Bill Kristol: Not Resigned to a Trump Presidency

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
We're back. It's Monday.
We're with Bill Kristol. Before we get to Bill, I just want to provide some updates about things that we've learned since taping yesterday's weekend show with Sam Stein following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
Regarding the shooter first, we still don't know a whole lot. One classmate said that he was very conservative when they were discussing political issues in class.
Others said he was bullied. Several remember that he was rejected from the school's rifle club for being a really bad shot and also making some concerning jokes.
He wore a t-shirt of Demolition Ranch, a popular gun YouTube site to the event in Pennsylvania. He had explosives in his car, rudimentary explosives, authority said.
The weapon was purchased by his father, still no known manifesto or motive. Also, more evidence of security failures continue to pile up.
There are videos of people shouting about the shooter for minutes while he's on the roof. A cop engaged him on the roof, but then backed off before he fired into the rally.
We've also had an Oval Office address from the president. Trump gave an interview to Selena Zito.
And on top of all that, Judge Eileen Cannon has dismissed the documents case in Florida. So, Bill Kristol, where do you want to start? I don't know.
Black despair? Actually, I think I wrote my piece today. It was against despair.
So, we shouldn't start in despair. Yeah, against despair.
Let's not start at despair. Let's start here.
Sam and I, you know, were discussing yesterday, and I think spent a fair amount of the time in a measured way, you know, just talking about the overheated rhetoric that we have in our politics right now, the apocalyptic rhetoric that we have. And, you know, we discussed, you know, all the various people that are responsible for that, including President Trump, as was exacerbated, frankly, in a lot of ways.
I come today, like with another 24 hours of sleeping on it. And while I still think that's an important topic for everybody to self-reflect on we still don't know anything like there's no real evidence you know based on what i just laid out there that this murderer was influenced by any of that like we just we don't actually know anything yet and so i do wonder kind of what you think about that whole how you know that has really kind of dominated the fallout and that topic has dominated over the past 48 hours yeah i mean in a way why shouldn't we assume as a first approximation at least that he's like one of these terrible school shooters murderers who are often disturbed and don't have sometimes they have i guess you could say political attitudes but mostly they don't seem to.
So I very much agree that this notion that this tells us a one-person disturbed 20-year-old about whom we have no evidence that he was particularly political or motivated by rhetoric of the extreme left or, for that matter, of the right, of Trump, why assume that this tells us that much about our political culture? I mean, having said that, obviously, we have a lot of rhetoric floating around that shouldn't be. And obviously, the bulk of it is due to the right, not to the left, in this current moment in American politics.
And the bulk of it is due to Donald J. Trump.
And I myself was reticent to sort of say this in our internal discussions, as you know, I think I was right. And we sort of all decided to be restrained yesterday and not to spend, you know, four hours after an assassination attempt against him.
And I'm glad he's well. And I'm very sorry that obviously someone at the rally died and two others are very badly injured.
But I mean, I think it's wise to hold off for a bit in saying something, even if it's true. But the truth is Donald J.
Trump has been the main purveyor of extreme and violence-friendly rhetoric into the American mainstream. Yeah, there's something kind of solipsistic about the media class, the media immediately going to.
Maybe this was about us, because maybe it was. Who knows? Maybe it wasn't.
There's still a lot we don't know. And that was something something i tried to emphasize with sam but i just think i want to put a finer point on it today i mean to this question of rhetoric and responsibility you know i think that we can all say what is still true today based on what we know is that the apocalyptic rhetoric the dehumanization of political opponents is out of control.
And there are many, many, many people in public life for whom, you know, maybe a little reflection on that point is in order, including us and our colleagues at times. Trump, though, like put that on hyperdrive, like this type of dehumanizing rhetoric and apocalyptic rhetoric like was not really nearly as common in our political discourse in 2014 as it is now and um the killer may or may not have been impacted by any of that right like all three of those things can be true right and i think that that's sometimes hard to say without you know you don't want to feel like you're not meeting the moment, right? Like not being appropriate for the conditions.
But like, those are all statements of fact, as we sit here on Monday at 9.09 a.m. 10.09 a.m.
on the east here for, you know, the Ocelot Carter, the real time zone of America, you know, I have to insist on that. No, you're absolutely right, obviously.
And look, none of us has said that Donald Trump was in any way, was responsible for this 20-year-old doing what he did. Maybe some people have.
There's been some attempt to say that. But none of us knows that.
And none of us at the Bulwark, I don't believe, have said that. But J.D.
Vance took, you know, two hours before saying that this is due to the Biden campaign, not even incidentally to some far left types who undoubtedly are involved in incendiary rhetoric, not that there's any reason to think this young man knew about them or anything, but the Biden campaign. I mean, how unbelievably irresponsible is that? And just to put a finer point on your fine point, I mean, Trump is not just another player in this.
He's the nominee of one of our two major parties now for a third time. He was president of the United States for four years.
The effect his violence-friendly incendiary rhetoric has is just in a different scale than a random backbench member of Congress, a local radio talk show host, I mean, whatever. be everyone should be held accountable for whatever he or she says including us and including people in the media but trump is not just you know gee there are like 14 people or 140 people in america who are kind of irresponsible one of them just happens to be this guy donald j trump that is not the world we're living in this guy spent four years as president of the united states in a way that no previous president in our time, or maybe any time, has done.
And it's only in a way that no previous candidate in our time or any time, presidential candidate, has done in incredibly irresponsible and violence-adjacent, let's call it, rhetoric. So, I mean, I have no problem, as you say, saying two things.
We don't blame Trump for what happened Saturday night, and I'm glad he's well and so forth. Very sorry for what happened.
But on the other hand, we need to tell the truth about his role in the last decade in American politics. You know, we've all been here before.
This morning, Axios is out with a just absurd story. I don't really like to do media criticism on here, but just a totally preposterous story about how Trump could unify America and we're going to have a new Trump now that's based basically on nothing, I guess, except for that Trump told Selena Zito in an interview that he's rewriting his convention speech and he's planning to give a unifying speech.
And I went back, we've through this so many times and i wrote an article after the shooting in el paso in 2019 this was august of 2019 and um if you don't remember um there was a mass murder at a walmart in el paso 22 died and you know there was a moment then where you know kelly and conway and people around Trump were talking about how like this is not a moment to point fingers.

This is a moment for unity. And we need to come together.
You know, I wrote at the time just all these series of things. So I was like, that's a great notion.
If Donald Trump's going to do that, like, that's good. Okay.
Like, everybody should dial it back. but like these empty calls for unity from somebody that has been the leading cause of divisiveness without any acknowledgement of responsibility is just hollow.
Like, it's just BS. And I listed all the things that he did, all his incitements to violence in this article.
We'll put it in the show notes. But there were some, rereading it now, I didn't't even remember like apparently he made a joke in pensacola about people in the panhandle murdering immigrants i'd forgotten that some guy shouted at him from the crowd we should shoot the migrants and trump started laughing and saying yeah only in pensacola can you get away with that so you know when you say that he has engaged in some violent adjacent rhetoric like pretty straight on violent rhetoric actually he's engaged and i mean there are many other examples but that was just one that struck me as i was scrolling through the article i mean the if i recall correctly the the shooter and that horrible the mass murder in el paso had a manifesto that was did not reference trump to my knowledge but reference certainly right-wing anti-immigrant and replace theories and literary you know and literature so if i can use that term loosely the shooter in the synagogue in pittsburgh a year before that uh similarly uh you know so there is plenty of actual empirical evidence that stuff that is one tick to the right of trump two ticks maybe one tick to the right of some of the Republicans in Congress, on the other hand, zero ticks to the right of some of the people speaking at the Republican convention this week or moving in Republican circles has led to mass violence.
I mean, this is, so again, it's not as if, you know, gee, it's just kind of climate, just kind of, you know, it's like climate change. It just happens, you know, and there's this bad climate in American politics.
And some of that is true because of bigger socioeconomic trends and social media and all that. I'll stipulate that.
But an awful lot of it is due to one man and one movement, let's call it, or different parts of that movement. It's always good to just reflect on this stuff and think about it.
What do you make of the criticism that if you say that there's going to be no more elections, if you say that dictatorship is coming, if you say that fascism is coming, then crazy people out there are going to feel like they need to take that into their own hands. And that maybe there's some reflection needed on that type of rhetoric coming from the left.
What do you make of that critique? I think some reflection is always needed, especially when one's making a strong claim about a political opponent. I think a lot of us have reflected and tried to be clear when we say that, that we say pretty soon after the next sentence that therefore we need to really mobilize peacefully and defeat him electorally in 2024, or we said the same thing in 2020 or in 2016.
And there was not a whole lot of left-wing violence that I'm aware of after Donald Trump won in 2016. And he won the nomination this time, which puts him in, you know, with some reasonable chance of becoming the next next president and there weren't a lot of left-wingers saying okay to the streets to disrupt the republican convention i mean it's just you can take one sentence and say well if you take this you know i suppose seriously it could induce someone to violence and i hope it doesn't and we should all be try to be careful that it doesn't and deplore and tell people they shouldn't

act violently but we've all done that many times and again just empirically where are the people acting violently because of joe biden's rhetoric who has cited joe biden as they went to a maga rally and god forbid you know tried to beat up someone or something like that let alone shoot someone it just it hasn't happened it hasn't happened because it's not actually an incit to violence. And Trump's and the right-wing rhetoric that's adjacent to Trump is an incitement to violence.
Part of the reason that nobody's responding that way to Joe Biden's rhetoric is the nature of Joe Biden's rhetoric. So he gave a speech last night in the Oval Office.
You know, that was fine. It was okay.
He had a couple of stumblesumbles a really unfortunate one saying that we'd solve these things at the battle box he said that twice instead of ballot box the idea was fine the rhetoric was fine i will say that you know when sam and i were talking yesterday you know we were talking about how challenging of a moment this is for democrats and i do think it is challenging like i that they have to be critical and call out, as you wrote in the newsletter, these bad faith, absurd attacks from the right and the lies, and they have to continue to do that. But there is an obligation to reach out to any people in red America that will reach back, right? And to signal that you're trying to unify and they're actually putting effort to it, that you're genuine about that.
And, you know, that's something that Obama for all his flaws was pretty good at. And that Joe Biden at one time was pretty good at.
And I don't know, I'm not sure he really, he really nailed that last night, but what were your impressions? I mean, I thought the text of the speech is fine and indeed admirable, really. He's just not up to giving it powerfully.
And he's not up to convincing people, I think, that he could do this for four more years. And therefore, he should step aside, as I've said, over and over.
And don't need to litigate that today. But I think that's the problem.
It's not that he doesn't believe in unity and in decency. And it's not that he doesn't say those words and sentences, you know, as he should.
But you mentioned this, I mentioned this in this morning's letter. Many, many people have mentioned this, the contrast between him and Josh Shapiro, who spoke in Pennsylvania, the governor of Pennsylvania, who spoke yesterday as well, a few hours before President Biden, standing at a microphone, paying tribute to the man who was killed at the rally, making a call, his own call for unity in his state and in the nation.
Just the contrast is so startling, you know? Let's listen to Shapiro. And I think this is, just before we play it, one thing I wish I had thought of yesterday when we were talking about the podcast is, like, one idea to demonstrate this genuine commitment to unity, to putting out an olive branch, would be the president, who has been a marvelous eulogizer at times, to offer to eulogize the man who was murdered at that rally.

Now, maybe they wouldn't want President Biden there.

Maybe they wouldn't want to politicize the funeral or whatever.

But making that offer or offering a pay-in to him, I think would be a good

first step. Here's how Josh Shapiro handled that off the cuff in a press conference.
We lost a fellow Pennsylvanian last night, Corey Comprator. I just spoke to Corey's wife and Corey's two daughters.

Corey was a girl dad.

Corey was a firefighter. Cory went to church every Sunday.
Cory loved his community. And most especially, Cory loved his family.
Cory was an avid supporter of the former president and was so excited to be there last night with him in the community. I asked Corey's wife if it would be okay for me to share that we spoke.
She said yes. She also asked that I share with all of you that Corey died a hero.
That Corey dove on his family to protect them last night at this rally. Corey was the very best of us.
May his memory be a blessing. And that's pretty wonderful, you know, humanizing a political opponent, humanizing and just speaking extemporaneously about there is no animus about the idea that this person loved president trump but that's good like that's okay in america that we can have political opponents who are passionate and you know we can disagree and we can be you know in the arena together and have it not be something that is violent or cruel or negative and you know i think that the governor's remarks there were absolutely spot on and reflective of why he's so popular you know i i was moved by governor shapiro's remarks i i did think as i i happened to see it live so i was watching tv that leave aside trump and biden you know but okay you know there are two political parties one has a rising star jd vance the other has a rising star josh shapiro i am proud to be with josh shapiro as a human matter not even just as you say as a kind of policy matter or because they have different views on tax policy or something like that josh shapiro behaved there it stood up there like a decent human being and a good public servant and jd vance has behaved in the last 48 hours and unfortunately times before that as well not as that so i know that you said that we're not uh we're not going to do the uh the biden step aside thing for now but i have one point that i want to make about this.
Maybe I have two points, actually. You know, it's my podcast.
Here's my problem as it relates to the Trump question about pivoting to unity and the Biden question about whether Biden is up for this campaign. There's no parallels to me between those two men and how they act and what kind of leaders they are policies but like in this one sense there's this cable news like environment that like i'm a cable news contributor so i contribute to it right where you have to analyze every moment right and you have to analyze like well you know was trump's speech 10 percent more presidential than the speech before and you know as was joe biden's oval office address 10 percent more vigorous than the speech before.
And, you know, as was Joe Biden's Oval Office address, 10% more vigorous than the speech before. I think that myself and many people in America have come to a conclusion already about the men.
And like, they've been in public life for a very long time. And the conclusion about Donald Trump is that he is a cruel asshole that does not actually care about anybody besides himself.
And so if he does a good job pretending to for a day or two, that's nice. But like, we shouldn't, that shouldn't change your views of him as a person fundamentally.
And I feel kind of the same way about the Biden age question. It's like, if you've demonstrated that you can't do the job of standing toe to toe with Trump in this crucial election, that's kind of like, what does it matter? Like whether you're a little bit better, a little bit worse day to day, the microscopic analyzing of this stuff seems to kind of miss the forest for the trees for me a little bit.
Totally agree. I mean, and look, I saw Biden, what he spoke three times this weekend, I agreed with his sentiments and the plot is sentiments really each time.
But he's not the best opponent to Trump. He's not the best spokesman for his party.
He's not the best spokesman for the broader cause, I'd say, at this point. And not only not the best, but he's a very halting one.
This is a frustrating thing. There's this Axios story, maybe we can or some blind senior Democrat.
I've got some people in my mentions when I tweeted this, some progressive folks, some pro-Biden folks saying, this is fake news. I'm like, whoa, that sounds a little familiar.
Let me tell you, if an Axios reporter quotes a senior Democrat, it's a senior Democrat. I've had a lot of complaints with Axios.
Their article today about Trump is absurd, but they don't do fake quotes. A senior Democrat saying that they have come to terms with Trump, basically echoing what Ezra Klein said on this podcast last week.
And I find that so outrageous and so offensive and pathetic and embarrassing. I understand the sentiment of feeling like after that debate and after, you know, Donald Trump and having this iconic image of him, like holding his fist up in the air with a bloody ear that like it might feel that we are in an inexorable path to Trump 2.0.
Like we're not, there's three and a half months left. Donald Trump has still has a lot of flaws.
There's no reason to not like Donald Trump. A lot of people out there still do not prefer him as the president.
If you gave them an alternative And like this notion that we now, because of what happened last weekend, have to just silently continue down a path to defeat with somebody that nobody in private on the Democratic side thinks can win is absurd. Like we're in unprecedented times.
We had a man with Hussein as his middle name become the first black president and then a reality show has become a president like why not try to mix it up and offer somebody that could speak like josh sapiro does to our better angels and maybe offer a refreshing change anyway that's my joe biden anyway i agree it's an uphill struggle, but that just means you struggle hard and maybe struggle in some new ways. You rethink some of the people you've been using, if I can put it that way, who've been leading you in the struggle or whatever.
But absolutely, it's pathetic. And I don't know who the senior House Democrat is, but I agree with you.
It's a real quote and a very distressing one. You know, interestingly, I haven't seen any polling on this and does it take a while obviously for everything to settle in and what happened saturday night but liam kerr our friend who runs the welcome party will work contributor at various times they happen to be in the field with a big poll actually trying to doing attitudes and all kinds of other things and they asked the match-up question to trump b.
And so they sorted out people who they had talked to Sunday evening after the Saturday night assassination attempt, as opposed to, I think, Thursday and Friday before. And there was a change of one point in the matchup.
And Trump's approval went up about three points, and Biden's approval went up two or three points. So there's a little bit of a rally to both of them.
And so I don't buy the argument that, I mean, we all, people joked, I suppose, privately, oh my God, after that iconic photograph and all, Trump's going to be unbeatable. But I think that's not true.
You and I have been pretty honest, I think, in saying that Trump's ahead and it's going to be uphill to beat him. But that's very different from saying we have a 20 or 30 or 40% chance of winning to we're resigned to a trump presidency it's so unbelievably irresponsible and it doesn't matter i suppose some democrat says that i'm background to axios but it is demoralizing and i don't know how many people out there read that and don't do something they were thinking of doing to try to help win a state for the democratic nominee but anyway well it matters because like let's have some creativity.
Yeah. Let's try try to try can we try that's what my problem is like i refuse to just sit here and and like not comment on a party that wants to just go on with business as usual in the face of trump very you know likely being a clear favorite to ascend to the presidency again, like to be elected to the presidency.
It is absurd. It is ridiculous to say that, to be like, let's just sit around and do nothing.
Let's just keep on with business as usual. And I said this to the Biden folks.
And before all of this craziness happened, it would have been something we talked about in this podcast because on Friday, Biden did like like at least say do a lot of things that we've been begging him to do right which was deliver a contrast message against trump you know in a speech in michigan friday so okay like even if it's biden you know reassessing changing you know being open to creative ideas right like i do not want to hear from anybody that would only happen in the West Wing. Like, we can't do that.
Biden can't offer to have a joint eulogy for the man that was murdered at the rally, because that stuff only happens in the West Wing. We're living through a time that only happens in the fucking West Wing.
Like, we're living in crazy times. Like, let's try to be a little more creative and thinking and optimistic and try to change the tone and tenor of this campaign a little bit no absolutely very well said totally agree you know the west wing thing is also annoying and i mean liberalism back when i was young was too utopian sort of fuzzy-minded wishful maybe we thought it was at least to be conservatives and neoconservatives and that was kind of annoying at times you know everything was judged the incremental progress wasn't good enough we have to transform the world overnight we have to wish that communism goes away instead of standing up to it and going through the slog of the cold war etc etc now it's flipped to the total opposite now if you say you know what we could actually defeat someone who really is a threat to democracy we we could actually achieve something, that's you living in the West Wing.
That's even worse, in a way, that kind of fatalistic, cynical liberalism, I think, than the earlier, somewhat utopian and naive liberalism. Okay, I want to talk about the RNC Convention and I think Canada, but any other final thoughts on what Democrats can and should be doing right now? I just think having the attitude that you expressed very well, that it's very important to win, it's possible to win, and we have to be imaginative and bold in doing what we need to do, obviously within the law and within peace and so forth, to win.
And you know what? Joe Biden's stepping aside in favor of John Shapiro or Vice President Harris or Gretchen Whitmer. That's entirely within the law and peaceful and exactly what a responsible party should try to pull off.
And maybe refreshing. I do think there's a lot of people out there who want to move on from this era.
There was another blind Democratic quote that said that. Might we consider that? That people are really just, maybe that's unfair to president biden but are really sick of this era like why are we still here you know having these kind this type of political violence this type of rhetoric this type of extraordinary events you know could maybe somebody that offered a more calm page turn be something that's appealing i don't know it seems like it to me okay do you want to do the convention first or eileen cannon which one do you have broader thoughts on can it just broke like five minutes before the show so i have no thoughts okay give me one give me one minute on eileen cannon i mean this is a theory she seems to have embraced that the special prosecutor is not you know correctly appointed that i think was regarded by everyone as an utter fringe theory.
In any case, the Supreme Court has never gone in that direction. And quite the contrary, since it's, as we speak, is hearing cases from special prosecutors, right? I mean, so a district judge has decided to reinvent a very big issue of separation of powers and constitutional law against all the appellate courts and the Supreme Court, because she wants to help Trump.
I mean well that's trump's america though i do think it's a very useful wake-up call this is what trump will appoint many many more eileen cannons and people will be talking about the rule of law on the guardrails of the judiciary and guess what those guardrails don't hold and the rule of law doesn't hold if the judiciary is full of eileen cannons uh yeah it's another maddening part about the let's just come to terms with the trump win you know because it's not even just four years right like you in point eileen canons going to be there forever until she gets impeached you know in 2042 by president aoc or whatever all right the convention so i guess i'll just say if it is true that they're changing all the speeches to tone it down, I think that is both politically savvy and wise and good for the country. I think it's politically savvy and wise for Republicans because I do think they risk a boomerang effect if there's too much bloody shirt waving and too much craziness.
I do think that there's a category of Americans that have rallied to the president's side after the attempted assassination. But I think there is a big middle that, you know, doesn't want crazy unrest and threats to violence or, you know, any of that sort of stuff.
And so hopefully they do that. I'm not really crossing my fingers that they, you know, can control everybody that speaks at this convention and that people won't want to try to turn the rhetoric up.
But I don't know, what's your sense for what they will do, should do? I think they can do this if they want. They can pretty much control what people say to a pretty considerable extent.
And obviously, what people remember is what Trump says, and maybe one or two other high profile speakers, not what everyone else says. So I hope they do for the sake of the country.
I think it's unfortunately probably helps Trump a little bit, though it fades away also, to be honest. For me, the VP pick, and I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on this, is key though, right? I mean, that's the biggest thing that will come out of the convention, maybe apart from Trump's own speech.
And that can go in one of two directions. J.D.
Vance, literally the guy who said the single most irresponsible thing that was said, I believe, on Saturday night, seems to be a front runner. The other candidates are not people we love by any means, but are at least on the side of, I think, somewhat less incendiary message from the Republican party and from the Republican ticket this fall.
So what do you think? Who does Trump pick? I mean, I thought it was JD the whole time. You know, I do think there's two ways to look at it if you're Trump, though, right? I mean, I think that I saw a MAGA account say this.
So this is this is their words. But they were like, I think that Trump needs to consider assassination insurance more for who the vp is that it would be somebody that would continue the mega you know carry the mega mantle forward macabre and and but possible something that goes through their minds right you have to think about you know where things go post trump the other way to look at it is that maybe this is a time for rethinking.
And if Trump buys the same narrative that even the senior house Democrat buys, that he's on a glide path to victory and he just doesn't have to, as on, he should just not rock the boat too much. And maybe that causes a rethinking, right? And he wants to choose somebody that feels safe and feels unifying until whatever that means really.
So, you know, to me, that is probably Bergam, right? If that's the path that you go or somebody else that hasn't really been talked about that much lately, like a Tim Scott. So I don't know.
To me, it still feels like it's JD, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't put any money on it. I've been slightly on the side that will be a Tim Scott, Burgum type.
I don't know if Tom Cotton quite fits in that category, but I think he's a little harsher than they are, but respectable, still on the respectable voter to certify the election in 2020 side of things, as opposed to Vance. So I guess I thought for a while that Trump might go that direction, obviously, pre-assassination attempt.
Maybe he's more inclined to go that way now, but maybe he also doesn't think he needs to go that way now. So I could argue that either way.
I think Vance would be, Vance would undercut all the unity bullshit, if I can be honest, right? Don't you think? I mean, you're putting him number two to the president of the United States after this latest demonstration, something that's been a pattern now for quite a while. But I'm with the view that the unity stuff is BS.
Caputo wrote about this this morning, and based on his sources, a lot of people around Trump liked what J.D. Vance was saying, obviously, right? Because they are filled with vengeance and they are are mad you've never lost betting on these people doing the least honorable thing so i'm going with jd vance we'll see next monday he's right another thing to watch out for in the speech i think that they're going to use is just one example of this from dace uh steve dace who's this uh iowa radio talk show host i was a christian conservative turned maga once admitted that he had a serial masturbation problem that he was dealing with that he got over and so we're proud of him for that he wrote this the original plan this weekend was to sentence trump but when that didn't work out they decided just to try shooting him instead and so I have like a new they rule for this week.
And I think it will be interesting to see how much of that we see at the convention, which is they are out to get Trump. They tried to stop him.
He couldn't write this, that there's some shadowy conspiracy to go after Trump rather than the fact that Trump is a criminal that committed crimes and a crazed shooter went after him. There's some web that ties it all together.
And I think that that's going to be too irresistible for them not to try to employ this week. Yeah, I suppose what's implied is that that they is headed up by Joe Biden, or at least acquiesced in by Joe Biden, right? And so what are we accusing the President of the United States of orchestrating an attempted assassination of his rival? Yeah, you're right.
How many other people at this convention are going to be saying things like that? They're certainly not going to ever denounce anything like that, God forbid, which you and I are old enough, well, I'm old enough, you're almost old enough, to remember Bob Dole in 1996 telling Buchanan delegates who believed in believed in racism and nativism that the exits were over there and they should feel free to leave. I mean, Dole didn't win in 96, so I suppose people can say, see, but you know what? That was a party that it was okay to be part of.
Indeed. Alright, speaking of who's going to be there, I have one more clip for you.
This guy, Mark Robinson. I just think this is important to listen to as we think about the context of the overheated rhetoric in our political culture right now.
Here is Mark Robinson, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina the other day. He'll be speaking in Milwaukee this week.
You know, it was a time when we used to meet evil on the battlefield. And guess what we did to it?

We killed it.

We didn't quibble about it.

We didn't argue about it.

We didn't fight about it.

We killed it.

Some liberal somewhere is going to say that sounds awful.

Too bad.

Get mad at me if you want to some folks need killing it's time for somebody to say it it's not a matter of vengeance it's not a matter of being mean or spiteful it's a matter of necessity it's time to call call out those guys in green and go have them handled. You one of those liberals that is not happy about a candidate for governor saying that some people need killing? I mean, can we just pause for one second? He is the candidate for governor of the Republican Party in a major state, North Carolina.'s endorsed i believe by every republican from trump on down through other governors the republican guy haven't seen a statement maybe i missed it from the republican governors association saying that we can't support this person oh no they're with him they're with him i haven't seen a statement from any senators members of congress republic i mean so it, and it's true, right? I mean, you can say, well, there's one governor.
There are 25 different Republican governor candidates. But fine, let one of them say he shouldn't be.
Republicans in North Carolina shouldn't support him. Republicans in the matter of state shouldn't help him, support him financially.
And let someone say he shouldn't be speaking at the Republican convention, which he's currently scheduled to do. So I think it really brings home.
Yes. The, the degree to which not every single Republican is going to sound like that at the Republican convention, but none of them is going to denounce other Republicans who sound like that.
Yeah. Pretty sick stuff.
Okay. Bill, um, any historical thoughts, me and Sam, we're talking about 1968, uh, on yesterday's pod, but you know, neither of us were around then us were around then and so i you know you i guess were you not in the regular administration yet when he was when he was an assassination attempt victim no i i didn't come till i remember that so well i mean and i remember because it came after you know all those years of 63 with president kennedy 68 with Reverend King and Bobby Kennedy, 72 with George Wallace, 75, luckily totally hapless attempts against Gerald Ford, and then 81.
So one thought, oh, my God, every five years we're just going to have an assassination. Incidentally, in 81, there was the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.
There was a Thatcher, they blew up that hotel that she was staying in with, part of it with her cabinet, the IRA. And you just thought, you know, I don't know, I mean, 15 years of violence, can democracy survive that? And then there was this period, a lot of violence, horrible school shootings, I don't know if you minimize any of that, but, you know, less political violence or less political violence at the presidential level in the US, certainly, and i would say in the other major democracies too probably uh and so one thought we were beyond and that did i did have a moment saturday night thinking oh my god are we going to go back through another decade now of this i don't know if we will or not and maybe this is a i hope it's not and we don't but you know what we're more likely to if honestly if we have an awful lot of people saying incendiary

things so i hope this is a one-off yeah i really hope we don't too and this is why and i said this yesterday i just want to reiterate again i really get upset at the people in my mentions you're getting blocked and muted if you make jokes about how you wish like that shooter had been successful because he was one, really, it looks like had Trump not turned his head

to look at the jumbotron or whatever he was looking at um that had the chart on it did he was referencing that he probably would have died i've looked at several of the kind of diagrams of the angle of the bullet and because he had turned his head he survived and when you think about that era that you just went through and the political violence it just i mean it feels like an assassination attempt would have and obviously you know we don't want anybody to die it would have been horrible for trump to be killed but also too you know the following like what would come after right like that period that you're referring to with the series of assassinations right like we would have been in such a fraught time for it to happen right before the convention. I mean, it was sort of an unbelievably dangerous moment in America.
That is one area where everyone needs to make sure they have cooler heads. Like that's not acceptable kind of rhetoric.
The other history thing that I learned this week, Bill, that just hadn't occurred to me, is there was an assassination attempt on the president every 20 years from like 1900 or maybe even 1880. And the streak broke with W.
Right. So like that does tell you something a little bit about like, because in my time, my era, I grew up in this time that you're referencing.
We're like, we really haven't had political violence. We had a lot of violence we had school shootings other types of violence we haven't had political violence but to think about in that context you know speaks a lot to you know kind of what what american life has been any final brave words for us on political assassinations and violence look it's wonderful that he that trump just said honestly and that and that he missed it It's terrible that this gentleman was killed who behaved so heroically and two others wounded, and just generally to have this specter return.
But that's something everyone can unite in denouncing this violence. And I think it's very good that really almost all of President Trump's opponents, it didn't matter whether they were left-wing democrats or centrist democrats right have said this is terrible this is terrible violence must be repudiated so let's hope that sticks across the political spectrum and frankly i do hope that some people at that republican convention take a look at their own rhetoric and their own associations and maybe say a word or two about how violence against anyone on all sides is unacceptable amen to that bill crystal we'll see you next monday and see his instincts were right on the vice presidential pick we'll be back here tomorrow with a reaction to the first night of the rnc convention and president Biden's interview with Lester Holt.
We'll see you all then. Peace.
Another head hangs lowly Child is slowly taken And the violence costs such silence Who are we most again? But you see, it's not me It's not my family In your head, in your head They are fighting With their tanks and their bombs And their bombs and their guns In your head, in your head, yeah I'm crying In your head, in your head Zombie, zombie, zombie, eh, eh What's in your head?

In your head, zombie, zombie, zombie The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.