E. Jean Carroll and Sarah Longwell: Such a Bad Man

Transcript

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Speaker 2 All right. Hey, everybody.
We've got a wild schedule today, given everything that's going on in the Hill.

Speaker 2 So I just want to kind of talk to you about the pod calendar, what you're going to be getting from me today and this week. Up first is Eugene Carroll.
And I got to tell you, she's a Spitfire.

Speaker 2 Just finished that conversation, and that will be a nice tonic for your day. And so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
We did something a little different in segment two.

Speaker 2 I went live with Sarah Longwell to discuss the drama that was going on on the Hill with the BBB.

Speaker 2 As we were talking, all signs were pointing to the fact that Lisa Murkowski was going to fold and be the 50th vote with J.D. Vance as the tiebreaker that passed Trump's big fugly slut.

Speaker 2 And that happened just right after Sarah and I taped.

Speaker 2 But, you know, all of the context of that conversation was sort of based around what we expected, which was that Lisa Murkowski was, in the end, going to fold. Kind of crazy.

Speaker 2 After all of that, Markowski gives a press conference later in the day that says that my hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognize we're not there yet.

Speaker 2 Lisa Markowski voted for a bill she doesn't even think is done or good and gave the tiebreaking. It's just, it's unbelievable.
And Sarah has a lot of... harsh words on that topic.

Speaker 2 So that's what we did in segment two. Wanted to make sure we got the news to you guys.
And just one other update on all that. As stuff happens, we are doing breaking live takes more and more.

Speaker 2 And usually that stuff is going into the bulwark takes feed. So make sure you subscribe to that on your podcast player of choice.

Speaker 2 And then coming up this week, just so folks know and can plan, we've got a podcast tomorrow and Thursday. And then I'm on holiday.

Speaker 2 I think you should go on holiday too, you know, the day at least, the people, those of you who, you know, stick with me every day. We appreciate you.

Speaker 2 Maybe use that 45 minutes to read or listen to an audio book or, I don't know, have a glass of rosé, whatever. It's something to think about.

Speaker 2 So, we're going to do a vacation for one week, one summer vacation, then I'll be back on July the 14th with Bill Crystal. So, that's what you got.
Doubleheader today.

Speaker 2 Two more podcasts after that this week, and lots happening. Stick around for Eugene Carroll and Sarah Longwell.
Appreciate y'all.

Speaker 2 Hello, and and welcome to the Bullword Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
I'm delighted to be here up first with a person that wrote the Ask E. Gene Carroll column for 27 years for Elle Magazine.

Speaker 2 It's since moved to Substack, and she also has a new book, Not My Type One, Woman vs. a President at Long Last.
We've got E. Jean Carroll on the podcast.
How are you doing, girl?

Speaker 19 Oh, Tim, you are such a faithful reader of Ask Eugene. I can just tell.
You never missed a column. I know I can tell.

Speaker 2 It is so funny you start with that because I asked my friend Dan Savage as a gay, I was more partial to the Dan Savage advice column, I must say.

Speaker 2 And I said, What should I ask a fellow advice columnist?

Speaker 2 And he said, You should ask Eugene what you do if someone tells you they've been reading you for years and then asks you a question you've answered a hundred times already. Exactly.

Speaker 2 So, what do you do in that situation as an advice columnist?

Speaker 19 Let's just say Dan Savage is one of the premier great advice columnists of all time. Okay.

Speaker 19 You couldn't have talked to anybody. As a matter of fact, he should be here sitting here instead of me.
No, Dan Savage, we'd be.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I think he'd be happy to not be here because he wouldn't want Donald Trump touching him, I think.

Speaker 19 No, he would not. No, he would not.
And Dan Savage would have gotten out of that dressing room faster than I would because he's in very good shape.

Speaker 2 He does.

Speaker 2 Well, I don't know. You have that dog inside you, as they say, these days, that maybe Dan doesn't.
I don't know.

Speaker 19 I don't have a dog inside me.

Speaker 19 I have a cheerleader. A cheerleader.
I have a cheerleader.

Speaker 2 People can already tell. I said this yesterday at the very end.
I said, we've got a... such a fun guest coming tomorrow.

Speaker 2 And then I said that and I kind of caught myself because, you know, the book is about sexual assault. And so that's not really a fun thing to talk about.
But the book is, it's fun.

Speaker 2 How did you manage to deal with all of this in such good spirits?

Speaker 19 Well, Tim, I found myself in the middle of a high comedy. You know, have you been in a courtroom, Tim? You've been in a courtroom.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I've been in a courtroom a couple of times. We're not going to do the details because my mother doesn't know about one of them.
But yeah, I've been in a couple of courtrooms.

Speaker 19 I found myself surrounded. by characters that not even Jonathan Swift could have created.

Speaker 19 It was so absurd and so bizarre. I had to get it down.

Speaker 19 And when I started to write it down, when I started to take notes, when I spoke every night into my iPhone, the notes so I wouldn't forget, it was coming out funny. It was just coming out funny.

Speaker 19 Just the details were funny. So

Speaker 19 that was the truth. That's what I wrote.
And

Speaker 19 I think people are really sort of liking it.

Speaker 2 I include myself among them. I have to say, I don't, I have to live the Donald Trump life, so I don't like reading about it.

Speaker 2 And so I was a little bit like, oh, do I have to go relive this trial like through the news?

Speaker 2 And I opened the book, and it begins with probably the most delightful list of consensual sex partners I've ever heard.

Speaker 2 Maybe the best list. This is how you start the book.
And I was like, okay, now I'm talking. Now we're talking.
A gentle lady's eight men total. Only one one-night stand.

Speaker 2 They include an Olympian, the man who opened the door for Neil Armstrong when he landed back on Earth, Chris Guest's brother, Dumbledore,

Speaker 2 so many acclaimed actors.

Speaker 2 I think they might have an egot if you put them all together. What a list.

Speaker 19 It was it. Well, first of all, Alina Haba Esquire, the fabulous Alina Haba Esquire, who is Trump's most beautiful attorney.
And she is the, as you know, the acting attorney right now of New Jersey.

Speaker 19 She's stunningly beautiful.

Speaker 19 I know you're frowning. I can see you're frowning.
I'm frowning. No, she's not for me.
She's highly intelligent, deliciously arrogant.

Speaker 2 She's highly intelligent. Eugene, she was a parking lot

Speaker 2 before she was deposing you.

Speaker 19 No, I don't care, Tim. I don't care.
Listen, who got elected?

Speaker 2 Okay, well, not Eugene.

Speaker 2 Excuse me, not Alina, I mean.

Speaker 19 No, no, she got him elected because after the trial, every single day she went out and spoke to the reporters and said that everything that Judge Kaplan said she could not say. Anyway, Alina asked me,

Speaker 19 she said she hated to ask me,

Speaker 19 but could I possibly tell her

Speaker 19 everybody I've ever slept with? That was her question. Now she did this.

Speaker 19 No, she never said that.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 19 She should have said that.

Speaker 19 Because I did not put the very man the whole deposition was about. I didn't put him on the list.
She did it to shame me. Yeah.

Speaker 19 She did it to try to make me look like a floozie. But of course, it was the one thing I love talking about, right? I love my lovers.
And it was, I hear you, Guff.

Speaker 2 I hear you. The dog also loves the lovers, apparently.

Speaker 19 May I stand up and let him out?

Speaker 2 Please, yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 The listeners will love it.

Speaker 19 We hear you, Guff.

Speaker 19 We hear. We,

Speaker 2 yeah, going out.

Speaker 19 Tim and I here,

Speaker 2 you

Speaker 19 had to ask about the lovers.

Speaker 19 It drives the dogs crazy.

Speaker 2 I did have to ask about the lovers because it made the book. It was such a great choice to start with it.

Speaker 2 I went from dreading reading the book to wanting to turn pages. I mean, I wanted to learn more, actually, about the eight men.
Thank you.

Speaker 19 Thank you. Well, one of them showed up at the book party.
See, most of them,

Speaker 19 I am 81. So many of the men,

Speaker 19 so do you.

Speaker 2 Thank you. I'm not 81, though.

Speaker 19 Yeah, well, you will be.

Speaker 19 One came to the book party, and it was fabulous. And he was 88, and he walked in, he had all his brains, he was adorable.
It was great seeing him. I introduced him to the crowd.
So that was, yeah.

Speaker 19 So she meant to humiliate me. She meant to drag, make me look like a cheap, huzzy slut,

Speaker 19 you know, skank and all the words that the and but no, oh my god, it was a moment. And Robbie Kaplan's

Speaker 19 your attorney, yeah, she was sitting next to me. Yes, the world's greatest civil rights attorney, who was born with a lust

Speaker 2 for

Speaker 19 competition,

Speaker 2 right?

Speaker 19 She heard this list, and as I named them off,

Speaker 19 when I said

Speaker 19 Ben Vereen, she rocked forward in her chair and beamed at her notebook.

Speaker 19 It turns out at the end of the deposition, she says, and just for the record, Ben Vereen is the first Broadway star I saw in my first Broadway play. So that, so that ended the deposition.

Speaker 19 It was quite on a high move.

Speaker 2 It was a great list. You didn't memory hole anyone? I mean, there was not a single miss on there.
You know, I mean, we all make bad choices sometimes. Eugene? Yeah, I do.

Speaker 19 I know, I'm picky, picky, picky.

Speaker 19 Very picky. I make bad choices, but not about men.

Speaker 2 I'm pretty good about men.

Speaker 2 Well, it was a wonderful way to start. And you're right about Robbie.
She's the best. She argued

Speaker 2 the Windsor trial in front of the Supreme Court. I had her on the pod maybe last summer, and we talked a little bit about your case.
So, folks should go back and listen to that. She's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So, I wanted to ask about Alina Haba.

Speaker 2 I'm pretty disappointed in your initial comments. You're not at all alarmed about the fact that this is the U.S.
attorney. I mean, you seem a little bit more impressed with her than I was.

Speaker 19 No, she's highly intelligent. No,

Speaker 2 she seems vindictive, though. It's not a great trait for a U.S.
attorney, I wouldn't think.

Speaker 19 No, no, she's full of revenge, full of revenge. They are living and dying for revenge.
It's she's Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, running New Jersey. I understand this, but I can't do anything about it.

Speaker 19 All I could do, Robbie and I beat her.

Speaker 2 We beat her.

Speaker 19 Now, you would have enjoyed some delicious moments in court because Trump treated her with such

Speaker 19 disrespect in the courtroom. He snarled and snapped at her and told her what to do, told her what to say, told her to stay.
He kept saying, stand up, stand up.

Speaker 19 And then she would stand up and would have no idea why she was standing up because she didn't know what she was supposed to object to.

Speaker 19 No, he really tortured her, but she took it and then she stood up and then she defended him and defended him. And he would snarl and snap.
It was,

Speaker 19 you know, she ate a mile

Speaker 19 of his garbage just to praise him. It was not pretty to be in the courtroom watching that.

Speaker 2 We'll see if you remember this, but you did pique my interest. You had a line in there where you said, Alina Haba reminds me of something, but I'm not going to say what it is.
But now I need to know.

Speaker 2 I need to know. What was it? What were you thinking? We're just on the podcast.

Speaker 19 Oh, God. Okay.
What I was thinking of, have you seen a dead fish on a slab of ice? Of course, yeah. Okay.
Have you really seen that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I live in New Orleans, girl. We go to the fish market all the time.

Speaker 19 Oh, my God. Okay, so.

Speaker 2 Porgies, recommend it.

Speaker 19 So you've seen fish on ice that are still

Speaker 19 alive, and we think they're dead, and their mouths are closing and opening like this on the slab of ice. Yeah.
That's Alina Haba.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Now that is the kind of description that I was hoping for. That's more

Speaker 2 up my alley.

Speaker 2 I need to ask you about, there's one disappointing thing in a postscript to the book I want to ask you about, which was my first question when Robbie reached out, which is,

Speaker 2 is this cheap bastard ever going to pay you? What's the status of the money?

Speaker 19 He will pay after he gets done exhausting the appeals. And every time he's appealed in the United States Court of Appeals, second circuit, he has lost to Robbie Kaplan.

Speaker 19 She just just argued last week on the $83.3 million.

Speaker 19 First of all, the arguments are flimsy. Second of all, Robbie Kaplan tore the roof off the Second Circuit last week.
She was like,

Speaker 19 well, I said Henry V in Agincourt. I couldn't help myself.
I mean, she blistered him.

Speaker 19 And then, Your Honors, he stood up during my final summation and walked out of court. You know, she was brilliant.
She was brilliant. So he's going to lose that.

Speaker 19 And then he will, you know, exhaust those appeals and then he'll go to the Supreme Court. Now, Tim, let me ask you,

Speaker 19 what do you think the chances are the Supreme Court wants to take a case where the president has been found liable? for sexual abuse and huge damages. Do you think they want to take that case?

Speaker 2 You know, it seems unlikely to me, but I would be, I've been surprised before. I don't know.

Speaker 19 Seems unlikely. There's a lot they've got to do right now.
There's a lot. They're very busy tearing apart the seams of democracy.

Speaker 2 And so then in your mind,

Speaker 2 do you get one of those big checks from Publishers Clearinghouse? Or

Speaker 2 how would it work?

Speaker 19 Wouldn't that be great? I would love to have you coming with one of those big checks, but I'll tell you, you know what I'm going to do with it? If there's one thing trump loves

Speaker 19 and just loves and worships it's his money yeah so i am gonna take that money and i'm going to give it to everything

Speaker 19 he hates i love that yeah can't i can't i don't really care about money myself

Speaker 19 i mean

Speaker 19 so let's just torture trump by giving it. Let's give it away for women's reproductive rights.

Speaker 19 right let's let's give it to the immigrants that he's sending to el salvador see that yes see and it's changing day by day what i'm going to give the money to so i'll have to i'm going to do uh publicly um okay on substack for everything we uh send them i have an official foundation and everything we support and send money to will be made public so we can all join in and if you have ideas

Speaker 19 tim and i'm sure you do do.

Speaker 2 I've got some nominations. Some things are coming straight to mind.
Really?

Speaker 19 Really? What would be one?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean,

Speaker 2 I am obsessed with the El Salvador stuff, as I mentioned. And I mean, you know, like the poor.

Speaker 2 We're just now into July. We did a Pride Month fundraiser last month for Andri, the makeup artist

Speaker 2 who's been sent to a fucking hole in El Salvador with no rights. So

Speaker 2 that is something that jumps straight to mind. But

Speaker 2 I'm sure we could think of other things.

Speaker 2 People, the trans folks, have been kicked out of the military that seems that seems pretty good that's a though maybe what would bug trump the most would be like to give money to some of his other rich rivals i guess we probably shouldn't do that that probably should that probably wouldn't count wait a minute we could give it to elon musk yeah elon right oh my god that would drive him insane well or maybe or at least ask elon for an idea um that's

Speaker 2 we can we can keep brainstorming on how to how to torture him more about that i i do like that i wonder though if it wasn't if you don't care about money, I mean, why'd you put yourself through this?

Speaker 2 You could have done anything. You could have fed your dogs and hung out.

Speaker 19 Okay, yeah. Well, the plot of the whole two trials was this kid from the sticks of Indiana grows up, becomes a cheerleader and a beauty queen and a journalist.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 Finds herself in front of Bergdorfs running into this guy named Donald Trump. And what happens is so horrible, she doesn't speak about it.

Speaker 19 And then at 75, she finds her voice and at 80, she goes to Trail and beats him.

Speaker 19 There was a drive behind this to get back at him, which was so strong in me, so strong to not let him get away with this. It took two trials.
And I'm still extremely happy we did it, Robbie and me.

Speaker 2 There's a satisfaction in it, total satisfaction. The fact that he won again, did that take anything away from you?

Speaker 19 That wasn't great.

Speaker 2 It wasn't great for me either. I just wonder.
I mean, there's got to be part of it that, like,

Speaker 2 part of it was tough to tell.

Speaker 19 Well, I'm just mad that people didn't get off their lazy asses and get out there and vote. You know, we just didn't get out.

Speaker 19 And now we're all sitting in our houses on our lazy asses doing nothing now as he's tearing everything to shreds.

Speaker 19 So

Speaker 19 wanting people to leave their houses and go out, look at your neighbors, organize a little thing, stop, just get off your ass. Doesn't it drive you crazy?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I try not to think about it. I try to just look at my little box here in my room and just rant and do my part.
Yeah, well, you're doing a big part. Thank you.
But I, well, not really.

Speaker 2 I mean, you know, he walked. He said he won again.
It is, it's a mix. Let's just be honest.
Like, I don't know. I felt mixed about it.
I'm sure Robbie did too.

Speaker 2 It's like, you know, there are certain things we did, and we felt good about what we did.

Speaker 2 And obviously, I didn't go through anything like what you went through, but then for him to still not get the fucking comeuppance is a tough pill to swallow a little bit, you know?

Speaker 2 I mean, you at least got him to get the comeuppance on the money, which is nice, but it's still a tough pill to swallow.

Speaker 19 Oh, I think we, I think if

Speaker 19 I keep thinking, just fucking leave the house, everybody, leave the fucking house, and we may be able to get something done. I am a, I'm appalled, not really,

Speaker 19 he's a fact, but I'm appalled at my fellow citizens, really, really,

Speaker 19 really,

Speaker 2 same.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was in New York this when he went the day after, and I found myself, this is a horrible trade. So I'm just admitting that this is horrible, that this thought came across my brain.

Speaker 2 I'm just being honest, I found myself walking down the street, not too far from Bergdorf, actually, and like looking at people and just being like,

Speaker 2 did you do this?

Speaker 2 And then looking at another person being like, did you not show up? You know what I mean? And like getting mad at strangers, just stereotyping them, which is a totally irrational, insane thing to do.

Speaker 2 But it's

Speaker 2 rational.

Speaker 19 No, that's the rational reaction. That's the rational reaction.
Just being blasé is the irrational if you look around what's going on.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 19 I mean, how hot is it right now in New York?

Speaker 2 I've heard it's hot.

Speaker 2 I wasn't up there. Where are you?

Speaker 2 I'm in New Orleans. It's hot as balls down here.
Okay.

Speaker 19 Shouldn't that be enough to drive us outside?

Speaker 19 Come on. Shouldn't that be enough? I just, yeah.
No. Okay.
So you and I are fed up, but and you have a big soapbox.

Speaker 2 I'm trying.

Speaker 19 And I have a little soapbox. So we're.

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Speaker 2 Can I ask you a little bit more about the deposition

Speaker 2 of having to watch him? I guess let's go back to the positive. Having to watch him get kind of humiliated had to be sort of joyful.
I mean, when he confused you with Marla,

Speaker 2 did I did that sink in immediately? For folks who didn't listen, he's on the Robbie shows him the picture of where you and him were together because he said he'd never met you.

Speaker 2 And he looks at the picture and he's like, is that Marla? Which is his ex-wife? How'd you process that?

Speaker 19 Well, it was Robbie Kaplan. Here's how

Speaker 19 devastating Robbie is. Do you realize, Tim, that she told him three times before she showed him a picture of me that she was going to show him a picture of me? She warned him.

Speaker 19 But Robbie, as you know, set trap after trap after trap. And Trump fell into almost every one of them.
So when she comes up with this photograph of two couples, she doesn't mention my name.

Speaker 19 She just says, Can you identify the people in this photograph?

Speaker 19 And he looks at he doesn't recognize Ivana, of course,

Speaker 19 and he says, You know, he recognizes my ex-husband, John Johnson because he's on TV, he watches a lot of TV. Yeah, he watches TV, and then he said,

Speaker 19 And that's Marla. And Robbie didn't say a word, he said, Yeah, that's my wife.
And then Habba leaps in,

Speaker 19 that's Carol

Speaker 2 Robbie was absolute you know it was perfect

Speaker 19 and so

Speaker 19 the jury was shown this while he was sitting there in court

Speaker 2 you know calling me Marla and

Speaker 19 it was

Speaker 19 I guess there's a

Speaker 19 it was sort of a divine moment to watch watch the jury. The jury was mesmerized by him anyway.
Yeah. Everything he did.

Speaker 19 They were just, oh, so delighted by everything he did, but they were particular, their eyes all went to him while he was sitting after he made that mistake, you know. So

Speaker 19 it was a wonderful moment. And Robbie showed that deposition to the jury every chance she got.

Speaker 2 I believe it. The other kind of iconic moment in a more negative way from the trial, I was wondering how it struck you, having

Speaker 2 A, having been through it personally, but also as a vice columnist, I'm sure you heard from lots of women that dealt with sexual harassment.

Speaker 2 And Robbie says to him, Well, Trump's asked about the access Hollywood tape. And he says, Well, historically, that is true with stars that they let you do it.
That's what he says.

Speaker 2 And then Robbie says, It's, what do you mean it's true with stars? It's true with stars, they can grab women by the pussy. And

Speaker 2 Trump replies, Well, that's what, if you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true, not always, but largely true, unfortunately or fortunately.

Speaker 2 So he won't even grant that it's a bad thing. No.
He's like, maybe, or fortunately, maybe it's a good thing. This is his worldview.

Speaker 19 He, he is,

Speaker 19 it's all in our bones. We love a strong man, as you know, too.
We love a strong man.

Speaker 2 But we love. I kind of go the other way, but that's for that's a that's for the advice section at the end.

Speaker 19 There we go. So it, and part of being a strong man is having whatever you want.

Speaker 19 Having whatever you want. And he just

Speaker 2 has

Speaker 19 the right to have whatever women he want. And as we know,

Speaker 19 at least a dozen women came forward. Some say 23, some say 48.
So he took what he wanted. And people voted for him because that's the sign.
of a powerful man. That's the sign.

Speaker 19 He can have whatever we want. So of course he's not going to deny it to Robbie in a deposition.

Speaker 19 You know, he's not going to deny it because

Speaker 19 he's talking to his people, talking to his people, and that's what they want to hear.

Speaker 19 His voters want to hear. He can have anything he wants and that's how it's been for a million years.
So vote for me.

Speaker 2 There's a moment where it felt like that was changed like that the culture was rejecting that

Speaker 2 and I don't know. It kind of feels like we've backslid.
I don't know. What do you think about that? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 19 No. Do women have rights in half this country anymore? No.

Speaker 19 No.

Speaker 19 Yeah, backsliding. But that'll change.
We can change it back.

Speaker 19 We can change it back. Jim, we can change it.

Speaker 2 Back. I like your optimism.

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Speaker 2 For the other women, you had several of them that testified at the trial, and you've written about them. Just talk about their stories and like, I don't know, how you guys have connected.
And

Speaker 2 I don't know, at some level,

Speaker 2 it's hard for me to put myself in your shoes, right? Like, is that

Speaker 2 nice to hear from other

Speaker 2 from them? And is it a balm, or maybe it's stressful? I don't know. What is it like to kind of build a relationship with the other women that went through this?

Speaker 19 We have what is called

Speaker 19 the sorority.

Speaker 19 We have the strange sorority, and it's the women who've come forward. And we all banded together.
We banded together on election night. That was a real donor.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You You were all together or just on text?

Speaker 19 We're on Zoom.

Speaker 2 Zoom, yeah.

Speaker 19 And a couple of us are

Speaker 2 really struggling, really,

Speaker 19 really

Speaker 19 struggling. The impact of him on their lives,

Speaker 19 it just crushed their lives. Others are like me, I don't center my life around it.
You know, it happened.

Speaker 19 I tried to move on.

Speaker 19 So we help help each other so the strong help the weaker the weaker ones are you know they can come to the group and say you know things are tough right now they things are so tough for women who have been uh

Speaker 19 pounded by him and then have him go out and deny it he denies it so these women think

Speaker 19 that everyone believes they're a liar and they're a you know so it's hard to deal with but the the group of us

Speaker 19 you'd be amazed you should come to it

Speaker 2 i would love to

Speaker 19 we'd have wine and we laugh our asses off

Speaker 19 most of the time

Speaker 2 i would be honored to be included i like talking about feelings and i and i hate donald trump so and i like wine so that would be a good uh i think i feel like i'd fit in uh one of my hobby horses you're mad you said you're mad at the people one thing that i'm mad at is

Speaker 2 And some of I kind of hate media criticism because media is so big and like some people are better than others. That's just the way the world works.

Speaker 2 But with you guys, I felt like in 2016, there was this big outpouring of coverage and interest around the Access Hollywood tape. Cause it's like he admitted it, right? And these folks are coming out.

Speaker 2 And then he wins.

Speaker 2 And then it's like, oh, well, he wins. I guess people don't care.
And it goes away. And then they'll cover your trial.

Speaker 2 But it's like, he doesn't get asked about this anymore. Like, he hasn't been, since he's won this time, nobody's, no journalist has asked him about the women that he assaulted anymore.

Speaker 2 It just gets memory hold, and that just really pisses me off.

Speaker 19 Well, right now, we have more important things to deal with than sexual assault. We have the democracy being split to smithereens.

Speaker 19 So, sexual assault is extremely important. But right now, we got a

Speaker 19 fight on our hands.

Speaker 2 Yeah. A fight.

Speaker 19 No, it's well, every time I see him, no, I've learned not to think of it when I see him because it's, you know, the constant.

Speaker 19 He's such

Speaker 19 a bad man. Yeah.

Speaker 19 That it's astonishing

Speaker 19 to me

Speaker 19 that we would vote for a man like that.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 When you were having to go and do the deposition and think, like, how did you kind of just deal with that? I mean, like, just the thought of,

Speaker 2 oh, I've got to, and you're writing about this in the book, like, I got to get dressed up a certain way and I've got to talk a certain way, and he's going to be in the room.

Speaker 2 And, you know, what was that like?

Speaker 19 Oh, my God. Are you kidding? It was years.

Speaker 19 It was years.

Speaker 19 Soon we'll be in our sixth year. So

Speaker 19 Robbie Kaplan prepared me.

Speaker 19 She and the Carol team prepared me. We did a mock jury, Tim.

Speaker 19 That's where you have typical New Yorkers come into a ballroom. They're given lunch, breakfast, and every other thing, and we put on an entire trial for them.

Speaker 19 Then they split into three groups, and the Carroll team watches them as they make their decision. The mock juries all agreed on three major things.

Speaker 19 Number one, it's possible two people could end up in a Bergdorf dressing room in 1996. Yes, they all agree.

Speaker 19 Two, they all agreed, Yes, something sexual could have happened in a Bergdorf dressing room in 1996, all agreed on that. And they all of them totally agreed.

Speaker 19 One of those people could have been Donald Trump, and one of the people could have been Eugene Crow, all agreed.

Speaker 19 You know what they disagreed about?

Speaker 19 They thought I wanted it

Speaker 19 because I was so old and unattractive and such a dissicated old carcass, they could not imagine somebody as glorious, as fabulous as Trump attacking me. So

Speaker 2 that was a problem. The genius blob.
He's horrific. He is like his makeup.
Oh, the little tiny hands. Oh.
Why would anyone?

Speaker 19 Well, the jury sees him as the glorious, you know, Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 The hair?

Speaker 19 Yeah, no, the hair.

Speaker 2 It's horrible.

Speaker 2 Oh, no, the hair is fine.

Speaker 2 So then, so that, I mean, that has to be pretty dispiriting. That then you're like, well, I got to be hotter to win this table.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I got to be fuckable is the word. So what we did

Speaker 19 is we looked, I had a talk show, a TV talk show, 1996.

Speaker 19 I went through that, some of the shows, took screenshots of my hair, cut in a bob, and we did the, then I... found the hairdresser and the makeup person who made me look like that in 1996.

Speaker 19 She came every day to trial, did my hair and makeup exactly like it was in 1996. I wore the exact same clothes I wore in 1996, the exact clothes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they're back. It's back in trend.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 Oh, I don't have a book here, but the thing I'm wearing on the cover, I bought it at Bergdorf's in 1993. So that's the kind of,

Speaker 19 and

Speaker 19 I didn't look

Speaker 19 like I looked in 96, but I looked like somebody who could have looked like somebody in 90, and it was enough. It was enough.
So that's it was a trick.

Speaker 2 Mysterio, that doesn't make you annoyed. That doesn't your feminist juices don't start flowing over that? Like, this is crazy.

Speaker 19 Tim, who are you looking at? I'm a woman. I'm into clothes and hair.
What can I say?

Speaker 2 Hey, same. I mean,

Speaker 2 it's just more. I'm into clothes and hair, but it's just more like the principle.
It's about the spite.

Speaker 2 The principle of the matter is I shouldn't need to look fuckable fuckable for you to believe that I was assaulted.

Speaker 19 No,

Speaker 19 you understand in the history of sexual assault trials, the center of the trial is always the woman's body. Always the woman's body.
That's it.

Speaker 19 And any of the young men who've accused famous politicians of

Speaker 19 really bad behavior, if any of those go to trial, the young man's body will be at the center of the trial. That's true.
So that's, yeah.

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Speaker 2 All right, what are you doing now? How are you sort of? Are you good? But you have your zooms? What are you doing? You're just hanging out up there?

Speaker 19 I've got my exercise ball, as you can see.

Speaker 19 I'm living in upstate New York in my hubble, and I hike and I

Speaker 19 got a best-selling book, so I'm thrilled.

Speaker 2 Are you scared at all? No, I've got a gun. These fuckers are going to come for you.

Speaker 19 No, I've got a gun.

Speaker 2 What kind of gun do you have?

Speaker 19 I have a Mossberg

Speaker 19 shotgun.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 2 Huh? Have you shot it?

Speaker 19 Yes,

Speaker 19 of course I've shot it.

Speaker 2 Of course.

Speaker 2 I've only shot a gun one time. I got peer-pressured.

Speaker 19 What'd you shoot? Was it a hand?

Speaker 2 I don't know. Some little, I don't know the different types of guns.
Well, wasn't it? I'm a gay from the suburbs, Gene. I don't know.
It was a little gun.

Speaker 2 No, I don't know. Weird a little range.
Weird little shooting range.

Speaker 19 Just a little rifle maybe well you know no i didn't hit anything i missed it i can't i'm not i'm not saving anybody with a gun but you're you can shoot i'm not a great shot but it's a shotgun shot the principle of shotguns is you just aim it in the direction yeah and you're gonna hit something all right so yeah that's so i feel fine and also did you just see that white blur right off of it okay that dog waves more than I do.

Speaker 19 And you can hear them outside right now?

Speaker 2 Well, I saw them run through. I can't hear them right now.

Speaker 19 No,

Speaker 19 they're good protection.

Speaker 2 Okay. Well, I'm good.
I was just worried about you.

Speaker 2 I just don't want you to be all alone up there without, you know, worried about anything.

Speaker 19 No, no, it's, it's cool. It's, and we, I got, Robbie

Speaker 19 got

Speaker 19 around my hubble

Speaker 19 24-hour surveillance. Listen, you even look at this place.

Speaker 19 You look at it. The police come down.
No, really. It's.

Speaker 2 Get out of here, Cash Patel, your little masked micropenis agents.

Speaker 19 Oh, the mess,

Speaker 19 the goggle. It's horrible.

Speaker 2 It's horrible. It's horrible.

Speaker 19 It's frightening.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 no. And it's not masculine, I don't think.
It feels very performing. It feels camp.
almost. Like they're trying to be scary because they're overcompensating for something.

Speaker 19 She is totally scary and totally. It's all performance.
It's all performance. You're right.
You nailed it. That's the word.

Speaker 2 Yeah. All right.
I want to do advice column star. Is there anything else you want to say about Donald Trump or the book that I didn't ask you about?

Speaker 2 You want to go off on it? No, yes.

Speaker 19 Well, you're famous for doing great interviews.

Speaker 2 I want to ask you about advice column life.

Speaker 2 I feel like I could have been an advice column nest. It's an alternate journey that I think about for myself.

Speaker 19 You'd be good because you're funny.

Speaker 2 When you look back on it, is there any stuff? You know, you have all this wisdom now. Like, is there anything you kind of look back on any of your advice columns? You're like, man, I missed that one.

Speaker 2 I wish I could go back and email it. Totally.
Half of them.

Speaker 19 I can't stand the advice I gave. Half at least.
I'm like, what the hell was I thinking? But

Speaker 19 basically, overall, my whole thing was

Speaker 19 get the hell up and go do it. You know, because people write to advice columns

Speaker 19 uh because they want to be told to do something they want to be told what to do so i have no compunction neither does dan savage telling them exactly what to do um dan is uh

Speaker 19 brilliant because he has changed a lot of people he has changed a lot of people's lives who've never read his column that's how big his impact is he has pulled the strings behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 He did so much for me. Do you hear that? Do people get to that's got to be fulfilling? Do people come up to you

Speaker 2 and talk about the

Speaker 19 they say, you don't remember this, but in 1994, I wrote to you about my career and I didn't know what to do. And now I'm running a country.
You know, now I'm running the whole company or whatever.

Speaker 19 Or, yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't think Donald was ever much for asking for advice.

Speaker 19 Well, no, he did ask me for it. That was how we went on the shopping thing.

Speaker 2 All right, I guess that's true. He was going to ask you for

Speaker 19 advice about buying a gift.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That feels fake. What?

Speaker 2 What do you think? Did that feel fake? Was it all?

Speaker 19 Great scene. Hey, you're that adventure.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. I don't think.
I'm not saying that you're saying it's fake. I'm saying, did

Speaker 2 it a pretense that he asked you to do that? Do you think?

Speaker 19 No, I think he actually was. And then I think it developed.
Yeah. Because I

Speaker 19 was flirting my brains out. I admit it.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 I'll reluctantly allow it. It was, you know, a moment in time.

Speaker 2 We all can get caught up in a moment.

Speaker 19 Yeah, and it was hilarious. And he was not like he was

Speaker 19 what he liked.

Speaker 19 He had a sense of humor back then. No, it was

Speaker 19 something very light turned very dark. By the way.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 19 I didn't notice this, but Laura Miller, you know, the great book reviewer, she said that what happened to me, you know, going from laughing, laughing, laughing to this very dark thing is what happened to the country.

Speaker 19 We're all laughing, laughing. He's such a clown.
He's so ridiculous.

Speaker 19 And then, boom,

Speaker 19 everything turns dark. That's exactly the same scenario.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 I love your facial expression.

Speaker 2 I just don't like to think about it like that. But yeah, that's right.
Laura, that's right. All right.
Well,

Speaker 2 here's what I'm asking you for my advice. Because of this, because you can see this

Speaker 2 burden on me.

Speaker 2 In three days, I'm taking a real vacation for the first time in a while. And we're going to Europe.
We're going to go to Gay Pride in Madrid.

Speaker 2 We're going to go to Amsterdam. We're going to go to Coasis at the end with my college buddies.
Oh, and fabulous. And my advice question for you is:

Speaker 2 I want to go dark. I want to just not pay attention to this, but I'm worried that I'm going to be unable to do it, to compartmentalize it, to turn it off.
How do I do it?

Speaker 2 How do I get 10 days of freedom, of peace from this? E.J. and Carol, do you have any thoughts on that for me?

Speaker 19 Yes, I do. Okay.

Speaker 19 It's your brain. You make the decision.

Speaker 20 You

Speaker 19 make the decision.

Speaker 19 Just fucking turn off your phone. You make the decision.
You make the decision.

Speaker 19 Tim, you make the decision.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 19 If you're going to have any respect for yourself, you're going to not go back on it. Because how can you look at yourself in the mirror? You're having a great 10 days.
Oh my God, Amsterdam.

Speaker 19 I mean, can you imagine how wonderful this is?

Speaker 19 I mean, can you imagine?

Speaker 2 I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 19 Why would you even look at a headline?

Speaker 2 I don't know. It's the job, and I'm an addict, and maybe I don't have control over myself, actually, Egypt and Carroll.

Speaker 2 Maybe it's like fentanyl. Maybe it's like a version of, maybe it's just a news fentanyl that I'm dealing with.

Speaker 19 Well,

Speaker 19 you're a hard case because your job is the news.

Speaker 19 bringing it to people in such a way that they understand what's going on. That's what you do.
Important role today because it's happening so fast.

Speaker 19 We do need somebody to explain to us what the hell is going on in ways that we can understand. I do not know what's going on with the bill right now at the Republican.

Speaker 2 Our next guest, Sarah Longwell, is going to do that part with me. I figured we weren't going to do Medicaid reimbursement rates with you.
I felt like

Speaker 2 excellent. Tell her hello.

Speaker 19 I love her George Conway stuff. It's just, I mean, really.
Okay, so

Speaker 19 you decide it. There's no tricks.
There's no trick. You know, you can put rubber bands around it and all that stuff.

Speaker 19 Then if you're going to turn it on, you have to like turn it on, take the rubber band off and do all that.

Speaker 19 Do you want to try that?

Speaker 2 I might have to. That's an interesting idea.

Speaker 19 You wrap it up in paper, put a rubber band around it. Now, if you're going to check, you have to take the rubber band off, undo the paper, and then turn on the phone.
Try that.

Speaker 2 If I have to resort to that,

Speaker 2 well, I guess I won't be able to send you a selfie because it'll be wrapped up, but I'll have my husband send you a picture of me with the phone wrapped up.

Speaker 2 If I have to resort to that in Amsterdam, that's what I'll let you.

Speaker 19 I'll send it to you. Please.
Oh, I would love that. Then I'll put it all over the internet and you won't even be able to see it

Speaker 2 because you won't be checking. I hope that is true.
I really, honestly, E. Jean Carroll, you are an inspiration.
I'm so grateful you did this. The book is so

Speaker 2 delightful. I mean, I hate to call a book, again, about sexual assault in a Burger Dorf-Goodman dressing room delightful, but it just is.
It is.

Speaker 2 And your bravery is something that I just, I really look up to you. So thank you for doing the pod and writing the book.

Speaker 2 I love being here. All right.
Let's stay in touch. Let's do that Zoom.
Or maybe you, me, and Robbie sometime or something. I don't know.
Let's do a hang. I would love it.
I would love it.

Speaker 19 And I want you to have the best 10 days of your life.

Speaker 2 Come on. I'm going to do my best.
I'll do my best. I'll report back.
Thank you so much. Eugene Carol.
There she is. Sarah Longwell.
Oh, no. Hello.
Hello. Hello.

Speaker 2 Hello. Hello.

Speaker 20 I'm sorry to jump on your recording.

Speaker 2 Exactly. We were just finishing.

Speaker 19 It was perfect timing. We just had, Tim just did the best interview.
Just the best. It was so juicy.

Speaker 20 I do not believe you.

Speaker 19 No,

Speaker 19 it was brilliant. All right.
I'm going to sign off, everybody.

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Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 We are live. We're doing things a little bit differently today.
We're doing a bulwark pod segment live on YouTube because there's so much news happening on the Hill. I'm Tim Miller.

Speaker 2 I've got the publisher of this here, Bulwark, Sarah Longwell, along with me. How are you doing, Sarah?

Speaker 27 I'm great, buddy. How are you?

Speaker 2 I am good. I just want to.
Did you stay up all night?

Speaker 20 Did you stay up all night and follow the various machinations of the bail?

Speaker 2 I didn't. I just read the briefings from our friends Joe Pertico and Andrew Egger here and the Punch Bowl guys this morning.
I was reading E.

Speaker 2 Jean Carroll's book last night because we had a kind of sultry conversation for the pod today. So anyway, that's a little break for people from the Medicaid rate cuts convo.

Speaker 2 I want to just lay the groundwork for where we are. As we sit here right now talking,

Speaker 2 there is, I guess they were supposed to start voting like 15 minutes ago. It seems like Republicans are indicating that they have the votes for this.

Speaker 2 There were four Republican senators that were iffy. Rand Paul concerned about debt, Tom Tillis, Murkowski, and Collins on Medicaid and some of those other issues.

Speaker 2 It seems like Murkowski has cut a deal. And so she would be the 50th vote.
And then J.D. Vance will be a tiebreaker as stuff develops as we're talking here.
We'll keep people posted.

Speaker 2 But I just want to talk to you first just about the biggest picture state of play. This is a ridiculous way to do a bill.
Andrew wrote about this this morning.

Speaker 2 Senate Republicans are trying to pass this law this morning, even though they were still writing it overnight. Brian Schott, senator from Hawaii, summed up the state of play this way.

Speaker 2 One of the world's worst legislative processes I've ever seen. No bill tech still, almost a trillion out of Medicaid, a subsidy to move a space shuttle to Texas, a statue garden, $4 trillion in debt.

Speaker 2 Hospitals will close

Speaker 2 like trash.

Speaker 2 What is happening? What the process here?

Speaker 20 Well, it's called reconciliation. And we could really use a reconciliation on reconciliation because this is a little procedure that's been around since the 70s.

Speaker 20 I think sometimes people call it like the bird rule because I think he was the one who came up with it. The thing is, it isn't until really modern times here, right?

Speaker 20 To get, it's basically a maneuver to get around the filibuster, which I would just say, as somebody who's like, has been in the past a bit of a traditionalist, somebody who likes, you know, to force bipartisanship out of people, which is what the filibuster is supposed to do, right?

Speaker 20 It's supposed to make you get some consensus. Instead, everybody, like, you might as well just get rid of the filibuster.
Like, why have it?

Speaker 20 If people are just going to use this reconciliation, which is a budgetary process, it's like a budgetary process that they use. And then what they do is they pass these, they jam everything in.

Speaker 20 to one bill. It's the reason that Trump has called it the big, beautiful bill is because it's like, yeah, we took literally everything we want to do and we put it all in one place.

Speaker 20 And now we're going to, we're going to jam it through with this little maneuver on this budget. And it's a terrible way to live because they are still right now, they are writing the bill as they go.

Speaker 20 It's not like horse trading the way they used to do it to kind of get to consensus. It's just pure bribes and carve outs for people so that they will go ahead and jam this thing through with them.

Speaker 2 Yeah, speaking of just how just absurd this process is, I just have this coming across the wire.

Speaker 2 Senator Jim Justice says that the delay here is because senators are haggling with the the parliamentarian over last minute handwritten legislative text. Like they're looking like napkins

Speaker 2 on the margins. It's like the original deal that Murkowski had gotten to get when, and it seems like she was going to be for this originally before that kind of unraveled last night

Speaker 2 was a Medicaid and snap carve out for non-contiguous states.

Speaker 2 So just the last. Things are really different when you're out there.

Speaker 2 It's a whole different ballgame.

Speaker 2 And then that didn't pass the parliamentarians' muster. So it ends up doing this thing where

Speaker 2 Alaska doesn't get the Medicaid carve-out, but they do get a snap carve-out. But now it's a bunch of other states, and it's based on like their error rate.

Speaker 2 So the people that are claiming that they want to get rid of waste fraud and abuse are now rewarding the states.

Speaker 2 that have the biggest error rate and snap because, you know, there's some pretense then that they can't figure out how to get the food seas to be.

Speaker 2 Like the whole thing is, it's a preposterous Frankenstein joke. And like Lisa Murkowski, I guess, is going along with this because she just is focused on getting stuff for Alaska.

Speaker 20 Yeah. So let me, let's talk about Murkowski for just one second.

Speaker 20 There's a lot of ways that Trumpism corrupts people.

Speaker 20 There's, you know, it is obviously it's, it's, it's, it's, sometimes people are like, Trumpism's not a thing because Trump has no real guiding ideology. That's true.

Speaker 20 Like, it's not like when people say Trumpism, they're like, and this is the philosophy that we all, you know, agree on. Trumpism, though, like, it's forces he unleashed on our politics.

Speaker 20 And one of them is, I'm going to get mine and the rest of you be damned.

Speaker 20 And so I think that Lisa Murkowski might be telling herself, because a lot of people tell her this, like, I've met Lisa Murkowski a number of times. She's been one of the moderates.

Speaker 20 She's often who you turn to in moments of Republicans really doing something insane.

Speaker 20 Like you look at Collins, you look at Murkowski, you look at Tillis, maybe you look at Cassidy, and you say, You guys are normal. You know, this is wrong.

Speaker 20 And they do, which is why they seek carve outs, why she's seeking a carve-out for her own state. But I want to tell Lisa Murkowski something.
As somebody who's admired her, defended her, really

Speaker 20 been somebody who pushes for the need for there to be moderates still in the Senate and the House.

Speaker 20 What is the point of you being a moderate if you're going to vote for RFK, if you're going to take carve-outs as a bribe just for your people, if you're going to sell out the rest of the country?

Speaker 20 For the people who think the moderates are going to save us, and me as somebody who's long believed that they were important,

Speaker 20 if all it takes is a carve-out for your own state, like you don't understand your full job. And you too have been corrupted by Trumpism.

Speaker 20 You too have drank this particular Kool-Aid of as long as I get what I need for my people, then everyone else can go screw off.

Speaker 20 And it is deeply disappointing if that's what happens.

Speaker 27 Yeah, it's

Speaker 2 the Markowski thing, it's like she's, I guess she still has an opportunity to do the John McCain. We're sitting here, we're waiting for the parliamentarian and the rules.

Speaker 2 And we've had dramatic moments in the past where a moderate has given the thumbs down.

Speaker 2 So, you know, folks, maybe folks call Lisa Markowski's office right now or send them that little live clip of Sarah tried to encourage her to do the right thing.

Speaker 2 But I just, you know, I mean, it also is a,

Speaker 2 there's another element of this that I think is at play, which is like the interpersonal. I always go back to the high school cafeteria explanation of all this.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because like when Jon Thune gets the leadership, you know, gets in a majority leader, he isn't

Speaker 2 like they are friends, right? Like they have worked together on bills.

Speaker 2 You see, we're adding, we're moving to the Senate floor here now, so you can see kind of what's happening there, though Barry if you can mute that.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it feels like there's almost

Speaker 2 favor triving on two levels, right? It's like I'm getting some favors for Alaskans, which is my job, but I'm also working with and cutting deals with Jon Thune here.

Speaker 2 And it kind of does, it compartmentalizes what's happening with this bill and takes out the bigger picture of the damage, whether you are concerned about the debt or whether you're concerned about all the money that's going to the ICE prisons that are now going to be bigger than the federal prison system or, you know, you're concerned about the medicaid cuts and snap cuts in other parts of the states and i i think that's what's happening here one other funny thing that and funny in the dark comedy way that happened last night with this bill um an excise tax on wind and solar came in now it's hard for me to judge this claim but like the wind and solar people are freaking out like that this tax would cut would would be devastating to them lisa murkowski i i it wasn't part of any consideration lindsey graham i don't know where it came from like that is how haphazard this process is like even if you thought it was a good bill which it doesn't seem like anybody really does like it's like they're just flying doing this by the seat of their pants to such a degree they don't know where some of this stuff is from and this is like a whole industry like an emerging industry in our country that has like the government has been participating with for a long time it's got rail infrastructure they would just be like ending it uh and here i don't know if it is a a anti-Elon thing that Trump wanted stuck in there because yeah, everybody's like, I have no idea where this came from.

Speaker 20 And think about that is one example amid,

Speaker 20 I don't know, 3,000 things that are in there.

Speaker 2 I'm just talking right now, six minutes ago, they're saying that they removed that excise tax, but like that's, this is what we're doing. Like we're just doing this live.

Speaker 2 Like we're coming to the floor of the parliamentarians working on stuff on a napkin. We're putting taxes in and taking them out.
It's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 I mean, like they haven't even read, they haven't even read the bill.

Speaker 20 They have no idea what's in it.

Speaker 20 And this is what's interesting is you know as well as I do that one of the biggest attack ads ever levied on Nancy Pelosi from the Republicans was, we're going to have to read it to find out what's in it about the ACA.

Speaker 20 But the thing about reconciliation, too, that it really robs the American people. Speaking of the ACA,

Speaker 20 that bill had to be debated for such a long time, right? And you had, they went through different provisions and like hearings. Yeah, and they held hearings.
There was like the death panel thing.

Speaker 20 So the American people actually had time to give it some due consideration.

Speaker 20 And they acted like serious grownups who had difference of opinions and they heard from industry and whatever. None of that's happening here.

Speaker 20 Like unless somebody has the ability to call somebody, like somebody over at the Wind and Solar Association had to call up and be like, are you going to crater our whole industry?

Speaker 20 Like, and they had to go find, I don't know, Joni Ernst in a state where like they have a lot of wind and like say,

Speaker 19 do something, like get it out of there.

Speaker 20 And that's how the whole thing is being crafted across a million different issues.

Speaker 2 Elon's kind of right. Elon is right about this.
I want to get to whether how uncomfortable it makes you feel with Elon in a minute. I have two other things I want to get to.
J.D. Vance first

Speaker 2 is just, you know, the most unbearable person in all of public life.

Speaker 2 He did this tweet thread last night

Speaker 2 that says this about the bill. It's not really a great sign when the vice president of the United States has to offer this level of caveat about why people should pass a bill.

Speaker 2 You would think that the VP would be the cheerleader for the one piece of legislation they're actually going to pass this year. No, this is his argument for the bill.

Speaker 2 The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigrants and then giving those migrants generous benefits.

Speaker 2 The OBBB fixes this problem and therefore it must pass.

Speaker 2 Everything else, the CBO score, the proper baseline the minutiae of the medicaid policy is immaterial compared to the ice money and immigration enforcement provisions i could there be a possibly a more cynical argument for passing this bill than what the vice president offered no because dude so

Speaker 20 do a standalone bill to fund ice like this is actually isn't hard uh you if that's you have opposed that actually back in january some of the immigration target liners said they should do that yeah so this is um this is when you say like there's no this is no way to make law it that it's such a cynical like here's what i hate i hate when people who are pretty smart act really really stupid to do this like he knows perfectly well the idea that you have to pass a gajillion trillion dollars in new debt uh on a bill that nobody's read that is about giveaways to rich people and hurting people that trump doesn't like and that we have to do it all because there's one provision around funding ICE, and that's the only way it can get passed is just it's preposterous.

Speaker 20 It's like it's the silliest thing I've ever heard.

Speaker 27 It is preposterous. And I'm stealing this from, I'm seeing multiple things from Andrew Egger today.

Speaker 2 So people should sign up for his newsletter if they haven't morning shots with Bill Crystal.

Speaker 2 But he's like, he sent this funny tweet that's like, wait a minute. So the 3 trillion that we're adding to the debt is immaterial, but the 8 billion that is going to ICE is the thing that matters.

Speaker 2 It's stupid on its face and it's condescending and

Speaker 2 it's also hateful. And the actual substance of the ICE policy is also terrible.
They're funding, they're putting a ton of money into jails. So great news for the private prison industry

Speaker 2 for ICE prisons.

Speaker 2 And they are not giving any money for new judges.

Speaker 2 So if you look at the whole context of this, what they're going to do is they just want to have the money in the budget to advance their no due process agenda where they just nab people off the the street and hold them in cells.

Speaker 2 So, like, that is the part of the bill that J.D. Vance is like, it's so important that we are able to nab people off the street and hold them in cells that we should not care about the

Speaker 2 debt-busting part of the bill or the cuts to Medicaid and food stamps.

Speaker 20 I love the term immaterial. Like, I like the idea that you're saying it's immaterial.

Speaker 20 Don't be silly and pay attention to all of these other things. The rest of it is immaterial.
Okay, well, if it's immaterial, take it out.

Speaker 20 Do the other thing it's it's no no big here here's the thing about the judges i don't we don't have to go like down a huge rabbit hole in immigration but i'll tell you even in trump 1.0

Speaker 20 they understood that to deal with the border the number one thing you needed was a lot more immigration judges to process people in and out like to be able to handle the reason one of the reasons that people sort of disappear sorry there's a siren going by one of the reasons that people end up doing like the no no-show and you know, just kind of like is because their court dates are so far away.

Speaker 20 Like it's impossible to get in front of a judge. And so, like, by the time they get in front of a judge, they've been here for a very long time.

Speaker 20 And so, like, a sensible policy, just like one that made sense, like a common sense one would be that you would fund a ton of new judges. But no, you're right.

Speaker 20 What they want is to fund a bunch of places to just store people without due process.

Speaker 27 One more thing on JD the prick

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 he he tells this story, like he tries to make it seem like there is a coherent narrative for how he went MAGA, like the scales fell from his eyes and he saw that nationalist populism was better than the old corporate republicanism and the neocon republicanism.

Speaker 2 So that's why he started to care more about immigration and about working-class Americans.

Speaker 2 But here's the thing: in 2017, that aforementioned John McCain thumbs down vote, JD was on John McCain's side. So

Speaker 2 2017, after Trump was president, after he suggested he might be Hitler. And he wrote this, the Senate bill offers a bit more to the needy, but still leaves many unable to pay for basic services.

Speaker 2 And the rosiest projections of each version, millions will be unable to pay for basic health care. This should not be acceptable.

Speaker 2 So it's like, during his populist conversion, between 2017 and now, he also somehow has decided that he cares less about health care for poor people. Like the whole thing, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 It belies

Speaker 2 the narrative that he wants to tell about his conversion in a major way.

Speaker 20 This is where there's a bunch to unpack here in terms of both Republicans having to come to terms with the fact that their new voters

Speaker 20 rely on these social services, right?

Speaker 20 The previous Republican Party was all about fiscal discipline in a way where they were like, look, we're going to be clear-eyed, which meant somewhat cold about things in order to try to make these programs solvent.

Speaker 20 Like there were like these academic conversations. This was part of the Republican Party when we talked about it.
But now, right, the Republican Party, they're voters.

Speaker 20 And I have like, I've heard this a ton in focus groups where people are like, you know, I don't want to lose my stuff.

Speaker 20 Like, I'm glad Trump's doing things, you know, taking on trans things and saying there's two genders, but like, I don't want giveaways to rich people

Speaker 20 that are going to cut my benefits. I I rely on those benefits.
And actually, I'll play some focus groups on for you in a minute.

Speaker 20 And so, so part of this is, and this is where Trump is such a weird animal because

Speaker 20 he talks like a populist, but he still governs in some ways like the worst version of the old Republican Party, right? Which is, I'm going to give total tax cuts. only to my wealthy friends.

Speaker 20 Like, this is true. The Democrats' critique of this is absolutely true.

Speaker 20 That there is the thing that that Republicans are panicked about right now, the reason they are jamming this thing through is that if they think if these tax cuts expire on their watch and their tax rates go up for their voters, that that is their, that's the only failure, right?

Speaker 20 But that's what they don't seem to be thinking is that it's going to be a massive failure for them when so many of their voters lose snap and snap and Medicaid benefits.

Speaker 20 And also, I want to just talk about J.D. Vance's, I don't know that it's a, what did you call it?

Speaker 2 I would like to call it conversion story. I call it the Saul to Mar-a-Lago journey.

Speaker 20 Okay, I would like to call it his transition

Speaker 20 because,

Speaker 20 yeah, I think, and that's what he's getting right now. He's getting his, his transition care, uh, where he basically literally, and look, the thing is, it's not a news story that J.D.

Speaker 20 Vance was a different person. He was one of us, one of us back in the day.

Speaker 2 Literally, he was like never Trump blogger, and he was literally one of us.

Speaker 20 Yeah, Trump was Hitler,

Speaker 20 you know, the whole and but this idea, right, of his transition was that he really cared about poor people. This is not a bill that supports poor people.
It's just not.

Speaker 27 I want to play your aforementioned focus group

Speaker 2 audio and then kind of talk about on the other side what you think the political implications of this are going to be if it, you know, continues on this trajectory and they jam this through on a 50-50 vote.

Speaker 2 Let's listen.

Speaker 28 Draw SSI disability and I get Medicaid and I get food stamps and I don't draw money for my kids. Okay.
So I'm supposed to live off $900 a month from the government.

Speaker 28 And with them turning around and cutting Medicaid, I'm already struggling to pay for medications.

Speaker 28 They're going to take and take and take until there's nothing left.

Speaker 29 More requirements for Medicaid, I think, was good.

Speaker 29 And also the overtime, the taxes on overtime and tips, I thought was good too.

Speaker 29 I know it increases the national debt, but I think if we get some of these programs like under control, it'll eventually even out.

Speaker 30 I'm not quite sure sure about

Speaker 30 the budget increases and the debt ceiling, putting everything into one bill.

Speaker 30 It seems kind of crazy to try to push all these things through at the same time without people picking and choosing what they think is not good.

Speaker 20 So the first woman was the one I really wanted to play because I think that she's a really good example of people who are part of the Trump coalition now, right? And there's a lot of people like her.

Speaker 20 But the other clips are also people you kind of have, it's an interesting,

Speaker 20 you've sort of got the Elon wing of the Republican Party where people are concerned about it adding to the debt.

Speaker 20 And then you've got the personal consequences wing of the Republican Party who are like, no, this is going to impact me.

Speaker 20 I don't like it. I don't care about it.
Then there's also the sort of third category of people who I would be like.

Speaker 20 I don't know. I kind of trust Trump.

Speaker 20 I think it's going to be fine. I hope it's going to be fine.
Like fingers crossed, but my parents are old. And so I hope that, you know, they don't get kicked off Medicaid.

Speaker 20 But the overall thing is the voters don't like this bill. Like Trump voters don't like this bill.
Like he doesn't have a cheerleading section on this.

Speaker 20 Like the people who are voting right now to pass it are not listening to their voters.

Speaker 20 Voters, I can't, the bill is so unpopular.

Speaker 20 And people,

Speaker 20 and it's unpopular basically based on what people know about it, which is they're still like, I don't know everything that's in it. So I'm worried.
They know it cuts Medicare and Medicaid.

Speaker 20 They know it gives tax cuts to rich people.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 20 like, there's nobody who's there saying, and they know how much it costs.

Speaker 20 And they're against this kind of reconciliation, these big bills. Like, I've heard this a lot in focus groups where people are saying,

Speaker 20 why do we do it this way? Like, this is crazy.

Speaker 20 And so I just,

Speaker 20 I can't think of a time time when you've had something that is like this much of a unpopular thing that these guys are going to jam through only to like they know this is going to be actual nightmare fuel for them in 2026.

Speaker 20 Like this gives Democrats just a perfect position going into 26.

Speaker 27 How do you square that?

Speaker 2 Like what you're hearing the focus groups from, I mean, the top line numbers on this bill are bad, but like there's some other polls came out recently that like show that people really also don't know a lot about it yet.

Speaker 2 And I don't know, I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's what Republicans are banking on.
On the one hand,

Speaker 2 maybe that they can sell it better. They do have ads running on this right now.
I've been seeing some of them down in Louisiana.

Speaker 2 But at the same time, they're jamming it through because they also seem conscious of the fact that the more people learn about it, the more they're going to dislike it. So I don't know.

Speaker 2 How do you kind of square all that?

Speaker 20 I mean, I said this on TNL, but there's like one of the,

Speaker 20 I can't remember who the legislator was who said this, but he was like, you know, you got to get these things passed fast because otherwise they're like a dead cat on a on a front porch or a dead cat on the steps.

Speaker 20 Like the longer it sits out there, the more it stinks.

Speaker 20 And so,

Speaker 20 yeah, this is

Speaker 20 the more voters learn about it. This is why Trump has really tried to focus on the gajillion things that are in there.
There's only a few things people really know.

Speaker 20 Cuts Medicaid, tax cuts for the rich, and the no tax on tips stuff, right? Like you heard some people say that, like, oh, it's good for gig workers. That's the main thing.

Speaker 20 This bill does a lot of things.

Speaker 20 Uh, and it's going so fast that I think even people who are really experts in this, like, we've got some very smart uh experts in healthcare and and you know, John Cohn.

Speaker 20 I mean, we're all in our Slack, and he's he is, I'm not sure there's anybody who knows more than John Cohn.

Speaker 20 Uh, and like Joe Perticohn is basically sleeping up at the Capitol, and we're all in Slack right now, being like, What does it say? What's in there? Like, what?

Speaker 20 Because not only it was, it was unclear always, and now it's more unclear because they're changing things while it's going through.

Speaker 2 Yeah, one thing I did, I just want to follow up on because I mentioned yesterday on the pod, speaking of like all of these changes that are just happening overnight,

Speaker 2 was there was this horrible provision that was going to ban states from regulating AI for a certain number of years, or else they weren't going to be able to get any money from the federal government.

Speaker 2 That did get stripped last night, 99 to 1. It was a Ted Cruz

Speaker 2 provision. So

Speaker 2 I guess people don't really, it doesn't seem like people like Ted Cruz that much, 99 to 1 again. So that was a pleasant change.

Speaker 2 All right, we're still waiting to kind of see if there's any additional developments

Speaker 2 on the actual vote here. But in the meantime, the Trump-Elon feud reignited this morning.

Speaker 2 Bannon suggested that they need to nationalize SpaceX.

Speaker 2 Again, that's something he's been asking for for a while. Elon replied to Bannon that Bannon needs to go back to prison for a long time.

Speaker 2 So they're still at it. And then Trump was asked

Speaker 2 about deporting Elon outside the White House this morning. And we're going to break our no Trump audio rule just because this is too delicious to miss.
Let's listen.

Speaker 31 I don't know. I think we'll have to take a look.
We might have to put Doge on Elon. You know, you know what Doge is?

Speaker 31 Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies, Peter.

Speaker 2 The dentures are out. Really sorry.
He's sounding more and more like the SNL version of himself, I think, with the dentures there. But

Speaker 2 I thought it was interesting. There are a couple interesting things I noticed there.

Speaker 2 Doge is a monster in Trump's view.

Speaker 2 And the monster he wants to go back and maybe eat Elon and go after his subsidies. Um, I think that was kind of revealing.
I don't know. What do you think?

Speaker 2 Uh,

Speaker 20 I mean, I like it when he asks the reporters, you've heard of Doge, know what Doge is?

Speaker 20 Uh, and then he completely then says something that maybe makes it seem like he doesn't know what Doge is. Like, uh, I like, it was unclear exactly what he defined.
It's a monster that could eat Elon.

Speaker 20 I mean, I guess what he means, I mean, it's just a threat to take away the subsidy. I mean, and when you say it's revealing, I mean,

Speaker 20 I think what's never been clear is when Elon had his hands all over the federal government, like, what did he do? What did he do in there? Uh, and I think that Trump's

Speaker 20 Trump has spent the, I mean, he's only been there for five months, and Doge was like central to what he did for the first few things, right? Kept putting Elon in the White House, and now

Speaker 20 Doge is,

Speaker 20 is, I guess, something he's going to wield against Elon, or it's a bad thing? It was unclear to me. What do you think he was talking about?

Speaker 2 I just, yeah,

Speaker 2 I think Trump sees Doge as something that caused him pain and that he wasn't really that bought in on. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Honestly, like, I just, I think that he, Trump kind of saw it as

Speaker 2 Elon is a really rich guy that helped me win. And he's sucking up to me and talking about how I'm the greatest.
And he is, and he's a, he got us into the

Speaker 2 outer space and he's like a real successful guy right and people respect him and so Trump is susceptible to that kind of flattery as we know right and so I think that it's like he felt like okay well I got this really smart guy that wants to come and be my shadow president and he and he thinks that there's a lot of fraud and waste and and I don't really like these

Speaker 2 deep state officials anyway. So if he wants to cause them trouble, who cares? And I'll just

Speaker 2 let him loose.

Speaker 2 But it was never really part, like that wasn't part of trump's agenda like when you hear trump talking on the campaign trail about deportations and tariffs and revenge on the 2020 election like you know what trump cares about like he might have mentioned cutting spending before it's not like he never mentioned it but it was not that was not what trump cared about and i think that elon got in there and it became a fucking hassle for him you know people were always people were mad at him people were asking he's like why and then all of a sudden elon's calling him a pedophile and then it's like wait a minute you know and so i to me it seems like he's flipped on the whole thing, right?

Speaker 2 Like the whole, now the whole thing is kind of tainted and he sees it as a political loser for him. And he's mad at Elon over it.
Anyway, that's my psychotherapy for Donald Trump for the, for the day.

Speaker 20 Yeah, I think that's pretty good.

Speaker 20 I do think it's interesting the way that Don, I mean, the mafia stuff, right? The way he's going to wield the federal government against Elon.

Speaker 20 And to be clear, he backed Elon off the first time they had one of these fights with these threats.

Speaker 20 Elon kind of of did a shouldn't have gone there. It was too much.
I went too far. And I don't know if he just like started hitting the ketamine pipe.
Is ketamine something you take out of a pipe?

Speaker 20 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Snort usually, I think. Not an expert, but my understanding is snorting.
Yeah.

Speaker 20 So he's, I don't know if he's back on the ketamine or like, if this is actually a deeply held principle, but part of what Elon is doing right now is he's back in the like, I will primary everyone who, every Republican who votes for this bill.

Speaker 20 And it was like, if it's the last thing I do on this earth,

Speaker 20 which is very intense, Elon, feels, but I'm like rooting for you, buddy.

Speaker 20 I would, I go, you should do that. Do you feel any?

Speaker 2 This is what I wanted to get out of you.

Speaker 2 Do you feel any mixed emotions about Elon now at all? And you really turned on him very harshly, but now he's kind of speaking your language in a lot of ways. Elon is concerned about the deficit.

Speaker 2 Elon thinks maybe we need a centrist third party. Elon thinks Donald Trump's a pedophile.
You and Elon are starting to come into alignment in a few areas. Does that make you at all?

Speaker 20 Yeah, this is like that onion,

Speaker 20 you know, thing, like worst person in the world makes some decent points.

Speaker 20 And so like, he's, I think he's right about the fact that, and I do, I am enjoying watching him exact pain from them because the fact that he has elevated how much spending there is in this bill, what it's going to do to the debt and deficit, you're right.

Speaker 20 Like, I was a super moderate Republican, but one thing I care a lot about is the debt and the deficit.

Speaker 20 And I think that Republicans should be shamed constantly

Speaker 20 by their former, you know, comrade in arms for the way that they're blowing up the debt and deficit because people should know that it's all talk with them. It's all talk, the Doge stuff, all of it.

Speaker 20 I think that similarly, there's some emotional stuff on Elon's side, though, where he felt like he was trying to do something on Doge

Speaker 20 and

Speaker 20 like he got embarrassed by it. Like he went in there and actually couldn't do any of the things that he said.
Then the administration hung him out, Trump hung him out to dry on it.

Speaker 20 And so now he's like back coming for Trump. So I do think they are taking it personally, but I also think Elon has realized that Trump holds, and I think actually maybe I have too slightly.

Speaker 20 Trump holds more cards than Elon. Like I always sort of think, man, Elon's got a lot.
He's got a lot of money. He's threatened to primary people.

Speaker 20 You know, he basically bought Trump out this last go-round, like spent, I mean, just so much money on the election.

Speaker 20 I, wouldn't that be scary? But, like, Trump does have a lot of leverage because Trump no longer, it's not like Trump cares about Congress. And so, like, he can just go in there and snip, snap, snip

Speaker 20 Elon's contracts, those things. Remember when Trump was doing the everyone should have a Tesla? They had Teslas out on the front lawn of the White House.
And I was like, this is absurd.

Speaker 20 And now Trump's like, I don't want an electric car. Who wants an electric car? That's garbage.

Speaker 2 On to your point about the Republicans claiming to care about the debt being shamed, I think we should just take a moment to specifically shame Ron Johnson.

Speaker 2 Ron Johnson got out on his high horse talking about how this bill is a debt bomb and how he could never support it and how he got into Congress because he was worried about irresponsible budgeting.

Speaker 2 And he went on the all-in podcast with Elon's pals and they all buttered him up and washed his balls and was like, Ron, you're the one real guy. You're the one straight talker in Washington.

Speaker 2 Where's Ron today? Voting for for the bill. Voting for the bill.
So he learned the lesson about, I guess, you put watch the Elon Trump feud.

Speaker 2 So no, no principled hawks, fiscal hawks to be had.

Speaker 2 Even though I guess if this bill does pass, it'll go back to the House and we'll have a chance to be disappointed again by the remaining three people who claim to be fiscal hawks in the House, like Chip Roy,

Speaker 2 I guess. But we'll see.

Speaker 20 So here, let's talk about the House for just one second, because part of what's interesting is there's a bunch of people who've already said no.

Speaker 20 I mean, a bunch, like Chip Royce, they've all they say like they're already no's on the Senate version of the bill.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Ralph Norman from South Carolina just said that.

Speaker 2 And so they don't have a lot of room.

Speaker 20 But what's interesting is the dynamic is kind of flipped in the House versus the Senate.

Speaker 20 In the Senate, there are people that we think of as moderates that we think could have pulled the John McCain and, you know, knocked this bill out.

Speaker 20 On the House side, though, it is like the genuine fiscal hawks.

Speaker 20 It's massy, you know, whatever.

Speaker 2 And like, yeah, genuine.

Speaker 20 But some of them hold out. Like they will create trouble.

Speaker 2 Massy will for sure.

Speaker 20 We'll see if anything. Massy will for sure.

Speaker 20 So I think that this is this is not the last time we're going to have to do a live stream watching people vote because it will be

Speaker 20 you know the wing of a hair's breadth

Speaker 20 of whether or not this thing passes the house.

Speaker 2 And it's going to change again. Yeah, it won't be the last time today.
So, once again, for folks that are just tuning in on the live, this is a part of the Bulwark podcast for today.

Speaker 2 We're going to continue the live stream here in a little bit once I have to hop off

Speaker 2 with some of our other friends, JVL, Jonathan Cohn, who's kind of an expert on the bill. Sam Stein might pop on.
Sarah's going to hang out. I might come back.
We'll see how things go. But

Speaker 2 the latest thing we have right here is

Speaker 2 the Senate Parliamentarian knocked down a handwritten parenthetical notation in the Murkowski-focused Medicaid provision that created a special preference for an Alaska Medicaid fund, according to some Democrats.

Speaker 2 So, you know, I don't know what Lucy with the football around here,

Speaker 2 but interesting that Murkowski hasn't gotten everything that she wanted as far as the carve-outs are concerned.

Speaker 2 And they need her vote. I mean, they either need her or Collins, it seems like, or I guess Tom Tillis

Speaker 2 or Rand Pollock. That's it.
That's the four. They need one of those four.

Speaker 2 And Murkowski was the one that, at least at the time of we're taping this, looked the most optimistic. So we'll see.

Speaker 2 Sarah, before we sign off here,

Speaker 2 I've got two real quick questions for you, and then we'll continue kind of live coverage with a different group in a minute, so stick around. But

Speaker 2 does this make you at all less worried about the fascism?

Speaker 2 It's the only green line I can, I have, green shoot I have about this whole thing, the only silver lining is like these people don't seem like very effective authoritarians right now.

Speaker 20 I mean, Congress, though, what it is is Congress. No, no, no, Trump is the authoritarian.

Speaker 20 And what Congress has done is assume a supine position so that his authoritarianism can run right over them, right? They basically don't do their jobs. If they stood up and killed his bill,

Speaker 20 and said, we're not going to give this to you, I would feel like, hey,

Speaker 20 you you know, that's good. That is a green shoot.
But the Senate moderates, here's the thing: the Senate moderates roll over for this and

Speaker 20 Murkowski votes for it. And look, there's other Senate moderates that have already rolled, like Cassidy.

Speaker 2 Like, hey, hey, Cassidy, what happens? Former doctor.

Speaker 20 How's it going with the vaccines? Are we happy with, did Maha keep their promise here about how they're going to take vaccines seriously? No.

Speaker 20 The moderates

Speaker 20 go elect Democrats. Like there is no point to the moderates.

Speaker 20 They do not do anything to stop the authoritarianism. So, no, I'm not sanguine about that at all.

Speaker 2 Final topic.

Speaker 2 Bill Crystal made me mention this to you. He sent me a message and he said, you have to ask Sarah to close the pod about the Trump fragrances.

Speaker 2 Bill quoted the Merry Wives of Windsor and saying it must be the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended the nostril. I thought that was a very Bill Crystal poll right there.

Speaker 2 Trump is now selling Chanel,

Speaker 2 selling, not Chanel smelling, but Chanel priced fragrances.

Speaker 2 And I don't know.

Speaker 2 Does that fill you with despair or laughter? The idea that the president is such a fucking hack grifter late night salesman?

Speaker 20 Well, this is always the tough thing about Trump is he gives you something that you want to laugh at. But if you think about about it for a second, you're like,

Speaker 20 like, it's too embarrassing to contemplate the president of the United States, phones, shoes, fragrances. And it's like Trump 45 and 47.
It's like, it smells like winning. Like,

Speaker 20 I am embarrassed to live in a country where there are people who would buy that. You should feel ashamed.
I don't care what it smells like. Maybe it does smell like winning.
Maybe it's really good.

Speaker 20 The fact that you would purchase something from this guy,

Speaker 20 like, that's the least American thing I can think of. Americans should mock this kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 Imagine what JD Vance

Speaker 2 would say about a third world country's leader selling a fragrance.

Speaker 2 I think we all just know what would be, what would happen there and how they would, how they treat those folks, but that's what it is, that's what it is in ours.

Speaker 2 We have our own Banana Republic, a MAGA Banana Republic. All right, thanks to Sarah Longwell for doing it live with me with all the breaking news on the Hill.

Speaker 2 And oh, so special thanks to Eugene Carroll for coming on the pod go check out her book it is it's really an enjoyable little read

Speaker 2 she is something else

Speaker 2 so we'll be back here as I mentioned at the top we'll be back here tomorrow and Thursday before we go on vacation so stick around for those two pods we'll see y'all then peace Mary Ann and Wanda were the best of friends all through their high school days

Speaker 2 both members of the 4-H Club, both active in the FFA.

Speaker 2 After graduation, Mary Ann went out looking for a bright new world.

Speaker 2 Wanda looked all around this town, and all she found was Earl.

Speaker 2 Well, it wasn't two weeks after she got married that Wanda started getting abused.

Speaker 2 She put on dark lashes, long-sleeved blouses, and makeup to cover her fruit.

Speaker 2 Well, she finally got the nerve to file for divorce, and she let the law take it from there.

Speaker 2 But Earl walked right through that restraining motor and put her in intensive care.

Speaker 2 Right away, Mary Ann flew in from Atlanta on a red-eye midnight flight.

Speaker 2 She held Wanda's hand and they worked out a plan. And it didn't take them long to decide

Speaker 2 that Earl had to die.

Speaker 2 Goodbye,

Speaker 2 girl.

Speaker 2 Don't speck out pee.

Speaker 2 It tasted all right to me,

Speaker 2 girl.

Speaker 2 You feeling weak?

Speaker 2 Why don't you lay down and sleep?

Speaker 2 Girl, ain't a door.

Speaker 2 Wrapped up in that time,

Speaker 2 girl.

Speaker 2 The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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Speaker 26 I'm glad her doctor recommended Rick Sulti.

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E. Jean Carroll and Sarah Longwell: Such a Bad Man

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Transcript

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