The View from Trumpland

Welcome to beg to differ, the Bulwark weekly roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. I’m AB Stoddard, associate editor and columnist at Real Clear Politics sitting in this week for Mona Sharon. I’m joined by regulars Linda Chavez of the Miss Cannon Center and Damon Linker who writes notes from the middle ground on Substack. Our guest this week, I am delighted to say, is former congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio. He served for twenty years in the House, and ran an amazing campaign for the Senate last year against JD Vance.

Welcome to

all of you. Thank you.

I’m going to begin this morning with what we always talk about these days, which is the twenty twenty four Republican primary field but it stays interesting. And then Thursday morning, we had Will hurt, former congressman from Texas join the race. Trump has also given a bombshell interview to Fox News, where he admits to the crimes he’s charged with, And, suddenly, his numbers are softening just a bit in a new CNN poll. So to level set before we discuss I want to play my favorite clip from Brett’s interview with Trump the other night if we can roll on that.

A woman who you know very well was in jail. She had twenty four more years to serve. She served for twenty two years. She had pounds Johnson.

Alice. She was in the Super Bowl.

High quality. Oh, yeah. I said how many years? And she was on a telephone call and they were involved in selling marijuana, mostly marijuana, and she got like fifty years in jail.

But she’d be killed under your plan. As a drug dealer?

No, no, no, under my Oh, under that? It would depend on the severity.

It would depend on the staff. She’s technically, a former drug dealer. She the she had multi million dollar cocaine rank.

Any drug dealer?

Look. So even I’ll show Natsan in that ad.

She can’t do it. Okay? By the way, if that was there, no, she wouldn’t be killed. It would start as of now, so you wouldn’t go to the house.

Okay. So I just want everyone to remember where we are. It’s twenty twenty three and the twice impeached twice indicted criminal corrupt, Donald Trump, plotted a coup against his own country and government, is the front runner in this race He wants to give the death penalty to drug dealers who a few years ago when he wanted to win over quote the blacks before his twenty twenty election, obviously, was a champion of criminal justice reform. So, we’ve come a long way. And Congress and Ryan just six months ago, people were still thinking that Republicans lost the midterm elections, because of Trump and the extreme candidates that he supported.

And there was evidence in Sarah Longwell’s focus groups for the Bulwark. That members of the base of the party, though they very much still love Trump, felt the need to find an alternative without baggage who could win and served two terms. And that’s changed now, and he’s obviously dominating the field. But there is this new polling that challenges the theory that the indictments don’t matter. And the crime pays.

And so my question to you is, what are the Trump supporters in your community in Ohio saying about the indictments and especially with the likelihood that two more are coming.

You know, I think that he obviously has hardcore base that is immovable, really. I mean, there’s just really no way to move him. There’s nothing he could do. There’s nothing Biden could do there’s nothing anybody could do to move them. And that’s that’s what you’re, I think, seeing that hardcore base in the polls.

You would think that at some point it would have some effect on the middle of the road voter. The issue I think now is really that people are checking out of politics. So the low information voter is just not paying attention. They’re not seeing the interview with Brett. They’re not gonna you a lot of this stuff.

They’re outliving their lives. They hate politics now. They think it’s toxic. And so I think the normal things are gonna play next fall? What’s the economy like?

You know, what are interest rates like? What are gas prices like? And, you know, a lot of people are gonna be like, who’s best for me? And if I’m paying four and a half dollars a gallon for gas. I don’t know, this Trump, whatever.

I mean, you know, maybe it’s time for him to go back. I had gas prices were lower when he was in. You know? Like, that’s how people will think. And I just think that’s still out there, and Democrats need to be very cautious not to fall into the trap of the corruption and I mean, you need to make the argument.

Don’t get me wrong. But don’t fall into the trap like this is a slam dunk.

I completely agree with you that we’ll return to that in terms of Biden’s vulnerability there. Linda, why is there a sense that there’s somehow suddenly blood in the water. These late entries into the field, donors are supporting people like Chris Christie and Will Heard, What is their role? Obviously, we are all been saying all this time since twenty sixteen that a larger field helps Trump. But is there a way that these truth telling rule of law, Republicans play a role here?

Do they end up hurting and maybe in

the general election? Well, I think this is the problem, and I think Tim probably knows it much better than I do on the ground because he’s out there with people who voted for Donald Trump. And I live in the Washington area and don’t know a whole lot of people who voted for Trump even among my Republican friends. But the problem is that we now have such a bifurcated system of getting our information, that there is the Trump world, the MAGA world, They get their information from all sorts of very sketchy websites. They get through emails and texts from their friends and from people whom they identify with.

They watch Fox News, News Max, or one of the other far right channels. I mean, if you actually read the indictment, it is open and shut case, it looks like. We’ll see when it goes to trial. I think Bill Marce said, half of what’s in there is true, he’s toast, and yet that message doesn’t get through to the people it needs to get through. It’s dangerous to have too many people in this race because it will be very difficult for any of them to even meet the threshold to be on the debate stage, and I for one think it is absolutely critically important that Chris Christie be on that debate stage because He seems to be the only one who is really willing to take Trump head on and he’s a former prosecutor.

He knows his stuff, you know, he’s got a personality that’s not to everybody’s taste, but he’s funny. He does not sound like a robot. He talks off the cuff, and he does so, I think very persuasively.

Yeah, I wrote about him that I think he intends to be the ex fact, So I guess, Linda, are you gonna send your five dollars in to make sure he gets some

I have to tell you I already did.

I already I already and by

the way, I’m not a Republican anymore. But if he had a chance of being on the stage and if my vote would help, I would reregister at least temporarily for being able to vote for him.

Well, it’s really fascinating what you mentioned about the information ecosystem. Perhaps having Chris Christie, and will hurt on the stage talking about these cases against Trump will force the base to learn things that they haven’t yet learned. Damon, there’s some new public opinion strategies pulling that shows Ron DeSantis who’s really been Sarah Longwell, beating Biden in critical battleground, Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. With Trump losing to Biden in those states, in those polls. DeSantis has been gaining a little bit of ground in Iowa and some early state polling, but He is still way behind Trump.

He still believes he has to be the anti woke guy, and he’s running hard on anti vaccines. Where do you see that going? And do you think that he is going to be able to topple Trump from the right? Or does he eventually have to start talking about the seriousness of these charges?

Well, I certainly don’t say any evidence yet that DeSantis is going to try to best Chris Christie and going after Trump. It’s a weird situation where Ron DeSantis really truly does seem to be running a campaign where he wants to simply be the guy who’s in the lead among the non Trump options when Trump either collapses on his own or maybe a surrogate like Christy takes over in his place. And actually does the dirty deed, but DeSantis benefits from it because Christie is behind him. DeSantis doesn’t seem to want to actually risk making enemies of any Trump voters. And there’s a way in which you can imagine a kind of political strategy session behind the scenes where this makes total sense for them.

But when it comes to a practical issue, it has the effect of making to Santa, I think, sound like this sort of bizarre kind of base whispering candidate where he just is talking only to write fringe, and that includes a lot of right wing, anti vax, paranoiacs. And so, I don’t really see where it’s going. If you look at the Real Clair politics line graph, the aggregate polling graph that they have there. What you end up seeing is that Trump remains followed thirty points ahead of DeSantis. And they’re pretty much plateaued.

I know there was a CNN poll recently that had Trump looking like he might be softening a little. But if you aggregate all the pulls together, you don’t really see that yet. What we have seen is that the latest federal indictment from Jack Smith has not led to a further boost for Trump. It’s not like he’s now up thirty five or forty. So He probably is at his ceiling right now, at least with the long list and growing list of competitors there taking bits and pieces of the electorate’s voting on the right.

But at the moment, we seem pretty frozen. And so, as encouraged as I am to hear Christie giving his articulate and passionate denunciations of Trump as a crook, who has no business making it to the White House. Again, I’m not seeing it having any real effect as of yet, unfortunately.

Yeah. I’m with you. It is interesting that it seems that there’s really nothing that DeSantis can do. Indictment or no indictment, because he is, as you described, quite frozen in his effort to appeal, to the MAGA base. Conerson Ryan, among Republicans in your community and your life, is there an appetite for Ron DeSantis?

Or just people just like Trump because they like Trump. Do they actually talk about DeSantis and COVID lockdowns and the free state of Florida? Is there any traction for him among the Republicans that you know?

I don’t think so. I think they’re so in the tank for Trump, you know, and DeSantis, I think is revealing a lot of, like, kinda he looks like a politician, I think. He’s, like, wants to not be Trump, but he won’t hit Trump like Christie is. So he’s in this no man’s land that I think, like, a hardcore Republican primary voters gonna be like, I don’t know. The bravado of a Christie probably appeals to them more, but it’s so anti Trump that they can’t let themselves go there.

So this we’re gonna have, like, psychology books written about this primary and then with a voter on, like, exactly what they’re thinking. But I just think Trump is Trump and and everyone else is just gonna divvy it up. I think Christie will be most effective in persuading, you know, middle of the road people who kinda pay attention, but don’t vote in a Republican primary. And, you know, he’s gonna continue to make the case against Trump, which I think at the end of the day is gonna benefit the Democrats.

Yeah, I think that it really will be interesting in terms of that sort of delightful bullying appeal that Christie has. Like nice bully, funny Bulwark, I think that DeSantis is terrified of how much Christy is going to make him look like a wimp.

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I wanna go around the table on the question Trump in that Brett Bear interview basically revealed that he doesn’t want to debate. Let’s start with Linda. Linda, what happens if Trump won’t debate?

Well, he bowed out of at least one of the debates last time, so it’s not clear that that hurts him. He doesn’t rely on appealing to a larger audience. Look, he’s got I don’t know, maybe forty percent of the base vote in the Republican Party and most of those people are going to stick with him. I think what happens if he chooses not to debate, he is able to survive and become the nominee is that he loses. And you know, this theme that what he is is a loser is the most powerful argument against him.

At least for the Republicans who know that if he’s at the top of the ticket, it isn’t just that Donald Trump will lose. Is that they stand the chance of losing the House of Representatives. They won’t likely get the Senate if Trump’s at the top of the ticket So it really puts the Republican Party in the wilderness, define for a generation by someone who’s not even a traditional Republican much less a conservative. So, I don’t know that it’s going to hurt him in terms of getting the nomination, but it will certainly hurt him in terms of having any chance whatsoever of winning the presidency again.

That’s a good point. It really does make him more of a would be loser Damon, what is the dynamic on that stage if he doesn’t show up? Christy will prosecute the case against Trump on that night of August 23rd in Bulwark, if Trump doesn’t show up, do the others? Or is that like the opportunity for Nick Kaye Haley to get mad at Chris Christie and pick on Ron DeSantis. I don’t really know how that works.

What do you think that would do to the race?

Well, first of all, I’ll get to that in a second, but I do wanna say in response to Linda’s comment that I do think it’s important for us to keep always separating whether we’re talking about the primaries or the general. I don’t think whether or not Trump appates in any or all of the Republican primary debates will have any effect whatsoever on how the general election works out with presumably Trump v Biden, everything will be redefined by then. And then the question will be will Trump and Biden even debate? And if they do, how does Trump come off like a wild animal lunatic like he did in the first debate in twenty twenty? Mauling at Biden.

Does Biden have much more difficulty in twenty twenty four than he did in twenty twenty? Of actually holding his own for an hour, hour and a half, two hours on a debate stage, opposite someone who is coming at him like a wild animal. Those are the questions that will end up mattering a lot more, not maybe decisively, but it’ll have a big effect on final vote and whether or not Trump really is that loser that Linda said he is. As for the primary debates, as you asked AB, I really don’t know. There is a way in which refusing to debate sort of tacitly turns everybody else into kind of lilliputians, like they’re all fighting amongst themselves.

Half of them are kind of Trump obsessed like Christy and Jason Hutchinson and maybe Will Heard and a few of the other candidates kind of want to talk about Trump a lot and how bad he is in terms of the opportunistic argument that Linda mentioned about him being a loser. So, I agree with Linda that as far as kind of a strategic argument, there is reason to think that there might be some Republican voters purely on, like, calculating electability grounds might be willing to push Trump out of contention because they don’t want to lose again in twenty twenty four. But of course, Trump’s entire pitch is I didn’t lose. They stole it from me. And if you make me your nominee again, this time I’ll make sure they don’t do that again, and I’m your retribution for that great act of injustice.

And so, that just scrambles any attempt to do that. And that’s why so few of the other republican candidates, why any of them other than Christie are really pushing anything like that argument because the premise of that argument is that he actually lost in twenty twenty. And most of those candidates are afraid to come straight out and say that because that puts them kind of on the opposite side of all of Trump’s supporters So, that’s a lot of the party. And you don’t want to antagonize all of them or even a large portion of them if you have any hope for the future.

Yeah. I’m just wondering if that electability argument, I mean, less than a year ago held sway with some of the voters who very much loved Trump but thought maybe he can’t win and we need to find someone who can. Maybe the argument is the more indictments you’re under, the less it seems like a deep state plot. Maybe not. Hires and Ryan, you know, a thing or two about debating, I must say your debates were really impressive against Vance.

And you look at this, I’m sure you get sort of a kick out of watching debates. What do you imagine the scenario is if Trump doesn’t show up to debate basically Chris Christie on August twenty third.

Yeah. I I think Damon’s right. I mean, it turns into Trump is the clear leader, and these guys are all just kinda fighting for, like, distant second. This is kind of normal Trump play. Right?

Everyone’s talking about whether or not he’ll be in the debate. So who’s everybody talking about? They’re talking about Trump.

And if he

if he shows up, and he’s keeping everyone else on their toes. Will he show up, won’t he? And I think psychologically, you know, he’s obviously very, very good at keeping everybody on their toes. Stealing the limelight, having people talk about him regardless if he’s in or out, and that’s what he’s doing now. As I was listening to Linda, and Damon talk about this.

Like, to me, it’s like Christie’s making the argument, hey, I had a Democratic legislature. I could get things done, da da da. Which may be very good in a general election, but in a Republican primary, it’s more like screw the democrats. We don’t wanna work with them. They’re evil.

These people are trying to destroy America, yet, you know, the whole kinda extreme, you know, January sixth line of attack. And Charlie Sykes saying I’ve worked with these people. And Trump’s gonna say, we don’t work with those people. They’re evil. They’re trying to destroy the country.

They’re trying to destroy me. They stole the election, deep state, and all that crazy stuff. And so I don’t know. I just think it’s gonna be really hard for Christie to you know, be a compromiser and someone who can work with Democrats when the base of the Republican Party doesn’t wanna hear that stuff because they think we’re trying to destroy America.

Excellent point. Alright. We’re going to move on now to this week in the House of Representatives where the Republicans never fail to entertain. Speaker Kevin McCarthy for the moment has fended off articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, but they’re going to sit in the folder ready for later. We imagine that after two impeachments of Trump, the Republican base is not going to give up demanding scalps, and those impeachment articles were filed even before they were in control of the majority, we know they censured Adam Schiff because that’s a good way to quell the thirst among the base.

I am fascinated to see that the two poster girls for the House Republican Conference, Lauren Baubert and Marjorie Taylor Green are in quite a row, right wing watch, first reported Lauren Bobert appeared on their Victory Channel’s FlashPoint Program. After introducing her article of impeachment. And she said, oh, glory to God. This is grace. This is God’s empowerment and his ability and staying grounded rooted in the Word of God She said she’s being directed and led by God.

But she wants everyone to know that what we’re doing is right in and righteous and history will prove that. And her friend Marjorie Taylor Green is furious and people overheard their exchange on the house floor where Marjorie Taylor Green according to the Daily Beast said, I’ve donated to you, I’ve defended you, but you’ve been nothing but a little bitch to me. And you copied my articles of impeachment after I asked you to co sponsor them. So somehow, Kevin McCarthy is able to deal with this and everything else that’s going on and has convinced people that for now, they need to hold off on this. Linda, obviously, this is what happens when people get close to power.

McCarthy has successfully co opted MTG. She’s now one of his lieutenants, and You know? So Matt Gates and Lauren Baubert now are like the House rebels, and they’re better said with the right wing media universe and that are able to, you know, fundraise off of this. When we take a step back, in the before times, the divided party lost the general election, the general, you know, the presidential election. And it’s likely that Republicans go into next year far more divided than Democrats.

Will that matter? Democrats are apathetic, Joe Biden is prinley unpopular. His numbers are now at thirty two percent a new low in CNN. Do we think that the division matters? Will Republicans be more energized than Democrats overall voting next year?

How do you see it playing out?

Well, I mean, that’s possible that Trump wins the nomination and his followers get to the polls, people who don’t always vote in elections, turn out to vote for him, But I Will Saletan know, this behavior on the floor of the house. I mean, it’s not as if we haven’t seen very bad things happen on the house floor. I I think we’ve seen canings, we’ve seen, you know, almost fisticuffs in previous years, but it was nothing so much as, you know, a high school knockdown between two of the mean girls, fighting each other, It was so unseemly. And you know, in terms of Bobart and you know, she’s been ordained by God to do this, well, if God was so much, in favor of the Republicans, why didn’t he change all those votes? Why doesn’t he strike?

Joe Biden dead, why isn’t there a thunderbolt coming down from the heavens, you know, knocking him dead on the floor. This is who these people are. I mean, it’s funny, but it’s not funny that we now live in a time when one of the story major parties of the United States has devolved into the Matt Gases and Warren BOBards and Marjorie Taylor Green, I mean, if she is the face of reasonableness in terms of this republican party and this house representatives. God help us all. I’m going to get down.

On my knees, I’d start begging for divine intervention because we are in a very parallel state. I mean, this is really a disgrace on the hill. We have a country to run. There are serious problems that only Congress can deal with including, by the way, the immigration issue. We do need to do something to make our border more secure and to allow people who will contribute to the United States to come into our country.

And yet nothing is getting done, so I just think it’s a very, very sorry day.

Yeah, unfortunately, what it does when average Americans of any information level, behold this, they just believe that that’s what their government is, and it obviously discourages good people from running for the house. And increasingly, the Senate, So, Speaker McCarthy has promised his members, you know, who want impeachment that Chairman, Comar, you know, head of oversight is on this. He’s investigating that Biden crime family, and we have a process. And Comer keeps promising us connections between the Bidens and foreign entities who enrich the Bidens in exchange for, you know, policy favors or something. Homer is continuing to insist that the FBI is hiding you know, damning facts in some unclassified redacted ten twenty three form.

He says, memorializes confidential sources conversations with a foreign national who claimed to have bribed then Vice President Joe Biden. And Democrats are saying these are, like, recycled garbage from Rudy Giuliani. So, Damon, when you look at their efforts so far, I mean, I thought they’re hearing with John Durm was pretty embarrassing. I don’t think people remember that they held a hearing after Trump’s first indictment in New York. On DA Alvin Bragg’s record on crime prosecution, and the Twitter files are sort of, I don’t think anyone remembers that either.

It’s pretty weak. But Most Americans see the Jack Smith indictment even as Trump’s numbers weaken a bit as political even when they believe that he’s guilty of the crime. And so does the Hunter Biden plea deal, which is like their newest thing to crow about. Do you think that it could seem to these same voters like a slap on the wrist and just as political?

For voters who are even aware of any of this, and I don’t think it’s a huge number, this is fever swamp stuff. I don’t mean by saying that to preemptively assume that there’s no there there on the Biden family investigation stuff. I’ve been around long enough to not at this still early stage to pre judge it. They are making some pretty wild allegations, but it’s possible there’s something there. So I happy to let that unfold on its own.

But my sense is that very few Americans actually have any idea about this stuff. They’re living their lives. They’re going to work. They’re trying to be parents and pay the bills and put gas in the car. And this is the kind of stuff that, right wingers who spend a lot of time online and watching as we said earlier in the podcast, not just Fox News, but OEM and the other kind of further out right wing sources in those areas of the information ecosystem, there is a huge tangled web of lines on old whiteboard, like connecting all kinds of stuff that connects things like Hunter Biden and his laptop and the Charlie Sykes copped a plea deal for this week, plus these other allegations about other Biden family members getting money in return for favors.

Most Americans are not following that. So it says something about the state of the Republican Party that someone like a Lauren Bauber who remember barely won reelection in twenty twenty two. It was one of the narrowest contests in the race. For the house. And she has decided that the best way to go forward, either to solidify her standing in her district or to have a catapult to some kind of far fringing media deal if she loses in twenty twenty four, is to stake out this kind of even more extreme position than Marjorie Taylor Green.

As far out and crazy as she is. She’s sort of decided, you know, I’d like to do a little governing here, so I’m going to ally with Kevin McCarthy and be close to the position of greatest power in the caucus. I agree with Linda that this is, it’s one of those moments where I sort of watch what’s going on in Washington and think, how is it possible that we remain a major world power while our political system is like collapsing into this kind of utter nonsense? I just don’t know. It’s a sad day.

Yeah. I mean, this is very successful for them in the short term. They go on LA and a News Max and Fox, making all kinds of allegations they’ve yet to prove. And it’s just excellent for their fundraising. I don’t know what Baubert fancies herself doing a few years from now if she loses her election, but isn’t the message that they learned from the Benghazi probe that Hillary lost in twenty sixteen, and you can do enough damage to make people really angry about the deep state protecting Democrats.

And there were many members, Republicans on the record, saying that the impeachment, the voters are going to demand it. They’ll definitely get around to it. So, I don’t even think they’ll be satisfied and sated by an impeachment of Alexander Mayorquez or Merrick Arlan. I think they’re going to have to impeach Biden. Just I guess on the border, if they don’t find what Damon talked about in terms of, you know, solid connections between some kind of influence peddling with foreign nationals.

Conerson Ryan, what do you think about the way that the Hunter Biden plea deal lands with most Americans who still believe that a lot of this stuff is politicized.

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that most people don’t know anything about it. You know, I’m sitting outside of school in Central Ohio. There’s a baseball game. There’s a football camp if I went around and asked all the parents here, hey, would you hear about that hunter bike case? I I think most people would have no clue what actually was going on.

And so it is red meat for the base, I think, you know, that the idea of impeachment and all of these things, I think, like, you’re gonna alienate those middle of the road voters. In the Hunter Biden case, It is Hunter Biden. It was a a Trump appointed prosecutor, which I think knocks the legs out of the argument right from the get go. But the idea, like anybody knows that if you have somebody who has an addiction, and they ended up having a gun some point while they were dealing with their addiction and they get caught and they go to court that and it’s like a first time offender. There’s a, you know, circumstances.

Most people aren’t gonna get prosecuted and go to jail. It’s just the way it works. You can be in Franklin County, Ohio. You know, you can be in wherever in the United States, like, that’s how these cases are handled. So it’s not really that out of the line other than when you view it through a political lens from the extreme right wing, in Biden’s evil, and he’s corrupt.

And it’s a mob family. People are gonna vote their pocket book, period end of story. We talk about it every election, There’s all these different issues. People vote their families. They vote their pocketbook.

They vote safety. You know, they just these other things are just distractions that we talk about. But at the end of the day, people start focusing in the fall of next year around economic issues, gas prices, health care costs, you know, safety in their own community, and that’s it. And that’s how it’s probably gonna roll again. And so if the economy’s going okay, And, you know, they’ll think, well, Biden’s old, and I wish he was younger, and I wish he was this, and I wish he was that.

And I don’t know if I wanna deal with four more years of Trump and gas prices or two bucks a gallon, let’s just keep things as they are. That’s how it’s gonna go down, I think.

Yeah. I think the gas won’t be two bucks a gallon, and I think that if Everyone is looking at the price of eggs and gas, and the age of Trump and Biden, I think Trump wins —

Mhmm.

— not a problem. Considering that he only lost five, you know, fewer than forty five thousand votes in twenty twenty. So Cox and Ryan just watching Kevin McCarthy as speaker these last few months. A lot of us think that the Senate will go Republican next year and the Democrats can likely take back the house. And I think McCarthy agrees with me on that.

And after he cut the deal with Biden, to avert default, knowing that would be the worst thing for his party. You know, all credit to him for realizing that avoiding default was worth losing his speakership. How well do you think he’s containing his hardliners? And do you think it’s like a foregone conclusion that they’re going to shut the government down in September?

I have a hard time predicting, but I think the right wing’s getting some pushback in the middle of the road seats, you know, those Republicans who hold seats that Biden won. Like, they’re very, very concerned. Ken Calvert these guys out in California. I think they’re very, very concerned. I noticed Calvert even said, you know, something negative against the impeachment thing.

He will he barely won out in California. So I think it’s gonna be a fight. It’s gonna be messy. I think that the exact same thing’s gonna continue. There’s gonna be chaos within the House caucus.

Whether or not they shut the government down, who knows, they will certainly try, and that may be the end of Kevin McCarthy, you know, who knows. But it’s not gonna be good for them. I mean, and that’s, again, with the economy, if everything’s looking stable and Trump is having all of his issues and he gets the nomination, and the Republicans are crazy, and you have Beaubert and Marjorie Taylor Green, you know, in a fight with each other or going into fall, and that continues people are gonna vote for stability. And so I think it’s just gonna continue to be chaos on the Republican side. I don’t think there’s any evidence that it’s gonna change at this point.

I mean, you got a, like, a bunch of egomaniacs that are in charge. And, like, everybody can get on TV. Everybody can, you know, send out a fundraising email. Everybody can get the attention they want to fill their emotional voids in their own lives. And and so there’s no, like, end in sight that this is gonna stop.

Yeah, I just think that after that deal came around, there’s so much pressure from the right wing like Steve Bannon saying that Mcarthy was Hakeem Jeffery’s bitch. You know, that that is just — and that Hakeem Jeffries was a man. Right? I just think that they’re gonna have to light a kitchen fire. To invoke John Banner at some point.

I’m going to go back to Linda, because I think Congress and Ryan and I both feel that Trump has a good chance to beat Biden Linda believes that he’s, you know, an electoral disaster. Do you agree, Linda, that this could be decided on Maybe we save off a recession, but on other indicators price hikes that people haven’t seen in their lifetimes, and that Trump could win next year. Could be Biden.

I don’t think so, but having said that, I do think that Biden has a prop and certainly it’s the economy stupid, the old James Carvel line. I think that is probably what matters most to most people. The biggest problem I think that Biden is going to have is lack of enthusiasm, people not being willing to come out and support him. Particularly among the base of the Democratic party, which is among black women. Are they going to end up showing up in lower rates?

And obviously in certain states, states like Georgia, that’s gonna matter, and he’s gotta win. He’s gotta win those states where the vote is going to be up for grabs. But I think we’re, you know, we’re ignoring in this whole discussion that Donald Trump is under indictment that a trial date has been set for August. Now, nobody really believes the trial is going to start exactly then, but it is possible that we are going to see Donald Trump sitting in a federal courtroom, not being able to, you know, bluster and bluff his way out, and that he’s going to be judged by a jury of his peers. So, I’m not willing yet to just throw up my hands in despair and think we’re going to have another Trump presidency, but Biden has got to get his base in order.

And I think his problem is more with the lack of enthusiasm on the left of his party. It’s not Tim Ryans of the Democratic Party that he’s going to have a problem with, it’s going to be the AOCs and Pramilla Gia Paul. And all of those that I think we’re gonna end up seeing that if their people don’t show up, then Biden will be in trouble.

And, Damon, I want to let you jump in here. I mean, I’m obviously in the doom space. Have you actually tried to be imaginative and roll out the string? And considered that the timing of the trials would end up being a factor and potentially damaging to Trump in a general election against Biden. What’s your take on where that looks like it’ll land?

Well, it’s pretty complicated because there are so many prosecutions in play. If it is the case that this first federal trial begins anything like in August of twenty twenty three, it’s going to be done in over long before the twenty twenty for election. And then just talking about that trial, first of all, is he convicted? Is he convicted on all counts or just some counts And then what is the punishment? Is he given a slap on the wrist?

Or is he actually sent to prison? I’m hard pressed to come up with an estimate of what the political consequences are going to be because it’s so far beyond any other series of events we’ve ever witnessed in this country. He’s very much in the lead in less all of those events that I just described knocks him out of the lead. He’s still going to win the Republican nomination even after he’s been on trial and potentially convicted and potentially going to jail. And what he’s like running for the primaries from a jail cell?

How’s that work? And Is it really true, that what I think will happen happens that the Republican electorate looks at that and says, that’s even more reason to vote for this guy, because this is so unjust and we like our outlaws in this country. And this just shows that he’s really on our side against the deep date, then going from that to, is he gonna be competitive against Biden in the general election? I mean, how could we even guess its so strange. And then I haven’t even mentioned the fact that around mid August, the Fulton County grand jury will be citing whether or not he’s going to get indicted in that state level case, about election manipulation.

And then there’s this other federal case about Trump’s role in the January sixth and sureactionary violence, which could yield its own indictment. And then, of course, the Alvin Bragg case in New York. So this is four separate tracks going on at the same time while two rounds of elections are going on both at the primary level and the general election. Absolutely no precedent for even one of those things to be happening. Let alone all of them.

And I’ve worried for a very long time and made a lot of people angry months ago in trying to make the case that actually pursuing indictments of Trump probably isn’t a good idea precisely because I worried about what the consequences for the rule of law in this country will be when one of our two people running for president makes us part of his platform running against the rule of law in general and how radicalizing that could potentially be for an already very radical Republican base.

Yeah, who is going to cheer when he runs on pardoning himself.

Yeah, exactly. That’s its own potential constitutional crisis. Because that’s by no means a settled issue if that’s even possible. And then, of course, you’re going to end up getting courts weighing in on whether it is and those votes very likely could break down along partisan lines based on who appointed the judges to mess all the way up and down.

I am just one of the people that do not believe that there’s ever going to be a jury that can fix them, that there’ll always be one. Trump supporter who believes that everything in this whole country is rigged against him. But yeah, it’s too surreal all of it to even contemplate Amazing discussion. Let’s move on to our highlights and lowlights for the week. Linda, what do you have for us this week?

Well, it’s a low light. It’s on a topic that I frequently talk about. We got a report from the United state census bureau that the median age in the United States has reached a record high of thirty eight point nine years. And just to sort of put this in perspective, in nineteen eighty, the median age was thirty, and it has been slowly climbing, there are lots of reasons for it in mostly, people aren’t having as many kids as they used to. And people are living longer than they used to live, but it’s also true that one of the reasons that age is climbing is that we are letting in fewer immigrants who tend to be younger, of working age, and at least for the first generation have slightly higher fertility rates than the native born.

And this is a problem. It’s certainly a problem going forward in terms of whether or not the United States can continue to be able to support our older population When you have half of the country now over forty years of age, that means that you’re going to have fewer workers being able to support the people who are on Social Security and on Medicare. And that will bring the kind of crisis we’ve seen another countries. I mean, this is the way that Europe has gone. It’s the way that much of Asia has gone, certainly Japan.

And it’s a real problem, so that’s my low light of the week.

Yeah, policy makers are going to have to get their act together on immigration for that needed workforce or they’re going to have to convince generation z and beyond that this is a society worth bringing children into. Damon,

Well, this very much fits with most of what we’ve been discussing on this episode. I actually have a kind of slew of lowlights all related to similar themes. I’m with AB and being quite dark and pessimistic about Trump’s prospects I think he probably will be the nominee. And I don’t think he’s anything like a shoe in or evenly matched with Biden. But one thing that will give him an advantage that we do not want him to have is if we see certain things that I’m going to talk about now.

For instance, Bloomberg had a piece this week talking about how Cornell West who is a left wing, a sort of religious academic theorist with a bit of a following. He has declared that he’s running in the Democratic primaries against Joe Biden. I don’t think he’ll go very far, but Jill Stein, whose campaign played such a small but very decisive role in Hillary Clinton losing the election. Is working to get Cornell West on the Green Party candidate ticket in twenty twenty four. All it would take is given how narrowly divided the electorate is, for a percentage point or two in a few key states for that to throw the election.

And likewise, you also have several ultra rich tech bros, including Elon Musk, David Sachs, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, trying their damnedest to make Robert Kennedy Junior a thing. He doesn’t have much of a shot all against Joe Biden, but he could weaken Biden somewhat, and all of that big money support could end up convincing Kennedy. To run a third party contest or to pick up the endorsement of some marginal party on the left to end up on ballots. So, you put those two things together, and then Trump really does have a shot, and I shudder to think what that could portend.

Really, really interesting — under the radar factors that the Democrats somewhere — and that brain trust are hopefully taking into consideration. So a year ago yesterday, I watched the January six hearings featuring Shay Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, two election workers in Georgia whose lives were upended by fraudulent claims. From Rudy Giuliani and Trump and others that they committed election fraud. The Georgia elections board and the GBI, Georgia Bureau, investigations working with the FBI cleared both women, mother, and daughter. Of the allegations against them.

And so that the substantiated claims had no merit. And they were accused by Giuliani of passing USB drives like vials of heroin or cocaine. During the ballot counting when one of the two women had handed the other one, a ginger man. The entire thing was recounted how their lives were pretty much destroyed in their testimony before the January sixth committee. The two and a half years of their lives have been completely upended.

Over these false claims, led by Trump and Giuliani, but obviously, that led to threats from so many people to the point where they had to move out of their homes Robbie Freeman lost her business. And Shay Moss left her job as an election worker and hid in the house. It is a heartbreaking story. Their testimony combined is less than an hour. And for anyone who missed it, I highly recommend you take the time to watch that hearing from June twenty one of twenty twenty two to learn what can happen in this country when people like a president can send a mob after innocent people.

It is really a stunning story So I just wanted to highlight that they have been cleared, but far too late in my opinion. Thank you to everyone today. Thank you so much congress and Ryan for joining us. Thank you to Linda Chavez and Damon Linker. Our producer is Katie Cooper.

Our engineer is Jonathan Last. And our editor is Aaron Keene. Mona is gonna be back with you all next week. Thanks so much for having me, and thanks for listening.

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

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

Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes speaks with guests about the latest stories 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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