Tom Nichols: This Is What They Want

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Speaker 2 Hello, and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
We're bringing in friends and fam this week. That's the only way to deal with it.

Speaker 2 So I've got Tom Nichols, professor Professor emeritus at the Naval War College, staff writer at the Atlantic and author of the Atlantic Daily Newsletter. Tom,

Speaker 2 what should we do? What do you want to say? What happens? I mean, you know, what we should do is be on a beach somewhere right now and, you know, just with a couple of Mai Tais.

Speaker 2 You know, what do we do? You get up in the morning and you square your shoulders and take a deep breath and say, okay, four more years of this crazy shit.

Speaker 2 And I think as long as he doesn't bumble us into World War III, you know, we just kind of get up and do the work every day and try to hold this administration to account the way we would and, you know, criticize and discuss and write about them the way we would.

Speaker 2 Look, Tim, the saddest part, American people made their decision, and 51% of the American people made their decision. This is what they want.
Okay, so we're all strapped into the same rocket and

Speaker 2 we're just going to have to deal with it. That's, you know, that's all we can do.
Yeah, they're going to get it good in heart, as many people have sent me lately at the HL Mincan.

Speaker 2 They just don't believe that that stove is hot and they've decided to touch it three or four or five or ten more times.

Speaker 2 Well, I want to talk in a little bit more detail about what actually the next steps look like, practically, but I want to go back first.

Speaker 2 So you wrote for The Atlantic this week saying Trump voters got what they wanted.

Speaker 2 But in the article, you know, you kind of talk about the various explanations and the various excuses and recriminations that are happening. And I guess you have a more, you have a different view.

Speaker 2 Why don't you talk about what you think? Well, first of all, as you know, I was never part of the, yeah, she's going to make it chorus. I said, I hope she makes it.

Speaker 2 She's running a good campaign, doing the right things. She's not taking, you know, Trump's bait.
She's doing all the stuff she needed to do.

Speaker 2 But I always had this kind of sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that if Trump could win the Republican nomination and this country had not shunned him and driven him out of the public space, then he was going to win.

Speaker 2 I mean, Biden couldn't have won. Let's get that.
Let's just stop all that right now. There's no way Joe Biden had the energy for the kind of schedule she was on.

Speaker 2 I don't understand a lot of the criticisms of the Biden first term. People say, well, she should have run away from the Biden record.
His first term was awful. Maybe it's the former Republican.

Speaker 2 I keep looking at his first term and going, that was a pretty good term. That's a term, that's a term most people would have run on, you know, hands down.

Speaker 2 Oh, she's got to talk about the economy because people are suffering with, you know, full employment and 2.5% inflation. I just couldn't get my arms around what she was supposed to do there.

Speaker 2 So I think a lot of the recrimination and the what-ifs and, you know, I think he was just going to win because, and this is the part that's hard to say, Tim, she was going to win because that's who most of us are now.

Speaker 2 You know, that millions of people have become, they're not accepting of Donald Trump. They have become like Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 They identify with him, and that means that he was just going to win.

Speaker 2 But now, with that said, I think if the Democrats are having a come to Jesus moment about the baggage that she had to carry with her, some of which she packed herself earlier in her career, you know, then fine, have that argument, you know, about how far left.

Speaker 2 Just this morning before you and I started talking, I saw the numbers for Dearborn, Michigan.

Speaker 2 Okay, you're going to have that kind of, you know, loss in Dearborn.

Speaker 2 First of all, I think the tweet was from Jim Manley, who basically said to the Arab voters of Dearborn, good luck now that you've got Trump and Netanyahu.

Speaker 2 Okay, I guess, you know, wow, you showed them.

Speaker 2 But, you know, if you're going to lose a place like Dearborn, a place that you used to win handily, and you want to have a discussion about whether college students ought to be, you know, driving big chunks of the Democratic Party, great, have that conversation.

Speaker 2 But I don't think it was going to matter that much in 2024.

Speaker 2 I think the American people, a lot of the American people, especially in the swing states, just said, still believe presidents have the magical ability to do things.

Speaker 2 And Trump especially plays into that, right? You know, I'll make gas cheaper. How?

Speaker 2 You know, Jedi mind trick. I just can because I'm magic, because I'm Superman.
But also, the other thing that he did is he said, I want basically, and I take a lot of static about this.

Speaker 2 He said, I'm not boring. I'll bring back the drama.
I'll bring back the reality TV show that you all love so much. And they got what they voted for.
I'm torn about this.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's undoubtedly true. And I'm torn about the response to it because I have like the two wolves inside of me in response to that.
And the one is

Speaker 2 fuck the rubes. These people are going to get what they want.
Like, if you want it, good luck. We'll see.
Let's see. I can afford those tariffs.
You can't. Yeah.
Right. And the other,

Speaker 2 the angel inside of me is also says,

Speaker 2 you know, the Dems actually didn't really do a good job of trying to care, to trying to show that they care, right?

Speaker 2 And that's hard, right? Because at one point, you're like, what?

Speaker 2 You're supposed to show that you care about their like deep-seated concerns about transgender reassignment surgery in prison or what, you know, whatever the others, you know, thing is.

Speaker 2 But it's like, I don't know. To me, if there is any recrimination and you look back, it's like there's a big part of the country.
that rightly or wrongly feel like the Democrats don't care about them.

Speaker 2 And I know it's the Republicans who are like, facts don't care about your feelings, but

Speaker 2 we're in politics. This is politics.
The whole point is to win campaigns. And if you have 42% of the country that their impression of you is

Speaker 2 that you think that they're racist and stupid and idiots and you want to make fun of them and look down on them, then you're already starting from a pretty low base, you know, of achievable vote, especially when some of these people have voted for Democrats in the past.

Speaker 2 So I am genuinely torn. This is a genuine question.
I'm wondering what you think about it. Okay, I think three things.

Speaker 2 First of all, there's an irony here because nobody hates the kind of rural working poor as much as the Republicans do. You know, you and I know this.
I mean, Trump hates them.

Speaker 2 Most of the people who represent them hate them, don't want to be around them, don't want to have to visit those community centers and schools.

Speaker 2 I mean, look at the lengths to which so many of these Republican legislators go not to have to live in their own districts.

Speaker 2 But the sense that there is a big chunk of the Democratic Party that just doesn't care is true. But let's split that into two things.

Speaker 2 First of all, maybe the anxiety about, you know, like prison transgender reassignment. But you know something? The Democrats, I'm going to say the Democrats helped to bring that on themselves.

Speaker 2 I mean, at one point, there was a really revealing moment when Kamala Harris was getting prodded about this by Brett Baer.

Speaker 2 And in kind of frustration, she said, why are you focusing on something that affects such a small number of people?

Speaker 2 And I was watching this and I wanted to say to the screen, because you did, because your party does, you know, because you've made this a kind of symbol.

Speaker 2 And I was watching the day after I was on Morning Joe, and just before I, you know, my hit time came up, you know, you can watch the show. And

Speaker 2 I think it was Donny Dwight saying, look, you know, the Democrats have to not be, they have to move to the center. And one of the panelists said, the center, so we don't care about trans people.

Speaker 2 And I was like, oh,

Speaker 2 there it is again. You know, it's like, why is everybody so obsessed about trans? Well, because if it's the first thing you think of when someone says you need to move to the center,

Speaker 2 then,

Speaker 2 you know, maybe

Speaker 2 you're you're playing into that.

Speaker 2 But the problem that I have in joining those Democrats, you know, who don't care, when people say, you know, Tom, you don't care enough about how people are suffering in this economy because eggs are five bucks a carton.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they're five bucks a carton here in Rhode Island, where, you know, Trump increased his share here in Rhode Island, too. He lost his state.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I have a hard time with the typical American who complains about $5 eggs, eggs, driving

Speaker 2 the big truck and spending the money that we spend on gambling and sports and all the other stuff.

Speaker 2 I mean, there is a part of me that says the very poorest people in this country, nobody seems to care about except the Democrats at this point, who, you know, have always kind of been there to say we need to have, you know, free, the Tim Waltz Democrats, right?

Speaker 2 We need to have free lunches for hungry kids. But that other argument about you're supposed to really empathize with the suffering of

Speaker 2 people who are living in half million dollar houses and driving big trucks who just happen to be pissed off because eggs for a year or a year and a half have been a couple of bucks higher, even as all the other stuff cools off.

Speaker 2 I admit it, I have that same problem of saying, you know what, I give up. I don't know how to talk to you.

Speaker 2 And when Trump starts, you know, dumping tariffs on things, here's the part that really worries me. If I can just jump from that subject to the thing that the popcorn kernel really stuck in my teeth.

Speaker 2 Trump Trump is going to inherit a great economy.

Speaker 2 I can't even think about it. It's so annoying.
Right? And the day after he's inaugurated, he's going to say, there it is. We've solved everything.
Economy's great.

Speaker 2 Flow interest is.

Speaker 2 I can't even think about it.

Speaker 2 And he's going to take credit for, and for a year, he's going to skate on Biden's soft landing. The thing, the problem of hat not caring, right?

Speaker 2 When people say, but Tom, the economy, I'm like, listen, two years ago, we were expecting a massive recession.

Speaker 2 The soft landing that got pulled off by this administration and by the Fed, nobody thought was possible.

Speaker 2 And now you're bitched out about it because the recession didn't happen, but gas is only $2.99 a gallon now. The death of expertise.
All your experts failed us on that one.

Speaker 2 All the economists said there was a recession coming. The economic experts were like, Of course, you know, there's always that trapdoor phrase, if current trends continue, right?

Speaker 2 Hey, listen, when I was gaining weight, if current trends continue, you know, I'd be 3,000 pounds. At some point, you'd try and do something.

Speaker 2 And that's what policy does, right? It's to make sure you don't end up weighing 3,000 pounds to make sure that you don't end up in a recession. And good policy created a soft landing.

Speaker 2 Trump's going to take total credit for that. He's then going to screw the pooch.
He's going to do that thing with tariffs. Just like he did, you know, we don't have to guess at this, right?

Speaker 2 Remember, he had to bail out the farmers.

Speaker 2 He had to do relief for small businesses that he screwed over by messing with China because he didn't understand how supply chains work and doesn't understand how tariffs work.

Speaker 2 And then he's going to say, I had a great economy. Democrats messed it up.
I don't know what happened. I take no responsibility at all.

Speaker 2 That's where my lack of empathy overcomes me because I know that's going to happen.

Speaker 2 And I know that the people that are going to believe that horse shit are the same people right now telling me, I don't know, Tom, eggs were five bucks.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I mean, I know fascism is bad, but, you know, eggs. I'm with you on

Speaker 2 the fucking rich Trumpers and who are complaining and will spend, unfortunately, way more of my brain power than I would like unraveling all of their fake grievances for the foreseeable future that said my when I think about the Democrats problem and maybe this is wrong I'm open I'm gonna try over the next few months to have like some lefty populace on maybe they need to be do lefty populist policy maybe my instinct is I don't think so though actually I think that the Democrats answer is always a policy paper And to me, the reality is when I think in my mind's eye, who could go to a town hall, not what I call a town hall, who could go shoot the shit with the guys at the MMA fight that Trump goes to?

Speaker 2 Who could go to, you know, the SEC tailgate and just, you know, shoot the shit?

Speaker 2 Who could go to a farm gathering, you know, in Lamars, Iowa, you know, like where everybody's sitting around doing coffee and like demonstrate that they actually care about these people and are listening to them?

Speaker 2 I don't think the Democrats have anybody. I literally can't think of any.
I can't think of anyone. They had Sherrod Brown until 10 years ago.
And he's okay with that kind of Federman.

Speaker 2 I guess the answer is Federman, but he struggles to talk. Fetterman, maybe.

Speaker 2 So he's not a particularly strong communicator. But to me, it's as much about like some of it is policy, but some of it is like they're just not showing up.

Speaker 2 And for a group of people, the Democrats are always like, oh, you've got to show up. You've got to listen to this group.
You've got to elevate that group.

Speaker 2 You've got to do like that is the Democrats' ethos.

Speaker 2 And so I just don't understand if you're like, oh, you have to make space for the native community and you've got to make space for the LGBTQ, but you don't make any space for 42% of the country.

Speaker 2 Like, listen to yourself, I think. To me, like, that's my instinct, is that is the main issue? Well, I'm of two minds of this, as I am about everything now.
One is I don't want presidents doing that.

Speaker 2 I liked, you know, I mean, yeah, Reagan used to put on his hat and all that stuff, but remember that the big slam on Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan was that they were too regal. Right.
Right.

Speaker 2 That they had this kind of lazy majesty, you know, the designer dresses and the whole thing. Yeah, but fast forward.
W could do it. Obama could do it.
Obama. All right.

Speaker 2 I will give you Obama and I will give you Bill Clinton could do it. But among representatives.
Bill Clinton could do it.

Speaker 2 Every president, that's every president except Biden who was elected during a pandemic. Clinton, Bush, Obama.
Bush 41 couldn't do it. Bush 43, though.

Speaker 2 After 41. Message, I care.
Yeah, but there were still only three networks when Bush 41. In the modern media era, in the modern media era, all of them have been able to do it.
I know, and

Speaker 2 I think that's a a problem. I don't want presidents.
I want presidents that are competent, who know their job, who know foreign policy, who are people of steady character and steely nerves.

Speaker 2 I don't really care. I want that too.
You know, I don't really care if they can go do the corn dog,

Speaker 2 you know, and

Speaker 2 all that populist bullshit. I think part of the reason that we're in the situation we're in is that people have come to expect that.
You know, it's like, well, he needs to be just like me.

Speaker 2 No, I don't want the president to be just like me.

Speaker 2 I'm not that competent. I'm not that good.
I'm just a middle-aged guy in Rhode Island. I want the president to be somebody who has real talent and ability.

Speaker 2 And whether he can hang around with me down at the clam boil,

Speaker 2 you know, here in Middletown, I don't give a shit about that. But I understand, as you just said, in the words of Hyman Roth and Godfather 2, this is the business we've chosen, right?

Speaker 2 You know, this is politics, and you have to win those elections. But on the other hand, a lot of those folks live in such an epistemic bubble.

Speaker 2 At some point today, I'll tell you more about this conversation. I had two hours I spent talking to a Trump supporter in Pennsylvania, and it was trippy.
But I will agree with you about this.

Speaker 2 How many times, and I know you've said this to friends, and I know I've said it when talking to other never-Trumpers or former Republicans or centrists, stop scaring the normals.

Speaker 2 Right? That's all you have to do to win these elections. Don't scare the normies.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I think Harris, to her credit, figured that out fast because in 2019, you know how I felt about Harris in 2019 and 2020.

Speaker 2 I was like, oh, man, this is really a, you know, bad idea, you know, far to the left and doesn't. But, you know, she was a different candidate by 2024.

Speaker 2 I'm glad, you know, people learn, they can change.

Speaker 2 But I think too much of the Democratic Party, I think on this, the critics that have argued that the Democratic Party, now being the party of college-educated people, basically,

Speaker 2 has lost its ability to talk to people who come from working-class backgrounds, who are not steeped in the latest, you know, gender studies controversies.

Speaker 2 And I think that that's something that has to be recaptured. And I think a lot of Democrats think it's like dirty to have to do that, that there's an impurity involved in that.

Speaker 2 It's funny, you brought up trans issues, you know, because I was talking to a Democrat and I said, not a winning issue right now for the Democrats if you're swimming upstream against, you know, Republicans.

Speaker 2 They're going to take out all these ad buys and they love this issue and they go after it. And the answer was something like, well, trans people can't wait for their rights.
Well, okay,

Speaker 2 they're not better off today.

Speaker 2 That's for sure. As is anybody, any minority community, no minority community is better off today after what happened on Tuesday.

Speaker 2 I also hate the false binary, you know, and this is what I'm talking about, about being able to talk normal.

Speaker 2 Like, you can talk about protecting trans people in a manner that is reminiscent of how American politicians have talked for a long time about how everybody has dignity.

Speaker 2 We're not trying to throw anybody under the bus. Like, there's ways to do this that it is not, I'm sorry, Kamala Harris.
I'm sorry to obsess about this.

Speaker 2 Kamala Harris has her pronouns in her bio still. Okay.
It's just like, I get it. I get it.
But like, and by the way, I respect this.

Speaker 2 If you prefer to be identified as they, them, or if you're trans, like, awesome. I have trans friends.
I love trans people. Okay.
But like, Kamala Harris is obviously she, her.

Speaker 2 And so my point is to people that don't, like, that aren't involved in this, in this sort of debate and aren't familiar and don't know any trans people and aren't familiar with all this, they look at this and they're like,

Speaker 2 like, this is ridiculous. This person doesn't actually care about me, you know? Right.
Or it opens the door for them to say, I don't know what that's about. What is that about?

Speaker 2 And of course, the Republicans interpose very quickly and say, we'll tell you what it's about. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's about an attack on you and your family and God and country and all that other stuff.

Speaker 2 And you can protect trans people and speak like a normal human. This was the frustrating thing to me.
You can protect everybody and steal. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was like on MS yesterday and I just listened to some of the politicians and just the way in which Democrats talk, like to me, that's the wake-up call. Like, I know you love this.

Speaker 2 This is why I want to have Tom Nichols on because

Speaker 2 you want the highfalutin rhetoric. You know, you want the Criticor, right? You want the reference to Montesquieu.
No, come on. Oh, now, now, whoa, whoa, whoa,

Speaker 2 whoa. You forget, you forget who I am and where I come from.
I have never quoted Montesquieu.

Speaker 2 And I mean,

Speaker 2 like I said, remember, I'm the guy in my stuff. You're going to more often find a Don Corleone quote than you're going to find Montesquieu.

Speaker 2 I mean, look, I agree with you.

Speaker 2 You know, we're in heated agreement about this, that if we're going to keep bashing the Democrats for a moment more, because I think we have, you know, this is part of the.

Speaker 2 That's part of this. We're grieving together.
Yeah, yeah. We're all in this together.
It's just like, you know, you know, I think it's worth trying to figure it out. What else are we going to do?

Speaker 2 Well, I think it's, I think it's especially important to figure it out, not for the presidential election, which, you know, look, Kamal Harris spoke like a completely normal person for three months in this election, and Donald Trump talked like a gibberish.

Speaker 2 A completely normal politician. Yes, a normal politician.

Speaker 2 But Donald Trump also was, you know, a gibbering, delusional old man going on about, you know, sharks and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 So, you know, this double standard where we say, well, now Democrats have to talk like, then Donald Trump can sound like, you know, he's off his medication and wandering the streets in a hospital, Johnny.

Speaker 2 Totally. Right?

Speaker 2 I mean, that's every time I hear Trump, I just think of this guy with the Johnny Open in the back and a New York City policeman saying, come in, come out of the road, come out of the road.

Speaker 2 This would, again, set the table. There is no shortage of complaints about Donald Trump's language, policies, behavior, character here.

Speaker 2 My point is, we're doing politics, and when you're doing politics, you're trying to win campaigns.

Speaker 2 And this was a devastating loss. And it's the down-ticket campaigns where I think that really can hurt.
A lot of that language can really hurt.

Speaker 2 And you saw the Democrats already started to pay that price with people like Corey Bush and Jamal Bowman and, you know, that.

Speaker 2 Look at one yesterday in Red Districts, Jared Golden, Marie Gluzenkamp-Perez.

Speaker 2 You know, they are working class. Like these, these are some dems that exist.
Actually, I should revise and extend my remarks about Federman earlier.

Speaker 2 Both of them are people that I think could go into these spaces and talk normal and do a hang, right? And they're not Joe Manchin corporate moderates.

Speaker 2 My last criticism here while we're on the subject of Democrats is when you're putting pronouns in your bio, it's because you're trying to send a signal that part of it's well-intentioned, right?

Speaker 2 To say, I see you, I care about your issues, I'm an ally, and so on. But you're also trying to shore up these shaky flanks all the time.

Speaker 2 The Republicans, you know, this as a former Republican guy, Tim, the Republicans never have to do that. I mean, look at how they treated Nikki Haley.
Didn't matter.

Speaker 2 Didn't matter. You know, I always think of that great,

Speaker 2 it's possibly apocryphal, but I think it's been attributed to Deaver Deaver back in 84 when somebody told the Reagan campaign, the evangelicals are really mad at you, right?

Speaker 2 Because Reagan didn't get prayer in schools and outlaw abortion and do all this stuff.

Speaker 2 But on the campaign show, yes, yes, of course we're going to do that. And of course, then he gets an officer.
Yeah, we're not doing any of that shit.

Speaker 2 And so they told the campaign, they're really mad at you. And this Reagan aid says, fuck them.
What are they going to do? Vote for Mondale?

Speaker 2 You know, because they won't.

Speaker 2 The problem is that the Democrats are constantly getting these kinds of, you know, pasted up hostage letters from various constituencies saying, you know, remember us or, or this section of the vote gets thrown in the river.

Speaker 2 You know, and it's also part of the nature of the coalition, though, because the Fuckham strategy actually didn't work with Arab voters that were concerned about Gaza and potentially young progressives.

Speaker 2 And we got to wait for the numbers to come in.

Speaker 2 I mean, she did try to, I mean, she did stay away from that third rail.

Speaker 2 And I think part of the reason that she didn't pick Shapiro, and I don't think that was a, I think that was a good call not to pick Shapiro for a lot of reasons, is that she didn't want to have to walk with him through Michigan and go through all that.

Speaker 2 But the problem is that there is always something, you know, you and I and other Never Trumpers went through this in 2016 when we were trying to make the big tent argument to our friends in the Democratic Party to say, this is the nature of coalitions.

Speaker 2 I mean, Roosevelt didn't like Stalin, but they managed to work together. And I think that there is just this kind of purity testing among Democrats that makes that really difficult.

Speaker 2 And it's not about Gaza or trans people or anything else. It's about all of it.

Speaker 2 It's about a very segmented coalition that is like a parliamentary party where every small party says, I must have my issue satisfied or I will withdraw during the vote of no confidence.

Speaker 2 And I think Harris, again, going to give more kudos to Harris. I think she held that together pretty well.
And I think she threaded that pretty well.

Speaker 2 And I'm not sure that in 2024, there was any abandonment of, you know, wokeety pronouns or any of that stuff that was going to help her. But I think now

Speaker 2 going into 2026, which could be,

Speaker 2 you know, really the speed break on a lot of, I mean, if the, if the Democrats can do what you're supposed to do in a president's first, second, first term and put the brakes on Trump, you're right.

Speaker 2 They're going to have to learn to talk to. And can I add one more thing?

Speaker 2 As a son son of the working class and a man who grew up with a an accent that i had to shed by the way let's hear it my accent yeah say those last points in your old accent that you shed us all right so you know so i grew up near springfield and them guys let me tell you about it them guys they come in here okay they come in and they don't want to hear nothing about about those things okay

Speaker 2 and i grew up that i mean i had to i had to learn how to pronounce th

Speaker 2 you know this that them those okay fine don't mimic these things. Don't be a college-educated, you know, go and say, and now I'm fixing and I'm a gunna.
And, you know, just be yourself. It's okay.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't need to, don't do that.

Speaker 2 And I think both parties do that, except the Republicans get away with it because Republicans are so, their party discipline is so strong, they just don't give a crap about any of that.

Speaker 2 But you don't have to walk in.

Speaker 2 I mean, I know she got accused of code switching and all that stuff, but you can talk to normal Americans in your normal voice and not have to pantomime caring about that stuff.

Speaker 2 Just talk to people, talk to people and realize that not everybody went to grad school and not everybody is on Twitter.

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Speaker 1 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carise Van Houten.

Speaker 1 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 1 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 2 All right, we've spent 28 minutes of hair shirt. I want to go forward, but one more quick back question,

Speaker 2 which is the anti-hair shirt question. I'm going to put the link to this in the show notes for people who want to look at this.

Speaker 2 Derek Thompson, who we've had on the pod, posted a chart that goes back to, I don't know, like the middle of the 20th century about how global incumbent parties did in a given year.

Speaker 2 And in 2024 is the only year, I guess we're in November, so I guess some incumbent party could, I don't know if there are any elections between now and January, but it's the only year where every incumbent party lost share, everyone, all around the world.

Speaker 2 I find this very strange that 2024 is the year of suffering for everybody. I mean, the inflation, certainly, inflation is annoying.
I'm with it.

Speaker 2 And some people really suffered through inflation, but there's been a lot of suffering over the course of the last 80 years.

Speaker 2 It's a little strange to me that it's an outlier, I guess, and levels of suffering. But maybe there was just nothing.
Maybe this is all just hot air. And it was just,

Speaker 2 it was literally just the eggs. It was just the eggs.
And that's it. And the phones.
It's just the eggs and the phones. People hear more complaints now than they did back then.

Speaker 2 And the inflation was annoying. And that's it.
All incumbents were fucked. Okay, but I saw Derek's chart.

Speaker 2 And the explanation for why now, by the way, is that like in the first wave of inflation, people got it. It's like, yes, it's the pandemic.
Nobody can do anything.

Speaker 2 But then when, because prices persist and stay high for another year after that, that's when people said, okay, the government should do something about that.

Speaker 2 Of course, governments, unless they want to institute price controls, they can't do anything about it. This is part of that

Speaker 2 myth of executive power. The difference is, in the one place, I'm not going to let the United States off the hook.
First of all, we're supposed to be smarter than that.

Speaker 2 And in those other countries, getting rid of the incumbents did not mean trading off for a sociopath. I'm not letting us off the hook either.
Okay, Bill Crystal has a newsletter this morning that is a

Speaker 2 stealing your spine. The fight must go on.
We must fight. You know, we must band together again.

Speaker 2 And I don't know. We few.
Yeah, we few. We marry few.
We band of brothers.

Speaker 2 I'm letting the devil inside me talk now. This is just going to be this podcast for the next month.
So people, if people want that, that's great. You're welcome here.
Do we actually

Speaker 2 shouldn't we let them burn it down?

Speaker 2 Shouldn't we let them just fucking shouldn't we let them just stew in their own shit for two years? Do we fight? Like, do we, why, why? What? Well, I let them have it. Let him, let him get it.

Speaker 2 Let them get Trump.

Speaker 2 And I guess there's a strategy of how to fight, right? Like if he appoints an insane person to one of these cabinet positions, great.

Speaker 2 Let him appoint the craziest fucking person that he can find to all these things. Why would we push back? Why fight? I think it depends on what it is.

Speaker 2 I'm going to tell a tale out of school from the days when Bill and I were at these early, you know, holy crap, never Trump meetings.

Speaker 2 I'd show up sometimes. You were there.
Yeah, that's one of the ways we met.

Speaker 2 I love that we practically met in a bunker. Remember that? It was literally, yeah, it was a basement.

Speaker 2 It was dank. It was like the man from Uncle.
You know, it's like you go over to the elevator and a guy nods and you go down and, you know, a typical elevator in a big city or is it?

Speaker 2 And I remember one of the discussions that I had with Bill back then was,

Speaker 2 and there were other people, you know, Elliot Cohen wrote a very famous piece about this, about should you work for Trump. And I said this in my piece yesterday.

Speaker 2 The decision that the Republican Party, the people that worked for Trump came to, is to put baby bumpers and pool noodles on all the sharp edges around Trump.

Speaker 2 And I remember that that was a big discussion among that group and among a lot of other Republicans of saying, you know, do we let them just, but, you know, Tim, it goes back to the thing you said earlier about, okay, but then a lot of people suffer.

Speaker 2 You know, needlessly. I think we might need that.
Well, okay, but. But not needlessly, actually.
Maybe there's a need. I don't want to be one of them is the thing.

Speaker 2 so when it comes to places like the defense department look if trump wants to i think tariffs is a great example he keeps on tariffs tariffs tariffs hey go for it i mean i'm i'm the guy that back when i was still writing at usa today i said let's have that trade war get it started you know do it touch that stove you know embrace it because that's the only way you're going to learn but i do think you know if he wants to put robert f kennedy in charge of national health I mean, I think in that case, Bill's point is well taken: that you have to really square your, you know, square up and say, no, I'm not going to let this, you know, deranged weirdo kill children, you know, simply because it would be fun to watch it happen and watch the world burn.

Speaker 2 But there's a different way to approach it. Say we have to fight.

Speaker 2 The first thing I wrote, the thing that I finished writing at three o'clock in the morning, you know, with a bottle of bourbon next to me, was

Speaker 2 to say, look, deep breath, square your shoulders, one foot in front of the other.

Speaker 2 Don't run into the streets screaming, you know, but start talking to other people, you know, citizen associations, figure out the candidates you're going to support, the organizations you're going to donate to, places that are going to, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, you know, no more demonstrative canceling of subscriptions, you know, to help pay for journalism that will, you know, hold these people to account. You may hate some of the people.

Speaker 2 Local ones in particular. Subscribe to your local paper if you have one.
Be engaged, but not obsessed. Don't stare at the TV.
Like I haven't, I don't know about you.

Speaker 2 I've been, I haven't watched the news for like two days. Unfortunately, I've been on the news for fucking two days and I'm considering jumping off the 30 Rockefeller.

Speaker 2 But I was I was on I was on Morning Joe yesterday. So yes, I watched an hour of TV.

Speaker 2 But the minute it was over, you know, I said, okay, I don't, because it was like, okay, we have more results coming in. No, I know the result.

Speaker 2 I don't need to know, you know, what Hamden County, Massachusetts. I was sitting there at five in the morning and Steve Kornacki is like, and in Winnebago County, you can see this.
Trump is plus five.

Speaker 2 And then you go to, you know, whatever. We're in county and he's plus nine.
And I'm like, he's plus in every county, Steve. I don't need to listen to this for 20 minutes.

Speaker 2 You don't need to keep, he's pressing every new county, you know. Okay, I like it.
Oakland County, he's up 11. And I'm like, yeah, he's up in every county.
Steve's got a job to do, dude.

Speaker 2 I know, but I'm just saying there as a consumer of it.

Speaker 2 It was driving me insane. Like that character on, see, I don't go for Montesquieu.
I was thinking of that character on Galaxy Quest who says, it repeats what the computer says.

Speaker 2 I have one job on this ship, and it might be stupid, but I'm going to do it.

Speaker 2 You know, all systems are normal. Captain, all systems are normal.

Speaker 2 I needed that laugh.

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Speaker 2 I want to make one more case for that resistance is futile.

Speaker 2 We're like 40 minutes into this and we're slap happy on it. Yeah, I know.
Here's Nick Natasha over at the dispatch.

Speaker 2 And if you'll indulge me, I just need to read quite a bit of it because it was, it spoke to my dark soul in a deep way.

Speaker 2 Trump's voters broke America and deserved to get what they've bought economically, politically, and morally.

Speaker 2 I was right about the rottenness of the electorate, and I'll be right in spades about the rottenness of Trump's abuses in a second term.

Speaker 2 And when millions of our friends and neighbors decide they don't care how abusive he's being, so long as he's hurting the right people, I'll remind everyone who scolded me for assuming the worst about our wonderful fellow Americans that I was right about that too.

Speaker 2 If you've been dismayed by what Trump voters have been willing to condone in the past, get ready. You ain't seen nothing yet.
We're going to hear a lot of nonsense.

Speaker 2 from never trumpers in the months ahead about how the valuable work of democracy goes on and we must fight to save America or whatever. And that's fine.

Speaker 2 It's human nature to answer defeat with defiance, but it's also silly. Ultimately, a country is just his people and you can't save these people from themselves.
Whoo!

Speaker 2 Whew, that's a heater. That's a heater.
I don't know if I agree with it, but there's a lot of truth there. I do agree with it.

Speaker 2 And I think that's, you know, that's why I love to read Nick, because that's, you know, that's the 180 proof

Speaker 2 white lightning right there.

Speaker 2 But, but, you know, look, he's, I've, this is the misanthrope in me.

Speaker 2 You know, in after the 2016 election, I gave a talk at a college upstate New York, and one of the faculty who was actually a Trumper, there are college professors who are Trumpers, believe it or not.

Speaker 2 I wrote about this in my last book, this incident. He said, your contempt for the voters is palpable.

Speaker 2 And I said, yeah, for some voters,

Speaker 2 It is. I'm not required to, you know, I'm not Jesus.
I'm not required to love them for their votes.

Speaker 2 I'm required to love them as human beings, but I don't have to love them for, you know, what they've done.

Speaker 2 He said, yeah, that contempt is palpable. And I said, so is yours.
I said, you just hate a different bunch of people and you hate them deeply.

Speaker 2 And you think it's okay to hate them because of the power dynamic or whatever. You justify.
Well, the power dynamic and right away, he went to an abortion. Well, they support something evil.

Speaker 2 Oh, all right. So we're about to see some evil.
Yes, exactly. And I think the one thing I hope and that I really liked in Nick's screed there is enough of this double standard.

Speaker 2 You know, you can't judge them for their votes. The hell I can't.

Speaker 2 You need to reach out to them and we're all in this together. And no, no.

Speaker 2 You know, I respect their right as citizens to vote the way they want to, but I'm not required to affirm them.

Speaker 2 And I think that's the thing, that double standard where we infantilized Trump voters for so long, right?

Speaker 2 This is the same dynamic. And I think Nick's railing against this quite rightly.

Speaker 2 This is the same dynamic that had well-meaning reporters trumping out to diners in East Cupcake, you know, to say, you know, you're a 65-year-old retiree driving a Cadillac. Why are you so angry?

Speaker 2 What can we do to make you less angry?

Speaker 2 In a sense, I've always said, you know, the answer is like, well, you can get that girl at the Starbucks named Rainbow out of there because I don't like her nose rings.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, it's like you can't reason with any of these folks. You know, when you're asked, well, are you saying that by making this choice, they're bad people?

Speaker 2 Some of them.

Speaker 2 Some of them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm willing to grab millions of people who said, I really don't know that much about this.

Speaker 2 I mean, I've come to accept that there are people who literally are so detached from the day-to-day affairs of their own country that they really don't know the difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in any meaningful way.

Speaker 2 And they say, like, you know, friends back home will say, well, I don't know about any of this. Republicans are always better for the economy.

Speaker 2 Okay, I think that's irresponsible and it's bad citizenship, but I don't think it makes them bad people.

Speaker 2 But the people who want what Trump was selling, and there are tens of millions of them, yeah, yeah, this is a, I think Nick is right on the money about something here.

Speaker 2 That no more talk, conciliary, no more, more, you know, no more rationalizations about this. This is, these are people making a moral choice, and it's really a bad one.

Speaker 2 Stop me before I rant some more. No, no, no, that's right.

Speaker 2 No, I have one edit to Nick's point, and I think we don't have time to hash this out now, but I just, so people know where my head's at, and there'll be much discussion about this in the months to come.

Speaker 2 You know, I do think that the valuable work to save America goes on. The valuable work of democracy goes on.
I guess, maybe. I don't know.

Speaker 2 My edit to him is: maybe there is some element of for this year, for 2025,

Speaker 2 letting people see unadulterated Trumpism actually might be the work of saving America.

Speaker 2 And, you know, trying to do little things to make yourself feel better about putting bumpers on it might not be it. So, anyway, much to discuss on that.

Speaker 2 You know, me, I have, I argued from day one, don't put the bumpers on things other than things that could produce nuclear disaster or the deaths of millions of children, the rest of it, especially the economic stuff, have had it.

Speaker 2 We've learned America's resilience. And maybe, well, I just go back to the top of the podcast.
Maybe people need to get it good and hard so that we can get back to an equilibrium.

Speaker 2 Because if not, otherwise, then you're just, then you're in a total nihilistic place, which is like, well, nothing, it's unfixable. And I'm not there.

Speaker 2 Well, and also, I think people, people to our left, you know, one of the big arguments that I had over the years was, I, because I will do this when he becomes president, I will write about him.

Speaker 2 I'm going to cover those crazy press conferences. I want to amplify, partly as a way of keeping the record, you know, but also because I think that the more you see of Trump, the less you can deny it.

Speaker 2 And I don't want people unless saying, stop amplifying him. Stop sending out his message.

Speaker 2 That's all over and done.

Speaker 2 I think, and my other argument, which we'll be discussing over the next year, is I do think that maybe a refocus on the details of what is happening in the Trump administration over the words coming out of his mouth is probably going to be a useful pivot and one that I'm going to try to focus on myself.

Speaker 2 Okay. I'm going to have to add one more thing about that.
About please, one more thing. And I have one more serious topic we need to close on.
All right.

Speaker 2 This person I spoke to in Pennsylvania voted early and then I said, but you're not concerned about what you're seeing.

Speaker 2 Like you didn't think that Madden, because she said, oh, I'm not a racist and I don't go, I don't like any of that. Like, you know, like

Speaker 2 that was somehow like any of that other stuff. That ugly stuff.
As if it's not central to Trump's being. Exactly.
And, but I said, well, you didn't like Madison Square.

Speaker 2 She said, no, once I voted, I turned off everything. I don't fall.
I don't watch the news anymore.

Speaker 2 Now, that is

Speaker 2 deeply alarming because that is not only am I in an epistemic bubble, I am building one. I'm building it from the inside out.

Speaker 2 And that's why, you know, all of that stuff, everything he does, it needs to be, you know, covered and not normalized. Because I will say,

Speaker 2 we were a little hard on the Democrats today, I think, because I want to be kind of hard on at least some journalists who did engage in sainwashing and really indulging that bias toward coherence and not really covering.

Speaker 2 I mean, there is no argument. Donald Trump was not covered the way Joe Biden would have been covered if he had done the same things.

Speaker 2 For Democrats who are getting sensitive, there's no criticism I can offer offer of Democrats that is deeper than my criticism of myself. So trust me, it's all

Speaker 2 the shame is on this side of the microphone. All right.
You know, Alexander Dugan, Putin's brain. Yeah.
Brain? Brain. Yes.
He sent some tweets this week. You see those by chance? Yes, I did.

Speaker 2 I'm going to read a couple of them to you because

Speaker 2 I think that there's a little bit of mocking, but also some very serious worries for us to close the podcast with. So we have won.
That is decisive. The world will never, ever be like like before.

Speaker 2 Globalists have lost their final combat. The future is finally open.
Now we have to rethink our global strategy: how the world traditionalist circles should shape their common policy.

Speaker 2 We need to reintroduce our society's traditional values. Here, post-modernity meets pre-modernity.
And then he cites J.D. Vance saying he's announced that.
I don't know if J.D.

Speaker 2 Vance actually announced this, but Dugan said that he did. The post-liberal right-wing era is coming.
This is exactly what's needed.

Speaker 2 No alliance between the right and liberals, only traditional values. They're pretty happy in Moscow.

Speaker 2 Yeah, although, listen, this is where I'm going to be a little bit of a, hopefully a calming influence. Great.
Don't overreact to Dugan. Dugan says this, you know, every 45 minutes.

Speaker 2 This is what Dugan does. There's no doubt they're happy, though.
Medvedev. They are.
Oh, in Moscow, they're popping champagne again in Moscow and in Beijing.

Speaker 2 America's enemies rooted for the election of Donald Trump. As the kids say, let that sink in.
So there's no doubt about it. But Dugan is a nut.

Speaker 2 And even Putin has kind of held him at arm's length on occasion.

Speaker 2 But Dugan does bring up something that people should think about: that as nutty as Donald Trump is, and he makes no sense, and there's going to be a lot of terrible policies, you know, Vance and the tech bros around him are really dangerous because they have really stupid ideas.

Speaker 2 They think they can be implemented. They have no experience in politics.
You know, we just elected a vice president who had literally like 24 months of experience in politics.

Speaker 2 To me, I think the thing about the Dugan thing that is right, I hear what your point about his clownishness and draggedocia is we're all liberals now. I think it was Bill Crystal that wrote that.

Speaker 2 The fight ahead is really not about conservatism and progressivism or whatever. It's the survival of the liberal order is the fight ahead.

Speaker 2 It's the global democratic coalition against a global authoritarian movement.

Speaker 2 Had Americans thought about it more in that way, of course, you know, I don't know if that would have broken through the big egg scandal.

Speaker 2 You know, it's like, hey, you know, China and Russia, you're electing a guy who says that like Nancy Pelosi is more dangerous than the guy pointing 1,500 nuclear warheads at us.

Speaker 2 Would that have, you know, really broken through the horror and the pain of $5 eggs? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Maybe not.

Speaker 2 Tom

Speaker 2 The eggs are expensive. It's a mad world out there.
I think that the laugh about the Cornaki map was the first real laugh, not like doomsday laugh I've had since Tuesday night.

Speaker 2 So I appreciate you indulging me and sharing that with me. And we'll be talking soon.
All right. In a basement, probably.

Speaker 2 Take care, Tim. We'll see you.
Thanks to Tom Nichols. We'll be back tomorrow with an old friend, Friday edition of the Bulwark Podcast.
See you then. Peace.

Speaker 2 All around me are familiar faces, faces

Speaker 2 Worn out places

Speaker 2 worn out faces

Speaker 2 Bright and early for their daily races

Speaker 2 Going nowhere

Speaker 2 Going nowhere

Speaker 2 The tears are filling up their glasses

Speaker 2 No expression

Speaker 2 No expression

Speaker 2 Hide my my head, I wanna drown my sorrow

Speaker 2 No tomorrow,

Speaker 2 no tomorrow

Speaker 2 And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad

Speaker 2 The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had

Speaker 2 I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take

Speaker 2 When people run in circles, It's a very, very

Speaker 2 mad

Speaker 2 world.

Speaker 2 Children waiting for the day they feel good.

Speaker 2 Happy birthday,

Speaker 2 happy birthday.

Speaker 2 Made to feel the way that every child should.

Speaker 2 Sit and listen,

Speaker 2 sit and listen.

Speaker 2 Went to school and I was very nervous.

Speaker 2 No one knew me,

Speaker 2 no one knew me.

Speaker 2 Hello teacher, tell me what's my lesson.

Speaker 2 Look right through me,

Speaker 2 look right through me

Speaker 2 And I find it kind of funny,

Speaker 2 I find it kind of sad.

Speaker 2 The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had.

Speaker 2 I find it hard to tell you,

Speaker 2 I find it hard to take

Speaker 2 when people run in circles. It's a very, very

Speaker 2 mad world,

Speaker 2 mad

Speaker 2 world

Speaker 2 in large yogurt

Speaker 2 mad

Speaker 2 world

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

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