The Bulwark: Live from New Orleans

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 5 It's October 26, 2023. I'm Charlie Sykes.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast.

Speaker 5 We're going to be doing something a little bit different today.

Speaker 5 We've been on COVID lockdown here in Wisconsin, but the rest of the Bulwark team was down in the big easy last night for a wide-ranging discussion of everything from our fifth string speaker, Mike Johnson, to Joe Biden, Israel, anti-Semitism on the left.

Speaker 5 So today's podcast is going to be a replay of last night's conversation. Hey, a quick reminder, if you want to come to one of our Bulwark events, the next one is scheduled in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 5 on November 16th. I'm going to be joined by special guest Brian Stelter and the rest of the Bullwork crew.

Speaker 5 We'll also be on hand to have a wide-ranging conversation again on the 2024 election and the news of the day. If you'd like to join us in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 5 on November 16th, just go to the Bullwork website for more information. In the meantime, enjoy this conversation from last night in New Orleans.

Speaker 2 Hey, everybody.

Speaker 2 How y'all doing?

Speaker 2 New Orleans, Louisiana, not too bad, right? Pretty good. French quarter.

Speaker 2 How many locals we got here tonight? We got some locals.

Speaker 2 What my people back there. Team Sarah, Team Sarah.
We have some focus groupies in the crowd. Any focus groupies? A couple.
We're out front.

Speaker 2 I hope.

Speaker 8 Thank you.

Speaker 10 Hope someone's wearing the t-shirt.

Speaker 2 Ladies right there.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 We got Sarah Lomo right here.

Speaker 2 That's Sonny Bunch. You might know him.
He's in the Bulwarks.

Speaker 2 And at the end, we have Mona Charon. So there's this thing about Mona Charon.

Speaker 2 We're not going to age anybody, but it's an interesting fact of Mona Charon. How many New York Times bestsellers do you have?

Speaker 2 Two.

Speaker 10 That's more than anybody else on the slide.

Speaker 2 So I'm just saying, hypothetically, should another book of mine come out, it's very important that everybody in here buy it so that I can get to even here at the bulwark. All right.

Speaker 2 Boy.

Speaker 2 We had an interesting day today, huh? Mike Johnson, we have a speaker. I guess we have some fresh things for everybody to talk about.
I'm interested in everybody's opinion.

Speaker 2 I want to, how many people, is there anybody here that really knows Mike Johnson? Do we have any like, oh yeah, we got a couple, we got a couple. Okay,

Speaker 2 I'm finding you after Padapo.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing about Mike Johnson.

Speaker 2 He is

Speaker 2 a rabid evangelical conservative, very similar to maybe your old boss, Rick Santorum. Remember, we like to ring out that.

Speaker 2 So he had some very Rick Santorum-y qualities.

Speaker 2 He was

Speaker 2 one of the most active

Speaker 2 supporters of the Stop the Steal effort, including something that our friends at Republican Accountability PAC uncovered today, which was he was even pushing the Dominion voting machine

Speaker 10 conspiracy,

Speaker 2 among other things. But he just, I stole a line from you today.
Do you know? Have you heard it yet? No.

Speaker 2 So he like, he is, he's kind of like Patrick McHenry in the streets, but Jim Jordan in the sheets.

Speaker 2 So that's in Sarah.

Speaker 2 So he looks nice, you know, like he looks like he just wants to like,

Speaker 2 he looks like he drinks milk with a straw and like goes to church and gets there early and sits in the first row of the pew and like he was the speech debate captain. So

Speaker 2 was it just meant to be, do you think, for Mike Johnson? Do you think he is like representing what the Republican Party is now? Or

Speaker 2 how do you think we ended up here?

Speaker 10 Okay, here's what happened. And actually it's really important that people understand this because this is what's happening more broadly.
Why is he the speaker right now?

Speaker 10 Because people were exhausted.

Speaker 10 They were tired of fighting over this. And so they grabbed a backbencher that they thought they could bring to consensus.
And

Speaker 10 sometimes I say this at the end of every show, but I'm going to say it at the beginning this time: that it is a reason why eternal vigilance on democracy is so important because when you are tired is when terrible things happen and you let people through, right?

Speaker 10 And even though you're offering his minute, it doesn't seem like anybody knows who this guy was or realizes he was a congressman.

Speaker 10 But it doesn't matter who he is, actually, because what it tells us isn't that much about him. It tells us about the rest of them.

Speaker 10 And we were having a little bit of a love fest over Ken Buck last week, right? Because Ken Buck.

Speaker 2 Seems like Ken Buck needs a therapist.

Speaker 10 Well, Ken Buck was all over the TVs telling us about how you cannot support somebody who was out there saying that the election was rigged, that was endorsing January 6th.

Speaker 10 And this guy was like the person behind the scenes. He is the, yeah, the clean-cut Jim Jordan who was organizing the whole thing.
He organized the Ken Paxton,

Speaker 10 you know, the Texas AG letter where they were going to try to, you know, throw out the votes of a bunch of people in the state. So

Speaker 10 it showed us, again, who these guys are. And the fact that, like, while we all thought there was a brief moment last week that the center was holding, it caved the second they thought they had it.

Speaker 10 It also shows that it was just personal about Jim Jordan. Like, it was about Jim Jordan.
It wasn't about January 6th. It wasn't about the principled stand.

Speaker 2 Mona, what do you, like, where should people in the crowd's panic level be about Mike Johnson? Like, what is your assessment?

Speaker 2 Is it like, this is kind of a guy that's going faking it, going get along, or is this like the

Speaker 2 real kind of danger?

Speaker 8 Yeah, so there are two ways to look at this as I see it. On the one hand,

Speaker 8 it would have been 10 years ago

Speaker 8 inconceivable that somebody who tried to steal an election and who was an election denier

Speaker 8 would have been anywhere near the Speaker's gavel.

Speaker 8 And the fact that now

Speaker 8 this was the bare minimum. This was the entrance exam that you had to pass to get the job is to say the 2020 election was stolen, Donald Trump has given me his little pat on the the shoulder.

Speaker 8 I'm okay.

Speaker 8 And that's the only way that you can get to be Speaker in this Republican House. All right, that is pretty grim.

Speaker 8 The other side of this, though, is that he has just inherited the worst job in the world.

Speaker 8 And so

Speaker 8 the caucus has not changed. They settled on this guy because they couldn't bear the humiliation of dragging this on any longer.

Speaker 8 Sarah's right, they're tired, they're exhausted, and the country was getting exhausted, and they were worried that maybe the voters might just like suddenly notice that they can't govern.

Speaker 2 I love that. They didn't notice.

Speaker 2 Really? Have you done groups? Nobody noticed? Well, I love, I love Pete. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 Nobody noticed.

Speaker 2 There's like something. It's been 23 days.

Speaker 2 They didn't notice.

Speaker 10 Doesn't know what the Speaker of the House does?

Speaker 11 Has anyone ever noticed the House?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 8 So P.J. O'Rourke had a great line.
He said, the Republicans are the party who say that government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it.

Speaker 2 Sonny,

Speaker 2 I have one, I think that there is, I think that there are a lot of medium-term things to be low-level concerned about when it comes to Mike Johnson. We can talk about.

Speaker 2 I think there's one acute short-term concern, which is Ukraine. So he voted against both

Speaker 2 of the last funding efforts. There was some talk today that

Speaker 2 I'll believe when I see it, but there's some talk today that they came to some sort of

Speaker 2 back deal agreement on the CR to avoid the shutdown fight. So he doesn't become speaker and then it's like, hey, shutdown fight.
So it seems like they're going to solve that.

Speaker 2 But Ukraine wasn't part of that talk.

Speaker 2 Biden is out there, I think, smartly offered and said, hey, we're going to give $100 billion, some to Ukraine, some to Israel, some to the border. There are a couple other things in there.
Like,

Speaker 2 do you, are, are there enough of your people left? Are there enough free vegan neocons left to pressure this guy just to like just at least get us through one more cycle of Ukraine?

Speaker 2 Or how worried are you?

Speaker 11 I'm pretty worried. I don't, I don't see, look,

Speaker 11 you mentioned that there was some chatter about him saying, well, you know, Russia is a real threat.

Speaker 11 And there's this weird thing going on right now where some of these guys are like, yeah, you know, at least Ukraine makes sense because of Russia.

Speaker 11 You know, we don't want to be involved with the Israel Gaza stuff at all. Like, we don't want any part of that.
But, you know, the Ukraine.

Speaker 11 So, like, there's almost a, the two sides are, one side is playing both of these conflicts against each other, which is terribly disappointing to me. Like,

Speaker 11 as you say, I am one of the last unrepentant neocons. I just want to arm all of them to fight all of their wars.
You know,

Speaker 11 that would be the preferred outcome here.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 we'll be throwing them some weapons too, or which sounds like that. I don't know which side of the map.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I gotta read read up on that one. That one, but possibly.

Speaker 2 The one good thing I have, Sonny, which you'll appreciate,

Speaker 2 is I saw one good fact about Mike Johnson today. I consumed a lot of information about Mike Johnson, and I saw a single good fact

Speaker 2 that I liked, and that was from a MAGA person tweeted unhappily that he receives a lot of money from Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. And I was like, okay,

Speaker 2 we can work with this.

Speaker 11 We can can work with this.

Speaker 2 Maybe the military-industrial complex can come through for Ukraine one more time. I don't know.

Speaker 11 I'll balance that by saying that I saw Matt Gates' appearance on Stephen Bannon's show where he's like, this is a win for us. This is a win for us.

Speaker 11 And anyone who doesn't see it as a win for us, the MAGA

Speaker 11 crowd is just, they don't know what they're looking at. I'll take Matt Gates at his word.

Speaker 2 Isn't it so annoying that Matt Gates has been right a lot lately?

Speaker 2 Matt Gates was out there talking about how the impeachment thing was a sham and how Kevin McCarthy's an empty suit and how the MAGAs have taken over the house.

Speaker 2 Like, God, that fucking big forehead has a couple of good points in it.

Speaker 10 Well, Matt, Matt, I mean, Matt can tell you what's happening in the house. Matt needs sucks, but he wants to be ascendant, right? He really sucks.
But he does want everybody to understand that

Speaker 10 they are ascendant in the House, that they are ascendant as a political force. And he's just correct about that.

Speaker 10 I think people were overreading the rejection of Jim Jordan as a rejection of MAGA and like, well, Trump, you know, doesn't have the juice.

Speaker 10 And like, Trump went and made sure he proved he had the juice by Emmer lasting four hours and then getting a bona fide election denier to run the House.

Speaker 10 I will say on the upside, there's a lot of, the downsides are very real if like we don't pass Ukraine funding, we don't do the things that we need to do.

Speaker 10 The upside is, I was one thing, the one good thing about Jim Jordan was that it was at least truth in advertising.

Speaker 10 It was like, this is who the party is. This is who's running it now.

Speaker 10 We don't have Kevin McCarthy with his haircut making people, you know, the wolf in sheep's clothing, putting a nice face on the election denialism and everything else.

Speaker 10 And so this guy, this is who they are, this is who they wanted, and like now we'll have him to run in every swing district in Congress in 2024.

Speaker 11 That's true. Why? Isn't this, but I'm curious what the voters think of this, because on the one hand,

Speaker 11 nobody knows who he is. He's not Nancy Pelosi.
You can't be like, look at this guy. On the other hand,

Speaker 11 can't Democrats say say like, this guy wants to ban abortion at the federal level. This guy wants to end Ukraine funding, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, like, isn't he extreme?

Speaker 11 He wants to overturn gay marriage. Like, isn't he extreme enough that they can just pin all of that on?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's my point. My point is, is it's true in advertising.

Speaker 10 And they don't know who he is now.

Speaker 2 They will.

Speaker 10 They'll know who he is.

Speaker 2 Don't treeport my house district.

Speaker 2 That seems like that could be a way to run.

Speaker 10 There are so many ads micro-targeted at you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, don't

Speaker 2 Like, Mona, do you think there's something to that?

Speaker 8 Well, yeah. So there was a debate that we all participated in.

Speaker 8 Tim, you did an interview with somebody, I'm forgetting who, but discussing whether people should have worked for Trump in order to keep the country from going off the roads.

Speaker 8 Steve Hayes, thank you. Should you work for Trump to keep the country at least somewhat between the 50-yard lines?

Speaker 8 And Tim was saying no because you gave it cover and you made it seem more normal than it really was and it would have been better to just let Trump you know appoint his lunatics and then the you know country would have been in real trouble but at least the voters would have seen the reality who Trump was.

Speaker 8 Some people said, nah, you know, when it comes to national security, when it comes to the Defense Department, that's just too big a risk to take.

Speaker 8 But when it comes to somebody like the Speaker of the House, who does not have his finger on the button, at least, I mean, he is two steps away from it, but for now, he doesn't have his finger on the button.

Speaker 2 Luckily, Kamala is still young. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, luckily for some of us.

Speaker 2 I guess I won't speak for everybody.

Speaker 8 But in this case, it really does seem like it's fine. You know, that this will allow voters to make an evaluation about the party because

Speaker 8 the window dressing, which was Kevin McCarthy, is gone. And

Speaker 8 it's it's not quite Jim Jordan.

Speaker 8 So Adam Kinzinger said something funny.

Speaker 8 He said, Johnson

Speaker 8 is Jim Jordan in drag.

Speaker 2 Kinzinger was working that line hard. I got that text too.

Speaker 2 Kinzinger is trying to be serious, Congress guy, is trying to work the line into the podcast face via text message.

Speaker 5 Hey, folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast.

Speaker 5 We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more.

Speaker 5 And every day we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to thebulwark.com and take a look around?

Speaker 5 Every day we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact.

Speaker 5 To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bulwark Plus membership free for the next 30 days? To claim this offer, go to thebulwark.com slash Charlie.

Speaker 5 That's thebulwork.com forward slash Charlie. We're going to get through this together, I promise.

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

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

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

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

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

Speaker 13 Even though severe cases can be rare, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is still the leading cause of hospitalization in babies under one.

Speaker 13 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 13 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 2 I have one more strategic question about Mike Johnson that I'm going to get to with another special guest we have coming at the end. So

Speaker 2 I want to move on for Mike Johnson really quick and just have one moment of Schottenfreude about Tom Emmer before we get to Israel. JVL wrote today about the eunuch Republicans.

Speaker 2 I don't know if you saw this about how Tom Emmer got his balls cut off by Donald Trump and then just said, thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

Speaker 11 Like,

Speaker 2 this has been the thing that is,

Speaker 2 I know I wrote a book about this, so I'm supposed to know, and I'm supposed to be the one that the actual, like, but it's the thing that's most plummetsed me.

Speaker 2 It's like, doesn't one of these people just want to say, fuck you, man? Like, no, like, no, I will not do this. I don't, I really, we spent three weeks with this.

Speaker 2 And is that, can any of the three of you open question explain to me why not a single one of the 220 of them said, this was my moment.

Speaker 2 I am going to go stand up and do the right thing, and I'm going to try to create a consensus government with Hakeem Jeffries, and I'm not going to let Donald Trump make fun of me, and I'm going to call him a crazy, racist lunatic, and at the end of this, Walter Isaacson's going to make sure I get some board seats from Aspen Institute donors.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 2 that seems like a logical thing, but not nobody. Why?

Speaker 11 Because they like being in government. They like being in the House.

Speaker 11 They don't want to have people sending them death threats because they've betrayed Donald Trump. I mean, like, I can think of a lot of reasons why, because they're cowards.

Speaker 8 Really? Yeah, also for a lot of these people, I'm sorry to say,

Speaker 8 they are too dumb to make a good private sector salary.

Speaker 8 All right.

Speaker 2 True.

Speaker 8 So this is as good as it gets for them. And

Speaker 8 they'll hold on with their white knuckle grip.

Speaker 2 I just sometimes fantasize, Sarah. I just like, I wish, you know, Back to the Future was real.

Speaker 2 And I want to get in the thing and fly back to 2013 and go to Tom Emmer's house in Minnesota and meet his wife with their probably dom sub material that they have, whatever he gets into.

Speaker 2 And just, I want to say to,

Speaker 2 we're in New Orleans. We're in the French quarter.
And I want to say to,

Speaker 2 there's a very interesting shop right around the corner that I want to take you to.

Speaker 2 They sell some very interesting goods right around the the corner if anybody's interested.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I just want to read Tom Emmer Donald Trump's tweet. And I just want to be like, this is what is going to happen.
You are going to be in Congress and you are going to support a coup.

Speaker 2 You are going to support the game show host to become an autocrat

Speaker 2 and running the country without our democracy. And he's going to create a social media thing where he calls you a rhino wimp and you are going to say thank you.

Speaker 2 And I just want to tell them that and be like this 10 years from now this is what's gonna happen and and I think that all these guys would be like no way of course they would never I would never do that but so why

Speaker 2 what does Liz tell you you and Liz hang out don't you Chaney yeah

Speaker 2 what does she say

Speaker 2 why only Liz

Speaker 10 well also Adam look here's here's the thing hold on just it's not just the people who are in Congress we've been asking ourselves this question forever I was just talking about this with some people

Speaker 10 Behind closed doors, they all say Donald Trump is a psychopath. Obviously.
They know, it's not like...

Speaker 2 Obviously. Right?

Speaker 10 They are afraid of the threats, but a lot of it is that in the early days, people did stick their heads up. I don't know if you guys even can remember back.
Remember who Jeff Flake is?

Speaker 2 He's got a great life. He's an ambassador.
That's fine.

Speaker 10 That's fine, but no, no, no.

Speaker 2 Do you remember? But he stood up.

Speaker 11 Sure.

Speaker 10 And he got, but

Speaker 10 he's done. He's done in the party.
It's all over.

Speaker 2 He's the ambassador to Turkey. That's awesome.
I'm available. I don't know if there are any Joe Biden people out here.
Whatever. Actually, I don't want to.
The answer is they're cowards.

Speaker 10 I don't know. I don't want to sit up here and make these excuses for them.

Speaker 2 It's very strange.

Speaker 10 And actually, the important part is not why they don't speak up now. Actually, it leads me to a different point, which is this.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 Sarah's stronger than me. Yeah.
Not kidding about that. That is real true.

Speaker 10 Do you guys know Tim and I used to travel together and we used to have to share hotel rooms because we worked for like.

Speaker 2 Very uncomfortable. Yeah.

Speaker 10 yeah one time he left me at a gay bar in minnesota by myself because he just left with somebody and didn't tell me he's like

Speaker 2 my husband because i'm in a covenant marriage

Speaker 2 like

Speaker 2 like like johnson

Speaker 2 yeah

Speaker 2 anyway you have something

Speaker 2 here's the different point

Speaker 10 The point is actually, it is the point about speaking up, which is we are about to go into,

Speaker 10 I hate to tell you this, but it is going to be Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. Okay, that's the election we're facing, that's what's going to happen in 2024, and maybe RFK Jr., I don't know.

Speaker 10 And the test for everybody this time around, Millie and Kelly and Mattis, all of these guys sat there in the administration. They've all been talking in background on books.

Speaker 10 They've all watched the coup happen.

Speaker 10 People are either going to say something now

Speaker 10 or they will regret it for the rest of their lives.

Speaker 10 And we will all pay the price because the only people that can really make a difference now is like, and that is like the thing that we have to demand. It's not to, we can't go back to the future.

Speaker 10 We can demand now that they speak up because like it's the last time it's really going to matter.

Speaker 10 And like that pressure, we have to be putting them on them and we should call them cowards if they don't.

Speaker 8 Sarah, you're the expert on this, but don't you think we should wait till September of 2024, then run a whole series of ads? If they do it now,

Speaker 8 it'll be forgotten by then. We need to hold our fire on that.

Speaker 10 Okay, so that's a strategic question.

Speaker 10 I'm actually trying to pose like a moral question, a question of what is the right thing to do, and are people going to understand?

Speaker 10 So, because actually, I've already heard there are people, maybe former presidents, where people are already posing the question to them. Will you say something going into 2024? And they're saying no.

Speaker 10 And we should should find that unacceptable.

Speaker 8 Absolutely.

Speaker 10 Sonny's going to say something to make me mad.

Speaker 10 Can I ask one strategic question?

Speaker 11 Would that even work, or would it backfire?

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 11 then it becomes: look at the Uniparty coming out against Donald Trump. This is our guy.
They're attacking him. These are all traitors.
They're traitors to Donald Trump.

Speaker 11 Why would we listen to these people? They took his money. They took his jobs.

Speaker 11 I have about as much faith in the voters as JVL does.

Speaker 10 Okay, guys, just on this whole thing, since you're going to stand in for JVL.

Speaker 2 I need to stand up.

Speaker 10 I'm standing in my chair. I'm standing up.
I'm cool.

Speaker 2 I'm cool.

Speaker 2 I'm fine.

Speaker 10 How do people in the room feel about democracy? Do we love democracy?

Speaker 10 Who do you think is part of democracy? Who's doing the democracy? We are.

Speaker 10 The voters are doing the democracy. So we can't just.

Speaker 2 The people on Bourbon Street. Yeah, all of them.
The people in Mandeville.

Speaker 2 The people in Shreveport. That's right.
All of them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Homa. They're voting.

Speaker 10 I don't know what that means, but yeah.

Speaker 2 It's not good.

Speaker 2 It's not good. They're voting in Homa.

Speaker 10 And so we better figure out how we are going to persuade enough of those people that Donald Trump is a sufficient enough danger, which he absolutely is.

Speaker 10 It is not like 2020, where we didn't know what he was going to do. We do know now that he'll pull us out of NATO and he will abandon Ukraine.
We do know now that there will be no guardrails.

Speaker 10 None of these people will work for him. Mattis won't work for him again.
You know who's going to run DOJ? Rudy Giuliani.

Speaker 2 Pardon Rudy Giuliani.

Speaker 10 You know who's going to run

Speaker 10 the State Department? Mike Flynn.

Speaker 10 Like, just sit with it for a second and let it consume you.

Speaker 2 Vimeg, Vimeg Mike get state.

Speaker 2 Let's not give it to Mike Quinn yet, okay? Vimeg's out there. All right.

Speaker 10 So our only, the main option, right, is to persuade a small slice of voters who will be up for grabs and a bunch of people in their military uniforms all saying together.

Speaker 10 I agree, they can come a little bit later. My fear is, is that they're going to do one Atlantic profile.

Speaker 10 or one interview and they're going to say they're going to sign one letter with 20 people and they're going to say I did my duty. I said it.

Speaker 10 I said it out loud that's not enough like we've got to tell this story over and over again we've got to make sure voters hear it because I just I want people to start getting attuned to the level of catastrophe can we show them

Speaker 8 I hope you'll indulge me. I want to make a pedantic point.

Speaker 2 Oh, no. I love pedants.

Speaker 8 I'm against democracy, but I am for liberal democracy.

Speaker 2 Okay?

Speaker 8 So democracy is what they had and have in Hungary, where the majority gets to take away the rights of the minority. You know, 51%.

Speaker 8 So, you know, your religion doesn't get protected, your free speech doesn't get protected, because the majority has decided it wants its way. So we don't have that.

Speaker 8 We have a liberal democracy where the rights of minorities are protected and where we have rule of law and where we have limitations on government. That's what I'm for.
Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 Same, saints.

Speaker 2 I like liberal democracy too. I've been trying to take back liberal.
I know, Sonny Closieris.

Speaker 2 I've been trying to take back liberal for our people, you know, because the lefties, they want progressive. I kind of like, let them have it.

Speaker 2 Like liberal, like lip, I want to be like the British liberals. You know, that's nice.

Speaker 2 But that's, you know, it's kind of the same in Australia, the Aussies, the Liberals. Anyway, for another day.
I want to show them, I want to go back to Mark Milley and these guys.

Speaker 2 Mark Milley's been good. I want to go back to Mattis and these fellas, Condi, and the people that have

Speaker 2 been hanging out with Walter and Aspen and not really doing a whole lot.

Speaker 2 No offense, Walter.

Speaker 2 What I'm wondering is, can we show them Charlie? Charlie did a good YouTube video the other day. Charlie's not here.
He's going to listen to this, actually.

Speaker 2 Can everybody say hi to Charlie really quick? Hey, Charlie!

Speaker 2 We miss you. Charlie did a good YouTube video the other day and it showed Brian Stelter telling Jenna Ellis, it was like, you are going to regret this someday.

Speaker 10 He said in 10 to 20 years.

Speaker 2 He said 10 to 20 years. I was like, you're going to regret this.

Speaker 10 I just watched it and I was like, it was a lot sooner than you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you're not in 10 to 10 to 20 years.

Speaker 2 And then the next video is her crying in court.

Speaker 2 Which I did enjoy

Speaker 2 and watched a few times.

Speaker 2 You'll be shocked to hear that JBL was not satisfied with the tears.

Speaker 2 He wanted more pain.

Speaker 2 When I was talking about how much I enjoyed that, he was like, no, not enough pain for her. But anyway,

Speaker 2 classic JVL.

Speaker 2 Can we not show that video to these guys and just be like, here's what

Speaker 2 you're going to be crying in the camps in three years if you don't talk now? Like, this is your moment to avoid regretting it. Like,

Speaker 2 what knobs and levers can we pull to get them out of the Stanford Ivory Tower?

Speaker 10 I don't think we've done it. Jack Smith seems like he's on that.

Speaker 2 Jack is? Yeah.

Speaker 10 I don't know that we can do anything about it, but he's on that.

Speaker 8 But I think, here's what I picture. In a few months, Sarah Longwell is going to place some calls, and they are going to take your calls.

Speaker 8 We're talking about Mattis and all the people who are in the Trump White House.

Speaker 8 And you're going to say, we want you to cut some ads.

Speaker 8 And all together, if possible, but individually if necessary, and you're going to look into the camera and you're going to say, I sat with Donald Trump. I served him.

Speaker 8 I was not anti-Trump at first, but because of what I saw, he can never hold that office again.

Speaker 2 Hey,

Speaker 8 Sarah's going to make that happen.

Speaker 8 I really believe that actually.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 10 Future me sounds awesome.

Speaker 2 I can actually believe that.

Speaker 2 I'm going to start carrying around a paper bag for the next year.

Speaker 2 It's kind of crazy that we're at this like level of

Speaker 2 we're relying on Jim Mattis to cut a TV ad to save us from a Donald Trump autocracy is a little bit too tenuous for my taste, I guess. Wish we were in a different place.

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Speaker 2 I want to go on to another tenuous situation. We're just doing uplifting talk here in the French quarter.

Speaker 2 Nothing but positivity here. Joe Biden was talking about Israel today.
So I went to GW as much as I own, as much as I rep LSU.

Speaker 2 I actually graduated from GW. We can talk about that after.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 there's not some great stuff happening in my alma mater this week.

Speaker 2 and it's one thing to be like oh some college student signed a letter It's like another thing when some college students are like praising our Hamas martyrs on the side of the library at campus that's not good.

Speaker 2 That's not good

Speaker 2 To say the least and and some of the numbers about young people have been bad and so what Rashida Talib has done has been bad and we can talk about all that but I just want to start with like Joe Biden has been like quite good on this, like quite, quite, quite, quite good.

Speaker 2 And today

Speaker 2 he was asked about,

Speaker 2 yesterday KJP gave a very bad answer about anti-Semitism, but today the actual president was asked about the deaths

Speaker 2 in Palestine. Legitimate question.
And he was, I expressed empathy about the deaths, but also at the same time said, I actually also don't believe the information that Hamas is putting out.

Speaker 2 And a a lot of lefty folks were like really pissed about this. And I thought it was like a pretty, people are always like, where is Joe Biden's sister soldier moment?

Speaker 2 And I was like, Joe Biden standing in front of the White House and saying, I do not believe that the Hamas numbers based on the based on the intel we have, is causing him some trouble. And so,

Speaker 2 anyway, I guess my first question for Mona is how you assess how he's been doing, and then I want to talk about the politics.

Speaker 8 Okay, so

Speaker 8 Biden has has been magnificent.

Speaker 8 The last two weeks have been the best of his presidency. I mean he has inhabited the office in a way that he has not been able to do until now and it's been really terrific.
Now here's the thing.

Speaker 8 On the left it's it's a different

Speaker 8 problem so we've talked a lot at the bulwark. We you know focus

Speaker 8 on the problem of the authoritarianism and radicalism that is filtering up from the grassroots. And it comes from the people.
Now they are fed a lot of crap by

Speaker 8 the conservative media.

Speaker 8 But it has created a problem of the grassroots that then the politicians and the elites.

Speaker 8 I'm talking about the right. Politicians and elites have responded to this.
They feel like in order to make their constituents happy, they have to get more and more authoritarian and crazy.

Speaker 8 On the left, it's quite different. On the left, it's not bubbling up from the bottom.
You

Speaker 8 stop your average Democrat on the street and say, What do you think about the Israel-Palestine thing?

Speaker 8 And they're going to say, Well, I mean, of course, Israel has a right to defend herself, and I really feel for the Palestinians. It's an awful thing.
They're not going to be saying, Go, Hamas, okay?

Speaker 8 But the elites on the left are really corrupted. And they are the ones who are cheerleading for mass murder and not seeming to get that, you know,

Speaker 8 that they've got a moral screw loose if they can see what Hamas did two weeks ago and not respond with moral revulsion.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so here's my question. Either one of you can take this, or both.

Speaker 2 I really, I don't mean to be a Joe Biden fangirl on this. Like, we and all of us have, like, we're pretty harsh about the Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 So So, I've not been 100% with him on foreign policy stuff all the time. But,

Speaker 2 shouldn't Biden be getting more credit for this because of what Mona's talking about? Right? It would be easy to stand with Israel if everyone in his coalition was locked up with him.

Speaker 2 But because this is the one issue where there are people that disagree with him, some people in good faith disagree, some people have some kind of crazy views disagree.

Speaker 2 Like, shouldn't he be getting more credit with center, center-right folks because he's been so stalwart on this.

Speaker 11 Well, this is, look, like you, I was a little bit worried after Afghanistan, you know,

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 but this is the perfect opportunity for Biden to make the case, you know, the Republicans have embraced their crazies. They've embraced their crazies.

Speaker 11 I represent the middle 60% of the country, the 60% that tells the pollsters, yeah, we support Israel's right to exist and defend itself. And

Speaker 11 yeah, I think you're totally right. I mean,

Speaker 11 like Mona,

Speaker 11 I have been shocked and vaguely appalled by a lot of the talk, but it's also been revelatory in a very real way. Because

Speaker 11 when academics say things like, well, what did you think decolonization was going to look like? Like, yeah, I knew what it was going to look like in the context of Israel.

Speaker 11 It was going to look like this. That's horrible.
And that's why I don't support it. And that's why Joe Biden doesn't support it.

Speaker 11 And that's like, it's the best case for Joe Biden is here here is a guy who is maintaining the United States's role in the national order, or the international order. And he's doing a great job at it.

Speaker 2 Sir, isn't this, isn't this what, like, so like, it's not just Biden, actually. It's Dan Goldman who I had on the podcast Sunday.

Speaker 2 My buddy Peter Hamby wrote an article that had Alyssa Slotkin and Jake Auchenclaus and Richie Torres. Like, aren't they doing all the things that

Speaker 2 all of the anti-anti-Trump or never-Trump Republicans asked Republican leaders to do?

Speaker 2 Like, saying to the people on their own side who they think are being extreme, like, you're being extreme and crazy. Aren't they all doing that?

Speaker 10 I think so. I think it's

Speaker 10 getting, yeah, maybe not all, but also, like,

Speaker 10 I'm gonna say two things. One, the situation in Israel is complicated.
Condemning Hamas is not. It's like a very simple thing.

Speaker 10 People should be able to condemn terrorists. And I think that Joe Biden...

Speaker 2 I got this really quick. I'm sorry to throw it to you.

Speaker 2 I got a tweet today that was like, you centrists think that it's so, you're being, you're, you know, like, that you're being so logical by opposing Hamas terrorism.

Speaker 2 And I was like, yeah, it's really hard to oppose Hamas, think BB has not been that great, and also not want Palestinian kids to die. That is like, woo, we're scary centrists.
Watch out.

Speaker 2 Watch out. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 10 From a political standpoint, look, I don't know. I don't know if Joe Biden's going to get credit or maybe he'll start to get some grudging credit along the way.

Speaker 10 This is one of those situations where like it doesn't matter really if he's getting credit right now. What he should do is Joe Biden clearly believes right now in what he's saying.

Speaker 10 It is his finest moment because he has moral clarity at the moment. He's speaking from his heart every time he does it.

Speaker 10 He's speaking like a normal person that is empathetic and as a result it will transcend some of the age concerns. He will look like a leader.

Speaker 10 That will either, it will either give him that, if it doesn't, nothing else will.

Speaker 2 Like this

Speaker 10 this is his best opportunity to show that he still has the ability to lead this country, to be a good commander-in-chief. I thought that Oval Office speech was the best thing I've ever seen from him.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 I hope he continues to behave this way. And, like, here's the thing: he should just do the right thing

Speaker 10 and let what happens happen because he knows it's the right thing and he believes in it.

Speaker 2 So, you're that was a really nice talk, really nice, but it was a long way of saying

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 you don't think the voters are going to care about this. You don't think that they're going to give you a title?

Speaker 10 I mean, I will just tell you that, like, this is not great.

Speaker 10 We've asked of the voters lately, both about Israel and about Ukraine for a long time, like, even swing voters, like, they just really have internalized this idea that, like, we shouldn't do anything abroad.

Speaker 10 that we that we we have lots of problems here we should take care of our own border we should spend money here uh this This is the argument Republicans have been pumping into the ecosystem now for a long time.

Speaker 10 And frankly, it wasn't just, this was also something that you heard a lot of Democrats say back in the day, back when I wasn't, you, I was a much less big fan of them.

Speaker 2 All right. We got a special guest coming up here in a minute, but I want to play my favorite game.
Is everybody ready?

Speaker 2 It's president or jail. Okay.

Speaker 2 We go around

Speaker 2 and everybody tells us how likely you think it is going to be that two years from now when we gather here in the free city of New Orleans,

Speaker 2 that Donald Trump will be either president. I'm going to give you time to think about this by asking the question the longest way possible.

Speaker 2 You'll either be president, you'll either be in jail or neither. None of the above.
And I'm going to lump in being on house arrests and Mar-a-Lago with the Cougars as being part of jail.

Speaker 2 So jail or house arrest, president or neither.

Speaker 2 My current spot is 45% president. No, no.
45% president, 40% neither, 15% jail.

Speaker 2 Moving down the panels.

Speaker 10 I'll swap your top two.

Speaker 2 So 45% neither, 40% president, 15% jail. Woo! All right.
Little jail, huh?

Speaker 11 What about president from jail?

Speaker 2 President from jail!

Speaker 2 That's a possibility.

Speaker 2 Make it happen.

Speaker 8 I keep wondering, if he goes to jail, what does the Secret Service do exactly?

Speaker 8 Do they, you know, do they say, like,

Speaker 8 don't mess with him to the guy who's got, you know, tattoos all over his body and, you know, no teeth? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but okay. So before we get to the next question, this leads to a final question, though.
Are we...

Speaker 2 Is your hope at least on the way up? I mean, all these flips in Georgia, we got to give Bonnie Willis some love, right? Like, it's feeling real.

Speaker 2 Is anyone else feeling a little more

Speaker 2 hope?

Speaker 8 Anyone on the mono? So, look, this was not a great week for defendant Trump. I mean, you've got, you know, all of these flippers,

Speaker 8 and you have to love Trump, who keeps saying, you know, I know about flippers, you know, like

Speaker 8 as if he's a mafia don, but whatever.

Speaker 8 And then, and then we only have ABC reporting that Mark Meadows has a deal with Jack Smith. So it hasn't been picked up by anybody else.
So we'll hold our fire on that one.

Speaker 2 But it doesn't really seem like he's made a stirring stuff to me.

Speaker 2 He cries a lot.

Speaker 2 I mean, not that I'm crying.

Speaker 10 I was just going to say, like, let's take it easy on Men How.

Speaker 2 He cries a lot.

Speaker 10 You and J.B. Olga are like, I like to cry.

Speaker 2 I like to cry, but I, you know.

Speaker 8 Listen, if you worked for a while,

Speaker 8 if you worked for Donald Trump, you'd have more reasons to cry. That's true.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's true. When Donald Trump went into the hospital, I was crying tears of joy, and Mark Meadows was crying tears of sadness.
So that's like a little different.

Speaker 8 But look,

Speaker 8 one thing that people have to bear in mind, unfortunately, is that our legal system is designed for delay, and Trump is a past master at delay.

Speaker 8 That Mar-a-Lago case with his little cutie judge that loves him is not going to go to trial for ages, you know, maybe not even before the election. She's going to find every reason to delay.

Speaker 8 So, that one, which is cut and dried, it's the Mar-a-Lago documents case, that's not going to do anything, certainly not before the election, maybe not ever, I don't know, we'll see. And the

Speaker 8 Georgia one, he's not going to go to jail for that. So, I just think if he's

Speaker 8 the thing we have to focus on is not whether he's going to be in jail, it's whether he's going to be a convicted felon.

Speaker 8 Because that is a possibility, and that would be enough, I believe for a goodly number of Republican voters to say

Speaker 8 yeah he was a great president but I can't vote for a felony

Speaker 10 a good define a goodly number

Speaker 2 two percent two percent one percent three percent which would be that's good that's a that's one percent

Speaker 10 I think I think yeah we're gonna need about six percent could I just say though really quickly the chances like the scenarios that you can come up with, and it just so happens I was at a meeting where people were doing some scenario things,

Speaker 10 he could be a convicted felon.

Speaker 8 He could be even maybe have to go to jail.

Speaker 10 And he could still become president, pardon himself, and walk away from all of it.

Speaker 2 All right. Well, I think we can all agree on one thing.
Hopefully, he dies before all that happens. Okay.

Speaker 2 Let's go.

Speaker 2 We have one final guest. And I was hoping that everybody could do me a favor.
And our last guest, it is his

Speaker 2 49th birthday.

Speaker 2 It is his 49th birthday, May 59th. I'm sorry, my ears are going wrong.
59th birthday, and he's coming on stage. You might have heard of him.
His name is James Carville. And I was hoping we could all

Speaker 2 sing him a little happy birthday as he comes out to visit us. Ready?

Speaker 2 One, two, three.

Speaker 2 Happy birthday to you.

Speaker 2 Happy birthday to you.

Speaker 2 Happy birthday to you.

Speaker 2 Happy birthday to you.

Speaker 6 This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture East. This with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
Get ready for your next TV obsession, All's Fair.

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Speaker 2 Terms apply.

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Speaker 2 Nah, brother.

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Speaker 2 All right, let me try it. Hmm, okay, yeah.

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