The Bulwark: Live from New York

Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes.
It is Friday, so that means I'm going to be joined by Tim Miller. But here's the thing.
We actually spoke last night at our special live show in New York City, and it was a fantastic show, long in the making, and it was really great getting to meet so many Bulwark fans. We have other live shows planned around the country.

And if you'd like to attend, join the Bulwark, join Bulwark Plus,

find out when we're coming to a city near you.

And with that, let's go to last night's live show,

where I put my buddy Tim to the test.

It's Thursday, and we are in New York City, Tim Miller.

We're in New York City, baby!

Yeah.

Yeah. I love it.
I'm glad you dressed for the occasion. You got the Denver hat.
I got my Nuggets hat on. The games after this.
Straight after this. Go Nuggets.
Games after this. I'm going to do some selfies.
And, you know, don't get mad at me if I'm looking at my phone during the selfies. I am monitoring the Nuggets game.
I have been asked whether something we do on the podcast occasionally is just schtick or whether it is real.

Okay.

Okay.

I don't like Donald Trump.

That's real.

I wanted to play this off

this New York audience.

Please do not shout out

your answers

until I ask you.

Oh, no.

Tim Miller,

one of the great show tunes

of all time.

Number one.

I'm such a bad gay.

White side lights winking and clinking. Ain't no finer rig I'm such a bad gay.
Alright, Tim Miller, name that musical. I was worried you were going to do this, so I googled famous musicals on the subway.
It wasn't helpful. Is this Mary Poppins? New York.
Everyone in New York City knows it is Oklahoma. Oklahoma.
Okay. Better chance you might get this one, but there's a bonus question, too.
Play number two. I could have danced all night.
I could have danced all night. This sounds familiar.
Okay. Okay.
Tim Miller? Les Miserables. New York, please.
Okay. Bonus points.
What was it? Who was that? Oh, see? Okay. What was that from? This is My Fair Lady, but that is the Broadway version, and that is sung by Julie Andrews.
Oh. This is a hint for you, Tim.
Number three. Name that musical.
Doe, a deer, a female deer. You really like this? I was like, this is horrible.
Me, a name, I call myself. You know this song.
You sang this as a child. As a child, yeah.
Man? I have no fucking idea. New York City.
The Sound of Music. Julie Andrews once again.
So the Doe Adir song is from Sound of Music? Really? It is in there. That's a good fact.
Wait till we hear, what do you with a problem with Maria. If it wasn't for the Nuggets I'd be at Maria's Crisis later and I would know the songs.
Okay. I do have an easy one coming.
I have a layup for you but let's go with number four. Okay.
How many of these are there? There were bells on the hills but I never heard He's going to get it. not also the sound of music oh I never heard them at all New York the music man never heard of that this is the music man alright I am pretty sure I've actually bet a great deal of money with my producer Katie Cooper that you will get this one this one.
Okay, all right. Okay, so let's play this one.
Beat Phantom of the Opera. This is the layup for Mr.
Miller. Made that musical.
Oh, no. No, no.
Kids. This is Donald Trump's favorite song.
he's playing this in Mar-a-Lago right now. There's ketchup all over the wall, but this is...
I didn't know there were going to be five of these. I only Googled three musical names.
All right. New York.
Cats! Oh. All right.
I'm sorry. I got high and watched Cats.
All right. I heard we had one more, actually.
No. Cats.
Oh. All right.

I'm sorry.

I got high and watched Cats.

All right.

I heard we had one more, actually.

No.

Is there one more?

I heard that.

I think Tim had one.

I heard that.

I heard there was maybe one more.

Six.

New Cops.

New York City Cops.

New York City Cops.

They ain't too smart. You didn't say that.
I apologize if there's anybody who backs the blue in the room for that choice. Sorry you got me there.
You don't know it? No idea. No.
The number one New York indie band right there. That was them from the 2000s.
Anyone have it? I am impressed. Only three people have it.
The Strokes. I think this is my audience here.

Okay, so since it is a New York audience, Rudy, can you explain what happened to this? I have a theory. I just wanted to bounce this off.
I've got a glass of whiskey. America is...

I mean, it is all the planets aligning

of the narcissism, the arrogance, the extremism, but I am convinced that medical science is going to discover that there is such a thing as Viagra bourbon poisoning that does something to your brain. Can you explain this story to me? Rudy's poor daughter.
You know, and I have to read that. You know, I have to hear about your dad.
I think it's been hard before this. I don't think that it's, I mean, there could be alcoholism and everything.
And I'm interested in our New York expert, Molly Jung's fast psychological takes on Rudy in the next hour. But honestly, it is so strange to think this, but he has this grievance.

Like, I feel like he feels like

it should be Rudy Giuliani train station

instead of Moynihan train station.

And then he feels like everyone should respect him.

It could have been, right?

There could have been a school.

Every airport in America would be named Rudy Giuliani.

I mean, but look now.

But he just wanted the buzz so badly.

And I think the big giveaway on this

is the Bill Clinton element of the whole thing.

Like the facts that he asked this young woman

I'm not sure. he just wanted the buzz so badly.
And I think the big giveaway on this is the Bill Clinton element of the whole thing. Like, the fact that he asked this young woman to give him a blowie while he was on a work call so that he could feel like Bill Clinton.
Well, and when they were in bed and having sex, he insisted that she call him Mr. President.
That's better than Rudy Slut.

It's a little less gross for me than Rudy Slut.

I don't know where this lawsuit is going to go,

but I am really intrigued,

and I talked about this on our Trump Trials podcast

with Ben Wittes from Laughfrey,

which is our Thursday podcast.

Just really quick, by the way,

no kink shaming, nothing wrong with Viagra.

No, no, no.

Whatever you want to call your husband or wife in bed tonight after a few drinks with the Bulwark, you guys do that. That's fine.
Let's just say that if you're taking more than 10 a day, you might want to talk to somebody. You might.
And if you mix it with alcohol, you become Rudy Giuliani. I think it's Rudy Giuliani.
Yeah, giuliani actually but i do think it's interesting to know where this case goes in terms of the selling of the pardons because leaving apart the salacious stuff which i could spend all night on the fact that he's talking about selling pardons which you can't do unless you have the person who gives out the pardons being involved so i do wonder whether there's going to to be an investigation to fall out from that. Well, the time was on this, actually.
There was a time story in late 2021 that had a different source saying that Rudy was going around town saying that he could get pardons for $2 million. So this lawsuit, which a lot of the anecdotes in there check out.
I mean, Rudy, it's not like this is the first person to say Rudy's been drinking at 10 a.m. So the question, I think, comes down to whether, like, was Rudy really selling pardons for $2 million, or was he just, like, talking a big game, just like he wanted to have the gal call him Mr.
President, like he wanted to feel important. And that's his defense, right? I mean, that's the defense's insanity, and he might actually be able to pull that off okay so uh breaking news today about the presidential campaign um disney apparently was not bluffing um and they basically they basically sent a postcard to ron de santis you know blank you know just like i can't say these words here on just say guys you know and find out And they've canceled now a multi-billion dollar office project in Orlando the week that Ron DeSantis was hoping to roll out his presidential campaign.
I mean, I'm working on my headline for Morning Shots tomorrow, and I'm thinking of Disney's dagger right now. What do you think? I thought you were going with daddy there.
Disney's their daddy. The big winner of all this is the people who work for Disney Parks who no longer have to move to Orlando who get to stay in LA.
Congratulations to them. I accept leaks from any Disney employees that are out there as well.
DeSanta is like... I never thought that I'd end up being such a Bob Iger stan.
I'm not really into just getting all the hagiography of the corporate titans. That's not really my style.
But Bob Iger has really dominated him on this. And just what a horrific mistake.
And I think that when you look at, I got into a little Twitter dispute with a national review writer today about like why DeSantis' poll numbers are going down, right? And his point was you could attribute it to anything, right? Because like his poll numbers have gone down 20 points and he's like, I think it's because of Bragg, but it could be anything. But Disney thing to me really stands out as being a contributing factor, not the factor.
Because it's like the voters want the alpha, right? The voters want somebody who can fight. And he has been just bitched out so hard by them on this.
And it's been so blatant. Like he thought that he was going to have an easy foil here.
Just a mouse. Yeah, he thought he was going to have an easy foil here, just a little mouse.
And I think that it's really harmed his brand broadly. So have we talked about my lizard theory about the Ronda a little bit? I read about it.
That Ronda Sanders figures, okay, if I need to be the Republican nominee, I have to get the mega votes, I have to become a lizard. I have to look like a lizard and act like a lizard.
So he shows up with his suit and his Yale law degree and goes, hello, fellow lizards. And he acts as if he tries to figure out what would they do.
And so he takes the most extreme, blunt, crudest possible position on every issue with no subtlety whatsoever. And he just doesn't have the lizard thing down yet.
It's kind of like when Mitt Romney said, I am severely conservative. It's like you scream inauthenticity.
And frankly, believe it or not, even with the derangement of the Republican Party and the Republican electorate, there are people that remember, wait, weren't we the people who didn't like the idea of government bullying and beating up on a private company? I mean, it sounds a little fascist-y. It does.
And it's also dizzy. You forget, DeSantis is trying so hard to appeal to the super cons, the super activists, the people that just mainline Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro.
And you forget that Trump appealed to a lot of people that liked his anti-elite sensibility, liked his culturally conservative sensibility, but don't follow every little scandal. They're still drinking Bud Light, right? Bud Light sales might have gone down, but they haven't gone down that much, right? There are people out there that are still drinking Bud Light.
This isn't the biggest deal in the world. And if you jump on every one of these things, you start to come off as weird.
This happened to Ted Cruz. I think Ted Cruz started off weird.
I mean, he didn't have far to go. Right, right.
They both are really weird, but they started to show. Hey, who is shocked to find out that Ted Cruz is the biggest asshole in the world? I mean, like.
But this kind of person, like you have your mind's eye, like the barstool sports person or the senior version of that that like listens to talk radio, right? And they're like, I don't like these elites, but I don't go to church two times a week. And I don't, I think it's very, I still watch Disney movies with my grandkids and I still drink Bud Light.
Like I'm not obsessed with all this shit. Like you weirdos.
And DeSantis is veering into this weirdo category. And I mentioned this yesterday in the next level, but it's worth doing again, is that I saw this Instagram post from I Follow the Gays Against Groomers.
I punish myself for you guys, okay? And a couple of them are handsome, but that's just a side benefit, okay? And I follow them, and one of them was posting yesterday, and they were really upset. And they're like, I think that it's very strange.
Did you see the story about the Strange World teacher? The teacher showed Strange World, and now she's under investigation. This is a serious issue, actually.
It's not funny. It's fucking crazy.
It's like this teacher showed a movie that was relevant to the subject matter of fifth graders there's no sex in it and uh and the teacher's now under investigation and the gays against groomer guy is like guys i think we might have gone a little overboard on this you know i think that we i think that i think we might be and if that guy who i met at the tp usa festival is like you're getting a little weird well that uh that's a bad sign when you get to the normal Orlando kind of crowd. And I think that he's hurting himself.
Yeah, I'm thinking of the millions of parents whose kids watch Disney or grew up with Disney. How they react to all of this? How many of them are thinking, well, actually, there probably are a lot thinking, you know, please save me from having to watch Frozen for a thousandth time.
I mean, does this resonate with anybody? Okay, this... Have you been to Disney World? I'm telling you, if anybody's had to take their kids or grandkids to Disney World, there's a lot of maggots there, okay? And it's not an afeet Upper West Side Whole Foods crowd, okay, on Space Mountain, I promise.
Well, I'm glad there's no elitism here. I'm glad we're defending democracy this way.
Real America, 95. You know what we should have played? It's a small world after all.
I would have gotten that one. He would not know that, but it would haunt his memories and his dreams forever.
Okay, I'm sorry to segue to a completely not funny subject because speaking of the lizard-yy demagoguery of Ron DeSantis, since we are here in New York, it's particularly relevant. The enthusiastic way that he has felt the need to come to the defense to raise money for the defense fund for the vigilante who choked a man to death in a New York subway.
Now, I think there's a lot of ways of discussing this, but I was really struck by the fact that he describes this man who, and you may think that he's a hero or that he was stepping up, but to describe him as a good Samaritan seems to suggest that perhaps he doesn't really understand the story of the good Samaritan. Did the Good Samaritan choke somebody out? It's been a while since I've been in Catholic school.
I forget. Okay, I mean, even a New York audience is going to know that in that story, the Good Samaritan did not stop and then choke somebody to death, okay? The Catholics, we weren't big on Bible reading in school in the Catholicism, but we have the gist of the story.
Let's talk about this because, and I wrote about this this morning, the brutality is the point. There is this new fetish for extrajudicial killings.
They're vying with one another. How can we have more executions? But also, I'm from Wisconsin.
Kyle Rittenhouse has become, yeah, you're gay? Really? Have I not mentioned that yet? Sarah has a focus group? I don't know. We keep these things to ourselves.
We don't actually say these things. So yeah, I'm from Wisconsin.
And Kyle Rittenhouse kills two people in Kenosha, in Mequon, Wisconsin. Kyle Rittenhouse kills two people and has become a MAGA icon.
You have a man who shot and killed a Black Lives Matter protester in Texas. The governor of Texas is now saying that he is going to pardon him.
And, of course, now we have every Republican candidate for president, the entire right-wing media ecosystem, basically saying this was a good thing that this man was choked to death in the subway yeah tim miller well there's a lot of places to go there and for starters part of this is just this we're in this tribal you know where you project the worst onto the other like folks aren't willing to come to new york and i've been on the subway all day in and out today and i i know that it's true i know that big cities everywhere i just left oakland san francisco new orleans has its problems like crime is an issue places like this notion that that the subway is so unsafe and like it's so threatening everywhere like this needs to happen because the police are in these democratic blue cities are falling down on their job it's just all based on this fantasy right like like every place has their issues I am very supportive of making sure. Crime is a fantasy?

Well, it's certainly a fantasy that the subway in New York is so dangerous that you need vigilantes to choke people out. If you look at the numbers, New York City is safer than Florida.
On a percent. Now,

could it be safer yet?

Sure.

Could it be safer yet?

Sure.

Was it safer

before the pandemic

than it is now?

Yes.

Is it safer now

than it was

during the 1980s?

Yeah.

You know,

it's all relative, right?

But so some of this stuff

is maybe not a fantasy,

but a hallucination

of you want it to be

what it is in your imagination

rather than what it is

in reality. I felt completely safe as a gay man in pearls on the New York subway today.
Nobody threatened me. The Rittenhouse element is another thing that's worth getting into, though, right? Which is, you know, we are now valorizing these people, right? And it would be one thing if the guy you know you can imagine a

hypothetical alternate situation we don't know all the details right where jordan neely was

fucked up and uh maybe getting in front of a woman's face and the guy comes over and like

holds him and it's like hey like we're gonna get off the next you know what i mean you can imagine

a situation that'd be worth valorizing right that wasn't this like he killed an unarmed person this

is the point disorderly conduct you don't need to tolerate it. It's not a death penalty offense.
It is not a death penalty, right? You do not administer the death penalty for disorderly conduct. Right.
That seems to be a pretty clear line. Yeah.
So, the other thing here which just shows, and obviously, oh, there's hypocrisy in the building with Republicans. Okay, you get it.
But I think you get into the political vulnerability side of this thing when normal people look at Kyle Rittenhouse and you're like, that is bad. It is not good to have a high school kid driving into a city with weapons.
It's not good to attack someone on the subway and choke them to death. And when you're like, oh, I'm valorizing them, I think that

separates you away from mainstream opinion.

And this was the core complaint of

Kamala Harris, right? After what was happening

in Kenosha,

when Kamala Harris was paying bail for

some of the people that were

criminalized in Wisconsin.

That was actually

not a smart political move from Kamala Harris.

That was a mistake.

We cannot be celebrating people that are creating this kind of disorder. And that was a uniform opinion among the Republicans.
But now it's like a white person does it on the subway, a white person does it on the streets, and it's like, okay, we can valorize them. It's not hard to see between the lines.
Yeah, this requires a longer discussion, including the failure of the mental health system to deal with Mr. Neely.
I mean, he was... Because Republicans are big on funding mental health systems.
By the way, this is actually an interesting issue because that's become the go-to thing about guns, right? Is that every time there's a mass shooting, it's the mental health thing. And fine, let's do that.
But it's one governor after another that is slashed funding for mental health and they don't get called on it. I mean, it is bizarre.
Speaking of other strange things that are happening, and we're going to get to Donald Trump in just a moment. Who? And I think, you know, because we do talk about it so much, every once in a while there'll be, you know, somebody will ask a question that implies that when and if he ever leaves the scene, how long does it take for things to go back to normal? And we have some bad news for you on that, because the dysfunction of the Republican Party was a pre-existing condition that he exacerbated, and it will stay afterwards.
But there's something also in the culture of, and this goes to what we're talking about the vigilantism that if you convince enough people

that this kind of behavior is acceptable and is valorized but also that the world is a really really scary place then you have things like young black teenager goes to the wrong house rings the doorbell man with a gun shoots and kills him because there are scary people out there and I am simply defending my castle.

And you can see the uptick in the destruction. kills him because there are scary people out there.
And I am simply defending my castle.

And you can see the uptick in the distrust.

And what a toxic stew of so many guns

and then convincing people.

And I come from a state, as I mentioned.

Minnesota?

Where lots of people have guns,

but used to really emphasize,

and this is the thing I think people need to understand,

is that what percentage of gun owners actually believe in gun safety and being responsible. But what's happening now is that they're kind of being shoved aside by the, let's have constitutional carry.
Do you know what constitutional carry is? That in the state of Florida, you can carry a concealed weapon, not only without a permit, but without any background check and without any training about how to use the thing. And honestly, it feels like five minutes ago, if you had a room full of gun owners and said, do you think this is a good idea? They would have said that it's nuts, completely insane.
And yet here we are. It's a hobby horse.
I'm glad you brought this up. I didn't know this was on our list today.
Did you, have you, anybody see the J.J. Reddick rant about John Morant recently? I'm going to do a little, yeah, I'm going to do a little basketball crossover.
But it's a cross-cultural issue, right? So John Morant is a basketball player for the Memphis Grizzlies, who's going to be suspended because he was flashing a gun on Instagram, black guy.

And JJ Reddick's on ESPN going,

I'm upset that John

is going to be punished for this

when there's no

equivalent punishment that happens

when guys are carrying

AR-15s around.

You have the governor of Texas.

We're doing constitutional carry in Florida.

In Tennessee, where John is in Memphis,

the governor is supporting all this pro-gun stuff. They're doing the Christmas cards with the guns that you've written about.
My issue with his rant was that like, everyone needs to stop excusing the people on their own sides on this. Like this has gotten completely out of control.
It's out of control, obviously in conservative environments, but it's out of control, certainly in city environments among, you know, younger people of color in particular. It's like, it's cool to have a gun.
It's not cool to have a handgun. It's not cool to have an AR-15.
It's not cool to have a Christmas card with guns in it. It's not, it fucking sucks.
Like, it doesn't make you a bigger man to have a fucking hand penis, okay? It just doesn't. It doesn't.
And not enough people are out there saying that, right? Like across the board. And like, it is, it's what we really need to address because as I've written about in many situations, it's like when you're in a society where everyone has decided that I should carry, right? And when there's a lot of inter-societal tension, then there's no laws that are going to fix this, right? I mean, Jared Polis in Colorado is doing a great job.
Like they've done a lot of like really meaningful reforms, but it's, it's like, as long as everybody's carrying around these guns, you know, like you can only do so much, right? Like there's a cultural rot here that needs to be addressed. And I feel like that there is a empty set of people that are really willing to call out across the board like it's time to reassess this obviously there's nobody on the right that's doing it and i think there's a tremendous opportunity for that i mean i see you know as you know if you ever listen to the podcast i hate talking about these because i'm so frustrated i i mean honestly uh this whole question of the mass shooting after newtown just broke me i mean just listening to this doom loop of you know stupid discussion and i do keep waiting for the thought you know what the problem being a thought leader is you have to think and then you have to lead and i know are you a thought leader are you self-identifying as a thought leader? I strive to be one.

Okay, got it.

Or at least I play one on a podcast.

Okay, got it.

And so I'm waiting for the 80% of gun-owning normies

to be the ones to say,

that is complete bullshit that you are,

you know, the day after a school shooting

that you have an AR-15 lapel pin.

Yeah, fuck you. Okay, yeah, you okay yeah so all right speaking of of of the depths of of crazy out there because it's very easy you know to talk about marjorie taylor green by the way so a political party that thinks of marjorie taylor green as a leader is blank ted Ted Miller.
I mean, doing pretty well, unfortunately. No, I mean, it's just so obvious.
I mean, it's out of its freaking mind. She's the dominant figure.
It's crazy. I mean, it's an indication when you say, well, what's happened to the Republican Party? Look, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who should not, you know, have any entree to civilization at all, is in this position.
But, which brings me, Tim, to Elon Musk. Oh, my pal.
I'm so happy about this one. I mean, have you been following what the world's richest man has been doing? Because sometimes people open their mouths and they expose things.
Did you guys watch the CNBC interview with Elon Musk? That poor guy that had to do the interview,

I don't know, I'm not a CNBC watcher.

My stock portfolio is not that great.

I should be watching it more.

Unfortunately, I'm spending the time listening

to Steve Bannon and Candace Owens' podcast

so I can keep you guys posted on what's happening out there.

He's a man.

So I'm not doing that and my finances are suffering.

So I don't know who the reporter was.

David Faber, thank you. And David asked him about, Elon, about how, you know, he was attacking Bellingcat, which is, you know, an investigative journalism outfit.
And he said they do science. And essentially, Bellingcat reported that the killer in Texas.
The latest killer as of Thursday night, because we don't know if there'll be another one. Okay, I'm sorry.
By the time this podcast airs tomorrow. Yeah, Bellincat reported this guy was essentially a white nationalist.
He's Hispanic, but— He's a Nazi. Yeah, he had white nationalist ideation.
He had a swastika tattoo. Swastika.
Yeah, and Musk is saying that this is a psyop, that this isn't true, that his posts were on the Russian site, and the CNBC reporter was so ill-equipped to respond to him that he wasn't able to be like, the guy had a fucking Nazi tattoo. Exactly.
Like, are we going to split hairs here, Elon? Like, you know. We just don't know.
Yeah, I can get you a toe with paint on it. I mean, I was listening to a clip today where he was explaining being a billionaire how immoral it was that some people work from home among many of his other don't even ask the thing for me that gets it and today he was doing this thing where he tweeted in response to something I deleted from the way back machine, the internet archive he tweets, he's like, well, it's because Taylor Lorenz, who's a liberal reporter, like Taylor Lorenz's uncle runs the Wayback Machine, which is like not true.
Like the founder of the Wayback Machine replied and he's like, I am the founder of the Wayback Machine and I'm not related to Taylor Lorenz. And he doesn't correct himself.
So it's like, this guy isn't a white nationalist. Paul Pelosi got attacked because he had a gay lover, as reported by the site that said, Hillary Clinton has a body double and is an alien.
And he's out there sending all this stuff while at the same time trying to argue that I want Twitter to be the place where people get real news, right? The journalists are the problem and Twitter is the place you get real news. But it's like, dude, you are the owner of the site and you keep doing all these just asking questions, like tweets about total lies.
And it'd be akin to have A.G. Sulzberger like added a column on Friday to the front page of the New York Times.
He's like, just asking questions. Did Bush do 9-11? Everybody would be like, this is insane.

This is insane.

And he's out there doing this on what is supposed to be an information platform,

and yet there is no accountability from the Elon cult world,

like from the Barry Weiss and all these people.

There's nobody that's like, this guy is spreading fucking bullshit left and right.

But what about the investing community?

I mean, if I have a lot of Tesla stock and everything, I have to be really nervous about this. Yeah, George Soros pulled out, you know, of investing for Tesla.
Yeah, right. Yeah, you know.
I mean, come on. Where are you going with that? Yeah, I'm not.
You go. Where do you think they're going with that? That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, but it was three days after that that he's tweeting that George Royce is an evil person. I don't have the tweet in front of me, but it's just sick.
And he is engaging with the worst contrarian misinformation far-right MAGA people on the site and elevating them. But to just stress this, though, it's not just your normal conspiracy crazies.
If there's a continuum, Elon Musk is way over here. The fact that he is trying to provide disinformation about a neo-Nazi, I mean, there's some brain worms here.
Do you have any insight into that? I can't blame that on the Viagra whiskey poisoning. No, I think he's been seriously red-pilled.
And this is the concerning thing. And that has real impact on our culture.
It does. This is a concerning thing.
Tying this back to our DeSantis conversation, there are a lot of people out there who are casuals. They're not coming on a Thursday night to go to a nerdy podcast event at the SimFun space.
We appreciate you who are're not casuals. But there are a lot of casuals out there, okay? And they look at the DeSantis stuff, and they're like, you're kind of weird.
But they like Elon Musk, right? Like Walter Isaacson, who I respect, is doing a bio on him. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.
But it's like, he did the SpaceX thing. He did the Tesla.
I like him for that reason. He's a troll.
He's funny. I'm not into politics.
And so this is why this is so dangerous, right? Like this is a very powerful, very influential person that is sending those casuals down this dark, like white nationalist adjacent, maybe not adjacent place. And this has been the scariest thing to watch is the normalization and the mainstreaming of things that have always been out there but were on the dark edges.
On the fringe. And really, really fringe.
And the role that people with the microphones played in all of that. I mean, we can focus on the actual 4chan people, but when it is the Elon Musk, or even worse, at least historically, Tucker Carlson, every single night, would come on the air and would ask questions about the Great Replacement Theory.
Five minutes before this, the only people who talked about the Great Replacement Theory were neo-Nazis. And suddenly it's being beamed to millions of people.
Now, I would love to be able to tell you that that's why Rupert Murdoch ended up firing him. But, you know love to say that it was the disinformation the lying about the vaccines lying about the election uh the fact that he is vladimir putin's bitch um or or the overt racism but the reality is probably something else so at some point though doesn't elon musk need to like worry something like a Dominion lawsuit? Not against Twitter, but against himself.
If he is sitting there saying these things, wait, we do have a little bit of evidence that maybe defaming people, lying about them on the air might not work out well for you. Well, two thoughts on this.
One, I do think he's going to lose, I don't know, probably $30 or $40 billion. He made one of the worst financial decisions ever on Twitter.
But he was the richest man in the world. I think he's the third richest now or something.
So he can afford to lose $30 billion. I wish that I was in that situation.
I'm not. And he basically admitted that on CNBC.
He said, I'm going to say what the fuck I want if we lose money, whatever. And I do think that it's going to harm Tesla.
I don't really care that much about Elon's financial situation. The thing that I do care about, to go back to your earlier point, is I wrote in the book, I did a book, I don't know if you guys knew that, about Alyssa Farah's dad, who founded World Net Daily, right? So Joe Farah.
And World Net Daily has been this thing that's been around for a while, right? This is what you describe as the fever swamps. You know, like the people down in the basement, that was World Net Daily.
They were all the news that's fit to print of the fever swamps. Before this, yes, right.
Before this, right? And it was a problem, and people that went and sought that out could find it.

But it was still kind of over there.

And now Elon is elevating the modern-day world,

not dailies of the world, to the people who don't really follow the news that much.

And they just get a little bit of the news, and I think that is why it's such a dangerous situation. Okay.
So let's talk about the hometown hero here. I understand...
Eric Adams? I understand that... Oh, we got two Eric Adams fans in the crowd.
This is no longer... Bipartisanship.
This is no longer Donald Trump's hometown. This is true, right? But he has been spending some quality time here lately.
So let's talk about that. He has been indicted on, like, what, three dozen charges for paying, you know, hush money to a porn star? It feels good to come to New York and not be perplocked.
Yeah, I know. Doesn't it? It's like, ah, free man.
And of course, we had the lawsuit in which he was found to have sexually assaulted a woman. I wrote a piece basically saying, and I'm still slightly obsessed about this, that there is literally no other area of American life where someone could be indicted or sexually assault someone and remain the CEO of a company, on the board of directors of a company, the coach of a professional team, the owner of a team.
There is nothing. You could not get a job at Burger King, being the manager of Burger King, with Donald Trump's record.
And yet, and we continue to talk about this and will for a long time donald trump has been held accountable here or is in the process but his poll numbers have gone up since he was perp walked and even since he lost that jury verdict to eugene carroll his poll numbers have gone up and his lock on the republican party has been stronger all grabs that a ball grab? What is that hand gesture? When you're a podcast host, you can do it. They let you do it.
They let you do any of that. Squeeze on the ball.
Ball torture. There was a little bit of a delay there.
Sorry about that. So let's talk about this because, and again, you and I have had hundreds of conversations.
We don't usually do this when we see each other. See, we don't see each other.
I'm not used to the hand gestures. The Republicans have had so many opportunities to take an off-ramp after he lost, after he was impeached, all of the times.
And I think that people like Rhonda Sanders and Glenn Youngkin have been sitting back waiting, okay, he's going to get indicted, you know, and then we're going to be able to move in and everything. He's indicted, he becomes stronger.
So you wrote a whole book about this, but it is worth continuing to discuss. Why is the Republican Party incapable of quitting this guy? Why can they not take the off ramp? Help us understand the psychology.
Well, I'm going to answer the question, but I just want to start really quick with a little bit of happiness. Please.
Which is his general election poll numbers haven't gone up, and he has scared not as many people as we all would wish, but like quite a few people, present company included, away from the Republican Party. And there's a reason why the Republican Party did a lot shittier in 2022 than they should have done.
And it's mostly him and a little bit of the Supreme Court. He can win, though.
Yeah, he could. He could, sure, sure, sure.
But I'm just saying that since all the stuff you laid out, Bragg and E. Jean Carroll, et cetera, and we could go down the whole list, it's only improved his numbers vis-a-vis DeSantis in the primary and that's a discreet animal and so why can these guys not get rid of him I think the real answer is that there are two groups of people one is there are the voters the people and they wanted this they wanted this all around and it's something I grappled with in the book in a real way, which is I do wonder if you could rewrite history, could the party elites have done a better job of trying to appeal to what those people really wanted, which was not globalism, which was not.
We could go down all the issues. Trump did it, and he was the first one to do it, and they have this cultish attraction to him now.

And Ron DeSantis, no matter how hard he tries,

no matter how mean he is to trans people,

no matter what he does,

he still smells like a fucking neocon.

He still smells like 2002, you know, Karl Rove.

And so Trump doesn't.

So he has that hold over them because of that.

The rest of the folks, like, why is Chris Rosavita and my old colleague Susie Wiles, like, why are they helping him? Story's old as time. Thirst for power.
You wrote about this, and I think the image that you had was that the Republican elites are not waiting to be defeated by Donald Trump. They were basically ballgagging themselves in the basement.
Was that you, Tim? Well, it was me. That evocative metaphor was brought up because my friend Jonathan Martin wrote this story, and I love Jay Martin, and he's the best chronicler, because they all still talk to him.
He's the best chronicler of, like, what does the Republican consulting class think? And he's doing an interview. He did a column recently where one of the Republican consultants, who he said was very prominent, so I take him at his word, said that he's like, you know, the numbers that we're looking at, it feels like it's going to be Trump again, and we're just going to have to go back down in the basement and ride this out.
And that is what led me to wonder, where do you think you've been the last seven years? You've been in the basement the whole fucking time, bro. He has you ball gag down there.
And that is the deal. The anti, to use a poker term, is to be on board with it.
And they've gotten so used to it and so comfortable with it that in spite of everything that's happened, in spite of

the deaths of the Capitol, like they're still gonna, they're still gonna ride it out. You broke it down

in like 12 different ways of appeasing Donald Trump. I mean, you have the transactionalists,

you have the professionals, you have the quasi true believers. It continues to be a remarkable

thing. And I know that, you know, clearly what you're seeing is that this is what the base wants.

Fox News knows what their audience wants. The politicians think they know what the base wants.
And yet this is the question that nags at me and we'll never know the answer. If you did have some of the leaders of the party at that time, the pre-Trump Republican Party, if they had stood up and said, look, this is nuts, this is crazy.
And some of them did, and they got rolled over. But there is that failure because, you know, and I'm so sick of this, the number of Republicans that we know that will say in private, well, yeah, we know this, we listen to the bulwark, but if I did this, I would lose my primary.
And I think people need to understand that when we talk about tribal politics, it's not just this is people's, their communities the clubs they belong to, their co-workers their family members and you either belong or you don't belong and one other thing that Tim and I have experienced is that feeling of excommunication where it's It feels great actually I don't know if you've ever been excommunicated for anything, but it feels nice.

I don't disagree, but I mean, understand when you lose all of your professional associates,

but also many friends, people you've known for years.

And I have to say, one of the big shocks for us has been people we've known for 20 years.

And I hear you just describe it just last week.

You said, I can't believe I saw that person doing this sort of thing. And it continues to be a shock.

And so there is that alienation.

But you're also right.

There is also a liberation.

Thank you. week you said, I can't believe I saw that person doing this sort of thing.
And it continues to be a shock. And so there is that alienation.
But you're also right, there is also a liberation. When you step out and realize how much of our politics is that if you're on team A, you must agree with everything that team A does.
If you're on team B, you must defend everything that team B does. That after a while, that becomes a habit.
But when you step step outside it is incredibly liberating and incredibly refreshing and i think that that's what we've tried to do with the bulwark i think that's what what has bonded us together is that we're all people that kind of stepped out of the cave and looked around and said hey this is actually kind of nice out here it does feel Nice. Cessna.
Thank you all for coming. All right, one last.
Just really quick on this, though. Spoiler alert.
The book ends with the editor, the publisher, who I just met with earlier. I don't have a good idea for a second book, so if any of you guys have a good idea, please let me know.
But I just met with him. He wanted me to do a positive end.
Like, here's how we get out of get out of this and and book actually ends with you know it looks like this road that we're on it goes on forever and and and the reason why is because the people that made those decisions made those rationalizations like those rationalizations are still operative just because ashley babbitt's dead or just because you know some cops got it likeizations, whatever they were, the different categories, whatever they were, they're still operative. And for us, we just keep getting freer and freer because everything that happens proves us more and more right, which is really nice.
And every once in a while, we'll pull over one or two more people if I cross the line, but the rest of their rationalizations continue as such. And I think that is why in one of the books I was reading recently, it was this analogy of the devil.
And it's like when you make the deal with the devil, the devil just keeps raising the ante. He doesn't let you off the hook.
And the ante's going to keep getting raised. That's right.
And I think that they've lived through that. And by the way, we agree with you that it goes on and on.
Now, I was not told there would be arithmetic tonight. So how many years ago was 1968? Oh, God, don't try to age us.
Okay. Now, think about the impact, 55 years.
Think about the impact that the politics of 1968 had on the decades that came after, how we're still kind of living in the hangover of what happened in 1968. And if you realize that, you think 55 years from now, I'm sorry.
Because I think there are a lot of people that are coming into politics now. They're looking around.
They're looking at Elon Musk's Twitter. So how much older are you than me? I'm trying to figure out how long, 55 years from now it's going to be.
They see Marjorie Taylor Greene, and they go, that's what a politician is supposed to do. So Tim, one last time, okay? We got to have a bonding thing here? Because I have one more tune for you.
It's not a show tune, but Tim will get this one, okay? system last one New York I love you oh we do like this one thank you all so much we love Billie Eish. You've been listening to last night's live event in New York City.

Thank you all for listening to this weekend's Bulwark podcast.

I'm Charlie Seitz.

We will be back on Monday in our regular venue,