Jonathan Martin: The Antibodies Resisting the Virus

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Speaker 5 I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast.
It's October 24th, 2023. We are on day 21 of the House of Representatives being without a speaker.

Speaker 5 Even as we speak here, Republicans are trying again to pick a speaker. They are down to Plan D.

Speaker 5 Also, Donald Trump has made an amazing discovery, which we're going to get to in a moment. We are joined by Jonathan Martin, who is a senior political columnist of Politico.

Speaker 5 He's also its politics bureau chief and the author of the best-selling book, This Will Not Pass, Trump Biden, and the Battle for America's Future. And he joins us from Oxford, England.
So,

Speaker 5 top of the morning to you, Jonathan.

Speaker 4 Hey, Charlotte, thanks for having me on. I'm feeling very posh here in Oxford.
I just stepped into an ancient pub, and I saw on the wall drawing a pint of beer, none other than

Speaker 4 that great American John F. Kerry.
Oh, my. And it occurred to me that John Kerry came to the pub and he was reporting for duty at the pub.

Speaker 5 I don't think that John Kerry spends much time in pubs, though. That just doesn't sound on brand.

Speaker 4 That's a shout out to those who have memories of the 2004 convention.

Speaker 5 I'm trying to forget those.

Speaker 5 So, hey, talk about deep dives here.

Speaker 5 I'm probably going to date myself with this, but we have a lot to talk about, including the ongoing cluster fuck of the house GOP, which by the time we're done talking, we may have some results on, you know, on, you know, having gone from Kevin McCarthy to Steve Scalise to Jim Jordan to Tom Emmer,

Speaker 5 whatever. But we have to start with this.
Can we start with the breaking story, the latest flipper?

Speaker 5 Flashback to your youth, Jonathan.

Speaker 1 Come on.

Speaker 1 You know this one.

Speaker 1 Flipper, faster than lightning.

Speaker 1 No one you see

Speaker 1 is smarter than he.

Speaker 5 Jenna Ellis

Speaker 5 pleading guilty, apparently weeping in court this morning.

Speaker 5 Of course, this is what Donald Trump says about people who take the pleas, right? They're flippers. They're rats.
But Jenna Ellis. Boy, you didn't see this coming, did you, Jonathan?

Speaker 5 I didn't see it coming.

Speaker 4 It's always the ones you most expect, as the saying goes. Well, first of all, I gotta say, this is a podcast, I know, but props for that great sound.

Speaker 4 I mean, that's like really quality talk radio material there, Charlie. So respect for the old school, the old school cue there on the

Speaker 4 flipper soundtrack.

Speaker 4 It was such a band of

Speaker 4 we're in England. So like, Charlie, this is more your generation, but like, what was the like the B-list Beatles band called, like, the Ants or something like that? What was the whoa, no?

Speaker 4 See, I thought you were going for band of brothers, no, no, no, there was like some like would-be Beatles, like, imitation called like the Ants, I don't know, but it was this like group of grifters and B-list lawyers looking for this sort of moment of notoriety.

Speaker 4 And, like, of course, they have no deep loyalty to like Donald Trump or his movement.

Speaker 4 So, like, when their ass is on the line, I'm not at all surprised they're flipping In the case of Jenna Ellis, who I think supports the Santas now, I can't say I'm terribly, terribly surprised.

Speaker 5 Yeah, she's gone through some things. You know, Trump wasn't paying her legal bills.

Speaker 5 You could tell that she was a little bit disaffected.

Speaker 4 It's not exactly Jim Baker versus Warren Christopher in the Florida recount in 2000.

Speaker 5 I think that's something of an understatement.

Speaker 5 Okay, so just to bring people up to speed here, Jenna Ellis, former lawyer for Donald Trump's 2020 campaign, pled guilty Tuesday to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump's 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Speaker 5 So in other words, once again, we have one of the Trump inner circle, his legal brain trust, saying this was a crime.

Speaker 5 See, I guess I try to put this in perspective, that if you and I had been told a year ago that Sidney Powell would plead guilty, Jenna Ellis would plead guilty, Kenneth Chesborough would plead guilty.

Speaker 5 There's another guy that nobody knows about. We'd go, okay, wow, there's some traction here.
So she is the second codependent with known direct links, a one-time Fox News regular.

Speaker 5 Ellis was part of the post-2020 election legal team appearing alongside Rudy Giuliani, Trump attorney Sidney Powell. You know this.

Speaker 5 We've already had the guilty pleas from the Atlanta bail bondsman, a guy named Scott Hall, and of course, Powell and Chesbury.

Speaker 4 So moving ahead. I mean, Charlie, you know the law.

Speaker 4 The prosecutors aren't looking to get the goods on Jen Ellis and Kenneth Cheeseborough.

Speaker 4 They're hoping to leverage them to get a bigger fish here to stay with our aquatic theme for the show. And that's obviously what they're up to here.

Speaker 4 And Donald Trump, who never sort of exudes loyalty to others, I think is now in a situation where he's not feeling it reciprocated.

Speaker 4 And as you put it earlier, I'm sure he's not very happy about that because

Speaker 4 they're not hanging tough like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.

Speaker 4 They're getting the best possible deal for themselves.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 5 So, and you know, you and I are not lawyers here, but I do think that as lay people, it certainly does look like Fonnie Willis's strategy of indicting 18 co-conspirators on racketeering charge is actually paying dividends.

Speaker 5 Because, I mean, the whole point of using that racketeering statute down in Georgia

Speaker 5 is to put pressure on people. And there is that amazing phenomenon of showing up at the courthouse and facing actual jail time

Speaker 5 that leads to these kinds of guilty pleas. So in each one of these pleas, they may not get a lot of jail time, but the deal is they have to testify truthfully, otherwise the deal goes away.

Speaker 5 Okay, so I want to spend more time on what's going on in Washington, D.C., where they're voting this morning. But before we do this, this is a little bit of a palate cleanser.

Speaker 5 I know the world is burning. I know there are more important things going on in the world, but I just wanted to share this moment.

Speaker 5 of stable genius with you, Jonathan, as a longtime student of Donald Trump, the mind of Donald Trump, the incredible brilliance of Donald Trump, he apparently discovered something that no one had ever thought of before.

Speaker 5 Let me play you this sound button in case you missed it. This was Donald Trump speaking up, I believe, in Derry, New Hampshire.
I'm for us.

Speaker 5 You know how you spell us, right?

Speaker 5 You spell us, U.S. True.

Speaker 5 I just picked that up. Has anyone ever thought of that before? I just picked that up.
No one's ever thought of that. A couple of days I'm reading and it said us.

Speaker 5 And I said, you you know, if you think about it, us equals U.S.

Speaker 5 isn't that? Now, if we say something genius, they'll never say it.

Speaker 5 Okay, Jonathan, nobody ever thought of that before.

Speaker 4 He thought of that.

Speaker 5 It must be amazing waking up as Donald Trump looking around the world and thinking some obvious thing going, hey, us, U.S., same thing. I'll bet you nobody in history has ever thought of that before.

Speaker 5 What a stable genius I am.

Speaker 4 I'm just thrilled that the Friars Club has opened an expansion office in Derry, New Hampshire. And

Speaker 4 because, look, that shtick really kills. It's up there with, you know, take my wife, please.
Oh, God.

Speaker 5 Okay, so you've heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Here's the definition from psychology today because I do my research on the internets.

Speaker 5 The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because a lack of self-awareness

Speaker 5 prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills. In other words, they are too stupid to know how stupid they are, Jonathan.
I just present this for people's contemplation before we dive in.

Speaker 4 Just put that out there, Charlie.

Speaker 5 Of course, I'm going to get the reaction saying, you know, there are so many more serious things. Why are you talking about this? Why are you laughing about this? Be better.
You know what?

Speaker 5 This is the only way we stay sane, Jonathan. Okay, so

Speaker 5 let's talk about what's going on. The House GOP, beyond any sort of parody,

Speaker 5 has now gone 21 days without a speaker, absolutely paralyzed. Everybody is acknowledging that it's a fiasco, that it's an embarrassment.

Speaker 5 So you had a really interesting piece last week where you talk about

Speaker 5 why the Republicans just cannot get their act together, that there is, in fact, no sort of cohesion at all in the party. So what's going on right now? What's going to happen?

Speaker 4 The piece that I I wrote, you're nice to mention, I had a column in Politico last week about it's not one party anymore. And there's a reason why they can't come to an agreement on a speaker.

Speaker 4 You've got what's really a fractured Republican Party today. I mean, listeners to this show will know this well.
I mean, you've got the remnants of the pre-Trump party as they exist, still hanging on.

Speaker 4 And there's more of them in the Senate and the ranks of governors, of course, but there's some in the House still. And then you have the post-Trump Party.

Speaker 4 And part of this is generational, but it's also sort of psychological too. And they're just operating in different wavelengths.

Speaker 4 So it shouldn't be a surprise that not only, Charlie, do you have this messy speakers race, but that you have this remarkable primary in which you have sort of almost a parallel race

Speaker 4 happening on top of the main race, which we are very familiar with, which is candidates go to Iowa, New Hampshire. They do candidate forums.
They do debates.

Speaker 4 they raise money, and they, you know, try to make an impression with activists and house parties and take questions.

Speaker 4 And then you've got like this other primary going on, which Donald Trump is like the clear-in-a-way favorite, doesn't do any of that stuff, and it doesn't really seem to hurt him.

Speaker 4 And so, I see sort of similarities in the parallel primaries taking place in the presidential field and what's happening in the House, Charlie.

Speaker 4 You've just got these sort of two different parties in one. And I think about what the House GOP is trying to do, you know, it's less a faction-driven American political party at this point.

Speaker 4 It's more like a sort of European-style parliament trying to put together a coalition government with different parties. That to me is more than what's going on.

Speaker 4 You got real mistrust, real differences, and just inability to put them aside for the good of the institution.

Speaker 5 As you point out, I mean, there's a pre-Trump GOP, a post-Trump GOP living together uneasily. They They may be roommates, but they're not married.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 But they're screwing each other. I mean, it's just, it is nasty.
I mean, they're throwing the plates, they're throwing the dishes. So let's talk about Jim Jordan going down, the significance of that.

Speaker 5 He is Donald Trump's candidate. They pulled out all of the big guns, all of the media guns.
You got to go with Jim Jordan. Otherwise, you are a rhino.

Speaker 5 And to the surprise of a lot of people, you had more than 20 Republicans who stood up and said, I'm sorry, too crazy, too crazy even for the modern Republican Party.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because there is still the DNA, the strands of the DNA lingering among some members of the House GOP, especially among members who have been there for a while, people who are more institutionalist, in which they just can't stomach the idea of, you know, a bomb thrower type being the Speaker of the House and second in line to the presidency.

Speaker 4 That's just not what role he is to play. And so I think it was a bridge too far.

Speaker 4 I think that surprised a lot of people who thought that the traditionalists would cave, like they often have when it comes to Trump or Trump-adjacent issues, and they held strong.

Speaker 4 But it does speak to the paralysis that is now gripping the institution three weeks after they threw out McCarthy.

Speaker 4 Look, it may be so much that the fatigue alone will prompt them to pick a new speaker this week. But, Charlie,

Speaker 4 how much is that speaker going to be a short-term play? And how much of this

Speaker 4 will be re-litigated

Speaker 4 after the election? My big picture view is that so much of this hangs on Trump and Trump's fate, because he really is the biggest actor

Speaker 4 in American politics broadly, but certainly in the Republican Party.

Speaker 4 And until they figure that out, and until his fate is determined, I think that it's just going to be difficult to figure out what their identity is in the House or anywhere else.

Speaker 5 Let's say that it's somebody like a Tom Emmer. I mean, we're moving the standards from being acceptable to not as awful as it could have been.
But whoever it is has the same dynamic, right?

Speaker 5 Is that you're trying to square the circle. You're trying to keep the government open.
Oh, you know, are you going to allow a vote on Ukraine?

Speaker 5 Kevin McCarthy tried to appease, tried to make the deals, tried to finesse it for months and months and months. He couldn't do it.
I'm not sure why anybody thinks that somebody else can do it.

Speaker 5 Now, as you were putting this together, you were talking to Paul Ryan. Right.
Who you said was perhaps the purest archetype of the pre-GOP.

Speaker 4 Pre-Trump GOP, right? exactly. The crown prince of the pre-Trump Party, right?

Speaker 5 Well, you and I are old enough to remember when he was the future of the party 11 years ago.

Speaker 4 He used to be the future of the GOP. Exactly.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Okay. So what's Paul Ryan really thinking right now? He's watching this shit show.

Speaker 4 Well, I think he was pretty candid with me. And I think his view was it's a populist,

Speaker 4 very political GOP conference in the house right now, and that reflects a populist party. It's not a sort of ideas-oriented party.

Speaker 4 It's mostly oriented around populism, or being honest, oriented around personality, the personality of Donald Trump. And as long as that's the case, I think everything's on hold.

Speaker 4 And can they muddle through with Tom Emmerer or somebody else's speaker for the next 14 months? Well, sure, they can, but I all of this has got to be reconciled in 2025.

Speaker 4 And Charlie, you're old enough to have lived through Democrats losing three consecutive presidential races in the 1980s, and by considerable margins, by the way.

Speaker 5 80, 84, 88, right.

Speaker 4 Exactly. It took them three straight landslide losses to have a real reformation movement.
And so let's see what happens if Trump does lose and if he is sentenced to prison.

Speaker 4 I mean, will that prompt some kind of a reformation in the Republican Party? Or will they just try to kind of muddle on through in this hybrid manner, neither fish nor foul?

Speaker 4 But it's pretty damn messy right now.

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Speaker 5 Okay, so let's go back to Paul Ryan because I would love to be a fly on the wall listening to the conversation that must have taken place between Paul Ryan and John Boehner.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 5 Okay, so both of these guys pushed out as Republican speakers. In fact, going back to 2000, I mean, when's the last time there was a successful Republican speaker?

Speaker 5 It is the shittiest job in Washington.

Speaker 5 And they had bigger majorities, but they must be looking at this and going, because they lived through this, right?

Speaker 5 John Boehner had had it with the Taliban caucus, with the political terrorists, you know, to use his phrase. Paul Ryan saw the writing on the wall.
He got out of the way.

Speaker 5 He tried to appease the MAGA folks and Donald Trump. But now Kevin McCarthy is out.
I mean, it's basically an unworkable job. There's no way of doing it.

Speaker 5 I mean, you think about one speaker after another. Each one of them thought, okay, it'll be different with me.
It wasn't. And they all ended up being thrown out the window, right?

Speaker 4 Because you've got members who don't want to govern. That's not why they're in Washington.
They're in Washington to make a point,

Speaker 4 not a difference, to paraphrase a comment that Mitch McConnell often makes. Or as one former member told me, they come to Washington to be something, not do something.

Speaker 4 And that makes it pretty damn unworkable to use your word, Charlie, because they don't want to be in the majority.

Speaker 4 Because the burden of being in the majority is you have to govern, you got to compromise. And when you have a Democratic Senate, Democratic White House, that's not fun.

Speaker 4 My friend Paul Kane, the great congressional correspondent, the Washington Post, had a column over the weekend in which he noted that like 120-ish members of the House GOP have been elected since 2018.

Speaker 4 I mean, that tells you everything you need to know about the turnover and about the culture of the place. They don't know life in the majority, let alone understand how to govern, right?

Speaker 5 And yet, what you wrote was that apparently there were still enough antibodies resisting the virus in the House to have stopped Jordan. So let's talk about that.

Speaker 5 There are still the antibodies, there are still the normies, and as you point out in the Senate, the Republicans still more or less reflect that pre-Trump party. So, what are those antibodies?

Speaker 5 What's going on in the Senate?

Speaker 4 The antibodies is the sort of traditional muscle sinno of the pre-Trump party that

Speaker 4 is just not going to elevate Jim Jordan to speaker. That's not going to throw out Mitch McConnell for being leader.
But

Speaker 4 those antibodies grow weaker and weaker every two years, Charlotte, because the generational turnover that's coming in a lot faster in the House, but you certainly see it in the Senate too, reflects a Trumpier party.

Speaker 4 Look at the issue of Ukraine, which I think is really one of the best tells where you can sort of see the difference between pre- and post-Trump and the party.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I wrote a big piece over the summer about Mitch McConnell and him trying to really keep the party on kind of the Reaganite path on national security and on Ukraine in specific.

Speaker 4 And I looked this up, and you would not be surprised at all. But overwhelmingly, the House GOP members who voted to strip Ukraine of aid came in after Trump was elected president.

Speaker 4 And it's a lot smaller number in the Senate. But similarly, it's an overwhelmingly post-2018 group in the Senate that's for stripping Ukraine of aid.
Look at Ohio.

Speaker 4 You know, Rob Portman, classic Bushy Republican, literally worked in Bush 41 and Bush 43 White House. He went to Dartmouth,

Speaker 4 very much the sort of Cincinnati Republican. The Taft family would recognize that archetype.
You know, replaced by J.D.

Speaker 4 Vance, somebody who not only is an outspoken critic of Ukraine aid, but kind of leading the charge in the Senate on stripping Ukraine of aid.

Speaker 4 Never mind that his state has an enormous Ukrainian and Eastern European population that feels very differently about the issue.

Speaker 4 But that's just where he is politically and tells you everything you need to know about where the party is today and really where it's going.

Speaker 5 What would happen if Mitch McConnell was no longer able to serve as leader?

Speaker 5 People who are listening to this have very mixed feelings about Mitch McConnell, but Mitch McConnell right now is kind of, by default, the leader of this pre-Trump GOP, isn't he?

Speaker 5 He's like the chief antibody at the moment.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously he's more frail now after a sort of

Speaker 4 tough health issues. But no, he is the last Republican leader of the pre-Trump wing of the party.
That's why he went on TV.

Speaker 4 He rarely does this over the weekend at two Sunday shows, making the case to link Israel and Ukraine. He feels strongly about those issues.

Speaker 4 He is most appalled by the isolationist instincts of the sort of Trump-era party.

Speaker 5 Right now, he may be Joe Biden's most important ally in Congress, which is a bizarre thing to say.

Speaker 4 No question about it. Certainly in the Senate.
And when the time comes to move a bill over to the House, he obviously is going to have some say as to how that's done.

Speaker 4 It's going to have to to be a finesse job. It'll take Democratic votes to do it.
No, I mean, he is indispensable to

Speaker 4 what is now effectively, Charlie, a war presidency.

Speaker 4 If tomorrow McConnell could not serve any longer as leader, I think you would see three people emerge, all name John, John Barrasso from Wyoming, John Corner from Texas, John Thune from South Dakota.

Speaker 4 Barrasso is probably the most conservative, most Trump-adjacent of the three, but I'm not sure how genuine that is.

Speaker 4 Certainly Cornyn and Thune, very much traditional Republicans and kind of the McConnell mold.

Speaker 4 It does make me wonder, would there be somebody, a younger Senate Republican, who would try to run that is more reflective of the Trumpy wing of the party?

Speaker 4 I'm not sure he or she would find much luck, but you can sort of see somebody making that case that Trump's the leader of our party. He should be reflected in the Senate leadership.

Speaker 4 I think it's totally plausible. A lot of this hangs on 2024, I think.
And what is Trump's status after that, right?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 I know that nobody's replaceable, and I'm reluctant to ask this question, but can anybody take Mitch McConnell's place in terms of the role that he is playing?

Speaker 5 So, I mean, is he right now the essential man? And I'm thinking in terms of the Ukraine policy, Ukraine-Israel policy, because you take him out.

Speaker 5 Does anybody else have the clout, the leadership, the willingness to stand up to MAGA world that he has? And again, his record is decidedly mixed.

Speaker 4 He is an internationalist to his core. He believes very much in projecting American strength abroad.

Speaker 4 And I mentioned a piece earlier that I did that your listeners can read about McConnell in winter fighting this, what may be the final war of his career on the issue of keeping the Republican Party on the internationalist track.

Speaker 4 And I spent time in Europe and I talked to top European diplomats and leaders. And they have relationships with McConnell, Trilla, to your point.

Speaker 4 And in a way that, you know, I don't think his successor is going to step in and have those relationships with NATO leaders, with the leaders in Finland, obviously the newest entrant into NATO, with other leaders across the continent.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, I think McConnell, in terms of the relationships alone abroad, is going to be hard to replace on the GOP side.

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Speaker 5 By the time people watch this, they will know the results. So, but you and I are watching all of this stuff in real time as it's afternoon in Oxford, it's morning here in Wisconsin.

Speaker 5 The first ballot totals for Speaker in the Republican Conference, Tom Emmer 78, Johnson 34, Donald's 29, Hearn 27.

Speaker 5 Kind of interesting. I mean, clearly, you get a sense of how divided they are.
Emmer being the front runner.

Speaker 5 We, of course, don't know whether whoever comes out of this will get to 217, but let's go back to this for a moment because there are some key questions about whoever becomes speaker.

Speaker 5 Number one, whoever becomes speaker has to immediately decide whether or not they're going to support or how they're going to handle a continuing resolution to keep the government open, right?

Speaker 5 I mean, that's become a life or death issue, hasn't it?

Speaker 5 So that's the first question. Are they going to be able to deal with Democrats? Because that's what killed Kevin McCarthy, right? And yet, how do you get a CR without dealing with Democrats?

Speaker 4 Whoever gets this job, it may be a 14-month term. And that could be generous.
That's very generous. Because coming out of this,

Speaker 4 one more divided vote where they basically

Speaker 4 nominate a speaker or elevate a speaker because they're just tired of it and exhausted and embarrassed by it.

Speaker 4 That person's going to have to immediately figure out how to fund the government next year and how to find money to Israel and Ukraine. Those are tall orders, to say the least, in the House GOP.

Speaker 4 That's why so many people in the conference, Charlie, don't want the job.

Speaker 4 Look, there are people who I think would be formidable speakers, but they're not going near this job because they know that that's a thankless task. Carol Legend.

Speaker 4 Look, I think it's going to be a messy few weeks and months here trying to, you know, do the basics. But look, you just mentioned Tom Ember.
That speaks to how divided they still are.

Speaker 4 The fact that he's the next guy in line, at least by the order of the current leadership, and he couldn't even get 80 votes on the first ballot.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's surprising.

Speaker 4 I mean, he may end up getting the second or third or the fourth ballot, but let's see there what Trump does, by the way, because Trump obviously has a history with Emmer.

Speaker 4 You know, Emmer called him over the weekend to try to sort of diffuse their challenges.

Speaker 5 You're right. I mean, the one thing that distinguishes Emmer from some of the other candidates is he did vote, in fact, to certify the presidential election.
I mean, the Biden wins.

Speaker 5 He's also voted in favor of recognizing gay marriages, which is a real hot-button issue for members of that caucus.

Speaker 5 The initial buzz was that Trump World was going to do everything possible to cut Emmer off at the knees, but then he called and sucked up and said to Donald Trump, I am your biggest fan.

Speaker 4 Amazing how that works, huh? Yeah, exactly. Right.

Speaker 5 We will see how it works. Okay, let's talk about the presidential primary because you mentioned this, this parallel primary.

Speaker 5 You made the observation that Ron DeSantis, his strategy was to try to blur that lines between the pre- and the post-Trump party, and he ended up alienating both groups.

Speaker 5 I mean, DeSantis had a theory of the case that just was a complete flop.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Look, I think, like Kevin McCarthy, Ron DeSantis tried to be a hybrid.
He tried to avoid making the choice.

Speaker 4 He said, I don't have to decide, and you, Republican voters, you don't have to decide either. You don't have to say which camp you're in, a post-Trump or pre-Trump.

Speaker 4 I'm going to give you both if you want them. You know, it's like the old saw about, you know, you can lose weight and not change what you're eating and don't have to exercise at all, man.

Speaker 4 It's like, it sounds good to me, so I'm here for that diet. It's a little harder in application.
I'm talking about Ron DeSantis, not the dieting thing. But what?

Speaker 4 Because

Speaker 4 when you run around bashing the establishment and

Speaker 4 equivocating on Ukraine aid, floating RFK Jr. to be in your administration, trying to outbid Trump on the border, outbid Trump on every kind of culture issue.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it turns out like the pre-Trump establishment that's up for grabs doesn't like that stuff.

Speaker 4 And then when you try to vie to be Trump's successor and Trump is in the race, well, that's going to irritate Trump's people, right?

Speaker 4 So I don't understand this belief that you can sort of be all things to all people in this moment where there's such an obvious bright line. But we saw this early, Charlie.

Speaker 4 I mean, he, you know, from early on, he tried to run to the right. And it was like the Ted Cruz 2016 campaign.
Yeah. There's just not enough votes out there.
Well, it's not an easy task.

Speaker 4 To be fair to Ron to say this, if you are trying to beat Donald Trump, you have to put together a coalition of

Speaker 4 folks that listen to your podcast, the kind of never Trump retypes, the folks that were fine with Trump, but just kind of want to move on, right?

Speaker 4 And then kind of like the pre-Trump party establishment, kind of the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Speaker 4 And that's not easy to forge that coalition, right? It's not easy. And especially not when you got, you know, other candidates in the race.
But boy, he make it easy on himself.

Speaker 5 First of all, he was a bad candidate. I mean, you know, that's he was not able to scale up from being governor to a presidential race.
And I've seen Scott Walker do that as well.

Speaker 5 I mean, you know, he doesn't just play an asshole on television. Apparently, he is one.

Speaker 5 But I also think that at the heart of all of this was this magical thinking that somehow something, something, something would happen. The unicorn would come along and Donald Trump would disappear.

Speaker 5 I think that they thought that with all of these indictments, that Republicans would surely turn to somebody else, that they would want, you know, the Trumpism without Trump baggage.

Speaker 5 And they, I think, are as shocked as anyone

Speaker 5 that Donald Trump became stronger with every indictment. Is there any scenario in your mind in which Donald Trump at this point does not get the Republican nomination?

Speaker 4 I think it's less likely at this stage, given that we are fast approaching November here, and obviously he's formidable. I still think it's possible.

Speaker 4 I wouldn't want to be the team coming out of the locker room in the second half, Charlie facing this deficit.

Speaker 4 But I think it's still possible. But look, it would take significant and rapid coalescence behind an alternative here that we have not seen.
And it would take defeating Trump early.

Speaker 4 You got to get him in Iowa or New Hampshire.

Speaker 4 There's just, there's no way that this is a traditional race where, oh, we'll win over the field in Iowa and then New Hampshire, and then we'll battle it out in South Carolina on Super Tuesday.

Speaker 5 It's going to be over like that.

Speaker 4 Yeah. That's right.
It's got to happen sooner than that. They got to get behind Juan Kiva.
And I tell you, I'm really interested.

Speaker 4 I think the next couple of months are going to be fascinating because the amount of pressure, especially from the money crowd that is just, you know, petrified about Trump as the nominee again, that I think is going to sort of come to bear trying to win all this field is going to be fascinating.

Speaker 5 Okay, so who drops that? I mean, Tim Scott seems like he's a dead man walking. Mike Pence can't get 15 people to show up at a pizza hut or whatever that was,

Speaker 4 where he was. Pizza Rance, come on, Adam.
It's Iowa here.

Speaker 5 This is giving me the 2016 vibes where it appears at least on paper it's shown on paper that the one person who might be able to go one-on-one would be nikki haley but what's happening right now ronda sandis is attacking nikki haley so that's very 2016.

Speaker 4 I was going to say, speaking of 2016 vibes, yeah, we certainly saw that movie with Jab, Bush, Mark, or Rubio. No, it's so true.
You know, these candidates can't help themselves.

Speaker 4 And when they see one emerging as the alternative, they try to knock down that candidate instead of focusing on the person that they're trying to be the alternative to.

Speaker 4 And of course, that is what Trump loves. But yeah, look, I mean, I think it's pretty clear at this stage that the alternative that, if there is one, would be the Saints or Nikki Healy.

Speaker 4 And this next debate in November will go some ways to clarifying that. I think if Nikki Healy does well in that debate, I think you'll see a ton of money move her away.

Speaker 4 And I think you'll see pressure on all the other candidates in the race to drop out.

Speaker 5 Does the money make any difference anymore, though? I mean, this is a serious question.

Speaker 5 I mean, because given the nature of our politics and the communications, the way in which you know information spreads and the way the base is broken down. So let's say that $100 million a giver.

Speaker 5 What happens? What does she do with it?

Speaker 4 I think the answer to your question, the way you're phrasing it, no, it doesn't matter that much. I think it matters in the sense of sending a message as to who the Trump alternative is, right?

Speaker 4 It's a cue.

Speaker 5 The YC

Speaker 4 endorsements, it's money, and it's folks dropping out and

Speaker 4 taking those cues. And I think

Speaker 4 that's where it matters, right? It's sort of picking up the money crowd, picking up endorsements, you know, having good debate performances. I think that's the stuff.

Speaker 5 Okay, let's you and I engage in a little bit of magical thinking because we remember what happened with the Democrats back in 2020, where it looked like Bernie Sanders might win.

Speaker 5 And then suddenly the entire field coalesced.

Speaker 5 In fact, even in retrospect, it is amazing. All of the candidates that dropped out and said, no, we have to endorse Joe Biden.

Speaker 5 So what you're saying is the money people get together and they say, let's, we're engaging in magical thinking here. We want it to be Haley, and we're sending that out.
She has a good debate.

Speaker 5 And so Mike Pence drops out and endorses Nikki Haley, right? Tim Scott drops out, endorses Nikki Haley. I'm making this up as I go along.
Glenn Youngkin says, I'm not running.

Speaker 5 I'm supporting Nikki Haley. Does it create a,

Speaker 5 how does it play out?

Speaker 4 Brian Kemp says, look, folks, I beat Trump. I know what it takes to beat Trump.
Nikki Haley is the one that can do it. We got to to get behind her.
This is the moment.

Speaker 4 Yes, I think that's what it takes. And I think that your model is exactly right.

Speaker 4 And I think if there's an anti-Trump Republican out there who's looking, maybe even praying for some answer of how Trump can be stopped, I think it's unlikely.

Speaker 4 But I think that is the way that we see a repeat.

Speaker 4 in some fashion of the 2020 Democratic primary. That is the precedent.
And to your point, Charlie, about how politics works today, it is so lightning quick.

Speaker 4 Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary after being 0 for 3 on a Saturday night in February. All right.
Super Tuesday was the following Tuesday, three days later.

Speaker 4 In that 72-hour period, Biden effectively wrapped up his party's nomination. Just like that.

Speaker 4 Because of those cues that I mentioned earlier, right? The cues that were sent. Okay,

Speaker 4 Amy Klobuchar drops out. Mayor Pete drops out.
Beto emerges from exile. And they all rally to Biden.
Obama makes a few well-placed phone calls.

Speaker 4 And there's this incredible momentum swing to Biden starting at Saturday at about 9.30 at night that winds up leaving Biden the nominee, effectively.

Speaker 4 He had this work in Michigan still, but effectively the following Tuesday night after Super Tuesday, right? Now,

Speaker 4 other stuff. played a part there.
Bernie didn't have a great period after Nevada. Bloomberg got crushed by Elizabeth Warren out of the base state.

Speaker 4 There were helpful factors. If you're somebody looking to stop Trump, that's the model for how it happens.
There's a fast coalescence.

Speaker 4 All right, that's the good news for folks looking to stop Trump. The bad news is Bernie Sanders ain't Donald Trump.

Speaker 5 That's where the analogy gets a little bit fragile.

Speaker 4 It does. Donald Trump is a global phenomenon with an iron grip on millions of people in this country across every state.
Bernie Sanders was not that. And so it's a little different.

Speaker 4 Also, Charlie, so many Democratic primary voters in 2020 were one-issue voters, and the one issue was who can beat Trump in the fall. That's all they cared about.
That's all they cared about.

Speaker 4 And look, some of those people still exist today. They're one-issue voters.
It's who can beat Donald Trump in our primary today.

Speaker 4 But, you know, what is that? How many people in the primary is that?

Speaker 5 You know? Okay, so in the time we have left, you wrote a very, this is, by the way, is the least popular topic among our audience. I just wanted to warn you, you know, trigger warning here.

Speaker 5 You wrote a really, really strong piece in Politico about Biden's age. Yes.
And the fact that Biden is not directly addressing that age issue. This was a very strong piece.

Speaker 5 I was starting to think that they had figured out that if they joked about it, if they sort of kept bringing it up, everything, but you point out that they've done very little to confront the biggest threat to his reelection.

Speaker 5 They're not. polling about it.
So talk to me about that because I was shocked by your piece that there had not been more focus on confronting what is the elephant in the room.

Speaker 4 His staff and his advisors know what's a sensitive issue. They don't want to be the ones who go into the office and say, hey, boss,

Speaker 4 the overriding issue about you and what defines you with most American voters is that you're an old man and we got to try to fix that. Like, who wants to be that staffer, right?

Speaker 4 I mean, not a lot of hands going up. But it was striking to me to learn that, you know, even away from Biden a little bit, that at the research level, there's just not the appetite to poll it.

Speaker 4 That may change. You're closer to the campaign.
But yeah, I mean, I think it's a pretty cavalier attitude. Every focus

Speaker 4 among Democrats, voters, among swing voters, talk to any pollster in America. When you bring up Biden's name, he's entirely defined by his age.
Nobody knows anything he's done.

Speaker 4 All they know is that he's an old guy who occasionally has gaps or falls down. That's just what voters say.
It just is. I'm not sure that Biden is willing to confront it.

Speaker 4 If you put Biden on truth serum, I think he'd probably say they're going to vote for old versus crazy or, you know, old versus criminal. You know?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm old, but he's crazy. I mean, that's about the best formula you can come up with, right? Yes, I am old.
He's nuts, he's dangerous.

Speaker 4 Or, you know, he's in leg irons and he's going to serve five years in federal prison. I mean, that to put a finer point on it, right? And if that's the alternative, obviously Biden can make that case.

Speaker 4 But you got to be willing to make it, right? And I don't know if Biden's pride will stop him.

Speaker 4 There's a great old line that I actually used at the end of that piece, but I'll mention it here because the political junkies will appreciate this.

Speaker 4 One of the most memorable campaigns at the state level in modern American history, when David Duke was the nominee for governor of Louisiana in 1991, he's running against an old cage named Edwin Edwards.

Speaker 4 Edwin Edwards was not burdened by a strong moral compass, Charlie, to put it mildly. There's a saying about Louisiana, he said, everybody in Louisiana is either underwater or under indictment.

Speaker 4 Eidwin had been under indictment, even done some time.

Speaker 4 But he was the Democrat standing there, and he was the only guy standing between the state of Louisiana and a Klansman being their governor, right?

Speaker 4 And there was this great bumper sticker that emerged. And the bumper sticker said, vote for the crook.
It's important.

Speaker 4 And it was a great wait to Louisiana voters because it was saying, you don't maybe like like this guy, but that's the best alternative we got, right?

Speaker 4 And so, can Biden come up with the equivalent of that, right? Vote for the Codger. It's important, right? I mean, we'll see.

Speaker 5 Well, I can see Trump doing the same thing. I can see him having, you know, the ankle bracelet as the symbol, you know, vote for the crook because it's important.

Speaker 5 And his base will go, absolutely, absolutely. So, wow.

Speaker 5 Good point. We apparently are about to buy this ticket again, and it's going to be one hell of a ride, Jonathan.

Speaker 4 It's remarkable. It's a long ways from Scott Walker and Paul Ryan.
She's had time in Wisconsin, man. Those were quaint days.

Speaker 5 Tell me about a kinder, gentler era. We didn't think so at the time.
Hey, enjoy your time in Blighty, and we'll talk when you get back. Thanks, thanks a lot.

Speaker 5 And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark podcast. I'm Trelli Sykes.
We'll be back tomorrow and we'll do this all over again.

Speaker 5 The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

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