Tim Miller: We Told You So

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Well, thank God it is Friday, and thank God that I am joined once again by Tim Miller. I was telling my wife, Tim, just a few minutes ago, I am so glad that I have Tim on the podcast today because there's so much going on.
And I think that you and I are probably, you know, in the same lane on our reaction to the debate slash the mugshot. I mean, we have to start with the mugshot, okay? So satisfying.
Talk to me about it. Talk to me about the mugshot.
It's just so satisfying. The presidential portrait.
The first presidential portrait of its kind. It's been a long time coming, you know? It really has.
I mean, for us, eight years now. But really, even before that, you know, he's been a criminal for a long time, the people he screwed over at Trump University, people he screwed over other places.
He's been a con man and a criminal his whole life. And we knew it.
We said it. And, you know, it's been kind of this one long, slow rolling, unsatisfying.
I told you so. I was hoping you were going to say it first.
If only they had been warned. What did you tweet out? You know, never Trump from the jump from the jump.
Guys, we told you this eight years ago. And that was my thought this morning.
I'm looking at the mugshot and, you know, and I say, you know what a twisted, bizarre, tangled road this has been. I mean, there's been so many chapters, you know, so many clowns and cowards and co-conspirators, but it all comes back to Donald Trump.
And it was always going to end this way, wasn't it? I mean, you elect someone like that, you know, a wannabe mob boss, you know, a serial fraudster, liar, and, you know, hey, shock that it ends this way. Yeah, I mean, anybody that knew anything about Donald Trump would have known that it would have ended somewhere like this.
I mean, did we know we were going to get 91 felony counts in the storming of the Capitol? You know, no, the particulars. But no, you knew it was going to end in a fucking flaming dumpster fire of disaster.
And here we are. And it's just, so, a lot of you know what are the impacts and what you know there's a lot of other ins and outs and what have yous but it's like this is just an absolute unmitigated disaster for the republican party that is going to have ripple effects forever right i think like this stuff is like his mugshot is never going to go away these guys complicity is never going to go away the whole never parade of mugshots i mean i was enjoying everyone i was the the trump when i was worried it was gonna be a little disappointment but rudy and any of his chief of staff and you know that people were bringing back the old pictures of haldeman's mugshot from you know and and flashing back the meadows haldeman comparison which was was satisfying and, and Jen Ellis and Sidney Powell, I'm still waiting for Jeff Clark's, but it was

needed. But, you know, I guess the only one thing that cuts the other way for me on this is like,

we do kind of feel like we're at the point now where everyone that's going to jump off the ship

has jumped, you know, usually on each of these inflection points, there's been an exit ramp that like far too few people have taken but a couple have taken but they're nobody's taking any exit ramps yesterday nobody's saying you know none of you mean the politicians the political class types and everything yeah yeah you know let's come back to this a little bit later because you know there are some there are some polls out there suggesting that uh you know despite our default setting of nothing matters and he could

shoot somebody and all of that stuff that he could set you know live monkeys a fire in i'm not saying i'm not talking about that yeah i mean let's talk about the political okay right so but you know and of course there's all these you know the the whining about the weaponization of the justice department and the point that i made in in morning shots this morning is you know if you know donald Trump, this was always coming, but also this is a result of his choices. This is what he wanted.
I mean, there's an alternative reality. I mean, he chose to lie about the election.
I mean, he could have behaved like every other president in U.S. history and conceded and allowed the peaceful transfer of power.
Instead, he chose to orchestrate a coup and, you know, he chose toame election workers, and he chose to try to intimidate officials into stealing votes. It was his choice to form a criminal enterprise, right, and conspire to defraud the government.
It was his choice to summon the mob. I mean, all of these things.
It was his choice to steal the classified documents and then ignore the subpoena. It was his choice to try to erase the tapes and all of this.
And frankly, and I guess this is like, Tim, I'm sorry we've had this conversation. To your point, this is also the Republican Party's choice because they had so many opportunities to say no.
They could have impeached and disqualified him. And I have to say that what an amazing moment at that debate when they were all asked, you know, the candidates for president of the United States were all asked for the show of hands, whether they would support Trump, even if he was a convicted felon.
And then six of them raised their hands. Two of them sort of, you know, awkwardly that that moment, you know, Ron DeSantis looking around, like, what is everybody saying? Maybe you ending up being the only thing that ends up being memorable from that debate.

We talk about the debate more, but DeSantis' slow hand raise feels like might be the thing that has legs out of all that.

On the weaponization, really quick, before we get to that, though, I know our listeners know this.

It is important to say it.

Just how preposterous it is.

And if anything, Merrick Garland was too timid as you've covered quite quite extensively like mike pence doesn't have any mug shots he hasn't been arraigned he hasn't been indicted bill barr hasn't been indicted ron desantis nobody's coming for him for you know the firing of prosecutors or anything like Like this whole, like the whole preposterous notion that these guys are coming after Trump because they're whatever, scared of him or whatever. It's like, it's ridiculous.
I mean, most of these Democrats, frankly, are so stupid. They want to run against Trump and risk burning our entire society down with it.
So there is no nothing to that. And the fact that otherwise smart people, otherwise Ivy League educated people like Ted Cruz, like continue to advance this just shows like the depth of the rot on this side.
And I think that is what connects for me, the two things you brought up there. Just you have a Republican Party primary field where we're going to give Chris Christie three and Asa just in one percentage point where 96% of the vote share is with people who said that they would vote for a convicted convict, where the vast, vast majority of Republican elected officials are advancing the obvious lie that this is some politicized indictment.
indictment. So somebody asked me, you know, if you were a producer for Saturday Night Live, what would you do with that debate, you know, with the slow hand raise of, you know, Ron DeSantis looking around? The thought that comes to my mind is that, and, you know, this is the problem of parodies these days, is that Bret Baier then actually asks a follow-up question.
Well, okay, let's have a show of hands. How many of you would still vote for Donald Trump if he set baby monkeys afire in the middle of Fifth Avenue? All the hands would go up.
How many of you would vote for Donald Trump for president if he beat baby whales to death with the bodies of baby seals? And it would just keep escalating. And of course, all the hands- And you can picture on everyone, Vivek, getting more and more excited, raising his hand more fervently as DeSantis looks around and being like, really? We're doing it again? We're doing it again? Okay, I guess I'll raise my hand again.
Okay, I just want to just stop for a moment because every once in a while, you need to underline things, how extraordinary it is for the party of law and order. Because five minutes ago, Tim, it would have been the easiest question in the, because nobody would ever think of voting for a candidate who had been indicted, tried, and then convicted of felonies, found guilty of felonies by a jury of their peers.
Nobody would have thought of endorsing or supporting that person, not for city council, the legislature, secretary of state. I mean, much less the presidency of the United States.
I mean,

this is like mind boggling. If you just wanted just one moment that captures what has happened to the Republican party.
I mean, on one level, you know, the extent to which they're still in the thrall of Donald Trump, but also just the incredible intellectual and moral corruption that they're all up there on stage saying, yeah, convicted felon, actual criminal. Yeah, we're okay with that.
I mean, can you imagine this in 2005? Yeah, I was thinking about this reading your newsletter. And just thinking about the confirmation process, right? Like any confirmation, any official that gets appointed to the federal government needs to be confirmed.
Take out all the coup stuff. Take out all the coup stuff.
Just the documents case. Somebody that was indicted for this level of mishandling of documents would not get approved by the Senate for any office.
Like there's nothing that they would approve this person. Deputy Secretary of Commerce.
Or hired by any public company. You show up to apply for the shift manager at Arby's with this rap sheet you're not gonna get the job and it's just like it is crazy and the moral bankruptcy is part of it but and then also just the self-preservation element like the thing that just was astonishing to me on that stage on wednesday was i guess nikki haley kind of made the practical argument about how Donald Trump was the most unpopular politician in America.
But nobody was like, guys, guys, we might love him, but have you seen his court date calendar next year? Like, are we really going to nominate somebody who's got to be sitting behind a table for a vast part? Chris Christie kind of flirted with that. Yeah.
But no, you're right. right.
You're right. It's like people, have we lost our minds? Do you know what we're about to do here? Okay.
There's a lot of heavy stuff here and I want to get to the debate. I want to get to Vivek and all of that stuff.
And, but a couple of things. Number one, Donald Trump's weight.
Donald Trump self-reports his weight. He says he's six foot three and 215 pounds.
I mean, for fuck's sake, Tim. Yeah.
He could be Mac Jones, quarterback of the New England Patriots. I saw that his basketball comp was this guy, Lou Dort, who's like the most muscled man in all of the NBA plays for Thunder.
So that's not true. I'm just going with the fact that it's a typo and it was 315 yeah um you know you think it's got to be 290 right at minimum you think that the fulton county court wow would have just been like guy you know at least give us okay give us something in the ballpark here i mean yeah this is actually an official document yeah i was disappointed in that but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna let myself get too disappointed because the lie is so obvious okay the more intriguing thing was that he volunteered his hair as a strawberry blonde when it's more of like a burnt sienna for me um but maybe it's just because his orange scalp is like you can see his scalp going through but a straw he's not really a strawberry blonde i wouldn't say uh it's kind of It was kind of an effeminate choice, even, strawberry blonde.
What was with the motorcade? I mean, you asked this really excellent question. What is the possible security rationale for 80 motorcycles flanking a loser who is being arraigned? I mean- This actually pisses me off.
And also the media doing that. They cannot freaking help themselves.
They have to do the whole OJ slow moving Bronco stuff. But what was with that motorcade? I mean, I don't know that there were 80 motorcycles, but it was intense.

There were so many motorcycles.

And then it was in the New Jersey side and the Georgia side.

One of the guys that replied to my tweet on there was like, it was like when the King of Zamunda comes to America and coming to America.

You would think that this was a G20 or, you know, the queen of England going to visit her, you know, an imperial capital.

Like, I don't, legitimately, I don't understand the security rationale.

I mean, like, do you think that there's going to be like an armed Antifa confab that comes after him? I mean, how many people could you possibly need to protect the president? But it seems more dangerous, right? Like if you're worried about a bomb threat or something, stochastic terrorism, everyone being able to watch this slow moving motorcade, you know, parading through Newark and then parading through Atlanta, it seems like a bigger threat to me. I'm not a security expert but it seems like a low profile and george conway you pointed out tweeted you know there's a video of obama going to something that he that he picked up at post-presidency and it's it's two yeah it's two suvs and one police car no sirens no nothing and that seems like no like that seems just from a security point more appropriate but then just from the optics like this thing this pisses me off right he's not he has no office right he's a former president so you know he has secret service we get that but in america just to start with you know we don't have royal kings and queens right like we have citizen leaders and they should be treated as such um and it's a long time rant of mine mine.
Like, I just think, I think that politicians should sit at stoplights. Like I don't, I don't understand why anybody, maybe the president for security reasons, but why anybody else gets a motorcade that doesn't sit at stoplights.
We have citizen leaders in this country. We do not have royalty.
And just the visual of this guy going to get arrested, you know, with that kind of pomp and circumstance, it fucking pisses me off. And then there's the taxpayer element of it.
I just, I don't like it. And I don't know the real answer because he had the same treatment in New Jersey and in Atlanta.
So is it the local police? Is it the secret service guys doing him a solid? I genuinely don't get it. I think it's a legitimate question.
I mean, this whole thing, like no one is above the law. You will be treated like anybody else.
No. I mean, look, I understand that there are security concerns, but this was essentially a taxpayer-funded parade.
And we know that Donald Trump really, really likes parades, doesn't he? 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.
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We're going to get through this together. I promise.
I'm Rodney Williams. And I'm Travis Holloway.
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Legends with a Z.com is legendary fun. So let's talk about the debate.
I think you and I may have a slightly different take on all of this. Okay, good.
How do you think Fox handled it? I thought this was supposed to be the redemption. I thought Joe Perdicom had a great newsletter.
This was a reminder that Fox News is still Fox News, and I thought it was kind of a shit show. What did you think? Just about the way the moderators handled it.
The fact that they went a full hour without even mentioning the orange elephant not in the room. I mean, come on.
Questions about country western songs and UFOs. Yeah, the three-minute propaganda thing at the beginning was very strange.
Like, eight people walk out on stage, and then there's like a two-minute sizzle reel about how Joe Biden's the worst president in American history. And then they play the preponderance of the Richmond, North of Richmond song for everyone to sit there and listen to.
Like while all eight of them just stand there, I don't know, there was something communist about that. Like I just, I don't know, it was very strange.
I think the most telling thing about Fox's treatment of Trump is like the crowd is booing. And at one point, you know, Brett has to turn around and calm everybody down.
And he's like, you know, I know we all want to move on from this. I know we all want to get on to other things.
And it's like, do we though? He has about half of the primary electorate right now. There's this whole like farce that gets perpetuated in the, you know, polite society, conservative media world where it's like, you know, it's just those deranged never Trumpers and the New York Times that are just an MSNBC that's obsessed with Trump.
And we want to talk about other things. We want to get on to serious matters like, you know, whether kindergartners are ready to read about the Stonewall riots and, you know, vape pens.
And it's like, I don't think that that's right, actually. It's Republican voters.
I would love for Donald Trump to just go the fuck away. I'd love for him to fall into the sea and disappear forever.
I'd love to never have to think about him again. It's Republican voters that want him.
And so they might not be happy that they have to talk about all the bad things that he did. And I'm sorry for them that they need their binky.
But to not talk about the guy winning by 40 points in the first hour is prepos... seems a little weird.
...and to apologize for it to the crowd when you have to bring him up. And the whole thing's preposterous.
I mean, especially because, I mean, Donald Trump's decision not to come is basically an FU to Fox News. It's an FU to the RNC and to Republican voters and to the other people on the stage.
But, you know, this has been the pattern, right? That the response to being humiliated and slapped by Donald Trump is to say, thank you, sir. May I have another one? Yeah.
Instead of pushing back on him. Just like nobody made the practical case against him about the arrest, like we were talking about him earlier.
Nobody tries to do the, this guy's a wuss. He's a wuss.
He can't even come out here. Yeah.
I was hoping that Christie would say, by the way, we are here, you know, doing this. You know, where is the coward who won't even face this? Yeah, a little baby won't even come.
Give him the empty podium treatment. You know what I mean? Like, do something.
The thank you, sir, may I have another? That's exactly the vibe. All right.
So, this was the Vivek show. I think the one thing that united everybody on that stage, the one point of unity is they all loathe Vivek.
They think that he's a fraud, that he's a fake, and they're all right about all of this. And they're just sick and tired of him.
But the crowd seemed generally to like him. He's the one, he got the buzz.
Now, again, we may disagree, but I thought they were kind of, if there were two lanes, the MAGA lane and the Normie donor lane, clearly Vivek won the MAGA lane. He speaks fluent MAGA.
I mean, he, he hit every single one of those buttons. I'm going to argue later that I thought Nikki won the normie lane, but let's talk about Vivek because there's a guy who has been just, you know, throwing feces up against the wall for, you know, several weeks.
You've seen him, you know, how entertaining he is. I mean, he is, he's gifted.
He's a gifted and therefore even more dangerous demagogue. But he's out there talking about 9-11 being an inside job, January 6th being an inside job.
He embraces every batshit crazy conspiracy theory about Ukraine. Policy more Trumpy than Trump on appeasement.
Give Taiwan to the Chinese, you know, let Vladimir Putin win. I mean, what's the downside? Defund Israel.
And yet, Tim, he is the new hotness. He is the new rock star for the MAGA right.
You feel like there's a trajectory line, right? I mean, since you've done Trump, should we be surprised that the next man up is not, say, Mike Pence, that the next man up is this, you know, shallow, utterly shameless demagogue, Vivek Ramaswamy? Yeah. So, just really quick on the merits of what he's saying.
Did you see the clip from after the debate where he's asked about ukraine and he's talking about how you know

actually us cutting a deal with the russians is the best thing for ukraine because if we don't

then some warlord is going to take over from zelensky and they're going to turn into afghanistan

it's just like he's a buffoon that's just rank idiocy and offensive and the pope zelensky stuff

a total charlatan on this stuff you know and he's up there just machine gunning like conspiracy

nonsense. Like the one that caught

Thank you. offensive and the Pope Zelensky stuff, a total charlatan on this stuff.
And he's up there just machine gunning conspiracy nonsense. The one that caught my ear that I didn't see anybody else talk

about was, he's like, one way to resolve our crime issue is we need to bring back insane asylums.

Did you catch that?

Oh, yeah.

He's like, yeah. He's like, we've been shutting down our mental institutions.
We got to bring

those back. And it's like, okay, well, that's a hot take.
You know, we need more comps. We need qualified immunity for them so they don't get sued.
And then we need to give them the right to lock people up in the loony bin. That's great.
That's the freedom first agenda right there. But I think maybe he overstepped on some of that stuff.
And I think that his personality is more grating than Trump's.

But just directionally about what the people want in the party, and not everybody, but what a big portion of the party wants.

On the Ukraine thing, the other hand raised question, when Brett Baer is like, should we stop sending money to Ukraine?

Vivek shoots his hand up.

I mean, it's coming out of his shoulder.

Way up.

Yeah.

He didn't give a DeSantis sort of little alligator arm thing. He up there like me yeah tiptoes me no one else on their stage reaches their hand okay in recent polls 71 of republicans are with vivek so this was a little reminiscent to me of trump in 2016 when people are like this guy's a clown he's saying conspiracy stuff and that was.
But there were also a handful of issues, immigration, Muslim ban, Iraq war, where he was the only one on a big stage saying something that people in the crowd agreed with. And so I'm not saying that everyone should pander and change their view on Ukraine.
I'm just saying that if we're in reality about where the party is, that that's good for Vivek if he's the only one on a 70% issue on the side of the 70. And then there are six people really on the side of the 30.
And then Ron DeSantis does the alligator arms thing and kind of tries to do, well, you know, the Europeans should pay more. And so he tries to tiptoe on both sides of that whole thing.
So, you know, and then there's six on the side of we should give Ukraine more money, which is, you know, a decent chunk of the party, a quarter of the party, 30%. You could replicate that on some other issues too.
You're right. That's a reality check that in fact, he knows, you know, where all the erogenous zones are for the right.
Yeah. And he has flipped.
I mean, he has flipped. Like his criticisms of Trump in his book were like, oh, he has a baby like Stacey Abrams.
And I didn't like the tariffs.

And he's like, the spending was too high.

And that was just in a book that he wrote like two years ago.

And he's trashed all that.

But he's learned from Trump.

He's gotten on the road.

He listens to what the people want.

And now he's just like, oh, okay, well, I can adjust.

I can just give these people unfiltered Candace Owens.

Like, that's easy.

None of these people have any memories whatsoever.

So did you see what your old friend, Elise Stefanik, tweeted out today? Oh, no, I've missed that one. All in caps.
Trump won. Won what? Who the fuck? You know, I mean, here's somebody who, again, you know, got this great educational pedigree who was once considered a rising star among the, you know, thoughtful, right? You work with her at the RNC.
Her transformation has been, you know, to absolute, complete, shameless shell. I'm just watching how many of these people have just completely shed everything that they used to be and believe, you know, starting with J.D.
Vance and Lindsey Graham. It's like there's some weird drug out there that they have to go in the room and they get the juice or something.
You know what I'm saying? It's just, vivek in some ways is well of course it's going to lead to somebody like this oh yeah and this is the other thing that just and i want to get into nikki next but this is a related topic and there were some things i liked about the stage in my not my party this week i talked about how nikki was surprisingly good for me and so so was penn so there are things i didn't like both raised their hands and said they voted for convicted convict, for example. But there are some things that I liked, which we can talk about.

The thing that I get frustrated with is I saw a lot of there was some conventional wisdom out there, and particularly in the center right world.

It was like there was some refreshing elements of this debate that this is what the party could look like under Trump.

Like there's one weird MAGA guy, but there's a lot of relative normies up there.

And then there's the same just kind of straddling.

And it's like, well, wait, the stage was like that because trump wasn't there if trump died if trump had a heart attack maybe i'm wrong but i don't think the field would be this field right i think that there would be other people trying to fill that vivek would not be alone there would be other people trying to fill the trump lane because that's where the majority of the party is. And Ben Shapiro did this tweet yesterday that was like, the party is 35% MAGA, 20% MAGA adjacent, 25% Reagan, 20% never Trump.
And I'm like, I wish. If that was true, the stage would make sense, right? Because it was just kind of a competitive, it's like 55, 45 mega traditional.
But that's not what it is. It's like 65, 35 or 70, 30.
And so that is a thing that I just think is sobering. And Bill put this well, I think on Thursday night for Bulldog Plus subscribers when he was like 75% of the party is going to be with the three worst candidates or 80%.
So that's the concerning thing. And I think that that is some context about the Vivek situation.
I'm Rodney Williams. And I'm Travis Holloway.
Welcome to The Wealth Break. Let's be honest.
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found creative ways to succeed,

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Legends with a Z.com is legendary fun. Before we get to Nicky, who was the biggest loser on the stage, did you think? Tim Scott, for sure.
Okay, that's what I thought. He was weird.
He disappeared. Totally.
I mean, again, he proved what people know. My friend Peter Hamby writes for Puck.
I wrote this article like a month ago. It was just like, I don't think that these donors that are giving Tim Scott money have met Tim Scott.
He's a nice guy. He's fine.
Obviously, he's way too lickspin all about Trump, but interpersonal, he's a nice guy but like he doesn't have these performing skills like this is a reverse tokenization effort to like put somebody up that they can feel good about but it's like he just didn't have it up there and so i just think that larry ellison just lit 60 million totally on fire for no reason i'm also also confused what tim scott's thing was remember when he said he agreed with Mike Pence? I was like, okay, so now you're not going to be VP. It's like, why are you running just because some rich guy gave you 60 million and you had nothing better to do? Just like the motorcade, I genuinely do not understand.
If anyone is listening and knows why Tim Scott is running for president, please let me know. Because I assumed he was running for VP, but now he's never going to be VP.
I had the same assumption. And of course, if he was not running for VP, this was a great opportunity for him to be the, hey, give me a second look.
I'm the non-Trump acceptable candidate. And he just faded away.
He spoke for about eight minutes. By the way, I'm totally bored now talking about Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis is really, really bad at this. Okay, have we done this? But I mean, clearly that was not the debate that he wanted or needed.
And, you know, talk about a guy who is just not comfortable in his skin. So you're a veteran of these debates.
It was Ted Cruz for me. I don't need to go on.
It was Ted Cruz again. Now, remember, Ted Cruz finished second.
And it was kind of a distant second. I do remember.
He hit his marks. He said mostly the things the MAGA people like.
The awkward hand raise is going to be bad. He has weird facial expressions.
He's kind of an awkward person just like Ted Cruz is. And his likability factor is low.
But he is minimally acceptable for people in all these lanes to the extent that you want to call them lanes. And so I wouldn't be surprised if polls come out next week and he gained a point or two or something.
You know what I mean? I'm expecting that Vivek's going to overtake him, though. What do you think? I mean, with the polls next week, who's in second place? I think that you'll see some for both of them.
I put out a tweet that I was like, I bet you'll see one poll that has Vivek in the high teens and DeSantis in the low teens. That's my priors.
We'll see. Maybe that's wrong.
Remember, DeSantis was in the 20s and has lost altitude. So, you know, can you win some of those people back? Sure.
I think that Vivek gets some momentum for sure. Nicky does.
He needed to really regain alpha status, you know, and regain, oh, oh, right. This is why we liked him, you know, the migrant guy.
And he didn't do that. And he was fine.
You know, the National Review people liked him, but they liked him already. Yeah, of course they did.
I just thought that by the end of the debate, he felt like an afterthought. Okay, so let's bring me to Nikki.
I actually was very, very surprised by her performance. I have to admit that, I mean, I've been quite critical of her.
I wrote a piece called The Unbearable Lightness of Nikki Haley. When I was like, you know, gaming out in my mind what I thought might happen at this debate, I wasn't even thinking about her.
And she comes out right away with that statement about spending of all things, you know, this high lob, you know, ripping fellow Republicans, you know, calling out Donald Trump for raising $8 trillion in debt. And that was the moment I thought, OK, so she has decided that she's running for president, not for vice president, and she's going to call them out.
I thought she was really strong on Ukraine going after Vivek. I thought Vivek dominated that stage until that moment.
And I think if you listen to the crowd, there was a turn. Now, it doesn't change the fact that it was his dominant night, but feel free to disagree with me here.
But I think a lot of that, and maybe they're irrelevant. Maybe this doesn't make a difference.
Maybe there is no donor class. Maybe there is no normie class at all.
Maybe it

is only 30%. But the folks who've been sitting around going, we need somebody else because

DeSantis is so awful. The people who are on the phone to Glenn Youngkin or hoping that Brian Kemp

gets into the race. On Thursday morning, didn't they wake up going, hey, we've got to give this

Nikki Haley a second look? Yeah. And that's why the real big winner of the debate was Nikki Haley's political consultants.
Because they are now going to get to cash in on some TV ads that they didn't think that they were going to have the money for. And so I want to congratulate those guys and the new pool they're putting in in Bethany Beach.
Because they are the real ones. No cynicism here.
Okay, I'll be earnest for a second. It was refreshing to hear her about Ukraine, to give just an in-touch-with-reality position about abortion.
Even if you don't agree with all the particulars, I thought that it was directionally good to have her, a woman up there, saying that and offering at least some kind of reality-based position on on how to balance different contingencies on abortion the spending thing but i again yeah let's just say and i think that this could be possible right that she coalesces the scott vote the christy vote her own you know the little ones and twos of the aces and the Will Hurd all together. Maybe even takes one or two of the normie National Review types who are with DeSantis and they pop over.
Like, what's her ceiling? 25? Ceiling? Like, ceiling, ceiling? 28? Right? It's just, I just don't. Well, what did DeSantis have at his peak? Like, 28, 29.
I don't remember. Yeah, 28.
I'd have to look. I don't have it in front of me, but something around there.
Yeah. But the thought with DeSantis was always that he could unite the tribes.
This is the fundamental issue with the anti-Trump effort. Exactly right.
Right, which is, I was actually talking to a guy that's working for a super PAC trying to beat Trump and still a Republican. And I was like, test me out on this.
But I think that the persuadable vote, if you say that Trump has this 35% rock hard base, right? Like for me, the persuadable vote, then the remaining 65 is basically split down the middle of MAGA and norm, right? Like 30, 30. And he was like, it might be a little better than that.
It might be, might be 35, 25. I still then then that that puts the peak up at 35 you know when you're doing the math here it's like you have to get into the maga world somehow you got to get some percentage of those people right and you know maybe nikki can find some mega women who like the fact that she's a woman she does she does do pretty well in sarah's focus groups on that stuff but Trump hasn't really started attacking her yet.
I think that the, oh, we need, that Joe Biden isn't giving enough money to Ukraine. We need to cut spending, cut entitlements.
I don't think this is the party for that anymore. There's a strong minority of that within the party, but I just don't think there's enough people there to do it.
Going back to previous primaries, and we've seen in the Republican primary, you know, a strange phenomenon where, you know, Michelle Bachman has her moment, right? Herman Cain surges to the top of the pack. Newt Gingrich is all hot, you know, after the debate in South Carolina.
There was the Rick Santorum moment. And then, of course, these things fade.
Vivek strikes me as the kind of guy who's going to burn very, very hot and very bright, but burnt out because the more scrutiny he gets, the worse it's going to get. And he's going to get a time in the barrel, not just from the media, which is not going to be vetting him aggressively, but from fellow Republicans who thoroughly detest him.
So I don't know that his bump is going to be sustainable. I think that it's got a short fuse on it.
On the other hand, Nikki Haley, I think, has the potential for more staying power. I mean, she is substantive.
I mean, she's been all over the place. We've all written about her and how disappointing she is.
Are you sure people want substantive? Well, that's an interesting question. But at least in terms of if the donor class does start calling her up,

she'll have more staying power. And the more attention she gets, the more people are going to say, okay, this is a strong woman.
This is somebody who is worth listening to. She makes a lot of sense and she's strong and she's gutsy.
And here's my other point. It had to occur to some people after Wednesday.
Can you imagine what a general election matchup between Joe Biden and Nikki Haley would look like? If you're a Democrat, you cannot be relishing that prospect. And if Democrats see how bad that would be, some Republicans are also going to come around to thinking, well, wait, we could have another Biden-Trump matchup.
Or what if we put a youngish woman, who's still very much in her prime, by the way, up against Joe Biden? It's kind of a nightmare scenario. Look, I'm just sort of gaming this thing out.
I'm not sure she's going to win because the numbers the numbers, and the Republican Party is the Republican Party. But if I'm a Larry Ellison and I've just burned through all this money for Tim Scott and that's not going anywhere, and I'm thinking, wait, if she was the nominee, what would that look like, Tim? Yeah.
I mean, if you're sitting in the Biden White House, what do you think would run it against her? So I actually kind of see the other side of this. Christian Vanderbilt had a good article for the board this week about what exactly is the plan? Like even for DeSantis, he was talking about this as DeSantis, not Nikki.
But, you know, let's say he eked it out. Let's say that he had this before the debate.
Let's say he had a great debate and he wins over Trump and the Cox's narrowly. And then in South Carolina, everybody unites behind him and he wins narrowly.
And then they kind of split delegates on super Tuesday and, you know, he's in the delegate lead slightly. Then what, you know, like, where do they go from here? Have they thought about that? Like, do they think Donald Trump's going to concede to him? Do they, Donald Trump's going to give the keynote at the Ron DeSantis convention in Milwaukee next summer? And so anyway, that is even more intense for Nikki.
I think that there's a huge chunk of the party that would never go for her. Never.
And I think you end up with a RFK or Vivek style third party candidate if Nikki is the nominee. And maybe not.
I don't see people getting in line for her. Like that 35% rock hard Trump base.
If you look to that Duane Register poll, I guess it was 28. And I think Iowa was a bad state for him.
I'm laughing. I'm in Louisiana, my new home state.
There was a poll that came out that had Trump 75, DeSantis 10 recently. And so it's like, where is Nikki getting votes in Louisiana? Like she's not right.
She's just not like they don't want her. I thought that was really a good analysis because there's been a lot of magical thinking, like something, something, something happens.
And then Trump, you know, graciously concedes, you know, Trump, you know, gives the nominating speech at the convention. This will never happen.
You know, the magical thinking always has to end with, and then Trump dies. I mean, there's, there's really no other way because he is never going to admit that he lost.
He will never graciously lose. He will never go away.
But I noticed, Tim, that you did dodge my question. Okay, I'm sorry.
Okay, because since we're doing the what if, what if, what if, and now by the way, I totally accept the premise that it's really hard to imagine this, but what would a Joe Biden, Nikki Haley matchup look like in the general election? Yeah. I'm not saying it's going to happen.
Sure. See, this is the vulnerability.
I think Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump because he's Donald Trump. But what if the meteor strikes? What if the Big Mac takes him out? What if there is a younger candidate? If I'm a Democrat, I think that matchup just has to be terrifying to them.
I guess. So this is my point is I just don't think that we would ever see that for this reason, which is that if Nikki, if Nikki were the likely nominee, I don't think Joe Biden is running again.
Right. I think that the Democrats would have had a primary or even Kamala would be the nominee.
And we could, you know, game out fantasy politics, what Kamala versus Nikki would look like. But it's different.
I just I don't think you're ever seeing a stage where it's Joe Biden and Nikki Haley on that stage, because I think that there'd be a MAGA third-party candidate and or Joe Biden would get out of the way. But sure, yeah, you're right.
On Earth 7, I think that's a huge problem for Democrats, because Nikki Haley is whatever, 48 or however old she is, and Joe Biden is going to look like the past up there. But I think that for a variety of reasons within the Republican Party and within Joe Biden's strategic thinking, there's no path to that.
But the Biden re-election campaign does seem to be premised on the assumption that it's going to be Donald Trump at this point. So pretty good assumption.
I mean, he's winning by a lot. Well, you know, this is really the just watching the agony of the anti-anti-Trumpers, you know, who had, who, you know, are stuck with like, we have to beat Joe Biden, but we can't go along with Donald Trump.
And they had, they projected so many qualities onto Ron DeSantis. There was so much wish casting there.
It's really been a struggle for them. They're not going to go along with Vivek, but this realization seems to be sort of settling in on them that the magical thinking, I think, in DeSantis' world and the anti-anti-Trump world was the assumption that these criminal indictments would take care of Trump for them.
And so it is still an amazing moment, even for people within that world, that Republicans look at these perp walks and these mugshots and say, yeah, we're fine with that. We are okay with that.
Okay, you know, he set baby monkeys on fire, but like, who doesn't? Their agony takes us back to my very first answer in this question, which is just our slow rolling, I told you so. It's like, they hate us so much.
And for people who don't know, sometimes we just throw out the anti-antes. People don't know what we're talking about.
But these are the people that really dislike Trump privately. Politicians, the right-wing commentators that dislike Trump privately, but have just continued to stick with them because the Democrats are bad and the Democrats are scarier and Elon Omar and transgender youth or whatever the excuse of the day is.
And they're going to find themselves now for like the ninth tenth straight year having to suck it up and you know just be donald trump's you know what again apologist the thing is like they hate us because like we are a mirror up to their choices and and they they would you know say they have tds and they're they're democrats now and whatever but's like, had they listened to us in 2015, had they listened to us in 2016, 2017, impeachment one, the 2020 election, after the stop the steal, impeachment two, they had so many fucking off ramps. They had so many off ramps and it was so obvious.
It wasn't hard to figure out that they were going to end up up here it was so obvious that they're going to end up here and they refused to take every single off ramp and now they are stuck on this hell ship with the flaming monkeys and donald trump's uh mugshot and i just i don't feel bad for them i kind of enjoying their pain i have to admit are we going to do the t-shirt come on we're gonna do the t-shirt, right? Yeah. Never Trumpers were right t-shirt? Please.
Yeah. This is Tim's brilliant idea that you have the mugshot and what does it say? Never Trumpers were right.
Thebulwark.com. There's a slightly more obnoxious, we could say, we told you so.
Oh, we told you so. We told you so.
Sure. We told you so.
TheVolorg.com. Either of those are acceptable to me.
We are going to have that t-shirt because I want that t-shirt. Okay, great.
Let's do it. I want to walk down Main Street in Cedarburg with a big mugshot, we told you so, or, you know, never Trump from the jump.
Just some version of that. I really want that.
Same. So anyway, by the way, you will sometimes throw yourself on the sword.
Did you watch any of the Tucker counter-programming with Donald Trump? This was the one time I have not thrown myself on the sword. I watched a clip show put together by somebody, and that was it.
So I've seen somebody's highlights. Low energy, tired, weird.
Philip Bump though is debunking some of these crazy numbers that are coming out. Basically, look, it turns out one in three likely Republican primary voters watched the debate, which is a pretty big number.
One in six watched all of it, all two hours. Only one in 20 watched Trump talk to Tucker instead.
So let's just put this in some context. And that may actually be good for Trump because, you know, he's continuing to retcon January 6th.
You know, talk about, you know, the riot, the attack on the Capitol, you know, in which you had all of these police officers bloodied and a death toll as this beautiful day, this wonderful picnic of patriotism. patriotism.
And he is all in on all of this. And of course, we're going to get a lot more of that

because he is absolutely committed to making January 6th, his attempted coup into a great proud moment in American history. And Republicans ought to realize that that's going to be their platform in 2024.
And I think that's an interesting stat because I'm genuinely intrigued by the poll, not the very first ones, but like maybe two Fridays from now, by two Fridays Fridays from now I think that we're really going to know a lot you know because it will have been in the water for a week and you know you got to let this stuff trickle down to the two-thirds of people that didn't watch the debate but these guys had about as good a chance as they're going to have they had a third of the party watching them without him there at all right free shots and then he gets a rain the next day now everybody's gonna see that everybody's gonna see the mugshot it's number four people are gonna be able to you know judge like whether that's someone they're gonna want to put up if there is no meaningful gain what else is left to happen that would it be a gain for people i know that the you know delusional irrational confidence people will say maybe they get to the voting booth, then they're finally going to get serious. But that was about as clean a shot as they're going to have.
No, no, no. You and I have lived through this before, right? I'm sorry to bring this back, but I'm sure that you remember back in 2015 at exactly this point, everybody would say, well, there's five months.
No votes have actually been cast and lots of things. It's way too early.
In fact, it was already too late. All right.
But I do think that it's important to provide a little bit of an antidote to the more he's indicted, the stronger he gets. Because yes, within the Republican Party, that may be true.
But hello, that's still a minority right now because you're getting one poll after another suggesting that this is not helping him, shockingly, in a general election. I'm reading this from Politico.
A new political magazine, Ipsos Poll, provides some bad news for Trump. Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, the cascading indictments are likely to take a toll on his general election prospects.
Amazingly, we have not repealed all the laws of political gravity. The survey results suggest that Americans are taking the cases seriously, particularly the 2020 election case, and that most people are skeptical of Trump's claim to be a victim of a legally baseless witch hunt or an attempt to weaponize law enforcement.
Public sentiment in certain areas, including how quickly to have a trial and whether to jail Trump, is moving against the president when compared to previous Politico polls. So right now, most respondents want a trial before the general election.
Most Americans right now, Trump is guilty in the eyes of half of Americans. Do you believe that Donald Trump is guilty of the alleged crimes? Total, 51% yes, no, 26%.
Among independents, 53% yes, he's guilty, only 20% no, and that's before the televised trial. That is before one court date after another.
So, you know, once again, even though there are those polls showing him running neck and neck with Joe Biden, guys, how does a year of litigation and arraignments and trials and testimony, how does that help Donald Trump win swing states in a general election? Isn't that the heart of it right now? Yeah. And the front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this morning is the mugshot with books.
You know, I used to work in campaign PR. That's not really what you're generally going for, for your candidates, is to be on the front page of the biggest swing state paper with your mugshot, Generally not seen as helpful.
Think back to the old WDUI controversy right before the 2000 election. Which seems so trivial now, right? So trivial.
But the other bizarre thing about all this, we did a little gimmick on the Next Level podcast this week where we were like, the jail or the White House are really the two main options for this person in the next two years is one of the most bizarre dichotomies, I think, in world history. I was looking at that same poll.
I guess it was in your newsletter. It was like 50% of the country wants him jailed.
I'm part of that 50%. And it's like 50% of the country wants him jailed.
41% wants him to be the leader of the free world. It is just, I mean, it's kind of hard to wrap your head around.
I know it's our job to help people wrap their heads around that, but that's a tough one. Yes, it is a dichotomy.
And yeah, you're not the crazy ones. Okay, point of personal privilege, Mr.
Miller. Please.
Let's do it. I think I've told you this before, but this is actually happening.
I'm going to have a teenager in the house again. Congrats, Dad.
But he wasn't really sure until right before we started this podcast. My grandson, Elliot, who's French, wants to come and live with us and attend school here in Mequon, Wisconsin.
There was some paperwork, obviously. There's some passport stuff.
And so he and his mom, my daughter, took a train to Paris to go to the U.S. Embassy today.
And if things were going to go wrong, it was going to go wrong today. He's coming tomorrow.
Okay, so I don't need things to the last minute. So at 4.30 this morning, I roll over, hear my phone buzzing, and there is a picture of him.
And I put it in my newsletter

outside the U.S. embassy holding his passport.
He's got it. And so he is coming.
This is actually

going to be happening. I'm going to have a teenager in the house for the next semester.

I'm a soccer dad. I'm going to be a soccer dad again.
I mean, like, man.

Football dad, I think. think well it's soccer here a reality check i can i have a request i think um you know i don't know anything about your grandson so feel free to to reject this but maybe around christmas i want our friday podcast to end with i want to interview him i want like five minutes to I want to ask him about being a, you know, a Parisian in

Mequon. Because I am fascinated

by what it would be like to be

an eighth grader who just

gets dropped into Mequon, Wisconsin.

You know, we could just a little break from

the parade of horribles.

Because I'm very intrigued by this.

Well, that's a deal that I will at least talk to him about and see

whether he's comfortable doing that. I mean, I think a podcast is kind of...
No pressure, no pressure. Well, no, it deal that I will at least talk to him about and see whether he's comfortable doing that.

I mean,

I think a podcast is kind of low pressure because I mean,

we don't have like cameras around us or anything like that.

So yeah.

And it will be fascinating to know because,

and again,

I am so out of touch with what the culture,

the social media culture is.

I mean,

it is,

I think it's hard to be in middle school.

Was,

was your middle school years difficult?

My middle school years were fucking awful. Can you imagine going through middle school with social media now? No.
I don't want to catastrophize it, but it's one thing for people to have clicks and talk about people behind their back. But now, of course, it's so much more difficult.
One jerk with an Instagram account, and I don't know. It does seem, I have to tell you, the school system has been so responsive, and they are so supportive, and they're sort of aware of all of the problems.
And so, you know, they will have a support network to help him. His English is extremely good, but they're going to have people who are going to help him with the English and with math and things because you don't know what you don't know.
I'm sorry, Charlie. I've been told that our school system is in complete tatters and disarray and the only thing people care about is critical race theory and they don't actually teach anything anymore.
Does that not seem right? Not in Mequon, Wisconsin. I have been reliably informed the same thing.
I'll report back, but it doesn't appear to be the case in Mequon, Wisconsin. So you have a great weekend, Tim Miller.
And I'll talk to Elliot about this and say that at least put the request in. It may, and again, probably not till the end of the semester.
Sounds good. Congratulations.
We'll talk to you soon. And congrats on the mugshot.
Congratulations to all of us for the mugshot, to all of Americans. If only they had been warned.
If only they had been warned.

But Tim, keep pushing for the t-shirt. And if we can get coffee mugs, that would be pretty cool too.
Okay? So use your extensive influence on all of this. Thank you all for listening to this weekend's Bulwark podcast.
I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back on Monday.
and we'll do this all over again. The Bullwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.
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