Bill Kristol and Ben Wittes: We Still Have to Do the Work

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

Speaker 6 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny, infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 9 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 10 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 8 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 6 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.

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Speaker 12 Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. We got a doubleheader for you today.

Speaker 12 Bill Crystal and I will peruse the wreckage of the weekend poll numbers and some weird Donald Trump events and Nikki Haley winning a DC primary, then Ben Wittis on the Trump trials.

Speaker 12 We've got a 14th Amendment ruling and much more on that. One quick note first.

Speaker 12 Starting next week, I'm going to try out a mailbag segment on the show to give you all a little something, something if the guest is getting you down. Hint, hint, Bill.

Speaker 12 So send in your questions on politics, yeah, but on anything you want my take on, parenting, music, policy, gay stuff, travel, adoption, Louisiana, Nikola Jokic.

Speaker 12 If you need some life advice, I've got you. You know, if there's a man man out there that's got you down and you want my feedback on it, I've got you on that too.

Speaker 12 So send him questions on whatever your heart desires. The new mailbox, Bullwork Podcast at theBullwork.com, BullworkPodcast at the Bullwork.com.

Speaker 12 I'll answer the questions that pique our team's interest on the show. All right, Bill Crystal, you have any questions for me? You need any advice?

Speaker 16 My advice to our viewers and listeners is send Tim questions about Jokic. He's excellent on that topic.

Speaker 12 Some of those others, I don't know. I'd be a little,

Speaker 16 not so much, maybe.

Speaker 12 Just my two cents worth, you know?

Speaker 12 Okay, yeah. Well, we'll see what the people want.
Everybody can think about it. And, you know, maybe it won't work out.
Maybe this will be one of those one and done segments.

Speaker 12 We'll see what people think. All right.
Nikki Haley has won the Washington, D.C. primary.
About 2,000 people turned out for this.

Speaker 12 And my response is: shouldn't these be the people that decide the nominees? Bring back smoke-filled rooms. 2,000 people in Washington, former administration officials, lobbyists, pundits.

Speaker 12 Shouldn't we be in charge? And not we anymore, but the royal we, Bill? What do you think about that?

Speaker 12 I know we're in the pro-democracy movement, but just for the primary process, maybe a little less direct democracy.

Speaker 16 And also, the primary was held at the Madison Hotel, one block from the bulwark offices. And our people, I think those who live in D.C., they trudged that block.
You know, it was tough. It was uphill.

Speaker 16 Maybe it was raining, but they went out to vote. So give them credit.
You know,

Speaker 16 she won two to one in D.C. Trump got a third of the votes.
That's a little disturbing about the D.C. Republicans.

Speaker 12 I guess. Those are the lobbies.
Many of them, I've assumed, worked for him or aspired to him.

Speaker 16 They either work for him or have very lucrative lobbying businesses based on their close connections with Trump World, right?

Speaker 12 Yeah, they're a little worried that somebody might have looked over their shoulder and seen their true vote.

Speaker 12 Okay, well, anyway, maybe for another podcast, but I'm half joking, half serious about how, I don't know, maybe we overdid it a little bit on our democracy when it comes to nominating contests.

Speaker 12 But, you know, we'll get some feedback on that another day. We are where we are.
Trump, on the other hand, he was pretty weird this weekend, frankly.

Speaker 12 He had a speech in North Carolina, another one in Richmond. The creepy music is back.

Speaker 12 And there was one quote that stood out to me that I want to listen to about what he thinks about the people that voted for Nikki Haley in Washington, D.C. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 17 And they say, always trying to demean, well, MAGA really represents 48% of the Republican Party. No, it represents 96%, then maybe 100%.

Speaker 17 We're getting rid of the Romneys of the world. We want to get Romneys and those out.

Speaker 12 We want to get Romneys and those out. Well, in the one sense, Bill, it's a pretty accurate pundit analysis of the party, but potentially harmful.
You know, I mean, is that a useful message?

Speaker 12 I think that really did hurt Carrie Lake when she said, get the hell out to the McCain voters. It's kind of a PG version of that.
What do you think?

Speaker 16 Yeah, isn't Nikki Haley getting all in Leave Geside D.C., which I will acknowledge is a bit of an outlier?

Speaker 16 What, about a third of the vote, I think, so so far in the republican primaries we just add them all up yeah sure

Speaker 16 and i think she may get a quarter or so maybe more than that tomorrow and super tuesday i'm hopeful here in virginia i'll be out voting early early and often here and taking a republican ballot for nikki haley i believe you've commented that you took one in louisiana i re-registered we're not super tuesday it's not till later but i needed to re-register you have to actually reregister now

Speaker 12 i was worried that like i was going to get struck down from the heavens when i clicked the republican button it gave me a shiver down my spine. I felt a cold chill.

Speaker 12 What else are you going to do? You know, here's the thing. I'm not becoming a Republican or anything.

Speaker 12 And obviously, like, Nikki's not going to win, but why not do anything that you can to, on the margins, weaken Trump is the one motivation.

Speaker 12 And the other is there's no better endorphin rush than getting to walk into the booth and vote against Donald Trump. And so I'm excited to get to do that one bonus time.

Speaker 16 I'm glad you've preceded me and sort of, we don't have to be register here, but I'll be asking for a Republican ballot tomorrow morning for the first time, I guess, what, in seven years, huh?

Speaker 16 So I should get a drink first, maybe. You think I can do it, though?

Speaker 12 I don't know.

Speaker 12 I would get a drink for I would, you know, maybe wear a little light wrap, you know, just to kind of protect your skin from any potential, you know, sort of

Speaker 16 tomorrow morning. And yeah, anyway, look, I mean, let's just say Nikki Hilly gets 30% of the vote in these Republican primaries.

Speaker 16 Let's even say that half those voters are really Democrat Biden voters, ultimately. And so Trump's not not alienating them.
Half maybe a little high, but some number like that.

Speaker 16 Still, less 15% of the vote is going against Donald Trump. He really is telling them all, forget it.
I don't want you in the party. That elects Biden or any other Democrat, right?

Speaker 16 So, I mean, I do think he's being a little cavalier. And I hope the Democratic candidate uses this against Trump.
You need to explicitly tell people Trump does not want your vote.

Speaker 16 You know, you voted for Nikki Haley. Trump doesn't want your vote.
That's a pretty good short ad, I think.

Speaker 12 It does.

Speaker 12 And anecdotally, I mentioned having spent a lot of time in Arizona in the midterm for the bulwark and the circus and covering that race, again, I don't know how much you can measure this, but it came up when I was talking to people that Carrie Lake said that, that she didn't want John McCain voters' votes.

Speaker 12 And so, you know, I do think that certain people for whom, you know, their identity is tied to being that part of the Republican Party and who have maybe reluctantly at some level gone along with Trump or, you know, maybe they didn't vote or maybe they voted for him and held their nose.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I think that clips like that, you know, it's not a silver bullet, but like can add to kind of the case to nudge some of those people that one step further.

Speaker 16 It's one thing to attack another candidate. Trump's really gone the step further, which they always tell you not to do in politics, which is to attack the candidate's supporters.

Speaker 16 That clip of Trump, he's not just saying, I don't like Mitt Romney. You know, he's, I don't want any of these people who are supporting.
Romney or Haley.

Speaker 16 And as you say, that's exactly what Carrie Lake said in Arizona, I think. It wasn't just that she attacked Biquain.
She doesn't want those Biquain backers.

Speaker 12 Yeah, get out of the room.

Speaker 16 Maybe that will do some damage. Let's hope so.

Speaker 12 Question is whether Nikki is taking him up on this. I know this is a Lucy with the football situation, and I'm just, I'm not letting myself hope.
But it is noteworthy we should at least listen.

Speaker 12 Here was Nikki on the Sunday shows this weekend talking about whether she has to abide by her pledge to support Donald Trump.

Speaker 19 You did sign a pledge, an RNC pledge, to support the eventual nominee. Do you still feel bound by that pledge?

Speaker 20 I have always said that I have serious concerns about Donald Trump. I have even more concerns about Joe Biden.

Speaker 19 So is that a no? Are you bound by the RNC pledge?

Speaker 20 The RNC pledge, I mean, at the time of the debate, we had to take it to where would you support the nominee? And you had to, in order to get on that debate stage, you said yes.

Speaker 20 The RNC is now not the same RNC. Now it's not.

Speaker 19 So you're no longer bound by that pledge.

Speaker 20 No, I think I'll make what decision I want to make, but that's not something I'm thinking about.

Speaker 12 Do we have a technicality here? By kicking Rhonda McRomney out, did they give Nikki an out? How do you read that? What's your Haley cremulinology there on that answer?

Speaker 16 I mean, it would just be easier to say that, you know what? As Haley said elsewhere in the show, she's not sure Donald Trump believes in the Constitution.

Speaker 16 And that's a good enough reason not to vote for him in the fall. And she's been getting there gradually.
She's been doing it in her own way, right, over the last three, four weeks.

Speaker 16 And I do think there's a reasonable chance she will not endorse Trump.

Speaker 12 The non-binding, non-legal contract that I signed is now voided. There was no notary public when I signed the document.
So I get to move forward. I'm hoping.
I'm not hoping. I'm interested.

Speaker 12 Unfortunately, it's meaningful. Nikki sitting it out, I think, makes a difference in the margins than not my party I did last week was all about this.

Speaker 12 Frankly, I think the most important four months for her legacy and her influence are the next four months, not the last four months, and kind of how she decides to handle that.

Speaker 12 So fingers crossed, let's say.

Speaker 12 All right, Bill, are you ready?

Speaker 12 People, if you don't want to hear about the New York Times polls, if you are enjoying your weekend, you know, and you just don't want to hear about it, you can just click that fast-forward button, five minutes, and we'll be on to something else.

Speaker 12 But for the rest of you, Donald Trump, 48,

Speaker 12 Joe Biden, 43.

Speaker 12 New York Times, Sienna, Biden had a 32% favorable, 59% unfavorable, as you point out in your morning newsletter.

Speaker 12 Another interesting number on the approval, 38% approval, 47% strongly strongly disapprove, 73% think he's too old to do the gig.

Speaker 12 Bill, your response is that we should not be living in denial about these numbers. Talk about that.

Speaker 16 Yeah, there were three other polls this weekend that were also had Biden down. He could win, obviously.
Trump is so flawed, and Biden could have something of a comeback.

Speaker 16 But I don't know, these are very bad numbers for an incumbent. He can't fix the age issue, really.
He might reassure people that he's in better shape than some people out there think.

Speaker 16 The judgment on his incumbency, you know, once that settles in, I've seen this over the years, it can be totally unfair. It was unfair in the George H.W.
Bush administration in which I served.

Speaker 16 But once it settles in, it gets beyond any one issue, immigration, inflation, and it just becomes he's not up to the job. You combine that with the age issue.
I think he should step aside.

Speaker 16 And I think a non-80-year-old, non-incumbent Democrat, any of a host of governors actually, could defeat Donald Trump and maybe do so pretty easily. I know it's flate and it's hard.

Speaker 16 And how do you arrange the succession and all this?

Speaker 12 But that's and Kamala Harris. You're familiar that there's a vice president?

Speaker 16 I'm not sure at this point that she wouldn't be stronger, but I think you need someone who's not part of this administration.

Speaker 16 There's such an anti-incumbency mood out there, again, some of it unfairly, that I think recognizing that reality would suggest finding some governor.

Speaker 16 Some of these governors have pretty good approval ratings, incidentally, and they won big in 2022. So I'm for them.
But as you say, it's funny, we began talking about the D.C.

Speaker 16 Republican primary and smoke-filled rooms. Yeah, we could use a 1932-type smoke-filled convention where on the third or fourth ballot, the

Speaker 16 Marquis Ma Westmore, Josh Shapiro,

Speaker 16 Liz Cheney, a surprise VP ticket emerges, and they win easily over Trump and save the Republic. But that's a little hard to imagine these days, but you need to have a little imagination in politics.

Speaker 16 Denial is a useful psychological mechanism. Obviously, none of us could make it through probably the trials and tribulations of life without a certain amount of denial and wishful thinking.

Speaker 16 Biden really is in denial. That interview, have you seen that new New Yorker piece that's out just earlier this morning by Evan S.
Osmos? Yes. I don't know.
I think he and his team are in denial.

Speaker 16 And I think maybe I can shock them out of denial, but probably not. So we're all going to be supporting Biden.
Don't get me wrong. I'm there.

Speaker 16 You know, and if it's what it's Biden beat Trump, I'm for Biden. But I think one shot at improving on the t-shirt.
One shot at improving the odds of defeating Trump is worth taking here, I think.

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Speaker 16 And Ricky, wear them, please.

Speaker 3 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 8 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 9 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 10 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 8 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 1 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried so keep your enemies close watch malice all episodes now streaming exclusively on prime video

Speaker 12 i should have just brought jvl on the podcast he is in the atlantic today biden is still the democrat with the best bet for november no amount of wishful thinking is going to magically produce a winning candidate b

Speaker 12 you know going around and around on this is probably not that helpful at this point um but here's the way in which i agree with your point and dan pfeiffer made a similar point to yours, you know, maybe not about necessarily replacing Biden, but just about how to look at these numbers.

Speaker 12 And here's Pfeiffer: he says, instead of dismissing the polls, we should embrace the idea that Donald Trump can win this election and then use that frightening notion to re-energize the anti-MAGA majority that delivered victories in 18, 19, 22, and 23, telling people what they want to hear, may be satisfying in the short term, but it rarely works out.

Speaker 12 And I think that his point is well taken, right? That I blanch at the reflexive,

Speaker 12 oh, the polls have been wrong. The polls are terrible.
This is biased. Hey, I lived through this when I was on the other side in 2012.

Speaker 12 Everybody's unskewing the polls in favor of Mitt Romney, and people are looking through the crosstabs and convinced that Mitt Romney is actually going to win. And I was the one person at the RNC.

Speaker 12 I was literally, I remember being in the RNC in a conference room, looking at the people in charge of the data and the politics and saying, prove this to me, walk me through this, because I think you're wrong.

Speaker 12 Like, I think the numbers are pretty clear that we're on a track to lose. And they got mad at me and I was no longer invited to those meetings.
So you don't want that to happen in the Biden campaign.

Speaker 12 In fairness, as the deputy communications director, was I needed in those meetings? Probably not. But still, I certainly wasn't needed if I was going to be the turd in the punch bowl.

Speaker 12 So it's not helpful to not pay attention to it, assuming it is Biden.

Speaker 12 Then there are things you can take away from this, about like what needs to be done and pretending like the numbers aren't what the numbers are and pretending like the polls have been that far off.

Speaker 12 Like I go back to 22, for example, and there's this kind of belief that the polls were really off when really the punditry was off.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 12 Self-included, by the way. Like, if you looked at the numbers, they ended up being pretty close to reality.
And they're a little bit off, right? It's anytime. Like, polls aren't perfect, right?

Speaker 12 And so, just like in 2020, they're off a point or two, but it's not like there was an eight-point miss.

Speaker 16 There was almost no miss in 2022. I was actually on the we're a case of being correct, sort of, said there wasn't going to be a red wave.

Speaker 16 The reason I said that is I'm actually looking at the polls and they were R plus one, Republican plus one, Republican plus two. And that is not a wave.
A wave is plus eight or something like that.

Speaker 16 And in fact, the final results nationally, if you had a poll, the house races was about R plus two and a half. So they weren't off.

Speaker 16 Democrats won a couple of very close races that helped too in the Senate and stuff. And then Republicans had some awful candidates, which made a difference at the governor's level.

Speaker 16 So with Kerry Lake, your friend there in Arizona and obviously in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Speaker 16 Interestingly, I looked at 2016 and 2020, the two races Trump has been involved in, which probably are pretty good

Speaker 16 guidance for this one. And the polls, even in March, were not off the final result by much.

Speaker 16 Hillary Clinton did, I think, a point worse than the March average poll, the March 4th, or whatever today is average polls had. And I think Biden did a point worse, actually, in 2020.

Speaker 16 But the polls said Hillary's going to win a narrow popular vote victory. Biden's going to win a more comfortable one in March, and they were right.

Speaker 16 And the final point I'll make, just one reason they may not be off much, unfortunately, is these are two incumbents.

Speaker 16 This is not the situation where you have a challenger and voters learn more about that person and he gets disqualified or they learn more about that person and he's okay.

Speaker 16 That was the Reagan 1980 situation. Everyone has seen Trump as president for four years.
They've seen Biden as president for three years.

Speaker 16 They're settling into this, you know, Biden, Trump plus three, plus four type judgment. That could be changed.
It could get eroded.

Speaker 16 It could flip the other way and be a very narrow Biden lead, but it's worrisome.

Speaker 16 And certainly, one other poll number, I didn't mention this in my little piece, that's very striking, is people's retrospective judgment of the Trump presidency is that it was good for them.

Speaker 16 They benefited personally from it. I know you can't believe it, right? But maybe that could be changed with a lot of advertising and education.

Speaker 16 But their current judgment of the Biden presidency is negative. So it's not even that they're sort of having like an image of, you know, some challenger who turns out not to be quite so good.

Speaker 16 They think they're making their decision based on their own perception. That's a harder thing to change, right? Than I really don't know much about this guy, but I've seen him on TV twice.

Speaker 16 They know Biden and Trump.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I think that there is one potential way to change it, which I'm going to get to in one second. And I will make one caveat to my anti-unskewing of polls.

Speaker 12 You know, people and MAGA people are deep in the crosstabs of the Times and some of these polls talking about how much better.

Speaker 12 Trump is doing with voters of color, particularly working-class black and Hispanic voters.

Speaker 12 It was Ron DeSantis' pollster, Chris Wilson, who's pretty good, frankly, which I think is something that we have seen on trends. Republicans arguing with Latinos.
There's a major caveat, though.

Speaker 12 Only Only 3% of the times polls, Latino interviews were in Spanish, but Spanish-dominant Latinos are usually about 20% of Hispanic voters. And in 2022, they went for Democrats by 40 over Republicans.

Speaker 12 And so you have seen this. And I think that Nevada polls, some of these other states that have a lot of Latinos and Spanish-speaking ones have undercounted them.

Speaker 12 And that has been kind of the one consistent miss of the polls over the past few cycles. So anyway, worth noting that.

Speaker 12 I want to talk about potentially optimistically the way some people might change their view on Trump. And this is this kind of conversation about how Trump has not

Speaker 12 been in their face. You know, a lot of people that are casually watching this, I could have picked a million clips from these two weird rallies that I suffered to this weekend, but here's just one.

Speaker 12 Let's listen to Donald Trump talking something about Russia with a score behind him.

Speaker 17 Recently, heard that Saudi Arabia and Russia will reduce

Speaker 17 reducing their oil production

Speaker 17 so sad while at the same time substantially increasing the price.

Speaker 16 Was that music from the rally, or did you just put that in the middle?

Speaker 12 The music is from the rally. That is the same.
About 40 minutes into his rally, he likes some fascistic kind of background music comes in now.

Speaker 12 There's a QAnon connection. I can't quite figure it out, but like people in the crowd start putting one finger up.
It's very cultish, very weird. And he couldn't say warmonger.

Speaker 12 Again, we could have done a million clips. This is the weird thing where he gets lost talking about drilling in Russia.
I do think this is our optimistic case, right?

Speaker 12 That like people have tuned him out. And now it's like, wait a minute, this guy, I've kind of forgot how weird he was.

Speaker 12 Obviously, not listeners of this podcast, but people who have normal lives who listen to podcasts about the real housewives or the NFL or something, maybe getting re-reminded of him.

Speaker 16 I totally agree with that.

Speaker 16 And I hope that people get re-reminded of how both extreme and crazy and also just weird he is and also he's not exactly a spring chicken himself and all that makes trump very vulnerable i i think trump should lose in 2024 all things and his numbers are bad i mean if you again if you and i start up somewhere and they give you a thing and here's the challenger with a 43 54 i think that's not great i mean you know if you're a challenger usually you're a little biden was fine and when he was a challenger and up in the air these challenges usually are sort of favorable if people are unhappy with the way things are.

Speaker 16 For Trump to be underwater doesn't help him, but unfortunately, Biden right now is further underwater. So I agree.

Speaker 16 Trump's weakness remains real, and that's why the Democrat will have a chance against Trump, including Biden. Biden will have a reasonable chance against Trump.

Speaker 16 I just think it's slightly under 50-50 now, and it could be much better than 50-50 if Biden chose to step aside.

Speaker 12 All right, two more things really quick. What do you say to the medium criticism part of this? And I don't love being a media critic.
There's so much media out there.

Speaker 12 I think everybody's like, nobody's talking about this. And it's like, well, no, you're just not watching the right thing.

Speaker 12 But I think there is something to the fact that the mainstream media is feeling very obligated to go overboard in focusing on Biden's weaknesses and a sense of being fair.

Speaker 12 And that Trump doing weird music at his rallies and fumbling words and saying insane things and being racist. And like, you know, he compared this guy to Martin Luther King 2X.

Speaker 12 All of that is old news. And so they don't have to talk about that.
Do you think that's a fair critique and that that is in some way creating a death spiral here a little bit for Biden?

Speaker 16 I think it's somewhat fair critique, and it's creating some problems for Biden. It's worth calling the media on that.
I think the media will adjust.

Speaker 16 I mean, once we have the real clarity, once the Haley thing, in a way, goes away, which is I'm happy she's staying in there and causing a distraction. But once it really, really becomes Trump v.

Speaker 16 Biden, everyone will be reminded of Trump for six, seven months, and that's obviously Biden's best shot.

Speaker 12 All right. Ukraine, they're still dithering.
Nothing's happening. The war is getting worse day in, day out.
These guys are doing what? I don't know, washing their hair in the House of Representatives.

Speaker 12 There seems to be absolutely no urgency. What's your sense of that at this point?

Speaker 16 No, just what you say. No sense of urgency.
And even the good Republicans who are working quietly on a discharge petition, and Hakeem Jeffries is working on it.

Speaker 16 And then they're also pressuring Johnson, said the speaker. But I mean, this is important.

Speaker 16 Some I read last night might get this late in the month or at the beginning of April because there'll be another vehicle for it to move on.

Speaker 16 I just feel like it's the most important foreign policy moment since the end of the Cold War, and we're not approaching it with the sense of urgency we should be.

Speaker 12 Biden will have the chance to talk about this in the State of the Union.

Speaker 12 I do think that being able to reframe this and the immigration thing is an important opportunity for him later this week during the State of the Union, because like, I think that there are legitimate critiques you can level at Biden on the border, less legitimate ones you can level at him on Ukraine.

Speaker 12 But he did what you're supposed to do. There's a deal.
There's been a deal. Worked with Republicans, worked with conservative Republicans, gave up stuff that Democrats don't like on the border.

Speaker 12 All the liberals in California running for that Senate seat said they would be against the immigration bill because it was too harsh.

Speaker 12 Biden made the compromise, did what was needed, and now these guys are doing nothing because of Donald Trump. And I think that that's a worthwhile contrast.

Speaker 16 Look, I think Biden has the state of the union as people say it's important always in Washington. It never really

Speaker 16 is important. I think it is this week because he has a chance to obviously reassure some people and make the case strongly, I mean, and substantively.

Speaker 16 And then let's see if the White House and the campaign are also ready to really follow up in a serious way with paid advertising on something like the border and other issues.

Speaker 16 And then let's see if the special counsel her, the guy who wrote that Biden was too old to have charged with the documents, what his testimony is like next week.

Speaker 16 It's actually a pretty important week when you think about it.

Speaker 16 But if you go through the State of the Union through the HER testimony next week, we'll have a better sense in two weeks whether these polls are maybe the low watermark and maybe I don't have some recovery or whether they really are.

Speaker 16 You know, give us a sense of what's to come.

Speaker 12 All right. We'll be back talking about this next week.
We will not be in denial. We will not be in denial.
We'll be clear-eyed about the challenges and the threats and what we need to do to beat them.

Speaker 12 Up next, we've got Ben Wittis with a little bit on the Trump trials. See you on the other side.
Thanks, Bill.

Speaker 16 Thanks, Tim.

Speaker 21 Amazon has everything for everyone on your list. Like your Uncle Ricky, who ruined every single one of your wedding photos because his fly was open.
Get him a three-pack of new underpants.

Speaker 21 And with Amazon Black Friday week starting November 20th, you can save up to 40% on the gifts everyone wants, like the latest toys and housewares,

Speaker 21 and the gifts they need, like underpants.

Speaker 16 And Ricky, wear them, please.

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

Speaker 6 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 9 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 10 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 8 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 6 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 12 Hey y'all, here's a simple but meaningful gift idea for your mom or dad or grandparent who lives across the country, a digital picture frame from Aura.

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Speaker 12 It was awesome. You can upload new pictures to it all the time.
Now I've got a couple new frames going out to my in-laws. And so I highly recommend this.
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Speaker 12 All right, we are back with the man, the myth, the legend. Ben Wittis, editor-in-chief of Law Affairs, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

Speaker 12 He also writes Dog Shirt Daily on subject. Is that a daily?

Speaker 15 Well, you know,

Speaker 15 the dog shirts are daily. I reserve the right to publish it at any moment.
So, but on any given day, it may or may not appear.

Speaker 12 Got it. Though you're not in a dog shirt today, I might notice for our YouTube fans.
Okay, we have breaking news from the Supreme Court.

Speaker 12 They have rejected Colorado's attempts to strip Donald Trump from the ballot in a unanimous decision. What's your initial reaction to this?

Speaker 15 So this opinion will not remotely surprise anybody who listened to the oral argument at which the justices pretty uniformly expressed skepticism that a state can implement

Speaker 15 section three of the 14th Amendment by enforcing against a federal presidential candidate through the ballot access process.

Speaker 15 They did seem to be a little bit divided about the specific mechanism of that idea, and that division is reflected in a five to four

Speaker 15 division on the court between

Speaker 15 people who frame the matter broadly and Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberals who would frame it more narrowly.

Speaker 15 But by and large, this is exactly the opinion that I think everybody who listened to the oral argument expected from the court.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it seems like the narrow side of this, tell me if I'm wrong, but Soda Mayor in particular and the other three, all the women justices, I guess I would notice, seem to, just as a hypothetical matter, did not want to take away the possibility that somebody from January 6th, say someone that actually stormed the Capitol, was convicted, that runs for office in the future.

Speaker 12 They did not want this ruling to preclude that the 14th Amendment could apply to them. Is that essentially the breakdown?

Speaker 15 Yeah. And also, I think more broadly, did not want a holding that is broader than necessary to resolve this particular case.

Speaker 15 And this particular case required, in their judgment, only that the court say a state can't exclude a federal presidential candidate on the basis of Section 3 without Congress getting involved somehow.

Speaker 15 And the majority went further and said there's a specific mechanism by which Congress needs to get involved. And they didn't buy that.

Speaker 15 It's not an unimportant question, but it's a pretty hypothetical question.

Speaker 15 And the broader point, as Justice Barrett points out in her little concurrence, is that nine of them agree on the disposition of this case, which is to say Trump wins.

Speaker 12 Do we have to say it like that? Trump wins? Could we say, could we say Janet Griswold loses? How about that?

Speaker 12 That just stings a little less.

Speaker 15 Okay, so let's put it this way. All nine agree on the following proposition, which is we need to do the work and defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box.

Speaker 12 We do. Or the Senate needed to have done the work and they let us the fuck down.
Right. So, you know, but unfortunately, that's in the past.
So we need to do the work now.

Speaker 12 I've been agitating for that, as you know. Okay, let's talk about on that question about us needing to do the work.
SCODIS has agreed to take up the presidential immunity case.

Speaker 12 We've hashed that out a lot on the various bulwark platforms.

Speaker 12 George Conway seems to be the most optimistic about the prospects that this case might still come up in the fall, that Trump might find himself facing trial in the fall.

Speaker 12 Where are you on that timeline question and just kind of the broader timeline about how these cases are going to shake out over the next few months?

Speaker 12 I know that's something you wrote about for Dog Shirt kind of daily.

Speaker 15 So let's start with what we know for sure,

Speaker 15 which is that with a very high degree of probability, we can assume that on the 25th of this month, jury selection will begin in the Alvin Bragg Stormy Daniels case in New York.

Speaker 15 So the first of the Trump criminal trials is actually happening, and it's happening soon. Everybody ignores it because this case can't get no respect and there are some reasons good and bad for that.

Speaker 12 I've changed my view on that just as a standard. I'm giving this case respect.
I've had a total flip on this and I'm like, okay, fine. Let's do it.
Let's roll. All right.

Speaker 12 I'm ready to roll with Alvin Bragg. You know, the law is the law.
All right. I thought we were the law and order party.

Speaker 15 We are rolling. That case is happening.

Speaker 15 It's a longer conversation what the merits and demerits of it are. I think there's more to be said for it than the commentariat has acknowledged.
But look, it's happening.

Speaker 15 That's the non-relative non-variable.

Speaker 12 Well, for people that are interested in your merits and demerits, we'll have a bonus special Ben Wittis episode in April where we just do one hour on Stormy Daniels. I'm going to be there

Speaker 15 for the trial, and I'm taking it seriously enough to go to it. So happy to do that.
So now we get into the variables. There are three trials, and we don't know when any of them is going to happen.

Speaker 15 Here is what we know. The Supreme Court is going to hear this immunity case when it rules, and it will rule rejecting the claim of immunity in one form or another.

Speaker 15 Judge Chuckin, who's presiding over the case, has said she will add what amounts to 88 days to the time she gets the mandate back before trial.

Speaker 16 Don't ask why 88 days, just trust me on that.

Speaker 15 So if they rule at the end of June and they don't require more litigation, which is another possibility, you could have at a minimum July, August, September, sometime in the September timeframe, maybe as early as August, depending if they rule a bit early, you could have a trial.

Speaker 15 I think that's a little bit optimistic, but George is not wrong that it's certainly possible. If their ruling requires more litigation, you'd push it off into the future.

Speaker 15 So that's variable case number one. Variable case number two is Judge Eileen Cannon's case in South Florida.

Speaker 15 This is, for me, the most frustrating because this is the barn burner case that the Justice Department just has him dead to rights on.

Speaker 15 And they've got a judge who seems committed to making it hard to bring it to trial, but it's a real doozy of a case. And the Justice Department has now asked for a trial date in July.

Speaker 15 Trump has asked for, you know, that New Yorker cartoon, Thursday doesn't work. How about never? Does never work for you? That's his brief in the,

Speaker 15 but he has this added like part, okay, if you can't do never,

Speaker 15 how about August?

Speaker 15 So I think we are likely to get a trial date in that case sometime in the summer, but but it's not clear to me whether that trial date will be stable or whether Judge Cannon will push it back further.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it seems like she would be very amenable to any appeals.

Speaker 12 You know, they look at some precedent from 1832, you know, some absurd filing, and then she's like, ooh, we're going to have to review this for a few months.

Speaker 15 And you just alluded to what I think is her remarkable strategy, which is just if you don't rule on any motions, it becomes very hard to schedule a case.

Speaker 15 You have all this work that piles up, and then you can write opinions about how complicated the case is. And, you know, the answer is, well, fucking rule on some motions, lady.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 15 That's not the way you're supposed to talk to federal judges.

Speaker 12 I kind of think, why not at this point? Can't we talk to Eileen Cannon like that?

Speaker 16 I'm okay with that.

Speaker 15 I just did. So the last one is the Fulton County case.
And this one,

Speaker 15 which you know, has been sidetracked on this crazy disqualification question, which required several weeks of litigation. That's now done.

Speaker 15 Judge McAfee, who is the opposite of Eileen Cannon, he's been working extremely hard and has a really, really tough job.

Speaker 15 He is going to issue a ruling in the next couple weeks that will either disqualify Fonnie Willis, the DA, and thereby throw the case into permanent turmoil, maybe killing it altogether, or he will reject this motion, I think the latter, and set the case back on track.

Speaker 15 At that point, you might see a trial date scheduled.

Speaker 12 So, why do you suspect that he will

Speaker 12 reject it? Similarly to the last time you were on this podcast, this is the one I'm not reading. I'm just choosing not to click on these articles because it brings me rage.

Speaker 12 So, I'm not up to speed on the latest.

Speaker 15 Yeah, so I just want to say you're making the wrong choice there, Tim. Okay.
This is the best reality show

Speaker 15 I have ever seen. It's better than the O.J.
Simpson case.

Speaker 12 I can't enjoy it. It's not a thing of beauty.
It's like, just fuck anybody. You could fuck anybody.
It's fine with me. But like, you have to do each other.
Now we have to do this.

Speaker 12 And now this asshole, Mike Roman, gets to have a smug look on his face about how he's dragging you through the dirt and it's helping Donald Trump. And it just makes me so mad.
I can't. I can't.

Speaker 12 So anyway, what's been happening?

Speaker 15 Well, what's been happening is that there was a multi-day evidentiary hearing that in which they gathered a lot of evidence. It was unflattering.
And then they had arguments about it on Friday.

Speaker 15 It was a three-hour oral argument. And my read of Judge McAfee, he's very hard to read because he's a real pro.

Speaker 15 But my best read of him is that he understands the gravity of a disqualification here and that he's likely to refer.

Speaker 15 her to the bar for having maybe lied in his court, but he is unlikely to disqualify her. I want to say I could be very wrong about that.

Speaker 15 And I would not be altogether surprised to be wrong, but that's my read of his body language and the questions he was asking.

Speaker 12 Okay, back to the Jack Smith cases. From a scale of one to 10 on like a rage meter, what do you think Jack Smith's like level of rage is at this point and frustration at the calendar timing?

Speaker 12 And do you think that

Speaker 12 they are maintaining optimism? Or do you think just kind of handicap that for us?

Speaker 12 Because to me, it's just like if I was Jack Smith, I'd be ready to just kind of take somebody downtown with some MMA moves at this point.

Speaker 15 I think it's got to be very frustrating to them.

Speaker 15 The Supreme Court intervention here, you can look at it more or less cynically, but it is whether you're cynical about it or deferential to their reasoning, it's extremely inconvenient for a prosecution that clearly feels about this case like getting him convicted before the election

Speaker 15 is an important

Speaker 15 preventive deterrent step to other election shenanigans and to other coups.

Speaker 15 And they look at this case clearly as like, okay, you're prosecuting a murderer to punish the past murderer, but also to prevent other murderers, right?

Speaker 15 You know, you lock the guy up, you disable him from other murders.

Speaker 12 I get that, but the timing, though, I mean, it's notable. I mean, they were able to turn around ruling in Colorado by today.
What is happening that is taking so long?

Speaker 15 So that's the reason for cynicism. This is a much simpler case than Colorado.
You could have affirmed summarily. You could have set a really expedited briefing schedule.

Speaker 15 And instead, you set a briefing schedule that Trump can win by losing. Right.
And that's got to be very frustrating for them.

Speaker 15 The Eileen Cannon stuff is even more maddening because, you know, know, people think the Supreme Court is powerful, which it is in some grand sense, but there is nobody in the world more powerful than the district judge who has your case.

Speaker 15 And that is a horrible position to be in, to be before a judge who you can't catch a fair break from. And she has all but openly said she's in the tank.
for Trump.

Speaker 15 It's just got to be very, very, very frustrating for them.

Speaker 12 All right, Benjamin. I see you.
You're dressed up. You're not in your hammock today.
You're in a suit. You've got a Ukraine pin and a Ukraine flag behind you.

Speaker 12 Do you have any Ukraine activism updates for us before we let you go?

Speaker 15 Well, I had a little run-in with the Capitol Police the other day. I projected on the Library of Congress to welcome Speaker Mike Johnson back and to urge him to pass the supplemental.

Speaker 15 And it took five minutes for the Capitol Police to show up and inform me that projecting on Capitol complex buildings was an arrest, no warning offense.

Speaker 15 So I shut it down and held out my hands to be arrested. And they said, No, we're not going to arrest you.
And so that's

Speaker 12 kind of secretly hoping to get arrested to raise attention for your efforts to the speaker, or I assume maybe your wife was maybe not that excited about the possible handcuffs.

Speaker 15 I am never hoping to be arrested, and I'm really not interested in making trouble for the Capitol Police.

Speaker 15 So I shut off the projector a moment after being ordered to and took it down to the Smithsonian, where the National Park Service police really don't care if you project on the Aaron Space Museum.

Speaker 15 And so I've decided that for Capitol Hill purposes, the Aaron Space Museum and the Hirschhorn, which have these big windowless walls, they're really great, are my new projection location because you get all the traffic for Independence Avenue.

Speaker 12 I'm excited for you, and I appreciate your activism for our friends of Ukraine.

Speaker 12 And the one thing that this does call to mind is the grand theory of the case about January 6th, about the deep state, about how it was an FBI op.

Speaker 12 I'm intrigued by the contrast between your story and the behaviors of the January 6th protesters, right?

Speaker 12 Because you would think that if it was an FBI psychop and they didn't really want to storm the Capitol, that when Capitol Police informed them that they should not do so, and when they reached the barricades, that they would have done what you did and listened and had respect to the Capitol Police.

Speaker 12 But they did not do that. So, I do think that the behavior contrast is pretty noteworthy.

Speaker 15 Yeah, so I mean, jokes aside, in all seriousness, the Capitol Police are firm, they've got a serious set of problems to deal with, but they are not looking for trouble with anybody.

Speaker 15 And my interactions with them have been uniformly professional and excellent.

Speaker 15 They cited me chapter and verse on the reg that forbid the projection, and they couldn't have been more gentleman and gentlewomanly about it.

Speaker 15 And so I have kudos to the Capitol Police, and I will not be projecting on Capitol Hill just below it. They even told me where the line of their jurisdiction is.

Speaker 15 They said, if you stay on the other side of 3rd Street and don't project on Capitol buildings, we got no problem with you.

Speaker 12 Well, we're going to send this tape to our friends in the January 6th choir because in all seriousness, this is what you're supposed to do. I was making a joke, but also being serious.

Speaker 12 And fortunately, fortunately, frankly, some of the insurrectionists have experienced the accountability of their actions and not listening to our friends at the Capitol Police.

Speaker 12 Ben Wittis, sounds like you're going to be back a bunch in April. You're going to be the Borg Podcast correspondent in New York City for the Alvin Bragg trial.

Speaker 15 I will be there for the trial, or for at least for much of it, and I'm happy to join you guys anytime.

Speaker 12 All right. Appreciate it, Ben Wittis.
Talk to you soon, brother.

Speaker 16 Yep. Take care.

Speaker 12 All right. Thanks so much to Ben Wittis and Bill Crystal.
We'll be back tomorrow. See y'all then.
It's worth a try.

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

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