Tim Miller: A Week Full of Nazis

Well, happy Friday. We made it to the end of the week. Our first Friday in December podcast. Happy to be welcoming Tim Miller back to the Friday podcast, the weekend podcast. How’s your week been going so far, Kim?

You know, Charlie. My week’s been going great much better than the week that I think some of the Republicans who endorsed EA’s week has been going. By comparison, so I’m feeling pretty good. I didn’t accidentally endorse or have dinner with any Nazis this week. So a huge step up.

I had a nice little you know, I went to the market last night with my daughter. We played some foosball against a ten year old. You know, Matt Matt lost a little bit of the football game, and I’m I’m pretty certain there wasn’t any not there were not any luck to you there.

Okay. I wanna work up to that because What happened yesterday, you know, it feels like for the last five years, we’ve all been waking up thinking we took crazy pills. And today for people waking up and looking at the picture, and I have we have the picture in my in my morning shots newsletter of of Kanye West on the Alex Jones show wearing what the hell is he wearing? He’s wearing his black stocking mask over his head I mean, it is bizarre for people who, you know, just a reminder that

I don’t

know, provocative The guy is barking mad. I mean, he’s decompensating in in in real time. It’s kind of brutal. But this all takes place in the same week that he, well, a week and a half after he dined with the former president of the United States. And and, of course, that was Trump world’s best spin about the whole Nick Fuentes Neo Nazi showing up for dinner that their their defense was, we didn’t know that Fuentes was gonna come.

We just thought was going to be Kanye West. I mean,

because and I mean, because that’s our defense. And I’m sure Kanye’s just little dinner table, chatter was was very benign. Right? I mean, I doubt somebody that spent three hours shocking Alex Jones with his effusive praise of Hitler. Was just kind of, you know, talking about, I don’t know, Tom Brady or something in the Bucks, the weather.

So where do we start with this? The the fact that and please do not misunderstand me here. So here you have the show with Alex Jones, Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. And I’m watch I’m watching this thing and realizing, okay, this is how strange things are. This is how, by the way, we are not back to normal when Alex Jones is the most reasonable guy in the room.

I mean — Yeah. — Jones is actually trying to help out Kanye West. I mean, she’s talking about that. Or should we start with the fact that the Republic House Republicans finally got around after all of this time to say, hey, maybe it’s time to take down the Kanye Elon Trump tweet that’s been up for months now. Mhmm.

What are we talking

about? I mean, it’s hard to know. There’s there’s connection between all these things, which is

that,

you know, everyone that is hampered by this are people that at some level enabled Trump. Right? And or all the way up to actively supported Trump. Right? And and to me, I think this is like, the big takeaway.

And, obviously, there’s the Kanye meltdown element of it. But and and the Alex Jones thing, I I it it does bear mentioning for the people that didn’t suffer through it. And I I really don’t encourage people to suffer through it if they haven’t already. It is

wait for some sound bite. You’re gonna you’re going to stop Okay. Great. We’re going to okay. So we’ll get to that.

Don’t don’t make promises you can’t fulfill here. Okay. But

to me, Like the big takeaway is just everyone is tainted by this and it was the most obvious thing to avoid possible. And this guy is having a public, manic meltdown, where he not, I guess, not even at the beginning, dabbles in, but a pretty aggressive dabble in antisemitism from the jump. You know, and and you go back and, you know, I pulled this up. The the the media tour, people don’t remember all this because I I did this my snapshot show on this, like, a month ago. Right?

It’s not it was very clear. This was and the message of the Snapchat show was, this is dangerous, like contrarian antisemitism, like leads to dark places, like, don’t go down this path, like, reject this guy. And it was, like, the most obvious advice you could give. And and but that was that’s started. I I did that show after his Tucker appearance, which was the beginning of the show.

Tucker, and this was my comment from earlier, described his interview with Kanye. Here is interesting, deep provocative. Oh, yes. Such a deep such a deep yeah. Such a deep commentator.

So Tucker chances, if you recall, Tucker cut out. He

edited it out. Like, he

aired two hours of Kanye, but but but they still cut out some parts, you know, where he got, like, much more aggressive in his anti Semitic remarks. So they all knew this. They all knew that he was playing the antisemitism game. They all knew that he was spreading hate, and yet still they aired two hours of his show on Fox News, Did anybody quit? Like, did anybody quit over it on Fox?

I don’t think so. And it was that interview that the Kanye Elon Trump tweet

you know, is

the House Judiciary GOP. I I tweeted something like this at the time. There are a dozen plus members of the House Judiciary GOP. If you’re on that committee, that Twitter account represents you. Did any of them say, you know, no, I don’t think so.

This guy that is spreading conspiracy theories and attacking Jews. Like, maybe we should maybe we should take that down. No. None of them did because they all are scared. And they all now are tainted by Trump and tainted by Kanye and and and and they’ve learned horrible lessons the last seven years, which is like it’s some kind of whatever, sob to the media, to us, never Trump cut the legs for them to just say, like, no.

Some things are right. Some things are wrong. This is wrong. This guy is a no fly zone here. But they did the opposite.

They jumped in they jumped in the ship because he was trolling the people they hated. They’ve learned fucking nothing in the last seven years. There’s so many good points here including the fact that, you

know, why is it relevant to, you know, who Kanye West is or who the president has dinner with? Well, you know, it goes back to the, you know, being in the room where it happens. Who who is in the room where it happens when Donald Trump is the president of the United States? I mean, we saw you know, a group of, you know, crackpots and nutters, you know, brought into the White House during the stop the steel. And, of course, that pattern is continuing even rich, lowry.

Is writing, can you imagine who’s going to be in the room in a second Trump term, you know, good point. But you remind me, it was like five percent kind of a good point.

Kind of a good point. I guess, I wish it would have been, like, we need to do everything plausible to prevent a certain Trump term up to it, including supporting Democrats, but, you know,

about that. There’s there’s a lot of hand waving kind of going there. But, you know, you you remind me, you know, about five minutes ago, Fox News, you know, Tucker Carlson decided that he was going to make Kanye West. They were gonna make him a new right wing icon. He was, you know, our celebrity icon, you know, to get a tingle up their leg.

You know, we have this billionaire X rapper or whatever. Who is, you know, saying things that we actually like. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna whitewash and we’re gonna, you know, polish this turd and, you know, eliminate the stuff about the anti Semitism. But then hold him up. I mean, they they were invested in building his brand, changing his brand, even though it was obvious that the guy was was having some serious problems that he was nuts, these barking mad, as well as that he was peddling real hate.

And so, you know, it it all blows up when he brings Nick Fuentes along. So but what’s interesting to me and I’m gonna play this. Alex Jones, who is one of the most vial conspiracy theorists and bigots in the world. One of the most plausible human beings leave aside his political and cultural impact. So he he he wants to jump into this.

He brings Kanye West and Nick Fuentes onto his show. And he’s trying to again clarify that, well, you know, you’re you’re you’re clearly, you’re not Hitler, you’re not a Nazi. Right? All of these, you know, left wing media types that are trying to say that you guys are Nazis. That’s really not true.

This is so weird. Alex Jones is trying to help Kanye West, and this is how it went. Let’s just play this.

What’s right? You’re not hitler. You’re not a Nazi. You don’t deserve to be called out a demonized. Well, I I see I I see good things about Hitler also.

Oh. The Jew I love everyone, and Jewish people are not gonna tell me you can love you know, us. And you can love what we’re doing to you with the contracts. And you can love what we’re, you know, what we’re pushing with the pornography. But This guy that invented highways, invented the very microphone that I use as a musician, you can’t say out loud that this person ever did anything good and I’m done with that.

I’m done with the classifications. Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table. Especially Hitler. Especially. Especially — Especially Hitler.

— who look, I’m not gonna spend time fact checking whether Adolph Hitler invented the microphone that we’re using. I’m just gonna leave that aside. Let’s just stick to the information. We

could fact check it really quick. He did not.

Yeah. He just said that to the microphone, actually. Yeah. Yes. But Jews are pushing pornography, whereas Hitler gave us microphones and the freeway.

And in case there

was a he goes on to a compliment Hitler’s fashion. I know. Wow. That was interesting. And it’s a fashion magnate kind of an in spell for him.

Well,

in the in the Nazis, they did good things too. We have to stop dissing the Nazis all the time. The Jewish media has made us feel like the Nazis in Hitler. Have never offered anything of value to the world. As he goes on, Kanye says he doesn’t like the word evil.

She is with Nazis. I love Jewish people. I also love Nazis. I mean, whoa. I mean, because I wrote this morning, how the hell is your week going?

And even Alex Jones is going, okay, wow, this this is this guy is not not to mention, what was with the fucking mask?

Yeah.

Because you’re you’re you’re my fashion go to guy. Can you explain the fucking mask? So

he’s been doing the mask for a little while, and it is all about this. Yeah. And it’s all about this is why Tucker Tucker called him provocative, a provocative tour. You know, I think it’s part of being shocking. He wore the mask when he at his believe it was the Donna tour.

I checked out a Kanye, like, in his music, I don’t know, in college dropout era, I think. So so someone might wanna fact check me on this. I was like, I think it was his don detour. He’d wear a mask or or he’d go down into the stadium and you know, there’d be like a little mystery around when he’d come out, but I believe he had the mask on when he was wearing the White Lives Matter. Jacket.

Anyway, you know, it’s all about just letting the fashion speak for itself, I think, is the best is the best way of putting shocking people. So he does that. The I’m not And and that thing’s Alex, yeah, freaking people out, but I think that’s part of it. Alex Jones. Creeks.

Creeks. Those also freaked out like you. Oh, creeps. Yeah. Creeks.

Creeks. Is like you, I don’t, you know, I don’t know that Alex, a lot of these a lot of these, you know, middle aged white guys, conservatives, I don’t think are very deeply burst in Kanye’s musical oo. So I I think he also didn’t know this, that it was coming. And so Alex, like, it’s like, when are you gonna take this thing off? Halfway through.

And multiple times, Alex Jones, the fucking disgusting ass pimple that, like, you know, talked about the frogs making people gay in in a we don’t need to go down his list. Like, multiple times, he’s looking at Kanye, like, dude, you were off the deep end. Like, what are you talking about at he had they had to got it to commercial during one of his pro Hitler rants, you know, because Alex is just, like Alex starts laughing out of frustration of just, like, what? Like, really? Like, I’m trying to bail you out here and let you, you know, do the perfunctory, no, I’m not a nazi thing, and you won’t even you won’t even do that.

Like like, you know, Alex is versed in how you, at least, finally, failed. Thank God, recently, but he’s versed in how you walk this line. Of spreading hate, spreading conspiracy, you know, while leaving enough gray or enough doubt to prevent you from, you know, getting sued or fully you know, thrown overboard. And and Kanye has no interest in that. Well,

and even Elon Musk had to decide that, hey, maybe content moderation is not so terrible idea after all, after Kanye posted this bizarre image of a star of David with a swasticky inside it and sort of blending them together. And he says, yeah. That that’s kind of it. You’re resuspended, which, of course, he’s now being dragged on. Online.

You well, you were supposed to be a free speech absolutist, and, you know, it’s it’s very interesting watching, you know, the various convolutions and No. But since

we do an interesting question on content moderation because there are a lot of people on Twitter that post memes that have swastikas in them. So they all gonna get banned now. Right? I I know this shows that Elon and I thought about this with the depth. Of of, like, a five year old when he bought Twitter, and he literally bought it with a four twenty joke as the price.

So and this is despite the fact that people his fan voice wanna turn him into some super genius, and he might have some genius qualities. Like, this was not one. This was an impulsive he’s an impulsive child.

So what what’s a port twenty yoke?

Well, four twenty is the number that stands for smoking pot.

Yeah.

So when so when he offered Twitter, he made he made his official offer, of his price that he was gonna buy, that was fifty four dollars and twenty cents a share because because it was four twenty was the last three digits, like, that was not he did not have his business guys, you know, take a look of the EBIDTA or whatever it is, and like, look at the look at what the revenue was and make it determined on value evaluation. Now he made a joke about marijuana in his purchase. So a weed little weed joke pretty funny. But anyway, so he he makes that purchase. And and and he’s just like a challenge to go, we need free speech.

Oh, free speech. And and now, you know, he’d banned Alex Jones Arty because he has, you know, personal issues with anybody who’d screw with dead children. Okay? That’s a that’s a — Okay. — reasonable humans impulse, then now he’s banned Yay.

And what Yay tweeted, the swastika, trust me. There If you if you wanna go search it on Twitter today, you find plenty of sponsors because if you look at the trending topics, they’re almost all about Nazis right now, which is heck of a job, Elon, on that. And and there was Richard Spenser, the old Nazi, you might not remember him because we’re kind of we’re sort of moving through our our Nazi children leaders. But Richard Spencer, the previous Nick Flintase, had a Twitter space going yesterday, a pro yay, Twitter space where people met and were chatting about this. So so why isn’t that bad?

In some ways, if you take Elon’s logic to its conclusion, why would you bank on it? Right? And if you’re gonna a ban Kanye, then you do need to rehire all your moderators and ban the other people that are posting Nazi stuff. Why does Kanye treat it any differently than just some random nineteen year old shit posting, Nazi from, you know, North Carolina.

So far. But it’s still complicated. Who could have possibly known? This was going to happen to not work out well. The crew could have possibly seen it coming.

So I know that you get the same thing that I get that there are those of of our listeners who think that we are sometimes perhaps a little bit too cynical because you look at what’s going on right now and and I think it’s reasonable to say that, you know, Donald Trump has had a bad couple of weeks. This is really terrible. You know, this is there’s a turning point. He’s got no momentum coming out of the the announcement. Spacing these legal problems, he actually dined with a Nazi and his defense was, no, I meant to dine with his other guy who’s now Anazi.

And so there’s the feeling, well, this is going to be the turning point, but you and I have been through this so many times. Right? I mean, it we we we thought this after January sixth or after the election or after Charlotte’s bill or after, you know, I I like people who weren’t to capture it. It’s happened so many times before Is there any real reason to think that this is different? And I think that there are reasons, but what do you think?

I mean, in terms of, I mean, again, again, this is burned into my psyche. I’m guessing it’s burned into your psyche as well. Right? You know, all those moments you thought you can’t come back from this this is going to be too bad, and yet he always does. So give me your handicap this, different same old what?

Well, so I think that there

are two levels to this. Right? Is it different in its impact on Donald Trump? And are there an increasing number of people within the party that maybe are not willing to say, oh, man, I really made a mistake associating with all these Nazis. And, like, you know, the guy in the hot dog suit.

Like, we’re all looking for the guy that did the crime wearing the hot dog suit. Like, maybe it was me that was part of the problem. I don’t think we’re gonna get that. Right? Because, you know, people don’t like to admit their own faults.

But are we getting enough people that are saying even Republican rank and file, but, like, we like winning. All this crazy shit is not helping. It might be time to move on. Yeah. I think, possibly, your fellow Badger Stader, what do you guys call yourselves?

Wisconsinizing. She’s head. Cheesehead, your fellow cheesehead, Charles Franklin, had a —

Yeah. — pollster,

had a pullout a national republican poll, had a sixty forty DeSantis, and a head to head. That’s possible. I’ve always said I thought that Trump had a thirty five or forty solid base within the party and that DeSantis, you know, the whole DeSantis idea is based based on uniting, like, that other sixty, the majority of which actually like Trump, but it could would be open to moving on. So maybe he he will achieve maybe he’s on path to achieving that. But okay.

So that’s what’s one step. That’d be a good step, by the way. If there is just some progress that’s like, hey, maybe we’re not gonna take a moral stand here about our association with bigots and hate mongers and anti semites. But just as a practical step, we’re gonna kind of like try to make sure that they hang out over there in the corner because they’re hurting our brand. Okay.

I that’s something it’s better than nothing. It’s not it’s not bringing me back into the fold, you know. It’s not I don’t think that that’s what they need to do as a party. But but I think that that’s progress. But here’s the thing.

You can have that progress while also just being clear eyed about the fact that they’re not actually learning anything. Here’s what something I’m just eyeing here coming up December seventeenth to twentieth. I was texting with A friend friend is the wrong word. Former colleague that works for a Republican candidate that’s attending this thing. And they were upset about how I was tiring the whole party for their associations with Kanye.

Like, it’s not my boss’s fault. And, like, actually, it is, but here’s an event that your boss is speaking at coming up twenty twenty two. December. Charlie Kirk is there, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Candice Owens, Matt Walsh, Tim Pool, Jack Posabek. These are all the people that were promoting Kanye.

Okay? Who’s who’s speaking with them at the same time? Yeah. They

will all be Kanye in five minutes. Too.

Yeah. Steve Hilton who has a who has a weekend Fox show and was supposedly one of the normal, you know, independent minded tech guys. Right? You know, Eric Marks, this is their Mike Glendale, and Republican politicians are going to that. Right?

So okay. Until until there is a recognition that no. This is not some one off dude who, like, got had a manic episode and started talking Nazi stuff. The problem with Trump is not that he’s not electorally viable anymore, which is Mitch McConnell’s critique of Trump, not Nazi dinner. Like, the problem is that we keep a associating and providing platforms for this hate speech and that our voters are responding to it.

And that nobody has the balls to actually stand up and say to them. No. We are not gonna do this anymore. Like like America is better than this where porkless the country blah blah blah. The kind of shit that John McCain, etcetera, used to say.

There’s nobody out there saying that. Nobody out there is making a a moral argument for this. So you you can hold two thoughts in your head at the same time, which is, yeah, this is damaging Trump in a meaningful way. But but no. It doesn’t feel like the Republican party has learned anything from it.

Besides that Trump is like electoral poison.

So let’s go back to this poll that came out that you mentioned, the Charles Franklin poll. This is the Marquette University law poll, which is highly respected in Wisconsin, mainly because it’s almost always right. I mean, it just nails one election after another. And it does national polls now. And the one that came out yesterday was interesting because it shows Dusantis running much better against Joe Biden than Donald Trump Donald Trump is trailing by ten points.

DeSantis runs even Also the approval ratings for DeSantis are pretty high. He’s got a sixty eight percent approval rating among the DeSantis. Among Republicans. So these are the kinds of things that actually, I think, are more likely to move the needle with lickens than whether or not Donald Trump is, you know, throwing in same crap up against the law, you know, might have engaged in a seditious conspiracy or dimes with Nazis. They’re willing to swallow the Nazis, the sedition, the corruption, all of that.

But a poll showing that, you know, you’re the one guy that’s gonna get whacked in twenty twenty four, that appeals to what’s left of the moral sentiments of the Republican Party, isn’t it?

Yeah. Maybe. This is another kind of known, unknown, right, which is that was true in sixteen. Right? It wasn’t quite this dark where I, you know, Marco was tied and Trump was losing by ten or whatever, but Marco was pulling better head to head against Hillary than Trump was.

Right. And that didn’t persuade enough people. I used to make this argument. I cringe at myself, actually, I went Heilman did this to me when I went and did his podcast. He played some old clip of mine from, you know, his show that he had on Bloomberg in twenty fifteen, and it was me making the argument that Republican should vote against Trump in the primary because he can’t win.

Which obviously ended up turning out to be wrong, but also was like, just that just goes to show I was a spokesperson for the anti Trump pack at the time. So so that was the messaging we thought worked. Right? So maybe that will work better this time. You know, now that they’ve already seen them lose, but then the problem is you got about thirty percent which isn’t enough to win over the same area.

You gotta get beyond that. But there’s about thirty percent that don’t believe he lost. Right? They don’t believe the polls, that don’t believe any. Right?

So So I think that yes, that has an impact on the margins. And if that holds through, you know, might end up being his death knell because obviously that is compelling in a way to Republican voters in a way that, like, the FBI rating

his house isn’t because, you know, the FBI must be politicized and and woke or whatever. Well,

I also think there’s a cumulative fatigue with with all of it. You know, the there’s a a accumulation of it, which and you just mentioned the FBI rate on his house. Trump continues to lose in the courts, and it is really a remarkable losing streak. What’s really about it is not only was it was it a complete slam dunk ruling, I mean, it was, you know, just dripping with contempt for the ruling, but it was written by three judges who were all appointed by Republicans. See, the chief judge there is William Pryor, who’s very, very conservative former attorney general of Alabama.

The other two judges on the panel were actually appointed by Trump. And they just dropped from a great height on Aileen Cannon. I mean, they threw out her whole ruling said said she had no jurisdiction. The whole special master thing is is done. And I posted a link to the whole decision, which I would urge people to read because it’s very, very clear and it is absolutely definitive.

But for those of you that don’t have time to do that, here’s a shorter version I thanked Tim of what the appellate court was telling judge Cannon yesterday.

What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response, were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought? Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points and

may god have mercy on your soul. Charlie Pop culture reference from after nineteen fifty eight. That movie was in color. I know I know that one. There wasn’t any

musical

bets in there.

That’s great. Billy Madison, I have to say, this is one of my favorite cuts of all time, and I have to confess that I always when I was on talk radio many, many years ago, I always had this queued up for that special caller. And so and I I expressed no regrets for this, but there were times when callers would call up and they would make some absurd point. And rather than respond, I would just simply play that cut. Yeah.

So this is this is a chance for me to go back to my roots, the golden oldies, but that was intense. And now, I mean, you wanna talk about a bad week for Trump mean, this is the same week that, yeah, the federal court jury come back and convict the leaders of the oath keepers of seditious conspiracy I mean, not just disorderly conduct or violence, seditious conspiracy. And a few days later, Trump loses this particular case. If you’re the new special counsel, Jack Smith, and I’m sorry to use this cliche, but maybe come with a better one, I mean, you wanna talk about, you know, wind filling your sails at the moment? I mean, it’s this is there’s some momentum here.

And that may again, it may not matter for the Republican core voters, but shit’s coming down. I mean, you you can you can feel it. I mean, the New Year, you’re gonna see an avalanche of shit headed toward Mar a Lago. What do you think?

Firstly, you know, I thought though your podcast has been with us over a lot earlier this week was excellent. So people skipped that one. They should go back and listen to it for actual expertise on this sort of stuff, which I’m not bringing to the table. I I will bring, you know, more of a political eye to it, which is I was always very hesitant to get falsely exuberant. Over news coming from the courts.

And I still feel that my dream, the champagne that I have on ice, you know, for the Donald Trump, Herb Walk, and conviction probably will stay on ice. Yeah. You know, I just think that there are a lot of myriad challenges that make it hard to effectively prosecute and convict of former president. That said, the amount of different between the documents case, Georgia, the private case regarding his businesses, the tax returns, you know, ruling. It just came down.

In addition to — Yeah. — the Nazi dinner, in addition to people turning on them, I think about old, the the people who jumped out of the barn early in the twenty twenty four endorsement, like Elise Tufonic, you know. And, like, Oh, you know, it’s it it definitely feels like there’s been a series of of good news for those of us on the side of righteousness. We should enjoy and celebrate that. The heat is is on him in a way that, you know, there’s kind of this cliche that that, you know, people would would make fun of the resistance Twitter types who are always like, the doors are closing in on Trump.

And, like, the doors aren’t really closing in, but, man, there are feds coming through doors all around him. And we should appreciate and enjoy that. And and I think that that is gonna reflect his behavior, and I think that his political standing is hurt, and I think that it’s hurting the entire Republican party’s political standing. And so to your question earlier about whether, I don’t know, the Trump Monster is coming back and it’s gonna rise from the dead. Don’t know, but I I you know, we do know in this moment that that it’s been a nice little run for those of us on the side of democracy.

It’d be nice to hear from just one person that was like, you know, you guys really had this right turns out. It would be nice for one person to say that because it is kinda true. So we just can say it to each other, Charlie, because I feel like we always knew we’re right, but boy, the evidence just keeps piling up in our favor. Doesn’t it?

Well, and it has for a long time

now. No. That’s true. You know, we’ve been acutely right this week. That’s

true. We’ve been

a low

level of rightness for a long time. It it does feel that moral vindication, however, is sort of like, is the equivalent of a participation trophy. Right? Okay. So hey, here’s your little, you know, certificate of moral vindication, but let’s move on to to something else.

I I like my certificate. So okay. Can I just can we get it? Can we frame one? Can somebody send one to me?

I can frame it, put it up next to the pinto bean. I wouldn’t mind that. Like, it’s

something. So I wanted to talk to you about also your piece from earlier this week. Oh, yeah. You got a really interesting piece. About all the anti anti trumpers who are, you know, who are now saying, this is terrible.

We need to not do this. Again, but you people who have been right all along, you need to get on board with us now and support DeSantis. So you wrote a letter to the DeSantis fanboys from a real network trumper. I actually have to admit that I was I was a little surprised. Let me just put my my eyebrows to the extent I have any eyebrows.

Went up when you basically got to the point saying that, you know, if it came down to it fifteen days before the California primary and it’s a binary choice between Rhonda and and Donald Trump. You’re gonna go in there, and you’re going to vote for Rhonda Santos. But this is after all of the things that you’re not going to do. So tell me about you know, why you wrote this piece through the background of this?

Well, the background was really kind of driven by there have been a series of national review articles recently and gooding one to trying to tell everyone else not to run for president except for Ron because people need to circle the wagons around the person that can beat Trump for the good of the party. You know, I don’t have that piece in front of me, so I don’t have this direct quote. But the the sentiment was, like, being a good governor and somebody with integrity is not enough, right, for a room for president. Like, you gotta you gotta also be able to win. Right?

So, you know, we appreciate your service, but but that’s not gonna

be good enough. So just just don’t get in and make problems for the rest of us if you are just Larry Hogan or an Asa Hutchinson or Brian Kemp or

Chris Knut Titan. Mhmm. And that just pissed me off. I was just like fuck you guys. You know, and so I had Twitter to tweet.

You always get in trouble on Twitter criticizing them for that article in another article about how they’re unmistakably anti Trump. I agree. Are you sure? Is it unmistakable? And and I just there was a pile on on me from everyone on that side, you know, anyone that is even one Iota to the right of the dispatch.

Mhmm. To, you know, being like, oh, never trumpers or grifters. And you guys are all gonna actually be rooting for Trump and you love Trump because he helps you get attention and and you’re just as bad. And I just I could tell that this was gonna happen now for the next year and a half And so I just wanted to lay it all out on a piece of paper, which was actually, no, I’m not. You know, we have actual beliefs us when anti Trump, we have red lines.

You know, we are not maneuvering and moving our red line when it’s convenient. And here are mine. And here is what I plan to do. If it does turn out that it is just Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump running against each other, and I will lay that out for you so that next time you try to troll me, you can just come back to this one article and review what I said I would do and what I said I would not do. That’s the backstory.

Well,

it’s interesting, you know, how deeply invested they are in in Rhonda Sandis. I mean, we’ve described dash rule reviews has now become a fan scene for Rhonda Santis and, you know, the piece you’re talking about in case this is, yeah, no one else should run. Yeah.

I’m not being just cheeky. And you can just go if you if you want to punish yourself to, like, they have a a Ron DeSantis tag, you know, which is how I linked to all these articles. I mean, it is it’s insane. I mean, it it is honestly, like, RT has been harsher on Putin during the war effort. Than what national review has been on Ron DeSantis during his times governor.

So Well, I

don’t wanna break their hearts, but I just remind people that two years out, you know, front runners do not always, you know, become president, you know, and ask Fred Thompson or or Rick Perry or

Oh, your boy’s got Walker.

Yeah. Exactly. There’s there’s a lot Mark Lebovitch has a great piece in the Atlantic suggesting that, you know, he might not wear that well when people get to know him. In fact, I’m gonna have Mark on the podcast next week. But it is interesting that we’re two years out and they’re already saying we need to clear the field for this guy who has never been remotely tested on the national stage?

No. So there’s the political element to this, which is like You have no

idea if he’s gonna actually be able to pull this off or not. Right? We’re two hit points. Giving twenty twenty two. We’re clearing the field for somebody and thanksgiving twenty twenty two.

It’s just absurd on its face. Okay? Just just as a political matter. I said this is the next level podcast. Like, this is a calculation for fall of twenty twenty three.

You know, if you wanna start putting the pressure on somebody who feels like they’re being boiler or whatever. Okay. Like, this is what I did. I wrote that article in the Democratic primary about Bloomberg. Right?

Which was, like, okay. You had your chance. You know, you got on the debate stage. Elizabeth Warren Smack down and now you’re just playing a spoiler alert for Bernie go away. Right?

That’s the appropriate time to do this. But to say that Brian Kemp or eight sergeants that are Chris De Nuneau. None of whom are exactly my cup of tea, by the way. So this is not like me being wanting to go work for them or being a fan boy or even saying I vote any of them in a general. I’m not sure that I would.

I probably wouldn’t actually. But they all at least had a Iota of integrity over the last seven years. And it just doesn’t make any sense to say, Donald Trump is toxic. Donald Trump is political poison for the party. Like Donald Trump is a Nazi collaborator, and so what we have to do in order to beat him is to anoint someone that has never criticized him.

Right. A single time, including this week. Yeah.

Including right now, up to the Nazi dinner that happened in his state. A former president had dinner with a Nazi in Ron DeSantis’ state, and he hasn’t had the courage to say anything.

Parrot, not too Nazis.

Yeah. Too hot, please. Too hot. And, you know, there are people there are some foreign Mitch McConnell staff are tweeting saying, like, oh, well, you guys are just trying to bait him in hurt him. And this is bad strategy.

It’s bad strategy for him to engage. I’m like, it’s bad strategy to say, don’t have dinner with Nazis. If you’re a former president, are we sure that’s bad strategy. I don’t think so. I I think that Rhonda Sanchez could just be like, I don’t know.

If I’m president or even as governor, I’m not having any Nazis over to dinner. I I don’t think that’s gonna hurt him that much. I I really don’t. And if it does, I think that that says something deeply to serving about the Republican base. It’s another conversation.

Well, the people complaining about this are based girls

saying, please don’t don’t test Rhonda Santos. Let let’s not poke to find out what what his metal is. How he’s going to hand Let’s protect him. Let’s let’s protect him, then we throw him onto the public stage, and then we’ll find out what he’s I mean, bad strategy, bad politics. So they’re trying to protect him saying

that he, you know, shouldn’t have to engage in any of this. And I guess my point is Okay. I don’t know. Let’s actually see. Right?

And maybe if Trump is so weak, he should not be replaced with somebody that I cut an ad you know, where he’s reading to art of the deal to his baby. I literally, this Ron does Amazon or is in the article if you haven’t launched it. People should go back and rewatch it. I mean, Joe Biden is if he’s the nominee or whoever the Democrat nominee is in twenty twenty four could, like, air this ad in in Arizona. I was just, like, I’m gonna air the ad that Rhonda Sanchez aired.

In, like, unedited in his in his primary. I mean, if if if just if Trump is that toxic, then then shouldn’t somebody who is less tainted by his toxicity, at least be able to try. And all of these guys who claim to be anti Trump, who, you know, all these anti anti trumpers are like, no. No. We need to scare these people off, the people that have had some integrity in order to protect precious little Ron.

And so I I’m like, no. Fuck that. Fuck you. And and criticizing Ron for his cowardice is not helping Trump. It is very early in the process, and and that is why just to demonstrate some credibility, I was like, if it gets to the point, if we get to the point, where it really is a binary choice between Ron and Trump.

And at that point, Ron has not gone full Nazi because I don’t know. I mean, a number of other mag people seems seems at least to be untuned normal and then, like, went down this slide over to nazism. So assuming he doesn’t do that, Okay. You know, then he’s clearly better than the person that tried to end our democracy and people should hold their nose and vote for him in the primary and then go against him. In the general, I Fine.

I will I’m happy to concede that, but that is a calculation for spring of twenty twenty four. Not fucking thanksgiving, and I will not be lectured to by people who have shown absolutely no courage or no balls over the past seven years about what it

means to be an anti chopper. So that that’s my rant. So let’s do something a little bit counterintuitive because I wanna get into some wonky stuff here for a moment and also talk about Georgia. I mentioned this with Dana Millbank yesterday during our podcast. It is remarkable this week to watch what’s going on in in the capital.

And you and I have spent lots of time talking about, you know, Democrats, you know, forming circular firing squads and the various dysfunction of the factions, etcetera, to watch the way they have coalesced behind, you know, Hakim Jeffries and this this new much younger leadership team, you know, in juxtaposition with the absolute gang warfare that’s going on over on the Republican side. I mean, you know, to use the cliches again. You have Republicans in absolute disarray and democrats very much inarray. And I can’t I can’t remember the last time, you know, a party that just lost control of a house was as unified as the democrats are right now, now again, everything that we talk about is temporary. But it but it but it’s worth at least marking that this is kind of an unexpected moment, isn’t it?

I mean, it’s it. And we ought to we ought to

acknowledge it. I think so. And I think it’s a question of whether Jefferies will be a skilled, you know, once Pelosi, etcetera move off stage, right, you know, to to keep that together. But I I think that you know, it it again shows Pelosi strength as a leader compared to the Republican leaders of late. And then I think that, you know, she kind of bestsella successor and have there not be really meaningful objection to it.

It also once again reveals I have plenty of disagreements with some of squads, tactics, and various things. We we went round and round on their tactic around BBB, for example. But most of the time, like, they’ve been kind of team players. Actually. It’s and, you know, there’s this, like, meme on the right that it’s, like, oh, the left is, like, they’re puppets for the squad.

And it’s, like, well, I don’t, you know, there’ve been sort of give and takes. There’s certain things that that Biden’s move left on, but a lot of times they’ve gotten in line. It’s it’s interesting to note

that there’s not like a Rashida Tlaib challenge or anything that I came to offer. So anyway, it’s just worth observing. It is.

Yeah. On the right though, I just I just pulled this up. There’s a group called the House Accountability WarRoom. I started following this monitoring Kevin McArthur 30th. That listed out the concessions that he’s made already to the right in order to get this two hundred eighteen votes who doesn’t have yet.

He’s committed to investigate the January sixth committee and the supposed mistreatment of January sixth attackers. Now I kind of refused to believe that he’s actually gonna do this. I just you can’t be this stupid. Is is it possible and Kevin McCarthy is dumb as a box of rocks but is he really so stupid that he would start the new congress by re litigating January sixth? Yes.

If he does that, I mean, yes. Okay. I mean, honestly, that would be I would feel bad for the Democratic staffers who have to, like, hire lawyers or whatever for this. But besides that, it is an absolute present. It’s like a cake.

Handing to the Democrats if he does that. Okay? He’s also promised to restore Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gossar to speak of our yeah. Speak of our Nick Fuentes problem. You know, Donald Trump headed over to dinner.

Well, let’s get to Nick Monte’s two favorite members of Congress and give them a promotion.

Okay? So we’re getting back into the back with the Nazis. Can I just interject here? Because — Yeah, please. — you know, you you you and I have both both been doing this long enough that there was a time when people on the right would mock resistance Twitter, resistance commentary because, you know, oh, you people are always using words like fascist and not see.

And it was, okay. We need to be a little bit restrained here. That’s what would mean. I thought yesterday was so hilarious. Like, Alex Jones, like, you’re well, this is crazy because you’re not Nazis.

Right? Well, wait. No. Actually, we are.

Yeah. We are. We actually

are Nazis. So I have specialized the

two people that are the most friends with the Nazis give them a promo.

So I’ve exercised as much restraint as I can with with mix success in not comparing everything that’s going on to Adolf Hitler. Right? You don’t wanna you don’t wanna play the Hitler card. You don’t wanna play the Nazi card. You wanna have a daily forecast.

You know, you can’t do a Hitler every week.

No. You can’t do Hitler and it says that what is that law? Is it the moment you Godwin’s

law. Godwin’s law.

Godwin’s law. You know, the first person that that invokes Hitler or Nazis, you know, basically has lost the argument. And so I’ve always kept that in the back of my mind, and there’s Kanye West and Nick twenties and Donald Trump going. No. No.

That’s yeah. Nazi’s tough for the hell going.

Okay. I’ll give the rest of this list quick, but so he’s gonna give a promo to the Nazi diners, MTG and Paul Gossar, and then take off from their committees, Elon Omar, Eric Swalwell, and Adam Schiff So I mean, okay. Then he is gonna look into impeaching secretary of my arcus. We’ll figure out a reason afterwards and Chip Roy is demanding that the freedom cock just gets more power than promoting the agenda. He’s agreed to that.

I mean, that’s This is moronic. In in addition to just a fact, like, here’s where I thought you were going, where where Republicans used to say, hey, the conservatives, the tea party conservatives I mean, they were always nihilistic assholes that turns out. That at least back in the twenty tens, they would pretend that their demands on Baylor were, like, based on some kind of conservative principle. Right? Like, we need to cut spending.

You know, we need to shut down the government to cut spending or, you know, we need this on immigration. Like, none of these demands are even about policy. It’s just about, like, this, like, Twitter live owning. And and

so hundreds laptop. Laptop. Yeah. Why why are you not talking about the laptop? You’re not talking about the laptop?

Tim Miller never talks about the laptop. Just like seeing a laptop. But we’re we’re that’s that’s going to be one of those words that the problem is is that they think this is their magic bullet. And I I think there’s a very real possibility that the term Hunter’s laptop is going to be a is gonna be a punchline

by May. Again, well, Benghazi became a punch line. And Benghazi was a legitimate thing. And some I you know, they made it illegitimate by how many, you know, by, like, your twenty eighth hearing on it. Right?

It’s like, okay. You know? But but it was legitimate. At least, like, the hundred laptop thing, Hunter wasn’t even a government. He’s the kid.

Right? So this is about you think that this is what Was this really what you learned from your sweep in these key senate races, Nevada, New Hampshire, Arizona? Oh, it seems like Georgia. We’ll see you know, Pennsylvania, you think that the voters that voted you out care about investigating the mistreatment of January sixth attackers and call GoStar’s committee assignments and Hunter’s laptop? And are you fucking insane?

Who are they even talking to? It’s just like they’re in this hermetically sealed bubble of Tucker Carlson Show.

That’s exactly what it is. Okay. So you mentioned you mentioned Georgina, of course, I’m out of the prediction business. But I have to say that the Georgia runoff, which is next week, it certainly doesn’t look like the Republicans have gotten their act together down there. I mean Hershel is not, like, rising to the moment.

I mean, look, I anything can happen. I I see the the New York Times has a has a piece of how will Hershel Walker can still win, but Number one, there’s concerns that he’s not campaigning enough. He apparently took five days off during the the holiday. He’s being out spent tremendously. He continues to say incredibly stupid things about werewolves and vampires.

Barack Obama, did you ever watch any of that that that speech that the Obama game? I caught a couple minutes on that. He’s good. That guy’s good. If they could just

if you could just change his name to Barry Solato and put on a mustache and run again, that would that might help the democrats a bit a little bit. It

is interesting that we’re also in this this little interesting moment where Donald Trump is too toxic. Joe Biden’s approval ratings are too low. And so the most effective surrogate in the country right now is Barack Obama. Yeah. And he’s he’s got the juice back.

He does.

You could tell he’s having fun out there. He likes doing it. He

was actually funny. He’s loose. He’s just he just carves up Hershel Walker. So there’s gonna be a lot of Agita. If Hershel Walker goes down and the Democrats get fifty one seats, all of this sort of bad mood among Republicans, I think, you know, you have to ratchet it up a couple notches.

Don’t you? What’s gonna happen there?

Well, I think that it’s baked in that he’s

gonna lose

actually. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m to ratchet. I don’t think that Republicans expect that he’s gonna win.

I don’t I don’t get the sense that they do. And, you know, he needed to have Frank kept dragging across the line. And that’s really what he needed was to win on the original action. I just wanna say, this is I made a I made a club on our other podcast where I said that the primary was Saturday. I got it mixed up.

The SEC championship game is on Saturday, and the primary is on Tuesday. And in my brain, I was just thinking with these two big Georgia events, and I transpose them. So if you’re in Georgia, please don’t go vote on Saturday, go on Tuesday when the actual election is. You know, look, the early vote you can overanalyze, it’s interesting that about five percent of the early vote is people that didn’t vote in the midterm. Then over half of that group is under thirty.

So that doesn’t necessarily mean everything. But what it does mean is you can just already tell that there is this energy on the left about okay. Let’s finish the job here and and about shutting down this about Hershel and turning up for warnock. So you got that. And then you got the people that I wrote about in Georgia, these camp warnock voters that they’re they had a they had a brother group, you know, which was people that were Camp reluctant Walker voters.

Right? And are those people really gonna show, you know, for this midterm, people that like, are your classic, you know, Buckhead Republican types that that didn’t really like Hershey Walker in the first place. He embarrassed them and, you know, did like they did then Kemp did a good job. Like, are they gonna go out and vote again? For Hershel, just stand alone.

And he said Jeff Duncan said he couldn’t do that. Lieutenant Governor is kind of the stand in for him, you know, said he wouldn’t do it. And so I think that they’re gonna be, you know, not a not a million Jeff Duncan’s, but one or two percent. Right? So to me, I’m also not in the prediction business.

I’ve been bad at it, but just it does not it feels like, you know, it it it’s it’s going the other way. And we’re not just one last thing on this. Black deserves credit has just run a really strong campaign. And the contrast between him and Abrahams, and I wrote about this in the article, but it’s just a good lesson for Democrats. Is is him and Abrahams, I don’t think a disagree on anything.

Policy wise. I mean, maybe there’s one issue that you could find, you know, if you went down an issue list. But but WarMax campaign had this brand and this vibe and this energy of if you’re a suburban swing voter, if you’re somebody used to be a Republican, you can trust me. I’m bipartisan. I’ll work with Republicans when I need to.

You know, I haven’t gone fully woke or whatever. You know, I’m a pastor. I’m a guy that you can feel good about. While at the same time, you know, because he grabbed onto, you know, key issues that, like student loan debt has energized, the younger and African American base of the Democratic Party. So, Warrick has run a really good campaign, you know, in a state still a tough state for Democrats.

I mean, it was, you know, they hadn’t won it until twenty twenty. Right? So it’s not as if the all these Republicans magically disappeared. And and Stacy Abrams lost by nine or whatever

it was. So big credit to him on the type of campaign that he’s trying to appeal to these crossover voters and also energize the base. You can do both. Yeah.

Just briefly to underline the point that you’re you’re making. A runoff election is different than a regular election because there’s only one thing on the ballot. So You can imagine people who would get up and go to the polls because there’s a lot of other things they wanna vote for. They wanna vote for the governor. They wanna vote for Congress.

They wanna vote for the state legislature. Or the state attorney general. This election, there’s only one reason to get up, get in your car and drive to the polls, which is to vote for senate. So if you are a soft Republican, you could imagine that person going into the polls on election day in November, but then thinking, do I wanna go through all of this for Hershel Walker? Just for Hershel Walker.

Knowing that the control of the senate is not up. And again, it may not be ten million votes. It may not be a million votes, but one or two percent to go, you know what? You know, like Jeff Duncan said, but he stood in line for two hours. He’s he’s the Republican lieutenant governor, gets into the voting booth, looks at it goes, I just can’t do this.

I’m just not. I mean, it’s like, why? All of the rationalizations for voting for Hershel Walker, they just have give after Okay. So since we’re getting a little bit wonky here, let’s talk about Michigan, South Carolina, and Georgia. A lot of speculation about what the Democrats are gonna do to change their primary schedule.

I mean, it’s a big deal. Demoding Iowa and maybe displacing New Hampshire as the first in the country, Tell me what do you think is going on? How how it’s gonna end up?

Well, I mean, I think Iowa bound to them. They

played themselves at the way they’re doing those last

caucus. So I think they were our our screw they made it easy. The democrats wanted to do this because just the diversity issue of Iowa and Hampshire Bank first and having all white people — This is ridiculous. — and so — Yeah. Which was ridiculous on his on his face, and then I only made it easy for them to to move it.

So I do love the small state thing. So this has a personal you know, implication for me because I wanna go out there and and cover the stuff for the bulwark. I miss it. I loved going to New Hampshire. I loved the fact that they, you know, they had these know, that the people there actually cared.

I was kinda hoping that they would replace it with another small state. I thought, Joe Biden’s there from Delaware,

I

was already planning out my summer next year. You know, you got Rehoboth Beach. Charles, you might not know about this. Gay Beach, they’re in Delaware. We got a Gay Beach.

You got there are there black people in Wilmington. You know, it’s like American miniature, but Delaware didn’t make the cut joke. And I guess they thought that they would feel too biased or whatever. So they’re pushing Michigan and Georgia, I guess, as their replacements. And

I

think that’s fine. Lose a little bit. Yes. The South Carolina stay. We don’t know what the order is quite yet.

It seems like there’s been some Jonathan Martin’s reporting. Was that Michigan was gonna be first out seems like there’s some reporting that that may be Biden want South Carolina to be first. So TBD on that, I I think you lose a little bit of having the big of having a bigger state, you know, having a more of a media market campaign. But I’ve not spent a ton of time in Michigan, so I’m also excited to hear from our Michigan listeners. If it does end up being Michigan, where to hang out in the summer?

Can I go to the UP? Have you ever been to Traverse City? I don’t know. I could see a little Michigan tour in my future. It’s easy for you, Charles.

Could drive over, maybe we could have a little little bulwark event in Ann Arbor or something?

That would be very

cool. No.

Let’s say you. So actually, the the western coast on Lake Michigan in summer is absolutely gorgeous. Now, you know, you know how would Lake Michigan picture it. Wisconsin, we have the western shore on the east side of the lake. The beaches are completely different.

I don’t know what it’s the prevailing winds. They have these beautiful, gorgeous beaches in places like Sagatok and and others in no towns. New Holland that that are have no relationship to the coastline of Wisconsin, which is a little bit, you know, rocky or a little bit rougher. So, yes, summer in Michigan, especially on the Lake Michigan Coast, is really special. Really good I highly recommend.

Never done that. I

decided to give that a try. The other thing I think that is worth noting that I don’t know if this is intentional or not. But the Democrats, the most liberal part of the Democratic electorate, is college educated whites. Okay? And so demographically, just making this change to to Georgia emphasized in South Carolina, Michigan.

New Hampshire is a little bit different because you had you had this independent big independent vote, which I really didn’t really have because there were caucuses. So there wasn’t this crossover vote. So you did that in New Hampshire, kinda is, like, the one place where swing voters, like, actually make a difference in primaries, which I think is is mostly a good thing. It does at times, led to some weird outcomes like Pepsi Canada. And Donald Trump.

So not always a good thing, but mostly a good thing. So in some ways, I think that they’re moderating a little bit as well. You know, the states that have importance and giving more power to the older voters of color, which which are a little more culturally conservative. Going to some states, you know, in the south, in Georgia and South Carolina that that are gonna have, you know, these, you know, Georgia in particular, these big Atlanta metro Democrats. Who who kind of who are a little bit different than than their counterparts, you know, who show up to Cox’s in Iowa.

So in some ways, I think that is that’s good about it is could have some moderating impact on on the type the makeup of voters in those important early states.

Oh, well, have a great weekend. Are you gonna be watching the World Cup?

I’m not. And there’s an ad on this podcast for another World Cup podcast, so I would never impug one of the advertisers, but I gotta tell you, Charlie, I I can’t even it’s so boring. It’s just unbelievable how boring. I know that whatever this is made honest, stereotypical, ugly American or whatever. But I’ve tried.

I put in my effort. I mean, literally, I guess, in one of the games yesterday, the tie breaker went to the team with the less yellow cards. I mean, like, this is, like, a kindness points. I mean, there’s zero zero. So, no, I will be I’ll be suffering through probably George’s beat down a bell issue in the FCC championship on Saturday.

And I’m I’m fully into I’m fully into the basketball season. Me I took the kid to Saint Mary’s New Mexico game. I’m just I’m just getting deep on basketball right now, and you can wake me up when the World Cup gets interesting. Well, you need to

wake me up when the NFL season’s over as a packer france. I am I am desperately looking for a sort of alternative. And I and I haven’t I haven’t found it quite yet. So I I am open to it. However, for the and again, I’m a big fan of the US team.

However so ninety plus ninety plus nine plus whatever other stoppage time there was for a grand total of one goal. I just I don’t know what it is. Highlight my sports where they score points, but that’s just me. I’m I’m maybe

not gonna lie.

Grand. Give me a little action a little bit. Hey. Have a great weekend. You have

a great weekend as

well, Charlie. It’s good to be with you. Alright. Well, we will talk next week sometime. And thank you all for listening to this weekend’s Bulwark podcast.

I’m Charlie Sykes. We’ll be back on Monday, and we’ll do this all over again.

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