so you really think Donald Trump is going to say, no, no, guys, back off the FBI. After the FBI, you know, raided his house and this unprecedented blah blah blah. I mean, what planet are you living at? Like, they are just constantly negotiating with their own hostage shakers.

Absolutely. And and Amanda, I mean, just just to back up to the what Ducey actually says there, you know, he doesn’t say, mister former president, you need to come out and say this. He says repeatedly, it would be great if, you know, they sound like remember when Republicans used to complain that, like, Liberals believe had moral relativism and they weren’t strong enough in expressing what was morally right, here it’s it’s open and shut what’s morally right to do, but instead what we get from the Fox News host and occasionally from the better people in the Republican Party, not even most of them. Is this stuff about it? It would be great if maybe you guys would say that, you know, gosh, we shouldn’t go around shooting FBI.

It’s not their fault, and then the additional relativism of, you know, if you wanna blame somebody, blame the boss of the FBI, blame the attorney general. It’s pathetic. No.

It’s like Steve Ducey almost had a decent point. And then, of course, you had Brian Kilmaid and Ainsley, whatever her last name is. Swooping in to say, hey, but but remember Democrats are the really bad guys here. This is bad, but Democrats are really bad. And if you wanna focus your energy, focus on the big Democrat in charge.

Because remember, we’re always the good guys. Even though Donald Trump, please, would you stop people from wanting to shoot up FBI. I mean, it is really a pretzel kind of head space that you have to be in to sit on that couch. And constantly have to stop yourself from making a pure simple, honest, necessary point because you have to caveat it for your audience so badly to show them, oh, well, we’re still on your side. We hate Democrats too.

Yeah.

Absolutely. I could not agree with you more. And and I would just point out that, you know, when there was the George Floyd stuff, Republicans were the people who when black Americans said, hey, a lot of our people seem to be getting killed unjustly by police. Republicans said, oh, you know, don’t fuss about that, back the blue. And now Republicans are playing exactly doing exactly the same thing saying, why do you keep prosecuting our people?

Therefore, the police are are not trustworthy here. They’re saying the FBI is not trustworthy. At best, they’re saying don’t blame the line officers. Don’t blame the FBI. Go after the attorney general.

What happens when somebody takes a shot at the attorney general? This rhetoric needs to stop. I

agree. Okay. Well, before we go, let’s listen to a woman who does have a clear line of sight about the problems in front of us who never hesitates to speak honestly about the situation. Of course, I am talking about Liz Cheney, whose primary is tomorrow. She is not likely to win.

But throughout her candidacy, she has made January sixth the central focus of that campaign. She has never shirt from it. Her voters didn’t want to hear it, but she has decided that is what she would talk about in the final days of her campaign. And we do have her closing argument in an ad. I’m just gonna warn you, it is long.

But I do think we do deserve to hear it in its entirety. So here’s Liz Cheney’s closing argument. As election day nears, I wanna talk to citizens across our great state and all across our country. America cannot remain

free if we abandon the truth. The law that the twenty twenty presidential election was stolen is insidious. It prays on those who love their country. It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts, and the rule of law. This is Donald Trump’s legacy, but it cannot be the future of our nation.

History has shown us over and over again. How these types of poisonous lies destroy free nations? Like many candidates across this country, my opponents in Wyoming have said that the twenty twenty election was rigged and stolen. No one who understands our nation’s laws No one with an honest, honorable, genuine commitment to our constitution would say that. It is a cancer that threatens our great republic.

If we do not condemn these lies, if we do not hold those responsible to account, we will be excusing this conduct. And it will become a feature of all elections. America will never be the same. Nothing in our public life is more important than the preservation of the miracle given to us by god and our founding fathers. Nothing.

Here’s my pledge to you. I will work every day to ensure that our exceptional nation long endures. My children and your children must grow up in America where we have honorable and peaceful transitions of power, not violent confrontations, intimidation, and integrity.

Where we are

governed by laws and not by men, where we are led by people who love this country more than themselves. No matter how long we must fight, this is a battle we will win. Millions of Americans across our nation, Republicans, Democrats, independents, stand united in the cause of freedom. We are stronger, more dedicated, and more determined than those trying to destroy our Republic. This is our great task, and we will prevail.

I hope you will join me in this fight. There it is. And it doesn’t

sound like she’s going to disappear from public life? Should she lose tomorrow? No, it

doesn’t. I mean, a couple of things about this ad strike me. One is her emphasis on the very, very big picture. I mean, she’s talking she says history has shown us, you know, and she said that

Water writes in Wyoming. This is total.

I’m totally not water rights, not cattle, not agriculture at all. And so she talks about history. She talks about the history of the construction of free nations, the cancer that threatens our republic, our nation must long endure, that we must have peaceful transitions of power, plural, She is talking about the entire history of the United States going back and going forward. So she is totally not focused on winning a house seat in Wyoming. Although she’s hopes to do so.

And the other thing Amanda is some of what she says there suggest to me that she expects to lose this primary and that it’s just the beginning of her future, which is either a presidential campaign or some kind of national movement she says at the end. No matter how long we must fight, we’ll win the battle. We’re more dedicated, we’re more determined, and she says, I hope you’ll join me in this fight. It’s not even really about Did you hear anything about Wyoming in the ad? No.

There’s a lot of

royal we. We. We. Yeah. So she’s talking

about a fight that sounds like it will go on for a long time and I agree with her, but it’s not a fight for the Republican nomination for a house seat

in Wyoming. Yeah. That’s right. And I know there’s a lot of speculation about her running for president. I I I’ve expressed this before.

I I do not see how someone will be permitted to actually challenge Trump in a fair contest at under the current structure of the Republican National Committee. I I don’t know how that would work, but here’s one thing I am looking for in the returns tomorrow. Let’s say her opponent, Harriet Hageman beats her bike. Let’s say it’s seventy thirty. It’s a walloping.

Liz Cheney only gets thirty percent of the vote. I would want to know, those thirty percent of Republican primary voters, and I understand she encouraged some crossover voting, but there’s just not a lot of Democrats in Wyoming. Let’s set it low, twenty to thirty percent of Republican primary voters in Wyoming. Are they actually gonna cross over and support Hageman or a Trump in a general election? I don’t see it.

If

you’re voting for

lose Cheney after she made those kinds of arguments throughout the primary, I do not think you suddenly turn and vote for the MAGA Choice. And so what you have left are the abstainers. Right? Republicans cannot win general elections if they continually lose twenty five or thirty percent of the Cheney vote, let’s call it. They will

not win. It

is not possible. You cannot turn out the megabase enough. You can’t juice them up anymore if twenty or thirty percent of your own people are sitting on the sidelines. And so I think that is where we will see let’s call it the leverage that potentially a Liz Cheney could hold over a twenty twenty four contest. And I’m not sure she has to actually run for president to do it.

Yeah. I

don’t think she has to win at all, and I don’t think that’s what she’s playing for. I mean, I think it’s pretty clear by now from the fact that she has laid down her seat, laid down her leadership post already and is now prepared to lay down her seat, that her priority is not her career. Her priority is she recognizes an evil in our time, a very great evil, a very dangerous evil, and she is determined to defeat that evil. That’s the whole game for her. I mean, it’s not I I hesitate to call it a game.

It’s not a game. It’s the opposite of a game. The stakes could not be higher and she’s willing to lose for that. And your math is exactly right. It doesn’t get Liz Chaney nominated in Republican primary.

It doesn’t necessarily get Liz Cheney elected in a in a as a write in in a in a state like Wyoming. What it does is it deprives Donald Trump, first of all, and secondly, anyone who tries to do what Donald Trump did, rely about elections to, you know, turn the United States into an authoritarian country from getting enough votes to win a general election. She just wants to have enough people who are in I hesitate to call it the middle because these people can be very ideologically conservative, but they believe in democracy, they believe in the rule of law, they will not vote for Trump, they will vote against Trump, and that is all that is necessary to prevent the great evil from returning. Well, as we

close, we will watch what happens with the Cheney race tomorrow closely, but I wanna leave people with this idea. There are five hundred and thirty five members of Congress who come and go win and lose their elections all the time. Rarely do they make history? Rarely do they bend the will of a Congress in the right direction? And Liz Cheney has already succeeded on that front, which makes her more impactful than thousands of other members who have served.

So that’s all for today. Charlie Sykes will be back tomorrow and will thank you again for joining me for a summer Monday. Thank

you,

Amanda. The Bulwark podcast

is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Siri. I’m Shirley Sykes. Thank for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. We’ll be back tomorrow and do this all over

again.

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