Nihilists in the Driver’s Seat

Welcome to beg Beg to Differ. The Bulwark’ weekly roundtable discussion, featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I’m Mona Sharon, syndicated columnist and policy editor at the Bulwark, and I am joined by our regulars. Will Saletan of the Brookings Institute and the Wall Street Journal.

Damon Linger, who writes the sub stack newsletter no from the middle ground and Linda Chavez of the Niskannon Center. Our special guest this week is Matt Bennett. Matt was an official in the Clinton White House, worked closely with former vice president, Al Gore, and is a founder of Third Way. Well, our first topic this week has to be the historic events on Capitol Hill, for the first time, In American history, a speaker of the house has been ousted from his position. And, of course, it was done by his own party.

So, Matt, I’m going to start with you and ask you This is evidence of a really very frightening level of dysfunction in one of our major political parties, but What do you think of the thesis that Democrats should have saved him for the sake of the country? Some people are saying that.

Yeah. I don’t really buy that. I understand the argument because what folks are saying is, McCarthy may be bad in the estimation of Democrats, but what you’re gonna get Next, it’ll be worse. It could be Jim Jordan, which is an unimaginable idea that Jim Jordan could be the speaker of the house, but I guess it is conceivable that that could happen. The reason I don’t buy that Democrats should have saved McCarthy is because McCarthy came to the table with precisely nothing for Democrats.

What has been reported, and I don’t know this firsthand, but apparently, When he spoke to Joaquin Jeffrey’s leader of the House Democrats, he basically told Jeffries that he would give him literally nothing. Not an insurance on a boat about Ukraine, not some kind of assurance about continuing to keep the government open. Nothing about how the house was organized to give a little bit more power to Democrats. Jeffries wasn’t asking for the moon. He was just asking for something and McCarthy said my offer to you as Michael Corleon would say is nothing.

And that meant after he had attacked Democrat on the Sunday shows and had broken his word many times that Jefferies just couldn’t go to his conference and say we need to save this guy.

Yeah. Let’s consider some of the other things as well. Damon, I’m coming to you on this, but there is such a long list of reasons why McCarthy, there was no love for him on the democratic side, you know, starting with the fact that he refused to vote to certify the election, even after the insurrection on January sixth, after denouncing Trump briefly, he scooted down tomorrow lager to rehabilitate him. He gave the security footage, the January six security footage to Tucker Carlson. And he sandbagged Liz Cheney.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And then, of course, he blamed just this past weekend on the Sunday shows he seemed to blame Democrats for coming close to a government shutdown when, of course, the Democrats are the ones who voted to keep the government open overwhelmingly, and it was understandable, right, that they just couldn’t bring themselves to, even though they know the alternative might Bulwark. It’s a big lift to ask them to vote for this guy?

Well, yes. Absolutely. You know, my instincts are pretty centrist pretty much in favor of, you know, doing what’s right for the policy as a whole rather than partisan game. So I’m always inclined to wanna side with people who make that kind of an argument. But the fact is that, you know, we do have parties, and it’s one thing for me as an individual, say, if I’m a Republican, and then it’s twenty sixteen at its Trump, I can’t get myself to vote for him because he’s so awful.

And I refrain from voting or in twenty twenty, I switched to vote for Biden. That’s a tactical calculation about prudence and what’s best for the country and the message I wanna send with my tiny little vote. It’s quite another thing to say that a party is supposed to essentially put aside all of its own partisans. Ship and take a hit for the country in which it gains, as Matt indicated, absolutely nothing. That is simply not the way politics can ever work where the parties exist, and we have parties.

So that’s in and of itself asking too much. But, you know, what we’re dealing with here, you could imagine an argument being made that Democrats should have done that keep him in power because then he would have strength. He wouldn’t have to worry about the right, and then he could break from them and and and kind of join in some kind of grand coalition of the broad center. But that is not what would happened. What would have happened is he would have been dependent on Democratic votes to keep his speakership, which would have given added extremist leverage to Matt Gates and his conspirators so that they would then call for another vote to take him down and probably get thirty or forty votes rather than just eight, maybe even more.

Because now he’d be able to say see, I told you McCarthy is a rhino. He doesn’t wanna be a Republican. He’s basically a Democrat dressed up as a Republican. We have to take him down. I’ve been right all along.

And so what you end up with is it would have been McCarthy even weaker than he already was, and his days probably would have been doomed. And we’d be here anyway. I mean, there really is no reasonable way out of the kind of brinksmanship that the populist right of the Republican Party is playing with right now. There’s simply no solution. And so those who I think make this case are being unrealistic stick on multiple dimensions.

Linda, it is really difficult to see how the GOP gets out of this box canyon that they’ve managed to ride into because we know what we think the sins of Kevin McCarthy were. He sold his soul many times over to the Maga Wing of the Party for the sake of power. He had no principles So that’s what we think. But what they think was his worst sin, was that he dared to make a bipartisan deal with Democrats to keep the government from shutting down. That’s the great sin.

And so if that is what McCarthy was guilty of, and leaving aside whether Matt Gates had his own agenda. We’ll come to that later, maybe. But for the other seven voted against McCarthy. That was the big sin. So if that’s it, if you cannot govern which means with a very, very narrow majority agreeing to deal with Democrats, then if keeping the government from shutting down is the worst sin Then what’s the next guy going to have to promise these people in order to get the votes necessary to win the speakership?

He’s gonna have to say yes. I promise. I will not do the responsible thing and keep the government open.

Well, look, I think a lot of the analysis of this vote and what took place has been wrong pointing to populism. Are we the Republican Party or the populist party for at least one member say, I think it’s viewing it wrong. And I will defer to Damon, who is the political philosopher, on our team here, but, you know, I look at this group of people and I say they’re a group of nihilists and anarchists. It’s not even that they’re populist. It’s not that people in the districts in the Trump territory were clamoring for the removal of Kevin McCarthy.

I mean, most of them don’t even know who he is. I accept when Donald Trump speaks his name. They don’t focus on these things. And believe me, if the government has shut down and their social security checks have been cut off. You would have, you know, heard bloody murders.

So Well, actually, they don’t cut off the social security checks when the government shuts down. That’s one thing they’re careful about.

Yeah. They’re careful about doing, but alright. You’re right. But there are other programs. I mean, there are there are other programs that do

cut off.

Even even the, closing of, you know, state park,

state parks, but national parks. Contractors don’t get paid. The military doesn’t get paid. Right.

The military doesn’t get paid. Yeah. The problem is that this was a very odd coalition. I mean, you had Nancy Mace and Ken Buck in there along with, you know, sort of the usual suspect with the Matt Gates crowd. And you were missing people like Lauren Bobert, for example.

Nancy Maces is pretty moderate on some issues. She’s you know, got some interesting ideas about immigration. She’s, you know, not terrible on abortion. And yet she went against him. So you just had the feeling that this was like political vendettas.

I mean, I think Ken Buck, one of the things he’s been known for is, you know, focusing on government spending and perhaps that, you know, he really believed that there ought to have been more cuts even though the keeping the government open is not the place to do that. It’s hard to know what they expect to achieve with this. But the one thing that is clear is that the signal we are sending not just to the country but to the world. Is of anarchy and chaos in the United States. And what’s going on in Congress, the inability to govern, the inability to get normal things done is going to have a terrible effect on the United States and our standing in the world and our reputation.

I mean, you’ve got European leaders looking and saying, you know, here we are, Biden, you know, help form this coalition to support crane. And now, you know, we can’t even get Congress to, appropriate money to be spent. So it’s really quite disturbing, and it has nothing to do with one man in his, you know, virtues or vices that I you know, certainly McCarthy in my view had a lot more vices than virtues, but the way in which this was done, the way in which you have a small group of people exerting this kind of power and having no plan. There’s no plan for what happens next is very dangerous.

Will Saletan, this sort of thing is not new to the GOP. This has been going on now for more than a decade. These temper tantrums, these threats or in actuality, the pulling the trigger on government shutdowns. And the thing about it is Look, I agree with some of the goals of people in the GOP in the sense of wanting to have less government spending. I mean, I adamantly disagreed that they’d like to abandon Ukraine, but, you know, and and other things.

But, you know, sure. Would I like less government spending? I would. But this is such an unrealistic and childish kind of way to behave for grown ups. Right?

I mean, all the Republicans control is one house in Congress, which is only one third of the government. By the way, when they did have control of the presidency and the Congress, they didn’t cut spending, And so, you know, these outsized expectations of what can be achieved by holding your breath and turning blue is just I can’t imagine why this has taken hold as proof that you’re a fighter. I mean, it it’s proof that you’re an idiot. I don’t know. What am I missing?

Well, a couple of things. First of all, I’ve been Arjuegan. Now I have a real expert to back me up that what just happened is a culmination of a trend that began with the rise of the tea party and the election of twenty ten. And that is the emergence of a rejectionist oppositionist force within the Republican Party. That really doesn’t believe in governance as most people in Washington understand it.

On politico, there was a terrific interview with Theda Scotch Ball. He’s probably done more than anybody, you know, to report on the rise of the tea party movement and to do so as a sociologist and not a political commentator or or cultural critic. And it’s very clear the succession of steps that, you know, that toppled Eric canter, you know, that led John Bainer to resign that led Paul Ryan to resign, those were milestones on the path that led to the vote to oust McCarthy as speaker. So it is not for light and transient causes that this happened. Another data point.

The Wall Street Journal was the latest in a series of surveys to find that while Democrats at least say that they prefer leaders who compromise to get the country’s business done rather than stand on principle, even at the risk of not accomplishing anything. Republicans don’t even say that. They want fighters regardless of whether the fight can succeed, regardless of the consequences of fighting. They want people who stand up and say, we reject the status quo. We reject the elite two party conspiracy against the American people.

They call it the UNi Party.

The UNi Party. And if you don’t give us a new deal, we’re prepared to throw the deck off the bridge. And what can be done in these circumstances? Well, I rarely conduct what Norman Maler memorably called advertisements for myself, but I’m gonna I’m gonna break with that. I just published a piece for brookings, arguing that the entire model of a single party speakership has hit a wall and that realism requires a radical departure from a longstanding assumption.

Why do I think that? Well, Anybody who wants to be the next speaker of the house would be an idiot to accept the job given the rules that the late Kevin McCarthy agreed to because they’ll be just as powerless as as McCarthy was. But the Republicans by themselves cannot change the rules back to the way they were before last January. The only way to have a public and speaker who’s empowered to act is to make a deal with Democrats, and that deal would have to go beyond a change in the rules. And otherwise, you get crackpot realism where you do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

So I think it is time to think big and bold. And if I were Republicans who want to do something as opposed to just standing there, you know, a thwart history yelling stop, I would think about a broader conversation than simply the House Republican call.

So, Matt Bennett, let’s follow-up on that. What would stop some of the more moderate Republicans. There are at least as many of them as there are of the Bernadall Down caucus. In the house. What would stop them from, say, making a deal with the Democrats that allows for a speaker who, you know, is not going to be under the sort of democlace of this, you know, motion to vacate the chair can be can be introduced by a single member and other things because we know that Republicans from certain, like, bright red district cannot do anything bipartisan without risking their seats.

But these Republicans come from more district, so they might not be risking their political futures by doing that, or am I missing something?

I think the word might is doing a lot of work there. What we don’t know is whether the radicalization of the Republican Party has gone so deep that it extends to, for example, the Hudson Valley of New York where a Republican now holds a seat that Biden won easily in twenty twenty. It’s a very, very at risk seat. There are four of them in New York state that flipped Republican in twenty twenty two and that gonna be tough Republicans to hold on to. So while you’re certainly correct, that that is a best for republic, it’s a very centrist district.

What we don’t know is whether the Republican Party of that district has been taken over by the virus of MAGA and trumpism. And therefore, whether people like those members would be in trouble in a primary. My sense is though that you may be correct and that their bigger risk is losing the general election to a Democrat who points out that they are part of a party that simply cannot govern. And if they broke out and found a way to do it, that could be, you know, that could be a real breakthrough. I think given how close the margins are on the house, it is conceivable.

If not likely that something like that’ll happen. But boy, it would take an act of enormous courage

with courage. We haven’t seen much.

Which is in short supply. And so, if anyone has seen political courage, please contact the office immediately. But but it would be great and it could be trans formational, and it could be the first step towards presuming Trump loses the presidency, could be the first step towards recreating Republican Party that actually functions.

Right. As things now stand, you know, it may be true that for some significant portion of the Republican base. You know, fight fight fight is the thing that gets their blood going, but For the average voter and especially for independents who now represent forty nine percent of the electorate, according to new data from Gallup, The image of a party that can do nothing except shut down the government when it has control of the house just doesn’t strike me as a winner, even in our crazy times. Alright. Let’s move on now and discuss something that I know is near and dear to your heart, Matt, and that is the no labels movement and third parties in general.

So we know that Cornell West is going to be launching a third party quest under the auspices of the Green Party. And we are hearing that RfK junior is shopping for a party. He’s been in discussions with the libertarians, which, I mean, you know, the libertarians have a high tolerance for oddness, but, I don’t know if they can quite go to that street, but we will see. But the one that is the most concerning is, of course, no labels. You got a number of very high profile.

And in other respects, completely admirable Americans who are associated with it, Joe Lieberman Larry Hogan, Ben Tavis, Pat McRory, and of course Joe Manchen, who I ran into recently. And maybe we’ll get to that. But before we do, Matt, let’s talk about the Wall Street Journal editorial, which takes aim at a group called Citizens to Save Our Republic. I assume you’ve seen it.

I have seen it.

Let me just read a couple sentences from their editorial and then you can respond. Quote, so a group trying to give voters a democratic alternative smoldy. A democratic alternative is somehow a threat to democracy. We’ve repeatedly keeled hold, miss Trump for his dereliction on January sixth, his fraud delusions and much else, but it’s strange to say democracy will end if voters in twenty twenty four cast ballots and elect whomever they want, unquote, your response.

It is not at all strange to say that democracy will end. If they do this, it is absolutely the truth that democracy could end because as we’ve been seeing now very loudly for a long time and and we’ve been joined by others very much including Bill, who was a co founder of no labels. Work with them for years and left in principal protest over this insane thing that they’re doing try to run a third party candidate in twenty twenty four. The facts are very, very clear. There is absolutely positively zero chance that they can elect present as a third party candidate.

It cannot be done. Happy to delve into the numbers on that if you like. But there is a very, very substantial risk that if they do this, they will serve as a spoiler that reelects Trump and there is no greater threat to our democracy than that. So in the broader sense, of course, they are the threat to democracy. Now the journal is not a reliable narrator here.

They’re very invested in helping conservatives and Republicans. I know they’re very mixed view of Trump, but they are really parroting the kind of most ridiculous of no labels arguments about this. And I just wanna point out that no labels itself beyond their threat of reelecting Trump is proceeding in ways that are deeply anti democratic. And let me just give you a couple of examples. First of all, they are a political party.

There are seeking ballot access in dozens of states as the no labels party, and they’ve been granted access in eleven of them already as the no labels party. However, political parties have to operate under very strict rules that require that they disclose their donors, that they limit contributions to a very small amount under three thousand dollars per person. The labels is operating as a five zero one c four, which means they can take unlimited contributions from billionaires and not disclose who they are and they are taking full advantage of those rules. So they are not playing by the rules there. And then perhaps even more importantly, they have not said how they’re going to choose their nominee.

Obviously, the Republican and the Democratic parties choose their nominees through voting. There are primaries. Those primaries lead to a nomination that culminates in a convention. You know labels have said we’re having a convention, but they haven’t said how they’re gonna choose the person that accepts their nomination at the convention and all accounts suggest that they’re gonna choose that person inside the leadership of no label. So to suggest that we are anti democratic somehow because we think it’s a bad idea that they’re gonna try to surface a spoiler for Trump when they are proceeding in ways that really are counter to everything that we’ve done in this country to move towards more democratic openness in the last fifty years is is really riseable.

So you can just imagine the people affiliated with no labels and their deep pocketed donors sitting around rooms or on Zoom calls, and, you know, passing around data such as the Gallup poll that came out this past week, showing that something like sixty three percent of the American public are open to a third party. And I can see them passing this around and saying, see, the the the country is clamoring for just what we are in a position to offer. So in light of that, I would like you to delve into the math about why you say there is no path for a third party to win the presidency outright.

Happy to. So first of all, let’s start with the data that you just described. And It is true that, you know, substantial percentage of voters when they’re asked, are you open to voting for a third party more than a year before the election? They say yes. No labels claims that number is sixty three percent.

Most of the polling has shown it’s more in the low fifties, but it’s generally above fifty percent. The problem is that that doesn’t mean anything because that number is almost always above fifty percent. When you ask someone, Would you like another option? They say yes. The question is, are they going to exercise that option in huge numbers?

Now, some people will vote for third parties enough perhaps to serve as a spoiler, but not nearly enough to to get, you know, more than a third of the vote which they would need in a three way race. If you look at what has happened through history, there have been only two prior times in American history has a third party candidate said, I believe I’m going to win the selection. The first time was Theodore Roosevelt, who had left office four years prior as one of the most popular presidents in American history who would be carved into Mount Rushmore fifteen years later. He tried running as a third party candidate and he ended up massively short of victory. I think he only got eighty six or so electoral votes and he served as a spoiler that elected, which were Will Saletan know, the Democrat and he was a spoiler for for the Democrats against the Republicans.

The next time that happened was nineteen ninety two, a campaign that Bill and I both were involved with within Ross Perot, said he was gonna win in the spring. It looked like he was pulling even or slightly ahead of both Clinton and Bush. He ended up with zero electoral votes and no one has won an electoral vote as a third party candidate since George Wallace did it running as an overt racist in nineteen sixty eight. So the notion that these guys can defy all of American history and do something that has never been done when in fact the mood of the electorate is where it normally is. Americans tend to be very grumpy about their choices for president.

Every cycle, they might be a touch more grumpy this cycle, but not in a major outlier is just preposterous. And I’ll just finish by saying if you look at all of the data, all of the data where they test the real question, which is who would you vote for in a three way race, not are you open to voting, but who would you vote for? Even when you give them the fantasy candidate, a moderate independent without a name, somebody that you could just fill in the blanks around. That person in every survey comes in third, including the survey that no labels did itself. When they tested the two way race between Trump and and Biden Biden, it’s basically tied in their poll.

In a three way race, their candidate comes in a distant third and trump wins. And that is what you see over and over in polls done by Democrats and Republicans, by no labels, and by independent media.

Let’s talk about Joe Manchin for a sec. So Joe Manchin, he’s up in twenty twenty four in the state that, went for Trump I believe by the biggest margin in the country. I think West Virginia is now the most Republican state. And, Mansion, of course, is Democrat as of now. So I actually ran into him a couple weeks ago, and we talked about this.

And he also spoke about it at a forum at the, Texas Children Festival that we were both attending. So he has said that he is considering vis à vis his possible race for reelection for the Senate. He doesn’t think he can win as a Democrat, so he’s thinking about running as an independent, but even then, it would be hard for him for a whole variety of reasons, including that his opponent could demand that he say who he’s gonna caucus with. If he doesn’t say I’m gonna caucus with the Republicans, then he’s kind of sunk. So there’s that.

Then he’s also considering not running for reelection and West Virginia, but running for president on the no label’s ticket. So I asked him whether he isn’t worried about being a spoiler And he said, oh, I would never do it if I thought I were gonna be a spoiler. Wouldn’t do it. Don’t want that to I said, okay. Well, But I said, but why are you considering it?

And he said, well, you know, we really have to get the extremes under control in this country. You know, we’ve got such extreme people, and we have to get the the far left. You know, we have to defeat the far left. Now, I think he was saying that to me because he kind of figured I’m a Republican, which I used to be, And so he was trying to tell me what I what he figured I wanted to hear him say, but, I came back to him, and I said, Well, it is true. The far left is bad.

I said, but surely the more urgent threat right now is the far right. And he said, what do you mean? I said, well, Trump being reelected. And he said, oh, absolutely. That is the biggest threat to this country is Trump being reelected.

Okay. Fine. I felt good about that conversation until I listened to him later that evening, addressing the whole festival in which he again, said that he’s, you know, all options are on the table, and he’s thinking it all through. And so your reaction to that.

We are very, very closely monitoring the mansion situation. We very much hope that he chooses to run for senate, and I think that option is still a live one. Remember that he won in twenty eighteen in between two gigantic Trump wins in his state to your point. Trump won his state by thirty nine points in twenty sixteen. And then again, in twenty twenty, and mansion won right in between that.

So he has unbelievable power to defy odds in West Virginia. And I think if he did it as an independent, he really would have a shot at it. There’s all kinds of dynamics in that state. They’re still unclear whether governor Justice will have a primary from the right, whether his health will hold out justices, and there’s a pullout showing mansion within striking distance. So we are very much hoping that he runs for Senate.

I, in the end, I don’t think he’s gonna run for president because he doesn’t want to be a spoiler and also because No labels is telling anyone who will listen that they think they’re gonna have to nominate a Republican at the top of the ticket to mitigate the charge that that I was leveling, that they’re gonna be a spoiler. Now it doesn’t mitigate it at all. The impact of John Huntman or or, you know, Larry Hogan as their nominee in terms of who they help in the three way race, it doesn’t change whether it’s mansion or Hogan or huntsman. But that is apparently what they believe. And there is no way that Joe Mansion is going to be the Admiral Stockdale of the no label ticket.

He is not gonna be in the number two spot. So I think in the end, he will either run for senate or perhaps retire from politics.

Okay. Bill, since you were a founder of no labels and left the group, I’d be curious, do you have any new thoughts on this? Well,

I don’t disagree in any way with Matt’s analysis, but I think we do have to ask ourselves how we ended up here. You know, this moment is not like all those other moments. The Pew Research Center has been, asking the question Do you feel adequately represented by one of the two major political parties, both of them, or neither? For thirty years now. And thirty years ago, only six percent of Americans said that they felt unrepresented by either of the major political parties.

When they reran that question just a couple of months ago, that number had risen to twenty eight. Percent. So what is going on? I think with the proliferation of independent third party efforts, is a symptom of a broader malady. That is that there is a lot of discontent in the American public with the representativeness.

Of the two parties as they now stand. Does that mean that they will necessarily bolt You’ll end vote for a third party or an independent candidate this year? I’m with Matt. I think the answer to that is no because hyperpartisanship will deter them from that. But the fact that hyper partisanship will determine the votes of most of the people doesn’t mean that they’re happy about that.

And if I had a lot more time, I would try to explain why they’re right not to be happy with that. There are a lot of ways in which my party, the democratic party is running in the teeth of common sense and prudence right now. And people are picking up on that. They’re not happy about it. A party that has essentially no viable policy on immigration is not a party that a lot of people in the center of the political spectrum gonna feel very well represented by.

I think that once the dust settles on the twenty twenty four election, you know, assuming god willing that doesn’t lead to the destruction of our Constitutional Republic, we really have to think more seriously about where we are as a country, where we are as a political community And what sorts of changes are urgent starting with a function in Congress, but not ending there?

Right. I noticed in your column this week, you mentioned Catherine Gail, who has been a guest on this podcast, a couple of times, I think, and, who has some really great proposals for reforms that would open things up and disempower primaries the primary electorates in both parties because they tend to be more extreme. And, that that’s one proposal that’s out there. And I I agree wholeheartedly that we need to pay more attention to those kinds of things because the road we’re on is very, very, Let’s say the bridge we’re on is creaky. And and For

the record in that piece, I also talked about a number of other form options.

Yes. Yes. I know. But I wanted to talk Catherine because she’s been on this podcast.

Right. Well, but there are others who might well be on the podcast.

Well, we should talk about that.

Other form options to offer. She’s not the only game in town.

No. She is not. That is true. And we should be looking at all of them very seriously because we desperately need to find a new direction. Alright.

Let us take a brief look at, the Civil Fraud trial, that Donald Trump is engaged in. Damon Ruth Marcus my old friend, had a column in the Washington Post this week that caught my eye because, you know, she’s writing against tight. And she said, you know, course, she has no brief for Donald Trump, that’s putting it mildly. But she’s a little concerned about this trial and just because she feels that, well, I’ll quote it directly. She said, of course, he should be fined or punished in some way for making fraudulent, claims about his wealth.

But she said, but forcing the sale or other dispositions of his businesses as the judge ordered in his opinion last week seems both unnecessary and unduly punitive, disproportionate to the offenses charge. And she says she’s worried that it wouldn’t have happened to any other individual who engaged in similar conduct, and she cites the fact that really aren’t very many cases that you can find in the record where this has happened. So what do you think?

What I think is that if you are a billionaire, supposedly billionaire real estate mogul who plays fast and loose with the truth and has a tendency to exaggerate the value of your companies for the sake of favorable loan terms and insurance rates and things like this that you probably should not run for president of the United States and bring the entire scrutiny of our entire you know, media and journalists and law at all levels, down on your own head. You know, that’s apart from, you know, the fact that I think Ruth Marcus, you know, is expressing the kind of, concerns that, often have motivated my own commentary on, Trump’s legal problems, the worry that fair minded observers And I so by that, I don’t mean, like, the the Maga Diddo heads. I mean, like, kind of middle of the road, people who pay all that much attention to politics and aren’t inclined to be screaming partisans. But people who might just start tuning in soon to the political scrum as we head into the primary season might stand back and think, you know, trunk you know, kind of a shyster, but this seems like overkill somehow, like, all of this stuff.

So you’re going to, like, dissolve his entire business and forbid him from doing business in New York City, provoking the licenses to conduct business, eliminate the Trump organization from top to bottom. And all of this is happening in the, say, you know, eighteen months leading up to him running for president, that seems fishy. It feels a little bit like, you know, that it’s exactly the conspiracy that the Magadino heads insist it is. Now as always with Trump and all of this, I have to, you know, issue the the caveat that, yeah, but you know, there’s validity to all of it. You know, it’s not it really isn’t that he’s being railroaded and he’s a poor innocent child.

I mean, everything that he’s accused of doing, he really has done in one capacity or another, but there is always prosecutorial discretion at work. And it’s really hard to to game out, especially when you have multiple jurisdictions and multiple judges and multiple prosecutors all acting independently. It’s not like they all get together in a room and decide. Okay. Well, we can charge him in these jurisdictions for these crimes, but these other things like the civil trial in New York, that’s maybe a bridge too far hold that.

Maybe we’ll come back to it if he doesn’t win in twenty twenty four. It doesn’t work that way. And in fact, if it did, that would be a vindication of the Magaview. So what we’re left with is, you know, on very unfortunate timing and a kind of perfect storm of charges on every front, criminal, civil, local federal, all at the same time while he’s running for president. Not ideal, but, the problem is, as always, Trump, most of all, rather than everybody It’s a little last point, I guess, it’s a little bit like, you know, when you get sick and then you you end up dying your body going into convulsions with your antibodies running crazy, trying to kill the invading virus.

We have, like, every single antibody in the league sister going at Trump right now at the same time. And, our civic life is running a fever as a result.

Well, it’s unfortunately the case. That the judicial branch seems to be the only well functioning part of our government at the moment, which is possibly why so many things wind up there. But, Linda, you, I think, have a different view.

Have a different view. You know? People know me as a political pundit and all that, but I’ve spent many decades serving on corporate boards, being on audit committees, governance committees, etcetera. Now granted these were public boards and so they have to follow SCC rules and the rules of the various stock exchanges and they’re not the same as a private company, which is, and actually you could hardly call the Trump organization a company. It’s a bunch of LLC seas limited liability corporations, about a hundred of them folded in under, one umbrella all under the control of one man.

But one of the things about American business that has been the standard is that Businesses are held to be honest in their financial statements. You know, you or I apply for a loan on a mortgage and we are asked because we’re independent, you know, we don’t necessarily have a job. We have to come up with our financial statements. We to give a P and L of our profits and losses over the years. When we apply for that loan, those documents that we submit, we’re submitting under the threat of perjury.

Now this is somewhat different because again, he’s a private corporation and and perhaps he also could be prosecuted federally for perjury if he submitted false documents. But the point is that When you commit fraud on the level that Donald Trump did, you undermine confidence in the American business system. And I think the state of New York has an absolute reason to want to make sure that a company is not operating fraudulently, within the state. And the reason this has come about this whole investigation came about is ostensibly because Michael Cohen Donald Trump’s former fixer actually testified before Congress said he plays with his financial statements. He inflates values when it comes to assigning what his assets are worth and then he deflates them when it comes time to paying taxes on it or doing other things where he would get some financial advantage for having a lower valuation.

That is fraud. And, you know, I think to ignore what he’s done, would be wrong. Nobody is going to necessarily force the sale of some of these buildings, for example, but he’s gonna have to come up with the money to pay for the fraud that he gauge.

Well, if he loses his business licenses, Linda, he’s gonna have to sell them at a fire sale price.

There are other places you can do business in. Yeah. But I think what he’s done here is quite appalling and that we should all be appalled by it. And it was something that, you know, we talked about when he was first a candidate for president, people saying that he was this brilliant business man. No.

No. He’s never been a brilliant. He’s a con artist. He’s a a huckster. He sells his name.

He sells an image. But the underlying businesses that he’s supposed to have have have never been particularly well run, and which is why, you know, he’s come so close. And in fact, had to go into bankruptcy for some of those investments he made certainly in in the gaming industry. I think it’s wrong to say. Yep.

Everybody does it. No. Not everybody does it. Not everybody says that their private residence is thirty thousand square feet when it’s actually closer to ten thousand square feet. You know, not everybody puts different figures on different documents having to do with the same property based on on what their advantage is gonna be, especially when These documents are supposed to represent reality and, by the way, in we her testimony in that on this issue this week when there are actual appraisals of some of these buildings that were available that they did not disclose.

So I think that the attorney general. Whatever her reasons were for bringing this, I think the people of New York are well served by making sure that other businesses don’t think they can operate the way Donald Trump has.

Let me just put a cherry on top of that little Sunday and say that there are many, many advantages that this society gives to people who are wealthy and famous. But there is a price, though, to pay if you misbehave and you’re very prominent because then there is almost an obligation on the part of the authorities to come down hard on you because Otherwise, it sends a signal to the rest of society that this is normal, that this is okay, or that if you’re sufficiently prominent, you can get away with it. Now there’s plenty people do get away with, but they shouldn’t. Right? And we shouldn’t in endorse that.

Here here. Okay. Yeah. Alright. So we agree Jonathan Last, Matt, I wanna bring you in on the on a different matter regarding this trial.

And that is, you know, once again, the confounding problem how you deal with this character because, of course, true to form. He is truth, socialing, lies, and innuendos, and insults toward everybody in Sundry, including the judges law clerk there was a picture that surfaced of her, you know, one of those meet and greet things where she was smiling in a picture with Chuck Schumer. So he said, oh, she’s Chuck Schumer’s girlfriend. Right. And the judge was not amused and said, okay.

That’s it. You cannot comment on anybody in on my staff. You cannot comment on it, you know, Now he can still comment on the judge himself and so forth, but there are real limits, right, to what this judge or any of the judges in the Trump cases can do to enforce the normal rules in these situations.

There are. And I think this underscores your point about how there are different rules for for the privileged, and there’s nobody more privileged than Donald Trump. A normal defendant in a case like this would face significant dangers. I mean, you could be thrown in jail for violating the terms of gag orders that are imposed by courts. You can be fined, and there are other sanctions as well.

So The problem for all of the judges in all of the cases that Trump is a defendant in is that they are walking a tight rope. Not only because they face real risk to themselves physically and otherwise, but because they are dealing with a defendant that is completely suey generous in American law. I mean, this guy is a former president who is the leading candidate for president of his party, and it is incredibly hard to figure out what to do about that. The other thing I would note is that even if the gag orders were to work, which is kinda hard to imagine, That wouldn’t stop the torrent of abuse. There are plenty of people around Trump that can signal to the to the millions and the hordes that follow him on social media and elsewhere, and they can make these cases.

So I do hope that the judges who are able to find a way perhaps with with fines or other kinds of sanctions to impose some order on these cases, but I am not particularly optimistic. And I think when we see the federal cases starting to go, perhaps as soon as the winter or spring, this is gonna be a central question in front of these judges. And what they don’t wanna do is make a mistake that would allow the verdict to be vacated because they did something and took it too far with a guy who has got different kinds of first amendment rights than everybody else because he’s a presidential candidate.

Bill, you know, Trump makes the argument that this is all being done to him to prevent him from running a campaign. It is election interference. He keeps saying election interference. That’s what that’s all this is. But of course, some people say, and I be curious to hear your view of this.

They say, oh, no. The trials are the campaign. That’s that’s enough for Trump to run on, and arguably when the nomination on.

Enough to win the nomination on. Yes. Enough to win the general election. That’s a different question.

Different question.

Having said that, You know, I think the discussion we’re having goes to the heart of Donald Trump, and that is he is to his core a lawless man. He makes his own rules. And when even his own rules become inconvenient, he throws them over board and makes new rules. He acknowledges no authority other than his own will. Not the people not god.

And his conduct in and around the trial is just one more demonstration of his utter contempt for the rules and norms that make a civilized society possible. And rather than comply with them, he would rather blow them up, and he has encouraged his supporters to think in exactly the same way, which is what makes him so dangerous. If he had a program that I violently disagreed with, that he wanted to execute consistent with the laws and constitution of the country. I would resist him, but I wouldn’t be so vehemently. It is his essential lawlessness that scares me the most.

Well, amen. Alright. Let us now turn to the final segment, which is the, often commented upon highlight or low light of the week, and we will start with our guest, Matt Bennett.

Well, it is hard to pick a low light outside the the one that, occurred in the house. My particular low light is the attempt to blame Democrats for the insane dysfunction on the part of House Republicans. There is no doubt about who is at fault here, and that extends to a whole bunch of things. I mean, senate Republicans are saying we should not have a forty five day budget in place. We should have the agreement that was reached with with then speaker McCarthy back in June.

So blaming Democrats for things Republicans are doing generally speaking would be my low light.

Okay. Thank you Linda Chavez.

So I would appoint to, something as a highlight, although the article itself sort of points up a low light, which was a series that was done in the Washington Post this week, and it was called Dying Early, America’s life expectancy crisis. And one of the articles was entitled how Red State Politics are shaving years off American lives. And it was by Lauren Weber Dan Diamond and Dan heating. And what it really pointed to is the way in which some of the politics that we’ve seen over the last many years have led to lifestyle choices that people make who live in many red state or or red counties, in America, and how these choices end up impacting lives. And it pointed to The early deaths in one of the towns that they pointed to was a place called Oshapula, Ohio.

In which the life expectancy is below the national average, and it has to do with people dying of of preventable diseases, obesity, smoking related diseases, and that some of those deaths may be attributable to political decisions made in those states by Republican leaders, for example, to keep taxes lower than surrounding areas on tobacco. I thought it was a fascinating piece. I’m not sure that it so much points to a cause and effect as as much as a correlation. But I do think that Republicans ought to take a look at, you know, their future and whether or not some of the kinds of political decisions they make may in fact be eliminating their future constituents.

Thank you for that. I was at an event with, former head of the National Institutes of Health, Doctor Francis Collins, who pointed out that there were two hundred and thirty four thousand unnecessary deaths of Americans, just because they declined to get vaccinated. So that’s another example of what you’re talking about. Okay. Will Saletan.

Well, like Linda, I want to highlight something that points to a low light. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, does some of the best survey research around on foreign policy issues. And earlier, just a few days ago, they released a comprehensive survey on public attitudes towards Ukraine and assistance to Ukraine and let me just give you a few of the low light highlights. Only thirty nine percent of Republicans think that our military aid to Ukraine has been worth the cost. Compared to sixty one percent of Democrats.

Since March of twenty two, Republican support sending additional military aid to Ukraine has declined by a stunning thirty percentage points. Asked to comment on the statement that the United States should support Ukraine for as long as it takes sixty two percent of Democrats said yes to that compared to thirty percent of Republicans. Asked to comment on the statement. The United States should urge Ukraine to settle for peace as soon as possible. Sixty six percent of Republicans said yes compared to thirty five percent of Democrats.

The United States should encourage Ukraine to negotiate with Russia to end the conflict, even if it means allowing Russia to keep the territory is captured in Ukraine. Republicans, fifty percent Democrats twenty six percent. US leaders are paying too much attention to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Republicans, forty nine percent Democrat eighteen percent. The party of Ronald Reagan is gone.

It’s not coming back. We now have an internationalist party and a party who’s remaining internationalist leaders are increasingly out of touch with their own constituents. This is a scary development for the future.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Damon Lincoln.

This is actually a more of plug for a highlight who’s an author. He wrote a very good, opinion column for the Guardian where he works. His name is Jason Will Saletan titled Red Caesarism is right wing code, and some Republicans are listening. That’s a bit of a mouthful, but The piece is about the increasing tendency of right wing intellectuals, including Michael Anton, a wealthy individual named Charles Haywood, who has a pretty prominent right wing podcast and, you know, funds a lot of stuff in in this corner of the world. Basically intellectual justifications for really the outright embrace of tyrannical government.

It really isn’t, hyperbole to put it that way. These are people who are increasingly convincing themselves that, democracy is is in the past. And If the right can somehow manage to gain power in twenty twenty four, it should not relinquish it. It’s pretty amazing to imagine that there are American intellectuals who believe such things, but they do, and they see their role as softening up people on their own side to these arguments. So this is a very good and scary piece.

It’s important, I think, for people to read. But again, my plug is more for Jason Wilson, the author. In general, if you click on his name at the guardian, when you go to this piece, you’ll see a list of other recent columns he’s written over the last couple of years, and he’s really written a series of these. I think of all the people who are doing this kind of work for, large, mainstream newspapers, I think he’s probably doing the most to kind of unearth the kind of dark corners of the Maga right as it transitions to something very dark in the wake of Trump’s last presidency in preparing themselves for what they hope will be his next one. So a highlight, of a very much a low light.

Thank you. General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, has been blind quoted a few times about his views on the former president, but now he has decided to go on the record and tell CNN exactly what he thinks. And so he said, quote, a person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because it doesn’t look good for me. A person who demonstrated open contempt for a gold star family, for all gold star families during the twenty sixteen campaign, and Rantz that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are losers and wouldn’t visit their graves in France. A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians on Jews, on working men and women.

He continued, a person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for forty years in peace time and war should lose his life for treason, in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators, a person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.

So, okay. This, it seems to me, is the start of something because if Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. That means there is a very strong chance he could be elected president again. And to prevent that unthinkable outcome, it is going to require everybody who worked with Trump and has personal experience like Kelly to come out and cut ads, saying exactly what Kelly just said, describing what they saw, what they know, what they think, because the stakes could not be higher. And I think it will carry weight with people to hear it from someone like Kelly.

We need to hear from the others we need to hear from Bolton, from tillerson, from Bill Barr, from all of them. And I’m hoping that they will be inspired by Kelly’s example this week. He’s done the right thing. Also just want to let our listeners know that the Bower crew will be appearing live and in person this month, October twenty fifth, in New Orleans. And we would love to see you there.

It will be Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, Sunny Bunch, Charlie Sykes, and me, and special guest, author Walter Isaacson. You can sign up at big easy bulwark dot rsvp if I dot com. So that’s big easy Bulwark dot r s v p I f y dot com. Tickets are fifty dollars And again, that’s October twenty fifth. We hope to see you there.

With that, I want to thank our guest, Matt Bennett, and of course, our regular panel. I also want to thank our producer, Jim Swift, our Sound Engineer, Jonathan Last, and our listeners, and we will return next week as every week.