Philip Bump: Running Against Reality

Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is Tuesday, May twenty third twenty twenty three. And remarkably, a court in Arizona has just finally ruled that Carrie Lake is not in fact the governor of Arizona. Which is interesting that these things drag on for so long.

So so apparently, we are not gonna get an announcement from Charlie Sykes saying you won’t have Carrie Lake to kick around anymore because We will always have Carrie Lake. Won’t we? Philip Bump joins me National columnist for the Washington Post. We’re always gonna have Carrie Lake, aren’t we?

Yeah. I mean, we will have Carrie Lake as long as Carrie Lake can continue to generate attention by saying carry Lake ish things, which seems like so far an inexhaustible resource.

The thing about the the kind of the shamelessness or the, you know, alternative reality she lives in is that even though, you know, a judge has been looking this per month. And even though there’s, you know, massive evidence and it’s overwhelming evidence that she did not, in fact, win the election, that Katie Hobbs is, in fact, still the governor of Arizona it will have no effect on her and very, very little effect apparently on the Arizona republican base.

Yeah. That’s exactly right. And I think it’s important to acknowledged that what Carrie Lake is running against here isn’t really democrats. She’s not just running against Katie ops. She’s running against this idea of reality that is bolstered by people she does like, by the elites, by the mainstream media, by the left broadly.

This is who her opponent is, and it’s always been her opponent. Right. So the November eighth twenty twenty two election against Hobbs was merely a benchmark in her progressing campaign against reality. By my account, and I have I have a piece up today at the post. My account, she’s lost a selection six times.

She lost it on November eighth. She lost it when it was called by the AP. She lost it when the results were certified. She lost it in the court challenge in December. She lost in the court challenge February, she lost it this week in that her most recent court challenge.

Right? But it doesn’t matter. Each of those things is a data point for in this war against what they want you to think. And what they want you to think is reality. But she doesn’t want people to agree with that.

In part because she generates so much attention simply by refusing to accept the reality that’s obvious to everyone else.

There are

a lot of states that have really crazy interesting politics. I mean, I live in Wisconsin, but Arizona seems to be kind of in a class by itself because if in fact she is running for the United States Senate, this is gonna set up the most amazing senate race of twenty twenty four, and that that is saying a lot. Right? Because you have Kirsten Cinema running. She’s got a Democratic challenger she’s not running in the primary.

Right? So you got Roman and Gallego running as the Democrat. Kirsten Cinema may be running as an independent and then Carrie Lake of what the hell? Fill up? I mean, how is this gonna shake out?

I mean, that’s also assuming Carrie Lake wins the Republican nomination. We also have the Sheriff of Lam who’s planning on seeking the Republican nomination as well. You know, this is a guy who was alive with the truth of vote folks. He’s pretty much out there. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, he and Lakers are sort of competing for the French. And, you know, this is gonna be in twenty twenty four, presidential election year. You know, if if I’m the GOP nationally, I’m very concerned about who ends up on the belt in Arizona. Simply because having Cinema actually run, which doesn’t seem like a sure thing necessarily is going to potentially, and likely split the vote on the left to some extent.

But, you know, we just saw how in twenty twenty two, Arizona had this this great opportunity. To take the governor’s seat to win the senate seat that failed in part because their cans were so extreme. And this is a state that obviously they’re going to want to win the presidential level. And I don’t think Carrie Lake Orland helps them do that.

Okay. So, do they have a normie alternative?

Yeah. I mean, honestly, not that I’ve seen I I think part of the challenge is and this is the ongoing challenge to the buffet party, which, you know, I don’t need to tell you about. But the fact that, you know, Norman candidates usually don’t win the primary. Right? You know, the the base that turns off a primary is often looking for someone who’s going to spouse these these fringe views of this opposition to reality.

And so those candidates went. You know, we saw it in so many times in twenty twenty two.

This is also kind of speculative, but last month, I was talking with some pretty well known Republicans from Maricopa County. And we were discussing about what had happened to the Republican party in Arizona. I mean, the Republican party in Arizona has a kind of a long tradition of you know, pretty reasonable, normal people. And you can just run through, you know, whether it, you know, it’s John McCain or, you know, John Kyle or or Jeff Flake etcetera. And he was speculating about what has happened, why the Republican Party in Arizona has gone off the rails, why it has been so crazy One of his speculations was, well, it’s different being a border state, you know, because everything is more intense, everything is, you know, you feel a little bit more under threat.

These things feel a little bit more dangerous. But I don’t know whether there was any basis to that. I mean, he’s there every single day, and he’s looking around at people who had supported him in the past and watching the madness spread, and it has become intense. I mean, the fact that Republicans in Arizona might have the choice between, you know, crazy Kerry Lake and even crazier sheriff gives you an indication of just kind of how bizarre things have become there.

Yeah. I mean, look, this is also the state that gave us buried goldwater. Right? I mean, so it’s not as though, you know, everyone’s been a John McCain all the way down. Right?

But very goldwater’s not a carry lake.

No. No. Sure. Right. I mean, Jan Brewer is not very late.

Right? And Jan Brewer was seen sort of an out buyer when she was governor of the state. Now she’s like, oh my gosh, I can’t even with these people. Right? But, you know and I think the last time I was on this podcast, I was talking about my book, which looks at the shift, the generational shift in American politics.

One of the things to remember Arizona, it has become a destination for retirees and for people moving from other parts of the country, not all of them are are, you know, hard right people. But it is very much a state where there is an increasing presence of a generation of people that is older and more likely to be conservative than younger And so we see in part, I’m sure some of this being a function of the new arrivals to the state who are looking for a type of politics that the state didn’t have previously. I guess what I’m saying is, it may not be the immigrants coming in from the southern border, but from all the other borders from the rest of the United States that are playing some role here.

Alright. Well, let’s just look at the week and news that we have. A lot of things are gonna happen in a very short period of time. We had senator Tim Scott from South Carolina announcing he’s running president yesterday, Ron DeSantis is going to announce within the next couple of days. And, of course, we’re up against this debt default deadline.

Now so I have to admit that I’d gotten into the habit of just simply assuming that you went through this kabuki dance, kabuki dance, everybody got nervous. And then at the last minute, they resolved all of this. That doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment. Give me your gut sense of whether or not we are gonna go over the cliff this time.

Yeah. It’s really hard to say. Right? And I think that I’m with you, that we’ve done this several times prior and that it’s gotten resolved. And it’s like, okay, that was a waste of time.

Right? The difference here is that we’ve already seen earlier this year that Kevin McCarthy is not able to get things done the way he wants to get them done. Right? You know, this speaker election should have taken, you know, a ballot or two, and it lasted for days. Right?

And here, we have a hard deadline. You know, the speaker election could last as long as it the last. It doesn’t really matter once it gets resolved. But here, there is a real deadline that they’re up against. And so they need to solve something sooner rather than later if they want to be able to modify the people who are gonna want to make a big deal out of this in in McCarthy’s own caucus.

And I just don’t know what that looks like. And and and one of the things that’s a question that, you know, I think Alexander Acasio Cortez raised a valid point in a recent interview where she’s like, does McCarthy know? Does he know where the votes are? Does he know what his caucuses actually can go along with? And I I think that’s a totally fair question.

I’ve circled this from the moment that he was elected speaker, whether or not he’s capable of actually making a deal, whether he’s capable of delivering anything. And I don’t even think that he knows that at this — Right. —

at this point.

So we’ll get to Rhonda Ron DeSantis a moment because you have a very, very funny piece about him. But yesterday, Tim Scott announces, and I have to admit that I am somewhat puzzled by what the theory of Tim Scott begin elected president is. I mean, as I’ve written my newsletter this morning, you know, sweet summer children of the Pandadocracy. You know, I have these theories about how, you know, Tim Scott’s gonna rock it to the presidency. But as you explained yesterday, No.

Tim Scott is not Rick Scott. And yes, there is another politician from South Carolina who has announced that she is running for president. And in no. Tim Scott’s big splash yesterday was drum roll please, the endorsement of John Thune.

Yeah. I mean, look, I don’t mean the bad mouth John dude. I mean, he’s he’s the number two ranking Republican, the Senate, but I do think that the DC set of which I am probably not apart just by working for the Washington Post, overstates the value of high value endorsers. Right? You know, one of the things that I point to is in twenty sixteen, Donald Trump basically had no endorsements coming into the Iowa caucus.

It didn’t matter. Right? The endorsements, that year followed the support of the base as opposed to driving it, which is theoretically roll endorsements. You know, the Mitch McConnell came out early in favor of Rand Paul in twenty sixteen. And Rand Paul, as people may recall, was not elected press either not win the Republican nomination.

So John Thune, I think, does Scott some good in that. He signals that Scott is a player in the other lane. So, you know, we used to talk about how all the multiple lanes in the Republican primary. In twenty sixteen and moving forward, there are two lanes. There’s Donald Trump and there’s not Donald Trump.

Right? Donald Trump has a pretty solid lock on the Donald Trump lane and will for the foreseeable future. And that everyone else is fighting for the not Trump lane. And right now, DeSantis is the heavyweight in that lane. But it’s pretty clear that he’s wobbly.

And I think that Tim Scott Nikki Haley, Glenn Jungken potentially who made pretty obvious last week that he was thinking about maybe throwing his hat over in here. I think all of those people are saying, okay. Well, what happens if it’s not the scientist? And then, secondarily, what happens if Trump somehow stumbles? And and they wanna be in a position to do that?

I think by Scott coming out and having him by his side. He’s saying to the establishment that doesn’t like Trump, look, I’m a real credible guy. Maybe I’m not Trump guy who can win this thing. That’s I think the best case.

You’re a number cruncher. I love some of the numbers you had in this piece on Thune. South Dakota has fewer than nine hundred thousand residents. Thune was actually included as a possible contender for the presidency back in twenty twelve. Fifty three percent of voters had never even heard of him.

He’s got a little bit higher name recognition. Only twenty two percent of responders to a UGG poll said they liked him. I like this one. On you gov’s ranking, Thune is the eightieth, most popular Republican lending just above former Arizona governor Jan Brewer. And just below Ron DeSantis previous.

Okay. So here’s my question about about Tim Scott. And I understand the the lanes. I guess, I am even more cynical because I think there are multiple lanes. I think that there are obviously, there’s the Trump lane, there’s the not Trump lane.

And then there’s hey, maybe I’m running for something else. Tim Scott, for example. I described it as the Potemkin campaign.

Sure.

And I thought it was interesting that Donald Trump put out a truth social bleat yesterday saying good luck, senator Tim

Scott, in entering the Republican presidential primary, it is

rapidly loading up of people. And Tim is a big step up from Ron DeSantis domonius, who is totally unelectable. I got opportunity zones done with Tim. A big deal that has been highly successful. Good luck Tim.

Exclamation point, no caps anywhere. Right. So Philip, what does that tell you that Donald Trump is gone? I have no problem with this guy getting in the race. I kinda like this guy.

What the hell?

I wrote about this one Donald Trump did the same thing for Fitik Ramos swami a week or two ago. Yeah. Donald Trump thinks zero moves ahead. And what he’s doing here is exactly what it seems like he’s doing, which he’s trying to promote Scott against thisantis in order to both increase the number of viable candidates in the field and therefore make the level of victory that he needs to have lower. Right?

The Republican primary process is stacked for the front runner with a lot of winner take all contests that if he just wins thirty percent of the vote, and gets more votes than anyone else, he gets more delegates. Right? Trump is aware that hadn’t gone through this in twenty sixteen. But he’s also just trying to, you know, have people see that there are other people in the not Trump Blaine. Oh, you don’t like me.

Oh, here’s this guy Tim Scott. You know, if he’s sort of like me, maybe you go for him instead of Ron DeSantis. And all he does then is keep her on to Santa I mean, it’s, you know, it’s it’s not subtle.

Well, this is where I have the PTSD flashback from twenty sixteen because a large deal clearly benefits Donald Trump. Donald Trump understands that.

Right.

I’m assuming that other Republicans understand that the more candidates that get in this race, the better it is for Donald Trump. I assume they understand this.

Like, that that seemed like it was the obvious lesson from twenty sixteen.

You

have Rubio and Cruz and Kasik and all these other guys who were just wanna be the last man standing And it seems pretty obvious now that you have people like Glen Young. And who again hasn’t declared, but has has taken the first sort of steps for challenging Ron DeSantis. Saying, hey, why not me? The Santos is funneling. Maybe I could be the guy.

And then that’s how you end up in the same situation you had twenty sixteen where it’s like, You know what? Maybe I can be the last guy against Trump, and then it ends up there eight people running against Trump, and then Trump, you know, clears what to take all the states with thirty five percent of them.

Well, yeah. And, you know, stop with the logic because this is the way it plays out. Just one more question on Tim Scott. I mean, Tim Scott clearly has a different you know, persona and personality than than Ron DeSantis. We’ve been Donald Trump and kind of a sunny optimistic.

I’m kind of a nice guy. Sounds very pre twenty sixteen and, you know, talking about personal responsibility. Does Tim Scott think that there is a lane for that sort of sunny optimism give me your your sense of of how his message plays with the base. I think the base will look at him and they will like him. They will feel validated.

Hey. Have a conservative Bulwark Republican running. But hard to imagine that this base, which has its own shall we say, predilections, and tastes, is going to go along with that kind of a message.

Yeah. No. I think you’re generally right. I I do think that his sunniness and optimism is over so a little bit. He’s had a number of interviews since he announced his intent to form an exploratory committee, which he sort of bashed the left in the ways that you would expect of a of a guy who’s speaking to Republican prime.

Right? But I think generally speaking, there is the sense among Republicans that when Republican voters say, I like Donald Trump. I just didn’t like all the mean tweets you know, sort of the argument that we heard from Michael e last week

—

Right.

—

that they take that at face value. And I think they shouldn’t. Right? I think for a lot of republicans really the mean tweets and but they know they shouldn’t say they like the mean tweets.

Oh, yeah.

And so I think that to your earlier point about Tim Scott potentially running for something else like VP, I think that’s valid. I also think every single politician has ever won any election for anything, has pictured themselves taking the oath of office on January twentieth of an odd numbered year. Like every politician sort of dreams like, well, maybe there’s a path for me, and that’s why I think that’s playing a role too here. And Bulwark with what you got, and that’s what Tim Scott’s got.

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Okay. So, Ron DeSantis, who has been reminding us over the last couple of days that he’s not the most gifted retail politician in America. You have a kind of an interesting story that I wanna talk about. You reorder on Monday. This development on Twitter where it appears that DeSantis got a new Twitter username from a dead California realtor?

What is that story?

Yeah. So this is purely speculative. Just to be very clear.

But delicious.

Yeah. Yeah. But with very serious implications, really. It it should it should it be borne out. So Ron DeSantis used to be Ron DeSantis FL on Twitter.

Right? That f l, not super useful if you’re running for national office, which Ron of Santa clearly is going to be imminently, you know, officially, you know, has been for a long time. So he is now Ron DeSantis on Twitter. There was a Rhonda Santis on Twitter, and it was this guy who sold real estate in California, and hasn’t tweeted just, you know, years, and it turns out actually appears to have died in twenty twenty, September twenty twenty. That guy who was Ron DeSantis on Twitter is now rhonda santas underscore one.

So at some point in the past couple of days, rhonda santas, the original, the realtor, became Ron DeSantis underscore one. And Ron DeSantis FL, the governor became Rhonda Santos. How did that happen is the question? Right? You’ll remember that at the beginning of the month, Eon Musk, very publicly came out and said, you know what we’re gonna start doing is we’re gonna start shutting down accounts that have been inactive for thirty days or more.

And everyone had was in an uproar. How can you do that? You know, I my, you know, my dead relative was on Twitter. I wanna keep all their tweets, etcetera, etcetera. I was surprised by that because I’ve known since Musk took over Twitter.

He’s gonna eventually realize that usernames have value in trying, you know, loosen up some of these usernames. But now, I’m curious, was that a way of clearing the field? So you can have people like the poor deceased Rhonda Santa of California and have his username altered so that Ron DeSantis can have the Rhonda Santis username. I just find it hard to believe that the Dead Reelzer’s family contacted by DeSantis’ team, and they agreed somehow to figure out what the password is. And, you know, I mean, like, the process of actually changing that to Ron DeSantis underscore one, seems very onerous for someone who died three years ago and wasn’t in that Twitter user.

It’s just all very strange.

Well, speaking of very strange, Rhonda Sanders is launching this presidential campaign based on let’s turn America into Florida or whatever. This comes the week after Disney announces, yeah, that billion dollar office complex we’re gonna build in Orlando. Yeah. No. This whole Disney fight has really become I don’t know.

You you tell me whether I’m wrong. It feels like a quagmire sort of an own goal mixed by metaphors for Ron DeSantis. And, you know, that that he doesn’t have the deafness to pull back or minimize it. He keeps plunging in. He keeps doubling down.

He thinks he has to be a fighter. And now he is in a fight that looks increasingly unwinnable from his point of view? Your thoughts?

Yeah. No. I think that’s right. I mean, Disney is a more powerful entity than the governor for Right? In part because it’s an international organization.

And it’s gonna outlast Columbus. Disney will be here after Ron DeSantis is for. Right? So they just have to wait four years. Right?

You know, they can file lawsuits and just wait. One of the things that I think the Santos is being challenged with broadly is that he sees his argument against Donald Trump as being predicated on the fact that he wins his fights. Right. And he won his fight against Pfau, You want to fight against, you know, so and so and so and so forth. That’s a hard argument to make when you continue to trail someone by thirty points in the polls.

Right? So he has to just demonstrate it another way. And so I think that he thinks he needs to come up with some sort of concrete victory against Disney, especially because Disney played him on, you know, when Florida took over the whatever that weird entity in Florida was called, how they sort of, you know, submarine all the power that it had before Ron DeSantis people took over. He’s being seen as taking losses on this thing. And he very clearly wants to have a win, but this needs you know, if they have more power and they know how to fight these fights.

Right? They know how to win fights against political entities. And you’re right. He is stuck in this fight And he doesn’t have a path toward victory that’s obvious to me. What do I know?

But but he continues to engage in it because he needs to prove that he’s a fighter who can win.

Except that it it seems like it’s a liability at least on two fronts politically within the Republican primary leaving aside what it will do to swing voters in a general election. You know, number one, you know, there are still Republicans who have the, you know, muscle memory of remembering when the Republican party stood for small government that did not use its power. As a cudgel against private businesses. You know, that’s certainly number one. The other one is the fact that clearly part of his sales tool is the business climate in Florida.

You know, people wanna come to, you know, Florida. You want them this is a big thing among Republicans, you know. We are business friendly versus places that are, you know, hostile to business. And now you have, you know, one of the largest corporations saying, no. Actually, we we don’t think this is a a good business climate.

So there seem to be multiple downsides within a Republican primary. And then he he has also decided because he’s a fighter. He’s going to double down on the book bands —

Right.

— and leaning into that. And as feels like every day, there’s another story like, are you kidding me? What is going on in Florida? The dumbing down of Florida. Which does not strike me as an asset in a general election campaign.

Yeah. I I don’t I don’t argue with any of that. For months, my assumption has been that Ron DeSantis thinks that he can outflank Trump to the right. And, I do think that there is validity in saying, that in him picking up fights that Trump could never have, in part because they’re newly emergent and in part because Donald Trump was different home like vaccines, right? The issue of his focusing so heavily on trans identity, that was not an issue when Trump was president.

Now the dentist can really plant his flag on it. But he just can’t stop going down that path. And the the Florida legislature is, you know, just sort of rolling over for everything he wants to do. At some point in time, he’s demonstrated what he wants to demonstrate, and now is going so far that there are obvious negative repercussions to it, that I don’t understand why he and his team don’t simply put on the brakes. Right?

And I’m curious, the extent to which He has people on his ear like Christina Pushshaw, who obviously is a far right actor and uses that that sort of rhetoric. You know, to what extent is he hearing from people who think this is the right move and really auto expand as a universe of advisors. So so someone can say, hey, look, you know, maybe enough is enough.

Okay. So let’s pull back the lens a little bit and talk about something that you have written about extensively, you know, demographic trends in your book. We talked about the last time you were on the podcast. The aftermath the last days of the baby boom and the future of power in America. I I was struck by this new report by the folks at Catalyst about the twenty twenty two election.

And they write gen z and millennial voters had exceptional levels of turnout with young voters in heavily contested states ceding, their twenty eighteen turned up by six percent among those who are eligible. Further, sixty five percent of voters between the ages of eighteen and twenty nine supported Democrats. Many young voters who showed up in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty to elect Democrats continue to do the same in twenty twenty two. So This is a trend that the people have talked about for years. I think there’s been a lot of skepticism about whether young voters would actually turn out in big numbers?

What kind of trends are you seeing there? Because if Republicans keep losing two out of three younger voters, that’s pretty ominous.

Yeah. I mean, for the party, absolutely. Yeah. There are three overlapping things at play here. The first is that younger people are more likely to be engaged politically at this age than were older generations.

So, they turn out more and are more registered to vote than was the case for Genex or the boomers at the same age. The second is that they necessarily are making up more of the electorate simply because the silent generation in older in particular are dying. And so, Now, we see this shift downward in terms of generations simply by virtue of the natural processes that lead to people, not voting anymore, but namely their Then third of all, you also have this this shift to the left that younger people are much more likely to vote Democratic than Republican It is not the case that older voters vote very heavily republican. You know, the baby boom generation preferred Donald Trump according to Pew Research Center by just a handful of percentage points in twenty twenty. But that so much more moderate than the younger voters, who preferred Joe Biden by a wide margin that you see this gap between a very liberal young person our young generation and a a more moderate older generation.

So so there’s some of that tension there. But, yeah, you’re absolutely right. That the Republican Party long term There are still questions about how and if the party can appeal, particularly to non white voters better. But the party has been so invested I mean, look, Charlie, you recall after the twenty twelve election when the GOP sat down, like, how do we win elections? So one of the things I said is we need to expand our base.

And then Donald Trump came along, and he leveraged Bulwark Lives Matter, and he leveraged the immigration crisis in twenty fourteen to say, no. Actually, what we need to do is we need to, you know, quadruple down on white grievance. That’s been what’s been defined the party for the past five years. And at some point, the party’s gonna have to shift. They’re gonna have to shift away from that messaging.

The problem is that Trump’s presence makes it very, very hard for them to do so. And as such, they are postponing the point at which they can start trying to appeal to younger voters better and in the meantime costing themselves politically.

Is Joe Biden’s age a problem for Democrats with younger voters or are they gonna vote on on issues? Considering that They are now becoming more and more dependent and hopeful about these demographic trends with the younger voters. What do gen z and millennial voters think about a guy who’s eighty years old running for president?

Mean, he’s not even a baby boomer, he’s silent generation. Right? And he is very old, and you’re right, that younger voters, you know, one of the reasons that Nancy Pelosi stepped down in addition to fact speaker anymore, but one of the reasons she stepped aside as leader of the Democratic party is because the party recognized it needed to send a message to younger voters who overwhelmingly vote for them that it recognized the generational problem that has been had. Diane Feinstein’s a huge problem for the party. Not simply because she’s not adept at actually doing her job.

But also because she is a symbol of the gerontocracy that a lot of young people feel frustrated by. All of that said, If it’s Donald Trump versus Joe Biden, there are gonna be like a lot of Democrats and a lot of Americans broadly who are like, I don’t love Joe Biden, but I really don’t love that Trump. The Washington Post had new focus group reporting on that yesterday. And I think that’s gonna be the defining thing. If if it’s those two, at the end of the day, People don’t like Biden, they don’t like Trump, but they like Biden better than Trump, and then that may be it.

This is a good segue into into the piece you have up in the on the post today or maybe it was yesterday about the gun issue. This is one of those issues that I think, you know, Democrats, you know, are increasingly vocal about and The younger generation, I think, has a very, very different perspective. I I can’t even imagine what it would be like to grow up doing mass shooter drills in school. Like, I honestly can’t get my head around that. And clearly, there’s going to be a political shift here.

But you’re pointing to this rather remarkable AP poll that shows, you know, that Joe Biden has weaknesses on a number of areas, but the one that you highlighted was the fact that president Biden may be paying a political cost for his stance on gun violence. Only thirty one cent of Americans said they viewed Biden’s handling of gun policy positively, and the more striking number, that includes only fifty percent of Democrats. So what is going on here? Is there frustration that he hasn’t accomplished more? Why is he sort of falling between the stools on on an issue that obviously is going to resonate among younger voters, especially.

I think there are two factors at play here at a minimum. One is that he’s pressed And so, you know, he is the person who is seen as culpable for things that are not going well in this country. But the second is, I think that there is an increasing frustration nationally. On both sides of the political spectrum at the rise in mass shooting incidents in particular. There has been a big spike in those this year.

We see, though, general social survey pull in from last year, we see this reversal of the number of people who think that you should have to have permit obtained by a police department in order to own a gun, increased overall, but it also increased among Republicans in twenty twenty two. It may be an aberration. It may you know, this may not be a long term trend. But there is an appetite for something to be done in the United States, and Joe Biden is held responsible for that. It’s ironic.

Obviously, because he doesn’t really have the power to do a whole lot. Right? That David has everyone who’s been paying attention to this for the past ten years understands that this congress that is generally stumbling block. And even Republicans agree that a lot of restrictions that could be put in place to make it harder to own guns ought to be put in place, that that simply doesn’t happen because there isn’t the political will to do so on Capitol Hill, but Biden takes the blame for it. And so I think that it is a way in which Democrats are expressing their frustration about the issue broadly and then buy the same the political cost.

To your point about the, you know, people hold the president accountable for, you know, things that go Well, they give them credit occasionally from when things go right and they hold them accountable when things go wrong. This would seem to explain the sort of the reptilian instinct that Donald Trump has in calling for Republicans to go ahead and default on the debt. I continue to think this is an undercover story when you had the leading Republican candidate for president actually explicitly endorsing defaulting on the debt, which would be economically a catastrophe. But what Donald Trump understands is that if there’s an economic catastrophe, you know, large portion of the electorate won’t blame him. For calling for the catastrophe or Republicans that’ll blame Joe Biden because he’s the president.

Yeah. I think that’s true, but I also think it’s true that no one takes Donald Trump’s assertions of face value. Right? You know, if Donald Trump were president, and first of all, this wouldn’t be an issue because they would simply, you know, lift the debt ceiling for the duration of his administration, which is what they did when he was president last time. But, you know, Donald Trump just changes on a whim.

He didn’t pay his attention to policy. And so, to some extent, he gets covered for that. You’re right. He shouldn’t be elevated. Should be talked But no one thinks he would actually do that.

He’s just saying stuff because he’s saying what he thinks is appeal to people. The the fundamental driving thing, I’m just gonna get on my hobby horse for a second. This guy spent decades selling real estate in New York City. They’ll tell you what he wants to hear. Right?

Like, this is his defining characteristic, rhetoric. Whatever he thinks you wanna hear, that’s what he’s gonna tell you, and he doesn’t mean it, and you can’t take him to face value. Right? So that said, yes. I do think that he is creating space, political space for the Republicans to do a thing that gives them leverage against Biden, but obviously would be very, very negative.

For the country to the problem.

As you mentioned, Donald Trump is really not that complicated. I think people understand what makes him tick. And we talked about this on the podcast yesterday. Speaking of another, I think, maybe underappreciated story over the weekend, Vladimir Putin decided he was going to play Donald Trump issues. A list of all of the Americans that he won sanctioned.

And the list includes everybody from Rachel Madau to Brad Raffensberger, to the cop that shot Ashley Babbot, Seth Meyers. I mean, a lot of these people had nothing to do with Russia policy, and apparently, the only reason that would have come to Putin’s attention is because Trump doesn’t like them. And so Vladimir Putin is saying, you don’t like these people. I don’t like them either. It’s just the nakedness of it.

Like, I’m going to suck up to Donald Trump and because that works.

Yeah. No. That’s exactly You know, I don’t think Brad Raffinsburg is upset that he has to get a refund on his tickets to Moscow. Right? Yes.

Exactly. That Putin tried to influence the twenty sixteen election very surreptitiously to Donald Trump’s benefit. What is it seven years ago now? And Donald Trump came out and made very clear that he was all four, So Putin’s like to help it. You know, yeah, Donald Trump, I’m your ally.

Look at all the I hate your enemies too. It’s just it’s just very explicit. And, you know, we saw Victor Orban saying, I just this morning and interview with Bloomberg that he supports Donald Trump being elected president in twenty twenty four. It’s very clear which side of history Donald Trump is on in regards this stuff, and Putin was just sort of cementing it.

What do you make of Joe Biden’s decision to give Ukraine f sixteen jets after being so reluctant for so long.

It’s a good question. I mean, it certainly seems as though he’s probably faced some international pressure. Obviously, the stakes are somewhat higher for for countries in Europe, and it’ll look like maybe very clear form of policy. I I am not going to present myself as an expert on it. But this does seem as though it is international pressure, more than domestic pressure, according to the, you know, the way I agree it.

So you all crunch some numbers on Trump versus Biden on the days away from the White House. I mean, we all know that that Fox News and in the Maga world creates an alternative universe, but this whole notion that Donald Trump was the hardest working president ever. And Joe Biden is just never around So run the numbers for me on who’s been away from the White House, especially as we’re heading into the memorial day weekend. What does it look like?

I over the course of Donald Trump’s presidency. In large part, because he was constantly criticizing Obama for playing golf, all the time. Going on vacation to Martha. You have Vineyard and so on and so forth. I was tracking what Donald Trump was doing, and it became very obvious very quickly that he spent a lot of time away from the White House.

And so I’d record the numbers on that. And so over the course of the Biden’s presidency, there’s been a lot of fewer from people like, oh, you spent so much time looking at what Trump was doing. You haven’t spent any time looking at what Biden assumed, which isn’t true. I wrote about twenty twenty one. But I thought it was time to revisit that.

And so, essentially, at this point in each man’s presidency, they both spend about two hundred and fifty days. All are part of two hundred fifty days away from the White House. Biden’s is almost exclusively to either Camp David or to one of his two homes in Delaware. Right? The difference obviously being that when Donald Trump left the White House, hey, he was playing a lot more golf.

Biden is usually, you know, when he goes to Delaware, he still has more meetings than does Trump. And I can say this. I I looked at all the schedules literally yesterday, so that’s true. But secondarily, obviously, Donald Trump was promoting his business, and he was schmoozing with merch, and he’s getting advice from folks in Mar a Laga, but what he should do is president. He was Charlie Sykes secret service to stay in rooms at Bedminster in Mar a Laga.

Right? Like, hugely different. Not only just the cost of getting to Mar a Lago as opposed to Delaware, but there was a cost incurred both to the government literally in terms of housing secret service, but then a cost just in terms of the way in which people viewed the and the fact that private customers of the Trump organization could get the president’s ear by paying his company money, that’s very different than Joe Biden, just spending every weekend at his house at Delaware.

Let’s double back to where we started talking about the presidential race and all of these candidates getting in, maybe some of them wanna increase their speakers’ fees or write a book. I speculate that Chris Christie is gonna play the role of suicide bomber in all of this. But clearly, there is a sense at least in some circles in the Republican Party that The Donald Trump does not have an absolute lock on this nomination and, again, speculating that they think that something might happen between now and the primaries that’s gonna change the dynamic. And some of that something might be that he will be indicted, indicted in Georgia, indicted by Jack Smith, there may be more information coming out about his foreign deals. So far, there’s no evidence that any of those things shake his support in the Republican base.

Is there any reason do you see any softness in the numbers? Will there become a fatigue factor? If, in fact, He goes into the primaries, you know, having a one jury found that he sexually assaulted a woman facing multiple felony charges potentially facing criminal charges in Georgia, potentially facing federal charges involving the Mar a Lago documents and or January six what is your sense looking at the numbers? Because the conventional wisdom is that whatever doesn’t kill Donald Trump makes him stronger. Every indictment actually bonds the base to him more intensely.

What do you think?

Yeah. I think that the data suggests that conventional wisdom is accurate. And there are there are two factors here. I always say there’s two factors on everything. That’s just sort of how my mind thinks.

So But there are two that I’d like to point out here. One is that Donald Trump has done a very good job since literally before his twenty sixteen election in convincing his supporters that the left and the elites and the establishment really hate them, hate the supporters, see them as deplorable — Right.

—

and that they are attacking him to get at them. Exactly. He’s been very effective at convincing them of that. The second thing is that they simply don’t pay attention to all this stuff. You know, Fox News barely covers the indictments.

It barely covers Eugene Carol. It barely covers these things. And that’s representative of the conservative media large. So a lot of them simply don’t hear about these things. They don’t hear about in detail or if they do, they see it social tweet or they, you know, they see something, bleach, which I like.

They see something which is sort of poo poo’s in the same way that I’ll say, oh, the Russia Post was disproven, which isn’t true at all. But they all see it that way because this is the media universe in which they live. So that combination of Donald Trump saying, oh, they’re just out to get you and I’m standing in their way, which is now, like, emblazoned on your social page, and them just simply not paying attention to the alternative, that is very powerful. And I think reinforces the idea that, you know, even if he gets locked up in prison, that’s gonna be seen as the establishment trying to attack the republican base, and and I don’t think it hurts politically.

I think I know the answer to this, but even when they hear from somebody from within the Maga universe like Bill Barr that the guy’s unhinged, that doesn’t make sense. Yeah.

Then he’s instantly out of the Mag universe. You know, soon as Barr says, oh, the election wasn’t stolen, boom, you’re done. Now you’re an opponent. Right? And how many times have we seen this?

People down from, oh, I hired a, you know, mad dog, mad. He’s the the Mattis was like, actually, this guy is not that good of president. Trump was like, oh, he was always terrible. And I was like, yeah, he was always terrible. And I was like, What’s going on?

You know, How long is our institutional memory going here? But it works for her.

Well, that does. And, you know, I I I see today that Trump is attacking Laura Ingram for having a segment on the program that Ron DeSantis’ rolling better, so he’s beating up on her, etcetera. Yeah. And anybody that thinks that this is a dramatic shift has forgotten what happened in twenty sixteen where He spent pretty much the first quarter of twenty sixteen beating the crap out of Fox News until they came back into line, which, of course, they did. So nothing changes.

Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. And Megan Kelly came after him hard in the very first debate asking him questions about his treatment of women. I think Fox News Roger Ailes is this great quote that I come to a lot from the book to decide or by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser in which they say that Roger Ailes recognize Trump had a stronger hold over the Fox News base than Fox News.

And so Fox News tried to challenge him in that first August twenty fifteen debate and say, hey, you know, this is how you talk about women. And Trump just sort of shrugged and was like, yeah, I’m tired of being politically correct in the, you know, the audience who didn’t holler. The Fox News was not backwards by. Then he started that fight with Megan Kelly, he refused to do the Fox news debate, and he showed Fox News that he did have a stronger grip on them. And so Fox News came along for the ride over the course of his presidency.

And it is interesting why what what happens to the cable ratings, the fact that News Max in some hours is now beating CNN is sort of an indication that — Right. — this audience wants what it wants. Right? And it’s gonna go where

it gets

it. And if you don’t feed them what they want, there are alternatives out there, which is basically the story of what happened with Fox and Dominion, and that dynamic hasn’t changed at all. Has it?

No. That’s exactly right. You know, I’m skeptical to do’s max holds on to this. I think it’s partly area in the moment. And I think once they replace Talker, you know, that person will just do the Talker shtick and, you know, it will bring back us to that audience.

But, yeah, you’re exactly right. That’s how in the immediate aftermath of November twenty twenty, Fox News had to choose. Are we gonna be reality, Jason News Organization, or are we going to continue to be the surreal right wing fringe network? And they never really resolved that tension. And it cost them, you know, three quarters of billion dollars.

And it made Tucker Carlton hugely influential in a way that ended up not being beneficial for Fox News. And they’re still trying to figure out what that path forward is.

Philip Bump is national columnist at the Washington Post who focuses largely on the numbers behind politics and rights the must read weekly newsletter, how to read this chart. He’s also the author of the book The The Last Days of The Baby Boom and The Future power in America Philip. It is great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you.

Of course. Always happy, John.

And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We Will Saletan tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again. The Bullbrook podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

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