Will Saletan: Lying Dog-Faced Pony Soldier

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Speaker 11 Welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes.

Speaker 11 It is the anniversary of 9-11, and I continue to be just really struck by the fact that even after 22 years, we still remember every moment, every hour, where we were, what happened on 9-11.

Speaker 11 Although, I have to say, Will, Will Salatan joins me, of course, again.

Speaker 11 I have to say that, you know, one of the interesting things that as you grow older is watching how historical memory changes and puts things in a different context.

Speaker 11 Do you remember when we thought that 9-11 was this moment of great national unity and national purpose? And we look back now with a completely different lens, don't we?

Speaker 14 Right, right. Well, you know, it could happen again if some terrible tragedy befalls us that forces us to recognize that we're actually compatriots.

Speaker 11 Yeah, exactly. We have a piece up at the bulwark today,

Speaker 11 really disturbing piece on 9-11. We promise to never forget, Will Selber writes, but too often we forget the post 9-11 combat vets.
This is a really, really, really good piece.

Speaker 11 I just want to highlight this before we get going here. He starts off with the words that I've never read before in this particular context.
He writes, I hate 9-11.

Speaker 11 I hate the commemorations, the Facebook posts blaring never forget and the empty declarations that we will stand vigilant. I didn't always always feel this way.

Speaker 11 I used to religiously watch the annual ceremonies and I'd re-watch footage of the horrific event itself.

Speaker 11 Seeing the iconic images again helped steal my resolve and propelled me to stay dialed into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They motivated me to fight.

Speaker 11 But ever since 2021, when Kabul fell, I have come to despise the public remembrances of 9-11. Why? Because almost nobody speaks truthfully about the wars that followed.

Speaker 11 Now, I use the anniversary to take stock of all that happened after that day of terror. I look back on my friendships and see what the wars did to us, the 9-11 generation.

Speaker 11 Specifically, I look at my two best friends, Mike and Alex, and wince at the toll these forever wars took on the few who fought them.

Speaker 11 If we really want to never forget, we must remember not only the events of the day, but also what we lost and the wars that followed and what we are still at risk of losing.

Speaker 14 It is a great piece.

Speaker 11 It is a very, very powerful piece. Will Sulber has been one of, I think, most valuable and eye-opening contributors to the bulwark.

Speaker 11 So, Will, we have a lot of ground to cover today, a lot of audio, and I'm sorry to say, a lot of heavy lifting. Although, could I start with this?

Speaker 11 It is a cold and rainy day in Wisconsin today, this morning, on a Monday morning in mid-September, and yet there is joy throughout Cheese Headland, I have to tell you.

Speaker 11 Because there is nothing sweeter. There is nothing more important.
There is nothing that eclipses a Green Bay Packer stomping of the Chicago Bears in Chicago on opening day

Speaker 11 with a new quarterback.

Speaker 11 I have to tell you, this has lasted more than four hours already.

Speaker 11 And I am not going to seek treatment for this. I'm just telling you right off the bat.

Speaker 11 And nothing I'm saying is overstating, just the sort of the joy. I mean, you see these, you know, wet and soggy Wisconsin nights, and they've all got this sort of beatific smile.

Speaker 11 All is good. All is good.
Spring in our step, little extra niceness to Wisconsin nights, if you follow me.

Speaker 14 That's wonderful for you, Charlie. And I have to say that with apologies to the people of New York City, I tuned out the Cowboys game when they were up 33 to nothing.
So also a good day for me.

Speaker 11 Yeah, well, I can't root for the Cowboys, but, you know, I'm in a magnanimous mood. I can share the joy.
Okay, all of that is kind of a long lead up to doing some heavy lifting. All right.

Speaker 11 And I need you, Will, to provide some perspective. President Biden is on this epic Asian trip at the G20.
It's a killing schedule. There's no question about it.
There are some significant diplomatic,

Speaker 11 I would say, advances and accomplishments here. But because we are who we are, there's also this debate.

Speaker 11 Should we be focusing on the diplomatic substance, the diplomatic successes, or should we focus on what was a

Speaker 11 what weasly word can I use here? Problematic press conference by a clearly weary Joe Biden in Hanoi. Can I play a little bit of the soundbite and then I want to get your take, put it in context.

Speaker 11 How should we think about this? Okay, here's Joe Biden talking about the lying pony soldiers or whatever.

Speaker 15 Did you ever think you'd be sitting at a G20 conference where everyone was preoccupied with the notion of global warming.

Speaker 15 Not a joke. Did you ever think that?

Speaker 11 Not a joke.

Speaker 15 And there's a,

Speaker 15 my brother loves having there's famous lines from movies that he always quotes, you know, and one of them is there's a movie about John Wayne, he's an Indian scout, and they're trying to get the, I think it was the Apache, one of the

Speaker 15 great tribes of America back on the reservation.

Speaker 15 And he's standing with the unions, he's they're all on their and they're on their horses and their saddles and there's three or four Indians in headdresses and the Union soldiers and the Union so basically saying the Indians come with me we'll take care of you we'll be everything will be good and the Indian scout the Indian looks at John Wayne and points to the Union so he says he's a lion dog faced pony soldier Well, there's a lot of lion dog-faced pony soldiers out there about

Speaker 15 global warming, but not anymore. All of a sudden, they all realize it.
It's a problem.

Speaker 15 And there's nothing like seeing the light.

Speaker 11 Is it a little bit didactic to point out that he's referring to this John Wayne movie actually

Speaker 11 the actor playing a Cree in 1952's pony soldiers addressing the character played by Tyrone Power?

Speaker 14 So here they are. The dog-faced soldiers, the regulars, the 50 cents a day professionals, riding the outposts of a nation.

Speaker 11 Okay, there is a John Wayne film, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, where Wayne is assigned to get the Cheyenne nations back to the reservation after Custer's defeat.

Speaker 11 And there is this final clip in the movie here.

Speaker 11 The pony soldier speaks with the tongue of the snake that rattles.

Speaker 11 All right, so what do we make of all of this? Because this is the headline in the Drudge Report this morning, and obviously it comes the week. There's all of this concern and all of this panic.

Speaker 11 I mean, here's the headline in the Drudge Report. Mumbling in Hanoi, president's strange behavior, press conference crazy.
They shut him off in mid-answer. They had to whisk him off.

Speaker 11 What do you make of it, Will?

Speaker 14 Okay, I just want to start by putting this in context. This is not the most important thing, obviously.
The important thing is that Biden went there. And what we are doing, obviously, is we are...

Speaker 14 Although Biden said we're not trying to contain China, we are trying to contain China. And that's why we're upgrading our relationship with Vietnam.

Speaker 14 We're meeting with, you know, India, Australia, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan. What do do they all have in common? They're all afraid of China.

Speaker 14 Biden's going to the G20 and he's building an alliance in Asia. And it's great.

Speaker 11 That's all great. Which is very important.

Speaker 14 Extremely important. He says, we're a Pacific nation.

Speaker 14 We're setting up in Asia what we had previously set up in Europe, an alliance of democracies or alliance against an aggressive totalitarian regime.

Speaker 14 But this particular press conference is obviously bad.

Speaker 14 And I have to say, Charlie, that when I watch the press conference and when I listen again to the clip of that, the word that comes to mind is grandpa, right? This is the way grandpa talks sometimes.

Speaker 14 In fact, Biden refers, he mentions one of the reasons why he got this story wrong about the movie is that he heard it from his brother. So it's gone through two grandpas now.

Speaker 14 He's told this story before and he gets it wrong every time, right?

Speaker 14 And this is what Joe Biden does. He's a storyteller and a lot of his stories turn out to be full of, what's that word, malarkey? So he gets the stuff wrong.
Here he's, he's slurring his words.

Speaker 14 He's also, it's just so inappropriate.

Speaker 11 He's talking about climate change, right?

Speaker 14 And how he got from that to this movie. And it's the Indian headdress.

Speaker 11 He's tired. He's jet lagged.

Speaker 14 Right. So

Speaker 14 it's from his era, this movie about cowboys and Indians and stuff. And he gets

Speaker 11 so.

Speaker 14 It's not great, but it's not the headline to my mind.

Speaker 11 It is not the headline. But again, it plays into this narrative, which is just dominating.

Speaker 11 I mean, just dominating the coverage right now, you know, that, and again, whether it's, you know, fair or not. Let me just read you the, this is the Daily Mail.

Speaker 11 A sleepy President Joe Biden saw his rambling Vietnam press conference brought to a sudden end on Sunday night with his mic cut and jazz music playing him off the stage like he went on too long in an awards speech.

Speaker 11 Biden was mid-flowing answering questions from journalists when he was interrupted and forced to shuffle away and head backstage.

Speaker 11 We talked about stability. We talked about the southern hemisphere has access to change.
It wasn't confrontation at all. Biden said as he rambled on.

Speaker 14 Okay, so I I have a couple of takes on this.

Speaker 11 Clearly, he was exhausted, he was tired, but this strikes me again as

Speaker 11 a staff failure.

Speaker 11 How do you put this guy out there? And why do you humiliate him in this particular way?

Speaker 11 You know, you know, look, I am not giving advice, and I'm this is this may be an insoluble problem, but we know what Joe Biden's strengths are and what his weaknesses are. You saw his weakness there.

Speaker 11 Why not put him in more stable environments, the set pieces, have him give addresses, have him sit in the Oval Office, have him sit in, obviously he's in Hanoi, he can't do that, but to throw him out, obviously exhausted, tired, clearly sort of confused and all of this.

Speaker 11 It's like,

Speaker 11 well,

Speaker 11 and I understand that we're going to get people saying, okay, there you go again, you people at the bowl worker, talking about what 300 million Americans are talking about every day.

Speaker 11 If you just ignored it, those 300 million Americans would probably just forget this was an issue, except when it's reminded.

Speaker 11 So, I guess my concern is how many of these dog-faced pony soldier-type things are we going to have to endure between now and November before

Speaker 11 people come to grips with either how you deal with this and

Speaker 11 leading him offstage or how you package him in such a way that this does not become the dominant issue of 2024.

Speaker 11 Well, it's

Speaker 11 okay. I don't have any other veterans.

Speaker 14 You and I can complain. I certainly have complained that we don't see enough of Joe Biden.
Joe Biden isn't out there selling his message, selling his record, yada, yada.

Speaker 14 And, you know, why is he in his basement? Why is he out? And what we're seeing in this press conference is there's a reason.

Speaker 14 There's a reason he's not out there more because his staff know, they know that when he is out there and when he's forced to go on for hours without a nap, this is going to happen.

Speaker 14 The guy is on what is like a five-day trip. He's gone across the world.
It's like 30 hours. This is a lot for him at his age, for anyone at that age.

Speaker 11 Yeah. For anybody.

Speaker 11 You think that Trump would do this?

Speaker 14 Right. And there's the jet lag.
There's all that. It's exhausting.
And when he gets exhausted, it's pretty clear that he gets, I don't want to say disoriented, but he slurs his words.

Speaker 14 He was slurring his words here. He's telling this old story.
They give him the hook. So it's not him at his best.
And in their defense, I think they're trying to show him being more active.

Speaker 14 And the price of it is when he's active, this happens.

Speaker 11 They could have shown that he was active without putting him out in this particular case. Okay, so let's leave this aside.

Speaker 11 The reason why I am so alarmed about this is because of the danger that is lurking out there that we have discussed, I feel endlessly for seven years.

Speaker 11 And in case you missed it, Donald Trump went to South Dakota, okay?

Speaker 11 And he's talking about how if he's president again, what he would do with his attorney general, you know, seeking his attorney general on an opponent.

Speaker 11 He obviously is implying that Joe Biden, this, by the way, here, talk about the cognitive dissonance. And on the one hand, Joe Biden is completely senile, you know, and sleeping in his basement.

Speaker 11 On the other hand, he's, you know, he's out going around the world doing these diplomatic things and apparently orchestrating the greatest conspiracy against a political opponent ever.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 11 I mean, he is at the center of this web that would make Machiavelli blush to listen to Donald Trump. Okay, so let's play clip number five about Donald Trump saying

Speaker 11 how he's going to sick his attorney general on his opponent.

Speaker 17 But remember,

Speaker 17 it's a Democrat charging his opponent. Nobody's ever seen anything like it.
That means that if I win and somebody wants to run against me, I call my attorney general and I say, listen, indict him.

Speaker 17 Well, he hasn't done anything wrong that we know. I don't know.
Indict him on income tax evasion. You'll figure it out.

Speaker 11 Hmm, okay, so he's not done yet. You know, he's talking about, you know, the opponent's doing well and what he would do.

Speaker 17 It does. It allows me to now, because this is unthinkable, I'm president and I call my attorney general.
Indict my opponent. He's doing well.

Speaker 11 See, Willis is the fantasy world that he lives in, but he's clearly obsessed with it. Yeah.
And does anyone think, by the way, that he wouldn't do that?

Speaker 11 That he didn't try to do that in his first term? Right.

Speaker 14 He did. He tried to abuse the Justice Department.
That's pretty well documented.

Speaker 11 He told people to shake down Vladimir Zelensky dirt. Right.

Speaker 14 To remind people, the background here, there's a reason why Donald Trump has been indicted four times. He is a criminal.
He is a criminal. The law is catching up to him.

Speaker 14 And that distinguishes him from all the other presidents, right, who were not explicitly criminals. But the problem is Republicans need to sort of equalize this.

Speaker 14 They need to make Joe Biden seem as bad. So the idea is the law enforcement is going after me, so I will do the same to you.

Speaker 14 Now, when law enforcement goes after a criminal, that's law enforcement.

Speaker 14 When the president says, I'm going to use law enforcement to go after my opponent, he said, like, you'll figure it out, come up with something. That is the definition of abuse of power, right?

Speaker 14 It would be an impeachable offense if Republicans were still capable of impeaching one of their own, which they're not.

Speaker 14 But the point is that what Donald Trump attributes to his opponents, the weaponization of law enforcement, A, they are not doing, and B, he is explicitly saying he would do.

Speaker 11 And I think we got to take him absolutely seriously.

Speaker 11 I mean, you know, just an asterisk there: if he's elected president again, he won't have an opponent because, in theory, he won't be allowed to run for a third term, but he's clearly unaware of that particular constitutional provision.

Speaker 11 Meanwhile, he got in a dig at Mitch McConnell. And in case there's any doubt in your mind, there's no ambiguity about what Trump is asking Congress to do.
He wants Congress to defund the police.

Speaker 11 Oh, no, no. Actually, defund the entire Department of Justice and state prosecutors.
He wants Congress to defund the entire criminal justice system that is coming after him. Let's play this.

Speaker 17 The House has been working hard, but the Senate under this guy, Mitch McConnell, has been a disaster.

Speaker 17 And they should immediately defund the DOJ and prosecutors who are trying to take conservatives and Republicans out of political races through through indictments and other illegal means.

Speaker 17 That's what they're doing.

Speaker 11 Yeah, no ambiguity there, is there?

Speaker 14 Look, he's calling on his political allies to abuse their power in Congress to undercut the, first of all, undercut the rule of law.

Speaker 14 And secondly, it drives me nuts, Charlie, that Democrats have to answer for this rhetoric of defund the police, which is espoused by a tiny fraction of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 11 But was weaponized by Republicans very effectively.

Speaker 14 It was weaponized very effectively. And at the same time, a much, much larger percentage of the Republican Party, if not a majority, is behind this idea of defunding federal law enforcement.

Speaker 14 In this case,

Speaker 14 he literally says defund DOJ.

Speaker 14 So it's anyone. It's anyone who goes after, who investigates a Republican.
It's the state and local prosecutors. It's the federal prosecutors.
This is the Republican Party.

Speaker 14 If you're asking yourself who is trying to defund law enforcement today, it is not the Democratic Party. It is the Republican Party.

Speaker 11 Can you imagine if there was audio of Joe Biden saying, I think we should defund the police in Portland, Oregon? I mean, it's okay, whatever.

Speaker 11 Okay, this is a slight digression, but over the weekend, one of the breaking stories, there's

Speaker 11 so many major stories, including the fact that Mark Meadows got totally slammed dunked by a federal judge in his attempt to move his case from state court to federal court, which would suggest that everybody else is going to have a hard time doing that as well.

Speaker 11 well but the other like rather unusual story was the release of the original fulton county grand jury report that had a whole bunch of names of people who the jury recommended for indictment but who were not in fact indicted this generally doesn't happen we generally do not see what grand juries are doing and we also don't hear about the people who were investigated but not necessarily indicted but in this case because of georgia law we were one of the names that popped up was your old friend, Will, your old friend, Lindsey Graham.

Speaker 11 And for anyone who has not listened to Will's absolutely brilliant podcast, I have already read his book about Lindsey Graham.

Speaker 11 I wanted to just ask you what your thoughts were to see that Lindsey Graham, his name was up before that original Fulton County grand jury, and a majority, not all of them, but a majority of the members of that jury had recommended indicting Lindsey Graham.

Speaker 11 Just give me your thoughts on this. And of course, Lindsey Graham comes out afterward and said, I did nothing wrong, and I'm prepared to do it again in 2022.

Speaker 11 Just saying.

Speaker 14 Okay, a couple of things about here. So Trump gets indicted, and Lindsey Graham doesn't in the Georgia case.

Speaker 11 Why?

Speaker 14 Okay, so one reason is if you look at the math on how the special grand jury voted, the prosecutors went after the people who got like 20 out of 21 votes from the grand jurors.

Speaker 14 They didn't go for Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham was a 13, I believe.
13, yes, seven, no. So you're probably not going to win that case.
Pretty mixed.

Speaker 11 Right.

Speaker 14 Also, Lindsey Graham was not directly involved in the fake elector scheme, which is central to the Georgia indictment, right? So they wisely focused on that and left him out of it.

Speaker 14 The third thing, though, Charlie, is the phone calls, right? Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump each had a phone call with Brad Raffensperger, the Republican Secretary of State in Georgia.

Speaker 14 Trump said, all I need you to do, Brad, is go find me 11,780 votes, right?

Speaker 14 Graham said, apparently, it wasn't recorded the same way Trump's was, so we don't have the exact details, but he apparently started asking questions about, about, you know, in these counties where there were a lot of mail-in ballots and we're not sure if the signatures are valid, we being whoever is on Graham's side, then maybe you could set aside those ballots and, you know, basically disenfranchise all those people.

Speaker 11 And just throw out votes. Right.

Speaker 14 But he didn't actually say do it.

Speaker 14 And Charlie, the funniest thing to me is when Lindsey Graham was asked about, I think this was on Friday, about him not getting indicted, he said, I never suggested anybody set aside the election.

Speaker 14 This is a quote from Lindsey Graham. I never said go find votes.
So Lindsey Graham is saying that he is innocent because he didn't say what Donald Trump said in a recorded call, right?

Speaker 14 Without really intending to, Graham is obviously incriminating Trump, that to say go find votes does mean that you corruptly tried to overthrow the election.

Speaker 11 Hey, folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast.

Speaker 11 We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more.

Speaker 11 And every day we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to thebulwark.com and take a look around?

Speaker 11 Every day we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact.

Speaker 11 To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bulwark Plus membership free for the next 30 days? To claim this offer, go to thebulwark.com slash Charlie.

Speaker 11 That's thebulwark.com forward slash Charlie. We're going to get through this together, I promise.

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Speaker 11 All of this is leading up to this conversation we have to have about Kamala Harris, because I think with Joe Biden, there are three separable questions.

Speaker 11 Number one, you know, has he been a good enough president to deserve a second term? And he could make a very strong case. Yes.
But a separate question is, but is he up for a reelection campaign?

Speaker 11 And I think there's a much bigger question mark over that. But then that leads us to the third question.

Speaker 11 And this is where I sort of come up against it, which is like, okay, if you answer no to either one of those questions, what is your plan B? What is the alternative?

Speaker 11 So let's say that you think that Joe Biden is told. So what are you going to do about it? Because he's running.

Speaker 11 Either the Democrats are stuck with him or they're going to have a wide open primary in which the vice president, I think, would be a very, very strong favorite.

Speaker 11 This is going to be a huge theme throughout 2024, by the way, that if you vote for Joe Biden, you're really voting for Kamala Harris, correct?

Speaker 11 I mean, so she lurks here and, you know, and I was on Moaning Joe this morning and they were saying, well, you know, historically, nobody's ever voted because of a vice presidential nominee.

Speaker 11 It's never made a difference.

Speaker 11 You know, I think that's probably largely true, but 2024 is going to be an unusual year.

Speaker 11 And you know that, you know, Nikki Haley has made it very clear that she's running against, you know, Joe Biden dead, you know, Kamala Harris alive, right?

Speaker 11 And she said this over and over and over again, you know, president Kamala Harris. So inevitably, any conversation about Joe Biden and his age has to lead to, okay, plan B, Kamala Harris.

Speaker 11 Would Kamala Harris be better? Would she be better as a candidate? Would she be better as a president? How would she play out?

Speaker 11 Well, she was on with Margaret Brennan on CBS, who asked her some really tough questions.

Speaker 11 And one of the key issues that Democrats will be emphasizing next year will, of course, be the Dobbs ruling, abortion, the right to life.

Speaker 11 And this has become now a signature issue of the vice president who has really made this her cause.

Speaker 11 So Brennan, you know, tries to drill down on her on the question of, okay, do you draw the line anywhere?

Speaker 11 Now, for those of you that want to push back on this, this is going to be the Republican line of attack is the Democrats won't draw the line anywhere. They support abortion up until birth.

Speaker 11 I think Marsha Blackburn is now even saying things like, even after birth, but they're kind of challenging, and this is going to be something you're going to hear over and over again, Democrats to say, okay, so first trimester, second trimester, do you draw the line anywhere?

Speaker 11 And this is what the vice president was pressed on in CBS yesterday morning. Let's play about two minutes of this back and forth, okay? And I want to get your take on this.

Speaker 19 What is it that you believe? I mean, what week of pregnancy should abortion access be cut off?

Speaker 20 We need to restore the protections of Roe versus Wade. We're not trying to do something new.

Speaker 19 Well, that was nebulous because it was about viability, which could be anywhere between 20 to 24 weeks.

Speaker 20 No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 21 Let's lose it. Let me be very clear.

Speaker 19 The Women's Health Protection Act, that's the only thing that we're doing.

Speaker 21 Let me be very clear.

Speaker 20 From day one, the President has been clear. I have been clear.
We need to put back the protections that are in Roe v. Wade into law.

Speaker 20 Since the Supreme Court took it, Congress has the power power and ability to pass legislation to put those protections back in law, and Joe Biden will sign that bill. So that is what we want.

Speaker 19 But does it need to be specific in terms of defining

Speaker 19 where that guarantee goes up to and where it does not, which week of pregnancy?

Speaker 20 We need to put back in place the protections of Roe v.

Speaker 19 Wade v. We know why I'm asking you this question, though.

Speaker 20 We're not trying to do anything that did not exist before June of last year.

Speaker 19 We are saying that it isn't crafted into law. And that's why I'm asking you for the specifics there, because Republicans say the lack of a precise date in cutting it off, you know this.

Speaker 19 They say that allows Democrats to perform abortions up until birth.

Speaker 21 Which is ridiculous, statistically, which is not accurate.

Speaker 20 And it's ridiculous.

Speaker 20 And it's a mischaracterization of the point. No, the point is.

Speaker 21 We need to be more precise.

Speaker 20 I am being precise. We need to put into law the protections of Roe versus Wade, and that is about going back to where we were before the Dobbs decision.

Speaker 20 And this is a very real issue. Our daughter in her 20s is going to have less rights than my mother-in-law, who's in her 80s.

Speaker 11 All right, Will, have at it. Okay,

Speaker 14 so this goes on for like two minutes, as you said. She has plenty of time to explain in her answer at least the basics of what Roe versus Wade said.
And she doesn't do it.

Speaker 14 She doesn't even begin to address the trimester framework, the idea that Roe drew distinctions between early and late abortions, right?

Speaker 14 That in the third trimester, Roe says, fine, states can ban abortion. In the second trimester, Roe says states can pass laws relating to maternal health.

Speaker 14 And then, of course, Roe was modified by Casey to allow more regulation.

Speaker 14 The point is, there is a lot that Kamala Harris could say here to clarify to the American public that Democrats do not support unrestricted, unlimited abortion up to the moment of birth, which is exactly what Donald Trump and all the other Republicans are telegraphing they are going to run on on this issue.

Speaker 14 They're going to say Democrats are extreme. All Kamala Harris has to do here is to say a little bit about the Roe framework and how it does not allow abortions up to the moment of birth.

Speaker 14 And she doesn't do it. It's basic communication.

Speaker 14 And I got so much blowback from people on social media this weekend saying that, you know, their position, these people on the left, is everyone should know what Roe versus Wade says.

Speaker 11 She shouldn't have to explain this. No, that's your job.

Speaker 14 You're running for vice president of the United States. Whether Donald Trump is president again may hinge on your ability to communicate with the public.
Do your job.

Speaker 11 Let's just spread this out just a little bit because this, I think, is a really crucial, crucial point. So you are Kamala Harris.
I am asking you a question. So,

Speaker 11 Madam Vice President, do you or do you not support third trimester abortions?

Speaker 14 You want me to answer that?

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 11 Yeah,

Speaker 11 you're Kamala Harris right now. Okay.

Speaker 14 I'll try to put myself in her shoe.

Speaker 11 I mean, the answer is no.

Speaker 14 The answer is no. I mean, the fundamental distinction that I would draw if I were answering this question is at viability, the way we regulate abortion changes.

Speaker 14 Before viability, the presumption is it should be legal. We don't need to know about the reasons or any of that.

Speaker 14 After viability, which is when it's not entirely clear because it varies according to the pregnancy, but in that range of 20 to 20, it's not really 20 weeks, but like say 22 to 23, 24 weeks.

Speaker 14 In that range, we're going to change the state laws about this to say that you need a good reason.

Speaker 14 Now, in fact, pro-choice people are correct that women don't generally go out there at 23, 24 weeks and say, I feel like having an abortion. Correct.

Speaker 14 These abortions that happen late happen generally for very serious medical reasons.

Speaker 14 You know, as Pete Buttigig has said, by this point, you've like, you may have ordered the crib, you're painting the room, you're expecting to have a baby.

Speaker 14 So you're not going to do this for frivolous reasons.

Speaker 14 But it's fine for progressives, for Democrats, to say that the law should express the moral distinction that people make, including the women who are going to make that decision, instead of saying the law should have nothing to say about abortion at any stage of pregnancy.

Speaker 11 But there's a reason why they're not giving that answer. Okay.
So why don't they? I mean, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. So why aren't they doing it?

Speaker 14 A couple of reasons, I would say. I think they're afraid on the merits that if they open the door to some regulation, that the right wing will take hold of that.

Speaker 11 Look, we're already there.

Speaker 14 The right is already passing laws in all these states taking abortion back to six weeks or zero, right?

Speaker 14 There's also the political concern that we mustn't pick a fight with anyone on the left about any issue, right?

Speaker 11 And I guess that's- I think what you're seeing here is the way that the absolutists dominate this debate.

Speaker 11 And you do see this in the pro-life movement, but you're also seeing it now in the pro-choice movement, which is that if you are talking to these swing voters, you look at every poll and voters make the distinctions that you are describing.

Speaker 11 You ask them how do you feel about abortions after 15 weeks, they're strongly opposed.

Speaker 11 If you ask them how do you feel about abortions in the first 15 weeks, you know, there's strong support for the legalization.

Speaker 11 And so this debate seems to be dominated by people who represent a very small sliver of the electorate, who are unwilling to say there's any limits whatsoever. Right.

Speaker 11 And I'm just not sure that that's smart politics, but it's also, I think, does defy a certain common sense and a certain moral sensibility among among American voters.

Speaker 11 And I'm talking about people all across the political spectrum.

Speaker 14 And on that point, Charlie, not just the spectrum, but across both genders, okay, both sexes.

Speaker 14 Look, to every woman who is listening to our conversation and saying, I can't believe that these two men are presuming to talk about how to control women's bodies.

Speaker 14 Let me tell you, okay, this is really, because I got a lot of this blowback from people. The problem to you folks who are upset about that, the problem isn't me and Charlie, okay?

Speaker 14 We're just a couple of guys. Your problem is with the public of America, including the women of America.

Speaker 14 And if you are a pro-choice woman and you are an absolutist and you think the only people who don't share your point of view are men trying to control women's bodies, let me quote to you some polling data, okay?

Speaker 14 This is from the most recent Gallup poll on this issue, which was from May. This is among American women, not men, women.

Speaker 14 The percentage of women, who believe that abortion should be illegal in the last three months is 66%, two-thirds. Okay.
But let's go beyond that.

Speaker 14 The percentage of American women who think abortion should be illegal in the second trimester, the second three months of pregnancy, is 52%.

Speaker 14 40% say it should be legal. 52% say in the second trimester, it should be illegal.
So if you are a woman who thinks you're only arguing with men, you need to get out more.

Speaker 14 You need to talk to other women. And this goes all the way back through the history of abortion politics.

Speaker 14 If you read some of the best sociological works about this issue, Kristen Luker, Faye Ginsberg, this is largely a fight among women. Men are heavily involved.

Speaker 14 Men are in these legislatures passing laws. And I understand the complaint that they shouldn't be speaking the same way women do.

Speaker 14 But you need to talk to more women and you need to communicate to those women and explain to them that you do recognize moral distinctions. between the trimesters, between various weeks of gestation.

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Speaker 11 Okay, let's switch gears a little bit. Let's talk about the presidential race again.

Speaker 11 The whole dilemma of good Nikki Haley versus bad Nikki Haley, it feels like it's every single day that you get to go, yeah, Nikki Haley is really sounding like the normie candidate.

Speaker 11 And then she'll say something like, you know, no, I will definitely vote for Donald Trump, even if he's in jail because X, Y, and Z.

Speaker 11 So over the weekend, we got a little bit of the good Nikki and the bad Nikki. Let's hear clip number nine when the good Nikki talks about cutting off funds for Ukraine.

Speaker 22 So House Republicans should keep that Ukraine spending in the spending bill and should not separate it and should support it.

Speaker 23 Republicans and Democrats should not pull in Afghanistan. Don't go pulling out now.

Speaker 23 Putin is at rock bottom. We know that because he's getting drones from Iran and missiles from North Korea.
We know that because they've raised the draft age in Russia to 65. Finish this.

Speaker 11 Then she's asked about this weird flex in the Republicans right now to basically invade Mexico.

Speaker 11 Do you think that's a fair way of describing what Ron DeSantis and others are talking about, sending our military into Mexico?

Speaker 11 That sounds like an invasion. Yeah.

Speaker 14 There's the question of consent, but yeah, we would be sending military forces into another country.

Speaker 11 Now, we've done that before, though, right? I mean, haven't we sent special forces to various places in Central America to go after drug dealers? I mean, is this really that radical?

Speaker 11 I'm asking you for a friend.

Speaker 14 So it depends. It depends, Charlie, on what happens after we send them in.
Do they get shot at? Do they start shooting back? Who else gets hurt? These things can get out of hand.

Speaker 14 They have in the past.

Speaker 11 I mean, you assume you send special forces into a foreign country to go after cartels that there will be shooting, that they will shoot and people will shoot back. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 11 Here's Nikki Haley asked about that. And apparently, like all the other Republican candidates, she's like, all in on this.

Speaker 22 I've heard some of your colleagues talk about.

Speaker 22 treating the drug dealers in Mexico as if they are a terrorist cell and having the military, in cooperation with the Mexican government, obviously, treat those Mexican drug dealers as a terrorist cell.

Speaker 22 What do you think of something like that?

Speaker 23 Well, first of all, I think we deal with China first because that's the originator. That's where it's coming from.

Speaker 23 But I actually do think we should send our special operations over to eliminate the cartels. We can't wait on Mexico anymore.
We can't wait on any more Americans to die.

Speaker 23 We have to be aggressive on this and we treat them like the terrorists that they are.

Speaker 11 Okay, so troops into Mexico.

Speaker 14 Okay, so Jake Tapper sets this up by giving her the caveat that we would do this, quote, in cooperation with the Mexican government. First of all, I haven't heard that.
I don't know if you have.

Speaker 14 I haven't heard Republican candidates specifying that we would do this with Mexico's cooperation.

Speaker 14 And in fact, when Nikki Haley answers the question, she specifically says, we can't wait on Mexico anymore.

Speaker 11 What the hell does that mean, Charlie?

Speaker 14 Is she saying she doesn't care?

Speaker 14 whether the Mexican government consents because all of these Republican candidates are telling us, oh, oh, we mustn't risk American men and women in harm's way in Ukraine, right?

Speaker 14 We don't want that. But now they're talking about sending them into harm's way in Mexico, and they're not even taking the offer of this would only happen with Mexico's consent.

Speaker 14 It makes me wonder how much of the Republican position on fentanyl and on the border is bluster, and how much of it is really about doing this despite Mexico's opposition.

Speaker 11 Speaking of bluster, I wrote a piece some time back where I said, it used to to be that cruelty was the point.

Speaker 11 Now the new litmus test is brutality, is how much are you willing to embrace in terms of just killing people, maiming people, and suggested there would probably be a war of words there.

Speaker 11 And sure enough, Ronda Sandis is doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on his use of the term stone cold dead to describe what would happen if somebody crossed the border with a backpack with fentanyl.

Speaker 11 Now, how they would know that it's fentanyl before they shot him stone cold Dead is a little bit unclear, okay?

Speaker 11 But he's apparently relishing the idea that we will be killing people coming across the border, not arresting them, not giving them due process, killing them.

Speaker 11 And apparently, he's doing this because either polling or focus grouping or whatever is telling him or crowd reaction that there's kind of a kind of a, oh, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 11 We just need more dead people coming across the border. So there is this escalation in terms of, you know, how much force are we going to use and how many people are we going to kill.

Speaker 11 I mean, look, there's no secret about it. Donald Trump is always talking about how much he admires the Chinese approach of executing drug dealers after a short trial.

Speaker 11 He's praised the former Philippine president Duterte for the extrajudicial murders. He's got a real fetish for this sort of thing.

Speaker 11 But other Republican candidates seem to be picking this up as well and without any blowback as far as I can tell.

Speaker 14 Right.

Speaker 14 I mean, Trump certainly broke the mold in terms of just disregarding human rights and the thing about the death penalty and one day trials and that kind of thing, emulating the Chinese.

Speaker 14 When DeSantis says this stone cold dead thing, you know, this sort of, to me, brings home how unserious this party is, right? Serious strength.

Speaker 14 including serious military strength, includes not making threats that you don't actually intend to enforce. It's not just something you can say in a campaign speech.

Speaker 14 So when DeSantis says this thing about Stone Cold Dead, does he really mean it? My guess is, Charlie, he doesn't mean it. And so it's all bluster.

Speaker 14 It's all, but if he did mean it, of course, that would take America down the road of becoming just another country that disregards human rights. And that really would destroy our country.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I mean, the whole idea of a wall and shooting people coming over the wall. I mean,

Speaker 11 where did we hear this before? What does this remind me of?

Speaker 14 This is the thing that drives me crazy about immigration policy, right? The Republican message here is we need to defend America. And Trump talks about blood and soil, right? It's our land.

Speaker 14 People are coming into this territory of ours, right? But what makes America America isn't just the Rio Grande, right? It's that we have values, right? We stand for something.

Speaker 14 We're not just another, you know, tinpot dictatorship. And so when you hear these Republican candidates say, we're just going to shoot people, right?

Speaker 14 Or we're just going to give people one-day trials and execute them. That is destroying America.
That is destroying the essence of what makes our country different. Yeah.

Speaker 11 And of course, Rhonda Sanders has to be not just shoot them, but shoot them dead. And not just dead, but stone-cold dead.
Okay, so this is a strange thing.

Speaker 11 And you and I were talking about this off the air, this big speech that Mike Pence gave up at St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire, where he drew this bright line between populism and conservatism.

Speaker 11 I talked about this with Tim a little bit, Tim Miller, on Friday, how weird it is to listen to Mike Pence, who for four years sat across from or sat next to or stood behind Donald Trump, now saying that there are unbridgeable, irreconcilable differences between traditional conservatism and the kind of populism represented by Donald Trump.

Speaker 11 This is former Vice President Mike Pence.

Speaker 24 But today,

Speaker 24 a populist movement is rising in the Republican Party.

Speaker 24 The growing faction would substitute our faith in limited government and traditional values

Speaker 24 with an agenda stitched together by little else than personal grievances and performative outrage.

Speaker 11 Ooh, performative outrage.

Speaker 24 The Republican populists would abandon American leadership on the world stage,

Speaker 24 embracing a posture of appeasement in the face of rising threats to freedom.

Speaker 24 Republican populists would blatantly erode our constitutional norms.

Speaker 24 A leading candidate for the Republican nomination last year called for the, quote, termination of all rules, regulations and articles even those found in the Constitution

Speaker 11 close quote

Speaker 24 while his imitators in this primary have demonstrated a willingness to brandish government power to impose their will on opponents

Speaker 11 I'm gonna say their names too

Speaker 11 so okay that's really kind of extraordinary it's kind of a it's kind of a moment like you know how long has this been going on that Mike Pence is shocked shocked to find out that this is going on in the Republican Party and I understand that people would say, Charlie, it's like,

Speaker 11 you know, wasn't that you? Okay, but I never bought into the Trumpian populism and Pence was right there where all of that was going on.

Speaker 11 Still, it is, I guess I have mixed feelings, Will, because here you have somebody who is who is saying what we have been saying or I have been saying for years now, which is that this is not conservatism.

Speaker 11 This is an abandonment and repudiation of conservatism. And And for Mike Pence to be saying it, I mean, you know, hey, welcome to the party.
A little bit late.

Speaker 11 I think we have some scraps left around here. I think the cake's all gone, but, you know, you're still welcome to the party.

Speaker 14 Your thoughts? This is going to be my pony, right? Okay. So, yes, Mike Pence is, you know, eight years late.
He's eight years late.

Speaker 14 You could argue he's 15 years late in terms of the changes in the Republican Party since the Tea Party.

Speaker 11 But

Speaker 11 still, this is the way out and better late than never.

Speaker 14 And even even if it's too late for Mike Pence to redeem himself, he did describe in this speech exactly what is wrong with Donald Trump and Trump's movement from the standpoint of principled conservatism.

Speaker 14 So, progressives out there, I know you have other reasons to be unhappy with Mike Pence. You don't agree with him on abortion, nor do I.

Speaker 14 But the point is, he is explaining to conservative people who are still of good faith, who believe in conservative principles, why Donald Trump is wrong and what the Republican Party must be in the future if it is to stand for something at all.

Speaker 14 And I welcome that. And even if it's too late for Mike Pence, future conservatives could read this speech.
And Charlie, you know how history works.

Speaker 14 The speech of a loser, which Mike Pence is right now, can become a beloved document, a scripture for the future about what the party should stand for.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I'm not sure this is going to become scripture or a beloved document, but he does make some interesting points. Here's where he,

Speaker 11 one more clip here, where he kind of slips in the dagger saying that these populists are starting to sound a little bit like the much-dreaded progressives.

Speaker 11 And he actually kind of lumps in the populist Republicans with people like Bernie Sanders and Huey Long and William Jennings Bryan.

Speaker 24 I mean, the truth is, Donald Trump, along with his imitators, there's the name, he's often sound like an echo of the progressives they seek to replace. Ooh.
And a choice for the American people.

Speaker 24 For instance, they argue that we can only end our crises at home by abandoning abandoning our allies abroad.

Speaker 11 Yeah, you were there.

Speaker 24 Like progressives, Republican populists insist government should dictate how private businesses operate.

Speaker 24 And in fact, the governor of Florida still justifies using the power of the state to punish a corporation for taking a political stand that he disagreed with.

Speaker 11 Okay, so in that clip, he takes a shot at Donald Trump by name and Ron DeSantis pretty clearly. But you see the way that he's framing.

Speaker 11 He's telling his fellow conservative Republicans, who do these guys remind you of? Huh? Right. So I don't know whether that will get any traction.
My guess is it won't, but

Speaker 11 that was a sign to me that he is somewhat in earnest and explained to conservative audiences, look what these guys are doing. Are you old enough to remember when you thought this was terrible?

Speaker 11 Using the power of the state to punish somebody that you disagreed with? You remember when you thought it was terrible if we ever abandoned our allies out there?

Speaker 11 And like, look in the mirror, look at these guys now.

Speaker 14 Right. And it's one of the things that Pence says there that's really important.
You're right. He names Trump and that's a big deal.
But he goes beyond it and he says Trump's imitators.

Speaker 14 And to me, Charlie, this is the problem because Donald Trump actuarially. you know, he will pass from the scene.
And the real danger in the long term is that he will have imitators.

Speaker 14 He already has one in DeSantis and to some extent many other politicians. And what happens if the Republican Party goes that route in general and there ceases to be a conservative party?

Speaker 14 So good for Pence to say that. And here's just a theory.
I don't know what you think about it. Is this happening now because Mike Pence is losing? Because he's hanging out at what, 3% or something?

Speaker 14 He's at the bottom of the Republican field, practically. And is it the kind of thing that you've known in your heart all along?

Speaker 14 He's known it for a decade, but he's kept silent because the Republican Party was doing okay, because Trump won the election, right? And then they all stuck together.

Speaker 14 And when they're losing, losing is what forces you to reflect on, was it really worth it to to abandon everything we believed in?

Speaker 11 Yes, yes, I think that's exactly what's happening. I don't think there's any other interpretation.
And I do think that Mike Pence has known this all along, and yet has chosen not to say it.

Speaker 11 He went along with it. He rationalized it.
He enabled it. He was complicit in it all along.
So what turned him around?

Speaker 11 You would have thought that it was January 6th, but you can sort of see his gradual evolution where he looks at what happened on January 6th, and he's now becoming more outspoken that this was, you know, a terrible day.

Speaker 11 This was an attack on the Constitution. Donald Trump asked him to put his political career ahead of constitutional norms and the peaceful transfer of power.

Speaker 11 So obviously that was something of a shock to Mike Pence, but you can see that he's now working towards saying, all right, you know what? I have nothing to lose.

Speaker 11 I might as well just lay this out and say what I'm actually thinking. Although the speech has got a lot of boilerplate in it, and, you know, it's got a lot of the usual stuff.

Speaker 11 And there's a lot of Reagan nostalgia.

Speaker 11 And to me, I have to to tell you, Will, I know that he intends it as kind of a clarion call for a restoration of principled conservatism, but it really felt like kind of a eulogy for a party that just doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 11 I mean, he's right in explaining the difference between conservatism and this Trumpian populism, but the phrasing of his entire speech was, it is a time for choosing, which of course is an echo of Ronald Reagan from 1964.

Speaker 11 The problem, and this is almost too obvious, is that the time for choosing has come and gone. The party chose Trump.
The party chose populism.

Speaker 11 The party was just not that into conservatism, and it's obviously not that into Mike Pence, right? So the choice has been made.

Speaker 14 Well, yes and no.

Speaker 14 Okay, so first of all, I do think that we're going to look back at this election, I mean, hopefully in the future, we will look back at 2024 and the Republican race in 2024 as a moment when there was an articulation of what the party used to stand for and should stand for by people who could not in that year of 2024 win the election.

Speaker 14 Just to go back to the Republican debate, right?

Speaker 14 The first Republican debate, you got eight candidates on stage, and you see six of them articulating what Mike Pence is articulating here, traditional conservative values, right?

Speaker 14 And those six have no chance, right? Who's at the top? Donald Trump. Who's behind him? Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, right? So the populists are ruling the party.

Speaker 14 But there's this minority voice, the losers who are articulating something different. And maybe in the future, things can change.

Speaker 14 I don't know if they can, but I don't agree, Charlie, and this is just temperamental with me and you obviously, I don't agree that the choice has been made in perpetuity.

Speaker 14 I think the choice is still open. And I think that's the message Mike Pence is trying to deliver.

Speaker 14 And he says beautifully in this speech, I think, he says at the end of the speech, if we abandon all of the conservative ideas we used to stand for for this populism, with this pastiche of grievances, right?

Speaker 14 He says, we will be Republican in name only. It is a beautiful turn of phrase on Trump's accusation that everyone's a rhino who doesn't support Donald Trump.

Speaker 11 Except that I know people who said that seven years ago.

Speaker 11 You know, seven years ago, eight years ago, six years ago. And they said it five years ago.
They said it four years ago. Great to hear Mike Pence saying it now.

Speaker 11 But I desperately hope that you are right about this. Certainly will.
I mean, let's end on this note. I am am absolutely hopeful that you are right about this.

Speaker 11 I'm not optimistic about it, but I hope you are right.

Speaker 14 I'll take what I can get.

Speaker 11 Making the distinction once again between hope and optimism. Will Salatan, thank you once again for joining me on this anniversary of September 11th on this Monday.
I'm Charlie Sykes.

Speaker 11 Thank you all for listening to the Bulwark Podcast. We'll be back tomorrow and we will do this all over again.

Speaker 11 The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

Speaker 11 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturists with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturists with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
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