John Heilemann: Piss and Vinegar

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Hello and welcome to the Bulldog Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
It is Tuesday. It is summer.
We're through the Memorial Day weekend. I'm delighted to be here with my pal, my former partner in crime on the circus, now chief political columnist at Puck.
He's host of a new podcast coming out June 4th called Impolitik. Impolitik.
I like that. Impolitik.
It's probably Impolitik. But Impolitik, I kind of like saying.
So I'm going to say it like that. Because you're a fancy pretentious frenchman tim deep at heart i am a fancy boy uh john heilman is here he's already interrupting me the bill walton of political commentary it was appropriate that he'd be here today we'll we'll do a little bill walton remembrance at the end john how you doing brother dude it's awesome to see you i don't think of you as a former partner in crime i just think of you as a former as a former circus partner in crime but i think i thought we were partners in crime before you came on the circus and i think of us as partners in crime you know in perpetuity i take that at it i take that out you know we are we will be partners in crime today and then again in the future they're closing arguments in the trump tower happening right now as we tape and so i want to get to that but before if you don't mind i just want to play little game with you.
It was Memorial Day, as I mentioned. I want to read a Memorial Day post from one prominent politician and see if you can guess who it was.
Happy Memorial Day to all, including the human scum that is working so hard to destroy our once great country and to the radical left Trump-hating federal judge in New York that presided over, get this, two separate trials that awarded a woman who I never met before a quick handshake at a celebrity event doesn't count. Ninety one million dollars.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Any thoughts on which politician that might have been? Well, here's the you know, it's such a gimme.
It's like a six inch putt. You know, the truth is, Tim, that given what we previously thought had reached the the nadir of obeisance and up suckery to trump right in the republican party we all we thought man they couldn't get any worse it's now worse than it's ever been and it's so bad that almost any republican senator could have written that tweet like except for some of the weird like like linguistic curlicues it's like you know the basic sentiment is what they all say every day in front of the – I watched them parade down in front of that courthouse in their little matching Trump MAGA outfits.
There's weird Trump Halloween costumes. I'm like, guys, get the orange fright wig.
If you're going to wear a Trump costume, get a fright wig too. It's like a leftovers thing.
It's like a Trumpy leftovers. The Trumpy remnant.
That's right. That's actually really funny.
We should do that. That'd be a hilarious parody series where instead of the guilty remnant, it'd be the Trumpy remnant.
It's funny. It's Trump.
It was Trump. It was Trump.
Where I thought you were going to go with that is, it's true, other Trumpy senators could have written that. But the other thing was, even the vestigial pushback of like, oh, I wish he wouldn't do this this or oh, but the tweets like that doesn't happen.
It's the opposite. I did see several Republican politicians and leading commentators criticize a political Memorial Day tweet, but it wasn't Trump's.
They were making fun of Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush because they didn't know that Memorial Day was celebrating the dead. You know, those who died, those who were memorializing, they thought it was about veterans, which is a goof, but it shows that they're able to read other.
Apparently, Eric Trump doesn't know that either because he thinks that he thinks his family has sacrificed much for America, like on Memorial Day. Yeah, yeah.
Eric Trump quote tweeted that, you know, we've done this before, but if this person was, I don't know, in your child's, you know, camp group, and there was a group text, and they started posting things like this about human scum on Memorial Day, you'd be like, I think we're trying to find a new camp. But some people want this guy to be president.
I got a weird text yesterday, some app that I'm on from Mark McKinnon. No, no, I got a weird I mean, like, I'm not on any of these, you know, like, there are all these parents now, who have like, who are like, on the sex of the registered sex off offender thing so they can know if there's a sex offender that's moved into their school district.
There's that thing. I'm not on any of those.
But I did get a thing yesterday saying that a registered sex offender on some app of mine. I don't know where it came from.
I've never seen it before. And I keep thinking that I would really like an alert for when Trump is in my zip code or someone in one of those Trump outfits is there, like some kind of like a little like Amber alert thing that would pop up and be like, you know, beware of who's around.
I would also like that, but that would be problematic when I go to Baton Rouge. I think that it would just be like, yes, I was going to say, I want to get to your thoughts on the Trump trial, but I think that's interesting that if something else happened today and that is maybe more right on your wheelhouse which is media commentary i noticed that this morning in every media outlet there was basically like everyone all the editors had decided this is the time to let everybody know that the biden people are panicking politico full-blown freak out in biden world the post trump trial unremarkable for some voters the times our friend jason zengerly about how the biden team is struggling to make the campaign about Trump.
The Biden team is addressing this today with an announcement that their campaign will hold a press conference with special guests outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse. Something I've been saying they should be doing for a while, something that some pearl clutchers are now on Twitter saying is very deep norm breaking.
So I'm curious what your thoughts are on the political political side of this and and whether it is true that trump is not being harmed by this at all is it is it an unknown unknown we don't know because you know we have to wait for a verdict like where do you kind of sit on the political analysis before the legal right this is the first real column i wrote was about this and and look i might you live outside the seller corridor so know what i'm about to say is true basically no one gives a shit about the trial right right hence not in this in its in its proceeding and i think it's totally natural this is like trump diddled stormy daniels in 2006 wow and the and then he paid her off in 2016 it's a long time ago i was straight in 2006 i mean not literally i really. I'm trying to think.
I think I came out in 2007. I'm doing the quick math in my head right now.
So yeah, it's been a long time. I was in baggy, tacky since 2006.
Even by, by my kind of, you know, Mesozoic era standards, that's a long time ago. Right.
And like in the world of today, it's like, it really is like a cave painting from the Paleolithic era. It's like, that's old news, right? Who is there in America who doesn't already have a pretty settled view of Donald Trump

and Stormy Daniels and paying her off?

Almost no one.

I mean, either you think it's disgusting or you think it's whatever but irrelevant to

being president, or you think he's like a lovable horndog like Bill Clinton was.

Like, yeah, he's a rogue. He's promiscuousuous i kind of like that or yes that's yeah you know charming the funniest thing about the whole thing is this is i think really of all of trump's lies he's told so many lies but the most gratuitous and idiotic one is expecting anyone to believe that donald trump the cheapest skin flintiest you know welcher of well i don't like that word with trump i know that you're using it accurately but skinflintiest, you know, Welsher in chief.

I don't like that word with Trump.

I know that you're using it accurately, but skinflint.

Well, whatever you want to say, someone who doesn't pay his debts.

I'm not talking about the Welsh here.

It's just like, you know, it's like when I say I've been gypsed, I'm not really actually

talking about gypsies.

Like I just, you know, whatever.

But my point is like the idea that that guy would pay $130,000 to a woman who he didn't have sex with is literally the most ludicrous thing he's ever said. It's just kind of crazy, right? It's all priced in the stock.
I think that in terms of the long-run political implications of it, I don't like to be one of these people who says, well, you really can't know. I think if he's acquitted or there's a hung jury, I don't think it really moves the needle much at all, because all it does is rev up the Trump base more.
Trump will beat his chest and talk about how he's been victimized. But those people, the people who are moved by that are already voting for Trump.
They can't pull the lever more than once, right? It's like they're going to pull it 10 times harder. They're like, ah.
I think among the maybe 800,000 voters in the combined area of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin that will probably determine the outcome of American democracy in this election, the polling that is not, I think, particularly reliable, and it's all over the place in this. But you see these numbers like 6%.
It would have an effect on their point of view among persuadable voters, 6%, if he were convicted's a slightly higher number if he's convicted and put in jail that's not going to happen before election day he's going to appeal he's not going to go to jail he's not going to be an orange jumpsuit he might one day be but what about an ankle bracelet can we get an ankle judge mershan has the total power over what happens to trump is he's convicted whether he gets like probation house arrest you know all those things so ankle not all, not off the cards, but 6% people say, well, that's no, that's,

that's tiny.

And I'm like 6% in, in those three States is the ball game, you know?

So I don't know.

I mean, I think a conviction is the only verdict that has potential political long-term salience.

It's on the margins, but this election is going to be won or lost on the margins, you

know, based on assuming if everything you're saying is true, which I think it is, most people don't care about this. People aren't paying that close attention.
Maybe a conviction will matter. Then the logical strategic follow of that is it kind of doesn't matter what Biden does.
Does he talk about this or not? Do they have campaign press conferences or not? Do you feel like all of that panic is unnecessary bedwetting? Or do you think there's something they could do to increase the salience on this like what's your thought from a strategic standpoint i think in the absence of conviction really nothing anything that where those guys are showing a lack of complacency are on the move are doing something i thought was a partisan of this and to the extent i'm a partisan for democracy i'm one of those people it would be good for them in a lot of ways to demonstrate to people that they have the eye of the tiger, right? And if I were a political strategist, I'd be on offense all the time. This is not an era that rewards being on your back foot, right? Do I think it's going to matter in the absence of a guilty verdict? No.
But I do think with a guilty verdict, you could argue you're setting up something that you're going to build on later and a guilty verdict does raise some interesting questions and those questions we talked about a little bit on morning joe this morning where lamir had some reporting basically that said you know they're going to start at least in social media referring to trump as a convicted criminal a convicted felon and the question of what biden will do about that is very much in play you know like and I mean, we can speculate on Biden's mindset about these things, but I want to believe Tim, that there's still some small part of America where if you happen to be in the category of you're really undecided between these two candidates, after everything we know about the two of them, that like being reminded, this gets to the Zengerle know this challenge of memory which is how much the the trump amnesia factor of people who thought trump sucked in january of 2021 and now remember the administration is having been great people who've forgotten how bad january 6th is we see data on this all the time right so one of the biggest challenges the biden campaign has a tactical and strategic one, reminding people, making vivid for people who are, again, in that very small subset of persuadable voters, just what it was really like when Donald Trump was president and just what he is really like. And figuring out a way to do that is not easy.
That's the point of the Zengerle piece. It's fucking hard.
It's not easy. And it's a weird way that his pervasiveness, his wall to wallness is a thing that, again, for 48.5% of the electorate is like, I'm never going to vote for that motherfucker ever.
For the ones that are still undecided, the persuadable voters, it's inured them to a lot of these memories of shaking them by the shoulders and trying to remind them of what Trump was really like, because they're, you know, obviously in this weird twilight zone. Anyway, I think it's a huge challenge.
And I think to that point that you're going to have to do everything, you know, that you can try everything tactically, but that as a strategic thing, that seems central to me. Same.
Yeah. I, to me, I feel like, look, his schedule is a little light.
Biden's schedule is a little light the aggressiveness could be turned up to 11 so to speak on some of the mess on some of the attacks and so i'm happy to hear that they're doing some of this and just for one example you're you're pointing out amnesia which i think is right there is an amnesia about the terrible trump stuff but there's also new stuff there's also stuff people don't know yeah right like for example like convicted felon trump pairing that i was I'm quoting the Times today, I was talking to Maggie about this, and comparing the convicted felon Trump with Trump had two alleged murderers on stage with him in New York, Chef G and Poppy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow.
I know Kendrick, but I don't know the deep cuts when it comes to the New York rap scene. Let's just make sure we're talking about Poppy Harlowlow poppy harlow not a convicted murderer let's be clear on the podcast now and neither is sleepy hollow he's an alleged murderer who's out on bail all right but you've got that you have criminals all around him you know he pardoned multiple criminals including bannon stone and manafort and all of them by reports apparently still talk to him that his campaign chairman from the last campaign, his campaign fixer, the chairman of the inauguration.
All these people have been convicted. The guy that was Weisselberg, the guy at Trump.
The dude is surrounded by criminals. And you could put together an orange jumpsuit mashup that would be much more aggressive and I think much more compelling.
and maybe stick with people on, you know, some of these people who either have amnesia or don't know what they're talking about

or just getting little TikTok clips. I just think that there are more compelling ways to make this point than what Biden is doing.
When we're both dead and buried, Tim, the only thing that will find that will ever be in Bartleby's is the quote, which I'm proud of and will happily actually maybe inscribe in my tombstone, although having Trump in my tombstone would be weird. But the quote that is, everything Trump does is either projection or confession.
And Biden crime family is one of the greatest examples of Trump projection, literally one of the greatest. I mean, it's so out there.
It's like exhibit A, right? Trump is the ultimate ex-president, presidential candidate, whatever you want to call him, who really is a member of a non-blood, but a literal crime family surrounded by criminals. And he does stuff like I wrote in this week's column, the one that just came out last night, about the Libertarian Convention.
And he's up there on stage, the Libertarians are booing him. The funniest thing over the weekend was listening to cable news, trying to debate whether, in what ways is Trump a libertarian? How could he make that claim? I'm like, do you people, have you people know anything? Like, here's the thing in political ideology, libertarianism and authoritarianism are the opposite ends of the polarity.
Okay. Like that's, that thing couldn't be more different, but you know, here he is up there, you know, the libertarians are, you know, obviously you mind.
Can we just listen? I think ends of the polarity. That thing couldn't be more different.
But here he is up there.

The libertarians are obviously...

Do you mind? Can we just listen? I think some of the listeners

might want to listen. If they were out at the beach

on a barbecue, they might get some joy

out of some booing. We're going to play it for you.

That is why I'm committing to you

tonight

that I will put

a libertarian in my cabinet

and also libertarians in senior posts. Pretty good.
Pretty good? That's pretty big. Doesn't seem like they like that deal.
That's nice. The boos get louder.
Only if you want to win. Okay, that's enough.
Only if you want to win. We got the booze get louder only if you want to win okay that's enough we got we got the booze well this is what he shifts to start insulting them it's like he moves from at the beginning it's he says i you know i never knew i was libertarian but now that i've been indicted 91 times i'm definitely a libertarian so like it's just the basic kind of like finding common cause pandering then he moves to to favor trading right so his next move is i'll put a libertarian.
So it's just the basic kind of finding common cause, pandering. Then he moves to favor trading.
So his next move is, I'll put a libertarian in my cabinet and I'll have libertarians as high advisors. He then moves to your point earlier, which was what triggered me here was, he says, I'm going to commute the sentence.
He sees all these Free Ross signs, which I think they had no plan to make this pledge until they saw all these signs that said Free Ross, Ross being Ross Ulbricht, the guy who started Silk Road, which is like the most notorious dark web vice market that ever existed, not just drugs, but all kinds of terrible shit. How much time did you spend on the Silk Road back in the day? I don't want to answer that question on the grounds that might incriminate me, but I will say a lot of bad shit went on Silk Road, right? The guy got caught.
He's in jail for life. And Trump just like, just, hey, I know I said before many times that I want to have death sentences for drug dealers, but this guy, commute a sentence.
If you guys, if that'll help me get the libertarian endorsement, let him walk now. He was only talking about black drug dealers, Sean.
Ross is white. That doesn't count.
That's a high quality drug dealer. He doesn't get it.
Only the best drug dealers, Tim. Only the best.
I'll surround myself with only the best drug dealers sean ross is white that doesn't count that's a high quality right only the best only the best drug dealers tim only the best i'll surround myself with all the best drug dealers so yeah i mean it was hilarious in the sense that the whole libertarian convention was such a shit show but i got a candid to him for one thing which is that they looked at the two interlopers trump the greatest of them i mean bobby kennedy jr is at least a little more libertarian on certain things, not very many, but certain ones. But these two guys walked down there and tried to interpose themselves in libertarian land.
And the libertarians, I will give them credit. They did exactly what they should have done, which was basically just say, fuck you, both of you, get out of here.
Leave us alone. One thing I also think the Biden campaign is going to end up being able to use, I think maybe it was a mistake from staging.

You say what you want about Trump's campaign, and it's been pretty incompetent all three times, but they're usually pretty good with staging and making him look presidential and strong, etc. Have Trump in the background.
In this case, they didn't get to do the staging because it was a Libertarian Convention. And behind him, it says, become ungovernable with the Anarchy A.
And that feels like that potentially could work against in certain ways as an image. I mean, yes.
I mean, the anarchy sign was, I mean, become ungovernable is an incredible slogan for a political party, even for libertarians. It's more of an anarchist kind of slogan.
And they've got that anarchist A up there behind them. I mean, if you were doing comms for the Biden campaign, that would definitely be in a lot of digital hits.
The funniest thing about that was him saying, make me your nominee. He says, make me your nominee.
Literally, he said, right there. Make me your nominee.
I want to be your nominee, or at least vote for me a lot. It's the only way you're going to win.
If you don't want to win, you get your 3%. And then he starts mocking them because they keep booing.
So he starts making fun of the people he's courting, which is hilarious. And then the next day, when the chair rules immediately on the day of that voting will proceed, she says, I'm sorry, Donald Trump can't be put in nomination because his campaign has failed to turn in the proper paperwork, right? Trump puts out a post on Truth Social that says, well, I never wanted it anyway.
And I couldn't apply for it apply for it. In fact, because I'm a nominee in another party.
So I'd never wanted it anyway. But of course, if I had wanted it on the basis, he literally says of the incredible reception, I got there, which you just heard you.
I obviously would have won it. I mean, it's just like, it's so fucking crackers, crackers, Tim.
I got an interesting note about the libertarian thing. It seems like you spent a decent amount of time watching it this weekend which i this is an interesting judgment call on your part well i was gonna write about it so i did watch it and uh let's just say there's a lot of weed in my house so well you're on brand one of the nominees did an edible i guess before he spoke and and gave an inco yes the guy who invited milo to uh nyu and got basically got fired from nyu the professor dude, Recton Wald or whatever his name is, Recton something.
He was supposed to be at the post-Trump press conference. They were inviting some of the top candidates to get up on stage after Trump left.
That's where the guy who won denounced Trump and said he was a war criminal and stuff. And this guy got up and was like a babbling idiot.
And people were yelling at him from the crowd, how high are you? And he kept saying not high enough, which I thought was right. I could relate to that.
And then the next day he was like, yeah, I took it edible. I'm a libertarian.
Like, what is this a big political scandal? It's not like I boinked Stormy Daniels or something. I mean, what's the fucking difference? I'm like, I took it edible.
It's a libertarian convention. Someone handed me something.
I ate it. All right.
Someone handed me something. I ate it.
That's a great quote that's a bill walton uh homage if i've ever heard one totally the serious political side of this which i i think is probably i think probably the impact this young man chase oliver as you wrote in your column uh advertised himself as gay and armed which is different from the weak and gay which i've tried to self-brand as um but uh gay and armed. And he is more of this like kind of liberalitarian type, you know, and there's like pictures of him wearing a mask and hanging out with drag queens.
And, you know, he's liberal on various social issues. And somebody messaged me and asked if this is potentially a threat to Biden a little bit, and if maybe it would have been better for it to be, you know, a more right-wing, you know, Rand Paul, Thomas Massey type nominee to peel off from Trump.
Does that strike you one way or the other, that it's going to be meaningful at all? Jace Oliver winning the nomination. I mean, look, the guy Jorgensen, who no one paid attention to in 2020.
I believe it was a woman. I'm sorry.
It was a woman Jorgensen. The guy, the guy, the guy who's guy there, I sometimes refer to my women friends as guys.
Hey, guys. Yeah, same.
I say thanks, man, to people at the women at the coffee shop, and sometimes they get mad about that. So I've tried to stop.
You know, she won whatever her 1.5% of the vote, but in Arizona, she took enough votes away from Trump in Arizona that you could argue that she kept Trump from winning Arizona, because that that's how narrow that was you look at the high watermark for libertarians which is the which is the gary johnson bill weld ticket which is not trivial i mean they won four and a half percent or something almost five percent of the vote in unintentionally cost hillary the election really i'd honestly in 2016 a bunch of people thought that trump was going to win there was probably one percent of their four and a half percent that would have voted for hillary you know because they did pull from left i think it's always the confusing part because you get all these people and i this is the thing i i sometimes i try to avoid arguments about this kind of thing but people like jill stein cost hillary clinton the presidency in 2016 like jill stein had a quarter of the vote of gary johnson and bill weld and of course libertarians are complicated it's not all the republicans there are some people on the some people on the left who vote for libertarians, but it's kind of a messy picture. There's a bunch of third-party people who were problematic in a lot of ways that year.
It's just impossible to really know. I think that if you think this election is going to be won or lost on the margins, as I do, and if I were in the Biden campaign, I would have rather seen the edible-eating Milo-hosting expert on 19th-century British secularism is what I learned about him.
He's written books about that as he's a former professor. That guy would have been a better choice.
But I will say the main thing, if I'm a Biden person that I'm psyched about, is that Kennedy, who actually had spent a year talking about winning the libertarian nomination, even before he left the party and dropped his bid against biden he talked about it in public with smirk on tv and said you know maybe the libertarian party is what i want the libertarian party has ballot access in 38 states like if rfk jr had been remotely competent and actually been in that fight and really worked it i mean that's the nightmare scenario for biden was that but it was that that rfk jr i know know you might want to talk about debate qualifications, but the instant pickup. He's right now on the ballot in six states.
They say they've submitted for a seventh and they have another nine or something, maybe eight or nine on the way where they think they have the right number of signatures. They obviously have to get all those signatures.
The states all decide whether those signatures are verified, et cetera, et cetera. But even then, you're at 15 compared to 38 with the Libertarian Party.
And that's a ticket to ballot access, man. 38 states, a lot of states.
And it's most of the battleground states that you get that you're on. I think maybe even all six or seven.
So maybe it was always a pipe dream. Maybe RFK Jr.
was never going to get the Libertarian nomination, but I will say that he met with them privately and publicly over the course of a year and then pretended like he didn't want it, but then accepted the nomination when he got it, had his running mate was ready to speak on Sunday. I mean, I think there was still some hope in that part of the world as bonkers as they are that he might've been their own libertarian nominee.
And I think if you're the Biden campaign, you're like, we can live with Chase Oliver as long as it's not bobby kennedy jr yeah i don't know if the bobby kennedy campaign has a ken melman david plough type over there running bobby was on brian taylor cohen's youtube over the weekend which i watched and he was uh rambling about how he doesn't want to submit the signatures they have in states until as late as possible so the dnc rat fuckers can't do anything to disqualify them the problem with that is that it goes in direct conflict with my next topic which is that he needs to submit them and to get on enough state balance to be in the june debate here's my question for you i have it wasn't in the room when the biden campaign and the trump campaign came to their agreement with cnn but my understanding at least is is that the Biden campaign will only do a two-person debate. So does it really matter if he meets the qualification threshold? Does the Biden people look at CNN and go, hey, we said only one-on-one.
We're not doing a three-person debate. We'll take our business across the street.
Someone will do a two-person debate. If CNN somehow says, well, Bobby Kennedy Jr.
met the qualifications, we're going to get him on stage. I imagine the Biden campaign will say, okay, see you later.
We'll go talk to NBC. I'm sure MSNBC will take that debate in a heartbeat, which is too.
Yeah. Well, this is kind of my question.
This is what I wanted to game out a little bit with you, because I don't know. I was walking down to the streetcar this weekend, thinking with my child, kind of thinking about this, spending too much time rattling around my brain.
And'm like are we sure that maybe uh maybe the biden campaign shouldn't want kennedy in the debate i do think that there's two sides of this i understand your point which is right right which is you want to tamp down the kennedy number as much as possible because kennedy's core supports three percent four percent are kind of trumpy you know iconoclastic type people contrarians right but then if you get it more than that, if you get up to 12, 13 percent, he's picking up, you know, probably younger voters, black and Latino voters that Biden needs. So, on some level, you want to tamp them down.
At another level, could Biden maybe not benefit from like having a moment where he's like, look at these two black hosts, you know, the topic of vaccines come up and Trump and Bobby are fighting out on who's more anti-vax who's gonna you know be stronger on limiting funding for schools that have measles mumps and rubella mandates i don't know might might it help biden a little we can agree to agree about something on this on this podcast which is i think you can believe that joe biden is an 82 year old man and therefore not as sharp as he was at 72, 62, 52, 42, and without saying he's infirm or senile or any of those things. I don't think he is any of those things.
Agreed. But I think he's 82.
And if you've ever met an 82-year-old man, what I imagine you're going to be like at 82, and I'm going to be like at 82, it's like we're not at our absolute best prime. We're in prime debate condition.
So one question is, if you asked me what a presidential candidate in their prime who was in command, but would they be able to navigate a three person debate and make the point you're going to make like confidently be able to use that? Like, yeah, more crazy on the stage, please. Like more crazy on the stage makes me look sane.
They both look like they're nuts. I win.
Yeah, right. I just, you know, everything, the way the Biden campaign has done this is suggestive of wanting to eliminate or reduce as much as possible variables that would be in any way tricky for Biden, right? I think the way they got this debate done on their terms was a triumph for them, but they are, you know, we're not going to have a live audience.
We're going to be able to cut Trump's mic. It's like, how many variables can we tamp down so that essentially our guy gets to speak and not be interrupted, not have an audience to deal with.
And, you know, Trump will speak and then his mic will be cut in theory. Biden will speak and then his mic will be cut that reflects a certain degree of like man we want to keep this thing pretty simple well that's making me nervous right no you're right you're right no you're totally right yeah and i don't like the mic cutting thing actually just that thought crossed my head i was like you want trump to seem like a lunatic biden won the first debate last time because trump seemed like a lunatic so it was no memorable by line it wasn't like reagan look you know talking about his youth and an experience there was no great bide moment it was trump looked like a lunatic other than the time when he told him to shut up i mean that was like we were where there was an expression of kind of like the visceral thing a lot of people in the audience were thinking it was like yeah shut up goddamn right shut the fuck up yeah but again that was because trump would be a lunatic so shouldn't they let him be a lunatic at some point it's like the caution i worry that there's a cutting off the nose despite the face element to the caution and they gotta just try to let it rip in the world of obama people their view has been for a while you gotta get biden out a lot and essentially try to do for biden what trump's craziness has done, which is to say, Biden is going to stumble.
He's going to have bad moments. He's going to say some dumb stuff.
He's going to trip over his verbal feet. He might trip over his literal feet.
But the more people see that, the more it gets priced in the stock and people just go, okay, that's Biden, whatever. It's really going to be painful because Biden's going to look bad a bunch.
And in the long run, getting people used to Biden looking like, let's say, looking like an 82-year-old man is in their long-term interest. They are not doing that.
That has not been advice. As you pointed out earlier, the schedule's not super aggressive.
And they're doing the opposite of putting him in situations where it's like, yeah, this is going to be painful. You're going to make mistakes, but we got to get you.
We got to let you make small mistakes over and over and over again so people stop paying attention to them so much. Biden was out this weekend.
He's at West Point. I'll just put the link in the show notes.
People want to watch Biden. He was totally fine, but again, are people seeing it? That's why more is more here, and it's not just the Obama folks.
I want to play a clip from our mutual friend, James Carville, has similar frustrations. Say what you want about the Obama guys and James Carville, but they did successfully elect presidents, which I did not.
I don't know if you recall my track record, John, of covering, but I don't have that. You're not quite on the Mount Rushmore political strategist yet.
Yeah, so podcast host, maybe. Because Democratic messaging is full of shit.
That's why. And talk about cost of living.
And we're going to help deal with this. And don't talk about fucking Gaza and student loans.
That's so out. The Harvard, that guy Delevoe is pretty good.
Give him 15 issues. You know what the number 14 and 15 issue are total? Student debt and Gaza.
I forgot which order it's in. And why are we forgiving student loans for people that go to Harvard, which, according to Scott Galloway, quite accurately is nothing but a hedge fund that has classrooms.
Well, they got a $52 billion fucking surplus. Why are taxpayers going to bail these people out?

We've got another James clip here in a second,

but I want your reaction.

Wait, where's that from?

Is that you?

No, this is James' YouTube feed.

James has an amazing YouTube feed.

I'm doing my best on YouTube,

but speaking of how 82-year-old men can make strong arguments,

James Carville is beating me on YouTube.

I want one more James Carville clip for you

on what he means.

Ask him one question.

Thank you. can make strong arguments.
James Carville is beating me on YouTube. I want one more James Carville clip for you on what he means.
Ask him one question. Did Keith Schiller steal Trump's medical records from his internist? And where are these medical records? Prove that you're fair.
Ask him and keep asking him.

And the same thing for the Biden campaign, because you and I are not stupid. We know why he stole the records.
Right? Let me put it this way. We have a strong suspicion is he stole the records because he had the goddamn class.
and look up, go to the Mayo Clinic or WebMD or whatever, you know, I'll get a rash and I'll look it up on the computer.

Go look up how insidious a disease of secondary syphilis can be.

I'm not sure he's not having sex anymore because his dick may have fallen off the mall of VDS.

I mean, I think James grovel would have 400 electoral votes if he was the 80 year nominee dude the greatest thing that could ever happen it would like oh they'd be the thing that would change my mind and make me think i should write another book about a presidential campaign would be if the biden campaign after i'm imagining the scenario a disastrous debate performance in June. And there's so much panic that they decide we got to, we got to just throw the long ball, bring in James, let him run the whole thing.
Like just let James run the whole thing. It'd be incredible.
It'd be like one of the most incredible things that we would ever experience in our lifetimes. There's some absurdity in James, obviously.
And, and you know, there's certain things that a sitting president can't do like talk about his opponent's dick falling off that's probably not a winner but um his point is right though right like chris wrote this morning about how biden should take some lessons from clinton about being you know wrong and strong instead of you know weak and right what do you think i i've always thought that that clinton thing is is mean, look, there's always possibility that the whole Copernican universe of politics has now been rendered obsolete or whatever, and that none of these things are true anymore. But I think the basic Trump framing of the election is me strong, you weak.
And that's just the strength thing. We focus on the victimology of it, which plays to his base.
But in those parts of the country that are going to decide the election and in those voter groups, it's Trump is basically like, I am strong. I am indomitable.
I am invincible. I'm a bad motherfucker.
And the detail of this is I will get inflation down because I will, because I will bend it to my will. I will beat the Chinese because I'm stronger.
And he points at Biden and says, you know, weak, infirm, incontinent. And so I think things that show strength, I like when Biden gets mad, you know, like those moments when Biden gets mad and, and really kind of lashes out are to me, good moments.
Like there's nothing worse than a docile oxygenarian, you know, a quiet, me quiet, meek oxygenarian. That is not the oxygenarian we want.
I'd rather see an oxygenarian making mistakes, but being like Grandpa Simpson, waving his cane on the lawn and scaring the kids away and doing that to these fucking protesters on the campuses, just screaming at them. And anybody who gets in his way it's just if you're going to re-elect an octogenarian you want to think the octogenarian is full of piss and vinegar yeah and the opposite that's the case against trump this is where i'm with james and i want to play this right like making trump into you know a whiny syphilis stricken ball sack who has to put makeup on syphilitic is the word you're looking for Syphilitic, a whiny syphilitic ball sack who has to put makeup on to hide just how like

aged and peaked his skin is like like that is good right like that is a good frame you know now on twitter the smart side gets oh the resistance they don't know what they're doing it's like i don't know man i a campaign that was more that's a little resistance pill talking about how how Trump's Putin's bitch would be preferable to one that's like, well, actually, let me tell you about what might happen in 2025. Democratic principles.
I am inherently attracted to Michelle Obama's formulation, the when they go low, we go high. I'm inherently attracted to it.
I wish for a world in which that was wise. And I think maybe when she said it, she was right.
It probably was wise. Maybe then, I forget what year it was that she said that, but I thought, when they go low, we go high.
Better angels, et cetera. That is definitely not the right strategy in 2024.
We are not in a better angels moment. We are not in a, they go low, we go high.
You're not going to win that way. Apart from everything else, it just doesn't, as your point, which I think is about the way that the media works now, going high just doesn't break through.
Whatever else can be said of it, whatever other nobility it encapsulates, it doesn't break through. There's so much noise and there's so much fragmentation that going high, the Aaron Sorkin version of the presidency or the presidential campaign is not a thing that breaks through.
No one even hears it. Maybe it could work if you had somebody that could hit the notes also.
It's just not Joe Biden. I know with Barack Obama's not coming out of the bullpen.
That Joe Biden from 2020 Biden and from 2020, when he threatened if when he wanted to get in a fight with that guy and called him fat.

So that guy like where's where's that Joe Biden?

Yeah, I like that Joe Biden.

I was like, yeah, like, you know, pony soldier.

Right.

Exactly.

I mean, it's kind of, you know, you can make fun of it, but at least it's like, again, piss vinegar.

I love the fat.

He's like, whatever.

He called the guy's like fat. So yeah, he's like, you're like, yeah.
You know, it's like that's the formula for fighting Donald Trump is piss, vinegar, mix, distribute, repeat. Just kind of related to the go low, go high formulation.
One thing I just I've never asked you about that I wanted to ask you about since I had you alone on this podcast yeah just just you and me no one no one else just you and me now it's not about your the choices in your private life oh good you know a lot of what i you know wrote about and was thinking about was from the like the republican perspective of looking back and like our mistakes in 08 12 and your book game change was like so central to that time and accompanying film and I just wonder I don't know like I looked back in that period and Pailin is kind of portrayed as as this like clownish figure like kind of ridiculous and a little threatening a little risky obviously Nicole is concerned she might be president so like there's a seriousness to it but it's also clownish and you know mccain is the going high figure i just wonder like you look back on that now 12 years later i just wonder if what you think about that whole scene you mean the scene the book you think about it differently i just think if you do you think about it differently do you think that like if you if you were able to go back and talk to 2012 john writing that book do you think you would have covered it do you think that the media would have i'm not looking for you to hit yourself over the head but do you think we would have covered it differently do you think that it was covered right first of all the the things about palin that are in the book she got caricatured as a clown for a whole lot of reasons that had nothing to do with game change and she was caricatured that way long before the book came out which was you know in jan of 2010. And the things that we wrote about that were things that made her, that were clownish, but that were also signs of how manifestly unqualified she was to be vice president, let alone president.
Those are just the facts. If you laid out the facts of things that were striking to people on the campaign about things she didn't know about ways she behaved, those were things that people were going to interpret in a certain way.
The movie, Danny Strong, who wrote the script

and what Jay ended up with a much more ominous tone in the movie than in the book because you

could see the Tea Party was now happening by the time the movie got made. The movie didn't come

out until 2012. The book comes out in January, 2010.
The movie came out in January, February,

2012.

And in that intervening period of 2010, 2011 was the rise of the tea party. And so you could see her as an avatar for that.
So the movie had a darker cast to what Palin augured for, even though she was too much of a buffoon and too incompetent and dumb to be able to actually ride that wave. But people saw that.
I don't think the book, fairly speaking, the book was not John McCain is like an avatar of like principle and going high and she was going low. That's a good point.
I mean, the book, again, accurately presented McCain as being pretty craven in a lot of ways, not just in the selection of Palin, but pretty craven. That moment that he gets all the credit for, and I'm happy to give him credit for him credit for it but you know the moment when he finally snapped at the end of the campaign where he took on that woman in the in the town hall who said that obama was a muslim that gets played over and over again on tv that was after a long period of time where mccain was willing to see obama i've got to defend mccain's honor here there was all the back and forth which was right which you wrote about in others, about how some of the consultants wanted to go in harder on errors and wanted to go in higher on that stuff.
Yeah. I'm not saying McCain wanted to go if he had wanted to go as far as, you know, there were a couple of ads that didn't get run that were really, really incendiary.
And McCain pushed back on those. I'm not saying he was without scruples whatsoever.
I'm just saying, like, you know, he Palin a pretty, at the beginning gave her a pretty wide berth and it took a pretty long time for him to, he's a mixed, he's a mixed figure. McCain often in the end ended up in the right place.
He was not like a prissy John Huntsman figure. He was not prim about his, his views about negative campaigning.
I'd rather be strong and right in the end than prissy and wrong. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it wasn't like a little mis-mucket on his tuffet there.
He was willing to hit pretty hard. Given what we knew at the time, which is all you can really judge, is we couldn't know what would come after.
With the benefit of hindsight, there's a million things I would go back and change and add all kinds of foreshadowings. But we don't have the benefit of hindsight.
We were writing the book in 2009. So we don't have a problem with that.
And as I say, I think Jay and Danny did a nice job of taking into account what Palin portended in the movie, giving it a kind of that slightly darker cast and not making her. I mean, I thought the reason that Julianne's performance was so great was that she did a really nice job of both capturing some of the ways in which Palin was just really ill-served by the whole process.
I mean, on some level, she was obviously manifestly unqualified, and she was not served well by that process in some ways. And some of the things that happened to her were not really her fault.
On the other hand, there were other things that were totally her fault, and She became an ambition monster and a really craven one along the way.

I thought the movie was pretty good at that, getting a little sense of the darkness, more of the darkness than we had a picture of in the immediate aftermath of the campaign.

If Palin had one good, trusted advisor with her that she could have listened to and she

decided to run, she would have been the nominee in 2012, right?

I wrote a cover story in New York magazine in the fall of 2010, in the fall of 2010. That was like the headline that Adam Moss put on the cover was president Palin.
It was a scenario thing of she is going to run. She is likely to be the Republican nominee.
And here's how it could work out that she could end up being president, not like predicting, but sort of saying, this is the scenario by which this could happen and how crazy it was i mean it was obviously it was a kind of a you know it was meant to be kind of a shock treatment thing i mean if somehow this is such a ridiculous counterfactual but if you know the some of the people who worked with her at the convention if she had maintained a real relationship with like tucker eskew nico you know, I mean, again, these are all ridiculous. But Tucker and Nicole are good people, but maybe there's somebody around who would have, would have stuck.
But remember, I mean, her performance at the convention was incredible. I mean, I don't think I've ever seen a politician who was more in the, the human microwave as McKinnon would call it a politics than that period from when she was selected to when she gave her speech in Minneapolis.
I mean, she was just being vivisected before your eyes. And she got up there and gave a lights out speech at that convention.
And I will give her credit for that forever. And she was like, really? I mean, the pressure was on that woman.
I mean, if I were her, after 48 hours, I would have been like, I'm going back to Wasilla. Like, I'm out of here.
She had this charisma and she had these natural performance skills. And the people who helped her in Minneapolis when she was so willing to take their help were some really talented people like Tucker and Nicole and some others.
And for obviously various reasons having to do with her personality defects, she ended up basically losing all of the people that had any capacity to be the person you're talking about. But if she had put together a team that was as good as john huntsman's team for instance like if she had had rick santorum's team forget you i'm like rick santorum almost beat mitt right rick santorum almost beat mitt i was gonna say tim miller john bray bender nick ayres nick ayres bray bender and me would have taken out mitt with perryland easily easily thank't happen.
That's a horrible counterfactual. And then throw it Alex Conan, and you guys could have made her president.
Ugh. All right.
That's a horrible counterfactual. All right.
I want to close with, I want to put a quarter and let you talk about Bill Walton, but I want to play one clip because Bill Walton, this was a guy who liked John Howell, and he would go there. He was not afraid.
Let's listen to Bill Walton. They don't.
Not even if you beat Liberty next time.

If you beat Liberty next time.

Okay.

If you beat Liberty next time, will they rush the floor?

Why don't we just talk about Liberty since you brought it up?

All right.

Tell us about Liberty.

Let's move on.

Coloco with his second foul.

Tiger Campbell at the line.

If there was ever a misapplied name.

All right.

So, Tiger.

It's the middle of the second half, and Bill Wal's like let's talk about jerry falwell for a second okay totally this man could talk about the beauty of life but also our darker angels um with a plum and uh man there are very few originals we'll miss bill walton do you have any closing thoughts for the listeners on on the big red so you know i grew up in southern california and in the san fernando valley so my dad was a huge basketball fan and had played at university wisconsin when he was a undergrad and and i played a lot of hoops and so we were huge lakers fans and ucla fans even though we didn't go but the cult of john wooden was deep i might you know wooden was from indiana my was from Wisconsin, like that kind of Midwestern guy who had been transplanted. And so, Lou Alcindor, soon to be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, dominant center with UCLA in the late 60s, then goes to the Milwaukee Bucks where my dad was a huge fan.
So we're like, who's going to replace Lou Alcindor in the early 70s? I was young, but Bill Walton was rad. At the time, I didn't appreciate this, but later, the pictures of him engaged in student protests at UCLA, things that with the beard- While playing on the team.
While playing on the team. A team that John Wooden, for all of his- I mean, he had many obvious attributes, incredible coach, one of the greatest coaches in the history of the game, but that was not a wooden kind of thing.
And his ability to reach an accommodation with living within the wooden system, and he worshiped wooden on some level, but also really was an individualist and there were things he wouldn't compromise on. I always thought that was so admirable.
And people talk about that era in sports and Kareem, Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, these were all very out front, very politically active athletes at a time. Arthur Ashe, but huge politically expressive, involved in the protest movements, involved in all of the stuff that was happening late 60s, early 70s.
Bill Walton was in that group. He was the only white guy.
He was the one white dude who was a great athlete in that era. It was really politically outspoken, willing to court controversy, willing to stick to his principles, and was a white dude fighting in a lot of cases on the side of poor African-Americans and also of racial justice and on the side of those kinds of issues.
So I always thought he was great for all of that. And he was also so funny, right? I mean, the combination of his seriousness and his goofiness.
And there was a thing in one of the obits that said that he talked about how when he was the sixth man on the Celtics and won his second NBA title, was the thing he was proudest of, being a sixth man. That that was the thing that meant most to him of his two NCAA championships, his two state championships in high school, and his two NBA championships, the one where he was a sixth man on the Celtics.
And there was a quote from Larry Bird saying that Walton was one of the greatest players that he'd ever played with when he was healthy. And their interviewer said to him, do you mean greatest centers? And he goes, no, one of the greatest players ever to walk the court.
But when Larry Bird gives that kind of compliment out about somebody, it makes you sit back and go, man, if that dude hadn't, you know, his feet were so fucked up. I think in his book, he said he felt like he was basically ruined by the time he got out of, he got into high school.
He was like, he was never age 14. Yes.
14 was the first time it happened. What that guy would have been capable of if he had had good health.
He's already in a pantheon of, you know, one of the 50, maybe greatest basketball players who ever played the game. But what he would have achieved had he been remotely healthy and not in constant pain.
And then finally, you know, a guy who as a broadcaster would occasionally like go on a beautiful little pns to his experiences of

mushroom eating acid dropping uh grateful dead listening mid game you know middle of the second quarter just just all of a sudden start talking about it well you know my experience with mushrooms is always that they're pretty good and here's how you use them it's be like oh there goes bill i mean the phrase american original is thrown around a lot and often not fully accurately Bill Walton was a true American original.

And I think,

you know,

we don't have enough people. is thrown around a lot and often not fully accurately.

Bill Walton was a true American original.

And I think we don't have enough people like that that qualify as being that original

and that surprising all the time.

And I think he'll be missed a lot.

I would watch random late night Pac-12 games

just because he was calling up,

just because of the joy he'd bring me.

He'd answer his dorm room phone

and impeach the president back in those days

on the national championship teams.

Look at his final four box scores.

They're insane. He was like 21 for 22 in a final

four game or something. Crazy.
It's unbelievable.

And he'd score 20 points, have 25 rebounds,

like 10 assists, and like

nine block shots. It was like he did

fucking everything

on the court when he was on the court.

Everything. John Howellman, thank you for staying a little long with me to talk to Bill Walton.

Your new podcast launching June 4th, Impolitik.

I call it Impolitik, but it's Impolitik.

He's a national political columnist at Puck.

We'll be talking to you soon.

My partner in Climb, Bill Walton, fare thee well.

The rest of you, we'll see you all here tomorrow.

Peace. Fare you well, my honey.
Fare you well, my only true one. All the birds that were singing are cloned except human alone Gone to leave this broke-down palace On my hands and my knees I will roll, roll, roll Make myself a man By the warmest side.
In my time, in my time, I will roll, roll, roll. In a bed, in a bed by the water side I will lay my head

listen to the river sing

sweet song

to love my soul

The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing

by Jason Brown