BONUS EPISODE: The Symmetry Between Zelensky’s Visit and the Jan 6 Report

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I am JVL sitting in for Charlie Sykes. It is Wednesday, December twenty first, the winter solstice. I’m joined by Bill Crystal.

And, Bill, there’s so much good news today. But the best news is that tomorrow, the day start getting a little bit longer. I thought JBL you being JBL that you would

say the best news is today is the shortest day of the year. So he had the most darkness. Then we could always say John McDonough, John McDonough, and his

favorite.

Quotation was that, you know, it’s always darkness before it goes pitch black. Right? It’s always darkness before it goes pitch black with you. For some reason, you just described a huchy band. It was like a weird a comic riff he had that was very, very fun to hear about the way he would good timing, say it’s always darkest before he goes pitch black that but he claims somehow that was a g minute or mouthpiece tongue.

I can’t remember. Used to say this was kind of a bizarre description, I would say, to them. But anyway, it’s good to be with you. And I I am looking forward to longer days. Head though, I think it’s gonna get super

freezing here in a couple of days. Up here in New York City, it’s already quite cold. This week is tradition a dead’s news week and yet we are somehow in a vortex of twenty four hours of just tremendous amounts of real and very important news. We have the passing of the omnibus bill. We have the release of the president’s tax returns.

We have the criminal referrals. We from the January six committee, we have the January six committee final report, and then we have Volodymyr Zelensky arriving in America to meet with Joe Biden and then address a joint session of Congress all within about thirty six hours of one another. So It is unclear to me how much any of America will pay attention to this as people are running around doing Hanukkah celebrations and finishing their last minute shopping and beginning their travel plans because I know some people are already beginning to travel for the holidays. Let’s start with the January six to eight report. That’s the time we’re sitting down to take this.

I have read bits and pieces of the executive summary. It is pretty impressive. I would say, and the thing which struck me most in it is that it begins by quoting a whole bunch of the foot soldiers the people who were arrested and convicted for their actions on January sixth. And these are people who say, a patriot and I was told by the president of the United States that an election had been stolen and he said we should come to Washington to fight it. And now it turns out I was just being lied to the whole time.

I’m paraphrasing. But this is what you know, like a dozen of these people are quoted as saying in interviews in the opening paragraphs of the report. The idea that these people can have their lives, disrupted, and many of them wind up in jail, lose jobs, have rifts with family members. And yet, the president who did all of this could face no consequences and even worse, the members of the Republican Party who knew better but who stood to the side and either actively abetted it or refused to pass any judgment at all, refused to say anything. Right?

He would refuse to say that Joe Biden was president. Did there be no consequences for any of them?

This strikes me as deeply unfair. Yeah. And I think that’s why they began to report that way to suggest that they were recommending that the president be prosecuted as the so many hundreds of those who followed his guidance is what they took to be his wishes, correct me took to be his wishes as they have been. And I think that’s why they began the report that way. And I I think you drew the right conclusion, and that’s the conclusion they hope the special council draws, and I think they expect them to do a little more importantly, if they hope the American people draw.

You know, it’s interesting. I I was on a call last night with a bunch of sort of lawyers who who filed this stuff very closely in the January sixth and the report, the legal situation. And one of them was sort of complaining and understandably that g was so let’s get used to just broken. Is this gonna kind of step out in the January six zero four, and it’s a further coverage of the executive summary from from Monday. But I actually think there’s a certain just to begin with that for a second a certain I don’t know.

Poetic symmetry or appropriateness to Zielinski and the January sixth of four sort of I mean, they are sort of it’s not the same fight, but the the fight of Ukraine against Putin and the fight here against Trump. Our cousins with one another. Aren’t they a fight for for democracy and for the world of law and for decency and without comparing the situation to what’s happening with Ukraine, obviously. But still, it’s I I sort of feel that they go together in OA. So I tried to make that point that didn’t really console the lawyers who wanted one hundred percent attention to every detail of the reward, but and the federal referrals, but I I guess I think that’s the case.

So the executive summary was Monday, obviously, and we’ve looked at that. And that really was an attempt to pretty narrowly and, I guess, you say, strictly almost totally compellingly build the criminal case against the president and against his top. Associates that I a couple of people I know who read it or skim through it, said, it doesn’t really get to the broader issues. But those are addressed in the report, the full report, thousand pages, I think it is almost. That comes out today.

I haven’t seen it yet. I’ve heard some about what’s in it. There are a couple of chapters that really get to the point you just raised. JBL, which is the kind of the relationship of Trump and the rioters, the way it was put to me by one person who’s who had been briefed on it also. Was this kind of a a call and response relationship between Trump and the alt right, the insurrectionists and extremist who did what he wanted them to do, and that Trump knew that was happening.

And that Trump had worked on that for weeks and months, and really, you could argue from the beginning of his presidency. Beginning of his campaign. And people like Roger Stone and Steve Madden had really worked on that, you know, in spades, and had been in touch with Trump. Bannon is one of the people who talks to Trump on the fifth and the sixth and the stone is obviously remained at that point very close to Trump, both imparted by Trump. Still very much involved with the actual crowdboys and the other leaders of the assault.

So one thing I think the broader report does that that summary doesn’t really quite get to because it’s such a legal docu quasi legal document is the as I say, that got a close relationship of Trump and the extremists who who actually carried out the interaction and the way in which that was purposeful on Trump’s part and on the part of Trump’s associates, and that remains the case. Right? The violence, the craziness, the ratchet rounds, like it’s never been incidental. To Trump’s political efforts. The way it has been to some others, you could say, well, there’s some people, the fringes.

But, I mean, come on. That’s not the heart of it. This is the heart of it, and they did what Trump wanted them to do. I

mean, Trumpism has always felt like nineteen thirties European politics. Right? But a very literally bare knuckles kind of thing, which encourages street

fighting and is about power, right, and exertion. So the students of authoritarianism were pointed out that if you look at the twenties and thirties especially, those movements very self consciously had a parliamentary wing as it were and an extra parliamentary or quasi military wing — Yes. — and they worked sometimes in just parallel to each other, sometimes an implicit kind of coordination, kind of call and response. You might say coordination with each other. And sometimes it’s very direct, obviously, total.

Coordination with each other. And and that is something that, thank God, we’ve mostly been spared in the US. And that’s just one of several ways really at which Trumpism not the twenties and thirties. It’s not Europe. All that has to be stipulated, but it does bear a certain kinship to to those movements.

So

Bill, the obvious parallel here is the Mueller investigation report. And I can’t tell you how different this feels from that. And it’s because I think, in large part, because the Mueller investigation I mean, lots of factors, but the more investigation was very close phase. And the idea was that, you know, we would find out everything when we found it out. And the January sixth committee has played their hand almost like open face, you know?

And everybody has seen their cards the whole time. They relied almost entirely on Republican witnesses and the witnesses of people in and around the Trump administration itself. There aren’t going to be a ton of surprises, I don’t think, and much of the news we know and we will learn more details of it. But the committee has already shown us the evidence in broad brushes of what they have. And so I I wonder as a political document versus a historic document, which side of that continuum do

you think this is likely to be more like? I just think having those public hearings on televised hearings, having a public report directly should to the public, with some commentary by the committee members as opposed to Bill Barr getting to interpret it for three or four weeks before it becomes public. And the silence of the Mueller team was the other extreme I think it makes a big difference. I mean, there’s a reason we remember today the word to gate hearings. As decisive, maybe we underestimate almost how how important some of the executions were and stuff that happened sort of in the privacy or in the secrecy, you have grand jury chambers and so forth.

But is the reason congressional hearings have a certain drama and kind of are remembered in a way that the that, as I say, secret proceedings or reports that just emerge without having had any public predicate late for them or quite remember the McCarthy hearings or how does another Joe McCarthy of of Justin Wells. So the so yeah. Now I think this is a pretty big moment, and you do get a one two punch conceivably. That is you get the public hearings, the congressional, the the year along, building up of the evidence in public. And then you perhaps to get the prosecution as well.

So I think it’s very, very different from the Mueller situation.

This would be like John the Baptist, making way for the main event. Which would be the prosecution if we get it. And I’ve been very skeptical of the wisdom of prosecution for the last two years. I’ve really come around on that. And I think they’re all bad options.

But at this point, it strikes me that the least bad option is probably if the special counsel believes that there is compelling evidence that crimes are committed and believes that he has enough evidence to justify conviction that he should bring an indictment. That is where I am

too. I’ve had my you know, I I thought it was reasonable question to be debated a few months ago. I think now it’s just too much of a slap but most of the the notion that we’re all subject to the rule of law, not to bringing in a domino list that just facts and developments and exculpatory facts that we don’t know. Just thinking about your previous point, which I hadn’t think about the two impeachments. So those were public and were somewhat dramatic and I think had some hill effect.

But remember, no witnesses. Right? So we sort of have a continuum and be, I suppose, some political, some social scientists, or maybe student of mass communications would have to write a scholarly paper on this. We have to continue from the Mueller report nothing public, very long, and the complicated report dropped on people suddenly with the and the only preparation after being Bill Barr’s kind of distortion of it for two or three weeks before we get to see it. The impeachment, which is public, but but not with the drama of witnesses or putting faces to in a way what what had happened, but rather, you know, intelligent presentations by members of Congress, but still kind of giving speeches.

And then all the way to not all the way, but this is pretty far the other direction of real witnesses and real video and a real sense of learning new things and seeing the the players and seeing Bill Barr. I’m I’m stuck on the people I talked to, I don’t know what what you found in this, JV. Really talks to many Trumpists, but to people who were Trump sympathetic, Trump acquiescent, Trump excusing. I think Bill Barr made a big reference. I mean, of all of the different witnesses, and he was one they liked.

If you were a Wall Street Journal, National Review, Trump, acquiescent type, you know, Bill Barr was the kind of conservative who went along with Trump and but did great things for the country allegedly, but you could still respect him because he sort of quits, you know, two weeks before the end of the administration, he sort of denounced January sixth, and that was the kind of the guy you could hang your head on. And having borrowed not just, you know, on paper being reported, but video a bar saying what he said, and then the accounts of his deputies at the justice department that day of that meeting on January third, the that testifying. I think that that did have an effect on some. I mean, not a huge number. Let’s not hit ourselves, but I some of the kind of Trump equity asset types over to, oh my god, it’s worse than I realized.

I think

that’s probably right. His testimony probably made a little bit of a dent. It is important to remember that when this was starting, one of the the anti anti Trump position was that we shouldn’t do this because none of it matters. Mhmm. Right.

No. We we we already know everything and nobody cares and it won’t move the needle anymore. Mick Mulvaney even Mick Mulvaney was tweeting, whoa, if that’s the best they got, there’s not much there. And this was always a bad faith argument against it.

But it

has been revealed to have been a totally meritless argument. It turns out that this committee unearth a great amount of new information that it added to the public understanding of what happened in the period between the election day and January sixth. And it seems to have had a pretty fair impact on just public opinion in general. And it’s gonna be probably the best attempt at a historical record of it that the country is going to get. You know, it’s just one more instance in which all of those people were wrong, and I want nothing more for Christmas than for them to take their medicine in public.

I know I

won’t get it, but Yeah. Well, you won’t get that for Christmas, but that’s a it’s an important lesson in life. You don’t get everything you want for Christmas. You know, that’s the other thing, this was not the purpose of the hearings. I I wanna make clear, I don’t think this was the intention, but I do think what affected it also was we had these hearings.

And suddenly, I think you could say Suddenlink, in November of twenty twenty two, the Republicans who who lost, who underperformed the party as a whole, and the party still did pretty well better than a surge of my view, though, historically, a little worse than you’d expected a midterm. But the Republicans don’t have to perform with the election desires with the with the January sixth. The people who deny the seriousness of what had happened in January sixth or in those cases really embraced, you might say, January sixth. Part of it was their general extremism and part of it was the baggage of Trump. When you think about it for a second, what what was the new baggage of Trump?

He’d been so bad and so horrible and so many ways for four years. The baggage was January sixth, and his not only refusal to apologize for January sixth or say express regret, but his embrace as it were of. And defensive January sixth. So I think there too something happened in twenty twenty two to change that dynamic. And one of the main things that happened were the hearings.

And again, they repeated increasing difficulty of anyone of goodwill saying, well, that really wasn’t so bad. That was kind of unattended. It was just to write it, let’s not overdo it, the kind of buyer in your art, Rich Hume, you know, read accruing of the series’s of it. And then suddenly, Bill Barriss, recounting what he recounts, some of the lawyers, the the other senior people of justice, who were counting the meetings on December third. And we’re seeing the degree to which Trump purposely, you know, wants is is happy that the crowd is armed and wants them to go and watch on the capital and sit there for a hundred and eighty seven minutes in the White House enjoying this spectacle.

A little harder to take that rich human bar in York attitude. I mean, they probably are still taking that attitude, of course. But at least some people might have moved away from that. So

I wanna ask you a couple of questions that I just asked our colleagues to Miller and Sarah Longwell over on the next level podcast. Another excellent podcast from the Bulwark that you should all be listening to, very straight. Next level,

one might I most say. Right? It is it is next level. We’re here on the kind of regular level, the kind of lower level, to be honest, that JBL and I are just that I’m allowed to discuss when you get JBL, Tim and Sarah, I want to place it is truly next

level. My first question is, would it have made a difference in that period between the election in January sixth. If Trump had been doing his Trump thing, but the rest of the Republican Party had fused to go along with it. And if they had all said, you know, Joe Biden won the election. He’s the president-elect.

If they had just moved on as if this was the reality and refused to indulge him. I mean, I I remember Tim Scott. Being interviewed during that moment and asked who won the ocean? Tim Scott wouldn’t even say. He was like, well, that’s really up to, you know, that’s beyond life.

I’m just focused on my constituents in South Carolina. So the first first half of my question is, would it have made a difference if the Republican party had gotten off the bus in a concerted way at that point. So I I think it would have made some difference. I mean,

I I suppose one could say that the Trump call in response with the mob, with the Proud Boys, with bad and and through bad and and and and stowed, and, you know, a few elected officials who were true raval rise as an extremist, that would have happened anyway. So that would still have been, I mean, just doing this thought experiment. There might still have been a rally, a demonstration on the sixth. Trump would have said everything he would have said. He would have placed the calls on Ravensburger.

He would have tried to do what he tried to do with justice. But here I think the people who are most to blame probably for getting to the severity it got to. Well, there are many people who are to blame, but one group is Ted Cruz and Josh Holly. And the senators who and people sort of forgot and I myself forgotten this until a couple months ago, you know, who or I think it was right on January first, just about then. Signaled that they were going to support an effort to overturn the electors as senators, which meant that it was gonna be a real vote, it was just gonna be a few house members.

I think camera with the rules exactly now under the old law, which probably is about to be changed by the intellectual contact. But I think you needed one or two senators to object. But if it just been a few house members, You can write a scenario where and if if McCarthy hadn’t gone along, if you you can write a scenario with forty house members, seventy house members. Photo jack, maybe one or two centers, and that people know that that’s what’s gonna happen on January fifth. That for me is the key.

If if there’d been no sense a possibility that my god, well, this could really stop this count. We’ve got Ted Cruz and Josh wrongly, and it looks like maybe a majority of the house ready to go along. Let’s go for it. I think that really gave steam and energy to the assault on January sixth. So I think you you have a bad situation anyway.

Made so much worse by the kind of by the incitement of those people and and the and the knowledge ahead of time that they weren’t only that like Tim Scott, they weren’t willing to rebuke them. That would have helped even more, of course. But but that they were actually some people who were going to be kind of mirroring what they did outside the capital or turned out inside, but from the outside of the capital, they were going to mirror it on the floor of the Congress. I think that was very important. Look, a Phil Barr, here’s another thought experiment.

Phil Barr had resigned as he did on December twenty third with a letter, excoriating Trump. For seeing what was happening, how terribly dangerous it was. We all had to be resolved to make sure this election got properly, the transfer of power, was peaceful and proper and that Trump didn’t get away with any of this. I think that changes the dynamic in those two weeks between December twenty third, January sixth, and said he resigns. With a letter of fusively praising Trump.

It keeps totally quiet about what he has seen. We now know that he saw until January sixth itself, actually. So, yeah, I think those those those figures bear a fair amount of responsibility for turning what would have been a you know, unpleasant rally and conceivably with some, you know, I don’t wanna minimizes, I mean, some fakeuses on the fringe, so I just speak. Into what we saw. So the reason I ask this is because I’m projecting forward to the

possibility of a criminal prosecution against Trump. Again, I will ask you what I asked Tim and Sarah, what does the Republican establishment do in such a scenario, do they affirmatively defend Trump? I assume some will. Do they go into strategic silence mode where they say, well, I don’t really like to comment on ongoing legal proceedings or, yeah, I think that’s not my business. That’s between, you know, the justice department and or well, I, you know, I don’t really know.

I haven’t looked at this whole case. I do have some concerns about democrats politicizing justice department? Or do they say, yeah, you know what? You look at this stuff. It’s awfully troubling.

I mean, there are three essential pathways, right? One imagines that the incentives are lined up, so different parts of the party, you’re gonna have different be incentivized to each of those pathways to to different degrees and that you’re gonna wind up with a response that looks a lot like the

response to the election denialism stuff. Yeah. That’s interesting. We don’t obviously quite know what the

charges will look like when there’ll be even more evidence that’ll come out of the grand jury, which might be a bit public either. And in the, you know, charging documents or in very early in the legal process. And so there could be more weight even on the scale. But I guess your middle scenario seems the most likely for the most people, which is a kind of cowardly evasion but not a full scale rallying to Trump. I mean, you pointed anything in the newsletter that we haven’t seen as much rallying as people might have expected a few months ago, which again I think is due to the actual work of the January sixth committee and to the election results, actually.

And so maybe relatively smaller chunk of the party rallies to Trump or at least to the party who leads and the conservative movement lead. But what does A, smaller is not not nothing. Right? Smallers, maybe twenty percent or thirty percent is fine, not two percent. And the base is probably rallying more than the elite.

And to come back to a point u and Tim Biller in particular made many times such an important point that one just has to keep reminding what’s off of. We say elites and the bays are I do and, you know, the establishment and all. But there’s a huge mega establishment. There’s a ton of money and a ton of media and I would assume they rally to Trump. Yeah.

And I think they matter a lot, actually. I mean, we have a discussion with a bunch of roles and nice people, good people the other day a few weeks ago. And there was, can we get the mainstream media to, you know, do something about Fox and Tucker Carlson and all this social media stuff? And I was like, the fox is the I mean, is the mainstream media more powerful at this point than the Talk Across and and Fox related media? Is Elon Musk is running Twitter.

I mean, you know, people have just so underestimated the power. And this is in a way to their credit. They’re sort their seriousness, their thinking through it in their own kind of crazy way, literally how to grab various levers of power and exercise them. Their recruiting of wealthy people and so forth. I mean, the degree to which there is a big maga establishment.

Now, Tim Miller has a piece up in the bulwark, very interesting one reporting from that insane Charlie Kirk manifest in Phoenix, I think it was this past weekend. And Tucker seems to be a little bit not quite a hundred percent Trump, blah blah, a little more kind of implying that maybe we can get beyond that. And, I mean, I think it’s still very pernicious. As pernicious, as ever. But I I do wonder if there’ll be some attempt to liberate the broader semifascist movement, if I could put it that way, from Trump in particular as a flawed leader, and that might mean there’s a slight tendency to not put all their eggs in the defending Trump basket.

Having said that, is such support for Trump in the base, even if it’s thirty percent, not fifty, but it’s not, as I said before, it’s not two percent. That there’s gotta be a lot of incentives in that way of the party to to basically be pro Trump, maybe not quite as specifically as you would

have been a year ago. I mean, it seems to me like a lot of this will depend on what the other Republican candidates for president do and the invisible primary will be we will know a lot about the invisible primary by next July, right, seven, eight months from now. And the the operating theory seems to be that they hope maybe believe that Donald Trump’s voters will simply transfer to them at some point on their own. That Trump’s voters will come to their own conclusion that they should switch camps. Then migrate over to

to

Santos or Christina or whoever, and that they don’t have to be taken. And I guess it’s possible. It’s possible that some large chunk will. I don’t know that all of them will. I mean, it has looked like a personality called I didn’t often see people running around with flags, picturing Mitt Romney as a bare chested guy welding gatling cannons while riding rhinocerus, you know, like, in

the way

we needed with Trump. I you know, do you see what I’m sort of getting

out here? Like, you’re totally no. No. I think you’ve captured the, you know, the Santa’s Christine Elm, Youngkin, or whatever, you know, articulation very well, including Penn, said, like, Penn himself who she’s doing his book tour. So he’s he’s still alive.

You know, she can’t really convict Trump for a crime just because he listened to got some bad advice from lawyers, which is, like, so insane as if, you know, Trump was earnestly just trying to get good legal advice. We get a little misled. You know, Trump and, of course, is ignore all the lawyers who who tell them she can’t do this and and to the contrary is is very self consciousness, as I said earlier. Insight to get playing call and response with the crowd, the super extremist elements of the crowd. So I think you’ve nice to capture the what most of these candidates will try to get away with.

But as you say, it’s not as if this is where it’s important to think dynamically. Once you get a real campaign, they can, I guess, only talk to friendly media or to Fox and right wing media. But even then, they might get that question because they’ll be diverging points of view there about shouldn’t you be defending Trump more or not? And and on the side of they’re not fully breaking by any means from Trump, look at Mitch McConnell, who probably is if you I don’t know. If one is Trump called Nintendo’s anti Trump McConnell’s closer to anti Trump than almost everyone else we’ve mentioned so far.

Right? So we did all the candidates to speak of, all the serious candidates. So he’s at a five or six or something. And McConnell comment on the executive summary Monday was what it was something like I think you all know what I think about what happened then, and I I’m not gonna be commenting any further on it or something like that. So even he who’s been reelected, the Republican leader in the Senate, the elections are over.

He’s you might not already lead you for two more years the next time you And

he’s never running again. Right? I mean, the guy he’s at the age. He’s not gonna run again for the Senate again. He’s not running presumably for the Senate

again, and he and in terms of his leadership, he wouldn’t have to do that till after. The next election. So presumably, either well, whatever will have happened will have happened in November twenty four. But even he can’t just say, look, I am the Republican leader in the United States Senate. I have looked at this rather important document, and I’ve got to say that know, I mean, there’s so many things he could have said that would have been more appropriate honestly and more I mean, courageous is not even is even too high as standards.

It would be that courageous, but just just appropriate and fitting for someone in his position to say. And I would say the same about a whole bunch of other political leaders, governors, and other senators, and members of the house. How few of them have said that. That’s, again, they they still feel no obligation to the nation, to the country, to the public. To ex help explain a little bit or put their shoulder a little bit behind an honest attempt to explain what happened in January sixth.

So your your middle ground is the dominant ground. Pretend it didn’t happen. Pretend it was sort of unfortunate, but we can sort of don’t need to really come to grips with it. And just hope that everyone’s gonna sort of magically move on. And as you say, people, you know, a certain number of voters will be share that view.

And they and moving on, maybe decent short term tactical strategy for rod disasters and stuff like that. But where does it leave the Republican Party? It leaves the Republican Party utterly having failed to come to grips. With something that they one of the most important things that happened in the United

States in the last several years, that’s something with with which many of them were complicit. Yeah. Well, and this is, yeah, this is like a quintessential American thing. Right? Instead of coming to grips with our past or coming to grips with legacies, we just pay right over them.

Right? This is what I’m just trying to build on top of them. Let me throw an idea at you. Just to kick it around. I don’t know that I believe this.

But I’m I’m gonna propose it to you. The level of anti Zelensky and anti Ukrainian thinking within the Republican Party is a reasonable proxy for the sway of Trump over the party. So Zelensky is here in in Washington right now as we are taping. We have maga types on Twitter tweeting out disparaging names of him and Mitch McConnell. We have Don Junior calling him an ungrateful international welfare queen.

I think that if you sort of just stripped away all of the particulars of this, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the western support of Ukraine in response

would be

a ninety five to five winner among Republican office holders and Republican base voters basically at any time since the onset of the cold war. And it is only the particulars of Donald Trump, which have eaten away of that because Republican both office holders and voters were very pro Ukraine in the early days of the war, and then that number has shifted over time. And as the Republican base became more pro Putin and more pro Russia and more skeptical of Ukraine than Republican politicians started going where where their voters were. What do you think of this? Is this a cock mamey idea to use that as a proxy measure?

No, not at all. It’s a I think it’s it’s correct.

I mean, good news, I suppose, is which McConnell is still for Ukraine. That’s more than half the Republicans in the Senate, and I don’t know the numbers in the House, honestly, at this point, but let’s just maybe half. We’ll vote if they had a freestanding vote, which, I guess, they won’t be part of the omnibus, but they would probably vote from appropriate levels of aid to Ukraine. It would not say the thing, the really repulsive things that Donald Trump Junior and other such types of saying or Marjorie Taylor Green. But your instinct very early, I think you were more right than I was about this.

Where you said this, I think, why don’t you tell the Ukraine is one of the first to just go full anti Ukraine. And I remember thinking that makes it kind of an outlier, and I think you said Yeah. But gradually, she’ll be less and less of an outlier. She’s the canary in the coal mine, and she’s the beating heart and soul of of today’s republican party conservative movement, not Mitch McConnell and old fashioned conservative elites offer more resistance, I would say. So it’s a little harder for them to you know, to to simply steamroll the way they can on some other issues, and it’s an important issue.

So it’s not one that a decent Republican senator who’s been cowardly and gone along on a whole bunch of other things that he thinks are symbolic or don’t matter or, you know, second tier things and give the base a bone. This is real. So they they there’s been a little more willingness to be serious about this. But I now the numbers are pretty it’s pretty striking how much the numbers have changed. The fact that they’ve gone from five percent the way you put it is ninety five five, let’s say ten percent to forty percent maybe, you know, in the last three, four, five months is pretty striking.

Doesn’t mean they go from forty to seventy. Could mean that could also mean they just stall out at forty or fifty and they and the party settles for the next six months into a kind of equilibrium of being half pro Ukraine and half anti Ukraine. This has happened sort of without Trump weighing into much. Right? Am I wrong about that?

I mean, Trump personally. It it shows how much the movement is exists on its own, so to speak, can ban and and green, and all these people, you know, can move republican public opinion even without Trump making a huge deal of an age, just hasn’t been in public that much in the last few months. And I don’t think he stressed it at all in his announcement speech, and he hasn’t really done much since then. So some of this is happening without Trump personally. Now it’s happened with Don Junior.

Maybe he’s a kind of leading indicator of where Trump personally will be. That would be interesting question. I mean, from Trump’s point of view, isn’t it gonna be awfully tempting to go lead this fight against tens of billions of dollars going to Ukraine? Doesn’t he do that and put to Santos? And sort of Tim Scott and sort of more responsible Republicans in a difficult position.

It’s allowed us to continue his fight with McConnell. I I don’t know. I mean, I I’ve I’ve little surprised, Trump has been so reticent to host on, maybe that’s an overstatement, but on this issue. Just tonight, we’re speaking here at about two p. M.

Eastern time, and Wednesday, I mean, who will show up for Zelensky’s speech? McConnell will show up in the Pelosi said she was she was inviting Zelensky on behalf of the bipartisan leadership of Congress, and I think that’s I don’t know if that’s sort of a formulation that you always has to use or a true statement. I mean, I assume McArthur I mean, McConnell will certainly show up, and I think a lot of Republican senators will will McCarthy, will cease, will cease to Fonic. Will there be misbehavior by a large retail agreement? Or will they just not show up?

I mean, I think that’s a mildly interesting mini indicator of of what we’ve been discussing. So on the how this happened, two points I would make.

There’s a confluence of events. First is pre existing anti Zelensky sentiment among Republicans because of the first impeachment — Mhmm. — because Zelensky did not play ball with Trump. Pre existing pro Putin sentiment among many Republicans because they were forced into defending Putin by Trump. You then have a weird, almost, sooey generous, culture war aspect of this in which big chunks of conservative elites became invested in the idea that American military was a feat and woke and that the Russians were the great manly anti woke bronze age pervert type soldiers.

And seeing the Russians get routed on the battlefield over the course of the year has been very hard for them to take. I think you know all the people I’m talking about. Right? There is an aspect to the culture war where Russia was largely seen as a, you know, well, they they understand. They know what time it is.

Pooten knows what time it is. Right? And he’s he’s anti gay and in favor of the family and Christian faith and all that. And that stew that stew of factors can happen even without a guy like Trump leading the charge. As your second question, you know, couldn’t Trump really step out here to lead the anti Ukraine faction?

Absolutely, he could. And the fact that he’s not, I I’ve said this since his announcement, I think that something in which I did not expect to play a factor in twenty twenty four is Trump’s age. And I think he suddenly looks and feels very old and very tired. Yeah. And I don’t mean tired in me like cultural way, like, oh, his actor started.

I mean, he he looks and feels exhausted. He does not look like he has the vigor and the will in the stomach to fight anymore. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but when you compare and contrast just four years ago, just speeches. You just go to YouTube and pull up Trump’s speeches. You know, he’s up tempo.

He’s excited. He he’s having fun. And this does not feel like a guy who really looks like he’s up for anything less than a coordination. And this is one of the reasons why I who have who have long thought that he was a very very heavy favorite to be the Republican nominee, provided he ran for

it. I

actually now think that it’s possible he can be beaten. Because, you know, in every

race, voters want candidates

who want to fight. And the minute you have a guy who looks like he just sort of doesn’t have the the fire in the

belly for it. They smell that. Yeah. That’s awfully interesting. I mean, on the first part, I

just would say, very briefly that I I think none of this would have happened without Trump or probably wouldn’t have happened without Trump. Trump was key to unleashing a lot of things but they are unleashed now. So as you say, they he doesn’t have to personally lead every aspect of the semi finishers movement here in the U. S. On every issue we can, it’s got a momentum of its own.

I think on your very interesting second point, maybe Trump’s playing some long game that we don’t know and he’s holding back and he’s being clever and, you know, he he would exhaust people if he were out every day. But you’re right. You gotta think the old Trump would just be all over well, it could be over Twitter since they can’t be over Twitter, but he could be over Twitter and suddenly, maybe that’s a little you know, today, why not come back to Twitter today and denounced Zelensky and denounced the giveaway of the aid and you could announce aid other things as well if he wants. But I mean, he would get a lot of publicity. I think it would kind of push it right back there instead of Donald Trump Junior in March, retail, agreeing in all these characters being in the news as the anti Zelensky.

Faction and and and that that faction’s leaders. Maybe he’s looking around the corner, maybe he sees us not where he wants to be. He’s being a little clever, but In a way, that’s not how he got to where he is by being, you know, by being subtle and too clever. And one wonders whether either his age, as you say, or or maybe just the kind of the presidency and running for reelection, which is a little different than being a surgeon the first time. And then sort of coasting on those rallies and on the adulation and on the griff and all that has taken the edge up.

And you’re right, why isn’t Trump? This is a moment for Trump. Right? And whether it’s the January sixth committee, it’s get beyond defending yourself and looking a little pathetic and sort of whining at the committee. And attack Zelensky attack McConnell for giving all this money away, attack the omnibus.

One thing’s in the old days, he would have been right out there and and maybe it’s a sign that he either doesn’t want to or think. So say maybe it’s a calculation. Maybe it is just a kind of tiredness. It’s very interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. And,

you know, just a quick word about Twitter. You know, back when we were immediately post January sixth, and we’re having the big de platforming arguments. I have always been in favor of de platforming, I think, that social media companies should de platform people more often. There should be more bands. There should be more heavy handed moderation.

I’m all in favor of that. And I remember getting to an argument with our colleague Tim Miller about this, and Tim was like, look, you know, what does it really matter anyway? And I said, well, it will matter. You know, it’ll it’ll matter a lot to take away Trump’s Twitter weapon. And it it will be different not to have Twitter’s algorithm boosting his signal if it is just two hundred people copying and pasting a Trump parlor post.

And that has turned out to be true. And Trump desperately needs his Twitter weapon back, but I think he correctly intuits. And the coming back into Twitter under Musk puts him in a very dangerous position because if he comes back Musk as the new, you know, sole owner of Twitter can do whatever he wants to Trump. And Trump needs Twitter more than Musk needs Trump on Twitter. And so I think he you know, the one sort of animal cutting thing is that he still seems to have, I think, is the he and too, it’s the power dynamic there in that coming back Twitter and placing all of his eggs in that basket.

When Musk who is actively hostile to him now, since Musk is a DeSantis supporter, I guess, an out DeSantis supporter that puts Trump in a subservient and weakened position where if Musk decided for whatever reason or no reason at all that he could start monkeying with Trump’s Twitter account or kick him off the the platform again for some reason. That that makes Trump look weak. And so I think he’s probably right to to be sticking with truth, but it shows how how important the platforms are and why it was generally good for America that Trump was off Twitter for the last two years. I hadn’t really felt through

the Trump Musk relationship. I this part of me, those still things, if he showed up on Twitter and let’s not get my ideas, but whenever when, you know, at five PM today with dramatic tweets about Zelenskin McConnell and the outrage of it all. And, you know, I still think it would be a pretty effective short term release wave. Be establishing his leadership of that wing of the party and and probably, and as I say, dog eating the news going into Christmas at all, but maybe the worst relationship is makes that problematic. You have one other point, the degree to which Harvey Ansell makes this point in a new conversation I have up, which is very interesting on liberalism with Harvey.

So friendly defender, critical defender, I don’t know what the right term is, but he makes the point in passing that Zelensky’s performance and Ukraine’s performance in defending its nation against Putin. But doing so explicitly in the name of local democracy and explicitly in the name of resisting not just Russia, but gastly autocratic Russia. And Putin’s appropriation for his own reasons to do domestically and in terms of appealing to conservatives in the west. Or the right wing in the west, appropriation of of the culture war over here into his own rhetoric, you know. All of that has had a pretty big effect back here, I think actually.

Zelensky, he’s been a nontrivial contributor to the difficulties the alt right has had, the extremist right, the neo fascist right, whatever one wants to call it. In some keeping the momentum going that they had going pretty much through last year. Again, the story of twenty twenty one was January sixth at the beginning of twenty twenty one. He got to have thought that would discredit Trump. Finally, end of twenty twenty one, he seems to have a stronger than ever.

Hold on the Republican Party. Twenty twenty two, Ukraine, January sixth committee, some other things, and Trump does seem weaker. So so interesting how those things have gone in some ways contrary to what we would have expected probably at the beginning of each year. And I guess the question we just don’t know and this is such dynamic situation, not a static one is where we are. Three, six, nine, twelve months from now.

We will say, Bill, thank you

so much for joining me. Everybody, thanks for listening and sitting in with us while we were sitting in for Charlie. Enjoy the last couple days of big news before the Christmas holiday, and we’ll be back again tomorrow to do this all over again.

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