Bill Kristol: Pure Oligarchic Greed

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Hello and welcome to the bullwark podcast i'm your host tim miller it's monday so i've got bill crystal of course but a little bit of housekeeping first after bill's righteous rant about the trump donors i'm gonna have a little monologue about white rural rage you may have suffered through the social media discourse about our recent guests and their book on this topic. And so I've got some additional thoughts.
So make sure to stick around for that. We have an update for the big mailbag fans out there.
And by the way, if you if you want to send in a mailbag question, you send it to bulwarkpodcast at thebulwark.com. But our very first mailbag was Cindy, who was thinking about moving to Door County because she wanted to make a difference.
And Door County is a 50-50 county in Wisconsin. She had some ancestors that lived there, and she's going to move there for six months to volunteer.
She reached out to the Wisconsin Democrats, and she's doing it. Cindy is moving to Door County.
And so, amazing. We're so happy for you, Cindy.
And if you're in Wisconsin. if you're in Green Bay or somewhere in that region, put a comment in here and we'll put everybody in touch.
Make sure she gets a warm welcome there.

One more thing.

We have two events coming up.

We have May 1st, our first trip to Philadelphia.

What's up?

City of Brotherly Love.

We will be in you May 1st.

May 15th, we'll be back in D.C. at 6 and I with George Conway.

You may have heard of him.

I'm trying to get claudia in the building but i haven't heard yet whether she's going to be able to make it so go to the bulwark.com slash events to get tickets for both of those events bulwark.com slash events all right this afternoon we're eclipsing we won't have another total solar eclipse in the contiguous 48 until 2044 that's assuming that god does not punish us with another one as marjorie taylor green suggested was happening this time so bill do you have some eclipse classes do you feel like god is judging your actions and that is why we're going to have this historic event this afternoon you know i'm not really as into the eclipse either way as a lot of people are. I've never, as I said to Susan the other day, I've never really been that interested in the heavenly bodies.
And I'm sure that's a failure on my part, a lack of scientific curiosity or something. But anyway, I hope some people enjoy it.
That's it. You're a man that cares about what's happening here on Earth, feet on the ground.
Do you also not like movies about kind of like what's happening out in outer space i mean like everyone in my age i saw star wars when it came out and all that but no i i've never been much of a science never been a science fiction person so i think there isn't the conventional view that there are two kinds of people for kind of casual relaxing reading this is maybe true 50 years ago not today mystery readers and science fiction readers and i do think there's something true to that and i like mysteries you know like actual things set here in england or america or anywhere and in which you know detectives solve crimes and it's semi-realistic at least and science fiction i don't know but i don't not being judgmental here i there's a lot of great science fiction you're not making fun you're not begrudging it's another bullock I'm more on your side of this. We do have a couple of nerds.
I believe at least Jim Swift and Andrew Egger have traveled to prime eclipse locations, which, you know, God love you. Whatever brings you joy.
It's an interesting travel choice though. All right.
We've got a lot of business. Mr.
Trump, you wrote in the newsletter this morning, really a strong newsletter, if I might add, about Donald Trump's comments with some rich donors. You can't believe a fucking word out of their mouth.
I'm a little frustrated by the media just blindly repeating that Donald Trump's saying that he raised 50 million in South Florida today. Like, let's see the numbers.
All right, first, before we just believe whatever this person says. But here is a quote that Maggie Haberman had from inside the fundraiser trump he was recounting the shithole countries discussion which you know he claimed just fake news back when it happened but now he's he's admitting that it actually happened and he's and he's reflecting on that controversy i said you know why can't we allow people to come in from nice countries i'm trying to be nice nice countries you countries, you know, like Denmark, Switzerland.
Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway? And, you know, they took that as a very terrible comment, but I felt it was fine. Bill, what were your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think Maggie and Michael Gold, her co-author, also report, and this is based on an attendee who told them about this, who I take it is a Trump donor, right?

Sure. You had to pledge $800,000 to the Trump victory fund and the RNC and that whole medley to get in.
So presumably this is a Trump donor kind of cheerfully recounting this wonderful evening at Paulson's house in Palm Beach. And they chuckled, according to the attendee.
So they chuckled at this denigration of immigrants and Trump reveling in his denigration of immigrants, if they're not from the Nordic countries, the Aryan countries. I did two minutes of research yesterday when I was struck by the piece in the New York Times, which people should read, really.
This is such a big deal back in the 19-teens and 20s in America, right? The Nordic race, the race, we're losing the race, the purity of our race and and that's a very very bad result in the real world and hitler loved some of it incidentally not to not to go right to hitler but uh why not that's true fact you know anyway yeah so these people all chuckled at it these donors of course i look quickly at the list that is available i think of the it was like the sponsors or something the the original hosts who know hosts who signed up they do not all have names that make one think that they are from their sons and daughters of the american revolution or nordic or or teutonic or aryan there's the usual medley native american for that matter yeah but there's the usual medley of american names which is good i mean you know right it's america provides opportunities for wealth and success it's concerning actually that there is a normal medley of americans that are donated to donald trump but yeah i'm sure it's slightly disproportionately you know on the teutonic side so to speak and the nordic and aryan side but i so i looked up john paulson who i don't know at all the hedge fund billionaire who's the host and it turns out i had no knowledge of this that his father's from father's from Ecuador and his mother is the daughter of East European Jewish immigrants. And they met at UCLA, a state institution of public higher education, which I'm sure everyone in that room thinks should be defunded because A, why is the state wasting money on educating poor kids and B, it's probably woke or something.
So you'd think someone in that room would have thought, you know,'t i'm like my parents or my grandparents these are the people trump not only wants to keep out but just has contempt and scorn for but there seems to have been no such reaction no and sometimes i feel a little awkward getting this earnest and high-minded but it's just is it is true it is what it is you you wrote this you ended the newsletter today with political leaders once tried to urge the wealthy to look beyond their immediate comfort to act for the greater good not pull the ladder of opportunity advancement up after them and the more responsible this group themselves criticized the inevitable temptation to wallow in the smug self-regard and indulge in fanciful grievances not in donald trump's america this is like right and obviously there were conservative politicians time immemorial that said that we should cut taxes and that people should be rewarded for their success and we can have debates over that but like there is a category difference between that and between denigrating people based on their race between celebrating people only because of their financial success which is another element of what is happening at this. Donald Trump just lavishing praise on these people and focusing only on what the government can do to make their lives even easier.
Yeah, wealth is success, according to Trump, and it's all about success. And there's not even the obligatory nod that used to happen, maybe slightly obligatory, to the scientists and the artists.
I'll take a disingenuous obligatory nod. Can you at least give me that? Totally.
Somebody messaged me this. And they're like, Tim, you missed that sometimes these rich people were grin-fucking you and then screwing you behind your back.
And I'm like, I'll take that, actually. I'll take it.
You know, just give me some obligatory noblesse oblige. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice-paste to virtue, right? I mean, that mean that you want that hypocrisy of you know what we also respect the scientists and the artists and the and the do-gooders and the philanthropists and the people who've made wonderful discoveries that have helped mankind but there's not even the pre-tap i mean there's not even as you say a nod to that anymore nor is there a nod to america as a nation of immigrants which again is something people said and then they went ahead with whatever policies they wanted to go ahead with to some degree.
So I do think that's important though, you know, the obligatory nods signify something. They signify a certain deference to a kind of liberal democratic norms and history and probably limit therefore the scope of the pure oligarchic greed and in particular the scope of the authoritarianism.
I mean, for me, that's what's so striking about Trump and all these huge donors who've done so well in America, so well over the last 30 years, under the horrors of the Obama administration and the Clinton administration and all those rhino Republicans running everything. Those people have suffered, John Paulson has suffered so much and all those other, you know, people writing checks for a million dollars they've suffered so much in america that they just have to embrace this authoritarian and it's too earnest i mean i get too worked up about this no no i'm earnest this is my other two thoughts it's not earnest because fuck these people and it's like i have a practical and an ideological thought one more while we're getting ourselves riled up on a practical manner i also just think that they're making a bad choice here it's like the economy's not going that great in hungary and i think that just risking to completely breaking down the american institutions and taking a a flamethrower to them in the form of donald trump's second term might not turn out as well as they think just this is a practical matter for rich people who are listening the other thing i just think is worth mentioning is you know sometimes people of our ilk look at the progressives who want to say talk about everything being white nationalism this white nationalist thing maybe they're overstating maybe there's a little bit too much talk of this white nationalism maybe sometimes they're exaggerating and certainly in cases there's exaggeration but i mean a statement that we should only bring in people from denmark and switzerland in a room full of rich people is kind of literally white nationalism you know and and so a lot of times you get the pearl clutching over the use of this term and like that is what's you know the the explicit argument that donald trump is making that this is a country we should protect america first and we should only bring in white people i mean that's's his explicit argument.
And well-received apparently by all these dozens of super wealthy donors who've done so well in America. Good stuff.
That's uplifting. One other thing, my note here is rich people suck.
This was rich Trump donors suck. Rich Trump donors suck, maybe is what I should have written.
Okay. The other thing- Can I just add one thing? I mean, richiden donors are a mixed bag i mean i'll stick like that too and i wasn't a big fan of the radio city musical you know glitzy thing and i got to criticize by some people for saying i didn't think that was a brilliant political move by the biden campaign maybe they could raise the money a little more quietly and not been so both so much we raised so much you know in such a public way and all a podcast there's a little much too much courting

of donors even on the left having said that at least the limousine liberals do have the sense

that they're supposed to be dedicated to something bigger and you know maybe sometimes they don't

they aren't and they're selfish and hypocritical but it is as you said earlier it's kind of a

category difference i think to some of these trump donors right i mean they they are trying to do

well but realizing they live in a broader democracy and they they have some obligations. And when Biden says, I'm going to raise your taxes, they at least pretend to go along, even if they're quietly hiring some lobbyists to work on the Hill to prevent the taxes from going up.
The Trump donors, it's all just, hey, I cut your, Trump says to them, this is quoted in the piece in the Times, I cut your taxes and give me some guidance on which kind of tax cut for the tax cut would be more helpful. I couldn't quite follow the Times, it's a little abbreviated the account, but he wants to just help them as much as he can.
There's not even a pretense of this is for the greater good. Indeed.
One other thing from Trump from this comment, the Resolute Desk is beautiful, Mr. Trump said.
Ronald Reagan used it, others used it, and Biden's's using it i might not use it next time it's been soiled and i mean that literally which is sad again like in the last week donald trump has accused joe biden of using cocaine and of crapping like literally pooping on the on the resolute desk i don't know what i really want the media to do in this sort of situation but we go through these cycles of where we had to spend three days you know rending our garments over whether donald trump literally meant bloodbath or figuratively meant it or whether he's talking about the auto industry or whatever and yet donald trump just gets away with this stuff like donald trump can just go out there and be like joe biden is on cocaine and wears diapers and it's like okay well there's no there's no expectation that mike johnson and mitch mcconnell you know speak out and say no actually we're working with joe biden right now in bipartisan legislation and you know he's a decent person we disagree on policy he's not pooping himself right like there's no expectation that that happens there's no expectation that that conservative commentators do the right thing i like this imbalance is just a continued frustration of mine that i feel like it's just barrett's mentioning i don't want to contribute to the problem by not bringing it up like the media doesn't bring this stuff up totally agree and i would just say the media would bring it up if Republicans criticized it. That becomes the story.
And the media should bring it up anyway, but it's a little harder for them just on their own, so to speak, freestanding, to sort of go crazy about this, or not just crazy, but even make any kind of big deal about it. But you're right.
There was once a time, and there should be a time, and it really is important for the health of the country, that the party be a party and say, well, in this case, we think our presidential nominee has gone too far. And the last time that happened was what day was that, October 7th, 2016, when they rebelled against the Excess Hollywood tape for about 24 hours.
And once that subsided, I don't know, they've just got along and got along increasingly cheerfully and unhesitatingly i would say we have some other news this morning donald trump has has released his position on abortion for now let's take a listen to a clip of it the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both and whatever they decide must be the law of the, in this case, the law of the state. Many states will be different.
Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will have more conservative than others, and that's what they will be. At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.
Just as somebody that had to write papers in college like it's impossible to diagram that sentence there's just a lot of a lot of nonsense a gobbledygook there politically speaking bill what do you think about where donald trump has landed on this he's gonna say just whatever whatever the states think whatever y'all want to do is fine with me please don't blame me for anything you don't when it comes to abortion. Seems like the stance he wants to take.
Yeah, that overturning road stuff I was so proud of. Well, that's actually just throwing it back to the States.
And if you live in Michigan or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Arizona, you've got abortion rights protected in law to some considerable degree. And right now you have governors who will protect it.
And so don't not vote for me because you fear a national abortion ban. So I think in some short-term tactical way, it's probably a reasonably clever move.
And do we think any actual pro-life leaders are going to, I mean, there'll be some carping at Trump today, but are they actually going to jump ship? I don't know. What do you think, Tim? I'm not sure there'll be any carping.
I saw Matt Schlapp of CPAC just off having to have his insurance pay out a big, a big number after a sexual assault accusation. He tweeted out that they've polled people at CPAC and that this is a popular position at CPAC.
And so I don't even know how much carping there's going to be. I worry that it could be effective.
I do. I keep looking back to the midterms.
And I think that clearly the two big things that helped Democrats were democracy, concerns about threats to democracy and abortion rights, right? And if you just look at the places where the Democrats did well, if there were legitimate concerns about abortion rights, and if the Republican candidates were MAGA extremists who wanted to overturn the election the democrats tend to do well if there were states where the republican candidates were at least in the ballpark of normal and where they the voters felt like their abortion rights relatively secure california new york the republicans did well florida i guess would be the one counter example to this trend but besides florida that was pretty much much the trend. And so I do worry that, you know, there's some practical set of voters that doesn't want to lose abortion rights or does not want the Tennessee zero week abortion ban, but who prefers Donald Trump for whatever reason on other issues and might choose to vote for them if they feel like abortion rights are safe because they live in Wisconsinisconsin whatever and their governor is a democrat how many people is that i don't know but it's not zero and i think it's going to be incumbent on the democrats to really focus a campaign to message to those people about what the threats are no i think it is a his lesser cunning kind of you know understands he's always understood that abortion was a problematic issue for him and he's always been been trying to have a little distance from the most fervently pro-life parts of the party.
He certainly has gotten a little further in that direction here based on the 2022 results. Of all that, he's kind of a lunatic, kind of doesn't want to listen to reality and kind of lives in his own bubble and so forth and drinks his own Kool-Aid, I guess.
He's not impervious to a certain kind of electoral reality and and and hearing voters well he doesn't care about this he doesn't care at all and he's impervious he's in his own bubble on things that he cares about his own ego right you know the fact that he won his narcissism he doesn't he doesn't actually care about it or like him not actually caring about abortion rights doesn't mean that the threat to abortion rights isn't real and that's kind of the conundrum that democrats face in making that case to people. That's why, I think.
But I think the one thing, I think Democrats will be tempted, and they should do this to some degree, to put up all the old quotes of Trump sounding much more dogmatically and pro-life and talking about a national ban and boasting about overturning Roe. I'm not sure that's really going to convince people.
For one thing, I don't think a national ban is really practical, given that it would take 60 senators, presumably. Maybe the Republican Senate would change the rules, but then Susan Collins would get off board, et cetera.
I don't know. I feel like that's going to be hard to sell, that if you vote for Trump, you're going to have a national ban on abortion or even much of a national restriction.
What I think you could sell much better is he has no principles at all. Anything you like about Trump, he could just as easily toss that overboard, which is pretty much true with one or two exceptions.
I think he does believe in being nicer to dictators abroad than to democracies. That's kind of one of his core principles.
But pretty much everything else, God knows what he could do. And I think the notion that he's a totally unprincipled authoritarian, only in it for himself.
I think Axelrod said this to me on the conversation I did with him, and I take it this was based, didn't really elaborate on some focus groups and polling, that Trump's in it for himself. And you are just along for the ride.
And you may like some things he's saying, but you can't count on them, you know, manifesting themselves in any actual action that will help you. I kind of feel like his betrayal of the pro-life forces, what could make as much of an issue of that as sort of saying, well, he's deep down, he's still plotting to do that national abortion ban.
I think that Axelrod's frame is right. I do think that Trump's going to continue to appoint judges.
These judges, you know, are going to have oversight over various abortion rights, IVF rights, birth control pill, right? Like all of that is something that is relevant. I think that Mike Johnson, so I've continued to suggest that the Democrats do a little bit more to elevate Mike Johnson's profile.
This man is the Speaker of the House. Like this person definitely wants a national abortion ban.
Is that a risk worth taking? I think that all of those messages are potentially convincing. The other thing Mark Caputo, who writes our Maginaville newsletter flagged is that it seems like he's gonna have to vote in florida on abortion he's just gonna be one man voting but he lives in at mar-a-lago and florida has a ballot initiative on upholding the six-week ban or not eventually somebody's gonna have to ask him about that i assume i don't know maybe he might just be able to get out of it with word salad.
But I think that's an interesting subplot. Yeah, agreed.
Agreed. Okay, we've got house dysfunction.
They're back. They've taken a holiday.
Kharkiv is just being bombed. Speaker Johnson does not care about that.
They've been on a lengthy vacation, but they're back now in Washington, D.C.

Here's a quote from Marjorie Taylor Greene about the challenges facing Speaker Johnson in the coming weeks.

If Johnson passes the $60 billion to Ukraine and then follows it up with FISA reauthorization,

you're going to see a lot more Republicans than just me coming out saying his speakership is over with. Huge divisions on both of these issues for Johnson.
What say you about what to expect here in the coming weeks? I mean, I've been moderately hopeful on Ukraine. There's such a clear majority in the House for it.
And Johnson at least has said he kind of wants to make it happen. And I think he's under the threat of a discharge petition or maybe a couple of different ones if he doesn't make it happen.
But I'm also, he's managed to draw it out and maybe he'll just keep on drawing it out. At some point, the Republicans who do want to do the right thing have to drop the hammer and say, okay, we're going to a discharge petition with the Democrats, not some sort of fake discharge petition that sort of creates yet another piece of legislation that then has to go back to the Senate and so forth.
Ultimately, the real hammer would be if five of them said, you know what, we're going to support Jeffries for speaker for like two weeks and get this legislation through. And Jeffries will make a deal not to change the committees even for that time.
I don't know. There are things they could do if they were serious.
And they all claim some of them, you know, I think in good faith even, really do want to do the right thing on Ukraine. But the party loyalty is so deep.
And the lack of imagination, I guess, and fear, maybe political retribution, that they just can't liberate themselves from pleading with Mike Johnson to help an ally fighting in the largest land war in 80 years against an unbelievably brutal dictatorship. I mean, can't they do a little better than pleading? Aren't they elected representatives? Aren't they supposed to act when something crucial is at stake? They really only need three.
I mean, you're asking for five, but there have been so many retirements. There's so few of them that are required.
There's a letter you put in the this morning from Mike Pompeo to Johnson. We write as individuals it's him and the head of the hudson institute as you consider the path forward in the house of representatives for the national security supplemental that includes critical replenishment of u.s weapons stocks and support to our allies we encourage you to lead with conviction and bring the aid palette package to a vote i think we're kind of past the point of no return on leading with conviction.

But the Pompeo factor of all this is interesting.

I mean, he's like the one person that has just tried to walk this MAGA isolationist,

but also I'm still, you know, I still believe in the post-World War II world order,

you know, tightrope as much as anybody.

Does he have any influence anymore? Is this just a retired guy howling at the moon? He's been to the Hill. Hudson's brought, he's, I think, associated with Hudson now.
Hudson's brought him to the Hill several times, and I'm told he gets good attendance of Republican members of Congress, and they respect him. And so he's not like bringing, you know, one of us rhino types or never Trump Republicans to the Hill.
So maybe he could do good. It wouldn't hurt if Pence and others weighed in on this too.
Nikki Haley could, you know, she's been good on this. And obviously she's taking a bit of a break after losing to Trump.
But again, she can write a letter. I don't know.
I feel like this is the moment on, when you see what's happening in Ukraine, it's so horrible and it's so shameful that we're not doing the minimal thing we could do, which is simply send them the weapons. I mean, I personally am sort of open to no-fly zones and much greater NATO and U.S.
involvement, but I know that's probably a minority view, and I shouldn't even say it, so I won't. If the Bulwark podcast, if you can't say it on the Bulwark podcast, where can you say it? Good point.
Okay, I said it. But anyway, I hope others have a sense of urgency i give pompeo credit because he didn't have to do this he's probably taking some grief for it and i wish more people would weigh in but i wish the actual members of the house who are elected officials by their constituents they're not they don't work for mike johnson in the old days and i mean for all of american history they have often been splits in parties and that's fine if you don't agree.
And here they don't agree clearly, and it's a very important priority. I would say the Biden administration has not ratcheted up the pressure on this.
I think they've wanted, and this has been reported, to give Mike Johnson room to move, not look like he's being beaten up, make it his own choice. I can see that as a tactical matter.
But I think at some point pretty soon, if Biden's serious, I assume he is, about Ukraine, he needs to kind of make an issue of this to the country the way, you know, Reagan would have made an issue on a major foreign policy issue. Or Bush in 07, even though the war in Iraq was so unpopular, defending the surge.
President Obama thinks he cared about. I mean, I think this could use a little more pressure from the White House if Johnson doesn't do anything this week or next.

I could also use some more trolling. You know, we had Jared Moskovitz on last week, who is a Democrat from Florida.
And, you know, he's done a nice job, I think, of kind of pantsing Comer and Jim Jordan on the impeachment stuff. But not every Democrat needs to be sober and responsible.
I like we like sobriety and responsibility, but but we could use a couple guys over there in the house really shaming them and making them you know suffer some political penalty from this dysfunction and the stalling right and i think that maybe whether the ukraine issue itself can carry political penalty or just the broader issue of like these guys can't do anything like they went on vacation they're back he can't do anything like they can't govern they don't care about governing i do think a little bit of more trolling than that would be i agree welcome you know they always sometimes show up with those big uh one of those cardboard things what are they called on easels you know sometimes it's a chart or a photo how about photos of kharkiv which the second largest city in ukraine which is being just destroyed purely gratuitously no military reason at all just to kill ukrainians and make the city less and less habitable in ukraine destroyed by the russian air force that's where i do think you know nato air force why exactly don't we declare it a no-fly zone but leaving that aside we could help ukraine with obviously anti-aircraft and Patriot batteries and so forth. And that's what they were asking for.
They're not asking for us to intervene. So people should go to the floor with those photos and say, you are not doing anything and innocent people are being killed by a brutal dictator.
And it's the easiest thing to do in the world. Send them the weapons.
Totally agree. And can I just say, you might actually be providing some political help here.
We maybe might need a headline maybe this should be tomorrow's newsletter bill crystal no fly zone over ukraine because that allows moving the overton window you know allows people to be like well at least i'm not crazy like bill crystal calling for a no fly zone i'm just i'm just calling for weapons over here maybe you can help move the overton window a little bit thank you for that suggestion i want to finish with uh with Washington Women's Hoops this weekend. What a tournament.
A little bit. I think of a talk, weirdly, that was scheduled ages ago yesterday after at a local kind of community organization.
So I missed most of the Iowa game. Was Princeton the local community organization that you're talking about? No, I was in Princeton during the week.
This was the Northern Virginia Jewish Community Center. Very nice people.
But, yeah, I was in Princeton. got cheered up in princeton actually the students were perfectly sane and intelligent and i had nice talk with different kind of groups of them as part of my little half day at princeton they gave a broader talk and stuff actually uh sort of cheered me up a little bit you know maybe the young ones will save us there's not like hang glider memes or any pro far left you know ending overthrowing capitalism like none of that you just they may not have come to talk to me if they were into that but the students said it's been pretty quiet there princeton has the big advantage of being a it's kind of princeton which has a different tradition maybe and b it's not in a big city if you're a professional activist you're in new york or boston and then you just hop on the subway and go up to columbia or to harvard yard and you know cause a huge of trouble.
They're not probably living in Princeton if you're a professional 27-year-old left-wing activist. So they're kind of a little bit insulated.
Fair. And maybe, I was discussing about this on the Next Level podcast last week about how I was at USC for a week doing a study group.
And same. And the USC campus was great.
My study group had a diverse set of views on Israel-Gaza. We discussed it.
There were members of the group that were very much pro-Israel. They held an event that was about freeing the hostages, which I attended, on the quad.
And there was no, you know, any of the kind of like, whatever, nobody's throwing feces at them. There was no counter.
So again, one school, maybe USC and Princeton, both private private school self-selecting maybe in a certain way but i was equally encouraged that people felt free to share their views pro and anti what was happening in israel on campuses and that you know some of the doomsdaying about the fact that the youth are too afraid to give their opinions was not what i experienced at usc either okay i do want to on women's basketball before i, before I leave you, I have to just rant about one thing, if that's okay. Would you mind just listening to a rant? Happy to.
The final four was amazing. It was so good.
And Sarah and I talked at length about women's basketball on the secret podcast. So if you're not a Borg Plus member, this is your chance to join the Borg Plus.
Go listen to the secret podcast if you really want to hear my thoughts on, you know, kind of like analyzing the strategery of the various teams. but the UConn Iowa game I watched at a bar in New Orleans and it was rocking fans on both sides just people were so into it you know you would have thought it was a Saints game or something the level of interest in in UConn Iowa I watched with my daughter the championship at home and that was great game USC was wonderful but because I because I was at home, I was suffering through social media while I was on it.
And a few things that I noticed the right wingers that want to just take all our joy away. You know, we had Steve Dace who was tweeting about as great as Caitlin Clark is, all her records are going to be broken by some young freshman at the Citadel who decides he feels pretty and wants to pretend to be a girl.
Megan Kelly, who is the self-appointed protector of women's sports. I was looking at her feed this morning.
She's posted several times about the women's tournament. Nothing nice about any of the players.
She insulted Dawn Staley, coach of South Carolina, for saying that she'd be open to having a transgender woman playing in women's basketball. was calling some random person a reporter a disgrace for abandoning our daughters blah blah blah i don't really want to get into that we can debate transgender sports action but the thing that like that bothers me about all this bill is like the people who are out there like donning this mantle of being the self-proclaimed defender of women's sports don't like women's sports and i admit i'm raising my hand i'm new to this i'm new to caring about women's basketball i'm loving it i've been loving the tournament and i've always felt the thing is it's like i care much more about dawn staley's opinion about protecting women's sports one of the best women's basketball players herself who's now won three championships as a coach, who has to coach these young women, who is with them day to day, who cares about them, who's obviously competitive, who is crying and just a beautiful moment.
And her congratulation of Caitlin Clark was very beautiful. I care a lot more about Don Staley's opinion about how to protect women's sports than I care about Megyn Kelly's.
And so anyway, if you're out there and you feel very strongly that transgender women shouldn't play in women's sports and that you want to protect young girls and young women, I feel

like the ante for holding that position is also actually enjoying women's sports.

So that's anyway, that is my rant.

That was just driving me crazy over the weekend.

And it was a wonderful tournament.

And, you know, the people that are trying to kind of ruin our joy in the culture war

are really pretty evil, I think. So I don't know if you have any final thoughts on that or any meditation.
That was well said. I take your point about the, you know, obviously they should care about and like what they're claiming to defend.
The other thing is they just are so into ruining everyone's joy. No one was thinking about it.
I mean, everyone enjoyed the women's final four. There were interesting stories about at least three of the teams, maybe all four of the teams, obviously.
Caitlin Clark. Paige Bucher's off an injury at UConn.
Great player. But SC seems to have been, again, I haven't followed this much, but SC, a generational team.
I mean, just, right, I mean, UConn. And instead of enjoying it or letting the rest of us just enjoy it and keeping their own thoughts to themselves, you know, how much of the culture war really is about them being unhappy, them feeling a sense of grievance and wanting to make the rest of us unhappy? You really wonder about that, right? Is it about any actual issue they talk about or is it they think they see people in America enjoying themselves in a kind of healthy and good-natured but also competitive way, and they say, I hate it when those people are enjoying America in 2024.
There's an element to this. And their critique is always of the left.
It's like, oh, the left wants to take our joy away with the language police and all this. And I think this is the Joe Biden advantage.
This is the great Joe Biden advantage is that there is a coalition, the new silent majority of people who just want to enjoy women's basketball, you know, who just want to enjoy women's basketball,

and they're not interested in the language police.

They're not interested in being shouted down

and turning it into a debate about transgender politics.

They just want to enjoy the tournament and celebrate the young women

who were just so talented and so passionate.

Maybe that is our advantage as we go into November,

that that is the silent majority of people

who just want to be normal. Okay, Bill Crystal, we'll see you back here next Monday.
I'm on the

other side with one more rant. I've got one more rant.
It's a double Tim rant day about

white world rage.fuffle a little bit. For those who were enjoying their weekend and blissfully missed this, there are articles in Politico and the Atlantic arguing that the academic research underlying the book was misused.
What liberals get wrong about white rural rage, said Politico. A misleading book about rural America, said the Atlantic.
There's a lot of Twitter discourse about this. A few people sending me messages about how I'm a liberal elitist, blah, blah, blah, for having these people on.
And so I want to get into it. I want to get into the critiques.
Some of this is a bit of a nerdy pedagogical interacademic argument. Some of this is just about the research methods that Schaller and Waldman used.
Some of that may have merit, but it's just not all that relevant to the broader political questions that we're getting into on this podcast. So I want to focus on the effort to take those academic critiques and broaden it out to try to dismiss the argument that they're making, try to dismiss the notion that we've seen any uptick in right rural rage at all.
We've seen a lot of this. There are people out there saying this is just another case of academics and Morning Joe green room types who never leave the Stella corridor staring down their nose at real Americans.
And on that part of the charge, I think that there are two minor points that have some merit. I want to get into those.
But in the big picture, I think that they really missed the ball and that Waldman and Schaller have the argument. So let's take a look at the two points that the critics, I think, got right.
The first W is on the semantic point. And that is over the use of the word rage.
Now, I want to point out during our interview, which, by the way, everybody should go back and listen to the whole thing. And we had a ton of feedback on it and a ton of folks listened to it.
So, you know, if you happen to miss it, you just kind of go back to the archive was a couple of weeks ago and go to the white roll rage app. But during that discussion, Schaller admits that the authors were gilding the lily a little bit with the title.
Let's just listen to what he said. First of all, and we've pled guiltyiness in public appearances already.
The title is a bit provocative. We use the word rage, but we're really talking about the academic and scholarly construct resentment.
But white world resentment is a lot of syllables and doesn't really fit neatly vertically. And as you know, publishers want, you know, one word, blink, Malcolm Gladwell kind of titles.
We couldn't get it down to one or even two words, but we got it down to three words and four syllables and so we're really talking about resentment and if you do a search on the galleys of the book as we've done the word rage actually appears in the actual tasks a handful of times okay so i get it there's slang in books this is a business i had to slang books everybody has do it. But it is quite the caveat on the title.

When he said it, I was wincing a little bit. And I just think that calling it white rural

resentment, making it accurate might have cost some book sales, but was probably on balance the

right call given the backlash now that they're dealing with. And so sometimes you just got to

take your lumps on this sort of thing. And the fact that he was offering that, I wasn't even

really pressing him on it. And he just volunteered that showed that they were sensitive and knew that

Thank you. Sometimes you just got to take your lumps on this sort of thing.
And the fact that he was offering that, I wasn't even really pressing him on it. And he just volunteered that showed that they were sensitive and knew that these critics were going to come.
The second critique was something that I did ask him about, which was whether we can really identify whether the most enraged, resentful groups here are actually the rural Trump supporters or whether they're in these MAGA communities in the excerpts. Because in my experience, it's where I've seen the most Punisher stickers.
Okay. And I think this distinction is important and being imprecise is important and trying to suss out whether the radicalization is the same or different or more intense or less intense in Queen Creek, Arizona, where I went to the scary Carrie Lake rally or in Waverly, Iowa, where I lived, where, you know, the town had been hollowed out because of globalization.
I don't know. Maybe there is a difference in these kind of rural, rural communities or the small towns are acting versus, you know, the kind of Sunbelt exurbs.
I don't know. And so I think that that's a distinction that's worth getting into.
We got into that on the podcast, and I'm not sure that the book provides a lot of clarity on that okay but here's my big picture defense of the author's broader thesis both in terms of the academic data and all of our life experience there is undeniably a radicalization happening among rural whites one of the book's critics included this line in their article in Politico. Our research, the critic is a researcher, our research found that just 27% of rural voters, including 23% of rural Trump voters, think that if the opposing candidate wins in November, people will need to take drastic action in order to stop them from taking office.
They go on to say that's the same percentage they see in urban and suburban areas okay but here's the thing just just 27 percent just like that is an insanely high percentage one in four 23 percent of rural trump voters one in four think that drastic action would be needed to stop biden from winning reelects do we have a baseline on what that number looked like in 1996? Because I don't think there were one in four dole voters planning drastic action to stop the Clinton reelect. Okay, something has changed.
And there's another fact that you have to consider here. We've seen with our eyes what these people mean by drastic action and how drastic action looks in different communities over the last eight years.
You remember the women's march in the pink pussy hats? That's what left-wing drastic action looked like following Donald Trump's shocking victory. All right, it was protests.
It was peaceful. There was some rage there, no doubt.
I had some rage, but the way it manifested was within a normal band of how you would expect people to protest in a democratic society. Now, compare that to what happened on January 6th.
All right. So we saw what drastic action looked like on January 6th, beating up police officers, storming the Capitol, raising a Trump flag over the Capitol and taking down the American flag.
So yeah, it worries me a little bit when one in four Trump voters are already stating that they are planning drastic action. Here's another thing that those of us who actually venture out into Red America have seen.
There's a tangible uptick in radical right-wing political statements happening. My in-laws live in rural West Virginia.
Not great airport options there. God love you know, sometimes we got to fly in different places.
We're trying different things. What's the best way to get there? For 17 years, I've been doing a lot of driving around rural North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, rural Appalachia, going to their house, going to different communities near where they live.
And you know, back in the late 2000s, 2009, 10, 11, the political signs I saw were mostly leftists that were mad about the fracking that was happening in these rural communities. The last few years, Trump signs with quite a few F words, fuck your feelings, Trump 2024, fuck you, you know, Trump forever.
So an index marking the number of fuck your feelings signs I see driving through rural west virginia might not be academic rigor but it's not nothing all right like that's happening the same story is true with the oath keeper stickers look i i drive a lot between doing the circus and between driving to louisiana driving around louisiana driving through texas the number of oath keeper stickers on cars, on the highways, is notable. The radicalized crowd I talked about, I go to these events, I've seen these crowds.
The crowds are different. The crowds at Mitt Romney events versus the crowds at Cary Lake events are different.
The crowds at Trump events versus the crowd at McCain's events, it's different. What Tim Alberta and what David French have written about in the evangelical churches in these communities, changes that are happening there the number of Trump flags and the boats in Florida Bama all right I'm just telling you again anecdotal but I have friends that go down to Florida Bama for the beach they used to invite me now they're kind of like I don't know gay family with a black daughter probably I don't know that you probably want to come right now it gets pretty weird there's a lot of very political drunk people now at the beach in florida bama okay these are all anecdotes all right but you put them all together how about the mass shooters with their manifestos we've read the manifestos it's not nothing all right we're not imagining these changes we aren't reversed racist elites for noticing the changes so if some rural expert professors want to have a white paper off with Schaller and Waldman on their thesis, make it more precise, I'm all for it.

All for it.

But to take the critiques and then use them to dismiss the thesis outright demands that

we not believe our lion eyes, that we not notice what happened

on January 6th and what's happened all across the country in many of these communities.

We've already seen up close the consequences of what happens when you ignore threats like this.

So speaking of our lion eyes, hope you wore your eclipse sunglasses this afternoon.

We're going to see you back here tomorrow. We're going to do it all over again.
Peace. I'm going to pull She threw your grin Knocking at your door Now let me in Oh, I try Yes, I try You're not bad But you're not good You just say that you're misunderstood And I ain't gonna try Ain't gonna be no I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not

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I'm not Thank you. What can I say?

I can't wait

And now my pain

The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.