Bill Kristol: Kama-Momentum

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Legends with a Z.com is legendary fun. Hello and welcome to the bulwark podcast i'm your host tim miller i'm here today with our editor emerita emeritus the cheerful pessimist bill crystal if it's monday it's bill crystal what's up from editor at large which sounds like i'm actually doing any work to editor emeritus which is just this output out to pasture.
But that's okay. I'm not offended.
I'm just cheerfully chugging along. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker Emerita, and she saved the country in the last month.
I take the point. It was more of a Pelosi-Crystal comparison than an attempt to kick you off the side.
I'm good with that. I'm good with that.
We have serious business to discuss today. Much happened over the weekend, but we need a little Monday morning amuse-bouche.
And so I'd like to play for you a clip that for some reason RFK Jr. put out himself on his Twitter feed.
Here he is in conversation with Roseanne Barr. I wasn't drinking, of course, but people were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea.

And I said, I had an old bike in my car that somebody asked me to get rid of. And I said, let's go put the bear in Central Park and we'll make it look like he got hit by the bike.
That's about 20 seconds of a much longer video of RFK trying to preempt a New Yorker story about how he, I guess, put a dead bear cub in Central Park

and tried to frame it as a bike accident thoughts on that bill i mean who hasn't stopped on the highway and put a poor dead bear cub in the back of one's van and then had a bike there by accident and decided after a long day of falconing i think think it was, and then going to Peter Luger, kind of the meat theme is very big in this RFK video, for a big steak dinner. It was too late for him to do whatever he intended to do with the bear cub and he had to get to the airport.
So he just, seeing his buddies, just did what you'd actually do in that circumstance, which is drop it in Central Park with a bike to make it look like a bike accident. Yeah, a couple extra fun want to share with people he puts his finger in the bear cub's mouth going to one of the pictures so i think we might have found out where his brain worms came from though it kind of seems like he might have had the brain worm before this event so i'm not sure about that i'm not a medical doctor and the other thing worth noting is that this happened in 2014 he's like 60 years old when this this happened.
This was not like, oh, I was 19 years old. We were in college.
You know, things got a little out of hand. He's a seasoned man when he decided to frame a bear cub attack in Central Park.
You know, 60-year-olds can have fun too, Tim. I know that's hard for you to believe in your youth.
No, I'm going to be having when i'm 60 i just hopefully you know judgment fun with judgment i assumed is what happens at age 60 not uh not to be pedantic but i don't know are you allowed to just put bear cubs and bikes and race an incredible a lot of police resources and stuff but you know just no it seems like that's sort of a problem right yeah he meant later in the video to Roseanne that he got worried because the police said they were fingerprinting the bike. Things are not going well for the RFK Jr.
campaign. He's down to like two or three percent in the polls.
And, you know, it was fun while it lasted. Do you think he gets out and endorses Trump? I kind of assume that's the case.
I just don't know that it matters anymore. I think it'd help Harris in the tiniest of margins if he got out.
You know, if it ends up being a thing where 8,000 votes matter one way or the other, it could matter, right? Because, you know, the issue was always with RFK is are the double haters who are traditionally Democrats going to go to him, particularly the let low info traditional Democrats? Are they going to go to him just as kind of like a F you to this race with these two old guys? his numbers have totally dissipated now that Harris has come into the race. All those people, nearly all of them have moved to Harris already, a few to Trump.
And so if he's at 3%, like it only really matters if it's a coin flip and it might be a coin flip. So maybe it'll matter.
Speaking of the polls, you have an exclusive in morning shots this morning from the UMass Amherst, the top line, I would say rational exuberance seeing the top line of this poll, but you have an exclusive in morning shots this morning from the umass amherst the top line i would say rational exuberance seeing the top line of this poll but you have found some reasons underneath to be a little concerned so tell us what you found in the in the latest umass amherst poll so i'm cheerful about this poll so they do polls every now and then the u.s amherst has a pretty sophisticated polling operation out of their political science department i think and this one this one's going to be released momentarily, I guess, today. In this respect, they're not that different from everyone else.
They had Trump about four points ahead of Biden in January. A little bit better news for Harris than maybe some of the other polls, which are more like plus one now, plus Harris, plus three nationally.
And this is a sophisticated, serious poll. So I see no reason to think that that isn't basically in the ballpark.
and it is consistent with other polls showing pretty significant movement to Harris. I mean, that is the bottom line.
It's unbelievable. It was only two weeks ago that Biden got two weeks plus one day ago that Biden got out.
And the big question, we discussed it, was everyone thought she would get some bomb, the relief of Biden being out. But would it dissipate? How big would it be? And would it dissipate? And it out to be pretty substantial.
I mean, she needs to carry it forward. But if she's really plus two or three, that's not nothing compared to where Biden was drifting down to what minus five, I'm going to say something like that.
So that's a seven point move and what had been a totally static race. I mean, that's almost totally static race.
That's really something. And then can she sustain it? And we don't know that, but there's not much evidence of it ebbing at this point so that's all very good news and when you get into the polls questions about issues and characteristics the striking things are that trump it's pretty predictable the harris wins on health care and reproductive rights and trump wins on immigration and crime kind of but trump's margins on immigration and crime are something like 53,

47. They're not what they need to be for Trump, I think, to really be clobbering Harris on the issues that are presumably his strongest.
And on the personal qualities, Harris does well on being a nice person and a decent person, but also close to Trump on strength and experience, actually. Yeah, I have it right here.
So strength, 54, 46 advantage for Trump. Patriotism, 52, 48.
And then to the key point that you got to, which is on who voters perceive as more moderate, Harris had a 57 to 43 point advantage. I think that's very noteworthy.
Yeah, and what we discussed a couple weeks ago, we go against Doug Sosnick and said this, that Trump people are going to really try, he was very worried that Trump people would really try and have some success in defining Harris as radical, as extreme, based on those clips of her in 2019.

That doesn't seem to have particularly worked yet.

Now, they have another two weeks and they have another two months to keep putting tens and hundreds of millions of dollars behind those clips.

I think Harris's momentum is just kind of overwhelmed it.

It's not that she's been,

but she's been pretty good on defense on some of these issues,

the border ad and stuff.

Weirdly, she's had so much momentum.

She almost hasn't had to play defense.

If I put on my gloomy little hat for a second,

I sort of worry they shouldn't over, you know,

at some point they are going to have to really play aggressive defense,

if I could put it that way, on some of these issues and neutralize them.

I don't think they're gone away just because they didn't work in the first two weeks. But no, no, it's a good news poll, no question about it.
Yeah, the counterpunching is going to have to continue to come like they did in the immigration ad. To me, it does tie to the serious part of the RFK thing.
The best case scenario for Harris, I think, in the first two weeks, which has come to pass, is that she just gobbles up all of the young voters and these voters of color, the working class, black and brown voters who have been traditionally Democrats that were unhappy. A vast majority of them have already coalesced back with Harris.
And her number now with black voters is almost at where Biden 2020 was and heading straight back to that number. And so that's happened.
Meanwhile, in the attributes, you had this kind of group of, can I say probably our people, a lot of the folks that were kind of, I wasn't holding my nose for Biden, but our people in the biggest sense, like the former Republicans, the Romney Biden voters that were holding their nose for Biden were not happy that he was running again. you know, you see now that they're approving in a large part of the candidate.
And you're seeing this in the numbers, right? Like where her numbers are improving on things like the economy, you know, that's because it's these types of like college educated voters that were probably going to vote for Biden anyway, now seem, you know, to, you know, fully have her backing as a preferable answer to Trump. So you go from there then into the persuasion, right? And I think that's where the big groups are going to be fought over.
To me, that's just such a much easier task for Democrats now when they don't have to worry so much about the activation side of things, right? If you can focus entirely on persuasion, that makes your job a lot easier than having to spend a lot of time making sure that people that are in your core groups are excited like that part has already i think basically been solved and i'm not sure there's anything that harris could do to change that at this point no in that respect having harris as the nominee as opposed to you know a competitive process that or an earlier biden withdrawal that might have produced a more moderate nominee whom I at one point would have, you know, might have preferred, in a way it helps because it's easier for her to soak up all the, as you say, the kind of base voters and almost all of them. And then if she can, you know, sort of fix the problems in 2019 and be aggressively moderate, if I can put it that way, on some key issues, you know, maybe she gets the best of both worlds.
Now, campaigns that should be persuading centrist voters, gettable centrist voters, don't always do that, right? And we have one instance here in real time, which is Donald J. Trump and J.D.
Vance, who seem to be cheerfully, you know, going further into the insanity of their base and not persuading, let's say, Georgians who might like Governor Kemp, which is a pretty large number of Georgians. So campaigns can do foolish things, but I hope very much all Paris stays on the path and goes for those voters.
And for me, the Shapiro pick as vice president would be very important. I want to get to the Kemp thing.
We have some audio from Trump's insane rally in Georgia. If people were enjoying their weekend and not watching that like I was suffering through, we'll play that for you here in a couple of minutes.
But let's just do the Harris VP side of things. You, as sort of a supplemental point to your newsletter about the good poll, sum things up pretty succinctly.
we're not tired of winning pick shapiro as i kind of the obvious choice here for the things that we

just discussed right that if harris has already coalesced the base, she's solved the enthusiasm problem. She's closed the enthusiasm gap between her and Trump.
Now do the pick that will help shore up the middle. And you seem to think that it's clearly Shapiro.
Yeah. Plus the Pennsylvania state-specific strength of Shapiro, the most important state.
You rarely get sort of a pick that fits, what do we call it, let's say, ideologically, and that fits generationally, and that also really appreciably increases your chance to win by far the most important swing state. To have all those things at once, it just seems to be kind of crazy not to go ahead with that.
I obviously agree. I have a newsletter that will be out by the time this podcast posts, and it addresses this question of Shapiro and divisiveness.
I think that the most legitimate case against Shapiro that I've heard, I mean, there's some people who just have legitimate ideological concerns and would rather the Democratic Party move to the left. That's a legitimate concern, but we're here talking politics right now, not ideology.
So on the political side, the most legitimate criticism of Shapiro that I've heard is when the vibes are this good, when the energy is this high for Harris, why risk it? Why mess with it by bringing something that's going to be divisive, that there are going to be elements of the left that don't like because of his position on vouchers or because of his comments about the pro-Palestinian protesters on campus or some of his past views. Some of these are kind of ridiculous, like people criticizing him for something he wrote in college.
But there might be this divisiveness that will arise based on kind of the Israel-Palestine issue and some of his other more moderate positions. And like, why do that? Why mess with a good thing? And why not just go with somebody that's not going to cause this internal divisiveness? And my response to that in the newsletter is basically, I just don't believe that that's like going to happen.
I think that it's a misunderstanding of what has united the Democrats around Harris. I think that Harris's performance has been a big part of it.
Harris being a woman has been a big part of it, that there's something to kind of get excited about, a generational shift as well. And the top of the ticket is what matters for that.
And the vast, vast majority of people who are not listening to this podcast or obsessing over politics on Twitter just are not going to change whether or not they're excited about this based on who the VP pick is. I don't really believe that.
I think that Beyonce gave Harris $4 million over the weekend, Charlie XCX, Kamala Bratzummer, Megan Thee Stallion was performing in Georgia. Are any of those people going to stop their outreach for harris because this is a vp picks college essay like no i just i think that it's too online and i think that the shapiro pick in the end if she has it has very little impact on the divide the side of things i think he helps with a small percentage of maybe pro-israel or whatever, pro-strong on national defense, foreign policy conservatives that are looking for an excuse.
That's not a ton of voters. I don't want to pretend like it is, but it's some.
He helps with some people in Pennsylvania who've come to judge him and know him and accept him as demonstrated by his poll numbers. They're 61% approval rating.
And maybe he costs some voters in Dearborn or on campus at ann arbor and like net net it's probably a help in pennsylvania maybe not in the other states and all the other candidates on the table are kind of net net neutral so after that long that long intro bill my main takeaway is like i just don't think this is as important as everybody thinks it is i think vibes are going to continue to be good. And I think that Shapiro is a small net advantage in a key state.
And like, that's what it comes down to. The only thing I'd add, be a little stronger maybe is, I think he's just a more talented politician than the others.
I mean, again, we don't have that much data, but we have his actual rating in Pennsylvania and his actual performance in 2022 compared to the others. The others are all good politicians.
They've won races in one or two cases in red states and in other cases in liberal states. But I think Buttigieg and Shapiro are just the best politicians, the most talented politicians of them.
And that could matter. We don't know.
It often doesn't matter. You go through September, October, there's one VP debate.
Maybe it's a neutral, it's a draw, and everyone forgets about them. I think that's the more likely outcome.
But the talent could matter a little bit. I'll just, you know, one brief autobiographical sort of moment on this.
Before you were born in 1980, I was a young conservative and a Reagan supporter, but I really loved Jack Kemp. I came to Reagan kind of through Kemp.
There's a lot of people, some people my age did, if you were sort of into politics, and Kemp was the forward-looking, optimistic, Republican, et cetera, but also quite hawkish on foreign policy, pro-human rights and democracy.

And there was talk in 1980 that Reagan could pick campuses running, made generational and other things.

And instead he took George H.W. Bush and he had defeated in the primary and who was, we all thought, a boring establishment, not a politician, in his politician in his case on like shapiro not a very successful politician in terms of elective office and there was some diminutive enthusiasm i mean not like for a week not for two months by october we were all back so we got it's got to be reagan we can't have carter you know and reagan the reagan revolution we got back into it i want to get to the bush thing just actually let's just pause right there for one second because this is basically a summation of what I wrote today, which is yeah, for a week or two there will be a handful of super engaged political nerds who wish it was Walls, or if it's the other way, wish it was Shapiro who are unhappy, who send some tweets, but by the time we get to Chicago or by the time Reagan got to the convention, were any of those people like, I'm not going because of George H.W.
Bush is too squishy. No, that's just not how this stuff works.
Yeah, there were a couple of sort of freakish types who ended up not supporting Reagan because they were like for Howard Phillips, all these characters in the past who were, you know, whose Reagan was too nice on immigration. Anyway, so there wasn't much of that but you know and reagan won big and it wouldn't have mattered having said that there was a moment there where john anderson was running as a third party candidate he was a respected modern republican i don't know the dynamic could have been a little different if he had not picked bush i would say if he had picked camp and they'd made a mistake then reagan launches his campaign in philadelphia mississippi didn he do that, which had been a site of terrible killing of the civil rights workers? And I don't know that he meant to do it there.
And I think he got sort of a pass on that. But if he didn't have the kind of moderates okay with the campaign, I think you're right that it probably doesn't matter.
But I think there's some risk of giving another opportunity, I'll put it this way, to the Trump campaign to say, look at this. He took this liberal governor of Minnesota, the state where all these riots happened in 2020, and where Kamala Harris had this bail plan.
Or I don't know what you really have it, but she promoted this bail plan to let out various criminals. And I don't know.
Could that catch on? Probably. It doesn't make much difference.
But could it stop her momentum some? Yes. Whereas I think Shapiro is just a win-win.
So I do think it's maybe a little more important in the moment, even though ultimately the election probably is what it is. I just want to be abundantly clear about what I'm arguing here, which is not that the VV pick could not matter at all.
Like it could. Certainly Shapiro could make a difference in Pennsylvania.
Certainly there could be some protests against him on campus and Michigan that create problems like and if this election ends up being a coin flip everything will matter my point is just to dismiss like the core arguments that you hear from people online to try to be a wet blanket on Shapiro is that the Shapiro pick will create this divisiveness within the Democratic Party and that you know people will be unhappy and that the vibes will no longer be good and it's just like nah like that's just not it like the vibes in chicago are going to be immaculate no matter who she picks then there's some other considerations at play with the vp but that actual mainstream democratic voters the democratic celebrities the democratic influence on tiktok the people that donating five bucks, like they're all going to be there. They're going to be there for whoever she picks because they're excited about her and the contrast with Donald Trump.
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Legends with a Z.com is legendary fun. Speaking of the vibes being bad, Donald Trump is in Georgia this weekend and what a split screen.
Credit to the Harris campaign. I don't know if this is intentional, but they put out Republicans for Harris, that coalition with our friend Adam Kinzinger and Olivia Troy and Joe Walsh, a bunch of people who've been on this podcast who officially endorsed Republicans for Harris.
They put out this press release announcing it the day after Trump just loses his mind at a rally in Georgia on the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and his wife. And so I think that was a smart strategic move.
But before I get your take on it, let's listen to Trump. He attacked Kemp times during this rally so here's here's just one of the clips but i got him by doing massive rallies and i really worked hard he's the most disloyal guy i think i've ever seen but think of the wife we can never repay you for what you've done sir life we could never won.
And now she said two weeks ago that I will not endorse him because he hasn't earned my end.

I haven't earned her endorsement.

I have nothing to do with her.

Somewhere he went bad.

And you know what?

Your numbers in Georgia are very average.

Your crime numbers, your economic numbers, all of your numbers, you're very average.

You can do a lot better, and you'll do a lot better with a better governor.

Bill?

I mean, he got reelected very easily in 2022 after Trump had lost the state in 2020 and

caused them to lose both Senate races on January 5th, 2021.

Decrushed the candidate Trump put up against him in the primary by, what, 50 points or something so that's among republicans right that was not getting a lot of democratic votes so it's all kind of amazing you go into a state you have to win or it'd be very very convenient for you to win with a popular republican governor and you attack the republican governor and his wife just for you know and his wife kind of in a gross way with a gross tone just when you think about this sort of stuff you think about the in the republicans for harris context i don't know does that nudge a couple of those georgia people to just go ahead and sign up i think that there's an electoral problem of this i just as a strategic point how stupid is it you're in georgia you have marjorie taylor green speaking we're talking about how harris is like should you go for shapiro or someone slightly more moderate like bashear or you know what i mean you're having this vp contacts trump is saying no the conservative governor who's popular is not welcome here and his wife i find disgusting right like i'm going to personally attack the wife meanwhile marjorie taylor green the insane conspiracy theorist is speaking at the event like sending this complete message that you're not interested in the georgia suburbs red dog voters that are going to be so important in in that state you have the lieutenant governor jeff duncan that was already included on this republicans for harris rollout you know there are a bunch of local georgia republicans who are in the duncan kemp mold there's like trump just being an asshole to marty kemp nudge a of them? I don't think that's crazy to think.

No, I think totally.

And I was just thinking as you spoke, I'm really focused on this.

So Trump's assassination attempt was July 13th, I think, right?

Right before the Republican Convention.

Until that point.

July 13th of 2024?

Was that just last three weeks ago?

I mean, it's less than a month ago.

Got it.

So until that point, the Trump campaign had done a very good job. trump had been done a pretty good job of being disciplined for trump on the massive trump curve yeah not crazy he was running ahead of biden uh we didn't know about harris at that point so he was ahead in the race if you think about the three weeks since then you've got to think about harris's extremely good two weeks but think about but trump also trump the pick of vance the convention speech the way in which he and vance have both campaigned sort of doubling down basically on the worst aspects of their own record and characters i would say for these three weeks i mean it's rare in politics you get the combination right trump fans doing as badly as they could do i'm almost going to say and harris doing as well as she could do in the same time frame and in the time frame when everyone's paying attention because everything's been shaken up and you've had a assassination attempt a convention of withdrawal and a new candidate and now we're gonna have a vp tomorrow historians will look at these three or four weeks and say whoa that's very unusual very unusual moment of, you know, whatever.
For sure. No, a MAGA account that I follow, like not one of our former crusty Republican times, like a pro-Trump MAGA account that I follow posted this the other day.
I thought it was very telling. And this was in a criticism of Trump strategists.
Like, so the motivation here is to go after a loss of Eden Wiles and say that they've messed this up but there's a picture of the Trump post-assassination attempt bloody ear fist in the air and then a picture of the polls going inverted in the three weeks since then with just the comment of like the last three weeks of campaign choices by the Trump campaign has been the biggest self-own and potentially you know his political life I wouldn't say that because I would say you know, January 6th, when he was out there, but like just, just looking at it from the MAGA perspective of we want to win just like a disastrous strategic three weeks for him. Now, you know, it's still a close race, unfortunately, but.
Well, that's the, yeah. I mean, Harris should, if JBL were here, he would sayris should be ahead by 15 points and that's probably true but that's not quite the country we live in so same event i got in some trouble this weekend on the internet bill i don't know if you saw this because i i criticized this comment from jd vance and the mega people are are really really pissed at me so let's listen to jd first and and then we'll let you kind of be the judge of whether I was in the right here

or whether libs of TikTok and Wokeness

and Donald Trump Jr. are in the right.

We'll let you kind of be the determining factor here.

Let's listen to JD Vance.

Remember, eight years ago,

Donald Trump had everything.

Fame, fortune, family, friends.

He gave up the easy lives so that we could get our country back. He traded everything he had for unjust persecution, for slander and scorn from the fake news, all for this country, for you and me.
They couldn't beat They couldn't beat him politically, so they tried to bankrupt him. They failed at that, so they tried to impeach him.
They failed at that, so they tried to put him in prison. They even tried to kill him.
They even tried to kill him. I sent out that this was a pernicious, disgusting lie and that J.D.
Vance should stop saying that. They even tried to kill him.
The Trump defenders then said that I'm like a conspiracy theorist or something and saying that that's true. They did try to kill him.
Let's say you. Did they try to kill Donald Trump? No, of course not.
Didn't Vance say that that night? He was one of the first to get out there. And I think some of us, some people thought at the time gee that's that's so unbelievably irresponsible before you know anything to say that this is the left is he said the biden campaign had helped cause this because of their overheated rhetoric against trump and we all said that's so responsible then i'm for about 24 hours i one thought that's going to hurt him in the vice presidential pick because you know why would trump want to pick someone who said something so manifestly irresponsible and dangerous i would almost say really dangerous of course trump picked him and now vance has decided to just keep on saying it something i saw over the weekend do the trump also has decided to try to play the assassinate he didn't get enough benefit out of the assassination attempt that he's sort of playing the assassination card again that he wasn't am i making that up i think i saw something no no he's been he's kind of doing been starting to lean back into it he said at the convention that this was going to be the last time that he talked about it and uh he's been bringing it back

up in his speeches on truth social yes the day though is like it's extremely they didn't thomas

he he tried to kill him one troubled young man who i guess apparently looked to see where those

events were for lots of different people like who knows what is in this man's young man's mind

to kill him one troubled young man who i guess apparently looked to see where those events were for lots of different people like who knows what is in this man's young man's mind but he with an ar and with bullets that he was able to buy under age tried to kill him like that's what happened and jd is clearly like trying to rile up and radicalize the audience and making it seem like it was part of some plot that's just so irresponsible they is really just the classic device i think yeah of the totally irresponsible demagogue and conspiracy theorist actually right it's if you push him what's the they well who know i mean i've been sort of struck you know i don't quite follow these magi accounts as much as you but i mean when i occasionally stumble across one i've been struck how much stuff there is about how it was kind of a plot and the secret sir can't be an accident that the secret service didn't see the guy on the roof and there's even something kind of totally crazy about cnn doesn't usually take trump rallies but they took this one because they want i mean i can't even follow it but and i don't think it's very followable because it's not reasonable or certainly not true.

But I'm sort of struck why I'm struck at this date. But the conspiracy theorizing goes very deep in Trump circles and not just on the extremes.
I think that's what Vance. I mean, Vance is the VP nominee and there he is, right? On stage.
Yeah, no, it's the dangerous part of this. It's just so important.
it's like even if and i think it's more but even if only one percent even if only 0.1 percent of the people listening like take that seriously and they're like no they tried to kill him and you know trump's like i am your retribution right it just doesn't take very far to imagine somebody that is unstable being radicalized by this type of rhetoric and responsible politicians in both parties for our entire lives would have tried to tamp down something like this and did you know in the case of reagan and ford and the kennedys right like they did try to tamp down this stuff you did not see this type of rhetoric you know ted kennedy whole career wasn't out there saying the conservatives tried to kill my brother you know like it was unthinkable you know it is i was just thinking as you spoke i mean even papi cat in a way did not like do not like fought against in the 90s and etc is a demagogue in my view and very there's very dangerous views for the country and so forth but even he he wouldn't do that you know what i mean i mean he's a very bad in many ways in terms of his whipping up people against immigration and his nativism and all that. But he wouldn't do that kind of next step of they tried to do this.
I mean, that's, you have to go pretty far into conspiracy swamps to get to that. And, you know, that is kind of a John Birch Society level, I would say.
And there's J.D. Vance, as you say, from the stage, I guess where they kind of prepared remarks, it seemed like.
Yeah, no intro that was his intro to trump that was not just like him riffing that was because he did a long intro speech one of my other favorite lines from that was when he's talking about the days obama said that we cling to our guns and our religion hillary called us deplorables and i kind of wanted to intervene there and say no actually he didn, Hillary didn't call us deplorables. He's having trouble with his pronouns in these speeches.
She didn't call us deplorables. She called them deplorables.
JD was on Hillary's side back in 2016. You weren't part of the deplorable.
You might be now, but you weren't deplorable then. But yeah, no.
And so then he leaves the stage, comes back out and does like that what we played that like 45 second intro you know to bring donald trump up onto the stage yeah no it's it is on the teleprompter was not a riff legends the greatest social casino and sportsbook experience has arrived at legends.com with thousands of the best free-to-play casino style games chances to earn millions of bonus coins and win real money legends is revolutionizing the vegas experience wherever you are if you love winning then you'll love playing at legendz.com legends is a free-to-play social casino void we're prohibited to play responsibly visit legends.com for more information legends with a legendary fun. One other weird J.D.
Vance thing while we're doing weird J.D. Vance things.
We've done some interviews with Peter Thiel in the past. I think that this is important to just not ignore how radicalized these folks are.
Now that Thiel has his chosen VP candidate on the ticket, now that Trump has clearly pivoted that if he gets back in it will be more towards the teal kind of a worldview here's audio that people are sharing this weekend of teal in an interview at george mason recently i don't think we're ever in a cyclical world but there are certainly certain parallels in the u.s in the 2020s to germany in the 1920s where you know you know, liberalism is exhausted one suspects that democracy whatever that means is exhausted and um and uh you know that that uh we have to ask some questions very far outside the overton window huh is peter thiel hitler what is happening it's like Germany is in the 1920s democracy is exhausted whatever that means i don't mean i don't know what democracy means it's a complex term and so we need to think about some things outside the box it's just a very dark place that these guys have gotten yeah i mean we well we need to ask questions it's sort of isn't that don't we always make fun of that it's the classic dodge of people who don't want to quite take responsibility for what they're saying i mean yeah but it is you're right it's not as if we're talking about a hypothetical situation where let's just say liberalism is is maybe a little exhausted and democracy is stumbling and we don't quite know what we have to think more broadly about possible futures that's one thing to say and then you could be going to a possible future that maybe you and i wouldn't like but that is still within the bounds of decency and the rule of law and so to speak. We know what the future for Germany was, right? So why do you bring that up as your example? It's usually brought up the other way as the example of how horrible everything can go when you walk away from liberal democracy.
Right. My new Peter, I haven't seen him in a whole bunch of years.
I was actually reading groups with him and stuff.

He's a very smart guy, and unfortunately, it's a good example that you can be very intelligent and very intellectual,

and it doesn't save you from the temptation of very irresponsible extremism.

Some of the greatest artists and thinkers in Europe in the 20s and 30s went down that path,

and I don't know that Peter's quite like them, but he's a very intelligent guy,

and unfortunately, the intelligence is now in the service of really a dark view of the world, I'm afraid. Sometimes, yeah, that you're too intelligent for your own good.
Like you feel like you need to come up with some outside of the Overton window, outside of the box solution. When it's like, this is the thing that just flummoxes me about this whole thing.
Like Peter Thiel is living, you know, the top 0.0000001% most blessed life of anyone in the history of the world. He can do whatever he wants.
He has, he's married to a man. He's been able to adopt kids and also have, you know, pool parties with shirtless young people that get to come over because he's rich and he has a fancy house.
He has houses on different continents. He's had a place in New Zealand.
What are these guys talking about that democracy is exhausted? The premise is also just silly. He's living in a country which is personal, the fact that he's gay, I'll say this to you, you'll understand the spirit in which I say this, which is he's benefited from liberalism in the last 50 years right right he couldn't be having as happy a life if he had lived in the america of 50 years ago and he couldn't be having as happy a life i mean goes that saying if you lived in in the post weimar post decadent liberal democratic germany which was not friendly to people like peter thiel among many many other groups it wasn't wasn't, it was horrible, horribly unfriendly too.
So, so what, he just gets to assume that he gets a kind of fascism or dictatorship that's friendly to his particular minority, you know, characteristics. I don't think that's very, I mean, obviously it's not prudent.
In a certain way, it's almost not serious, right? I mean, but. It is not serious.
It's ridiculous like the democracy if it wasn't for donald trump democracy is like working fine in america it's not as if there's some huge so i'm saying with polis when you're in colorado i'm driving around with jared polis went to a couple events before our event and it's like the notion that democracy is is on the wane in colorado and there's this huge crack-up happening.

It's insane if you're driving around in the car

with Jared Polis.

We're going to a gay pride event.

He's calling the Republican legislators on the phone.

They're doing bipartisan work.

People in Denver can go skiing,

can be happy, can be merry.

It's not like Weimar, Germany, in this country right now if you just have responsible people in charge and weimar germany it wasn't like weimar germany if i can put it this way i mean it's sort of a bum rap i think the term weimar republic was used first used by hitler and speaking of hitler in 29 i don't think that i mean that was not what they called themselves so to speak in the 20s anyway they had a great they were staggering along a stag was. They were doing their best to make democracy work in a country that hadn't been very friendly to it and that had lost a terrible war, which they mostly initiated, but they had reparations, so they had huge burdens on them.
Then there's the Great Depression, which they get clobbered by like everyone else does, but they don't have the resilience. The responsible attitude towards that is what could have been done to strengthen the democracy democracy and what could we have done incidentally to help them? There were things we didn't do in 1929, 30, 31, forgiving reparations payments that would have actually, I'd have staved off the horrible future they had for them.
But Peter Thiel's attitude is to sort of relish the weaknesses or failures of German democracy in the 20s and early 30s, even leaving aside sort of your other point, which is also correct that we're not like that yeah sure it wasn't like the way you think in your imagination too that's a fair it's a fair correction of what i was trying to say right like it wasn't it wasn't even like weimar germany was like a you know apocalyptic hellscape either right but the responsible thing to say is well how do we strengthen democracies in certain ways and he's not interested and that's most striking. He's just not interested in that.
There are people who are not where we are, I'd say, who probably in good faith, sort of, are sort of, I'm for strengthening liberalism and democracy. And that's why I'm a little more open to some of what Trump is saying.
I don't really take that in good faith usually, but I can sort of see how people got suckered a little in that direction, or at least they can be vaguely suckered in, let's say, DeSantis or Tim Scott or something direction, right? But that is not where Thiel is. And really, it's certainly not where J.D.
Vance is. Trump doesn't have any really settled views, but he's certainly willing to more than go along with that to really encourage that kind of wild irresponsibility, not even like medium level irresponsibility.
That's why I think it's important to talk about, important to play these quotes for people, because JD and Teal, it's just way out of step with folks. I think there's a category of person who's just not engaged with what is happening in as obsessive a way as some of us.
It relates really to the VP conversation, like doesn't realize just how weird and extreme. That's why the weird thing works, how weird and folks views are you know if you stopped into a random dinner party a random barbecue a random fish fry anywhere in this country and we're like hey here's what the vp candidate and his intellectuals are saying they think that we're on the cusp of nazi like most sane people would look at that and say okay i think that uh everybody's got Concerns, though, about what could happen that could allow demagogues to work would be a market crash between now and the election.
We've had a market sell-off over the past two days, Friday and now today. Joe Weisenthal is good on this.
I'll put a link to his thread in the show notes here. 10 thoughts on today's big market sell-off.
He's really good on these topics uh the main thing that he writes that overlaps with the political world is that powell was out of step with kind of where things are in the decision to you know kind of basically signal that there weren't going to be rate cuts this year uh during the last uh during the last meeting so i don't know if you have any thoughts on on powell or rate cuts or the stock market sell-off and how that might intersect with what's happened in the election i just have a couple of quick thoughts i think he will cut rates now maybe should do so more in a more urgent way they never want to look panicked the fed but maybe it's worth it if the markets are panicked to unpanic them by showing a little more flexibility and speed and moving to cut rates than he has shown. So that would, I think, be good.

It's hard to tell if there's just a big market sell-off, a little drama, and then it stabilizes again. It's still up a lot in the Biden years, obviously.
But the other point I'd make is, it does probably mean that Harris should focus a little more on her economic message, but not, I'd say, particularly defending the Biden years, which she has to do that as well. But Trump has proposed literally the economic program that would turn a stock market sell-off and maybe even a mild recession into possibly a much deeper recession or depression, based, again, if we can go back to the 30s on the actual economic policies then, which is tariffs, which would lead to retaliatory tariffs, which really would do damage to the economy.
And Vance Cavalilli said the other day, it's not worth losing one manufacturing job just so a million people can buy cheaper knockoff toasters. Well, leave aside toasters for a minute.
That's literally an insane statement. I mean, Americans can save a lot of money on buying imported goods, keeps inflation down incidentally, and we export a ton of goods.
And that's good for the American economy. And I think making that point in a more general sense, but then really going after the tariffs, because that you can put a number on.
If you have a 10% tariff on X, defer to the economists on this, but basically the price of these things is going to go up 10%. There are an awful lot of things Americans buy that are partly foreign labor, or some of them are just imported, and that will be damaging to the economy.
So I think getting a more aggressive economic message focused on trump's totally crazy kind of protectionist message would be a good idea all right i want to close with this because it's cute and uplifting you posted an old interview you did with joe lieberman before he passed where he was reflecting on his vp choice and being a jewish vice presidential nominee let's listen to uh your discussion with Lieberman. I'll tell you a quick story.
We had a lovely dinner, the Gore family and my family. And Al Gore said at that dinner, he said, I want you to know that I decided two weeks ago that I wanted you to be my running mate.
But I really thought it would be irresponsible for me to try to talk to some other people about whether they thought America was ready for a Jewish vice president, the proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency. So I always wondered whether Al did a poll.
I think if I were him, I would have done a poll, but he said he called a number of friends. And he said to me, I called a number of my Jewish friends, and I called a number of my Christian friends.
And here was what I found. Most of the Jews were extremely anxious and uncertain about the reaction to your nomination.
He said, every Christian friend I called said there'd be no problem. So then with a little bit of gore humor, which people don't remember sometimes, he said, so, since I know that there are so many millions more christians in america than jews i decided i could choose you bill i love this a because it's cute of joe but b because i've had this experience over the last three weeks where my aunt who's black was really worried about kamala yeah and has now come around i got a text from her the other day it's like okay she's good she's good.
She's good. I was just nervous.
The people were going to be doing me and her. My husband is nervous about Kamala picking Pete because of the gay stuff, very attuned to that.
Several Jewish people in my life, very concerned about Shapiro. It's like the Lieberman, the gore experience is very in line with kind of what we're seeing now.
There's something about human nature. Yeah, and people should have, Lieberman took the lesson from this, he says, later in the interview.
His faith in America, he felt, was justified. And his wife, Hadassah, spoke with this very movingly as a Holocaust survivor, child of Holocaust survivors, I should say.
So I think we should have more faith in America sometimes. And I probably should need to take that lesson myself, since I occasionally get slightly more worried than I should be about things, I suppose.
Believe in America. That's a flashback from a campaign that lost but was well-intentioned in 2012.
Let's believe in America. Bill Kristol, appreciate you.
We'll be seeing you next Monday. We'll have a VP selection by then.
I'll be back tomorrow with Congressman Adam Schiff, and maybe it'll be a doubleheader too. We'll see.
See y'all then. Peace.
There's a bear inside your stomach. A cup's been kicking from within.
He's loud though without vocal cords. We'll put an end to him.
We'll make all the right appointments. No one ever has to know.
And then tomorrow we'll turn 21 We'll script another show We'll play charades up in the Chelsea Drink champagne, although you shouldn't be We'll be blind and dumb until we fall asleep None of our friends will come They dodge our calls And they have for quite a while now

It's not a shock you don't seem to mind

And I just can't see how

We're too late

But I'm all alone

Just too late Oh We're not born Just taking me home We're not born The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. L-E-T-E-N-D-Z.
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