The Indicted Demon and the Maligned Angel

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level. I’m JBL here with my best friends. Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the Bulwark. Before we get started, hit the like button, hit subscribe, give us five stars.

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Give us money. Yeah. Why not? Tim’s gotta eat. We burned.

Ted’s gotta eat. So

we had a livestream last night, kind of thing we do for members only, for the people who actually give us money. And it was a little bit gloomy. We had a diversity of opinions on the indictment. Yes, Sarah. No.

I’m still mad about this. Everybody I okay.

Oh, you look mad.

People like me in the chat, normally?

People like mad at

me in the chat, and No one

was wearing black for some reason. It was like a funeral. It was very doer.

Dour. Dour. Dour. That’s what you mean. That’s how you pronounce that word.

Doer

was very French cajones.

Okay. So the it was sour. First of all, I don’t think you could do a second emergency podcast with, like, champagne drinking. Like, we’ve done the champagne drinking, the indictment of Habit. I think that if people were just coming on so that everybody could do, like, a happy dance, That was sort of missing the point of what we really needed to be talking about, which was, okay, we have the details that we’ve been looking for.

None of them are new. I was disappointed by how exactly what we’ve known for so many months it was. And I have some concerns about where we’re landed on things politically. But nobody wanna hear that. And so Amanda, Amanda was where the people are.

Man does the voice of the people and that’s great. So

here’s here’s the deal. So I I’m gonna ask you each for your opinion on this and I’m going to just go ahead early and tell you that I have concluded that absolutely none of this matters. And I’ll explain why after the fact and that it doesn’t matter if the case is strong. It doesn’t matter if the case is weak. It doesn’t matter if this enlightenment was brought or not brought.

We were in full JVL Neulist for this. But because of that, it actually takes you to a happy place. Because if none of this matters, then you might as well just let the legal process lay back and let the legal process work its magic. I’ll give you the full case for that afterwards. You know, oddly enough, this is a thing that you could read slightly about at even greater length in my newsletter, the triad by JBL.

Go subscribe for it at the Bulwark dot com. So, Sarah Longwell want you start first. You make the case for why you’re worried because you you made I think very eloquently last night and in a way which I find very commencing.

So my concerns are basically political, and it’s it’s PR and Optics. Right? It’s the story and how it is shaped. And it’s born out of what I saw happened to the Mueller report and complete and total exoneration when that is absolutely not what was in the Mueller report. It was there was, like, ten counts of obstruction of justice.

The only reason they couldn’t indict is because he was a sitting president probably would have indicted him fact, almost assuredly would have invited us on the circus with Andrew Weitzman who prosecuted that case on Friday and their hands were literally tied. And I understand people’s desire. Not literally unless it’s Michael Cohen. I’m sorry.

Just like did Michael Cohen take a rope out. Okay.

I’m I’m glad you just did that to me because my kids have started using the word literally and they use it wrong all the time. And I’m like, they’re getting this for me. They’re

getting it from their mother.

It’s terrible because I’m good with grammar. But the literally thing, it’s I use it as an emphasis word as opposed to literally for what it’s for. Anyway, thank you for that. So my concern is what I’m seeing from the voters and what I’m seeing from the pulling, and what I’m seeing is the increasing likelihood of Donald Trump being the Republican nominee. And the way that this case And I think people’s general sense, not that it is weak, although I do think that’s where we got yesterday.

But I before this, I was kinda making a distinction been a weak case and an unserious case. Like, or a less serious case than, let’s say, coup doing and another version of coup doing, which is go find me votes that don’t exist. Right? So, like, those cases, I very badly want Trump to be indicted on and I want those to be impactful and meaningful And to the extent that this might dilute that impact and and sort of create a shadow that those exist in, I’m concerned about that. Nobody wanted to hear that perspective last night, and that’s fine.

I Will Saletan slept on it, and I’m interested in your nihilistic position a little bit JBL because I did start to think to myself this morning. I said, self, if this thing doesn’t go to trial, until twenty twenty four.

December is the next court date.

The December

I saw December come in. I was like, what

month are we in? I,

like, I literally pulled out my phone and looked at the calendar and I was like, right, April. So that’s two months or the Iowa caucus.

It is. But my guess is is that there’s other cases that happened here. And so I actually started to think What’s very possible as a dynamic is that this case quickly recedes and other cases become dominant and I may still have cause to worry about how this ultimately shaded things, but I’m not sure like, he will not be prosecuted for this. In a time that it involves the election. Like, it’s all gonna be passed.

And I think we’ve learned a few things from this like The rally around Trump effect is real. These indictments are probably not gonna knock him down. And so his opponents as they rally around him should learn that this is not the right strategy. Right? And so I’m gonna try to turn my frown upside down by

giving myself a perspective

that this might not matter as much as I was originally thinking, and that actually the lessons that we learn from them, we may learn early enough to actually put into some good use. Or or his opponents might. That’s where I will leave things.

Timothy? So I did think it was a gloomy livestream last night, but I think that the instinct of Bill Crystal and Sarah Bill was maybe I just more directly on this point in particular, but DeSera was echoing it, that we shouldn’t be so sanguine about things that might help Donald Trump become president. Right? Like anything that helps Donald Trump become president even incrementally is bad, and we should oppose that and we should be worried about and we should be thinking about ways to combat that and to weaken the chances that he becomes president again since that is, you know, the number one, two, and three threat that we face. I concur with that.

Where I parted ways a bit from the group’s analysis was just that Are we sure? Like, I just think that this certainty that this helps Trump, you know, is is really wrong headed.

Tell me more.

Sure. Yes. We’re sure that right now today his poll numbers vis a vis Ron DeSantis are better. Yes. So that is true.

And so that is bad in the micro. But in the macro, we have some counter evidence. Right? Most just upgrade Donald Trump’s loss in twenty twenty, but also in the midterms, that, like, there is a plurality of people in this country that are done with the crazy. And I just am not convinced that Donald Trump getting indicted.

Donald Trump having to go to courts, Donald Trump lying, Donald Trump having Joker, Joe, Tapioca, on TV, like defending him. Do everybody having to relive and rehash all of Donald Trump’s crimes and corruptions helps him in the act. Oh, I agree with that though. Are

you talking about the primary or the general though? You’re

talking about the

general election. You’re not talking about the primary. And all I’m saying is in this world, in this election, we’re gonna play things out in stages. And every stage is an opportunity to stop Donald Trump. Like, the biggest opportunity to stop Donald Trump so that we’re not rolling the dice on our democracies in the Republican primary.

And him coming in from a very flat footed, weak as he’s ever been positioned to gather steam and also, like, nothing is crazier to me than the extent to which we have actually seen this movie before. And nobody is behaving differently. So I’m starting to get anxious, very anxious that there’s actually not somebody who’s capable of stepping up. Okay.

Then can I just push back on this about the primary though? But my I guess, my point is we said on Secret Podcast. Many times, I think, over the past year when doing our way too early assessment of Ron DeSantis. Like, there are a lot of pitfalls ahead for him. Sure.

And this was one of them. Yep. Like, inevitably, these guys were gonna have to go toe to toe with him. And, like, if if it wasn’t about Alvin Bragg, it was gonna be about something else. Right?

Like, there are a million things that are gonna come up between now and next February when the voting starts. And if nobody has the supports, the charisma, the message to beat him, then, like, why are we letting our panties about you know, I don’t know. It’s not Alvin Bragg that’s like gonna make a break whether Donald Trump wins his primary, I don’t think. It’s whether or not one of these other guys is able to make the case if they’re better off and And I, you know, again, maybe there’s no way to beat Donald Trump. Right?

Maybe he’s just unbeatable and Republican primary. I don’t I don’t know that I don’t think that that’s true, but, like, just this notion that it definitely helps him, that he’s under these indictments, and he’s out there. As Sarah Longwell, like, doing an Oatmeal mush press conference last night, I just maybe that’s true. I just don’t know that it’s true. One of these guys has to figure out a way to beat them, and I don’t know that any of us who are all worrying out it on MSNBC panels.

And at the Bulwark and on sub stack, you know, it’s a bunch of college educated white people, which is like the the best group for Democrats like all rending each other’s garments about how non college, mega white people are gonna react to the noose. And I just I don’t know that we have control over that.

We don’t.

Ron DeSantis maybe has some control. He

does. We we don’t have control over, but I think what I was reacting to is, like, when we were on the circus, I got asked this. It was, like, how did you feel when you heard the news? Sure. And I said, I had mixed emotions because I had actually when I saw that this jury was going out on hiatus.

I was quite relieved because I thought one of the other cases might drop first.

Yeah. So

you’re

right. I have no control over which case happens first. But, like, if you gave me my druthers and nobody can control this, that that’s true. But, I guess, I just, like, there are ways that things could happen that are worse for Donald Trump and there are way things could happen that are better for Donald Trump. And I think this indictment being the first indictment for him is more helpful than hurtful.

Well,

can we just play that out though? What if it was the reverse? Are we again, like, are we sure that’s the case? Like, what if Georgia came first? Then Alvin Bragg throws the Stormy Daniels thing on top, and then people are like, oh, wow.

They really are targeting him actually. They had the serious one first, and now it’s the stupid one. Second. So to speak, I don’t think this is stupid, but but just so to speak. So

super fair point. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot, but here’s the reason I think it’s different. I think that a whole bunch of people on right wing media. So and let’s there’s our layers to the right wing media There is a section of Mega Media that a lot of people here will never see because they don’t even it’s like barely visible. Right?

And it is intense, and they are energized by this, and they believed that the election was stolen, and they would be deeply energized by a January sixth indictment as well. But Lindsey Graham doesn’t go on Fox News and cry. And Ben Shapiro doesn’t tell all of his people that this is a miscarriage of justice. I would say there’s a big chunk and the chunk is. It’s the baby trunkers and the move on trunkers.

Right? You need to consolidate those people behind somebody else. They’re the people because they’re being told by all the right wing talkers, including Mitt Romney last night, that this is a weak case, that this is about being out get Donald Trump, and there is a big piece of psychology on the right. And I just let me say this clearly, that says, if they want to work this hard to get Donald Trump. It’s because they must be scared of him.

And your point, I I can see, like, well, maybe that happens with all of them. But like this one, I just think that the the histrionics coming from all the talkers on the right and the elected officials creates the sense of they’re out to get him. This is on serious. This wouldn’t have been brought against anybody else. And I don’t think those people could have made that case about the January sixth one.

I think that would have been put Ben Shapiro in a much tougher place. Rich Lowry baseball rank in a much tougher place.

I disagree entirely.

Okay. So we will see whether or not this is true But if you think that they would all react the exact same way to Trump being indicted for January sixth and for the Georgia thing. If you

think documents. Right?

The documents.

For the Mar a Lago documents. I think

you guys are both gonna win this one because what’s gonna happen is that Fannie Willis is gonna indict him in your next and Ben Shapiro and Angry Baseball head are gonna be, like, Well, if it wasn’t for that elven brag indictment that really poisoned the well for me, I might have been able to come around on I was radicalized. Yeah. I was like, now you can see that these people are just out to get them again. I I there always would be an excuse, I think. Right?

I mean, there always has been an excuse. They could’ve got rid of them after January sixth. If January sixth was the rabbit’s last

time.

You know?

The thing I I I ask you, Sarah Longwell back on the polling among Republican voters on January sixth by the time we got to the impeachment.

And by

the time we got to impeachment, Republican voters were, what, eighty six percent against it. Right? And this — Yeah. — this is not like a legal case. You know, this is like a a two bit political thing for whether or not you can, you know, pass this thing after this guy.

There’s basically no pretzel you know, consequences of it. It has just happened. Everybody lived through it. It was unbelievably dramatic and they still didn’t want it. Which is why I don’t think it is possible to have an indictment that either Republican voters or anybody in conservatism, Inc.

And in in conservative media would ever say, you know, this is a pretty strong case actually. This is serious stuff. Will it? I just don’t think that that exists.

Mhmm.

And and so my my it doesn’t matter. Case comes from a. This is all gonna recede, as we said, like, into the background. We’re gonna have, you know, by next week, he will have Donald Trump will have truth doubt that Rhonda Santos is Disney’s bitch or something. And everybody will be laughing about that.

Right? Or he’ll say that when he’s president, he’s gonna kick Finland out of NATO and people be like, oh, you can’t and we’ll just be on to the next thing. And because this is becomes a technical conversation about motions to dismiss and whether or not there’s, you know, the state of New York has the the standing to be concerned with a federal violation. And if we’re gonna wind up with an indictment period at some point, which I think were probably likely to, then we would still get to this place where everybody was forced to rally around Trump because there was an indictment.

Only

if there was gonna be an indictment. It doesn’t matter which one it was because none of these people who who were defending are capable of making the distinctions. I I mentioned this last night. I listened because I was a little bit late on the David French episode of The Focus Group, and he told the story about how he was down in Kentucky after the tornadoes, volunteer with some Americans purse, and he and this this lovely lovely woman were working hard together and trying to salvage people’s possessions, people had their lives destroyed, and he just he just thought this woman was the most wonderful, loving, god fearing gal he’d ever met, and she was just a tremendous human being. And then she turned to him and said, you know, they sent this thing to get the red state.

I am sorry. I do not believe that that woman is capable of looking at two different indictments and saying, well, you know, I really think this is a stretch on this one because it wasn’t missed it really should be a state misdemeanor. And this district attorney is trying to Trump because he’s part of it. People who are

capable. There are some people who are No. No. We think from them. Sarah Longwell from them.

No. Those people write for Vox. Those people are actually on the left. And this is the weirdness of this. The weird asymmetry is that you have a ton of people who are anti Trump who are looking at this in good faith and trying to say, gee, I don’t I don’t really know about this, I think, but you don’t have the converse of that.

On the other side, there is no such thing as Actually, there’s this Republican senator who’s gonna come out and say, aside from Mitt Romney. And Mitt Romney’s statement, I thought was actually quite responsible and quite good. There was one line I didn’t like in it. But on the whole, it was not a total exoneration. It was like, this man is unfit for office.

There are dangers in going down this road. I think it was But, you know, like, aside from Mitt Romney and Asa Hutchinson, that’s it.

Okay. I really

wanna to talk about the Lady Parts, Wisconsin? Alright.

Let’s go let’s go to let’s go to Wisconsin first. Judge Prada say wits.

Prada say wits. Judge P. Prada say wits.

Judge P who was projected to maybe win a three or four point victory. You had the race called very early. One of winning by eleven. Kind of a big deal because it signals maybe the end of gerrymandering in Wisconsin. There was I saw this stat somewhere about how Republicans control something like sixty five percent of the statewide offices in the legislature even though they’ve

only won three of the last seventeen statewide elections.

Which is just astonishing minority rule. Do you guys have thoughts about this? I have a bunch of thoughts. Tim,

you haven’t gotten

to talk yet.

Yeah. You talk more. Alright. Great.

I

know I was so proud. I was so proud. I was sitting there myself looking at the clock. I’m like, man, seventeen minutes in. I barely talked.

I don’t know. Can I handle this? Can I wait any longer? So my thoughts are this. Number one, I think that I’ve had been long time arguer of the fact that there are Obama Trump voters that really don’t like the new abortion regime and that are gonna be pretty important we think about these swing voters, often time we think about our people, the cucks, the Romney, Biden voters, right, and the suburban voters from college educated voters, but there are working class secular, non college, white working class voters that went along with Trump and that they are capable of being persuaded.

And they’re being persuaded on this issue. I think there are other things that play too. There was, you know, turnout and energy among the Democratic coalition. There was there was energy on both sides, but young people turning out that that I just think this is underplayed and it’s gonna be really tough. And Ron DeSantis down there passed a six week abortion ban which kind of gets overshadowed by the Trump news.

But, boy, I just don’t see how a six week abortion ban plays. Among, you know, these gettable Obama Trump voters. I think you’d see that up there. So I I think that’s the biggest takeaway for me, the next biggest being the Jerrymandering which we covered, and then you get to an electoral map. Right?

Where at Wisconsin is just really, really important. Like, if Michigan’s off the map, which seems like it is, if the Republicans don’t win Wisconsin, they have to win Georgia and Arizona. Georgia and Arizona aren’t looking very great. So I don’t know just think you can over analyze these random Supreme Court races, but I just think it’s important to look at the fact that that between abortion and Trump, Like Trump seems pretty much disqualifying in Georgia and Arizona. Oportions seems pretty a pretty tough sell in Wisconsin and Michigan.

And those two things working together make the map really, really hard for Republicans right now.

Tim doesn’t Trump have the leeway to run away from a six week ban, though? Yes.

Right? I mean, in

a weird way, this is the idea that, like, oh, you guys wanna run against Trump, which drives me crazy because we really don’t want to. But

that last weeks or two weeks ago, that I’m no longer convinced that DeSantis is is a better general election candidate. Gunned to my head, I think so. But because this is one of those issues, what we saw in Wisconsin, I’m not so sure. Yeah. Sarah Longwell

with everything Tim said, so I’m just gonna take a different since I’m already making people mad with my take, so I’m just gonna roll with this. Yes. Log in to that. Yeah. Just if ever She’ll turn.

Go ahead. Just send me all your hate mail. Do you know what to me, my first thought was when I saw her engaging in this blow out victory in Wisconsin. I was like, you guys coulda had a Senate seat. You coulda had a Senate seat.

You know what? You pick I mean, you pick somebody that didn’t get through, the defund the police, soft on crap. M and A, like, I hang that, Ron Johnson’s gone. And I was just mad about it. I I mean, I’m happy about it.

I think the political team down there in Wisconsin that does the organizing is super strong And I think that the way that they are Jerry Mannered in Wisconsin is bananas. I saw Ali Alexander. He tweeted like, there goes the Wisconsin Supreme Court or something without that. The path to two seventy is is almost impossible. And it was like We

can’t steal Wisconsin with judges. We have no chance to win. That’s

right. And so the reason one of the reasons I’m elated about Wisconsin, you know, I did good on portion in gerrymandering. But really, it it is about ensuring that this guy who was running was a big, you know, election and ire, tried to help Trump at twenty twenty overturned things, and keeping people like that away from these seats is extraordinarily important for the just like general fundamental health of democracy, and so that win was important for those reasons.

One other fun fact is on when you’re looking at explanations for why these wins happen. And and I know that I just get Sarah excited whenever I’m talking about persuasion, persuasion, not just turnout. Yeah. If you I I love this fact. If you take away Dane County’s votes.

If you take proteas, which is Dane County votes away. That’s that’s where Madison is. That’s where if you’re like, oh, a lot of excitement, young voters, young women, young women turned out. No doubt. But if you take away all hundred eighty thousand votes of hers, still wins.

Still wins. Because she’s purseweeds in the wild counties. Yeah. Yeah.

Because she did better than Biden even, better than evers among college educated suburbs and noncollege white working class out in the rest of the state?

No.

Yep. Hey, everyone. It’s JBL. What do you do to get a better night sleep? You can go to bed early.

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Want

to mention this because when you were gone, I forget, mate, you might have been sicky sick a couple maybe a month or two ago, when the first round of the mayor’s race went through, and Sarah and I did a solo podcast. And we talked about how Lightfoot loses, you know, how it was the latest example of how people in these big cities are upset at you know, defund, upset at rising crime, upset at issues, and, you know, I I think we implied I didn’t say for sure, but kind of implied that that is a good sign for Validus. Right? Who was the Paul Validus was the more centrist, you know, school reform white man candidate running against a black younger Brandon Johnson who is running, who was, you know, maybe to fund curious. Right?

Soft caught soft to fund. And and Johnson ends up winning last night. Chicago, close race, but he’s gonna be winning by three or four points. So I called so I wanted some pundit accountability on this. I called I had a friend that was working on the valves campaign and called them and just was like, what hat?

What what’s your take on what happened. And I think that when you look at these races, Johnson, there’s an interesting lesson learned. Right? They’re right. It doesn’t seem to be learning anything from their losses recently.

The progressives are learning from the losses. Johnson, who had had kind of a Mandela Barnes ish issue. Right? Like, he had gone to fund harder originally. Softened it up.

Now that didn’t work quite as well for Mandela in a swing state, but in Chicago, the electorate’s different. And he really softened it. He insisted he’s gonna take crime seriously, claimed he’s gonna hire more detectives, said he wasn’t gonna take one penny away. He’s the son of a pastor, very good speaker, you know, kind of modulated his view on on property taxes, on kind of the more socialist sort of rhetoric that that he had in his past. And, you know, that’s enough to get through when you compare when you then turn the other guy say, no, he’s maga, actually.

This guy was maga. And and Dallas was vulnerable to that because he had done, you know, some events with conservative groups that were anti trans anti woke, etcetera. And so Johnson ends up doing well with black voters and with suburban whites. I A, Allen, to follow-up to a little abundant accountability, but it’s interesting to see kind of the prongs sort of learning from where the oversteps are and saying, okay, hey, how can we get more progressive folks in, in these places, you know, without turning off the getable, you know, getable voters, both older black voters and college educated white voters. I thought it was an interesting result I said.

And we’ll be interesting to watch, like, the compare contrast between now. We’ve got Eric Adams in New York, London breed and San Francisco. Very different style. Then Johnson and Chicago Will Saletan little bit of a, you know, real life political science test.

Sir, is it fair to say or is this just my reflective anti Republicanism? Is it fair to say that the Republican party seems to confront losses with double downs. Were the Democrats even confront wins with introspection and gosh, that was culture than it should have been. And what do we need to do differently? And, you know, Biden has run very hard against defund the police and stuff.

He did that thing in DC a couple weeks ago about you know, being tougher on crime.

Is it fair, Sarah, to say that it looks like the Republicans just keep

doubling down no matter what? This I just look at the DeSantis constitutional carry in the six week ban for a guy who thinks he’s running for president. And I don’t know, man. It it looks like one party is heading towards the middle and the other party keeps heading out towards the the fringe. Yeah.

I mean, this is a function of of voters. Right? And so one of the things I tweeted this this morning, but I I I say this a lot, and I probably said on this podcast, which is The gap between what base Republican voters want and what independent swing voters will tolerate has gotten very wide. And it sort of gets wider all the time. And so Republicans are actually part of the big problem for them is that their voters, right, want their base voters.

It’s like you gotta go really far to satisfy them. And that’s what Ron DeSantis is doing right now. Right? Rhonda Santos is basically being like, I never get to run a general election unless I win this primary. And to win this primary, I need a six week abortion ban.

I need open carry. I need everything as well. Like, I gotta be on Donald Trump’s side and hope that some exogenous event takes it out and on the next in line. Like, you know, you can just see what DeSantis has to do. And and you saw this predicament for the twenty twenty two slate of candidates where they had to go to one of primary heart election denialism and hard anti abortion, and, like, they couldn’t pin it out of it, the

general. Why don’t Democrats have that problem with their base? Sorry. I should say, why do they have that problem to a lesser extent with their base? Right?

Because every every political party has that problem with their base. And but it does seem like it’s not same same. I

just don’t think the gap is big. Like, the reason I talk about the gap, right, is I just think that the gap is, like, it used to be. Everybody has to do this. Right? Everybody pivots in the general election softens things that they say.

But to go from, like, abortion should be illegal after six weeks, to, like, something where the voters were, like, at fifteen weeks, like, that’s hard. Like, they’ll hang you with it. And, like, it’s just harder to pivot out of it. And I would say that Democratic voters are are, like, it’s a softer pivot now to say take previously defund the police positions and turn them into look, we need to think about how we reform police. Like, I I think that Democrats have, like, learned a lesson on that one.

That was, like, a hard That was a real problem for them. And so they’re figuring out how to work that one. I think

there are two reasons for that. One is just like the diversity of the a Democratic coalition, both in everything, like race, ideology education level, like the Republican Coalition’s much more homogeneous. So that’s one reason why Democrats have a little bit more leeway on that. The other one is Democratic voters like, stereotypical Whole Foods, like the core of their base. Right?

These the Whole Foods Wipes. I asked the guy as I talked to on the Dallas campaign like, how did Bowser Johnson do among Whole Foods white people? And he was like, Johnson did better in those precincts. Right? But those same voters voted for Biden.

Right? And I think that there’s a lot of pragmatism happening among that part of the Democratic coalition where they will go pretty far left. If they feel like they can, you know, but they also don’t want the MAGA insane people to be running. And so I think that there’s some of that in Republican voters too. And every coalition has people who vote, you know, practically and pragmatically, but I just think that there’s a much bigger block and you saw that in twenty, people who jumped from Warren to Pete.

To clobuchar, to buy them in the end.

I agree with that.

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Get a fifteen dollars Truman Shave trial set for just three dollars at harris dot com slash next level. That’s harris dot com slash next level for a three dollar trial set. Alright. Well, let’s get to the thing we all really wanna talk about, which is the triumphant, we are the champions, LSU Lady Tigers. Big for you, Tim.

I’m sorry

you couldn’t

be in New Orleans to celebrate with. Not quite there

yet.

So Tim, please, why don’t you start by talking about college women’s basketball? And, Sarah, you can chime in a little bit.

Oh.

Yeah.

Ouch, I do have a bunch of takes for fine. Fine.

Don’t get me

there you go first. No. I

don’t like to be tokenized like that. And also, let’s be real here. I wasn’t following women’s basketball or any basketball in March Madness until JBL told me about Caitlyn Bulwark. And I and then sent me a bunch of stuff about Caitlin Bulwark. And then I decided I was the biggest Caitlin Clark stand on the planet.

So let’s talk about that. So

here is, I think, the big tip. Before we to the drama and, like, whether there’s racism, misogyny, and they’re, like, angel reads first. For people, it didn’t follow. That final is the Iowa Hockey I’ve seen that has this woman, Caitlyn Bulwark. Who is unbelievable.

She’s like the Steph Curry of women’s basketball. She’s shooting threes from thirty feet out. Like, she has a her hand doll is amazing. She’s just marvelous to watch. And they’re going against an LSU team that was, you know, largely black women that also have a lot of great players, including this Angel Reese, is really, you know, kind of a tall, more of a the full word center type.

And there’s a lot of trash talking happening. And soon there’s a big discourse about the trash talking. So we’ll get to that in a second. But but just first on the women’s college basketball, my main takeaway before the discourse was I think we’re headed to a path where college basketball, it’s like tennis, where women’s college basketball ends up being kind of on par with men’s. And the reason for that is I just I watched this tournament more than I had any women’s basketball tournament.

And there’s just more women playing basketball. The talent is so much better. The nature of the game now where people can shoot these threes and open up the court has changed the type of play and make it more watchable, more enjoyable to watch. Meanwhile, on the men’s side, out of the good players skip college now and just go straight to the pros. They can’t do that in women’s.

And so you have it was just a much more watchable women’s tournament. And anecdotally, I didn’t text Sarah Longwell texting Sarah, but this is in my life. I got way more text about Caitlyn Bulwark, South Carolina, LSU, women’s than I did about the men’s tournament this year. And I think that that was anecdotally a lot of people felt that way. That’s like my big picture take on women’s ass won.

Caitlin deserves a lot of credit for that despite the fact she end up finishing second Go Tigers. And it’s not gonna be embedded at the White House.

Sarah Longwell says that women’s basketball is getting more watchable. What do you think about as a compliment?

I was gonna give Tim a hard

time. NBA is also getting more watch. Well, by the way, but go ahead. We can make it misogynistic. Anyway, I dare you to watch it.

Tap Summit nineteen ninety two Tennessee Volunteers game and then go watch the LSU Iowa game and tell me whether it’s sexist to say it’s getting more watchable to go.

I don’t know. All I know is that when I started watching Caitlyn Bulwark, and I probably haven’t watched women’s basketball, like, sense paths on it. Time. And I just wanna say something about myself because we we make this joke a lot about me in sports, but I just wanna like sports was such an important part of my life and I believe so strongly in women sports. And I was always mad that people would be crappy about women sports.

And a lot of times, I’ve heard Tim have a riff on women sports that’s crappy. But they, you know what? He’s going through what a lot of men go through, which is the I have a daughter now, and I love sports. My dad my dad was always taken me to see women’s golf tournaments. Like, he really wanted me

to — Oh, dad.

— see these women. And I did, like, my I remember I did a big report about women’s sports. I did my speech, my senior, like, speech that you have to give in front of the whole school about women’s sports and what it did for me. And so anyway, I’ve always hated the way people talk about women’s sports, but yet, I do this about lesbian bars too. I’m always mad.

There’s no lesbian bars. You know who doesn’t go to lesbian bars? Me. You know who doesn’t watch women’s sports? Me.

Like, it’s terrible. Like, I’m supposed to I’m this big advocate, but, like, I don’t do it. I should be upfront about that. But JBL gave me this huge gift. By telling me about Caitlin Bulwark, because you know what I just I made time for it.

I started following it. I made time for it. And I remembered how much joy there is in rooting for somebody And so I was so excited to watch her play and to watch Iowa play and my kid with me and we were jumping around and it was a really exciting first half the refs were garbage.

Terrible refs.

And I wanna say some and to me, the most misogynistic thing and all those all the discourse, people are missing the way that the refs were police because I was watching I ended up watching the men’s tournament too towards

the end and just I I got into all of it. But level of physicality they let the men play with, that they were not letting these women play with makes me crazy. Like, nothing has ever made me angry. I’m always like, why is women’s lacrosse so stupid with the little sticks that they hold right in front of their face when the men are allowed to, like, wear gear and hit each other. Yeah.

That’s unfair. I, it is. Our daughters ought to be able to beat the crap out of each other in middle school too. Yeah.

Yes. I I mean, if that’s the sport, that’s the sport. I don’t know why you’re mocking me on this. So You’re

with Sarah.

Yeah. And so I thought the games were were so fun, but I was watching them get police. By these refs in terms of the physicality. And, like, getting ticky, tacky stuff, like, it wasn’t a championship game. And I actually thought that That was the most genuinely offensive part.

That technical they called on on Caitlin Clark was just an embarrassment. And I I saw Caitlin Clark doing an interview on ESPN this morning. Here she said, she’s like, you know, good for Angel Reese for the trash talking. She’s like, you know what I want? She’s like, nobody gets mad at the men for gosh talking.

She’s like, we wanna be out there. We wanna play really hard. We wanna show emotion and, like, have a great time and the fans wanna see that. And so, like, let her talk and, like, let’s, you know, let us do that. And I was like, yes.

Like, it’s not not really trash talking. I’m not saying sitting here being, like, boy, trash talking is the essence of the game. It’s not Well, like, the idea of playing with emotion and being able to be physical and be all in it and, like, go really hard and have it matter a lot. Like, they deserved that. And I thought that the racial discourse that took over was really unfortunate because I actually thought there was a piece of discourse around the way that women’s basketball is being placed on the already and the way it was being police just in general of, like, you guys shouldn’t be trash shocking.

It’s always all really frustrating. I just

wanna

just just chime in because this is basically my take, which would find a point of it. Look, there’s always gonna be some people who are racist. And the fact that, like, you know, Dave Portroy is out there tweeting. Oh, Angel Reese, you’re a piece of shit or whatever, like, we have really tweeted that about Caitlin Bulwark, probably not. Right?

So there is some racism. So I don’t wanna say there’s none. But I think that the acute thing is it was misogyny. Because I can tell you this at least because it’s by, you know, you can only know your own feelings. And this is my personal feelings.

I’m rooting for LSU. I love trash talk when it’s the LSU men. And when Angel’s, like, waving her hand in front of doing the John Cena thing, right in front of Caitlin’s face right at the loss, I I felt myself, I like, a little cringe. And then I thought into myself, I was like, wait, is this like internalized racism? And then the more I thought about it, I was like, do you know what I think it really is?

It’s like, I felt bad for Caitlyn Bulwark. Well, that’s Caitlin Clark’s thing. Yeah.

Caitlin Clark’s thing is the John Cena thing. Yeah.

She was it’s the same thing Caitlin Bulwark did, but I was feeling I felt that way when Caitlin was doing it to other girls too. What I’m saying is, I felt bad for the women, like, they can’t take trash talk. Like, this was my message. I was like, oh, if Toulouse is out there, I wouldn’t want her Like, I feel like that that I feel like part of the discourse is that. Right?

Like, if it’s a man shit talking another man, everybody’s like, yeah, they can take it. But the two women Anyway, maybe that’s just me, but I I felt like that people went straight to the race stuff. There is a racial element to it, but that part of why people get so caught oh, you should be a good sports woman, you know, is because it feels weird to see a woman get shit talked. There

is only one piece of this that I think makes it slightly different, which is that it is weird to taunt somebody at the end of a game when you’ve won. That’s a thing which is a little a little weird. Now, in this case, I’m entirely an Angel Reese’s side because Caitlyn Bulwark is a total, like, shit talker constantly and everybody celebrates Everyone makes it. It’s like she’s John McNamara. They love it.

She’s like a lovable Scamp. Like, how horrible she is to these other girls that she’s beating them. And I don’t like that. She

was shit talking to the whole South Carolina game. And by the way, it was brilliant. The South Carolina game was much better than the LSG game just as a watchable thing. It was it was like beautiful basketball. And But you should talk about whole game.

I do not love trash talkers. I’m more

of a Julius Irving guy than a Larry Berg guy. You know, I I like guys who Glide the Gliderexler carries himself with dignity.

But

that said, I don’t get, like, all upset about it. And I was certainly all upset that Angel Reese did it in retaliation. The only thing I think maybe a little bit question was like, you know, can you just one? Like, you know, dude, let’s find you do it during the game. But, you know, you’ve just won the championship.

You don’t need to, you know, scoreboard. That’s all. But overall, I’m a favorite.

This is so good for women’s college as well. Actually, kind of I need bad for our culture, but it’s good that it’s

big

enough that we can have a a narrative discourse about it. It’s so good. Did you see all that my favorite racial thing, like, on the positive side of our racial differences? Celebrating

You see what the fuck?

No. It showed the Iowa locker room. There’s all these white belts. They’re saying high school musical. Altogether as a

team, and then

it shows the allergy locker when they’re wrapping the boozy bad ass. I like all the girls. I like, you know, it’s working and getting down. Is and it’s just like a tale of two cultures. And it was it was so good.

I

wanna make one more plug for this. I watch the women’s final four through because I stream everything. We don’t do gable. And ESPN gave you three feeds for it. I watched the De Anituraci and Sub Bird feed.

Which I’d never seen before and I didn’t know what it was. I was just curious. And it is the two of them sitting in big Bulwark leather easy chairs drinking I think I’m assuming they’re drinking like cocktails. But just the two of them watching the game and doing sort of commentary about the game, but sort of just talking about basketball and life and bringing guests. Like, you know, Cheryl Swoops came by for ten minutes to talk and go over and it was so good And I immediately thought, like, every basketball game should have a feed like this if you can have two people like having Chuck and Kenny the Jack together doing it.

Right? Because Bird and Curiosity together were unbelievably entertaining. And it was the most entertaining way I’ve ever watched any basketball game. And a triumph of the format. I want more of it there.

I

will just say when I started watching the game, I was very much an iOS kid, but I also occurred to be like, I haven’t watched LSU play. And the second I started watching them out, I there wasn’t a part of me. It was, like, why has everybody been talking about Iowa? Like, LSG was unreal. But also LSG’s coach was a nightmare.

This morning, she was on the court. Yeah. She was ridiculous.

Jemulky.

She was, like, on the court. And I think she’s the

Tiger dry outfit or high heels. It’s a character. That’s great.

She looked like classy, Freddie Blasey. And

what Tyler and addresses are for how when I moved to Louisiana. But

you know what I liked about it? So, like, these characters. Right? I was thinking about how much the sports I could take, you need characters for people to get behind. You need, like, to have the arguments.

And I was so happy for women’s basketball, and I’m gonna, like, make a promise. Like, we’re gonna start this is we’re gonna watch this now. No, we are. All of us. We’re gonna be people who talk about women’s college basketball.

Man,

no, I don’t mean to burst your balloon, but I don’t believe you at all. The reason I don’t believe you, Sarah, is because you and I bought season tickets for a bay Major League Baseball team together and we went to over the course of the season one game together. Well,

we bought those tickets so we could go to the world series.

Yeah. I I will believe that you watch women’s basketball next season when you produce the timesheet. Your vlog all of your game hours. That’s

I am. I’m there.

Everybody thanks for hanging out with us. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the like button. Come over and join us at the full dot com. Sign up for a newsletter.

It’s very good. Listing Charlie Sykes’ podcast is very good. Do all the things.

Bye. Go Tiger.