Tom Nichols: This Is What They Want

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.
So I've got Tom Nichols, professor emeritus at the Naval War College, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of The Atlantic Daily Newsletter. Tom, what should we do? What do you want to say? What happens? I mean, what we should do is be on a beach somewhere right now just with a couple of Mai Tais.
But 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. And I think as long as he doesn't bumble us into World War III, 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 criticize and discuss and write about them the way we would.
Look, Tim, the saddest part, decision and 51 of the american people made their decision this is what they want okay so you know we're all strapped into the same rocket and um we're just gonna have to deal with it that's you know that's all we can do yeah they're gonna get it good and hard as many people have sent me right HL Mencken. 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.
Well, I want to talk in a little bit more detail about what actually the next steps look like for practically, but I want to go back first. So you wrote for The Atlantic this week saying Trump voters got what they wanted.
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.
Why don't you talk about what you think? 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.
She's running a good campaign, doing the right things. She's not taking, you know, Trump's bait.
She's, she's doing all the stuff she needed to do. 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.
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.
I don't understand a lot of 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 me.
I keep, 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. Oh, she's got to talk about the economy because people are suffering with, you know, full employment and two and a half percent inflation.
I just couldn't get my arms around what she was supposed to do there. 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.
You know, that millions of people have become, they're not accepting of Donald Trump. They have become like Donald Trump.
They identify with him. And that means that he was just going to win.

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. Just this morning, before you and I started talking, I saw the numbers for Dearborn, Michigan.
Okay, you're going to have that kind of, you know, loss in Dearborn. 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. Okay, I guess, you know, wow, you showed them.
But you know, if you're going to lose a place like Dearborn 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. But I don't think it was going to matter that much in 2024.
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. And Trump especially plays into that.
Right. You know, I'll make gas you know jedi mind trick i just can because i'm i'm magic because i'm superman but also the the other thing that he did is he said i want basically and i i take a lot of static about this 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.
That's undoubtedly true. And I'm torn about the response to it because I have the two wolves inside of me in response to that.
And the one is, fuck the rubes. These people are going to get what they want.
Like, you want it? Good luck. We'll see.
I can afford those tariffs. You can't.
Yeah. And the other, the angel inside of me also says, you know, the Dems actually didn't really do a good job of trying to care, trying to show that they care, right? And that's hard, right? Because at one point, you're like're like what 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 other you know thing is 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.
And I know that's the Republicans who are like, facts don't care about your feelings. But, you know, 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 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 of achievable vote, especially when some of these people have voted for Democrats in the past. So I am genuinely torn.
This is a genuine question. I'm wondering what you think about it.
Okay. I think three things.
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 they trump hates them right 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 i mean look at the lengths to which so many of these republican legislators go not to live in their own districts but the sense that that there is a big chunk of the democratic party that just doesn't care is true but let's let's split that into two things first of all maybe the anxiety about you know like prison transgender reassignment but you know something the democrats i'm gonna say the democrats helped to bring that on themselves i mean at one point, there was a really revealing moment when Kamala Harris was getting prodded about this by Brett Baer. And in kind of frustration, she said, why are you focusing on something that affects such a small number of people? 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 and 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 i think it was donnie 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 and i was like oh there it is again you know it's like why are why is everybody so obsessed about training well because if it's the first thing you think of when someone says you need to move to the center then you know maybe you're playing you're playing into that 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.
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. 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 the state. But, you know, I have a hard time with the typical American who complains about $5 eggs,

driving the big truck and spending the money that we spend on gambling and sports and all the other stuff. 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 we need to have free lunches for hungry kids but that other argument about you're supposed to really empathize with the suffering of you know 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.
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. And when Trump starts 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 yeah trump is going to inherit a great economy oh 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 oh you know flow interest i can't even think about it let's yeah and he's going to take credit for and for a year he's going to skate on biden's landing. The thing, the problem of not caring, right, when people say, but Tom, the economy, I'm like, listen, two years ago, we were expecting a massive recession.
The soft landing that got pulled off by this administration and by the Fed, nobody thought was possible. And now you're bitched out about it because the recession didn't happen but gas is only 299 a gallon now the death of expertise all your experts failed us on that one all the economists said there was a recession coming the economic experts were like of course you know there's always that trap door phrase if current trends continue right listen when i was gaining weight if current trends continue you know i'd be 3 000 pounds at some point you try and do something.
And that's what policy does. Right.
It's to make sure you don't end up weighing 3000 pounds to make sure that you don't end up in a recession. And good policy created a soft landing.
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. He just like, you know, we don't have to guess at this.
right? Remember, he had to bail out the farmers. 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.
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.
That's where my lack of empathy overcomes me because I know that's going to happen 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. And, you know, I mean, I know fascism is bad, but, you know, eggs.
I'm with you on the fucking rich Trumpers and who are complaining and will spend, way more of my brain power than i would like unraveling all of their fake grievances for the foreseeable future that said when i think about the democrats problem and maybe this is wrong i'm open i'm going to try over the next few months to have like some lefty populace on maybe they need to be do lefty populace 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 a wouldn't call a town hall who could go shoot the shit with the guys at the mma fight that trump goes to who could go to you know the to the SEC tailgate and just shoot the shit? Who could go to a farm gathering in Lamar's, Iowa, where everybody's sitting around doing coffee and demonstrate that they actually care about these people and are listening to them? I don't think the Democrats have anybody. I literally can't think of anyone.
think of anyone they had sherrod brown until 10 minutes ago and he's okay with that kind of fetterman i guess the answer is fetterman but he struggles to talk fetterman 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 and for a group of people the democrats are always like oh you've got. You've got to listen to this group.
You've got to elevate that group. You've got to do like that is the Democrats ethos.
And so I just don't understand if you're like, oh, you have to make space for the native community and you got to make space for the LGBTQ, but you don't make any space for 42% of the country. Like, listen to yourself.
I think to me, like, that's my instinct is that is that is the main issue well i'm of two minds of this as i am about everything now yeah one is i don't want presidents doing that 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 that they had this kind of lazy you know, the designer dresses and the whole thing. Yeah, but fast forward.
W could do it. Obama could do it.
Obama. All right.
I will give you Obama and I would give you Bill Clinton could do it. But among Republicans...
Bill Clinton could do it. Every president, that's every president except Biden who was elected during a pandemic.
Clinton, Bush, Obama... Bush 41 couldn't do it.
43 though. After 41 after for after 41 message i care yeah but there are still only three networks in bush 41 in the modern media era in the modern media era all of them have been able to do i know and i don't i think that's a problem i don't want presidents do i want presidents that are competent who know their job who know foreign policy who are people of steady character and stealing nerves i don don't really i want that too you know i don't really care if they can go do the corn dog you know and the and the 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 no i don't want the president to be just like me i'm i'm not that competent i'm not that good i'm i'm just a you know middle-aged guy in rhode island i want the president to be somebody who has real talent and ability and whether he can hang around with me down at the clam boil you know here here in middletown i don't give a shit about that but i as you just said, in the words of Hyman Roth and Godfather II, this is the business we've chosen, right? 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. 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 it was trippy but i will agree with you about this 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? That's all you have to do to win these elections.
Don't scare the normies. And I think Harris, to her credit, figured that out fast.
Because in 2019, you know how I felt about Harris in 2019 and 2020, I was like, oh, man, this is really a bad idea, far to the left. But she was a different candidate by 2024.
I'm glad people learn. They can change.

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, 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. 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 do that. There's an impurity involved in that.
It's funny you brought up trans issues, you know, because I was talking to a Democrat, I said, not a winning issue right now for the Democrats. If you're swimming upstream against, you know, Republicans, 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, they're not better off today.
That's for sure. As is anybody, any minority community, no minority community is better off today after what happened on Tuesday.
I also hate the false binary. And this is what I'm talking about, about being able to talk normal.
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. 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. 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.
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. And so I've went 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 like 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 and of course the republicans interpose very quickly and say we'll tell you what it's about yeah right it's about an attack on you and your family and god and country and all that other stuff and you can protect trans people and speak like a normal human this was the frustrating thing to me you can protect everybody and yeah i was like on ms yesterday and i just listened to some politicians and just the way in which democrats talk like to me that's the wake-up call like i know you love this this is why i wanted to have tom nichols on because you want you want the highfalutin rhetoric you know you want the creed of core right you want the reference to montesquieu no come on oh now now whoa whoa whoa whoa you forget you forget who i am and where i come from i have never quoted montesquieu uh and uh i mean 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 i know i mean look i agree with you 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 we have, you know, this is part of the grief.
It's not bashing.

It's like, we're all in this together.

Yeah, yeah, we're all in this together.

It's just like, you know, I think it's worth trying to figure it out.

What else are we going to do?

Well, I think it's especially important to figure it out,

not for the presidential election, which, you know, look,

Kamala Harris spoke like a completely normal person

for three months in this election, and Donald Trump talked like a completely normal person for three months in this election.

And Donald Trump talked like a completely normal politician. Yes, a normal politician.
But Donald Trump also was, you know, a gibbering, delusional old man going on about, you know, sharks and all that stuff. So, you know, this double standard where we say, well, now Democrats have talked like that.
And Donald Trump can trump can sound like you know he's he's off his medication and wandering the streets in a in a hospital johnny right 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 i just would again set the table there is no shortage of of complaints about Donald Trump's language, policies, behavior, character here. My point is we're doing politics.
And when you're doing politics, you're trying to win campaigns. 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.
And you saw the Democrats already started to pay that price with people like Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman. Look at one yesterday in red districts, Jared Golden, Marie Glusenkamp Perez.
They are working class. These are some Dems that exist.
Actually, I should revise and extend my remarks about Fetterman earlier. 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.
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? 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 the republicans you know this as a 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 didn't matter you know i always think of that great it's possibly apocryphal but i think it's been attributed to um deaver back in 84 when somebody told the reagan campaign the evangelicals are really mad at you yeah right because reagan didn't get prayer in schools and outlaw abortion and do all this stuff he you know but on the campaign show yes yes of course we're gonna do it of course then he gets an officer yeah we're not doing any of that shit and uh so they they told the campaign they're really mad at you and this reagan aid says fuck them what are they gonna do vote for mondale right you know because they won't 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, you know.
And it's also part of the nature of the coalition, though, because the fuck them strategy actually didn't work with Arab voters that were concerned about Gaza and potentially young progressives. And we got to wait for the numbers to come in.
I mean, she did try to, I mean, she did stay away from that third rail. 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.
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 i mean roosevelt didn't like stalin but they they managed to work together and i think that there is just this kind of purity testing among democrats that makes that really difficult and it's not it's not about gaza or trans people or anything else it's about all of it 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 and i think harris again gonna give more kudos to harris i think she held that together pretty well and i think she threaded that that pretty well. And I'm not sure that in 2024, there was any abandonment of, you know, wokeity pronouns or any of that stuff that was going to help her.
But I think now going into 2026, which could be, 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. They're going to have to learn to talk to it.
And can I add one more thing as a son of the working class and a man who grew up with an accent that I had to shed by the way. Let's hear it.
My accent. Yeah.
Say this last point in your old accent that you shedded. All right.
So, you know, so I grew up near Springfield, and them guys, let me tell you about them guys. They come in here, okay? They come in, and they don't want to hear nothing about those things, okay? And I grew up there.
I mean, I had to learn how to pronounce T-H, 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 gonna.
And, you know, just, just be yourself. It's okay.
You know, I don't need to, don't do that. And I think both parties do that, except the Republicans get away with it because Republicans are, are so, their party discipline is so strong.
They just don't give a crap about any of that. But you don't have to walk in.
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.
just talk to people, talk to people and realize that not everybody went to grad school and not everybody is on Twitter. All right.
We spent 28 minutes of hair shirt. I want to go forward, but one more quick back question, which is the anti hair shirt question.
I'm going to put the link to this in the show notes or for people want to look at this. 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.
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. I find this very strange that 2024 is the year of suffering for everybody.
I mean, the inflation, certainly, inflation's annoying. I'm with it.
And some people really suffered through inflation, but there's been a lot of suffering over the course of the last 80 years. It's a little strange to me that it's an outlier, I guess, in levels of suffering.
But maybe there was just nothing. Maybe this is all just hot air.
And it was just, 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.
And the inflation was annoying. And that's it.
All incumbents were fucked. Okay, but I saw Derek's chart.
And the explanation for 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 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 of course governments unless they want to institute price controls they can't do anything about it. This is part of that myth of executive power.
The difference is, and 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. And in those other countries, getting rid of the incumbents did not mean trading off for a sociopath.
I'm not letting ourselves hook either. Okay, Bill Krist has a newsletter this morning that is a stealing your spine.
The fight must go on. We must fight.
You know, we must band together again. And I don't know.
We few. Yeah, we few.
We marry few. We band of brothers.
I'm letting the devil inside me talk now. This is just going to be this podcast for the next month.
So if people want that, that's great. You're welcome here.
Do we actually? Shouldn't we let them burn it down? Shouldn't we let them just fucking, shouldn't we let them just stew in their own shit for two years? Do we fight? Why? What? Let them have it. Let them get it.
Let them get Trump. 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.
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.
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. I'd show up sometimes.

You were there?

That's one of the ways we met. I love that we practically met in a bunker.
Remember that? It was literally, yeah, it was a basement. It was dank.
It was like the man from Uncle, you know? It's like, 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? And I remember one of the discussions that i had with bill back then was and there were other people you know elliott cohen wrote a very famous piece about this about should you work for trump and and i said this in my piece yesterday the decision that 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 yeah 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 you you know, needlessly.

I think we might need that.

Well, okay.

But not needlessly, actually.

Maybe there's a need.

I don't want to be one of them is the thing.

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 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 up and say, no, I'm not going to let this deranged weirdo kill children simply because it would be fun to watch it happen and watch the world burn.
But there's a different way to approach it. We have to fight.
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 to say, look, deep breath, square your shoulders, one foot in front of the other. Don't run into the streets screaming, you know, but start talking to other people, you know 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 i'm sorry you know no more demonstrative canceling of subscriptions you know help pay for journalism that will you know hold these people to cut you may hate some of.
Local ones in particular. Subscribe to your local paper if you have one.
Be engaged but not obsessed. Don't stare at the TV.
I don't know about you. 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. I was on Morning Joe yesterday, so yes, I watched watched an hour of TV 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 I don't need to know you know what Hamden County Massachusetts five in the morning and Steve Kornacki is like and in Winnebago County you can see this Trump is Trump is plus five.
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.
You don't need to keep, he's plus in every new county, you know. Okay.
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 i know but i'm just saying there as a consumer of

it it was driving me insane like that character on um see i don't go for montesquieu it's i was thinking that character on galaxy quest who says it repeats what the computer says i have one job on this ship and it might be stupid but i'm gonna do it you know all systems are normal captain All systems are normal.

I needed that laugh.

I want to make one more case for that resistance is futile and we're like 40 minutes into this and we're slap happy yeah i know here's nick katagio over at the dispatch and uh if you 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 trump's's voters broke America and deserve to get what they've bought economically, politically, and morally. 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.
And when millions of our friends and neighbors decide they don't care how abusive his 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. 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 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. It's human nature to answer defeat with defiance, but it's also silly.
Ultimately, a country is just as people and you can't save these people from themselves. Woo.
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. Yeah.
I do agree with it. And I think that's, you know, that's why I love to read Nick because as you you know, that's the 180 proof white lightning right there.
But, you know, look, he's I this is the misanthrope in me. You know, after the 2016 election, I gave a talk at a college of state New York.
And one of the faculty who was actually a Trumper, there are college professors who are Trumpers, believe it or not. I wrote about this in my last book, this incident.
He said, your contempt for the voters is palpable. And I said, yeah, for some voters, it is.
I'm not required to, you know, I'm not Jesus. I'm not required to love them for their votes.
I'm required to love them as human beings, but I don't have to love them for, you know, what they've done. 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.
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 oh all right so we're about to see some evil yes exactly and i think the one thing i hope and and that i really liked in nick's screed there is enough of this double standard oh you know you can't judge them for their votes the hell i can't you need to reach out to them and we're all in this together and no no you know i respect their right as citizens to vote the way they want to but i'm not required to affirm them and i think that's the thing that double standard where we infantilized trump voters for so long right this is this is the same dynamic and I think Nick's railing against this quite rightly, 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? What can we do to make you less angry? 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.
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? Some of them, some of them.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I'm willing to grab millions of people who said, I really don't know that much about this. I mean, I've, 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.
And they say like, you know, friends friends back home and say, well, I don't know about any of this. Republicans are always better for the economy.
Okay. I think that's irresponsible and it's bad citizenship, but I don't think it makes them bad people.
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 that no more talk, Consulieri, no more, you know, no more rationalizations about this.
These are people making a moral choice and it's really a bad one. Stop me before I rant some more, but.
No, no, no, that's right. 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. 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. My edit to him is maybe there is some element of for this year, for 2025, letting people see unadulterated Trumpism actually might be the work of saving America.
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.
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 right the rest of it especially the economic stuff have at it we've learned with 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 to an equilibrium.
Because if not, otherwise, then you're in a total nihilistic place, which is like, well, nothing. It's unfixable.
I'm not there. Well, and also, I think people to our left, you know, one of the big arguments that I had over the years was, because I will do this when he becomes president.
I will write about him. 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. And I don't want people on the left saying, stop amplifying him.
Stop sending out his message. That's all over and done.
I think, and my other argument, which 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 to focus on myself okay i'm gonna 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. This person I spoke to in Pennsylvania voted early and then I said, but you're not concerned about what you're seeing? You didn't think that matters? She said, I'm not a racist.
I don't like any of that. Like that was somehow, like any of that.
That other stuff. That ugliness.
As if it's not central to Trump's being. Exactly.
But I said well you didn't like madison's great she said no once i voted i turned off everything i don't fall i don't watch the news anymore now that is alarming 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. 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, you know, we, 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 sane washing, and really indulging that bias toward coherence and not really covering. 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. For Democrats are getting sensitive.
There's no criticism I can offer of Democrats that is deeper than my criticism of myself. So trust me.
It's all... All the shame is on this side of the microphone.

Alright. You know Alexander Dugan?

Putin's brain?

Brain?

He sent some tweets this week. You see those, by chance?

Yes, I did. I'm going to read a couple of them to you.

Because it's... 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 before.
Globalists have lost their final combat. The future is finally open.
Now we have to rethink our global strategy, how the world traditionalist circle should shape their common policy. 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. Vance actually announced this, but Dugan said that he did.
The post-liberal right-wing era is coming. This is exactly what's needed.
No alliance between the right and liberals, only traditional values. They're pretty happy in Moscow.
Yeah, although listen, this is is where i'm gonna be a little bit of a hopefully a calming influence great don't overreact to dugan dugan says this you know every 45 minutes this is what dugan does there's no doubt they're happy though medvedev oh in moscow they're popping champagne again in moscow and in beijing 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 and even putin has kind of held him at arm's length on occasion but dugan does bring up something that people should think about that as 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. 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.
To me, I think the thing about the Dugan thing that is right, I hear what your point of his clownishness and raggedosha is we're all liberals now. I think it was Bill Crystal that wrote that.
The fight ahead is really not about conservatism and progressivism or whatever. It's the survival of the liberal order is the fight ahead it's the global democratic coalition against a global authoritarian movement 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 you know it's like hey you know china and russia you're electing a guy who says that like nancy more dangerous than the guy pointing 1,500 nuclear warheads at us.
Would that have really broken through the horror and the pain of $5 eggs? I don't know. Maybe not.
Tom Nichols, the eggs are expensive. It's a mad world out there.
I think that the laugh about the Kornacki map was the first real laugh not like doomsday laugh I've had since Tuesday night so I appreciate you indulging me and sharing that with me and we'll be talking soon in a basement probably take care Tim we'll see ya thanks to Tom Nichols we'll be back tomorrow with an old friend. Friday edition of the Board Podcast.
See you then. Peace.
All around me are familiar faces. Worn out places.
Worn out faces. Bright and early for their daily races.
Going nowhere. Going going nowhere The tears are filling up their glasses No expression, no expression Hide my head, I wanna drown my sorrow No tomorrow, no tomorrow And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had I find it hard to tell you.
I'll find it hard to take. When people run in circles, it's a very, very mad world.
Mad world. Children waiting for the day they feel good

Happy birthday, happy birthday

Made to feel the way that every child should

Sit and listen, sit and listen

Went to school and I was very nervous

Thank you. Sit and listen, sit and listen Went to school and I was very nervous No one knew me, no one knew me Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson Look right through me, look right through me.
And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad. The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had.
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take. When people run in circles, it's a very, very mad world.
Mad world. Enlarge your world Mad world