Jamie Weinstein: The Cowardice of Mitch McConnell

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Speaker 15 hey everybody before we get to a really interesting and maybe a bit long exchange with our guest jamie weinstein i just wanted to give you guys two things really quick number one i mentioned this in the podcast but with regard to the scotus decision i was really moved last night by some comments on the bulwark reddit and their takeaway from all this this was: it's always been up to us, folks.

Speaker 15 And I think while I'm just talking to you guys here in the family, stopping Donald Trump is going to be up to us. All right.
The courts are not going to save us. We can keep watching it.

Speaker 15 The George Conway and Sarah Longwell show is out today. And you should listen to George's legal analysis on this, but we're going to have to be the ones to stop him.

Speaker 15 We're the ones we've been waiting for. And so, if you were down by the Supreme Court news last night, you shouldn't be.
We've just got to beat this asshole.

Speaker 15 Lastly, RIP to the great Richard Lewis, the great comedian. You know, this guy, he loved his country.
He loved his faith. He was a proud Jew.

Speaker 15 And he used to message many of us that are involved in the anti-Trump movement from time to time, giving us encouragement. I always appreciated that and was really moved by it.

Speaker 15 I was hoping we could have him on sometime. And I was sad to hear of his passing yesterday.
And so I want to leave you with a little sound from the great Richard Lewis.

Speaker 15 We'll dedicate this show to him. And on the other side, Jamie Weinstein.
Peace.

Speaker 16 To one and all, and all in one.

Speaker 16 It's a little redundant, isn't it? What? Shut up.

Speaker 16 Tell everybody that before the day is out, we shall have a wedding or a hanging. Either way, we ought to have a lot of fun, huh?

Speaker 15 Hello, and welcome to the Bullwood Podcast. I'm here with my old friend Jamie Weinstein.
He's a producer and creator of Finding Matt Drudge on iHeartMedia. It is a serial about, well, Matt Drudge.

Speaker 15 We're going to talk about that. He's a host of the Dispatch podcast on Mondays.
In a former life, he hosted the Jamie Weinstein podcast.

Speaker 15 And I just do need to mention that I consider the interview that he conducted with me about my political transformation, I think, the best one that I did anywhere.

Speaker 15 So now I get to turn the tables on him. What's up, brother?

Speaker 16 How's it going? This is wonderful. I didn't know that.
I didn't know that you considered that the best interview you did. So I appreciate that.

Speaker 15 Well, you know, I mean, there are different kinds of bests, but I thought it was the best because you actually made me think and kind of challenged my assumptions about it.

Speaker 15 I think probably a lot of it was a lot of people that are interviewing me were happy about my political transformation and didn't really challenge me on it too much.

Speaker 15 And so, I thought that those elements of it were good. So, I go back every once in a while, I go back to it, or I send people to it when they're like, What? What do you think about this?

Speaker 15 So, anyway, you did nice work. People can go find it in the archives.

Speaker 16 Thank you.

Speaker 15 I'm going to give you the business, though, now. But beforehand, for people who don't know you, I just kind of want to level set a little bit.

Speaker 15 And maybe you can just tell us, like, how do you define yourself politically these days? And what does that mean for you with regards to our octogenarian presidential candidate?

Speaker 16 Well, I guess the way I tell people I define myself these days,

Speaker 16 less ideological than I once was, although I am somewhat ideological. But the way I describe it is I'm pro-democracy in the sense that I think that there's a threat to the country with Donald Trump.

Speaker 16 I don't know if that's 100% threat if he's re-elected, but it's much higher than it was last time. And I thought it was a threat last time.
But I'm also for not teaching my kids crazy things.

Speaker 16 I guess on both sides of the spectrum, I find issues, but I like to have conversations, especially with people that disagree with me.

Speaker 16 And I think that brings, if not agreement, it brings clarity to a debate. And I think that's healthy.

Speaker 15 So are you still using the C word? Conservative? Are you still using the C word? Or are you classically liberal, a different C word? How are you describing yourself? Moderate?

Speaker 15 Are you a neoliberal now?

Speaker 16 I've used classically liberal when I was in college. I mean, I guess that's probably what I'm closest to, but I still say I'm conservative.
Yeah, I'm not afraid of saying I'm conservative.

Speaker 15 I mean, you said beforehand you might be moving to California. So, like, would you see yourself as a Steve Garvey supporter?

Speaker 16 I haven't paid too much attention. It seems like he doesn't say very much, is from what I can tell.

Speaker 16 He was on some debate stage, and he seems to know how to just repeat lines, as far as I can tell, but I really haven't been following it very closely.

Speaker 15 Okay, we'll explore over the course of this podcast. Maybe we'll revisit that question at the end and see if we've evolved at all.

Speaker 15 I want to do state of the Republican Party, state of the conservative movement stuff. I want to argue with you a couple of things you've been tweeting about lately.

Speaker 15 And I want to talk about Matt Drudge. But unfortunately, the news gods have forced us to delay all of that just a bit.

Speaker 15 We had the SCOTUS

Speaker 15 decision late last night, or I guess yesterday,

Speaker 15 where they announced that they will be hearing Donald Trump's appeal with regards to whether or not he's completely immune as president from doing all crimes, a preposterous appeal.

Speaker 15 And they'll be hearing that on April 22nd. I don't know.
I don't know what Samuel Lito has to wash his dome or something for the next eight weeks. It's unclear to me what the delay is on that.

Speaker 15 But I was wondering what your top line response was to this and the political implications.

Speaker 16 You know, I always thought, you know, these are in the background. Will he get convicted? You know, will something happen? There's going to be an election, no matter whether he's convicted or not.

Speaker 16 And I'm not sure the convictions are, if he is convicted, I don't know how much that will play, good or bad. It might spur people to come out and vote for him who they think he's aggrieved.

Speaker 16 Donald Trump's a little bit like, I always think of the picture of Dorian Gray in a different way. Like, everything goes right for him.

Speaker 16 Like, there must be someone up there that allows all the chips to fall where they may. Everyone around him falls and burns, goes to prison, fall apart, go bankrupt, lose their money.

Speaker 16 And yet, you know, Trump, the cards just always fall exactly right for Trump, where he avoids it all while all those around him burn.

Speaker 15 Is that right? I mean, he's lost a lot of elections lately. I hate this sense of, oh, there's nothing we can do with Donald Trump.
He just, he is, he's Teflon. That's not really right.

Speaker 16 I do think it is a little bit right, actually. Yes, he lost obviously 2020, and there were midterms that he lost, but he didn't really lose.
Those were other candidates that lost.

Speaker 15 He's been indicted four times. That's not great.
I've never been indicted.

Speaker 16 I mean, he went bankrupt three times, and yet he still won the presidency. He finds his way back.
Everyone thinks he's gone, and then he's back.

Speaker 16 I mean, I use this jokingly. You know, when he left office, he had all these commentators, some of which I agree with.

Speaker 16 They were calling him the former guy as if he's going to disappear and he's going to go away. And now he's going to win the Republican nomination and one election away from being president again.

Speaker 16 So, you know, despite all of this, he is at worst the second most likely person to be president in 2025.

Speaker 15 Yeah, maybe the most likely. So I guess there's something to be said for that.
What's your sense about the SCOTA side of this?

Speaker 15 I mean, we have a legal podcast, so people can go check out George Conway's take on this. But I don't think that you have to be, you know, a Supreme Court, a constitutional law expert to feel like

Speaker 15 that doesn't seem like they're in a rush.

Speaker 16 Again, I'm going to give them a little more credit.

Speaker 16 I do think the court,

Speaker 16 and maybe there are figures on the court that are more ideological, I do think the court wants to get this right. And weighing in one way or the other probably has political implications.

Speaker 15 And the D.C. Circuit ruling on this was pretty resounding.
I mean, it was rude, frankly, to the Trump challenge.

Speaker 15 I mean, it was mocking almost of this notion that like the president could order SEAL Team 6 to kill Hunter Biden and he would be okay and that would be fine. Like it's a rather preposterous appeal.

Speaker 15 I mean, you know, Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court, took that up promptly.
What they didn't in winter of 2000, you know, they weren't saying, well, maybe we'll look at this in spring. Yeah,

Speaker 15 let's see what happens.

Speaker 16 I don't have a problem with them looking at it. I agree with you.
I think, I mean, it should be somewhat immediate. I don't know why they're delaying it.

Speaker 16 And, you know, maybe the George Conway podcast will have more clarity on why the court is doing this.

Speaker 15 They're going to have more harsh words, maybe,

Speaker 15 on why, but I don't know about more clarity. Okay, that's fine.

Speaker 15 The main takeaway, in some ways, I think there were a lot of people in my life. I don't know about you.

Speaker 15 and our Slack chain and the Bulwark Slack chain and my text messages on my social media that were very disappointed about this. I'm disappointed.
I'm annoyed.

Speaker 15 But to me, a lot of that disappointment was predicated on this notion that like the courts were going to save us in this case. And I just kind of never really believed that was true.

Speaker 15 Like from the start, I've always felt like the voters and those of us that are stated activists against Donald Trump are going to have to save ourselves for this one in November.

Speaker 15 And I was just never that, I never had that much optimism about the court side of this. And so it sounds to me like that's kind of where you've fallen on this stuff too.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I don't think the court's going to save the country from Donald Trump.

Speaker 16 I think the one thing that may have done it, and I think you tweeted about it yesterday, which is a decision that was made in, you know, 2021 in January to not impeach him and try him and convict him.

Speaker 16 And it was made for the same reason. People called him the former guy.
They wanted to get off their plate. They thought he'd just disappear.
Turned out completely wrong.

Speaker 16 And, you know, here he is again when he ran again. I thought this would be the easier primary than 2016.

Speaker 16 And people were claiming, oh, you know, all these people were going to overtake Trump, DeSantis. And it seemed to me from the very beginning that Trump was going to walk through the primary.

Speaker 16 And that's kind of what he did. And now he'll be an inch away from the presidency again.
So, you know, it's depressing.

Speaker 15 You can, you can tell you're a podcast host because you've transitioned us into the other news of the day. So we have Mitch McConnell's retirement from leadership, at least.

Speaker 15 And that announcement was yesterday. He spoke on the Senate floor, got a little overclemped.

Speaker 15 And man, I don't know. It's hard for me to look at the Mitch McConnell thing and feel anything besides besides just pure rage, as you mentioned, just about his behavior around January 6th.

Speaker 15 I mean, I look back at this and I just think,

Speaker 15 you know, he wanted those two damn Senate seats in Georgia. Georgia had that Senate runoff on January 5th.
A lot of party leaders who knew that the Stop the Steal was nonsense were quiet.

Speaker 15 They wanted to win those Senate seats, so they said nothing, sat on their hands. And then January 6th happens.

Speaker 15 They knew, again, what he did was wrong, but they didn't want to blow up the party, right? And which is what would have frankly happened.

Speaker 15 So there would have been an internal civil war in the party had they convicted him after the impeachment. And so they didn't do that.

Speaker 15 My opinion, you tell me, is that Mitch McConnell, for all his supposed savvy, in this case, on the one hand, he was being a coward. He didn't want to be the one to put the stake through Trump's heart.

Speaker 15 But on the other hand, I think his political antenna was off. I do think he really thought Trump was dead.
And so he didn't have to kill him, right?

Speaker 15 I think that he did not recognize what you recognized, what we did, that he could rise from the dead and win a Republican primary after what happened at the Capitol. And so instead, he did nothing.

Speaker 15 Is it TDS for me to say that that is really kind of overshadows everything else of the longest-running Senate leader?

Speaker 16 Well, let me answer that, but to go to the previous question, I mean, it would be crazy if he did not.

Speaker 16 I mean, and it's possible he didn't, but all the people that thought that Trump could not leave office and then come and run again and be in a position of how, I mean, even at that moment, he was at worst the second most likely person to be president in 2025 the idea that he's just going to go away and you know

Speaker 16 never hear from again so you know maybe he thought that I think it was what you said cowardice

Speaker 16 not to give Trump too much credit but Trump recognized this when he entered the race in 2015 that all these leaders in Washington they talk a tough game but their spines are made of jelly and that he exploited that and he continues to exploit it and he'll continue to exploit it right now with all these guys that talk a tough game.

Speaker 16 They're slowly going to endorse him as it goes to Jon Thune has endorsed him.

Speaker 15 It's all related. And this relates to the January 5th, January 6th thing, right? Like, there's always a reason why not to challenge him, right?

Speaker 15 We shouldn't challenge the Stop the Steel stuff because we got to win the Leth Laura and Purdue race in the Georgia runoff on January 5th. Jon Thune, I could endorse Nikki Haley.

Speaker 15 Obviously, I like Nikki Haley better, but I want to be leader. I know Mitch is going to retire, so I want to be leader.
So I'm going to endure, right? Like, isn't that what this comes down to? Yeah.

Speaker 16 I mean, I I think you're right.

Speaker 16 I think for Mitch McConnell in that moment, it also, I think if he impeached him, it would probably be, you know, it would be very hard for him to continue on politically in many ways.

Speaker 15 So what? Isn't that his whole thing also? Isn't his whole legacy Supreme Court? He did it already. I guess he wouldn't have been the longest running Senate leader.

Speaker 15 So you wouldn't have the Cal Rifkin record. You'd be whoever's second for the most straight game plays, Lou Gehrig.
He had a pretty okay career, I think.

Speaker 15 JBL can check me if that's right. It's been a while since I did baseball trivia, but right? That's it.
He's not like he did anything.

Speaker 15 It's not like he was, he had this big agenda item he wanted to do the last two years.

Speaker 16 Tim, what is amazing to me, and it still is, and I'm still in awe of it, is the number of people that are either powerful and could get a great job after leaving wherever they are now or already wealthy, like bending over and humiliating themselves in order to stay in good graces with Donald Trump.

Speaker 16 I mean, look at Vivek Ramos. I mean, the guy's a billionaire, and yet he's like, what can I do in order to like suck up to Donald Trump? And like, I don't get the the value of that.

Speaker 16 You think that at some point these people say, you know, F you, this isn't worth it. My dignity is worth it.
But in Washington, it seems like dignity is very low on the totem poll of what matters.

Speaker 16 And I just want to mention one more thing. Like, I hope Nikki Haley rises somehow and beats Donald Trump in this primary.
That would be wonderful. And I think she's way better than Donald Trump.

Speaker 15 Sure.

Speaker 16 The odds that she comes and endorses Donald Trump after she loses this primary are greater than 50%.

Speaker 15 Greater than 90% on this podcast. I don't know.
I mean, I don't want to take anybody's hope away. You know, hope dies last, but it's greater than 90 on this podcast, I think.

Speaker 16 You know, I'm starting to be convinced that maybe Chris Christie won't do it again, but I'm not 100% convinced that Chris Christie doesn't come out and endorse Donald Trump in the end.

Speaker 16 He's really trying to make it clear he's not, but.

Speaker 15 Yeah, back to McConnell before we leave. So you didn't get to the TDS question.
You have my level, at least, of Trump derangement. Like Mitch McConnell, first paragraph of the legacy is this, right?

Speaker 16 I was thinking about it, and I think the answer is we don't know yet. And it depends what happens in the future, right?

Speaker 16 If Donald Trump wins, and especially if it's as catastrophic as the worst case scenarios, of course, that is the first paragraph in his bitcher.

Speaker 16 And if it's written by certain papers, it will be no matter what.

Speaker 16 If, on the other hand, Trump loses, so, you know, it didn't matter all that much in the end other than, you know, he wasn't able to get another, a Republican that could actually win to be the nominee, I think it will be the Supreme Court.

Speaker 16 I think it will be a master of Senate maneuvers who helped create a Supreme Court that's conservative for a generation. So, I mean, the answer, I think, to that is depends what happens.

Speaker 16 But you and me both know the risk that he took by not doing that should probably be preeminent. And even if Trump doesn't win, he still took a great risk that put him in that position to win.

Speaker 16 But that's not how I think these things happen.

Speaker 15 We have memories. Especially because he knew.
I mean, the risk to me, it's like he told us he knew. Like, he said it on the Senate floor.

Speaker 15 It's not like it was, oh, he was too dumb, or he didn't see the threat from Donald Trump clearly, or he didn't, he was under the impression that Donald Trump didn't do anything wrong, like your boy Dan Crenshaw, who we'll get to in a second.

Speaker 15 It wasn't, I can't even have that. Like, he went on the Senate floor and was like, no, you did this.
It was your fault.

Speaker 15 But I can't do anything about it because we had to go on vacation after Christmas and we had to take a couple weeks off. And then you were gone.

Speaker 15 And I guess we can't convict somebody who's gone technically by some rule I just made up, right? Like, that's the most telling part of it.

Speaker 16 We get a lot of these really powerful speeches against Donald Trump. We get, you know, Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz at the convention, all these righteous speeches, and all every concession speech.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's all BS in 2016. All BS.

Speaker 16 Like, they're not like that, that upset about him. No one actually has that strong of a position because it all fades like three weeks later.

Speaker 15 All right. So, here's my one more Mitch McConnell thing we need to hash out

Speaker 15 so you can grade how deep into the resistance Kool-Aid I've gotten since leaving the Republican Party.

Speaker 15 But some of my old friends get mad at me when I say that functionally he stole a Supreme Court state. I mean,

Speaker 15 he didn't literally steal one, but functionally,

Speaker 15 it was a situation where in a normal working system, you would have ways that you appoint judges. There would be norms.

Speaker 15 Both sides would respect them.

Speaker 15 you know, the rules would be the same no matter who's the president, which party is the president, which party is the senate. That like didn't really happen, right? Like there were two situations.

Speaker 15 They were exactly the same. They weren't even exactly the same.
In the one case,

Speaker 15 the justice left like many months before the election. In the other case, the justice died right before the election.

Speaker 15 And he was in charge of the Senate and he did things differently for two different nominees based on no real principle, except like a made-up principle about election year, you know, appointments.

Speaker 15 And as a result, the conservative side of the bench got an extra seat. So stole is like an okay word to use.
When I say say stole, conservatives get really mad, really mad.

Speaker 15 They're like, oh, Tim, like this is Joy Reed, MSNBC stuff. And I'm like, I don't really think so.
I mean, functionally, he stole one.

Speaker 16 I'm not going to get upset at you, Eddie, but I think the reality is that the Supreme Court fights had been existential in a certain sense because of Roe v. Wade.

Speaker 16 And I think the Democrats ratcheted up. to begin with, you know, starting with Bork and other places.

Speaker 16 And, you know, the attacks on Alito that attacked his character for being a racist, I think, was very thin. So you have these escalating adventures.

Speaker 16 And I believe the Democrats would have done the same thing in the same position all over Roe v.

Speaker 15 Wade. And I do.
You do?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I do. And I think.

Speaker 15 Do you think that this Democratic Party, you think Chuck Schumer, these guys that haven't even brought Jared Kushner up for a hearing, you think these guys would have held a Supreme Court seat for 10 months?

Speaker 16 I don't know anymore because I do think the interesting question is now Roe v. Wade is overturned.
That court case was in many ways kind of this escalatory impetus for these Supreme Court fights.

Speaker 16 So I do believe that in that moment, the Democrats would have probably done the same thing, whether it's right or wrong.

Speaker 16 And I think at the end of the day, the Democrats, why did Ruth Bader Ginsburg stay as long as she did? I mean, there's so many questions that you could ask.

Speaker 16 The Democrats could have better control of the court than they do.

Speaker 16 But yeah, I mean, he'll be viewed as a hero by Republicans in his obituary, especially if Trump's a faded memory and he doesn't win again.

Speaker 16 And he'll be viewed as a villain by Democrats for what he did on the Supreme Court. But that will be his legacy.

Speaker 15 So not stole for you.

Speaker 16 No, I wouldn't.

Speaker 15 I mean, you know, what word are we going to use? Can we use the word aggressively seized, maybe? A bonus Supreme Court seat?

Speaker 16 Legislatively maneuvered. You know, I have to go back in time to read the arguments for and against.
At the time, I think it was pretty clever.

Speaker 15 but then again you could argue in the same way it would be clever to put more seats on the supreme court i i guess um so right i i think it would be good not to to i just get a little flummox it's fair i i'm i'm gonna let you wiggle out of that one it's just i get a little flummoxed when it's like accepted really on the right to be like the treatment of kavanaugh radicalized me like that's a comment like like the way democrats treated kavanaugh radicalized me and like pushed me towards trump side you hear this from from people and like i actually wasn't really so keen on the Kavanaugh treatment, but it was like, Kavanaugh's on the Supreme Court.

Speaker 15 Merrick Garland's fucking things up at the Department of Justice.

Speaker 15 So, so, like, I don't know how I could, you know, the sometimes I think that the outrage side of this stuff gets a little performative.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I mean, I do think there are people that say that's how they came back to, it's usually like the moment they came to Trump.

Speaker 16 And the other one, how they supported Trump the first time is the way Romney was treated radicalized them.

Speaker 15 I can't even do this. I can't even do that one.
That one makes me so mad, Jamie. When somebody is like, I'm a blogger for the Federalist and Mitt Romney's treatment radicalized me.

Speaker 15 And I'm like, why did it radicalize you? It didn't radicalize Mitt or Ann Romney and it radicalized you. Yeah.
Like a mean super packhound? What about the birtherism?

Speaker 15 Did birtherism radicalize you into being... I just, I hate it so much.

Speaker 16 Well, I think it, you know, so A, I do think he was mistreated, but B, it doesn't justify like going all in for.

Speaker 15 I don't get the correlation there.

Speaker 16 But that is the argument that they realized they can't play nice anymore. So they needed a mean guy like Donald Trump.

Speaker 16 But to me, the meanness was never the main issue with Donald Trump, so I don't get that justification.

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Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houghton.

Speaker 7 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 10 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 12 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 7 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 15 All right, I want to move on.

Speaker 15 You did an interview that reminded me to reach out that I was listening to driving around Los Angeles a couple weeks ago with Dan Crenshaw, and it nearly caused me to take the car off the road.

Speaker 15 So I encourage people to listen to it, and it's full on your Monday dispatch podcast. Well, just at the top line, you probably don't want to insult interview guests, which I understand.

Speaker 15 So I'm not going to put you in that place. So I'm just going to speak about my perspective of it.

Speaker 15 His whole tone to me in this discussion, which I... was very fair.
It was not, you're not being overly aggressive.

Speaker 15 That was reminiscent to me of how I behaved in like ninth grade when I was in trouble with my mother or a teacher. And I was like, screw you.
This is stupid. I don't have to do this homework.

Speaker 15 I know how to do this. Like, he just had a very kind of like condescending, too cool for this.
I'm not having fun. I don't enjoy this.

Speaker 15 And I say that not to insult him, really, but because I think the context of this is important.

Speaker 15 Because right around the time you did that interview, Mike Gallagher, you know, who is another in this kind of more traditional, whatever you want to call it, McCain, Bush, Reagan-ish, Republican vein left Congress at age 39.

Speaker 15 And I listened to that Crenshaw interview and I was like, this guy doesn't seem like he's having a good time. So I just at first blushed, like you're, when you're talking to these folks, doesn't that,

Speaker 15 you don't have to go with the, with the childish ninth grader comparison, but like, don't you think that like there's a sense of frustration with people in Congress that do actually want to achieve tasks?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I mean, he doesn't seem like he's enjoying himself. And I asked a variation of a question.

Speaker 16 I almost asked it more directly that, you know, you're getting attacked viciously by certain wings of the party.

Speaker 16 You seem upset that you can't get actually bills through the house. Is it worth it? Do you want to stay? And he said he's going to stay.
But then, as we'll mention, it gets on January 6th.

Speaker 16 And I wanted to go, look, Dan, you're not very convincing that you're really enjoying making this argument. Like, do you want to do this for four years again if he's re-elected?

Speaker 16 This will be for four years. You're going to get this.
Every time you're going to get questions on Trump, you see me don't want to talk about Trump. Why are you signed up for this?

Speaker 16 I mean, you can get a pretty good job. I'm sure you can after this.
You're a former Navy CEO who was in Congress. Why are you doing this?

Speaker 16 Yeah, that's, I got the sense that this is not something that he's particularly enjoying.

Speaker 15 And you didn't get a satisfactory answer of that. So my other question, which I guess is less about Dan and more about the bigger, you know, kind of party, is the exchange you had about Tucker.

Speaker 15 And the line from Crenshaw that really stuck out to me was he says, I don't consider Tucker to be a Republican.

Speaker 15 He sort of vamps about how you know his views about foreign policy are weird, and then some of his economic views are closer to Elizabeth Warren than Republicans.

Speaker 15 And then you rightly kind of push back at him and are like, Well, Tucker, though, could be a VP choice. And so, I guess I wonder what, like, is your assessment of the answer to that question?

Speaker 15 Like, who is more of a Republican these days, Dan Crenshaw or Tucker? What did you think about his engagement on that question?

Speaker 16 There are still Reagan conservatives, people that

Speaker 16 imagine themselves in the party of Reagan, who still want to believe that the majority of the party is

Speaker 16 that. And I don't know what ideologically the party is to some degree, because I don't think it's an ideology at this moment.
It's Donald Trump and supporting Donald Trump.

Speaker 16 And Donald Trump can pretty quickly sway most of voting Republicans to whatever position that he decides from time to time that he has.

Speaker 16 And most of the people that go to vote on election day, the primary voters, are not there for, you know, the Dan Crenshaw's view, certainly, the Reagan conservatives, and they're not there even for the American first Steve Bannon like ideological framework or even the Tucker Carlson ideological framework.

Speaker 16 They're there for Donald Trump. And whatever Donald Trump's view is, that is what the Republican Party is today.

Speaker 16 And it might not be forever, but right now, and it has been since Donald Trump became the leader of the party, he is the party, and his views and ideas. are what animate it.

Speaker 16 And Dan Crenshaw is not going to be the vice president to Donald Trump.

Speaker 15 Yeah, no, let's do a thought experiment on that. I'm not sure that that's 100% right.
I mean, clearly, the party is a cult of Trump.

Speaker 15 And if Trump woke up tomorrow and was like, the number one issue that matters to this party is that like we need to have daylight savings time forever.

Speaker 15 And like, that's what I'm going to truth about every day, then, like, that would be a 100% issue, no doubt.

Speaker 16 But I don't know.

Speaker 15 If Trump woke up tomorrow and was like,

Speaker 15 you know, I've been having some conversations with my friend Jamie Dimon, and I really do think we need to kind of move to a globalist, no labelsy type platform within the party.

Speaker 15 And I've like the scales have fallen from my eyes on trade and immigration and

Speaker 15 foreign entanglements. You think people would snap back to him? Yeah, because on that? Because I don't know.
I do think that there's some of that.

Speaker 15 I guess my point is that I think that a lot of voters do prefer that.

Speaker 16 Yeah, he wouldn't frame it that way, obviously. I mean, he would say, like, we beat China.
They're on their knees. Now it's the time.
We're doing this from a position.

Speaker 16 Now we're lowering the tariffs to get, you know, or he would say that, you know, he would come up with some reason where he already, his policies won.

Speaker 16 So now we have reached a point where we can recalibrate where our policy is. I think for sure they could go to a free trade.

Speaker 16 I mean, if you're talking about free trade, I don't, I don't, I don't think that is deeply held by the voters that vote for him.

Speaker 16 He made it a significant issue, I think, to most of the Republican Party because it was actually a pretty free trade party before that. And I think he could reverse that.
Sure.

Speaker 16 Yeah, no, I think he can do pretty much anything. Okay.

Speaker 15 Yeah, let me. Okay, so let me ask the question another way then.
Let's say I'm from the future. We're back to the future here.
I'm Michael J. Fox.
Okay. And Donald Trump died.
That's too bad.

Speaker 15 And so it's 2028. We're in January.
And I just flew back to Jamie Weinstein's house with the Churchill picture. And I'm letting you know that the Iowa caucus in New Hampshire primaries just happened.

Speaker 15 And the clear frontrunner is either Dan Crenchon or Nikki Haley or Tucker Carlson or Vivek.

Speaker 15 I'm telling you that the frontrunner is somebody who's running on an America first Steve Bandonist platform, or it's somebody that's running on a Dan Crenshaw platform.

Speaker 15 Like, what would you say is the more likely kind of outcome following Trump's death?

Speaker 16 Yeah, when did he die in this scenario?

Speaker 15 In this scenario,

Speaker 15 he died this year.

Speaker 15 He lost the election to Joe Biden, and then he died over Christmas because he had, you know, his egg dog was spiked. Yeah.

Speaker 15 There's a lot of concerns that the deep state spiked the egg dog, but that's kind of a side issue.

Speaker 16 So I do think that Donald Trump is a unique figure that is not replaceable. And therefore, I do think the party could go back to a different policy orientation.

Speaker 16 So it would not shock me in that scenario if it was Dan Crenshaw versus Nikki Haley.

Speaker 15 Really? Yeah.

Speaker 16 Or Vivek might have slightly different positions. Like, you know, Vivek is not set on his positions.
It depends at the moment what is politically viable.

Speaker 16 So I could see him in that mix as well, but having positions on certain issues that are very different than he has today.

Speaker 16 So it's not really answering your question, like what is the most likely, but I would say I would not be shocked in that scenario if the party is, you know, moved away from Donald Trump's outcome.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 16 I wouldn't say

Speaker 15 on your podcast, you used to ask people,

Speaker 15 do you think what explains Trump is more like his force of personality and will or more his policy orientation?

Speaker 15 And it seems like your answer to that question is the former, like that, that it's less about the policy.

Speaker 16 I always ask that question, but I think it's obviously the former, his personality. It was shown time and time again.
You would have Ann Coulter.

Speaker 16 When Steve Bannon left, people are going to be like, oh, this is going to be bad for, I mean, he was the ideological force. People are going to be really angry.

Speaker 16 No one in the Republican Party, other than like six people, knew who Steve Bannon was. I mean, it was just a DC-centric thing.

Speaker 16 None of those people that went to go vote for Donald Trump knew who Steve Bannon was other than a very small, small, very politically online involved force.

Speaker 16 It didn't make any difference that Donald Trump kicked Steve Bannon to the curb. It didn't make any difference when Ann Coulter started tweeting against him.

Speaker 16 It doesn't make any difference when these people leave and attack him for not being so true to the American first cause. It just doesn't matter because they're voting for Donald Trump.

Speaker 15 I don't think there's a 0% chance you're right about that, but I kind of respectfully disagree. I think they work in concert together.

Speaker 15 And I think that the global movement of parties, of concert right-wing parties in this direction is telling in this account.

Speaker 15 Like my interviews with people at Turning Point and at these events is telling. It's a compelling point that like it might all just be cult of Trump, that it might all just disappear.

Speaker 15 I don't really think so, but it's interesting.

Speaker 16 But Tim, so I had Charlie Kirk on my old podcast. Okay.
Charlie Kirk has changed his positions to model himself off Donald Trump 100%.

Speaker 16 Will he keep them when Donald Trump's not on the stage? Seems like Charlie these days is like for ingratiating himself who's ever like in power. So, I mean, maybe his views will model whoever is.

Speaker 16 I mean, Nikki Haley's the nominee.

Speaker 15 Maybe the next cult. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Maybe he's, maybe he's now, you know, echoing Nikki Haley. You know, I think things change rapidly.
And if Donald Trump's not on the stage, I don't think there's anyone who can fill his shoes.

Speaker 16 Donald Trump Jr. might think.
I think he probably thinks he can step in after Donald Trump leaves the stage. It's not going to work.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 Yeah. I agree with that.
Okay. One more thing on the Crenshaw interview.
Let's just listen to,

Speaker 15 you didn't even ask him about January 6th, actually, he just started talking about it.

Speaker 16 I, I was, I wasn't planning on going there, I thought it's already been done with him. You know, I didn't feel like having that conversation, but he he brought us to that conversation.

Speaker 15 Okay, here it is. Let's listen to it.
I want to give Bill Crystal a heart attack mostly because I tried to get him to listen to it and he refused. So, we're going to play it right now.

Speaker 16 In the end, it was a peaceful transfer of power, and that was it. You know, and it was, I mean, like, I was there and I was pissed about it.

Speaker 16 I was, I was, you know, pissed about how that mob got whipped up. But in the end, you know, I don't call it an insurrection.
It's just by definition, that's not what it is.

Speaker 16 It was an angry mob that got really out of control. And like, they were lied to.
They were lied to in the sense that they were told that they could affect change.

Speaker 16 And when people think that they can affect change, well, they'll get really passionate about it. They'll go.

Speaker 16 And they thought that that day was the day to affect change because they thought that that process you're engaging in in Congress could actually change the presidential election. Of course, it can't.

Speaker 16 That's a very different thing than like trying to raise an army to stay in power. It's a very, very different thing.
And fair, not at the end. I mean, I don't think Jenner was six with procedures.

Speaker 16 I mean, he filed court cases that he lost. And then when those failed, I mean, he attempted to, it wasn't procedural, I don't think.
At the end, I think you'll agree on that, Congressman.

Speaker 16 Well, no, I don't, because it's what's the, what did he do? He tweeted at Mike Pence. Did it instigate like, did

Speaker 16 it kind of make all these people crazy and make them do crazy shit? Yeah. But in the end, he tweeted at Mike Bence.

Speaker 16 Now, I think that was wrong. And he stayed inside and didn't, didn't, didn't initiate help to Mike Bence and do all sorts of things.
Yeah, no, but

Speaker 16 you can criticize, you can criticize the morality of it all day long, but you can't call it this sort of South American style coup.

Speaker 15 Okay, so,

Speaker 15 boy, it's just a lot of post hoc rationalization happening here.

Speaker 15 I think that he has a psychological need for this to be true, and he's kind of convinced himself that this is true, that Donald Trump didn't really do anything that bad.

Speaker 15 It's just got a little light, a little light treason.

Speaker 15 What's your take?

Speaker 16 Here's the thing. The January 6th stuff to me, I remember, and like, it's still in my mind.

Speaker 16 That was like the worst thing that happened domestically in my lifetime in terms of, you know, the government. It was shocking.
Shocking. I couldn't believe.

Speaker 16 I lived right near the VP's residence. I heard like military helicopters.
I thought like, you know, I thought maybe the Article 25 was being enacted.

Speaker 16 I thought like there might be, I mean, it was pretty crazy. It is amazing that all these figures knew it at the time, how awful it was.
Even Nikki Haley, remember?

Speaker 16 Like she said, I could never support him and then kind of started backing away and now is back to it again.

Speaker 15 But everyone knew.

Speaker 16 And as time goes, Trump has maintained his power in the party. They all have to rationalize it as not as bad if they're going to stay.

Speaker 16 within the Republican Party because for the head of the party, Donald Trump, when he started his campaign, he had a choir of the January 6th musicians or something to

Speaker 16 speak to them. And not only do they have to do that now, they have to compare the prisoners to Navalny in order to stay in good graces.

Speaker 16 I quoted to Crenshaw what Zeldon said, and I got the sense he likes Zeldon. So he's like, oh, I don't know what exactly he meant there.
You know, maybe

Speaker 16 it's maybe it's not a joke anymore. It's like the party line is:

Speaker 16 yes, Russia has political prisoners and so does America.

Speaker 16 And either we're similar, or in some cases, they're better at the way they

Speaker 16 handle their political prisoners than us.

Speaker 15 So the other thing that drives me crazy about that,

Speaker 15 any conversation with anybody in your life, public or private figure about this, you know, is like

Speaker 15 they want to do the whole like, well, you know, the media, you guys all overstated. And it's like, you know what I mean? It's just his words.

Speaker 15 It's just to mean truths and it's just his words and it's like i just wanted to be like if we got back in the time machine now going backwards to 2015 and showed dan crencho just a picture of january 6th and been like here's the trump flags here's the confederate flags here's the smoke it's the capital and we're like this will happen and you will defend it you know what i mean like he would be like come on you're an idiot never right you know what i mean and that's like the thing like like that's how the goalposts get made yeah and i'm sure if he was here say i'm not defending it he'd say i but he's minimizing it.

Speaker 16 He's certainly minimizing it now.

Speaker 16 And Donald Trump, and I brought this up to him, was like, how long was he like not responding

Speaker 16 while the Secret Service were like trying to rescue Mike Pence? His vice president was like, life was being threatened and didn't care. So, I mean, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 16 He, Donald Trump is not the greatest planner. And thankfully, he might not be able to execute things that well.

Speaker 16 But he's also a guy who had the power to try to save his vice president for five hours and chose not to lift a finger. That's kind of like as damning as you can get.

Speaker 16 And I mean, I know this is kind of superfluous, but like it's kind of an important point. Like anybody who's ever worked around him, like say he's the worst human being of all time.

Speaker 15 And yet, that's where we are. You would think that would be a data point that people would consider.
Maybe. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 15 And I, and I kind of agree, you implied this earlier, maybe there's not a hundred percent chance that like the democracy ends if he wins again.

Speaker 15 And I'm also on that, but like my point always to these, to people like Crenshaw is like,

Speaker 15 like, what do you think the chance is? Do you think think there's a 1% chance? 2%?

Speaker 15 Right? Because it's like 2% is really bad.

Speaker 15 Previously, before 2020, we hadn't really had an election where you thought that one of the two candidates, there was a 2% chance that the American experiment would end if they won.

Speaker 15 That was a 0% chance for both sides question.

Speaker 15 No matter how bad of a planner he is. You would think that would be, you know, cross-the red line.

Speaker 16 So in my piece where I wrote in 2016, I think I wrote Hillary's malaria and Trump's Ebola. That's why I'm a supporter of malaria over

Speaker 15 Ebola.

Speaker 16 But in that piece.

Speaker 15 My listeners will really appreciate that. Yeah, I will be the malaria net in my vote for Hillary.
We appreciated your Hillary vote.

Speaker 16 But in that piece, I said, you know, look, I don't think Donald Trump is going to overthrow the government, but is there a 10% chance he'll try to maintain power and overthrow the government?

Speaker 16 That's 10% too high.

Speaker 15 I can't vote for someone.

Speaker 16 There's that percentage chance.

Speaker 16 I kind of remember conservative commentators at the time saying, it's just so hyperbolic that people think that, well, he's going to try to maintain power and be a well, he did it.

Speaker 16 And now we're, now we're saying like he probably won't again. I actually think he probably won't.
I mean, won't again and say term limited out.

Speaker 16 But I mean, it has to be at least the same percentage chance as the time before when he did it. Like, why are we, like, we're taking that risk? I guess we're taking that risk.
I don't know.

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Speaker 15 All right. I've got some other topics we got to get through.
Okay.

Speaker 15 I want to talk about Israel. I got some unhappy reader email about my conversation with Brian Boitler on Tuesday and Iglesias about Gaza.

Speaker 15 They thought that he was a little overstated in his claims about Israel's actions. So now I want to...
give you a chance to discuss this. This is something you sent recently.

Speaker 15 You said this before, but it remains true. The sadistic October 7th massacre was the easiest moral test of our time.

Speaker 15 But since so many people are failing it, it has become the most clarifying moral moment of our time. You wrote that.
Talk about that a little bit more and what you mean by it.

Speaker 16 Well, there have been sadistic attacks before. I think the Yazidis is probably up there, and the ISIS attack on the Yazidis, from what we know.

Speaker 16 But we've not had one as sadistic that's at that level that has been filmed. We're able to see the sadism.
We're able to see the level of just, you know,

Speaker 16 murder. It was joyful killing because they were attacking Jews and people that were, you know, working with Jews, fellow Muslims that lived in Israel that coexist with Jews.

Speaker 16 And it was from an organization that controls Gaza, the managers of Gaza, who were founded upon a document that not only calls for the murder of Israelis, but the genocide of Jews worldwide in its founding charter.

Speaker 16 Now, what is the response that is proportional to that threat after you know that they can, which was shocking to me, I mean, totally shocking, having been to that fence and having written about it for years, that it had a hundred percent success rate in stopping terrorist infiltration.

Speaker 16 What is the proportional threat to the threat of elimination, the threat of genocide? It has to be to destroy the group that wants to do it.

Speaker 16 It just so happens that this group has spent aid money that was supposed to go to help the people of Gaza and their fellow citizens, I guess you would say, because they're the leaders of Gaza, and built the most elaborate tunnel system that the world has ever known to hide under the population so that in this conflict, it will be even more bloody than it would be if they were fighting another way.

Speaker 16 So in order to defeat this organization, there's no way it can not be bloody, unfortunately,

Speaker 16 because that's the way they made it. They made it so that would be the case.
So I am not a military expert. I'm not in Israel's position.

Speaker 16 I would understand if they said, you know, there's no way we can actually do this,

Speaker 16 a ceasefire is necessary to get our hostages back. But

Speaker 16 I don't see how this cycle that we've had with Gaza ends going back and forth in these wars unless Hamas is totally defeated.

Speaker 16 And by defeated, I mean its leadership totally eliminated and its foot soldiers to the extent you can killed or captured.

Speaker 15 Okay. The first 90% of that answer, I was with you 100% of the way.
So, you know, I think that we have a little bit of an area worth hashing out about kind of what to do about it, right?

Speaker 15 And one of the things you didn't get into that I'm sure we agree on when you talk about the people that failed the moral test, the folks that were posting hang glider memes on Instagram.

Speaker 15 You know, at my alma mater, there was glory to the martyrs projected onto the library.

Speaker 15 We could go down the list of people that were literally pro-Hamas in their response and then kind of expand that circle circle out to the people that were silent in the face of folks that were literally pro-Hamas at their organization, be it a college or political organization.

Speaker 15 You know, there are folks that have tried to create moral equivalency, gross, horrible, and infecting too many of our American institutions. I 100% agree with that.

Speaker 15 But I think we get to another moral question, though, which is like, okay,

Speaker 15 is there unlimited, are there no

Speaker 15 rules of war that Israel has to abide to?

Speaker 15 Do they get unlimited ability to kill in response?

Speaker 15 I mean, the usage of the 2,000-pound bombs in civilian areas, there was just a story this morning, civilians had swarmed around newly arrived aid trucks in the hope to get food when Israeli tanks and drones started shooting at people.

Speaker 15 Israeli officials, this is not coming from Palestine or Gaza, told CNN

Speaker 15 that they did use live fire fire on people surrounding the aid truck because they felt like the crowd were approaching the forces in a manner that posed a threat to the troops.

Speaker 15 And I get it, you know, people waving white flags. It doesn't seem like there's a real plan.
Like, 60 to 80% of the structures in Gaza have been bombed.

Speaker 15 It's like, okay, we kill all of the Hamas leaders to what end, right?

Speaker 15 Like, and so that is like just this giving carte blanche to Bibi and this sense, I think, a lot from the pro-Israel side a lot of times, that if anybody raises concerns about this, then they're giving aid and comfort to the terrorist.

Speaker 15 You know, that's where I start to kind of part ways with people.

Speaker 16 Well, I would say there's no question that there's a lot of death and destruction. I think actually Israel has enormous standards.

Speaker 16 And it's, you know, the standards that they act to launch attacks is well known and documented. Now, I don't know all the things that you mentioned.

Speaker 16 A lot of these things that are reported at the time often turn out not to be the case when the dust settles. I go back to 2002, the Janine massacre.

Speaker 15 I just, I will say on this point, I wanted to be very specific. I only used examples of things that the IDF has copped to, right? Because I agree with that.

Speaker 15 There's been a lot of news out there and a lot of, you know, false news taking kind of the Hamas angle from, you know, that face.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I'm not accusing you of trying to, but, but I remember like in 2002, the Jenine massacre. They called it a massacre.

Speaker 16 MSNBC was flaring this massacre that, you know, Israel like killed 500 people. It turns out the troops went door to door to make sure they killed only the terrorists that were in there.

Speaker 16 And I think 50 people died, not 500. It wasn't a massacre.
23 Israeli troops died in the same battle instead of doing a campaign above to just drop bombs on it.

Speaker 16 So a lot of times when the dust settles, some of these claims of massacres often turn out not to be true. I'm sure that there could be cases where some Israeli soldiers are not following protocol.

Speaker 16 But I ask a lot of people this who have a similar position. How do you get Hamas leaders that have deliberately decided to hide under civilian infrastructures in tunnels?

Speaker 16 I mean, that's not a scenario that I know has happened in any other war. Israel's in a position to root out this genocidal foe that has burrowed itself underground.

Speaker 16 And by the way, with the aid that has come from the world to help the Palestinians, they use that money not to build bunkers for the Palestinians in case of war, not to provide food.

Speaker 16 but to hide underground. And the question is, if any country is in that position, it's a terrible position to be in.
So how do you do it?

Speaker 16 And I think the reason they're in that position is because Hamas deliberately knows that once civilians die, that there are these calls for ceasefire, and that's their exit plan.

Speaker 16 That's how they'll survive.

Speaker 16 Once it's over or there's a ceasefire, you know, they'll come out of their bunkers with a victory, V for victory, and plan and plot to do this again, as they said they would.

Speaker 16 That's what they want to do. They want to keep doing it.
So it's deeply tragic.

Speaker 16 But I do believe the blame for it goes to Hamas and to a lesser extent to a lot of international aid organizations that were giving money and not following where that money was going.

Speaker 16 And instead of giving it to the people, it was enriching Hamas to do these type of things.

Speaker 15 Yeah, our views about Hamas and their culpability here are completely simpatico.

Speaker 15 I think the question, though, is there's a lot of things in life where you don't have good choices, where there are gray areas, right? Where you're being treated unfairly, right?

Speaker 15 And like, does not still Israel have some responsibility and the leaders of Israel some responsibility to say, okay, I mean, we need to root out Hamas and we need to kill them.

Speaker 15 But in order to kill all of the Hamas leadership, we're going to have to totally decimate Gaza, you know, so that it's unlivable afterwards.

Speaker 15 We're going to kill some X number of innocents that's going to number into the thousands. And then at the end, we still don't really have a plan for what we're going to do after.

Speaker 15 Maybe we'll occupy it, I guess. Maybe there'll be a couple non-terrorists that can take over.
We don't have a good option, though. Like the the Palestinian Authority is hollowed out and corrupt.

Speaker 15 Hamas is the thing that people voted for. Okay, so in the face of those bad options,

Speaker 15 is it not okay for there to be people to say to Israel, okay,

Speaker 15 maybe we need to start going back to the drawing board? I don't know. Maybe there's a lot of space here between just mass slaughter and doing nothing.

Speaker 16 Well, I just don't, I'm not going to say it's mass slaughter. Because, I mean,

Speaker 16 if Israel wanted it to be mass slaughter and there would be, you know, 100,000 dead, dead, it could be mass slaughter.

Speaker 16 I believe they are targeting to the best they can the terrorists there, but it's not an easy job when people have created a system of tunnels under the ground to hide from Israel after committing the worst massacre since the Holocaust.

Speaker 16 I think people have to understand Benjamin Netanyahu. I wish he would resign.
I think he's been there too long.

Speaker 16 I think the failure to prevent what occurred on October 7th is going to be a damning legacy to him. But he has not been a particularly violent or someone who wants to engage in wars.

Speaker 16 Like this is not what he wanted. I mean, he was.

Speaker 15 There are more hardliners and there are people trying to push him to be more aggressive than the government.

Speaker 16 Sure, but even he was avoiding kind of this issue until October 7th.

Speaker 16 And I don't believe if you replace Benjamin Nyahoo today with someone else in the war cabinet, you would have a policy that is that much different in terms of a war in Gaza.

Speaker 16 You might have someone who is more likable and easy to deal with with the U.S. administration, but I do not believe you would have a very much different situation in the struggle,

Speaker 16 the fight in Gaza, because I think after October 7th, the view in Israel, and I'm not Israeli, but I don't think they can tolerate the existence of Hamas. And there is a solution.

Speaker 16 There is a better option to this, and that is for Hamas to give back the hostages and surrender, or at least come to a deal where they give back the hostages and get a ceasefire. They can do that.

Speaker 16 I mean, if this was a genocide, as some people claim, like I've never heard a genocide in history where the solution to stop the genocide is to just return the prisoners, these hostages, innocent civilians, that the person losing the battle has captured.

Speaker 15 If you waves the white flag, we stop the genocide. It's a fair point.
I concur with that. There are many of my colleagues that agree with you.
I'm just, I don't know.

Speaker 15 It's starting to make me uncomfortable. It's been a long time.
I was essentially where you were during October and then early November, and it's late February.

Speaker 15 And if anything, it seems potentially, well, hopefully, there's a deal this weekend, but BB is sending signals that it's potentially escalatory signals if the deal falls through. So we'll see.

Speaker 15 But you make a compelling case. I do not think that you're supporting an ethnic cleansing, but I think that there is maybe some space between.

Speaker 15 Unfortunately, the only views I see out there is like Mehdi Hassan's view and the completely opposite side of that. I'm trying to stake out some room between.

Speaker 15 Okay, I want to argue with you about one other thing. Our friend, I don't really want to to make it about him, Adam Rubinstein wrote for the Atlantic.
I was a heretic of the New York Times.

Speaker 15 People can read that in the Atlantic if they haven't and they want context.

Speaker 15 He was on the opinion page at the New York Times when the Tom Cotton brouhaha happened about publishing the Tom Cotton op-ed. And he stayed there for a little while after that.

Speaker 15 He's a Weekly Standard alum.

Speaker 15 And, you know, his argument basically says that as a conservative or center-right person at the New York Times, that he, you know, felt, I think, separate from very much separate from the culture there, ostracized, and

Speaker 15 that he was treated poorly with regards to kind of the oversight and the review of how the Tom Cottonop Ed was handled.

Speaker 15 And I just, I want to say in the micro, I like basically agree with everything that he said, and I think that he got screwed over.

Speaker 15 But like, I think the part that I want to hash out with you is not like so much about his specific case, but about what that case says about our current discourse and media landscape.

Speaker 15 Because I read the story and I was like, okay, the Times is culturally liberal and you got screwed over by your colleagues. That sucks, but that's like a dog bites man story to me.

Speaker 15 Like, I just, I don't,

Speaker 15 there are culturally liberal outlets, there are culturally conservative outlets, there are culturally liberal companies, culturally conservative companies. People get screwed over and

Speaker 15 inter-office fights all the time.

Speaker 15 I don't think that this is a crisis of epic proportions.

Speaker 16 I don't think we need massive movements and organizations dedicated to this other people disagree where where do you fall on that well i think part of it uh his piece is a micro but really is a macro which is the the opening anecdote which for people who haven't read it he was in hr meeting with a bunch of other employees and they asked him a question just to kind of break the ice with everybody like what's your favorite sandwich and his initial thought in his mind was i guess a very expensive sandwich i've never heard of uh but he didn't want to do that because he thought people would not like it so he said uh you know uh spicy chick-fil-a chicken sandwich and the hr person said you know we don't eat chick-fil-a in this place because of the paid chicken yeah no because the uh the uh chick-fil-a's the leadership of chick-fil-a's views on gay marriage and then everyone started snapping um

Speaker 16 okay that is not culturally liberal that is an insane asylum

Speaker 16 that is a scene that is an insane asylum and and where i would say the macro in that is is that this is the paper of record.

Speaker 16 If that is the staff reaction and that is going on, and that's like not seen as an insane asylum

Speaker 15 that bothers you, it's the snapping. You're more of a clapping man,

Speaker 15 you just feel uncomfortable. Maybe this is more about your age, though.
I don't know.

Speaker 15 Snapping is just more in vogue. I don't know.

Speaker 16 I thought it was like the beatniks in the 1950s or something.

Speaker 15 I don't know about that age.

Speaker 16 But yeah, no, I think that's kind of a painting in insane asylum. And this is supposed to be the paper of record.
And look, I feel bad because I know people there or friends of mine. I mean,

Speaker 16 great reporters. So I know, like, because I know people in media, like when I read this, like, okay, there are some, at least some really great writers, the Times.
It's not all like this.

Speaker 16 I can trust their work. But if you're like, this is an outside person of the media, doesn't know the media world and you see this, like, I don't know.

Speaker 15 Should I be reading the Times?

Speaker 16 Like, this is, this is absolutely a crazy environment. So that's a micro, which I think is a macro.

Speaker 15 So, okay, that's fair though. But again, that's about the Times.
Like, the Times is culturally liberal and is staffed by people that are elite and culturally liberal.

Speaker 15 Like this has been true since the beginning of the New York Times, right? He published his story in The Atlantic, you know, not exactly a lunch pail magazine, okay?

Speaker 15 That is a culturally elite magazine. It's very good.
I look at the Washington Post. The Washington Post editorial page, as far as I'm concerned, has conservative white man affirmative action.

Speaker 15 Like Hugh Hewitt, Mark Tiessen, Jim Garrity, Ramesh, Ramesh isn't white, but Ramesh, Ramesh is great.

Speaker 15 Whatever you think about any of these people, like Hugh Hewitt, if he was a liberal white man and he was putting out the quality of columns that he puts out, would be writing letters to the editor.

Speaker 15 Okay. He would not have a perch at one of the top magazines.
So like... This idea that conservative thought is being stifled in these organizations.
Sure, yeah, at some places, right?

Speaker 15 But I mean, I'm sure somebody that works at Fox News that puts their pronouns in their bio would say that they get mocked and treated poorly and that that's rude.

Speaker 15 I just, I guess, like, why does this matter? Convince me that this matters at all.

Speaker 16 And I don't think this is actually a cancel culture question, but I do, this is why I think it matters even more than,

Speaker 16 I mean, I'd have to think about the cancel culture aspect, but I think what it matters is.

Speaker 15 Well, it's cancel culture in the sense of like that ideas are being silenced culturally because maybe they're not being canceled, but they feel uncomfortable sharing them.

Speaker 15 I think the notion is that if I can't mention that that I eat a spicy Chick-fil-A sandwich, then I'm sure as hell not going to mention that, like, I think abortion should be banned in the first trimester because, or whatever.

Speaker 15 So, I think that it's related in that.

Speaker 16 But here's why it matters, I think, even beyond the cancel culture aspect: is that, and I had this conversation on my old show with Ben Smith, when you staff a paper with all like-minded people from like-minded places, as you just said, they're all, you know, probably Ivy League graduates who feel comfortable snapping

Speaker 15 to,

Speaker 16 you know, I never saw that

Speaker 16 when I went to Cornell 20 years ago, so maybe it's new. But look, they're all comfortable in the same meal.

Speaker 16 They all have kind of same cultural reference points, probably similar ideological outlook.

Speaker 16 And the problem is when you're covering politics and the New York Times isn't known as a liberal paper, at least it doesn't present itself as a liberal paper, right?

Speaker 16 It might be viewed as that by conservatives, but it does not present itself as a liberal paper. It's like the paper of record.

Speaker 16 When you ask questions of politicians, you start having asking it from a certain framework. And you brought up abortion, right?

Speaker 16 There's a way to ask an abortion question if your view is that it's a human right to have an abortion.

Speaker 16 And there's a way to ask an abortion question of a politician if your framework perhaps is that it's murder or something less than that, something that should have some restrictions.

Speaker 16 And both ways to ask a question are actually probably good questions to ask of different senators, depending on the senator, if you're trying to be neutral.

Speaker 16 The New York Times isn't asking, you know, I think the classic example is a Democratic senator. You know, when is a baby a life? Is it?

Speaker 15 Sure. But who cares? I guess who cares? What do you mean he cares? Like, aren't there other reporters out there that can ask those questions? I mean, we are, we are living in a time of abundance.

Speaker 15 To me, I'm just like, really? Like, people are feeling stifled. There's so many outlets.
There's this preponderance of outlets. Ben Smith now runs when he has semaphore.

Speaker 15 Like, there is the Axios, there's Politico, there's the AP, there's Reuters, Washington Examiner has people there, the Dispatch has people, the ball, we just stole somebody from you, and he's going to be at the White House.

Speaker 15 Andrew, like, isn't everybody's view represented?

Speaker 15 And isn't the fact that the New York Times view is all of the same milieu, isn't that just downstream from our polarization of education and our politics?

Speaker 15 And like, isn't that also kind of Donald Trump's fault? Like, who do you want the New York Times to hire? Somebody that likes Donald Trump?

Speaker 16 No, I didn't quite say that, but you might know this better than me, since I think probably at one point in your career, you imagined being at the podium looking down at the reporters from the White House.

Speaker 15 room. I did imagine that once.
No longer.

Speaker 16 Who is the front row there?

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's the networks, ABC, NBC, CBS. It's AP.

Speaker 15 It used to be Helen Thomas.

Speaker 15 Peter Ducey looks like he's in the front row now these days. Maybe he's in the second row sometime.

Speaker 16 There you go. But it's all outlets that say they are not biased.
They say they are mainstream.

Speaker 16 And, you know, I'm not saying they are or they aren't, but if they all have people from the same mindset, they are put on a different pedestal than the Washington Examiner Examiner getting a question about one of these topics that we're talking about in one of these Hunter Biden's laptops.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 16 So I do think it matters when you're talking about outlets that are considered non-biased, mainstream, non-ideological. They're the ones that tend to get

Speaker 16 debates, you know, more often than not, or at least they used to.

Speaker 15 I don't know if that happens.

Speaker 16 I don't know if that's going to be the same case anymore. But it used to be ABC and CNN.

Speaker 16 If you're all staffed, and I'm not saying they all are, but I think in the the case of what we're seeing in that New York Time piece, it looks like a lot of the staff has the same snapping.

Speaker 15 If everybody's snapping, that's a problem.

Speaker 16 Yeah. So I do think it's an issue if you're staffed with people from one perspective.

Speaker 16 And I actually think that's this perspective that people argue for the importance of diversity at companies and different places.

Speaker 16 When everyone has the same perspective, you might be missing out on something else.

Speaker 15 I'm for it. I'm for it.
I think the New York Times should hire people that, you know, went to state school and whatever.

Speaker 15 But like, I just, I think at a time when we're seeing increased education polarization, like there's something you have to go to college, right, at the New York Times, I think, right? Like, maybe not.

Speaker 15 Like, somebody, I guess, could be a college dropout and also be a New York Times reporter. I'm not saying that that's impossible.

Speaker 15 But, like, generally speaking, if you're going to be a person of letters, you kind of need to have graduated college.

Speaker 15 And if 85% of college graduates are for one party because the other party is appealing to racist bigots by putting a reality TV show Buffoon as their presidential nominee for three cycles.

Speaker 15 And I'm kind of like, I don't know what to do. I think that the New York Times should try harder to have viewpoint diversity.
I do. But I just don't care that much about it.

Speaker 15 I don't think that it's that big of a deal.

Speaker 16 Again, I went to undergrad at Cornell. I went to grad school at LSE.
So I've been to some of these institutions that are supposedly elite and like super liberal.

Speaker 16 Not everyone who's even left of center and votes a Democrat is like snapping their fingers and like at the Chick-fil-A thing. Like we're acting like this is like,

Speaker 16 I don't know people that do that. I mean, and I know a lot of people in the media, I mean, they're friends, and none of them, very few of them, share my center-right ideology.

Speaker 15 Okay, this comes down to the snapping. We're going to do a whole hour on this.
We've gone way over. Katie is going to be so mad at me.
Don't cut this, Katie.

Speaker 15 I want people to know that you're mad at me when they listen. But we need to talk about Finding Matt Drudge really quick.
And then we're going to be finished.

Speaker 15 I guess I should reveal that I was interviewed for the Finding Matt Drudge podcast.

Speaker 15 And so I guess I have a little bit of skin in the game here. But he's a super interesting character.
He's extremely influential, still influential, you know, maybe not at his peak like he once was.

Speaker 15 And the podcast digs into his influence and his history while also trying to literally find him because he's missing.

Speaker 15 And so it's, you know, a little bit politics, a little bit, I don't know, true crime or something. I don't know.
You pitch it better than me.

Speaker 16 Well, it's kind of the political version of Finding Richard Simmons.

Speaker 16 And we are literally trying to find him while trying to, you know, tell tell his story and answer some of the questions that are still mysterious.

Speaker 16 Because, why did he become increasingly reclusive when he used to come to the D.C. White House correspondence dinners and have a TV show? Why did he turn against Donald Trump after supporting him?

Speaker 16 The questions.

Speaker 15 Way to go, Matt. I'm snapping at Matt, giving him snaps for that turn.

Speaker 16 And then there's some people that believe that he doesn't even own the site anymore. So the show tries to answer those questions and try to get him in the final episode to sit down for an interview.

Speaker 16 So we are actively attending.

Speaker 15 Have you had any luck?

Speaker 16 Well, I'm heading out.

Speaker 15 Do we have any leads? Do we have any hot leads?

Speaker 16 Well, I'm heading out to a city tomorrow, and we have an invitation to him that we have a seat will be open for him at a dinner.

Speaker 16 And we're hoping that he'll come join us. That will be part of episode eight.

Speaker 16 So, you know, hopefully we'll be able to tell you that he did come and we had an interview. I don't know.
I don't know he's going to sit down with us.

Speaker 16 He kind of, in the past, when authors wrote books on him, there's a recent pretty good biography of him from 2020.

Speaker 16 He plays around with it, like lets people know that he's listening, but he didn't give an interview to the author.

Speaker 16 Our last episode that just came out on Wednesday, episode six, kind of goes into why he turned.

Speaker 16 And then we have a big, big episode that's going to answer a lot of questions about Trump next week, where we have a former employee, the first employee, perhaps, coming out on the record talking about Matt Trudge.

Speaker 16 So I think we're going to learn a lot from that. And I hope that he sees that we kind of try to do a fair job on this.
I mean, we weren't trying to make an ideological case against him or for him.

Speaker 16 And, you know, I would love for him to sit down. Our tagline is, how can you be the most powerful man in media? And we know so little about him.
And to your question, he's still quite powerful.

Speaker 16 I mean, we tried to talk to a lot of people that did not want to talk because they still, still are dependent on those Drudge links.

Speaker 15 I've been listening. It is a great podcast.
People should check it out. Finding Matt Drudge.
Jamie Weinstein, thank you for being in the hot seat today. And hope we can do this again soon, brother.

Speaker 16 Thank you. Appreciate it.

Speaker 15 Marijuana, hellistic, psilocybin, damp,

Speaker 15 the options,

Speaker 15 love's the only thing that ever saved my life.

Speaker 15 Don't waste your mind on nursery rhymes, fairy tales, the blood and wine, turtles all the way down line.

Speaker 15 So to reach the rounds, we go home. Further realms our souls must roam to and through live death.
We all come space and tonight.

Speaker 15 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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