Springtime for Demagogues

Welcome to differ the Bulwark weekly roundtable discussion, featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We ran from center left to center right on Mona Charen indicated columnist and policy editor at the Bulwark, and I’m joined by our regular Will Saletan of the bookings institution and the Wall Street Journal, Damon Lincher, who writes the sub stack newsletter, notes from the middle ground, and Linda Chavez of the Niskannon Center. Our special guest this week is Walter Olsen of the Liberarian Kato Institute Welcome one and all. Well, we had a debate this week. They call it a debate.

I’m not sure that’s accurate. It’s something of a show. Wrote a piece today suggesting that it’s the perfect environment in which Democrats can flourish and serious politicians are at a disadvantage. But let us begin with you, Will Saletan. Do you think that this has done anything for any of the participants good or bad?

Some, but I’m sure not as much on the upside as a lot of the candidates we’re hoping. As I wrote in a piece for brookings that I coauthored with Elaine Kmart, the candidate who I think performed the best by a considerable margin was Nikki Haley who hasn’t gotten much of a hearing lately, but I suspect if anybody was paying attention, we’ll get more of a hearing. By contrast, Tim Scott, who has a lot of upside potential, I think, played it so safe that he virtually disappeared. DeSantis was less egregious than usual. But as a result of that, he didn’t really stand out all that much.

He may have stopped the bleeding. I’m not sure, but if you ask me, did he put his campaign back on an upward curve? I would have to say, no. Pence did a very good job. Of appearing for the most part to be the adult in the room, but I suspect it as the debate was going on and was confirmed after the debate ended by a CNN focus group that he made no new friends.

He will not be forgiven. For doing the right thing on January sixth. And now for the alleged star of the show, Mister Ramaswami, he is a very intelligent, well educated, and accomplished young man. He’s also an arrogant over caffeinated class a jerk. If he, he’ll embarks now on a meteoric rise.

Among the Republican primary electorate. It will tell me that that electorate is even more degraded than I thought it was. And, you know, even less interested in whether or not someone has any visible qualifications whatsoever for the highest office in the land or whether they’re looking for someone for shock value. And I think a lot of people clearly are looking for that. I recognize Ramaswami’s brand

I’ve met a

lot of young men just like him at national conservatism conferences. They hate liberals but they have nothing but contempt for older conservatives. They think history begins with them and that to quote the end of the first act of, Cabaret, the future belongs to us. God help us if they’re right.

Walter Olsen, our friend, Pete Weiner, who was on this podcast just last week, described Ramaswamy as young glib, shallow, and cynical, which is, good for atives, I think. I could add many more. I had a visceral disgust watching him. First of all, the fact that he wants to give Ukraine to Putin, and his toying with conspiracy theories and the rest of it, but also he makes these broad statements like I am going to eliminate the department of education and abolish the teacher’s unions. And he says these sorts of things that nobody follows up and says, well, Under what authority would you propose to do that as president?

I hate to get sidetracked into Ramaswamy Wally, but Honestly, he was a big part of the story last night, and Bill’s right that if the Republican Party rallies to him as the new second most popular candidate, it will tell us a great deal according to a CNN focus group, He was the declared winner, your take.

Well, I think you’re right to focus on it because he was the candidate who moved most. Partly because he was still not a known quantity to a lot of viewers. And I had much the same reaction as you did. I was thrown back at the very end when he launched into what sounded like a kind of prerecorded things he locked. And he mentioned the US constitution because, of course, his earlier remarks put him in the candidate block that did not talk about it or even seemed to understand the constitution.

And I do believe it’s fruitful to go at it from this direction. You had of the candidates. You had governor Bergum actually pull out his Kato pocket tuition. I’m always so proud when that happens being from Kato. But you had — Fair.

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in their various ways, you had Pence and Christie and Hutchinson making a big deal of the constitution, the fact that you take an oath to defend it, the fact that Pence was put to that oath and passed. And, you know, I won’t say Haley and Scott spoke as much about it, but they still seemed very familiar with what the things are. Trump, as we know, and I pointed this out when he gave, I think his first inaugural address, which never mentioned the constitution. Trump is very unusual in how much he avoids talking about the constitution. He doesn’t cite it even sometimes when it’s on his side.

DeSantis’s rapid response force put out a zinger against Ramaswamy who I didn’t hear this a bit, but they said that he appeared not to know that the constitution postdated American Revolution.

That’s correct. He said that’s what the patriots were fighting for, the Constitution.

There you have something symbolic of of a thread that goes all the way through Ramaswani’s thing in which you pointed out very well, which is the he can’t abolish the teachers unions. He can’t abolish federal agencies in general as president when there are authorizing statutes requiring them to exist every other person there on stage understood the practicalities better. If you’re going to remove the department of education or more amazing, the internal revenue service from the organizational chart of the government. That’s a different question from how many of its functions. You’re just gonna have to redistribute to other places.

So Ramiswame, glided past and, you know, I too re recurred the word glib in the way in which he does this. He is used to being a CEO of a tech company who can talk for as long as he wanted it in a monologue. And the way he treated the other candidates, saying that they were all bought and paid for, saying that Nikki Haley was just angling for a spot on the word. This was as Frank Brooney put it in his New York time column. It was larval Trump.

You can see him sort of flop flopping the future wings. You can see him, you know, what what’s instill somewhat sticky as metamorphosis toward the future thing. I’m really reminded of the lantern fly that we are all told to keep up with. But I’ll I’ll I’ll just stop with this, which is that Under there were a couple of somewhat important appeals unique to Ramaswame. There was kind of a racial one, which I think in some ways he did more effectively than Tim Scott, but There was also one about youth, and I’m going to turn it into a joke by saying that everyone realizes that Trump’s brand of immaturity isn’t gonna be around forever, and we’re gonna need a new standard bearer for immaturity.

Why not go with the youngest person?

Well said, Alright. Damon, there were moments at the debate where you would, you know, sort of bury your face in your hand. So, for example, the moderators ask, if Trump becomes a convicted felon, will you still support him? Six of the eight People on the stage said yes, and yet there were a number of other kinds of moments too. I thought Pence had a really outstanding night.

I thought it was very, very healthy and good for the country and for the party if it has ears to hear that he said Trump specifically asked me on January sixth to put himself over the constitution, and I would not do that. That was a great moment, and Nikki Haley schooling Ramaswamy on whose position on Ukraine, she said you are choosing a murderer over a pro American country. Those were some actually very, very inspiring and good moments. So what was your sense?

Well, those were good moments. My take on the individual candidates on the stage, is a little different, and this has to do with subtle gradations between our assessments of different eras. You had kind of every iteration of publicans since Reagan up there represented. And I tended to be most sympathetic to those who hearkened back to the Reagan era at Pence? I mean, yes.

He did what he needed to on January sixth, then we should all be grateful to him for that. I liked the lines that you highlighted where he really pushed that in a forceful way. Much of Pence last night, I really disliked quite intensely, and that, speaks to one of the reasons why I broke from the Republican Party around two thousand two to four.

Right. Toss. What were those?

Well, I I just the the sanctimonious way in which he invokes his faith

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I know.

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in a way in a way that is just And I’m not averse to civil religion and speaking in terms of a kind of collective lowest common denominator, mere orthodoxy of Judeo Christian faith that then gets mixed with elements of American history. That’s all part of politics and and it’s part of who Americans are. That’s fine and totally okay.

Yeah. There’s a Lincoln Esque way to do it, and then there’s a cheap and Taudry way to do it.

Well, a cheap and Taudry and also very evangelical protestant. Like, I’m gonna tell you here about my personal turn to Jesus Christ, my personal lord and savior. I there’s a a kind of, off putting character to that. I’m sure he’s making his play for those Iowa caucus goers that might have served Georgia w Bush well in the early two I’m less convinced that it will now, where I think a lot of evangelical faith has so blended with adoration for Donald Trump that it sort of gets invoked in a different idiom. So I wasn’t very fond of that.

I agree with what everyone has said about Nikki Haley. I think she remarkably well. I was sort of stunned to come out of this event with my opinion of her sort of rocketing skyward. I’ve never been a huge fan of Nikki Haley because she also is kind of a Bush era Republican, but I think she had a number of moments including the one you mentioned in talking about foreign policy with Ramaswamy. And just thinking on our feet, you know, we’ve talked and highlighted on the podcast few weeks ago about her stance on abortion and praised it.

And I think she she did even better in a much broader for him to really just come right out and be like, you know what? I’m pro life. I’m in favor of pretty strong restrictions on this, but this must be a state issue. There should not be a a federal ban on this. Tim Scott, he was the mirror image in South Carolina.

If Nikki Haley sort of blew me away by how well she did. I was genuinely surprised at how lacking in energy and cogency he seemed to be. It was almost as if he was in a time delay, like, He wasn’t actually on the stage with everyone else and was hearing the transcript to an earpiece two seconds behind everybody else. He sort of paused a lot and So I I guess in the South Carolina primary, I would say, Haley’s now the person to beat and Scott might be on his way out. That sort of way I see it.

Last point, I think probably more than anyone on this podcast, I think that Rama swami really is going to see a big boost out of here. I certainly share everybody on this podcast discussed for the man. I wouldn’t vote for him for all the money in the world. I can’t stand where he comes down on anything. I find his demeanor very off putting.

But as Walter Olsen and Will Saletan, have already indicated, he really is the trumpian on that stage. And he masters it in a kind of instinctual way. And I don’t mean to say he’s authentic because I think most of it is b s. We’re living in a springtime for demagogues, my friends, and Rhima Swamy is the best of the demagogues on that stage. And poor Ron DeSantis he sure does try, but he doesn’t have the knack for it that a Vivic does.

And I think we’re gonna see him be up probably in the teens in the next week because of this. But, you know, all the debates we’ve had for all these months about, like, Will DeSantis be the guy who’s there waiting in the wings in case Trump collapses? And then he can step in in his place. I think Ramos mommy is in that position. After this.

And is that pretty scary about the future? You bet it is, but in a way, that’s not a new thing for me to be saying. I really do think he has his finger on the pulse of the party more than anybody else.

Linda, some people have said, look, the purpose of this Trumpless debate. There were two things to come out of it. One was to see whether there was some sort of anti trump candidate who could get traction or, let’s say, non trump candidate who could get traction. So apparently, the donors were eagerly eyeing the exits, you know, about Ron DeSantis and looking for an alternative. So I’m wondering if you think that Nikki Haley might see a nice boost at least in her fundraising.

After this because DeSantis did in my judgment very badly. I thought he does not come across well. He seems like an Tomiton, but with a weird look in his eye. I don’t know. He’s not a normal person, and I think that came across.

I don’t know what you think. I’d be curious.

He’s definitely not a normal person. Oh, Mona. I mean, my husband was practically on the fort laughing because I was doing Ron DeSantis of imitations after the debate, facial imitations because he had this, you know, he has this weird frown on his face. He’s got these two deep creases in between his eyebrows, and he’s always looking like he’s so angry and yet his voice is very whiny, so it doesn’t quite come across, you know, in a forceful way. But then at the end of one of these little tirades, he put this weird smile on his face, and you could just see that somebody has spent time.

Ron, you have to smile more. Maybe it was his wife. You gotta smile more. You’re not appealing if you don’t smile. But it was exactly what you said.

It was weird. Look, I actually find Ramaswamy. Who, by the way, I have redubbed. Vivek, Ramos Marmy. Because he is smart.

There you go. Perfect. Yeah.

In the worst possible way, I find him a little scary. I think he’ll see a pretty substantial bump.

I do too.

Because of his energy. Look, the Republican party isn’t or at least the Republican base. Primary voters is a reality TV base now. These are not, you know, the neo cons and intellect tools and even the, you know, some of the old, very gold water right Republicans of our youth. It’s a different group of people.

And what they always found appealing about Donald Trump was what they considered his star quality and his entertainment value. And Ramaswamy is entertaining. I mean, he’s up there. He’s animated. He’s got energy.

He speaks a mile a minute. Never really says much of anything except throwing out some outrageous things, but I think that he’s gonna have the biggest bum in terms of Nikki Haley, I’ve been hard on Nikki Haley on this program. I think that she has come across is trying to have it both ways with respect to Trump, but she did herself some good. And although I would not have liked to see her raise her hand that she’s willing to put a convicted felon. Isn’t this the Republican party, by the way, that wants to take away the vote?

From convicted felons. They don’t want people to vote. Oh, but you could be a president, convicted felon.

Yeah. Oh, but they’re tough on crime.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Right.

I’ve I forgot. Anyway, but I thought she did very well. Now, first of all, I think she’s made a a lot about her role as governor of South Carolina. And you had you know, several governors up there, vying for each other. And that has been traditionally one of the place you look for for presidents because they have executive leadership But what she displayed in her debate with Ramaswami, the sort of back and forth, was her credentials as a UN ambassador.

And her more sophisticated understanding of foreign policy. But, you know, one thing I would like to say I don’t think anybody is focused on this. And that is how tough it is for a woman in that kind of a debate. To be able to keep attention, to be able to continue to talk and not to be shut up by Ramaswamy who talked over her and over her. She did get a little in the scolding there with her finger as did he.

But She never got shrill. She’s learned the technique. Don’t raise your voice if you’re a woman, you know, raise it an octave higher because that’s not attractive and it’s not commanding. But she managed to hold her own. And I think that’s gonna be appealing to women.

I think that, you know, the suburban woman vote out there Four, Nikki Haley is there, and I think she did herself a world of good talking about not demonizing women, not ever suggesting that women be punished for having an abortion. So she may come out of this. I think she’ll get a boost in funders, because I think DeSantis is gonna have lost support in the debate. But the one that I’m worried about is Ramaswamy.

Yeah. I just wanna underline what you said about her performance just in general, but also for a woman because I had the exact same reaction. It is so difficult when you’re the only woman and you’re in a potential shouting match or raised voices with men because men tend to have louder voices, and it is difficult to be heard when somebody is trying to overpower you like that and their and their mail. And so I think both you and I have had experience with this.

We’ve had a little experience with that.

We have, you know. And so for us, it’s like, yes. And I agree with you that that will appeal to a lot of, you know, professional women who’ve or or even non professionals who have been in that situation. I thought she handled herself incredibly well. She really maintained commands.

She seemed to be the adult And I thought she really gutted Ramaswamy and and did it all with poise and maintaining her dignity. God bless her. I thought that was a really great great moment. And, you know, on another planet in earth two point o, she’d be rising in the polls, and Republicans would look at each other and say, her. We want her.

Let’s put her up against Joe Biden, and we’d win. But that’s not the world we live in.

Sadly, Mona, may I just add that The part of the problem is that where she did the best on the Ukraine issue, the Republican party is not there anymore.

I know. That’s why I said it’s Earth two point o. That’s right. And, you know, who knows? She may not get any bump.

We’ll see. Okay, one more thing before we end this topic and that is I’m gonna turn to you Will Saletan on the topic that has been getting a lot of attention this week, a, University of Pennsylvania law review article by two federalist society law professors, William Boyd and Michael Stokes Paulson, where they argue that section three the fourteenth amendment remains valid and good law. Of course, it is. It’s part of the constitution, but they say it gives secretaries of state in every state, the option of declining to put Donald Trump’s name on the ballot because he had previously taken an oath to uphold the constitution and then engaged in insurrection. Do you have a view on this?

Do I ever? No. In all seriousness, I have a somewhat middle of the road in a critical view, but I have read the entire article, and I have been influenced by the article because before I looked at it, I had been among those who had been somewhat dismissive of Section three of the fourteenth amendment for our own circumstances. And I thought, you know, it’s going to be a blonde ally. You know, people are going to be disappointed in some cases when it doesn’t work out.

Well, Buds and and Paulson’s article is very well put together. It is argued very carefully. They are very well respected, conservative while professors associated with the federalist society, and they do a really a it’s a turn of force, a magnificent job. It doesn’t mean necessarily, I think that their view is gonna prevail on the course. But a couple of quick points about that.

First, I had always been aware that there had been a ruling not by the Supreme Court, but by a panel that included a salmon Chase, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, basically taking the other side, saying, we’re gonna interpret this, not to be self executing as lawyers put it, but requiring a finding by a court or Congress or someone that someone was an insurrectionist. We’re not going to leave it in a situation where each new challenge might have to relitigate the question of whether person, x to person y, was engaged in insurrection or not. And they, argue, I think very persuasively that Chase was properly wrong. On the other hand, precedent is precedent, and we know that the Supreme Court, regularly, agrees to live with, old cases that it might agree were not, rightly decided. So that’s point number one, point number two, and then I will let others have the floor if you like.

Is, on the one hand, a vision of chaos and anarchy breaks out in which every secretary of state and perhaps down to a more granular level you know, county election boards could be refusing to let him on the ballot, could be, refusing to tabulate votes as invalid this could be happening as indeed it did happen and challenges to representatives Madison Hawthorne and and, Marjorie Taylor Green, more more on that in a moment. Let me say somewhat reassuringly. All those things are gonna get appealed very quickly if they have any success and go right up to the Supreme Court it’s crucial for the country, but it will also probably happen that if this gets any traction, it is going to be resolved. And probably, I hope early by the Supreme Court, said that we don’t have to go through uncertainty about whether or not it applies to Trump. Now I’ve mentioned that this was used against Cawthorn and Green Green prevailed because on a factual basis, it was ruled that she was not an insurrectionist.

She might have sympathized. She didn’t take enough actions. Carthorn’s case wound up being mooted, even though the lost ruling I believe was against him, on the grounds that he got defeated in the primary so there was no longer a practical question. So the courts did not resolve it Jonathan Last round.

Interesting. Alright. Does anybody else on the panel have a view on this or just a question? Or

Well, I do. Okay, Dave. I mean, I’ve written on this this week. I have no informed opinion about the legal side of it. I completely defer to Walter Olsen and other works who are lawyers and know this stuff far better than I do.

But I think as a political question, I think this cannot possibly be the way our Trump problem gets resolved. It may be the case that in the immediate aftermath of the civil war with the confederacy, a defeated insurrectionary movement within the country, with hundreds of thousands of deaths and a surrender in hand that the victorious union had the authority to say that unilaterally, if you wanna vote for these insurrectionists to office, you are not allowed to do it. That’s what happens in a war when one side surrenders to the other. That is not at all the relationship between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in our time. And the sad fact is that if this starts to unfold, it is going to be Democratic states, Democratic secretaries of states, arguing one side against Republican states and Republican lawyers and members of the public and party on the other side.

And, ultimately, it will be decided by the US Supreme Court, and I would bet quite a bit of money that it will probably end up that it will not fly, and it will be either a six to three or a a five to four decision with the conservatives siding the way you would predict them to. And in the end then, maybe it won’t matter. But I do think people need to be Be clear about what we mean by the rule of law. The rule of law is us as a political community coming to an overwhelming bipartisan consensus that certain rules are valid. And will be enforced.

And the sad, dangerous fact about our political moment is that the Republicans have succeeded in sort of creating their own alternative, legal, moral, and political universe. In which they no longer agree with the rest of the country about what any of this means and what the standard should be. And so inevitably, it ends up being not an overwhelming bipartisan consensus that these are the rules and Trump has violated. Therefore, cannot serve an office again as president. I think it inevitably will end up seeming like, oh, a bunch of crats are getting together and saying that the Republican portion of the country are not permitted to want the person they want.

To be president. And I don’t think that’s a viable political path forward. So I I do hope that this goes nowhere. And that Trump, if he is indeed the nominee, simply loses by the greatest possible margin in

Of

course, the the other possible interpretation in terms of respect for the rule of law is that, you know, Democrats say, well, hold on. I mean, what you’re saying then is that Republicans can flout the law and get away with it because were too intimidated by their threat to say this is all political. So there’s that too. Okay, Linda.

Yeah. I was just gonna say, I don’t disagree with Damon in terms of the politics of this issue and the way it would be incredibly divisive. I do think that’s right. I think Republicans would scream bloody murder if democratic secretaries of state attempted to remove Donald Trump, and that of course is what it’s going to take. It’s going to take a state official refusing to put Donald Trump’s name on the ballot.

But let’s not think about this as some kind of punishment for Trump’s behavior. There are qualifications to be president of the United States. You know, when Arnold Schwartzneger was governor of California and everybody loved him, people were saying, oh, gee, it’s really too bad. He wasn’t born in the state so that he could run for president. Nobody suggested, you know, that that was somehow a punishment.

It was a qualification. Similarly, the age qualification is one of the qualifications. And what they did in the fourteenth amendment in that debate, and I’ve spent a lot of time studying the fourteenth amendment because of its role in terms of the race issue and how it’s played out. And in terms of the citizenship issue, the natural born citizen. So I’ve read the debates on the fourteenth amendment to end I think this was not so much a punishment to those who had been involved in the civil war.

After all, it wasn’t everyone. It was only those who had taken a previous oath to the constitution and then had flouted that oath. And more than just flouting it, they had actually engaged in insurrection or given aid and comfort to insurrectionists. And I also am not that sure that you’d see the kind of result at the Supreme Court if in fact is tested in the courts. As Damon predicts because, you know, yeah, there may be some partisan leanings.

Obviously, the majority, now the sort of super majority of of the court were appointed by, Republican presidents, but Surely, somebody like a John Roberts would like nothing more than the Republican party to be rid of Donald Trump and, you know, I can see even Neil Horstitcher, even Amy Coney Barrett, who was nominated by Trump. Going along with the plain language of the fourteenth amendment, section three, and the intent of those who framed the amendment in the post civil war years. So that’s my piece. Wally, do you

have any comments on what’s been said?

Yeah. I agree with virtually everything that Damon and Linda have said, but I will get back to the same question of, assuming it goes to the US Supreme Court, what’s likely to happen? And my own guess is that And and the phrase that I always think of is Nino Scalia, which is that he said that he was an originalist, but that he was a faint hearted originalist. And it meant that even though some old decisions were incorrectly decided, you can’t just pull down the pillars of the temple. Every time you see an old intellectual mistake, and he wasn’t going to do that.

Now the court is not all that divided. Neil Gore, such is the justice above all, who doesn’t believe in being fanned hearted. If he reads an old Indian treaty as giving a third of Oklahoma to the Indians, you know, by golly, he’s gonna give it to them. But to some extent, all the other aid are faint hearted. And for the reasons Damon said about the political two molds, the feeling that much of the population, including many Democrats, that that democratic choice was being limited by this.

I would actually be kind of surprised if the disqualification side got as many as three votes on the Supreme Court.

Next topic is Hunter Biden because as former president Trump’s legal difficulties pile up, the Democrats have increased their attention on Biden. And on his corruption, and we saw recently that the plea deal fell apart after the judge in the case scrutinized it and realized that there was not in fact a meaning of minds and now there is a lot of Sterling Drang about Biden and about the so called Biden crime family. The Republicans are saying that, they may start impeachment proceedings against president Biden. So I’m gonna start with you, Will Saletan. Do you have a sense that this issue is really dogging the president and a sense of whether he should be taking it more seriously, whether he should be doing something different I’ll just say one more thing, and that is that some people have said that he should distance himself from his son, and I find that just psychological kind of hard, but what what do you think?

Alas, it is dogging him, and I’m afraid that he’s brought it on himself. Let’s stipulate, as the lawyers would say, to the proposition that he himself didn’t make a dime out of any of these transactions. He must have known what he was doing, however.

He must have known what Hunter was doing. You mean?

No. He must have known what he himself was doing in support of his son.

Okay.

Right? That in effect, he was cooperating with Hunter to allow the brand to quote a number of people involved in this to be an effective financial force for his son. And if he didn’t know that, He should have known that because he is plenty experienced enough to know, you know, where the line is. And so I don’t think he should have been on any of those telephone calls. You know, the question of money flowing into his bank account is one thing, but the question of, you know, allowing himself to be used by his son for the purposes that he was used for, I think creates an optical question, even if it doesn’t create a legal question.

It is, I think, a misuse of the powers of the office that he held at the time. And I say this as a Democrat who is going to vote for Joe Biden’s reelection. But It really doesn’t look good. And it allows insinuations of moral equivalence to enter the political discourse. In a way that’s distinctly unhelpful, not only politically, but also civically.

And I am not suggesting for all the psychological reasons that you’ve already invoked that that the president, quote unquote, distance himself from his son. This is not the kind of father who’s ever going to do that, but for god’s sake, you don’t have to invite him to a state dinner just days after all of this to technical miss Michigan has unfolded. And if the reports out of the White House are correct, that this is one of the few issues where no aid, no matter how senior can open a conversation with the president. You know, a politically important conversation, then I don’t think this problem is gonna go away. And it is not going to be helpful politically or civically.

Okay. Wally Olsen, I’m going to play hunter Biden advocate here. This is what some people are saying. Look, Hunter is sleazy and he, you know, had a daughter that he wasn’t supporting for a long time and he’s a drug addict engages in kind of shady, influence peddling, But, they say, the crimes that have so far been identified are incredibly trivial, things like failure to pay taxes, which, you know, thousands upon thousands of Americans do every year, and there it’s usually taken care of administratively not through the criminal process. And the lying on a form to purchase a handgun, not admitting that he was under the influence of drugs at the time.

Again, usually no prison sentence despite Chris Christie saying during the debate that he would give him a ten year term for that offense. That’s unheard of. That was ridiculous. So they say, look, actually, there is a There is a double standard hunter is being treated more harshly than the average defendant just because he’s the son of the president. What’s your view?

I have taken the view all along that most people are able to keep in perspective that a president might have a family member who has gone to the ballot and committed crimes and will not, for that reason alone, if that’s all there is to it. Will not blame the president or other main personality. But I agree with Bill that it has gone beyond just being unlucky in what happened to his son. And as Bill mentioned, the presence on phone calls, the decisions to do things like invite to stay dinners, bad enough, I would add two more things. And to me, they represent smoke that is not just seeping out, but kind of bellowing out at this point.

First, The Republicans have made, hey, I think, rightly, out of the fact that Biden’s position has changed and that connections to Hundred Biden’s business that he denied. He eventually admitted, oh, well, actually, yeah, yes, I may have been there. Yes, I may have been on a phone call. Okay. Well, so we’ve caught him seemingly being evasive about some of the issues at the center of it.

The thing that I can’t get over is something different. And, again, I find the the defense of the official you know, democratic message machine to be very inadequate on this. As I understand it, and maybe someone will correct me if I’m wrong, the investigations found that various miscellaneous Biden family members who are neither Hunter nor Joe have been getting all this money in from foreign sources. And a democratic response to I heard about it is, well, there’s no proof of a quid pro quo. Well, you know, there’s no proof of quid pro quo in part because some of these are just kids.

Now why are kids in the Biden family getting large foreign payments? You know, maybe it had nothing to do with any decision Joe made, but isn’t that irregular how would even Hunter necessarily have brought it about? Naturally people wonder if it’s something where, this, you know, a kid couldn’t have a consultancy. A kid is not gonna be on on corporate boards. If the Republicans are right that there are these money flows, then at least we should get an explanation.

Yeah. Linda, I feel a little bit the way I did when I found out that right around the time that we discovered, you know, the the huge scandal about Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, We find out that Biden had kept some classified documents in a couple of different locations also. Now, of course, there are huge differences, right? Between Trump’s very Will Saletan, obstructive behavior and the nature of the classified materials and all of that. And Biden’s apparent somewhat careless bad handling of classified matters, but still the very fact that it made the news that Biden also had had these things in garage.

It does muddy the waters. Right? And similarly here, I mean, you know, this this hundred Biden thing does give the Republicans an opportunity to say, well, you know, Trump

may have been corrupt, but everybody does it. Yep. That’s exactly what they’ll say. And by the way, You know, I feel very, strongly about this. I think Hunter Biden should go to jail not for a long time, but I think what he did was Absolutely wrong.

I mean, you know, not paying taxes. We’re talking about millions of dollars that he owes. The fact that he was a crack addict and wasn’t exactly doing his paperwork is in some ways irrelevant. I think if Hunter Biden loved his father, he would take the correct fall for his actions, and there would have been a plea deal which it had given him some time in federal prison for what he did. And maybe others will disagree with me.

Maybe that’s too strong. But I feel strongly about that. And I speak as a granddaughter of man who went to federal prison for eleven and a half years for bootlegging and whose wife and children were deprived of their home because, of course, there was tax evasion. The feds came in and took away the property of my grandfather during prohibition. So, you know, people pay for their crimes by doing time.

And I think he is despicable. I’m sorry. This man got millions of dollars from foreign entities, but it wouldn’t matter if it was foreign or domestic entities. He did not do anything to deserve that money. These were a way of him trying to sell the family brand, influence peddling, and whether or not Joe Biden accommodated them.

I don’t think he did because I think the actions he Ocon Ukraine were, in fact, the proper action in firing a corrupt, prosecutor who, by the way, was not doing a good job investigating Burisma. The company that, paid under Biden. But I don’t know, you know, if there could be a family intervention But somebody ought to sit Hunter Biden down and say, knock it off. You’ve lived high on the horse on your family’s names You’ve disgraced your family in multiple ways. It’s time to pay back a little.

He would help Joe Biden if he got a plea deal, which included at least some time for the crimes that he committed.

Damon, having previously been Devil’s advocate, I’m gonna switch sides now and point out that one of the things that Hunter Biden has done quite recently is his lawyers threatened during the course of these negotiations with the justice department that if the justice department went forward with charges, that they would call the president to testify in the trial and that this would be a national security disaster or something along those lines. Basically, Hunter allowed his lawyers to threaten his father.

Yeah. The whole thing is extremely depressing to me because maybe I’m being naive here. It’s entirely possible, but my instincts tell me Joe Biden did not mean to do anything wrong here. This was in the period where Bo Biden died of cancer. He was shaken.

He wants to keep up ties with his other son who has had such a kind of rocky, difficult life. And so what he sets up is kind of, situation where, hey, you wanna use the fact that you’re my son, like, make a bunch of money overseas, Alright. I’ll also, you know, stroll into the room when I know you’re on the phone with that person and and say, Hey, kid. How you doing so that you can then say, Hey, yeah, there’s my dad. See, we talk all the time.

It’s such a strange kind of familial corruption where unless they can show the Joe Biden personally received payments and or that there was some policy pro quo. That’s what I mean when I say naive. I don’t believe that we will find either of those things, which means that In the context of the, say, post twenty sixteen American political scene at the highest levels, there is something a little obscene about even having to talk about this because in comparison to the kind of corruption that we saw throughout the entire Trump administration. And then, of course, the end of the Trump administration. And since with corruption bleeding on into, like, incitement and self coup attempts and all kinds of other you know, egregious lies and attempts to subvert the constitution and other things that seem so infuriatingly trivial that I think a lot of Democrats are sort of like, oh, get out of here.

Go to hell. Like, compared to Trump, how can you even say the name, Hunter Biden? The problem is that in addition to what, Hunter Biden’s lawyers have been willing to do is that, you know, all of us have said versions of this, but I wanna put a finer point on it even. When Trump ran for president in twenty sixteen as a populist in that right wing cultural populist way, where the entire thing is about pointing to an entrenched establishment and impugning its integrity and saying that you will fix the problem personally as the outsider. That’s the the shtick.

He did not say I am an angel. I am a saint put me in charge and I will do it better. That is so important that he did not say that. What he said was I am part of these people, be insinuated at least. I know they’re corrupt because I’m with them.

I’m corrupt. Two, which is exactly, I think, what is behind things like this unbelievable outrageous CBS yougov poll that came out this week that showed that if you ask, Trump voters, who do you trust? Religious leaders? Forty two percent say yes. Who do you trust conservative media figures, fifty six percent?

Friends and family, sixty three percent and Donald Trump, seventy one percent. Why is that obscene figure? The reality on the right these days. In some way, it’s that they take that position that I outlined as honest as a kind of confession that, like, we can trust Trump because he’s not portraying himself as better than the sleaze all around. And that is that is how he was able to narrowly defeat Hillary Clinton by turning her into crooked Hillary So, yeah, you think I’m corrupt, but look, she’s just as bad.

You hate me. Okay. Fine. But you should hate her too. And so her negatives are pretty much the same as his.

Trump’s only hope of winning while under indictment and four separate cases and four jurisdictions with ninety one counts is if he can somehow convince a lot of Americans. Yeah. They think they’re in a position to judge me. But they’re not. They do it too.

If they were hiding this, what else are they hiding? That’s the dynamic and the thing that is so depressing and infuriating is that this stupid comparatively trivial option that probably grew out of Joe Biden’s admirable desire to stay close to and help his you know, maladjusted son, with with all of his drug abuse and other problems, is now gonna be hanging around his neck weighing down. And I don’t trust, you know, the judgment of him to not allow his own staff to talk to him about it is pretty bad. But then there’s also, you know, his cognitive decline, and how is he gonna handle it on a debate stage with Donald Trump when he’s asked questions about Hunter and Trump is coming at him attacking Hunter. I think it was a little shaky last time.

I think it’s gonna be worse this time. So I am worried. I’m worried.

Alright. In the interest of completeness, let me just observe that it’s been alleged that Joe Biden himself has suddenly become wealthy. And the question is, you know, is it because of corrupt foreign dealing? So I think it is worth noting that his net worth as recently as two thousand nine was listed as something like thirty thousand dollars, and that was after a career in the US Senate. And then after his vice presidency, he made his money, most of it from book deals, and speaking engagements, and Biden’s very well remunerated post at the University of Pennsylvania as a professor at the Penn Biden Center for diplomacy and global engagement.

Where he received a salary of five hundred and forty thousand dollars. So that’s not too bad, not too shabby. But in any event, that’s worth noting that he seems to have come by his money that he now has, honestly, though, of course, we can’t be positive that there isn’t anything under the table. Second thing to say I think in the interest of completeness is that that this is the president’s son who has never held a government post and is accused of influence peddling which is not pretty but which is not remotely on a par with what Trump was accused of. And finally, I think it’s worth noting that Biden, however poorly he may have handled this.

He did not fire The special council who had been appointed by the Trump people to investigate Hunter but I’m stay on. He did not denounce the investigation into Hunter Biden as a witch hunt. He didn’t denounce the judges in the cases as so called judges. He didn’t say that this means the entire justice system is rigged and a plot against himself. So Obviously, it’s a complicated and very, unpretty picture for president heading into a reelection campaign.

Alright. Let us now turn to our final segment, highlight, or low light of the week, Will Saletan.

Regrettably, this week has been a target rich environment. For low lights. I hardly know where to start, but of course I must add quickly. So I’ll just pick out a couple One, which I don’t think has been discussed enough, is Ron DeSantis pledge to invade Mexico. On day one of his presidency, sending American troops across the border into a foreign country without the consent of its government is, I think, the strict legal definition of an invasion.

So Ron DeSantis has threatened to invade Mexico on day one. Maybe it plays well with the base, but, it’s pretty darn irresponsible in my book. And now for fun, number two, and I really don’t mean to pick on the person. I’m about to quote, a veteran Republican political strategist by the name of Bob Heckman had this to say about the political consequences of the Republican debate. And I quote, Armaswamy probably gets a small bump, but I don’t know how you get nomination by insulting everyone in the room.

Apparently, mister heckman slept through the entire twenty sixteen Republic’s primary, you know, where Donald Trump got the nomination by doing exactly that. No. I don’t expect Ramaswami to get the nomination, but the only reason I don’t expect get it is because Donald Trump is still there. Otherwise, he might just.

Right. Walter Elson.

I’d like to point to a low light, which is kind of a deter and probably more minor in the greater scheme of things, but which I just found so symptomatic. And it’s detailed in an article by Will Saletan and the the Bulwark. And it’s about vaccines in the military. You know, vaccines came up a couple of times with the debate, but A lot of us remember that there was controversy about whether the military as it is done with many other vaccines and many other circumstances could require its members to take the COVID vaccine, it clearly has legal authority to do that. There were clearly issues of unit readiness and so forth.

And So now you think, okay, the issue is basically in the past. They’ve discontinued the mandate. COVID landscape has changed. You’ve got a bunch of Republican senators threatening to hold up the National Defense Authorization Bill. If they can’t get a vote, a bill that has been introduced, not just to somehow go back and, you know, mend the relationship between those who were insubordinate on this and and may have been separated from the service or or in other ways penalized, but to give them back pay.

And, unless they can get the vote for the back pay, then they won’t allow the defense bills to go forward. And my mind wheels, I’m, you know, I spent much of my life writing about employment litigation. And as those who have been through it may be aware, back pay is this sort of special remedy with highly punitive overtone because someone has been not working for you for two years. If you pay them back pay without getting any back work, you’re just handing them over a large sum of some of money, well, you know, they may have been burning a perfectly nice income somewhere else. It’s basically something that is meant to rub your nose in it and and punish you for having been wrong rather than just right in a good faith way.

And, for them to do this about vaccines, for them to ignore both the readiness issues that were the underlying reason in the first place and also the readiness issues haven’t passing a necessary bill. It just confirms that the Republicans or at least many of them will play even the military and even national security for cheaper cultural war entertainment. That’s what I have to say.

Yes. Alright, Linda.

Well, we’ve had a lot of low lights. I’m gonna give a highlight in really good news and it comes from south of the border. There were elections actually. It was a runoff election in Guatemala, last weekend. And the winner of that election, he was running against the incumbent Sandra Torres, who was the wife of another, Guatemala president, but the winner is a center left candidate whose name is Bernardo Arevalo.

And he is somebody who got fifty eight percent of the vote. Guatemala has not quite as bad as El Salvador door, but in many respects like El Salvador has been, you know, a kleptocracy, a failed state, Obviously, the failure of Guatemala. Government has led to the exodus of many Guatemala and course, when they exit, they move north and can try to come to the United States, not always legally. So the fact that you’ve got now an anti corrupt crusader, who was going to be president of Guatemala, somebody who, you know, had almost no name recognition or anything else prior to getting involved in this race and who managed to overcome all of the impediments to democracy put in place by the ruling party is I think remarkable. I think it’s very good news and is good news not just for Guatemala but for the United States because the way to help solve the problem we are having at our southern border is to have more stability in Central America and in Mexico and having Guatemala be now governed by someone who might very well be able to turn things around there.

I think is very good news for all of us.

And Linda, most of the people who are showing up at the southern border are from central America. Right? They’re not from Mexico.

That that’s right. Although the Mexicans have again started, to come in more recently, the the, Lopez Orbrador, government there is doing no favors to the Mexican people. But we paid too little attention to this. In America. It really matters and it affects all of us.

I wish we’d pay more attention to some of these trends.

Right. We also pay too little attention to our neighbor to the north. I mean, Canada, they have to have forest fires in order for us to even remember that, that they exist. It’s a great country. Great neighbor.

Alright, Damon.

I’m going to, avoid any temptation to kind of, contribute to the, pervading mood of gloom by giving a highlight. It does require that I leave politics behind. This is a really lovely long moving essay by Jennifer senior in the Atlantic titled the ones we sent away. Subtitled. I thought my mother was an only child.

I was wrong. It’s a very much a personal essay, but one with a lot of resonances with broader questions of what humanity is and the role of disability and human life and how we treat those who are disabled. The basic rundown of the piece is Jennifer Senior’s mother actually had a a sister who had been sent away when she was a small child. To institution for people with severe mental disabilities and has lived her entire life in such facilities in group homes only, years later, sort of started to be incorporated a little bit back into the family. The always had quite a great distance.

And, one of the things that’s so great about it as an essay, which is often the case with Jennifer Senior’s, excellent Bulwark. Is just the very light touch, great sensitivity of Jennifer’s writing in capturing the sadness of real human lives and the struggles that they have. I think you should read it with a box of tissues nearby. I challenge you to get through it with a dry eye. But it’s in a good way and very much recommended to everyone.

Okay. Thank you. Mine alas is also a low light. The Heritage Foundation, which was founded to promote conservative ideals and for decades stood strong for democracy, American leadership in the world and other things, though I didn’t always like heritage Bulwark. But I never thought that they were dishonest or cheap.

And, unfortunately, this week, and now they in the era of Trump, they have pleat pivoted as so many formerly honorable conservative organizations have done. And they put out a tweet this week that is just despicable, talking about contrasting images of Kiev, which they portray with people riding bicycles on a nice sunny day and out in cafes, with Maui and chastising the Biden administration for giving more money to Keith than to Maui, which is of course, you know, I’m sure the numbers are wrong, you know, that we’ve only begun to rebuild in Maui, but in any event, the notion this kind of, you know, primitive us against them stuff. You know, don’t send your money to those undeserving foreigners when there are people in this country. There are always needs in our own country, but we are either a great nation or we’re not. And, what we are doing to preserve democracy and to help the Ukrainians fight off a brutal invasion is one of the better things that has happened in the world in in recent history and for the Heritage Foundation.

To scoff at it is really a comedown and it’s emblematic of what has happened to so many formerly honorable conservative organization, so shame on them. And with that, I would like to thank our guest, Walter Olsen, and our panel, as well as our producer, Katie Cooper, our sound engineer, Jonathan Siri, editor, Aaron Keane, And of course, our wonderful listeners, and we will return next week as every week.