Tim Miller: Heroes and Zeroes of the GOP

welcome to the bulwark podcast i'm charlie six oh my god it is september 1st 2023 it's friday at least we have a long weekend tim i mean i i'm looking forward to a long weekend you i love a long weekend i get sad at the end of summer you know i love summer not done yet another three weeks fall people if you're a fall person i just close your ears for a second because i don't get fall people i just don't get it it's like you know i have this this childhood maybe trauma you know that bubbles up inside of me just this feeling that happens in my gut that's like i know i have to go back to school right now school's coming so anyway that's it but i'm gonna have a great weekend lsu tigers are back it's beautiful here in louisiana we're gonna have a great time it's gonna be a nice three-day weekend i actually love fall because it's beautiful here in uh in the beautiful midwest we have all the colors we have the like five weeks the gold no no it's basically it is it is it is beautiful but uh there was that whole back to school thing. You know, you sort of go back and forth remembering how excited you were the first day of school versus the anxiety of like, holy crap, I have to go back to school.
Hey, I got to tell you, first time in decades walked the grandson to the bus this morning. It happened.
First day, it happened. That's so exciting.
When was it? Today. This morning? This morning.
Oh, Friday's kind of a weird day. First day of school.
It's just like a little orientation situation. It's kind of brilliant.
You ease into the year by starting on Friday. Then you have a three-day weekend and then you dive in next week.
It's a very French schedule, actually. So it's a nice way for them to start.
A little bit, but you know, I mean, the whole back to school thing and you get the school supplies and everything. And it's even more exciting when it's not you.
I definitely hear that. Can we do something a little bit unusual? Can we start off with something positive today? I'd love to.
I have a few positive things, even. I think we've spent several years on a regular basis, you know, doom, gloom, talking about which Republican has crushed our souls, who has disillusioned us, who has betrayed fundamental principles, all of that stuff.
Did you catch the Georgia Governor Brian Kemp's press conference yesterday? I did. Okay, now, I understand a lot of people are going to go, Brian Kemp.
No, no, no. Okay.
Whatever you think about his politics, I think this was pretty extraordinary. There is a big push in the Georgia legislature from the usual suspects to do something like impeaching district attorney Fannie Willis.
This is a big thing down in Florida where Ron DeSantis has been firing prosecutors that he doesn't like. And so there is this push.
Let's use our legislative clout in Georgia to pull Fonnie Willis and basically obstruct and blow up the entire case. So it, again, I think is one of these sort of amazingly ironic moments for the party of law and order that ran so successfully against defund the police.
And now they're like, hey, hold our beer, defund prosecutors, defund the law enforcement, defund the criminal justice system. Eliminate the FBI.
Why stop there? Who needs an FBI? Well, Brian Kemp. Again, I don't know this guy.
Do you know him at all? I mean, have you ever encountered him in any way? I covered him. No, I've never actually, I never, well, that's not true, actually.
I met him one time with Jeb. We were together, and he was friendly, but it was kind of a formal setting.

And then for the bulwark, I went down and covered his campaign.

So I saw him in little press gaggles.

So I don't know him personally.

I mean, he kind of ran as governor, you know, as kind of a MAGA guy, you know, with the buses he's going to send immigrants back and all of that stuff.

Yeah, I had a negative initial feeling to him because he had that first ad that was like, blow up the bus, send the illegals back type thing, which was pretty gross. Right.
Total pander. But he did, as we all know, stand up to Donald Trump when Donald Trump was pushing the big lie and he lived to tell about it.
This is, again, another extraordinary story because the assumption on the part of every Republican in America is if you cross Donald Trump, particularly on election stuff, you're dead. That's the third rail.
He defies Trump, ignores Trump, you know, is primaried and wins overwhelmingly. So, I mean, he's kind of a untouchable a little bit.
So anyway, there's this big push to use the legislature to pull Fonnie Willis.

He holds a press conference yesterday saying, absolutely not.

Let's play it because he doesn't hold much back here. I did want to take just a few minutes to speak to some history that's trying to repeat itself over the last few days here in Georgia.
Many of you will recall that in the final weeks of 2020,

I clearly and repeatedly said that I would not be calling a special session of the General Assembly to overturn the 2020 election results because such an action would have been unconstitutional. It was that simple.
Fast forward today, nearly three years later, memories are fading fast.

There have been calls by one individual in the General Assembly and echoed outside of these walls by the former president for a special session that would ignore current Georgia law and directly interfere with the proceedings of a separate but equal branch of government. Up to this point, I have not seen any evidence that D.A.
Willis' actions or lack thereof weren't action by the Prosecuting Attorney Oversight Commission, but that will ultimately be a decision that the commission will make. Regardless, in my mind, a special session of the General Assembly to end run around this law is not feasible and may ultimately prove to be unconstitutional.
The bottom line is that in the state of Georgia, as long as I'm governor, we're going to follow the law and the Constitution, regardless of who it helps or harms politically. Over the last few years, some inside and outside of this building may have forgotten that.
But I can assure you, I have not. The oath I took with my hand on the Bible that's right behind me in January of 23 is the same Bible that I took in my inauguration in 2019.
And in Georgia, we will not be engaging in political fear that only inflames the emotions of the moment. We will do what is right.
We will uphold our oaths as public servants. And it's my belief that our state will be better off for it.
Who is this guy, Tim? Wow. That warms your heart a little bit, doesn't it? He goes on to talk about the grifters and the grifting off of all of this.
It's like, who are you talking about? What are you aiming? He could have just issued a press release, right? He could have written a letter saying, yes, no, we're not going to do this. Thank thank you for your concerns but at this point we're going to keep it on no he comes out and basically says okay we've been through this bullshit before we're not going to do this bullshit again it's illegal it's unconstitutional and we are not going to engage in some stupid political theater like some other people out there yeah or you know could have done nothing.
There are a lot of different steps between what he did and, you know, what the other options would have been, right? And just think about how these senators act, right? What Marco would have done in this situation, right? You get asked about something like this. It's, you know, he starts talking about how the media, why the media is always obsessing over this random nonsense and and oh you know isn't it not true that the district attorney fanny willis is targeting trump and that it's politicized and you guys you know what i mean like you could have done that it could attack the media he could have attacked fanny willis i've done what every other trump opponent is doing saying that you know these prosecutions are not appropriate.
There are a million things that he could do. And he chose to not brush it off, not attack the media, not attack Fonny Willis, but defend Fonny Willis and attack Trump.
Not by name, I guess. So he could have gone one step further.
But everybody knows what he's talking about. I think it was pretty clear.
and just the thing that i thought watching this yesterday was i just would love to rewind history back to january 7th and just done where would we be today september 1 2023 if everyone had done what brian kemp did a much better not asking for everybody to do even what liz cheney did just what brian kemp did just you know speaking truth about what happened in the election calling bs when it's bs you know i'm not asking everybody to change parties you know not asking everybody to change their beliefs just speak honestly about what donald trump was doing where are we today and my guess is that he he's convicted in the Senate and that, you know, we're staring down the barrel of probably a campaign that doesn't have Joe Biden or Donald Trump, right? Because Joe Biden wouldn't feel like he needed to run again if Donald Trump wasn't on the ticket. Individual choices matter.
Bill Kristol is so good on this. Like history is contingent.
Like this stuff is not inevitable. And I just have so much credit to Brian Kemp, despite obviously we disagree on a handful of issues, particularly on social issues.
But if this was easy, some people say low bar. I come from Instagram on Twitter and a few people replied to me like, oh, the bar is so low for Republicans.
Yeah, the bar is low, I guess. But if the bar was, he's the only one stepping over it.
So there must be something to it. I'm with you on this.
Okay, let's go back to January 7th. And it's not just everybody behaving like Brian Kemp.
It's like if everybody behaved like they thought and they believed back on January 7th, if every one of them remembered that moment, and then, again, you're absolutely right. If Mitch McConnell would have gone ahead, pulled the trigger, and he would have had the impeachment and the conviction.
If all of these other Republicans had said, okay, we're just done. If Lindsey Graham had said, okay, I'm off the train, you know, before I get yelled at in the airport, this country, this political world would be almost unrecognizable compared to what we have right now.
And the Republican Party would be better off. This is the thing that I kept saying at the time is,

Brian Kemp survived.

Now, Georgia is a different animal.

You talked about this a little bit on the podcast yesterday. I think that the nature of Atlanta is so dominant.
I just think there's so many more college-educated kind of Republicans because the southern metropolis in the state, I do think there's some demographic reasons why Georgia's happening, but there also is, we ended up happening to get ethical leaders there. We could have a different universe where Marjorie Taylor Greene ran for secretary of state instead of Congress, right? And we'd be in a whole different world right now.
So, so part of that is leadership. Part of it is demographics, but we, you know, that, that we had this, these decisions that were made in Georgia.
And it's like, I think that the Republican party had everyone done that there would have been some sacrificial lambs. A few other people would have gotten Liz Cheney'd and lost primaries.
But in the medium term, in the long term, the party would have been stronger. The party would have been stronger.
See, I think that's almost inarguable. And this, by the way, is Brian Kemp's point as well, that if you actually want to win elections, we need to stop this sort of thing.
And here we are in Georgia where we saw that up close and personal. And it is interesting to me why the Georgia Republican Party is so different than the Republican Party, let's say, of Michigan or the Republican Party of Arizona, which has gone completely crazy.
Now, of course, Marjorie Taylor Greene still represents Georgia in the House. Big asterisk there.
Your point about the Republican Party being stronger, I mean, imagine if the Republican Party was not carrying the dead, stinking carcass of Donald Trump on its back going into the 2024 election. They'd have every reason to be optimistic.
The 2022 election- There would have been a rocky exit, right? A certain percentage of MAGA folks would have bailed on the party. There would have been some third-party MAGA candidates.
They would have lost some primaries. There would have been a little pain.
You don't make a deal with the devil and not have a little pain coming out of it. But by now, by September 1, 2023, I think that that's a trade that Mitch McConnell should have wanted to make.
And he just didn't do it. He went out because he wanted to be the longest serving majority leader and he didn't want to get overthrown.
And it was just an

unbelievably horrific, consequential decision by him and Kevin McCarthy and all of the party

leaders, really. And they switched places with Brian Kemp.
I mean, we could only wish.

We'll come back to Mitch McConnell in a moment because he's in the news again. But before we

get into irrational exuberance about Brian Kemp's speech here, can we go to the other end

the We'll come back to Mitch McConnell in a moment because he's in the news again. But before we get into irrational exuberance about Brian Kemp's speech here, can we go to the other end of the spectrum? I got some feedback this week from some readers like, you guys are too doom and gloom.
I'm like, am I doom and gloom? I mean, I have a mugshot. Trump's been indicted four times.
Well, you're not the doom and gloom guy. You and I had a schadenfreude party a week ago here.
We got some negative, you guys shouldn't be so happy about all of that. Whatever.
It's like, we need to be much more earnest. We need not to do this sort of thing.
Anyway, so here's the opposite end of the spectrum, just to remind us how far the party has come. And I say this as somebody that was so desperate to stop Donald Trump in 2016 that I supported and voted for.
I'm wincing. Can you feel me wincing? Well, I did the same thing, so it's okay.
Ted Cruz. No, okay.
Ted Cruz. Look at Ted Cruz, who still remains a, I think he's still a part-time senator, full-time YouTube influencer.
Yeah. It does give me a little bit of pleasure on the charts.
He's behind this podcast significantly. And on some weeks, he's behind this and the next level.
So a full-time YouTuber, part-time sender, he still is, you know, he's still trailing us in the charts. That's another thing to be happy about.
Why would he be happy this weekend? Every week in which we are higher on the charts, the Bulwark podcast is higher on the charts than Ted Cruz podcast is a good week. Okay.
So here's performance artist, Ted Cruz, who goes on Newsmax and he's triggered by these comments from a guy named George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. And he's really pissed off that this guy suggested that maybe the US government should embrace Canada's recommendation that people only drink two beers per week.
Okay, I'm going to raise my hand. This is not going to happen.
It's never going to happen. Okay, but he found some random guy making this proposal.
He goes on Newsmax, and in this sort of performance art, he's standing in a bar. He's wearing this blue shirt with lots of buttons and a bunch of guys in cowboy hats standing behind him, obviously, to do some synchronized drinking.
And here's his rant. Here is part-time U.S.
senator, full-time YouTube influencer, Ted Cruz's rant. They're trying to go after and regulate ceiling fans.
I got to tell you, it's hot in Texas. We don't want to get rid of our ceiling fans.
And now these idiots have come out and said, drink two beers a week. That's their guideline.
Well, I got to tell you, if they want us to drink two beers a week, frankly, they can kiss my ass. No.
OK, Senator, I brought a beer to drink with you. I'll drink this non-alcoholic beer with you because I'm not allowed to drink on camera.
Jesus, like we know. I'll have a sip in the meantime.
Well, look, I've got to say, have you ever seen a brand do more damage to itself than Bud Light, which single-handedly seem to destroy themselves? So I'm glad you're not drinking a Bud Light. Personally, I'm fond of Shiner Bach, which is a good Texas brand.
I've been to the Shiner Brewery in Shiner, Texas, and I recommend it, and I promise you this is not alcohol-free beer down here. Yeah.
Ted Cruz is a good old boy. He's not going to drink Bud Light.
He's not going to drink a light beer. He's going to drink Texas beer.
And those liberals are not going to take that away from him. They can kiss his ass.
Charlie, this is where the little limitation of the podcast, the visual here of Ted Cruz is pretty important. Number one, here's this man ranting against somebody suggesting that he has less beer while his beer gut is so big that he hasn't seen his manhood since 1999.

Touch my toes? I ain't touching my toes. He's sweating.

He's sweating. His neck

is all...

He's profusely panting

and he's like,

I can only have two beers.

Then when he does the, you can kiss my

ass, he changes,

leans his shoulder in and does his performative pose like he's been practicing it in the mirror for a little while which is like you ivy league pansy you debate club ivy league pansy pretending to be some fucking beer swilling tough guy the whole thing is just preposterous the whole thing is preposterous like if there's anybody stupid enough to get fooled by this, they get what they deserve. That's all I'm saying.
This guy is such a fucking phony. Next week, Ted Cruz is going to come down hard on the government warnings against drinking paint thinner.
Down here in Texas, we want to drink paint thinner. We are drinking paint thinner.
I don't know where we're going to go on this. All right, people are going, when are you guys going to get serious? Democracy is hanging by a thread.
We are actually being serious. Okay, so can I do a complete mood change here? Because just change it up here.
I've been pretty happy, but yeah, sure. Okay, so I don't know what I did.
I don't know which straw I drew, but I apparently became the designated guy to go on and have to comment about the Mitch McConnell video. Oof.
And like, like about three or four times I had to say that was really painful to watch because it is painful to watch. I haven't been called for that.
Do you think that's a generational thing? MSNBC is like, we need to call in call in you know another old guy that they might be

more empathetic or what do you think the reason was for that it could be that because what would you have said okay they show it like and you're there going what going mitch um mitch i don't know i don't know um be careful what you wish for people people who are dumping on this and okay so OK, so here comes the comment section. But I'm looking at that going, this is the danger of, you know, a politics dominated by a gerontocracy.
And, you know, 2024, everybody's thinking it's going to be all these indictments, all these trials. You know, maybe it's going to be some 80 year old guy.
I'm not naming any names here who freezes for 30 seconds, who has those moments. This is what you get when your entire culture is hanging by the thread of 82-year-olds.
And I'm sorry if that comes off as ageist. That's just a fact.
I am worried about this on a couple of levels. The interesting thing, just getting out the politics not too macabre, Kentucky has a Democratic governor, and there's an election in Kentucky this year.
So there's a lot of ins and outs and what have you if Mitch can't at some point continue his duties. Now, there's this appointment rule that they pass that he has to appoint a Republican, but we've already been whispering behind the scenes.
There are some never-Trump Republicans down in Kentucky I'd like to see in the Senate. So anyway, we'll see while we're in happy talk mode as for mitch and biden and the age thing i'll do the positive first yeah joe biden's comments about mitch were very classic and and i had some people be like well he's just doing that because oh he's old too and it's like i guess but still he could do the thing you know and you could imagine again we're doing the brian camp what what were some other options you can imagine somebody like president trump former president trump in that situation who's also an old guy being like yeah well i haven't been freezing lately you know people have been asking about my stamina i'm not you know he could have done i thought i was sleepy joe looks like he's sleepy mitch he's not doing that right he doesn't do any of that of that.
He talks to Mitch McConnell. It has paid off.

They've got several bipartisan accomplishments that he can now tout on the campaign when

a lot of people said, including myself, by the way, that I didn't think it was realistic

that Biden was doing a little happy talk on how much he thought he could do from a bipartisan

standpoint, given the nature of the Republican Senate.

So that's all good.

And it was all decent.

And Biden's response was really good. Having said that, it does bring up that thought in the back of your mind though which is like there but for the grace of god go our democracy really if joe biden got into a situation like mitch mcconnell was in and and that is something that i think that is fair to be worried about it is fair to be worried about and i know that we get say, you know, stop talking about Joe Biden's age.
Why? I mean, because you think that denial is really a good strategy here? Because as I talked to your old colleague, Mike Murphy, the other day, and we can talk about that in a moment. But, you know, what I told him was, I mean, so far, every conversation I have with a voter, every single one, will eventually get to the question of Joe Biden's age.
Now, some people will say, you know, I'm worried about his age, but I'm definitely going to vote for him. I'm going to vote for the old guy versus the fascist.
You know, that's not really a problem, but they worry about it. I mean, it's a reality.
Every time he comes out and speaks, you know, I find myself struggling to listen to what he is saying as opposed to, is he walking like that? You know what? He sounds really old. And if I'm thinking that, then other people are thinking that.
And so let's not pretend it's not there. I mean, I understand only happy.
Give us only happy talk about this. Do not mention this giant elephant in the room.
But Joe Biden's got two problems. murphy says two big problems number one the age problem number two there is the poll numbers showing that he is not getting credit for the economy that people don't think that he's a good steward of the economy and those two things are really dangerous for an incumbent president i don't want to belabor the point on this because, and I think that I'll just say just two really quick things.
One, I am not exaggerating or playing some sort of political game. I genuinely think Joe Biden's had the best first term of any president of my adult life.
I think it's been better than what, obviously, Trump and Bush and Obama and Clinton. So I think he's done a great job.
I've had some things I've disagreed with, of course, which we've talked about, but I think he's done a great job. But when he's walking to the lectern, he looks like, I was thinking about this last night, I was trying to walk into the room.
I had to go get a shirt to wear on Stephanie Ruhl's show at 11 p.m. And my husband's sleeping and I'm walking in the dark through the room very gingerly to not wake him up and i don't want to bump into anything and i was like i just was thinking to myself i was like this is kind of how joe biden walks right and it's like you just can't help yourself right like you can't help but notice it and then people reply and be like what are you talking about he seems and it's like he just he just doesn't like like normal people when they're watching him it's like he seems really old has done the job well? Could he still conceivably do the job well in the second term? Yes.
But I just find it very weird when people are like, what are you talking about? It's like, what do you mean, what am I talking about? I have eyes. And that's something that I know people are going to see.
And it's a worry. And maybe when you look at all, game everything out, JBL has done this in his newsletter and others.
Maybe if you game everything out, it's like, okay, that risk is a smaller risk than the other potential risks. And I'm open to that argument for sure.
And I think that's probably right, really. But that doesn't mean it's not a risk.
It is a risk. And again, I understand people say, well, look, we're stuck with it.
Okay. And I acknowledge that.
I mean, I don't think the Democrats have a viable plan B at this particular point. But I do think that it's important to confront it.
Maybe, you know, look, there are ways of working around this, even in the modern internet age. Okay, so let's move on to some of the other stuff.
I mean, what did you think of Murphy's critique, Mike Murphy's critique? I thought Murphy's point about Biden was pretty right. You know, I part ways a little bit with him on the Republican Party side with love to Mike.

I think that he, you know, on the Biden side, he had the antlers metaphor. You know, he's like, people want to live in a fantasy world where what's happening with Biden isn't really happening.
And other people are like, what are you talking about? I see the antlers. I thought that was a fair metaphor.
But it feels like he has an antlers problem on the Republican side, which is just like this notion that

Trump has all these problems, and somebody's going to come save the party from this and

someone else is going to win. But it's like, wow, it's the old meme about like Donald Trump gets

indicted, question mark, question mark, question mark, someone else gets nominated to be the

Republican Party president. Trump is dominating in every every poll his numbers have only gone up since the winter there's no sign of him losing any strength so i i know that people don't want this i know there's a lot of people who don't want this including ab stoddard who i thought wrote a good piece yesterday but it's just in, it's like, we're staring down the barrel of Trump and Biden and a meteor, I guess, could hit and change things.
But as a political commentator, and as somebody who has deeply invested in Donald Trump not being president again, I think pretending like we're not staring down the barrel of Biden and Trump is a little bit of folly. I don't disagree with that.
But if you're going to have a conversation about this, this is the time to have it. We're not going to have this conversation in September of 2024.
So I think clear-eyed recognition of reality is always a good thing, particularly if you're a commentator or if you're a defender of the funnel bulwarks of democracy, you at least ought to know exactly what the state of your defense and the state of the attack is, right? Good information is better than self-delusion. That's just my point.
Hey folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. 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.
And every day we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to thebullwork.com and take a look around.
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We're going to get through this together, I promise. Speaking of delusion, could we dip back into a deplorable delusion? Because you came up with a soundbite that I think is extraordinary.
Have you been spending, are you like spending time listening to For Your Sins, For Our Sins, Candace Owens? I'm kind of obsessed. So I wrote the big feature article on her.
I punished myself through most of June listening to her and wrote it.

Remind our listeners who she is for people who spend most of their time in the rational universe.

Yeah.

So Candace Owens was a former Turning Point USA, which is the MAGA College Republicans spokesperson

who became a media darling on the conservative side, obviously.

Conspiratorial, a black woman. She looks good on TV.
She's a good presenter. And, you know, at times she's like floated the idea that she might run for office.
Anyway, she got hired by Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire and now has, I think, very clearly the second biggest podcast and YouTube show behind Shapiro's himself on all of the right. He's crazy shit maybe bannon's is in there too but i but i think it's pretty clearly that candace is the second biggest one and so i listened to her whole podcast for a month and wrote a profile on it a couple months back which you can read i think it's called president candace that kind of posited that she was a inheritor of the trump spirit more than a lot of other of the imitators because she like like Trump like kind of talks about like he's obsessed with celebrities like talks about pop culture stuff and you know it's not you know we say that a lot of these politician Trump imitators like like Ron DeSantis get into the weird culture war stuff in a way that seems weird that's not Candace right she's more She's more pop culture like Trump.
So anyway, I don't have to listen to her anymore

because the article is already out.

But I find myself when things happen wanting to be like,

I wonder what Candace thought about this.

Just kind of check myself to be like,

like as my MAGA ballast.

And so the other day,

and so I have her in my podcast feed

and her new episode came up yesterday

or Wednesday or whatever it was. And I was pretty intrigued by the topic.
Was that on the news? Let's say. Let's listen.
That's a pretty big one. The idea that the president of the United States was involved in having illicit affairs and the media was covering it up.
And I'll take it a step further. I'll tell you what I heard.
I heard this directly from the mouth of a Secret Service agent whose name I cannot remember, but who worked for Barack Obama and his family. And he said that while Barack Obama was in office, again, this is coming from a Secret Service agent, that they would help sneak young men into the White House.
It was not a secret of sorts that Barack Obama was sleeping with these young men. And that was just a part of their job.
Tim. Unbelievably, the press never found out about this, which happens sometimes.
Sometimes you can actually drop off crack cocaine at the White House and they don't know who did it. So yeah, the government can be super hush hush when they want to be and of course the media will help them worry those facts.
Wait, wait, wait. Why are we talking about this, Tim? What are you doing to our podcast here? This is this week.
This is from this week, you know? I feel like you have just come on the Bulwark podcast, and you take this truck, you've just backed it up, and you're just like dumping, beep, beep, beep, dumping this toxic shit into our ears. A million people are listening to this.
I mean, a million people. This is like like she she does huge numbers and yeah that was that was her i was most of the show this week that's just a little 50 second clip it was most of her uh her most recent show was covering the idea that barack obama is actually a secret homosexual okay so everybody knows about this they're just sneaking voice and there's a little bit of a q anon wink there it's a little bit of a call back to obama's really a secret muslim where's the birth certificate and it's just right it's just asking questions it's salacious it's just right in the trump wheelhouse i'm gonna go take a shower now is it possible that after this aired you know she got a call miss owens it's ben shapiro on Ben Shapiro, you know, who used to be

the young conservative intellectual

who read books and things.

Ben wants to talk

to you about that podcast. Do you think that

happened? No.

No, she got away with, she defended

Kanye when he was doing

his Nazi anti-Semitic stuff.

Ben is obviously a

devout Jew. And so Ben chastised her a little bit publicly when that happened.
But she didn't lose her show. She didn't get suspended.
What was that line the New York Times called them? There was something good. It was like the conservative it boy intellectual.
I was probably quoted in that story. Oh, you know what? I have a book of like worst takes, but that's right on the top there,

right next to my support for Ted Cruz. So I'm having this flashback.
The morning I woke up at a hotel in San Francisco. Okay, bear with me here.
Is this related to Barack Obama being homosexual? No. You're in San Francisco.
I will be working in Ben Shapiro into this story. The reason I remember this day so well is because this was, I wake up and I look around and I think the hotel is on fire.
The room is filled with smoke. Actually, it turns out there was just these wildfires that were covering San Francisco in smoke and nothing was going on.
But I remember and it woke me up real fast. And I also remember, this is weird, that Ben Shapiro called me that day and there was somebody on his website who had posted some clearly white supremacist really racist thing and I think he was he was wanting to know should I fire him should I get rid of him what should I do about it you know this is really.
Okay. So my take was, yes, of course, you should not be associated with this guy in any way whatsoever.
I have no idea what happened, what he did with this guy. But in this distant mists of past, in this smoky San Francisco hotel room, I was talking to a Ben Shapiro that gave a shit about what people thought about it, right? That he was actually concerned, hey, there's some racist stuff on my website.
Is this going to be a problem? Fast forward to today. Clearly it's like- Did he fire the person? Do you remember? I don't even remember.
No, I don't. It was not a close call.
And I assumed he was calling me because he probably knew what I was going to say and he wanted some validation. But I think I can safely say that he's never going to call me again, and he's not going to listen to my advice again, because clearly this is not something that he worries about.
He does not wake up thinking, boy, my whole reputation as the it boy of conservative intellectuals will be undermined if I have somebody like Candace Owen who is defending Nazis and suggesting that Barack Obama brought boy toys into the White House. He's going, what are the numbers on this? Well, you know, I'll tell you what the numbers are, by the way.
OK, number seven, Apple podcast, political podcasts. We do this.
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Number five, Candace Owens. Number four, Velshi's Band Book Club.
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I will just close the loop. I will say, Candace, in fairness in fairness just in the scary side of this candace like also has like a gazillion youtube you know what i mean it's a video show i'm happy we're meeting her on the podcast and to close the loop just for listeners i don't want any misinformation out there barack obama not gay actually two children his wife is michelle a woman no i do have many dc friends who probably wish brock obama was gay um but uh he's not this whole thing was just based on some letter from college when he was like you know writing a letter about how he was like exploring is what you know and it's just like okay canis owens was like a liberal in college so you think that she might have a different point of view but uh well my favorite part is canis owens i got this from you know word of mouth from a secret in college.
So you think that she might have a different point of view. But well, my favorite part is, Ken, so I got this from word of mouth from a Secret Service agent whose name I can't remember.
I forget. I forget.
We've got the source. I know it's out there.
It's in Hawaii somewhere. We're going to send investigators.
Secret Service agent gives me like this earth shaking news. I'm probably going to get the name.
I mean, it's literally

the Trump birth certificate thing

all over again. It's just gay, not Muslim.

It's the same playbook. You know, Trump

being like, I have a source.

You know, we're sending people to Hawaii to

track this down. It's the same

fucking thing, 12 years later,

time is a flat circle, Candace

Owens doing the Donald Trump shtick.

It's just, it's funny, but it's also sick. i mean it's sick how many people listen are listening to this where do we go now should we talk about jobless numbers we talk about the negotiations with china should we talk about jobless numbers are good hey why don't how about the pharma deal pretty good populist donald trump kept talking about how he was to take on the pharma companies, and he wasn't one of these Paul Ryan conservatives.
He was a populist conservative, and he's going to lower drug prices. And then he folded like a cheap suit as soon as pharma started running some ads against him.
And now Joe Biden, Medicare, negotiating with some lower pharma prices. That's a pretty good pivot from his Barack Obama gay, straight into Joe Biden accomplishments.
So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Donald Trump will not be campaigning in 2024 on his healthcare agenda. Actually, there's a good piece.
This is strange that I'm going to say this because I'm not necessarily a fan of the New Republic, but they have a piece by Michael Tomosky. It makes a great point.
Trump's trials don't interrupt his campaign. They are his campaign.
This is a great point. It is really a good point because people are saying, well, is this going to interfere with his ability to run the campaign? I mean, is this going to distract from his detailed proposals on dealing with Firmland? No, he's not going to be talking about any, well, he may, but nope, he could care less.
The point of his campaign is, you know, I am on trial. I am your victim.
You know, this is the deep state setting himself up for, you know, the retribution. But that's absolutely right.
And now, of course, this trial in Georgia is not just going to be televised. It's going to be live streamed.
I mean, the bad news is when that happens, are we going to have lives at all in 2024? I mean, asking for a friend. Yeah, seriously.
People are like, oh, well, this will be fun to watch in 2026. God willing, our constitutional republic is still standing.
But that is a great point. And I think it's underappreciated.
I also think that it's not great, as you've pointed out many times in this podcast, to be sitting in a courtroom and having to surrender to a judge and being at the mercy of their schedule all day long when you're supposed to be running for president. But at the same time, it's not as if he's going to be rolling out his policy proposals and that, unfortunately, he's going to have to go to court that day.
Yeah. I mean, his trial is going to be, will be the 2024 version of the rallies.
Yeah, he doesn't get to go to the rallies, but he's going to be everywhere. I mean, everywhere, especially with the streaming.
Okay, so the debate feels like it was a million years ago. It was totally meaningless.
There was a lot of speculation about Vivek Ramaswamy, the new hotness, the surge is coming.

And of course, there's been a lot of buzz, but I'm not seeing the Vivek momentum bump out there. Is it because basically the fact that he's a sanctimonious asshole kind of negated all of the MAGA stuff? What is your take on Vivek? Well, I don't think so.
My friends have been in Iowa, said actually that his events have a lot of energy, but it's a lot of Trump people. So I think part of the problem is, right, in a different world, let's imagine Trump's disappeared, right? And this is a DeSantis-Ramaswamy-Haley race, right? Okay, can I go there? That's kind of my happy place for the moment.
Okay, let's go there. Let's go to that.
Give me a minute. Give me a minute.
There's no Donald Trump. He's gone.
He's just okay. he's just okay okay I'm sorry back to reality I think in that case Vivek probably jumps from like seven to twenty yeah and you're like wow this what because that's then more reminiscent of the old days or it's like Herman Cain when you jump up after a thing or Carly Fiorino you know I think he would have had that but that bump was limited by the fact that Donald Trump has 50% of the primary vote I just pulled up the the 538 average here because I want to get this right.
So we're today, Trump is 50.3. We got DeSantis way down here, way down, way, way down.
14.8, Ramaswamy 9.2, Haley 5.6. So before the debate, you know, I'll just pull up a random day, August 9th, Trump 53, DeSantis 14, Ramaswamy 7, Haley 3.
So Vivek and Haley bump up two points. Trump goes down three points.
That's all that happened. Nothing happened.
Like it was just storm and fury and takes and punditry for nothing. And I just, I think that goes back to what I was saying in the Murphy discussion.
It's just like, okay. And that was big opportunity we think the next debate's gonna make a difference it's on fox business are people gonna watch like isn't the shine gonna wear off these things people are gonna watch the third debate without trump and why would trump go so i i don't know i do think that vivek that he's polarizing right and so i assume that some people were turned off by the fact that he was a, what'd you call him? Sanctimonious smarmy asshole? Yeah, yeah.
Something like that. There's a longer sentence there, but yeah, that was pretty much it.
Yeah, facile, I think. And he had a bad week.
I mean, I think that to the extent that anybody was paying any attention, I mean, he's just all over the map. Did you see Trump on Glenn Beck? Did you see this? Glenn Beck asked Trump about Vivek for VP, and Trump says some nice things about him.
And he's like, but you know, Glenn, he's getting a little controversial. Wow.
When Trump's out there going, maybe dial it back. That should be a wake-up call.
Okay, so speaking of the opposite of my happy place here, the whole wild ride of somebody like Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck was crazy before crazy was fashionable with the conspiracy whiteboards and all of that stuff.
Kind of softened the ground for the Alex Joneses. But then in 2016, there was this apparent epiphany where he said, but I didn't mean Trump.
And he sounded like a never-Trumper for a while, right? He did. Like, sorry for all of that and seemed to sober up and fly straight.
And that lasted, what, about 10, 15 minutes? And it's like, no, I'm back with the tribe. What happened with Glenn Beck? Yeah, just to get a couple of these things here.
So the Glenn Beck cover was Glenn Beck is sorry about all that. Yeah, exactly.
The Ben Shapiro quote I was looking for then is actually worse than the one we said. He was the cool kid's philosopher.
That's in the New York Times. The cool kid's philosopher.
I'm quoting that story. I'm sorry.
Just throw it down. I mean, whoever wrote that has just got to want to slit their throat right now.
That's way worse. I'm quoted in there and I feel that way.
Glennck is sorry about all that i don't know i can't get inside glenn beck's head to me this is one uh while i've been suffering through candace for the team i don't know it worried me i did get a text from my uncle about something that glenn beck said recently and so that that made me a little bit concerned that he's still out there his tentacles are still out there. But I don't know if this was a gimmick.
I do think that a lot of people genuinely were deeply scared and concerned about Donald Trump and then realized that if they wanted their career lavish lives to continue, they had to get back. And I think that's probably what happened here.
It was their business model. I mean, what was his company? What was the...
The Blaze. Yeah, I mean, so it basically crashed and burned around him.
And he realized that if he continued actually having a conscience and speaking rationally, that he had no business model anymore. And so he did what all these grifters do.
Speaking of grifters, and you tell me whether this is unfair, I am somewhat fascinated by the Ron DeSantis super PAC that has raised a gazillion dollars being run by a guy named Jeff Rowe, who I encountered only briefly when he was running the Ted Cruz campaign. What is his deal? Because he seems like he's sitting out there burning through a huge amount of cash and DeSantis' credibility at the same time.
But it's kind of a great gig for him. I mean, although the headline today is that he's begging for another $50 million.
Unbelievable. Because he hasn't sufficiently tanked the DeSantis campaign.
So I know Jeff pretty well. A big problem I just have with all of this is that a lot of the political consultancy is bullshit.
Like this whole Svengali thing is bullshit. It's mostly candidates.
Really happen on the mat on the margins you know trump strategist was a golf caddy okay so like okay let's just be real okay i think that this stuff matters on the margins it matters in house races where people don't know the candidates right but on the presidential level so you know a lot of this is just prbs and so you know i i don't think you can blame ron de santis's tank on jeff roe like it's ron de santis's fault he's a very unappealing person i think that's the main issue but there's a lot of money going he has spent so far this was as of august 1 34 million 34 million for ron de santis to have fallen to have lost like half of his vote share while he spent 34 million now the new york times reporting maggie haberman and john swan he's asking donors for another 50 million and it's like why are these people burning their money on fire i want nothing more than to have the job of just telling rich people to stop giving money to these super PACs and to just give me 10 of whatever they were going to give as a consulting fee and give the other 90% to unhoused youth or something. I just do something with your money that's useful.
Presidential campaigns, it is all worthless. Like people get to know these candidates.
They are on TV interviews. They're on radio interviews.
They're on their sports talk shows. people are talking about it in their lives, on Facebook, on TikTok, everywhere.
Like this race is everywhere. People make these decisions.
What do you think a 32nd ad? It's like Ron DeSantis, you know, stood up to Fauci in Florida. Like you think that's going to change people's minds.
These people already fucking know that. They all know that this is not a state delegates race.
Like where you do introductory ads and yet they spent 34 million he's lost half his vote share and now these people are going to keep giving him money and i guess it's like i guess i'm happy that they're separating stupid rich people from their money but uh you know at some level it's like won't somebody say don't give jeff roe any more money like what is the point of this i think say that. Don't give Jeff Rowe any more money.
But I mean, and maybe this is not the most significant question, but how do you spend that kind of money? I mean, where did it all go? Is it all like on private jets and motorcades? Yeah, TV ads, jets. You know, when I went to that event in Tama, they had a five-car motorcade.
They had a bus. They had security.
You know know so so all of that cost money they had these huge staffs that are door knocking you remember that story about the how they had paid door knockers like why do they think this is you really think that you're going to pay some burnout who's 25 you know 12 bucks an hour to go knock on a stranger's door and be like hey have you considered Ron DeSantis? And that person is then going to change their mind from Donald Trump to Ron DeSantis. Just think logically about this.
And really, as I look at this article, he's probably spent more than 34 million, actually. That was just through June.
So we're through July and August now. So he's probably already spent 50 million and wants another 50.
It's just like, it is astonishing that people, it it's like were you all awake in 2016 donald trump's campaign was his own jet the golf caddies tweets and the rallies he didn't fucking run ads he didn't have a voter outreach program like joe biden ran out of money like it was a jim clyburn endorsement in south carolina and people being scared about bernie being the nominee and a consolidation from the other candidates that turn things around. Sometimes I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
I'm like the only one that recognizes. It's big business, I guess.
When all this money's on the line and everybody's beach houses are on the line, nobody's going to go out there and say, hey, maybe we shouldn't spend so much money on presidential campaigns because it's worthless. And yet there's an old guy billionaire somewhere going, you know what you need to do? We need to hand out more matchbooks, matchbooks with the message, with the three-point plan.
Ron DeSantis, because, you know, my first political campaign, I found that I could hand out matchbooks and everybody took the matchbook. They knew my name.
And, you know, if we just had more, I'm telling you, I'm willing to write out a big check if we put out more car tops. We need car tops.
Because in my game. Driving through the neighborhoods with the bullhorn.
Yeah, Jeff, I'm really, really concerned. We don't have enough yard signs.
Papio more. Papio Daniel, we're mass communicating.
You do know this. You know this trend that people are going, you know, I'm telling you, if we don't have this, I just, anyway.
All right, we have a long weekend, which I am looking forward to, seriously. Same.
So I will see you on the other side, Mr. Miller.
I'll see you on the other side, Mr. Sykes.
I'm looking forward to hearing about the first day of school. I am as well.
And thank you all for listening to this Long Weekend Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes.
We will be back next Tuesday, and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.