Will Saletan: Don't Forget Who Jim Jordan Is

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Speaker 26 Good morning and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes.
It is officially the second half of October 2023.

Speaker 26 It is going to be an amazing week. It's going to be an awful week.
It's going to be a terrible week. It's going to be a completely implausible and improbable week.

Speaker 26 So who better to talk with than my friend and my colleague, Will Salatan? How are you, Will? I'm okay, Charlie. How about you? I have to admit, I'm going to make a confession here.

Speaker 26 I find the whole story about the war in Israel to be very, very painful to deal with. So we're going to have to ease into it.
We're going to get to it. We have a lot of material on it.

Speaker 26 I want to spend some time on the absolute insanity of the Speaker's race with one stipulation, because we're going to spend a lot of time talking about how absolutely insane and absurd it is to even consider the possibility of making Jim Jordan the Speaker of the House of Representatives, right?

Speaker 26 I mean, this is crazy. It is, however, not nearly as crazy.

Speaker 26 as what the Republicans are planning to do by nominating Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States leader of the free world. So let's put this in perspective, right?

Speaker 26 As nutty as it is to put somebody like Jim Jordan in the presidential succession, putting Donald Trump, you know, in the presidency.

Speaker 26 So, I mean, when we're evaluating, you know, whether or not the Normie caucus, the sanity caucus of the Republican Party is finally going to take a stand, kind of remember that they've already made it clear they're not going to take a stand on the big one.

Speaker 26 Okay. So we may have this little moment of sanity, but one of my themes lately is to tell the listeners, You are not the crazy ones.

Speaker 26 So could we start off the week with a little bit of a you are not the crazy ones palate cleanser? Is that okay with you, Will? Sure, sure. Okay.
So here is an actual interview. This is a real person.

Speaker 26 This person votes. She may be somebody's grandma who was interviewed at a MAGA rally over the weekend talking about the role that Space Force is going to play in the presidential election.

Speaker 26 And by the way, This would be big if true. So let's play this audio of this interview.

Speaker 27 The election, I believe, was stolen.

Speaker 27 but we know that space force has it all trump has all the all the

Speaker 27 information

Speaker 27 it's going to be overturned what do you think space force has space force is a military branch of the you know just like the army the you know all the military and they literally walk up here that's right they literally the night of the election they literally watched the election be stolen.

Speaker 27 They know, they watermarked the ballots. They know exactly what happened with every ballot.

Speaker 27 They know what fake ballots, all right, they saw, they knew the election switches, they know what countries were involved, they know they followed the money, they know what every politician that's been paid off, they know

Speaker 27 there was 260,000, 269,000

Speaker 27 sealed indictments, but I think it might even be up to 500,000 sealed indictments.

Speaker 27 And I believe that we're going to have an emergency broadcast and the military is going to come in with martial law.

Speaker 27 And we are going to be shown eight hours on, eight hours off of videos for seven days, the world, and they're going to be showing us taped

Speaker 27 tribunals, taped confessions.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 27 the world is going to be awakened to what's really going on with the deep state.

Speaker 26 Wow. I don't know.
So maybe we ought to change our plans. Just don't make any long-term plans, Will, because this woman is looking forward to all of this.

Speaker 26 There's a little bit of queuing on there, but, you know, part of it is, and I'm sorry to keep coming back to this, this is probably somebody's mom or grandma.

Speaker 26 So probably in her daily life, you know, she

Speaker 26 bakes casseroles for neighbors who go through things, right?

Speaker 26 She buys tricycles for her kids. And yet...
There she is, very matter-of-factly explaining to this interviewer, yeah, yeah, Space Force knows everything.

Speaker 26 And you're looking around, going, okay, no, Space Force, because it's got satellites, knows all this stuff.

Speaker 26 And also, somehow, she didn't quite explain how they watermarked the ballots, but there's going to be hundreds of thousands of indictments.

Speaker 26 Charlie, there's Space Force, of course, they watermark ballots. That's what Space Force,

Speaker 26 among other things, this lady has a lot of faith in lawyers. 500,000 indictments.
I'm trying to imagine the production on that, right? Televised. Right.

Speaker 26 Eight hours on, eight hours off, televised tributos. Did she say we'll be forced to watch them?

Speaker 26 We can, right? She's got, she's talking about the countries that are involved. I guess that's Hugo Chavez.
I'm not sure who else is in on that. But there were some Italian satellites.

Speaker 26 The Italian, I mean, that's right. Okay, so have I made the point that you are not the crazy ones?

Speaker 26 Let's just set this aside for a future conversation, Will, about the sort of the nature of insanity and how widespread it is, because insanity can be overused.

Speaker 26 But I have to tell you, there are a lot of really, really crazy people out there. Can we stipulate that?

Speaker 26 I'm not going to say which show it was because I don't want to embarrass them, but I was on a show. I sat there for about 20 minutes before it was my turn listening to callers call in.

Speaker 26 And I have to tell you, Will, it's enough to make you doubt your faith in democracy.

Speaker 26 And I'm not talking about people who are uninformed or even the folks who basically, you know, just string together bumper sticker cliches, talking points, and think think they're engaging in some sort of intelligent.

Speaker 26 I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about people who believe

Speaker 26 really seriously, batshit, crazy things, and they vote and they get elected and they determine the future of our government, I'm afraid.

Speaker 26 I mean, no, look, they may not be the people who actually determine, but, you know, as we just get into this conversation, kind of remember when we say that there are politicians who are really afraid of the base.

Speaker 26 I have a couple of serious points, but I got a pony. I got a pony for you.
Actually, you already gave me a pony. So the serious points are this lady, we just heard talking about tribunals.

Speaker 26 She says the military is going to come in with martial law. There's going to be tribunals and taped confessions.
And this is her idea of a rescue operation, right? This is Christmas. Right.

Speaker 26 And so the serious point is this is how authoritarianism comes to America in the name of democracy, right? The people's votes were stolen. Will, will.

Speaker 26 Okay, Will,

Speaker 26 she's nuts. I mean,

Speaker 26 let's not get too serious, okay? This woman is

Speaker 26 nuts. But in addition to this crazy lady, there was a discussion in the White House, right? Yeah.

Speaker 26 Before Donald Trump left, Mike Finn and the others, right, talking about exactly this, the military rerunning the elections. Italian space satellites, right?

Speaker 26 These crazy people discussed this in the White House with the president, and he was one of them, right? Okay, so that's the serious one.

Speaker 26 The pony, of course, the pony, Charlie, is the casserole, right?

Speaker 26 Because the people who are spouting this garbage, they are baking casseroles and they're perfectly functional in other parts of their life.

Speaker 26 So somehow people can be absolutely nuts and say this crazy stuff and then go about their daily lives as moms and grandmas and whatever.

Speaker 26 I'm not sure that that is as reassuring as you think it is, you know? But basically saying, okay, so yes, there are zombies, but most of the time you can't tell the zombies. They walk among us.

Speaker 26 I'm just not sure that that makes my day.

Speaker 26 But to your point about, and again, I'm kind of brushing her off as nuts, but you make the point that, okay, we can say this woman is nuts, but I will see you and raise you a Mike Lindell, my pillow guy who is at the White House, Mike Flynn, who was a general and was the national security advisor, Rudy Giuliani,

Speaker 26 Sidney Powell, the Kraken. I mean, so the problem is, is that we have this line between completely insane and completely corrupt and completely seditious is kind of blurry, isn't it?

Speaker 26 I mean, that's the moment we're in.

Speaker 26 And can I come back to your point about the base that these politicians are following the base and the craziness of it? So, this happened on Saturday in New Hampshire. Mike Pence is up there.

Speaker 26 And there's another one of these casserole ladies, right? She gets up and she says to him, How are you going to get elected? He's like, How am I going to get elected?

Speaker 26 She says, Yeah, because after the vote, she says, This is a quote, that's where it all goes away.

Speaker 26 somebody comes along and just takes a bunch and puts it in the back of a truck and takes it away and what does mike pence say does mike pence say i'm sorry ma'am no that doesn't happen elections are actually free and fair in this country no mike pence says yeah i hear you well and he starts going into his thing my secret weapon is new hampshire so mike pence knows this lady is nuts and he doesn't correct her because he's afraid to correct her and this is what's happening or he's exhausted okay yeah yeah yeah i'm not

Speaker 26 at a certain point you just kind of roll your eyes and go, yeah.

Speaker 26 Meanwhile, back in the real world.

Speaker 26 No. So let's talk about where we're at here.
Because, you know, when I talk about this being an implausible, improbable week, we have

Speaker 26 what's about to happen in Congress, which is amazing. I think it's fair to say, and feel free to disagree with me here.

Speaker 26 Really, literally, no one knows what's going to happen this week. I mean, this is one of those, I mean, no one has any idea.

Speaker 26 So for those of you catching up who actually had a real life, Steve Scalise won the vote for speakership. That flamed out in less than about 24 hours, right?

Speaker 26 Jim Jordan immediately jumped up and said, you know, I want to try again. The House conference gets together.
He wins the vote, but there were a surprising number of votes for this dark horse guy.

Speaker 26 We leave that aside. And then...

Speaker 26 Will, I mean, was this Jim Jordan's idea, this weird validation vote, this sort of other second vote basically saying, so how many of you would actually be willing to vote for this complete numb nuts to be Speaker?

Speaker 26 How many of you will vote for him on the floor? Now, keep in mind, here's the math. He can only afford to lose four.
More than 50 Republicans voted no.

Speaker 26 So Jim Jordan spent the weekend trying to arm twist, bully, sick Sean Hannity on people, threaten people. Well, you know, Donald Trump is supporting me.

Speaker 26 The base is going to come after you like this lady. They're going to be really pissed if you don't do it.
So he's going to force a vote on the floor.

Speaker 26 There is a group of normies who have said that they're not going to vote for him. There might be another candidate on them.
So what do you think? Tell me what you think of the state of play here.

Speaker 26 Are we going to go through another 15 to 20 ballots before people decide that putting Jim Jordan in his speaker is just too nuts even for this Republican Party?

Speaker 26 Well, first of all, there is nothing too nuts for this Republican Party. So let's set that one aside.
Okay.

Speaker 26 The fact that Scalise couldn't get enough tells you we're already.

Speaker 26 chance. He had the best chance.
So everything from here on in is less likelihood of it. The fact that Jordan is the next guy up is because

Speaker 26 the crazies are in control. So all of the normie Republicans, to the extent that they still exist, are kind of out of the equation because they're the ones who are flexible.
right?

Speaker 26 They'll be just like, give me Austin Scott, give me somebody to vote for, right? Sorry, that's the dark horse guy.

Speaker 26 So we're in the stage where we have to appease the crazies because that's where the Republican Party is, and there's very little likelihood of getting enough votes. So I don't see a way out of it.

Speaker 26 And the crazy vote that you brought up, Charlie, how many of you would vote for me on the floor?

Speaker 26 That's because the Republicans are afraid to take this to the floor because it's going to show everyone how nuts and chaotic and disorganized they're.

Speaker 26 Well, but they're going to do it. They're going to do it because Jim Jordan apparently wants to get people on the record so that he can beat them up.

Speaker 26 So look, there's at least, correct me if I'm wrong, at least 12 Republican congressmen who were elected in districts that Joe Biden won.

Speaker 26 Clearly, there are a lot of people who know who Jim Jordan is, who know he's an idiot, who know he can't be trusted, who cannot stand the idea.

Speaker 26 So the question is, will there be more than four who will just say no or vote for somebody else? And I think there's a high likelihood of that. Again, I don't want to be the optimist here.

Speaker 26 So then what happens?

Speaker 26 Then the question is, all right, there has been a lot of, I think, wish casting over the weekend about how, you know, maybe they should caucus with the Democrats, elect Hakeem Jeffries, people, that is just not going to happen.

Speaker 26 They are not going to elect Hakeem Jeffries.

Speaker 26 But is it at this point completely impossible that there could be a bipartisan deal to say, keep Patrick McHenry in position, but, you know, and empower him, you know, but with the requirement that you don't shut down the federal government, that you vote on aid for Ukraine and Israel, and that you maybe change some of the floor rules.

Speaker 26 Is that impossible, Will? I wouldn't say impossible. First of all, none of this is totally impossible because we're in the realm of the unlikely already.
Everything's unlikely.

Speaker 26 So the interesting thing to me is that Hakeem Jeffries was on one of the talk shows yesterday and he said, we're not playing for an individual. We're not negotiating that we want a specific speaker.

Speaker 26 So correct me if I'm wrong, the Hashrt rule is the one that says if you don't have a majority of Republicans supporting whatever the legislation, it doesn't even come to the floor.

Speaker 26 So he wants to get rid of that. That's his deal.

Speaker 26 We'll come on board. And he's not saying support me, Hakeem Jeffries, because he knows he's not going to get that.
We'll cut a deal with you to give you our votes for Speaker, for a Speaker.

Speaker 26 And then you won't have to capitulate to the crazies. You don't need Gates' vote because you got mine in exchange for waiving that rule.
And then the House would be much more bipartisan than it is.

Speaker 26 And the question is, can things get bad enough in the Republican Party that they would make that deal?

Speaker 26 Those folks in the Biden districts, Charlie, that you brought up, they'd be happy to make that deal, I think.

Speaker 26 But they're also inviting being being primaried, even if it's in an overwhelmingly, you know, Biden district or even an overwhelmingly Republican district, the primary is a scary prospect for all of them.

Speaker 26 So I don't know. I mean, either way, for those guys, it strikes me as potentially political suicide.
They vote for Jim Jordan, they'll lose their seats in the general election.

Speaker 26 They vote against Jim Jordan, they might lose their seats in a primary election. Let me come back to those because you said there are 12 of them, right? And I don't know what the exact number is.

Speaker 26 Yeah. But it's relatively few.
And that's the problem. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 26 Because the more districts we can create where the incentive structure is to win in the general election, as opposed to the primary, the more sane the Republican Party will be.

Speaker 26 It shouldn't be that winning the primary is the whole ballgame in your district. It should be competitive districts.

Speaker 26 Then you have to behave like a normal person who has to win some people on the other side of the political aisle.

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Speaker 26 So over the weekend, there was, you know, obviously, as, you know, people are going on the Sunday morning talk shows to talk about really Jim Jordan? Seriously?

Speaker 26 You think that he's a viable candidate for a speaker, that this actually makes sense for the Republican Party? One of the more interesting exchanges was Jake Tapper and Dan Crenshaw.

Speaker 26 Now, I've written about Dan Crenshaw in the past. There's a whole segment of folks out there that want to believe in Dan Crenshaw, that want to think that Dan Crenshaw represents

Speaker 26 something new and refreshing and independent. And one of those is Dan Crenshaw, who actually wrote a whole book about values and virtue and everything.
And our colleague Tim Miller did a review of it.

Speaker 26 It's really a remarkable book because he'll talk through the values and the principles and the character traits that you want in a good leader and somehow reconcile that with sucking up to Donald Trump.

Speaker 26 I mean, it's impossible to do, but Dan Crenshaw is one of these guys that wants to say, no, I'm actually sane, normal, and decent.

Speaker 26 And yet, there he is on the Sunday shows yesterday explaining why he's supporting Jim freaking Jordan to be the Speaker of the House House of Representatives. Listen to this.

Speaker 30 What I would remind a lot of the members who are against Jordan, you know, because his reputation precedes him, but his reputation has changed over time.

Speaker 30 He has become part of the solution, not part of the problem. He has long since been part of the solution.
I have a lot of good conversations with him. I've gotten to know him.

Speaker 30 There's a reason I support him.

Speaker 30 He was right. He's giving McHenry additional powers.
Well,

Speaker 30 that still requires a vote, you know, and what kind of powers? I mean, at a certain point, you're just electing him speaker. Yeah.
And so he doesn't want that. He's asking us not to do that.

Speaker 32 I mean, he defied the congressional subpoena, and he was trying to get Pence to overturn the electoral votes.

Speaker 26 But anyway,

Speaker 26 you're in the Jordan camp.

Speaker 31 But a lot of them did that.

Speaker 33 If I held that grudge, I wouldn't have friends that were in the middle of the day.

Speaker 31 That's two thirds of the conference. That's two-thirds of the conference.

Speaker 31 That's an excellent point.

Speaker 30 I was on an island there.

Speaker 26 Yeah, I hear you. Wait, wait, wait.
Okay, so let's just translate that.

Speaker 26 Ian Baston, I don't have have it right in front of me, but basically, yeah, all of my friends are like seditionists who tried to overturn the election.

Speaker 26 And, you know, if I actually held sedition against them, then I'd have no friends whatsoever. Right.

Speaker 26 What was the Republican complaint about the teachers' unions that we're passing all the kids who should be flunking? We've lowered the standards. So here's the Republican Party, right?

Speaker 26 I can't apply the standard of doing the right thing on January 6th about protecting democracy because then I wouldn't have any Republicans. It's the greatest confession in the world.

Speaker 26 So I don't want to beat this horse too much, but I think this would be a good moment just to remind ourselves about who Jim Jordan is.

Speaker 26 I mean, Jake Tapper mentioned that he refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, you know, so much for his collegiality. This is from David Korn and I think Dan Friedman from Mother Jones.

Speaker 26 I mean, here's the strange world that I'm quoting from Mother Jones, but just reminding us who Jim Jordan was.

Speaker 26 Jordan was an early and enthusiastic recruit in Trump's war on the Republic and reality in public and in private.

Speaker 26 Days after the November election, he spoke at a Stop the Steel rally in front of the Pennsylvania state capitol. He spread election conspiracy theories within right-wing media.

Speaker 26 He endorsed Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell's bogus claim that Dominion voting systems and SmartMatic had robbed Trump of electoral victory. Okay, so now we're looping back to the crazy lady.

Speaker 26 Jim Jordan is this far away from her.

Speaker 26 You know, he was spreading the Dominion voting lie, which, by the way, cost Fox, what, $787 million.

Speaker 26 He called for a congressional investigation of electoral fraud for which there was no evidence and demanded a special counsel be appointed.

Speaker 26 He endorsed state legislatures canceling vote tallies and selecting their own presidential electors. He urged Trump not to concede.

Speaker 26 He demanded that Congress not certify Joe Biden's victory in the ceremony scheduled for January 6, 2021. Behind the scenes, he schemed with Trump.

Speaker 26 The final report of the House Select Committee on January 6th lays out in damning detail Jim Jordan's participation in Trump's election thwarting machinations.

Speaker 26 Quote, Representative Jordan was a significant player in President Trump's efforts, the committee said.

Speaker 26 He participated in numerous post-election meetings in which senior White House officials, Rudy Giuliani and others, discussed strategies for challenging the election, chief among them claims the election had been tainted by fraud.

Speaker 26 As early as November, Jordan was, quote, involved in discussions with White House officials about Vice President Mike Pence's role on January 6th, the report noted.

Speaker 26 Conversations that focused on whether Pence could block the certification of Biden's win.

Speaker 26 Jordan was one of 10 Republican members of Congress who attended a White House meeting on December 21st, where the topic was how to pressure Pence to undo the election.

Speaker 26 And we could spend the rest of the podcast going through just remember who Jim Jordan was. You know, Jim Jordan, the guy who was responsible for the tweet, you know, Elon Kanye Trump.

Speaker 26 He's the guy who is continuing to harass Fonnie Willis because he sees his role in Congress as being the obstructor in chief.

Speaker 26 So putting this in context, so there's Dan Crench just saying, hey, if I held this against everybody, I'd have no friends. Right, Dan? That probably should tell you something.

Speaker 26 Right. Okay.
Now, you and I have talked about this before, and you have made the point, and you're right, that Jordan is not just another.

Speaker 26 one of the Republicans who voted against certifying the election, right? So Jordan went further than others. And let me just come to that last point.
By the the way, love Mother Jones.

Speaker 26 I used to write for Mother Jones. David Corn's a great guy.
Friedman's a great guy. From Mother Jones to the bulwark.

Speaker 26 Okay.

Speaker 26 What I love about them is that they are very focused on facts, right? And that article that you just mentioned, they've laid out a lot of facts.

Speaker 26 And let me just come to the last one, because I think that's the important one. There are varying degrees of complicity and guilt in January 6th.

Speaker 26 There are a lot of people who lied after the election and spouted fraud and all that. But Jordan was one of the guys guys who was behind the scenes.
He was in the meetings.

Speaker 26 And as you get closer and closer to January 20th, 2021, you get to January 6th, you get conspiracies to go beyond January 6th.

Speaker 26 Jordan's participation in that meeting where they're trying to get Pence to stop the certification and push things past January 6th. Now you're getting into territory where you're going to keep.

Speaker 26 the defeated president in power past when the Constitution says he's supposed to be out of power. It's that much further into the madness.
And Jim Jordan, we must never forget his role in that.

Speaker 26 We must never forget that we don't even know enough about him because of his defiance of the subpoena, right? And Liz Cheney has said Jordan's not just another pretty face here.

Speaker 26 In this case, not just another ugly face, right? He's particularly complicit in this. He's particularly dangerous.
I would say in a choice between Scaleesh and Jordan, it's not close.

Speaker 26 Now, I was wrong about that last week. And yeah.

Speaker 26 Okay, so in another mind-blowing moment that would cut against any optimism about the GOP normies, Mike Pence was asked about this over the week, and Mike Pence says that Jim Jordan would make a great speaker.

Speaker 26 See, I have to tell you, you know, guys like Mike Pence just continue to blow my mind.

Speaker 26 At some point, every once in a while, you'll think, okay, Mike Pence has suddenly realized I'm not going to be president. I'm not going to win this nomination.
I'm going to go out in a blaze of glory.

Speaker 26 I'm going to say what I think. I'm going to call out the seditionist.
I'm going to say that Donald Trump tried to get me to ignore the Constitution. You know, that's the hill I'm going to die on.

Speaker 26 And then it's like Mike Pence goes,

Speaker 26 no, no.

Speaker 26 And Jim freaking Jordan, explain this to me, Will.

Speaker 26 People always ask me to explain this stuff, and it's like, okay, I'm done. I'm out of material.
Okay.

Speaker 26 It does matter that Mike Pence on January 6th didn't go along with the plot to stop the certification. It always matters.
We're going to give Pence credit for that.

Speaker 26 But having said that, Pence is one of these guys who's very concerned with his personal piety, his personal reputation. I did the right thing.
By God's grace, he always says, you know,

Speaker 26 thanks to God, I did the right thing. And that's really wonderful.
But if you're interested in protecting the United States as opposed to your personal reputation, then it can't end on January 6th.

Speaker 26 You can't, after January 6th, and having done the right thing, then turn around and say, I'll put a guy like Jim Jordan back in power. So why is he doing it?

Speaker 26 Wouldn't this be a moment of saying, the Republicans have so many brilliant, bright people in the House of Representatives. How about somebody that did not try to overturn the election?

Speaker 26 Well, see, that's the problem. This goes back to the Dan Crenshaw problem.
Boy, if he says that, they got nobody, right? Exactly. It's because look, let's go back up.

Speaker 26 Remember, Liz Cheney is what you would do if you're serious about protecting the Constitution.

Speaker 26 You are a Kinsinger. You draw a line, you say.
Anybody who doesn't meet the test of defending the Constitution is out. And if that means 67% of the House Republican Conference, then so be it.

Speaker 26 I'm going to protect the Constitution.

Speaker 26 Once you go down the Crenshaw road of saying, hey, you know, I got to work with what I got here, and that's where the Republican Party is, then you're just dropping standards one by one, you know.

Speaker 26 And so this is just another one. Pence ends up saying, yeah, Jordan's okay because that's who the House Republicans would nominate.
I don't know. I'm

Speaker 26 like five minutes away from somebody saying we should just check with Space Force who they think we should

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Speaker 15 to your life.

Speaker 25 Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 26 All right, let's switch gears because on a much more serious level, and I guess this is part of this split-screen world that we live in, where we have clown world and then we have real world, and real world is brutal.

Speaker 26 And it's kind of reminding you that the world is deeply, deeply serious and grave at the point you're playing these stupid games, which will continue.

Speaker 26 So, let's talk about what's going on with Israel, which is preparing a ground offensive in Gaza.

Speaker 26 Of course, now the debate is shifting from the Hamas atrocities to are the, you know, Israelis, are they going to not show enough restraint? Are they going to engage in atrocities?

Speaker 26 And let's just play some of the sound bites that we've talked about over the weekend, sort of a scatter shot. Ron DeSantis is trying to capitalize on this crisis.

Speaker 26 You saw that he has like his own air, like Air DeSantis. flying people out of Israel and everything.

Speaker 26 Well, he was on one of the talk shows talking about all the people in Gaza. Let's listen to this.

Speaker 34 Of the 2 million people who live in Gaza, half of them are under the age of 18. Let's take a listen to something you said yesterday.

Speaker 33 We cannot accept people from Gaza into this country as refugees. I am not going to do that.
If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all anti-Semitic.

Speaker 34 I'm sure you know all Arabs are Semites, but how can you paint with such a broad brush to say 2.3 million people

Speaker 5 are anti-Semitic?

Speaker 33 Well, first of all, my position is very clear. Those Gaza refugees, Palestinian Arabs, should go to Arab countries.
The U.S. should not be absorbing any of those.

Speaker 33 I think the culture, so they elected Hamas. Let's just be clear about that.
Not everyone's a member of Hamas. Most probably aren't, but they did elect Hamas.

Speaker 34 In 2006, and then the military occupation happened after that, where they went in and haven't allowed elections since 2007. So in 2006, there was an election.
But

Speaker 33 there was a lot of celebrating of those attacks in the Gaza Strip by a lot of those folks who were not Hamas. But if you look at their education system, this has been an issue for a long time.

Speaker 35 They teach kids to hate Jews.

Speaker 33 The textbooks do not have Israel even on the map. They prepare very young kids to commit terrorist attacks.
So I think it's a toxic culture.

Speaker 33 And I think if we were to import large numbers of those those to the United States, I think it would increase anti-Semitism in this country, and I think it would increase anti-Americanism in this country.

Speaker 26 Nikki Haley was asked about this as well, just to get the kind of the back and forth on this. Nikki Haley asked to respond to Rhonda Sanders' comments that

Speaker 26 we shouldn't have anybody from Gaza here because they're all anti-Semites. Nikki Haley.

Speaker 32 According to a recent polling earlier this year from the Washington Institute, which is

Speaker 32 a pro-Israel group, using the polling of a Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, 62% of Gazans wanted the ceasefire with Israel to stay in place.

Speaker 32 50% of Gazans want Hamas to stop calling for Israel's destruction, want Hamas to accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.

Speaker 32 70% of Gazans wanted the Palestinian authority from the West Bank to take over Gaza.

Speaker 32 So I'm not really certain that Governor DeSantis has a real read on the difference between Hamas and the people of Gaza. What was your response when you heard what Governor DeSantis said?

Speaker 28 You know, I dealt with this every day for two years. And, you know, what I can tell you is you have to realize that whether we're talking about Gazans and Palestinians,

Speaker 28 you know, all of them don't, you've got half of them at the time that I was there, didn't want to be under Hamas's rule. They didn't want to have terrorists overseeing them.

Speaker 28 They knew that they were living a terrible life because of Hamas. You had the other half that supported Hamas and wanted to be a part of that.
We see that with Iran, too.

Speaker 28 The Iranian people don't want to be under that Iranian regime. They don't.
We saw what happened to Masa Amini. We saw how they treat them.

Speaker 28 There are so many of these people who want to be free from this terrorist rule. They want to be free from all of that.

Speaker 28 And America's always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists.

Speaker 26 Okay, so Will, there seems to be kind of a difference of opinion there. Yeah, okay.
So, folks, I am Jewish. It's painful to me and my community that so many Jews were murdered in this Hamas attack.

Speaker 26 Just going to stipulate that.

Speaker 26 I have a personal interest in this topic. Having said that, okay, having said that, what Ron DeSantis said here, this is how evil happens on the other side.
This is how we become the bad guys.

Speaker 26 In the name of fighting prejudice, right, he says they're all anti-Semitic. He doesn't say Hamas is anti-Semitic, which is true.
He says all the Palestinians in Gaza are anti-Semitic, right?

Speaker 26 And Margaret Brennan points out that half of them are under 18. Rhyna Santis says it doesn't matter.
He said, they teach the kids to be anti-Semitic.

Speaker 26 The children of Gaza, he's saying, are presumptively anti-Semitic and shouldn't be allowed to come to the United States. Okay, that's one step.
He says, you know, they elected Hamas, right?

Speaker 26 And Margaret Brennan points out that was in 2006. That's 17 years ago.
17 years ago. And when she says they haven't allowed an election, she's not talking about Israel.
She's talking about Hamas.

Speaker 26 Hamas has not allowed a vote in Gaza. So, and then Tapper has the, he has the numbers from the poll, right? So that it's bullshit.

Speaker 26 What DeSantis is saying is just wrong about what people in Gaza believe. The larger point, though, is he's trying to say there should be collective guilt.
Yes.

Speaker 26 That no one from Gaza should ever be allowed in.

Speaker 26 But I have another sound bite for you, because then this also can translate into, therefore, we shouldn't have any sympathy for what is about to happen to anyone here.

Speaker 26 Here's Tom Cotton, Republican senator from Arkansas, talking about the coming attack on Gaza and the possibility of massive civilian casualties.

Speaker 35 Israel has inflicted no suffering on Gaza. Hamas is responsible for the suffering in Gaza.
They've been in charge there for 16 years.

Speaker 35 They didn't have to spend the billions of dollars they get from countries like Iran on things like tunnels and missiles. They could have spent it on water and power plants.
Hamas is the only,

Speaker 35 their sole responsibility for any suffering the people of Gaza have currently, have already had or for any civilian casualties in Gaza because Hamas intentionally uses women and children and the elderly for human shields.

Speaker 35 And if you don't want your hospitals or your schools or your mosques bombed, you shouldn't use them for military purposes.

Speaker 36 But you know the images that we're going to get. They're going to say this is Israel.

Speaker 36 They are carpet bombing and blanketing the Gaza Strip in a way that leaves, first of all, food and water cut off, a humanitarian crisis and destruction there.

Speaker 35 Shannon, as far as I'm concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza. Anything that happens in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas.

Speaker 26 Okay, bounce the rubble.

Speaker 26 Everything is a responsibility. Okay,

Speaker 26 let's parse this out because on one level, I want to agree that Hamas began the atrocities. It wants to inspire more.

Speaker 26 On the other hand, There's something breathtaking about Tom Cotton essentially saying, whatever happens when they bounce the rubble, it's not Israel's fault. I mean,

Speaker 26 how do you parse out the clear guilt and responsibility of Hamas without basically saying, and yeah, here's a complete blank check for Israel to do anything to anyone in Gaza Strip?

Speaker 26 There ought to be some moral clarity here, but it's going to be painful and it's going to be difficult. And there are no good answers to this, I think.
Yeah, I agree with you.

Speaker 26 The blank check thing is the scary part here.

Speaker 26 Charlie, I agree with you about moral clarity, right? Moral clarity says things like, Hamas is deliberately targeting civilians. True.
Israel may end up killing civilians, but it won't be deliberate.

Speaker 26 It would be inadvertent, right? And then that distinction matters. The way that Hamas conducted its invasion, targeting civilians rather than soldiers, these are all parts of moral clarity.

Speaker 26 But moral clarity can't mean. that we completely disregard any other moral considerations because we're the righteous ones.
That's not moral clarity, right? That's blindness. That's ideology.

Speaker 26 That's dogmatism. And that is the road to hell when you think you're so righteous that nothing you do can be wrong.

Speaker 26 So when Tom Cotton says that last line, anything that happens in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas, he is giving a blank check.

Speaker 26 And just because you are the more morally right party in a war does not mean you can do anything, right? You still have the laws of war. What makes you different is that you respect the laws of war.

Speaker 26 You respect the distinction between enemy soldiers and civilians. So, no, it is not true that anything that happens in Gaza is entirely the fault of Hamas, right?

Speaker 26 There must still be proportionate behavior by the Israelis to the extent they are able. You're still responsible for your own behavior.
Absolutely.

Speaker 26 Yes, I mean, this is the overwhelming guilt here is Hamas, but that does not mean that everyone else then is absolved of responsibility for the decisions that they make in the acts that they take.

Speaker 26 Okay, so another soundbite here.

Speaker 26 Your good friend, Lindsey Graham, because of course, people who have listened to this and watched this know that Will has written the definitive account of Lindsey Graham's descent into authoritarianism.

Speaker 26 You can buy the book, you can read the article, you can listen to the podcast. So Lindsey Graham was on yesterday and has a couple of interesting things to say.
Here's Lindsey Graham.

Speaker 37 If Hezbollah, which is a proxy of Iran, launches a massive attack on Israel, I would consider that a threat

Speaker 37 to the state of Israel, existential in nature.

Speaker 37 I will introduce a resolution in the United States Senate to allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the oil business.

Speaker 37 Iran, if you escalate this war, we're coming for you.

Speaker 26 Okay, so your thoughts, Will. You are a student of Lindsey Graham.
That's like the old

Speaker 26 saber-rattling Lindsey, though, isn't it? Right, it is.

Speaker 26 Now, last week you were saying, I was talking about, oh, if only we could retaliate against Iran, and you pointed out, look, be careful what you wish for, right? You don't want to expand this war.

Speaker 26 In fact, all of American diplomacy is to try to limit it.

Speaker 26 But in the name of trying to limit it, Lindsay is now explicitly threatening United States, not Israeli, United States military engagement attacking Iran, right?

Speaker 26 And what's interesting to me about this, in addition to that it's a little bit dangerous to talk this way, is who exactly made Lindsey Graham in charge of Joe Biden's foreign policy, right?

Speaker 26 And the answer is nobody.

Speaker 26 The answer is nobody, but this is a major reason why Lindsey Graham became a Trump flunky, because he loved when Trump was president, he could say, you in Iran, I have been talking to Donald Trump.

Speaker 26 Donald Trump's my buddy, and he's going to do the following to you if you come into this conflict, right? But he doesn't have that now.

Speaker 26 So now he just has to say, I'm going to introduce some resolution in the Senate. Okay, so Lindsey Graham is, in fact, as you accurately describe him, a Trump flunky.

Speaker 26 But on that same program, he said that Trump's comments about how smart Hezbollah was and his attacks on Israel, being a bunch of jerks and idiots and everything, was a big mistake.

Speaker 26 I hesitate to ask this question because I think you and I both know the answer, but there was a lot of sort of, you know, Henry like, well, will this latest gaffe by Donald Trump, will this make a difference?

Speaker 26 The fact that at this moment he makes it all about himself, of the narcissism of Donald. See, the thing about Donald Trump, and again, just come back to it, there's no ideology here.

Speaker 26 There's no through line of principle. It's all about him.
It's all about his grievances and everything.

Speaker 26 So he's mad at Benjamin Netanyahu because Benjamin Netanyahu called up Joe Biden and congratulated him. So, you know, Trump tried to walk back his comments about how smart Hezbollah was.

Speaker 26 You know, there's no better friend of Israel. But, you know, and even Lindsey Graham's calling him out on, but it's not going to make a difference, is it? Because we're like way past that.

Speaker 26 We're way past any moment at which anything Donald Trump does is actually going to be the breaking point, right? Or do you have a more optimistic view than that? I'm open to this from you.

Speaker 26 No, I don't. And so there's two points here, Charlie.
One is the political point you're making, that the Republican voters don't care about any of this. They still vote for Trump no matter what.

Speaker 26 But the other thing is, it's just amazing to me that people like Lindsey Graham are always trying to draw this distinction between, oh, you know, Donald Trump just said this outrageous thing, like attacking, you know, criticizing Netanyahu and claiming that he didn't didn't support Trump when Israel is literally under a mortal, a deadly attack.

Speaker 26 And at the same time, so Lindsey Graham says this is, he shouldn't say this stuff, but he keeps calling it, what is it, a mistake? This is not a mistake.

Speaker 26 What's lacking here is Donald Trump is a very bad person, right? Who doesn't care about anything but himself. That's why he says what he says about Israel.

Speaker 26 That's why he says, let's overturn the Constitution.

Speaker 26 That's why it is so dangerous for anyone who cares about America's role in the world to even entertain the possibility of returning Donald Trump to the Oval Office.

Speaker 26 And of all the people who should know that, shouldn't Lindsey Graham be like at the front of the line? Totally, totally.

Speaker 26 And this is like, but the scary thing, Charlie, is if Donald Trump wins the presidency again, it will be with the help of a bunch of people who literally think this.

Speaker 26 They think, you know, I don't like Trump's mean tweets or whatever, but, you know, he was good on the economy or whatever. And we can manage him.

Speaker 26 We'll just limit the damage he does to Israel or the Constitution or whatever, right? Lynn Lindsay will be the Secretary of Defense or something.

Speaker 26 And he'll talk himself into like, I will protect the world for him because I'll be his Secretary of Defense for like five minutes until thrown under the bus by the Donald.

Speaker 26 And what we have to convince these people of is you don't get to choose. You don't get Trump a la carte.
You get Trump.

Speaker 26 And Trump's going to do all the bad stuff you don't like in addition to the things you think he did well. Well, you know, that's where we're at.
So what are you watching this week?

Speaker 26 What are you going to keep an eye on?

Speaker 26 I've been writing, and I'm going to, hopefully this will be out tomorrow morning, a look back at what happened when there was a massive Jewish slaughter of Palestinians 30 years ago in Israel, and what was said at that time.

Speaker 26 You didn't have all this namby-pamby, you know, excuses for the terrorists. Israel and its allies, and the United States, and Jewish groups, were out very clearly talking about the evil of this act.

Speaker 26 That's what we need more people on the other side to do. We need more Arab countries, more Muslim organizations speaking out in the same way about violence against Jews.

Speaker 26 Now, going back to Trump's comments

Speaker 26 and the need for moral clarity, I do think that that is something that Joe Biden has actually risen to the occasion on, at least in a couple of the things he said, his public statement, his interview on 60 Minutes last night.

Speaker 26 I don't know whether you caught it. I only caught some excerpts of it.
But he seems to have a very clear view. of the moral stakes here and his historical perspective.

Speaker 26 And in looking at the pictures of what happened to the children and everything and thinking of the Holocaust, the distance between

Speaker 26 the seriousness with which he is proposing this, and I'm not saying I'm going to agree with everything he does here.

Speaker 26 I'm not giving him a blank check in any way.

Speaker 26 I'm not going to join the rah-rah

Speaker 26 club here, but the distance between Joe Biden's seriousness and his moral clarity and Donald Trump's narcissistic recklessness, boy, could not be more dramatic.

Speaker 26 And again, it's one of those moments that you're not the crazy ones if you're saying this guy's acting like a grown-up, this guy's acting like a complete complete fucking buffoon.

Speaker 26 And it's not just that Joe Biden understands the moral clarity of the wrongness of killing Jews and that Israel is in the right to defend itself.

Speaker 26 It's also that he does something Donald Trump would never do, which is that at the same time that Joe Biden says that, he also talks about the Palestinian-American boy who was just murdered in Illinois, in Chicago, right?

Speaker 26 And this goes back to what Ron DeSantis said. When politicians like Ron DeSantis go out and talk about how all the people of Gaza are anti-Semitic, that's not just like a rhetorical error.

Speaker 26 That has consequences. And I'm not going to draw a straight line, but there has already been one hate murder that we know of.

Speaker 26 The sheriff's office says that they believe this is related to the situation between Hamas and Israel. A man murdered this boy, a boy, right?

Speaker 26 After Ron DeSantis says, around the same time as Ron DeSantis says, oh, the children of Gaz, you know, they're all indoctrinated. They're all.

Speaker 26 And Joe Biden has come out and talked about that as well and said, we must not do that. He's not doing China virus.

Speaker 26 He's not playing on ethnic stereotypes. He's trying to stand against that and in defense of human rights.

Speaker 26 And meanwhile, I think the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see a shutdown of the federal government because of the complete dysfunction. in the Congress of the United States.

Speaker 26 I mean, if they do come up with some sort of a bipartisan power sharing agreement, which by the way would be incredibly countercultural.

Speaker 26 I mean, that would be incredibly not on brand for 2023 to have some sort of a bipartisan compromise.

Speaker 26 So if in fact Republicans do fall in line behind Jim Jordan, I think the chances of a government shutdown in the midst of this international crisis is way higher than 50-50.

Speaker 26 And I mean, among the many mind-blowing things that we have to endure, you know, the most mind-blowing of all being the possible reelection of Donald freaking Trump, the fact that anyone would even contemplate shutting down the federal government during this particular period of time is just, I, but, you know, here we are.

Speaker 26 If only they had been warned. Charlie, can I have a do-over?

Speaker 26 So last week we talked about this and I said it didn't really matter that McCarthy was out, you know, because Congress wasn't really relevant to the situation in Israel. Yeah.
Totally wrong.

Speaker 26 I was totally wrong because all of a sudden, if you need appropriations, if you need money, you know, Israel's in a better position than Ukraine vis-a-vis the money, but like.

Speaker 26 To the extent that Israel needs money and they do are trying to get an appropriation, if you don't have a speaker, you don't have a house, you can't pass anything. And that's a major, major problem.

Speaker 26 So we do need the Republicans to get their act together, among other reasons, on behalf of Israel.

Speaker 26 And this is one of those moments of political crisis and of American weakness that is completely and utterly self-inflicted. No one is doing this to us.
The Russians are not doing it to us.

Speaker 26 The Chinese are not doing it to us. We are doing it to ourselves, or at least the Republicans are doing it to themselves.
And unfortunately, we are the collateral damage.

Speaker 26 Will, it's going to be a hell of a week. We'll have to catch up again next Monday.
All right, Charlie, thanks. All right, and thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark podcast.

Speaker 26 I'm Charlie Sykes, and we will be back tomorrow and do this all over again.

Speaker 26 The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

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