It’s Just A Sweet Sweet Fantasy Haley

Hello everyone. This is JBL here with my best friends. So along well and Timothy Miller of The Bulwark. Welcome to the next level. Hit all of the buttons.

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even get a newsletter from me, which you don’t have to read. Many of the people on this show don’t read it.

I always read it later.

It’s it’s really like not recommended reading, so much as suggested reading. So or alternate reading. Okay. Sarah, you were on the news this week like a real professional writer and

How about that? How about the person

who happens to write nurse spare time?

I sent him a Nikki Haley piece last week. Tim. I would just like you

to know that because As we say in the business. Yeah. That’s right. And and

I got asked about it. On television, I’m getting interviewed about your material. It’s sort

of like when people asked me to sign your book at the last event.

Did

you say, oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t read that. No, I did not, so sorry, I didn’t read that. I didn’t It was it was more just asked me to comment on Nikki Haley, then really to, like,

grade you in your article. Oh, they didn’t ask you how great was Sarah Longwell’s piece?

Didn’t say that. They just read a little bit blurred from it and asked me to kinda react. I I guess. Tim, how great was Sarah’s piece? I concurred.

I concurred. I concurred. It’s I thought that it was very insightful and prescient. And now, JBL wrote a newsletter about your piece, and now I’m trying to remember, I don’t wanna do something really bare again, compliment the line from Jake’s piece about your piece. Rattle and compliment your

piece. But go ahead. Say which line. Just say the line.

Just think good about they’re not being the magnet.

No. That’s

it. The eighty percent, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. I knew it was as soon as as soon as it came out to me, but it was essentially, you know, riffing on the the central point that you had, you know, which is that there just isn’t anywhere to go. For Nikki in this in this primary. And and I think that that is what there’s just a class of people in in the in the commentary and and particularly in conservative commentary as well as, you know, people who are just super interested in politics, who are Republican. I just can’t get in their head what has changed, you know, and why, like, it couldn’t be Nikki.

And and that’s frustrating. And I I liked that your piece and J. P. L. Riff on your piece, you know, both, yeah, I think, explained quite clearly, like the fact that, you know, it’s not really even it’s not about judge normative judgment on Nikki as a governor.

It’s not really you know, it’s not about her performance, her skills as a politician. Like, it’s just about the fact that, like, the makeup of the party is now a mega party. And the winner of this primary is gonna have to cross some threshold level of mega with which she doesn’t cross. Right? And that doesn’t mean that these people hate her.

It doesn’t mean that, you know, that they can’t be in coalition with one another. You know, but it’s just she is not gonna be gonna be the standard bearer for this part. It’s it’s the same way. There there are a lot of examples of this. Right?

It was like it was like up until, like, recently, you know, some socialist wasn’t gonna win a Democratic primary. Right? That’s why nobody you know, because, like, their Bernie was in coalition with the Democratic Party, but like, you know, people had a general positive feelings about Bernie, but, like, that’s not what the party was. Now maybe over time, that that’ll change. But I think that’s the parallel here.

And and, Nikki, it’s a bed of her own making, really. Though I’m not sure that she could have done any different as an Indian American, like Mio conservative globalist. Like, but but her, you know, kind of unwillingness to go whole hog with MAGA prevents her from really having an opportunity here. And and so I think then, you know, the question is, does she know that? And is she playing for VP?

You know, is there is she does she live in this Carl Row world of unreality, where all these voters are just gonna snap back to normal and really want low taxes and American strength abroad, you know, or she, you know, just being trying figuring that, like, her best path towards a VP nomination is to run and that you never know. You never know. Who knows? Maybe you’re on DeSantis, you know, falls off a bridge and Donald Trump has a heart attack. And I’m the only one left standing, or or does she really think that these people might come back to her, and I I don’t not really share the answer to that part.

And, Sarah, I’m gonna prompt you here to disarm a criticism which I’ve already seen of us, which is that you are not rooting for Nikki Haley to fail. You are simply analyzing the reality. Wait. What is the

criticism though that we we are we want her to fail?

Yeah. We’re while we’re we’re saying she’s toast because we want Right? I I believe all three of us agree that in a world where Nikki Hillary could win the Republican presidential nomination, we would love to live in that world. That would be a good world. That’s a that’s a good timeline.

Correct? Agreed.

Agreed. Guys, I wanna say a few things about Nicky Haley that weren’t in the piece are sort of new observations as I’ve thought more. And so can I just take the first we’ll take the first thing as the scenario Tim played out? Is she playing for third? Is she playing for VP?

Because I think this is a very interesting question. And let me tell you, I think if you really think hard about Nikki Haley and how this could go, Right? One of the things I talked about in the piece is how she’s the top of the tier of the meh middle. Right? The lame rerons of people, the pences, the pompeos —

Pompeo. — Chris Christie, you

know, whatever. She’s at the top of that too. And so I could actually see her running where does Santa and Trump were kinda going head to head? This is not I’m not say, this is definitely the scenario, but I could see the scenario playing where Trump actually he’s attacking DeSantis relentlessly, but he’s helping Nikki. Right?

He’s he’s being kind of nice to Nikki. You know why? Because she’s taking vote share from DeSantis. And so, you know, she’s eaten into him. She’s getting as as Tim calls it a gentle womanly ten, twelve percent maybe, especially in New Hampshire.

Especially in New Hampshire. Right? So we’ve got the Iowa caucuses, and let’s say DeSantis and Trump are both in the low thirties, high twenties. She’s coming in third with with double digits, low double digits somewhere.

John Edwards territory. John

Edwards territory. Here’s her play. Right? The next state up IS SOUTH CAROLINA HER HOME STATE WHERE SHE WAS A TWO TERM GOVERNOR. NOW I DON’T THINK SHE WINDS HER STATE IN THIS SNAAR But why doesn’t Trump or DeSantis?

They need her ten percent and they’re going into her home turf. Isn’t and there’s two weeks. There’s two long weeks between New Hampshire and South Carolina. Why isn’t at that point somebody cut the deal with Nikki Haley for VP? And I thought I was floating this scenario in the bulwark Slack and I think it was Amanda was saying like I don’t know what what does Nikki Haley get you?

But I guess It hasn’t been going on long enough for me to say that it’s a trend, but it used to be when the populace were the recessive gene of the party as Charlie puts it. That you gave them the recessive job. You gave the VP to Sarah Palin and the normie serious person John McCain was on the top. Well, that could be reversed now, where your establishment candidate, your Mike Pence is now, that’s a VP slot. Because you’re the junior player on this team now.

Right? We’re in control, magazine control. And so why isn’t she that establishment VP? I

can

answer that. And I think that she’s thinking like this. I I don’t know this. I know this is not reporting. But I I sense that she’s thinking like Sarah is thinking right now with maybe a little bit of additional dollop of wish casting that maybe, you know, things can turn up Nikki for the top of the ticket.

But I I think that this is a key part of the strategy. Here’s what I’m not sure that that works. Number one is, I think that she only helps Trump, and I don’t think Trump will pick her. Right? If you’re in that two weeks with DeSantis, That is a risky move actually to add Nikki to the ticket right before South Carolina.

That could end up signaling to the mega voters that he’s a he’s a Yale Rhino phony cock and that and and and actually helped Trump. I I know that that, like, this is where people’s brains are broken. Like, the notion that a a Nikki endorsement might hurt somebody in South Carolina. It might. I I mean, Nikki did endorse Marco last time, and it didn’t help him that much.

And then DeSantis is gonna be in this very fragile position, right, where he wants to be more electable, but can’t be seen as a phony inauthentic maga. So I don’t know that she helps him. So would she definitely help Trump? Right? Because Trump is maga, and so he doesn’t have to worry about that authenticity question, and and what he needs his help with the electability question.

But is Trump really gonna pick her after he went through the pants? Find that hard to believe when she wanna be Trump’s VP? Who the fuck knows. I guess so. That’s insane to me, but I guess you would.

Then the other element to this, just as you gain this out, is Let’s just look at the recent past. Comblea almost lost VP over her one mean thing to Biden. Had Comblea stayed around longer? Probably wouldn’t have gotten VP. Right?

Had she done a couple more debates where she was going toe to toe with Biden? She probably wouldn’t have gotten VP. Pence was from off the tape off the table. Right? You mentioned Palen.

Palen was that, like, you know, McCain did not pick Mitt Romney or or Tim Palenti. Obama did pick Biden, but Biden, like, didn’t even really count. He’s at the one percent. You know, like, that he didn’t pick like, there’s a you know, he didn’t pick Hillary. Right?

Like, there’s there’s very few examples looking back of, like, the the the winner choosing the person that was, like, a real thorn in their side. Kerry Edwards.

Reagan and Bush. Reagan

and Bush. Carrie Edwards, Reagan Bush. Maybe I’m forgetting one. But those are the two that come straight to mind. So that’s that’s impossible, but it’s a lot harder of a, you know, you have to walk this tight rope, right, where you’re competitive enough to, you know, seem viable and seem like you’re additive, but you’re not so competitive like, the feelings are hurt and they can’t you know what I mean?

So I just think that for those two reasons, the fact that she might hurt the Santa’s in some ways, and that it’s a tough thing. I think that she’s thinking that. I agree with that, but I I do think that’s a pretty challenge. I I wouldn’t put any money on it. I guess what I’m

Also, from from Trump’s perspective, having seen what happens when you have a normie vice president and you need him to do a coup for you and he refuses to do it, I cannot believe that Trump would pick another normie. Right? I I have to believe that if if Trump were to be the nominee, he will get somebody who he views as a pure loyalist, a a button man, like a Cary Lake or an MTG or somebody like that. Maybe this is incorrect. I

think that makes sense in, like, a global way. I think the question is is, like, sometimes you can make weird decisions. If you’re locked in a dead heat, Trump versus DeSantis, you’re going into Nikki Haley state, and you’re thinking, what gives me the advantage to pop out into? Because the thing about the This is why I’m gonna keep harping on the calendar. The calendar is gonna cause weird dynamics where you’re popping out at South Carolina and Nevada are on the same day.

Or on the same day. And if you recall, Trump was living in the thirties in these states, and then, like, popped in Nevada and then roll rolled with that momentum into the March fifth, super Tuesday. This is assuming the calendar stays the same. Where, like, you can lock up so many delegates on that day. So that momentum popping out of the South Carolina Nevada is like so important.

And I guess that’s where I see they could do some weird things. Like, I under your points are all correct, I think. I just could see, like, in that two weeks suddenly people being like, I don’t know, man. I mean, we gotta lock this up. We gotta put distance.

We gotta do something that and but Tim’s point about, like, whether or not she’s a liability, I think that’s a I think that’s possible. In some ways, I think we maybe shouldn’t overinterpret though the agonists of a lot of this audience. Like, there’s a really deep maga strain. It’s a dominant one, but there’s, like, plenty of establishment maga, normi maga, soft maga. Maga.

Maga. Maybe MAGA, that I think can shift things. I

think that this pitch is a real one for Tim Scott.

Yeah. Yeah.

So South Carolina is two weeks different you know, he brings diversity to the ticket. He is not really MAGA, but, like, hasn’t done anything to poke MAGA in the eye the way Nikki has. And that does fit the bill more of a Obama Biden. Gore Lieberman is another one we we picked, but Lieberman is kind of a second tier candidate. Right?

Like of choosing a second, you know, someone that wasn’t a real contender. I think Kamala really fits his bill. Right? She dropped out before any votes. Right?

So, like, a Tim Scott, I think, and that’s the same two weeks South Carolina. Now does Tim Scott actually bring you anything in South Carolina? A couple good news cycles, you know, I I don’t know. I bet did your point about how people’s brains start to get up wired? And they’re like, man, things are really close.

I got two weeks. Even if he brings me two percent in a couple new cycles, it’s worth it. So I I see I think that your game’s been shipped there, Sarah. It makes a lot of sense for Scott as VP. Can

I just ask you guys to imagine what the world will look like in the level of establishment Republican freak out? If we hit that moment, two weeks out from South Carolina,

and

the race is actually pretty close. Trump DeSantis, like the level of unbelievable hair on fire panic in conservatism, and among the anti Antis and stuff.

And for me, I will also be panicking in that scenario. That’s a terrible scenario because it it puts me in a position where I will suddenly be like, I’m sorry, everybody. You have to line up with the scientists. Like, because I just we’ve never done this. But it’s just speaking of, like, freestyle scenarios.

Just walk down the path with me of a Trump second term.

Schedule right after.

The idea of a Trump second term, when people do the who’s more dangerous, Trump or DeSantis, they’re just like thinking about them as like these two guys that both have these issues. I’m talking about Donald Trump. Who did a coup, getting a second term, and like, what happens to the press in that scenario? Like, Donald Trump is a in in in excuse my language. Just bleeped us if there’s kids in the car, but he’s in fuck all territory.

And he is like, He’s like, I would like, Don Junior, he’s going to make a tremendous secretary of state. And you media are canceled. You’re not the enemy of the people you’re just gone. Like, I I And you might be like, well, how does he do that? Like, just a Trump second term is, like, to me, the scariest thing I could possibly imagine.

Concur. I don’t need to go further down that path right now. I’m gonna spend more time thinking about it later. But, yes, absolutely concur. Wait.

Can I just I just one thing I wanted to do before I didn’t wanna forget this? So we did a focus group And these are just two time Trump voters. Just no other screen. They’re just they drove for Trump sixteen, they voted for from twenty. Here’s what some of them said about Mickey Haley.

She’s just gonna be returned to what everything was before twenty sixteen. You know, status quo politician basically.

Isn’t that good? Wait. I’m sorry. Is that an endorsement or criticism?

Sorry. No. A criticism from that person. Endorsement. If that was Sarah instead of Brett.

Yeah. That’s an endorsement. But it’s Brett. And Brett thinks that’s a bad thing.

Check out the big brain on Brett.

And then David said, I think she’d just be, you know, Republicans that we’ve seen in the past. I think she’d just be more of the same cookie cutter

conservative views. So here’s and here’s the thing. I just She’s going back to talking about freedom and free markets and economic expansion and American strength in the world, and we don’t want that. Yeah. I’m sorry.

Sarah, did either of these gentlemen speak with a Fghorn, Lghorn accent? No. They didn’t JBL.

Was there any pro was there any pro, Nikki, in the two? Not

really. Not really.

Not really. Yeah.

But to Tim’s point and this was in the poll that we did, they don’t dislike Nikki Haley. They are not saying those things with derision, they’re just saying them as a, like, why they’re not that into them? That’s not my first person. First person. And and what’s crazy about Nicki had, like, the great irony of Nicki Ailey?

Is that she’s got all these components that would make her be a future candidate. She’s a woman, she’s a minority, she’s got this foreign policy experience like this should be the fresh new thing. But actually, to them, she’s a throwback. Right? She’s an old style politician.

She’s not something new. And this is where I just wanna stomp on something that Tim said. These Republicans, Sunu knew and Hogan and Haley. God love them. They have the same problem that I did, which is they spend all their time at AEI with the Heritage Foundation around donors and around the elite conservative class, the Wall Street Journal editorial page writers, and they think the Republican Party is something different than it is.

They think voters want something different than they do, and they tell themselves a fantasy tale about how you can get back to that. But I’ll tell you what, the mountain ain’t coming to Mohammed. On this one. Like, you are either going maga or they’re not interested in you. The

group is even bigger than that. You know, sometimes we like to tease you know, our AI pals and all this and and make it about that, but I was just looking at some numbers yesterday. And I I kind of didn’t realize this. In the midterms, college educated whites only went for the dams by, like, three or four points. Yeah.

Nationally. Right? So, like, there is, like, in all of the major metros, all across America, college educated white people who live in the suburbs, who are

forty

plus that voted for Republican.

Voted for Trump.

Yeah. They voted for sorry. They voted for the midterms. They voted for the mid vote for Hershel Walker or whatever. And they they had their brothers, they would rather had Brian Kemp than Hershel Walker.

They would rather have Nikkeel. Right? So it feels like it’s a lot of people. You know what I mean? It feels like it’s more people than it is.

Right? Because it is. You know, fifteen percent of a hundred million is fifteen million people and they all live in the same major metros and they’re all you know what I mean? Like, so I do think that that leads a little bit to this dissolution. If you don’t mind, I’d like to do one a little bit of figure skating judging on the Nikki announcement.

That video that she dropped, boy. We’re a fan. And I was texting with one of my buddies that still does Republican videos to make sure I’m not I was a TDS thing on this. It didn’t have a story or a message. It spoke to her fundamental problem.

Right? She wanted to do this video that to Sarah’s point should have been she’s running in twenty fifteen. She’s been a great candidate for twenty fifteen. I think maybe twenty eleven, but we can pick that. But but that video in twenty eleven would have been, hey, I was from Berenberg.

I saw racism firsthand, but I also saw the goodness of America. We overcame it. When I was governor, I brought down the confederate flag, you know, USA, we can all come together, you know, a little bit of Obama. Maybe there are no blue states or red states. We’re not divided by white and right.

Okay. You could do that video and tell a good story. That’s her story. That is authentic to her story up until twenty seventeen. Right?

And that is a video that that would speak to a certain group of people. It’s not a winning video in the Republican primary for all the reasons we’ve gust. Right? Or you can do a I’m a magna culture warrior at the woke left is out to get us blah blah blah, what DeSantis will do. She tried to do both in the same video.

I could make no sense. Like literally her first, the first sentence of the video is my town, Vamberg, was divided by a railroad. And the railroad divided the town by race. And then, like, seven seconds into the video, it’s like, and then there are some people that wanna say America is fundamentally flawed with structure show racism and shows a picture of someone holding a sign that says racism is a pandemic. And I’m like, wait a minute.

Like, the video started by you talk about structural like literal structural racism, like the structure of your town was divided by race, then five seconds later to attack the sixteen nineteen project. Right? And then Later in the video the same thing happens, where she, like, makes fun of the woke left, but then she doesn’t mention that taking on the Confederate flag, but she does mention the Aimee Church. Right, and how she went to the AME church. But it’s like, again, you’re talking about how the left is talking about how racism is real problem.

And then, oh, here I am. Like, going to this black church that got shot up by a white supremacist. Right? Like, it does make any sense. Like, the video had no narrative structure and that choices that they made, like, choosing the the signs.

It’s like speaking to this tiny, tiny, tiny group of people for whom. Like, I’m at the sixteen nineteen project, but I don’t wanna be too racist. Right? That’s like four percent of the Republican electorate. It’s like that is there.

And and so just just stylistically and narrative, she just doesn’t have one. That’s

because Nicki Hilli doesn’t know who she is. And what’s a bummer is that I bet she did. Houston. Like, I she knew who she was in the Republican Party where you could look to the future. I sort of felt like this.

And you’re like, well, limited government and free markets and American leadership in the world are really important. Those are values that are important to me. But I also I have this future in mind. The Republican Party. Like, it’s much more socially tolerant.

And, like, I I can be a voice in that new movement. It’s gonna be younger, fresher, whatever. THEN THE PARTY ZAGG. RIGHT? AND SO NOW SHE’S Gotta MAKE A PITCH WHERE SHE’S TALKING ABOUT SOCIALISM AND BEING DAW AND SHE WANTS TO MAKE AN OPTIMISTIC PITCH FOR THE COUNTRY.

But she doesn’t know how to do it without hitting the buzz words that drive the anger and the wedge issues. And as a result, she comes off as inauthentic. And she doesn’t know how to do it quite well. And that’s why you get a messy narrative because her own sense of things is messy. She doesn’t really know what direction she wants to go.

I would suggest to you that it’s not really a Nikki Haley problem. It’s a Republican party problem. I I think she knows who she is. The problem is that who she is. It used to be a cutting edge reform Republican, and now she’s a conservative Democrat.

I mean, just like she’s just much closer to Joe Biden than she is to Donald Trump in her view of America and her view for the future. A foreign policy. Certainly on foreign policy. Right? And probably on race.

Probably on race and probably on, like, infrastructure and economic and in terms of, like, trade. Right? She’s probably much closer to where Biden is on

trade. I think she’s not where Biden nor Trump. Biden and Trump are protectionists on trade. And Nikki Haley’s a globalist. Think

he always is a globalist. That’s a fundamental issue.

She is a globalist. If you couldn’t, like, shake the etch and sketch and let her start from scratch, in terms of her party ID right now, I think she’d be more in step as a running as a southern Democrat. Right? You know, to why why not be a conservative Democrat. I think she should be pretty sensible.

She is a tea party Republican. I don’t think it’s quite that. I just I think that the reality is that she’s an out of step Republican. That’s what she is. Yeah.

And

Nikki Haley wants to live in a world where, like, she can talk about the debt all day long and people are responsive to that. And like we are should be spending less and we should be supporting Ukraine against the Russian advancement. She’s giving big speeches about that that are Reagan asking their you know, we’re gonna fight communism and whatever. And and that that’s who she wants to be and she just can’t be that person and get elected. Right.

Reliable or even taken seriously in a Republican frame or instance, she just sounds like a weird then can I actually, I’m just gonna add one thing to this, like, There’s also this weird mega pop feminism thing where, like, she’s she knows she’s gotta say she’s tough and she’s a fighter for those? It hurts when I when I see you know, oh, I kick back and it hurts worse when they’re in heels. And I’m like, oh, like what? What is that? And I Tells it.

It would. If you were I mean, if you kicked hard, I know you don’t deal that much with women, but, like, the bottom of us still let you. You know, take your

drag queens. I guess I’m just saying I’m trying to imagine myself getting kicked by Nikki Haley. Stomping around DeSantis. I don’t think any of them are gonna hurt. I don’t think any of them pack much of a punch with their kicks.

So

you talked about, like, the dissonance of her pitch. Tim, shows she specifically frames that as like, you know, she likes to kick bullies. And whatever you think is Donald Trump, like, whether you’re pro or con, like, he is a bully. And if you are a trumper, That’s why you like him.

That’s good.

Because he goes and bullies the people you hate for you. Right? He’s he’s and the weirdness her having been in it as administration and tried a guess at the very end to stand up to him, but then reversing course again, like, it just seems like a formulation in her video that was practically designed to highlight her weakness. Instead of her strength. Right?

Because you you know, you want to talk about fighting generically fine. But why insist that she’s good at fighting bullies when she didn’t?

Breaking news, Nikki Hilli is now calling for mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over seventy five.

Seventy five. That’s an interesting bright line she’s chosen. Okay. Is that for real or is that an onion?

No. It’s for real. Thanks.

And you know what? So let’s see. So Biden would be eighty two. He’s for he’d be seventy eight.

Sure. Right? What was what was his formulation on that? Do you remember? Yeah.

It was man, woman, camera, TV. That’s not it. Anyhow, that’s it.

That’s great. That’s really great. Okay. Do we wanna talk a little bit about Elon in Twitter this week? Have you guys been enjoying getting all of Elon Musk’s tweets in your feed?

No. I don’t see him that much. And I also don’t do the one that the 4U thing.

So you you weren’t getting them on Monday because this is so Casey Newton’s platformer broke an amazing story, which is that On the night of the Super Bowl, Elon Musk got incredibly upset because Joe Biden’s tweet about Philadelphia Eagles got more engagement than his tweet. About the Philadelphia Eagles. And so he threw Twitter into crisis mode and, like, started rousing engineers out of bed at two thirty in the morning. Because for, like, forty eight hours, the most important thing was why isn’t Elon Musk’s tweet tweets getting more engagement? And at first, they tried explaining to him why this might be, and he did not like any of those explanations.

He he simply said, they they should get more engagement. And so they went and just created a formula for him to give him a boost times a thousand. Would this had a practical effect of meaning that the algorithm would show basically everybody on Twitter Elon’s tweets. Mhmm. Thoughts?

I mean, you know, you spent forty four building. Well,

a lot of it is other people’s money, but I think he put in a few building of his own. And

you

know, I think that’s it’s a true poster. You know, that’s so committed to posting. This is the one area, the one thing that me and Elon can relate too. I’m a poster. I want a post.

I want people to see my takes. I’m unrepentant about it. And as a poster, I can understand that you’d want to spend this significant portion of your network, ensuring that everyone sees your post. I I don’t know how good of a business practice it is. He’s supposed to be a genius businessman.

It doesn’t seem to me that he’s maximizing the performance of the website for the user. For the advertiser, that would seem to be your main goal as as an owner that you would want people to wanna come to the site. I don’t think that a lot of people want to see his post. Some of his posts are bad. He did one of the memes that he forced people to he was, I guess, meta commenting on himself and he posted this gross.

I did see this. This gross for me. I guess,

like, poorly. Poorly.

Vaguely poorly.

Am I wrong that that was a a vaguely poorly kinda meme. Extremely horny. I’d also, like, young horny too. Like, if the epithelial horny, as our cute friends would say. Yeah.

As are they fifteen or twenty four? It’s like kinda hard for me to tell now, now that I’ve I’m a dad, but but young women, like, one feeding the other one milk

FORCING HER TO DRINK MELK. FORCING HER hair, SHE’S LIKE POLLING HER hair. IT’S GROUSE.

HOLDING HER PONY TALE, IT’S PONY AND YOUNG. AFFIVA FELI IS. RIGHT? And so these are the people that are deeply concerned, I guess, about the sexualization of children. I’m pretty sure that that Twitter is not eighteen plus website.

It is one of

their concerns. And also about the algorithm never putting its thumb on anything because worst thing in the world was when the bad Twitter would deemphasize some tweets and emphasize others.

Oh, right. Shadow banner. Shadow pushing. So anyway, oh, the big shadow man in crisis. This is the first amendment crisis.

Let’s call in the supreme court. The marshall of the supreme court might need to go meet with with Elon. So I mean, it’s really pathetic and sad. And and, you know, for me as a Twitter fanatic, the quality of the site is is deteriorating substantially, but I’m also getting I do have, like, a masochistic enjoyment of, like, the Casey Newton platform or stories of, like, of the SAB. You know what I watched last night with Toulouse was a plus in boots.

Have you seen plus in boots? The new

one. Right? The last wish?

Yeah. Little Jack Horner.

Little

Jack Warner who puts his thumb and and pulls out a plumb, gets upset that he doesn’t have any, like, cool magic like all of the other fairy tales. So he becomes big Jack Horner who was, like, just a grown mom and adult baby who’s, like, really mad and wants everything to go his way. Big Jack owner. And there is, like, a little bit of a big Jack owner element to Elon’s, you know, kind of like a child that want that wants all the toys to work for him.

Sarah, do you have any any thoughts? Would you like to throw down a Shaquille O’Neil style dunk on this?

Well, I just think in terms of we’re an interesting group. Because JBL basically has always has hated Twitter for as long as I’ve known him, doesn’t really participate. I was new to Twitter in twenty eighteen and became somebody who really liked Twitter. I really like Twitter. But I’m not a huge poster.

I would post a fair amount, I guess. But like, no, I can’t I can’t get anywhere come anywhere close to ten levels of posting. I’ve

actually done two posts since you’ve been talking right now.

Right. Like the extent to which Tim Miller thinks people need to hear. Every thought rolling around in his head is just unbelievable to me. And I like I don’t I I I I would like people to know when I feel strongly about something, I’m gonna tweet it. But I like can’t come up with that level of takes and like that volume.

But the experience of Twitter is awful now. I think somebody that I even kinda like, like, the kid drives us. Bend drive us. Bend drivers said something at one point, like, it’s time for everybody to admit that Twitter is not different. You know, like, nothing’s really changed.

Everything is fine and stop freaking out about Twitter. And I guess there might have been a period earlier on where that was kind of true, but, like, it’s just garbage now. Just like from a usability experience, having two different feeds is terrible. The algorithms, the people they feed me are awful. I don’t see the people I like to see.

And so it’s a it’s a bad experience and there is but there is something about Eilan. And just in general, this sort of that category of person where they’re like, I drink liberal tears and and you guys are snowflakes and your babies and you’re so sensitive. And then you watch them, like, live like Elon’s profligacy on Twitter has what it has done is demystified Elon to the point where, like, the the genius pot smoking, but I’m gonna take you to space guys. Now, like, shit post meme or because that’s not the first pointy one I’ve seen from it. I don’t even see that much but he did that one where it was trying to get Trump back on Twitter and it was like a girl — Yeah.

— like bending over a bed and, like, Jesus was supposed to be Trump or

just Railed by a

priest or something.

Right? Exactly. Yeah. Something like that. But but it was gross.

It was gross. And he’s a gross infantile person and I won’t read platform. I like don’t care enough to go read about Elon. But when you communicate the shot and for it to me, I enjoy it. Just wish the consequence wasn’t that this platform is actually quite good for sharing news and engaging about news even as sewage and garbage as it was, you know, but still pretty good, and I miss it.

I actively miss decent Twitter.

Elon’s browser history must be a house of horrors.

I don’t mean A hundred

percent chance. There’s a lot of technical stuff in there.

Oh, yeah. Eight chance. I

don’t know what that means.

Scats. It don’t Sarah,

don’t look at that. You don’t know that too. Just don’t even do that. I want Elon’s Elon’s Google history is terrible. I will say this, The one nice thing that it’s done for us is the Bulwark Substack comment community is so vibrant now.

Here’s an online blog for joining Bulwark Plus, like several people commented in a recent one about Alec, I’ve substituted this for Twitter, and, you know, our little boy, Reddit is doing better. So we’re trying to find I think alternate places to fill the discussion apart of of Twitter, which is nice, but, like, the incoming immediacy news live React Element. It’s hard to replace.

Alright. Balloon talk. Balloon talk. We have a a crisis in America that has been brought on by Joe Biden’s weakness. The Chinese are just sending balloons all over the country, and these balloons are destroying the lives of good hardworking Americans in blue collar states.

And it’s awful. Sarah, what are the people saying in your focus group? Has this ever come up?

Well, we asked, we did a group last week great episode we did out of it with Peter Baker on the Focus Group podcast. Go check it out. There were Trump to Biden voters. The Trump sixteen, Biden twenty twenty voters, we were just asking them a bunch of different stuff. They’d all watch the state of the union.

And then we just, like, quickly at the end, we’re, like, so the balloon. What do you think? And I would say there were two camps of balloon people. There were people who were mad about the balloon that they said it made us look weak that we hadn’t shot it down. And Biden hadn’t done anything about it.

They were super concerned. And then there was the other half that was like, I don’t know if we know enough about the balloon to, like, have an opinion. And those are the people you should listen to. The ones who know that we don’t yet know enough to have an opinion. But half the group was like, can’t believe they didn’t shoot it down right away.

Anybody say aliens?

Nobody said aliens. Okay.

My balloon thing so I guess a mild critique of the Biden administration is I do feel like we can have a little more communication about these, like, secondary and tertiary things that we’ve shot down. I don’t know. Like, we’re firing four hundred thousand dollar missiles that, like, something in the sky over, like, Huron. And then it just seems like the type of thing that, like, the president should be like, hey, we shut down this thing. It was another spy balloon or it was somebody’s drone that was illegally flying above Lake Huron and, you know, I would like a little communication.

That said, on the original balloon, I have to laugh about, like, all the hard on hard boy talk from Marco and all these guy. Tom Cotton and all

Did you guys posing with his gun? Like, oh, I could take out, get them prepared.

Oh, and we should’ve shot that fucker down. And we’ve all litigated all the hell. Oh, this happened during Trump, and nobody ever did it. But the most hilarious part of this to me was the other day, even the serious one. Even Mike McCall.

Mike McCall, I guess, is apparently gonna be one of, you know, Kevin’s team normal spokespeople because he’s been out on the shows a lot lately. He was the one that said that Margery Taylor Green had been maturing. It’s like Cognizant from Texas. He runs one of the foreign committees.

His judgment sounds good. Yeah.

He sounds great. So Mike was out there on CBS Face Nation this weekend. I was watching this going, this is a sophisticated spy balloon that went across three nuclear sites and the way that we tracked it showed how the what the Chinese’ strategy was in order to spy on us and get all of our information in the Biden administration, let this happen their weakness. New reporting from the Washington Post yesterday showed that, actually, the first balloon was designed to spy on US assets in Guam, maybe Hawaii, but weather currents sent it way north to Alaska because it just started floating over the country. So I I mean, obviously, their sources are in the military.

TBD on what is true. But there’s an Akam’s razor element to that, which I appreciate, which is like all these Republicans are trying to do the red scare thing and like, oh, this thing is so sophisticated and Dementia Biden wasn’t ready to respond to it, like when and, like, the reality was that the Chinese just like their vaccine, like, sent over a balloon that, like, didn’t work and was supposed to go to and ended up flying over my scanner. Like, we broke up all the signals and then shot it down and got all the information. So I do appreciate that, like, the original balloon saga has kind of revealed this, you know, tendency of, oh, maybe back in the old days, there’d be a little bit of a wait and see approach. Like, let’s get briefed, let’s comment, you know, that is not the place where Republicans are right now.

Anything that happens, Biden pass, Biden Naposi, Biden Week. And, like, we have to come out and speak out. And, you know, as more details have emerged, they’ve really been left to look pretty stupid.

I am sort of interested in the fact that we we have a rough consensus foreign policy wise on China. Right? The the two parties are basically trying to outbid each other on China hawkishness, which is great. I’m a China hawk, and it’s fabulous. But I don’t know how that really jives with the manga America first stuff because their anti China stuff.

Like, if the rubber ever meets the road on Taiwan, the America first stuff, Inc. And a fit like the Neocons and the party who have been, you know, dragging the Republicans onto the side of the anti China, they’re gonna wanna do stuff to defend Taiwan that I think the magaites are absolutely not going to want to. So I guess what I trying to say is I think this is a a place in which it’s a freebie for Republicans right now, but it might not always be. And I’m not convinced that the Republican Party will remain as China Hawks if it means shipping weapon systems or breaking up a blockade or something. I

a hundred percent agree with this. If China invades Taiwan. You know who’s gonna be for doing something? Abigail Spamburger, Alyssa Slatkin. Nancy Pelosi.

And the voters often talk about the uno party in the focus groups, which is a thing I had not heard. I I maybe and I have said it on here if you guys, but it comes up a lot. It’s something that’s in the right wing media ecosystem. Them. And what they mean is that Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and Nancy Pelosi and whatever the foreign policy apparatus on both sides of sort of elite parties is that they agree on a bunch of this stuff, and that’s the stuff that the maga right wing, they think that’s bad.

That is the establishment they’re on the same side. They will sell America out to go help somebody else that doesn’t matter to us. And if you try to explain to them, freedom and democracy around the world and how that actually does work for American safety that that’s lost. That is not a thing anymore.

And

that’s why all those people held hands with like Glen Greenwald and Bernie Bros. Right? The the unit party is a critique both of the far left and the far right. They just come at it from different reasons. Right?

The far left comes at it from the Sihirish America is evil. And the far right comes at it from nativism. And yet they hold hands together. And this is what Elon is. Right?

So just play this out.

Right? So here we are in Ukraine and Russia. Right? And Elon is now doing this fucking thing with StarLink, right, where he’s only providing Internet service up to a certain point. Right?

In Ukraine, because he doesn’t want to be complicit in turning this into World War three or not, which is preposterous. And it’s like, imagine if you know, Boeing was like, yes, you can use our weapon systems, but only if you don’t cross the Don Bosch.

Minky tanks. But we’re gonna limit those tanks in their ability to fire because, you know, we don’t wanna kill anybody with them.

We don’t want blood on our hands. So So Elon is part of the new right, like that new horseshoe coalition. And Elon didn’t say anything about China, by the way, never because he has business there. So if China does actually start menacing Taiwan, how does that new coalition hold together? Right?

If a Democrat is president, as we’re seeing in Russia, it works. Right? Because everyone can just be like, democrat dad. Like, Tom Cotton can say, know, Joe Biden’s being too big of a pussy, and Marjorie Taylor Green can say, oh, Joe Biden shouldn’t be giving any weapons to Ukraine at all. We shouldn’t give us take sent, and they’re kind of in coalition because they’re both like Joe Biden’s bad.

Right?

Great point. But

what happens if Rhonda Santos is president? And China does Minist Taiwan. Right? And you’re gonna have the continents of the world that are gonna want to actually act and follow-up their language. And then you’re gonna have the maga part of the blessing the Trump, your Elon’s, your large retailer greens are gonna be like, who cares about Taiwan?

Right? Right? Like, why would we spend anything there? And they they haven’t worked that out internally at all. And and, like, the the Democrats being in charge are papering over that very big internal fissure.

I mean, probably the biggest internal fissure within the party really. Hey,

Democrats have an internal fissure of their own though. Die fi stepping down, but not immediately. I guess this is like the Democrat’s strong Thurman moment. She is totally out to lunch.

Is that okay to say? She she didn’t know that she was resigning when they asked her. It was really

Barry, do you have thoughts on this aside from the fact that it’s sad because, like, look, in her prime, like, sci fi was, especially in foreign affairs, like a very serious mind and an important part of the American foreign policy establishment and just a a razor sharp Aside from the fact that it’s reminder that we are all of us getting old and that age comes for all of us. So what are your thoughts here?

These guys are hanging on too long. We have too many oxygenarians in congress and running for president. And when people don’t quite know the right time to let go. The problem is is that then people are ready to push you. Right?

They’re ready to say, like, get out of here. And then it kinda robs you of the opportunity to just, like, you know, celebrate your legacy. Like, if she’d gone out and was stepping down and saying it’s time for a new generation, people would be like, let’s spend a week talking about the legacy of Diane Feinstein and all the other things she didn’t instead, people are like, this senile person held on so long out of ego, and it’s just a it’s a bummer way to go out, but they do it themselves. And I This is where I get a little bit on Joe Biden. It’s like, eighty six is old.

And he’ll be president and, like, there’s something arrogant about saying, like, no. No. No. Like, I’m sorry, guys. Like, it comes for us all.

It just does. Usually, somewhere between eighty and ninety. If you’re lucky, so Pat is a George Old man.

You sound

like Eric Schwahlwal.

That’s not how

I sound. Well, I know. I’m kidding.

I’ve got two die five thoughts. We’re talking about Diane Feinstein for, you know, those who aren’t familiar with their little slang. Number one on sci fi is, like, her career has been unbelievable.

Mhmm. It’s,

like, really hard to appreciate I mean, she was on the board of supervisors with Harvey Miller.

With

Harvey

Miller. Okay. That makes her feel really old, but it also is just like that feels like out of just another century. Harvey

Milk died young. Harvey Milk did that. Yeah.

I die young, but I mean, you know, when I watched the Harvey Milk movie, it doesn’t feel temporary.

Oh, Sean Penn was probably a little older than Harvey Milk was when he was playing. Yeah.

Yeah. And Sean did a good job. Anyway, I’m just saying she was early with the gays. You gotta give her up. She may or Sam Cisco, defended the gays, fighting aids way before her time on that front.

So, you know, I always have a special place in my heart for Diane Feinstein as a NeoCon Democrat who is early with the gays. I mean, she’s she had all my erogenous zones. And if she wanted to run globalist too, I would have been far, I would have voted for. In that primary, I’m just letting you know I would have voted for ninety seven year old Diane Foxy. Because that’s my woman.

As for her replacements, there actually isn’t a fissure in the Democratic Party, and I think this is bad. Fissures, sometimes news people are always like, there’s a fissure in the party, and that means things are bad. It’s not not really actually. Sometimes, fissures are good. You know, there needs to be creative destruction and and new ideas that come in place and we got into fight with Favreau about this a little bit in LA during the live show.

Like, the people going to replace her Katie Porter, Adam Schiff, maybe verbally, like, all agree on everything and are not really offering any kind of new vision for what a party could look like, and I don’t know, in a state like California that is very dynamic and has a lot going for it, but also has a lot of problems. As evidenced by my perch Jenkins interview a couple weeks ago. It’d be nice to have somebody in that race that was like, hey, guys. I think that Biden’s great. I think the democrats are great.

I think the mega people are bad. I don’t think we should be racist, but, you know, maybe we should have a little bit of a reform mind on some of this stuff. You know, Rocana, not exactly my brand of Democrat, but at least he’s saying, hey, we should try a few new things. I I would I would like to see that in this senate race rather than watching, like, three people who agree on everything, spend eight hundred million dollars, you know, to just determine who gets to, like, sit in an uncontested seat for a hundred years. That’s a little bit sad.

Are they the same? I mean

Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, what do they disagree about? What do they think the democrats should do differently?

Maybe it’s a question of emphasis. And to be fair, I guess, I’ve paid negligible attention to this and its dynamics. But Well,

it’s very interesting.

Knowing what I know about both of them, I guess I would say, he seems like a pretty typical normish Democrat, right, but a little bit of a show voter. Somebody likes some attention. Whereas, I think she’s like a populist. Right? Like, he seems like a corporate Democrat.

Sure. And she seems like somebody who wants to be like, I’m gonna spend all my time attacking corporations, which I find interesting in California because people forget it’s so liberal, there’s more Republicans than else in the country. And they’re pretty populist and anti corporate. And I’ve always been like, I wonder if KB Porter doesn’t have some weird wraparound appeal in a place like California that shift. And also, I mean, in a party that is trying to jump into the future and have different voices and different faces, youngish, progressive, populist, Katie Porter with her whiteboard seems like like slightly more the today’s speed than the Adam Schiff, but I don’t know.

They do like their old white guy politicians. I

guess that’s true. I guess my point is if this primary is fought over, like, whether Adam Schiff is taking money from pharma corporate tax or not. Like, it feels a little bit small. Ball. Sure.

But I just say I think that is the fight. I think that’s it.

I agree with you. You’re you’re right, though. That’s that is astute.

Alright. Before we get out of here, been a long show.

Good show. The thing we

are allowed to speak about in regards of the Super Bowl is the halftime act with Rihanna, who, I guess, was a tremendous disgrace to America in the worst the worst halftime act ever or something. Right? Why was Trump upset? Is it just because she’s black? I mean Trump

likes a musical. No. It’s what tries to think

that Is it just

like Trump being a masculine man? He very he’s into musicals. If you listen to his playlist and very operatic, there’s a lot of things that overlap with gay bar playlists. You know, I don’t know that he realizes out of that it’s intentional. And so I do think that, you know, maybe Trump style is a little bit more like the KB, Perry, you know, you had the sharks, you had a lot of, like, different buoyant elements.

I think that the blackness also there’s maybe something to it. I think

that is basically about the blackness. I

don’t wanna get inside Trump’s lizard head. I’ll tell you this. I thought Rihanna was fantastic.

You too. She

was at ten out of ten for me. We listen to Rihanna all week as a prep in our home. And I kind of forgot how many hits she had. You know, Beyonce, Gaga, I’ve always been like my divas. So I never never, like, put on a Rihanna album.

You know? And so, like, occasionally, a song would come on and I’d be like, oh, wait, that’s her too. Oh, yeah. I mean, her catalog was so big. Like SOS.

She had a couple of big ones that she didn’t even get to in the little montage. And, you know, doing the pregnancy reveal I thought was very cool. I’m just hoping she’s Coachella next year, so I can go back. I thought it was phenomenal. Shulif

just had a baby. She just had a baby. But I mean, you

know, she can get back out there because she did the Super Bowl pregnant. Why not do Coachella with a newborn? Maybe not. But I thought she was really great thought last year was great too. They’ve got two years

in a row. Last year was Snoop

and him

and Greg. Right? Last year’s was my second favorite all time behind the iconic prints. It

was so great. It was because it’s for us. Right? Like, we’re old now and we’re listening to our old songs get piped back to us by these aging you know, rappers and, like, whatever. I’ll just say I watched Super Bowl halftime show with my kids and we were all dancing and I was sort of trying to because I’ve had a couple of halftime shows where I’ve been like, oh, the children are watching this, you know, with like the twerking or the the outfits, but I thought the staging was really cool.

I thought the way that she was, which was like, not indifferent. But, like, at the center, supremely confident. Sometimes these rockers look nervous at the Super Bowl. You know, you can, like, feel the pressure of the big performance. And she looked like it was all hers, and everyone was routing her, the dances were cool, the effect was cool, and she didn’t have to do too much, but she was, like, doing just enough for it to feel fun to watch Rihanna at the center of it, but still I don’t know.

I I loved it. I walked away from that being like, that was awesome. Like, that was so fun to watch. No

guest. She didn’t need a guest. I thought that’s baller. She’s like, I’m not bringing out any surprises. Pregnant me.

I generally hate when they bring in guests. Like, I the act should be the act. Like, you don’t need anybody else. Yeah.

Give it to me. I will say that as part of my posting, I did one popular post. Twitter, which I know neither of you saw, which I’ll share with you right now live. Like, the number of songs that she has that are just like ambient noise at gay clubs. So, like, I this was the Gen X.

I was a little yeah. I mean, Snoop and Dray, and that was, like, middle school for me. But, like, so Rihanna’s, like, that soundtrack is like, ambient noise. And I’m watching and I’m starting to have, like, you know, little images flash through my head of, like, bad behavior going past the twenty tens, and I just I was like, I wonder if this is how what boomer hippies feel like when, like, dark side of the boom comes on. You know, when they talk about their asset flashbacks.

I was having, like, gate club, strobe light, flashbacks, just listening to her. So I do think that added to my appreciation for it, the nostalgia effect. But she’s amazing. Yeah.

See, I’m the exact opposite, which is I’m like ten years too old, five years too old for Rihanna. And so while I was watching it, I thought to myself if I was a Rihanna fan, this would be the greatest show ever because the staging is fantastic. And, like, she’s giving clearly a great performance. But I’m hearing all this probably not for the first time, but like, you know, again, it’s it’s been background music here or there for me, and so I don’t really know any of it. And so I was able to appreciate it, but without loving it.

That’s

great. Well, I found love in a hopeless place. This is a song. I’m a little older than Tim, but I was also in the bars for Rihanna. And, like, that is a song.

Every night — Every night. — you would not believe how often that’s on Glenet. And also, it’s a song I think about finding love in a club because that is a hopeless place. Right? Like, it just feels I don’t know.

Everything about it’s great. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a club. You’ve never been in a club.

Alright. Guys, good show. Long show. It was good to see you guys. Everybody go to the bulwark dot com.

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