Olivia Nuzzi: Kari Lake Is No Meryl Streep

Speaker 5 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovny, and Carise Van Houten.

Speaker 11 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny, infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 19 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 25 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 26 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 28 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 30 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

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Speaker 37 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast at Long Last. Olivia Nootsi, Washington correspondent for New York Magazine.

Speaker 37 She just wrote Arizona's Split Reality, Ground Zero for the rigged election conspiracy. The border state could decide both the fate of the Senate and the presidency.
Great time we planned on this.

Speaker 37 And then the Arizona News Gods gave us much more to talk about with the abortion ruling. And we're bringing it back to 1864.
So thanks, Olivia, for joining the podcast. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 37 I was participating in some New Orleans victual rituals last night.

Speaker 37 One of my favorite phrases

Speaker 37 from your piece. And so I'm moving moving a little slow this morning, so you're going to have to carry the podcast.

Speaker 37 I want to talk about the abortion ruling first, but just the biggest picture, you spent a lot of time. We both have had to spend a lot of time in Arizona, but I think you even more than me.

Speaker 37 I love it there. Yeah, it's kind of underrated, right? It's totally underrated.
Yeah. I could see myself in my 70s, like being a professor at Arizona and like living in Tucson.

Speaker 37 Yeah, I always figured I would like retire to New Mexico to hunt UFOs or something like Shirley McLean, you know, wear a lot of turquoise yeah

Speaker 37 a caftan yeah jewelry yeah i could wear a male caftan in tucson and wouldn't get too many weird looks i think caftans are genderless at this point not everywhere i don't know i at the vatican i don't think in iowa

Speaker 37 yeah i don't i don't think in iowa they're genderless i think if i went to council bluffs in a caftan i'd probably catch some stray looks yeah probably so arizona's underrated we agree on that maybe not so underrated are the types of people that you had to spend time with covering the campaign.

Speaker 37 What was your biggest takeaway from your various time with Ruben Gallego, the Democrat Carrie Lake?

Speaker 37 And then we'll kind of get down into the details, but what do you sense about the state of the world? I mean,

Speaker 37 Gallego is like a nice, normal

Speaker 37 man

Speaker 37 who's just like, he's a lot of fun. He's very honest.
He's very

Speaker 37 I was thinking about it. I think I've seen Ruben Gallego cry

Speaker 37 more times than I've seen any other man in my life cry. And I think he just has his emotions are so close to the surface.
It's something very honest about him.

Speaker 37 I have a lot of follow-ups about him in your life. On Ruben, what was the context of the tears?

Speaker 37 You know,

Speaker 37 a couple different interviews that either I've done or I've been present for that my fiancé Ryan has done. And I don't mean that that to be like, oh, Ruben Gallego cries, but there's something

Speaker 37 just there's something very honest about him. He's very in touch with his emotions and has had to deal with a lot of complicated, heavy shit, right, as a veteran.
And seems like he,

Speaker 37 you know, to use like horrible therapy speak, like he like did the work, right?

Speaker 37 He's just very present. He's a very present person.
Got it. So the tears are kind of reflecting back on his time in service and the deaths, his fellows.

Speaker 37 Yeah, or January 6th, I think, once I was interviewing him about that. So he's just, he's kind of an unusual cat.

Speaker 37 Kind of like a John Boehner situation where it's just like, you know, there's a cat stuck on the tree and he starts crying, or like somebody mentions

Speaker 37 the Jesuit school he went to. He's not smoking a camel and drinking a Cabernet.
No. Yeah, he's just like a very present person.

Speaker 37 And then how would you compare and contrast that to the other candidate in the race? Oh, Carrie like makes people cry. That's the difference.

Speaker 37 She's,

Speaker 37 I wanted so badly to find a there there with her, you know.

Speaker 37 You know, when I announced that I was turning off my recorder at a certain point and I wanted her to do the same and stop filming me, I tried all these different tricks to like get her to just be a person and nothing worked, you know?

Speaker 37 Yeah, it's for the context. So she's, she films everything.
Yeah. Like she films you back so that nothing can be taken out of context.
It's also kind of a power move. Sure.

Speaker 37 It's a little bit of a power move, how ostentatious it is. Yeah.
It's fine, I guess.

Speaker 37 She famously, I guess maybe not that famously, famously on this podcast, not famously like Justin Bieber famously, but famously among bulwark listeners.

Speaker 37 She taped me interviewing her on something that was not going to be published because it just wasn't interesting enough to make the cut of the circus and put that out.

Speaker 37 And it was like one of these weird moments where it kind of shows you why she does this. The power dynamics is that like her people didn't really watch it.

Speaker 37 Like I was pretty mean to her in the interview. Like I told her she was unpatriotic.

Speaker 37 I blamed her for her loss that she won't accept. And yet, she put it out.

Speaker 37 And the people that follow her, her supporters were like, hell yeah, Carrie, you know, showing it to that lib media, never Trump or cuck, right? And it's like, that's what it is.

Speaker 37 It's like less about the content. I'm more about

Speaker 37 the dominance. Yeah.
You know, she needs an endless stream of content, right?

Speaker 37 But yeah, it's about this branding exercise, you know, her endeavor to seem like a perfect mega candidate. You know, she was very upset with me the day that the piece was published.

Speaker 37 I think I shared with you that she thought that I had made her look like a fraud and a poser in her interpretation. Did you use the word poser in the piece? No, but I liked that word a lot.

Speaker 37 When she said that, I was like, oh, I do really. I like the word.

Speaker 37 You kind of got it. I'm glad the message of the piece got through, actually.
You know, sometimes you worry that people aren't reading between the lines and getting the context clues, you know?

Speaker 37 Well, at first, I sort of I protested and I was like, no, I, you know, I wasn't implying that.

Speaker 37 And then the more that I thought about it throughout the course of the day after she had like blocked me, I was like, no, I guess that is what I think of her.

Speaker 37 I mean, she's just sort of like overperforming. She's not a true believer.

Speaker 37 right and and she really wants to be seen as a true believer and i think the result is that there's no nuance in her performance of of this type of character that she's playing she's not sarah palin right in some ways she's like a perfected sarah palin right sarah Palin was a true believer.

Speaker 37 Sarah Palin was too human. She didn't have what it took to succeed in television as a sportscaster, right? She didn't have that type of shrewdness and ambition.

Speaker 37 And then she was too human and flawed to succeed as a politician, but she was a true believer.

Speaker 37 You can't imagine, Carrie, for example, like that famous Sarah Palin video around Thanksgiving where they're like killing the turkey behind her.

Speaker 37 She's like out in Alaska and she's trying to do an interview. You don't remember the dead turkey interview? Anyway, it's hard to imagine.

Speaker 37 I do wonder though, has Carrie just embodied the character though? Maybe it is real now. Maybe it is her.
Maybe she's fused with her character. I wonder.

Speaker 37 You and I are maybe more obsessed with this than anybody in the world.

Speaker 37 And so I was hoping it was a wonderful profile for an accurate, but I was hoping that you would be able to get underneath the skin in a way that I was unable to.

Speaker 37 I said to her staff, I was like, I want to, I want to wake up and have breakfast with her. Like I desperately want to.
I want to have breakfast with her. And I want to.
I want to marry Gary Lake.

Speaker 37 I just want to sleep in the guest room. And I want to come downstairs in our PJs and have some bacon and have a cup of coffee and just see if she still is talking about the rigged election.

Speaker 37 And the staffers tell me that I'm, A, I'm not invited into her home. And B, she would be

Speaker 37 talking about the rigged election. And maybe her text to you after the article run is like, maybe that's just her.
This is just it. Like, she's just become monomaniacal.

Speaker 37 She's been red-pilled and she's become her character. Is that not possible? I think it's possible.
I don't know.

Speaker 37 I kind of, she strikes me, though, as someone who's sort of like, like, if anyone was ever going to have like a lonesome Rhodes moment, it would be her.

Speaker 37 You know, if you've ever seen the movie A Face in the Crowd, it's about this radio host who becomes this populist hero from prison. And then he's on tour.

Speaker 37 I'm not watching this. He's on tour.
I don't remember what year it is. I think it's Andy Griffith.
And he's on tour and he's commanding these big crowds.

Speaker 37 And then he's caught on a hot mic referring to the idiots in his fan base. And everyone turns on him.
It's all too ironic with Trump for that to ever happen, I think.

Speaker 37 But I could see something like that happening with Carrie. It just, I don't know.
It doesn't feel fully real. It just, it's a very good performance.
She's no Meryl Streep, you know? Yeah. Hmm.

Speaker 37 I just want to say that I just, I just, I didn't dream or hallucinate the Sarah Palin thing. I have here CBS News headline, Palin interviewed as Turkey, as Turkey's Killed.

Speaker 37 That's the headline.

Speaker 37 Palin interviewed as Turkey's Killed. I don't think we weren't prepared to have this, to have it up live.
It's interesting, though.

Speaker 37 I was thinking about this yesterday with the

Speaker 37 abortion stuff and with the video of her referring to this great law from the 1800s. Actually, let's just pause.
Let's just, you think about that.

Speaker 37 We're going to listen to Carrie Lake from the debate because we do have that audio. Here's what Carrie Lake was talking about.

Speaker 39 Kerry, we'll start with you on this one.

Speaker 39 The new law banning abortion. Well, the new law banning abortion in Arizona after 15 weeks.
There's that law, and there's a territorial era law which bans all abortion. Zippo, over.

Speaker 39 Which law do you think should take effect?

Speaker 41 My personal belief is that all life matters, all life counts, and all life is precious, and I don't believe in abortion. I think the older law is

Speaker 41 going to go into effect. That's what I believe will happen.

Speaker 39 Okay, but you approve of that.

Speaker 39 What, at conception?

Speaker 41 I believe life begins at conception.

Speaker 39 Okay, what do we do about abortion pills? What do we do about...

Speaker 41 I don't think abortion pills should be legal. That's a very good thing.

Speaker 37 Not in Arizona. Pretty straightforward.
I don't know. That character.
Before you could light a cigarette, there is a third person in that room.

Speaker 37 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 37 it's very straightforward. But I was...
Thinking about it, because now she says that she disagrees with that law. She doesn't think that it should be the law of the land.

Speaker 37 Life no longer begins at conception. No,

Speaker 37 it begins somewhere around 15 weeks. Yeah.
I had seen her in Green Valley. She was with Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, who had come to town.
They had never been to the border before.

Speaker 37 And before this event, it's nice that those two kids are still together. I know.
Those two creatures. They can make it.
What is that? What does that say? Love is real.

Speaker 37 Love is real.

Speaker 37 After a pummeling, after a dick pummeling, still together.

Speaker 37 After having to pay out.

Speaker 37 The insurance had to pay that out, actually, technically.

Speaker 37 I want to make sure that we have that right. It was the Schlepp insurance.
Asexuality is the spectrum. But they had never been to the border before.

Speaker 37 And they, for people who have never seen or met Matt and Mercedes-Schlepp, they're this very goofy pair. And Matt is at the American Conservative Union.

Speaker 37 CPAT, which runs CPAC, Mercedes, they both worked in the George W. Bush White House.
They became lobbyists. And they really profited in a literal sense during the Trump presidency.

Speaker 37 Mercedes took a job in the Trump White House. Matt was sort of from his perch outside of the White House acting as part of the comms apparatus.

Speaker 37 And now they're both part of Trump's re-election effort and they came to Arizona to try and help get Kerry Lake elected.

Speaker 37 But they had never been to the border and I ran into them at the beginning of this event and they had just got back. We were about 40 miles from the border.

Speaker 37 And they were so, they were like, oh, we've never been to the border before. It was amazing.
It was so goofy.

Speaker 37 And I just was thinking, you know, they're part of this conservative movement that has been obsessed at the border for, you know, much of the last decade, that has been animated by the immigration policy for longer than that.

Speaker 37 And they've helped, you know, popularize this anti-immigrant rhetoric. And they had never been there before.
And I thought there was something so interesting about that.

Speaker 37 But they were on stage with Carrie Lake, and somebody in the crowd asked a question about inflation. And Carrie sort of seized up.
And she's very, she's a very good communicator, Carrie, and

Speaker 37 it's unusual that it seems like she doesn't have something to say, something kind of canned and prepared to go. She has perfect diction.

Speaker 37 Her 30 years in television really show most of the time. And she sort of seized up and

Speaker 37 kept looking over at Matt Schlap as if to say, you take this question.

Speaker 37 And eventually, Matt seemed to kind of get the point, and he took the question on inflation. He answered it.
But it was as if she really had absolutely no fucking idea what to say in response to this.

Speaker 37 And I just thought, oh, right, she actually doesn't have any command of policy. Right.
It speaks to the character, right? If you get outside the lines, right?

Speaker 37 If you get outside the lines, it becomes a little harder. And most of the time, she can get by just with her very shallow understanding of policy.

Speaker 37 And it's really just a shtick and performance and being a mega candidate does not require you to, you know, know a lot. And I think maybe that's now changing with abortion.
I don't know.

Speaker 37 Yeah, because they don't care about the issues. Just a fun Mercedes schlap aside.

Speaker 37 Sometime between Election Day 2016 and around Christmas, I forget when it was, I was in a Fox News green room and she asked me how I was going to fix my personal brand. I was like, an exact quote.

Speaker 37 She was like, I'm just, I'm concerned about your personal brand having been so out there on Never Trump. And I was wondering how you were going to fix it.
And I was like,

Speaker 37 I think my brand's all right, actually, Mercedes.

Speaker 37 But thank you for your concern. No, no, no, no, they weren't Trump supporters.
I know. They were not Trump supporters.

Speaker 37 Like, I remember pretty late in the game in the primary in 2016, they were not Trump supporters.

Speaker 37 And then, you know, I think they saw once Trump's takeover of the Republican Party became undeniable, they found God on MAGA pretty fast. I think she was looking for tips, right?

Speaker 37 Because she was trying to find God. And she was like, how are you going to do it? Because I'm looking for some strategy.
Anyway, it seemed to work out for her to a certain extent.

Speaker 37 This phoniness is related to another character that I wanted to bring up who's in your piece, who I spend a lot of time with, Steve Bannon.

Speaker 37 And as it released this 1864 law, and I guess we've been a little discursive here in this conversation, but for people who have missed the news, so in Arizona, there was a 15-week abortion ban passed under Doug Ducey prior to the 2022 midterm.

Speaker 37 There's a challenge to that, that that was not. the law that should stand because of this previous 1864 law that banned all abortions except for in the case of the life of the mother.

Speaker 37 Arizona was not a state yet in 1864, which was about to be relevant. And so that takes back to zero.

Speaker 37 And the interesting thing to me is this kind of divide between the like Arizona Freedom Caucus types who have been like, hell yeah, zero weeks. You know, this is what we wanted.

Speaker 37 The people that really, that this was the true believers.

Speaker 37 And the political class, which I think, including Lake, who backtracked on this, I want to play you an audio of yesterday's band in War Room with Steve talking to Abe Hamade,

Speaker 37 who is running for Congress. He was the one that was running for Attorney General.
He also thought that his election was stolen.

Speaker 37 He's kind of an affected MAGA himself, a little bit, kind of like, who's the sidekick for Laura Ingram? Raymond Arroyo. He's kind of like a handsome Raymond Arroyo, kind of in his persona.

Speaker 37 And so Steve is interviewing Abe. You'd think these guys would be very excited about the news, but let's listen to how it went.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

Speaker 40 Arizona made a state in 1910, 11, somewhere around there. When did Arizona become a state?

Speaker 37 1912. That's it.
1912.

Speaker 40 The territorial ban, you were a territorial, the territorial ban is from 1864.

Speaker 37 That's correct.

Speaker 37 How do we,

Speaker 40 did they actually consider another Arizona law that

Speaker 40 laws made when you guys were territorial? I think the, was the state capital in Prescott then? Or is it in, was it in Tucson?

Speaker 37 Steve also is usually pretty eloquent, but you could see that this one kind of caught them off guard a little bit. Like you would imagine if it wasn't an act, right?

Speaker 37 If it wasn't a bit, they'd be like, hell yeah,

Speaker 37 party like it's 1864, right? But they're struggling. I feel like the National Republican Party is sort of like the dog that caught the car on abortion, right?

Speaker 37 Like it was part of the shtick for so long to, you know, we want Roe to fall and we agree with all these activists, these pro-life activists.

Speaker 37 And now it's like, oh, shit, this is going to really hurt us potentially on the ballot. And yeah, they're all running away from it.

Speaker 37 I had to laugh when I saw Mike Pence, his comment that it was a slap in the face that Trump was running away from, running away from this.

Speaker 37 I mean, it's one humiliation after another for Mike Pence.

Speaker 37 Actually, I took the opposite view of this.

Speaker 37 I'm glad you brought this up because I looked at it and I was like, The fact that Mike Pence had the freedom to slap Trump on this, on like the one issue that he cared about, ostensibly, shows the benefit.

Speaker 37 It should be a lesson to the other Trumpers. Look at how good Mike Pence has it.
Because imagine the counter.

Speaker 37 If Mike Pence was still the VP, you know, if he had done the right thing to try to, you know, if Mike Pence had just had the courage to try to overturn the election,

Speaker 37 then he would be with Trump again. They'd be running again on this joint, absurd, alternate reality, as you described it.
And he would have to pretend on his pro-life views. He would have to go along.

Speaker 37 And so now he's free to flap his wings and to be for the 1864 territorial ban.

Speaker 37 That's nice for Mike Pence, I think, right? I don't see it that way. You don't see it that way.
No, I think it's like he spent, what, five years in service of this man

Speaker 37 who didn't actually believe anything that he believed. And

Speaker 37 you have to imagine Mike Pence is only vice president because he had his own presidential ambitions and he thought that he could advance his various ideological crusades, abortion being one of them.

Speaker 37 And it was just one humiliation after another. And it was it worth it in the end? I mean,

Speaker 37 they wanted to hang him. Everyone hates him who liked him before.
Yeah.

Speaker 37 But he's got his dignity back a little bit. Does he? I mean, I don't think that you get credit for

Speaker 37 finally

Speaker 37 allowing there to visibly be daylight between you and Donald Donald Trump only after a crowd of Donald Trump supporters threatened to hang you at the Capitol. I don't think you get credit.

Speaker 37 I'm not impressed. Well, we're going on a curve here.
I appreciate that point of view. I was happy for Mike Vence that he got to attack Donald Trump from the right on abortion.

Speaker 37 And I feel like other people should learn from that. They could also be their true selves if they just shed Donald Trump.
But I feel like he didn't attack him.

Speaker 37 He just was like, you know, a little disappointed. Oh, no, I'm being humiliated again.

Speaker 5 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 11 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 19 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 25 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 26 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 28 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 30 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 34 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 42 She is your once-in-a-lifetime. The quiet in your chaos, the warmth in your winter, the light you never saw coming.

Speaker 42 And deep within the earth, where time and fire do their slow, sacred work, a diamond is born. It shines like she does.

Speaker 37 Brilliant, rare, unforgettable.

Speaker 42 When words fall short, let a diamond speak for you. Treve and Company, Extraordinary Jewelry and Timepieces.
Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto.

Speaker 5 Get Ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 11 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 19 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 25 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 26 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 28 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 30 One thing's for sure: the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 34 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 42 She is your once-in-a-lifetime. The quiet in your chaos, the warmth in your winter, the light you never saw coming.

Speaker 42 And deep within the earth, where time and fire do their slow, sacred work, a diamond is born. It shines like she does.

Speaker 37 Brilliant, rare, unforgettable.

Speaker 42 When words fall short, let a diamond speak for you. Treeve and Company, Extraordinary Jewelry and Time Pieces.
Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto.

Speaker 37 The border part of your piece, I think, was also just kind of interesting.

Speaker 37 You mentioned earlier about how the schlaps had made their first trip there. Carrie, it was a long period where Carrie wasn't there, though she's been back recently.

Speaker 37 I was talking to Stephen Richard last week. And he said that people outside Arizona don't really understand kind of how serious it is and that maybe Biden hasn't taken it seriously enough.

Speaker 37 It seems like Gallego was obviously trying to not make that mistake like what was your kind of experience there kind of meeting the the MAGA activists who are at the border and like how the various parties are navigating that challenge I mean it's really two different

Speaker 37 interpretations of the border I think I called it like the democratic border pastoral which is where you know Gallego and and people like Gallego emphasize the way that the border does work, the way that it functions effectively.

Speaker 37 There are, you know, in Yuma County, for instance, 15,000 migrant workers who cross over legally every day and work on the fields. And I think like something like 90% of the produce in the U.S.

Speaker 37 that is available in the winter comes from Yuma County, which is 230,000 acres of farmland there. Then they cross back over at the end of the day.
And it does work, right? for that purpose.

Speaker 37 And there are people who live on the border and it is a normal place where life is

Speaker 37 unfurling in a normal way.

Speaker 37 And I think the challenge for the Gallegos of the world is to be able to talk about that and acknowledge that, while also acknowledging that it is a big problem to have 10,000 people at least crossing over illegally a month right now.

Speaker 37 And

Speaker 37 then on the right, I don't really understand why they exaggerated so much on the right and why they spend so much time talking about pedophiles at the border and kind of embellishing in really gruesome detail.

Speaker 37 I was at this trucker convoy rally. I called you, I think, helplessly from that rally.

Speaker 37 You were waiting for the truckers. You were bored.
I was waiting for the truckers, and you told me not to leave. Yeah, I was like, stay.
You're like, I'm done.

Speaker 37 I'm not going to wait for these truckers. You had to drive to Las Vegas, and it was like a five-hour drive.
I'd already driven two hours to the border that day, but you were right.

Speaker 37 It sounds like you got to meet a couple of guys that volunteered themselves to interview you, who had like been there on January 6th and stuff. So that was good.
Yeah, yeah. You know, it was worth it.

Speaker 37 And I appreciate you were basically my therapist throughout the course of my reporting this piece. So thank you very much.

Speaker 37 I want to get into the therapy part of it next because I do want to hear about the Republican POV. I mean, isn't the simple answer that there's a real problem?

Speaker 37 You know, we're not able to manage the amount of people that want to come to the border. It's not really an American.
And Biden has made it worse. I mean, it's true that Biden has made it worse.

Speaker 37 He exacerbated what was already a huge problem at the border. I mean, I think he finally realizes that, right? He's talking about closing the border down to immigrants.

Speaker 37 And it's been a problem, you know, for decades. It's not unique to Biden.
It's not unique to Democrats. And Trump did not fix it, contrary to what Kerry Lake might say.

Speaker 37 It's like people memory hole so much. Trump had an Oval Office,

Speaker 37 like one of those times where he had a address. I think it was Oval Office.
It might have been one of the ones where he like weirdly walked down a room to a hallway.

Speaker 37 I'd have to go back and find the video, but like I'm pretty sure it was Oval Office address about the crisis at the border during his presidency before COVID, about how we, you know, when he was arguing for even more draconian crackdowns than the child separation.

Speaker 37 I mean, so yeah, no, I mean, there was, there were still problems then, but um the policy changes, if it didn't exacerbate the problem, it certainly exacerbated just just the raw numbers of people that are coming, which I guess is maybe the problem from some people's perspective.

Speaker 37 The therapy of this is interesting. It's worth just talking about.
You have now been doing this for a long time. When was your first Donald Trump story? Was it about Sam Nunberg in 2015?

Speaker 37 Was Sam Nunberg a character in your first Trump story? I first interviewed Trump in 2014, actually.

Speaker 37 So that's 10 years. Yeah, and I remember I asked, it was about something unrelated.
It was about casinos in Atlantic City. One of his...

Speaker 37 last casinos there was shutting down and I was covering Chris Christie at the time and I had met Nunberg and Roger Stone because they were trying to kill off Christie because they perceived Christie to be in Trump's way politically and they were shopping some like deranged opposition research about Chris Christie.

Speaker 37 It was like, it was something like Chris Christie was a secret Muslim or something or like

Speaker 37 something crazy. And I remember I went to meet them at

Speaker 37 J.G. Mellon on the Upper East Side.

Speaker 37 And I didn't really know who Roger Stone was, but my editor at the time, John Avalon, who's now running for Congress in the Hamptons, told me like, do not be alone with Roger Stone.

Speaker 37 Here, read this Matt Labash profile of Roger Stone from, I think, like the Weekly Standard from some years before. We should put that in the show notes, too.

Speaker 37 Anytime you get to reread a Matt Labash profile, you should do that. He's so good.
He's amazing. Obviously, do not be alone with him.
Do not stand near him if you can help it.

Speaker 37 And he was very panicked, and I didn't understand why. And then I met them and I understood why.

Speaker 37 And

Speaker 37 Roger actually took off his shirt in the restaurant to show me his Richard Nixon tattoo that he has between his shoulder blades. But anyway, I met these goofy characters.

Speaker 37 And then when I needed to talk to Trump sometime later, I asked Number to set it up. And I remember I was in a cab and like a few minutes later, a Trump Tower Secretary was patching me through.

Speaker 37 And at the end of the conversation, I sort of felt like he was waiting for me to ask him the question. that everyone had always asked him, which is, are you going to run for president?

Speaker 37 And I didn't care. It didn't seem that relevant, but I felt like it was polite to ask.
And so I asked, and he was like, well, I'm certainly looking at it.

Speaker 37 And basically, if the country is still going to shit in a few months, then I may have to run for president.

Speaker 37 And I remember my editor and I at the time, Jackie Kucinich, we were like, eh, should we write it up? I guess we should write it up.

Speaker 37 And so we wrote the story about how Trump was like the boy who cried campaign and he was threatening to run again.

Speaker 37 And it was all, you know, the whole premise was that it was very silly and nobody should take it seriously.

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Speaker 37 Being in that brain for 10 years, it's just a long time. And it's not that complicated either, right? And so you're writing profiles and you're trying to edit this.

Speaker 37 And the reality is that all of these people are lying to you all the time. They're all full of shit.

Speaker 37 None of them really care about anybody or anything, as evidenced by our earlier discussion about it.

Speaker 37 If there was anything that you would think they would care about, it would be immigration and abortion.

Speaker 37 And as just a couple of anecdotes, as we've mentioned in this podcast, podcast, they clearly don't. They're completely nihilistic.
Totally nihilistic in every sense, right?

Speaker 37 Like, at least there's something to be said for ideologues. And so you kind of have to live in just this muck and mire and write about it and try to find it.
Like,

Speaker 37 I have to imagine it makes you want to just fly to Easter Island sometimes and just be like, fuck this. All right.
I want to write about the Indigenous tribes. Yeah.

Speaker 37 I mean, on the one hand, I feel like

Speaker 37 I have a

Speaker 37 not to sound too ridiculous, but I really feel like a sense of mission about covering Trump. And I said that I would see it through.

Speaker 37 I said that in 2015 and I meant it when I said it. I'm Italian American.
I'm a woman of my word. That matters to me.
I always feel like Lady Gaga when I say I'm Italian American.

Speaker 37 But it really matters to me and to keep my word. And that's what I said I would do.

Speaker 37 On the one hand, I feel like there is no universe in which I could, in good conscience, walk away from the story before it ends, however and whenever that may be.

Speaker 37 On the other hand, I'm like, I have dreams.

Speaker 37 I have other things I want to do.

Speaker 37 I can't talk to these people day in and day out anymore. And I don't talk to them day in and day out anymore.

Speaker 37 I may go through long periods of time because I think I would kill myself otherwise, where I don't talk to these people.

Speaker 37 But there were years where I would, you know, wake up in the morning, I would go and I would get coffee and I would go take a really long walk and I would make 15 phone calls in that time period and check in with all of these insane people.

Speaker 37 And you start to know them really well. It's like being part of a weird family, you know, their kids' names and

Speaker 37 you have to maintain this institutional knowledge of various feuds and who hates who and why do they hate them and how does that minor petty thing factor into Trump's ability to staff his West Wing or his campaign.

Speaker 37 And part of me feels this responsibility to keep covering it because

Speaker 37 that institutional knowledge, as silly as it is, is really important to understanding Trump and Trump world and how it functions and how the campaign functions and how a White House might function.

Speaker 37 And I see sometimes newer reporters on the beat who don't understand those basic dynamics because you couldn't really understand it if you weren't there.

Speaker 37 And I think, oh, well, that's probably not good.

Speaker 37 It's probably better to have Maddie Haberman or Jonathan Spahn or me or, you know, somebody who grasps all of that in the mix because you need to understand that shit to understand why Trump is doing or saying anything.

Speaker 37 The hardest part about it, though, is that like nobody ever goes away. And even if someone is fired or they quit or whatever, the ensemble just keeps growing and growing and growing.

Speaker 37 And it's like this big, bloated

Speaker 37 thing.

Speaker 37 And it feels heavy

Speaker 37 to contemplate it. And I remember when Trump won that night, I went back to my office after being at his victory party in Midtown.

Speaker 37 And

Speaker 37 my editor was like, it's like you climbed Everest and you got to the top, and now there's another Everest. And it sort of has felt like that.

Speaker 37 I think that maybe the more analogy is that it's Sisyphus, not Everest, because

Speaker 37 this is from your article. But Bannon had a good argument to deter would-be assassins.
He said, assassins of Trump. These guys are all paranoid that someone's going to assassinate Trump.

Speaker 37 And, you know, he goes, even if they did it, it wouldn't work. Not really.
You can't kill Trump. The movement had already made him immortal.
And you hate to hand it to Steve Bannon about anything.

Speaker 37 But like, isn't that right?

Speaker 37 Isn't that right? Like, even if Trump had the hamburger from heaven tomorrow, you say you got to see it through.

Speaker 37 So maybe in Olivia Nutszi's mind and the Italian mob mindset, you can be like, he is gone. I can move forward.
I can find a new family. You know, maybe you could.
But like, we're all, the broader we,

Speaker 37 it's over, right? Like, but like him winning, like, made this our permanent reality, right? I mean, like, these people aren't going away. None of them are going away.
Trump.

Speaker 37 could die, but it doesn't matter, right? Like, it's already, he contaminated the water table. Like, this is now our permanent.

Speaker 37 and the interesting thing about about that event where Bannon was saying that where he was talking to Charlie Kirk and they were they were talking.

Speaker 37 I remember I saw you you were right outside of that room.

Speaker 37 I ran into you at America Fest and and then it was kind of fun to read your article because there were like there were multiple times like oh, I was on the phone with her when that happened.

Speaker 37 That's interesting.

Speaker 37 Now I got to see what Olivia it's kind of like a movie where you're like a character walking through and it's like oh now I know what happens in the other scene you know and uh because we were outside and then I was like oh that's what Bannon and Charlie Kirk she left me and I went downstairs to talk to some crazy Christian nationalist.

Speaker 37 And she walked inside and they fantasized about Trump's assassination.

Speaker 37 I remember I said, Are you going in there? You're like, no, I'm not going in there.

Speaker 37 But

Speaker 37 they were talking, I mean, they really were enjoying talking about a potential Trump assassination.

Speaker 37 And it was interesting then when I saw Carrie Lake in Green Valley sometime later, she brought up the prospect of her own assassination too. It's like the specter of violence.
Carrie did? She did.

Speaker 37 She said they will have to kill me to stop me. And I think it got some applause.
But the specter of violence is something that they're all talking about.

Speaker 37 And you and I talked about this when we were there in Phoenix. There's very little coverage of these events.
There are very few reporters at these events now.

Speaker 37 I think part of it is that the mainstream media does not want to be accused of like platforming extremists and doesn't want to be perceived as making the same mistakes that they were perceived to have made in 2016.

Speaker 37 And so there's just precious little coverage of this movement, really. It was like me and you, and like one or two other reporters I saw there.

Speaker 37 And I think the result is that you miss out on a lot of these nuances. Like, oh, they're talking about political violence and they're preparing their followers for a civil war.

Speaker 37 It seems relevant and interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 37 No, it does. And the darkness, you get the dark, like there's the dark element of it.

Speaker 37 And this also relates to our therapy session, but like simultaneously, you kind of are dealing with the pointlessness of these people, like the nihilism and the ridiculousness.

Speaker 37 Because Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk and Carrie Lake aren't going to assassinate anybody, like they're actors, right? They're putting on a performance, okay?

Speaker 37 But the listeners aren't. And it doesn't take all of them.
Like I had Dean Phillips on it, and Dean Phillips was like, ah, the people at the Trump rally seem nice to me. I was like, yeah, they are.

Speaker 37 Like, I go to these things. Like, there are some nice people.
Like, people are humans. They're complicated, right? Like,

Speaker 37 there are nice people that go to these things. They're people that I've had very interesting conversations with, thoughtful.

Speaker 37 But maybe the people that show up to events like this also over-index on the sociability scale compared to some of the other people listening to the podcast. They're just sitting alone in their homes.

Speaker 37 And if they're talking about assassinations all the time and how these other guys are going to assassinate us, if you suffer through Steve Bannon and Carrie Lake and Charlie and all these guys for long enough, and you start to just take them seriously, It's not a big stretch to think that the natural consequence of that for some people would be like, oh my God, I need to take up arms.

Speaker 37 Like these people are taking the country from me and they're going to assassinate the person that's saving the country. And I need to stop them.
I mean, that is what they are priming people for.

Speaker 37 They are priming them for a battle. I mean, they used a language of war.
I mean, everyone in politics and fairness uses the language of war. That's a bipartisan exercise.

Speaker 37 But, you know, the interesting thing about Bannon is Bannon is brilliant. And Bannon, when he is identifying the problems in the country, he is often correct.
He makes a good point.

Speaker 37 It's the conclusions that he comes to that are wildly wrong in my view. And I think in a lot of reasonable people's views.
But he's a really smart guy.

Speaker 37 Well, this is the power of him, just really quick, is that he's not Sean Hannity. He's not fucking

Speaker 37 some of these other idiots, right? Like who just are spouting team player jersey talking points.

Speaker 37 Like he's identified some underlying problems that people are really upset about and he's righteous on those points. But then there's this whole other set of things that he's full shit on.
Yeah.

Speaker 37 Right. Like, and that's the fundamental conundrum, like the election fraud and them stealing the election.
Right. And so, and you can almost see it on his face if you watch him long enough.

Speaker 37 It goes back and forth between his genuine, righteous anger and the smirking, smug, like bullshit. Just like Trump, the thing to remember about Steve Bannon is that he was a Hollywood guy.

Speaker 37 He wanted to be in the movie business. He loves drama.
I mean, he is a drama queen and he

Speaker 37 is biased towards drama and wants the most interesting outcome.

Speaker 37 And you can feel it, you know, when you listen to him talk, how much he wants it to be true that, you know, one side's going to win here and one side's going to lose and we're in a war because that's fascinating and interesting and compelling.

Speaker 37 And he seems to be sort of just like on the molecular level, just like inclined to find the most dramatic, interesting outcome. Yeah, every podcast has to be Tennyson.

Speaker 37 You know, the Charge of the Light Brigade, you know.

Speaker 37 Okay, we're running out of time. I had so many things I want to talk to you about.
We just did all of this. This is typical of us.

Speaker 37 So maybe we might have to just do a two-hour marathon podcast next time when you're just in a dark place or

Speaker 37 in a contemplative place. We can just do it on the fly and then do that.
But I did have a series of topics that I wanted to talk to you about.

Speaker 37 And so I'm just going to list all of them and you can pick two because we have three minutes left. So we have one minute on each.
Don't give me, I don't like to pick.

Speaker 37 You don't like to pick? You want me to pick? Yeah, you pick. Okay.
I want one minute from you on the music that Trump has started to play at the rallies. What's going on with that?

Speaker 37 You mean like the Smiths? No, no, not the chill, not the playlist. Like at the end of his speeches, now has like the orchestral music that comes on.

Speaker 37 You know, he's speaking and he has a soundtrack underneath him now.

Speaker 37 Yeah. What's happening there? Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't have a lot of.
I mean, the rallies are interesting in the last like, I don't know, eight months or so. A couple new things.

Speaker 37 He's also been playing videos of Elvis beforehand. Just like performance videos of Elvis.
Bad Elvis or skinny Elvis? Oh, skinny Elvis.

Speaker 37 Skinny Elvis. But that I find fascinating.
If you're like waiting, you know, you have to go into these rallies, especially if you're not going in with the press, if you're going in with the crowd.

Speaker 37 You should get there pretty early. And so you're there for, you know, two hours at least in the room beforehand.
And so you hear like tiny dancer like 18 times, right?

Speaker 37 But he started playing these Elvis performance videos, which I just find really fascinating. And it's like, oh, maybe he isn't in on the joke a little bit.
I don't think so.

Speaker 37 He's also started playing a performance video of Elton John doing

Speaker 37 the Who's Tommy.

Speaker 37 You wrote the Norman Desmond piece. I think the last time you were on the Vlog podcast with Charlie was after that.
So I don't think that he gets the joke, actually.

Speaker 37 I don't think that he gets that he is Norman Desmond, that he is Fat Elvis. No, the Elvis thing is fascinating.
I'm going to be your assignment editor for the last question.

Speaker 37 I want you on bass John Fetterman.

Speaker 37 Are you on that? Have you gotten

Speaker 37 time with him? But no, I've never spent time with him. What is happening there, do you think? It's very interesting.
I mean, October 7th shifted a lot of people politically.

Speaker 37 I feel like a lot of politicians revealed themselves to be different than people thought that they were in the wake of that. For sure.
You know, and he's one of them.

Speaker 37 If you had said to me on October 5th, there'll be a terrorist attack in Israel.

Speaker 37 And then there'll be a prolonged fight where there's a lot of people on the left that are very unhappy with the tactics that Israel is using in the fight.

Speaker 37 And there'll be one Democratic politician that is stalwart in Israel's defense to a point of like trolling the left-wing activists who criticize Israel's

Speaker 37 cause to release the hostages. And you would have let me pick 25 names of people.
I don't think John Fetterman would have been on my top 25. So it's interesting in that sense.

Speaker 37 I mean, if you had told me John Fetterman was going to go to that Michelin-starred vegan restaurant with a... Yeah, the John Levine, the New York Post.

Speaker 37 John Levine, yeah, if you told me that was going to happen, I mean, people should read this as well. We'll put it in the thing.
And honestly, people should do more of this.

Speaker 37 The Democrats should do more of this. There's too much bubbling happening.
Yeah, I think. And just in the same way, I think that it's important that you're reporting from these things.

Speaker 37 And I know that there's mixed views on Maggie, but I think it's important that there are reporters that have inside sources. I'm always, I'm on the couldn't be on the pro more.

Speaker 37 I hate the mixed views on Maggie. Maggie is the best.

Speaker 37 In America, you can't not have access. You can't not, you need to know what's happening given the nature of the potential power that is in play here.

Speaker 37 People don't like it.

Speaker 37 People don't like access journalism, but much of the commentary about Trump and the understanding of Trump and Trump's White House and how it functioned, his campaign and how his campaigns function is because there are people who get access to the people around Trump or to Trump himself and report about what is happening and why it's happening.

Speaker 37 And then other people get to righteously pop off on it. And by the way, both of those,

Speaker 37 both of those roles are important.

Speaker 37 Both of those roles are important. If you want to righteously pop off on what's happening, you need to first know what the fuck is happening.

Speaker 37 You do. And so you need to know what's happening, and then you need to combat what they're saying.
You need to understand the message that these folks are putting out.

Speaker 37 And so that's why I think it's good that Mayor Pete goes on Fox.

Speaker 37 And I think it was interesting that John Fetterman went and did an interview with like one of the, frankly, one of the more trolly New York Post reporters.

Speaker 37 And that's a pretty competitive category, right? Like a more trolly, right-wing New York Post reporter. And he goes, and they have dinner together.
And like, kind of seems like he wins them over.

Speaker 37 I don't know. It's interesting.
It's interesting. People should read that.
I mean, we're all biased towards, as reporters, people who give us access, right?

Speaker 37 You're biased towards people who make your life easier. No, it hasn't worked for Carrie to bring us full song.

Speaker 37 Both of us have had a lot of FaceTime with Carrie. We want more.
Maybe if she gave us the breakfast, me and Olivia and Carrie, brunch, we're in our PJs.

Speaker 37 There's no cameras. The husband isn't taping us.

Speaker 37 Who knows what the coverage would look like after that? If you're listening, Carrie Lake's vaping staff team. No, yeah.
Maybe considering they like Zen. They Zen now.
Yeah, they Zen.

Speaker 37 I kept thinking, what would it require for Carrie to break? And I kept thinking, maybe we would need to go on a road trip or something. We need to have car trouble.
A shaman.

Speaker 37 Yeah, I mean, we would need to be trapped somewhere together.

Speaker 37 You know,

Speaker 37 in a crisis situation. We could fabricate a crisis of some kind.
We're on a road trip. We pretend like the car breaks down.

Speaker 37 Yeah.

Speaker 37 This is a pitch, Carrie Lakes team. We want to hear it.
Okay, I'm way over. Olivia Metzy.
Thank you. We're going to do this again.
Thanks for having me. You know, we've got many ideas.

Speaker 37 I've got many ideas. My whole list of topics, it's still, it's just scrolling down my page right now.
So we'll be seeing you soon. Okay, thanks for having me.
All right. Bye.

Speaker 37 We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the Bowler Podcast. Peace.

Speaker 37 Tell Rushman and Ball. They get off my balls.
In 2010, I 1864.

Speaker 37 Yeah, we come slow far. So I'll drive around town, hard toppling the song.

Speaker 37 And my trip back and love with my high brow, uh, and my high yellow bra.

Speaker 37 And my dark skin sensed in my best white mix. Say what's up, too, Chris.

Speaker 37 How's that boy, mix? Got a black president, got green president.

Speaker 37 Blue prints in my white iPod, black diamonds in my hay suit piece. My God.

Speaker 37 We ain't trippin' off that, it's a Veneton act.

Speaker 37 Whatever you about to discover, we all get. You about to tell her you you love her, we all dead.
Always wanna fight at the club, and we all fad. But you can't bring the future back, bad.

Speaker 37 Y'all are steady chasing the flame, and we all fed. Over time, slow for change, we all bad.
Took it still, making it rain, and we all bad. Cause you can't bring the future back.

Speaker 37 Yeah, we all bad, and you still on that. And you still making money, cause you still on that.

Speaker 37 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brad.

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