Charlie and Will Monday: Vivek’s BS

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Speaker 12 Happy Monday and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast.

Speaker 13 It is August 28th, 2023. We are almost to the end of August, and this feels like old times again because Will Salatin is back for Charlie and Will Monday.
First of all, happy Monday, Will.

Speaker 13 Thanks, Charlie.

Speaker 12 It's it's great to be back. Although I was away at the beach and that was a welcome break.
And then, damn it, reality intrudes again.

Speaker 13 You're just upset about missing the mug shot?

Speaker 12 I'm upset about the Republican National Committee scheduling their debate during my vacation week, which I planned a year ago. So here we are.

Speaker 13 Okay, you have to pace yourself. This is going to be a long slog for the next year and a half.
So you missed that. But trust me, there's going to be more

Speaker 13 coming up. Hey, by the way, just thank you so much.
And I just want to join my voice to the chorus of people who are saying how outstanding your long-form podcast series about Lindsey Graham was.

Speaker 13 I mean, first of all, I mean, you know, most important, you gave me every Monday in the summer off.

Speaker 13 But specifically, it was just a great job. And I really appreciate you doing that and filling in and helping the podcast even look better.
So I appreciate that very much. It was great work.

Speaker 12 Well, thank you very much. And thanks to Lindsay for being so morally decrepit that you warranted that length of treatment.

Speaker 13 So speaking of morally decrepit, I mean, it's like you keep kind of filling up our dance card of that.

Speaker 13 And my, my morning shots newsletter, which I would encourage people to, you know, if you are not a member of Bullwork Plus, to consider it, I devote to a flood of BS.

Speaker 13 We know this, right? I mean, I wrote that it's, you know, it almost feels like piling on, you know, to note that we live in, you know, in the age of bullshit.

Speaker 13 But I meant it in the technical sense that Harry Frankfurt meant it when he wrote his magisterial classic on bullshit.

Speaker 13 Now, before you think I'm going to just be, I mean, this is a renowned moral philosopher, Princeton professor, you know, who said one of the most salient features of our culture is there's so much bullshit.

Speaker 13 Yeah, no kidding. And he wrote that before Trump.

Speaker 13 And he actually thought that bullshit was a greater enemy of truth than lies because, you know, at least liars kind of know there's truth and they're challenging it, but bullshitters just don't know or care about the truth and they ignore or reject the distinction between truth and falsity altogether.

Speaker 13 Which brings me to

Speaker 13 Vivek Ramaswamy,

Speaker 13 who is the new rock star of MAGA. And he did a, we we could talk about him at the debate because this was his breakout moment in the debate, right?

Speaker 13 He's now, you know, touching all the, and I've said this like a, but I like the line, so I'm going to say it again. I'll touch all the erogenous zones of MAGA.

Speaker 13 And he did a tour of the Sunday shows yesterday. Will, I know you watched them all, and left a trail of bullshit wherever he went.
Where do you want to start?

Speaker 13 Do you want to start with the, there's no such thing as white supremacy, it's all the media's fault about the Jacksonville racist mass shooting?

Speaker 13 Or, or what he would have done had he been vice president in place of Mike Pence on January 6th. A coin flip there.

Speaker 12 Can we go to the Pence thing? I want to go off.

Speaker 13 Let's do that. Okay.
Okay. So Divek is on Meet the Press.
And this is just really kind of extraordinary.

Speaker 13 You know, to his credit, Chuck Todd is pressing him on the question of what would you have done as Mike Pence? Would you have certified the election?

Speaker 13 And Ramaswamy confirms that he would have overturned the election. This is what he said that he would have done.

Speaker 14 What I would have said is this is a moment for a true national consensus where there's two elements of what's required for a functioning democracy in America.

Speaker 14 One is secure elections and the second is a peaceful transfer of power. When those things come into conflict, that's an opportunity for heroism.
Here's what I would have said.

Speaker 14 We need single-day voting on election day. We need paper ballots and we need government-issued ID matching the voter file.

Speaker 14 And if we achieve that, then we have achieved victory and we should not have any further complaint about election integrity. So what would you do?

Speaker 13 So I would have done through the Senate.

Speaker 14 So what would you have done done with Mike Pence?

Speaker 13 You would have

Speaker 13 certified the election? So

Speaker 14 in my capacity as president of the Senate, I would have led through that level of reform, then on that condition, certified the election results, served it up to the president.

Speaker 14 President Trump then decided that into law and on January 7th declared the re-election campaign pursuant to a free and fair election.

Speaker 13 What the hell? This is absolutely amazing.

Speaker 12 And when I heard this, I was like, why is Twitter? Why is Threads? Why is not the political world completely up in arms over this?

Speaker 12 Here's what the operative phrase in what Vivek Ramaswamy just said is on that condition.

Speaker 12 He's saying that unless in one day from January 6th to January 7th, Congress passes election, quote, reforms that Ramaswamy has specified, including one day voting, meaning no more, not just absentee voting by mail, no more early in-person voting.

Speaker 12 For people who have to work that day on Election Day, no more early voting at all. So we're going to constrict the franchise.

Speaker 12 We're going to do it, in fact, without regard to election security because, believe me, when you go in to vote early, you're doing exactly the same thing, whatever ID you present on election day.

Speaker 13 Will, will,

Speaker 13 will, will, will, stop with the logic and the arguments. You're taking him seriously.
He is just throwing complete bullshit up against the wall.

Speaker 13 It's just like, he's just, it's like this word salad of like, yes, I would hold the, um, I, I, I would hold the presidency hostage until these magical things happen and something, something, something, then the next day, and there's like unicorns falling out of the sky.

Speaker 13 I mean, it's just,

Speaker 13 what the hell is going on there?

Speaker 13 I mean, he's, you know, he knows that the mega base likes ideas of, you know, single-day voting, they like paper ballots, they like the government, and they like all that stuff.

Speaker 13 So he's, again, he, he's, he's giving them the dopamine hits, but it literally makes no sense whatsoever when he says that he would have demanded this in return for certifying the election.

Speaker 13 I mean, this is what, you know, Harry Frankfurt called just bullshit. It's just, he knows it's impossible, that it makes no sense whatsoever, but he doesn't care, right?

Speaker 13 Because the actual connection with reality is irrelevant, right? He doesn't have to connect with reality as long as he just sort of spews these things out there.

Speaker 12 Okay, I'm going to take the other side of this one. So I would love.

Speaker 13 There's no other side of this. There's no other side.

Speaker 12 I would love to take the Charlie Sykes version of this and just laugh at the guy. And believe me, he's ridiculous.

Speaker 12 But when people show you or tell you who they are, believe them.

Speaker 12 Vivek Ramaswamy, like Donald Trump, is an authoritarian. He's making it really clear.
He's saying he'd fire, what, 75% of the federal workforce?

Speaker 12 He would prosecute Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. He would pardon Donald Trump.

Speaker 13 But not Joe Biden.

Speaker 12 No, no, no, no pardons for Biden.

Speaker 12 But I'm going to take this guy seriously because Donald Trump came into power and a lot of people thought he was a buffoon and he is and was.

Speaker 12 But he then proceeded to try to block the peaceful transfer of power and discuss using the military to overturn the election. He was for real.
We should have taken him seriously.

Speaker 12 I'm going to take this guy seriously. Okay, fair.
Remember, Mike Pence said, my power on that day as president of the Senate was essentially ceremonial.

Speaker 12 The instructions of the Constitution were to open the votes no more. Vivek Ramaswamy is saying, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 12 If I get in that position, I'm going to claim that I have the authority to block the certification until we get some satisfactory election reforms that make help Republicans win elections.

Speaker 12 And if I don't get that, I'm not going to certify the election. This is two weeks before the so-called peaceful transfer of power is supposed to happen.

Speaker 12 If Congress doesn't do what Ramaswamy wants, right, he doesn't accept the certification. Charlie, then where are we? The Supreme Court has two weeks to step in and save democracy.
What happens?

Speaker 13 There's something ridiculous about Vivek Ramaswamy, but also menacing.

Speaker 13 And I think that's part of the, you know, the toggling back and forth in this culture that, you know, the clown with a flamethrower actually still has a flamethrower.

Speaker 13 He's still a clown, but he can still burn you down. So in addition to this crazy lunatic idea that he's throwing out there, I mean, look, he's just a deeply unserious guy.

Speaker 13 I mean, that's the thing about Vivek. And as I wrote in my newsletter, you know that he knows.

Speaker 13 that this is rank bullshit because he wrote a book about it. I mean, you know, Chuck Todd actually says, you know, throughout your entire book, you mock the entire January 6th thing.

Speaker 13 You absolutely criticize Donald Trump for being a sore loser. You write about it in a way of making your point, you think we've become a nation of victims.
By the way, interesting title there.

Speaker 13 And he wrote, The Republican Party seems to be moving toward the position that any races it wins are legitimate, and any it loses are stolen.

Speaker 13 It's just the preferred conservative brand of victimhood, a knee-jerk kind of sore losing more common to playgrounds than great republics.

Speaker 13 So,

Speaker 13 this is Vivek five minutes ago writing about this. So he knows as he's spewing this stuff out what complete crap it is.
Okay, so he's not done with this parade of BS.

Speaker 13 And this is not funny at all. He goes on CNN as well.

Speaker 13 And he's asked about the racist mass murder in Jacksonville, where the shooter actually had these racist manifestos, made it very, very clear who he was, what he was about, wanted people to know that he was a racist.

Speaker 13 I mean, there's nothing subtle about this at all. And so he's asked about this, and he blames the media and the establishment and universities and politicians.
Okay, not white supremacy.

Speaker 13 He blames this racialized culture and mental health deficiencies for this slaying.

Speaker 13 This guy, by the way, wanted to go into a historical black college called Edward Waters University, and they didn't let him in, thank God.

Speaker 13 But

Speaker 13 there's nothing subtle about this guy. You know, the manifesto, he had a swastika on his AR-15, in case anybody had any doubt.
And this is what Vivek Ramaswamy said. Let's play that cut.

Speaker 16 I've never once encountered that yet.

Speaker 15 I'm sure the Boogeyman white supremacist exists somewhere in America. I've just never met him.
Never seen one. Never met one in my life, right? Maybe I'll meet a maybe I'll meet a unicorn sooner.

Speaker 16 And maybe those exist too.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 13 Unicorns. There's no whites.
What is this white supremacy thing? He says this the day after a white supremacist with a swastika on his AR-15 kills people.

Speaker 13 And it's like, hey, you know, maybe I'll meet a unicorn.

Speaker 13 What a fucking dweeb.

Speaker 12 So I just want to get the timing a little bit straightened out. So he says that this is on Sunday.
He's doing this interview on CNN, but they're playing back a clip that he just had in Iowa on Friday.

Speaker 12 So just to be fair to Vivek, that's a day before the Jacksonville shooting.

Speaker 12 Okay. The Jacksonville shooting is just the latest in a long line of these.
I believe the stat I saw in the New York Times was that there been an increase in hate crimes overall by 11% since 2020.

Speaker 12 And of course, the most prevalent of those, 31% of those were anti-black incidents. The point is, there are lots of anti-black racist incidents going on, of which this shooting is just the latest.

Speaker 12 And throughout this period, Vivek Ramaswamy is telling this crowd in Iowa, you know, I haven't seen it. I haven't witnessed one of these white supremacists.
So he then describes it as, what, Charlie?

Speaker 12 A unicorn? Okay, you and I know I'm the pony guy. I will always find a pony.
I'm not going to find any unicorns. And the reason is unicorns don't exist.

Speaker 12 And that is why Vivek Ramaswamy used the metaphor of a unicorn. It is a thing that literally is not real, does not happen.

Speaker 12 To say that about anti-black or any kind of racism in this country is just so callous,

Speaker 13 false.

Speaker 12 He's a hollow, shallow person to speak that way.

Speaker 13 There's this thing where various politicians, and he's not the first one to do this, you know, decides that he's going to sound like what he thinks a right-wing person would sound like.

Speaker 13 He actually, you know, Mitt Romney did a little bit of that. You know that Donald Trump does that all the time.

Speaker 13 I think Rhonda Sandis does this, where they'll say things that they sort of think that they're mirroring, you know, folks out there.

Speaker 13 So there are ways of talking, you know, from a conservative point of view, talking about race and racism, you know, saying that, okay, you know, you may think that perhaps the claims are exaggerated or that we have moved past it or that racism in our country is real, but it's not as dominant as some other people say.

Speaker 13 You could say that sort of thing. But Vivek Ramaswamy can't come up with a nuanced answer.
He knows that he has, and he needs to hit all the red buttons.

Speaker 13 And so it's not that we've overcome racism or it has been exaggerated or whatever. It's that it doesn't exist.
It's a unicorn, right? It's like, there are no white supremacists.

Speaker 13 Don't believe what you see. Don't believe what you hear.
Ignore all of the evidence that this is a real problem. Don't even pretend to care about that.

Speaker 13 And this is one of the reasons why he's the new hotness right now, which is

Speaker 13 pathetic. Right.

Speaker 12 His shtick is exactly what you said. It's to take sort of the core of a conservative idea or an argument against the liberal or progressive point of view and then just exaggerate it tenfold, right?

Speaker 12 He's going to be more trumpy than anyone else. He's going to be more defiant of reality than anyone else.

Speaker 12 And what happened in this case is he's sort of cracking a joke about how it's not real, and then reality intrudes on him. And that is, that is kind of the essence of Ramaswamy.

Speaker 12 And I can only hope, Charlie, that what will happen each time reality intrudes on his naive or deceptive statements about racism, about Ukraine.

Speaker 12 I can only hope that what happens is people look at that and realize what a huckster he is. But I have to warn, of course, that in the case of Donald Trump, that didn't happen.

Speaker 13 I think I said before, I think he's going to burn really, really hot and brightly, but doesn't have a lot of lasting power. But then we thought that about Donald Trump as well.

Speaker 13 But he is, in so many ways, the successor of Donald Trump and really does seem to understand what the political culture has become in a way that Donald Trump, with his reptilian instinct, understood how politics had changed back in 2015.

Speaker 13 He saw something. He understood the entertainment value of politics.
Vivek Ramaswamy is, I think, understanding the complete bullshittery of our politics and is embracing it.

Speaker 13 Okay, so speaking of which, I want to get back to the presidential candidates in a moment. You saw what Tucker Carlson said over the weekend.

Speaker 13 He went to Hungary and he's giving them, you know, he's lavishing the fascist adjacent Hungarian hosts with praise. But he said they, they, they hate Hungary because it's a Christian country.

Speaker 13 And that is why they also hate Russia, by the way. The reason why people are mad at Russia isn't because they're killing children, bombing civilians, invading foreign countries, assassinating critics.

Speaker 13 It's because they're Christian. I mean, what would Jesus do? Well, you know, commit war crimes, right? You know, he would do that.

Speaker 13 I mean, the thing about Tucker Carlson is Tucker Carlson does know the difference between truth and falsehood. He just doesn't care.
I mean, he knows.

Speaker 13 I mean, this notion that Russia and Hungary are these deeply Christian countries is absurd.

Speaker 13 Even Twitter X readers provided the context. Just 16% of Russians say that religion is very important to them.
Just 7% of Russians attend worship services weekly.

Speaker 13 Meanwhile, less than 19% of Hungarians say that religion is very important to them. And less than 19% attend worship service weekly.
And then, of course, there's this awkward

Speaker 13 reality. A few years ago, Russia actually criminalized missionary work and

Speaker 13 evangelizing outside of the church. I mean, people have landed in jail in Russia for merely talking about their Christian faith in public.

Speaker 13 And Tucker Carlson, presumably at some level, knows this, but he thinks that his listeners are so stupid, or maybe he just thinks they don't care. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 13 It's just, this is his shtick now, just throwing this stuff out.

Speaker 12 And it's deeply revealing about Carlson and people like him. So this gets at one of the essential frauds of the so-called America First movement, right?

Speaker 12 It's supposed to appeal to your sense of patriotism. But these people like Carlson are not America First.
And the comment that you were just quoting illustrates that.

Speaker 12 It's Russia first and Hungary first when, in the opinion of Carlson, the Russians and the Hungarians represent some kind of folk or some kind of

Speaker 12 belief system that America no longer does. In other words, America changes.
America has kept its values. America has kept its institutions.
It has kept its freedoms.

Speaker 12 But it has changed demographically. It's not as white as it used to be.
So what do people like Tucker Carlson do? They abandon their faith in America.

Speaker 12 They now reject the new America and they turn to places like Hungary and Russia. And so this just lays bare who these people really are.
They don't care about America. They're not patriots.

Speaker 12 They believe in some kind of nationalism, a white nationalism or a Christian nationalism or, as you point out, a fake Christian nationalism.

Speaker 12 But they're just as happy to have that in another country rather than in America, including authoritarian countries.

Speaker 13 Hey folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast.

Speaker 13 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 13 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 13 Every day, we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact.

Speaker 13 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 thebulwork.com slash Charlie that's thebulwork.com forward slash Charlie we're gonna get through this together I promise

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Speaker 13 Let's go back to what I thought was the most extraordinary moment of the debate.

Speaker 13 where the candidates were asked, would you still support Donald Trump if he was a convicted felon? Okay, they didn't ask him, would you support Donald Trump if he's the nominee?

Speaker 13 It was very specifically, you know, would you support Donald Trump for the presidency of the United States after he had been charged, tried, and found guilty by a jury of his peers?

Speaker 13 And six of the eight candidates raised their hand that they would support.

Speaker 13 I still think, and I've said this several times.

Speaker 13 Will, I do think that we need to pause here and think about the party that used to claim that it was the party of law and order, saying that a felony conviction does not disqualify them, because you and I both know five minutes ago this was the easiest question in the world.

Speaker 13 But this came up over the weekend on the Sunday shows.

Speaker 13 And I regret to tell you that Vice President Mike Pence, who showed, you know, flashes of independence and conscience, was asked about this. Let's play Mike Pence giving his answer.

Speaker 19 You were one of six candidates on the stage who said that you would support Mr. Trump even if he is convicted of a felony.

Speaker 19 Why do you feel that way, especially since you also said on the stage that you felt that he asked you to put him before the Constitution? Why should someone like that be president?

Speaker 17 Well, look, I signed a pledge to be on that stage to say that I support the Republican nominee.

Speaker 17 I remain confident, more confident after Wednesday night, that the Republican nominee will not be the former president, that we're going to give the American people a standard bearer for the GOP that's going to be able to lead us to victory against Joe Biden

Speaker 17 and the radical left. But But so, you know, I raise my hand just to say that I'll support the Republican nominee because, Nancy, I could never support Joe Biden.

Speaker 13 Okay, well.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 12 I hardly know where to begin with this. So like everyone else who saw this debate, this was the outstanding moment when they raised their hands.
And you realize that this is a deranged party. Now,

Speaker 13 I have issues.

Speaker 12 I have issues with the left. I have issues with the left wing of the Democratic Party.
They are problematic and they make some mistakes and they go overboard.

Speaker 12 But they're not deranged in the way that the current Republican Party is. Like, I'm sorry, a man convicted of a felony, you would support him as the nominee.

Speaker 12 Okay, this is just an index of how disease. And of course, we know, Charlie, that the two candidates who did not raise their hands have no chance of getting the nomination, right?

Speaker 12 It's going to either be the felon or people who said they would vote for the felon. And here's Pence giving his excuse.

Speaker 12 And his excuse is, I had to sign the pledge because the Republican National Committee required it. Okay.
That's just more evidence of the insanity. The Republican National Committee.

Speaker 13 Trump has not signed, by the way. Right.
Trump hasn't signed.

Speaker 12 But the official head or organization in charge of the Republican Party said, you have to make this pledge. And all the candidates understood it to mean, even if the guy is convicted of a felony.

Speaker 12 That's how diseased the party is. And then at the end, of course, Pence reaches for the rationale of, oh, I could never support Joe Biden.

Speaker 12 And this is also the excuse that Nikki Haley came up with when she was asked why she raised her hand. So it's really, is Joe Biden that bad?

Speaker 12 Is Kamala Harris so bad that you would literally vote for a guy convicted of one, two, I don't know how many felonies he's going to be convicted of by the time this is over?

Speaker 13 Well, the answer apparently is they think so.

Speaker 13 And, you know, and I said last week, and I've been thinking about this all weekend, because it wasn't that long ago that if somebody was actually convicted of a felony, they wouldn't serve

Speaker 13 on a town council, you know, a county board. a state legislature.
There's no way that anyone would support a candidate for governor.

Speaker 13 The Republican Party would rise up and demand resignations or would walk away from the candidate. And that was an easy choice.
It wasn't difficult.

Speaker 13 I mean, if you were convicted of these things, if a federal judge said you were a rapist, it would be a kind of a closed issue, right? And this gives you an indication of how far things have come.

Speaker 13 Let's play Nikki Haley because, of course, she had her breakout moment. I perhaps was a little bit more bullish on her performance than others.

Speaker 13 But then again, there she was on the Sunday morning talk shows saying the same thing here. Let's play Nikki.

Speaker 21 You raised your hand when you were asked, would you support him if he were convicted on those felony charges? I just simply asked you, why?

Speaker 21 Why would you vote for a convicted felon to be president of the United States?

Speaker 13 Excellent question.

Speaker 22 Because I am not comfortable with a president Kamala Harris becoming president. I think we would be in a far worse situation.

Speaker 13 Okay, this has become a consistent theme now of Nikki, that she's not really running against Joe Biden. It's Joe Biden dead, Kamala Harris alive, right?

Speaker 13 I mean, that's her strategy, the fact that she answered it that particular way.

Speaker 12 Right, right. And I just want to to pause here to say, George Stephanopoulos, just the best interviewer on these hard questions.
He's willing to spend the whole interview on it.

Speaker 12 He'll ask you the tough question you need to be asked. If you dodge it, he will not move on.
He will stick to it and calmly, he doesn't get upset.

Speaker 12 He just repeats the question because you have, and that's what happened in this interview.

Speaker 12 Nikki Haley had no good answer to why she raised her hand because you and I both know, Charlie, the reason she raised her hand was she was afraid that if she didn't, she had no shot to win the Republican primary for president.

Speaker 13 And she's not wrong about that, though, right?

Speaker 12 Right. It goes to the derangement of the party that you have to make this insane pledge.

Speaker 13 Yeah, okay. So we had to at least close this segment by mentioning that that magnificent beast, Chris Christie, at least, was willing to push back on this.

Speaker 13 This is Chris Christie talking about voting for convicted felons.

Speaker 20 I think the most lasting moment of the debate from Wednesday night, Nancy, is when you had six of the eight candidates on that stage raise their hand and say they would support a convicted felon for President of the United States.

Speaker 20 I think our standard should be higher. I think the president of the United States should be a role model for our children and grandchildren.

Speaker 13 Just radical.

Speaker 13 And that position, the idea that the president should be a role model was absolute orthodoxy just a few years ago, right?

Speaker 13 Now it essentially says, if you believe that, you're going to get less than 10% of the vote. You probably get less than 5% of the vote.

Speaker 12 I can see why you love Chris Christie, Charlie.

Speaker 13 Magnificent beast.

Speaker 12 There's two guys on stage, Christie and Hutchinson, who didn't take this pledge. And for a person who is conservative like you, like you have this completely deranged party.

Speaker 12 Your choices are the left or the Democratic Party or this completely deranged Trump cult, right?

Speaker 12 And every once in a while, somebody raises their hand who has no shot like Christy and just speaks the truth. Like, you know what? I disagree with Biden on the border.
I disagree with him on spending.

Speaker 12 I disagree with him on foreign policy. I disagree with all those things.
But I also don't believe that a felon should be president of the United States.

Speaker 12 And it's just amazing how few people are available, how few candidates are available to vote for who will say that.

Speaker 13 I think we talked about this on a previous podcast, but the way that Ron DeSantis had to look around to see if people were raising their hands first.

Speaker 13 That was such a tell.

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Speaker 13 So, okay, give me your take on the debate. It's been a long time now, but you were on vacation.
You were probably watching it in your hotel room in Key West or whatever, right?

Speaker 12 I did watch the debate.

Speaker 13 Oh, you did.

Speaker 12 I had to watch it. Okay, so I'm going to give you, here's my pony.
I promised you a pony. Here's my pony.
Okay.

Speaker 12 I'm sitting there and I'm watching all of these candidates, these governors, senators, former vice presidents attacking Vivek Ramaswamy.

Speaker 12 I'm watching Mike Pence, the most recent vice president of the United States, who in a fairly close election just lost, right?

Speaker 12 And this guy, who's been a congressman, a governor, a vice president, he is spending his whole debate attacking another candidate who has no experience at all.

Speaker 12 And I'm like, why are you all you serious people attacking this guy? And then it hits me. It hits me.
Remember what Chris Christie says about 2016, Charlie?

Speaker 12 He says, all of us thought there was an establishment lane, all of us, governor senators, whatnot, we were going to attack each other.

Speaker 12 And then the winner of that was going to, you know, face off against Donald Trump. And by the time we realized what was going on, it was over and Trump had wrapped it up.

Speaker 12 Charlie, they're not making that mistake this time. They recognize the new Trump in Vivek Ramaswamy, and they're going after him now at the beginning.

Speaker 12 I don't know if they'll succeed, but at least they're not doing what they did last time.

Speaker 13 All right, but that's a tiny little sliver of good news because Donald Trump blows off the debate. He's sitting there.
He craps all over Fox News. He craps all over the Republican National Committee.

Speaker 13 He craps all over his opponents. He craps all over the Republican electorate.
And they all love him. And they're all going to support him.
I mean, that's the amazing thing.

Speaker 13 He knows that, you know, the harder he slaps these guys, the more they're going to say, may I have another one, sir?

Speaker 13 You know, and this whole thing about supporting him, even if he's a convicted felon, I mean, if there was any moment, you know, that illustrated how much enthrall this party was to all of him. So.

Speaker 12 So I'm going to concede that about Trump, but there is a scenario here which we also need to avoid. That is, suppose Donald Trump does get convicted of one of these felonies or many of them.

Speaker 12 And suppose that does affect the willingness of enough Republican voters to nominate him.

Speaker 12 And supposing instead they turn to Ramaswamy, who at this point, Charlie, is looking like the backup Trump, like he's the guy that they would turn to. Okay, we can't have Trump.

Speaker 12 Trump's too toxic or whatever. We're going to find the next best thing.
We're going to nominate this guy.

Speaker 12 It is important, I would argue, to take down this guy now, to expose him for the fraud he is now, in the hope that somebody better can emerge as an alternative in the event that Donald Trump is not the nominee.

Speaker 12 Because we could live in a world where Donald Trump does get convicted and everybody thinks we're safe. And then it turns out they just nominate the next Trump.

Speaker 13 That is possible. All right.
So we talked about the debate. Let's talk about the mugshot.

Speaker 13 That was the other big issue, the mugshot heard around the world, which I have to say, interestingly enough, that that mugshot has sort of become both MAGA porn and never Trump porn at the same time.

Speaker 13 And I say this, look, I mean, you know, full disclosure, we're actually at the bulwark. I am totally in favor of this.
Tim Miller and I talked about this on Friday's podcast.

Speaker 13 We're selling mugs saying, we told you so.

Speaker 13 We're selling mugs with the mugshot and t-shirts saying, never Trumpers were right, because we cannot resist this moment.

Speaker 13 of telling people, you know, if only you had been warned, this is what we have been telling you for all these years. And there is the mugshot.

Speaker 13 And, you know, the MAGA people think that it's the hottest thing in the world.

Speaker 13 There was some guy on Fox News, you know, titillating Laurie Ingram by saying, you know, this is going to give Donald Trump new street cred with black voters. Black voters think he's a gangster.

Speaker 13 Again, speaking of bullshit, I mean, he doesn't know that's true. He's just throwing this stuff up.

Speaker 13 And also the assumption that the way to get to the black vote is to be indicted for, you know, serious felonies is a... Well, that's really on brand for Fox News.

Speaker 13 But in any case, I wanted to just get your sense of the... Of the mug shot.
What was your reaction to the mugshot?

Speaker 12 I had almost no reaction to the mugshot. I appear to lack the Schadenfreude, right? I keep forgetting how to pronounce this.

Speaker 12 Donald Trump is trying to destroy American institutions, the institutions of democracy, the institutions of law and order.

Speaker 12 So I'm in favor of defending, restoring, honoring those institutions, including the rule of law. And to the extent that he committed crimes, he should be convicted like anyone else.

Speaker 12 But the joy of just arresting somebody, of getting a mugshot, I'm not with that. I'm not with it, first of all, because it's not the same thing as a conviction.

Speaker 13 Tim Miller and I beg to differ.

Speaker 13 We need to stay in the moment. I know where you're coming from here.
I got the earnest will today. There's the loose will.
There's the, you know, the really.

Speaker 13 Some people come back from vacation. They're all like loose and everything.

Speaker 13 And you're like really, really earnest. No, I'm going to take this.
I get that.

Speaker 13 But the thing is that we are living in this incredible era where I think that we have to take the joy of the moment because all we have is today.

Speaker 13 Now, you're saying that you're not going to be happy until there's bars in front of that mug shot?

Speaker 12 There's two things. Number one is it's premature right i'm not going to believe it till you're not going to believe what you're not going to believe what

Speaker 13 91 criminal indictments not going to believe it's over till it's over so you're not going to be happy about anything until january of 2025

Speaker 13 you're my pony in the pile of shit guy and you're saying i will take no pleasure in anything until it's completely over. I'm going to be dead by the time it's over.

Speaker 12 This is one of the things I learned coming to the Bulwark. So I was sort of on the center left.
I come over here. The Never Trumpers are so into this.

Speaker 12 And I'm learning the hatred inside the party is way stronger than the hatred between the parties. I mean, on this stuff.

Speaker 13 No, no, no, no. We're talking joy, not hatred.
This is like carpe diem.

Speaker 13 We are seizing the moment. There's so much soul-crushing disappointment.
There are so many betrayals and like, oh, my God, this is the terrible thing. Oh, my God, it's getting worse.

Speaker 13 That when you have one of these bright little rays of sunshine, you know, I'm going to run to it. See, See, we're kind of reversing position here.
I'm usually the dark one.

Speaker 13 You're the one saying, no one can be happy ever again until we do this.

Speaker 13 Come on, I'm going to get you the t-shirt. I will buy a t-shirt for you.

Speaker 12 I love that you frame this as the little ray of sunshine. Because this reminds me of Charlie.

Speaker 12 When I was a little kid, the little ray of sunshine was that you get the magnifying glass out and you want the little ray of sunshine to go through the magnifying glass and burn the leaf or burn the ant or whatever it is.

Speaker 12 It's an act of cruelty. So I'm not going to view this little ray of sunshine that's burning Donald Trump.
Wait,

Speaker 13 that was

Speaker 13 no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That was okay, leaving aside the killing of the ants, which I never did.

Speaker 13 It was one of the cool things when you had the magnifying glass and you made it into a ray that burned things. I mean, that was one of the ways that we kind of, you know, you felt a little powerful.

Speaker 13 I learned a little bit about physics there.

Speaker 13 You were the kid going,

Speaker 13 don't do that. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 12 I feel terrible, but I'm going to go with the earnest take here like i i am genuinely afraid of that joy in another's suffering especially when it happens inside of me or inside of the people around me like we i think that's just the root of so much evil so i don't want to take away from the fun i'm glad you're celebrating and having a little fun but what we should be celebrating what we should take joy in is the revival the reinstatement the survival of the rule of law in this country.

Speaker 12 That the fact that a guy was president of the United States has had access to the ability to protect himself from the law, did so for four years.

Speaker 12 And now that he's out, has committed more crimes, he is being prosecuted as he should be. I will, I'm, I'm with that.

Speaker 13 Let's make a note. People I don't want to have a beer with after indictments

Speaker 13 will

Speaker 13 salmon.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 13 Because

Speaker 13 this is going to confuse people because you're the guy. I'm always going to find the pony inside, you know, the pile of, you know, the pile of bullshit in the driveway.

Speaker 13 And I'm telling you, this is a really, really, really big pony.

Speaker 13 Also, look, have you ever wondered, Will, how guys like Tim and I have not gone completely insane over the last seven years? I have wondered. In part, it's because we seize upon these moments of joy.

Speaker 13 And yes, they're premature. But if we didn't seize upon the moments of joy, we would be obsessing about the moments of just incredible, just awfulness.

Speaker 13 The ratio is like 10 to one, and you are trying to deprive me of the one,

Speaker 13 the bulwarks Miss Grundy.

Speaker 12 This is actually a very important social function that Charlie Sykes serves, right?

Speaker 12 You, because seriously, people to an end, people download, people listen to you in part because the madness is every bloody day, every week. It's never ending.

Speaker 13 And it is, you really do need a sense of humor to manage the insanity so as a listener and as a colleague I'm grateful to you for that because you do help keep me sane well yeah but you're our designated optimist about these things which is why okay so I may not not wear the t-shirt but I will get the mug I'm just I am just telling you I'm gonna get the mug all right so what else do you want to talk about today because there's so many other things and I feel like it's been weeks since you and I have uh have spoken about about the situation I guess I want to get your take on this and again I'm I'm a little exhausted by the angle of this, which is always like, does this help Donald Trump?

Speaker 13 Does this hurt Donald Trump? What do you think about the polls? You know, at a certain point, the real answer is that none of us know.

Speaker 13 But, you know, I do think that there's a certain Stockholm syndrome phenomenon going on with the pundit class that just sort of assumes that every terrible thing helps Donald Trump.

Speaker 13 And I'm developing a little bit of skepticism about this because

Speaker 13 I just don't think that having your mud shot taken is going to be a political asset in a general election. And I'm just not sure that the parade of trials is going to be good for Donald Trump.

Speaker 13 I mean, I understand that things can go south. I mean, look, Will, I'm not arguing with you that things cannot go sideways.

Speaker 13 I mean, it's possible that there will be higher courts that will throw these charges out. You know, it's possible that there might be hung juries.
I mean, all kinds of things might

Speaker 13 happen that would lead to Trump's exoneration and that would make all of this look like this massive miscalculation.

Speaker 13 But right now, I'm just a little skeptical of all the people who think that somehow this is an asset for Donald Trump in any way whatsoever.

Speaker 13 And the poll numbers that I'm seeing would suggest that you have a rather huge majority of independents and of American voters who look at this guy and go, yeah,

Speaker 13 he's a crook. I know we're all supposed to go to the diners in Western Pennsylvania and talk to Trump voters, you know, or have focus groups where we talk to Trump voters.

Speaker 13 But, I mean, we kind of know what Trump voters think about this. You know, what about like actual real Americans who are not insane?

Speaker 13 Yeah, and I did just say that, who are looking at this and going, yeah, why would we put a felon in the Oval Office? What do you think?

Speaker 12 First of all, I just want to point out on the polls, you're not crazy about this, Charlie. Trump really only has a grip on about a third of the Republican primary electorate, right?

Speaker 12 He can lose this nomination. Somebody just has to consolidate and move past him early enough in the process.
That is a realistic scenario.

Speaker 12 I know he has a big lead now, but that can happen if there's consolidation.

Speaker 12 And what's going to happen over the course of these trials, these cases, is there's going to be more facts coming out, right?

Speaker 12 Some of it, you know, Vivek Ramaswamy said this weekend, I already know all the facts. I'm going to pardon Trump.

Speaker 12 I can tell you that now because I've read the indictments and that's the best presentation of the evidence against him. And it's not enough.
First of all, it is enough.

Speaker 12 But secondly, there's going to be more.

Speaker 13 There's going to be more.

Speaker 12 This is not just a a media pile on.

Speaker 12 There are prosecutors who are sitting on evidence that's going to become public during the course of these cases, the filing of briefs, the actual testimony, the trials.

Speaker 12 And that evidence is not going to look good. And, you know, we have, for example, let's take two of the cases.

Speaker 12 In the case of the classified documents, we've already had more evidence come out than was originally in the indictment about all the mechanics that Trump went through to obstruct recovery of the documents.

Speaker 12 In the January 6th stuff, we have much more evidence in the Georgia case about the false electors scheme.

Speaker 12 There's going to be more of that so that even if you believe the election was stolen, all of the fraud that he engaged in to create these fake electors and to pawn them off on Congress, that's all going to be discussed.

Speaker 12 And all the emails that went into that. And all of those facts will affect some people.
And I think there are enough who are susceptible to make a difference.

Speaker 12 In addition, you now see more and more of the Republican candidates who are running against Trump, people like Nikki Haley, talking about Trump's electability.

Speaker 12 I'm not saying you have to agree Donald Trump is a bad person, just that he's obviously facing more and more damning facts as the next year and a half goes on. We shouldn't nominate him.

Speaker 13 And again, these things are just snapshots, and they may not be predictive, but there is a new Emerson College poll out of Republican primary voters showing some leakage from Donald Trump.

Speaker 13 I'm not going to become exuberant about this, but he is down to 50% of the vote, still way ahead of anybody else. That's a six-point drop from

Speaker 13 the 56% he had in the last Emerson poll from before the debate. Emerson says it's the lowest support to date for the former president in their national polls.

Speaker 13 And again, so while there's a little bit of a polling slump for the ex-president, his opponents seem to have experienced a little bit of a bump. Ron DeSantis is only at 12%.

Speaker 13 He had 10% before, so that's almost within the margin of error. Mike Pence moved from 3% all the way up to 7%.
Nikki Haley went from 2% to 7%. Chris Christie went from 3% to 5%.
Vivek

Speaker 13 went down from 10% to 9%. So the conventional wisdom, including mine, was that Vivek was going to get a big surge out of this.
So far, we're not seeing that. Now, maybe this is an outlier.

Speaker 13 Maybe we're going to see it, but I'm surprised by that. Are you surprised by that?

Speaker 12 I am surprised because I was a victim of, I played along with the media's take on the debate, which was that because Ramaswamy got all the attention, right, and because he was glib and, you know, looked like a good salesman and picked fights with everybody, that that was going to help him.

Speaker 12 It may not be the case. I mean, I want to see more polling on that.

Speaker 12 In some ways, Charlie, that debate, I don't know how you saw it, but I could imagine Charlie Sykes watching that debate and seeing essentially the revival of Reaganism, right?

Speaker 12 These were the Reaganites, the Pencees, the Haley's.

Speaker 13 If I really squinted hard.

Speaker 13 I was drinking during that debate, but I didn't have that much to drink.

Speaker 12 They were telling the audience: if you are a conservative by any of these definitions if you believe in you know a strong foreign policy and a strong military if you believe in you know limited spending if you believe in in the constitution whatnot then you know this guy isn't for you he's and he's against israel and he's against that and yeah to the extent that republican voters will turn against a guy and that poll may be showing that because he isn't consistent with traditional republican principles that is a restoration of sanity on the right and that would be a good thing there were indications of that the question is does that foreshadow where the party is going or is that to sort of, you know, a dead cat bounce on all this?

Speaker 13 Hey, by the way, we ought to mention,

Speaker 13 among other major political developments of the day, you saw what happened last night. Big endorsement for Vivek.

Speaker 12 I missed this.

Speaker 13 O.J. Simpson.
O.J. Simpson.
This is not a parody. I am not joking.
O.J. Simpson recorded a video.
Looks like he's endorsing Vivek Ramaswamy. This guy really would have a chance.

Speaker 13 It's perfect. I mean, you know, we're living in this simulation here, and it's like absolutely perfect.
What more could you want than O.J. Simpson saying, yeah, Vivek, he's my guy.

Speaker 13 Okay, now speaking of bullshit, I didn't weigh in on this on my newsletter because I don't have any way of verifying this, but Trump over the weekend, in case you missed this, claimed that he won a club championship at his golf course with a round of 67,

Speaker 13 which is eight shots better than Phil Mickelson

Speaker 13 shot on that same course two weeks ago.

Speaker 13 Sure.

Speaker 13 Maybe I'm just a little skeptical, but I'm thinking that a guy that lies about absolutely everything might just possibly be bullshitting about his goal score. What do you think?

Speaker 12 You know, Charlie, sometimes when I try to put myself in the shoes of a Trump voter, try to understand these folks. This is actually the kind of incident where I think it's like Joe Biden, right?

Speaker 12 Joe Biden is a bullshitter about unimportant things. You know, he tells stories about having been places he wasn't and that sort of of thing.

Speaker 12 I think this is Trump's version of it, and people find it endearing, the people who support him. So I'm going to give Trump a pass on the golf score.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 13 Endearing.

Speaker 13 See, I think there's ample evidence that you're just a kinder, gentler, nicer, better person than I am here, but I just, I don't know.

Speaker 13 I think it makes him sound absurd, but clearly I'm out of touch with what endears the Trump voter to him, apparently lying about golf. Speaking of new polls,

Speaker 13 more than two-thirds of Democrats, I want to repeat this, more than two-thirds of Democrats think Joe Biden is too old to be president.

Speaker 13 I was at a wedding over the weekend, family wedding, and I cannot tell you the number of times that specific question came up. Do you think that Joe Biden, and I'll tell you what my answer was.

Speaker 13 People say, do you think Joe Biden is too old? And I say, yes, he's too old, but we're stuck with him. What do you think, Will?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I agree with that. And I got to say.

Speaker 13 Don't deny that he's too old. He's too old.

Speaker 12 Oh, I'm a too, I've been a too old guy. I've been a a Mayor Pete guy at Beffin since the last election.
Joe Biden is too old. And it's not just a number.

Speaker 12 I mean, if you watch the very recent videos of Biden trying to talk to reporters, he has lost a lot in just the last couple of years. And I mean, this is what happens at the end of life.

Speaker 12 Somebody is, and I don't know how long he's actually been.

Speaker 13 Oh, wow. Nice.

Speaker 13 Sorry.

Speaker 12 He has lost a lot. And he has a lot of trouble just conducting himself.

Speaker 12 Now, I don't, again, I don't think that he is incapable of doing the job, which is to make decisions, which you have time to do as president generally, right? People present you with information.

Speaker 12 He's a wise man. He can put that together.
I think he's fine mentally, but his ability to interact with other people, to hear, to engage, to think on his feet, has dropped a lot.

Speaker 12 And everyone can see it. It's very real.
If it weren't for the fact that the Conservative Party has gone insane, you would have to suggest electing someone else to replace him.

Speaker 12 We just, as you say, Charlie, we just just haven't been presented with that alternative.

Speaker 13 What worries me is that our margin of error is so thin because the threat is so great, the stakes are so high. And so, you know, America's liberal constitutional democracy hangs by what,

Speaker 13 you know,

Speaker 13 one artery. I mean, I'm serious.
I mean, we're talking about, you know, the health of one human being.

Speaker 13 I mean, I would like to think that there's this huge institutional tradition or, you know, all of these bulwarks out there. And I'm haunted by what happened to Mitch McConnell.

Speaker 13 I mean, Mitch McConnell clearly had something like a stroke, you know, just like during a press conference.

Speaker 13 And in his age is showing, Jonathan Martin and Politico had a really great piece where he sat down with him and he's been covering him for years and he was like alarmed by

Speaker 13 how impaired he was. And my take on this was,

Speaker 13 this is what we get when we have a politics dominated by the gerontocracy because we're always just like one. thing away, one incident away.

Speaker 13 And when the threat is as grave as the second Donald Trump presidency, it's going to be a long year and a half. And this is why Nikki, you know, already wants to turn the page.

Speaker 13 I mean, Nikki basically wants to bury him right now. That's why she's like obsessed with this whole thing that I'm running against Kamala Harris.

Speaker 13 Right.

Speaker 12 And this is why I would appeal to anyone who recognizes the danger of Donald Trump.

Speaker 12 Do not by any means root for Donald Trump to win the Republican primary because you know you can beat him in the general. There are two things that can go wrong.
A health thing, Biden could drop dead.

Speaker 12 He could have a heart incident or something. He could also just gradually fade.
And then people watching Joe Biden on TV deciding he can't do the job. Let's turn to the felon.

Speaker 12 I mean, there are enough people who might do that. So if you have two chances to take out Donald Trump politically, one of them is in the primary, for God's sake, take that.

Speaker 12 You should be supporting Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, even Ron DeSantis, anyone.

Speaker 12 other than Donald Trump, because if Trump gets that nomination, he is one Joe Biden health incident away from returning to the presidency.

Speaker 13 I totally agree with you on all of that. And I do think there's there's a certain amount of cockiness.
Well, we'd have a better chance against Trump than anybody else.

Speaker 13 But wait, this is where we really do need to put the country ahead of party in every respect possible, including the fact that, hey, listen,

Speaker 13 Donald Trump gets that nomination and it really does, maybe it's not a coin flip, but if in late September Joe Biden, he doesn't have to like die or fall.

Speaker 13 I mean, what if he has 20 seconds of blankness during a live event? I mean, it doesn't have to be that much.

Speaker 13 Do you remember the way that Trump weaponized back in 2016, how Trump weaponized Hillary Clinton kind of fainting? I think she had a cold or flu. And the right-wing media made it into she's dying.

Speaker 13 I mean, that's it. Hillary Clinton, who's fine,

Speaker 13 her health was a major issue in right-wing media circles. over nothing.
So imagine if they did that with her, what they're going to do with Joe Biden. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yeah. And it's not just the right-wing media that's going to do this.
It's real.

Speaker 12 And for anyone who's looking at Joe Biden on TV and is not seeing it, I would recommend that you talk to other people because I'm watching it. And this is not of some fake thing about Hillary.

Speaker 12 This is a real thing about a guy who has definitely lost a step and has trouble looking coherent, looking cogent on TV.

Speaker 12 And in a debate with Donald Trump at the end, if it's close, that's really, really dangerous.

Speaker 13 So do you think Donald Trump would debate Joe Biden?

Speaker 12 I would.

Speaker 13 Because actually, you know what? Because until you just said that, I was thinking there's no way that Donald Trump's going to show up. Donald Trump's going to not want to debate.

Speaker 13 But now I'm thinking you just made a really good point there.

Speaker 12 Why would Donald Trump not debate? For the same reasons Donald Trump won't debate these Republican opponents, because it's not to his advantage. He will debate Biden.

Speaker 12 It is to his advantage because everybody knows the worst they've seen about Donald Trump.

Speaker 12 And what they will see on TV if these two guys are together is that the felon, the crook, the sociopath, is coherent.

Speaker 12 And the other guy, as much as I love him, looks like he just can't do the job anymore. That only works to Trump's advantage.

Speaker 13 As we close out here, the breaking news, Judge Chutkin, this is not a surprise, by the way, has rejected Trump's request for a 2026 trial date on the federal case related to the 2020 election.

Speaker 13 I mean, speaking of bullshit, I mean, that was the lawyer's. Yeah, let's not have the trial until 2026.
And Judge Chutkin said, yeah, no, we are not doing that.

Speaker 13 Hey, Will, it is so good to have you back on Mondays. I appreciate it very much.
Missed you all summer.

Speaker 12 You too, Charlie. I missed you.

Speaker 13 All right. Thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark podcast.
I'm Charlie Segs. We will be back tomorrow, and we'll do this all over again.

Speaker 13 The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.