196 Comments
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Daniel Spitler's avatar

Live is fun, but I do start checking my phone around noon anticipating my weekly dose of the Next Level. Not sure if I can wait until the evening.

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Stephen Crotts's avatar

Cletus ver Ivermectin! So good!

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Stephen Crotts's avatar

This whole thing is a dog and pony show. Even the US bombing was performative.

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Shana's avatar

Timmy 2028

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Sam Atkinson's avatar

The USA has nuclear power plants as terror targets.

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Elliott Rosengarten's avatar

What I would like to see is that after the midterms, the senate 50-50. And Lee Corso comes out of retirement and says, “not so fast, my friend”, and introduces Lisa Murkowski as the Democrat’s 51st member.

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Patricia McKeown's avatar

This show is why I am a supporter of the Bulwark.

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Bridget Grady's avatar

Hoping Cuomo loses!

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Aviva Patt's avatar

I wonder how much of the support for Mamdani is from people who are choosing him because they feel he is the strongest contender and they don't understand that the ranked-choice voting system allows them to choose the person they like best without "throwing away" their vote. Adrienne Adams and Brad Lander are both well-qualified and progressive, without the Mamdani baggage.

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Pete Mcaveney's avatar

Tim, interview JEFFREY LEWIS. This guy: https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/people/jeffrey-lewis , a.k.a. the guy from https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/

You're know you are caught in an epistemic loop when podcasters you follow interview other podcasters you follow, but this is the guy with the specialist knowledge you need right now. Besides, George Conway is reposting the heck out of him so he's already in the club.

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Sean's avatar

Sarah - I don’t think they meant to lie about WMD. They had bad intelligence.

OR - Did Cheney and Rumsfeld cherry pick certain bits of info to convince a president who already wanted to attack Iraq?? That’s what I think happened. This is where Sarah’s naivety about republicans is a weakness. You still hold conservative values, fine, nothing wrong with that. But if you truly believed that the Bush II White House was duped into attacking Iraq then you need to check all the facts. Not swallow the neo-con fantasy.

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Shana's avatar

That one stopped me in my tracks, too. Been a long time since somebody was like "yeah, Cheney and Rove were good dudes." :) You can take the girl out of the GOP, but....

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Elliott Rosengarten's avatar

Follow the money. Cheney. Halliburton.

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Bruce Lawrence's avatar

At the time, everyone believed Saddam had chemical weapons. He had actually used chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran. There was no reason at the time to believe he had unilaterally disarmed himself of those chemical weapons, even though that now appears to have been the case. And he did his best to make his neighbors think he still had those chemical weapons, for obvious reasons.

WMDs might have been a stupid pretext for invasion, but the pretext itself was not a lie, and it took no convincing since everyone already believed it.

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Pete Mcaveney's avatar

Not everyone. I knew.

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Claiming Equality's avatar

Remember Willie Wonka? Remember the kid obsessed with the TV—his name was Mike Teavee. He was shrunk to fit in a TV. That’s who Trump reminds me of with his TV obsession.

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Reldas's avatar

How did I miss this??

I would really like to thank the girls in my Southern Baptist youth group who bullied the fuck out of me in middle school. Y'all and my narc father kept me out of church entirely so I never became a Christian nationalist.

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Richard Courtney's avatar

I think you were smart enough to figure that out even if they happened to be nice.

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Richard Campbell's avatar

Regarding WMD’s in Iraq. “I don’t think they intended to lie.” Sarah, that’s the funniest joke you will ever tell on any Bulwark podcast. You WERE joking, right?

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Bruce Lawrence's avatar

It wasn't a joke, and I think you know that, troll. At the time, everyone believed Saddam had chemical weapons. He had actually used chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran. There was no reason at the time to believe he had unilaterally disarmed himself of those chemical weapons, even though that now appears to have been the case. And he did his best to make his neighbors think he still had those chemical weapons, for obvious reasons.

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Shana's avatar

Whoa, whoa. We still do the "presumption of regularity" thing here, dude. Civility and assuming good intent.

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Richard Campbell's avatar

I’m not going to address your fucking argument because you called me a troll. I’m a paid subscriber to The Bulwark, and listen to Tim, Next Level, Secret Podcast, and admire all of them deeply. I do very occasionally disagree. Of course I knew it wasn’t a joke! I thought that was fairly obvious. And I stated my opinion in that way because I disagreed with Sarah, but respect her on so many other matters so I kept it short

and light. Like her, I’m not re-litigating W.’s war now. If I was a troll I would have written something far more scathing. And if I disagreed vehemently with you about something I wouldn’t call you a troll. Because I know you too, are a paid subscriber supporting their work.

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Bruce Lawrence's avatar

So, you're going to pretend that you actually thought Sarah was joking? I'm sorry, but that is trolling.

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Shana's avatar

Did a double take when I heard that, too, and said "oh, you've GOT to be kidding. Who thinks that?!?" :)

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Mill128's avatar

The Bush administration did not sell the war to the American people over chemical weapons. They sold it over nuclear weapons and used the 911 attacks to scare the shit out of everyone when they had no idea if Saddam had them or not. In fact, there were plenty of people telling Bush and Co. that he didn't have nukes but those people were ignored.

Cheney wanted a war and that's what we got.

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Parrhizzia's avatar

...

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