Speaker Ships (The Secret Podcast PREVIEW)

Hey there. It’s JBL. On the Secret Show with Sarah Longwell today, we talked about the Republican speakership fight, the war in Israel, Donald Trump’s new found admiration for Hezbollah and a little bit of Taylor Swift too. Here’s the show. Last night sees police after bailing on his vote to get to two two seventeen that the number he made Yep.

Announced he was withdrawing his candidacy from the speakership, which leaves just Jim Jordan And he’ll try to get a vote to two seventeen today, I guess.

I don’t know. I because there’s some hard notice. Like, I like, part of, you know, what keeps coming out is, people saying, like, I’m an absolute never I’m a never Jordan. There’s never Jordan’s out there in the conference, and you can only have five of those.

Yeah. So, that’s That is up in the air. Maybe Jordan will try a vote. Maybe he’ll fail. Maybe he’ll succeed.

If Jordan can’t do it, then We start getting into weirdo fantasy scenario world where I could see call for Donald Trump as the consensus Canada, I don’t think Trump would do it. But I could see there being, like, we could spend the weekend with everybody saying, maybe Trump will do it, maybe Trump will do it, and he’ll truth out something like A lot of people are asking me it’s interesting.

Mhmm. Maybe I thought you were gonna say weirdo scenarios because I’m I’m getting I can feel my West Wing Fantasy politics. Oh, yeah. Bone start to tingle over, like, Don Bacon, saying, This is this is ridiculous and at some point, we’re gonna have to start talking to Democrats. We’re gonna have to see what we can do.

And the team Jefferies is out there saying we’re ready to work with some of you. You only need five.

I have trouble believing that.

Usually run opposite sides of this. I just I would like to manifest this.

Mhmm.

Because this would be Best case scenario is some kind of a power sharing agreement, in which or Okay. So either Joaquin Jeffries, but also make don Bacon speaker with the help of Democrats and have have an agreement that, I don’t know. Don’t know I don’t know what kind of procedural things these guys work out between themselves. But you get like a normie that you can work with for things like, like, what if they what if they here, just dream with me for a second.

Okay.

You get someone like Don Bacon, fits Patrick, you know, get one of your normal guys. And the agreement the Dems have with them is You keep the government open. You fund Ukraine. We’ll fund Israel. Like, they make they come up with a series of things they’ll do together.

And then And in exchange, they canceled their impeachment inquiry on Joe Biden, and like a few other things. Like, that’s why is that impossible? I mean, I know why it’s impossible. I know I know why it’s I know why it’s deeply unlikely.

Signing on to that is signing their political death warrant. And if these guys are Yeah.

But there’s a bunch of them that are in Biden districts.

You they would be better off. Of course,

they’ll be primary.

Better off taking their chances, in a Biden district with Trump at the top of the ticket. Which may not go well for them anyway or may go well for them than to make it so that they cannot win a primary.

So here’s here’s the one reason that I’m I’m slightly opened that my my fantasy politics scenarios, like, the the case that you just made, which I think is exactly right, is one in which they are determined at all costs to keep their seats. K?

Mhmm.

Right? Which is fine. That’s a fine thing to assume. But what if watching what’s happening right now? Some of these guys are like, actually I don’t I don’t need to do this.

Like, we’ve seen a lot of this over the last seven years of people deciding This is actually more dysfunctional than, like, more dysfunction than I need in my life. You don’t think anybody, you don’t think five people could be convinced to take a big swing. And go out in a blaze of glory.

I don’t think they go out in a blaze of glory that way. I I I just I don’t know. I mean, if they haven’t gone out before now, why now? Why is this the thing that that gets them?

I think I think these guys are all really pissed off at each other.

Maybe. I mean, Spike makes people do wonderful things.

Yeah.

I don’t I mean, if look, if we’re gonna be in Fantasy World, like, why not just switch parties? Right. I mean, that’s the The obvious thing, if you’re in a Biden swing district Yeah. And you really wanna keep your seat, why isn’t announcing that you’re a Democrat? As safe a play as either of the other two.

Well,

so this is and this is so okay. So I’m this is exactly right. So you take you five, five people, go to the Democrats and say, I’m gonna run as an independent next time. And you’re gonna get make sure no democrat primaries me, like, that there’s no democrat in the race. Like, why?

Why not?

And we’ll caucus with you. Yeah. No. That so that is a thing that would make sense to me. But there have been no party switchers.

In the trump era. I mean, it hasn’t Jeff Lake. God love Jeff Lake. Jeff Lake didn’t switch parties.

I know. So I guess and I guess the I’m sorry.

I don’t happen now.

So here’s my only the only again, the reason is because right now feels that the stakes feel higher. Right? We’ve got and and the so the stakes feel higher because of Israel and because of Ukraine, but especially because of the the urgency, the immediacy of real right now. Right? So there’s a sense from anybody who has like just a governing bone in their body.

They’re gonna be sitting there right now being like, this is not how we can operate. This is pathetic. I hate us. Right? So I just I could see a normal human.

I know how abnormal these guys are and they don’t react the way we’d like them to, but The idea that there’s not a handful that can’t go this is this is insane. I I won’t play this game anymore. I’m not gonna be part of a party that’s gonna be held hostage by Matt Gates. And where Nancy Mace is walking around with an a on her t. Like, this is the most on and then the white supremacist flirtations of Paul Gosa.

I, like,

Nancy Mays for speaker?

No. Nancy, not Nancy Mays for speaker. You guys can’t see JBL’s eyebrows right now, but JBL has

a Oh, I don’t wait. Video version of this

That’s true.

There is no video version of this podcast set along well.

Secret podcast listeners get to know some secrets, which is that JBL likes Nancy Base. He thinks she’s pretty.

No comment. I think I I think she’s nuts

Like a young Elizabeth Warren.

Oh, you’ve young Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren. Love young Elizabeth. Hottie, super smoke show. I’m not gonna hide from that.

I like Elizabeth Warren at the stage.

I will I will objectify young Elizabeth Warren, and I am sorry. Okay. So you don’t think Jordan gets there. I think Jordan has a chance.

Oh, I so I, I actually, I’m not sure how the next level I should have gone and listened. I never listened to our own podcasts, but we have when we have this debate on the next level, I think there was you I I continue to think that there is a bigger chunk of and Normies isn’t the right word, but you know, there is a very there is a small a minority governing wing of there are, like, actually, there are governing people. I’m not sure there’s a governing wing, but, like, there’s an I was arguing that there that I wasn’t sure Jim Jordan with Steamroll. And you guys seem to think Jim Jordan kinda could have a lock on the conference. And I would say but even I was surprised that Scalia came out ahead, in the head to head vote.

And then he dropped out. Because he knows he can’t get there. Which is real weird. Is it because he couldn’t go through he couldn’t face all the rounds of voting? Because, like, why would Jim Jordan be the next most plausible thing when he got fewer votes against scalise.

So, couple reasons. The reason Kevin McCarthy could do his thirteen or seventeen rounds of voting was because there was no other option. Right. There was nobody else who had said I would like to be Yeah. Speaker.

Skolese couldn’t do a second round of voting because there was another guy right behind him. By just like, you know, what, ten votes or twenty votes or something, in Jim Jordan within the conference, who is a totally plausible candidate. So scalise got one shot. Jordan might get multiple shots because there’s nobody standing behind him right now. Right?

So you don’t think at least Defonic’s gonna get in there or somebody else I think I think other people are gonna jump in.

It is possible. I think from their perspectives, that’s not wise. So if you are a climber, like, a lease

default who wants this job?

Well, who wants the job? Because it’s a job that’s set up to fail. Yeah. But also volunteering for the job and not getting the job? Hurt your career.

Right? You’re you’re better off sitting and waiting another cycle or two to to sit find a better environment. Right? At least doesn’t it? She’s got nothing but time.

Nothing but time.

Yeah.

So Jordan could have a couple rounds of voting And, again, just I always think about these things through the lens of game theory. If you are the governing wing of the party looking at this, You could tell yourself, ultimately Jim Jordan doesn’t matter because in sixteen weeks, Donald Trump is gonna be our party’s nominee for president. Sixteen weeks. That’s how far away we are. And once he’s the nominee, it doesn’t matter how either mainstream and normal or manga unfit and crazy the speaker is, the entire party is going to be defined by Trump.

And there is no additional downside for us to have an unfit crazy Ultra Maga speaker. And so I might as a it’s more important for the party to get a speaker as soon as possible. This guy is here he won’t last past twenty twenty four. So let’s just find here. Have your gavel gym And let’s move on.

And, you know, we our our fates are inextricably tied to Donald Trump’s anyway. And we’ll see where we are in in thirteen months. I think from their perspective, that’s the most compelling argument.

Yeah. I do think I think you got a point about, the way Trump’s role is in this, because Trump has endorsed Jordan.

Right.

And there is this there’s a way that people are used to if if Jordan becomes sort of a a proxy for Trump. There’s a way in which these Republicans have long ago internalized just giving up in the face of Trump. And and in and in the face of, like, his inevitability. Well, and would they be I mean, would that

scenario with that calculation I laid out to you, would it even be wrong? Because I don’t think it would be. Once Trump is the nominee, You could have Kevin McCarthy back as speaker, right, reasonably, you know, I’m not responsible, but we on this show contemporaneously always gave my Kevin credit when he did the right like, the three times he did it. Would even having a, you know, a now unimaginably competent speaker, like Kevin McCarthy’s speaker make a difference once Trump is president? I think the answer is no.

I mean, I think the extent of the first of all, I well, I don’t think you’re right that they’ve re they’ve bring Kevin McCarthy back in a No.

I’m not saying they would. I’m just saying that picture, if you’re the team normal, whoever your perfect speaker is in the team normal world, it doesn’t matter for the party’s prospects having that person there once Trump is the nominee.

Yeah. And again, I think your analysis is is perfectly good. It is based on though the assumption and again, I don’t think like a terribly faulty assumption that they’re all gonna act in sort of party rational self interest, an individual self interest that that includes where the the lens of self interest is. Keep my job as a Republican congressman. And I guess my analysis includes the option that some of them could say, no.

I’m not gonna, like, maybe I could be, like, or I could run as an independent, like, actually because because I have something I have actually, something higher, than my self interest, which is the interest of the country, the interest of our ability to support democracy abroad, I am friends with, you know, Abigail Spannberger and a bunch of normal Democrats, and I would rather hang out with them than these, you know, Jack Jile, these these these these these not very nice people on my own side.

I’m not afraid of the people in my district who vote for my Democratic opponent.

That’s right.

I am afraid of the people in my district who vote for me.

That’s right.

Right. I mean, the the people, if you’re in Biden swing district and you’re a Republican, you’re not concerned that, you’re gonna get death threats from the people who voted for the Democrat in your race.

So no matter how much of my optimism you guys have managed to just, like, ring out of me over the years to the point where I’m a shell of a person. I still my instincts still tell me there is hope that some of these guys could choose a different lens through which to, which to operate.

Possible. I I would just say this. Is in the the sociological study that we have made of the Republicans elected Republicans over the last seven years. As that tribe has winnowed. The one overwhelming impulse, like the the deep seated biological urge in them seems to be to protect the Republican party’s access and ability to gain power.

I think that is, like, their their prime directive, and I don’t see anything that would lead me to conclude that they’re changing that there’s anybody left in the Republican Party right now aside from people, like, mitt on the way out the door, who are gonna have this as the moment that would make them change that.

Yeah. Can I just say really quickly about Jim Jordan? It is important to not normalize the Jim Jordan of it all. Like if Jim Jordan is the speaker, Jim Jordan was, as Liz Cheney will tell you, somebody who absolutely, like, knew what was happening, the day of January sixth, was part of sort of the trump inner circle of planning. He went out and stumped Super hard for the election was stolen.

Let me tell you how it was stolen. They stuffed ballot boxes. They changed rules. Jim Jordan is a lunatic and a bad guy.

Mhmm.

And has been running off speakers like, he ran out John Banner, you know, because he’s such a hard line, you know, look at me no interest in governing jerk. And he is trying to constantly And he’s

not very smart.

And he’s not smart. Yeah. I mean And I don’t know a whole lot about the scandal. I don’t know enough about his his scandal, as a wrestling coach to sort of render judgment on it, but, based on what I do know of him, having watched him you know, lead, these impeachment proceedings. He is Not great.

He’s really bad. He’s really bad. And the extent to which if this guy is the space and listen, it’s hard. It’s I for me, I keep being like, Well, so we have this democracy report card that we do. Mhmm.

And I was like, go look at the scores we gave. You know, it’s like McCarthy and and, like, the difference between these guys is so negligible. Like Kevin McCarthy is also an election denier. Steve Steve scalise, Also an election denier. The the the differences tend to be like, did they sign the weird Ken paxton?

You know, thing, to give the states, like, I can’t even remember all this stuff.

Texas trying to invalidate the election results in Pennsylvania. Right.

So if you go and, like, look at these guys, like, there’s there’s or or or you have to, like, parse their statements. And still, Like, why do we think, Kevin McCarthy is better than Jim Jordan? Well, actually, the reason is because we knew Kevin McCarthy would keep funding Ukraine. We knew Kevin McCarthy, or we went didn’t know, but he proved that he, like, who’s interested in keeping the government open. Jim Jordan will do none of those things.

Yeah. He’s been a chaos agent his whole career And to put a k now you’re putting one of the chaos agents, in charge.

Nate Kone had a piece in the New York Times yesterday about how the the magas have really made their way all the way into the center of the Republican establishment now.

Well, this is a Tim Miller original, the Mago establishment. Yeah.

I think it’s actually originally a Sarah Longwell original. I don’t think so. I think way back.

I think this is, I I I I remember Tim writing a mega establishment piece a long time ago. I’m usually pretty good at keeping track of one I think I was the originator of ideas. I I don’t think he was. You credit. I appreciate it.

I failed

to get your service. I say that Tim is a best friend, but of course, it’s only you.

That’s right. Yes. I agree. And and and to be honest, I am

responsible for several of Tim’s ideas. When I was with Tim, the secret when I did with Tim?

No. I didn’t listen to the secret when

you do with Tim. Good.

Oh, but now I’m going to. What’d you say?

You’ll forget about it. Don’t worry about it.

What’d you say?

So the But what what Cohen says is that, I mean, the magas are gonna possibly have their own speaker of the house. Right? It is one thing to have The the election of Donald Trump is forced on the party by the voters. A speaker is an institutional decision made by existing Republican establishment.

Yeah.

And for the existing Republican establishment to elevate a Maga to speaker would be a sea change for the party.

Yep.

You know, and you could Yes. McCarthy was bad and all that. And, yes, McCarthy was Maga, and he was he was Trump’s Kevin. But, of course, McCarthy was always an institutionalist who was just trying to climb, get his brass ring, and was always just saying whatever needed to be said. And he was never a true believer about anything.

Yeah.

Jordan seems to be. It’s, it’s wild and it’s bad. So I don’t know. I’m I’m rooting for the house to remain dysfunctional. I hope that we don’t get a speaker for quite some time.

I would like to watch the World Burn.

Okay. Okay.

Speaking of which, we have Yeah.

I like it how that first part was the non depressing part. Yeah.

That was the non depressing part. That was the the candy. So, you and I haven’t had a chance to talk about, Israel and Gaza stuff?

I mean, we did on the next level. But, like,

I It was like a meta conversation

about

why how people reacting. So Who’s being good and who’s being bad?

So I had a I had an event last night, and so I didn’t get to see the live stream. And I was hoping you would tell me, can you give me the

It’s the best the best, Thursday show we’ve ever done.

Okay.

Honestly. It was It was I’m sorry

to go listen to. Will you just if you think you

should listen to? Yeah. So we we had Tom Jocelyn, who’s fantastic, Eric Edelman, who’s fantastic, Bill Crystal and Ben Parker. I gotta say. Ben Parker, our boy, Ben, he sat at the the big kids table, and he just brought it last night He was fantastic too.

I was so proud of him. So some things to think about, and I’ll just sort of give you a scattered recapitulation of the show. The most important thing in the very near term is what does Israel articulate as its war aims. Right? So at some point, Soon, the Israelis will make some formal statement of this is what we aim to accomplish.

How broad is that? Is it is it, eliminating Hamas’s capability to to strike, is it, a limiting Hamas as a as an organization? Is it regime change within the Palestinian Authority over there. Right? Who knows?

And that will that will tell us a lot about what the the future course of the war will look like. Things could get very, very bad. If the if this winds up becoming a broader war, and this is one of the points Eric Attleman made. Was that if it turns out that Iran was very closely involved in all of this? That may demand some direct retaliation from the Israelis, which could create a broader war if Hezbollah decides that this is a moment in which Hezbollah could somehow profit from moving against Israel in the north.

The the Hamas attack utilized, I think, four thousand or five thousand rockets and missiles, Hezbollah is sitting on a store of one hundred fifty thousand. Of those. So it I mean, it would thoroughly and completely overwhelm Israeli defenses and could just wind up being catastrophic. And the the best case scenario is that the entire thing is confined to Gaza, and we only have House to house fighting, which goes on for far too long, which involves the killing of many, many civilians. In a situation in which there is no conceivable political victory.

And that’s the best case scenario. Everything else after that goes into, like, really dark territory.

So so the news this morning is that Israel is telling Palestinians who live in the north of Gaza to evacuate.

Yes.

What does that mean? It mean that they’re gonna start bombing there? What

So they’ve already begun. The Israelis used six thousand pieces of, ordinance over, of course, the first, like, seventy two hours here, which is an incredibly large fire rate. They have cut off electricity, fuel, and water to the strip. And they have conditioned that on hostage release. They have said we’re until the hostages are released, we’re we’re gonna not allow any of these things.

And if if Hamas releases the hostages, then we’ll turn the water and the power back on. That is you can debate that if one way or the other, the the presence of hostages complicates things in a way that I think we can’t really understand over here. I mean, imagine if after nine eleven, it also turned out that Al Qaeda had abducted a hundred Americans. Somehow. Yeah.

And had them stashed, with wherever bin laden was. I mean, if you understand, like, it it would have complicated our response to that in ways which we can’t really game out. And so what what they the Israelis said is they said we’re, We we are declaring the North part of Gaza and active war zone, and you have twenty four hours to get out, which means about one point two million people have to go south, in a way, in in a very short period of time. Hamasas is telling people in the Gaza strip not to leave their homes and to not leave and saying that this is all a bluff from the Israelis, and this is part of a psych psychological operation, a psi op against them. If there is nothing to fear and they should stay right where they are, and this is how you know these people are evil.

Right? I mean, it’s can you imagine? That. Right.

And you wants to use them as a to to dissuade. Right? They wanna use them as human shields, right, to keep

Will Saletan also they want to use the deaths of civilians Right. As a political weapon against the Israelis. So, that, you know, you have humanitarian organizations in the Gaza strip saying, well, we can’t you know, like, we we’ve got a hospital full of people who have been injured in the bombardments of the last three days. We can’t move them. It’s it’s going to be bad.

The whole thing is going to be very, very bad. There are no good outcomes here. And the, you know, this is the point that I I wrote about this yesterday. I I I’m sure you didn’t read it. I I am a little You know, I’m I’m deeply pro Israel in this, and I I just don’t see a way in which Israel can continue to function as a free society while Hamas has the capability of doing what they did last week.

Right? I mean, a free society can’t can’t go about its business if any day, a thousand people might be killed. Because the people who are living, you know, a football field away want want to murder them. But and you know, what it will do to what it will take to remove that threat is gonna involve, a lot of terrible violence and no matter how hard Israel war to try, they would still wind up killing innocent people in in the course of it because that’s the nature of war. And I get bothered both by the the people who are vaguely pro Hamas or or who are, I would say, not clear eyed and realistic.

And you say, well, you know, it’s a cycle of violence. These really don’t have to respond. They could you know, an eye for an eye leaves the world blind. I think that’s not that’s not helpful and doesn’t really understand the situation. But I am also bothered by the people who say, well, so what?

Every every every, you know, anybody who is in the Gaza strip is functionally supportive of Hamas and, if they die, they die. And there is a lot of that out there too. I don’t like that either. And I’m, you know, I’m trying to sort of warn people off of both. That you can’t harden your hearts on these things.

It’s, it leaves you dead inside and black inside your soul. So

What do you think? So Netanyahu, did you guys talk last night at all about, like, the what a what a cast catastrophic failure this was on the part. And and and what was the what was the consensus?

And the the consensus is we don’t know how catastrophic the failure is. So, you know, one of the things we talked about is there was a report two days ago that the Egyptians passed warnings off to the Israelis that there was something coming. I’m sure you saw these reports.

I did.

Right? And that sounds very damning. But without context, you can’t really understand it. Right? So for instance, as Ben Parker said, Do the Egyptian send warnings about, like, hey, we have chatter about an impending attack every week?

Mhmm. Because if that is the kind of thing that happens in their intelligence sharing arrangement, then how useful really was that? This is, again, this is not me making I I do not like Bibi netanyahu. I hope that when there’s a reckoning of this, his reputation is in tatters, and he’s thrown from powers and replaced with somebody better. I I’m not trying to make excuses.

Same, by the way.

But just understand that, we don’t know enough yet. And Tom so Tom Joss on me I mean, it was a very smart point last night. He said, look. The United States intelligence community and the Israeli intelligence community were both caught totally flat footed by this. It is impossible that ninety six hours after the event that we could have figured out exactly where the source of the failure was or what do you know what I’m saying?

Like, like, there is no way to know Yeah. From where we sit now, the nature of the failure, how and why it occurred, who was responsible for it. But Israel does have a very, very clear eyed history of doing post mortems. Of these intelligence failures and, like, big bipartisan commissions, where they try to figure out. I mean, you know, you live in a dangerous neighborhood.

You’re gonna you’re gonna take security stuff more seriously than we do. It Mhmm. You know, it’s it’s not gonna be like the the January sixth commission with Republicans refusing to allow. Right. We think they won’t be like that.

We think there will be a a real reckoning once we get past the immediate crisis. But that could last a while. Yeah.

Yeah. What other questions do you have? It was such a good show. I mean, I kind of want you to explain what’s going on to me. Like, I’m five because I this is, you know, this is where my admitted.

I admit I canceled all my TV appearances. It’s because I don’t wanna go on and talk about this stuff because I don’t feel the intricacies of it. I don’t I don’t wanna go and blather on about stuff that I don’t know anything about.

That’s good. You shouldn’t. That’s that’s this is what makes us different. Right?

Yeah.

It’s, I mean, one of the one of the things I am interested in is what what the connections are if there are any connections with Russia But I mean, you know, the Iranians and the the Russians are absolutely in bed with one another. Right? It it it is not out of the realm of possibility that the Russians had a hand in this because having a war in the Middle East would be incredibly helpful to Vladimir Putin right now.

Right.

Especially because the European countries do not have a sterling history of support for Israel. And if there is a rift between America and the European allies on is real stuff, in the course of that war. Maybe it manifests and makes it harder for us to stand together on Ukraine. Right? I mean, you could easily see how this benefits other bad guys.

Yes.

And so would that be coincidental or it would be by design, and we don’t we don’t know the answer.

And this is where, you know, this is where I just can’t get excited about the chaos of the house. Like, I can’t sort of just indulge in the shot in Freud because it feels like you’ve had talked about this before. For a long time, it has felt like you don’t pay immediate costs. There aren’t immediate consequences for the kind of competence that we are seeing incompetence isn’t the right word for, like, this I don’t wanna just use a word like clown show, but, like, the unseriousness Yeah. Of American politics right

Yeah. You can get away with things for a long time.

The idea, like yeah. Like, for it’s right. And then at some point, it catches up to you. And you’ve got Vladimir Putin who’s invaded Ukraine, a Republican party that is no longer resolute on standing against dictators. Who from muscle memory, some some old kind of muscle memory jumps in on Israel, But then blames Joe Biden for it, in a way, like, we talked about this in the next level, wouldn’t have never happened.

Like, twenty years ago. Like, we would be figuring out how to work together. We would be these would be the moments when sort of partisanship wouldn’t dissolve, but would be mitigated, so that we could respond as the United States of America, the Republican Party can’t even do that now with each other. Yeah. And so the idea of you know, when I I write, you know, I’ve been spending all this time trying to be like, what is happening?

How do I understand how we should be reacting. Like, not just to form an opinion, but to just to to understand how to make these decisions. And right? And for a lot of them, even as you said, like, we can’t really know because there’s all this stuff that, like, we don’t have access to. But these people do.

And, like, the level of unseriousness to meet the challenges, the serious challenges in the world. I would say to has has made me so angry and upset about, you know, they’re they’re they’re they’re having these votes and we’re talking about them, because the Republican parties in shambles while, you know, Israel needs allies. Yeah. And Ukraine has needed allies. And instead, we’ve got Marjorie Taylor, Green and Matt Gates talking about blank checks, which is not a thing.

I just, Also, can can

I just say one one thing about this? Elliot, either Elliot Cohen or Eric Edelman made this point on shield of the Republic couple weeks ago, when we talked about writing checks to Ukraine, we do not send money to Ukraine. What we do is we take money and we buy military stuff in America And we which is made by American companies with American workers, and we then send that military stuff over to Ukraine. We’re not sending them it’s not like the fast and furious, where we’re dropping we we have a c one thirty cargo plane with three hundred million dollars in hundreds. Like, you know, wrapped up in plastic and we drop it out in a parachute or like, we’re sending them material.

We’re sending the equivalent dollars worth of equivalent of material. Which we buy and pay for and goes into the American economy. It is basically like a stimulus, and it is good for We need a defense industrial complex. I’m sorry. Like, it’s deeply important that we have the capability to manufacture arms, over here.

And this idea, like, you know, well, we’re just taking money and showering, but that’s not what’s happening. And these people don’t talk, damn. I’m sorry. This is like,

But it’s also it’s also like the inability to articulate linking the security of Ukraine to our own security. The idea, like, this is what’s happening right now, but this is it’s your point just reminded me about how, like, this is good for Vladimir Putin. The world is connected. The world exists together. And so, like, we are entering a moment where terrorist are emboldened to attack and rape and destroy and where dictators and autocrats are emboldened to go into and overtake democracies And, like, it’s just not a time for America to not and it is they are all of this is in part a challenge.

To American leadership in the world. Right?

Yeah.

And we find ourselves standing on the sidelines Very unsure about how to react and consumed by our own domestic squabbles.

Joe Biden’s not unsure of how to react.

No. That’s true. That’s true. I I and and actually Well, you know, I I’ve I he has been very good. Thank you.

Certainly, rhetorically good.

He’s been good on policy,

especially in the foreign I hope it’s true that we’re figuring out how to, like, freeze the six billion dollars.

I believe that’s already done. Yeah. Dark brand and getting it done. We got our hostages out of Iran and we kept the six billion dollars of their money. Put on my laser shades.

I can we talk a little bit about the Trump Trump, the Trump show on, I guess it was

Like, hezbollah smart?

Hezbollah smart baby Netanyahu treated us very badly, very unfairly. All of that. I mean, again, I would assume I saw this thing mentioned virtually nowhere.

Just on Twitter, people circulate the stuff. Yeah.

Tim Miller did a quick YouTube rant about it. And that’s it. I would have thought that in the week following one of the worst terrorist attacks and the last century. The worst slaughter of Jews since the actual Holocaust. I would have thought that the former United States president and current favorite to become the Republican nominee saying those sorts of things would have been splashed across every newspaper in the country and would have been Republicans lining up to disavow him and what instead, it’s just it’s just noise.

It’s just I mean, it’s insane. Right? Am I I feel I’ve this is the I’m taking feel like I’m taking crazy pills team because no nobody even bothered to to to fucking look at this thing. It’s Sorry. Did you have any of that?

I did. I mean, I obviously my response was, like, we need to get this video and show it to every Jewish Republican, to be like, hey, Look. Here he is. And also, you know what? Actually, here’s my main reaction.

It was to get preemptively depressed. At all at because it did go viral on Twitter because we we were one of the people who put that out immediately. And you see a bunch of people who condemn it, the anti anti condemning it. And I became pre depressed imagining all of them, five months from now. Explaining to us why you have to support Donald Trump over Joe Biden.

And listen. It’s not just this. Hezbollah is smart. It’s great that Xi rules over his people with an iron fist. He’s great.

I send love letters to Kim Jong Un this is it’s oh, I stand on a stage with Vladimir Putin inside against America’s intelligence community. I tried to bribe Ukraine. Wouldn’t give them withheld weapons from them so that they would do it unless they dug up dirt on my political enemies. Like, not new, Not not new information, but they’re they will fall in line as though it’s not as though they’re equivalent on some planet.

Well, Joe Biden is very old, Sarah.

He is old.

So, I mean, what are people supposed to do? Plus, plus Rashida to lead said very bad things about about, these attacks on his real. So it’s both sides.

And guess who can and guess who condemned

her. Oh, I know. I know. Biden gets no credit for any of this. Right?

No. Biden is doing a good I and and I’ll tell you, this is one of

those things. Third term. Reagan’s third term.

Well, this is I’ve always you know, I try to ask, like, when I had Jen Saki on the, focus group pod and so I’m always kinda trying to get understand what the theory of the case is about how people deploy Biden? Because if you let him just run on his own, His instincts aren’t terrible. I mean, he’s he’s an old guy, so he says like, you know, whatever pony soldier stuff and sometimes tell stories that, like, absolutely, there’s no way they’re true. But in terms of, like, on policy, his instincts of, like, We’re not gonna defend the police. We’re gonna support Israel.

Like, this is it’s let him let him go. He believes this. He believes this clearly deep in his core. They defends him morally and his humanity that that this that terrorists are killing people and he’s clear eyed about it.

Yeah. And he’s also neck and neck in the general election matchup polling with Donald Trump. Neck and neck, Sarah. I don’t I I I don’t understand it.

I can explain it, but I can’t understand it. Like, I can unders or or what is how I can understand it, but I can’t fat limit.

Yeah. It’s a well, you know, as you said I mean, look, if not for COVID, Trump is probably reelected. Right?

I mean,

that doesn’t invalidate all the other crazy stuff that happened. Right? It it’s that you can you can play you can light a whole bunch of matches and throw them all over the place and not start a fire for, like, the first hundred of them. Mhmm. Right?

And you can go a long time without paying the price. And what amazes me is that America actually did pay the price for Trump. Right? We we saw it. We got all the things that we warned about were like, but what if there’s some cataclysmic event, and this guy is president, and he won’t be able to handle it, and people could die?

And then, like, we got the cataclysmic event, and he couldn’t handle it. And we had an extra couple hundred thousand deaths in America. A hundred thousand deaths. And then when we were like, he’s got he’s an autocrat, this guy is not gonna respect elections. Oh, I’m a we got an actual fucking attempted coup.

Like, all of the worst we lived through the worst case scenarios. We lived through them. It’s not like, you know, we were warning people about some really bad stuff could happen. And then the bad stuff didn’t happen. And so we’re in the position of saying, but guys, like, he’s unfit for office.

Really bad stuff could still happen. Look, we all know the bad stuff. Yeah. And people are just like, yeah. Yeah.

It’s cool. Yeah. I like it. He’s funny. Hey, again.

JBL. The conversation goes on from there. If you wanna hear the rest of the show, head on over to Bulwark plus and subscribe. We’d love to have you.