Tim Miller: A Season of Grifters and Crackpots

welcome to the bulwark podcast it's june 16 2023 i'm charlie sykes because it's friday he's tim miller tim and charlie back together again how you doing tim what's up charlie you're north carolina i am in asheville north carolina this place is freaky beautiful i have to say so it isn't It's Thursday afternoon, actually, we're doing this. And so I'm just fresh.
You usually catch me in the morning every once in a while. I might have had a couple drinks the night before.
So you're getting A plus 10 today. I'm clear-eyed.
I'm riding high on the Nuggets victory, the parade. I was just watching the clips from the parade.
They were partying. I've been reading up on Ron DeSantis' DOJ plan.
So I haven't been partying, but I'm getting, you know, the high, you know. You could have gone.
So you're in New Orleans. I'm in Asheville, North Carolina.
So life is good. Life couldn't be better.
You know, as soon as I'm done with this, I'm going out in the mountains, walking around. It's beautiful.
It's lush. I have to say this.
I'll send a bill to the Asheville, North Carolina Chamber of Commerce. Asheville now has an ideas festival, kind of modeled on the Aspen Ideas Festival.
And they're doing a really nice job. It's only a year or two that they're doing, but very, very, very cool then.
So you and I were just chatting before we got started here. It's only been a week since Donald Trump's indictment.
And the last time you and I spoke, we didn't even know the details in the indictment. Now, I mean, everybody else has chewed over it, but I have to say that that was quite an experience.
I mean, for people like, oh, come on, this is ancient history. People, it's been one week.
So can we talk about that just for a few minutes? That Donald Trump had his perp walk, his arraignment, indictment we're kind of finding out who the hell jack smith is and damn he's been tough damn he's been tough yeah he moved his family to the netherlands it's like they're at the hague and like he i don't know he looks like he could be an mma fighter i don't know he's got alpha energy and donald trump one thing so we hadn't seen the indictment when we were talking with bill last week the actual text of it the full text we hadn't seen the images of trump you see the two sketches oh yeah it was like the reuters sketch artists that made donald trump look kind of like leo dicaprio and then there's the other sketch artists that made him look like ursula i think the ursula was probably a little bit more true to life there yeah i, I want to hire that guy. That person's doing a better job.
You have a small child now, so you're going to be making Little Mermaid references? I know, it's terrible. So from now on, I'll be talking to Tim and there'll be all these little drops for Disney+.
It's terrible. I'm feeling like such a dad.
On Twitter today, I made a So I Married an Axe Murdererer reference which is a great comedy. I don't know if you've ever seen it, Mike Myers.

But it was like from

1995 or something.

And I'm like, I'm getting old.

I'm like that guy. I'm the guy

making MASH references. I'm starting to sound like

Charlie Sykes playing the sound of music.

It's happening. So anyway.

So you probably have your favorite songs from Frozen.

Yeah, I do. I mean, I

stick with the classics on Frozen. I don't have any deep cuts.
But, you know, the Trump thing, the most interesting response, I think, and you had your legal expert pod yesterday. So I'll avoid stepping on that.
But it's not just the men with this of the world, right? It is not just like the never Trump folks. And you cover this in the newsletter.
It's Ludwig. It's Barr.
It's people that are kind of nonpolitical, that have deep expertise in prosecutorial matters of this nature. To a person, the strength of the indictment and just how airtight it was, in addition to Jack Smith did have a couple of rhetorical flourishes that maybe were a little bit of showmanship.
But the factual points. Good stuff.
Yeah, that was good stuff. The factual points, though, are so irrefutable that not even Donald Trump is refuting them.
I did. Now, my party this week for the teens, I tried to do a, you know, just kind of a, here are the things that Trump and his people are saying to push back on it.
And all of their arguments are kind of like, squirrel, look over there. Or I feel like I should have been able to do this.
Or I technically could have done it had I done it at a different time. Like none of his defenses are I didn't do this.
Or Hillary, Hillary. Right.
And so that is not somebody that is I gave the whole story if people want to suffer through it on the next level about the one time I've been jailed for minor in possession of alcohol. But let me tell you, that's the extent of my expertise of being on the defendant's side.
And I was drinking the alcohol. And it does limit your types of defenses when you did the things that you're doing, and you can't even put forth a technical argument that what Jack Smith is saying is wrong.
And so, I think that just on the facts of the matter, he's in deep doo-doo. Even the New York Post had that head today.
Well, this is what's interesting about it is, first of all, I mean, Jack Smith did a great job of the speaking indictment. This was one of my big questions.
Would he lay out the evidence? Would he tell the story in a way that wasn't like what Alvin Bragg did in New York? And by the way, I'm not trying to beat up on Alvin Bragg, but there's two ways of doing these indictments. You just list the charges and everything.
Or you tell the story. And what a story.
Because you think back on Friday, we knew the indictment was coming down. And then we had that CNN story that broke this incredible thing that there was a tape of Donald Trump sitting in Bedminster, rattling papers, basically going, hey, I'm doing the crime.
Here here's the crime is this you know I could show you this battle plan this plan to invade a foreign country but you know it would be wrong because it's confidential and when I was president I could have declassified it but now that I'm not president I mean it's like are you kidding me you have a tape where he's discussing the fact that he broke the law and revealing that he broke the law with a document about war plans. It's like, come on, come on, really? Is this real life? And it turns out that's actually in the indictment.
It's there. And we're only seven days out from that.
To your point about nobody is denying that he did these things. And what I'm seeing is that there was a little bit of people reading through the indictment.
And even among some of the Republicans who were inclined to immediately come to his defense, as soon as they saw the details, there was a little bit like a little bit of cringe. You watch people like the Lindsey Graham's of the world, the Marco Rubio's, a little bit of flop sweat going on there.
You can kind of tell like, oh, man, shit, we got to do this again. And you are having this little incremental move.
You even have guys like Andy McCarthy at National Review, been kind of a MAGA shill, let's be honest about it. But he's got some legal cred, essentially saying this is pretty bad, and Trump really has no defense.
Well, Angry Baseball Head did that as well. Yeah.
Ken Buck at Colorado, a congressman from Colorado. It's far right congressman.
He gets less press than Boebert, but he's from the Plains. Boebert's from the Western Slope part of the state.
So it's a rural part of Colorado. And even he came out.
So again, and this goes kind of part of into the discussion we're having last week about like, did these one-off people matter so much? If the preponderance of, you know,

if you have Fox having the banner up there,

that's like wannabe dictator tries to jail Trump, right?

You know, if the big megaphone folks aren't jumping on board,

do they matter?

I don't know, but it is a step in the right direction.

It's notable that it wasn't just the usual suspects.

It wasn't just Mitt.

You know, it was some of these other more conservative folks

that spoke out.

And the Marco one is interesting to me.

He must have been broken.

He's a broken man.

I mean, his tweet about how actually Chris Christie didn't end my campaign

was like one of the saddest tweets ever.

I mean, it's like, if Jeb called me and he's like,

I'm thinking about tweeting that when I did please clap, it was a joke.

And people should stop getting on my back about that.

I would be like, boss, that is true. But like, true but like you know just let it go okay just let it go all right uh it wasn't even true in marco's case the christy did take it out but the interesting thing about marco's defense which i think cuts both ways is the wishful the rush the p-tape version of this indictment like the thing that we wanted you know that might have actually been the you know dam he had this stuff.
And oh, by the way, he's showing it to MBS. I mean, like Jack Smith had basically everything you could have possibly dreamed in this.
I mean, except for that. And that is what Marco hangs his hat on.
Right. It's like.
At least he's not a spy. At least he didn't.
Yeah. At least he's not actively selling the secrets to hostile foreign powers.

Okay, he's not Ethel Rosenberg, okay. And that's what they're reduced to.
Marco deciding that not only is he sad and broken, but that he wants to expose himself as sad and broken. That was an interesting point.
So, you know, I know we keep coming back to this again and again and again, and I apologize in advance for this. but you do wonder whether or not if the Republican candidates took the collective action of saying

like, you know what, this is really, really bad, and we're all going to say it all at once, would it make a difference? I understand, you know, that the base wants to hear what it wants to hear, but, you know, would it make a difference? I mean, honestly, I mean, if everybody, you know, essentially said, yeah, this is really bad. This is, there's no defense for this.
I think the answer to that is, yes, it would make a difference. Would it make a difference now is kind of one of those known unknowns, rummy, that we'd love to see it, but we're never gonna.
Yeah, yeah. Because there's something to be said for, I wrote about this earlier this week, so we don't need to rehash it.
People can read it if they want. But I wrote about how the Koch network, how their ad, you know, was really terrible going after Trump.
But the point I'm trying to make is that the thing that we learned in the RVAT research- Republican voters against Trump. Voters against Trump.
Yeah. Thank you for the 2020 campaign, which I was a part of with Sarah and others.
And then going back to 2016, when I was with an anti-Trump PAC, the main lesson that you learned from survey research is that Republican voters do not want to be told what to do by DC elites that they do not like, right? And that they feel like don't represent them. And so in a weird way, right? Like if Paul Ryan or whoever, not to pick on Paul, but anyone in that vein came out and spoke out against Trump, it like helped him in a weird way more than it hurt him, right? You know, because it was like, screw that guy, I'm going to defend my man.
And so, you know, if there was like this coordinated effort of McCarthy and Mitch and all the people that kind of smell like old guard Republicans all came out, you do wonder at this point, if that would only make things worse, right? Like cause the backlash to be greater. Now, I think that there is evidence to believe that there were points in which that would have mattered for sure.
Like, I think at January 6th, if you just looked at his numbers, right? Like he was teetering, right? He was teetering at a couple of different points where they didn't take the chance to do that. At this point, man, you know, it's just, you'd start to dig deeper and deeper and deeper, right? And it's hard to see if you can dig out.
So another one of the interesting tells about all of this is how fast candidates have moved to talking about pardoning Donald Trump. I mean, it's just like let's move past the trial, the evidence and the conviction of Donald Trump.
And so it sort of started a little bit small, like, you know, like Vivek Ramaswamy saying, you know, I will pardon him. I'm going to run on this.
I have a pledge to everybody who's going to pardon him. And then you had Nikki, who will, of course, check every single box at the Waffle House on all of this.
And I see that your good friend Rich Lowry from National Review has a piece up now saying, definitely, it would be good for the country if we pardoned Donald Trump. This seems to me to also be a tell, that they're like moving past the whole thing.
And it's like, can we talk about this now? So what do you make of this? Now, big pushback from some folks. I think Asa Hutchins pushed back, said no.
Chris Christie said he'd have to actually admit guilt. So I'm in the clear on that.
Pence waffled a little, I thought. Yeah, Pence didn't go for it.
So what do you make of the, can we just move on and pardon him thing? I want to put Nikki Haley and Rich in one box, and there are other people like this that think that this is a get out of jail free card in a literal sense with Trump. But for them, they're a get out of jail free card with the base, right? That they can be like, we're not coming after your guy.
We like it. I think that he's being targeted but you know maybe we can all move on and sing kumbaya and i think they're just still maintaining this hope that the trump cult crowd will come around he's guilty but we're just not gonna do anything yeah yeah and we still get it we're on your team we're not gonna punish it's all good and let's all unite behind our guy, Nikki, Iran, or whoever it is.
That's the strategy they're doing. I think that's an utterly failed strategy, but I think that's what's in their head.
The Vivek thing is funnier. Vivek didn't just start by saying he's going to pardon him.
Vivek went down to the courthouse, stood outside there and was like, I am going to sue Joe Biden on behalf of my dominant Donald Trump. And I'm going to learn to see if Joe Biden was the one who plotted this attack.
And what Vivek is doing is more interesting because he's not part of the old guard that wants a kumbaya moment. He is like trying to just fly up Donald Trump's flank and just be like, hey, I am reading that this is what the base wants.
And I'm either going to get a win. This is a win-win for me.
Either Donald's going to be so proud of me and give me a pat on the head for going down there. And I'm going to get to be the new Steve Mnuchin in the next administration when he wins.
Or if he actually goes to jail, like I'll have been the guy who was the most vociferous in standing by his side. And maybe the cultist will come to me.
me now i think that's probably a silly calculation as well but i think it shows that that at least feels in a weird way like at least feels like there's a chance like that he's in touch with what the voters want where the nikki haley thing just feels kind of like you just want to yes they bless your heart nikki like it's just not happening for you just just i can see it happening. Now it's a Trump-Vivec 2024.
Maybe. You know what we have to look forward to, Tim? What's that? We have weeks and weeks and weeks of being able to speculate groundlessly on who Donald Trump's going to name as his running mate, which I think is a really interesting question, but let's not do it here.
Let's just save something to look forward to. Okay, you know a lot about Florida politics.
What do you make of this Miami mayor who's jumped in the race? Was it Suarez? He's a Republican. He's been kind of Trumpy.
Yeah, it's a weird one. What the hell? Yeah, he's Republican-ish.
I mean, he's a Republican now. So are you ready for this little factoid drawing? In the 2018 governor's race between Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis, who do you think Francisco Suarez voted for? Mayor Suarez.
Andrew Gillum. That was so long ago.
Yeah. He's a 2018 Andrew Gillum voter who then runs for mayor as a Republican and kind of goes at DeSantis over COVID a little bit.
Wanting to be more on the restrictive side on COVID, but gets way out over his skis on crypto, sees what happens in the midterms where Miami has this big move to the right. Miami becomes kind of this avatar for the tech bro.
Oh, I'm leaving California and I'm going to Miami and I can be in a free state. And so it becomes this avatar this avatar is like the anti-San Francisco for a certain cadre of people.
And he's just riding this now, wave, this mayor that has very, very little responsibility, actually, because the weird way the Florida set up, Miami-Dade County actually has much more power than, so the county executive of Miami-Dade County has more power than the mayor of Miami, the city. But he's riding this wave of, you know, all these Peter Thiel moved to Miami, all these guys kind of like him.
He's also under investigation for some bribery stuff. So he gets into this.
Yeah. And I think that he basically is just like this right place, right time guy who's like, I'm tripling down on this, right? Like these MAGF types love me.
The contrarian Joe Rogan, Peter Thiel world loves me. I'm going to throw my hat in.
You know, Trump wins. You know, I'm not going to attack Trump.
I'm just going to, it's kind of a different view of the Tim Scott. I'll be HUD secretary or something.
Sure, yeah. And maybe I can sell some books.
You know, I get my name out there more. I can get on the speaking circuit.
Or maybe I can just get a pardon right so it's like it is a just a total

it's a combination of two really um common inflection points of the trump era there is one the the realignment of our politics you know i wrote about the red dog democrats these moderate republicans who have moved over you know and then the republicans picked up you know the working class white people in the diners yeah but the other group that they've picked up is these tech bros, like the online contrarian

tech bros who don't like PC culture.

And so he's just riding that wave so he's riding the realignment wave just like elon musk at the same time he seems like he's a total grifter who's a complete phony which is also this has been the the salad days for total grifters i mean has there ever been a party where you can just like immediately move to the top of the ranks? I mean, if you're some mayor and, you know, if you're a random backbencher in the Democratic Party, you know, there's a lot of people ahead of you in line. Right.
As evidenced by the gerontocracy running the party in the Congress, you know, Katie Porter and any of Katie Porter, Adam Schiff. This isn't the case in the Republican Party.
You know, you can just ride that grift wave, you know wave right to, well, you ought to actually be able to win. But look at Blake Masters.
These

people never would have been Senate nominees ever. I wasn't going to bring it up today,

but this is my prediction for Trump's running mate. It's going to have to be Elizabeth Holmes.

It's a great fit. Okay.
So how much of this is the Miami mayor getting in? Is it F you to Ron

DeSantis? Is it kind of a wet sloppy kiss to Trump? Like, I'm going to split the Florida vote for you. I really just can't understand the answer to that question.
I think that something is at play here. And I know maybe we're going to discuss a little bit about RFK Jr.
too. I think that there might be a little bit of troublemaking at play here.
I mean, you're in South Florida, Roger Stone's down there. Somebody screwed him.
Yeah, there's always little things in the midst. So I think that's very possible.
I've not seen any direct evidence of that. To me, this just looks on its face.
Like I said, this is a grifter who loves the limelight, who was like a moderate, who thought that the path was going to be as a moderate Republican Carlos Corbello type. And then all of a sudden, the ground ground shifts under his feet and he's like, hell yeah, I'll put on the MAGA hat.
I'll hang out with Elon Musk. You know, I'll, I'll ride, you know, this wave.
And I think that really explains it more than, Charles, making that sense, I'm definitely open to, you know, waking up in two weeks to a Miami Herald article about how Roger Stone has been having, you know, secret swingers meetings with the mayor where he's been discussing this. You know, nothing wrong with that.
None of the, you know, what to each their own. Hey, speaking of Florida grifting, one of my favorite stories of the week has to be the post arraignment appearance by Donald Trump when he goes to this restaurant and says, oh, the food's on me.
I'm picking up the tab. Then he leaves and doesn't pay for anything.
It's just such a quintessential Trump moment. It is just,

it's all boiled down there. You know, many has had a pretty good tweet about it.
He said,

you know, we laugh about stuff like this, but this is just another indication that we kind of

grade Donald Trump on the curve because is there any other candidate that would be able to pull

that shit off? It would follow them forever. It'd be his bridge gate.
It would be forever. Yeah.

And it goes to like this core thing that nobody was ever able to get him on. I went back and I

I love you. candidate that would be able to pull that shit off it would follow them forever be his bridge gate it would be forever yeah and it goes to like this core thing that nobody was ever able to get him on i went back and i re-watched a 2016 interview i was doing when i was doing the anti-trump hack back then the other day um someone sent it to me i hadn't seen it in a while and one of the arguments i was making was i was like this guy has a history of acting like he's a man of the people but but screwing over regular people, you know? And like, that was his whole thing.
And I thought we really had something there that that might resonate. It just isn't for whatever reason, it just has been a total dud, you know? And he can do this shit and get away with it the way other people can.
Yeah. Screwing little guys who do the work and then you don't pay them.
Or how about that little old lady who was kicked out of her house so they could build a casino in Atlantic City and everything? I thought that was his position on eminent domain. Yeah.
Nobody cares. Hey, folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of The Bulwark Podcast.
We created The Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones.
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I'm going to get through this together.

I promise.

Let's talk about RFK Jr.

Because speaking of this being the perfect season for the grifter, the nut job, the extremist,

I mean, he is.

Did you tweet out this poll showing that he has much higher approval ratings among Republicans than with Democrats?

He's way underwater with Democrats.

Republicans love him.

Fox News loves him. All of the right conspiracy theorists love him.
And what the hell? Yeah, here's the poll. I just wanted to pull it up.
Quinnipiac National Poll, favorability rating. So 40% of Republicans have a favorable opinion of RFK Jr., 18% unfave.
Among Democrats, 25% favorable, 39% unfave. almost a complete inversion there.
And he's running the Democratic primary, right? Again, this goes back to those two same issues I was talking about before. One is the grifting.
And in this case, I think it may be worse than grifting. We, you know, we have foul play.
I'll get to that. And the other is just this realignment, right? Because RFK really hasn't changed his views on like, he does believe climate change is a problem and i'm sure he is supporters of union i haven't seen him talk about unions as much anymore lately but you know working class economic issues but on the core questions that most voters are determining their party idea on right now you know democracy issues you know recently the covid, public health issues, conspiracy around that, the, you know, Ukraine war, right? Like all of, all of like the main hot issues right now, he has sided with the kooky MAGA right and the other end of the horseshoe, the very small number of, you know, Glenn Greenwald leftists, like across the board on every single one of those things.
And he has become a hero among steve bannon podcast the world because it's like we have a kennedy who will come on this podcast and say that the doj is targeting trump and say that the vaccines are don't work and we'll say that you know the u.s is at you know ukraine was asking for it right like he'll say all of the stuff that the mega guys want on these hot button issues right now and And because he's a Kennedy, you know, I mean, the MAGA folks revere the Kennedys, right? And the whole thing about JFK Jr. coming back, you know, really being alive is one of the main QAnon conspiracies, right? So there's this synergy between that kind of Glenn Greenwald RFK left and the MAGA right in a way that those are the big animating questions for people in politics right now.
So the question I've always had is who are the people that like him in the Democratic? Like, why is he getting 18, 19, 20% of the Democratic primary? I'm just dying to see a breakdown of his support because I think it's two groups. I think it's one that just are upset about Joe Biden's age and that's it.
And they're just, they put down anybody's name because they're like, he's too old. I want somebody else.
And then I said two groups. So I meant three, two, there's just some vestigial Kennedy types, you know, and then three, I think there is a small number of like anti-vax, weirdo Democrats still like, cause anti-vax people used to be the Berkeley left.
Right. So, you know, so I think that those three combined kind of are getting them up into the teens.
And Bannon has sniffed this out. He sniffed out that he could use his celebrity.
He could use the fact that he has that small foothold within a certain element of the Democratic base. And they, as best as I can tell, encouraged him to run, are contributing funding, are the main engine behind his getting to the race.
RFK even said in interviews, like like, I can't believe, I don't even know what's happening. I couldn't, you know, I don't think he can even believe this maelstrom that he got caught up in.
But you see these pictures of him with Stone and Bannon and Alex Jones. And this is an intentional rat fuck that is taking advantage of, you know, that small fissure on kind of the farthest left side of the Democratic Party.
So since we're talking about sort of toxic grifts and ratfucking here, the no labels folks. I'm wondering where you're going with that.
I'm going toward no labels. Okay.
Look, I understand the 30,000 foot appeal of, hey, can we just have a third way? Can we just have something that is just not the same? I mean, I get that. You get that.
I understand why people tell pollsters, would you vote for a third party and everything? And yet these folks, I mean, I'm having a hard time decoding what's going on there. I saw a tweet from Adam Kinzinger who said, by the way, remember these no labels folks during the January 6th the select committee they lashed out at us they you know attacked us for you know partisan subpoenas and now they're i mean last week they were out with this sort of bizarre map the claims they can win which no one takes seriously was it this week that they suggested you know if ronda sandus is on the ballot we might stand down which is exactly backwards might not offer anybody like but apparently they're staffing up what's going on here rick wilson has a good thread about this i mean i've increasingly i think we've talked about this once before maybe it was on the other podcast but i consider too much people's better angels charlie i know that you say that about me all the time i'm just you know i'm a truster but i assumed that they're idiots not malign it really It was my first.
just assume naivete and uh yeah yeah not yeah i thought it was an occam's razor thing it was rich out of touch new york people who are in a tiny bubble of other rich people that don't like joe biden and like you know they thought that there's something here and there isn't i've talked to a couple of those naive people i you know i've had a couple of rich folks that you know people put them in touch with me like i'm thinking running third party. And then I kind of run them through what that would look like.
And then they're like, oh, I shouldn't do this actually, because that's not smart in this case. So that's what I thought.
The evidence increasingly, the DeSantis thing makes me start to believe that there's malice here. Because any objective view of a third party, I know that this goes against conventional wisdom, but any objective view, I don't think a third party person would have a chance at a presidential race regardless, unless it's like the perfect candidate, the rock, somebody that doesn't exist.
But you could draw a map that at least has me listening with DeSantis in, because DeSantis changes the game. It's an ideological fight.
You know, you try to get people in the ideological middle. You know, with Trump, it's not that.
Like, Trump is seen as such a threat. And Biden, by the MAGA voters, is seen as an illegitimate, dementia-ridden threat.
There is no path to getting a lot of independent voters in that primary. And the independent number in 2020 was tiny.
Despite the fact that people are like, I hate both my choices, they're like, the number of people that actually voted independent was tiny. It wasn't because there wasn't a good campaign run.
It was because the people that hate Trump don't want to risk him winning. And the people that think Biden is a dementia riddled grifter don't want to risk him winning.
Right. And so DeSantis would actually kind of change the thing to at least make this seem genuine.
It would still be stupid, to be honest, Charlie, but at least it would seem like it's a genuine thing if they're going to run it both ways. But for them to say that makes me think that, and Rick, I think, smartly pointed out that there's some overlap between DeSantis donors and No Labels donors, that this is an actual effort to help Trump if he and Biden end up getting there.
Because there is just no, the only type of voter that would be open to going third party in a Trump Biden electorate are our people really, Charlie. This is why we can speak to this with expertise.
I have these people in my life. I don't want to name anybody in this podcast, but I can think about family and friends that are like lifelong Republicans, lifelong conservatives, sucked it up for Joe Biden in 2020 because they hated Trump and thought he was so dangerous.
And if they were in a third party and they didn't have somebody like me in their life to explain to them how stupid this was, they might get sucked into, they would hold their nose for Biden, but they might get sucked into the third party thing. That is the type of voter, that's the only type of voter they would attract, and that's 3% of the electorate, and it could be a make or break percent of the electorate.
It is just weird. So I'm seeing here that they're posting job openings for communications director and deputy chief of staff.
You're probably not going to apply. Is that what you're telling me? I'm not.
Okay. I'm not.
Okay, so do you have your phone with you? I do, yeah. Okay.
I've been focused on the podcast, so I haven't been scrolling Twitter, but I can pull it up. I understand.
I'm urging you to look at your phone because I just texted you something.

This is happening.

You're texting in real time.

Sorry, I put it on airplane mode.

It turns out.

This is great radio.

Yeah.

Charlie, this is why you're an old pro.

What was it?

WMTJ?

WTMJ?

Yes.

WTMJ.

Okay.

Oh, wait.

Is this live?

No, no, no.

I just...

I see this photo.

Okay.

You sent me a photo of Ken Cuccinelli?

Okay.

That was my question. I'm flying here to Asheville yesterday and I'm in the, have a layover in Atlanta.
Yeah. And I'm sitting there and I'm listening to music, listening to tunes.
And then I hear this guy behind me arguing with somebody about Ron DeSantis and why he's supporting Ron DeSantis. Yeah.
And so I do what any reasonable person who respects the privacy of others would do, right? I turned off the music, took off the headphones, and listened to this guy behind me. And I hadn't turned around yet because he was very clear that he knew a lot of stuff and he was talking about, you know, he was talking about the Mar-a-Lago stuff and using the word crime scene and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then they were talking about Chris Christie and they were talking about other stuff. And I'm thinking, okay, this guy is a donor or he's a bundler or something because he's interesting.
So I turn around and I look at him and I go, shit, that's Ken Cuccinelli. You know, blabbing in the middle of the airport.
Not a lot of great op sec for the Ron DeSantis Super PAC. Isn't he like the chairman or the deputy chairman?

Or he has some sort of ceremonial role for the Super PAC.

So I, of course, did not want to be rude and, you know, go up and introduce myself or anything.

So I just surreptitiously took the picture.

But I wasn't totally sure it was Ken Cuccinelli, which is why I just texted you this picture and, you know, to say, like, Tim, that's the guy, right?

Unfortunately, I can confirm it because you, as a reader of my book, can remember that I had some quality personal time with Ken Cuccinelli where he was making fun of gay people and was unaware that I was a homosexual. So it was a really, really pleasant afternoon I got to spend with Ken Cuccinelli.
I mean, the last thing that Ken continually thought was that he's sitting in this airport having this this voluble conversation about raising money for Ron DeSantis and about how basically effed up Trump was with the Mar-a-Lago, the criminal trial, and he's sitting 10 feet away from me. I don't think he'll be accidentally sitting 10 feet away from someone listening to this podcast, but in case he is, can we talk about how Ken Cooch and Ellie kind of, I'm taking the host chair for a second.
He, Cooch, like, is the embodiment of what could be a really big problem for Ron DeSantis, that somebody like Cooch is attracted to his campaign. And that is, have you seen the New Hampshire poll that was out today? No, no, no, no.
Please tell, do tell, do tell. There's a New Hampshire poll that's out today.
And I do want to caveat that it's from american greatness so you know maybe not the best

polling outfit oh tim but i think this is but it's still important they spoke to 500 voters so it's not nothing and here's the numbers and here's why i think it's important because it literally matches the 2016 number basically trump 44 desantis 12 christy 7 your boy plus 6 from the last poll Scott, 7, plus 6

from the last poll. Haley, 5.

The problem that DeSantis has is he is staring down the barrel. He has the same Ted Cruz team from 2016.
It's Jeff Rowe. It's Ken Cuccinelli.
It's these far right, two con ideologues. Keith thinkers.
And that could be a good match for Iowa, Bob Vander Plaats. But you go into New Hampshire where the voters are not evangelicals there.
It's the second state, right? So you have these kind of working class MAGA types, right? And you have the Boston suburb types that Chris Christie and Tim Scott are doing with and Portsmouth, right? And then, you know, you have some traditional conservatives as well. And those are basically the three categories that make up the primary.
And the DeSantis group is not that big. If DeSantis can't get, if he gets down the ideological drain with these weirdos like Ken Cuccinelli, how do you come back? He's staring right down the barrel of the Ted Cruz redux.
What happened? Ted Cruz wins Iowa, goes to New Hampshire, and gets slaughtered. Gets absolutely slaughtered.
Let me pull this up. He finishes below.
Oh, I remember. I have the exact number up, though.
But it's important to know. He gets 12.
So just what DeSantis is pulling at? Below Kasich. You can't recover from that.
Ken Cuccinelli is the avatar of this for me, that they're doing the same thing all over again. The big question that we ought to ponder is, is Ron DeSantis Scott Walker or Ted Cruz? He's looking like Ted Cruz.
Yeah. He's looking like Ted Cruz.
Wow. So can I tell you about my other favorite story? Please.
Think I'm going to get blowback for sending you this picture? I don't know. No, I think that's great.
It's not like you chased him into the bathroom. I did not.
I have a word for you, Ken. Child separation.
Jeez. So every time Ron Johnson comes up, you know, of course, I cringe.
The senior senator from Wisconsin. And he was on Newsmax, and they're asking him about these.
And this is like this other universe out there where in the right ecosystem, there are these smoking gun tapes and whistleblower out there who is going to destroy the Biden crime family because he has these 17 audio tapes of Joe Biden talking about taking bribes. And Chuck Grassley has been hyping this.
You've been, you know, hyped from, you know, House Oversight Committee, James Comer, and Comer, and all of this stuff, and they actually put out a press release saying that the FBI had information that Biden took a bribe while he was serving as vice president, and Fox News mentioned the claim in more than 200 chunks of airtime. So it must be rock solid, 200 mentions.
Well, exactly. So Ron Johnson is on Newsmax, and they ask, well, what about this tape? This is not a big deal.
And Johnson essentially admits, yeah, we're not actually sure that it exists. We don't even know that it exists.
And the confidential source appears again to have disappeared or died or whatever the hell. So I just find it just just kind of amazing.
And so there they are, kind of just holding the bag. Grassley, for example, appeared on Fox earlier this month to discuss the claim that he'd elevate this document hadn't been provided by the FBI.
And Grassley was asked, well, what does the document say? Nearly a month after he signed this letter saying that it describes an alleged criminal scheme involving Joe Biden. Grassley said he was not going to characterize it.
And now, basically, it's like, where are the tapes? Are there any tapes? In a Newsmax interview on Thursday, Senator, this is a Philip Bump. Senator Ron Johnson was asked about the purported tapes.
We don't know, Johnson replied. Senator Grassley has never said they exist.
Instead, he continued. Grassley had simply said the source said he'd heard they existed.
On Tuesday, Representative Matt Gaetz, not a member of the Oversight Committee, discussed the issue with a former Trump advisor, Steve Bannon. I want to be very clear about something, Gaetz says.
Even what's on a 1023, this is the FBI report, even what's on that is an allegation. What needs to happen is to track down the bank records and to look for these 17 audio recordings that he said he knew about months ago.
But apparently, look, nobody knows where these tapes are. And so Fox News, apparently unchastened by the Dominion lawsuit.
Very unchastened. I mean, they called Joe Biden a dictator this week.
Yeah, wannabe dictator, so. Wannabe dictator, excuse me.
I would say that Representative Comer is, he's cruising to be deplorable of the year if there was such a thing, you know, if we're not grading on a curve. I enjoyed the anecdote, but I thought I was ending question i am no no question i more of a comment than a question um here did you see this one it's related it's fox news i feel like me and pertico need to go do a deep dive on this philip um's doing a great job but we might need to you know add a little more color to it here it is exclusive president joe biden was allegedly paid five million by an executive of the ukrainian natural gas firm barisma where his son hunter sat on the board a confidential human source told the fbi big if true big if true and i saw that it's fox you know it wasn't gateway pundit wasn't newsmax so i was like i guess i'll click on that one you know try to see what they're talking about that would be pretty bad if joe biden was paid five million by an executive of bernard's thanks yeah yeah and so i clicked on it the exclusive comes from a single anonymous source who delivered this to the fbi so all we know is somebody went to the fbi and told them this and their contention is that joe biden the biden family excuse me control a maze of bank accounts that are so intricate that it would take 10 years to unravel.

And that is why the 5 million doesn't show up on Biden's financial filings, which are extensive. It's just like Joe Biden is a dementia riddled criminal mastermind with like a Russian doll's nest full of different bank accounts to hide the amount of money he's getting.
I guess. I don't know.
I didn't think that the blind computer repairman story was true. So crazier things have happened, I guess.
But the evidence here for them to put stuff forward is so circumspect and so ludicrous in certain cases and fanciful. And yet you have the Saudi Arabia payoff like happening right out in the open, you know, and it's like, no, no report, no reporting happening on that.
I know the whole thing is preposterous. This is what the term cognitive dissonance means.
I believe so. You know, the craftiest manipulator in the history of finance is also this demented guy.
And the people who believe it, believe it without blinking an eye. They have no problem whatsoever that he's basically sitting there because, of course, I guess what George Soros is sitting behind him pulling the strings.
See, but unfortunately, and I think we ought to have a little fess up here. When you have these conversations with folks and say, they have no evidence, this is ridiculous, they're making it up with why you take this seriously? They will come back to the Hunter Biden laptop.
Look, I do not give a shit about Hunter Biden, but this was a fail when that Hunter Biden laptop. It was implausible.
There were questions about it, but it became this thing where everybody in the media, everybody decided that the Hunter Biden laptop was nothing, that it was fake, that it was planted by the Russians. And it turns out, as weird as the story was, that maybe it was true, largely true.
And so people can always say, that's what you said about Hunter Biden's laptop. And yeah, okay.
This is why you need to get it right all the time. If you want to maintain your credibility, you can't ignore the stories.
Otherwise, it creates this sort of doom loop of, I'm believing anything you guys say what about this you know i guess but we're human and the story that they put forth was that a blind computer repair man had hunter bind's drives i it's a pretty odd rudy giuliani got it yeah and then written that the blind computer repair guy called up rudy i mean the whole story was very unlikely so what's the lesson here weird shit is happening weird shit does happen simply because something is weird shit doesn't mean it's not true and i agree and that's what i said that's why i clicked on the story i was like i want to see what fox has there maybe i've been maybe the wool's been pulled over my eyes about joe biden and he is a criminal mastermind and we'll find that out in a few years i don't suspect so i think that he has a bit of a grifty son who's making some money he probably doesn't deserve but like that's a tale as old as time when it comes to politics i do on the laptop just one point in case everyone has these people in their lives who come up to them and say well you were wrong about the laptop the media was talking about the laptop that's true the absurd story did turn out to be true but what was on the laptop only served to embarrass and defame hunter himself right and there are all these embarrassing these embarrassing pictures of Hunter. There are a lot of texts between Hunter and his dad, where his dad sounds like a very loving father, you know, who's concerned about his son with addiction problems.
There's the one big guy email that they keep mentioning, right? And it's like, okay, you know, okay, I'm open to the possibility that Joe Biden was taking 10% off the top of Hunter's grift, and they were calling in the big guy in a code name, but I'm going to need one additional piece of evidence besides the one email that says, I think that there's going to be 10 for the big guy. That's all.
I need one additional piece of evidence. And then maybe we were wrong about this, but that is literally the only thing on the laptop that makes Joe Biden look in the least bit bad.
And a lot of the things on the laptop, you know, make him look like a dad who's struggling in a pretty tough situation with his son. So, you know, that is my other follow up.
It's like, you can't just say, oh, Hunter Biden laptop, you're wrong and have that mean Joe Biden is corrupt. But the problem is, is that clearly there's a certain asymmetry in the amount of evidence that you need to make an allegation because Jack Smith lays out all of this detailed of this detailed information with tapes with records with video surveillance with the sworn testimony it's many sources the sworn testimony of his own lawyer and it's like you got nothing there i don't know i see nothing you know you show somebody an email that has the term you know big guy is it there that's it.
This is all you need. There it is.

I don't know.

So you have a happy Father's Day.

I hope you have some good plans.

First Father's Day in New Orleans.

I have no real plans, actually.

I don't know.

These days, I'm not big on those sorts of things.

I think that we'll probably just hang out, go to the park, enjoy the weather, work on my tan.

Maybe I'll work on an article about Ron Johnson's secret swords. Treat ourselves ourselves to a nice dinner how about you do you have father's day plans no and not not really um at this point you know father's day has never been as big as mother's day you notice that and that's whatever i i think that everybody should get the recognition that they require you know and the problem is for father's day father's day my at least as i observe with my straight you know, Father's Day is really more of a day where the dads get to like extend their normal golf day of four hours while the mother has to parent to six hours.
You know, they get to extend the happy hour on their golf outing, but I'm not a golfer. Neither am I.
And we co-parent regardless because, you know, they're just both of us. So it's nice.
I love having people wish me a happy Father's Day when me and Toulouse are on the street. That warms my heart.
So if you happen to bump into me in the Garden District this weekend, you can, you know, I'd love to hear that. But besides that, you know, that's just it.
That's life. Life is good.
You have a great weekend. I'm going to enjoy the few precious hours I have here in Asheville, North Carolina.
You enjoy New Orleans, and we'll talk next week, Tim. All right, you too, Charlie.
Say hi to Ken Cuccinelli

when you see him on the flight back for me. Tell him I said what's up.
Your gay former strategist

says, hey, Ken, long time no see. It could happen.
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.