Jonathan Martin: A Resilient City

For a limited time at Verizon, you can get our best price ever for a single line.

Just $45 per month when you bring your phone.

Which is less than you spend on too-tired-to-cook takeout every week.

Get one line on Unlimited Welcome for $45 per month with AutoPay Plus taxes and fees.

Visit your local San Jose Verizon store today.

$20 monthly promo credits applied over 36 months with a new line on Unlimited Welcome.

In times of congestion, unlimited 5G and 4G LTE may be temporarily slower than other traffic. Domestic data roaming at 2G speeds.
Additional terms apply. Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Podcast.
I'm your host Tim Miller. A couple of notes.
It is little mama's birthday. She's seven today.
Happy birthday, girl. I can't believe she's seven.
We're going out for sushi tonight. Also, at the end of the pod, I'm going to share a little bit about the victims of the tragedy in NOLA, so stick around for that.
And we are taping this now as the speaker vote is taking place on the House floor, so we're going to save that discussion towards the back end of the show. Hopefully, we'll have as much up-to-date info as possible for you.
With that, our guest today, author of This Will Not Pass, that was a prescient book title, columnist for Politico and fellow New Orleans lover and transplant, Jonathan Martin. How you doing, man? Thanks, T-Mail.
Good to see you, man. I wanted to do a little NOLA talk to start.
We were together yesterday at the Sugar Bowl, and, you know, the city is just not going to get beaten by this. The city's going to move forward, but I'm wondering what your feelings were on New Year's night.
I know you were down here, and what your thoughts are about, you know, kind of the path forward. Yeah, Betsy and I were in the corner on New Year's Eve, and we actually got dropped off in an Uber on Canal Street near

the corner of Canal and Bourbon because they weren't letting cars down into the quarter earlier in the evening, or frankly, anytime in the evening. So look, it literally, as Joe Biden would say, hits close to home.
This is our home. And it's not only our home, it is, I think, the most special city in America.
And part of that singularity is it's constant heartbreak. When you sign up for New Orleans, you sign up for all the calories, all of the good times, all the music, the funk, the football, the Mardi Gras, as my native wife calls it.
But you also sign up for the inevitable, which is the city is going to break your heart and through no fault of its own this time. But that is the nature of the city and it always has been.
And I think it always will be. But to your first point, Tim, it's also a resilient place.
Yeah, it breaks your heart, but then you have a second line. It's the only city in the world where people have funerals that are celebrations.
I mean, not just like, you know, actual literal celebrations out in the street. And so that's part of the womb and bust cycle that is New Orleans.
Yeah, there was a great video of Glenn David Andrews, who's a famous brass musician down here. I got to know a little bit.
I'll put it in the show notes. It was pretty beautiful of him kind of leading a second line through the quarter yesterday.
I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the political implications. There was a minute there where the Republicans wanted to make this about the border, which was not true, fabricated.
The guy was born in Texas. There was a minute there where people thought maybe there was a coordinated thing with what was going on in Nevada.
I guess we don't know for sure that's not the case. They were both veterans, and there's some overlap, but there's no additional evidence of that.
The Republicans on the Hill are going to be talking about how this is some evidence that they need to move fast on getting the national security team confirmed, cash patel. Are there any meaningful political implications to this in your mind? Yeah, but I think they're all local.
I mean, I think that the national or global implications are pretty well known at this point. I mean, there are people who get radicalized, sadly, on a variety of levels.
And, you know, obviously, radical Islam is certainly one of them that folks get radicalized on in this country, other parts of the world. And clearly, this person fell captive to that and decided to ruin lives because of his own selfishness and his own issues.
But I think that the issues politically in terms of moving ahead are much more about the local matters, which is security and safety in and around the French Quarter. And that's the debate that I think is totally legit and I think should be happening right now, which is this is basically like adult Disney, right? And people come all over the world for adult Disney in that little square mile or so.
And how do you make it so it can keep the tax dollars flowing and keep businesses open and folks working? But also, Tim, so that there is a level of safety and reassurance and the people don't get scared off, whether it's Super Bowl. And by the way, your listeners should know Super Bowl is coming to New Orleans next month.
It's going to be a marquee event. You know, Mardi Gras, St.
Patrick's Day, et cetera, et cetera. How do you keep it safe? And I think that is the freaking debate before it's happened.
Yeah. Well, this isn't an old, a local podcast, so we could get into the mayor's troubles here.
But the mayor was not well-received at the Sugar Bowl yesterday. This is part of the challenge we have.
We have a lame duck mayor who's effectively been checked out of office for some time now, and now her final year. And, you know, that that's part of the challenge.
And you have a, you know, Tim, like a lot of places, a very progressive blue city and a very red state. And so you've got inherent tensions between state and city government as well.
But whatever, there's no excuse. New Orleans is the golden goose for Louisiana, frankly, for the entire Gulf Coast.

It's got to be safe.

It's got to be secure.

People have to come there and feel safe doing so.

They got to figure it out.

No excuses.

One more local item before we get to move on to your bread and butter.

One of our senators, John Kennedy, is kind of a clown.

And I wanted to play for you a couple of clips from him.

The first is him on Fox News after the tragedy. And the second is him at a press conference bullying into the podium.
Let's listen to both. Just a final question here for not just people in Louisiana that are watching, but people coast to coast that are watching tonight.
Are you getting the sense that there's any threat of any other potential attacks tonight on any other major cities? I can't answer that. I can, but I won't.
Can I say something, Riker? Tell me who you're with. WDSU.
WDSU. Okay, and CBS.
NBC's over here on the right. Oh, that's unusual position.
position um i don't get it uh you you wouldn't um eric swalwell said uh this may shock you but i was on an fbi briefing call this morning with senator john kennedy and he acted like a grown-up and asked real questions when the cameras aren't on most of these maga pro wrestlers actually ask act normal i mean that's the rub here right and this guy was Democrat not that long ago. And this is all just a clown show.
He has a guy also a sort of gilded education background, the likes that would make Donald Trump swoon. In fact, it did make Donald Trump swoon.
Just a 10-second digression. One of my favorite Louisiana political memories was being at a Trump rally for the fellow who lost to Governor John Bel Edwards in 2019 to him.
And Trump stands up outside of Shreveport in North Louisiana along with New Orleans and ticks off Kennedy's resume. And of course, Kennedy's so embarrassed.
He doesn't want to focus up there. Oxford? In Bossier Parish hearing about his Oxford pedigree.
Exactly. It was quite the moment.
No, Kennedy! The listeners were like, is that Ole Miss? I didn't know Kennedy yeah right no other I can tell you who's an LSU man no no Oxford is in the UK across the pond no Kennedy's playing a part he does this dick to get on cable and I'm you know and I guess mission accomplished for him but yeah in like the literal hours after a terrorist event in the biggest city in your state you would think that one of your two senators would express a level of sobriety and seriousness beyond just doing standard, you know, leghorn talking points shtick. But that's what Kennedy is.
That's what he does. So I can't say I was surprised.
But yeah, even for Kennedy, Tim, in the moment, it was jarring. We're talking seven, eight hours after the actual incident here.
New Year's Day, people are stunned. And he's making a joke about, I think, local TV affiliates, too, by the way, on the right.
Aha, you wouldn't understand. It's just so inappropriate.
And so missing. Like Lawrence O'Donnell standing there.
Yeah, it's so missing the moment when your local TV correspondents are trying to get

reliable information and guidance for their viewers who are fear and for their lives.

And he's doing, you know, like GOP Friars Club shtick.

It's, I thought, really disappointing, but not surprising.

Let's talk about the Dems for a minute.

In your column, I guess it was last week, you had sender shots from Hawaii we've had on. Smart guy on.
Smart guy, very incisive, online in kind of a good way, right? That is sort of in touch with kind of what is happening. Like J.D.
Vance level online. Yeah, J.D.
Vance. So maybe not in a good way, actually, if you put it like that.
Maybe a hair too online, but you need to find a balance, right? You don't want to have the decrepit democratic leadership that has no idea what's actually going on in the world. But you also don't want to have somebody whose brain is broken by the Internet.
So Schatz is maybe trying to find a balanced spot there. There are a lot of interesting things about the interview.
The thing that jumped out in the discussion was kind of his criticism about Democrats' rhetoric and the words that they use, words like centering. So talk about that.
I mean, is that real? I guess there's some element where it's like, yeah, I agree with that. A lot of Dems use words that people don't use at the pub.
On the other hand, like, did they really lose because people are talking about centering? What do you think was the point he was trying to make? Yeah, the only center that we want to hear about is the person snapping the ball, right? Well, the big man, Nikola Jokic. Oh, there you go.
Okay. Well, we can do all the basketball sort of lost its center, I guess.
but it's a different pot for a different day. It's always easier when you lose to blame the message and the optics and the kind of like surround sound rather than like the main event.
Right. I think it's hard for politicians to say our substance, our principles are actually misguided.
We got to change our policies instead of just like, well,

if we just communicated a little differently,

it's always easier to fine tune messaging than it is to have a really hard

conversation about substance and kind of what you stand for.

And I think that's part of the Democrats' challenge is that they'd rather

talk about the campus vocabulary, which I do think is a challenge.

But to your point, Tim, of course that's not the main event. There are more structural challenges they have.
But when you're Brian Schatz and you one day want to be Senate Democratic leader, you don't want to pick sides between left and center in the food fight internally because you want to get all those, whatever it is, when they are 51 or 52 or 49, whenever they're, you know, a majority minority when he is running for leadership. So he's being careful about the substance.
There's no question about it. I'm with you.
I think there's much more fundamental issues here beyond just the word choices. But Schatz, to his credit, does have some interesting things to say, too, about Tim, the role of interest groups in DC and sort

of national politics. You hear this privately from Democrats so often.
The elected officials

are so petrified of the so-called groups. It's the closest thing, I think, to their version of Trump

and Trump's Twitter account, which is we don't want to get crosswise with, air quote, the groups.

The groups are going to get mad at us. And it's basically, you know, liberal interest groups

Thank you. is we don't want to get crosswise with, air quote, the groups.
The groups are going to get mad at us. And it's basically, you know, liberal interest groups, some on the environment, some on, you know, abortion, others on race.
And they have a kind of catechism. And a lot of Democrats don't want to anger them.
But here's the rub. A lot of those groups are effectively run by people under the age of 40 who are not reflective of the electorate at large, not even reflective of the Democratic primary electorate at large.
And look no further than the 2020 Democratic primary. If you were to have taken a poll, Tim, of those folks in the groups, Joe Biden would have gotten like, you know, anti Saddam Hussein level numbers.
2%.

Like, sub-5%.

It depends which groups you count.

Does the third way count as a group?

Because if so, who might have got a percentage?

Yeah, exactly.

But like, you know, Warren would have been like the runaway winner with that demographic.

And it's just not reflective of the country and even reflective of the modern Democratic Party.

Yeah, I want to have Quentin Fulks on. He's the deputy campaign manager for Harris to have a broader compo about this.
Yeah, you should. He's a sharp guy.
He's actually pretty keen. He said something interesting in that interview with Pfeiffer on Pod Save America where he was like, I forget if he was saying the groups in specific, but he was talking about kind of the Democratic, you know, interests around the campaign and how they just don't let the candidates have any leash.
And he gave some example about how they put out an ad with a curse word in it. And they spent all day dealing with BS from people calling in to complain.
Or they put in an ad and then a different video they had something that offended some interest group. You had to deal with the management.
And his point was just like the republicans don't have to deal with this you know like they can put whatever the fuck they want in their tv ads it doesn't have to be true it doesn't have to be in line with the values of the base i mean just look at how weak the pro-life groups got you know like they didn't they didn't show any muscle in trying to bully trump as he tried to run away from the abortion issue because they all knew that letting him run away from these toxic abortion positions was net good for getting to victory. And that there's an imbalance there that maybe is not the fundamental reason why Democrats lost, but contributes a little bit to their weak campaigns.
And we're talking about a campaign in which, boy, if ever there was a moment that the candidate had running room to say or do whatever he or she wanted, and to sort of like run from those groups and run toward the center, this was it. Democrats from the DSA to the DLC were like, whatever, man, just win, baby, the Al Davis credo.
And I wrote this column, I mean, shameless plug, here in October, like, Kamala Harris, you've got a maximum latitude, take advantage of it. And maybe some of the groups would have like, you know, like muttered on background or even like in private phone calls with the campaign.
But so what? They just wanted to beat Trump so bad. That was the only mission.
And I'm still puzzled to this day why she didn't do further to reassure the center about how she'd governed, given the latitude she had. I wondered how you kind of analyze the other, you know, the conversations you're having privately with Dems as far as they're, you know, trying to analyze where the problems are.
And you've got Chris Murphy out there talking about, you know, how there should be more populist economics. Fetterman seems to be kind of staking out a spot of, you know, maybe they're, they can moderate on some cultural issues shots.
We've mentioned talking about the rhetoric. There are other, you know, theories.
I would put J.B. Pritzker in this category of kind of the full resistance.
Yeah. So, so yeah How do you kind of break it down and where you sense the winds are blowing? Well, the winds are definitely not blowing toward full resistance, which is so markedly different from this period.
The interregnum after 2016, as you know, is dramatically different than now. Democrats were like to the barricades and now Democrats are more like to the bar.
Same. They kind of want to like, you know, drown their sorrows or like, you know, watch the watch the football or, you know, like not think about this at all.
And those who are still in the game, you know, Tim, I think you raise an important point. There's differences like J.B.
Pritzker, I think, clearly wants to take the mantle of someone who's going to be a leader of the resistance in a way that other governors like Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore certainly are not doing that. You know, they are wanting to either, you know, obviously like work with Trump when they can.
I was so struck by, she's not a national figure, but like Muriel Bowser, the mayor of DC, Tim, like meets with Trump and afterwards says like, we found some common ground. And it's like, it's pretty remarkable this moment where like, you go calling him a fascist and like would be authoritarian.
They'd be like, we want federal employees back to the office five days a week, too. And we're going to fill up that empty space on Independence Avenue.
And, you know, I think Democrats are really struggling with how to deal with him now. And Tim, in large part because of it wasn't a fluke, right? The country knew what they were getting.
They voted for him and he won not just the Electoral College, cleanly, he won the popular vote too. I think Democrats are struggling with that and they haven't figured it out yet.
And I think the split that we'll see in calendar year 25 is going to be along the lines of those who say, once he does start doing some of the things he talked about, those who say, boom, back to the barricades, full resistance. And those who say, well, some of this stuff is kind of popular.
How do we like oppose them at times and maybe like find some areas to compromise at times? And hell, if we got to like name a tunnel or a bridge after Trump to get the money for it, like we'll do that too. I mean, I have talked to like Democrats privately who are pretty candid about that.
I'm like, all right, ma'am, this guy doesn't believe in anything, but he cares about his vanity and his legacy. If you want to name this bridge that I desperately want from my district, Donald J.
Trump, I'll be there. Ed McMahon, oversized check, ginormous scissors, like ribbon.
Let's go. Oh my God.
god j mart if if the democrats that are telling you that that is their plan to deal with trump and name bridges after him and and work with him so that he can feel like he has a good legacy i if they want to come on this podcast and hash this out with me i will gladly do it because that is fucking insane yeah that is an insane there's a difference between full resistance in the context of 2017 and full resistance to me in the context of 2009 mitch mcconnell yeah you know saying that it is his job to make sure that barack obama is a failed president yes failed at that job obama gets gets re-elected but the instinct was right i just politically like not not maybe morally or what is right for like politically speaking you know i'm listening to you there's the chris murphy theory of the case the west more of the pritzker theory is is it the real way for democrats to come back to make sure donald trump fails and that they can run against trump and isn't that the lesson of the last 12 years, 14 years, that the opposition party, the party that has said throw the bums out, has won essentially every time? Yes, of course. Of course, collectively, the best case scenario for them is, you know, misrule, incompetence, corruption, and Democrats reap the benefit from that.
Betrayal is Carville's word. Members of Congress would say, yeah, yeah, all that.
But then like, if I can get my deal on the side here for this like bridge that I need, like we can do both those things. Right.
I mean, they're members of Congress. Right.
They're trying to take care of their districts or their states. Tim, on the larger point, though, this is important because, look, Democrats are going to have so many conferences and op-eds and like TV panels about this for the next two and a half, three years.
You and I know the bottom line here. The best cheer for any out of power party is always the guys in power fucking up.
It just is. And like we've seen that so many times over the years.
And that's going to be the case this time around as well. The best comeback recipe for Democrats in 26 and 28 is simply hold out your finger and point at the other guys and say, they didn't get it done.
They're screwing up. Give us a chance.
Yeah. All right.
One last thing on the Democrats, just because I'm monitoring what's happening on the speaker's vote. I'm seeing this Democratic strategist, Chris Hale, tweeting this right now.
It's remarkable how my party has ditched the Trump is a threat to democracy argument. Aguilar didn't mention the word democracy once in his nomination of Hakeem Jeffries.
It sucks, but it's true. Maybe the biggest kerfuffle ever created on this podcast was when Ezra Klein was on and he said that his private combos with Democrats were that they didn't believe the democracy message that they were pushing forth, that they didn't believe that Trump was that great of a threat.
This was last summer he said that. That seems to be bearing out in a way that's a little alarming for me.
If they thought he was a real threat to a democracy, then with the mayor of D.C., like taking meetings with him, they'll talk about getting employees back five days a week into their cubes. I mean, they, I think, realize that there's no upside politically to the democracy message.
And they got reminded of that in a really cold way on the election that a lot of American voters just didn't give two shits about the democracy message because they cared about themselves, right? Like, that's not cutting any ice for me. I'm out here, you know, living in Henderson, Nevada, and I'm paying like $4.75 a gallon for gas.
It's kind of miserable, right? One more campaign trail memory, and we'll pivot to calendar 25. I remember being in Waukesha, Wisconsin in October for Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney, and former Bulwark host Charlie Sykes was the moderator.
And Tim, they were talking about our precious democracy and Trump's not invested in democracy. He's sending the wrong message to foreign countries.
And I'm sitting there and I'm like, you're preaching to the converted. Everybody who believes that is already for you.
There's nobody up for grabs that's moved by that. And Democrats figured that out the hard way.
And so, yeah, flash forward to like January 3rd, 25, and they've forgotten a democracy entirely because they know that voters didn't care about it politically. That makes me sad.
Yeah, I hear you. I did think in those events, they didn't lose because of those events.
That was one day. Of course not.
I did think, though, there was an opportunity to pivot to the center more. And you wrote about this.
Like, wasn't taking, I never understood this. every never Trumper that I spoke to politician wise, I was like,

endorse. opportunity to pivot to the center more and you wrote about this like wasn't taking i never understood this every never trumper that i spoke to politician wise i was like endorse her and say that you disagree with her things like i was like that's fine to do i never said this is hard for me i know it's hard for you too and look here's x y and z i think he's totally wrong but here's why i'm doing it and why i think you should do it, too, and bring other folks along with you, right? The roll call has started.
So we will have something on this in a second. But I want to talk first about, regardless of what happens with Johnson, the Trump administration kind of early challenges.
So we're coming up here, and we're about 10, 11 days away from the Hegseth confirmation hearings. We're going to have some dates on the other hearings popping up soon they're gonna have to do a tax bill at some point in the first three months to cover a reconciliation we're gonna have a big nerd session reconciliation for people next week for next week so you don't have to do that yeah the votes are super narrow to me trump feels a little weaker than he did two months ago feels weird to say.
But just like the fact that there have been these kerfuffles at all, that people haven't just like gotten in line and said, yes, sir, whatever you want, sir, has been a little surprising to me. So anyway, how do you kind of assess it, especially in your sort of reporting with Republicans behind the scenes? I think that the jury's still out on a lot of these nominees.
I think additional information that is damaging on Hegseth could torpedo him. I think right now he'd get through.
But I think a lot of folks are still up for grabs. I have two major questions, which is, will Democrats save some of these folks? Will a Fetterman or a Bernie on the opposite end, you know, be a vote for some of these nominees that gets them through? The Labor Secretary is a great example of that, right? She may lose some votes on the right, pick up some on the left.
The one that I think could be the most precarious is Tulsi Gabbard. Here's why.
She can't fix her challenges by saying, I'm off the bottle. I'm sober now.
And by the way, here's my spouse. I'm not cheating anymore.
Hegs have had character and personality issues. Also resume, but the Republicans don't seem to care about that that much.
Yeah. Her issues are more fundamental.
It's more her worldview and her perspective. She was like a Democrat who was for Bernie Sanders like a half an hour ago.
And so I think that actually could cause her more of a challenge because it's not fixable in a way that Hegseth could fix his issues. Tim, she also doesn't have the Fox News infrastructure necessarily behind her.
She was a guest host for Tucker a couple times. Yeah, but like our Charlie Kirk had said are going to go to war for her in a way that Hegseth was such the beating heart of, I think, that kind of world.
And I just don't know the answer to that. And I think if you look at the Hawks in the Senate, you know, they can say, look, we'll layer Hegseth with a deputy who's competent at the Pentagon, and they'll actually run the building.
How do you layer someone who's running the nation's intelligence services? I mean, that's a bit more of a challenge, you know? You mentioned Kirk. This is just something I picked up when I was at the Turning Point thing in Arizona that I don't think I've mentioned yet.
That is just like, I guess this is real life. He's been in the meetings with Trump as far as picking who these people are.
Like he's been meeting with Trump about like who they would support and put muscle behind. I was told that and I thought this must be BS from one of the turning point usa people spinning me but then that you know you get to see the pictures on on instagram from mar-a-lago of these like of these parties like he's sitting right next to trump at the table with with with hegseth and with some of these nominees so that i that feels real right like these mega oh yeah social media folks are are around in a.
No, I mean, it's like having a way in Paris, but like the movable feast is like the couches and chairs around like Mar-a-Lago and the lobby there. And they're like, I have one person described to me as like a sort of a couch fort that like, you know, Elon, Don Jr., Kirk, it's got Boris Epstein.
A lot of these folks have sort of created like physical little spaces down there for themselves and they pop in and out of meetings. And yeah, and it's not the Brookings Institution approved transition, Tim, is it? Well, it wouldn't be Brookings, but AEI? I don't think it's very AEI approved.
Not even AEI approved. One more, McConnell, you're pretty well sourced there.
I've heard some people saying that McConnell is planning to do a lot of thumbs downing this time. I'm kind of in the I'll believe that when I see it camp.
What are you hearing? I don't think he wants to unduly, you know, bait Trump, but I think like on the national security stuff, especially he's going to find some space to speak his mind. Speak his mind is different than saying no to Tulsi.
Well, the next thing I was going to say was, what does that translate to? Did that translate to like thumbs down on Hegseth and Tulsi? Or does it translate to like giving a tough speech on the Senate floor about Orban being a bad guy? Like I'm with you. Like, you know, it's not clear to me which of those two it's going to be.
And I think it may not be totally clear from his perspective either. You know, it's interesting, Tim, like Trump's always open for business.
You know, there's no permanent like friends or enemies with Trump as the old Kissinger line goes, only permanent interest with Trump. But he also like he wants folks to come to him to make up.
and, like, I don't think McConnell's going to do that. So, like, they're, I guess, like, de facto sort of, like, peace right now, but not because either of them has, like, sort of sat down to, like, smoke a peace pipe, right? So, let's see.
I mean, these votes are going to be interesting, and I think it'll be a tell as to how McConnell spends the next few years of his time. Kennedy, maybe, in play for McConnell to be against?

Oh, sure.

Because of the polio issue.

Absolutely.

I mean, that's one where he actually already put out a statement.

It was pretty heated about that lawyer who Kennedy had who was against the vaccine for polio.

Yeah, look, I think McConnell on Hank, Seth, Tulsi, Kennedy, and probably the Labor nominee is certainly in play. Yeah.
What about Joni, I guess? I was in Iowa and talked about this. I am on the line of, look, she doesn't want to deal with a primary and she's going to come around on Hegseth.
There are other people that have been indicating to me that maybe this is a she's buying time. You know, she put out this statement.
It's like, let's kind of see what happens. Maybe there are more women that come forward.
Maybe, you know, Hegseth blows himself up in the thing, you know, and so where do you, what do you think that, how do you assess that? Well, that's what I mentioned earlier about, about Hegseth, I think is so critical is, you know, is there more reporting? Is there more information, right? What else comes out?

How does he respond to it?

If there's nothing more, I think he gets through.

And I think people like, like, uh, Joanie fall in line.

I do.

But let's see if there's more that, that, that comes out.

You know how these lawmakers work like so much of this, like goes with the winds of

the news cycle in the moment and like the perception of how this thing is going and

that they like having safety in numbers. And, um, now he would he would get through okay so the votes are still going uh we got tim burchett from tennessee said that this will go multiple rounds but then he voted for johnson so who the hell he's kind of a weird cat he is the barn Coats, by the way.
Is that true? Okay. Yeah, he did a weird I'm friends with AOC tweet one time, but then he's also said some pretty offensive stuff.
I don't know what's happened on Tim Burton. He's still trying to find himself.
He's still trying to find himself. Matt Gaetz really likes him.
That's a red flag. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Cloud of Texas, Clyde is Georgia, right? Yep.
I'm doing this live and they have all withheld their votes.

Okay.

Well,

in the chamber,

they're chatting on the floor.

It looks like we've got Thomas Massey has said he's going to vote.

No,

and he's coming up.

We're not to the M's yet.

Chip Roy has been kind of on the fence ish about what he's going to do.

He's in the ours.

So he can only lose two. He's in the R's.

So he can only lose two.

So there is, I guess, a chance this could still go multiple rounds.

What we'll do is I'll come back on with Joe Perticone,

who's our Hill reporter over on YouTube for folks.

You can watch that on YouTube.

But this is all ending up with Johnson eventually,

but what's your feeling on what's happening?

Oh, that there's a lot of unease with Mike Johnson among the ideologically conservative faction that still exists in today's U.S. House, but that Republican voters who elect those ideologically conservative voters in primaries care more about what Donald Trump prefers than any set of issues.
And so those guys are in a tough spot, Tim, because they want purity. Johnson can't give them purity, but they don't want to oppose Donald Trump.
And if you oppose Johnson, you're kind of against Donald Trump. I mean, it's not that complicated, right? These are true believers, small government conservatives who don't want Mike Johnson as speaker, but they're more scared of Donald Trump, most of them are, than they are committed to their small government principles.
And so that's why I think eventually Johnson will get this.

And that's why those names you just rattle off, they didn't vote no the first time around.

They said, come back to me later.

We'll see what this thing is, man.

A real profile of courage.

We've added Gosar, Paul Gosar, to the list of people who did not vote.

So we have no votes against Johnson yet on the Republican side, but four people are waiting around. The catch-me-later vote, which, of course, is famous in the Daniel Webster pantheon of roll call votes of catch-me-on-the-flip, bro.
Catch-me-on-the-flip. Was that how Daniel Webster put it? I thought he was a little more highfalutin in his language.
I think it was verbatim, actually, yeah. The Johnson thing, how can he survive this? I guess this speaker vote, like I said, we'll see what happens.

I think he clearly ends up being speaker here. It's not like there's a big movement at this point.
It might take another ballot or two. But he's got to fund the government.
He's got to deal with tax reform. And he can only lose two votes.
What's the path out? How do they govern? Well, it's why Trump also was so eager to get the debt ceiling done on biden's watch last month right because like that's something else they got to deal with raising the debt ceiling speaking to small government conservatives it's like that same faction doesn't want to increase the debt ceiling they're never going to vote to increase the debt ceiling so you got to give democrats something to sweeten the deal to get democratic votes and once you do do that, you alienate more Republicans who hate that you're giving away the store to Democrats. But you have to.
So, no, Tim, you're totally right. It's a Gordian knot and it's very difficult and it's hard to see how Johnson is going to survive this Congress.
There's, I think, a lot to be said for what the Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith is saying, which is, we can do at best one big bill. And this idea in the Senate that you can come out and like do energy border and defense spending in the first couple of months to give Trump a big early win.
I get why they want to do that, because they want to give Trump something that's like a big, shiny, happy pony under the tree that's going to keep him occupied for a few months. I get it.
But like if you do that you then come back to a really tough tax bill in a midterm year can you imagine the salt a debate during a midterm year we're getting in the weeds here a bit i know that's a smart listeners but that's a really tough debate to have in the midterm you know the problem is and this was this discussion was happening at tp usa, in the abandoned world, was that they want to be able to do immigration stuff.

And Gates was, you know, saying to me, like, we want to start the deportations day one.

Again, we'll believe it when I see it. But like if the immigration gets all lumped in with keeping the government open, the debt ceiling and taxes, I mean, not even your most naive Democrats who are looking for a bridge for their district are going to sign up for that thing.
So they will need every single Republican to get on board with it. And that's, I mean, that's going to take a while with these cats.
There's no question about it. And, you know, let's say that they go to the Senate approach.
Yeah yeah what's the immigration language look like in that first bill if simultaneously the administration's carrying out like mass deportations or they're not and they're catching hell for not doing i mean it's just it's a much more complicated endeavor which is why i get the impulse to do one big bill because if you try to get something done first on the border and defense, and then

before you know it, it's summer, Tim. And then you haven't gotten it done yet.
Trump's getting

antsy and Trump's tweeting about John Thune and Mike Johnson and saying that these guys aren't

getting the job done. Then do you just drop that and move to taxes? I mean, it's a real challenge.

Maybe you just do nothing and just tweet about how the all state presidents did an ad that

was too nice to trans people or something, you know, and just like focus on just do that.

Like why, why govern?

Or like do like T.R. McKinley style and just like go in, go in, like poach various like

territories around the world.

All right.

We will see. Andy Harris from Maryland is also on the, maybe I'll like territories around the world.
All right.

We will see Andy Harris from Maryland is also on the,

maybe I'll catch you on the flip caucus.

So they're up to five.

We'll see.

We'll see how that all shakes out. We joke here,

but like it's entirely possible.

Like next spring is like,

well,

you know,

the house is bogged down in some like,

you know,

in depth,

the very nuanced disagreement and like the ways and means committees feuding

with the,

you know, the Senate. And like, meanwhile, Trump is out there, like literally like, you know, we're not, we nuanced, the disagreement and like the Ways and Means Committee is feuding with, you know, the Senate.

And like, meanwhile, Trump is out there, like, literally like, no, we're not, we're sending

101st Airborne to Greenland and we're going to like be seizing Greenland.

I'm not laughing about the fact that it's ridiculous.

I'm doing macabre laughter about the state of affairs, that it might be serious.

Let's close again, pop on YouTube folks afterwards and me and Sam and Joee perdicon will do a full breakdown of this vote when it's done but uh you've got jimmy carter at pass this week this is your wheelhouse jonathan uh you know old paul spinning yarns and so i'm wondering if you have any any jimmy carter uh memories or observations that are relevant to our current politics yeah um and we'll go full circle back to New Orleans in the South. I think Jimmy Carter memories or observations that are relevant to our current politics? Yeah.
And we'll go full circle back to New Orleans and the South. I think Jimmy Carter is an incredibly important political figure because he breaks the back of George Wallace and the SEGs.
And after Carter in 76, there is no Wallace anymore. There is no Dixie Crap faction.
Democrats come into the 20th century at long last, and it becomes a party that is wholly moderate or progressive on race. And I think Carter's a big factor in that, the biggest factor in that, but also a whole generation of World War II and Korea-era Democrats who came of age.
Carter was careful about that, too, different than his reputation now, which is, I just think, telling a potentially a lesson for the moment. He was righteous about race, but he also, you know, stepped gently at various times and would deal with segregationists and stuff.
Let's just say this without getting too deep in the weeds here. If you look at a 10-year span of 66 to 76, where he runs for governor for the first time in 66 to like 76, MLK's father is at the convention nominating Jimmy Carter.
That 10 years, Carter moves quite a bit on race. And in that period, he definitely tries to like play both ends of the keyboard on the issue in the South, like a lot of those guys did.
But to your point, he gets to the right place eventually. And he does so in a way that finally ends Wallaceism.
Keep in mind, Wallace ran for president 64, 68, 72, 76. I mean, he was a permanent feature on the political landscape until Carter comes along, beats him in Florida in the primary, and that's really it for Wallace as a national figure.
As far as Carter today, are there any Jimmy lessons for the Democrats now in the wilderness or no? I mean, don't assume anything about what the voters can or cannot do. I mean, he was a one-term governor from the Deep South.
He had never elected a Deep South president in the 20th century, sort of post-Civil War era, because the South was tainted politically. It was the party of, well, as one person said, sadly, rum Romanism and rebellion in the 19th century.
They were the region of rebellion. And I think Carter helped in that.
Yeah, I think the lesson for Democrats is don't make assumptions about what the electorate can or cannot stomach. They're much more open to candidates than the wise guys may think.
That's not just a Carter lesson, by the way. That's a lesson that you can include Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Pete Buttigieg.
None of these folks the wise guys gave a shot to who all became serious candidates along the way. So think big Democrats about who can or cannot be a viable candidate for president.
Jonathan Martin, lover of New Orleans, astute political observer, Tiger fan, believer. 2025 is going to be our year in Baton Rouge.
You're here first. Tigers are going to be in the national title game this next year.
And Nussmeier will be at the New York Heisman ceremony as a finalist and may be the winner. Your lips to God's ears.
Thank you, Jonathan Martin. I just wanted to briefly offer a coda for the victims of the terror attack and the tragedy on Bourbon Street.
I think oftentimes we talk too much about the perp and not enough about the victim. And so I've been spending some time on NOLA.com, support your local news outlet, reading about these folks.
And I just wanted to share a few things. There's Reggie Hunter.
He was a warehouse manager from Baton Rouge with two kids. One was just 18 months old.
Tiger Besch, his brother Jack, was actually a popular wide receiver at LSU. Transferred to Tcu and put out a nice statement about his brother it's just unimaginable uh tiger had just graduated from princeton nicole perez was a manager at a deli in metairie was a single mom to a four-year-old who is now in care of friends hubert gothrow yeah that's spelled with an e-X at the end.
He had just turned 21. And then there was Nakira Ditto, another E-A-U-X surname.
She was just 18 and her friend said she was a ball of sunshine. Matthew Tenadorio, 25 years old.
He's an employee at the Superdome. He's a beloved colleague of a friend of mine.
And Kareem Badawi,

he was killed and a friend, Parker Vidrine, was injured. Both were 2024 graduates of Episcopal High in Baton Rouge, where many of my best friends went.
Much love to the EHS family

and to the family of all the victims of this tragedy.

We will see you back here on Monday with Bill Crystal.

Peace.

Peace. When the saints When the saints Go marching in

When the saints

When the saints

Go marching in

When the saints Thank you. We're marching in I wanna stand up Be counting in that glory number Oh yes I do Yeah Walk with one sand When the saints go marching in Walk marching in When the angel Gabriel Walk with one angel Start to blow his home Yo, no! Gabriel

Start to blow his horn When the angel Gabriel Start to blow His golden horn I wanna be there With all the saints and angels Yeah, when the saints go marching in. Marching in.
Yeah, when a wiki. C-Strone When the wicked Cease to roam Cease to roam

Say when the wicked

When the wicked

Cease to roam

Cease to roam I'm gonna step up without the saints and angels Cause this old earth ain't no place I'm proud to call a home

This old earth

Sure ain't no place Lord, and I'm proud To call my home, you know I want to stand up

Stand up

Be counted with the saints

Saints and angels

The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.