A.B. Stoddard: Liz Cheney Groupie

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All right, folks, happy Easter. A couple quick housekeeping notes for you.
I was going to do a mailbag today, but me and A.B. Stoddard just spent like 10 minutes just loving up on Liz Cheney at the end of this podcast.
And so we didn't have time to get to it. So I will do a mailbag on Monday after the Bill Kristol episode.
So if you have questions, email bulwarkpodcast at thebulwark.com. I want some policy and politics questions, but ask you about other stuff too.
You know, let your freak flag fly. One of the mailbag questions that many people ask is, can you please tell us what the closing song titles are? blah blah yes we do i have a spotify playlist uh we are going to put the playlist in the show notes of every friday's episode and if you're in the comments section share it with people who ask so i don't have to keep doing it and uh just a reminder if you want to just troll me in the comments instead of sending emails,

that is a special feature for our Bulwark Plus members.

So just go to thebulwark.com slash free trial to get a 30-day free trial of the Bulwark Plus. We would appreciate your support.
Up next, Alexandra A.B. Stoddard.
Hello and welcome to the Easter weekend bull

world. Hello and welcome to the Easter Weekend Bulwark podcast.
I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm not showing any sacrilegious Swindler Bibles this weekend.
We are spinning Beyonce's new country record. I'm here with A.B.
Stoddard. Hello, A.B.
Hi, Tim. Or should I call you Alexandra? I was able to have a beer at the Great Kingpin Bar in New Orleans with your daughter recently.
And we started talking and she was like, so when did you meet Alexandra? And I looked at her, I was thinking, who are you talking about? I need to back up for everybody that when Tim graciously showed up to meet my daughter in New Orleans with a family friend in our company Slack, Tim says, I just met A.B. Stoddard Jr.
And I said, Tim, oh, you're the best. Thanks for showing up.
And I think the whole company, Tim, thinks that I sent you out of your marathon and whirlwind of work duties out to a bar to like babysit my 22 year old daughter. And not that you just happened to join up with her meeting up with a good family friend.
But she was thrilled to meet you cannot stop talking about how hilarious you are and how hip you are. And it was awesome.
She was great. She's great.
It's a good family. You've

been a good mother, I think. It's good parenting.
So it was very lovely to meet her. And as a gift, I have a little audio present for you.
I haven't told you what we're starting with today, but it's kind of like a little Easter treat, like something you might find in your Easter basket, but in your ears. Let's take a listen.
So don't think, just jump. You can't give up.
Know that anything is possible. Have faith, believe, just trust you'll see.
Anything is possible. I can't do it.
Jason, please stop. Please save me.
Stop it. Stop it.
Oh, my God. That's the new co-chair of the RNC, Lara Trump.
She's got a single out today. Anything is possible when you marry the stupidest Trump child.
You know, you can become the co-chair of one of our great political parties. You can become a top 40 artist.
It's a nice life. And I think she does exercise videos with celebs.
Tim, I think I learned from you, or who did we learn from that Ed Henry helped her put that album out out or that single yeah yeah that was mona mona mona was doing a investigative journalism on that i think and reported to us that uh ed henry who is booted from fox for sexual harassment allegedly and is now i guess i don't know i guess a maga yeah and i think also the January 6th choir, I believe. Ed Henry's also has some imprisoned clients.
Woof. You know, I don't know.
What do you think it says about the state of the Republican Party now that the co-chair is putting out just cringetastic singles? And they're hosting fundraisers for the RNC where the money first goes to her dad's legal fund. I just loved the conversation you guys had on the Next Level about this.
It's just full-on third world dictator style. I mean, as JVL said, you only trust the family and they get to run everything.
No one has any visibility into the funding, the future plans for the funding, the formulas for how it'll be divvied up in terms of what goes to the mass of the legal defense fund, what's left for down ballot and state parties and candidates that are supposed to be creating the Republican party of tomorrow, like there's ever going to be a post-Trump family Republican Party. So donors want to believe that this is the last hurrah for Donald Trump, that he's going to be a lame duck, second term, come back president if he wins, and then that will be the end of it.
And they are giving to an organization that's now run by him and basically subsidizes his needs. And the money goes, as I noted last week, straight in the new formula.
It can get to the RNC if there's a mega monster event. But most of it goes first to the Trump campaign, which is struggling.
It's less than half of Biden's hall at the end of February is what Trump ends up with. And then it goes to Save America.
And Save America literally funds the kids. And Melania's stylist, they call it strategy consulting, not strategic consulting, strategy consulting.
She doesn't appear in public anymore, except for funerals. So it's's not her clothing and her hair i don't know what it is that they're consulting with her about maybe you know another stab at the divorce but it is it is completely out of some bad tv show or soap opera you know and it's it's like the dallas dynasty of politics and and Donors, they know this, Tim, and they're going along.
They know that in months from now and next year, they will have no say and will, of course, never raise any objections into what the RNC does for the Trump family and for their future. It's not about the future of the party.
And everyone who's spending their money on this deserve this because they're going in and acquiescing to this pretty soberly. I mean, they know exactly what the Trump family is doing.
And this is what they want, and they're going to get it hard. So that's how I feel about it.
We have a specific donor we're going to talk about in a little bit. I do kind of wonder if Mussolini's daughter-in-law was kind of an artist.
Maybe she had an opera single that she was doing on the side. I don't know.
And everyone had to kind of go to the Italian opera and pretend like it was good. I kind of imagine this.
I like the title, though. Everything is possible.
Because now at the RNC, everything is possible. Or that's part of her refrain.
For the Trumps. Okay, on the donor thing, just really quick, Biden raised a bunch of money last night in New York with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and one of our competitor podcasts, Smartless.
We're available also for these bookings, guys. I know I wasn't on Arrested Development.
The Trump campaign has attacked Biden because there was an officer funeral that was happening at the same time Jonathan Diller that Trump went to. And so I'm curious what your thoughts are on that critique.
But also, I do think that it is no, again, like the gap in fundraising here is pretty significant. I'm like pretty pessimistic on how much money actually matters in presidential campaigns.
But we're getting to a point where Biden has so much more than Trump that it is a real advantage. What do you think? I'm with you, Tim.
I think that we lost so many traditional building blocks of politics in 2016. And I think the metrics that we used to pay attention to and value have really gone away and eroded retail campaigning, endorsements, and television advertising, and I think money.
I mean, I watched those Senate races like you did in 2020 when we were told also in the polling that we were going to have all these Democrats just knock it out in red states from Iowa to Montana to Kansas to South Carolina to Kentucky. And they all lost badly.
And they raised so much money.

And so I just, I don't know how far that'll get Biden. My thinking is, I'm really hoping that

they have a really sophisticated social media plan of attack because of what we're seeing on

the left with kids and what they're being fed about the war in Gaza. So that becomes the biggest

impediment in terms of the coalition. And I don't know if money can get at that.
I hope that it will. And, you know, it always will fund, you know, get out on the ground stuff that is important.
But I do wonder like you whether or not that's going to be able, the biggest challenge right now is the information bubble, right? Does money break through that? Or do you just fight fire with fire online? So we'll know that, you know, by next cycle, but not now. Yeah, I think it's not nothing that Biden is able to be up on the air framing some of this, you know, streaming some of his arguments a little bit.
We're seeing modest movement in the polls, very modest, but it's not nothing. I'd rather be in Biden's position than in Trump's, I guess we'll put it that way on the financial side of things.
We'll see the extent. Yeah, we'll see the extent of the difference.
I want to talk about something happy and then we'll get into the sad stuff. How about that? Or do you want to flip? Do you want to do happy first or sad? No, it's Easter.
He has risen. I can go everywhere.
I can go down. I guess it's Good Friday, technically.
Maybe actually let's do that.

We'll end with Liz Cheney.

We'll resurrect the podcast with Liz Cheney at the end. It's Good Friday.
So we'll start then in the dark place with the concerns about the Biden campaign that were in the Politico article this morning by our friend Jonathan Martin. J Mart writes that Joe Biden has apparently not contacted George Bush, Mike Pence, Larry Hogan, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Todd Young, Bill Cassidy, and Lisa Murkowski.
He did call Haley the day she dropped out. I don't do anything on this podcast that I don't tell my friends privately.
I've told people in Biden world that I think that they should be doing full court press on this. I think many of these people are gettable.
I read the article with some consternation. It is only March, but I don't know, man.
I know there's a lot happening, Gaza, Ukraine, but this should be Biden's wheelhouse, right? And that's what J. Mart does a really good job of articulating, that Biden more than everybody in his cohort, in the Senate now, in the Senate then, when he was vice president for Obama, congressional Democrats during Obama felt, you know, ignored by the president, but the vice president was always scrambling around to not only cut the deals and the negotiating, but the back slapping and the connecting.
And that's his gift. And he knows how necessary it is.
And so at this great deficit that, you know, that I just noted in his coalition, he knows from 2020, he won with Republicans. At that point, it was 6%.
We're obviously really counting on that number growing this time after January 6, among Republicans. And the Haley returns, even after she dropped out, seemed to be encouraging.
It's great he called Haley. It's great that his campaign, according to reporting in the dispatch today, have reached out to some Haley donors.
But you don't just go after the Haley money, you have to speak to those voters and you have to speak directly to the people that you just listed. And I always wondered why once he got into office in early 21, he didn't reach out to Romney immediately.
And Romney actually went on the record and said that, you know, I never heard from the Biden campaign. I mean, that's just crazy.
So this is such a gimme. It's just such an unforced error.
And I obviously hope that that J Mart's column, you know, causes some consternation in people closer to the campaign than you and I are, because they've got to take action. Like he said, why not have Chris Christie to launch? I mean, that's just Chris Christie turns no labels down.
There's only one thing left for that guy. In your words, the hammer job.
I mean, that's that's it. Right.
He's got to go on TV and pound every day. He doesn't have to support Biden.
All he has to do is prosecute the case against Trump. And so there's no excuse for the Biden people not to come to these Republicans and at least like JBL keeps saying, thank Mike Pence.
You don't even have to ask him for his vote yet, but you start by thanking him. Joe Biden knows Mike Pence.
This is madness that he hasn't reached out and said, what you've done to up your death threat level in the last two weeks is such a service to this country. And you'll take your place in history among the bravest people of great integrity.
This is bananas. OK, sorry for my rant.
No, please. Good rant.
And ask them for their advice. You know, make them feel like they have an ear, you know, maybe that makes a difference.
Biden's busy. Jill's, let's get Jill a yellow legal pad and she can start calling through all the wives or calling some of these folks themselves.
Larry Hogan take a call from, from Jill. So anyway, mean in my fantasy world for our biden friends are listening my fantasy world do you remember during the obama years when when biden i was never invited to one of these things maybe you were ab you're an insider or biden had the uh the parties up at the naval observatory where he'd have the super soaker you know you ever invited to a super soaker party okay well buy it and take the

super soaker out and like spray the the journalists uh they had a barbecue like a summer barbecue i kind of forget what to google i forget exactly what was the fourth of july thing can't we all envision that together you know biden out there like scranton joe with his super soaker spraying Chris Christie,

you know,

can we spray mother,

you know,

spraying mother a little bit, kind of teasing with her. Like, you know, everybody having some ribs.
Like this seems, that seems smart. I think people would come to that party.
I think many of them would come to the party. I think they'd come to the party.
I think mother would not take well to the super soaker, but I'm so here for it.

I really am.

Okay.

Well,

he's calling Haley.

Let's just,

let's just turn it,

I guess let's just not let our imaginations be limited.

Right.

Exactly.

Like I know,

Hey,

by the way,

I get it.

You got to work Bernie.

You got to work AOC.

You got to do that too.

It's a busy job.

It's a hard job.

I'm not,

I'm not saying I don't need special treatment,

but one little party,

that's one little barbecue of people that are having endorsed Donald Trump.

That's all I'm asking.

I don't need special treatment, but one little party. That's one little barbecue of people that haven't endorsed Donald Trump.
That's all I'm asking for. Also, I just think that it's important for the coalition of people we're trying to put together and keep together that we remind people it's not but, it's both and.
Okay. It's not but Bernie, but AOC, right? We have to hold a lot of truths together and a lot of disparate people in this coalition at the same time.
But from Gaza to like calling Paul Ryan, right? It's both ends. Nobody said you were signing up for an easy job saving democracy.
He lost one voter though, Eric Levine. His vote in New York, I don't know it's going to matter that much, but he's a prominent fundraiser.
I had the just pleasure of getting to meet this gentleman, Eric Levine, on Daytime MSNBC a few weeks ago. And we'll put the video of that in the show notes here.
I think we played it on the podcast once before. And we had a heated exchange on MSNBC.
At the time, he was claiming he hadn't decided who he was going to vote for. But all of his complaints were were about Joe Biden he's a Nikki Haley fan and and he was happy he was praising Mitch McConnell for being a team player and not voting to convict Trump or not opposing Trump even after Trump made racist jokes about his wife so we kind of had a little bit of exchange about that and then afterwards it got a little heated on set and then afterwards offset he said to me that people like me with my condescending judgmental attitude about trump supporters and the campus progressives is what's going to force people like him to vote for trump but he's not going to do it yet that was february this is march he sends out an email to his friends that say the exact same thing he said to me basically in the uh in the green room he had some concerns about jan 6th.
But as an American Jew, he questions whether there's a place in America for my grandchildren. If the cancer of the social justice agenda continues to metastasize, becoming ever more built into the laws that govern everyday regulations.
He goes on to talk about white privilege. He doesn't like that phrase.
talks a lot about the social justice agenda and how they've sided with the palestinians nothing about joe biden nothing we're on paragraph 12 here now he finally mentions joe biden and he thinks that joe biden's putting a little too much distance between israel no mention of ukraine or putin in here and then um and then he goes the real danger to american jews is the jew haters running around in the streets and on campus quads. No mention of the anti-Semite white nationalists that Donald Trump had lunch with there.
Goes on. Harvard doesn't like MIT, doesn't like the University of Pennsylvania president, even though two of those three presidents have been kicked out.
And then he says that the people protesting Biden are the core of his voting base. That doesn't quite make sense to me.
And then finally concludes by mentioning that Donald Trump's grandchildren are being raised as Orthodox Jews and that he wants to stamp out social justice. So he's been left with no choice but to vote for Donald Trump.
I hate giving this guy so much attention, but there are a lot of these people out there. Maybe there are too many of these people in our our lives right now.
I know you have some of them in your life. You're going to see them this summer at the beach in Maryland.
What do you say to them? At some super soaker parties. Okay, this is the thing.
I remember this segment. I did not know about the off-camera conversation.
I remember watching it. I thought you did great.
Thank you. And I did not think he could gross me out more than he did that day.
But I have a few gems from reading over. Oh, great.
I'm glad you took some notes. Yeah, that he's upset.
Eric's upset that Planned Parenthood and other women's groups didn't protest Tomas. So women are anti-Semitic and women's groups because they didn't protest Tomas after the war broke out.
And yes, he says anti-Semites are Biden voters, not the Proud Boys. Biden betrayed, of course, Israel by our vote to abstain at the UN Security Council on the vote for a ceasefire.
And Biden is intentionally thwarting its war effort. So social justice agenda basically threatens Jews, and he has no choice but to vote for Donald Trump.
This guy from before he got on set with you was, of course, always going to vote for Trump. He was going to say after raising this money, spending this money, whatever, being part of the PAC, that Republicans for Haley, he was going to say for a few days that it was very hard for him and he was struggling and he needed a good option.
And it's not fair. And he couldn't be taken for granted until he was.
And this is all just a bunch of BS. I think it's important.
I'm really glad you raised it. You sound conflicted over giving him airtime, but I think it's really important for the people who are in our conversations.
Right. And care about this mission that we're on, the fight that we're in, to understand what we're up against.
I mean, it's really important for people in the Biden campaign to start talking about what Donald Trump would do in Gaza. And we can make passing references to, you know, to Jared's plans for condos, like you did the other day.
But But I think we I think we actually need to raise this and highlight the fact that their record is something that the Biden campaign needs to discuss. And they need to in trying to move to the center of this issue to support civilians in Gaza while supporting the ratification of Hamas, and also in both supporting, but also holding to account Bibi Netanyahu, who's a not a good partner and not a good actor.
With all this complexity, right, with all this both and, with all this gray matter that Biden is challenged by, he needs to go to the black and white of Trump and make clear to the center of the electorate that we're trying to wake up. That, no, the Democratic Party is not a bunch of anti-Semites who are trying to break Israel with our woke social justice agenda.
So I think this is an important conversation. And it's obscene that someone like Eric Levine is going to make sort of fine purchase with this.

And it's really important that it be called out. I think that we probably have some listeners,

I have some friends that have messaged me with much less like eye-rolly versions of the Eric

Levine point. You know, people that I'm friends with in the Jeb campaign, people that are concerned about what's happening on campus, concerned about some Democrats going to distance from Israel.
And I want to get to the campus thing next just as a separate item. But in the context of the Biden folks, what I say to a lot of these people is like, I just, I don't understand what more they want.
I mean, from the podium, KGP, who hasn't been that great in my opinion, but like, she criticized Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar didn't stand up for Joe Biden at the State of the Union.
It was two people in his own party that didn't stand up for him because of his comments on this topic. Joe Biden's Secretary of State is Jewish.
Tony Blinken has been, I think, pretty deftly trying to handle a very challenging situation here, you know, where I think there are legitimate concerns, both sides, but you also have to, you know, be very clear eyed about what caused this, who it was the perpetrator, it was Hamas. I don't understand why we live in this world where where Eric Levine and his ilk can blame Joe Biden and Tony Blinken for some really gross things that are happening on ucla's campus and yet donald trump is not held to account for the words and language and policies being proposed by the people wearing his hats and going to his rallies i just i don't understand what they're talking about like the protesters who are putting up anti-Semitic paper mache pigs on campuses.
These are terrible people. They're not Joe Biden voters.
I know that Eric Levine's old and these people are young. So he assumes that they're Joe Biden voters and he's really scared of them.
They're not Joe Biden. They don't like Joe Biden.
They like Joe Biden less than Eric Levine probably. Okay.
Like these, I could go to a protest and meet a kid that is protesting gaza and ask them what they think about joe biden then go to a proud boys event go to a groypers event on campus go to a tposa event go to one of tucker's live shows and ask the people who are there who love donald trump what they think about israel okay so i'm like look we talked about this with jake tapper there's anti-semites that are coming from all political ideologies but like the joe biden base is not the worst kids on campus right the donald trump base is the isolationist america first america first was an anti-semitic thing by the way initially the america first that is the donald trump slogan and if you think at the end of the day the people that don't want to help ukraine that don't want to provide any aid that don't want to welcome any immigrants are going to come to the jews defense when they really need it i've got a history a couple history books that you should read so anyway that's my rant about assessing the joe biden Biden versus Donald Trump of it all on this topic.

I appreciate every word. And I particularly loved the concept of Eric Levine being scared of young people.
So I know they're younger, so they might scare him. Again, this goes back to the complexity of this.
You can, Joe Biden can address the rise, the scourge of anti-Semitism, which is burgeoning and exploding in this country right now and is so enraging and so tragic without, you know, associating himself with Bibi Netanyahu's prosecution of the war. And he can, and Democrats should call out Donald Trump, who's not talking about anti-Semitism.
You know why? Because it makes the Proud Boys upset. So he's not actually getting up and saying what Eric Levine is saying, that everyone is a bunch of anti-Semites on the left.
Occasionally he'll allude to it, but he's not explicitly saying people are attacking Jews in this country because they don't like the way the leader of Israel is trying to go after Hamas in Gaza and he's killing too many civilians. And so we have people calling Joe Biden genocide Joe on these campuses.
And then Donald Trump is getting a completely free pass for the fact that he's going to do shit to fight anti-Semitism that is like coursing through this country right now. Yeah, I cannot vote for Joe Biden, because I'm really upset at the people on campus who are calling Joe Biden genocide Joe, because they're part of his coalition.
Like it doesn't make any sense. It is nonsensical it was in the atlantic article um that theo baker wrote where it was like one of the tas at stanford was talking about how joe biden should be assassinated like the far left campus activists want joe morgan assassinated and they think that he's committing an ethnic cleansing which is nonsense obviously and then a bunch of like rich right wingers who like don't want to accept the fact that they're part of just a grotesque populist america first regime we're like i can't vote for joe biden because joe biden's voters are the people that want him assassinated like what are you talking about what are you talking about it makes no sense go meet a student go meet a student and go meet i just like i have homework for everybody if you decide that you do not want to make a judgment call judgment call based on Joe Biden or Donald Trump based on their own merits, but you want to decide based on their voters and what their voters want, because you think they'll be responsible to the voters, I encourage you to go to a Joe Biden event, go to a Donald Trump event, and go to a campus rally where they're calling Joe Biden genocide Joe and actually speak to the people there.
And then you can report back which types of voters you think are more in line with your views.

The campus thing really quick, AB.

And by the way, just, I want to say this clearly,

and I think I have on many podcasts,

but you can be concerned about antisemitism and also be concerned about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Those are two things that are not mutually exclusive,

though I know that a lot of people in our discourse

want to try to force us to have to choose.

I reject that choice. But I spent a lot of time this past week at USC's campus because I was doing a lot of people in our discourse want to try to force us to have to choose.
I reject that choice.

But I spent a lot of time this past week at USC's campus because I was doing a class there.

I got to tell you, the students there were great.

A couple of them participated in a Release the Hostages rally, which I attended with them.

They did so freely and of their own volition.

There was nobody spitting at them or yelling at them.

It was a nice gathering on campus. I keep being told that these campuses are just wastelands of anti-Semitism.
There were Israel flags and people spoke out. I did also speak to another student who went to a different campus who was expressing some concerns about some language that was said in their classroom about Jews.
So I'm not saying that this doesn't exist. The Theo Baker story is obviously very good.
So I think that this is a serious issue that we should be talking about and we should be trying to educate young people about without catastrophizing and making a caricature. So anyway, that's my experience last week.
But you have actual young people in your life since you have college children, which we were just discussing. So what's your take on the young folks and antisemitism? Well, my children are not around any antisemitism.
Their friends are not engaged with any of this. They're not hanging out with people who are building tents and holding protests and stuff.
They are aware, because of my warning since the 8th of October, that they have to be very careful about the propaganda that other countries, our enemies are going to use to divide us. And that, you know, as you guys were discussing the other day, it's important that people be very skeptical about the pictures they're seeing that might be from another war from five years ago.
So I just want Joe Biden to lean into this both and I want him to be able to talk about suffering in Gaza, his work to champion a two state solution, what he wants for the area next year or the year after to be really clear about that, because he's the best person to articulate that, but at the same time, say that there's no place for anti-Semitism in this country now or ever. I mean, I think he can do that so well.
I just think he's afraid to. And it's the same feeling I have about Ukraine.
You know, he starts the State of the Union with Ukraine. It was a bold move.
I want him to lean into this issue so badly. And Bill wrote about this today.
And Bill and I've talked about it a bunch. I just so desperately want him to call out the House Republicans and Mike Johnson right now, be on offense, they're on recess.
You know, talk about what's going on, the lights are out in cities in Ukraine, like, this is going to change the world order. This is literally one of the knivesedge right here.
And it's no small thing. And I want him to champion democracy, a sovereign nation, being able to freely protect itself with our help from an invasion by a brutal dictator.
And I feel that he should lead into that contrast. The administration seems to be completely committed to Ukraine.
But, and David Frum was right, that they have not always tactically done the right thing at the right time fast enough. But to just not abandon this issue with the American people, like use the bully pulpit more.
They were in it right away in 22, and then a little in 23, and then they feel like they can't talk to us about it. And maybe it's not like a 2024 election campaign, one of their top five issues.
I think it resonates with the middle and the people that we need to come out, right? The people who believe in NATO, who are afraid of it being blown up. And those voters who are often Republicans or independents care about this.
And I just think that the Biden people are too afraid of the issue rhetorically. So that's another beef of mine.
Yeah, I wonder if they can deploy Obama. Obama was so good at the both and and I had a lot of complaints about Obama at times, but like the campus thing, like who would be a better messenger for talking about, hey, we can be concerned about

humanitarian issues and also concerned about anti-Semitism.

This was literally his 2004 convention speech, right?

And it would be nice to be able to have that.

I don't know what he's doing in Martha's Vineyard or whatever, but maybe we could get

folks off the sidelines.

I don't know, AB, it's just you and me and Liz Cheney that are like, maybe we should be going balls to the wall on this right now, guys. I don't know.
Maybe we should be calling everybody into battle. I will say, and we'll get to Liz next, is that Biden, we critique because we love and because we're scared of Donald Trump.
Biden's been a lot more active lately. He's had a full schedule, and Donald Trump's been golfing and in the basement the basement.
And they've been starting to draw that contrast. And part of the reason Donald Trump's been golfing in the basement ties back to the money issues we talked about at the top.
I don't know that he's got enough money to run these rallies, like honestly. Liz Cheney was in Iowa at Drake University.
She had a big crowd. She said there, message with us ab our soulmate you never could

have told me i never would have believed it 10 years ago that liz cheney who i thought was too

conservative for me would be my soulmate as frustrated as i know people get sometimes with

policy disagreements you might have and i certainly have policy disagreements with the

vied administration i know the nation can survive bad policy we can't survive a president who's

willing to torch the constitution she committed that she would be campaigning. She didn't say with Joe Biden, but I'm kind of reading between the lines against Trump throughout the year.
Thank God, right? I mean, like, isn't this all we're asking for from people? This is all I'm asking for, to acknowledge you of policy disagreements and just say, I'm to campaign for it anyway because the threat's too great she again i'm gonna just groupie out and try to fight back the tears let's do it it's easter we're resurrecting i remember in 2022 in the summer a friend of mine who's a makeup artist at fox we were together and and she said, I got to do Liz at like 6 a.m. And I said, oh my God, that's because the hearing is tomorrow and you're going to do her hair and makeup.
And will you please tell her that? And I was overcome. I said, I need you.
And I'm like holding on to my friend. I said, I need you to tell her that she has led with her example, that what she is doing is so important.
She's giving so many of us hope. I can remember it's just like literally a crazy groupie moment in my life.
And I haven't had a lot. I was overcome.
My mom, I'm sure you saw that event. I know she got a huge crowd in Iowa, which I was so excited about.
It was a gazillion people in that arena. But my mom, there was one in Hartford like last weekend or something or 10 days ago.
My mom was not able to get tickets, but her, my mom's 82. Her bitty friends got tickets and went in person and then the rest of them like live streamed it at a friend's house together.
they all got together and they talked to their friends who went to the event and they were all

crying in the parking lot and rest of them like live streamed it at a friend's house together. They all got together and they

talked to their friends who went to the event and they were all crying in the parking lot. And this isn't just better than nothing.
This is so powerful to me. I just marvel at her for a couple of weeks after Oath and Honor, which is still on the bestseller list.
And I really urge everybody to read this book or listen to it on audio, please. And tell everyone you know to.
It is amazing. And it's gripping and it goes really quickly.
For a few weeks after that was released, Tim, she did remember she's a little like, I don't know if I'm gonna run for president. I think it was to sell more books, but she shut it down pretty quickly.
And ever since then, she's made it clear, like she said about bad policy, we can live with bad policy, we can't live with Trump destroying the constitutional order. So she's been very clear about that.
And I think it's so, so energizing, not only for us, but I think it's going to break through to people in ways that, you know, we can't really even count yet. We can't like,

you know, quantify it. I think it's amazing.
And I also want to point out to our community, because this is incredible. This woman and her father are friends with Clarence Thomas and the justices of the Supreme Court, okay? What they are doing, not only to invite threats on their lives, but to break up their inner circle, the life that they've always lived, the social set that they have been in.
For her to say, I trust she's talking about the court and the decision they made to take this on, but not in time for there to be a January 6th trial. She not only goes into this conspiracy theory that the right is trying to carry water for

Trump on, that some kind of evidence was stolen and the committee like put it in a toilet somewhere and Trump is always truthing about this. She's explicitly telling people repeatedly, no, he has all the damn evidence And the special counsel gave him everything from the grand jury and everything from the committee.
And he knows that all of it would be so incredibly damaging for him. And he would be so fucked if all these former Trump officials that are basically the bulk of the evidence were testifying in open court.
And that would be the end of him. and for her to say to the court, I trust they'll deal in a responsible and expeditious fashion with this appeal, but recognize that taking action that will result in further delay in preventing the American people from seeing the evidence in open court is itself suppression of the evidence that the American people have a right to see.
And the court ought to recognize that. That's incredibly brave.
And it's no small thing. And I have to thank her every time she opens her mouth and I have to jump up and down and weep.
But this is like next level to me, really is. Same, same.
The social stigma is an important element because it's what's prevented a lot of other people from doing it. So yeah, I didn't mean it mean it's better nothing i meant it as like this is it this is what we're asking for what liz cheney is doing this is what we're asking for when you're when people are like what do you what do you want from john kelly and what do you want from mattis and all the people on that list that joe biden hasn't called enough that he should call soon that's what i want just look at her what she's doing you know you don't need to go full lib know, you just have to be clear eyed about what's happening with Donald Trump.
Okay. And the threat.
There's one reason she's clear about the threat. And I want to leave us with this.
Some people message and say they miss hearing Charlie's voice. So our friend Charlie and Liz were attacked on Steve Bannon, my nemesis's podcast yesterday.
And a couple of people texted me about this. I want to i want to play just a little bit of what liz and charlie had to say about mike davis and what mike davis said about them on steve vannon's podcast as a little lanyard for the end of our episode one of the individuals um has talked about how he wants to he wants trump to appoint him to be attorney general for three weeks.

And at the end of three weeks, he's going to leave Washington with a pardon from Trump.

And he's laid out his plans for those three weeks, which include indictments, detentions.

I mean, it's chilling and it's tempting to listen to these people and think, you know, well, they're crackpots. And they are.
But a crackpot with power is really dangerous. So I think it's important to take seriously and literally what they're saying.
Right. You know, the discussion he's talking about is a crackpot.
But, you know, you put crackpots in power. They can be dangerous, as I've said many times.
You know, a clown with a flamethrower is still has a flamethrower. I mean, do we all remember where we were when we heard that that somebody was suggesting that the vice president could simply refuse to count the electoral votes? And we rolled our eyes and thought, well, they can't that can't be serious.
Well, now we know what a close run thing it was. So, yeah, the fact that people are saying, I'm going to come in here, I'm going to override the Constitution, and then what are you going to do about it? Mike Davis joins us.
By the way, Mike Davis, Charlie Sykes, who's a quite bright guy. I mean, he hates this, but he's a bright guy.
He fails to talk about the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which gave the vice president full authority to do that. And of course, they had to change it in the middle of the night and slip it into an omnibus bill because they had to cover the tracks of the crimes that they did.
Of course, Dave. Mike, as you said this morning, there has to be a special prosecutor and a massive criminal probe of this lawfare that's against everybody.
I'll turn it over to you, Mike Davis, because you put the fear of God in these folks.

Which I love.

I would say to Liz Cheney, she needs to keep up.

I've abandoned my plot to be Trump's attorney general because there's that whole pesky Senate confirmation thing. My next plot is to serve as Trump's viceroy of D.C., and I'm going to create a very special gulag for the humorless washed up dc politician losers like liz cheney well there you go they've got gulag plans i mean liz cheney just has these people's number doesn't she it's like yeah this is the problem this is the problem a lot of people eric levine's of the world want dismiss this.
They don't want to listen to this. They don't want to look it in the eye.
But these people might be clowns, but they're dangerous fucking clowns, and we've got to take it seriously. And, Tim, I did not mean to suggest that you were the one saying that it was sort of better than nothing.
You were, you know, you were, like, injected into my veins like me. Yeah.
I think a lot of democrats who we are working with tend to think like oh well like and then there's that yeah and they don't really understand how potent it is you've taken care of mike davis which i'm really glad you should do that again you should continue to remind our readers and our listeners in the best singular way that you do, but he's terrifying. And he's really one of the only people that will say it completely out loud and use words like gulag.
But it's all, you know, of a piece of the retribution agenda, which is to jail Cassidy Hutchison and Liz Cheney and, you know, have tanks in the street and enforce a Chris Joe nationalist theocracy plan for the country so yeah and by the way even if their gulag plan doesn't work even if that's a joke even if that's a troll it's not a troll for the deportations and these are the assholes and maybe it won't be Mike Davis himself but you know because he's just too big of a clown to get hired. But probably not.

It might be Mike Davis himself.

But there'll be people like Mike Davis that just don't have as big a mouth, that are just as gross as him, who are running a government-run deportation scheme. And so I think that everybody should take that very fucking seriously.
Very seriously. I think everyone should familiarize themselves with Project 2025.
If, you know, 78% of the country is in favor of abortion medication,

and that's one of their plans is to have the FDA ban it.

I mean, there's just a lot in there.

You know, I think there's a lot that people need to familiarize themselves with.

Yeah, the policy actually matters.

Okay, A.B. Stoddard, thank you.
It's a wonderful Friday. What are you doing for Easter? Are you doing a hunt? Are you doing an Easter egg hunt? No.
Are you having a bunny? Are you eating a chocolate bunny? No, we've moved past that. But I have both my college seniors here who are graduating next month, or in I guess, almost next month, they're graduating in May.
And they're both home for the weekend. Our baby is over in Florence for her semester abroad.
So we miss her. But it's awesome to have them home.
And we're going to eat, drink, and be merry. How about you? I don't know.
I've been in LA all week. I've missed my child.
And I'm happy to be back in New Orleans. Oh, I'm actually, if you're in new orleans i'm moderating a panel with rob

reiner tomorrow actually tomorrow afternoon for his documentary his documentary god and country which we did a podcast about if you didn't listen you can go back but if you're in new orleans that's tomorrow afternoon at the uh the britannia french quarter britannia theater there are two britannia theaters not the uptown one and i'm doing that and then i don't know me and the kiddo just i don't know ferrette street

and hang out and brunch and cool eat chocolate bunnies i think i'm gonna eat a lot of chocolate

bunnies yeah make sure she has some candy we're gonna have a lot of candy yeah this is the weekend

for that all right ab stoddard thank you so much we'll be seeing you all have a great easter and

we'll see you on Monday. Peace.
Tears that found me last night I saw some kind of moonlight I woke up in a whirlwind Hey baby, just you watch my head spin Spectacular made you cry It's a thriller and a plane ride It's overtime at ringside No, ah ah-i March me down to the sad sun sea Buried through the fear Kiss me, baby, on an easy side Make my hate blow away I'll eat the sun Take my hate and throw away I'll take the love away I hide, I seek, I go and die fine Truth thin a fable be the inner rhyme So I just want a man talking to me Are they surprised by what we see Like my table and my tie turned Like on my bed thinking for wine Ooh, is that a stuff for me? It could be me March me down To the session's ease Bury me with a boom to beat Kiss me baby On each side Make my head blow away Kiss me baby On each side Make my head go away

While I said I'm making love

I'm making love

The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brout.