Live from Philly

Speaker 2 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovny, and Carise Van Houten.

Speaker 6 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny, infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 8 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 10 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 7 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 6 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 12 November is all about gathering.

Speaker 13 Friendsgiving, Thanksgiving, and football weekends.

Speaker 16 Total Wine and More has everything you need for your table and your toasts, with thousands of wine, spirits, and beers at the lowest prices.

Speaker 20 From bullds to sparklers and smooth bourbons to tequilas made for celebrating, Total Wine has it all.

Speaker 12 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love, only at Total Wine and more.

Speaker 14 Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 23 See TotalWine.com for details.

Speaker 24 Spirits not sold in Virginia, North Carolina.

Speaker 22 Drink responsibly, B21.

Speaker 25 Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm Tim Miller.
Today's episode is going to feature my live conversation with Will Salatan and Bill Crystal on Wednesday night in Philadelphia. It is spicy.

Speaker 25 Will brings me some ponies. I reject one of them.
But one of the topics we discuss is how President Biden should talk about the campus protests in response to the conflict in Gaza.

Speaker 25 And in the intervening time, he took a little bit of our advice. And so I think it's important to hear what President Biden said about this.
I'm going to play the full commentary.

Speaker 25 It's about two and a half minutes. If you already heard it, just hit that fast-forward 30 seconds button.
Let's listen to President Biden talking about the protests.

Speaker 26 Before I head to North Carolina, I wanted to speak for a few moments about what's going on on our college campuses here.

Speaker 26 We've all seen the images, and they put to the test two fundamental American principles. Excuse me.

Speaker 26 The first is the right to free speech and for people to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard.

Speaker 27 The second is the rule of law.

Speaker 26 Both must be upheld. We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent.
The American people are heard.

Speaker 26 In fact, peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues. But, but, neither are we a lawless country.
We are a civil society, and order must prevail.

Speaker 26 Throughout our history, we've often faced moments like this because we are a big, diverse, free-thinking, and freedom-loving nation.

Speaker 26 And moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points. But this isn't a moment for politics.
It's a moment for clarity. So let me be clear.
Peaceful protest in America.

Speaker 26 Violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is.
It's against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest.
It's against the law.

Speaker 26 Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. None of this is a peaceful protest.

Speaker 26 Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It's against the law.

Speaker 26 Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education.

Speaker 26 Look, it's basically a matter of fairness. It's a matter of what's right.
There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education.

Speaker 26 the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked. But let's be clear about this as well.

Speaker 26 There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for anti-Semitism or threats of violence against Jewish students.

Speaker 26 There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it's anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It's simply wrong.

Speaker 26 There's no place for racism in America. It's all wrong.
It's un-American. I understand people have strong feelings and deep convictions.

Speaker 26 In America, we respect the right and protect the right for them to express that. But it doesn't mean anything goes.

Speaker 26 It needs to be done without violence, without destruction, without hate, and within the law.

Speaker 26 You know, and make no mistake, as President, I will always defend free speech. And I will always be just as strong in standing up for the rule of law.

Speaker 26 That's my responsibility to you, the American people, and my obligation to the Constitution. Thank you very much.

Speaker 26 Mr.

Speaker 9 President, have the protests forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region?

Speaker 27 No.

Speaker 9 Mr. President, do you think the National Guard should intervene?

Speaker 27 No.

Speaker 12 Pretty good.

Speaker 25 Pretty, pretty good, as usual. But here's the problem with Biden on this.

Speaker 25 While everything that he said, going back to first principles, talking about the importance of free speech and safety, while all of that is sensible, I don't know that it's going to satisfy the people who are most upset about the conflict.

Speaker 25 Want some proof?

Speaker 25 Let's listen to another piece of audio. Here is at the University of Alabama, two groups of protesters, students protesting the war in Gaza, and then the right-wing MAGA counter-protesters.

Speaker 25 They found agreement on something. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 25 Yeah, that's right. Both sides of the protest are shouting, fuck Joe Biden, in unison.
It's like, and they're also standing in a horseshoe, which, you know, it makes it a little bit on the nose.

Speaker 25 But here's the problem. This gets to the problem.
As I said, the people who are most upset about this conflict, left-wing protesters who want dramatic policy change. We've heard from them.

Speaker 25 I've seen them on social media complaining about Biden's comments already.

Speaker 25 And Jewish conservatives, moderates who feel like they're being targeted and are being targeted in certain cases, and who want a more dramatic response, which leaves Biden appealing to mostly, well, me.

Speaker 25 And I like being appealed to. That's great.
But here's the thing about my perspective on this and President Biden's.

Speaker 12 It's at a remove, right?

Speaker 25 Like, I don't have a team jersey.

Speaker 25 And when you're talking about an issue that people are deeply passionate about, where they see their perspective as the only righteous one, it's very hard to appeal to them from a remove, right?

Speaker 25 I can tell about this from my own inbox experience.

Speaker 25 You know, our listeners who feel like Israel's campaign to eradicate Hamas, protect their right to exist, feel like I get a little too squishy sometimes.

Speaker 27 I hear that.

Speaker 25 Our listeners who think the campus protests are a righteous campaign against genocide, tell me I'm obsessed with the handful of examples of anti-Semitism on campus. I hear that.
I don't know.

Speaker 25 I sometimes think that folks are underappreciating the degree of Jew hate that is out there right now at these protests. I've heard that firsthand.

Speaker 25 But here's the thing: my job at Joe Bines are different. I love taking negative feedback.
I want to tackle hard issues on this podcast.

Speaker 25 I don't know about you guys, but spending 10 years being right about a blindingly obvious question about whether we should submit to a depraved monster with no redeemable qualities who wants to tear America apart.

Speaker 25 Like, it makes me want to shake strangers on the street sometimes and be like, is this real life? Have I gone through a black hole? Like, what is happening?

Speaker 25 How is this possible that so many people are going along with this fucking idiot? Like, it is not a complicated question. It's not a complicated moral choice.

Speaker 25 There are not different perspectives at play. Like, it is abundantly clear what is right and what is wrong when it comes to Donald Trump.

Speaker 25 The question of how we should react react to the situation in Gaza and on campus is not like that. It's much more complicated.
So I want to be able to continue to try to hash that out here.

Speaker 25 We're going to continue to do that. If we can't hash out hard disagreements in this community, what the hell hope is there for the rest of us? But here's the thing.
Joe Biden's not a podcast host.

Speaker 25 All right.

Speaker 25 He's got a different job. He's got to lead the country.
He's got to enact the right policies.

Speaker 25 the morally right policies that help

Speaker 25 alleviate the most suffering. And he's got to beat Donald Trump.

Speaker 25 So balancing the right and just policies with the political imperative, imperative of victory in November is a dicey animal. Like it's tough.

Speaker 25 Holding his coalition together is like trying to keep up a Jenga Tower.

Speaker 25 You pull out a little piece, you lose a piece from that lefties in Ann Arbor, and you got to put another one back in of center-right folks in Macomb County, right?

Speaker 25 He's got to keep a very disparate group together. And so from my perspective, he's managed the policy side of this about as well as anyone could have hoped.
Some of the stuff's out of his hands.

Speaker 25 I just totally reject the smooth brain, like, well, it's Biden's fault that there was another flare-up in a centuries-old war in the Middle East. He just had to respond to events.

Speaker 25 And I think he's responded to events quite well. But that leaves the politics.

Speaker 25 And we've got six months to ensure that the people in these disparate groups that should be part of the Biden coalition stick with him instead of throw our democracy away for Donald Trump.

Speaker 25 And so we got to make sure that folks understand the stakes, understand the choice. I spoke to a woman in Philly at the end of this event you're about to listen to.
She has younger siblings and PA.

Speaker 25 She says they're on the fence about voting. They're apathetic about Biden.
Like, go get them. Finding those people in your lives and explaining the nuance of this situation and the threat is up to us.

Speaker 25 In the meantime, around here, we can keep talking, you know, try to not go crazy and see if we can, I don't know, maybe we can iron out peace in in the Middle East on this podcast. We'll see.

Speaker 25 It's Friday. So, Spotify playlist is in the show notes.
I've been in my bag lately on this playlist. So, go enjoy the tunes.
We've got another live event. The Philly event was so great.

Speaker 25 It was so wonderful to see everybody. Michael Luddig was there.
We got a huge standing ovation. You know, everybody's coming up to me.
It's like, I'm a Bernie Sanders leftist that loves you guys.

Speaker 25 Like, I was a Republican. I'm still a Republican.
We had a Republican elected official there. So, a huge just ideological diversity there.
And it was awesome to hear from everybody.

Speaker 25 And we've got some more events coming up in DC, May 15th. Tickets already on sale, the bullwork.com/slash events.
And then we're going to be in Colorado on June 21st. Okay.

Speaker 25 We don't know exactly where yet. It's not going to be the Western Slope, but you know, it's going to be somewhere Denver Boulderish.
And we'll be there June 21st.

Speaker 25 So put a hold on your calendar if you're in Colorado. If you want to come make a weekend out of it, my hometown is beautiful in June.
All right. It's a Friday.
So come hang out with us in Denver.

Speaker 25 We'll have tickets on sale soon for that. Up next,

Speaker 25 live from Philadelphia, Bill Crystal and Will Salatan. Check it out on the other side, and we'll see you next week.

Speaker 27 Hello, and welcome to the Bloorg Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Speaker 27 I'm here with the normal Monday guest, William Crystal,

Speaker 27 and

Speaker 27 the great Will Salatan,

Speaker 27 House Web.

Speaker 27 Bill, we're here in Philadelphia, and so I thought that you'd talk about your glory days, back when you wore an onion on your belt, like was the style at the time.

Speaker 27 What kind of memories?

Speaker 29 That was so shameless at that beginning.

Speaker 29 I was surprised we don't have one of those applause signs up there, you know, and then it goes off, and you have to stop right away so you don't waste valuable seconds.

Speaker 29 No, it's great to be back here. We lived in Philly.
My first job was teaching at Penn. My wife, Susan, was finishing up her dissertation, and she taught at Penn.
She taught classics.

Speaker 29 She was a real scholar and actually knew something.

Speaker 27 That makes a lot of sense. So that's where all those references are coming from, is that?

Speaker 29 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I taught political science, so I didn't really know much.
But yeah, it was great. We lived two, three blocks from here, 13th and Spruce.
It was

Speaker 29 kind of a rough neighborhood back then, if we could be honest.

Speaker 29 I think

Speaker 29 we'd been here about two months. It was true.
When I was coming back, what was it? So I took the subway from Penn down to what, to Broad Street, right, and walked down to 13th, I guess, to

Speaker 29 our apartment building, our one-bedroom apartment there. And

Speaker 29 I'm walking along, and it was maybe November or something like that. And suddenly this guy runs past me, full speed.

Speaker 29 Couldn't really tell why he was running so fast, but and then 30 feet, you know, five seconds later, another guy, really burly guy, runs past me, full speed.

Speaker 29 clearly chasing the first guy and pulling his gun as he runs.

Speaker 29 And I thought, yeeks, you know, everyone else, Philly, of course, routine. It was like, no one even, no one even looked at him.
He shot above the guy's head to stop it.

Speaker 29 He was in a plain clothes cop. That was Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia.

Speaker 29 So that was my,

Speaker 29 I had a great time in Philly.

Speaker 29 I was here for the Glory Days. What do we have? We had the Phillies win the World Series in 1980, Tug McGraw,

Speaker 29 Big Parade, right? I remember that. The Eagles, I believe, lost the Super Bowl that year, but they got to the Super Bowl.
That was good.

Speaker 29 Dr. J, the Flyers, Penn, this is amazing.
Penn went to the NCAA Final Four.

Speaker 29 You remember that in 79? They beat, I think, Duke in North Carolina or something in the regionals. Fantastic upsets.
Went to the Final Four, played Michigan State. Tim's a huge basketball fan.

Speaker 29 You both are, right? Played Michigan State, Irvin Johnson, and I believe Penn set a record by losing one of the Final Four games by 48 points, something like that.

Speaker 29 Anyway, we had a great time in Philly.

Speaker 29 It's great to be back.

Speaker 27 Enough of that. Yeah, well, we're going to go back.

Speaker 27 We're going to go deeper into your memory here in a little bit, back back an additional decade earlier than that in a second, because I want to start with a very uplifting topic that I'm sure everyone here agrees about 100%, which is the conflict in Gaza and the protests that are happening around the country.

Speaker 27 We're just going to get that out of the way first, all right? We're going to do a little bit of chatter.

Speaker 27 And I'm hoping that Will is going to offer me a pony because I wanted to share something that I was...

Speaker 27 I got here last night early because

Speaker 27 I talked to your governor today, actually. We'll talk about that a little bit later.
And so I didn't want to miss it.

Speaker 27 So I came in a night early, had a couple of beers, and I popped off a thought about the protests on X.com, Twitter.com, which is exactly what you're supposed to do after a couple of beers.

Speaker 27 And my thought was essentially summed up to something like this:

Speaker 27 which was on Reddit, we have a great bull of Reddit community. You guys should join if you're not.
There's a thing called, Am I the Asshole?

Speaker 27 Okay, and so a person tells a story and they're like, Am I the asshole here?

Speaker 27 And you can reply either, yeah, you're the asshole, or no, you're not the asshole, or the third option, ESH.

Speaker 27 Everyone sucks here.

Speaker 27 And that's kind of how I feel about our current debate. Like, the

Speaker 27 protesters with the,

Speaker 27 you know, we need you to

Speaker 27 bring us food, and we're going to whine about this. Our parents are playing for Colombia.
We've got Hezbollah flags. They kind of suck a little bit.

Speaker 27 They might be nice and earnest, but they kind of suck. Hamas obviously sucks.
Bibi obviously sucks. Bill might disagree with this, but

Speaker 27 the cops with their their riot gear,

Speaker 27 like they're storming Fallujah, going into the campus squad, I feel like they kind of suck. Seems like everybody sucks here.
And so I'm hoping, I wanted to start, Will, by you offering me a pony.

Speaker 27 Is there anybody that does not suck in this debate? Can I find any light?

Speaker 28 Okay, so first of all, I have to say I also have Philadelphia roots here. I went to college at Swarthmore, so

Speaker 27 those who...

Speaker 27 Is that Philadelphia, really?

Speaker 27 It's not.

Speaker 27 We said, not let him get away with that, you know?

Speaker 27 He came to Philadelphia. He passed through Philadelphia this way.
It counts for it. It counts.

Speaker 28 I'm taking that. I'll tell you that.
It's the Philly Burbs, okay? We did not, I did not, nobody was chasing me.

Speaker 28 I did not witness crimes.

Speaker 28 I did, though, I did, apropos of this topic, I did witness the, of course, the student protests. I'm very familiar with that.

Speaker 28 And in fact, we used to have, you know, Swarthmore, for those of you who don't know, was known, is perhaps still known as the Kremlin on the crumb.

Speaker 28 Now that the Kremlin is part of the Republican Party, maybe it doesn't work so much.

Speaker 28 So we would have, I guess you'd call them now outside agitators, like the folks who come into Colombia and other places. We'd have the Trotskyites, we'd have the Le Stalinists, Leninists, or whatever.

Speaker 28 We'd have them show up on

Speaker 28 the dining hall, Sharpel's dining hall. And so they would distribute their, whatever their socialist communist newspaper was.

Speaker 28 So we did a radio, my friends and I did a comedy radio show, and we went out in front of the dining hall, and we distributed a mock socialist newspaper.

Speaker 28 And the headline on our mock socialist newspaper was a picture of us, and it said, students distribute socialist newspaper in front of Sharpels.

Speaker 28 So we were early on the sort of performative protest thing.

Speaker 28 This is a real protest, what's going on right now. And I think Tim would agree with me on some some of this.
I do sympathize with the cause the protesters are talking about.

Speaker 28 We have more than 30,000 people dead in Gaza. That is real.
Somebody has to speak up for that. I do not begrudge anyone speaking up for that and feeling that that is not spoken up enough for.

Speaker 28 The way in which you do that is another question. And I think that the ways in which a lot of the students are doing it is not helpful to the cause and it is in fact alienating.

Speaker 28 But I do think Tim asked me for a pony and I have to deliver a pony. So

Speaker 28 I did bring a pony with me.

Speaker 28 This

Speaker 28 Jim Swift, one of our folks, gave me this pony. Thank you, Jim.

Speaker 29 Is that like the Swarthmore mascot?

Speaker 27 The

Speaker 27 Swarthmore ponytop road.

Speaker 28 Bill, I mean, I have to familiarize you with the Swarthmore basketball team, which has been kicking buttons.

Speaker 28 So

Speaker 28 I struggle to find a pony here because I'm sympathetic to the idea that everybody is hateful in this situation.

Speaker 28 But there is one thing that I think good that can come out of this, which is we've had these debates on campus for a long time.

Speaker 28 where the left is speaking for a minority group and saying that they feel threatened, they feel uncomfortable, they feel endangered. We need to protect them, we need safety for this group.

Speaker 28 And the right has said, oh, come off it. You know, you're playing the race card.
Get over it. Free speech.

Speaker 28 And what we have here is an inversion because the group that's being targeted, that's felt targeted on the campus is Jews.

Speaker 28 And that's not traditionally one of the groups that the left has spoken for as a threatened group. And suddenly you see the right.

Speaker 28 looking at an endangered group and saying, they mustn't feel uncomfortable. It's not right to make these students feel uncomfortable.
They feel unsafe.

Speaker 28 And the left now is saying, you know, sort of not exactly get over it, but you know, it's the protesters here have a right to speak up, and that speech needs to be heard.

Speaker 28 So I think it's an occasion for us all to be in the shoes of the other, of what the other side usually says and to recognize what's worth taking from that perspective.

Speaker 27 Sorry, put the pony back in the shitpile.

Speaker 27 Try, well, it was a good try. It was a good try.
But the people on the right pretending to care about the Jewish kids on campus are full of it. They don't actually care about them.

Speaker 27 They don't actually care about them, do they? I mean, do they really? I don't know.

Speaker 27 I think that if Jewish kids were on campus getting menaced by like little proud boys, do you think that any of these guys would be speaking up? Do you think Lee Stephonic would be waving her finger?

Speaker 27 at the at the presidents and on campus? I would say no. I don't know.
Bill, do you have a pony for me?

Speaker 29 That was an impressive pony-esque performance, by Will, though.

Speaker 27 I appreciate the effort.

Speaker 29 I'm not really into finding the ponies. I'm sort of the other side of saying there are no ponies.
And the one thing I would disagree with you on is the cops.

Speaker 29 In this respect, I went back and looked at the 68 Columbia protest, which I remember living in New York, a couple of miles south of Columbia. I mean, I wasn't involved.

Speaker 29 I was in high school, but, you know, it was a big deal, obviously. It was, let's say,

Speaker 29 not that far away on the Upper West Side. And I went back and looked at the headlines.
I think 100 students, the cops were not as militarized then.

Speaker 29 They went in with billy clubs, and that's what they had. 100 students, they had to...
lug the students out of there and 100 students were injured. I don't know, 35 were hospitalized.

Speaker 29 It was pretty bad. And it was a bigger protest.
They occupied more than one building. But actually, I thought the cops in Columbia, so far as I could tell, did a good job.

Speaker 29 They removed all these protesters. I don't think anyone's hurt even.
I mean, is there even a case, one person who got, you know, had to have stitches or something. They carried them out.

Speaker 29 They put them in buses. They booked them, presumably, and they're gone.
So I'm willing to be critical of the police, God knows.

Speaker 29 I think we've all, I've learned over the last several years, there's more police misconduct than I... I as a former conservative had realized.

Speaker 29 And, you know, no, seriously, it's one of the things that people ask, what have you changed your mind on? I was much sort of instinctively, I would say, pro-police, law and order, kind of.

Speaker 29 But I still think in this case, there hasn't been much police misconduct. I think they actually turned out to be pretty well trained for this kind of stuff, it looks to me.
And other places, too.

Speaker 29 I mean, in Florida and other places where they've gone in, you don't really have the stories. You did have those stories at Harvard, which I went to a year after

Speaker 29 the Cambridge cops came in in 69. Famously, this was their one moment to really, you know, beat up some Harvard kids who they hated and who

Speaker 29 they used, you know, and not without some justice, if we can be honest.

Speaker 29 You know, there's the carbon kids lording it around over the local over the townies and they just took it out on these kids and i don't have the sense that's happening this time did did did you just call yourself a former conservative

Speaker 29 i'm a shapiro democrat is that okay

Speaker 27 hey

Speaker 27 i don't know boy i hope josh doesn't hear that yeah i know that was bad strike that from the record. Take that out of the podcast there on Friday.

Speaker 27 I want to go back to 68 for a second, though. I do want to reiterate, there's an everybody sexy element to it.

Speaker 27 And I do feel like there's a very serious crisis happening in Gaza. I'm very empathetic towards it.
I think that I'm totally pro protests, drawing attention to it. I think that, by the way,

Speaker 27 you could argue that some of the protests have already had an impact in that the way that they're letting additional trucks in with humanitarian aid, who knows if that would have happened if there wasn't quite as much blowback.

Speaker 27 So I'm for it. But we can use a little more strategy.
You know, we could be a little bit smarter about it. And I'm a little bit concerned that we're staring down the barrel of Richard Nixon, Part 2.

Speaker 27 Bill, you wrote about this earlier this week. Are these kids going to fuck us? I guess that's my question, Bill.

Speaker 27 Are these kids going to fuck us? We're doing a lot of work here to try to prevent Donald Trump 2.0, but are they going to ruin it?

Speaker 29 It was a pretty big, I think the campus protests have been a pretty big, unintentionally, and maybe it's not their fault, but still in reality, in practice, a pretty big in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign.

Speaker 29 And I, now, maybe I don't read it right because the people I know are particularly interested in this, a lot of East Coast Jews who are very pro-Israel, but also very anti-Trump, and the degree to which the anti-Trump suffers.

Speaker 27 We are in a swing state. East Coast Jews, conservatives who are particularly anti-Trump, we have

Speaker 27 to

Speaker 27 do that.

Speaker 29 The degree to which these people have become the face of the American left. And of course, it's ridiculous.
They don't like Biden. They're protesting against Biden's policies.

Speaker 29 Nonetheless, I mean, I can't tell you how many people I've had casual conversations with or read emails from that were passed on to me about, you know,

Speaker 29 this is the party you've signed up with, Bill. This is the liberal, this is the left.

Speaker 29 And I do think good liberals should do more to distance themselves from the protests and from some of what they've done. And some have, and some have been.

Speaker 29 Or senator? Yes.

Speaker 29 He's been fantastic.

Speaker 29 Federer, yeah. Yeah, Federin and Toronto.
I can't decide. Are we for.

Speaker 27 You like Don Federer?

Speaker 29 Are we for, are we for, are we for, I can't, I'm torn now.

Speaker 29 Are we for Federal in 2028 or Shapiro in 2028? Why not both? Yeah, you have the electoral college problem, yeah, for the ticket there.

Speaker 27 Well, I can make a move.

Speaker 28 This is kind of, I gotta say, sorry, this is kind of fascinating to me. So I've never been a Republican.

Speaker 29 But

Speaker 27 the pandering to the crowd that goes on to these things is just terrible, you know?

Speaker 27 Thank you.

Speaker 27 This is Billy, after all.

Speaker 28 So I've always been sort of a moderate Democrat, so I'd like being hated by the left or having differences with the left. But it's totally fascinating to me to come to the bulwark.

Speaker 28 I mean, I was at Slate, and I was among my people, liberals, progressives. And now I'm with sort of these former Republicans.

Speaker 28 And I'm so used to people on the right wanting to elevate voices on the hard left.

Speaker 28 because they know that that's going to, like Fox News, we're going to show you the craziest people on the left because that's going to drive our audience to the right.

Speaker 28 And it's really interesting to me to be at a place where you guys who

Speaker 28 have done political strategy, especially you, Tim, like you know that the hard left is alienating the middle.

Speaker 28 And so you guys come over and instead of trying to elevate the left, you're talking to the moderates on the left about the far left and saying,

Speaker 28 get those people out of the way because you're now playing for our team. You're playing for the left half of the spectrum.
That's right.

Speaker 29 Well, you know, but

Speaker 27 I'm not going to speak.

Speaker 29 Mike Johnson wasn't an an idiot when he went to Columbia and made it, you know, he, I mean, it's really terrible to do that because it just makes the situation worse and it's vulgar pandering to his own base and so forth.

Speaker 29 But, you know, enough Republicans go visit New York and go to Columbia and speak out against the protests and introduce stupid resolutions to the House and so forth.

Speaker 29 And some voters think, I guess they're the ones who are against this, who were for Israel and against, more important than being for Israel, actually in this case, I think, who are for the majority of the college students who just want to go to school, take the tests, not be harassed all the time, not have loudspeakers at midnight if they're trying to sleep or do other things in dorms.

Speaker 29 And

Speaker 29 I do think it hurts

Speaker 29 the effort

Speaker 29 among swing voters for the Democrats to say, no, no, we're a sane party. We're not the caricature that Fox has created of the Democrats and of the left.

Speaker 29 So I worry about the political implications of it in this year. And I do think the Trump people think it's a gift.
And Trump started talking about it.

Speaker 29 I noticed the last couple of days he went on handing it.

Speaker 27 It's a freebie for Trump. It's a freebie for Trump.
Trump's coalition is people that hate these protesters, then they're all united in that.

Speaker 27 Right now, some of them are anti-Semites, and some of them are pro-Israel.

Speaker 27 Some are both.

Speaker 27 Some of them are both. But they're all united in hating these protesters, right? Whereas the Biden coalition is very

Speaker 27 fractured over all this. You know, it's very fractured over all this.

Speaker 27 The pod bros brought me on today because they're like, we need somebody else. We need one of you people to come over here at like point

Speaker 27 and represent the argument that

Speaker 27 there are legitimate concerns here about anti-semitism on campus and like you can be concerned about anti-semitism and and concerned about this protest and also concerned about the humanitarian issue but like that's tough and don't and I think that Biden has struggled a little bit it's just not his strength you know I said on what I said to those guys today I was like now lightning's really gonna strike me but we could really use Obama right now because like he would have been good at this He would have been good at this.

Speaker 27 He would have been good at this doing the well on the one hand, on the other hand. And he was like, LS his strength.
You know, it's not really Biden's. Like, he hasn't been out there at all.

Speaker 27 It feels like he's been really limited to written statements. I don't know.
What do you think Joe Biden should be doing?

Speaker 29 I mean, just one thing on that, though. I mean, it is striking how, yeah, the Deputy Press Secretary.

Speaker 27 Great statement, but all the Deputy Presidents.

Speaker 29 Bidens should be on camera.

Speaker 29 I mean, Obama could have spoken up, actually. He did graduate from Columbia, and he could say, I'm sympathetic.

Speaker 27 I processed myself, blah, blah, blah. But, but, but.

Speaker 29 Don't take over buildings. Don't break the glass.
Don't dump things up.

Speaker 27 Police. Don't wait.
Don't sell Jews.

Speaker 29 And I think that would have been helpful. I guess he's too busy doing other things.
But you know, just you mentioned 68, so just one of the reasons I was so, I was in 68.

Speaker 29 In the summer of 68, in between, I guess, my, I don't know, finishing high school, I guess, my sophomore year, and working somewhere for the summer job, I volunteered in the Hubert Humphrey campaign for three weeks.

Speaker 29 All my peers were for Gene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy, obviously.

Speaker 29 And well, half my peers were for them, half my peers were to the left and for the socialists who were at Swarthmore and stuff like that. And I was for,

Speaker 29 And I, this is at our little private high school in New York, and I was for Humphrey because I was like the centrist, you know, anti-communist Democrat.

Speaker 29 And Humphrey, and so it was the first campaign, I mean, I was just a ridiculously, you know, just low-level volunteer, I don't know, looking, putting stamps in envelopes and stuff, whatever you did in those days.

Speaker 29 But I followed the campaign after that very closely, you know, as you do when you get interested in politics in high school. And I was really heartbroken when he lost to Nixon.

Speaker 29 And he lost by the, so I looked up some stuff the other night when I was writing a newsletter.

Speaker 29 The Democratic Convention in Chicago, as this year's is, was a total disaster with riots and demonstrations, obviously, which this year's could be. Humphrey came out of that 20 points behind.

Speaker 29 That won't be the case now, at least we're so polarized, but still it could do some damage. Had a fantastic comeback the last few weeks and lost by 0.7% of the popular vote to Nixon.

Speaker 29 If you look at the polls right now, Trump is ahead of Biden by

Speaker 27 0.7%.

Speaker 29 It's like a little uncanny.

Speaker 29 The parallels are pretty crazy. The date on which the cops went went into...

Speaker 29 I can make it worse. And then I want Will to talk.
The date on which the cops went into Harriman Hall at Columbia is the same date 56 years ago as April 30th as yesterday.

Speaker 29 I mean, it's really sort of weird. And Humphrey had the same problem as Biden, which is he gets attacked, of course, for being part of the Johnson administration, which...

Speaker 29 is fighting the Vietnam War, so the left hated him, and

Speaker 29 not all of them ended up coming home to him on the one hand. Then he distanced himself from Johnson correctly in October and said, I'd be more interested in the peace negotiations in Vietnam.

Speaker 29 And then some of the old, you know, the Johnson loyalists and others were, you know, you're betraying Johnson and so forth.

Speaker 29 And so, like Biden, in a way, he, Humphrey, really a wonderful man, and Biden a very decent man, too. So similarity of being caught in this trap.
And it's the trap of incumbency.

Speaker 29 And this is what worries me, one of the things that worries about the race, obviously, is that you're incumbent, and the incumbent, you get blamed for a lot of things, a lot of them unfairly.

Speaker 29 And being a challenger is better, and being a challenger who's also a former president, so you get the benefits that people think incorrectly, well, he knows what he's doing, he can do the job, you know.

Speaker 29 And he's the challenger, he's going to shake everything up. Anyway, that's why I'm worried about the race and why I got depressed thinking about the Humphrey analogy.
That's enough.

Speaker 27 So Will, give us some more ponies. Will,

Speaker 27 final point.

Speaker 27 What if Joe Biden calls you? Like, what is he supposed to do about this?

Speaker 29 What's he supposed to do?

Speaker 28 I don't know if Joe Biden can do it. I mean, the problem is, let me come back to Obama, actually.
So Humphrey, obviously, before my time,

Speaker 28 but Obama was really good at this stuff.

Speaker 27 This is what I put up with all the time.

Speaker 27 That's okay.

Speaker 28 But Obama was really, you know,

Speaker 28 when I came to the bulwark, I was like, what were two of the most difficult things I was going to have to deal with?

Speaker 28 One was that I loved Barack Obama, and the other was that I think abortion should be legal.

Speaker 29 We'll get to that.

Speaker 27 But Obama.

Speaker 27 Stop pandering.

Speaker 28 But like this whole caricature on the right of Obama was like some kind of hard lefty. Obama was great at this.
Obama was great at expressing exactly what you're talking about, Tim.

Speaker 28 It's on the one hand, this,

Speaker 28 it's all, you know, he would encompass it. And Obama would classically say, that's not just my opinion, that's the opinion of these three ultra-conservative people here.
Hard Zandy.

Speaker 27 All right.

Speaker 28 So, but that's kind of what we need. And I think one of the problems we have is in Joe Biden.
We have a very nice man, a very decent man, but not a very compelling...

Speaker 28 charismatic speaker and he's not out there delivering a message that brings people together even if he's trying.

Speaker 28 We're going to have to get through this election with this guy, and it's going to be a challenge because he's not Obama.

Speaker 27 Is that the end of the answer?

Speaker 27 Sorry. That's all I'm going to do.

Speaker 29 Where is that pony? Yeah.

Speaker 27 Yeah, okay. Well, so do we think he has to talk about this more?

Speaker 27 Do you want to see Biden out there talking about this? Or is this right? He's just going to let this go, let the deputy press secretary talk about it, and

Speaker 27 hopefully Anthony Blinken cuts a deal.

Speaker 28 This is not about America. This is about keeping Israel from invading Rafah, ending this conflict as soon as possible, and hopefully with

Speaker 28 maximum destruction to Hamas and minimum destruction to innocent Palestinians, and putting this behind us because I think as long as it's festering, it's just going to hurt.

Speaker 28 It's bad for the world, but it's also bad for Joe Biden.

Speaker 27 Fair enough.

Speaker 27 Okay, we're doing what we can, but all you jerks out there that are cheering for Will, because he was never a Republican, it's your job to go talk to your children and tell them to maybe protest Donald Trump instead of Joe Biden and focus on that.

Speaker 1 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 6 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 8 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 10 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 7 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 6 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 12 November is all about gathering.

Speaker 13 Friendsgiving, Thanksgiving, and football weekends.

Speaker 16 Total Wine and More has everything you need for your table and your toasts, with thousands of wine, spirits, and beers at the lowest prices.

Speaker 20 From bold reds to sparklers and smooth bourbons to tequilas made for celebrating.

Speaker 12 Total wine has it all. With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love, only at Total Wine and more.

Speaker 14 Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 23 See TotalWine.com for details.

Speaker 24 Spirits not sold in Virginia, North Carolina.

Speaker 22 Drink responsibly, B21.

Speaker 27 Let's talk about abortion. You want to talk about abortion? Some good news, bad news this week for abortion rights advocates, or today rather.

Speaker 27 In Florida, the six-week abortion ban goes into effect today, or was it yesterday, whatever, this week, time is a flat circle.

Speaker 27 And today, in Arizona, two Republicans, there were two good Republicans in the Arizona State Senate. How about that? Hot damn.

Speaker 27 And they crossed over and created a 16-14 vote to overrule the 1864 law written by the bigomist pedophile.

Speaker 27 And so now the good people of Arizona do have abortion rights up to 15 weeks. The Florida thing is interesting.
We're going to spend a lot of time in the Time magazine interview in segment two.

Speaker 27 But Trump refused to say

Speaker 27 how he'd vote on that. That doesn't feel sustainable for him, seeing as he is a Florida man.
But Will, what do you think?

Speaker 27 Like the extent of the opportunity here for Democrats and the extent of the badness, I guess, for women in these states?

Speaker 28 Well, I mean, the Florida thing is enormous because if you now,

Speaker 28 Florida was the state in the southeastern quadrant of the United States where it was still illegal up to, 15 weeks after the last ban. Now it goes to six.

Speaker 28 I cannot stress to you enough, for those of you who don't know this, how big a difference that is.

Speaker 28 You may not like a ban at 15 weeks, but at 15 weeks 90% of abortions, more than 90%, something like 93 are before that period. At six weeks, something like two-thirds, at least 60% of abortions are

Speaker 28 after that. This is an absolute abortion ban and the entire southeastern quadrant of this country is now back to pre-Roe v.
Wade abortion illegal days.

Speaker 28 I have been waiting for a political explosion in this country and I know people say it was the 2022 elections. I didn't see what I thought I was going to see.

Speaker 28 Maybe we're going to see it now, because when abortion becomes illegal in that much of the country,

Speaker 28 I'm just waiting for women to rise up, and like men who understand that this is not a decision best made by the government. And politically,

Speaker 28 I think the Republican Party got away with going to 15 weeks in some states, and then Ron DeSantis just decided, hell, I'll sign a ban at six.

Speaker 28 I think that that's going to trigger, and again, it didn't go into effect, so it wasn't real. It's real now.
So I am waiting for in 2024 the monstrous backlash that I didn't see in 2022.

Speaker 27 Where do you think it's, where do you want it to come from that it hasn't come from yet?

Speaker 27 Are we talking about maybe Trump women? Like Trump, like women, non-college working-class women that are like, I've had enough of this. Like, this is crazy.
Like, it is crazy.

Speaker 27 And if you're in Florida, you know, Carrie Lake did the stupid thing where she was like, well, it's not that big a deal in Arizona. You can just drive to California or New Mexico.

Speaker 27 Great talking point, Carrie. But like, you can't really do that if you live in Daytona Beach.

Speaker 27 You know, you're a long way from Norfolk or whatever the closest place is you can get an abortion if you're a working-class woman in Daytona Beach. You know, is that like kind of the demo?

Speaker 27 Because we spend a lot of time talking about, you know, the college-educated Republican went, the Nikki Haley voter class. We spend a lot of time talking about them.

Speaker 27 But is there a non-college group that the Democrats can cut in with on this issue, do you think?

Speaker 28 To me, one of the interesting things about this issue is that it crosses party lines. I mean, I did a whole book about this.

Speaker 28 This was the Webster vs.

Speaker 28 Reproductive, I'm going to piggyback in 1980 or 1990, but the point is that there was a group at what was then NARAL, National Abortion Reproductive Rights Action League, that did all the political strategy.

Speaker 28 They did the polling and they saw that they could draw a broader coalition, not just liberals, but people, conservatives, who don't like the government on their back. They don't like tax.

Speaker 28 And they went for those people. So what I'm interested to see is whether we get some of these libertarians on the right as part of that coalition.
Florida is now an increasingly Republican state.

Speaker 28 A bunch of people moved to Florida because they liked Ron DeSantis' COVID libertarianism.

Speaker 28 How are the COVID libertarians going to vote when the medical authoritarianism is not vaccines, it's not masks, it's abortion. It's the right telling you you can't get an abortion.

Speaker 28 So I think there's a lot of potential to draw some of those libertarians into a pro-choice coalition.

Speaker 28 I mean, it's on the ballot.

Speaker 29 I think just to be clear what you were talking about, it's on the ballot this November in Florida.

Speaker 27 So the bill went in, the legislation that went to the legislature went into effect this week. But now it's on the ballot.

Speaker 29 The proposed, I think, a constitutional amendment to overturn that legislation is on the ballot. So it will be a big story.

Speaker 29 Everyone in Florida will vote on that at the same time they vote for president.

Speaker 29 And I do think it could have a big effect. I don't know.

Speaker 29 You know, I had something, I just had lunch at Penn with John Diulio, an old friend of mine who teaches political science there, really wonderful guy and a very good political scientist, a serious one, unlike what I was.

Speaker 29 And he just wrote a a paper, very interesting, on the white working class, which everyone talks about so much. But there's wildly different votes.

Speaker 29 About half the white working class, over supplying here, call themselves evangelicals, and about half aren't religious. Don't go to church, basically, just secular.

Speaker 29 The voting difference between them is as great as the difference between the white working class, non-college, and college-educated.

Speaker 29 The white evangelicals, the white working class evangelicals are, I mean, I'm 85, 15 or something like Heck of a Trump, really lopsided.

Speaker 29 Maybe some of them will also think this is cruel and move away, but that's probably, you know, they're mostly cruel.

Speaker 27 Fuck out our chickens. Yeah, there.

Speaker 29 But the white working class, non-college, was sort of like, I don't know, 65, 35, much more like that. And that's where you presumably could get some movement, right? I mean, you're, you know,

Speaker 29 you didn't finish college and you're working. Anyway, whatever the type of person is.
So I do think this could have a political effect.

Speaker 29 It's one of the biggest issues the Democrats have going through, don't you think? I mean,

Speaker 29 for me, the three issues are democracy, which unfortunately the country doesn't seem to care that much about, so that's kind of bad.

Speaker 29 Ukraine, basically, and Putin and NATO and the whole state of the world order, which the country also, the country, I think, cares more about that than people realize.

Speaker 29 But here, I do think the administration has done a bad job of making clear how unbelievably dangerous and disastrous it would be to have Trump.

Speaker 29 But those two maybe are too, I don't know what, macro or

Speaker 29 high-toned or something for politics. But the third is Dobbs, right? I think those, for me, are the big three.
And it may turn out, for me, Dobbs is important, but the other two are more fundamental.

Speaker 29 But it may turn out politics is funny, right? It It doesn't work that way. And maybe Dobbs ends up being the biggest issue.

Speaker 29 And I do think having it on the ballot in Florida, the state Trump lives in, where he'll have to vote, alleged, if he bothers to vote, I don't know,

Speaker 29 for or against this constitutional amendment, that could have spillover effects way outside of Florida, right?

Speaker 1 Get Ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall.

Speaker 2 David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 6 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 8 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 10 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 7 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 6 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 12 November is all about gathering.

Speaker 13 Friendsgiving, Thanksgiving, and football weekends.

Speaker 16 Total Wine and More has everything you need for your table and your toasts, with thousands of wine, spirits, and beers at the lowest prices.

Speaker 20 From bold reds to sparklers and smooth bourbons to tequilas made for celebrating.

Speaker 12 Total wine has it all. With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love, only at Total Wine and More.

Speaker 14 Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 23 See TotalWine.com for details.

Speaker 24 Spirits not sold in Virginia, North Carolina.

Speaker 22 Drink responsibly, B21.

Speaker 27 I want to go to D.C. to do a little swamp talk.

Speaker 27 Big Marjorie Taylor Green at a big press conference today.

Speaker 27 Some compelling points.

Speaker 27 She made an announcement. We were mentioning Will's.

Speaker 27 Now, Will is so moved by the concerns about anti-Semitism on the right.

Speaker 27 We should mention that Marjorie Taylor Greene said today she could not vote for the resolution condemning anti-Semitism because she was worried that that could lump in people who wanted to point out that the Jews killed Jesus.

Speaker 27 So she did not want to run afoul of that law.

Speaker 28 Okay, it was a long time ago.

Speaker 27 So Marjorie was a no on the anti-Semitism resolution. Anyway, she's ready to get rid of Mike Johnson.
She's going after the Union Party. Mike Johnson is part of the Union Party.

Speaker 27 Our tent just keeps expanding, baby. It's like, you know, it's

Speaker 27 radical Christian conservatives all the way over to like

Speaker 27 DSA liberals, right? You gave some evidence just this week, last week.

Speaker 29 Maybe I shouldn't even say this, that someone on Mike Johnson's staff is reading the bulwark carefully or something like that.

Speaker 27 You can say this. It's fine.
Whatever. I don't think he listens to the Pulwar's podcast.
Maybe he's not. Well, apparently he does.
I wrote an article where I complimented Mike Johnson. I did it.

Speaker 27 I did it. I complimented Mike Johnson.
Okay, he did what Mike Evan couldn't do, which was he said, I was like, I'm going to do that. I'm going to do this even though Mr.

Speaker 27 Trump doesn't want it on Ukraine and good on him for doing that.

Speaker 27 And so I pointed that out and I savaged Mike Evan mercilessly about how pathetic and sad his life is now and how he's just gotten absolutely owned by Mike Johnson.

Speaker 27 I received a text from an old friend who I haven't heard from in like literally eight years who's Mike Johnson's now comms director. It's like, nice article, period.

Speaker 27 So I don't know. Maybe we're back in.
I replied.

Speaker 27 I was like, thanks. That's it.
That's the extent of the exchange. Anyway,

Speaker 27 what do we think? MTG is trying to get rid of them. Uniparty, she's worried.

Speaker 27 Her and Tom Massey were out there. Do you think that she was talking with Gates today? Do you think that they're going to be able to scalp him? What do you think?

Speaker 28 No, they're not going to.

Speaker 28 I've been waiting to put this whole thing. This is a real pony.

Speaker 27 Okay.

Speaker 28 This is a real pony.

Speaker 27 Hot damn.

Speaker 28 The Uniparty. The Uniparty.
I can't.

Speaker 28 This press conference was Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey.

Speaker 29 And that's it.

Speaker 28 If they could have got anybody else, where was Gates? He was

Speaker 27 unavailable.

Speaker 27 He was the slow driver.

Speaker 27 Injections in the forehead. Forehead keeps getting higher.

Speaker 27 Higher the forehead, the closer to God.

Speaker 28 You have to remember, for Gates.

Speaker 27 Matt does listen to this podcast, by the way. Hi, Matt.

Speaker 28 For Gates, God is in the mirror, so he's got to move forward.

Speaker 28 So they would, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massey, if they could have had anybody else, they would have the Freedom Caucus, not there. Nobody else there.
These two. That's it.

Speaker 28 We're going to take down. So there's two members.
Now, it's a narrow majority for the House, so they think they have power.

Speaker 28 And they're not going to get it, and they're not going to get it because Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats said we're not going to let Mike Johnson fall over doing the right thing in Ukraine.

Speaker 28 The Uniparty, what these two members are attacking, is the blessing. This is what we should want.

Speaker 28 It's not, the UNIT Party is Republicans and Democrats who actually want to govern, who actually want to get something done, to do their job.

Speaker 28 Passing the bills for Ukraine, for Israel, honestly trying to pass the Lankford border provisions. That was also trying to, that was a problem that conservatives identified.

Speaker 28 And what we have in Washington now is not so much a fight between the right and the left. We have that.

Speaker 28 We have a fight between the people who want to govern and the people who just want to pontificate and object and fight and go do Fox News hits.

Speaker 27 Throw poop.

Speaker 28 Yeah, right.

Speaker 27 They don't want to pontificate. They don't want to throw shit.

Speaker 27 So

Speaker 28 every opportunity we have for Democrats and Republicans to work together on issues where they can agree on a solution, and the border is a classic case of that. Ukraine is another classic case.

Speaker 28 I'm for it and I'm for Marjorie Taylor Greene and these people identifying the Uniparty and distinguishing what it is.

Speaker 27 All right, Bill, that was nice, but let's ignore Will. I know he's right here.
It's nice. We're supposed to be earnest and care about governing, but is there a dark part of you that's kind of like,

Speaker 27 let him throw fucking Mike Johnson overboard?

Speaker 27 That little weirdo wants to get into our bedroom and weren't the one to overthrow the election to make Donald Trump an autocrat. Like, should we really be working with them?

Speaker 27 Like, doesn't it suck that the Democrats have to swallow hard and help Mike Johnson?

Speaker 29 You know, that is politics to some degree.

Speaker 29 No, I'd say for the next six months, no, the next six months, the task is to get some number of Republican-ish voters out there and say, hey, half the Republicans in Congress, just a little over half actually, including Mike Johnson, who's very conservative, probably more conservative than you are, Mr.

Speaker 29 Swing Republican voter or Mrs. Swing Republican voter, they voted for aid to Ukraine.
They knew how important this was. And they were not happy when Trump blew up the border bill.

Speaker 29 We can stipulate that. And

Speaker 29 you therefore have a permission structure, Sarah likes to say.

Speaker 29 You're not voting for Biden, right? You're voting against Trump, and you're voting for a guy whose position on Ukraine is identical to that of Mike Johnson.

Speaker 29 And to be fair to Johnson, he's been pretty, he's gotten pretty far. Like he did somehow, if I could use this phrase, get religion out of this or something.

Speaker 29 I mean, he's now a Reagan Republican, and this is the, he's a wartime speaker.

Speaker 29 Biden hasn't even said, maybe he shouldn't say, that he's a wartime president, and Johnson has sort of internalized that notion, I think.

Speaker 29 So I think the Democrats should use Johnson, honestly, as a way to get to voters.

Speaker 29 They're not going to get to the diehard, I speak, but creates a broader permission structure for the Biden set for voting against Trump, or at least not voting for Trump.

Speaker 29 Maybe they can't quite bring themselves to vote for Biden. The border thing, I do wonder, don't you think Biden should, I mean, he signed off on that deal.
Trump torpedoed it.

Speaker 29 Biden said, we're going to hold their feet to the fire. Trump's going to pay a price to Republicans for torpedoing this bipartisan deal.
But this is one problem with Biden's politician.

Speaker 29 It's not just the eloquence. He doesn't really hammer home.
He's got a winning issue there. Some of us probably aren't crazy about the border deal.

Speaker 29 It's a little restrictive and all this, but whatever. They signed off on it.
The Democrats in the Senate, 47 of them voted for it.

Speaker 29 They did the right thing. They were governing party.
They swallowed hard and accepted something they didn't like to get the aid package that was so important for the country and for the world.

Speaker 29 Having done that, they should get some more credit for it. And Biden should be just hammering the Republicans.
Where is that border deal? Amen.

Speaker 27 I think they're going to get that. I'm going to get that.
I think it's a big part of the campaign. I thought the first Biden had on this topic was basically good, which is like, I got infrastructure.

Speaker 27 I tried to do this. Like, this is the guy that doesn't care about you.
He's, I think, that crazy, selfish versus trying to get things done is a contrast that they are gonna push in the campaign year.

Speaker 27 Okay, we're gonna do more campaign stuff with Sarah and JVL, but I've got one important topic that, you know, people might wanted Sarah and JVL's opinion on this, but really, when I was listening to the crowd, they were like, I want to hear what Bill Crystal thinks about marijuana being rescheduled.

Speaker 27 So, are we excited, Bill Crystal? I was,

Speaker 27 Lovett, on the other podcast that Lovett said to me, he's like, you know, the 90s Republicans like Bob Novak, they were right. It was a slippery slope to legalization of marijuana.
Suck it, Bob Novak.

Speaker 27 How are you feeling about the Schedule C, the schedule reassessment of marijuana?

Speaker 29 Well, Will is the bulwark expert on marijuana.

Speaker 27 So I mean, I just,

Speaker 29 I think really, Will should be the one to speak to this.

Speaker 28 We can't answer it jointly?

Speaker 27 Oh.

Speaker 27 That was good.

Speaker 29 That was not to your age either.

Speaker 27 That was good.

Speaker 27 It's good news. We're not talking about it.
We'll get to the actual final question. It's good news.
It was ridiculous.

Speaker 27 We have people like we've got white college bros like, you know, fucking smoking, hitting the bong, while we've got black people in jail for marijuana. It was an absurd, it was an absurd situation.

Speaker 27 And I'm glad that Joe Biden, a little belatedly, is finally resolving it.

Speaker 27 And Merrick Garland doing something right for once. That's nice.

Speaker 27 But given just kind of this big day, it's not 420, but we're coming off of 420 and we had this big announcement, I wanted to know, Bill Crystal, what is your dream blunt rotation?

Speaker 27 They always do this.

Speaker 27 For people who don't know, a blunt rotation is

Speaker 27 four or five people stand around in a circle, puff, puff, pass. So you're looking for interesting people.
You want nice people. You want good conversation.
You're going to be there for a few minutes.

Speaker 27 And so I'm just wondering, all of world history, you know, we're allowing you to exhume people from the grave. I'd like to know who you would like to have in your dream blunt rotation, Bill Crystal.

Speaker 29 I would like Tim, Sarah, and JVL.

Speaker 27 I was hoping for like Ramsey.

Speaker 27 And, you know, I don't know. I was hoping for you to pull deep cuts from your time at, you know, as a Straussian.
There are no Straussians you'd like to join us on this.

Speaker 29 I get so much abuse for the mistake of having, you know, actually gone to grad school and taught for a couple of years.

Speaker 27 It's okay. I take it.
Will sell abuse. Will takes abuse regardless of what's going on rotation.

Speaker 27 So, all right, confession.

Speaker 28 I am the only pot virgin I know still remaining in this world. So, if I'm going to do this, I'm losing my pot virginity.
It better be with some important people.

Speaker 28 Smart. So, I'm going to do one person for one category, somebody who's just fun to get high with.
I'm picking Charles Barkley.

Speaker 27 I just think that would be.

Speaker 27 Sixers, little

Speaker 27 sexers.

Speaker 28 Guarantee.

Speaker 27 Yep.

Speaker 28 I want one person who you want to ask them, what the hell were you thinking?

Speaker 28 I thought you were going to give us some Roman or Greek philosopher.

Speaker 29 I'm going to go with Hegel, because

Speaker 28 I went to Swarthmore, damn it.

Speaker 27 I read a lot of Hegel.

Speaker 28 I didn't understand any of it.

Speaker 28 And I literally wrote a song

Speaker 28 about Hegel, and it had the line,

Speaker 28 it makes you wonder what he was smoking. So if I'm smoking, I want to smoke with Hegel and say, what the hell were you talking about?

Speaker 28 And

Speaker 28 then I want a Marshall McLuhan type figure. You know the Woody Allen movie where he brings in Marshall McLuhan.
You have somebody like somebody from the past

Speaker 28 who can say, you know, that isn't what I thought at all. So, I mean, obviously you want to pick Jesus.
Like, you'd want to go up to Mike Johnson and say, you want to have Jesus with you.

Speaker 28 So you could say, no, that isn't what I, you know.

Speaker 27 So you got Barkley, Hegel, and Jesus?

Speaker 28 Yeah, or you could, you know, you could pick De Tocqueville. Hell, you could pick Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 27 You bring back Ronald Reagan and Jonny. I don't want Ronnie.
I don't want Ronnie watching me hit the blunt. No, no.

Speaker 28 That isn't what I meant at all.

Speaker 27 Wouldn't that be useful? Who would you do? Thank you. Will took the project seriously, which I appreciated, Bill.

Speaker 27 My Dream Blunt rotation is Mitt Romney, Larry David,

Speaker 27 Angel Reese, and Lil Wayne. It's a nice, nice little group.
They've got a lot to say to each other. Guys, what do you think? Will Salatan of Bill Crystal?

Speaker 27 Where boys and girls can all be queens every single day

Speaker 27 I'm having wicked dreams of leaving Tennessee You're Santa Monica, I swear it's calling me

Speaker 27 Will make my mama proud, it's gonna cause a scene She sees her baby girl

Speaker 27 I know she's gonna scream

Speaker 27 on the stage in my heels.

Speaker 27 Swear I belong down at the

Speaker 27 pink pony club.

Speaker 27 I'm gonna keep on dancing at the pink pony club.

Speaker 27 I'm gonna keep on dancing down in West Hollywood.

Speaker 27 I'm gonna keep on dancing at the pink pony club,

Speaker 27 pink pony club.

Speaker 27 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 30 We use sunscreen pa protejer la piel, verdad. So, why not be proactive protegendo tu salud bucal también?

Speaker 30 Olamiente sea, marla nigra, y con el systema de prevention activa corgate total tu puedes ayyudara prevenir problemas bucales problems, como lascarias yingivitis antes de quémpiécen.

Speaker 30 The reformulated toothpaste, innovative toothbrush, and refreshing antibacterial mouthwash were designed to work together to be quiet as mass effectivos reducing bacterial buildup, like also principal de los problemas or

Speaker 30 seismanas, starting in week one. Compared to a non-antibacterial thora toothpaste and a flax and toothbrush, SOS prevention power, baby.
Compre systema de prevention activa colgate total.

Speaker 30 Visitando shop punto colgate punto con tagun el total. Protect your oral health and be dentist ready.

Speaker 31 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake. Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.

Speaker 31 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage. The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days.

Speaker 31 Strengthen your home and help protect your family. Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.
Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.

Speaker 12 November is all about gathering.

Speaker 13 Friendsgiving, Thanksgiving, and football weekends.

Speaker 16 Total Wine and More has everything you need for your table and your toasts.

Speaker 17 With thousands of wine, spirits, and beers at the lowest prices.

Speaker 20 From bold reds to sparklers and smooth bourbons to tequilas made for celebrating.

Speaker 12 Total wine has it all. With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love, only at Total Wine and more.

Speaker 14 Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 23 See TotalWine.com for details.

Speaker 24 Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.

Speaker 22 Drink responsibly, B21.