Nicolle Wallace: The Silence of Republicans Is the Bigger Threat

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Hello and welcome to the Vulrick Podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Could not be more delighted to be here today with the host of Deadline White House on MSNBC.

She's got a new podcast as well, The Best People with Nicole Wallace.

It's Nicole Wallace.

I finally get to turn the mic on you.

It's terrifying.

I'm thrilled.

Though I felt horrible because I was like, when do I get to turn the mic on you?

And you're like, you've never formally asked me.

No, you've never asked me.

This is what I figured you did.

I don't know.

This is what I got to be a tougher booker, you know?

No, I think there was a cool factor that I, I don't, I don't, I mean, I've not been on a lot of podcasts.

John Heilman's the only one that invites me on his podcast.

I don't think it's the cool factor.

I think people are scared because you're doing two hours a day.

You've got a newborn.

I'm like, God, do I want to bug Nicole?

You know what?

I mean, I've anchored the last two Saturdays and I'm entering this mode of like, always on.

Like it's like your endurance picks up when you do it more.

Yeah.

All right.

I want to talk to you about your news life.

We got to do a little actual news first.

Okay.

That's okay.

Sure.

Since yesterday's podcast, we've had a ceasefire announcement, more bombings, another temporary ceasefire, more bombings.

So it's a little tenuous right now.

I did a TikTok with Sam Stein on YouTube if people want to watch that.

But the latest, we have the president.

I don't usually place Trump's voice voice in the podcast, but we're going to make an exception for this one because he uses one of the podcast favorite words.

He's talking about his frustration with the fact that Israel and Iran did not follow the greatest ceasefire ever that he had announced on his social media feed.

Let's listen to him real quick.

So I'm not happy with them.

I'm not happy with Iran either.

But I'm really unhappy if Israel's going out this morning because of one rocket that didn't land, that was shot, perhaps by mistake, that didn't land.

I'm not happy about that.

You know what?

We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Do you understand that?

Maybe true of everybody involved, kind of.

Does the Ayatollah know what the FP is doing?

Does Trump, does he?

I mean, there's always a projection, right?

What have you made about this whole 12-day saga?

Well, I'm, you know, I feel like Bill Barr gave us bullshit because it was a direct quote.

And now Trump has given us, you know, they they don't know what the fuck they're doing.

And now we can just quote him.

So for that, I'm grateful.

I think that we have to be

careful not to become amnesiac, right?

Like, this is a guy who couldn't pull off the egg roll without annihilating norms and ethics laws.

And so we have to be really,

really careful about what he says about the Middle East.

Like, I get that he's the president, he's the commander-in-chief, he's the only one we have, But I'm uneasy broadcasting his tweets and his comments on a newscast because I don't know if he knows what he's talking about.

Yeah.

And we saw that last night.

And I was up laying in bed doing the unhealthy thing where I'm scrolling social media while also being in bed.

So you're doing that.

And we're like coming up on where the ceasefires was supposed to be.

And he is sending out a bleat about how great and brilliant everything was and how it's the best ceasefire ever, you know, in one post.

And then the next post I see is like four dead in Israel because an Iranian missile broke through the iron dome, right?

So it's like in real time, he's giving fake information.

Yeah, and I think it's for

another draft to figure out if he knows it's false at the time.

You know, I don't know.

I mean, he would have the ability to know if I knew.

Correct, correct.

But he, he, I remember living dog years, but I think it was four days ago that he broke with his hand-picked intel chief.

So it's unclear where he's getting his information.

It's unclear if it's coming from U.S.

national security agencies or elsewhere or the media.

I mean, I don't, it's completely unclear

who he's talking to and who he's listening to.

I had Bill Crystal.

Me and Bill Crystal were going back and forth yesterday, and he's a little bit, I don't know, his old neocon muscles are flexing a little bit right now.

And he's like, you know, I don't like Trump, but the mullahs are so bad and the Iranian people deserve freedom and we don't want them to have nukes.

And if it's a tailored strike, maybe that's a good thing.

Maybe it weakens Iran more.

Is there any of your old

muscles flaring in that direction?

I mean, I put all those muscles out to pasture, but I think a clear-headed analysis, I mean, Senator Slachin had this analysis that she'd been in Iraq, and the Iranians have the blood of U.S.

soldiers on their hands.

I mean, they've been been a threat and a danger and they're an adversary.

And that's clear.

But I think we're in a tricky zone where we're trying to sort of sift through the chaos and the mayhem and find little flecks of gold.

I mean, sure, there will always be them.

And the other one is thank God all the men and women of the military that carried out this operation came home safe.

I mean,

that is truly a wonderful aspect of all this.

But I'll leave that to others.

I mean, I think my focus is on what happens next, you know, what happens today, what happens tomorrow.

And again, I think it's stupid to compare Trump to other presidents.

It's fair to compare Trump to the last time he was president.

there is no one like Mark Milley around him.

I mean, he seems to be listening to General Kaine as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but he doesn't say the same thing that he says.

Trump's analysis the night of the strikes was that we had, quote, obliterated their program.

Kane went out the next morning and didn't say anything close to that.

An assessment hadn't even taken place when Trump addressed the nation.

So there will always be, you know, flecks of gold in that little thing of sound we sift through.

And that's a good thing.

But I think that the bigger picture is what keeps me up at night.

Yeah.

I'm going to make you list all the things that keep you up at night at the very end.

I have a couple other news things I want to do.

Lisa Murkowski was on Galen Drook's podcast.

And credit to Galen, because he was really kind of relentless in questioning her about a topic that has been something that I've been wondering for a while, which is why she isn't considering, if not becoming a Democrat, you know, teaming up with Angus King and creating some independent caucus within the Senate.

He asked her about it.

I want to play you just a ⁇ it went on for like six minutes, so I just want to play a couple of little bites from it and get your reaction.

Say Democrats win three seats in the next midterm election in the Senate.

And they say, we're going to let you pass bills that benefit Alaskans if you caucus with us.

You don't have to become a Democrat.

You can be an Independent.

But if you caucus with us and provide the sort of fourth vote that we need to get from where we are now, and you can pass legislation that helps Alaskans, would you do it?

That's my primary goal.

I have to figure out how I can be most effective for the people that I serve.

That's why I'm going to continue to do a really hard job because I want to try to help people.

My problem

your hypothetical is that

as

challenged as I think we may be on the Republican side, I don't see the Democrats being

much better.

And

they've got not only their share of problems, but

quite honestly, they've got some policies that I just inherently disagree with.

She goes on to kind of, after he asks again and again, to kind of say, well, I'm open to it.

It's kind of a Jim Carrey.

So you're saying there's a chance chance answer there a little bit?

I don't know.

That just kind of left me feeling cold.

I'm like, I don't, I don't even really know what she's talking about.

Like, what is it?

Yeah, look, look, I mean, 2015 is calling and they want their like, BS, why can't you be a Democrat response back?

Like, he's now orchestrated an insurrection against the U.S.

Capitol.

You ran for your life.

I think there's footage of it because of Trump.

The Republicans did nothing when he pardoned all the insurrectionists that made you run for your life.

He's put people atop the FBI and the Pentagon who, generously speaking, are inexperienced.

Accurately speaking, they are completely unqualified.

They were opposed.

I mean, I think she opposed one or both of them.

So the idea that their policy, she's not totally psyched about on the Democratic side is ludicrous.

I think Trump is what he is.

I think the Republicans are the bigger threat to the country at this point.

It's kind of crazy.

And how do you process all of it?

I just look at her and I'm like,

we're now in year nine or 10 of Trump.

And one Republican, Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, has switched parties from Democrat to Republican.

None have gone the other way.

I know we've had Liz, Cheney, and Adam, Kinzinger, who like, we've had people who showed courage and then retired, Jeff Flake.

But I just, I don't, I can't process like why.

Like, what do you think is really holding her up?

I guess is my question.

Could it possibly be energy policy?

Like, what could it be?

No, I think the policy thing is ludicrous.

I think there's a nostalgia for the old days and a delusion of the snapback theory, which you heard a lot during Trump 1.0.

Well, Trump will leave and we'll snap back to normal Republican stuff.

Normal Republican stuff hasn't appealed to normal Republican voters for almost two decades now.

I mean, it's why, you know, it's why Trump won the primary in 16.

And so the idea that they're waiting to get back to doing, I don't even know what they think the normal stuff would look like.

I mean, portman was normal and he's gone and he went along with all of trump stuff and corker was pretty normal and he's gone and i think it's this belonging this affinity to stay in the club you've always been in but i think it's delusional to think that it's ever going to be what it was when you joined it i don't know about you

this whole thing has been pretty easy to me Like I get thanked sometimes by liberals like on the street.

They're like, you're so courageous.

I'm like, not really, actually.

Like, he was a total clown.

It wasn't even a close call.

It was ridiculous.

Had it been a closer call, maybe I would have been a coward too.

You know, maybe I would have gone along with somebody that was unqualified too, but if in a more close run hypothetical, right?

So it's hard for me, especially with the book.

It's hard for me to kind of process like,

why is it so hard for all these people?

Like, why is it so hard for Bob Corker and Lisa Murkowski?

Like, what do you think the reason is?

I used to really anguish about it.

Think about this.

There has never

been a a book reported out by a reporter from Capitol Hill or a political reporter that shows anyone from J.D.

Vance to Mitch McConnell to Boehner saying anything privately that's different from what you and I say.

Mitch McConnell, quote, Trump is a despicable human being, the most despicable human being.

Kevin McCarthy in that book by the Jonathan Martin.

Yeah, you know, impeachment was too slow.

He wanted them to look at the 25th Amendment.

J.D.

Vance, America's Hitler, cultural heroine.

So, where I used to anguish, you know, how do they not see what I see?

The people who loathe him the most are the people who have completely sacrificed their integrity, their honesty, and their faith to what was real conservatism.

And so, that gives me some relief that at least I'm telling the truth about it.

You never listen to Lisa Murkowski and think, you know, she's making a point.

Maybe I should be hedging a little more.

No, no.

And I also think it's so lame.

It's so lame.

If you're a partisan, you are on a side because you believe in things.

For me, what I believed in, I, and people will sneer at this, but I believed in the democracy stuff.

I think Liz Cheney did too.

And the idea that if that was your sort of path into

being a Republican, that you don't see Trump as a threat to democracy as you're off-ramp from it is ridiculous.

I want to do the what you believe in because I get this question a lot too.

What I didn't know you until after all this, like we both worked for Jeb, but like in different eras, right?

And I'm old.

And we both, yeah, you're older than me.

You are older.

You look great, though.

And we both worked for McCain, but in different eras of McCain, like we never overlapped.

And so I didn't kind of know you until the Trump stuff happening.

So, like, thinking back to baby Nicole, college, Nicole, like, why were you a college Republican?

What drew you to it initially?

So, I wasn't.

So, I wasn't.

I was a college journalism nerd.

I squatted in all of the journalism classes at UC Berkeley, and I wasn't politicized by Berkeley.

A lot of people either really embrace Berkeley's liberal history or don't see themselves in it.

And I think there was a college Republican party there.

I wasn't part of any of that.

Oh, yeah.

My friend was a Berkeley College Republican.

It takes a special type of contrario to want to be the Berkeley College Republican.

But it happens.

But I spent my college years interning at local television stations.

I worked this like overnight shift, like 2 a.m.

to

through the morning shows until they took the national morning shows.

I covered the O.J.

Simpson trial.

I covered the earthquakes and the fires in the Bay Area.

I used to hop in the van and run around with local, the greatest.

You cover the O.J.

Simpson trial?

I cut sound.

I cut sound when I was in college from the night before

testimony.

I think I was 18 or 19.

And it would make up these like six-minute saw chunks on the local news before the national news.

So I was like a TV news nerd.

And when I graduated from Berkeley, I went to Medill.

So I went to Northwestern and I was a local reporter.

And then after sort of shooting, actually, there were a couple stories that I just, I couldn't handle being the first person on accidents.

I just, I couldn't take it.

And so sometimes I would, I had the scanner and sometimes I would get there before the ambulance.

And I couldn't, I couldn't take that.

And so I thought local news isn't for me.

And so I moved to Sacramento and interviewed with a Republican and a Democrat the same week.

And the Republican hired me.

And that was how I became a Republican president.

This is such a 90s story.

This is like people really, young people really do not get this.

But like, that was so, Michael Lewis wrote, when I was writing the book, I didn't read political books because I don't know about you, but because I like live it.

And so I hate reading them.

And so I never did.

And so, you know, my editor was like, You've got to read a bunch of political books and tell me which ones you like so we can create a model.

And I read this old Michael Lewis book from the 1996 campaign that's like lost to history.

It's called Losers, and it was about all the losing candidates.

And it was, it was so good.

And he was so contemptuous of the fact that, like,

the strategists on both sides of both parties could have been totally indistinguishable.

Totally.

And like, they could have switched sides very easily.

And they got into politics because they liked politics as a game.

And I, you know, I was like, the number of people I know who worked for, I mean, you, I think, worked for Republicans and then voted against McCain.

And like, then voted for Obama in 08, like there are still prominent Republicans around who privately told me they voted for Obama.

Yeah, because I think to do it, you are idealistic.

You're more Aaron Sorkin than the Federalist Society.

Right.

And so I watched the West Wing and I had this romanticized view of people doing the right thing.

And I have an email relationship with Aaron Sorkin saying, you've ruined all this for me.

You know, I keep waiting for someone to put the crime bill in the drawer because it doesn't do anything to fight crime.

You know, he totally romanticized with the West Wing and the American president, what it would be.

Yeah, so I started working for Republicans in California.

I never worked for Pete Wilson, but it was sort of at the end of his time.

And so George W.

Bush was thrust onto the scene as the opposite in terms of immigration instincts to Pete Wilson.

And so it's pretty funny that the party has circled back around to Pete Wilson, who couldn't make his way out of New Hampshire after elevating, you know, George W.

Bush and John McCain, who essentially believed in something much closer to amnesty.

Yeah.

The immigration thing is, to me, I don't know, sometimes left people are like, you, you were hoodwinked or whatever.

And I was asking McKinnon about this on the show last week.

And I was like, I don't think so.

Like there was, there was a fight within the party, right?

But like there was a genuine

kind of patriotic strain.

Like it's almost jingoistic kind of like pro-immigrant because we're so great, like less like kind of human, humanitarian, but also because the U.S.

is so great.

We want people who are fleeing communism, fleeing other countries to come here.

And that, to me, was like kind of my origin story.

I like really bought all that and was moved by it.

It was part of the reason why this switch has been so like easy for me.

But like, what do you think?

Going back to all that, I mean, you were there with Bush and both Bushes, I guess.

Like, how earnest was that like the more compassionate pro-immigrant pitch in those days so it played out within the second Bush administration so Bush goes to address the nation on comprehensive immigration reform in 05 and that speech had more drafts than that year's state of the union address which was the first year after his reelection And I think that's a reflection of the tug of war even within the administration.

And I spent enough time with Bush at that point.

I was his communications director in the second term, and he had a very, I think he saw it the way you just articulate, Reagan is the last president to really do sweeping amnesty.

And I think Bush saw immigrants as

vitally important,

totally persuadable if he made, I think he believed he could make a case about conservatism to any immigrant family and try to win their hearts and minds.

As a Texas governor, they weren't otherized to him.

I mean, he saw them as part of the community, part of the faith community, part of the economy.

Bush was never a fan of people having to return and then get in line because he knew that nobody would do that.

Bush also had an extraordinary amount of comprehension and compassion for anyone who put their children.

on a bus or on a train or sent them to America for a better life.

I mean, he thought that was in some ways just this incredible statement about what America was to a mom or dad who wanted to send their kids to America for the American dream.

So Bush saw immigration the way Reagan did, the way I think you and I see it, and was defeated and undermined by his own party.

in trying to do comprehensive immigration reform.

And there was a way to do it with Democrats, but Cheney, having served in the ranks with the House Republicans, was not a fan of that.

But Tony Snow was the White House press secretary.

So I had the job of booking Bush, Cheney, and Tony Snow on Conservative Talk Radio, which was the driver before the podcast era.

And I remember booking Tony, who I adored, and Bush and Cheney on with Rush, on with Hannity.

on with, I think Mark Levin Levin was one of the people.

The great one.

And

really trying to make the case.

And I don't think they support, I I don't think any of them really supported it, but they let us make the argument.

And I think it was Bush's first window into how nativist and isolationist the party was becoming even during his second term.

So what about you?

Do you look back on that and feel like,

I should have seen it a little bit more?

Oh, I mean, I did see it.

I did see it.

And I think, you know, the only Republican I worked for after that was McCain, who saw it.

It was the issue, I think, on which Bush and McCain agreed the most vociferously and agreed from this really deep how they saw America a place.

So I've never worked for anyone who was conflicted about this.

I think McCain and Kennedy.

Oh, this was gonna say, so McCain and Kennedy saw comprehensive immigration reform the way Bush did.

I mean, oddly, Rubio did for a minute, also, but then became.

Do you look back at it?

Are there you conflict about anything else?

I mean, I was conflicted about all of it.

I mean, I'm conflicted about being part of Palin.

I'm conflicted about

it.

Guantanamo.

And I was watching the Mauritanian this weekend and I was like, oh, God.

I mean,

I don't know.

That was the movie about one of the guys that was in Guantanamo that may be wrong.

I don't know.

You'll never know.

But yeah, look, and I think that I think just keeping your mouth shut and letting people

who

paid the ultimate price for the country because of the foreign policy decisions that Bush made is the path I've chosen.

I mean, I've been on the air, obviously, the last week, and every bad comparison is a comparison back to the decisions made by my old boss in that region.

region so yeah i'm conflicted about all of it i mean if you don't get older and wiser and platform your own sort of internal regrets and and and things you do differently with twice as many years under your belt there's something wrong with you

amen to that i always think the stupidest criticism people have at me is they're like you've broken your principle you've changed and i'm like you haven't changed we we elected the stupidest person in the country president twice it hasn't changed your view on anything like what do you, it doesn't seem like you're a very deep thinker in that.

Right.

And I, and like the idea that

it is true that neither party is perfect.

It is also true that only one party is trying to erode our democratic principles and norms.

So anyone that makes an argument to me about principles, I'm like, what, what are you talking about?

I mean, I never agreed with everything the Republican Party stood for either.

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Do you have any old job stories for me

from the early days?

So I was his first press secretary when he wins governor the first time.

Okay.

And I went and interviewed for the job.

I worked in California politics, and I knew a bunch of folks who'd worked for his dad.

So, that was my connection to his world after he wins.

And I went out there and interviewed, and it was right after Lawton Childs died.

And you know, Jeb, he's just always kind of walking around, unstaffed, and like taller than everybody.

And so, I went and interviewed.

Taking questions from people, you know, strangers, journalists, whatever.

Yeah.

And I interviewed with his chief of staff, Sally Bradshaw, and his communications director, Corey Tilley.

And they were amazing.

And I have no idea to this day what they saw in me.

But then Jeb, I guess, heard that I spoke Spanish.

And so came in and started talking to me in Spanish.

And he felt like he really owed to the Cuban community in South Florida his victory.

And so liked that I spoke Spanish.

And I got that job.

I arrived in Tallahassee with like a comforter in my suitcase and had to find a place to live.

It was very intrepid when I look back.

But because of the Sunshine Laws, the press secretary always has to travel with Jeb.

So I went everywhere with him.

And he played a lot of golf.

And he played one day with Tiger Woods.

And so I went with Jeb and Tiger Woods had gone to Stamford and I'd gone to Berkeley.

And so we, we like kind of like six degrees.

And the Nike commercial, he wasn't flirting.

No, Tiger was in flirting.

Tiger Woods never flirted with me.

But on his backswing, that Nike app is out that said, I am Tiger Woods.

So he was, you know, isn't that the backswinger?

And I said, I am Tiger Woods.

And Jeb looked at me like he wanted to fucking kill me.

And Tiger Woods started laughing.

And I was like, see, that was funny.

You're old.

So that was my golfing with Jeb story.

But you can see.

He's easy to get along with on the road, though, right?

Oh, he was easy.

I mean, he's like zero maintenance.

The plane was so scary and old, I was always afraid I was going to plunge to my death.

And he just sort of like did his emails.

And he, he called his laptop his whole band and was always emailing back a constituent about something.

And he was really easy, really low maintenance.

I love Jeb.

He was so easy to go.

It was so funny in private.

I never like really really couldn't translate it on the debate stage.

And in private, like that is just some people.

I hear Hillary's like that.

I've never been hanging out with Hillary.

There are others.

The thing with Jeb that's funny that I think about in your context is he really, I think, was kind of surprised by the direction of where everything was going.

And so I got to kind of live it with him firsthand, like first running and then seeing how crazy the MAGAs had gotten.

And like he's getting out of it because he'd been out of kind of day-to-day politics for a while.

And people are saying crazy shit to him all the time.

And he's like, look at me and it's like, what are they even talking about?

You know, yeah.

And so he saw that change on the one hand.

And then he kind of saw your radicalization on the other hand because you did the post-interview with him.

And I remember the moment where you asked, you guys were talking about McCain and Balin or something.

And you're like, yeah, I didn't even vote for John McCain.

And he, and he, and he was like, what?

You didn't even vote for John McCain?

And like, I just, like, the kind of extinction of the Jeb Republican, like, I got to live with him.

And it's sad and also it was kind of amusing at the same time.

Yeah.

So I spent a lot of time with their parents in 16.

I went up to Kenny Bunkport.

Yeah, I got there too.

It was really hard.

I think two or three times during the 16 campaign.

And in some ways, that was like a better lens for me because they'd become so close to the Clintons that I don't think they were as allergic to the idea of Democrats in 15, 16.

And they might disagree with this.

I've actually never talked to either of them about it.

But I think that 41, especially, because of his, I mean, well, you've been there, like, it's all he valued diplomacy as a principle.

And I think he valued his role as America's diplomat and president as much as anything that he was ever part of.

And so

I think they were able to get to Hillary Clinton in 16 a lot easier than, or at least George H.W.

Bush, easier than Jeb or George W.

And so I don't think he was as jolted by what had happened.

And Barbara Bush was like, in some ways, the most astute political observer in the whole family.

Like I remember talking to her after 08, and she understood

not just how challenging Palin was as a candidate, but what it meant that the party responded the way they did to Palin.

So yeah, I think as a family, they felt it all and they felt a lot of, at least the 41s felt a lot of it.

And I really was never able to draw Jeb out on how he felt about any of it.

But I think the 41s felt a lot of it.

They were more feelings-oriented.

Jeb was more like his dad, really.

And you get more feelings-oriented as you get older.

Barbara and W is more like Barbara.

I got to spend just a little bit of time with them both.

And the level of clear-eyed they were about all this.

I mean, and I didn't, I would only get to hear half the convo, but Jeb would call his dad a lot, like during the campaign, like from the car.

And

I didn't have to actually hear what was on the other side of the phone to get a sense from what 41 was saying about Trump and the movement of the party.

And so, and their political assessment of our viability was also right on, at least at least, Barbara's was.

I mean, look, their political assessment of our weakness in 05.

I mean, when I was George W.

Bush's communications director, they consumed a lot more of the punditry and the press coverage than he did.

And so, we heard from them a lot, and they

were brilliant political minds.

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One more Republican thing, and then we'll stop with old Republican shit and do a little bit more business.

People are just

the Mondale listeners of the podcast are getting bored with this

hagiography.

I told you, there's only like 17 people who give a shit about any of this.

Well, luckily, they're bored caught ass consumers for the most part.

Have you seen the story of Matt Gates' mom yelling at him?

No.

I was texting with your friend Sally Bradshaw.

He mentioned earlier, Jeb's old chief of staff, about this this morning.

So, I do need to mention this.

I was on, as I was mentioning last night, I was scrolling social media in bed, which I shouldn't be doing.

This is what I do, though, or after midnight if I can't sleep.

I was on TikTok, shouldn't be on TikTok.

I don't have TikTok.

That's how old I am.

I mean, it's the Chinese, and you shouldn't have it, children.

But also, the Chinese have done a really great job.

I mean, my algorithm just feeds me only things I care about.

Like, they're very good, they've figured it out.

And among the things I care about was there's this young woman who is on an airplane sitting behind Matt Gates,

and she is videotaping videotaping him feverishly texting on his phone.

And Matt Gates has admitted this is him already this morning.

Then he has old man font on his phone.

I don't know.

He might need some bifocals.

I recommend Williamson.

I am bad.

He's a scoop.

Yeah.

So he has huge font.

And so you can see it all clearly.

And Mrs.

Gates is chastising him

for going against Trump on the war.

Wow.

And they're going back and forth.

And he's like, you're going to lose your job in the media.

You're already out of coffee.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

And she's like, don't be criticizing the president or his actions he's trying to keep us safe maga will turn on you and it's just the whole thing is a is a funny and also kind of sad encapsulation of like what we've all seen yeah right like i sent i've tweeted at matt this morning i was like oh you know a fox watching family member is upset that you're not fully on board with donald trump like welcome to the resistance we've all been there like i don't know we've all been like how do you process all that well i mean i think the i think the intervention in the middle East is a real thing.

I mean, I think that Matt Gaetz speaks for probably more MAGA voters than his mother does.

I didn't think I'd ever find myself defending Matt Gates.

But I mean, I think that a lot of what turned off the base of the Republican Party at the end of the Bush era, and you and I both dealt with this in a political context, was support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And so I think part of, you know, part of it is just voters found Trump really entertaining.

They liked everything that offended a lot of the rest of us, but they also agreed with him on not getting involved in wars in the Middle East.

And so this is the ultimate betrayal.

This and making everything more expensive through his asinine trade war are the ultimate political betrayals.

Yeah.

It's kind of like the, what's the phrase?

Like the immovable force, the unstoppable object, or whatever it is, the immovable object, unstoppable force, one of them.

And with the voters, right, which is being demonstrated in this Gates family text.

Yeah.

Right.

Where it's like, on the one hand, it's just slavish cultishness devotion to Trump.

And on the other hand, it's this kind of the pure MAGA id of, oh, the old establishment Republicans did us wrong.

And like kind of who wins that battle.

That's real, I think.

Totally.

And I think the sort of veil on top of all of it is the fear factor.

And it ties the Murkowski stuff to the Gates, you know, mother stuff to, you know, because they're so thuggish to their own, there's a real fear to either opposing trump even if it's to actually stick up for what trump was originally about or to you know criticize anything he does even when it looks pretty boneheaded i'm sure you get this what do you say to people who come to you and like uh I'm guessing you get this as much as I do, which is like, I listen to you because I've got MAGA family members and like you're, you're kind of a stand-in for them as like a sane person

who like I can disagree with on whatever certain policies sometimes.

Like, what do you you say to that?

Like, how you deal with the cult side of it?

Look, I think you have to love your family, no matter who they support and vote for.

But I think you have to.

We have like a menagerie back there.

We had babies.

Mike Schmidt walked through and has that how many animals?

There's animals.

I've got three Vishlas today.

So I have two Vishlas.

Oh, Vishlas.

Vishlas are nuts.

They're baby gates, so they might make an appearance.

And then I have a third.

I have my ex-husband's Vishla, who we're babysitting for the day.

So I've got three little brown dogs.

They're so cute.

They're Hungarian, right?

They're Hungarian pointers.

Yeah, they're so cute.

Little fascist dogs.

We joke with them about Orban.

They got out.

They're three, four, and ten, and they're just, they're huge personalities.

And so someone is probably, my son and Mike are probably leaving.

And so they're probably wailing.

Yeah, there's a lot.

I'm sorry, there's a lot of brown dogs.

Anyway, love you.

People want Nicole Wallace unfiltered.

They want to see what's happening in your life.

You know, you have this love.

I promise you, there's a lot of love for you out there.

I hear about it all the time.

If I texted you every time, somebody was like,

I hope she's doing okay.

You'd be you'd stop responding by texting.

It's so nice.

It's so nice.

So, anyway, you said you got to love your family members, but oh, so you got to love your family members, but I think you have to protect yourself from the gaslighting.

And I think, like, this is the work for therapists, not cable news hosts.

But I think that they have now been marinating.

Look, like, I think it really started with the birth certificate, right?

Like, if you're really MAGA, you've been along for a lot of the journey.

And so, it started with with like the delusions about,

you know, Obama and Eric Holder.

And I remember doing Chris Wallace's show and I wrote a novel and he, he, he was such a sweet guy.

And he said to me, I was on because I'd written a novel and he let me join the Sunday show panel.

And I was going to get to plug my novel, but I had to sort of do news of the day with him.

I said, sure, sure.

And he said, you've been out for a while.

We're going to talk about the fast and the furious.

And I was like, what is that?

This was when it was sort of a right-wing thing and hadn't really burst you know it becomes more of a mainstream political story and and it and it it becomes stuff that the obama white house has to deal with and it but but this is early early and you think about all of the seasons right that maga voters have watched that started with the birth certificate it went through fast and the furious it went through all of the lies they've been fed.

So how I deal with it is that I don't deal with it.

I don't talk politics.

There's so much that Trump has politicized now that it's, it's like it leaves you kind of talking about the weather and family and stuff that has nothing to do with the world.

But that's that's

sports.

Yeah.

I mean, we deal with, but you know, my team is pretty political.

So, so they don't always love my, but no, I mean, really, it is.

It's a lot of fun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it's a lot of, it's a lot of sports.

And, and I do have a piece where, you you know with with my family like it's just politics and i love them to death and we just don't talk about it

this is larry flick owner of the floor store labor day is the last sale of the summer but this one is our biggest sale of the year now through september 2nd get up to 50 off store wide on carpet hardwood laminate waterproof flooring and much more plus two years interest-free financing and we pay your sales tax the floor stores labor day sale don't let the sun set on this one go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

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All right, on therapist questions, since you mentioned this, this is maybe a job for your therapist.

I remember we had a talk on set, I don't know, maybe around Christmas time.

This was after right after the election.

Yeah, it was Christmas.

Yeah, maybe it was around Thanksgiving, actually.

Yeah, yeah, it was pretty soon after.

And I was like, I don't know how I'm going to do this.

I basically said, how are you going to do it?

I just, I don't know how I'm going to wake up and care about these fucking people every day.

I hate them.

They're horrible.

I kind of want them to fail, but I don't want the country to fail.

And

how can I possibly bring myself to care about this?

Like, if this was not my job, I would just totally turn off everything and start reading gay novels and just pretend like it doesn't exist.

I swear to God, that's what I would do.

If this was, if I had a different, if my husband was independently wealthy or something, and I don't know, I've come around on it, but I guess I won't prejudice you with your answer.

How do you, how did you process that challenge?

Well, I remember that conversation, and I think,

I think the hardest thing for me about

his victory

was

that

everything he was going to do that threatened the democracy was stuff he said he was going to do.

So it's like, it's not like, oh, they didn't believe me with my warnings.

They didn't believe him.

And I thought that was such a mind fuck.

Like he ran on retribution.

He ran on charging Liz Cheney and Mark Milley with treason.

He ran on turning the FBI and the DOJ inside out.

He ran on putting people like Tulsi Gabbard in charge of national security.

And so he ran on mass deportations.

To me, he ran on the dehumanization of people in this country illegally and won.

And so that

felt like a blow to me.

What I have found is that,

and Alicia Menendez said this to me, like, just bear witness.

Like, what our viewers need us to do is bear witness.

And I have found that that was the best advice I got.

And then

a lot of people reached out to me and said, what do we do?

And I I said, just, just take care of your people.

Like, check on your people, you know, check on them, check on them every day in the beginning, people that you think are going to be really upset.

And then just, you know, try to see them more.

And I feel like

I feel like those two things are

enough.

And it's really satisfying.

And I actually find doing my job, just holding up a mirror, is easier than it was in Trump 1.0 because he's doing it all in the open.

There would be stories that would break in the Times and the Post.

And we'd run through our standards department.

And because it was the Times and the Post, we were always allowed to use them, but you were relying on, you know, what felt like really,

you know, my, my husband did a lot of that reporting.

I mean, this is almost, and I'm not saying there isn't important reporting, but this is almost all out in the open.

So we're holding up a mirror and saying, this is what we're getting.

And I find that as a cable host, the easiest kind of job.

We're just like webcam covered.

We're just showing what's happening.

And then I think as my colleague Rachel maddow is doing showing the reaction is really satisfying like showing that the american people in year one of a four-year term are out in the streets in historic numbers is incredible but it's it's probably the second piece and that's where the conversation

you know i think emanated from our conversation it's it's you know i find myself have you been like whitewater rafting like where they tie all the rafts together like i feel like we're in we're like we're on the rapids but our rafts are all tied together like the food might fly out and one one raft might might dip over but we're all tied together so someone will come and get us.

And so I do kind of feel like I'm on one of those like chartered whitewater reacting trips where we're all tied together and like it's bumpy.

And we knew it was going to be bumpy, but we're all kind of in it together.

Does that make sense?

It does.

It's interesting you say all that because I watch you.

And it's like, it doesn't seem like you're mailing it in up there.

No, I'm.

You're still feeling all the feelings and you're still doing it and showing everybody and passionate about it.

And that is kind of a challenge in itself.

There are people in media that are mailing it in.

Well, I love, so I also think like I had this, this real shift in my relationship with my viewers during COVID, where I stayed home for a year and a half.

My son stayed out of school for a year and a half.

So it was like me in the basement into the camera to the viewers.

And what they gave back to me was just, was life-changing.

I mean, we celebrated a life well-lived every day, someone that died from COVID.

And

I don't know.

I just, I meet viewers of the show in the street all the time.

And it makes my day when people say they watch.

like i maybe it's coming to these jobs as as a second career that you don't feel like you're entitled to an audience you don't feel like you're entitled to have these jobs and so you feel more grateful for them but i i feel i don't know if more is the right word i feel completely inspired by having two hours to fill every day Well, you're booing me because it's been easier than I thought.

I needed your little pep talk because I was worried about it.

I mean, don't you feel the same way?

I mean, and my-

I actually, I've ended up being the same way.

I was in a pretty dark place when we had that conversation between the election and

maybe two days after the inauguration.

The inauguration was pretty hard for me.

I think I was on your show on inauguration day, and I'm like lashing out.

I'm like, Why are we acting like this is normal?

It's like, what the fuck is happening right now?

You and Michael Steele were like, We're like, Why are we covering this?

Yeah, like, what is this?

Like, we're calling him sir, we're like grading it, like, we're figure skating, judging it.

I'm like, the billionaires are like, What is happening?

Um, so anyway, I was a little, but I have, I'm with you.

I don't know.

I've been very, I've, it's awesome to hear from people.

I love the audience.

I love seeing, I love hearing from people.

And

it is fulfilling.

It's been more fulfilling than I thought to just go out there and just say whatever you think.

My audience loves you, I think, because

you haven't sugarcoated the journey.

Yeah.

Just feel like what I ended up saying to folks here was, I'm just going to care what I care about.

I'm going to care about what I care about and talk to you about that.

And so if there's stupid Trump stuff, and I'm not going to pretend to be outraged about it, you know, and we're going to be on a remote and some days I'm going to be angry and some days I'll be sad.

And some days I'll be laughing and pointing and laughing.

And we'll just do all of it.

Let's just feel all the feelings.

Yeah.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

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All right, let's do big picture trump stuff.

Then I'll let you go.

What scares you the most?

Oh, everything.

I mean, I remember the first day I read about the deportations to El Salvador of the

alleged Trende Aragua members for whom no evidence was ever presented that they had anything to do with Trende Aragua.

And I remember saying to Mike, like, I wish I didn't feel so gutted.

And I wish I could stop thinking about these guys being scared in El Salvador.

And then I was somewhere,

I was in Westchester.

It's usually a baseball trip that has me in, I don't know, I don't know what I was doing, but we stopped to get something to eat.

And I saw the paid ads that

Homeland Security was doing in front of the deportees who were now prisoners at Seacot.

And I was gutted.

And I think I'm sometimes scared by how much

anguish I feel over how they're treating human beings.

But I think that

if you abandon the anguish, then you carry out horrible things against human beings.

And so.

I don't know, maybe that's maybe that's too circular and not very satisfying, but I'm scared about how much it bothers me that so many people are suffering.

And I spent some time with folks close to former President Obama after the election.

And, you know, I said, what's our guess on what happens?

And they kind of said, look, it's not zero chance that it's catastrophic.

It's far more likely that we kind of muddle through, but a lot of people are going to suffer.

And

I'm scared of all that suffering, of witnessing it, of doing it justice, of covering it responsibly.

And I refuse to...

I refuse to accept that there's a quorum that wants to see people suffer.

I just refuse to accept that.

What's your level of alarm that,

you know, I use the term pro-democracy coalition and people are always like, oh, it could be the end of democracy.

And that's, I always, I get frustrated with that conversation because it's like, you either have democracy or you don't when it's much more nuanced than that.

Like, what's your level of alarm that like the whole system crumbles over the next three years?

Well,

he's not suddenly totally competent, right?

So he's not like, he's not like good at any one thing.

The military is still great.

And so, you know, it appears that the military carried out a plan, executed a plan as it was written out.

But he's lost more in court than I think probably like the last 10 presidents added together times two.

I mean, I haven't done the math, but.

he's running up against a lot of things that are illegal.

I try not to get ahead of the story in terms of where will we be in three and a half years.

I've never covered his, you know, I'm going to run for another term because you can't run for another term.

And to do that, you're making all these assumptions that there's no more constitution, there's no more courts, you know.

But my alarm in the moment is

really around Republicans greenlighting anti-democratic practices.

It's around Republicans greenlighting the politicization of SDNY.

And I know we had to move on because so much has happened, but these were a bunch of Federalist Society lawyers up in SDNY that were bringing the Eric Adams case.

And the fact that Emil Bove and all these folks at DOJ ran out a bunch of conservatives and Mitch McConnell said nothing, whose whole reason for like swallowing it with, you know, swallowing his pride and swallowing his integrity when it came to Trump was about remaking the judiciary.

So he sits there silently when the Trump administration runs out the kind of people that he's

sort of had an affinity for through his entire career.

So it's the silence of Republicans around the politicization of the rule of law and the indifference to due process and all the rhetoric around ignoring court rulings that I find the scariest.

That's good.

That's not here on fire.

That's not what your opponents would say about you.

That's right.

I think that's inappropriately.

It's like it could be very bad.

There are a lot of concerning warning signs, and we'll be here to monitor how it plays out.

That's a healthy way to deal with it, I think.

Well, what do you think?

That's what I think.

My answer to that question is like, I don't know.

You tell me, and I mean, you being the audience, what percentage chance you think that it is that he tries to do another term or that he tries to end democracy.

And I think that anyone you ask that question to, their answer is somewhere from like 1%

to, you know, maybe the most TDS riddled people say 80%,

right?

But like, if your answer is 1%, that's still very bad.

And we're in a very bad place that like the answer isn't zero, where it's been for our entire parents' lives and our lives.

And that's alarming to me.

And

I think that you can be alarmed and be vigilant

without being

hysterical, you know?

Yeah.

And look, I mean, I think in defense of the people who are hysterical and alarmed, nothing has held, right?

Like he was impeached twice and never could.

The most hysterical people have definitely been more right than the most sanguine people.

Correct, correct.

And this is why when people trash the left, like

the left's been right about most things when it comes to Trump.

His biggest political weakness, you think, is his incompetence?

Like the biggest vulnerability?

Trump's biggest political weakness is his indifference to the cost of things, because there are a ton of voters who voted for him out of economic anxiety.

Yeah.

All right.

You've got a new pod.

I want to hear about that.

And then I have one final special rapid-fire question.

So, the new pod, why are you doing it?

You're busy enough.

You've got two kids now.

You're doing baseball tournaments.

You're doing weekend anchoring.

Two hours.

You're like, I need something else.

I want to beat Tim Miller in the podcast rankings.

What's the motivation for this?

Someone said to me, get off my lawn.

I wanted to do more when he won.

I went to, Rashido was still the president of MSNBC, and I wanted to do more.

I think Rachel had the same instinct.

She went out and anchored the first hundred days.

I wanted to do more.

Nobody that I work for or with thought a third hour was a good idea.

I don't know how Joe and Mika do it, but they have like a village and it's different when it's one hour.

So I also.

I'm happy they didn't give you a third hour.

That would have been more time for more obligations for me.

You would have spent a lot more time on television.

I also, I take the note that the media, I mean, Megan Kelly talked about this in an interview with the New York Times.

I think she's right.

Like, this is how people, people want to hear the news from you and they don't want it separated from your opinions.

And you do.

a better newscast than I do in terms of really like singling or paring it down to things that you know your audience cares about, giving them the news and the context.

And I think I wanted to be in the space without trying to replicate what I do on the show.

And then I actually think the best people was Trump's best brand.

I think in 16, the way he wins the first time is by acknowledging that people might not be totally comfortable with a guy who's never done anything in politics.

And so he promises his base, I'll bring in the best people.

And then he kind of sort of does it with Mattis and Millie.

Rights doesn't count, but you know, somewhat.

Right, Rice doesn't count, but but

he, but to his supporters, they look like Mattis looks like he's at Essential Casting and the people that he brings in, he can at least sell it to half the country that they're the best people.

And I think when he picked Matt Gates, he had clearly abandoned the brand.

And I thought that was the most, like to me, the most amazing thing about tapping Matt Gates wasn't that he was investigated right for child sex trafficking or that he had sent like so many videos of himself having sex around on his phone that mark wayne mullen was like yeah he took you know they could talk about how he i mean i i don't even want to say it's it's it's not because i'm a prude but because it's disgusting mental images but the whole idea that the best people have been abandoned and and and we know the best people right and they're the people you talk to they're the people i get to talk to so i wanted to sort of reappropriate the brand the best people and then bring some of the wisdom that i get from people that maybe don't want to come on the show don't want to be embroiled in the daily news cycle in the podcast.

That's been cool.

I was listening to Doc Rivers this morning.

He's so cool.

I got to get his digits from you.

He's so cool.

I'm glad you mentioned the short-lived Matt Gates nomination.

I don't think that anybody, not that we were looking forward to Matt Gates being attorney general, we weren't, but the concept of him as a nomination was something that we aligned on as bringing us a little bit of joy during the interaction.

But you look at Pam Bonnie, like in hindsight, I'm not sure he would have been worse.

Oh, no way.

Khlue wouldn't have been.

Yeah, I'm with you.

It's like the cash situation.

It's like, actually, the most incompetent people are a better bet for us because they don't know, you know, they don't know their way around.

You know, it's a little harder for them to do jobs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cash Patel year three is alarming.

Now we're back to the, what's the scariest question, Nicole?

All right.

Final thing.

Mount Rushmore.

I like to ask people to give us a Mount Rushmore.

You get the Mount Rushmore of Deadline White House guests.

Who are my guests?

Who do I put on that?

Yeah, which of your guests would you put on the Mount Rushmore Rushmore?

I mean, anyone that watches could, you tell me who they are.

You watch my show every day.

You're on it.

Well, I'm putting you on it.

Lancy, you're on it.

Lacey Glad is on it.

Claire.

Claire is on it.

And Andrew Weissman.

There you go.

Ouch.

That is, there are some people that are hardest hit right there.

We're not going to name them, but I will be sending them this clip.

Well, no, but I would just say that the show is built around.

John Heilman is too busy for me a lot of days, but you never say no.

Claire never says no.

Eddie Glad never says no.

And Andrew Weissman never says no, no matter where you guys are.

No, Heilman is a media empire in his own right.

He doesn't need to be on the Deadline White House.

I'm just saying, some people are sit there.

I'm just going to leave it at that.

I am saying no to you, actually.

I'm going on vacation, a real vacation.

I'm not doing any Deadline White House for my drill.

Say no.

Saying no.

One week.

You're going to have to survive one week without me.

We will be here when you get back.

I mean,

I think Deadline White House is like that sports bar that has to have like a good turkey burger and a real salad and be open every night like we'll be there we'll be here when you get back i look forward to being back i really appreciate you always having me on it's it's a delight this has been a great joy of this horrible era is getting to know you and i appreciate you doing the pod i love you so much thank you so much for having me on the pod all right we'll see you nicole give my love to the kiddos sorry they were so loud

i don't know maybe in a couple hours probably i don't know whatever query tells me exactly uh that's nicole wallace we'll be back here tomorrow uh with another one of my favorite guests.

Not as good as Nicole, but he'll be pretty good.

So we'll see you all then.

Peace.

an honest affector, conscientious objector, now her own protector.

Yeah, broken skyline, which way to love the land, which way to something better,

which way to forgiveness,

which way do I go?

Yes, time to move on.

Time to get going.

What I said, I am nowhere going

But under my feet baby, grass is growing It's time to move on

Time to get going

Sometime later

Getting the words wrong wasting the meaning

Losing the rhyme

It's nauseous adrenaline

Breaking up a dog fight like a deer in the headlights, frozen in real time,

I'm losing my mind.

It's time to move on,

time to get going.

What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing.

But under my feet, baby, grass is growing.

It's time to move on,

time to get going.

The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years' interest-free financing, and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.

This Labor Day, gear up, save big, and ride harder with cycle gear.

From August 22nd to September 1st, score up to 60% off motorcycle gear from your favorite brands.

RPM members get 50% off tire mount and balance with any new tire purchase.

Need to hit the road now?

Fast Lane Financing lets you ride now and pay later with 0% interest for three months.

And here's the big one.

August 29th through September 1st only.

Buy any helmet $319 or more and get a free Cardo Spirit Bluetooth.

Supplies are limited.

Don't wait.

Cycle gear.

Get there.

Start here.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Labor Day is the last sale of the summer, but this one is our biggest sale of the year.

Now through September 2nd, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years interest-free financing, and we pay pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Labor Day sale.

Don't let the sun set on this one.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your area flooring authority.