Isaac Arnsdorf and Joe Perticone: Trying to Finish What They Started

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Speaker 17 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 22 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 23 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 27 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 30 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

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Speaker 35 Hello, and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
We got a doubleheader for you today. Up first, Joe Perticone, our man on Capitol Hill.
He was hanging out outside the D.C.

Speaker 35 prison, you know, listening to that January 6th prison choir. They're beautiful, their beautiful tones last night.
So I want to ask him about that.

Speaker 35 After that, on the other side, we got Isaac Arnsdorf, Washington Post reporter. He's got a new book out.
He was on the ground in Arizona. So we've got some Arizona talk.

Speaker 35 He's got some new reporting about what the Trump team is thinking their plans are for Ukraine. So big show.
Joey P. Thanks for getting on the pod, bro.

Speaker 36 Glad to to be on again.

Speaker 35 So talk to us last night. Was there singing? Was there a choir?

Speaker 36 There were like five people there.

Speaker 35 Why were you one of the five people outside the DC prison?

Speaker 36 They are there every single night. Been there every single night since August 2022.

Speaker 36 And I was like, I've been meaning to go, but the weather's been bad in DC. And I was like, might as well pop down once it gets nice.
It was nice last night. There were a handful of them.

Speaker 36 They have the inmates call in and they have a phone held up to the mic. And then then the inmates talk to the attendees.

Speaker 36 And then at one point, like the call dropped, which was blamed on the FBI and the eclipse.

Speaker 35 The FBI and the Eclipse?

Speaker 36 Yeah, it's kind of a real-life manifestation of all the weird things that you see online. A lot of these people spend all their time online.

Speaker 36 One of the guys who organizes the live streams told me that he's in an Airbnb right now, but he was camping like in the woods near DC from April to November and kind of lives off of donations or little things he sells from his merch store, which is like January 6th attire.

Speaker 35 And this guy is a January 6ther. He was there, but he just wasn't imprisoned.
No, he's just a supporter.

Speaker 36 He had no connection to them until a couple of years ago. He was like, I used to pass out constitutions and camped out on the National Mall.
He's like, and then I met these folks.

Speaker 36 He's like, and now I do this. He's like, I've never met any any one of the inmates.

Speaker 36 And so it was kind of eye-opening in that, like, the way people find their little online communities where they are repeatedly told things they want to hear and they become like these January Sixers despite having no connection to it.

Speaker 36 That happens in real life too, at a much smaller scale.

Speaker 36 But like, this guy was not involved and just now lives it and lives in the woods or in an Airbnb, depending on how many donations he gets a month.

Speaker 35 I always had a soft spot in my heart for the Pocket Constitution people.

Speaker 35 And so it makes me a little sad to see somebody slip down the slope from being a pocket constitution person to being a, I want to overthrow the government person. That makes me a little sad.

Speaker 36 Yeah, it was quite sad. Usually you see this kind of behavior online and you're like, wow, that's crazy.
But being able to put faces to all these people was,

Speaker 36 it's just shocking.

Speaker 36 Like I've met a million people at the hundreds of Trump rallies that I've attended as a reporter, but the ones who are out there every single night, and like it was, you know, 75 degrees last night, they're out there when it's 25 degrees.

Speaker 35 Why do they get to

Speaker 35 call every night the prisoners? I mean, my only experience being in a prison, I was in the Vail County jail for about three hours for a minor possession of alcohol ticket.

Speaker 35 It wasn't exactly very strict, you know, high security there in Eagle County. But I don't think that, you know, generally speaking, prisoners get to have nightly calls out to protests.

Speaker 35 How does that work?

Speaker 36 I guess they do.

Speaker 36 Because at one point when one of the inmates was talking, there was a, you have one minute remaining over what he was saying. And he was like, damn it.

Speaker 36 And then, you know, then they go on to the next person. So like each person waiting in there, I guess, gets an allotment of time to do a call and they're doing it to this vigil.

Speaker 36 instead of presumably to their families. But there were some family members there, like there are wives of the J6ers out there.
And then they're doing it to the live stream, too.

Speaker 36 There were about a thousand people on the live stream, but it seems to be obviously the same people every night.

Speaker 35 Huh. Well, that's an interesting, depressing bonus.
I asked you to be on the pond today not to talk about the January 6th prisoners, not hostages, prisoners who attacked the Capitol.

Speaker 35 I wanted to talk to you about a record that was set.

Speaker 35 Mike Johnson, as speaker here, this Congress, it was, I think, the seventh time that they tried to bring up a rule to have a vote that it was voted down. This has not happened since the 1970s.

Speaker 35 These guys can't, not only can they not pass anything, they can't even bring anything up to vote. In this case, it was on the FISA bill.

Speaker 35 We haven't talked about the FISA kind of debate on the podcast yet.

Speaker 35 So, I just wonder if you could kind of brief us on what the hell is happening with regards to the FISA reauthorization and the continued dysfunction of the House Republicans.

Speaker 36 So, the rule votes failed, would have been more than seven in this Congress, but during the debt limit deal, Dems bailed out Republicans on one of them, which at the time, like, and you keep seeing it, and I think you're seeing it less, is like when the rule votes fail, that you'll see the typical horse race covering outlets go, you know, this is embarrassing for McCarthy or embarrassing for Mike Johnson.

Speaker 36 It's like, well, you need to be capable of shame for it to be embarrassing. It is now a tactic.

Speaker 36 And it's interesting because the Freedom Caucus was founded in 2015 when Boehner was speaker for the purpose of being allowed to vote on things that they thought deserved votes.

Speaker 35 Just for context, for people who don't kind of remember that, the complaint was the speakership, the leadership, was not bringing up like amendments or not bringing up legislation to a vote that these guys were.

Speaker 36 It was a very closed process. And it was like that under Paul Ryan, too.
And McCarthy, to his credit, allowed this more open process because they exacted all these demands from him.

Speaker 36 But that's what the Freedom Caucus wanted. But now the Freedom Caucus functions to block votes from happening.

Speaker 36 They do not want the FISA vote. And they say, well, we need to add these amendments or we need to do these things.
They want to block existing things from happening.

Speaker 36 They don't want to vote on Ukraine. They don't want to vote on debt deals.
They don't want to vote on all these things. And so they're nihilists.

Speaker 35 You know, say what you want about the tenants of Tea Party. Tea Party Republicans, but at least they had an ethos kind of thing.
These guys are nihilists.

Speaker 36 Yeah. Well, and it's, it's now just like they've been revealed to not be like these principled conservatives fighting for an open process.

Speaker 36 They're literally just trying to exact what they want on the entire Congress, even when the majority wants to do everything else.

Speaker 35 Aaron Powell, Jr.: And the FISA bill itself, the function of this debate is essentially, this is a reauthorization of the FISA tool, which allows government to spy on terrorists.

Speaker 35 And there is a process. There's a separate FISA court.
You've got to get a warrant to be able to do this.

Speaker 35 There is a certain brand of, I guess you can explain to me if I'm wrong about expressing this, but there's a certain brand of Matt Gates, Freedom Caucus types that are under the impression that this is being used to spy on conservatives, you know, who post wrong thoughts on X.

Speaker 35 And so they want to block this for that reason. Is that basically the gist of it?

Speaker 36 Yeah. The opposition isn't some principled libertarian one.

Speaker 36 It is they're using government to target conservatives, which usually doesn't hold the same weight as, you know, the purpose of this, which is to stop 9-11s from happening.

Speaker 35 There was one example of FISA abuse, I guess, which was regarded to Carter Page

Speaker 35 in 2016. That's what these guys all point back to.
But Carter Page was a spy. I mean, Carter Page did work with the Russians.

Speaker 35 It just was that the way that they went about that, getting that warrant on him, and then Carter Page ends up being an advisor to Trump.

Speaker 35 There's some misrepresentations on the application for the warrant, but that there was accountability for that.

Speaker 35 So, you know, there are principled legitimate calls for Pfizer reform, you know, by certain libertarian-type Republicans, but most of the Jabronis that are doing this now is just all part of the culture war thing.

Speaker 35 The government's coming for us.

Speaker 36 Yeah, the real critics were like Justin Amash when he was in the House, and then a lot of the members on the left who have opposed this since its creation.

Speaker 35 Yeah. Okay.
I want to talk about the status with Mike Johnson here. He's heading down to Mar-a-Lago tomorrow.
I want to get that before I lose you.

Speaker 35 But Mona Charon wrote today in the bulwark, the GOP is the party of Putin. Mike Johnson is a congressional chief of a party that contains a passionate Putin wing, and so he did.

Speaker 35 There's this week, Zelensky has warned that Ukraine will lose the war if the aid is not approved. Yet Johnson is headed not to Kyiv, but to Mar-a-Lago.
We've been having our periodic updates on this.

Speaker 35 There was some, I guess it was Ryan Fitzpatrick that was like, there's got to be a Ukraine vote. There was some glimmers of hope, you know, little, little tiny glimmers since we last spoke.

Speaker 35 Are you seeing any glimmers?

Speaker 36 Well, Scalise said he was not aware of what Fitzpatrick said. So I don't know.

Speaker 36 If there's going to be a vote, it's highly unlikely it would be on the standalone foreign aid package that's already passed the Senate, which if there was a standalone vote on that, it would pass and then it would go right to Biden's desk.

Speaker 36 That's not going to happen. There's going to be conditions.
What that looks like, we have no idea. Mike Johnson's been all over the place.
He doesn't really know what he's doing.

Speaker 36 So he says, oh, there's got to be a border component. Or sometimes he'll say, you know, we're looking at our options.
Other ideas might be that they will

Speaker 36 condition it on a pause to Biden's pause on the liquefied natural gas ban.

Speaker 35 Great. We'll love that.
Let's do it.

Speaker 36 I mean, they're so directionless and it's so like any idea of voting on something will require a heavy lift in some other unrelated category, which as we've seen with the border is not going to happen, even if they keep insisting that it could, it won't.

Speaker 36 And so they're going to have to figure out some kind of deal. And I don't think they can do that.

Speaker 36 I've said for months that I think that Ukraine is the scalia seat of this cycle, that it won't be decided until after the election.

Speaker 35 Yeah, nothing would make me feel more like a 90s college Republican again.

Speaker 35 I guess I wasn't in college in the 90s aughts college Republican again than the Republicans cutting a deal where we're exporting natural gas and

Speaker 35 giving weapons to Ukraine. I mean, that would make me feel great.
But it just doesn't really seem like that's the actual concern here.

Speaker 35 Seems like the actual concern is that, as Mona points out, there's a Putin wing in the party. Marjorie Taylor Greene has this Jewish space laser of Damocles hanging over his head.

Speaker 35 If he wants to bring up Ukraine aid and Faisa, it's kind of the same people. It's a little bit of an overlapping group of people, I guess.

Speaker 35 And even some of the more normal people like Chip Roy were like, if he brings up Ukraine and Faisa back to back, then his speakership is in threat. Thus takes us to his pilgrimage to Mar-a-Laga.

Speaker 35 Playbooks take on this, political playbook's take, was that the trip to Mar-a-Lago is a good thing for Mike Johnson because Trump is giving him cover and maybe Trump will give him the air cover to bring up these bills.

Speaker 35 I'm pretty skeptical of that. Punch Bull's take is that Trump is blocking essentially and is hampering Johnson by blocking the ability to bring these things up.

Speaker 35 How do you kind of see that and see Mike's trip down to South Florida?

Speaker 36 I think that it's a huge waste of time. If Mike Johnson thinks he's going to get cover from Trump in this respect, that's what Kevin McCarthy did.

Speaker 36 When Kevin McCarthy prematurely launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, he thought that was an appeasement and it did not work.

Speaker 36 And so if Mike Johnson goes and does some kooky, lies-ridden press conference or likely not a press conference, but an avail with Trump,

Speaker 36 that's not going to matter if he still pursues FISA and Ukraine.

Speaker 35 Yeah, because that's what they've said they're going to talk about, the election integrity.

Speaker 36 You can do that all you want, but if you move forward with FISA or Ukraine, you're going to create a handful of enemies and he can only lose, you know, a handful. He can only lose a handful.

Speaker 36 I think a lot of Dems will back him up, but they can't hash that deal out ahead of time because working with Democrats is the ultimate sin.

Speaker 36 Democrats, if they're going to say, we'll save Mike Johnson if he puts Ukraine on the floor, they have to proactively proactively say it on their own.

Speaker 36 They can't have that agreement in secret because then that's, you know, Johnson cutting a deal with Dems. And that's even worse for him.

Speaker 35 The best potential outcome here, we're on the darkest timeline that this is the best potential outcome, is that Trump actually doesn't care about policy.

Speaker 35 You saw this a little bit in the early Paul Ryan era, where kind of Trump let Paul Ryan do what he wants. And what he would say on Twitter was different things, but he wouldn't actually work anything.

Speaker 35 And so maybe the theory of the case is that Trump gives Johnson enough cover to protect him from MAGA Marjorie, you know, doing a motion to vacate. Johnson brings up a couple of these things.

Speaker 35 Trump bleats out about how, oh, it's, we shouldn't do FISA, and the rhinos are folding, and the rhinos working with Democrats, but he doesn't actually stop it.

Speaker 35 And he kind of gives Mike a little bit of a sheen of protection to pass this stuff. And then, and eventually, this has an end date, right?

Speaker 35 Like, Mike is just playing with fire, just, and his whole existence then rests on Daddy Trump protecting him. But I guess his his whole existence already kind of rests on Daddy Trump protecting him.

Speaker 35 So why not give this a try?

Speaker 36 I think Trump kind of stepping back would be a miscalculation on his part because from what we saw in the primaries, like even when he was basically running uncontested after Nikki dropped out, is there's a lack of enthusiasm.

Speaker 36 There are a lot of people still voting for Nikki, still voting for DeSantis. And I think it hurts his enthusiasm when on top of this, you have him being soft on abortion.

Speaker 36 Let's say he lets Ukraine happen. Like he has the power to intervene.
I think that that only adds to the waning enthusiasm that he's dealing with.

Speaker 36 And I think is a very undercovered component of this race.

Speaker 35 The people that are voting for Nikki were never enthusiastic about him. They were always the nose holders.
I mean, you think that he has potential base concerns? I don't know.

Speaker 35 I'm a little skeptical of that.

Speaker 36 I would say that there's a sliver of the base. And like enthusiasm matters.
And I don't think that Biden creates the same kind of rage enthusiasm that Obama did at all, or Hillary did.

Speaker 35 No doubt. Well, Joe, you've been the merchant of death on prediction, so I've got a final one for you.
Johnson says that he still thinks we can get FISA done by the end of the week.

Speaker 35 It's Thursday at 9.49 a.m. in New Orleans as we're taping this.
What do we think? What kind of odds do you give Mike on that prediction?

Speaker 36 Maybe.

Speaker 36 This might be a Monday night or a Tuesday night thing. I forget which day they're slated to come back.
A huge motivating factor for members of Congress is the idea of working on a weekend.

Speaker 36 That gets stuff done is when they're like, oh, no, we'll have to be here on the weekend. So that could be a motivating factor, but clocks ticking.

Speaker 35 We'll keep an eye out. I mean, it's going to be kind of challenging.

Speaker 35 for him to be in Mar-a-Lago talking about election integrity, keeping Daddy Trump happy, and also, you know, reauthorizing our national security services, different functions that they used to keep us safe.

Speaker 35 Joe Perticone, we're going to keep, you know, having Jan keep us updated on what.

Speaker 35 There's going to be so much not happening on the Hill, and we're going to need you to explain to us in what manner it's not happening over the course of the year.

Speaker 36 There's the most happening when nothing's happening.

Speaker 35 Exactly.

Speaker 35 Exactly. Thank you, Joe Perticone.
Back on the other side with Isaac Arnsdorf.

Speaker 37 Some moments in your life stay with you forever.

Speaker 40 In a special segment of On Purpose, I share a story about a book that changed my life early in my journey and how I was able to find the exact same edition on eBay years later.

Speaker 43 There are certain books that don't just give you information, they shift the way you see the world.

Speaker 45 I remember reading one when I was younger that completely changed me.

Speaker 47 Years later, I found myself thinking about that book again.

Speaker 44 I wanted the same edition back.

Speaker 48 Not a reprint, not a different cover, that exact one.

Speaker 47 So I started searching, and that's when I found it on eBay. That's what I love about eBay.

Speaker 40 It's not just a marketplace, it's a place where stories live.

Speaker 41 Shop eBay for millions of finds, each with a story.

Speaker 42 eBay, things people love.

Speaker 38 Listen to OnPurpose on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 17 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 22 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 23 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 27 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 30 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 37 Some moments in your life stay with you forever.

Speaker 40 In a special segment of On Purpose, I share a story about a book that changed my life early in my journey and how I was able to find the exact same edition on eBay years later.

Speaker 43 There are certain books that don't just give you information, they shift the way you see the world.

Speaker 45 I remember reading one when I was younger that completely changed me.

Speaker 47 Years later, I found myself thinking about that book again.

Speaker 44 I wanted the same edition back.

Speaker 48 Not a reprint, not a different cover, that exact one.

Speaker 47 So I started searching and that's when I found it on eBay. That's what I love about eBay.

Speaker 44 It's not just a a marketplace, it's a place where stories live.

Speaker 41 Shop eBay for millions of finds, each with a story.

Speaker 42 eBay, things people love.

Speaker 38 Listen to On Purpose on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 17 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 22 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 23 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 27 One thing's for sure: the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 30 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 35 All right, we are back with Isaac Arnsdorf, National Political Reporter at The Washington Post, author of the brand new book, Finish What We Started, the MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy.

Speaker 35 Since the last segment, we have news that O.J. Simpson has died of cancer or murdered by cancer, as the Drudge Report put it.
Isaac, I don't know, you're younger than me.

Speaker 35 Do you have a formative memory of the OJ Chase, or were you like, were you a toddler?

Speaker 34 My version of the OJ Chase is watching Trump's motorcade go to court to turn himself in in Manhattan.

Speaker 35 Okay. Or Balloon Boy.
Were you old enough for Balloon Boy? Okay. Man, I hate this.
Boy, this is making me feel middle-aged. I was pretty young for OJ, but I have two formative memories.

Speaker 35 One was my cousin was at my house. We were in our basement watching the car chase.
I cut out of a basketball game. It must have been a middle school or elementary school.

Speaker 35 And we thought it was really cool. We had no idea

Speaker 35 about the context, but it was our first car chase.

Speaker 35 And then during the trial, my parents, my parents, who never did this, mom, if you're listening, I know you are in my life constantly, 24 hours a day, but they took like one vacation during my childhood without the kids.

Speaker 35 Everything else was kids' vacations. And it happened during the OJ trial.
And the woman, the babysat us, was like obsessed with it and watched Core TV all day.

Speaker 35 Reported back to mom when she got back. I was like, I don't know about this lady.
She just watched Coro TV and smoked cigarettes all day long. Anyway, RIP, OJ Simpson.

Speaker 35 Isaac, Isaac, thanks for being on the podcast.

Speaker 34 Thanks so much for having me, Tim.

Speaker 35 For people that don't know you, you've written this book, Finish What We Started, The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy. There was a lot of time on the ground in Arizona and in other places.

Speaker 35 We overlapped in Arizona a couple of times. And so I'd like for you to just start.

Speaker 35 We'll get into the kind of book and the themes, but just talk about your time and reporting out in the MAGA movement in Arizona and around the country and kind of some big picture takeaways.

Speaker 34 Yeah, I mean, this reporting really started in early, mid-2021 when Trump himself was really out of the picture.

Speaker 34 But there was a lot of action going on on the ground among Trump supporters that we didn't know how it was going to turn out at the time.

Speaker 34 But in hindsight and through the story as it shaped up for this book, really paved the way for his comeback and the way that the party has consolidated around election denial in the last several years.

Speaker 34 And so I was just out meeting so many people who, you know, were not famous names and were never going to be headline makers in a newspaper article, but struck me as being kind of the most meaningful and interesting conversations that I was having.

Speaker 34 And so the book just kind of became an outlet to share that experience of, you know, again, things that aren't ever going to be headline news, but are a different way of thinking about the story of what we've all lived through over the past few years.

Speaker 35 Yeah, I think it's just so important. You were on Bannon's podcast earlier talking about this.
That's always a strange experience. You're walking on a tightrope.

Speaker 35 You know, you hate to be complimented by Steve Bannon, but like every once in a while, Steve Vannon's right. It's a very annoying

Speaker 35 situation that you have to deal with. I've had to deal with it many times.

Speaker 35 The one thing that I think he saw in this book that is like maybe one of three things in life that I agree on with him is just you recognize when you're actually with the grassroots Republicans is when you can really understand where the power is with the party.

Speaker 35 You know, we have a mutual, I guess, friend, in my case, source in yours, Kathy Petsis, who is in Maricopa County, who you write about in the book.

Speaker 35 And she is this kind of longtime traditional elephant brooch type Republican woman who's been a part of the party, her family, I forgive his uncle or dad that was the party chair in Arizona.

Speaker 35 And like seeing this through her eyes, and she's like going to the meetings, going to the door knocking,

Speaker 35 you can see the change in the party from the bottom up. Right.

Speaker 35 So anyway, talk about, you know, Kathy and talk about what you saw, you know, at a precinct level happening with the party and how it was changing and what the kind of old-time activists thought about the new crowd.

Speaker 34 Yeah, well, I mean, one of the most interesting parts of reporting this over the years and developing this relationship with Kathy were the times when we sort of had those different perspectives.

Speaker 34 Like when I first met her and she was encountering all these new people coming into the party who were motivated by Steve Bannon's show and the stolen election myth and explicitly with the purpose of getting rid of people like her.

Speaker 34 And she was sure that this was not going to last, that these people were going to get frustrated and disappear.

Speaker 34 And she knew from all of her door knocking and electioneering, she was very sure that she represented the party, not these people. And, you know, I remember thinking, like,

Speaker 34 Kathy, these people are coming for you. Like, I wish I could warn you.

Speaker 34 You know, and then the primaries was with her in that moment of devastation when the more moderate gubernatorial candidate who she was hoping for lost to Kerry Lake.

Speaker 35 Yeah, Karen Taylor Robeson.

Speaker 34 Exactly. And Kathy is confronting with like, how can I belong to this party that nominates Kerry Lake?

Speaker 34 But then again, in November, when, you know, I, like I think probably you and most everyone else was. expecting a red wave and expecting Republicans to dominate.

Speaker 34 And Kathy, from knowing her district and knowing her people, thought they were going to face plant. And she was absolutely right.
That is what happened.

Speaker 35 It's like being at the eye of the storm, Kathy, right? Because it's like, these are the people that, you know, when I talk about the red dogs and

Speaker 35 this reorientation, it's like you have to be in the eye of the storm. And there are two places where this is happening.
And they're going opposite directions, right?

Speaker 35 It kind of depends who you're spending time with.

Speaker 35 If you're spending time in Maricopa County with, let's just be honest, wealthy, upper-middle-class, Republican types who had moderate social views, like you thought that was the party.

Speaker 35 And so then you got surprised by the primary, but then the general, you're like, well, all these Republicans in my life are voting for voting for the Democrats.

Speaker 35 So I think the Democrats are probably going to win. So you're seeing that firsthand in your community.
That on the flip side of that, this is why I missed 2016, right? Because that was my community.

Speaker 35 It was those people that weren't going to vote for Trump.

Speaker 35 But there was this other group of people out in the country, the MAGA crowd that listened to Steve Bannon that hadn't previously voted for Republicans that were.

Speaker 35 And so that, I mean, like, these are the real people where you can see what's happening in our politics.

Speaker 34 Yeah. And actually, I remember reading your book when I was reporting mine and thinking about them very much as like companion parallel pieces of the same story, right?

Speaker 34 Because yours was about professionals and how they all went down different paths of, you know, of election denial and Trumpism or getting off the train.

Speaker 34 And this is sort of like that same tension, but it's happening with regular people out in the country who are not professionals, who are just party volunteers or, you know, people who became active in the party after 2020.

Speaker 35 Yeah, for sure. I want to talk a little bit more about some of the characters in your book, but while we're in Arizona, the real-life consequences of this, right?

Speaker 35 Sometimes you're talking about this and it feels academic political science-y, realignment,

Speaker 35 what's happening. We're seeing the real life consequences in Arizona.
Obviously, we talked on yesterday's podcast about the implementation of the 1864 territorial abortion ban.

Speaker 35 The House Democrats and one Republican in the legislature tried to repeal the 1864 ban yesterday that has no exceptions for rape or incest, zero weeks.

Speaker 35 GOP leaders, though, who commanded the majority, cut off that attempt to vote. They quickly adjourned.
Outraged Democrats started shouting, shame, shame. Like this is the...

Speaker 35 outgrowth of kind of what you're talking about, right? I mean, it's happened slowly, but the Kathy Petsis type Republicans that used to be in the Arizona legislature, they're getting pushed out.

Speaker 35 They're getting replaced with radicals who are happy to have an 1864 abortion regime.

Speaker 34 Right. It's a form of this like democratic disequilibrium where the party in power is out of step with the majority of the electorate.

Speaker 34 And, you know, there are kind of complex mechanical reasons why that happens through the imperfect political institutions that we have.

Speaker 35 But that's what you get.

Speaker 34 Those are the kinds of distorted outcomes that you get when, by all measures, you know, this is not what the majority of Arizona voters want, but they'll get to speak for themselves in November.

Speaker 35 When you're doing that reporting, you're thinking about the legislature. I don't want to pretend like there weren't extreme Republicans in these state legislatures before.

Speaker 35 There've always been, but there's like more of a balance.

Speaker 35 Like what were your sense for the main kind of motivating factors of like the MAGA types that are, and a big part of this book, right, is people that are getting involved in politics, the MAGA movement's ground war.

Speaker 35 A lot of that is the precinct captains. A lot of that is people that are taking over the parties.

Speaker 35 But a lot of that also are the people that are entering these state legislatures and running for these offices in red districts. Kind of talk about that.

Speaker 34 Well, it's about how the purification of the party leads to nominees, leads to candidates who reflect that wing of the party rather than Kathy's wing of the party, right?

Speaker 35 There's another character in the book that I'd like to hear a little bit more about, Sally Grubbs in Marietta, Georgia. I just want to let you cook on that story.
Tell us about Sally Grubbs.

Speaker 34 Yeah, Sally is kind of the foil to Kathy, who we were just talking about. She is the example of the Republican who was kind of a casual keyboard warrior, Rush Limbaugh watcher.

Speaker 34 And it wasn't until 2020 and an experience that she personally had that made her think that there was fraud going on, that motivated her to get involved in local party politics.

Speaker 34 And in the past several years, she's become kind of a rising star in the state GOP to the point that, you know, there are now hardliners who think that she's an establishment right now.

Speaker 35 Wait, why do they think she's an establishment right now?

Speaker 34 Well, she's developed an appreciation for, you know, when you're in the conversation, when you're in the room, when you're at the table, things are more complicated.

Speaker 34 So what happened was there was someone sniping at the state party chair who's under some pressure because the party is paying for the legal defense for the fake electors from 2020.

Speaker 34 And there was some criticism of him that she pushed back on in a signal chat. And then they called her a rhino and kicked her out of the chat.

Speaker 35 Maybe they found out that she went to the January 6th rally, but just hung out on the ellipse.

Speaker 35 If you didn't actually go into the Capitol and attempt to storm the Capitol, I guess that's what makes you a rhino now in a new MAGA world.

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Speaker 30 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 37 Some moments in your life stay with you forever.

Speaker 40 In a special segment of On Purpose, I share a story about a book that changed my life early in my journey and how I was able to find the exact same edition on eBay years later.

Speaker 43 There are certain books that don't just give you information, they shift the way you see the world.

Speaker 45 I remember reading one one when I was younger that completely changed me.

Speaker 47 Years later, I found myself thinking about that book again.

Speaker 44 I wanted the same edition back.

Speaker 48 Not a reprint, not a different cover, that exact one.

Speaker 47 So I started searching, and that's when I found it on eBay. That's what I love about eBay.

Speaker 44 It's not just a marketplace, it's a place where stories live.

Speaker 41 Shop eBay for millions of finds, each with a story.

Speaker 42 eBay, things people love.

Speaker 38 Listen to on purpose on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 17 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 22 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 23 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 27 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 30 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 35 I wanted to get your take.

Speaker 35 I thought you were very insightful on kind of the parallels looking back from a philosophical standpoint at Eric Hoffer, who's written a lot about these sorts sorts of movements, author of The True Believer.

Speaker 35 Here's a quote from Hoffer. I think it's worth reading the whole thing.

Speaker 35 The true believers were seeking not self-advancement, but rather self-renunciation, swapping out their individual identities with all their personal disappointments for a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose, and worth by identification with a holy cause.

Speaker 35 I mean, like, this is just right on the nose for what is happening with a lot of people that you meet when you go to MAGA rallies, when, you know, I have gone to see Steve's podcast live and talk to people standing outside afterwards.

Speaker 35 There is a lot of this, like that they are sort of letting their own resentments, you know, their own personal identity wash away and kind of get caught up in this holy movement.

Speaker 34 Yeah, exactly. And Bannon is very intentional about how he is deploying that and understanding.

Speaker 34 And again, particularly in the moment where this exploded coming out of the pandemic, that that need for belonging is really what's driving this.

Speaker 34 In a like, it's not as much about the content or the ideology as much as it is about that identification with the cause.

Speaker 34 And part of what happens over the course of the story is that Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans figure that out too, and figure out, and I think you were with Liz Cheney when she went and made that speech, figuring out the power of building community around these Republicans who are still Republicans, but feel so alienated from how their party has changed and where that leaves them.

Speaker 35 I was. Liz is so good at this.
And this is part of what was the idea behind the Republican Voters Against Trump program that I was part of in 2020, right?

Speaker 35 Which was we want to give people who feel politically homeless this sense of community, right?

Speaker 35 The sense of home that there are other people out there like them and try to channel that in a positive way, unlike what's happened over in the war room.

Speaker 35 I want to get on some of your reporting of some more recent stories. How do you think about elevating people like this, like Sally, going into Bannon's war room and talking about them?

Speaker 35 There is a debate that I think with well-intentioned people on both sides, some that say, oh, the right thing to do is ignore these people, don't give them the attention that they want.

Speaker 35 I think the other side of that argument is, I mean, they're important. They're taking over these state parties.

Speaker 35 Like, they're a big reason why there's an 1864 abortion ban in Arizona now and why our capital got stormed. And so we need to know what's happening and we need to monitor and we need to understand.

Speaker 35 Maybe you can pull people away from the brink a little bit if you understand what their complaints and what their resentments are. Some of them might be gettable.
I don't know.

Speaker 35 Where do you kind of fall in that discussion about, I don't know if you had any criticism of the book from that standpoint or the question of how much attention we should be giving these folks?

Speaker 34 Well, I mean, I wanted to go on War Room because the idea that like a single one of Bannon's listeners might pick up the book and critically engage with it, you you know, would mean the world to me.

Speaker 34 And I just think that if you're presenting things with context, then you know, people are smart.

Speaker 34 The messages can be dangerous when they spread in a vacuum, but when you're when you're giving people context and treating people respectfully, I think that people can be responsible.

Speaker 34 And, you know, Sally, I hope that readers learn to love Sally the way that I did. I mean, she's a lot of fun.
She's really smart. She's got great personality.

Speaker 34 And, you know, she believes things that aren't true, but she is a very reliable narrator of her own story and her own life. And I think that there's a lot of value in that.

Speaker 35 Do you grapple at all with the more you get to know these folks, the more you kind of develop a human connection with them? you start to paper over the threat a little bit. I grapple with that.

Speaker 35 I'm not trying to push it outside. I grapple with it, right? Like, I think it's important to be in this world, to monitor it, but humans are complicated, right? Humans are not

Speaker 35 two-dimensional. It's not like everybody that listens to Bannon's War Room is evil, right? Like they have desires that want their lives in the country to improve in certain ways.

Speaker 35 They want it to look differently in certain ways. They want it to look differently in ways that I find very troubling sometimes, right?

Speaker 35 But sometimes, you know, if you get to know somebody, right, like you think about the personal traits that you like about them and you start to push down like being clear-eyed about their flaws and about the very real threats that this movement poses.

Speaker 35 Do you worry about that at all? Well, people are complicated.

Speaker 34 And, you know, there's a quote in the book from Thomas Dewey, like, democracy is not just a system of government, it's a form of associated living.

Speaker 34 And so, like, actually forcing ourselves to interact on that human level is really healthy. And it helps to avoid getting so dug in and viewing each other as enemies.

Speaker 35 I want to get two recent stories you've written in the post. One, inside Donald Trump's secret long shot plan to end the war in Ukraine.

Speaker 35 It seems to me that the TLDR of this is that Donald Trump wants to give Putin some territory and hopefully he'll behave. He'll be happy knowing that he'll have a friend in the White House.

Speaker 35 And so that'll end the war. But maybe you, maybe it's a little more complex than that.
So why don't you talk to us about the reporting and what you uncovered there?

Speaker 34 Well, I I don't know that it's a ton more complex than that. I mean, you know,

Speaker 34 Trump sees two countries that want the same territory. And so he sees an opportunity to make a deal that he can get them in a room.

Speaker 34 And on the strength of his charisma and his prowess, he can, you know, pressure them to come to a compromise where both of them can safe face.

Speaker 35 I think that's a great theory, actually. That's thought about it in that frame.
Donald Trump sees two countries that want the same territory.

Speaker 35 And so they should just get, maybe we should just give South Florida to Cuba. That would be awesome.
Donald Trump lives there and then he can have his own little island.

Speaker 35 You know, that could be an idea, right? There's some little disagreements.

Speaker 34 Well, right. Like, why didn't anyone else think of this first?

Speaker 35 Yeah, why don't we give Mexico some of those border towns that Donald Trump thinks have so much carnage in it? Okay. Anyway, so he wants to just give some of the territory over to Russia.

Speaker 35 Where do we go from there then?

Speaker 34 Well, obviously, you know, Zelensky has said under no circumstances is he gonna recognize ceding any territory. And Putin has claimed to annex, which is an annexation that the U.S.

Speaker 34 and European allies consider illegal, but he's staked a territorial claim to much more land than his troops currently occupy and that Trump is talking about giving.

Speaker 34 So, you know, it's not like he would be satisfied with that either necessarily. So, you know, it's just, again, a lot more complicated.

Speaker 34 You know, even if you were to just, you know, have everyone put their arms down where they are, it's just not as simple as drawing an armistice line and everyone going home.

Speaker 35 I mean, to me, the next step of that is in the horror world where Donald Trump wins the next election and Donald Trump is the president and he actually tries something like this.

Speaker 35 And he basically puts America in a position where America supports Putin's annexation at some level or another. And obviously the Europeans would be opposed to that.

Speaker 35 Like, what did the foreign policy advisor? I'm let you talk to Rick Crunnell or the other foreign policy advisors around him.

Speaker 35 I mean, like, have they thought one step past, let's just give Putin the land or not really?

Speaker 34 So the, I think the like high-minded foreign policy big think that gets superimposed onto Trump's individual impulse is that

Speaker 34 China is a bigger problem than Russia and that the U.S. can't

Speaker 34 get so committed in Ukraine that it takes its eye off the ball in China. And actually the connection is between Russia and China with Russia becoming so reliant on China.

Speaker 34 And the thinking is that you could actually kind of draw Russia away from China if you improved Russian relations with the U.S. And that that would end up hurting China.

Speaker 34 Now, I talked to a lot of other foreign policy experts who think that that's incredibly dumb and would never work.

Speaker 35 Yeah, it's about a lot of cope, I think. But that idea, there are these people around Trump.
that want to still flex some of their hawkish muscles.

Speaker 35 And I just think that they refuse to accept the reality that for Donald Trump, Taiwan is not going to be any different than Ukraine.

Speaker 35 And like, they might, he might, there might be lib service to that now, but like, there's no rational through line to anything Donald Trump has ever said over the last 10 years.

Speaker 35 So it would make you think that he would look at Taiwan any differently than he looks at Ukraine. Isaac, final thing.
I'm glad you pointed this out.

Speaker 35 Trump has made no public statements about Evan Gershkowitz, who is still imprisoned in Russia. I feel sometimes remiss we're not talking enough about Evan on this podcast.

Speaker 35 Talk about the state of play there and what you heard from Trump World when asked about why he wasn't advocating for Evan's release.

Speaker 34 Well, I heard absolutely nothing. And that was the point:

Speaker 34 the journal had an editorial ahead of the one-year anniversary saying, you know, why haven't we heard anything from Trump? And so I asked the campaign point blank, did I miss something?

Speaker 34 Has he said anything? And would he take this opportunity? And

Speaker 34 absolute radio silence. And, you know, it's part of a long pattern of Trump going out of his way to avoid criticizing Putin.

Speaker 34 And, you know, the previous recent example was him comparing himself to Navalny, the Putin critic who was imprisoned and died.

Speaker 35 Sick stuff. Isaac Arnsdorf, thank you so much.
Author of the new book, Finish What We Started, The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy.

Speaker 35 He was actually out there with the MAGA grassroots and knows what's really happening on the ground. I appreciate you being on this podcast.
We'll see you out on the campaign trail, I bet, this year.

Speaker 34 Absolutely. Thanks, Tim.

Speaker 35 Thanks, Isaac. We'll be back tomorrow with the weekend edition of the Bulwark podcast.
I'm pumped about the guest. We'll see y'all then.

Speaker 50 We're about to bring it to you, kid,

Speaker 50 like we never ever did. See you, your career is done like Johnny Carson's.
Get me vexed, I do like left. I started Narson.

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Speaker 50 You move to the beat. You come on, everybody don't.

Speaker 35 The Bullwork podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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