Mark Leibovich: The Oracle of Washington

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Speaker 11 It might seem like the 2024 U.S. presidential election is happening in a vacuum, but it will have global repercussions.

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Speaker 11 Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
It's the weekend. I got Mark Levovich Levo.
He's formerly at the New York Times. Now he's at The Atlantic.

Speaker 11 There are a lot of good people at The Atlantic. He's the author of five books.
His most recent is Thank You for Servitude. And we might talk a little bit about 2013's This Town.

Speaker 11 In the green room, we were discussing the Nuggets, Futility, Bob Seeger, Office Atlantic gossip. So we're kind of screwing you guys over by leaving everything in the locker room.

Speaker 11 How are you doing, Libo? Great. It's great to be with you, Tim.
We'll come up with good material for the crowd, too.

Speaker 11 You know, I do have to say, you know, since the first time you've been on with Charlie, first time on with me, is when I called the editor, the guy that was going to edit my book, his first question for me was, it's like, what are some political books you like?

Speaker 11 And my answer to that question was, I pretty much only read fiction. And like the only political book I've read that I've liked in like the the last hundred years is This Town by Mark Leibovich.

Speaker 11 And he's like, great. He's like, well, there you go.
So you have one model to work for. And then he gave me five other books that I should read.
So now I have to read political books all the time.

Speaker 11 It's the burden of this job. And even with that model I had for you, I still struggled until we sat at an Indian restaurant together.
I forget the name of it.

Speaker 11 You'll know because you wrote This Town and you did a diagram on the table for me of how you organize a book.

Speaker 11 The long and short of it was basically, you can organize it however the fuck you want and the readers will go along with you because you are the God of the book.

Speaker 11 And that was like the one piece of advice I needed. So there you go.
So I just wanted to appreciate you for that. Well, first of all, thank you.
And it's great to be with you, Tim.

Speaker 11 I'm a huge, huge evangelist for not only Tim, but also for your book, Why We Did It.

Speaker 11 Why We Did It. I have it right here.
You got it. That's right.

Speaker 11 But also the bull work in general. The bull work is a minor miracle every day.
You know, every year I do a kind of audit of the things I subscribe to online. And I'm thinking, is this worth it?

Speaker 11 And Bullwork always like immediately, like, this is worth it. Amazing.
There you go. You go to BulwarkPlus.com slash free trial.
Listen to Mark Leibovich. Get your free trial for Bulwark Plus.

Speaker 11 I just cut the athletic yesterday. Sorry, athletic friends.
I was doing an audit. Ooh, I love the athletic.
And part of the reason I love the athletic is because ESPN Plus has completely screwed me.

Speaker 11 Ever since my email changed from the New York Times, I left the New York Times. They took the email away from me.
I can't get back into my account, and yet I pay for it.

Speaker 11 And you can't get like a human being. Anyway, this is like, get off my lawn talk.

Speaker 11 Complain to the credit card company. You can do this.
Yeah, you call the credit card company. Say, screw you, Disney.
Who owns Disney Plus? It's Disney. No, I can't get into my account.
Anyway.

Speaker 11 We have some Disney listeners. Somebody give Mark Levich his money back.
All right. And by the way, this town is not fiction.
It's non-fiction. I mean, it's great that you.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 11 No, you are the counter exception to the rule. I was like, I only like fiction books, except for this town.
Oh, I get it. We're going to talk about this town at the end.

Speaker 11 We need to talk about actual, we got to talk about the news. All right.
A little bit. News-ish.

Speaker 11 Your most recent piece of the Atlantic, which are all gems. GOP Bozos on campus.

Speaker 11 House Republicans showed up at a campus protest. Of course.
That was your actual headline.

Speaker 11 My proposed counter headline was GOP Bozos on campus. I love this.

Speaker 11 I'm my alma mater. You went to GW.
I real alma mater. People think I went to LSU.
I didn't. My actual alma mater of GW.

Speaker 11 And, you know, I've spent a lot of time, too much time, according to some people who've provided feedback, discussing the gross behavior of some of these protesters on campus with their anti-Semitic chants and their desire for antifada, et cetera.

Speaker 11 But I have not spent very much time discussing the gross counter-protesters and the gross politicians trying to take advantage of these people. And so this is our moment to do it.

Speaker 11 Lauren Bobert was there. People were trolling her with a Betelgeuse sign, apparently.

Speaker 11 Byron Donalds was getting shouted down about January 6th. Paint a picture for us at the

Speaker 11 GW Quad. Were you on the quad? Yeah,

Speaker 11 well, the protests were on the quad, the press conference presided over by Jim Comer, the head of the oversight committee, was about, I would say about 100 yards off the quad.

Speaker 11 It was mostly just the chaos center. So, yeah, so because...

Speaker 11 We are based in Washington, or I am based in Washington, we have George Washington University has the advantage of hosting a lot of great guests who just sort of come down from Capitol Hill for cheap grandstanding opportunities.

Speaker 11 And what better opportunity was there? I mean, it's a pretty big encampment of protesters. It's been going on for a while.
Pretty peaceful, pretty chill. I was walking around there before.

Speaker 11 I mean, it was the chance for kind of quiet.

Speaker 11 Free food everywhere. I mean, one thing I learned just going there is like

Speaker 11 a lot of free food. I mean, pizza, pizza for everybody.
They treat the kids well at GW, I will say.

Speaker 11 But, you know, people were offering like James Comer pizza. Like he was walking by the free food table and everything.

Speaker 11 I think there was a sign that said

Speaker 11 food, like Palestine, must be free. So

Speaker 11 all right. You're turning me off from the protesters again.
All right, Mark. Okay.

Speaker 11 The communist protesters, this is not, you know, from each according to their ability to each according to their need. This is not winning me over.
My old Republican muscles are flaring. 100%.

Speaker 11 I will say this, though, the pizza was terrific. I bet.
It was donated.

Speaker 11 I don't know who donated it, but shout out to whoever that pizza provider was anyway i show up comer bobert donalds florida crazy luna was there sources say she might be crazy wild-eyed luna yeah a couple of others and they were just taking their turns you know trying they were getting shouted down comer kept saying help is on the way to george washington university they're going to shut down these encampments once and for all because while peaceful protest is great we're all for peaceful protest this is trespassing and it's time for for House Republicans to get tough on a trespassing.

Speaker 11 And so that's what they were there for. You know, they seem a little lighter on the January 6th trespassers.
That does seem to be a kind of a big conflict.

Speaker 11 There was a lot of real-time heckling back and forth, but that's what they wanted. I mean, they had some nice little morsels of confrontation with the students to go back to Fox News with.

Speaker 11 And the whole thing lasted, I would say, about... maybe 10 minutes, their little press conference thing.
Then they all could not get back into the van soon enough. They were fully fully protected.

Speaker 11 I mean, it was a little chaotic. No one's heart was really in it, but they got their photo up.
Did they feel like they had a substantive complaint?

Speaker 11 You know, do they have any substantive feedback or, you know, thoughts, concern, humanitarian concerns about Gaza? They were worried about anti-Semitism, very worried about anti-Semitism.

Speaker 11 Of course, they all went back and voted against whatever anti-Semitism bill was on the floor that day. But they were very worried about trespassing, also the safe environment for students.

Speaker 11 I don't think any of them had ever set foot on the George Washington University campus before. I don't think they'll be back anytime soon.
It was kind of a hodgepodge of campus protests.

Speaker 11 I mean, there was a lot of signs saying, you know, there was a big sign that said lesbians for Palestine, you know, trans for Palestine.

Speaker 11 A lot of groups, a lot of identity politics were represented here.

Speaker 11 I do struggle with that. Yeah, I do struggle with that.
I do, I just, I want, that's great. If you want to be a lesbian for Palestine, I support you.

Speaker 11 I would also like for you to be a lesbian against Hamas. Correct.

Speaker 11 Because all Palestinians aren't hamas that's fine but i and so every sign doesn't have to have hamas on it but like one sign you know if if there's a group of queers for palestine protesting israel it would be nice if like you know maybe there's like an eight to one ratio where eight of the queers were for palestine and against the idf or whatever and one of the queers was also against hamas just you know just to just fyi we realize that that this is not really they're not really great either particularly for us correct and to take that a step further, to credit where due, and I can't believe I'm saying this, Lauren Boebert herself sort of seized on one of these signs or chants or something and said, all right, lesbians for Palestine, or take that to a Hamas rally, see how that goes for you.

Speaker 11 You know, fair point. I don't know if that's really credit where due, though, because, I mean, I don't, it doesn't, I don't think Lauren Bobert has a long track record of pro-lesbian advocacy herself.

Speaker 11 I think that that's probably true. I think it's called this concern trolling.
I think that's what Lauren Bobert's doing. Concern trolling.

Speaker 11 You could even say that kids call this concern trolling by whoever wrote that line for her or something. And they literally each had 30 seconds to talk.
And yeah, it was a little circus.

Speaker 11 I kind of figured a little bite-sized morsel of life in Washington circa right now.

Speaker 11 The only interesting thing about the House Republicans for me at this point, you've been covering these guys for decades, is Mike Johnson. Because,

Speaker 11 like, this guy was pretty indistinguishable from

Speaker 11 Byron Donalds,

Speaker 11 like five months ago,

Speaker 11 in his rhetoric and his behavior and his voting habits. And he gets in and has managed to do what all of the people pretended they thought Trump might do, grow into the job, you know.

Speaker 11 And now when he talks, he's like praising Tip O'Neill. It seems like him and Hakeem Jeffries have a little bromance now.

Speaker 11 He's like, I went into the skiff and things got to, I don't know if he found, you know, if God is speaking to him, I hope so. Maybe that is it.
I'd be happy to credit that.

Speaker 11 But in some ways, Mike Johnson's new tone and just showing how easy it is to flip the switch into being a responsible conservative leader actually makes these clowns look even worse in a lot of ways.

Speaker 11 Does that make sense to you? It does. I would like to have a hopeful view of him.

Speaker 11 I do think, and I've heard over the years, that exposure to the skiff and to the intelligence, which only a very, very small slice of elected leaders, like the Speaker of the House, get exposure to, can be an extremely chilling experience.

Speaker 11 You see in real time what's at stake, when it could happen. And also to be in the room with the president, to be in the room with other leaders, to be in the room with McConnell, with Schumer.

Speaker 11 I mean, that's pretty rarefied air. And

Speaker 11 it's, I imagine, fairly coercive in some ways, or especially when you're the outcast in there, you're sort of seen as the guy who is leading the real clown show.

Speaker 11 And look, you're the one impediment to progress here. Can you please go back and do something? It's a little harder to do that when you've been in, you know, been at that level and hearing that.

Speaker 11 So I would like to think that he kind of had a little talk with himself and said, okay, I'm going to do the right thing here.

Speaker 11 There's another part of me that thinks, what is he actually talking to Trump about? Did he actually say to Trump, look, I got nowhere to go here.

Speaker 11 It's a bad look for us for Russia to sort of rout Ukraine, Ukraine to be seen as being left out in the cold by us.

Speaker 11 Can you like give me a little leeway on this and I'll be there for you on January 6th, 2025 or something? Because that's really all that Trump cares about.

Speaker 11 I mean, I'm sure Trump cares about Russia on some level, but I can't begin to understand that. I do wonder if you think he's scheming with Trump.

Speaker 11 How worthy or how reliable a steward of all this Mike Johnson will prove to be when the chips are really down for the country.

Speaker 11 I just think that whatever he's talking to Trump about is probably as important, if not more so, than whatever is going on in his meetings.

Speaker 11 I'm with you on this, but again, nobody is more surprised than me that this has become a Mike Johnson fan podcast. And I guess one person is more surprised than me.

Speaker 11 Mike Johnson's communications director, a former colleague of mine that I ripped mercilessly for years on Twitter when I went to work for Donald Trump Raj Shah. Oh, so Raj in the White House.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I saw his name out there. Yeah.
Yeah, Raj is a communications director. Raj is pretty smart.
Well, I've been very harsh on Raj

Speaker 11 who used to work for me and then went to work for Trump.

Speaker 11 And so we haven't talked for years.

Speaker 11 And he messaged me the other day and he was like, what's going on? I'm like, I've been telling you for years. If you do the right thing, I'll say nice things.
Like, it's not that hard.

Speaker 11 Anyway, here's what Mike Johnson said. I'm going to pull this up in Politico to Ryan Lizza.
The person on the other side of the aisle is not an enemy. They're a fellow American.

Speaker 11 The founders anticipated that you have people with very different philosophical ideas, very different principles and ideas about government.

Speaker 11 But the the point was that we would come here, sit around a table and arm wrestle together and kind of get to a point of consensus so that we can govern as a country. I mean,

Speaker 11 maybe he's full of shit, but like, it's a breath of fresh air to go back to a time when we have people that are full of shit talking about bipartisanship. Correct.
I'll take that full of shit.

Speaker 11 I don't know. What do you think about that? I think so, too.
Look, even if it's just a feint, I mean, I think,

Speaker 11 First of all, I just want to say that the Reagan-Tip O'Neill friendship thing is bullshit. Mike Johnson also mentioned this in the same political interview.

Speaker 11 He said, Tip O'Neill goes to the hospital and kisses him on the forehead. Johnson said, you know, like they didn't agree on almost anything, but they had respect for one another.

Speaker 11 I think we got to get back to that. There we go.
Okay, but you're saying that that's apocryphal?

Speaker 11 A little bit. They were not close.
They did not love each other. Tip and Reagan.
They were not as close as everyone said. People, there's this gauzy nostalgia that people look to.

Speaker 11 It's like, oh, you know, you can reach across the aisle. After hours, you know, Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan would have beers together.

Speaker 11 Not really really true, because Ronald Reagan didn't drink a lot of beer. It happened maybe once.
And the kissing on the head thing, I'd never heard before. I don't know if that's made up.

Speaker 11 How do you do that? Like, you're visiting the president of the United States after he's been shot and you kiss him on the head? Like, why? I mean, it's cute. I didn't buy that.

Speaker 11 I'm calling bullshit on that.

Speaker 11 We have a really high-educated audience and listenership and a well-read listenership.

Speaker 11 So I'm going to have people dig into the Tip O'Neill Ronnie kiss, and we'll report back on Monday's podcast about the providence of that kiss. Was there a kiss on the head?

Speaker 11 I mean, I am actually old enough to remember when Reagan was shot. I was, I guess, like 15 or something like that.

Speaker 11 I was in my mom's belly. Okay.
I mean, maybe a kiss on the head was taking place at, I guess it was George Washington University Hospital or wherever it was.

Speaker 11 But larger point, people worked across the aisle, people worked together, which is true.

Speaker 11 I mean, there were actual deals that were cut between liberal Democrats who ran the House and conservative Republicans who ran the White House.

Speaker 11 I mean, there was much more dealmaking that went on back then. And look, I want to say Kevin McCarthy is basically a backslapper too, right?

Speaker 11 His impulse, I wouldn't say it's bipartisan, but his impulse is survival, but also just sort of hail fellow, you know, let's, he loves the idea that he and Biden.

Speaker 11 When Biden was vice president and he was leader of the House leader for the Republicans, they used to have breakfast, you know, at the vice president's mansion.

Speaker 11 And like he was like, I remember once he was like showing off pictures of him and Biden eating breakfast because he thought that was really cool. But, you know, put McCarthy aside.

Speaker 11 I, yeah, no, let's not put McCarthy aside, actually. I'm very happy you brought him up.
You spent a lot of time with Kevin. You were in Bakersfield with him?

Speaker 11 I was in Bakersfield, yeah, a few years ago. He was not speaker yet, but he was leader.

Speaker 11 I think another part, just psychoanalyzing myself of why I'm so free with praise on Mike Johnson, is the Schotten Freud of Kevin McCarthy's failure. Yeah, it brings me a lot of joy.

Speaker 11 And Kevin McCarthy not only was

Speaker 11 egomaniacal and narcissistic and confident that he was good at what you're just talking about. He was a good back slapper.

Speaker 11 He worked his way up from being a car dealer or whatever the fuck he was to being Speaker of the House. And I'm good at this.

Speaker 11 And here we have Mike Johnson replaces him. He gets overthrown by Matt Gaetz, who McCarthy's still leaking against, like weirdly, out of the speakership.

Speaker 11 He gave a quote to, I think, Politico the other day about how Matt Gaetz was doing cocaine and sleeping with underage chicks or something, which is, it seems a little petty.

Speaker 11 So anyway, he gets overthrown by Matt Gates.

Speaker 11 He gets replaced by a simple country lawyer from northwest Louisiana, who he has no respect for.

Speaker 11 And all of his friends are trash talking him, you know, and about how Mike's in over his head and he doesn't realize how hard Kevin had it.

Speaker 11 And then Mike, within a couple months, achieves everything that Kevin was totally unable to achieve by employing the simple trick of just like having a basic level of decent treatment of the Democrats on the other side.

Speaker 11 Like that's really all he did differently, and it works. And now Kevin is jobless,

Speaker 11 whining, having temper tantrums to news reporters. And I get a lot of joy out of that trajectory.
I don't know.

Speaker 11 I'm not asking you if you get joy out of it, but am I overstating the case here of the fall of Kevin? No, I mean, it's kind of, I don't quite know what he's doing now.

Speaker 11 I mean, he seems to have time on his hands. He's talking a lot to a lot of different reporters.
Yeah, this Vendetta thing he's got against, you know, Nancy Mace and Matt Gates and who else?

Speaker 11 Tim Burchitz, all people who he feels screwed him. I don't quite know where it's all headed, whether he has any.
I mean, I guess he's fielding candidates and so forth. Does he call you ever?

Speaker 11 Just event? No.

Speaker 11 No. I mean, he's got my number.
I got his number.

Speaker 11 No, haven't talked to him. I don't think he likes me.
Seems like you picked the right time of night. Like after a couple pops are in there, you call him.
I'm sure you'd have a lot to say.

Speaker 11 You know, sure. I might try who maybe tonight.
Maybe it depends. I guess the Nuggets game, after the Nuggets game, I'll do it and be on late.

Speaker 11 I will say this about McCarthy he actually the thing that kind of lost him his job or seemed to really hasten the loss of his job is he actually did kind of do the right thing on a couple of

Speaker 11 important things like the debt ceiling he cut that debt ceiling deal he cut the budget deal he kept the government open and then the motion to vacate came after now I'm not saying that well he's he followed his principles and and that cost him his job so you know he's like the second coming of Liz Cheney or something like that.

Speaker 11 No, I mean I think what he had that Mike Johnson didn't have was a whole body of bad will that he had accumulated over the years with Democrats, with Republicans.

Speaker 11 He just had been around much longer and made a lot more enemies.

Speaker 11 And you make a lot more enemies when you're in leadership than when you're a backbencher like Mike Johnson, especially when you are considered by your colleagues after like all this chaos and like, yeah, let's give this guy a shot.

Speaker 11 So I don't know. I mean, I guess apparently McCarthy wants to work for Trump again.
I mean, it makes sense. I guess he still talks to Trump.

Speaker 11 Did you see him like kind of soft float himself for VP in the New York Times? Yeah. Did you see that?

Speaker 11 Yeah. He called up Michael Bender.
This is why you got to maybe call him after a few pubs. You never know what kind of material he'll give you.
And he's like, you know what Trump needs?

Speaker 11 Trump needs a guy that knows his way around the hill.

Speaker 11 Yeah. A guy that he knows is going to be loyal and knows his way around.
And it's like, okay, Kevin. Just like, that's what they said about Pence.
But in some world, he could be like a

Speaker 11 legislative liaison kind of thing or chief of staff. He could be like a Reince.
Could be a Reince. Your friend Reince.
Reinz lasted six whole months in that job. And Reince is running the convention.

Speaker 11 Reince is very busy these days also. Tim, where'd you go? Oh, there you are.
I was putting up my notes about one of my favorite columns that you read

Speaker 11 was about Reince.

Speaker 11 And it was, will Trump swallow the GOP whole? This was in 2016.

Speaker 11 And you and Reince, what, had like a weekly meeting? Weekly therapy-ish session. Weekly therapy session.
It's interesting. So this is summer of 2016 to put people in this spot.

Speaker 11 It's interesting to think about the comp there, about like Kevin becoming chief of staff versus Reince and how things have changed over the course of the eight years.

Speaker 11 Well, I guess Reince did the RNC at that point, but then he becomes chief of staff, but he's the chairman of the RNC. So it's kind of a similar position.
And Reince is so tortured in that role.

Speaker 11 He literally is hoping for a health event to get out of it. Like it is, it's so bad.
Like he was privately telling people, I hope that I have a heart attack.

Speaker 11 Not one so serious that I will die or anything, but just like a little one so I can get out of this and that was the situation with all of those all of my old people they were all so tortured then yeah that's gone now right i mean do you have any republicans doing therapy sessions with you anymore like could you do the rights thing again or everybody's pretty kind of found acceptance on their life as if they're still there right yeah or hiding it's certainly harder to find people to have therapy with.

Speaker 11 You hear it less often. You just like people are either better at keeping their head down or a lot of them have just went away.
But yeah, 2016 was interesting because

Speaker 11 Reinz was RNC chair.

Speaker 11 He was kind of the normie Republican, but also the institutional Republican who had to somehow safeguard the party from this insurgent monster who was just running roughshod all of them.

Speaker 11 And I would go up to the RNC every week and we would talk and Sean Spicer was his communications director then or his deputy, I guess, whatever it was.

Speaker 11 And we would just sort of sit around and he would say, yeah, it's really, and he would kind of fetishize his beleagueredness. And it was kind of fun.

Speaker 11 And I kind of made him the main character of this piece that ran in the magazine, in the Times magazine. And we kept talking after that.

Speaker 11 I remember we spent some time together at the convention that year in Cleveland.

Speaker 11 And then I was so kind of amused by this, but also kind of amazed by his willingness to continue to kind of unburden himself to me that we did like a brief Tuesdays with Reince column online at the New York Times, in which I would get him to sort of weigh in on the latest Trump outrage week after week.

Speaker 11 And he completely played along,

Speaker 11 at least until someone I think might have gotten to him and said, you know, this might not be the best look for the RNC chair in like August, September of 2016.

Speaker 11 You might want to stand down for a little bit. And so eventually, yeah, he kind of shut me down.
Was it a self-flagellation type thing?

Speaker 11 Like, do you think that he was punishing himself or do you think that

Speaker 11 he thought that he could win you over?

Speaker 11 It was a test of his own ability to rationalize or what was he challenging himself or the kink i actually think on some levels he was quite amused by the situation too i think he was kind of flattered by the idea that he was the kind of guy in the hapless job who somehow was the good guy who was trying to be the grown-up here i remember talking to then speaker paul ryan who you know they're pals from wisconsin who said you know i'm glad that reins is the grown-up in the room like that was the big like scott walker all the whole all the republican like Wisconsin kind of group.

Speaker 11 They were all, they're all pretty tight. That was Reince's job.
I mean, thank God we have Reinz to sort of do this dirty work.

Speaker 11 And yeah, so I think, you know, Reince was kind of, in a way, was flattered by that too. And he kind of warmed himself into Trump world

Speaker 11 and got to be chief of staff for six months, which he's been dining out on for, you know, eight, nine years since.

Speaker 11 This is a life lesson that I always share with college students when I go to their class and ask them about my life, career.

Speaker 11 I'm always like, if you feel like you're the grown-up in the room where everybody else around you is doing bad shit and you're the one that's like, you know, trying to keep the rails on the tracks, actually, that's not a good place.

Speaker 11 Like that's, it's flattering to tell yourself that that's a good place to be, but actually what you're doing is you're enabling and helping the bad people around you.

Speaker 11 There's this big parallel between me and Wrights that I wrote about because he basically pitched me on playing his role with regards to the gay marriage. Oh, interesting.

Speaker 11 When I worked for him, I was quitting and I was quitting partly just for careerist reasons, but a sub-reason was gay marriage.

Speaker 11 I don't want to be an RNC spokesperson at that time and be like the gay on record, like, you know, being like, well, on the one hand, the state should have rights. Like, nobody wants to be that guy.

Speaker 11 And me and Reines had a big meeting where I told him this. I was like, I'm quitting because of this.
Right. And he spent like eight minutes being like, no, we need somebody like you.

Speaker 11 You'll make sure our statements aren't homophobic. You know, it'll be good to keep people in line and to signal that we're not.

Speaker 11 And I always looked back on that convo and was like, he took his own advice four years later with Trump, right? Which is like, we need somebody like me to make the statements a little less crazy.

Speaker 11 And anyway, he shouldn't have taken his own advice. That was dumb.
That was autopsy rents, right? That was like the era.

Speaker 11 That was the era where he was trying to have a really clear-headed sort of view of Republicans trying to talk like 21st-century people.

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Speaker 11 I want to talk about your most recent. Is it your most recent? Or maybe your second most recent article, Gavin Newsome Can't Help Himself? Yeah, I think that was the

Speaker 11 most recent big one. I mean, the Palestine one was that was last week.
I was quick. So you were in Sacramento with

Speaker 11 Sacramento. I love California so much, I'll even go to Sacramento.
I actually think Sacramento is underrated. I completely agree.
Sacramento is totally underrated. Good weather.
Completely.

Speaker 11 You can get a good meal there. You know, it's not Paris, but it's pretty good.
It's not. I stayed in the Bay Area, though, and there was no traffic.

Speaker 11 I mean, everyone leaving California has really helped with the traffic. This goes to my first question about Gavin.

Speaker 11 I'm of so many different minds about him because

Speaker 11 on the one hand,

Speaker 11 he has certain traits that you just can't deny. Like, he's good at going on Fox and arguing with the Republicans.
He's compelling.

Speaker 11 You know, he was really early on a lot of... social justice issues that he was right about, gay marriage in particular, but some others too.
So you have to give him credit for that.

Speaker 11 But also, there are some equally obvious flaws in his personal traits and in how California is being governed.

Speaker 11 Every time I read a profile of his, and I was hoping the great Lebo would

Speaker 11 help unpeel under the onion. Like, does he get his flaws? Does he see the flaws either in himself or in California and the governance philosophy? And it kind of seems like, no.
What say you?

Speaker 11 I think he gets the political vulnerability of California, definitely. I mean, he's lived with that for a long, long time.
I mean, he's wanted to, he's very ambitious.

Speaker 11 He's wanted to be a national politician for decades. And,

Speaker 11 you know, when you're mayor of San Francisco, which has a pretty limited, you know, traveling purview, right? I mean, it's very, very much kind of a bubble world in some ways.

Speaker 11 But you get to kind of find yourself on the national stage all of a sudden with same-sex marriage. And he was like, definitely a...
pioneer, if not the father of same-sex marriage.

Speaker 11 I mean, he was the first politician to really boldly go there in a very, you know, high, you know, high-profile way.

Speaker 11 You know, my husband says that he will always be with Gavin for that because he remembers, it was formative.

Speaker 11 I mean, it was, I was, I was a teenager or something that was happening or maybe middle school. And it's San Francisco.

Speaker 11 So, you know, and Harvey Milk and like, so within, but on a national level, to be like, I'm going to marry people. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 And, well, it's one thing, yeah, you can say it's San Francisco, but it also, I mean, that's where the wildfire started. I mean, that was a national policy, you know, within a few years from that.

Speaker 11 And that's where it all started. So, yeah, no, there were a lot of people like that.
I mean, I think his place in history is assured that way. Look, California is an easy target.

Speaker 11 I mean, I also think there's a romance to California.

Speaker 11 And I might just be like some coastal, you know, elite who loves going to California and loves going to San Francisco and loves going to L.A., and that's boring. And, you know, who cares?

Speaker 11 You self-identify as the Don Draper, you know, and the madman is like, it's like when you're on the East Coast, it's dreary, Mark. And then you go to California, you have a new outfit.

Speaker 11 It's like Pastels, Mark. You know, the filter on the camera is a little different.
Yeah, I wish. I don't actually own pastels, but if I did, I would.
I love it.

Speaker 11 Look, boring. Okay, who cares? Mark loves California.
But so Newsom is, he gets California thrown at his face all the time. The homelessness,

Speaker 11 the crime, the San Francisco, the way it looks, the way, just the whole look and feel of the big cities there. So he's used to that.
I think on a personal level, he definitely has blind spots.

Speaker 11 I mean, he is extremely talented. He can be very dazzling.
I think he knows that.

Speaker 11 And one of the drawbacks to that is it's hard to be a surrogate, which is ostensibly what he is being called upon to be now for Biden. He's supposed to go out and say, you know, we worship this guy.

Speaker 11 We think this is the greatest president like ever. And I am all in for him.
I mean, I think he is all in for him because he doesn't want Trump to be president. But I think it's hard for Newsom to

Speaker 11 he's such a performer. It's hard for him to subvert his own performance impulse to that of the greater cause of Biden because I don't think he, at the end of the day, really believes it.

Speaker 11 I mean, I think he believes Biden's better than Trump, but I think he probably also believes he could do a better job making the case.

Speaker 11 I'm just attracted to people who are a little bit tortured in certain ways, you know, and he doesn't feel that. I don't know.

Speaker 11 Is there any depth there? I think there is. He does go very deep into these issues.
He has this really weird, but I think very compelling way of learning.

Speaker 11 He had a terrible learning disability growing up. He had terrible dyslexia.
He stuttered. He got terrible grades and terrible SAT scores.

Speaker 11 And he had to really learn to process written material in a different way. He did a lot of memorizing.

Speaker 11 He kind of learned to be a consumer of information as a performer, which, yes, you can say that there's lightweightness behind that because he doesn't like spend like hours upon hours reading stuff.

Speaker 11 But look, I mean, he masters a lot of the bullet points, a lot of the main points. And look, when you're on TV, it's obviously a big asset.
But he also, he does the work. He works extremely hard.

Speaker 11 He stays up extremely late. And does he actually care about the social justice?

Speaker 11 Because that's the other thing that I see that I wonder sometimes is like you're doing the interview with him and you'll ask him a question that's kind of personal.

Speaker 11 And he'll be like, well, I just, I do care about the plight of the whatever group, you know, in a way that sometimes feels a little phony. Can't speak to his level of sincerity.
However,

Speaker 11 you kind of can. No, you're an observer of the human condition.
I am an observer, but there are limits to observation, you know, as far as one's inner, you know, commitment.

Speaker 11 I think he can certainly sound like he cares. Yeah, it's kind of what politicians need to do, first of all.
I mean, I think so. I mean, he legit was pretty badly bullied growing up.

Speaker 11 I mean, he definitely has

Speaker 11 had a lot of vulnerabilities in life that I think would make him or make someone like him more appreciative of what it's like to be beaten around a little bit and maybe have someone have your back.

Speaker 11 Again, very easy to be cynical with him, and I am, and I think many people can be. I think it hurts him.
He appears very Miss Showman-like, very,

Speaker 11 he looks like an operator. He looks like kind of a short-timer, someone who's just sort of blowing through and on his way to the next thing.
But I find him effective. I find him somewhat sincere.

Speaker 11 And look, I mean, politics is

Speaker 11 largely about what you can get done and what you can get away with. And he's obviously had a pretty long career at this point.

Speaker 11 Did you ask him about the picture? Which one? Him and Kim Guilfoyle laying on the rug together. Oh, I didn't ask him about the picture, but we certainly talked about Kim.

Speaker 11 Yeah, Kim Guilfoyle, his first wife, and who's now the future wife of Donald Trump Jr. So if Newsom does run for president, as I think he probably will in 2028, and Don Jr.

Speaker 11 runs as the heir to his father's legacy in 2028, assuming elections aren't canceled. I think it's actually more likely that Donald Trump Sr.
will still be running again. Probably.

Speaker 11 Okay, take the leap of faith and say Jr. actually steps in.
You will have an unprecedented situation in which both the Republican and Democratic nominee have been married to the same woman.

Speaker 11 I don't think that's ever happened. I mean, I don't think Mondale and Reagan were married to the same woman.
I mean, I'm not a historian, so I can't speak to like the 1800s or anything.

Speaker 11 But I mean, Kim Guilfoyle would become the most interesting woman in America, like instantly.

Speaker 11 That's one reason not to hope for that is because the last thing we need is Kim Guilfoyle to become one of the most favorite people in America.

Speaker 11 I was just doing a quick Google to see if we have any other examples of this, and I'm not seeing anything. I was pulling up the 1876 election, Hayes versus Tilden.

Speaker 11 They came from Ohio and New York. I don't think that there's a lot of overlap there.
Yeah, I think Adley Stevenson was dating Mamie Eisenhower for a bit, but I don't think they ever were married.

Speaker 11 Got it.

Speaker 11 Sorry, to the Eisenhower Library. I'm kidding.
All right, fine. If you can't be a psychologist, you can be an observer of people's political talent.
And so, like, where do you fall?

Speaker 11 Could Gavin really be it? The nominee? Like, do you think that Gavin's got it, or is he, is he more of a DeSantis or more of a Reagan?

Speaker 11 He's not a DeSantis and he's not a Reagan. I mean, Reagan, I mean, had much more sort of stage presence, frankly.
He was much less in a hurry. He played a long game.

Speaker 11 He'd been at that a while, and he was a trained actor. But he's not DeSantis.
I mean, first of all, he hates DeSantis. The two of them genuinely hate each other, which is kind of fun.

Speaker 11 The interesting nugget in your piece, actually, was when they did that debate, was the offstage of Gavin. It says a lot about both of them, right?

Speaker 11 Gavin tried to like be chummy, do the deal, and DeSantis wouldn't talk to him. He said he put his hands in his pocket.

Speaker 11 I had no idea if he would like talk out of school about what happens backstage because, you know, I don't want to talk about private discussions, but he had no problem with that.

Speaker 11 I mean, he had no loyalty at all or no. desire to protect DeSantis.
Yeah, no, he did a great kind of imitation of DeSantis' posture, just kind of looking right at his shoes.

Speaker 11 Someone had sent Newsom a bottle of wine called DeSantis wine. A sour? Well, he didn't open it because I asked him, I said, So are you still drinking, Governor?

Speaker 11 Because he stopped drinking for a while in the late aughts, I guess. I think he still partakes of wine, but he said, You'll notice that the DeSantis wine was unopened.

Speaker 11 And it was. But I have a picture of the DeSantis wine in Newsom's office.

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Speaker 11 One other thing from your interview that ties to a different subject I want to get to, which is Biden, is the age issue came up. And I guess Newsom made a joke about Previgen.

Speaker 11 Yeah. And that got you into a pretty awkward exchange, it felt like.
Yeah, it was awkward, but it was good for the story. I mean, basically, Newsom was doing his Biden is FDR, Biden is JFK.

Speaker 11 I've never seen a greater leader kind of thing, blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, you know, if you look at these polls, if you look at Biden's polls,

Speaker 11 in addition to his low approval ratings, and if you look at, you know, the concerning head-to-heads with Trump, voters in both parties and independents overwhelmingly think that Biden shouldn't be running at this age.

Speaker 11 Isn't age, at this point, just the intractable issue for him. And I thought he was going to just sort of like say something like,

Speaker 11 yeah, no, no, Biden has never been more vigorous.

Speaker 11 He's great and everything. But no, he said, maybe we can get him some previgen or something.
And I didn't know what previgen was.

Speaker 11 Newsom pronounced it pretigen with a T, but it's, I guess, a, a one of those vitamins or, I don't know, extracts that promotes brain health or something like that, that advertises on Fox a lot, which Newsom watches all the time.

Speaker 11 So he was familiar with Previgen, and I was not, because I don't watch Fox.

Speaker 11 But I very sarcastically said, well, do you think that someone should, you know, maybe put the President on a more vigorous notion of Previgen?

Speaker 11 At which point, I thought Newsom would realize that, hmm, maybe I've gone out a little over my skis here, and I shouldn't be joking about, you know, the President of the United States, you know, taking this anti-aging or pro-brain health kind of supplement.

Speaker 11 And then he kind of dissembled his way through that. And, you know, I heard this, and I was thinking, oh, well, one, make sure the tape recorder is working.
And two, that'll be in the lead somewhere.

Speaker 11 I don't think the White House loved that exchange, but it was big on Fox. Jesse Waters was a big fan of that.
And the five had a whole segment on that, apparently.

Speaker 11 Well, this uh episode is sponsored by previgen uh which is formulated with apiquorin which was originally discovered in jellyfish it's safe and unique and supports brain function

Speaker 11 yeah we're not actually sponsored by them but uh yeah that's uh that's what it says right here previgen.com

Speaker 11 jellyfish that's a kind of that's kind of brain eating it sounds like yeah well the jellyfish are very smart octopuses very smart Very sentient. I know.
Yeah. Have you ever been bitten by a jellyfish?

Speaker 11 I know. Jellyfish, they really hurt.
That really, really hurts. They can also be fatal.

Speaker 11 I was in Florida last year and I stepped on a jellyfish because I didn't believe that, like, okay, it's a big blob of jelly. How much damage could it do? And it did damage.

Speaker 11 That was kind of your hand on the stove moment at age 52? Definitely. Yeah, although actually it's funny, I think I had a hand on the jellyfish moment when I was like five or so.

Speaker 11 So maybe that moment only works for 50 years. Yeah, but if I need a reminder, it was a booster shot of having religion on jellyfish.

Speaker 11 I had a smooth transition until we got off into octopus and jellyfish, but I want to talk about your original Biden story on this age. June 16th, 2022, why Biden shouldn't run in 2024.

Speaker 11 You're arguing mostly that it was about the fact that he'd be 86 at the end of his administration.

Speaker 11 So in recent weeks, you've spoken with 10 official and unofficial advisors, asking them about how he's holding up. And

Speaker 11 what kind of responses were you getting back then? And how do you think that article is holding up here, May 10th, 2024? Yeah, I mean, I stand by it. Did I break the story that Biden is old?

Speaker 11 I don't know. I mean, kind of actually, kind of.
I was talking with Spann at the time for something that I was working on. Like, he was calling you like,

Speaker 11 the damn is broken.

Speaker 11 Once the oracle of Washington, Mark Liebovich, who is, who has whined and dined at the Washington parties and who is the scribe of the town, once he says it, now people can talk about it.

Speaker 11 So, you know, in some ways, some people thought that you kind of of opened up the convo, which I'm sure some of our listeners don't appreciate. Yeah, no, they really don't appreciate it now.

Speaker 11 I mean, I've written subsequent stories to the same theme. I mean, I think others have, obviously.
Look, I think he's too old. I think he shouldn't have run.
I think a lot of people think that.

Speaker 11 But I think at this point, you know, that chip sailed. He's the candidate that can beat Trump.

Speaker 11 His one job is to win. I mean, you could argue that his one job was to win in 2020, and he did that job.
And, you know, anything he's accomplished as president has been gravy, and

Speaker 11 he brought calm to the nation and non-chaos to the nation.

Speaker 11 But no, I think still it's a huge problem, and it has shown to be a huge problem in poll after poll after poll, no matter how taboo the subject might be now around the White House.

Speaker 11 And yeah, people get pissed off at you all the time, pissed off for mentioning it. But I mean, it doesn't make it any less true now, just given that the die is cast.

Speaker 11 Aaron Powell, when you're talking to people around Biden, I mean, so you still live in Washington, you know, you're still at this town man, not like me.

Speaker 11 I've decamped out to Real America, you know, the Caribbean.

Speaker 11 Are there things that they say that you can't, that can't make it into the Atlantic because of editors that can make it into a podcast, you know, where we have lighter, you know, lighter rules on sourcing?

Speaker 11 I mean,

Speaker 11 what are the vibes from the people that you talk to on this that are in his circle?

Speaker 11 Incredible nervousness. Yeah, I mean, I can't name names.

Speaker 11 No, it's like you hear the same nervousness around the White House, around the DNC, around the re-elect about his age.

Speaker 11 You know, the State of the Union was, I guess, a good moment for him, but he still looks old. People will say that, and they will say that,

Speaker 11 you know, even people who see him on a fairly regular basis. And that's a problem.
That's a fact. He might win anyway.
But, yeah, I mean, it's something they continue to deal with.

Speaker 11 I mean, I think it really, really helps that Trump has been...

Speaker 11 such a gobbler of attention. I mean, Biden has been, you know, very much the second candidate in this race and very much in the background.
Hopefully he doesn't step out of jellyfish.

Speaker 11 I guess my pushback is the one counter when I think about this, I shared concerns about Biden's age. I just wasn't sure that the alternative was any better, and I still not.

Speaker 11 Because, you know, I just imagine this Gaza situation, which is just a total

Speaker 11 problem for him, a conundrum for him as it is as the president. But imagine if he's the lame duck president and there's a Democratic nominee

Speaker 11 who is trying to either angle to his, probably to his left, who the hell knows, you know, if it's Kamala.

Speaker 11 I mean, that would have just take what is already a cluster and make it a cluster of epic proportions. So I don't know that the alternative was much better, I guess.
I don't disagree.

Speaker 11 I was definitely comfortable saying he's old, he's too old, making that argument. I was less comfortable saying, yes, and if they nominated so-and-so,

Speaker 11 you know, that so-and-so would win.

Speaker 11 Everything would be fine. It'd be a Reagan Mondale.
Right. I mean, I don't think Kamala's a so-and-so.
I don't think Newsom's a so-and-so.

Speaker 11 I think, you know, if you look at polling and like Whitmer, I mean, none of them do any better than Biden usually.

Speaker 11 Although I'm also of the belief that a vigorous campaign in which, you know, Newsom and Pete Buttigieg and Josh Shapiro and, you know, Raphael Warnock and Gretchen Whitmer were running across Iowa and, you know, a winner was anointed.

Speaker 11 I mean, you can't, I mean, that is a very, very enlightening process and definitely an elevating process if you can get through it, obviously.

Speaker 11 You were out with Nikki Haley a lot on the campaign trail. What do you think she does? She's been quiet.
Yeah, it's a great question. It's a wild card.

Speaker 11 I mean, I'm surprised she hasn't just sort of folded her cards and just said, I endorse President Trump.

Speaker 11 It's very important that we have his policies and Biden is terrible and blah, blah, blah, like done what Sununu did and what I guess DeSantis did.

Speaker 11 I mean, DeSantis has been kind of clunky, but I guess they had a détente recently. I don't think she's holding out for some deal with Trump.

Speaker 11 I don't think she said, you know, look, make me Secretary of State. I mean, that's not going to happen either.

Speaker 11 The only thing I can sort of say is I think the longer she holds out, the worse it is for Trump, which feels obvious.

Speaker 11 But I think, as we've seen in these numbers in the primaries that have happened after she's dropped out, this still seems to hold quite a bit of sway with her voters or her potential voters, either as a place for protest Republicans to go or at least, you know, this is kind of a cliche at this point.

Speaker 11 I don't like this word, but I'm going to use it anyway. A permission structure.

Speaker 11 Don't you think that's a banana? Is that a nag on Sarah Longwell? She loves talking about permission structures. You're right.
I love Sarah Longwell. I do too.
No shade intended at all.

Speaker 11 There are people that you love that sometimes use annoying phrases. That happens for me.
Sarah has become so influential and so widely listened to that she has made permission structure ecliche.

Speaker 11 So that is a sign of her power and the awe in which I hold her. So anyway,

Speaker 11 Haley's staying in, staying kind of on the outside has been helpful.

Speaker 11 I mean, I would love to think, and I guess guess Jonathan Martin wrote this a few weeks ago, I would like to think the White House is reaching out to her in some way.

Speaker 11 I don't know if the Trump people are. I mean, they should, but she can certainly be a bit of a power broker, you know, if non-Trumpy Republicans are a wild card in this.
I agree with that.

Speaker 11 I promised that we'd end with some nostalgia. So we're going to start in the 80s.
Okay. Look kind of like a...
an angel and devil nostalgia. Jack Quinn died recently of the Quinn Gillespie power firm.

Speaker 11 Unfortunately, still with us, Paul Manafort of Manafort and Stone is back in the picture. Big Washington Post story about him today, about being poised to rejoin Trump's world.

Speaker 11 And he did a deal with a Chinese media company, which is, I'm sure, totally on the up and up.

Speaker 11 I want you to take us through like that kind of 80s, 90s lobbyists' corruption heyday, and then we're going to do a little this town era and take us to present day.

Speaker 11 So talk about Quinn and Manafort and that side of the Washington swamp. Yeah, so Jack Quinn, who died this week at I think 74, 75, he was in his 70s.
He was a minor character in this town.

Speaker 11 He was the general counsel or the White House counsel for a brief period under Bill Clinton in the 90s. He was tied up in the Mark Rich scandal, which feels very quaint in retrospect.

Speaker 11 So Mark Rich was his financier who had some criminal problem and was a fugitive. He was in Europe somewhere.
And Clinton pardoned him at the 11th hour, right before he left office.

Speaker 11 Jack Quinn was Mark Rich's attorney. He was seen to have kind of brokered the pardon.
And there was a few weeks of pretty, you know, there was hell to pay for this.

Speaker 11 I mean, it was like, wow, what a terrible abuse of the pardon system. And like, how could Bill Clinton do this? And the guy just left the White House.
And, you know, they treat it as a real crisis.

Speaker 11 And it kind of was for a while. Of course, you know, Trump has made like a...

Speaker 11 like orders of magnitude greater mockery of the pardon system than anything bill clinton ever did but so jack quinn who i interviewed a bunch of times for for this town he taught me the expression you're going to have your time in the barrel because after mark rich you know was was pardoned and he was mark rich's lawyer someone said to him i forgot who it was you're gonna have your time in the barrel jack and you're gonna come back so jack felt great shame for a while he was getting terrible press he was seen as corrupt for somehow brokering this and this is how washington works he eventually um started a a pretty significant and pretty well-known lobbying firm with Ed Gillespie, who was a longtime Republican operative, RNC chair, worked in the Bush White House.

Speaker 11 Where's Ed Gillespie, by the way? I'm going to start adding him to my list of people that are

Speaker 11 just so cowardly. Can Ed Gillespie be for Joe Biden? What's he doing? Where's Ed Gillespie?

Speaker 11 He ran for governor or something, failed in Virginia, and was always one of the quote-unquote normal Republicans. Just add him to the list of the MIA, put him on a milk carton.
Anyway, sorry.

Speaker 11 I had forgotten about Ed Gillespie. Sometimes these names come up and I'm like, fuck that guy, too, actually.
Where are all these people? Anyway, sorry. Go ahead, Mark.
Continue.

Speaker 11 But it was a classic sort of, okay. Here's the RNC.
Here you got your Clinton guy and here you got your Bush guy.

Speaker 11 And they're teaming up and like both their names are on the building, Quinn and Gillespie. And boy, they're bipartisan.
It isn't great. They can get things done.

Speaker 11 So Jack, I remember talking to him once, and he taught me another expression, which is now much more commonly in use, which is the thing about Ed that I liked at Gillespie is he got the joke or he gets the joke.

Speaker 11 And I'm like, what do you mean? What is the joke?

Speaker 11 He said, you know, the joke that like, you know, I might be a Democrat and he might be a Republican, but we all kind of get the joke, meaning at the end of the day, it's all about the Green Party, the Green Party being money.

Speaker 11 So that's kind of the joke here. And I was like, oh, well, all right.
So I had all this umbrage and outrage.

Speaker 11 And that was kind of the whole theme of this town, which is this is kind of this one-party system here, which is dedicated to everyone getting rich and people getting elected and never leaving and, you know, just leveraging their public service for some kind of self-service, usually financial in nature.

Speaker 11 And of course, that was 10 years ago. And then Trump came in.
And in a weird way, I have this kind of gauzy nostalgia, you know, pseudo quasi, like, wow, that was what the outrages looked like then.

Speaker 11 And, you know, Trump has just turbocharged the outrages of the swamp and self-dealing and corruption. So the question, though, then that I grapple with is,

Speaker 11 okay,

Speaker 11 yeah, obviously that stuff seems like small potatoes compared to, you know, the end of American democracy.

Speaker 11 That said, are we just all so self-obsessed and myopic that we think that everything that we did played a part in this, but actually it was global forces? Or did it kind of play a part?

Speaker 11 Like, did the phoniness, the getting the joke, the, oh, oh, I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat, and we're going to pretend like we're on different sides for the cameras, but actually, we're all on the same team.

Speaker 11 Did that contribute to Trump and give him this sense of authenticity and give him the,

Speaker 11 oh, you guys are the uniparty talking points that allowed him to merge? And so in that way, yeah, sure, maybe the corruption was not quite as great, but like the consequences were very serious.

Speaker 11 Oh, 100%.

Speaker 11 I mean, like, Trump ran against that. I mean, that was the whole drain the swamp circa 2016 thing.

Speaker 11 I mean, it's a joke in retrospect, given what, how he purified Paul Manafort's back, given that Paul Manafort was like the fucking king of the swamp, the swamp creature.

Speaker 11 You could go down the list, right? But no, I mean, he very deftly ran against that. He ran against, like, look, these guys are all weak clowns.

Speaker 11 I can totally roll over these guys, which, of course, he proved to be true in the Republican Party. I mean, he found the right party to roll over because he could have been a Democrat.

Speaker 11 I mean, I guess he was a Democrat. So

Speaker 11 people have been running, or presidential candidates have been running, quite effectively against the one-world government of D.C. I mean, Obama was like, we're going to change this.

Speaker 11 I don't hate Republicans. You know, there's not a red god or whatever that line was at his keynote speech.
I mean, we're all. There's no red states, there's no blue states.
It's all the United States.

Speaker 11 There's no red states, there's blue states, yeah. We're all like Bush was like, Yeah, I come from Texas.
I mean, the whole outsider trope, but Trump was much more forceful in this.

Speaker 11 Said, these guys are phonies, and I'm going to totally like stomp them. And that was very compelling.
I mean, very unsubtle, but it was compelling, and it was obviously complete bullshit.

Speaker 11 But it worked, and that's what he did. I have one more nostalgia for you.

Speaker 11 You wrote in 2012 that that presidential race, Willard Mitt Romney versus Barack Obama, was, quote, the most joyless of your lifetime. Yeah.
Is there a life lesson we can take from that?

Speaker 11 You know, perspective, gaining perspective on things.

Speaker 11 Is there a life lesson you take from thinking that 2012 was joyless? It's embarrassing that I wrote that. I mean, look, it's...
My whole life is embarrassing things that I wrote in 2012.

Speaker 11 So, okay, so just welcome to the club. All right, Leno.
I hear you. I hear you.
I mean, it does speak to the wisdom of age, and

Speaker 11 it's all relative now as we head into what I think will be I think joyless is probably a pretty innocent way of talking about what we might have in store for the next few months I'd love for it to be joy I mean I would like for the end to have joy but for it to be merely joyless would be a gift I think it's going to be much more grotesque than that could be yeah I mean it sounds likely be nice if it ends well though it would be speaking of joylessness Celtics lost last night nuggets are down to uh we were planning a hang I don't know if you know about this yet but I was mentally planning a hang for game one in Boston because I would love to have seen the Nuggets in the garden.

Speaker 11 We talked about that or we talked about something similar. Yeah, it's not out of the question.
It doesn't seem like it might be happening. Not out of the question.
Not out of the question.

Speaker 11 I mean, the Nuggets need to win tonight. By the way, complaint to the NBA.
Why such a gap in the Nuggets series? This is actually the one series I cared about other than the Celtics.

Speaker 11 Actually, the Knicks series is interesting too. But, you know, I thought we had like a one-day gap, but now it's like, when was the last Nuggets game? Tuesday?

Speaker 11 And now it's Friday or something like that? Come on. Monday.

Speaker 11 Yeah, we needed the four days. Hopefully Jamal Murray's calf gets better.
Okay, hopefully it's not a joyless night. Thank you.

Speaker 11 Mark Levich, by popular demand, by specific request, actually, by a future guest, we've brought in Levo back to the podcast. So good to hang with you.
The Scribe of the Swamp.

Speaker 11 I've thought about what our weekend song is. You're going to have to listen to the end of the episode to find it out yourself.
Ooh, I can't wait. It won't be Bob Seeger, though.

Speaker 11 Please come back again soon. Anytime, Tim.
Love being on. Thanks to Mark Levich of The Atlantic.
Subscribe to The Atlantic. Go get his books books if you haven't.

Speaker 11 And we'll see you back here on Monday with Will Salatan. Will Salatan Mondays are back because Bill Crystal's on vacation.
We'll see you all then. Peace.

Speaker 11 Let me tell you a story.

Speaker 11 Now he has a plan.

Speaker 11 A pack of bones in his pocket.

Speaker 11 Anything you want.

Speaker 11 No guns.

Speaker 11 No rocks.

Speaker 11 The whole thing is over.

Speaker 11 All those beauties,

Speaker 11 exalted motion.

Speaker 11 All those beauties.

Speaker 11 They're gonna swan you.

Speaker 11 Let's go. High.

Speaker 11 High, high, high, high, high.

Speaker 11 No.

Speaker 11 High.

Speaker 11 High, high, high, high, high.

Speaker 11 High,

Speaker 11 high.

Speaker 11 High,

Speaker 11 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 11 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturists with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Hey, Bowen, it's gift season.

Speaker 11 Stressing me out. Why are the people I love so hard to shop for? Probably because they only make boring gift guides that are totally uninspired.
Except for the guide we made.

Speaker 11 In partnership with Marshalls, where premium gifts meet incredible value, it's giving gifts. With categories like best gifts for the mom whose idea of a sensible walking shoe is a stiletto.

Speaker 11 Or best gifts for me that were so thoughtful I really shouldn't have. Check out the guide on marshalls.com and gift the good stuff at marshalls.

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