Old Man Biden

Hey, are you? Are you JBL? I can’t tell because it’s on your shirt. We’re starting this show. I’m JBL.

This is the next level. I’m here with two of my former friends. Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the Bulwark.

People are gonna like that voice a lot better than the Fager and Lager, and you’ve been receiving a lot of negative commentary about the Fager and Lager,

and you’re being bullied. That is not right. On Reddit, there was a whole thread about Foggorn Leghorn. And actually, it wasn’t about Foggorn Leghorn. It was about cleatus.

People don’t understand that these are different characters. And, while initially the sentiment was running anti cleatus over the course of dozens of comments, a lot of people said they really enjoy pain.

Interesting. Like, you’re to, like, poop McFarty four four twenty came in and defended it. And, you know,

I Wasn’t those JBL’s burners are like, Cleatus is the best?

Wasn’t me. Okay, guys. Breaking news. Joe Biden is old. Old man Biden.

People are worried that he’s old because he’s so old. He’s an old, old person who was older than he was four years ago when he was old. It was yesterday. Three years older than Donald Trump, who is not old. And, we are gonna talk about this.

This has been causing a lot of democratic angst. It is a constant topic of conversation in the discourse. And also somehow is something that other people in the discourse claim is not being talked about, which I don’t understand at all, We seem to have people breaking into two camps, the people who say Biden should step aside because he’s too old and people saying, the age questions illegitimate stop asking it. I have synthesized these two positions and said, yes, the age thing is a salient issue. For a lot of voters, so it matters, and also there’s nothing to be done about it.

So just keep pushing forward, basically my view. But Sarah, you have all sorts of things because you just talk to the people.

I did talk to the people. Can I just say though one of the people, AB Stoddard wrote this piece for the Bulwark, Bill Crystal has been, yeah, love AB? Bill Crystal has been, like, retweeting this Jonathan Last

be like to be like and

so he was in is it I was talking to him yesterday? And I was like, bro, you gotta stop. It’s too late. It’s too late. And here’s the thing.

I don’t know if anybody remembers this. I also had this freak out. I shared this freak out. I’ve been hearing from the voters for a long time, but I had this freak out about nine months ago when it made sense for Biden to not announce that he was gonna run for reelection for him to pass the torch for him to maybe even like put his hands on a successor a little bit or or put a thumb on the scale or allow a democratic.

People don’t like that he’s handsy. That’s a consistent Republican attack.

Can I also reveal that I received a call from Bill Crystal yesterday? And you could maybe guess what the topic was with regards to?

Maybe I don’t

I don’t know if I should be reviewing private phone calls. Sorry, Bill.

He’s been it’s very public on Twitter. I was like, it’s too late, man. This is just it’s what I said. It’s just an internal Bulwark argument. But this panic is coming too late And the idea that you could now Gretchen Whitmer could just be like, oh, I’m gonna just step out of my Michigan governorship with my twelve percent name ID, which is the thing that people don’t understand.

Big Gretch.

Hey, and Gretch, I I’m for this. I was for this nine months ago. The Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Warnock, Wes Moore, Jared Polis, you know, bundle of moderate ish governors from swingy ish states. Right.

Maybe they could do, like, a quintum for it. A Clintonum for it. Of good Democratic governors running — Yep.

—

Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris. People are super. These people would also run for the president.

They would.

Does does a lot understand that? Would.

And they’re much more famous.

Bernie Sanders might run for the presidency if Joe Biden stepped aside.

So this is the thing. Right? Politics is not a place where fantasies come true. Right? Like the idea that you can just be like, well, obviously there’d be a Democratic primary starting now.

At which point, everybody would get in, by the way, nobody’s got an operation, nobody’s got money, nobody’s got name ID. They’re all gonna they’re gonna have this thing. Gavin Newsom probably is the only one who’s got like an active because he thought maybe he would do this. But he has now thrown all in for Biden. Like, He’s white, never left

a candle every night hoping that there’s there’s some health events, but he would never admit that. But just his privacy.

Sarah, can I ask you a question? Sure. You say it’s too late now. My position has been, again, since, twenty twenty one when people first start talking about Biden being a one termer, was that it was always too late, and the Biden would have to run no matter what.

This is your position. And I disagreed with it. Like, this has been a fun

You still disagree with you have you come around to agree that Gmail is No.

No. No. You were I was right back then. It’s just too late now. So, like, you these weaknesses that everybody is suddenly like he’s old and voters seem to care about this is something that I was telling you you heard from the voters Jonathan Last ten months ago, or or before that.

We’ve all been talking about this for forever though. It isn’t like, you know, people have only just realized he was old. Right? This is this has been a constant conversation since twenty twenty one.

Here’s what I think people are realizing, and it’s true. Which is that they are realizing that voters, including democratic voters. They are worried about Joe Biden’s age, I think they belatedly caught up to the lack of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris and the fear that that actually generates and the idea that if Biden had a health event, Kamlo is the person who would have to run and that she could very much lose to Donald Trump. I also think that people sort of thought the age thing would be a wash that between Trump and Biden, there’s like three or four years age difference and that it wouldn’t matter. And I think people realize maybe after the CNN town hall that Trump and Biden despite being not so far apart in age seem quite far apart in vigor.

Maybe it’s because just hatred burns brighter. But let me take read you some quotes. Okay. So I was in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Just one of those real important places like a bellwether County up in PA.

We just lost fifteen percent of our listenership.

Well, I’ve been to Bethlehem recently.

You have.

I’ve seen these people.

They were lovely people. And I, so I talked to democrats. We did two groups of demos, and we asked, in fact, we didn’t have to ask. It comes up immediately, Biden’s age. But when we were talking about it, one woman said, this is about Trump.

Even though he’s a bully, he doesn’t falter. He doesn’t mumble. He doesn’t fall off the steps. I mean, Biden does. So I think it’s a matter of, you know, I don’t think that he has enough confidence talking about Biden.

It’s Lisa.

Trump did literally fall down the steps. Just a

This is Elena from PA. You can see from even the beginning of his presidency to now, like there’s definitely been some decline, and that’s worrisome. This is Lewis. I think his health is the thing and his mental capacity has to come into play, and I would like to see someone a bit younger, a bit more assertive. And they’re all just kinda that they’re not they’re not saying he is dementia.

They’re not saying he’s drooling. Lisa was definitely gonna vote for Biden, but I think that part of it is that as people sort of got out in the field and started listening to voters, they realized that actually lots of voters are worried about his age and also that they don’t seem to have that same fear about Trump, that there does seem to be a difference.

I have a solution to this.

K.

Is he Mandelbaum? Remember Is he? Jameel. No idea what

you’re saying.

Sarah, you remember Is

he? The old man is seinfeld.

They kept challenging people to weight lifting competitions. Joe Biden. Should challenge Donald Trump to a bike race. Just one time around the track. I wanna see Donald get up on on a on a two wheeler.

And just put all these concerns to rest. Just to us just two old men getting out there. Drinking some powerade, eating some spinach, and then having a road race. That’s I think that’s the answer to this, or maybe a bicep curl challenge. Push up.

Push ups. Do five push ups.

Here’s the thing. When Donald Trump faces these indictments, one of them is the hush money to a porn star. Right? Like, I understand that people are like, well, this is a bad thing for him, but I’m like, it contributes to a general sense. Donald Trump is still dealing with porn stars.

Don’t think Joe and Jill are still knocking knocking boots?

That has never crossed my mind ever one time. I’m talking about just broadly how people perceive the age of these two men, the relative ages of these two men.

Does anybody recall that the press conferences during COVID when he talked about injecting bleach into people and shining ultraviolet lights inside the body and the the Wall Street Journal poll, which came out twenty four hours ago, One of the questions was which of these two is mentally up to the job of being president? And Trump had a ten point advantage over Biden. And I look at that, and I just don’t understand how anybody who lived through the Trump presidency could think that he is mentally because again, Like, it’s always word salad. This is, you know, does Donald Trump have dementia? How would you know?

How would you know if he had dementia?

Can I read a bleach he sent? Every time you see these radical lunatics in their partners in the fake news media talking about the trials and tribulations of president Donald j Trump, please remember that it’s all a hoax just like Russia, Russia, Russia, no collusion, Mueller witch hunt, fake dossier. Fies of fraud in order to steal an election. I like, he he doesn’t even make sense. He just posts, like, old man ramps every

If Joe Biden said the words that Donald any of the words that Donald Trump has said, they would be talking about invoking the what was the twenty fifth amendment?

Yeah.

Like, they’re like, oh my god. He’s lost his mind. We have to remove him from office. And yet with Trump, everybody just assumes that this insanity is just, well, you know, that’s just him. Sarah, can you explain it to me?

Cause I don’t understand it.

Yeah. I can explain it to you.

It makes me angry.

Well, the freak out is coming from the fact that I think there’s been a bunch of these polls that recent Wall Street Journal one included that just shows Biden and Trump neck and neck.

Mhmm. And

let’s be honest. There are plenty of people in the democratic camp who wanted it to be Trump. Right? Because they think that Trump is the easiest one to meet. And I think to have him, especially if you are a democrat who really is like, no, Joe Biden’s doing a really good job, you’re like, how is it possible that he is running neck and neck with Trump?

You go to the voters and you ask them, What? Why? And then you realize that the voters are number one, not feeling the benefits of the macro economy, and they talk a lot about inflation and the cost and the prices of things and that they think Joe Biden’s too old to the job and they don’t think he’s doing a good job. And I think that that is belatedly a broad swath of Democrats are coming to see this and are reacting sort of like you are, which is kinda be like a sputtering anger at voters, but also a real fear and also a recognition that is too late to change horses.

Can I also explain it? Trump seems like a deranged lunatic, but, like, it takes energy to, like, to issue that level of derangement. Day in, day out to just sputter angry word salad. I guess, like, a man screaming at you on the street corner. You’re like, I’m not worried this person is gonna keel over.

Like, they don’t seem to be of their faculties, but they they do seem to be awake. They actually seem like they might be on methamphetamine right now. And so, like, that is a contrast to Joe Biden who, like, moves very gingerly. I I I do think that’s it.

I wanted to defend the honor of the Democrats on this. Because this is a thing which I’ve heard so many times, like Democrats wanted Trump. I dug into this like a year ago, and I could find like two elected Democrats who said that they preferred the Trump be the nominee. And almost all the other ones who would wait on on this were like, nope, absolutely. Anybody but Trump Trump is dangerous.

Trump is and I did a survey of Bulwark readers, and the bulwark readers went like eighty five to ten. Like We have great readers though. Doesn’t does not matter. Anybody but Trump. Trump is too dangerous.

But our people are perfect. Our people are the the best ones. They are not representative. We have a we have a nice a nice sized community, but it is not a dominant sized community.

I’m just saying that I think most Democrats did not want Trump, and I think most Democrats, this one’s a little closer, believed Trump could win it in twenty twenty four too. Like, it is not the case. That the majority of dims have likely assumed that, like, oh, you know, if Trump’s the nominee, he can’t possibly win because people like us have been standing here shouting for three years now. Of course, Trump can win. Right?

I am not gonna name names, but I can I can conjure examples in my head, including some of the Never Trump world, which is a big, diffuse world of people who do not all feel the same about an awful lot of things? Let me tell you what. And there were plenty of people whose part of their strategy was like it’s gonna be Trump and trump’s the easiest one to beat. Like, and there were there are just I I think the consulting class of Dems, including Biden’s folks. Right?

There’s a there’s this way that people do it, which isn’t to say that they want Trump. They just said it’s gonna Trump. And I think that that that That’s

just analytically true.

It’s analytically true now. I don’t it didn’t always have to be this way. That’s fine if you think so.

I mean, I’ve been saying this since October of twenty twenty.

Uh-huh.

While we’re doing metacriticism, I think we can go rehash whether or not tiny D could have won in December. Every week on this podcast while we’re doing some meta criticism, can I can I bring you to an interesting media critique on this topic? Sure. Did I heard recently? Because I I think many of our listeners have a critique of the media and and even the bulwark, on the topic of age that that maybe that’s discussed too much.

Right? That that there’s too much of an obsession that there’s not any news about this. I think that’s one opinion. Here’s another opinion. Nate Silver did it post yesterday.

He wrote, I’m critiquing the media, not normie Democrats, because normie Dems are quite concerned about Biden’s age, but the de aligned media. The Lamestream media, I just added that part myself, tends to treat such concerns as a bit gauche, on the other hand. Or as a narrative, they’d rather not make legitimate.

Red Bill Nate is the worst.

What the fuck are you talking? What is the fuck are you talking about? Like, these guys have one note to play. One note to play. The media is bad.

Media is in the tank. I got fired from ABC. So the media has to be I’ve been spending the last three months, you know, playing poker in Las Vegas in a poker room, but I can make a meta observation on what every corner of the media is doing. I tell you they’re doing it wrong. And then I was like, can you provide me some data?

So I ended up in a Twitter canoe with Nate Silver for like five hours yesterday. And, going back and forth about this, I was like, you are the data person. Can you show me some ev like, can you show me some evidence? And then one of the national review guys, prod heap, because Nate needs fanboys, like Elon Musk does. Like, prod heap jumps in and Nate’s defense, and he’s like, this is correct.

I bet if you did an assessment of McCain Old Stories versus Bine and Old Stories. You would see there were many more for McCain. And I was like, Please do that now. I was like, please do that analysis for me and report back on the results. No response.

But Nate, like, refuses to give an inch on Like, it is the the holy Bible of the contrarian centrist, the other side of the horseshoe from us centrist. The holy Bible of them is that the elite media always wrong and must be wrong, and they’re always in the camp for the neo liberal moderate squishes. And and there is no amount of evidence that you can provide to them. That will shake that thought. And that that is, like, I think demonstrates, like, the part one of the problems you have in this situation, which is, like, There’s no winning.

And this goes back to your newsletter yesterday, JBL. Like, there’s no winning for, like, what is I understand the frustration of our readers on this. Like, you’re talking about the Biden age single. What are we supposed to do about

Yeah.

You know, Mike Murphy, it did suggest on Charlie’s podcast last week that maybe they the campaign could do a little bit better job of, like, bringing out a team of people with him. Like, I was joking about the quintumvirate of his governors earlier. But, like, demonstrating, like, a second term would have a lot of young faces and putting Pete and comma, I guess, forward more and maybe picking a few other young, you know, people that are like, they’re gonna be in the cabinet that’s something. Will that really work? I don’t I don’t know.

But but at least that’s a constructive solution, but like this is the problem. It’s like there’s not like there’s nothing to buy in team can do. And we can do them izzy mandelbaum, but it’s like, these assholes are always gonna obsess over this and always gonna talk about it and gonna complain that the media isn’t covering it enough, no matter the fact that it’s like the central thing people talk about. And in some ways, in a way that I think my media criticism would be, it’s getting to the point where it’s like negating the Trump criminality that, you know, like, we go back to the both sciences. I’m like, on the one hand, trump has been indicted for an un ninety one felony counts.

On the other hand, Joe Biden’s getting up there.

So, Sarah, I have a question for you about how regular folks assimilate information. One of the things we have seen through the Trump era is that something comes out about Trump and voters are horrified by it and then eventually they’re like, yeah, whatever. For instance, access Hollywood. For instance, the Charlottesville find very fine people on both sides, the injecting bleach into people, the January sixth, the ninety one indictments. I mean, you know, people get all exercise, but then voters eventually struggle Why is that not happening with Joe Biden’s age?

Why isn’t at some point people just do, like, you know why is that a scab that they keep picking at over and over? Is it because there are no other scandals to place it. Does Joe Biden need to start riding with a biker gang?

There’s there’s hunter. So there’s there’s stuff. But like

I see what I’m saying. Am I am I expressing it right?

I do see what you’re saying. That was like a slightly different point I wanna make, and it’s about inflation. But not about, like, real monetary inflation, but about the way that our perceptions get inflated around things. So for example, one of the things that was coming up a lot in this group of demos was this idea that they don’t see Joe Biden. They’re just like, where is Joe Biden?

Where is Kamala Harris? And I actually hear this all the time. I’ve heard this now for for years when you talk to Dems. There’s this sense that Biden is nowhere to be seen. Now, that is not because Biden is nowhere to be seen.

It is because people got during the Trump years an inflated sense of what it meant for our president to be in your face and in your ears and in your Twitter feed all the time. And so Joe Biden is behaving like a normal person And that’s where they get this idea of like he’s in his basement. And I think that even in terms of price inflation, I think prices are sort of going up somewhat, but a lot of it is actually the perception because things were so much cheaper during the pandemic because no one would did anything, then everything seems so much more like people are going on vacations Now, and it’s like catastrophically expensive for them. You’re hearing like a lot of that stuff this summer about how expensive everything was, gas, etcetera. And a lot of that comes from the fact that, like, there’s like big chunk there where people didn’t do as nearly as many things.

And so now their perception is different. Anyway, so a lot of this is about people’s perceptions and how this stuff kinda just like hits them. Now when you say are people gonna get sick of the Biden age conversation. I do think there’s a little bit of, like, we’re at the end of summer. The amount of calls I got after the debate about Vivate Gramaswami, you could feel it in the voices of quarters about how excited they were to just talk about something new.

Right? And this is a problem in our do you wanna talk about a media problem? It really is just the idea of, like, there’s a lot of column inches to fill, a lot of podcast space to fill, and, like, we’re about to rerun and elect from two years ago with two pretty old guys with a lot of well worn, where there’s a lot of well worn territory. Right? Like, what are we gonna talk about that’s really new even though there’s all these indictments, like it’s gonna be on one hand kinda crazy and on the other hand kinda boring.

So I think that’s some of where it’s coming from. The other thing I’ll just say on the neck and neck. Can I

just make one point before you get to the neck and neck? Because I do think that there is there’s something else that you can talk about that I think is relevant to your to those orders points about how they don’t see Joe Biden enough, and maybe there are new stories that need to be discussed. And and Megan Kelly brought up one of and that is that there are a lot of people that think the Obama’s are actually running the government and that there is some sort of shadow puppet situation going on that they are controlling. And so, that’s like some grist for the mill. Like when you consider, you know, the Brock Obama gay stuff, the Tucker is doing, and and Brock, and the Obama secretly controlling the government.

That might be just

as many people who say that Trump is secretly controlling the government because he’s still president. I mean, this is this is the insanity of Right? I mean But this

is where, you know, Republicans are better at providing the grist for the milk. Right? Like, the Democrats are out there being like, can we talk about how unemployment is so low. And all of the things that the inflation reduction act added and like whatever. And people are like, but I wanna talk about gay Obama running the government from the US world and

While he’s while he’s

watching, you know,

these tennis

players with his wife looking totally normal.

I do wonder if we should just run with the Megan Kelly thing. I think we should kind of pull it, which is like, how would what would the head to head look like if if what was really happening was that, but Biden was running again, but we all just understood that it was he was a puppet for Obama. Yeah. I bet his numbers might bump a little bit. So that might be another strategy.

Especially both Obama’s, you know, the I when I was talking to these devs, you know, I asked them about Gretchen Whitmer and Jared Polis and about Josh Shapiro now. Josh Shapiro because we were in Pennsylvania. Super popular, just in love with Josh Shapiro. I have high hopes for him. But for everybody else, nobody knows who these people are.

They do know they all thought Michelle Obama, and or Jill Biden, the wives of the current, should all be the next presidents. That’s basically what they had. Now I was gonna sort of go back to JBL’s question about does the age thing stop mattering as much? And I think once Trump is the nominee, like, what it’s funny when people are like, well, we don’t see Biden, but they feel like Trump is omnipresent because you talk about him all the time, but people actually aren’t experiencing Trump yet. Right?

Like you see his bleats. You see his bleats. You read them. People aren’t. Even like, like, this is happening.

I don’t the numbers came out for true social recently. And it was like, there’s ten people on true social and like a thousand porn bot, like a billion porn bots. That’s it. Like, there’s nothing on there. And so I just I I think that when there is a head to head, Biden’s age will matter slightly because I do think that the derangement right now doesn’t come through the way that it might when we have to see a lot more of Trump like, up there.

Here’s another question along the same line. We had two two Biden sightings in the last couple days, one of which was him going on CNBC after the Mitch McConnell frees up and saying, yeah, I tell, you know, Mitch is an old friend and, you know, I called him up and talked to him. He seems like his old self and, you know, I alpine Mitch, then Biden going down to Florida in the wake of the hurricane, and Rhonda Santa’s, like, scurrying off you didn’t have to meet with them. And reporters are begging Biden to pull acts to Santa’s, and Biden just refused to do it. Said, you know, now I’m, you know, I’m sure he has other things to do and, but he did a good job.

He, you know, he sat down with our folks and told us, you know, set everything up and I’m so like, does nobody see that and say, yeah, okay, great. That’s presidenting. That’s when he seems like he’s not actually full dementia, and like, this is This is I guess it’s disprovable or it’s not non falsifiable, right? You can’t prove that he’s not beating his wife So you can’t prove that he doesn’t have dementia or something. Right?

One of my buddies, said to me, this was before the Joe Biden thing was something that stuck with me. He’s like, You know, in polite society, which is not MAGA society, one of the remaining acceptable biases is against old people. I I do think that there is an implicit, like, you know, maybe it is, I don’t know, we could bring a psychotherapist onto the podcast. Maybe it’s about all of our fear of mortality. You know, something inside all of us that makes us where all of us feeling seeing ourselves slipping a little bit.

You know, my knee hurt when I got to, you know, the basketball court, like these sorts of things that that, like, builds up and we lash out. But I do think that there’s something to that.

Maybe if this is because old people run the entire country and we live in a gerontocracy and we’re rebelling against it a little bit, that might also be.

That could also have something to do

with it. Now. I mean — Yeah. — these tend to which the boomers run everything and appear though they will not let go.

It’s the silent generation. It’s still lying on the power.

It is getting out of control.

Like, I did buy not my party yesterday on this and or for tomorrow rather. And, so Jimmy Buffet You know, Jimmy Bussett is younger, was younger than Mitch, bonded to Anne Trump. Yes. And he’s the same age as Bill Clinton, who’s younger than Mitch Biden and Trump. And he’s barely, you know, he’s barely older than Chuck.

They were in college at the same time, and it is a lot. It is kind of a lot.

Something else. Alright. Sarah, what else from the focus groups did you have for us?

There’s a few things. So that the PBS crossroad special that Judy Woodruff does that, I was sort of holding the groups for will be out in a week or so. I will say JBL there’s a part in there just for you. Where when we were at in Iowa talking to Republicans, the two time Trump voters, we were we asked them about Democrats. And we ask them some things that were like, you know, do you think that Democrats can be people of faith?

Like good Christians? And the answer was sort of like, no. Like, because you can’t be for, you know, women becoming men, men becoming women, and you can’t be for abortion and, like, be a good Christian. And so, like, Biden’s faith is, you know, not. If you asked the Democrats and we did, about Republicans and, like, can Republicans, you know, how do you feel about Republicans and do you think what do you think about them morally?

And they’re all, like, they were completely like, well, it’s about Trump. Like, Trump is a bad guy, but like other Republicans aren’t bad. And it was something that I told Judy was like, like, the Democrats are much nicer to the Republicans. Now I do have a slight caveat, which is we were in red, red, Iowa, or, like, pretty red, Iowa versus, like, very purple, Pennsylvania, where I think a lot of the Democrats like, and many more of the Democrats in this group, like, knew hung out with or related to or engaged with Republicans in a way that the Iowa folks did not engage with Democrats.

Maybe the Greenpoint Democrats might have had a different view or, you know, something.

Well, I think if I was in Palo Alto or something and I asked about Republicans, they would be like, well, these people are crazy and, you know, maybe I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe Democrats are just nicer, but they were nicer in this group. For sure.

Did you, at any point, reach across the table, grab somebody by the lapels, and pull his face into the table, like Liam Niesen and taken?

Didn’t do any

of those things. Or do you do any of those things? How do you do that? That is a superpower for you to sit there. I was watching some video of you doing the in person phone this group, and I have to say, and and I do not mean this to be sarcastic.

If you had offered me a hundred thousand dollars, to sit there for that ninety minutes and just, like, you know, conduct myself professionally the way you did, I couldn’t have done it.

How do you get free pizza? I get free pizza,

when I do it.

So that’s enough for me.

It’s very impressive.

I will say there was, the group of dams. There were several black voters in that group. And one of them was this young woman, a young white woman in the they were in different groups. Because we did too. But I I both of them had a similar thing where for the black woman, she was like, Joe Biden hasn’t done anything about like, racism, the police, like, she had sort of this set of concerns where I just I voted for him, I wanted to vote for him, and I just feel like nothing’s been done.

And the white woman was very similar, but it was more about like prices, and like the cost of rent. And in both cases, when I asked about voting, both of them were kinda like, like, I don’t know if I’ll vote. So to me, this, I think part of the concern about Biden, I thought about it, what, because of Nate Cohen’s piece yesterday about Biden’s slippage with Bulwark and Hispanic voters. Because I would say I have seen evidence Not of them deciding to vote for Republicans exactly, but of just the total diminishment of enthusiasm, then when you when you pushed and I did push around like, okay, it’s Trump versus Biden, Do you vote? They were sort of like, yeah, probably and honestly, nobody really went for the no label’s third party thing either.

Just as a FYI. There was like a little bit of interest, but like, if you said Joe Manchin, everybody was like, no. But I I I do think It’s this it’s this enthusiasm thing that I worry about and I think that people are starting to worry about with Biden. And that’s like it’s they say age but I actually think it comes it could be something slightly different of just people not feeling like there’s something to be excited about or root for. And that that from a turnout perspective could be a problem.

Well, I’ve got some good news for them. I said the Republicans are gonna be able to turn them out because if you look at what the House of Representatives is focusing on right now on Republican leadership. It really is, you know, getting at those issues of racial justice, of, economic economy, pocket book issues, bread and butter issues. I mean, they’re, you know, right now here for September, Kevin McCarthy is a big question in front of him. Big question.

There’s some in his caucus. They’re like, we should impeach Biden. And then there’s some in the contest that think we should shut down the government so that people don’t get you know, the the basic services that they need. And so, you know, I that that seems pretty constructive

Sarah, is this another heads they win tails we lose?

I don’t think so. I said this before that I think go ahead and Biden. Actually nothing could be better for Joe Biden. With the debt ceiling, I think there was a not at all clear sense of like who was shutting down the government, people were like, and the idea of the debt being high is something that lots of voters just think. I don’t know about the dynamics of this one.

This is just like a spending bill. It also includes all of our aid to Ukraine. And so, like, that’s a big part of what this fight’s gonna be about. And while half of the Republican Party wants, you know, Matt Gates and Marjorie Taylor Green to shut down the government rather than send what I think is close to five percent. I wanna do this.

I wanna ask voters how much of our defense budget they think is going to Ukraine because I bet they would say that it’s much higher than five percent total. And, like, old airplanes that were sitting in hangers.

But I’ll take the over. Whatever number you want, I’ll take the over. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so I don’t know exactly what the dynamic is. I do think that they impeached Biden though it’d be good for riding in bad for them.

I think the government shutdown is gonna be bad for them. And the problem is they don’t have a coherent At least the tea party, like, which ended up being a total farce, obviously, like, from a from a public facing standpoint had a coherent message. Right? Which was which some liberals didn’t buy, and they were right probably to sniff that out. But but the the coherent message, which is we’re spending too much, you know, we need to we need to stop this.

We need to get our budget and control. And, you know, it was it was hypocritical and it was, you know, a cover for racial stuff. But Like, if people got it, like they understood what the message was, what the goal was, you know, Now, like, after a bush and Trump administration of skyrocketing deficits, you know, after, like, all of the just Trump insanity, you know, the fact that that that they’re incapable of having a clear message because the most visible people in the house are the most insane people you know, like, and that they’re all over the map. Right? Like, some of them wanna cut Ukraine, some of them wanna spend Ukraine.

They’re not like united with a clear message. I just think it’s a disaster. And that they’re in, I think, session twelve days between now and when the government shuts down. I don’t know. I just don’t know that people have, like, really, it has sunk in.

Even, you know, with people who are not, like, hill watchers. Like, DC Hill watchers, you know, I think this. But, like, McCarthy does not have devotes for continuing, you know, to fund, you know, these things. So so maybe it’s just a partial shutdown maybe that can kind of, you know, carve around it, but he, he just doesn’t have them. And and the Schumer and the Democrats are just like, you have to come to us.

Like, we’ll bail you out. Like, you have to, you have to come to us. Right? And so I, like, I do think that that that you know, you’re right. Like, the impeachment thing is a much more clear, like, these people are lunatics, like, who don’t care at all about you.

But even the government shutdown thing, I just think that they’ve lost the ability to kind of message that in a in a way that’s about economics and not about, like, just that this is an anarchy.

Can McCarthy survive it?

We we keep going back to the, like, you can’t beat somebody with nobody. It’s, like, true about Biden. It’s true about Trump, and it’s kinda true about McCarthy. Right? And so I I was always of the view back during the craziness or the McCarthy speaker thing, where I did think he was gonna eventually collapse the speaker thing.

I think JBL, you’re wearing the t shirt because you kind of had played that out that there was nobody else. I I thought that eventually, you know, that that someone else would just emerge. Because it got so embarrassing. But once he won it, you know, I was like, they’ll definitely give him the enough leash for one. Of these things.

Well, you gotta well, he’s gotta cut a deal with Democrats. But then after that, it’s gonna get dicey. And the thing is though, like, He ended up doing that debt deal. Like, there was a lot of smoke and whatever around it, but ended up being pretty clean. Like, like, the the the opposition to him did not seem very strong on that from the Chip Roy Matt Gates’s world.

So I I I do think that he survives it just because it’s like, who else? Like, what else? And and again, in the same way that the majority part of the Republican conference, does that have a clear message about why they would shut down the government or what they would wanna do? The opposition really doesn’t. I mean, their clearest thing is anti Ukraine funding, but while that is a majority issue among Republican voters, the politicians are lagging on that.

Like, there’s still a

And the party itself.

Yeah. There’s still these old school, not me, not old school, but, like, these the the Republicans from the Cold War era are still in there. Right? Like, there has not been a turnover of the conference yet that meets you know, the turnover of the voters.

Oh, it’s coming.

It’s coming. No. No. It’s definitely coming. But my point is if there were fifty plus one members of the house that were against Ukraine funding of the house Republican Conference.

Maybe Kevin is in trouble, but there aren’t. And so, like, what is the rationale for throwing them over? I just don’t see it.

Sarah, in your focus groups, did the voters give Biden credit for the shrewd way in which he negotiated with Republicans over the debt ceiling to just get the business of the people done and agreed to spending cuts and was sort of a good faith operator in negotiating and doing bipartisan chip. Is that a thing you’re hearing a lot?

I did not hear the word shrewd, unfortunately.

I’m a bipartisan ship. Did you did you hear? I mean, because people love bipartisanship. They want they want presidents and congresses who are gonna gonna just roll up their sleeves and work for the good of the people with the other side, which Biden has done more than any other president in our lifetimes, I think. I’d have to, like, go by then.

That’s not true. And that’s not fair to Reagan in in H. W. Bush. And and click that whole

era, really.

Right. But does does that come up? The bipartisan, like, working with the other side thing?

He took, yeah, he to interrupt this not at all serious question on your part.

Totally serious.

Uh-huh. Actually, I I’ll tell you when I brought up the the bridge collapsing there in Pennsylvania. There’s this part of I ninety five collapsed. And Josh Shapiro, the new governor, was able to fix it in like this record time. Like, he just had people working twenty four seven, got up, but obviously they also were awash in infrastructure, money.

And so I asked who got credit for the preparing of ninety five Sebastian. It was shapiro.

They said Donald Trump and No.

No. No. No. It’s your Democrat. No.

They were they were they saw a shapiro, but it there was striking to me that there was almost no recognition of sort of Joe Biden and infrastructure and the role that it played in it?

That’s interesting. I had a similar, conversation, not in a folk just in a casual bar focus group of people in Louisiana. And, somehow the Tom or maybe it was a child’s birthday party, I don’t remember. But that’s somehow the topic of, I I do have a distinct memory, though, Tom. Very similar vibes.

Yeah. How? How? There’s a lot of money coming in to, you know, basically the out like outskirts of New Orleans like region and Southern Louisiana for, you know, all of these new renewable energy efforts you know, money to kind of clean up, you know, the various, you know, all the emissions are going from, you know, the oil, natural gas, drilling that happens here, you know, some battery. I, like, the various plants, like, these are business guys.

They started mentioning other things, and I was kind of like, That’s pretty good. Right? Don’t do we think that people are gonna be crediting Joe Biden for that? Here, and that was allowed. That was received as a comedy bit.

So that’s unfortunate. Interesting. Just interesting.

Alright. Can we talk about Elon Musk and Twitter?

Oh, you

have to?

I want to. I want to. Over the last few days, the ADL, the anti defamation league has been trending on Twitter, and Elon Musk has explained that he is absolutely not an anti semite. He just blames the Jews for trying to destroy Twitter through their vast powers over money.

Do our producers have what Elon said? Cause I caught the second wave of it. Like, I caught the back and forth, but I never saw this original tweet?

Maybe Sebastian can effort that. So you guys are both still active on Twitter? Yes? No. I I am full time on threads.

I am loving it. I’m posting four, sometimes as many as eight times a day on threads, just embracing social media. At some point, shouldn’t you be off of Twitter? I don’t mean to be judging.

I think he’s calling us immoral, Tim.

I don’t mean to be judging. I’m I’m just saying that by by providing free content on Twitter, you are helping Elon Musk make money?

I love that you asked this question because these days so rarely do I get to sound like nineteen year old, young Republican Tim.

Oh, I

wanna hear it. The market I I love when I I love when I get this opportunity. And it’s just this always just felt like a lefty kind of activist thing that now the right activists have copied, by the way, and and now

But what?

In in the twenty twenties. Yeah. That was my I just need and the writings are worse about this now. But, like, back in the nineties, early aughts, this lefty activist thing. I was like, you can’t support this company.

It came really to a head in the late aughts. After I came out of a closet and Sarah Longwell this when it was, like, you were shamed. If you wanted to eat a Chick fil a shamed and, you know, or if you use the mozilla browser because the mozilla guy donated to prop eight. And that was like the one time where it did weigh on my conscience. And so instead of, like, eating at Chick fil A a lot, I would I would only do it shamefully occasionally.

And I just, like, We live in a free market system now with a lot of international conglomerates with a lot of really bad billionaires that run a lot of pretty bad, you know, that are that I probably would loathe if I met them in person. If I knew their private thoughts, like we know Elon’s private thoughts, I would probably be as repulsed by them because I am by Elon. I don’t really love Tim Cook, for example. And I’m on all this apples. All all this apple stuff.

I think that he’s kind of like the opposite of Elon. He’s like a very well put together fake kind of charlatan that has that is doing a lot of really awful shit in in China and elsewhere, but like, has the sheen of being a good guy. So anyway, that’s my rant. Yeah. Sure.

I should be on threads anymore. I’m threading too. I’m doing both I I’m I have a Twitter addiction also that is part of this. And, I I’m hoping that that, like, that Elon will save me from myself and that, like, this whole thing is gonna collapse upon itself, which I get increasingly seems like it will eventually. Right?

And, like, how can he, yeah, he’s just burning cash? Like, his his lenders are gonna oh, I don’t know. Maybe they’re Jewish lenders. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it. Bulwark gonna have to come calling at some point.

Right? Like, he’s gotta pay off his loans in debt.

In a weird way, he has more leverage over them. Because it’s twelve billion dollars that he owes the banks. Yeah. The truth is If

you owe the bank fifty million dollars,

Yeah.

Bank owns you. If you owe them twelve billion dollars, you own the bank.

You own that. That’s exactly right. Here is Sebastian founded for us. Since the acquisition, the ADL has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it and me of being anti Semitic. To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti Semitism, it looks like we have no choice, but to file a defamation lawsuit against the anti defamation league.

In our case, they would potentially be on the hook for destroying half the value of the company. So roughly twenty two billion dollars.

But there’s nothing anti Semitic in this tweet from him.

Well, I mean, saying that the ADL is potentially on the hook for destroying half the value of the company

I thought maybe there was another tweet that I was missing to the side. Yeah.

There was. There was another one where he talks about sixty percent or

But but to me, when I when I read this, what I hear is a pathetic loser, who doesn’t wanna take responsibility for the fact that he has cratered the value of his own company, and he’s looking to blame somebody else, which is not the choose, but ADL. Excusing him. But who are the Jews?

Right. They just the ADL just happens to be Jews. Yeah. Our our US advertising revenue is still down sixty percent primarily due to pressure on advertisers by the ADL. That’s what advertisers tell us, so they almost succeeded in killing X slash Twitter.

Please, Twitter is going to die. And so I was a, why not speed the collapse by hopping over to the other place? Well, I mean, I don’t think of you as one man when it comes to Twitter. I think of you as a great

with strength of a hundred men, Tim.

I did. I have social

media artists of our generation.

I have message. And if any of my friends over at Facebook, I’m kind of annoyed about this. I was like, Zach should be putting me in like the beta. Like, I should be getting the threads and I’ve I’ve I did message some of my people some people that I used to work with the work at Facebook. And I was like, give me in on the, like, I’m a power user.

Like, get me in on this bad boy. I want all of the I wanna test out all the features for you guys. So, anyway, I don’t know, but Soxano St. Yeah. I I hope Twitter dies.

I mean, I would I would get nothing more than joy than Elon Musk completely going belly up. But I I can’t completely give up on it.

Let me tell JBL a hard truth. I wanna give JBL a hard truth.

I love hard truths.

Twitter is deteriorating before our eyes rapidly. It is awful how much it is deteriorated. It is still better than any other platform that has been offered yet. None of these other things have both the number of users, the number of people that you can interact with who are saying interesting things, And just in terms of like a text based platform, like, where you can say a thing and comment and, like, on an article or whatever, I and it when it comes to sharing our our content from a business standpoint, like, there’s just there is yet I have a look, I’m a free market person give me the Twitter alternative and basically you just have to build Twitter from, like, three years ago, and I’d be perfect.

That’s what threads is.

Thread is slow. It doesn’t have lists. So for live, it’s like really struggling. Like, the thing that I would re the thing that’s really struggling is live. Right?

Like, what do I use Twitter for? Like, this so I’m using threads, like, just tweeting about articles, tweeting about politics. I’m already using threads. What what is it not offering me? Right?

Like, when Donald Trump is going to jail. And I wanna know and I want, like, initial reaction. I feed it to yeah. Feed it to me in my veins. Threads is not doing that.

It’s going too slow. And then and then sports and other non political things. Right? Like, I have my LSU people, I have my nuggets people, like, during the game, I have a list. I can just watch them.

So I’m not seeing, you know, random bullshit about Donald Trump coming into my feed. You know, so it’s got it’s got a little bit of ways to go on that front.

Look, I agree with you that none of these people are saints. One of the big differences though is publicly held versus privately held versus public. Companies, and it is, you know, like, a company that is holding the shareholders in theory has some accountability, but when some, you know, when you have a sole owner of a company, that is, I mean, there is no way to ever get any accountability, even theoretically, and that’s why.

That’s true. Oh, when you go get your gas, when you’re driving around, or you just are you going to the gas station only with the best CEO? Was like the most most moral CEO, you know. It’s like, who no. You can’t go to Chevron.

Don’t want the Venezuelan’s to get the money.

In New Jersey? We have other considerations. We go to, you know, when Joey, skinny joey skinny joey tells me that his station will take care of me.

So that’s

where I go.

Okay.

See, nobody gets mad at me when I do the Jersey accents.

Yeah.

Nobody, when I do my, you know, Italian American Jersey, this is how things happen. Nobody gets their their all, like, enough.

I think I’ve asked you, how does it feel to not have to pump your gas? God, that just must be a joy. That must be, like, your best eight minutes of every day, where you just know some be pumping your gas for you while you’re checking threads. Listening to podcasts.

I love it. I’ve never understood the thing that people because this is most people look at it the other way around.

Yeah.

I hate the idea of not being able to why is that Sarah Longwell

think that when you are used to not interacting with a person to do a thing and you just do it yourself, and then suddenly you are being told to interact with a person. And, like, here’s the thing. There are just some things that are, like, feel very unnecessary. So one of them is whenever I’m in the bathroom at, like, some of those, like, really ritzy places, and they have an attendant The tan me, the paper towels. I’m like, I don’t need you to do this.

I do this everywhere else on my own without supervision. So you might feel the same way at a gas station where I’m like, I do this by myself all the time, friends.

This is a classic lesbian gay divine. Right here. This is, like, classic LGBTQ divide within our community. Like, you just want your hands to smell like oil and gas and you wanna touch that stuff and get that and it’s just like No. Let’s somebody else do that for me.

That’s great. I will just hang out. Chill.

Yeah. I’m just spraying my hands with the gasoline.

You your hands smell like the pump

Like in Zulanburg.

They do. Your

hands smell

like the pump.

How do you? You get

your gas poorly. If your hands come away smelling like petrol.

It has an effect.

Good show. Long show. Hey, everybody. We are moving this show. We’re taking the next level and we’re putting it on the Bulwark main feed.

If you’re listening to this on the podcast, you’re still gonna get it there. Don’t worry about it. But if you are one of our thousands and thousands of YouTube listeners, then you’re gonna need to get us on the Bulwark main YouTube feed there. Did I do a good job of that?

From the beginning. I said, this thing should all just be in one feet. Here I yeah. I’m gonna tell you all. Oh, boy.

And for some reason, people wanted to split them up into their own feeds. It makes no sense.

Which people series is?

There were people here who just didn’t, you know, I’m just telling you strategically, it always made sense for us to all be on one channel, with all the shows and all the content. And it’s great because then you can find our other awesome content that is also on YouTube because it will be in the same feed. Just how it should have been.

And I don’t want you to now that you’ve mentioned this in the podcast, I don’t want you to confront that person publicly because they will listen to this. And they will know that it’s coming, and they will know that the ax is hanging over their head. And they won’t know when you when it will come down. Upon there.

I may I’m angry about this. But also, this show is blowing up. Tell your friends because, you know, this is this is the this is a big this show’s a big thing.

I’m doing good.

Guys, we’ll see you on Sunday. Bye.