The Real Wannabe Dictator (with Sonny Bunch)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level. I’m JBL here with Bud, Tim Miller, and my very good friend, Sunny Bunch sitting in for Sarah Longwell. Guys, we’ve got another arrest. I guess, arrest two, although it’s not really an arrest, because if you get to surrender to the authorities and then not get mugshotted or fingerprinted?

I mean, I have heard many people complaining about the two tier system of justice, and how oh, we have a two tier system. I’m thinking to myself, yes, that’s right. The rich guy gets to turn himself in and doesn’t even have to get mugshotted or handcuffed or any of those things. We do, in fact, have a two tier system of justice. But I don’t know, Tim, you’re you are chomping at the bit.

Get out of the gate there a guy go.

Mom mom, please fast forward this a few a few and just do a couple quick on that forward thirty second thing if you’re listening, mom. But, you know, I was a young man, and I was drinking alcohol before it was allowed, before I was of age, before I was twenty one. Mhmm. And so I wasn’t I was given a ticket for that, and I was assigned some community service, some classes, and I did like ninety percent of it. You know, I’m just a privileged white kid that just I was like, yeah, I paid the phone.

And I did I I did some of the community service. Good enough. I went to one class. I didn’t like it. I didn’t go to the other class.

No no big deal. I kinda figured. Wrong. I ran through a stop sign. I don’t know.

It’s kind of a BS pull. You know, it was a witch hunt, maybe. You know, I thought it was a rolling stop sign. Mhmm.

Yeah. Stop sign. Stop sign. Stop sign.

Just get pulled over. The cop comes just give me a ticket and then he, like, runs my numbers comes back up and he’s like, will you get out of the car? And I was like, what? And apparently, I had a warrant out for my arrest from not finishing the minor in possession class. Mhmm.

And so I got taken down to the boulder clink and I gotta tell you I got the mug shot. I got fingerprinted. I got put into a cell for like an hour. It wasn’t that big of a deal, you know, my my rights weren’t infringed upon, but it was only a single count of what I don’t believe was effective. I believe it was a misdemeanor, minor in possession of alcohol, and I was, you know, in a holding cell for a while.

Donald Trump was actively hiding war plan nuclear secrets from the government and was plotting to get rid of them and, you know, he didn’t have to do any of that. So whatever. Okay? Like that but it’s one of those things former presidents, I guess get a little bit of, you know, different treatment than than the average Tim when it comes to these sorts of things, but it is it is rather you know, galling to have to listen to just widespread whining and rending of garments about the unfair treatment that he’s received. I mean, nobody’s ever been treated better than this guy in history.

Can he get to be tried by the judge he appointed? The special counsel is a guy who he named as an acting US attorney in his justice department. Right? I mean, this

He had a mob of people outside cheering. He was able to have a — He’s been tried in Florida. He was able to have a little rally afterwards. You know, again, I just it doesn’t, Sonny? I don’t know.

I mean, shouldn’t shouldn’t he have been cuffed?

Sunny’s gonna come in with his defend

sonny is a long order man. Shouldn’t Donald Trump have been at least handcuffed? Like, shouldn’t we have had a handcuff?

My my main takeaway from this is that there’s a much shot of Tim Miller floating around somewhere in the Colorado Justice database. Can I can

we find that and and make

that curve? I bet I’ve on on the Bulwark?

Nineteen I have no idea. Did you Nineteen ninety nine. I have no idea. I’ve never seen it. It’s never shown up in anything.

I got it expunged. Again, two tiered system of justice. I I was I was handled fine, but even me who got the privileged treatment by the Bulwark PD. Exponge Record all that was treated less kindly than the former president on far, far, far, far, far, far, far,

far, less serious, breaking of our norms and rules.

Yeah. I mean, the difference between you and Donald Trump is that Donald Trump turns this into a Tom delay style photo op, and he’s given the thumbs up while he’s holding his little name card. And he’s like, I’ve been I’m being oppressed by the man. You gotta you gotta Okay. You’re thinking about

the good part though, but as somebody who’s been inside the clinic for a whole hour, let me tell you, there is a bad part. You know, you got to sit there in the cell, there are the other guys, the drunk guys are in there with you, you know, the the people that look a little scary,

keep me.

The handcuffs.

Vlad handing. Donald Trump, you know, oh, we’re gonna we’re gonna get you out of here. You know, I’m very I’ve freed many people from prison gonna get you out of here, Joe Bob. You know, you’re unjustly in person just like me. He’s gonna he’s get he’ll turn it into a little bit.

I don’t

I mean, obviously, it would be it would be very cathartic to see Donald Trump do a perp walk. And, you know, we don’t wanna confuse our own catharsis for what would actually

be helpful to the kids. It’s hell and I don’t really care if it’s politically helpful. What I’m saying is we’re just speaking about the question of is he being treated unequally or not? And the answer is, yes, he’s being treated very unequally in his favor.

It is hard to imagine anybody else having this airtight encased against him and still getting the kids’ glove treatments from Fox. I I will agree with that.

I have to say, I’m glad he’s getting the kid gloves treatment, I think. I’m glad that the the judge is somebody who’s already been pre established as kind of a Maga lightweight. I’m glad that the special counsel Jack Smith chose to do this in Florida, which is a venue that because what you you don’t want is you don’t want to go through all of this. And then leave the Trump apologists with obvious ways to to say that they’ve been done dirty. Right?

You wanna make they’re gonna say they’re done dirty no matter what. And so you want them to be reaching as far as possible for that,

I guess. But this isn’t being done dirty. Isn’t being done normal. Okay? I mean, if if this if what came out of the other side of this was the was mega people you know, having a changed view of the criminal justice system and feeling like maybe we should, you know, have a little bit more leniency towards people.

I know that this is now really triggering Ron DeSantis, you know, towards people who who run afoul of the law. I mean, I wrote the Jordan Hamlet piece people can go back and read, this guy had his door kicked down by the feds for just, you know, putting Donald Trump’s Social Security number into a database. That’s all literally all he did. Reality winner. Okay?

Again, broke the law, but faxed a single document to a journalist, jailed. She did not have a private plane that could take her in and out of out of her arraignment. Right? She was not able to surrender on her own terms. You know, there are plenty of examples of people who have very similar accusations against them to what the former president does, very airtight accusations who’ve been treated horrifically by the federal government and and by by our justice system.

Maybe that’s right, maybe that’s wrong. We could have a debate over over how, you know, we should be treating people who misuse classified documents and maybe we’ve been too harsh on people and everyone should get the Donald treatment. I’m fine with that, but to have to listen to these fuckers talk about how Donald Trump, and he’s being targeted. Like, it’s insane.

Timothy and I am sorry. If you are hoping that this sparks a moment of introspection on the question of law and order among certain conservatives and Republicans, that ship has sailed. I mean, we live in a world where they want to defund the FBI for raiding Mar a lago to take back classified documents that the DOJ and the national archives have been asking for for for months and months and months, and that that they wanna defund the FBI, but they will fend to the death any cop who chokes out a black guy selling Lucy cigarettes. Their their view of law and order and boarding of law enforcement has been irrational from the start.

This is why you just have to rationally be in favor of the the police doing this to everyone.

If you if you wanna if you wanna if they wanna kick

in Donald Trump, if Mar a Lago, that’s fine with me. I would be totally fine with that.

Well, okay.

You don’t have to convince me.

Right. And but and that happened, and then we have to hear about how is unfair. And Ben Shapiro, who’s like supposedly, you know, on the upper echelon of, you know, the more serious you know, members of the commentary, who’s not fully MAGA. He was out there on his podcast earlier this week, saying that that this just shows that the politicization of the FBI and the DOJ is such that now we might need to move to a system where only Republicans can prosecute Republicans, and only Democrats can prosecute democrats. Like, that is a fucking insane Like, could like, where was he during the civil rights era?

Like, traditionally, Democrats have kind of appointed Republicans to the FBI. You know, if you go back to the Obama era, the Clinton era, you know, law law enforcement agencies were often it was often either independents or Republicans, you know, Comey famously, like, who who were appointed to those positions. In this current Democratic administration, there’s an open investigation into Hunter. They went after Henry Quiar in Texas, There’s the guy in New Jersey that T. J.

Cox, they went after, Andrew Gillum, they went after. And like this stuff even on the intellectual Secret Podcast, like isn’t even brought up, right? It like that that isn’t even that isn’t even mentioned, all in defense of Donald Trump who who doesn’t even offer a substantive defense of what he did. He still hasn’t even put forth any, like, I didn’t even He doesn’t even, like, threw out there. I didn’t break law.

That’s not even one of the defenses. And and they’re mad, that it’s unfair, that he’s being charged?

Well, but here’s the dance. They are saying that they’re mad, but they desperately want him to be convicted because they want him to go away. But they feel the need to performatively make it look like they absolutely don’t want them to be convicted. Right? And in in a weird way, I think there’s a a very correlative relationship here between the the amount that a Republican figure wants Donald Trump to be convicted so that he will then lose possibly the nomination and go away.

And the amount of protestation they then feel like they have to do so that nobody can suss out what they’re actually thinking. Let’s just, you know, cut to the chase. Is this gonna help him too? The way the Alvin Bragg indictment did because I I saw a tweet from a fourth tier conservative person today saying something like, you know, I I have never really liked Donald Trump. I thought he was a good president, and I agreed with all of his policies.

And I was not going to support him in twenty twenty four. But now looking at this, I don’t know that I cannot support him. Because of the forces arrayed against him.

Yeah. Two parts to this. One, I do think that this this indictment which is very strong, and like the the document that the government has put together with Donald Trump’s own words saying, essentially, yeah, I broke the law. I did it. I I did it.

And, you know, I kept these documents, and here they are, and, you know, I shouldn’t have done this. I could have I could have marked them as not secret.

I forgot.

But I didn’t but I didn’t. And now I can’t. And now I’ve got

them and now I can’t, but I still got them. Like, it’s it’s it is so it’s so mind blowing to read the thing. And this does actually demonstrate some of the weaknesses of the brag case, and you could make an argument you could go back to Schumer killing the filibuster for supreme court nominees and say, like, they made a mistake by by filibustering the Supreme Court nominee, the first one, they should have done it, whatever. You could make that argument with these indictments. But I I do not think that this indictment helps Donald Trump because it is so it is so like obviously damning.

It doesn’t help him with the general pop. It might help him marginally with the primary voters. At the very least, it doesn’t hurt him with the primary voters. Because I mean, we’re gonna talk about this in a minute, but I, like, I don’t think there’s anything Donald Trump could do that would hurt him with, I don’t know, the forty percent base that he has. I don’t think there’s a single thing he could do.

Literally, again, shoot somebody in in the middle of fifth

His base is in forty percent. I mean, he’s polling in

like fifty six.

But I think there’s, like, a forty percent Probably

in the thirties. It’s our core.

Again, I would just note that every other single Republican running would murder somebody if they could get to thirty five percent in the polls. So what what you’re talking about when you say his absolute floor is a ceiling for basically everybody else who’s running so far in the race.

Yeah.

Yeah. This goes to there’s a hilarious Rick Santorum quote this week. You keep tabs on Aldrich. Who said that he thinks that the Democrats are doing this intentionally to help Trump. The democrats.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because because you know, this targeting of him actually boosts him and this is a plot by the deep state. Mhmm.

It’s just like, brief aside and then I’ll answer your question. Like, the deliberate you know pretend idiocy of all of these like senators like people who actually understand how indictments work, how grand juries work, like performatively pretending as if they don’t, you know, as if it was just like Joe Biden waved his magic wand and was like arrest this man. It’s like trust me, if Joe Biden had that wand, we’d we’d already have a few more other people arrested in addition to the former president, but that speaks to the fact that that people within the Republican Party who understand the Republican base who don’t want Donald Trump to win, think this helps him. That’s an important data point.

And this is what Sarah Longwell found in her focus groups. Right? Since the indictment have come down, she’s done focus groups with Trump supporters who zero of them are less likely to support him now

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Yeah.

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several of them were much more likely to support him now. So I mean, I I think that objectively speaking, this is probably true, that it probably helps him in the primary, which is not great because if he wins primary he then has a one in three chance of winning presidency.

Two in five. Two in five.

Two in five.

One in two.

Well, again, we’re gonna get to this why. Some of the advertisements that are being run against Don’t skip ahead. On electability. Don’t skip ahead. It’s insane.

Yeah. Sorry. I wanna offer and I mentioned this briefly on Charlie’s podcast on Friday. I don’t know if I really believe this, but I don’t think that we should close out the possibility. The preponderance of these things over time eventually weigh him down.

And I think that there are kind of two ways to look at this. Right? I think obviously in the short term this helps him. And so you should probably just assume that in the long term it helps

them.

And I think that that case is pretty easy to make. I think the obvious that that the main point of that is that it makes him the central character of the campaign, and and if no one’s gonna challenge the central character of the campaign, there’s this fight between good and evil and, you know, Donald Trump is good in the case of the primary and the primary viewers vantage point, then why would they go somebody else? Okay. Now The question is, if we’re getting close to the the primaries in the caucuses, and I think we all agree that DeSantis or someone will an advantage over him in Iowa just because of the nature of the makeup of the Iowa caucuses. And you’re getting You have arraignments happening.

You know, and he has court dates coming. And his numbers are going down even more with the general pop as as Sonny started his answer. Right? Which is like this is hurting him even more with the you know, kind of iffy, wishy washy, general pop type, no label c voters. Right?

And so his numbers are going down in those polls. He loses Iowa. He’s getting arraigned again. There’s a third and there’s a third indictment. There’s a fourth maybe.

Could the weight of all of that? Cumulatively like could the dam break and I don’t I’m not sitting here predicting that. But I don’t think that we should be totally certain that that could not happen and you know feel mixed feelings about these sorts of indictments because we know that there is that it only certainly will help him because it doesn’t certainly help him.

Get an inside look at Hollywood with Michael Rosenbaum. Actress Chris, Kristen Ritter.

Your parents let you by yourself. It was a different time. They just put you on a train. As a fifteen year old girl, you went to New York. I went on a bus, and I did get picked up at Port Authority.

They thought I was away. What would they do? They detain you and, like, get people on the phone, and then they finally let you go to your modeling job. How many times did it happen? Well, or twice.

It just seems like it wouldn’t happen. It happens. Yeah.

Inside of you with Michael Rosenbaum. Wherever you listen.

Sure. Possible.

I can give you anything as possible.

On the other hand, he did attempt a coup, and that didn’t cause the dam to break.

Kind of a silly kill.

I mean, he He told several thousand people carrying weapons that they should they should run up to the capital and hang Mike Pence, and they did it. And the entire country watched it happen, and then the dam didn’t break.

There.

So I have a hard I mean, it could happen. Right? I mean, look, that’s the thing about tipping points. Right? You don’t know that you’re gonna hit them until you do.

But my thesis on Trump is actually it has been for a long time. But the tipping point came early and it went in the other direction.

Yeah.

The tipping point actually came in the twenty eighteen midterms. When Republicans got hurt real bad, and they could have started walking away from him, and they decided to double down. I think that’s where where we’ll be got instead was into sunk cost. And so I I think of Trump more as sunk cost fallacy than tipping point. Stuff, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Right. It does. Just one sentence before and I’ll give like to hear Sonny’s taking this. My one sentence reply to that is I agree with that among elites, but like voters, you know, do voters think about this like that sunk cost, right?

Like voters, it might be less rational, for the type of voters that we’re talking about, the one, not the not the thirty five percent base, but that next group that he’s gonna need to get him over the over the hump.

I don’t know. I feel like these people have, like, lost friends over Trump, and they’ve sucked it up into voting for Trump, into to have done all to have gone all that way, and then abandoned him now is the equivalent of saying I was wrong. People don’t do that very often.

I think the the more likely response is the tweet that JBL had mentioned before, which is like, I’ve always been kinda iffy on Trump, but now I have to support him. Because, spite. The spite vote should not be under

underappreciated. Spight voting is real. Don’t sleep on spite.

Spight is as powerful a motivation as exists in our current current moment — Mhmm.

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and the spite vote is real. Whether or not that whether or not that’s good or bad for the country, I leave the people to decide. But Spight is Spight is a very real thing. I

I I’m not about a Spight vote myself. I don’t I’m not about I’m not about a Spight vote. Yeah.

I mean, look, who amongst us? The only way we hit that tipping point that Tim suggests as possible, and I think it is I mean, like, it is possible. If he if he is hit with a series of indictments, if he can’t go to rallies, Right? If he if he can’t do TV, if he can’t do general campaigning stuff because he’s so busy dealing with his various legal problems, I think that that that we might hit that tipping point if the other GOP candidates actually started attacking him on this. And that’s the thing.

They cannot sit back and just be like, we obviously support Donald Trump in this trying time of his, you know, his his oppression and his they they they are so mean to him, and we obviously, you know, I pledge to what was that dumb vivic letter he was passing

pledged just to pardon

him or something. She’s gonna

sue the Biden administration to get — Exactly.

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to get information on whether Joe Biden directed this. Sure.

Let me ask you a question, Sonny. So this this is of a piece with the rich lowry. When the time is right, Then we it’s a you know, this indictment has some troubling things in it. And when the time is right, Republicans should should raise it with the people. I mean, I understand that, I guess.

But can you I mean, look, if you’re Ron DeSantis and you have defended Donald Trump on all this stuff for six months, can you then, in December, as you’re bopping around Iowa, then say, oh, I’ve changed my mind. Trump is guilty of sin. We can’t let him have the nomination because he’s bad.

Like, I don’t No. How that works? This is why when I when I read the indictment, I one thing I thought to myself was, God, I really wonder if Ron DeSantis wishes he had waited like five hours to tweet out his preemptive support. He does for the president. Because it’s it is it’s well, I don’t think he probably doesn’t.

He probably doesn’t because he has calculated that he needs the support of he cannot look like a traitor to Donald Trump, to win that base of I I guess, it’s a calculation it’s probably wrong. I think you have to attack him and say, look, Donald Trump, in his entire presidency, talked about the importance of the sanctity of official documents. He is he does not live up to his own standards. And like, I don’t know man, voters don’t care about hypocrisy anymore. We I guess we crossed that Rubicon back in twenty sixteen.

But I still think you have you have to hit him on this. If you don’t hit him on this, If you just say, yes, Donald Trump is great, and we obviously all support him, but also I would be a good president. It’s not a winning message. The loser talk. That does loser shit.

Yeah.

I wanna prove to you, Sunny, why he doesn’t wish that he he waited five hours. I don’t know if you if you saw this. The Santa’s leaked to Phil Wegman, good reporter at the Real Care politics. His response to to Trump yesterday, actually, after the indictment came out. And it was he’s put together a looks like a six point plan.

To fight the weaponized DOJ. Gonna move the DOJ out of DC. Oh. Yeah. We’re just gonna get a country lawyer to to take over.

Maybe maybe put that in Wichita. He’s gonna fire a bunch of the DOJ employees. He’s gonna put the quote, Kibosh, unpolasing misinformation. He’s gonna reorganize the civil rights division, wink wink, He’s gonna withhold clearances as appropriate and he’s gonna police local prosecutor. So that’s a six point plan.

Just brief aside as somebody worked for the guy that put out the best plans in twenty sixteen. We had, you know, if we are get if you’re getting the AEI vote for somebody who had the most eight point plans to solve all the things, Jeb Bush and Elizabeth Warren would have been your nominees last time because people love eight point plans, but eight point plan is not not sure it’s gonna resonate. But that is that tells you everything about where Ron DeSantis thinks he can go. Yeah. Right?

It’s like — No.

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I’m not gonna wholeheartedly defend Trump. Right? I’m not gonna full throatedly be like, you know, do the Vivec thing where I’m standing outside the courthouse being like my master is being attacked, you know, like And and, you know, he’s not gonna do that. But he is going to basically try to to weave through this by by being like, you know, Trump, and this is unfair, and I’m gonna go after the DOJ. And this is the problem with that.

I think it’s worth briefly mentioning that there have been a couple of green shoots or the past few days like Ken Buck said the right thing. Don Bacon said the right thing. Pence and Haley Scott kind of said the right thing. Asa, you wrote about in the triad today. JBL.

Issa obviously is great on this. So there have been some people Britham even kind of sounded okay on Brett Bear. So there’s some people saying the right thing which is different from brag, so that’s a step the right direction, but the big names are not And so, like, I just Like, that’s just like a little drop Ken Buck is just like a little drop in the lake when you’ve got DeSantis defending him Vivec, you know, sort of, like, ringing the bell outside the courthouse. You know, you’ve got a fox prime time. Did you see the fox?

Yeah. This is this is what I wanted to bring to because it’s not just the the rival candidates. Yesterday, Fox ran a split screen with Biden and Trump. And this is the actual Kyron on the bottom of the screen. Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.

This is like the apex of projection. Right? I mean so Donald Trump, one of his signature things, was introduced seen the idea into American politics that rivals ought to be arrested. This was the leading chance of lock her up and all of that. Donald Trump attempted a coup, attempt a literal coup.

You know, that that is what wannabe dictators do. Joe Biden, on the other hand, So far as we could tell, we have seen zero evidence that he has put any pressure on the attorney general and the attorney general to his enormous credit The minute Trump declared his candidacy, the attorney general took his hands off of this and handed the entire ball wax over to a special counsel. The Biden administration has behaved, unless there is something going on that has not been exposed, exactly as they are supposed to have. Throughout

this. Just really quick. I haven’t even given the whiff of this. Like, remember the Bill Clinton and and what’s her name? Airport tarmac?

Thing. I’m having a senior moment. During the Clinton campaign, you know, there’s a Tarmac meeting where where Clint Anyway, they meet on the Tarmac and and I don’t know that we still don’t know exactly what they discussed, but that we’re in the middle of these investigations. Right? And so it just looked bad.

But there hasn’t even been one of those things. Like, the conservative media is shamping at the bit for anything. Any little like one email, one little piece of evidence that shows that Biden is trying to put his finger on the scale here. And they have nothing. They have nothing.

And yet still, we have, you know, the chiron that calls him a wannabe dictator.

Sunny should Fox News be credentialed by the White House Correspondence Association. Is that is that something that a news organization would do?

I I have no idea how to answer that question because I don’t I I I yes. I think they probably should because I I

agree with that. Just to just to let you off the hook there.

I don’t really understand the question there. Yes. I I think they should, but I like the despite having deranged chirons in the you know, opinion the opinion versus the news.

We have any news hours left. It’s kind of like at at the edges. The opinion used to be the morning and the in the late night, and now it’s like slowly surely, there’s like one news hour left

in

the middle of the day.

No. But this this again, we’re this gets to something we’re we’re gonna discuss in a minute here, which is that there’s no advertising campaign that the Trump rivals can do. There’s no there’s no messaging that the anti Trump groups can put together that is going to do more damage to Donald Trump than Fox News can help Donald Trump with simple stuff like this. I mean, like, if as long as as long as the semi official party organ mouthpiece is saying that Donald Trump is an oppressed victim of an evil state that he he doesn’t deserve any of this that his political enemies are out to get that we have to we have to fight and resist this. I don’t know how you counteract that.

Sunny, what do you say to people who believe that? Because they watch Fox News Yeah.

I don’t talk to those people. I don’t talk I don’t I mean, I what’s the point? I like, I general I genuinely do not

I’m trying to rope you into the Sarah Longwell of doom here. To to see if you’re on my side of it or on her side of it. That’s that’s all.

I’m I’m gonna triangulate and Sam in the middle of both of you guys. But I do not think that there is any way to counteract that a specific thing. Now look, I think Fox News could do the right thing and convince them that this is bad, and that the only way to win the presidency is to go with Ron DeSantis, If Fox wanted to do that, that would be great, but I don’t think any of the outside money coming in and trying to make that case while Fox News is like on their other shoulder, saying, actually, this is this is political oppression.

Yeah. I I just and I wanna add one more point there for you to the ads is that this is kind of one of those we’ve never tried at things. Like people tell us like, oh, am I working my nut butter to Like, if there was one instance, And and what would have been a better instance than this, I guess January sixth because there was a coup, as JBL has mentioned a couple times. Where the facts are cut and dry, where across the board it was a unified front, you know, where where everywhere all of the media, you know, folks from Ben Shapiro to Fox, I don’t Maybe it’s too much to expect from these Max, but like, from the from the big feet, we’re and and Ron DeSantis. We’re all out there saying, guys, he he botched this.

He’s making it easy on them. Like, he is the idiot. Like, if we wanna beat these deep state fuckers, we gotta we gotta smart and and and and be diligent, and this guy is a clown, and he did this to himself. If everyone said that, could could the weight of that get his number back down to thirty five or to to his base of forty? I don’t I don’t know.

We but the thing is, we’ll never know. Right? We’ll never know because this never happens.

Well, let me tell you why, though. Let me tell you why because it’ll hurt them more than it would hurt him.

Right.

Right? He can take more pain than they can. And they’re already losing viewers because the tucker thing.

Right?

Jameela, what is it that you always say that politicians can only be as good as their voters. You can news news outlets can only be as good as their viewers will let them be. And I like, I

Luckily, our listeners let us be great. Just let us be fucking exceptional Yokich level.

So, let’s go to the ad. So, Tim, you gotta piece up on on Wednesday today about the new ad from the Coke Bulwark. Sebastian, can we have that?

Trump did a lot of good things as president. But this time, Trump can’t win. Swing voter say no. Sixty percent of Americans don’t want him. In twenty twenty four, Biden will be Trump.

We need new leadership.

Well, hard hitting. Really go after him. He did great things. And this time, he can’t win, which I suppose kind of means that he did win the last time, and he did win the time before that. But now it’s now it’s all different.

And trust us, because we’ve got this this music in the background, which we pulled off a sound cloud

whole of women. Independent women don’t like him. That’s a new piece of information that the MAGov voters don’t know. They’ve they’ve been deeply considering the thoughts of independent women for the eight years and what what they’re interested in. This ad is so fucking bad, and I had to write this piece because

I love it when you get offended a personal professional. Number one.

I’m offended as a professional

as a retired professional political operative. That’s number one. Number two, I hate to be made to give advice, to try to help the cuckolded Republican establishment that’s trying to get rid of Trump. Because all of them have acted so cowardly, but here I am trying to help them despite what Andrew Sullivan says about us, I really want Donald Trump to be beaten and I would love to give them some tips. And I’m hoping that my old friends who secretly read the bulwark Well, maybe send the article to Charlie Sykes.

I don’t know if he’s still, you know, reading. So he’s getting up there, but Charlie Sykes people and like maybe they can we can shake them loose because they leak to CNBC that they are going to be going to war with Trump, I don’t know if that felt like war war to you. Mhmm. And and they’re doing, like, active harm. Like, the best case, the best case for that ad is that no Magavoders see it.

That’s the best case, because anybody who is potentially swingable would be turned off by that app. It’s like the indictment. It’s like a tiny fifteen second version of the indictment. It’s like, I know who this is. I don’t know if it’s Carl Rover that did it, but it smells like him.

And and it’s these DC elites that are trying to come after my man again, and they’re they’re putting this pre roll into my Facebook feed or into my YouTube feed, and I’m about to watch Steven Krader, you know, talk about how he hates women. You know, I’m about to talk. I’m about to watch some YouTube feed free media, right? Where people are gonna be defending Donald Trump. And before I watch it, I’m gonna be made to watch this fifteen second pre roll from some limp DC you know, establishment cock trying to tell me that my man can’t win.

They’ll assume it’s from DeSantis.

Right. Those

will assume it’s from DeSantis.

It hurts

it hurts It doesn’t it doesn’t even There is a group of people that is persuadable by that. And that is the base The Ron DeSantis or whoever ends up, if Ron DeSantis get just placed, whoever that is, the number two Challenger, whoever that ends up being. Their base will be the people that agree with that ad already. So you don’t need to run it. You don’t need to pay.

That will be part of the free media. That will be part of the discussion, you know, in all there on the Wall Street Journal editorial page and, you know, on Brett Bear’s show, like like all, like, that argument will be made already. And this is not people misunderstand political ads and presidential campaigns are completely different from other campaigns. Everyone knows everything about Donald Trump Ron DeSantis. This is completely consuming them, even talk about it on bar stool, like on sports radio, they talk about it in their in their Facebook feeds, in their lives, they are saturated with information.

Right? So, you can run an ad like that about in a primary against a house candidate. We’re like, you know, Joey, you know, Joey Smalls, like can’t you know, can’t defeat the liberal Democrat that’s representing you because he did these stupid things and you should vote for Jimmy, you know, Jimmy Lars instead. Right? Like you could and that could maybe help.

Could maybe. Again, that’s such a lien bad

You’re analyzing a New Jersey race?

Yeah. Yeah. Like, that could help. But but you cannot run a cookie cutter ad like that against Donald Trump is a waste of money. This is just a cash transfer from Charlie Sykes.

To whatever political consultant is building a beach house in Bethany. Like that’s all that ad is and it’s it’s infuriating And the last point I’m gonna make on this is like there there are two groups of people that are potentially gettable. We acknowledge that thirty five percent base. They’re the very conservative Ted Cruz voter types. Who like came along with Trump reluctantly a little bit and then really started to like him, but like, you know, is he getting wish he wants you on abortion?

Did he build the wall? Right? So you can come at them from the right. That’s not enough to win. Okay.

You gotta win some from both of these groups. But but you could get you could do an ad targeting them that the cokes don’t wanna do that. They don’t wanna be like, they’re open borders guys. You know, they don’t wanna run ads that are like, Donald Trump didn’t build didn’t put an alligator moat in front of the wall like he promised. That that might work.

Okay? Or they’re the soft

I’m here live at the Rio Grande. There are no alligators with freaking lasers on their

heads anyway. Watamalans. Coming through Donald Trump’s weak fence. You know, I’m taking video of them live. Okay.

That could work or going after the softer MAGa types who are the culture wars who are like, Ron DeSantis, wherever my man is, was much more effective than Donald Trump at sending immigrants from Texas to Martha’s vineyard, to own, you know, the lids. Right? Like things like that. Right? Like those those are the people that are getable in this in this primary.

The people that care about electability that read the National Review, you know, that that voted for Marco, like some of them might go along with Trump anyway in the end but that what your starting point. So if you’re gonna spend a billion dollars to try to stop Trump, don’t worry about those people. Because if those people aren’t with us then the race is already lost. Okay. Like that’s the that’s the bottom.

That’s the entry level ante of trying to beat Donald Trump in a primary. You gotta go expand the pie. And you are a super pack, so you don’t have to worry about this boomeranging back on your candidate. So just take the fucking gloves off and go try to rip off his face or help Joe Biden. You really don’t like Donald Trump.

Like those are the options or do nothing. Just count your money.

Sunny, does it matter at all that the premise of the ad is simply untrue as a factual matter? Like, when when the ad says Donald Trump can’t win, that is simply not true.

That’s the thing that actually drives me craziest about this ad. In addition to it just being totally Like, I it’s it’s not it’s not accurate. It’s not accurate. And we know it’s not accurate because he did win in two thousand sixteen. And can he very close

to twenty twenty? And everybody understands how the electoral college works at this point. Right? The Republican is gonna have a two and five chance of winning the presidency no matter who he is.

I mean, that that’s what it comes down to. If you if you win the nomination, you have probably a forty percent chance of winning the presidency, at least. I mean, that’s there there are macro trends that matter much more than the candidate, but candidate himself also matters. That’s what drives me the craziest about this ad is because it’s just wrong. As a factual matter, it is just wrong.

He is very electable as he could easily win the presidency. I don’t think it’s necessarily Sarah Longwell, I wouldn’t bet on it unless I was getting very good odds

—

Possible.

—

but he absolutely could win the presidency.

They should attack him with something that’s True.

The third This is the key point. And who knows it the most? The MAGavoders. Do you know why? Yeah.

This is

incredible. Like me spent all of twenty sixteen running ads like that telling them Donald Trump couldn’t win, and then Donald Trump won anyway, and they all rubbed it in our face on Facebook. They know of this already. So, it’s like, we did this already. That’s the other most offensive part about this.

Not only do the voters know, but we tried the ads they didn’t work. Why are you running them again?

This was the number one case against Donald Trump in two thousand and team before January six, before all the stuff that happened during the presidency. Like, even before grab them by the pussy. Right? Like, all of this stuff before all of this stuff, For months and months and months, we said he cannot win against Hillary Clinton. He cannot beat Hillary, and she’s a terrible candidate.

We could run literally anyone else and they would win, but he’s even worse. Look at the look at this popularity numbers. Look at the approval ratings. He’s so bad. He can’t possibly win the presidency.

And he won the fucking presidency. And like whatever maybe it’s different this time because Joe Biden is a better candidate than Hillary. I don’t know. But like The

voters don’t think so. The voters think Joe Biden is riddled with dementia.

Yes.

A MAGavoter.

Here’s the thing. I mean, we have undergone a change in our mental framework for presidential elections, where just said presidential elections. That’s awesome. We’ve undergone a change in in how we think about these things because prior to twenty sixteen, Everybody believed that you basically had to win a plurality to win the presidency, and that it was possible to sneak one through the wickets, in a, you know, one in a million shot where you, you know, like Al Gore, you win by a million votes, but you don’t quite get there. You’re on a razor’s edge with with the electoral college.

But that’s not and now the Republican Party has simply accepted that they cannot win a national majority, and so they will not try. That is not a thing the Republican party is interested in even trying. Their entire mental framework for how to capture the presidency now relies purely on gaining the electoral college. In a way that no that simply did not exist in American politics prior the twenty sixteen. And I think Republican voters know that.

Right? They’ve adjusted their mental framework. They don’t think they need fifty percent plus one. They’re like, yeah, we could do this ship with forty six percent we just gotta pack it in in, like, four different states, and then we can we can make it happen. And that is why you wind up with the we had a poll from Bulwark on electability asking Republican voters, which candidate they think was the most electable of the nine candidates in the field Donald Trump?

By wide margin, sixty two percent of Republican voters said that Trump would definitely beat Biden. DeSantis came in at fifty percent on that. I would say that twelve percent of Republican voters thought that Vivic would definitely beat Biden, and I thought that was the most amazing number in the poll. Because it shows where these people’s heads are at.

Just goes to show you that any you if if you ask any question in any poll, some percentage will will answer yes. Or no to the obvious yes or no question. Well, no,

I but I think part of this is that they really do believe that Biden is a drooling vegetable. I I I think that they they simply haven’t nobody saw the state of the union address, I guess, or nobody listened to his, like, they’re not paying attention to the inflation numbers. They’ve just decided that the entire country hates Biden and everybody thinks just like them, so anybody’s gonna win. I think.

Alright. So let’s just say, at the start, Coke Network’s not gonna go to the mattresses for Joe Biden and run a bunch of ads for Joe Biden and the Joe. So this is a primary this is a primary thing. What do the actual ads that they can run look like? I mean, we mentioned the alligators in front of the the wall?

I mean, could they put together a package that’s like, hey, you know who loves Bud Light is Donald Trump? And Donald Trump junior, they said layoff Anheuser Bush, but we don’t believe you should layoff. I mean like what is the actual line of attack here on Donald Trump? I I just I don’t I spent an hour thinking about this this morning before this, and I cannot imagine a line of attack that actually works in an advertising campaign that they would be willing to be.

It’s possible there isn’t one. But I would like for them to at least try things that could work rather than things that have been obviously debunked. The thing that jumps to mind for me, and and you’d wanna do a lot of market research on this. I have a friend who is doing this research, so maybe next week, I can have a report back on on what they have say. But the thing that jumps to mind for me is so when we were doing RVAT, like, the number one thing that Sarah Longwell because I came a little

bit later when she was doing the market research ahead of Arvett starting.

The number one thing that she learned is from talking to the voters and from polling, was that they recoil at being told what to do by Republican elites. They do not like them, they do not care, endorsements, from Paul, you know, any this thing’s obvious now, but like less obvious than getting prominent Republicans to say I will not support Donald Trump actually maybe hurt more than helped. Right? Like that the researchers showed they do not want to be lectured to by the DC class. That’s how we ended up with the RVAT strategy, right, of Republican voters, real people explaining, you know, to their peers why they were gonna, you know, not vote for Trump.

So to me I would try to go with like a much more agro version of that and like find there are plenty of people Like, go to the border. You know, find people in Texas and Arizona, who are MAGA. You know, we’re like Donald Trump said that he was gonna fix this. It’s worse than ever. You know what I mean?

Like they are, you know, have a video of where the wall got stopped and be like, and have a fucking dude in a MAGa hat being like, I was promised this. He didn’t do it. Like DeSantis is doing shit, whoever else, you know Brian can’t what whoever the person is. Right? Now this takes work.

Right? You don’t just write a check to a consultant in DC who puts together something iMovie, you know, puts little music behind it and then gets to take a ten percent cut. Right? You gotta actually do the work of finding the people going there, doing the videos, culture war stuff, like that’s that is where I would go. I mean I I think that his the Fauci thing is maybe workable, the failures.

Again, this but but who the messenger is it’s possible this isn’t workable, and you have to do completely off the radar stuff.

I voted for Donald Trump and then now she shut down my restaurant. That sort of thing.

I’m open to the fact by the way that that wouldn’t Bulwark, but at least you’d be trying, which is my point. At least there’s a waste of the money.

I don’t believe any of these things can work. And the reason is because the cokes are why the Republican voters chose Trump.

Yep.

In twenty sixteen because they don’t like the Coke’s view of the world. They don’t like the chamber of commerce republican party. They don’t like compassionate conservatism. The Cokes literally, as you said, Tim, want open borders because the Cokes are big capitalists who wanna, like, make the labor pool as large as pie possible, drive down wages, and, you know, good for businesses and all that. And the Republican voters fucking hate those people, and that’s why they went out and got Trump.

And so those people are not gonna be able to convince the the Trump voters to dump Trump for their guy again. There’s a fundamental problem there.

I

think that’s probably right.

And by the way, this speaks the one other point, we’re going we’re going long. I already get you a long show. We’ve got we got more material, but just one other point on this because it’s it’s a it’s a related topic. There was an article this week

I forget. I apologized to the journal because

I forgot who wrote it, but

it was about how Democrats are scared of the other candidates besides Trump. And it like quoted all these anonymous Democratic strategist being like boy Nicki, like this was supposed to be because Nikki Haley’s campaign manager who I follow tweeted like Democrat strategist freaked out by Nikki Haley. Run and scared about

Nikki. Nick scared

about Nikki.

I’m like whoever that strategist is is just as stupid as the Republican strategist running the ad, because I’m not only is the coke ad wrong, I’m fundamentally unconvinced that Nicki Haley would have a better chance. Because Trump wouldn’t be allowed to run third party, but but there’s a from that thirty five percent cult base, a certain percentage of those people are not gonna vote for Nikki Haley. They just will not. And they are overrepresented in the states that you need to game on the electoral college. Right?

And so she gets back some of some of that on Georgia Atlanta Berbs and stuff. So I I don’t think it’s a cut and dry case. But but to to act like, oh, I’m running scare, you know, that that is scarier especially with who the unknown of Donald Trump being out there potentially shit talking them. Right. I I don’t think there’s any reason to think that any of the other candidates besides Trump are clearly more electable than him.

Like it’s it’s false in that in that sense as well.

This is one of the, like, key facts about twenty sixteen that I don’t know that we’ve all or I don’t know that a lot of people are necessarily internalized, which is that Donald Trump wound up being a much better candidate than we all expected because he activated a different type of voter. Right?

Like that?

They

have an electoral candidate.

And I think Tim’s one hundred percent right that I think that that voter who turned out for Donald Trump does not turn out for Nikki Haley does not necessarily turn out for anybody else except for maybe Ron DeSantis. I think DeSantis has kinda tapped into that, but I I don’t know.

Yeah. Alright. So we had other stuff, but we’re gonna table it because it’s been a a very long show. But we have to give Tim a moment to celebrate because the Denver nuggets are the champions of the world. I hope you’re not buying that horrible t shirt that they put out.

People before you turn off, I’m about to give you some life lessons. Alright. Darn the the JBL triad, you know, sports is about life. You know, I’m about to go I’m about to go there for you. Number one, I’m just so happy

—

Boy isn’t.

—

I’m so happy about the nuggets. It is my long suffering fandom. And you know I was I was digging through old pictures of me and my brother going to camps you know to try to get autographs from long lost nugget you guys have never heard of, like, Antonio McDice and, like, finding all of our old useless, you know, cards. Macmood Abdul Ralph. Oh, yeah.

I wore the Macmood Abdul Oak, Jersey. I wore that jersey to the champ. Yeah.

He did. Come people liked it.

I wore that to the finals game. So it felt really good. I went to game one with my brother. It was it was emotional walking in there. First NBA finals game ever in in in Denver.

They they handled the heat easily in five games, and so it was was very enjoyable. It was enjoyable Monday night. I’ve watched all the content. I’ve consumed an unbelievable amount of content about the nuggets. Over the past forty eight hours.

But what I wanted to share with people is is just two little anecdotes, so just warm your heart. The first one is is about our the best NBA player in the world, Nicole Yokic. Nicole Yokic was a fat kid from Serbia, who was drafted in the second round, I think the 41st pick in the second round during a Taco Bell Casarito commercial. Didn’t even show the the pick. He came over.

He was overweight. People didn’t understand it. He was a bench player, but he just had this magical touch this beautiful ability to pass and to shoot around the rim and he’s a water polo player, so to tip rebounds to himself unlike anybody else. He comes forth to become the the best player in the league, you know, he is just degraded and salted everyone on ESPN for like a year is just like he’s gonna get exposed in the playoffs. He can’t play defense.

You know, he’s not athletic traditionally. Here’s what he said in the in the press conference after. This is this is, you know, something about dealing with success well.

Oh, this line’s

so good.

This is dealing with success well.

So good.

He said, if you want to be successful, you need the bad, then you need to be good, then when you’re good, you need to fail. Then when you fail, you’re going to figure it out. I mean, after winning the NBA finals, just the clarity, the the Yogi Bara, Serbian simplicity of that, a person who said that he was kind of a little disappointed, he had to stay till Thursday for the parade because he wants to get back to Serbia with his family. He keeps his wife’s wedding ring on his shoes. And he also said that there are other important things in his life besides basketball.

He’s happy but there’s other important things. I mean, this is just you can learn so much from him. Not everyone’s gonna have his just wonderful, historic skill.

Did you watch him walking around the court seeking out everybody from the Miami bench? Every last assistant coach after the end of the finals. Yeah.

Before he celebrated, shook everybody’s hand, and he brings his one year old child out. I mean, this is just a beautiful human being. It’s what everyone says they want from sportsmanship, and then it’s like, oh, well, we can’t make him

a superstar because he doesn’t, you know, he doesn’t have the star quality that stat that these other guys do.

Yeah. Okay. Whatever. He doesn’t

have the chiseled abs. Let me ask you his question about him. Is he the second coming of Larry Bird? Because his passing and court sense feel birdlike. He’s got a bunch of other stuff the bird didn’t have.

Including size and a handle and stuff like that. But his sense of the court and his sense of the game are uncanny in that way.

Like kind of all the eighties players in one, which is like, don’t understand why the old guys don’t like him. Like, he’s got a bit of magic. Like, he can he he goes through full length the court like magic can

—

Yeah. — throwing the oops like the old Lake Show Lakers. He has the bird birds touch and his stat lines are very similar to birds in a lot of ways besides the rebounding, and he’s also got big old Moses Malone kind of rebounding like Peakek Moses Like, he’s all three of those guys in one, and it’s been a beautiful thing to watch.

First player to ever lead the playoffs in scoring, assists, and rebounds.

I just

wanna mention one other guy Aaron Gordon. You might not have heard of him. I was watching his post game content. He was drafted for he’s the opposite of Yokic. He’s beautiful, you know, you could put him on a billboard in times square shirtless, you know, and the gays and the women would be kind of like fanning themselves.

He was like the top of his class always, you know, and he’s he’s drafted in the top five, and he goes to Orlando. The team’s terrible. He’s the best player on a terrible team because he looks like a pretty boy and because he wins same dunk contest and because he’s was kind of a ball hog and a terrible team. He gets all the stereotypical like, oh, he’s selfish. He’s one of these guys.

He’s never gonna win. He’s not a winner. Gets traded to the nuggets where he’s the fourth option, not the second, not the third, he’s the fourth option on the team, and he accepts a role where he defends the best player, he defended Lebron, Kevin Durant, and Jimmy Butler, and back to backgrounds, and he shut them all down. Wow. All he does on offense is set picks for Yokit and just take lobs and do dunks, like he doesn’t have to do anything else really, an offense.

He’s just the best defensive guy in the team. He plays into his role. After the game, this guy who was like called the prima donna, like just can’t help himself. He starts crying like on live TV, like talking about how he’s always wanted to be in a role like this. He’s always wanted to be part of a team, be be a winner, he always wanted to, you know, to be with other guys and not have, you know, to,

you know, to have just the glory for himself. He was like, eighth person interviewed,

you know, he didn’t get interviewed on stage and yet he still was so happy after the game. I’ve put this on my Twitter if you wanna go see us. He is shirtless dancing on the streets of Denver with all the nerdy white guys in their microbrews like in the middle of them just like jumping up in the air, walking home from the stadium to his loft. Pretty good stuff. It was pretty magical and it was like all the good stuff about sports in one.

Fantastic.

Sunny, thank you for being here in Sarah Longwell so that Tim could do that — Thank you. — without her falling asleep. It was very nice, very kind of you. Guys, good show, long show.

Peace, go nuggets. We’ll see you next week.

The Bulwark podcast focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties.

Real sense of deja boo sprinkled on our PTA So things are going well, I guess.

Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes speaks with guests about the latest story from inside Washington and around the world.

You document in a very compelling way. All of the positive things have come out of this, but it also feels like we have this massive hang of.

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