David French and Bill Kristol: The Age Thing

Speaker 1 is Matt Rogers from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 2 This is Boen Yang from Los Culturalistos with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 1 Hey, Bowen, it's gift season.

Speaker 2 Stressing me out. Why are the people I love so hard to shop for?

Speaker 1 Probably because they only make boring gift guides that are totally uninspired. Except for the guide we made.

Speaker 2 In partnership with Marshalls, where premium gifts mean incredible value, it's giving gifts.

Speaker 1 With categories like best gifts for the mom whose idea of a sensible walking shoe is a stiletto.

Speaker 2 or Best Gifts for Me that were so thoughtful I really shouldn't have.

Speaker 1 Check out the guide on Marshalls.com and gift the good stuff at Marshalls.

Speaker 5 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 5 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 5 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 5 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure: the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 5 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 6 Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes.
Let me tell you about today's show. This is my last Bulwark podcast, but we're going to go out the way we came in.

Speaker 6 We're going to be joined by David French from the New York Times, longtime friend of the podcast, to talk about the Supreme Court decision yesterday.

Speaker 6 But I wanted to start off by kind of bookending the podcast, because I remember a cold, dark day in December 2018 when Bill Crystal and I sat down and did the very first bulwark podcast.

Speaker 6 In fact, we did the Bulwark podcast before it was the Bulwark podcast. This is the way it sounded.
Good morning. I'm Charlie Sykes and welcome to what is eventually going to be the Bulwark podcast.

Speaker 6 And we're going to be launching it after the holidays. But Bill Kristol and I thought that, well, we have some things to talk about today.
So here's a special pre-Christmas edition.

Speaker 6 You can sort of think of it as a sample. So Bill, here we are.

Speaker 8 Good to be here with you, Charlie, and I'm looking forward to when we pick up

Speaker 8 in the new year doing this regularly.

Speaker 6 Yeah, well, we figured it's the winter solstice. What else are we going to do? It's the, you know,

Speaker 8 it's the darkest day of the year. How appropriate is that?

Speaker 6 How appropriate is it that it's still kind of one of the darkest days of the year? Bill, welcome back on the podcast, my first Bulwark podcast, my last Bulwark podcast with you.

Speaker 4 It's great to be with you and an honor to be both the first and the last. It was, just so people understand, that was the Monday, I believe, December 21st.

Speaker 4 The Weekly Standard had been murdered on the Friday before you would come to town for that event. We had the whole staff meeting there.
And then we just thought, you know what?

Speaker 4 The bulwark had been, we'd started a couple of months before in a very bare-bones skeleton thing.

Speaker 4 We thought, you know what, let's see if there is a market for contraria, as you called yourself at the time, a contrarian conservative, a never-Trump ex-Republican kind of Republican or ex-Republican.

Speaker 4 type of enterprise. But we were very uncertain, weren't we, that this thing would actually go anywhere.

Speaker 6 We did it because we were sitting there in sarah longwell's conference room we thought well why not right we have audio equipment to do a bare bones podcast but i it's really amazing what you've done over the last uh god how long is it five plus years i mean you know when you think about what the bulwark has become you know i you and i were sitting there it was just a few days after the murder of the weekly standard and it was still kind of stunning that that had happened and originally it was like hey you know how do you keep the band together and so i think the original plan was maybe you know hang on for three months.

Speaker 6 You know, Sarah was trying to pull together the money. And here we are in 2024.
So it has been a wild and very, very interesting ride, Bill.

Speaker 4 It has been, you know, and there we were in 2019, the end of 2018. Looked like Trump was in charge of the Republican Party.
Looked like he'd be the nominee again.

Speaker 4 Looked like the Republicans on the Hill were going south. Looked like the country was being increasingly deluged with authoritarian, you know, BS and having its institutions undermined right and left.

Speaker 4 And things have really changed a lot in the last five plus years, right, Charlie?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I know. That's the funny thing.

Speaker 6 I was listening to more of it, and we were talking about the fire hose and news and all the things that were going on that particular week, and why you and I had to do kind of an emergency early podcast.

Speaker 6 And it's like, okay, fast forward five years, six years. And

Speaker 6 every week has been that way.

Speaker 6 So, by the way, I just want people to know that starting Monday, Morning Shots is going to be taken over by you and Andrew Ager, who was also one of the original bulwark guys, has been working at the dispatch, coming back home to the bulwark.

Speaker 6 So congratulations on having to get up at five o'clock every morning, Bill, and turning out a newsletter.

Speaker 4 I'm looking forward to doing it at least for this year. And I'm looking forward to Andrew doing the bulk of the work that you did.

Speaker 4 The two of us together will hopefully be able to somewhat make up for your compared to what you did individually. I mean, both the assembling of all the links that were so useful and so, you know,

Speaker 4 important to be able to see every morning, plus the actual, you know, interesting, perceptive, witty commentary on it. So we will do our best together to fill your shoes.

Speaker 6 I think it's going to be well worth it. And so people, make sure you watch your inbox on Monday morning for Bill and Andrew.

Speaker 6 And I have to say that looking back on the five years or so that I've been doing the daily stuff, I don't think there was a single morning when I got up and I thought, geez, there's nothing to write about today.

Speaker 6 And certainly certainly that's not going to be the case in 2024. And of course, on Monday, this podcast will continue, of course.
And Tim Miller will be taking over as the host of that.

Speaker 6 So make sure that you listen in. I'm sure that Tim's going to do a great job.
But since I have you here, Bill, would you like to do a little bit of ranked punditry?

Speaker 4 That's what we do, Charlie. You know, that's like asking, I don't know, what's the right metaphor for this? Asking a...
gorilla if you'd like a banana or something, right? You know?

Speaker 6 Well, that wouldn't be the analogy that I was going to go for, but okay. So, you know, there's been so much that's happened this week.

Speaker 6 Actually, you know, Friday podcasts are always interesting to do because you go, was that this week? It seems so long ago.

Speaker 6 I mean, when you had the Majorkis impeachment, you know, earlier in the week, the D.C. Court of Appeals comes down with this immunity ruling.
Then you have this gigantic argument in front of the U.S.

Speaker 6 Supreme Court about the 14th Amendment. And here we are on Friday, and all of that has happened.
And then we also had that special counsel report.

Speaker 6 So I want to ask you about that because it's one of those things that, you know, people may not want to talk about it, but it's out there.

Speaker 6 This special counsel named her, a Republican, a Trump appointee, decides he's not going to charge Joe Biden with any crime for having the documents, but that's not what people are really talking about.

Speaker 6 They're talking about the language in that report that calls into question.

Speaker 6 you know, whether Joe Biden is there and he's got a memory. And I think the Biden White House gets how potentially damaging this is because Biden was, he was pissed.

Speaker 6 He comes out last night, has a press conference, and here's a little bit of his reaction to this.

Speaker 11 The special counsel acknowledged I cooperated completely. I did not throw up any roadblocks.
I sought no delays.

Speaker 11 In fact, I was so determined to give the special counsel what he needed, I went forward with a five-hour in-person, five-hour in-person interview over two days on October the 8th and 9th.

Speaker 11 of last year, even though Israel had just been attacked by Hamas on the 7th and I was very occupied. It was in the middle of handling an international crisis.

Speaker 11 I was especially pleased to see Special Counsel make clear the stark distinction and difference between this case and Mr. Trump's case.

Speaker 11 The special counsel wrote, and I quote, several material distinctions between Mr. Trump's case and Mr.

Speaker 11 Biden's are clear, continuing to quote, most notably, After giving multiple chances to return classified documents to avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite.

Speaker 11 According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.

Speaker 11 In contrast, he went on to say Mr.

Speaker 11 Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations, including his home, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.

Speaker 11 ⁇ End of quote.

Speaker 6 Okay, but here's the part where he's clearly ticked off because having gone through all of that, then he has to address the language about him being a little shaky in his memory.

Speaker 11 In addition, I know there's some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There's even reference that I don't remember when my son died.

Speaker 11 How in the hell dare he raise that?

Speaker 11 Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business.

Speaker 6 All right, Bill, what's your take? How much damage has this done to Joe Biden?

Speaker 6 And how is he handling it?

Speaker 4 I mean, I would say that, first of all, I've been concerned about this for quite a while. You have too, I think.
Though maybe I was even more on the extreme side of concern.

Speaker 4 And James Carville and others have really worried about this, that he is old. The individual lapses of memory, I don't think, are decisive.

Speaker 4 You know, you can get a country's name wrong, or we all make those, those are really slip-ups, obviously. They're not affecting governing.
They're not even affecting communications that much.

Speaker 4 He corrects them typically pretty quickly. It's more that he's 81.
He'll be 82 if re-elected. He'll be, that would imply he's president until he's 86.
As James Carville put it,

Speaker 4 you don't get better in those years. You might, hopefully, you stabilize and you're just fine.
But, you know, that's a hope. I saw a clip of him in 2021, early in his presidency the other day.

Speaker 4 He was pretty different, I got to say. That doesn't mean that he's not capable of being a perfectly good president.
It's just he was different. There's clear aging.
And there's going to be aging.

Speaker 4 I mean, that's the trouble with it, right?

Speaker 4 And I think people, and that's why the polls showed that two-thirds of Americans, maybe 70%, and a majority of Democrats a year ago did not want him to run for re-election and thought he could well be too old for a second term.

Speaker 4 So for me, that's really the key. The special counsel's report obviously has brought it back to the forefront.
I think we'll have a little bit of silly debate about memory for a day or two.

Speaker 4 And then it still is what it is. And I was always on the side of let's have a vigorous prime, let's have a one-term, successful presidency.

Speaker 4 He did what he did, transitional transitional figure, have a lively primary, probably would turn out okay, I think, and have a next generation Democratic candidate.

Speaker 4 I suppose it's too late for that, though.

Speaker 4 I don't know, you can imagine jiggering primaries and writing candidates, but I remain very worried about, just as a matter of electability, and secondarily as a matter of what an actual second term would look like in terms of his governance.

Speaker 4 And thirdly, the fact that his vice president is not, you know, just fairly or unfairly, isn't terribly well thought of or terribly popular. People don't have great confidence.

Speaker 4 I mean, 1994, you and I are all left to remember this. You know, he had some real problems.
He kind of lost track of things in that one debate. Remember that?

Speaker 13 He was a young pup back then, though.

Speaker 4 A, he was 73, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.
So eight years younger than Biden. And B, George H.W.
Bush was vice president. And people didn't love Bush at the time.

Speaker 4 And he was, you know, but you know what? No one was worried, right? Bush, George Schultz, Jim Baker. You know, if Reagan failed a little bit, they were there.
And so it would be fine.

Speaker 4 I don't feel like the Biden team, people don't have that kind of confidence. So it more rests on him.
And he is 81 years old.

Speaker 6 Well, and the language that was used in this, and again, there's a lot of controversy about whether or not the special counsel gratuitously threw it in. You know, was it necessary

Speaker 6 to write Mr.

Speaker 6 Biden's memory was significantly limited, limited precision and recall, that Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.

Speaker 6 And then he goes on, in his interview with our office, Mr. Biden's memory was worse.
He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended.

Speaker 6 If it was 2013, when did I stop being vice president? Forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began. He did not remember even within several years when his son Bo died.

Speaker 6 Probably unnecessary, but you know, the damage is real and you have that sense.

Speaker 6 And I guess, you know, if anybody thought that this was not going to be front and center, just look at the way this has become a major talking point on the right.

Speaker 4 Well, and your point about these sudden remarks by the president in press conference at 7.45, whatever it was last night, they don't do that very often. They haven't done it very often.

Speaker 4 I don't think he's had a press conference of that sort in four or five months, maybe. So that shows the White House was really alarmed.
Yes.

Speaker 4 I mean, they could easily have taken the view, maybe they should have, that, okay, look, it's a hit.

Speaker 4 It's a print story, if I can use an old-fashioned term. There's no audio or video on it.
There's a report from her.

Speaker 4 He, you know, and we're just going to say this is gratuitous and inaccurate and roll out six people who've been in meetings with Biden recently and say he's totally fine. And that's that.

Speaker 4 Instead, they were worried enough, or he was personally maybe worried and angry enough that he insisted on doing this thing that I think was not wise. I mean, he didn't look great.

Speaker 4 Leave aside the slip-up about Egypt and Mexico. And it just is, it elevates it.
I mean, how can you not cover the neck?

Speaker 4 Biden supporters say, well, why is the press obsessing about this? The President of the United States had a specially called announcement at a press conference at 7.45 p.m.

Speaker 4 on a weekday, you know, on Thursday night. You can't really blame the media for spending the next day talking about it.

Speaker 6 Well, and the headlines are, you know, Biden angrily responds. Well, I'm going to be very interested in following all of your takes, as I have been for many, many years now.

Speaker 6 Congratulations to you and to Andrew. I've tried to keep the chair warm for you and for Tim on the podcast.
And it has been a great run, Bill.

Speaker 6 And, you know, we're still going to be in the fight together. So I appreciate it all.

Speaker 4 Totally. And congratulations to you.
And we will be in the fight. And I'll see you in a couple of weeks here for that conference.
You're on that panel with the.

Speaker 6 Absolutely.

Speaker 6 I will see you then.

Speaker 4 Principles first. Principles first.
Principles first. So that's so.
Yeah. So that's a good group.
And that's a little bit of an offspring, you might say, of what we were trying to do, too. So

Speaker 4 I feel good about the fact that we have the bulwark, but also other institutions that have grown up in this space. And so it gives us a little bit of hope occasionally for

Speaker 4 the country, right? All right.

Speaker 6 Bill Crystal, thank you so much for joining me again on the podcast, my first and my last X Charlie. Coming up, David French from the New York Times.

Speaker 6 No fees, no interest. I used it to get this portable spa with Jets.

Speaker 12 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 17 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 6 Save the offer in the app. Ends 1231, see PayPal.com promo terms.
Points give you renewing for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval. PayPal Inc.
NMLS 910-457.

Speaker 5 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 5 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 5 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 5 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 5 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 6 Well, because this is my last Bullwork podcast as the host, we want to end on a high note.

Speaker 6 And how much higher can we get than going to our good friend David French, New York Times columnist, longtime friend of the podcast. David, good to talk with you today.

Speaker 18 Charlie, I cannot tell you how honored I am that I'm your last guest.

Speaker 21 I'm seriously touched, Charlie.

Speaker 23 I'm serious.

Speaker 24 I'm very honored to be here.

Speaker 25 Thank you.

Speaker 6 Well, we have a lot to talk about. We have a lot of ground to cover today.
I was just talking to Bill about the whole Joe Biden special counsel age thing, and I'm going to get to that in a moment.

Speaker 6 But first, let's just talk a little bit about what happened in the Supreme Court yesterday, rather extraordinary hearing.

Speaker 6 I know that you have been arguing that, in fact, the 14th Amendment should be used to disqualify Donald Trump from running, but it seemed pretty obvious.

Speaker 6 I think the consensus is that that is not going to be the decision of the court. In fact, the court might actually rule unanimously against the disqualification or maybe 8-1.

Speaker 6 So I'm interested to get your take on this. So the way the court is handling it and the decision that seems inevitable now.

Speaker 28 I think it's going to be a grave mistake, Charlie.

Speaker 28 I'm not going to sit here and be one of these folks who says, well, the Supreme Court's illegitimate or it's not operating in good faith or anything like that.

Speaker 32 Courts make decisions that I disagree with all the time.

Speaker 34 But I disagree with this, and I think it's a very profound mistake.

Speaker 30 And honestly, Charlie, I think I'm going to write this when the actual opinion comes down.

Speaker 33 If it comes down as we expect, it could be a mistake more consequential in some ways than the failure to convict Trump after January 6th.

Speaker 39 And the reason is that the actual effect of the decision will be very much the same as the effect of acquitting him from the impeachment charge, which the effect will be to allow him to be president again.

Speaker 40 So it's a very similar effect in one sense, but here's the way it would be worse.

Speaker 25 It would set a legal precedent that undermines the force and effect of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment going forward.

Speaker 23 So an impeachment decision doesn't have precedential effect in the way a court decision has.

Speaker 25 Appeachment's a political process.

Speaker 26 They can choose to follow precedent or not follow precedent.

Speaker 17 And sure, the Supreme Court obviously has demonstrated that it will reject precedent, but it also tends to follow it. That's the general tendency of the Supreme Court is it tends to follow it.

Speaker 38 And certainly the lower courts are bound to follow it.

Speaker 25 And so my real concern is that the Supreme Court is going to issue a decision here that doesn't just grant Trump access to the presidency again, but also creates a precedent undermining Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which I think of as a sort of a fundamental basic safeguard that any nation should uphold against insurrectionists and those who would attack its own system violently.

Speaker 33 So I'm very concerned about it.

Speaker 6 But it obviously matters greatly

Speaker 6 what the grounds the court uses to keep Trump on the ballot. I could certainly imagine very, very narrow grounds that they could do that would not create a really negative precedent.

Speaker 6 What do you think?

Speaker 49 Here's the trouble, Charlie.

Speaker 29 On the grounds that I think they're going to go, it's not that narrow.

Speaker 53 So I think essentially what you were looking at and what you were seeing broadcast in the actual oral argument was they were leaning towards some sort of rule that is essentially saying the states just can't do this, that there's going to have to be some sort of congressional action.

Speaker 13 And that would essentially eviscerate the amendment. Right.

Speaker 53 Because if you're going to say you need to have some congressional action to make this amendment enforceable, and there's no congressional action making the amendment enforceable, then does the amendment is it a dead letter in many ways?

Speaker 17 And then here's the other thing, Charlie, that I have not seen people focus in on, because one of the key arguments here was only Congress can do this, that this is not something that the Secretary of State can do.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 25 when does Congress have an opportunity other than passing legislation to weigh in on qualifications for the presidency at events like January 6th?

Speaker 9 So is this empowering in a weird way with this decision?

Speaker 48 And again, it's speculation based on the oral argument.

Speaker 49 That is always dangerous.

Speaker 51 But if you go the direction the oral arguments seem to be going, the argument would be, well, this is all Congress, which renders it a dead letter in the absence of legislation or Congress sitting to judge qualifications.

Speaker 17 And when does it do that?

Speaker 28 When it's counting Electoral College votes.

Speaker 25 And so there has been Electoral College Act reform, but qualifications for the presidency are still qualifications for the presidency.

Speaker 37 And so, Charlie, I am very concerned that what we're going to deal with here is a decision that would feel stabilizing in in the moment to a lot of people, but could be ultimately more destabilizing.

Speaker 6 Well, and as you pointed out, nobody at the court even disputed that Trump was an insurrectionist.

Speaker 6 So we're not going to see a court decision that says, yes, the 14th Amendment applies, but it doesn't apply to Donald Trump because he is not an insurrectionist.

Speaker 6 That was not really at issue at all in the arguments yesterday.

Speaker 63 No, not really at all in the arguments.

Speaker 9 And that was quite telling, in fact, because going into the arguments, I was asked about about this by a number of folks and I said you're gonna know where they're leaning based on the subject of the questions if they're really leaning in on did he engage in an insurrection or did he provide aid or comfort to enemies of the Constitution if they're really leaning in on that that means they're really leaning on hey maybe this guy needs to be disqualified if they're leaning in on why did Colorado do this yeah or what kind of due process should occur before this happens, then they're really looking at a way out of this that is related to process without adjudicating the substance.

Speaker 6 Yeah, exactly. Okay, so there's so much stuff that's been going on this week in Congress.
We had a vote yesterday in the Senate where they finally voted aid to Ukraine.

Speaker 6 We don't know what's going to happen in the House. It's one of those glass half-full things.

Speaker 6 Some people are saying, well, 17 Republicans joined with Democrats in voting for Ukraine. My reaction, I don't know what yours was, was like, only 17.
This is what the Republican Party has become.

Speaker 6 And when I come back to that, I thought it was just extraordinary that you had Tucker Carlson in Moscow interviewing Vladimir Putin yesterday. This sort of, you know, Kiss Fest.

Speaker 6 We have a little bit of soundbite for this. I don't know how much of it you caught.
I mean, it's not riveting television.

Speaker 6 I mean, trust me on all of this, you know, especially watching Vladimir Putin just roll over and talk over Tucker and Tucker taking it. I mean, it was, yeah, it was a self-owned for the ages.

Speaker 3 But here's just a little clip of Tucker Carl.

Speaker 65 With the backing of CIA, of course.

Speaker 65 The organization you wanted to join back in the day, as I understand.

Speaker 65 We should thank God they didn't let you in.

Speaker 65 Although, it is a serious organization. I understand.

Speaker 6 Okay, so

Speaker 6 it went like that a lot. So here's a video clip on what used to be known as Twitter by Ron Philip Kowski.
He says, this is a hilarious shit show. Putin is now 28 minutes into his history lesson.

Speaker 6 This is the third time Tucker tries to interrupt, and Putin mocks Tucker for just being an entertainer and not a serious journalist. Tucker tries to fake laugh it off while Putin emasculates him.

Speaker 4 Chef's kiss.

Speaker 6 Yeah. A great moment.

Speaker 43 Yeah.

Speaker 34 Putin is exerting dominance here.

Speaker 25 Putin's exerting dominance over Tucker Carlson.

Speaker 21 And the thing is, Charlie, it won't really matter that Tuckerites.

Speaker 66 It just won't matter.

Speaker 37 I mean, look, if advancing testicle tanning did not undermine this guy's standing with his core fans, then a little light humiliation by Vladimir Putin isn't going to do the trick.

Speaker 6 Okay, but it raises the larger question, though, and you wrote about this.

Speaker 6 Why MAGA loves Russia and hates Ukraine? You know, we've seen it develop in real time.

Speaker 6 You know, for some of us with a little bit of historical perspective, it is still stunning and amazing. So

Speaker 6 give me your take. Why has the right decided they love Vladimir Putin and hate Vlodymir Zelensky and Ukraine? What is this about, David? Help me get my head there.

Speaker 17 This is a fascinating issue. So let me just take one segment of people and put them to one side.

Speaker 67 There is a segment of people who are what you would call traditional paleoconservatives on the right who...

Speaker 18 They don't like foreign aid.

Speaker 31 They don't like foreign military entanglements.

Speaker 14 I'm not talking about those guys.

Speaker 25 Those guys have had an argument about foreign policy in America for a a long time.

Speaker 51 What I'm talking about is the pop culture right,

Speaker 21 the pop culture right that has this entertainment wing.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 26 That has this visceral reaction against Ukraine.

Speaker 28 You know, Candace Owens saying she wants to punch him.

Speaker 67 I mean, people saying he dresses like, was it Tucker Carlson who said dresses like a strip club manager?

Speaker 45 Donald Trump Jr. hurling these vicious personal insults.

Speaker 3 Where does that come from?

Speaker 30 Where does all of that angst and anger?

Speaker 6 Good question.

Speaker 28 And when you dive into the MAGA lore here, Charlie, it's sort of like, you know, there's the Marvel extended universe and the DC extended universe.

Speaker 27 Well, there's a MAGA extended universe.

Speaker 17 And when you dive into the MAGA extended universe, you realize there are people on the right who live in an upside-down reality.

Speaker 23 And in this upside-down reality, they believe that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and sort of engineered the whole thing to blame it on Russia.

Speaker 26 So remember first impeachment, Donald Trump talked about this crowd strike server that he was looking for.

Speaker 54 I remember this.

Speaker 6 It's a batshit, crazy conspiracy theory. I mean, this is in the category of the Italian space satellites changing votes.
And I remember that.

Speaker 6 You're saying that the tail of that has gotten us where we are today.

Speaker 39 It's one piece of it.

Speaker 17 Oh, man.

Speaker 39 It's one piece of it.

Speaker 55 So the tail of it is, that's the hostility towards Ukraine.

Speaker 30 And then at the same time, going all the way back until years before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there were a number of people on the right who said,

Speaker 17 essentially, Putin is the Christian leader against secular wokeness in the West.

Speaker 19 And there's all kinds of commentary out there like that.

Speaker 63 Or that even if, hey, I don't love Vladimir Putin, but he's making the right case against the West.

Speaker 43 After the invasion, even after the brutality, you know, Jordan Peterson was talking about, is the culture war in the West so threatening to Vladimir Putin that he would think he would need to invade a neighboring country to keep it at bay?

Speaker 57 So Vladimir Putin as defender of Christian civilization against the woke West.

Speaker 43 And then you lay on top of that, Charlie, this whole weird masculinity thing on the right.

Speaker 18 And I don't know if you remember this, but right before the invasion, you had people on the right, including Ted Cruz, sharing these videos.

Speaker 68 Oh, I do.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 56 Online about, look at this Russian military recruitment ad versus this American military recruitment ad.

Speaker 31 We're woke and emasculated.

Speaker 10 Look how tough they are.

Speaker 50 And so they had this narrative that the toughness of Russia was clearly superior to the weakness of the West.

Speaker 44 And then Russia invades and it stopped cold, just stopped cold.

Speaker 67 And the quote, weak, woke West actually turns out to have a lot of courage and resolve.

Speaker 60 And so it disrupts this whole narrative about the West that was emerging on the right.

Speaker 28 So you have Ukraine is a villain.

Speaker 50 Vladimir Putin is, in some ways, admirable figure taking on the weak, woke West, and then the whole war not going according to the script that they laid out in their mind.

Speaker 35 And all of that adds together to this really visceral anti-Ukraine stance that, as I wrote in my piece, it's not that Ronald Reagan is...

Speaker 23 turning over in his grave.

Speaker 42 The man's probably trying to lurch out of his tomb and come after the GOP saying, what are doing?

Speaker 6 Well, this is also this pattern that we've been discussing at some length where initially after the invasion, the pro-Russian faction was relatively small in the Republican Party, and it looked like maybe the center would hold.

Speaker 6 And as we see as we're speaking today, it looks like there's a real possibility that this country could abandon Ukraine because of Republican elected officials

Speaker 6 who are just not saying the way it has infected.

Speaker 6 So, you know, looking back on this, and again, we don't have, I'm asking you to speculate a little bit because, you know, from the very beginning, there's been this question, what is going on between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin?

Speaker 6 You know, on the right, it's the Russia hoax, you know, like nothing to see here. And yet, you know, Donald Trump is not, you know, reluctant to rip and criticize domestic enemies.

Speaker 6 I struggle to come up with any time when he has said anything critical of Vladimir Putin. And his admiration for Putin, his unwillingness to cross Putin is extraordinary and consistent.

Speaker 6 So looking back on all of this, what is the meta take?

Speaker 3 What is the Trump-Putin thing about?

Speaker 13 And where does it come from?

Speaker 27 Well, I think a couple of things.

Speaker 50 One, Trump obviously admires strongmen.

Speaker 49 It's not just Putin. It's Xi.

Speaker 28 I mean, he repeatedly praises, you know, Chinese leader, North Korean leader, Russian leader, like all of these authoritarian strongmen, he consistently expresses admiration.

Speaker 41 And I think he sees himself in them in some ways, or the what he could be if he were not so constrained.

Speaker 6 What he wants to be. Right.

Speaker 17 Now, the other factor here, Charlie, and this is what's really dark.

Speaker 14 So that's dark enough.

Speaker 53 Like having a past president of the United States and potential future president who actually admires authoritarian dictators is dark.

Speaker 52 But let's get darker, okay?

Speaker 17 Charlie, I can always go darker in this era, but

Speaker 59 the darker thing is you've heard the old phrase, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Speaker 68 And so traditionally in the U.S., how that has manifested itself is that we may have a lot of domestic differences, but we will unite against a foreign foe.

Speaker 61 Right. Now, we might disagree about how to fight the foreign foe, but we agree it's a foreign foe.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 17 And so we can and have demonstrated repeatedly in the past that we will put aside differences domestically to take on the international threat.

Speaker 59 Trump's and MAGA's enemy of my enemy is my friend analysis is different.

Speaker 20 They will set aside foreign differences to take on the domestic foe.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 52 So go back to the admiration for Vladimir Putin.

Speaker 58 That admiration for Vladimir Putin because he was taking on their domestic political opponents.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 43 And so there is an admiration for Putin because he was taking on the shared enemy as they see it, which is the left, the Republican establishment, et cetera.

Speaker 49 And that's why I I say this is really dark.

Speaker 14 The toxic polarization that MAGA feels towards fellow Americans is so great that some of them will wrap their arms around a Russian dictator and endorse his critiques of American society to advance their own domestic agenda.

Speaker 6 You know, a lot of the stuff that we talk about is performative, but this is really substantive.

Speaker 6 You know, as you wrote, you note that America has made catastrophic foreign policy mistakes in the past, but never in our lifetime have we been on the verge of a mistake so profound and catastrophic that was the direct result of theories and ideas that were so shallow, stupid, and frankly bizarre.

Speaker 6 The thing is, it is the alignment of the stupid, the crazy, and the catastrophic all at once.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And you can't escape that reality.

Speaker 6 It's not like we can change the channel and, you know, just not pay attention because the consequences of a Russian victory in Ukraine because of American Republican betrayal of Ukraine is very, very hard to quantify.

Speaker 17 Yeah, in some ways, Charlie, a defeat of Ukraine now

Speaker 34 in some ways would be worse than a defeat of Ukraine in the initial attack.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 64 Because even in the initial attack, even supporters of Ukraine were shocked at the tenacity of Ukrainian resistance because there was a lot of hype about the Russian military before the invasion.

Speaker 32 And it wasn't just amongst MAGA.

Speaker 9 A lot of thoughtful observers of the Russian military thought it had really modernized and become a far more professional force.

Speaker 41 And yeah, it had compared to previous years, but it wasn't as competent and professional as a lot of international observers thought.

Speaker 25 So if there had been an initial invasion that had gone the way international observers had thought it would go, it would have been a catastrophe, no question about it.

Speaker 26 It would have been a catastrophe, but it wouldn't have been a catastrophe of the West more broadly.

Speaker 17 It would have been a catastrophe for Ukraine, but it wouldn't have demonstrated a failure of will in the West.

Speaker 42 Here,

Speaker 25 if Russia is able to impose upon Ukraine a favorable settlement to the war, it will have been the result not of a catastrophic failure amongst Russia's real enemy, the West, the West, not Ukraine.

Speaker 23 So Ukraine would have fought courageously and would have given its all, and we would have abandoned them.

Speaker 28 And that, from a geopolitical standpoint, is far worse.

Speaker 9 So Putin would both accomplish subjugating Ukraine and accomplish the complete undermining of American credibility and national security, totally undermined it.

Speaker 64 And that's a worse outcome than him succeeding in that initial blitzkrieg, although it obviously will come at a very, very, very high cost to Russia.

Speaker 40 But Putin doesn't care about his people's lives.

Speaker 6 Well, that's why 2024 feels like it is going to be a pivotal year in American political history, but also in world history.

Speaker 6 You don't always know at the beginning of the year that something's going to be pivotal. You're a student of history.

Speaker 6 I keep trying to come up with the analogy that, and again, there's a cliche, this is the most important election of our lifetime.

Speaker 6 But I'm trying to imagine, historically, in terms of its significance, the 2024 election is the most fraught since when?

Speaker 3 What year would you go back to?

Speaker 68 That is a. If any.

Speaker 37 That's a great question.

Speaker 55 I mean, if you look back at history at the super consequential American elections,

Speaker 34 this is going to be up there.

Speaker 59 I mean, obviously 1860 with Lincoln.

Speaker 6 That's the one I was going to come up with. Yeah.

Speaker 28 Enormously consequential.

Speaker 33 I also think people sleep on the consequences of the election of 1876 and the conflict that played out over who was going to win that, because the consequence of that election was the compromise of 1877, which abandoned the South to Jim Crow and segregation.

Speaker 6 That was hugely consequential

Speaker 17 for a century, a century-long abandonment of black Americans, hugely consequential.

Speaker 59 I would say it's in that ballpark.

Speaker 60 And the reason why I say that is after what we saw on January 6th,

Speaker 35 I've never said these words before, Charlie, but I am not 100% certain that if Donald Trump wins the presidency, that the United States will survive as an intact nation.

Speaker 23 I think 99%, 99.9%.

Speaker 28 I don't want to be like some doomsayer who says America will.

Speaker 67 fade or collapse or whatever if Trump is elected.

Speaker 25 That's not what I'm saying.

Speaker 41 What I'm saying is he is so volatile that he raises risks that we have not seen in American politics.

Speaker 17 And how do we know that?

Speaker 49 Because we have a memory, Charlie, of what we just saw.

Speaker 62 I mean, this is a man who triggered the storming of the United States Capitol.

Speaker 28 And so this idea that he's, well, no, he's stable enough to rein himself in when it really matters.

Speaker 44 That's shot.

Speaker 25 That's gone. That's no, there's no argument for that anymore.

Speaker 6 And there's no argument for the fact that, well, the Republican grown-ups will, you know, they'll be the guardrails on him because I think we've gotten the answer on that.

Speaker 12 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 17 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 6 Save the offer in the app. N1231, see paypal.com/slash promo terms, points keep your renee for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval.
PayPal link and MLS 910457.

Speaker 5 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 5 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 5 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 5 Why is Adam Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 5 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 6 Okay, so I talked about this with Bill. Given the stakes in the 2024 election, we have to talk about, I know a lot of our listeners really hate talking about the Biden age issue.

Speaker 3 Oh, boy.

Speaker 6 But look, guys, you know, this is the wrinkly gray elephant in the room here. So give me your take on what we saw play out yesterday.

Speaker 6 We had the special counsel report, which said, you know, no criminal charges against Joe Biden because of the document, made a very clear distinction between the way Biden handled the documents and Trump and all of that.

Speaker 6 But what everybody's talking about, everybody's focusing on, is this, I suppose you could argue, somewhat gratuitous commentary about Joe Biden's memory and his age.

Speaker 6 And of of course, it's placed Joe Biden's memory and his age front and center in the campaign. Joe Biden goes out angrily, very angry last night.
So give me your take. How bad is this?

Speaker 6 What should we make of this, David? Where do you come down?

Speaker 6 We know where Bill came down.

Speaker 10 Where do you come down?

Speaker 26 It's bad.

Speaker 24 It's bad.

Speaker 26 Now, it's not is Trump better than Biden bad.

Speaker 49 Biden is clearly better than Trump.

Speaker 10 Clearly.

Speaker 39 But it is bad in the sense of can he serve capably for the next four years bad, which is bad.

Speaker 22 That's a serious question, Charlie.

Speaker 27 And here's the thing that gets me.

Speaker 17 Don't blame the special counsel for this.

Speaker 55 Look, this is where partisanship leads us.

Speaker 41 The special counsel was evaluating a crime that one of the elements of the crime is willfulness or intent.

Speaker 17 The state of mind is relevant to the legal analysis.

Speaker 49 And one reason why he felt like he would not charge Joe Biden was the state of mind.

Speaker 61 And you have to explain that to people.

Speaker 39 Now, if this was something that had come out of nowhere, where Biden is sharp and quick and quick-witted, and then you have this, and then he comes out and he gives a press conference where he's on top of his game, you would think, what's the special counsel doing, right?

Speaker 62 But this comes on the heels of in the last week, he'd confused two European leaders for their deceased predecessors.

Speaker 29 And then he comes out very, very angry about the report and then confuses the president of Egypt and the president of Mexico.

Speaker 61 And I know there are legions of listeners who are saying, but Donald Trump confused Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi.

Speaker 3 Yeah, for example. Yes.

Speaker 1 He is corrupt and he is confused.

Speaker 61 No question.

Speaker 17 But the question you have here is that a lot of Americans, especially those people who don't pay really close attention to politics,

Speaker 3 You can't yell at them

Speaker 17 so much that they'll forget about things like age Because you know why?

Speaker 21 They all have experience with it, whether they're aging themselves or their parents or their grandparents.

Speaker 23 And here's one thing that every American knows.

Speaker 50 It doesn't get better.

Speaker 31 It doesn't get better.

Speaker 34 It's not like at 83,

Speaker 52 you're better than you were at 81.

Speaker 6 So there's two questions and they're obviously related. Number one is, you know, can he serve for another four years as president?

Speaker 6 The more immediate question is, how much political damage has this caused to him?

Speaker 6 I mean, if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States in November, are we going to look back on this week and say this was kind of the decisive,

Speaker 6 not turning point, but an inflection point where people just decided, you know, that now you have this special counsel who's underlining these sort of pre-existing concerns?

Speaker 6 I mean, how badly hurt is Joe Biden? And is there anything that anyone can do about it? I mean, it doesn't seem like Democrats are in the mood to like move on. I mean, it's going to be Biden.

Speaker 6 It's going to be Biden and Trump. I think our former colleague, Steve Hayes, said it's going to be the 25th Amendment election.
It's going to be Trump versus Biden.

Speaker 6 And it's going to be, no, your guy's more senile. No, your guy's decompensating.
No, it's your guy. I prefer senility over psychosis.
I mean,

Speaker 6 we're stuck with it, right?

Speaker 31 I mean, we probably are stuck with it because it all depends on Joe Biden.

Speaker 37 Joe Biden has to decide that he's going to step aside. Nobody can make him step aside.

Speaker 25 Nobody's going to trigger the 25th Amendment. There's not grounds for triggering the 25th Amendment.

Speaker 58 And so he has to decide.

Speaker 47 And Charlie, here's the other thing.

Speaker 66 We all know what it is like to have really hard conversations with people who are entering the twilight of their career.

Speaker 38 And often the last person to recognize that they're entering the twilight of their career is the person.

Speaker 17 So they have to reach a point where they understand, okay,

Speaker 25 I understand my best days were behind me, but I also know that I'm now reaching a point where I don't have confidence I can do the job, so I should voluntarily step away.

Speaker 24 That is one of the hardest and most delicate conversations you can have with somebody who's retiring from, say, being an insurance agent, much less all the pride and all of the power that comes along with the presidency of the United States of America.

Speaker 6 And what's even more difficult, though, is that a lot of Democrats who might be willing to have that conversation are thinking, there's not a plan B that's better.

Speaker 6 right there's nobody that we have that would be more likely to beat donald trump so it kind of feels we're on this glide path is that nobody wants to have that conversation but also they're not sure they want it because they don't necessarily think that kamala harris is more electable and once you get past her who are we talking about you know gavin newsom so they they don't really have a plan b do they david gavin newsom has a plan b

Speaker 17 i mean he's been running his little shadow campaign for a while where he could like just jump right in.

Speaker 9 I'm here. I'm ready.

Speaker 6 I'm ready.

Speaker 50 Yeah, he's out there.

Speaker 41 He's warming up in the bullpen.

Speaker 43 He's Mariano Rivera waiting for the music.

Speaker 27 But here's the thing is you hit the nail on the head in that the alternative, at least in the short term, to Biden, is actually kind of Democratic Party chaos because you would have Kamala jumping in, huge arguments about her, just huge arguments.

Speaker 31 She is not incredibly popular even with Democrats.

Speaker 45 So nobody would clear the field for her.

Speaker 31 Gavin Newsom would probably come in.

Speaker 29 You'd have governors of Michigan, maybe Colorado come in.

Speaker 21 You would have a very compressed, super intense primary while the Republicans will have already picked their man, are just sort of watching the Democrats consume each other.

Speaker 25 And that's very dangerous.

Speaker 64 Look, primary challenges when your party isn't the incumbent or primaries fought over when your party is the incumbent tend to weaken the incumbent party.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 6 so it's just a giant problem.

Speaker 50 And the way through, Charlie, there is a way through.

Speaker 55 I saw Dan Pfeiffer say this.

Speaker 39 It's Biden's got to get out there.

Speaker 50 He's got to say yes to the Super Bowl interview.

Speaker 68 He's got to get out there.

Speaker 28 And here's the thing that I would ask listeners who are mad at us

Speaker 25 about talking about this.

Speaker 68 In your heart of hearts, when you hear Biden's got to get out there, are you encouraged or worried?

Speaker 23 And I would bet you a lot of folks, when I say Biden's got to get out there and he's got to nail these interviews and he's got to nail these speeches and appearances, a lot of folks who are actually mad at us for talking about this would be very worried about that approach.

Speaker 26 And my question to you is, if you're worried about the approach, don't be mad at the messenger.

Speaker 23 Don't be mad at the messenger.

Speaker 22 This is a serious issue.

Speaker 6 Well, since this is my last Bulwark podcast, you know, I've been thinking a lot about the trajectory of conservatism and the Never Trump movement. And you wrote a piece a few weeks ago.

Speaker 6 I've lost track of time here. That Never Trumpers never had a chance.

Speaker 6 And I keep going back over that, saying, you know, what if this would have happened? What if so-and-so would have taken a stand? I asked the question in a conversation I had with Mona Charon.

Speaker 6 You know, the Never Trump movement, you know, has been a success in many ways in creating cross-partisan alliances. And Donald Trump is not the president right now.

Speaker 6 But in terms of its ability to influence the Republican Party, I don't think there's any question that it turned out to be a lot worse after the 2016 election. So give me your take on that.

Speaker 6 Was there any world in which Never Trump was going to succeed in rescuing the Republican Party after 2016?

Speaker 25 No, no, no, no, no, Charlie. So really?

Speaker 33 This is, yeah.

Speaker 63 So this is one thing that I think there should be greater awareness of this.

Speaker 40 And that is, if you're talking about politics where, let's say you lost by five points, three points, one point,

Speaker 30 it's very legitimate.

Speaker 49 Five points might be on the outer bounds, but if it was a close race, it is very legitimate to sit there and say, what could we have done differently?

Speaker 45 Look, if you had the 2016 race, Hillary and Trump, there are 17 different things that you and I could identify that if they swung this way or that way, the election could have come out differently.

Speaker 15 That is not the case when you're never greater than within 25 or 30 points.

Speaker 26 Like, what is the tactic that closes the 30-point gap, right?

Speaker 17 You know, look, I thought Ron DeSantis ran a terrible campaign, but all of these DeSantis post-mortems, in a way, I think are misleading people because they're saying, well, if he had just tweaked this or tweaked that, he could have won.

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 14 If he'd tweaked this or tweaked that, he could have lost by 20 points instead of 40 or 25 points instead of 35.

Speaker 23 There was never a huge constituency in the GOP for the never Trump message.

Speaker 10 Never.

Speaker 62 Now, it might have been that there was a constituency earlier in 2015 for rejecting Trump, but never for never Trump.

Speaker 13 Never for saying he is out of bounds.

Speaker 25 That argument, we were never going to win in hindsight.

Speaker 6 Well, especially when that meant that you needed to support Democrats.

Speaker 6 And I think that people sometimes underestimate how difficult it is in Republican conservative circles to say, not only do you reject Trumpism, but now you must affirmatively vote for somebody who you've opposed your entire career.

Speaker 6 I mean, on paper, I mean, you and I have done it. We've done it.
But I don't think it's shocking that that's been difficult to scale that up.

Speaker 6 That people's partisan tribal loyalties are just, you know, much stickier than I think people sometimes acknowledge.

Speaker 31 Yes, yes, 100%.

Speaker 31 And that's why the Republican voters against Trump strategy was so smart to say, we're not asking you to vote for Biden.

Speaker 67 We're not asking you to cross the aisle to vote for Biden.

Speaker 51 We're just asking you not to vote for Donald Trump.

Speaker 36 For Democratic, my Democratic friends who say,

Speaker 25 how dare you be so partisan that you would never cross the aisle to vote for a Democrat, I say to them in response, under what circumstances would you vote for a pro-life Republican?

Speaker 32 And the folks who are honest with themselves say, oh,

Speaker 54 I'm not sure when I would vote for a pro-life Republican.

Speaker 25 So, you know, there's a need for a measure of humility on this when we're scolding people for not crossing partisan lines that we've never had to cross ourselves and don't know if we would, right?

Speaker 17 So it was going to be a challenge to get people to cross the partisan lines for sure.

Speaker 10 I expected that.

Speaker 21 What I did not expect was the deep, deep, intense loyalty for Donald Trump against all other Republicans, including Republicans who were demonstrably more conservative and demonstrably had higher character.

Speaker 6 No, and I think that that has played out really quite dramatically.

Speaker 6 Okay, so in the few minutes that we have left, I want to strike a little bit of a personal note because, David, I have thought many times over the last several months that I wanted to reach out to you for advice and counsel and to go back.

Speaker 6 And by the way, for people who don't know, I mean, David and I kind of go way back. And I am still very, very grateful for when we were in Austin, Texas for the Texas Tribune Festival.

Speaker 6 I was there with my French grandson, Elliot, and you were so gracious in sitting down with him and letting him interview you. You have a special place in our household.

Speaker 6 But, you know, every time I thought about it, you know, things that I wanted to bring up, I try to put it in the context of,

Speaker 6 and this is hard for me.

Speaker 6 And I think it's hard for a lot of people because I think about you and your wife, Nancy, all the time, and whatever problems that we are experiencing in our lives compared to what you and Nancy are facing, and the courage you're doing it.

Speaker 6 And I just, you know, first of all, just want you to know that I think about you all the time, and I am moved by her courage and her optimism.

Speaker 6 And your piece that you wrote about, the power of community, was really moving.

Speaker 6 And I have to admit that I struggle with community and how to express these things. But how are you doing?

Speaker 43 You know, Charlie, in the piece that I wrote, I shared this Swedish proverb that I think is just beautiful.

Speaker 37 And it really is kind of a mission statement for friendship.

Speaker 50 And it is, shared joy is double joy and shared sorrow is half sorrow.

Speaker 31 And I have never understood the truth of that more.

Speaker 68 I've always used it because I think it's a beautiful statement and it has resonated as true, but only in the last several months has it really hit home at this gut level because when we initially found out Nancy's diagnosis, and it's a very aggressive form of cancer, but she has a lot of hope for a good outcome.

Speaker 33 But it's a very scary time.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 58 in that short period of time when we kept the diagnosis to ourselves, it was terrifying and debilitating in many ways.

Speaker 25 And then

Speaker 19 when we shared, when we began to share, and people began to absolutely pour out love and concern and compassion, that is what made everything so much more bearable.

Speaker 42 And I could watch the love of others really energize Nancy, my wife.

Speaker 60 I could see it.

Speaker 17 I just say that to encourage people to reach out to those folks in your community that you know are suffering.

Speaker 9 it really matters.

Speaker 29 It really matters.

Speaker 19 Even if it's just a note that says, I'm thinking about you, love you, you know, much less a concrete offer of help.

Speaker 3 All of it is valuable, all of it.

Speaker 32 And it's really convicted me, Charlie.

Speaker 18 I've had to look and ask myself in my life, have I been that kind of person?

Speaker 27 Because I'm so overwhelmed by the reaction of others to us.

Speaker 15 It's been convicting to me and it's made me re sort of redouble my my own commitment to be that kind of person.

Speaker 6 Well, and again, I think what you underlined there was just the power of community and not trying to do everything on your own.

Speaker 6 And I think that, you know, whether we're talking about this or we're talking about other things, you know, that community is absolutely essential to stay strong, to stay spiritually connected.

Speaker 6 And so I want to thank you for that piece because it is a real challenge. And tell Nancy to keep putting those pictures out there because it's like, just want to thumbs up every one of them.

Speaker 6 And David, thank you for coming on the podcast for our final podcast before we go dark here. Of course, you know, Tim Miller is going to be here on Monday, but this is going to be my sign-off.

Speaker 6 And I have to say that one of the great experiences of my life has been able to, every single morning, to get up and talk to the smartest, most interesting people I know and to have these kinds of conversations.

Speaker 6 And I think that has been a real privilege and a real blessing.

Speaker 6 And I am very, very privileged to have you come on this podcast and very, very grateful for all the conversations we've had over the years.

Speaker 17 And we'll keep having conversations, Charlie.

Speaker 22 We will. Thank you for your work.

Speaker 56 God bless you and your future endeavors.

Speaker 14 And as I said at the outset, I'm honored that I'm your last guest.

Speaker 22 And I truly treasure and value our friendship.

Speaker 69 And I look forward to seeing what you do next and helping in any way that I can.

Speaker 6 Okay, well, we'll see you around the corner. Thank you, David.
And some final words as I head out the door.

Speaker 6 Look, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity that Sarah Longwell and Bill Crystal gave me when we founded the Bulwark and this extraordinary community.

Speaker 6 I mean, working alongside folks like JVL and Mona Cheron, A.B. Stoddard, Will Salatin.

Speaker 6 Kathy Young, Jim Swift, Adam Kuyper, Sonny Bunch, Barry Rubin, Tim, Ben Parker, Joe Perticone. This has been one of the most rewarding professional experiences of my life.

Speaker 6 And I'm really grateful for all of you for joining us in the wilderness.

Speaker 6 And a special shout out to our brilliant art director, Hannah Yost, who got up very early every single morning to make the bulwark the best-looking political site you're going to find.

Speaker 6 And to the very best podcast team in the business, the absolutely incomparable Katie Cooper, who prepped and produced our daily show.

Speaker 6 And to our engineer, Jason Brown, who always made us sound a lot better than we actually deserved. We could not have done that without that team.
An extra special shout out to my brilliant wife, J.F.

Speaker 6 Reardon, who's taking time out from writing her novels, writing her books of essays, her children's books about dogs, to copy edit morning shots every single morning.

Speaker 6 And again, to the entire Bulwark community, to all of the brave contrarian conservatives, the never Trumpers, the people who've been willing to reach across the aisle.

Speaker 6 A reminder, you are not the crazy ones. And that's it for me.

Speaker 6 Don't stop.

Speaker 70 Gas, groceries, eating out? It all adds up fast. With the Verizon Visa card, you get rewarded every time you spend.
Get 4% in rewards on gas, dining, and at grocery stores.

Speaker 70 And you can put those rewards toward your Verizon bill or on new tech like a smartwatch and earbuds. Apply today at Verizon.

Speaker 70 Application required subject to credit approval must be a Verizon mobile account owner or manager or Fios account owner. See Verizon.com slash Verizon Visa Card for terms or restrictions.

Speaker 70 The Verizon Visa Signature Card is issued by Synchrony Bank pursuant to a license from Visa USA Inc.

Speaker 72 Even though severe cases can be rare, respiratory syncytial virus or RSV is still the leading cause of hospitalization in babies under one.

Speaker 72 RSV often begins like a cold or the flu, but can quickly spread to your baby's lungs. Ask your doctor about preventative antibodies for your baby this season and visit protectagainstrsv.com.

Speaker 72 The information presented is for general educational purposes only. Please ask your healthcare provider about any questions regarding your health or your baby's health.

Speaker 73 Even when you're playing music,

Speaker 73 you're always listening to your baby, especially when RSV is on your mind.

Speaker 73 Baphortis, Nursevimab ALIP, is the first and only long-acting preventative antibody that gives babies the RSV antibodies they lack.

Speaker 73 Bifortis is a prescription medicine used to help prevent serious lung disease caused by RSV or respiratory syncytial virus in babies under age one born during or entering their first RSV season and children up to 24 months who remain at risk of severe RSV disease through their second RSV season.

Speaker 73 Your baby shouldn't receive Baportis if they have a history of serious allergic reactions to Baportis, nursevimab ALIP, or any of its ingredients.

Speaker 73 Tell your baby's doctor about any medicines they're taking and all their medical conditions, including bleeding or bruising problems. Serious allergic reactions have happened.

Speaker 73 Get medical help right away if your child has any of the following signs or symptoms of a serious allergic reaction, such as swelling of the face, mouth, or tongue, difficulty swallowing or breathing, unresponsiveness, bluish color of skin, lips, or underfingernails, muscle weakness, severe rash, hives, or itching.

Speaker 71 Most common side effects include rash and pain, swelling, or hardness at their injection site.

Speaker 73 Individual results may vary. Ask your baby's doctor about Bayfortis.
Visit Bayfortis.com or call 1-855-BEFORTIS.