Bill Kristol and Sarah Longwell: Is the Wishcasting Over?

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

Speaker 1 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny, infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 1 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

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

Speaker 3 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake.

Speaker 2 Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.

Speaker 7 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage.

Speaker 5 The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days.

Speaker 10 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.

Speaker 11 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.

Speaker 7 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.

Speaker 12 Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. We have emerged from our government-opposed darkness and made it to daylight savings time.
I'm so excited about that. We've got Bill Crystal here.

Speaker 12 Bill, how are you doing? I'm fine, but you're pro daylight savings time or permanent daylight savings. Permanent daylight savings.
I want to be able to take my child to the park after school.

Speaker 12 It is very confusing to me that anybody would not be for this because they want it to be light at 6.30 in the morning for some reason.

Speaker 12 I don't understand these people, and I'm happy that we've successfully, once again, just ripped the shackles of their daylight oppression.

Speaker 13 I'm for having one thing through the year. I'm very much against having an hour stolen from us unaccountably.
And you wake up Sunday morning and suddenly it's, oh my God, it's so late.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I'm with you. Permanent daylight savings time forever.
Folks, stick around to the end. We've got Sarah Longwell's here.
We're going to talk a little bit about her focus groups.

Speaker 12 And we're doing our first mailbag segment. So you're not going to want to miss that.

Speaker 12 Okay, Bill, before we get to the Binan ad and her testimony and Orban and a rant that I have, there's some audio from the weekend of the senator from Alabama, Katie Britt, that I'd like us to listen to together.

Speaker 12 First and foremost, I'm a mom.

Speaker 15 And like any mom, I'm going to do a pivot out of nowhere into a shockingly violent story about sex trafficking.

Speaker 15 And rest assured, every detail about it is real, except the year, where it took place, and who was president when it happened.

Speaker 12 This is Scarlett Johansson at Saturday Night Live doing her Katie Britt.

Speaker 12 I spent a lot of time with this, with Will over the weekend, but at that point, we hadn't gotten ⁇ there was an independent journalist, former AP reporter, who kind of tracked down.

Speaker 12 The most shocking element of her rebuttal was kind of the fake crying that she was doing when talking about a real story that everyone should have sympathy for about a rape victim.

Speaker 12 But the problem was she was heavily implying this was happening because of the Biden border policies. And the event happened in 2004.
during the Bush administration.

Speaker 13 In Mexico. In Mexico.
500 miles from the border. I mean, terrible, of of course, but I'm not a huge SNL fan these days, but it was excellent to skit with Katie Britt.

Speaker 13 And my only thought about it is, wasn't she supposed to be the normie Republican, the sound choice for VP, the Chamber of Commerce favorite, the former Shelby chief of staff?

Speaker 13 I mean, it shows how crazy the, I mean, leaving aside Scarlett Johansson, but the actual speech she gave and the attempt to be hyperbolic and, you know, I don't know what you call that even, you know, this ridiculous moating and performative stuff.

Speaker 13 It It was sort of a nice snapshot of establishment republicanism in the age of Trump.

Speaker 12 Yeah, and it's a snapshot, I think, of how uncomfortable they are still, right? Like they're all faking it, right?

Speaker 12 I think it is a parable or just a microcosm, I guess, of a broader trend, which is all these guys don't really know what they're supposed to do to appeal to MAGA world. And so they're faking it.

Speaker 12 And so she was just faking it in the most ostentatious way possible. One thing I was thinking about before I went to bed last night, and Bill, I always want your historical perspective.

Speaker 12 So I re-watched Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal's speeches, which were markedly better than the Katie Britt speech, honestly.

Speaker 12 If you like just watch them all back to back, I was worried I had recency bias. Then that made me think, is this the worst political speech of all time?

Speaker 12 And because like when I think about the things that have been terrible, like the Mark Sanford press conference or the Gary Hart press conference, like I think they're always like press conferences or debates, Admiral Stockdale.

Speaker 12 I couldn't think of like a set speech where you, nobody's questioning you. You get to prepare.
It's on your own terms and you still face plant that ethically.

Speaker 12 So I didn't prepare you for this, but anyway, I just want to leave that little mark.

Speaker 13 I wouldn't quarrel with the worst. And, you know, just one tiny footnote.

Speaker 13 It's not as if she wrote this personally, or she and her very small Senate staff who aren't used to the national pressure had to do this.

Speaker 13 This was done for her by the entire Republican establishment, by the senatorial committee, by the RNC. She would have had access to Mitch McConnell's staff.

Speaker 13 You know, I know how these, you know, too, how these responses to Senator.

Speaker 12 Specifically, the two people that were coaching her were the RNC, my former former colleagues of the RNC, Katie Walsh and Mike Shields, who were, you know, at the top of the RNC establishment, right?

Speaker 12 So it wasn't as if like it's some random Alabama yokels or something. Right.
You know, okay, that's enough for Katie, Brett.

Speaker 12 I want to get your take on the Biden speech because I haven't heard it, I guess. But before that, I kind of want to combine these things.
I thought it was interesting, right?

Speaker 12 Coming off of the State of the Union, the Biden campaign, which is much more flush with cash than the Trump campaign, put out an ad that tried to, I think, define the choice here of this election.

Speaker 12 And I'm interested in your take on it.

Speaker 13 Let's listen to the first real buy net of the general election cuping.

Speaker 16 Look, I'm not a young guy. That's no secret.
But here's the deal. I understand how to get things done for the American people.
I led the country through the COVID crisis.

Speaker 16 Today, we have the strongest economy in the world. I passed a law that lowers prescription drug prices.
Caps insulin are $35 a month for seniors.

Speaker 16 For four years, Donald Trump tried to pass an infrastructure law, and he failed. I got it done.
Now we're rebuilding America.

Speaker 16 I passed the biggest law in history to combat climate change because our future depends on it. Donald Trump took away the freedom of women to choose.
I'm determined to make Roe v.

Speaker 14 Wade the law of the land again.

Speaker 16 Donald Trump believes the job of the president is to take care of Donald Trump. I believe the job of the president is to fight for you, the American people, and that's what I'm doing.

Speaker 16 I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message. Can we do one more take?

Speaker 16 Look, I'm very young, energetic, and handsome. What the hell am I doing this for?

Speaker 12 It's like he's reading JVL, I think, whoever's script wrote that.

Speaker 12 Or maybe that's just the obvious thing to do, address the age-stuff hat-on, make a joke about it, contrast about Donald Trump caring about himself versus Joe Biden actually getting things done.

Speaker 12 What's your take on

Speaker 12 that attempt to address the Biden vulnerabilities?

Speaker 13 Yeah, I think it's good, and it was a good speech, and I'm happy the campaign is revved up. And I don't know whether it will change the dynamics politically of the race.

Speaker 13 That's what I just have no confidence in my judgment on that. You know, I could like it, and Biden supporters could like it.
Do Haley voters get moved back to Biden or back to Biden?

Speaker 13 Do younger voters get reminded of what's at stake? I do think ultimately, obviously, they just have to keep hammering away at what's at stake.

Speaker 13 It's not a choice of, gee, that last incumbent and the current incumbent. It's kind of a tough call on their policies.
And, you know, it can't be that.

Speaker 13 It's got to be the existential threat of Trump to democracy at home and to freedom and democracy abroad.

Speaker 13 I thought there were two good pieces of the bulwark this morning people should read by Trasinski and Gabe Schoenfeld at home and abroad. So what really is at stake?

Speaker 12 I hear you on feeling uncertain. One of my friends made a funny joke on tech.
We had a text chain going during the Katie Britt speech. You know, we're all making fun of it.

Speaker 12 And then after about 25 minutes, somebody replies in the text chains like, are we sure that this is bad, right, as bad as we think? Right.

Speaker 12 Like, have we just totally lost our ability to judge what MAGA people like? And I was like, no, I'm pretty sure this is really bad. Actually, I'm almost certain that this is horrible.

Speaker 12 But I hear you on the who knows how much this will break through. And we don't have any quantitative data to demonstrate it.

Speaker 12 But I think that clearly just the vibe shift from Democratic world and Biden world is real. Like whether that trickles down at all.

Speaker 12 And because some of the Biden number problems are not enough to win, right?

Speaker 12 But when you're looking at like the Times poll where he's down five, for example, some of that is just kind of cleaning up people that are Democrats who are concerned either about age or Gaza or still kind of hoping that there's going to be another option getting in the race.

Speaker 12 Right. And so you would think that a week like this might at least help on the margins, like start that process.

Speaker 13 Which would be good.

Speaker 13 It would have its own effect in terms of reassuring and cheering up and stopping people like me from carping that maybe there's a better Democratic candidate and next generation and all that.

Speaker 12 He stopped Ezra Klein.

Speaker 17 Ezra Klein has been bullied.

Speaker 12 He already did a column doing a Maya culpa. I mean, this is the weak-need liberal pundit class.

Speaker 13 The argument of, I think, of Klein's, as I recall it, in certain minds was always that there was a risk that he wouldn't be a good candidate in 2024. It wasn't that he's senile or that

Speaker 13 he and his staff are incompetent of governing the nation for the next nine months or maybe even for the next five years.

Speaker 13 So the one speech and one ad obviously don't really answer that, and it's March. And let's see.
But look, it's encouraging. I was cheered up.
I watched the speech and

Speaker 13 cheered up by that. I didn't watch Katie Britt's response, so I didn't have the real-time experience.

Speaker 13 That will be great when polls come out Wednesday and Katie Britt's fave on fave is, you know, 32 fave, 21 on fave. People thought the speech was very moving, you know, higher ratings for her as a VP.

Speaker 13 She would bring over some swing voters to VP joyce. That's going to be the moment where we all go into total 100% despair.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. I think that for all of Donald Trump's flaws, one thing that he has is a casting ability.

Speaker 12 And I think that he watched that casting audition and said, no, thank you, ma'am. I guess really quick, one more thing on the age question and Biden's vigor.

Speaker 12 The other side of that coin is this week with the her testimony, you know, thoughts about what to watch for there or, you know, concerns, opportunities, what you think Democrats should do?

Speaker 13 I mean, he's testifying tomorrow. This is special counsel her who had the report that talks about Biden's age a bit.

Speaker 13 You know, there's been an attempt by Democrats, and maybe true to some degree, say he's pretty conservative, so Trump appointee is assistant U.S. attorney.

Speaker 13 On the other hand, he was supported in that by the Democratic senators from Delaware, and his reputation is pretty good. I don't know.

Speaker 13 I think if Hurr seems like a reasonable guy, it'll give some credibility to that report. If he seems partisan, it won't.

Speaker 13 It was probably smarter than Biden people, don't you think, to schedule the State of the Union, though, on March 7th. They got past March 5th.
The race was ended. Time for refocus.

Speaker 13 They did a good job. And I wonder if the after effect of it is to minimize the likely effect or importance, really, of Hurr's testimony.

Speaker 13 So they got a good week here from March 5th, I would say, to hopefully through tomorrow.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I do think that that was smart. And it was notable.
There wasn't kind of a lot of commentary on that, but it was later than usual.

Speaker 14 Much later.

Speaker 12 Yeah. And so I think that was intentional and smart as far as audience is concerned.
It was a huge audience, actually. It was another thing that we've learned since Friday.

Speaker 12 I think 5 million more people just a TV audience than last year. And so obviously there's interest.
We're in an election year. I think we all kind of sense that.

Speaker 12 I think that clearly that was a smart strategic move. The bias towards news, which I always complain about, is always the new part, right?

Speaker 12 And this has been a frustrating thing during the entire Trump era, but it might work to Biden's favor here. It's like, is Hurd going to be able to say anything that's new?

Speaker 12 Frankly, is it possible that maybe some of the new parts of his testimony are him caveating some of the stuff that he said, you know, in the written report? I don't know.

Speaker 12 And I guess potentially, you know, if he is the conservative rap fucker that, you know, some of the Democrats are accusing him of being, maybe he'll drop some new anecdotes or something.

Speaker 12 But I don't know.

Speaker 12 It doesn't seem like the type of thing that offers a lot of kind of new fodder. I guess we'll have him speaking about it on video.
So, you know, you could run that on Fox. But besides that.

Speaker 13 Yeah, no, I think that's right.

Speaker 13 You know, just one last thing on the kind of March 5th where I mean, when Haley was in the race, it was actually, for all of her flaws, kind of a reminder of what a next generation candidate would be like.

Speaker 13 I do wonder if maybe what the Biden campaign has been counting on is happening now to some degree, which is people are beginning to focus on, okay, this is very, very most likely the choice.

Speaker 13 And let's stop all the, you know, Bill crystal wishcasting about next generation and really get serious about the fact that it's Biden and Trump.

Speaker 13 And I feel like the last week has been a pretty good beginning.

Speaker 13 If I were in the Biden campaign, I'd at least hope and maybe think that finally we're getting to what we need, which is the real focus on Biden versus Trump instead of lots of complaints about the incumbent.

Speaker 13 It's been a little more of a choice and a little less of a referendum, as the political pros say.

Speaker 12 I've said from the start, amidst all of your, you know, patty cake, that I was going to wait until April 20th, 420, to start panicking for this very reason.

Speaker 12 I want Haley to be out and I want that to sink in, you know, and I think that takes time and there's a poll lag. You know, if we get towards late April and

Speaker 12 we're still down five, I'm going to have a brown paper bag next to me for every episode of the podcast, but we'll see.

Speaker 13 Sosnick says Memorial Day or July 4th, that that's when the impressions sink in. Traditionally, if you look at incumbents, hard to move people after that.

Speaker 13 After that, it's the noise of the conventions. It's debates, non-debates.
It's the day-to-day of the campaign, but it's sort of that becomes the story, and that's unpredictable, of course.

Speaker 13 But the actual judgment of Biden, he thinks, by Memorial Day or maybe July 4th, gets fairly settled. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Doug Sausaging, that's a Democratic pollster.

Speaker 1 Get Ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten. Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family.

Speaker 1 with a hidden motive to destroy them. This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 1 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes. Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

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

Speaker 3 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake.

Speaker 2 Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.

Speaker 7 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage.

Speaker 5 The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days.

Speaker 10 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.

Speaker 11 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.

Speaker 7 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.

Speaker 12 We maybe need a little segment here. We need a little music for this.
Occasionally, I have a rant that I don't have another place to get it out.

Speaker 12 And so we're going to do a little thing where I rant and you just kind of get to respond to my rant, if that's okay.

Speaker 12 And this is not a traditional interview, usually an interviewer, the intervieweer asking the interviewee the question. But

Speaker 12 I'm changing the conventions here for this podcast. Okay.

Speaker 12 And my rant is about the brouhaha over Joe Biden saying the word illegal during the State of the Union.

Speaker 12 What happened for those that kind of missed this was Marjorie Taylor Greene is sort of dressed like a kind of like a racist Chili's host in the crowd. And I stole that joke for someone else.

Speaker 12 And she is shouting at him about Lake and Riley, who'd been killed by an illegal immigrant.

Speaker 12 And she's shouting in the audience, and Biden acknowledges her and holds up the pin, the Lake and Riley pin that she had given him as he walked down the aisle. And then he acknowledges the family.

Speaker 12 And throughout all this, Green is shouting from the audience, killed by an illegal, by an illegal, by an illegal. And Biden, off the cuff, retorts to her, yeah, by an illegal, that's right.

Speaker 12 but how many thousands of people are killed by legals to her parents i say my heart goes out to you so kind of an awkward exchange right but all in all it like it seems like biden is the winner of this exchange like mtg thinks she has a gotcha biden slaps her down like he's responding to her use of the word illegal by trying to make a point that she is the one that is politicizing this that she keeps bringing up this one murder despite the fact that there's lots of crime that's happening and and you know that happens and oftentimes if you look at immigrants they they tend to commit these crimes at a lower rate, right?

Speaker 12 So, this is the point that he's trying to make. Obviously, if you're in a Lincoln-Douglas debate, not being shouted down by a crazy person in the audience, maybe you say it more adeptly.

Speaker 12 Despite all that, after this great state of the union, where Biden's showing vigor, where even Bill Crystal is starting to come around, the Democrats, it's Democrats that are complaining.

Speaker 12 Here's a headline: Progressives fume at Biden, business insider. Joaquin Castro tweeted about how this was incendiary and wrong.

Speaker 12 Senator Alex Padilla, Democratic Senator of California, said the president's ad-lib was deeply disappointing.

Speaker 12 Are you kidding me, Bill? I'm deeply disappointed in Alex Padilla. Like, what does this person do? I never see this fucking guy's name.
He's not doing anything.

Speaker 12 He's not doing anything to help the Biden campaign. And like, he pops his head up to wag his finger at Joe Biden.

Speaker 12 In the context of this speech, does anybody actually think that he was trying to be offensive? Like, obviously, not.

Speaker 12 Like, does anybody think that Joe Biden was in this this exchange, the one that was not being, you know, on the side of immigrants and not being on the side of migrants?

Speaker 12 Like, of course, it's Marjorie Taylor Greene that is shouting and being an insane person. Like, why are you waving your finger at Biden? Like, to what end? This is not like, what is the end? I get it.

Speaker 12 If you're a Democrat and you're mad at Biden over Gaza or over a policy and you're trying to get him to change the policy, okay. I'm not saying that you can't criticize Joe Biden.

Speaker 12 Like, that's totally appropriate. We do it here.
Obviously, you want to advocate for policies. This, like, supposed gaffe isn't going to change anything.

Speaker 12 It's not going to change anybody's life to make him apologize. It's not going to change his worldview.
He uses the word undocumented almost of the time.

Speaker 12 It's not going to change the policies or the treatment of anybody. It's going to do nothing.
These liberals are just shouting, do better at him to try to berate him.

Speaker 12 And the net result of this is Biden apologizing, what should have been a friendly interview with Jonathan K. Part.
You would have thought it would have been a friendly interview.

Speaker 12 So now he's got to apologize. All the news is about how he apologized about this.
Everyone in my MAGA Twitter feed is dunking on him.

Speaker 12 And like the people that criticize him for this, the Alex Padillas of the world, what did they get? Like at best, they achieved nothing.

Speaker 12 At worst, they gave a news cycle to the person that is planning mass deportation camps. Like that's what you did.

Speaker 12 Like you gave an assist to the person that is planning mass deportation camps and that is Biden's opponent to no end.

Speaker 12 You know, if they were bullying Biden or pushing him because they wanted to change some feature of the

Speaker 12 asylum policy and make it more humane, like, okay, at least that would have an impact on people's lives.

Speaker 12 They're just doing random fucking speech codes just to give an assist to Donald Trump and like virtue signal from California. You do better, Alex Padilla.

Speaker 12 Like with friends like these, Bill, like, what are we going to do here? Am I overstating this? Am I letting myself get a little too riled up about this?

Speaker 12 But this seems like a really stupid cell phone by the Democrats.

Speaker 13 No, it's an excellent rant. And I would like one of the last points.
He is a Democratic senator. You know, we are independent people

Speaker 13 and other liberal

Speaker 13 commentators are independent people. And they get to say, I think that's unfortunate, or I think in the future people should say X, Y, or Z.

Speaker 13 And they get to criticize the administration as they choose, as we choose.

Speaker 13 As you say, if a Democratic senator wants to propose, if he wants to propose amendments, and he did, I'd maybe vote against that immigration compromise. That's legit, I think.

Speaker 13 And if he wants to say we should do this on Title 42, that's legit.

Speaker 13 But yes, just the performative, he's an elected official who supports the nominee of his party and is not on something serious, not on something where he thinks he's going to help him politically, not on something where he's been trying to get through to the White House for two months privately and they finally won't take his call.

Speaker 13 And he has to say something just gratuitously, what, courting the favor of what? I mean, who exactly anyway?

Speaker 12 Activists, liberal, progressive activists. Why? He's not up for an election.
He's not in the middle of the election. He's just finger wagging Joe Biden.

Speaker 12 You know, it's like, oh, 81-year-old man up there on stage, like dealing with a heckler. It's like, I'd like to see Alex Padilla go.
Making the right point.

Speaker 13 Making the point.

Speaker 13 The decency of 99.9% of immigrants, documented or undocumented, and making the substantive point to the degree it was substantive that, you know what, you're just exploiting this horrible murder.

Speaker 13 And what about the, I mean, so, yes, I agree. It wasn't as even if Biden was going in the wrong direction.
It's one thing.

Speaker 13 If you don't like Biden, it's being too nice to this and you know, in the past, you criticize that.

Speaker 12 Okay, that's a substantive thing, and you could change the policy this is him doing the right thing he's fighting marjorie taylor green right right he's fighting marjorie taylor green and also by the way just as one more aside the guy was a murderer okay so if like we're gonna do like if we're gonna do the oh mr president you should do better and be nicer like maybe find an example where the person that is supposedly offended here isn't someone that killed a innocent college student who is just out for a run.

Speaker 12 So anyway, screw you, progressives, for trying to, you know, unnecessarily snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on this one.

Speaker 12 Okay, while we're ranting, before I lose you, I'd like to rant about Victor Orban.

Speaker 12 Well, no, I guess I'd like to rant about Donald Trump and his treatment of Victor Orban, who's at Mar-a-Lago this weekend and was given a king's welcome at the president's elbow.

Speaker 12 All the cougars in attendance were very excited to see him. And let's take a listen to what the former president said about the Hungarian autocrat.

Speaker 18 There's nobody that's better, smarter, or a better leader than Victor Orban. He's He's fantastic.
He's the

Speaker 18 one, the Prime Minister of Hungary.

Speaker 18 And he does a great job. He's a non-controversial figure because he said this is the way it's going to be, and that's the end of it, right? He's the boss.

Speaker 18 And now he's a great leader, fantastic leader in Europe and all over the world.

Speaker 12 Fantastic leader. A little cheery house band in the background, Bill?

Speaker 13 Really, it made me feel kind of sick. I mean, I met some of the liberals in Hungary who were trying to resist Orban.
It's It's not like resisting Putin.

Speaker 13 They're free to do that.

Speaker 13 But of course, the Orban's taken up control of huge numbers of businesses, media, the universities, in that kind of more insidious authoritarian way that would be more of a model for Trump, incidentally.

Speaker 13 Presumably, we're not going to all be locked up on January 21st, 2025.

Speaker 13 But the kind of way in which you would pressure people through the Justice Department and DOD and all this kind of stuff is, in fact, Orban-esque, if that's a word.

Speaker 13 But to see an American president praising that former president,

Speaker 13 predecessor, as Biden Biden likes to say, but the nominee of one of our two major parties, yeah, really, I can't even quite think of an example like that.

Speaker 13 You know, there were other nominees in my youth who were Democrats who we thought were kind of not sufficiently militant and standing up to the Soviet Union.

Speaker 13 But did anyone ever invite someone

Speaker 13 in an election year to be lauded at his own home, I guess you could call it whatever, at his own place, his own elbow, who's explicitly a critic, a denier of

Speaker 13 liberal democracy, and explicitly embraces illiberal democracy.

Speaker 12 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, and I guess somebody could say, well, we've had bilaterals with she or things like that.

Speaker 12 We criticized on this podcast that kind of treatment of she's welcome in California, for example. But again, that is even still different, right? That it's like, okay, you're trying to figure out

Speaker 12 how to do bilateral relations with another country, another leader. That is a category difference from really like campaign surrogacy, is what this is.

Speaker 12 And just like lavishing praise, unqualified praise on somebody that has cracked down on speech rights, that has cracked down on LGBTQ, cracked down on immigrants, and all the things that Trump is planning on doing.

Speaker 12 And on top of that, you know, there was an Orban interview I saw, it was in Hungarian, so we're not going to play it around the time of the visit, where he talks about how Trump is going to just stop funding the Ukrainian resistance and how he's, and that is a good thing.

Speaker 12 And so, you you know, it's almost like sort of it was praising Orban, but also Putin by extension.

Speaker 13 This isn't happening in a vacuum. It's happening when the most important foreign policy issue facing us is Ukraine and Russia.

Speaker 13 Orban has been the most conspicuous defender of Putin in the European Union. To praise Orban is in that respect at this moment is to attack Ukraine and to praise Putin.

Speaker 13 And as Orban said, Trump seems to have said privately, don't worry, I'm cutting off all the aid to Ukraine. So that is what is at stake.

Speaker 13 I did this conversation with Tim Snyder, the great Yale historian. It's really good.

Speaker 12 I listened to it over the weekend. Folks should listen to it.

Speaker 13 Thank you. Ukraine and Russia and Eastern Europe.
I said something about the Ukraine issue is so important. He said, it really is the litmus test because it's not just about foreign policy.

Speaker 13 It tells you what you think about the world and about America at this point. And for Trump to be with Orban and therefore with Putin, for me, that says it all.

Speaker 12 Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes. It's a crystal conversation with Tim Snyder.
Folks should listen to it.

Speaker 12 Okay, lastly, I got a kind of a cryptic message from you that was intriguing over the weekend. You said

Speaker 12 you'd like to talk about my encouraging two days at a Liberty Fund conference.

Speaker 12 When I hear the words liberty fund, my spidey sense starts to get up that maybe that might be a cryptic MAGA group.

Speaker 12 So tell us what was encouraging about your time with some of these conservative academics.

Speaker 13 It was a small kind of academic seminar, but it was on liberalism. And there were lots of, it was mostly younger people.

Speaker 13 I was kind of a co-organizer. They asked me to do it.

Speaker 13 So tried to get people in their 20s, 30s, early 40s, and some academics, some other types, and public intellectuals, I guess you'd call them these days, and so forth. We read Orwell and a lot of

Speaker 13 stuff from Michael Walzer on being a liberal and Hitchens, actually. Liberalism could have a comeback, a good liberalism.

Speaker 13 Hubert Humphrey liberalism, anti-fascist, anti-communist, pro-civil rights, but doesn't have a heart attack when an 81-year-old man says the word illegal, you know, that kind of liberalism.

Speaker 13 I mean, I was encouraged by the discussion.

Speaker 12 Well, that is encouraging. Do you have any other positive notes to leave us on? Any other notes of optimism?

Speaker 13 Baseball season begins in two weeks and spring training is chugging ahead.

Speaker 13 And in the morning shots this morning, I do, it was sweet on a flung going down to give a speech, this 10-year-old boy who was going with his family. And he said, Are you going to spring training too?

Speaker 13 And I, you know, maybe think, you know, it'd be better to be going to spring training than giving my speech there at some hotel.

Speaker 12 Liberalism is not dead. Baseball is not dead.
I'm a little skeptical on both of those points, but that will be for another conversation next week. Thank you, Bill Crystal.

Speaker 12 On the other side, we've got Sarah Longwell with a focus group update, and we're taking your questions in the Bullwork mailbag.

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Speaker 12 All right, I'm back with my old friend, Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwarks. Sarah, I wanted to have you on A, because you have multiple other podcasts.
I want to make sure people know about.

Speaker 12 George Conway explains it all to Sarah Longwell. That publishes kind of periodically.
Do you have a schedule?

Speaker 12 Do you have a schedule? Do you have a day where we know what that is about?

Speaker 19 Well, we try to do it when there's good legal news to talk about, but it's like Thursday-ish.

Speaker 12 Thursday-ish, okay. And then every Saturday, you have the Focus Group podcast, which is so, so good.

Speaker 12 And in particular, I wanted to talk briefly about this week's, which was a little bit alarming, but in a good way, kind of a wake-up call, you know, kind of like smelling salt, kind of alarming, where you had Ashley Allison, CNN analyst, who was on to discuss focus groups you did with black voters who had voted for Hillary and Biden, but we're now thinking about Donald Trump a little bit.

Speaker 12 Can we just listen to a little bit and I'll get you on the other side?

Speaker 20 I think he just has more of an ability to jumpstart the economy, to inject energy into the economy. And that's really what a lot of it's boiled down to for me.

Speaker 19 With him and Putin from Russia, they had some kind of rapport. And so that sort of keeps us alive without getting bombs, you know, thrown on our country.

Speaker 19 So it seems like, I don't know, maybe a gangster knows another gangster and they have respect for one another. But it seems like he was able to get along with them people a little better.

Speaker 21 It didn't matter what he did. They were just going to bash him anyway.
At least it seemed like maybe three-fourths of the media, of course, he had Fox on his side, but.

Speaker 21 seemed like three-fourths of the media was bashing the guy. I'm like, that's unheard of for somebody to get bashed that hard.
And he's the president of the United States.

Speaker 21 So that maybe put a red flag in my head that maybe he's on to something.

Speaker 22 I don't know who in government is not committing fraud, who's not being crooked, who's not doing us right. I really don't know.

Speaker 22 I don't know why he's the only one that's actually being held accountable.

Speaker 12 Woof. Okay.
Again, just one focus group, but, you know, we're seeing in the numbers some bleed among black voters. I thought it was nice that you had Ashley on to kind of talk through it.

Speaker 12 What did you guys come away with?

Speaker 19 Well, I mean, first of all, I really wanted to do this group because we keep seeing it in the numbers. People are kind of freaking out about it while also denying that it's real, right?

Speaker 19 They're like, this isn't possible.

Speaker 19 And I wanted to be like, I'm sure it is possible because if there's one thing I know from doing focus groups all of these years, it's that the things that we self-soothe with are often wrong.

Speaker 19 And that if you go kind of find these voters and ask them, you're going to hear stuff. Yeah, it's going to make your toes curl, but it's going to be like, what is actually going on? I love Ashley.

Speaker 19 She's a friend of mine. And she did like a valiant pushback.
She was a little bit bit like JVL is, where he wants to, he wants to sort of reason with all the voters.

Speaker 12 Like, let me tell you what I would say. Yeah.

Speaker 19 Let me tell you what I would say back to them if you put me in the room. Put me in the room.
Let me convince them why they're wrong.

Speaker 19 But to me, the most interesting thing was how much they just sounded like

Speaker 19 there was nothing different about what the black voters were saying about why they liked Trump than just other Trump voters and why they liked them. It's all the same thing.

Speaker 19 It's like, I think he'd be better for the economy. Americans want to be rich.
Let's just tell you, like, Americans, all of them, they want to be rich. And they see Donald Trump as rich.

Speaker 19 And so, when they say we need a businessman running the economy, what they mean is, I saw this guy on TV being a businessman.

Speaker 19 I know he's got a gold toilet, and I don't necessarily want a gold toilet, but I want more money. And I think he'll help me get more money because he's figured out how to get more money for himself.

Speaker 19 And, you know, when Trump says things like, well, because I have a mug shot, I think that's going to help me with black voters. You and I hear that and go, well, that's really racist.

Speaker 19 Boy, that's got to turn off black voters. Of course it is.
But there are plenty of black voters who do not hear, and they may not even hear that sort of statement explicitly.

Speaker 19 What they do hear is this idea of, and this is, again, same with white voters, is this guy, look how much he has to put up with.

Speaker 19 I know what it feels like to have either trumped up charges or grievances on something. It's so frustrating because Trump, his grievances are all about himself.

Speaker 19 It's not like he shares your grievance, regular voter, but still they find, they find like a connection there on the grievance side. And then there's just some straight up like anti-vaxing.

Speaker 19 Nobody said deep state, but there was like, he's the only one who talks about how they're out to get us, you know, the anti-institutionalists.

Speaker 19 And I hear that across all the focus groups of people who like Trump. So it just doesn't surprise me, right, that

Speaker 12 black voters or some sub-segment of it.

Speaker 19 Yeah. I'm very careful in the podcast to keep pointing out that this does not reflect reflect a majority of black voters.

Speaker 19 In fact, it reflects a small percentage, but black voters are so reliable for Democrats.

Speaker 19 Hispanics have been so much more reliable for Democrats that bleeding, going from, you know, losing 10% of black voters to 20% of black voters, especially in states like Georgia, disaster.

Speaker 12 Okay. Well, were there any green shoots, things that issues feeling like that, you know, Democrats can use to talk about them?

Speaker 19 Well, we did another group of swing voters right after the State State of the Union, the day after. Okay.

Speaker 19 I would say only about half the group had actually watched the whole thing, but then the other half had like, you know, seen the vibes the day after.

Speaker 12 Yeah. And considered the memes.

Speaker 19 Yeah, that's right. And they were like, okay, okay, there's a guy I could, I could be into.
There's sort of a Twitter-esque fight right now of, will that matter? Do voters care?

Speaker 19 And they had heard about the Katie Britt stuff too. They were just like, she is so weird.
Everyone just came. this is so weird.
Someone said Stepford wife.

Speaker 19 One person said, I think she's trying to, you know, deflect from the IVF ruling in Alabama.

Speaker 19 And they were universally going for Biden, which I, you know, anybody who's been listening to my podcast knows we've been seeing some backsliding from these swing voters.

Speaker 19 But I think that Joe Biden turning the vibes around is really important.

Speaker 19 And they seem to be getting it. They seem to be there.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Good news for swing voters. Okay.

Speaker 12 If you're not listening to the focus group podcast, last this week, if you can't handle the black voters against Joe Biden, last week they had Jon Favreau and talking about California.

Speaker 12 Every week, it's a different group of voters. It's super interesting.
I love that I'm a focus groupie. Okay, final segment of the day.
We're trying it. This is new.
Sarah, you're here.

Speaker 12 We're doing it live. Our first mailbag segment.
Remember, if you have a question for the mailbag, email bulwarkpodcast at thebulwark.com. We received an overwhelming amount of mail.

Speaker 12 So I think it is awesome how engaged of an audience we have. So I don't know how we're going to try to do this often.

Speaker 19 You've got a big show here, Timmy. You know, got it.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's awesome. People listen, and they care.
They're not just half listening, you know, they're not just cooking and halfway, they're listening and they want our feedback on things.

Speaker 12 So, we're starting with two. And since I have you, the first one I know is Sarah Bait.
We got multiple questions like this.

Speaker 12 It is very similar to the questions that I got when I was on a panel in Aspen. So, I'm a little concerned about how many Aspen listeners we have.
But this question is from Bianca in San Diego.

Speaker 12 She asks, What if there were a Cheney Haley no-labels ticket designed to split the Trump vote and also found a new conservative party? Sarah, doesn't that sound wonderful? Guys, guys,

Speaker 19 guys,

Speaker 19 listen.

Speaker 19 The people who would vote for Liz Cheney and the people who would vote for Nikki Haley

Speaker 19 are people that we need to vote for Joe Biden. To win this election, you are not building a pro-Joe Biden coalition.
You are building an anti-Trump coalition.

Speaker 19 And literally, anything that splits the anti-Trump coalition is bad for Biden. Hear me on this, please.

Speaker 19 Conservatives swing voters. There is like 9 to 10% of the country, and there's even like soft Democrats.

Speaker 12 They will pull from Biden.

Speaker 19 Trump has a like fixed ceiling and floor, and there's like two points in between there. You cannot take, you cannot take away anybody from the anti-Trump coalition.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 19 If they want to start start a new conservative movement, they should and they should tell people to vote for Biden in this election.

Speaker 12 Agree. And by the way, I think that there are conceivably states or

Speaker 12 random races where something like this could work, right? It is not in the presidential election. I'm sorry, Bianca.

Speaker 12 And I did this a little bit during the live DC show where the weirdness of Trump actually, some people, I can understand why people logically would think, okay, Trump is so hated that this is the perfect time for a third party.

Speaker 12 But it's wrong because there's no elastic in his support, as you just mentioned, right?

Speaker 12 And if there would be room, I think, for a Cheney-Haley labels ticket, if it was like Mike Johnson versus Rashida Tlaib, right?

Speaker 12 It was two people on ideological opposite ends of the polls, then there's a lot of room in the middle. That's not really what's happening.
Joe Biden's running kind of from the center left.

Speaker 12 Trump is running as an authoritarian, heterodox, weirdo who's like off the left-right continuum. It doesn't work.
There's no room for it. I'm sorry.
I know it would sound nice to some people.

Speaker 12 It's not going to happen.

Speaker 19 And God knows, I would vote for that ticket. It's like my dream ticket you're talking about, but I'm just telling you that's not gonna work.
Sorry, Bianca.

Speaker 12 Okay, question two of the mailbag. This is from the life advice category.
I love the people that came at me with life advice. Some people thought I was joking.
I'm dead serious.

Speaker 12 You know, why not do a little life coaching here at the Bullwark? Okay, this is Cindy in DC.

Speaker 12 Cindy will retire from a 30-year professor gig at the end of June, which is sooner than she wanted due to health issues.

Speaker 12 She planned to stay in DC because her doctor and friends are here, but as an object of MAGA nightmares, single educated white female with savings and no kids, good on you, Cindy, I can live almost anywhere.

Speaker 12 The threat of another Trader Trump crap storm has her pondering a summer move to Doar County, Wisconsin, a 50-50 county in a 50-50 state where my vote could make a difference. Why Doer County?

Speaker 12 She visited last summer to gather information about some ancestors. It was beautiful and much cooler than D.C.
in the summer, although there were some gigantic Trump flags.

Speaker 12 Is she crazy to consider renting out her D.C. house, volunteering for the Wisconsin Dems, registering to vote in Doerr County for the fall election?

Speaker 12 She'd be grateful for any insights what life might be like as an East Coast volunteer in a Midwestern locale. How miserable could she be?

Speaker 12 Could I make enough difference to counterbalance the potential nastiness? What should I seek to do for maximum impact? I know what I think, Sarah.

Speaker 12 Do you want to hear my answer first or do you want to go first?

Speaker 19 You go ahead. I'll let you do it.

Speaker 12 Okay. I think that you should consider it, Cindy.
Life is short. I love it.
I just, I love the mindset of the attitude. We're only here for a certain amount of time.
It's a good life experience.

Speaker 12 We obviously made a recent move. I'll caveat one thing.
I'm a little concerned about the loneliness quotient. We have listeners, though.
We have listeners in Wisconsin to the Bulwark podcast.

Speaker 12 Door County, for people who don't know, is like on the little, what do you call it? It's like a little finger that sticks out on the east side of Wisconsin into the lakes.

Speaker 12 And so it's from kind of Green Bay. You go up this little finger.
It is really beautiful. I've never been there, but I've heard it's really beautiful.

Speaker 12 But I know, for example, Mark Becker, big fan of ours. It was the Green Bay, whatever county that is, Republican chair for a while.
Then he did the right thing.

Speaker 12 He was a Republican voter against Trump last time. He's written for the bulwark.
We can ask Mark. I just want to make sure you can have some friends.
I think otherwise the experience will be great.

Speaker 12 People are nice. You get surprised by how nice people are.
You can get a little community of people door knocking.

Speaker 12 I don't know if I'd want to live in Doer County, no pun intended there, forever, but to move six months, have a life experience, I don't know. Seems pretty good to me.

Speaker 12 And I like the mindset regardless. What say you, Sarah?

Speaker 19 I love the mindset. And I got to tell you, we hear from a lot of people being like, what can I do? And honestly, what I want to say to everybody is like, move to Montana.
Like, it's beautiful there.

Speaker 19 And honestly, if 100,000 of you moved, like you could, it could become a blue state and you could take it over. You get two Senate seats, governorship.

Speaker 19 I think this idea of people going to swing states. is amazing and one of the biggest sacrifices somebody could make for democracy.

Speaker 19 And here's the thing on the loneliness, I think, is that, you know, you could start a blog and encourage other people to move.

Speaker 19 You could start a whole movement, a community of people who move for democracy and go to places like in swing states.

Speaker 19 And my guess is that you will find a democratic community there that is so excited to have you.

Speaker 19 Ben Wickler, who runs the Democrats, the party chair there, is like a super good guy that would, I'm sure, like get you hooked up with all the other volunteers.

Speaker 19 I think it could be like a yeah, once-in-a-lifetime awesome experience.

Speaker 12 Move to Door County. And if it's terrible, don't blame us, okay? I'm just like, you know, we're doing the best we can.

Speaker 12 This is our first life advice question, and we might improve over time, but I'm feeling pretty good at it off the bat. Okay, Sarah, any final thoughts for people before you get out of here?

Speaker 12 Any other big focus group takeaways from your post-state of the union focus group?

Speaker 19 I don't know that I've got any other ones other than, hey, guys, if you have a zip in your step right now, a little skip after that, keep it going because it's going to be a long slog and there's going to be ups and downs, but just should remember that there's going to be ups.

Speaker 19 And when there's ups, remember to push, lean into them.

Speaker 12 That's great advice. All right.
Let's get your feedback on the first mailbag. Remember to email your questions, bulwarkpodcast at thebulwark.com.

Speaker 12 We'll be back here tomorrow with Evan Osnos, who wrote the great New Yorker profile about Joe Biden. I'm excited about that.
I'm in there. I'm in that profile.
Are you? I didn't make it that far.

Speaker 12 It's really long. So

Speaker 12 you must be quoted in the back half. I'm going to be reading the rest of it later today.
I'll let you know what I think about your quotes. That's Sarah Longwell, publisher on the Bulwark.

Speaker 12 We'll see you back here tomorrow. Peace.

Speaker 19 Bye, guys.

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Speaker 12 The Board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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