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Tim Miller: Tennessee’s Idiocracy

April 7, 2023
Notes
Transcript

The Tennessee GOP lives in such a bubble, they thought it was a good idea to expel two Black legislators, who’ve now become superstars. Plus, the GOP can’t pivot from punitive abortion laws, DeSantis is fighting about the fight, and Trump’s election criminality. Tim Miller joins Charlie Sykes for the weekend pod.

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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:08

    Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast on Charlie Sykes. It is Good Friday, so a blessed Easter for all of you. And because it is Friday, I am joined by my
  • Speaker 2
    0:00:18

    colleague, Tim Miller from the West Coast. Good morning, Tim. Glad to be back in the Friday slot Charlie Sykes Easter weekend, everybody. Don’t have much to talk about, you know, not a lot happening in the news. Maybe we can just, I don’t know, discuss Easter egg hunt strategies or something.
  • Speaker 2
    0:00:33

    We’ve had these conversations before about the weirdness of Friday
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:36

    is when you sit down on a Friday morning and you look back on the week and then you go, wow, that was this week. So here we are. Friday, three days after the former president of the United States was arrested red his Miranda rights. That was this week. That was this week.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:53

    For all the people, like, what does this mean for twenty twenty four? Do you know that that’s already not at the top of the new site anymore, which tells you something about the times that we live in. Look, I wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about what happened. Get your view on the indictment.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:08

    And where you think we’re going on all of this because I think that we have a an interesting disagreement within our family about all of this. But can we just start with what happened in Tennessee last night. Let’s just play a little sound bite from former Tennessee Representative Justin Jones, one of the two African Americans who was expelled from that body for engaging in a peaceful protest over a gun violence. This is what he said yesterday before the expulsion vote.
  • Speaker 3
    0:01:41

    Thank you, mister speaker. The world is watching Tennessee. The world is watching Tennessee. Because what is happening here today is a forest of democracy. What is happening here today a situation in which the jury has already publicly announced the verdict.
  • Speaker 3
    0:02:04

    Just yesterday, the house speaker took to National News to condemn us and call for expulsion before any evidence was presented before any trial happened. And so what we see today is just a spectacle. What we see today is a Lynch mob assembled to not Lynch me, but our democratic process but it will not stand because don’t lie. You
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:31

    can live forever. So where do we start with this, Tim Miller?
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:37

    Ma’am, because
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:37

    I was watching this in real time. Yesterday, while I was doing the co while I was just show. And and and there’s a lot to be outraged about it, but but what really struck me was just the profound stupidity of the whole thing. The stupidity it burns. The fact that the Republicans decided that they were gonna make martyrs of these three representatives.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:59

    They kicked out the two African Americans. They didn’t come up with enough votes for the white woman. These were all very, very impressive individuals. They are quite eloquent. And they were utterly obscure before yesterday.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:10

    I mean, when you are a member of the minority party of the lower House of the Tennessee legislature, you are not a big deal. Your voice is not amplified. So what do Republicans do? They say, hold my beer. We’re gonna make these people into stars by stripping them of their seats.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:28

    And of course, then disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters. And I so helped me with — Yeah. — this Tim What was the thinking? What did Republicans think they were accomplishing? What did they do?
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:40

    How did they imagine that this made them look good, how did they imagine that this would advance their agenda? What’s going on here other than idiosyncrasies on steroids?
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:50

    Yeah. Well, there’s that. I think that there are a few things going on together. You know, I I think that obviously you’d be wrong to not just start with the fact that I think that a
  • Speaker 4
    0:03:59

    lot of the motivation for this comes from just these members of the Tennessee House seeing a changing state, a changing country, comes to when it comes to race, when it comes to ideology, and wanting to fight back. Right? And being in a little bubble where it is okay to make you know, these kinds of derogatory comments about the people that are representing Nashville, people that are moving into the state, the younger folks, that are in the big metros in Nashville and Memphis. And — Yeah. — I saw the
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:28

    interview with the speaker. He had a couple of discuss interviews. You mentioned in your in your newsletter about about comparing this to the what they did to the January sixteenth election, which you could talk about later. But I the one that I was thinking of was about how he was saying that his caucus the middle of his caucus, I he used the Kevin McCarthy defense. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:45

    The beating heart of my caucus wanted They didn’t want censure. They wanted to expel these people. Oh, why? Why? Because they have this angst they have this bigotry about the fact that they want to put down, you know, the the younger black representatives, the people that they don’t feel like percent real Tennessee.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:06

    I think that, you know, you get into this bubble that in the good old boys club where this kind of stuff is okay to say. I mean, I was shocked. Did you see. There’s this video of the state rep who is, like, speaking to Justin Pearson. I did.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:19

    He sounds like Kevin Spacey in a time to kill. Like, you know, like, the evil racist southern lawyer parody. And he sounds like a parody is up there going. That’s why you’re standing there, you know, because that tension tantrum that you threw for attention. And will will you getting it now?
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:34

    And it’s like, you could just tell you because he did everything but calm boy. And he’s like pointing at him and mocking him with this accent. It’s like, how do you think that this is a winner? Well, I can answer that because it is a winner in his bubble, in his community. And so I just think that that is the first thing here.
  • Speaker 2
    0:05:51

    The other thing that you just have to mention is there is this comfort that has grown within the party on anti democratic actions. Right? I mean, there’s the line about the authoritarian impulse, like, that kind of exists within everybody. It exists within might have first read about the last million how to have there’s like a totalitarian impulse at times within socialism. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:11

    There’s this authoritarian impulse that you have to fight through norms and institutions. Well, the impulse has moved to authoritarian action. Donald Trump was we saw from him and laid up to January sixth All this stuff trickles down. All this stuff trickles down, like, once it becomes okay to act on that authoritarian impulse, like, you shouldn’t be surprised when people start acting on it. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:32

    When there aren’t internal forces to rein it in and to stop it. And we saw that there aren’t within the Republican Party right now. And so you know, I think that this this notion twenty years ago, you know, during, you know, the nineties, I think that, like, this notion that you would have said, oh, we are going to cancel not cancel seems like not strong enough of a word that we’re gonna eliminate. We’re gonna eliminate three members only two, it turns out, just the two black guys, not not Gloria Johnson, older white ones. We’re gonna eliminate it, like, make two members and have these two districts who voted to represent them.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:06

    You know, we’re gonna kick them out of the body. So these two districts don’t have representatives right now for the crime of just speaking out, and that would have been preposterous. Right? But once you open the door to these sort of anti democratic things, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get you get the idiosyncrasies version of it down at the lower levels. I think you’re right.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:25

    And you connect
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:26

    the dots here that what you have here is the Is the GOP ed at the the beating heart? What the base really demands you know, and they and they want vengeance. They want retaliation. They want vindictiveness. That’s number one.
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:37

    Number two. This bubble that they live in, this, you know, medically sealed world, including, you know, the gerrymandatory district, where they think that this is what you have to do. And they lose any perspective of how they look to anyone from the outside. And then on top of that, you supercharge that. With giving these people a super majority.
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:57

    And that’s where you really get to it. Yep. Because there is that moment where you’re sitting around going, oh, you know, we have a super majority. What are we gonna do with if not now, we know when. If we don’t use the power when we have it, we can do this.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:09

    Therefore, we will do this. And by the way, I think that’s a danger in a lot of States, including Wisconsin, which we can get to in a moment. So let’s just back up a minute what these three did. And I was really, by the way, struck by how eloquent they were, how calm they were, when they tell their story, the teacher who talks about what it was like being in a school, when there was a school shooting. She was the one they didn’t have enough votes to expel, but the others Pearson and Jones are very, very, very impressive young men and they are quite young men.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:41

    So what did they do? Yeah. After the mass shooting in Nashville where three small children were murdered, three adults were murdered, There were protests. There were peaceful protests at the capital where young people primarily came and demanded action. The Republican legislature apparently so arrogant that they never let the minority speak.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:04

    There was an interesting little sound bite where normally the speaker just basically says that we have seventy plus votes. We’re not even gonna let you speak on the floor. So what happened yesterday was unusual that you even had Democrats allowed to speak. Yeah. So they weren’t allowed to bring up anything about gun violence.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:18

    They weren’t allowed to talk about it. They were gabbled down. So what did they do? The three of them, stood in the well of the house. And there, you know, there were people in the galleries who were chanting.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:28

    You know, they joined in the chanting. One of them had a megaphone. That’s all they did. Didn’t beat anybody. They didn’t break any windows.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:33

    They didn’t poop on the podium or anything. No police officers were injured in this particular thing. There was no tasing. So, this demonstration came after that deadly covenant shooting just a few days earlier. Now, technically, it’s true.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:48

    This is a violation of house rules into corner. You know, that happened. Okay? It was a peaceful demonstration, but it violated the rules. Now, In a rational world, the good old boys could have find them.
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:03

    Right? Where they centered them? Where they could have written them a tough letter of reprimand or maybe they could have just ignored the whole thing and maybe talked about the dead kids. But instead, they rush ahead with resolutions to spell the elected representatives and disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters in two of the state’s biggest cities.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:23

    And
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:24

    that’s where I’m going the stupidity of this, that they’re doubling down, and now these three are going to be everywhere. Right? I mean, they’re gonna be on television. They’re gonna be on social media. They’re gonna raise money.
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:39

    They have created superstars because they decided they were going to murder them. And that’s where I said on morning, Joe, this morning, I just wish I was in the room just to listen to how they explained this. And whether they thought that this was smart, whether they thought this was going to help defend the second amendment rights. I mean, what’s going on there other than just that reptilian id let loose because you have a super majority and you can do it. I mean, look, they’re in a hermetically field bubble where they’re told
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:09

    that they’re right all the time. I I mean, they’re they’re in another universe. We’re not that far from the Parkland shooting. Right? After the Parkland shooting, the Florida legislature, which I guess wasn’t a super majority, but was a very heavy Republican majority came together.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:23

    And they asked some compromised laws. You toughened up some school security. Red flag laws got passed there. You know, you did what reasonable legislators do, you know, maybe that wasn’t the perfect policy, wasn’t what, you know, every single person would have wanted that, you know, you made incremental progress to say, hey, I we need to just try to do something. In Tennessee because of the super majority, they don’t feel like that they have to do that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:45

    And that and it actually, you know, starts to grind on them. That they think that these presumptuous, you know, young black man — Yeah. — up to the young black man — Yeah. — up to the young man. Yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:55

    Right? Like, like, one to talk, you wanna something else when they got a plan. They got a plan. We’re gonna arm teachers. We’re gonna arm teachers who we don’t trust to to determine what books that they allowed their students to read, but they can you know, bring an AR into the classroom to defend the kids.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:09

    If a school shooter come in, the whole thing is preposterous, but they’re not being challenged. There’s no one internal challenging. And why is that? Okay? Well, two things.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:17

    One that we’ve talked about at NOSIM, the extremism within the Republican Party that a lot of the more reasonable voices have been pushed out over the past eight years. That’s one reason that there’s nobody in the room, you know, asking why are we doing this? The other reason that you mentioned is this gerrymandering. Jerry mandering, I think sometimes can be overstated as an issue because we’re Jerry mandering ourselves, you know, in a lot of ways, sometimes, like, the reason why the numbers aren’t fair is because of the way that we’ve all self selected. But in certain places, it is really bad.
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:45

    And Tennessee, they jerrymanned themselves a super majority. I didn’t realize as Tennessee is not a swing state. I, you know, don’t pay as close attention, you know, to the congressional districts as I do other places. Did you know that Nashville does not have a Democratic representative the county, National Davidson County, went sixty five percent for Joe Biden. They carved Davidson County up into three districts.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:08

    You know, that go out then into rural Tennessee. So Nashville, despite being the capital, despite being the biggest city, the most popular city, doesn’t have a representative. Like, that let’s just be honest. They don’t have representation. And Nashville.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:18

    They’ve decided to cut Nashville up so that, you know, rural folks — Yeah. — represented. K. Same thing happened at the state legislative level. Just this last round, you know, they cut through.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:27

    Now the districts are smaller. You have a few national representatives. You have a few Memphis, a few Knoxville, but they cut them all up such a way that they gained five more seats, and they literally drew themselves a super maturely. Right? And so, okay.
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:40

    Again, had they not drawn themselves super majority. Had they forced themselves to at least communicate with, you know, people who represented suburban NOx, you know, like have reasonable folks around. Then maybe this wouldn’t happen. Yeah.
  • Speaker 1
    0:13:52

    So,
  • Speaker 2
    0:13:53

    you know, you add the the structural issues that they’ve put in place, the anti democratic structural issues, you add in the overt bigotry, you add in the, you know, you can just sense their, you know, cultural nervousness right over the fact that, like, they’re losing, you know, something that they think that Tennessee should be, or they projected should be in their head, the old MAGA mindset. And this is what you get. You end up in the wake of this school shooting like having your big action be, oh, we’re gonna arm teachers and we’re gonna kick out two people out of the legislature. I I don’t I do think the stupidity of burns early, but I think for me, the more acute thing is that that’s a medium term issue. In the short term, you know, they have the nuts to use the poker term.
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:32

    Right? So maybe that’s another reason why they don’t care that it’s stupidity. Like, they’re not worried about it. Tennessee is not a swing state. You know, Tennessee is not gonna go below.
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:41

    Yeah. But it’s no
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:42

    longer just a Tennessee issue in this place around the country. Sure. And I guess this goes to that larger question of Is the Republican Party just gonna continue doubling down on the crazy and the extreme, by the way, before we move off of Tennessee? It is amazing. What has happened to Tennessee and to the Republican Party in Tennessee.
  • Speaker 1
    0:15:00

    I mean, this is this is a Republican party that used to, you know, give us people like Howard Baker, Bill Friss, Lamar Alexander, Bob Quaker. Now we have people like Marshall Blackburn, Bill Hagarty, and the good old boys that you saw legends. By the way, the picture of the house, it looks like something out of nineteen forty seven and just in terms of the demographics of it. The whole thing felt like it was out of forty seven. It really did feel that way.
  • Speaker 1
    0:15:24

    Okay. So We didn’t, like, set
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:25

    it up. Let’s just set it up for one more second. Sure. Like, that they voted to expel the two black people. Right.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:31

    They they did not expel Gloria Johnson.
  • Speaker 1
    0:15:34

    Real name of Jimmie is You said the stupidity of burns. Like, for me, it’s like, what What are you doing? They planned this out so carefully. You could just not
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:45

    paint a more caricature version of racist Southern, like, Republicans. I know. And there’s nobody to tell them to stop. But so anyway, I wanted to focus on the on the substance of this first because the substance is so bad. I just like the optics of doing that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:15:59

    I was texting with a friend who had worked in Tennessee politics. And I was like, you know, it was kind of like when they don’t say gay people first back to in Florida where I texted and friends. And I was like, is this really happening? Like, are they really gonna expel these people and they realize how dumb it looks? They’re like, yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:13

    They’re really gonna do it. I’m like, are you sure. And just in my head, I keep being like, cooler heads I’ve got to prevail. Right? This is too stupid.
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:20

    It’s too overtly racist. There’s no way. And then then not only do they do it, but they let the white lady off the hook. I mean, it’s just like, oh my god. Anyway,
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:29

    sorry. I was on with somebody who is, I think, overthinking it. And I think, by the way, there’s way too much overthinking going on. We can talk about that at some point. Yeah.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:36

    We were saying, may want maybe this is part of this Machiavellian plot that they’ve come up with just so chaos. And and I’m listening and he went on blah blah blah for a very long time. And I’m thinking, you know, nobody in that chamber knows how to spell Machiavelli. I mean, these are not great genius this year. This is Charlie Sykes.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:54

    Host of the Bulwark podcast. Thanks so much for listening to this show where every day we try to help you make sense of the political world we live in and remind you that you are not crazy one. If you enjoyed this podcast, I’m sure you’re going to find my free morning shots newsletter, a great companion for understanding what is happening to us. And every morning as I prepare for this show, I share with my readers what’s trending and what to pay attention to, including my latest writing and essays on the events of the day. To sign up for my free morning shots newsletter, go to the Bulwark dot com slash morning shots That’s the Bulwark dot com slash morning shots, and I look forward to seeing you in your inbox soon.
  • Speaker 5
    0:17:37

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    0:18:00

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    0:18:17

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    0:18:43

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    0:18:57

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    0:18:58

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  • Speaker 1
    0:19:09

    So this takes place the same week. That Republicans suffered this really catastrophic defeat in Wisconsin, a swing state, where most elections are decided by twenty thousand votes the liberal candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court won by eleven points more than two hundred thousand votes. I mean, it was a landslide. And I think it’s pretty obvious what the major issues were. It was dominated by abortion.
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:32

    But maybe a close second, you know, concerned about election denialism and democracy see. You had Dan Kelley, who was the the great conservative hope, who’d actually been advising the Republican Party on the FATE Collector scheme. But now, who cares you have this huge repudiation of the Republicans on abortion, on election denialism and democracy you’re seeing. Tremendous, really alarming erosion of Republican conservative votes in the suburbs juiced up Democratic base. The numbers in the WOW counties were way down.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:04

    The conservative loss, the so called BOW counties, Brown County, Out of Gaming County, Winnebago County. But what’s really interesting to me is the fact that there’s no indication that the Republican Party in Wisconsin or any place else is about to pivot away from the things that are killing them. In fact, if anything, they are at ramming speed on punitive abortion bills, they continue to embrace Donald Trump, which means they’re gonna spend the next two years on election denialism and sedition and having to deal with all of that. And on the gun issue, and we haven’t even talked about sort of the underlying substance of all of this. The Tennessee story underlines that this is a party that is not even willing to seriously have a discussion or a debate about rational guns.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:56

    And I’m sorry, I know that it’s kind of the schtick here to be dark and negative, but this is an amazing moment where the Republicans are basically saying, yeah, we are stuck on stupid. We’re not gonna be moving on. And we’re gonna keep doing this shit over and over again. Can I just read you something? Yeah.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:13

    Because it’s good Friday and and I know that there’s, you know, Axios did a a kind of a run down on the GOP’s epic losing streak. First, Two thousand eighteen House elections were disaster for Republicans. Democrats had a net gain of forty seats, largest gains since post watergate. Then Trump lost the presidency read. Next, Republicans blew two runoff elections in Georgia, lost control of the United States senate.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:40

    Number four, then, Republicans won the legal fight over abortion as Trump appointed justices as help ensure that reversal of Roe versus Wade, but the GOP lost series of political battles over afterwards, a reflection of polls indicating that most American support abortion rights, GOP state legislatures have shown no sign of slowing their push to enact stricter bans, etcetera, generating the political backlash. Number five, Republicans put high profile election deniers on the twenty twenty two mid term ballot in key races only to see several loose winnable elections. Number six, Republicans blew a chance to control the senate by nominating too many hard to elect in a swing state. Trump faxed similes — Mhmm. — their hopes of a big house majority were erased for the same reason.
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:23

    Number seven. Just this week, progressive democrats trialed in two of this year’s most consequential election in Chicago. And then in Wisconsin, Democrat backed Janet Protosayowitz, flipped the state Supreme Court to liberals in a landslide number nine. Trump is driving an agenda dominated by vengeance and victory them hooded diverting Republicans from the inflation and crime centered messages that helped them in the midterms. So reality check Trump, if anything, is stronger and more likely.
  • Speaker 2
    0:22:52

    We’re tired of all the winning. Yeah, Charles. Well,
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:54

    this is my point as you begin and then you say, okay, now extrapolate forward given what happened in Wisconsin and how you’re seeing Republicans act in Tennessee. And it’s basically they’re looking at all this environment going, yeah, this is fine. Give us more of all. Yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:09

    They’re staring down the barrel. The beatings will continue until morale improves. Yeah. Exactly. Right.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:14

    So I’ve got kind of a mix take on this. My first thought, which is a little bit less Gidi for our Democratic listeners, which I’ll start with, which I think kind of explains all this, is it goes back to this structural conversation. Right? Like, we do have a structure that is allowing a minority party to punch above its weight, both in the electoral college, but also in the Senate. And so since we’re looking ahead to twenty twenty four, The Senate map for Democrats is just awful.
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:39

    Right? And they’ve got incumbent senators up in these in Montana and and Ohio and West Virginia, these very red states you know, we’ll see if any of them can hang on or if all of them even still run-in the case of Mansion. So, you know, the Republicans might very well almost certainly, frankly, will gain in the senate in twenty twenty four just based on yeah. You would think so just based on these structural matters even if they keep doing the stupidest possible stuff. And so okay.
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:03

    Maybe. So then, right, so then it’s hard to reinforce change. Right? Like, for the party to really decide, okay, we need to change you know, they would need to believe that they lost, which many of their voters don’t, about twenty twenty. They’ve been convinced it was stolen.
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:14

    Right. And, like, the losses would need to be so clear cut is to shape them. Right? Like, what made the Democratic party change? You know, and the biggest ideological shift that they made was between eighty eight and ninety two when Clinton ran and that was three landslide elections.
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:29

    Right? Like, that’s not what we’re in. So I think that part of that there’s part of the structural reason why the Republicans are kind of keeping going along to get along. That set. The other side of his coin is like, it would be so easy for them to fix it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:40

    I mean, it would just be so easy. If they just hit their own Trump overboard, and just had stuck with, like, I don’t know, twenty week abortion ban or whatever they were pushing, you know, ten years ago. It’s just because of the nature of our cyclical politics, because of inflation, because of an eighty two year old incumbent president, like, there would be a lot of reason for optimism on the Republican side and yet they have these two albatrosses. Donald Trump and his election conspiracies and pushing these very early, very extreme, six week, no exception abortion. Yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:12

    We’re not even talking about this because so much happened this week. But just this week, Ron DeSantis passes a six week abortion ban and constitutional carry so called constitutional carry, you know, which means you can just carry around to gap without having to get a license. Yeah. I know. And so how do you go into Wisconsin?
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:27

    You know, go into Georgia, go into Arizona in twenty twenty four and say, hey, we’re gonna be pushing a direct conian six week abortion ban with, you know, maybe we’ll throw a, you know, Texas style bounty hunter on top of it. And we’re either gonna have Trump or we’re gonna have somebody that’s a Trump clone who talks about how much they love Trump. The math gets very, very hard for them. And, you know, Wisconsin and and Michigan? These are states that Trump won in twenty sixteen.
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:53

    Time and again, they’ve rejected. Now, Ron Johnson is the exception. To this. So there is one exception in Wisconsin. Michigan has just swept to the feet, you know.
  • Speaker 2
    0:25:59

    Not this way. Yeah. We could talk about that. Don’t you don’t need to rub it in. Okay, Charlie?
  • Speaker 2
    0:26:03

    They’ve had a full sweep get out the broom in Michigan. You have the number of states that Republicans can win, you know, becomes dwindling. So that is, I think, that they rose colored glasses side of this thing for Democrats. I’m, you know, you can over read these supreme court elections, but a two hundred thousand persons swamping I just don’t know how you can look at that and say, okay, what we really need to do is double down on election dot an iolism and six week abortion bans. I just don’t think that’s what the people at Wisconsin are looking for.
  • Speaker 1
    0:26:30

    Okay. So you are our superstar political consultant here. And in politics, there are pivots you can make. There are ways you change your message. There are ways that you respond.
  • Speaker 1
    0:26:40

    There’s plenty of time between April of twenty twenty three and November of twenty twenty four. To fix these problems. Sure. But I don’t think they can for the reasons that we’ve been discussing because of this hermetically sealed bubble they’re in, because, in fact, they’re held hostage, by the extreme elements of their base because they cannot break free of Donald Trump. So is there any indication?
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:04

    Is there any prospect, the Republicans will wake up and go, you know, we really have to fix our messaging on abortion. We really have to do something about that. I mean, yeah, they may Here in Wisconsin, they tried to the assembly tried to pass an amendment to that eighteen forty nine ban that that would have added exceptions for rape and incest And the Milton Pro lifers shot it down, and the Senate said it wouldn’t take it up, so they had nothing going into the election. That’s not gonna change between now and the next year. If Trump is the nominee, it’s gonna be all grievance all the time, litigating twenty twenty.
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:40

    It’s going to be all about election denialism. I don’t see them. Taking more moderate positions on guns. Any of these things, and to your point, they’re watching Pennsylvania Michigan, Wisconsin slipping further and further away, you know, perhaps, you know, in Georgia, Georgia, Arizona, there was once a time when Colorado was in play for them, who knows what’s gonna happen in places like North Carolina and Virginia as well. So I mean, there is a playbook.
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:11

    This is the thing, and it’s not a playbook.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:13

    It’s probably that a lot of our listeners would like. I mean, if you just look at what Brian Kemp and Glenn Youngkin did. And even DeSantis DeSantis when he ran in the midterm. Let’s keep in mind. He didn’t talk about Trump that much.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:24

    Remember, Trump kinda knew he was gonna run against him. And so, you know, he didn’t have to do the election denial thing because Trump will head one Florida. And then if you look at Kemp in Georgia, who ran away from Ron DeSantis when he ran in in Florida, you know, at that time the, you know, abortion bill was, you know, much more in the middle of the road, right, than a six week a abortion ban of of a popular opinion. You know, they focused on these other issues. Right?
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:47

    Like schools, economy, COVID, inflation. Like these were winners, right, for Republicans in a number of key states and a blowout winner, really, in Georgia and Florida. And yet they moved completely away from that. Maybe that’s not tenable international environment because of the nature of a presidential campaign. It’s just different than the nature of state campaign.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:07

    I understand that. But the fact that there’s no one out there trying to recruit Brian Kemp or go in the Young Kemp into this race and to say, hey, maybe somebody should run on it’s trying to move away from Trump and, you know, maybe we should only have a twenty week abortion ban and oh, by the way, I’m gonna focus on the economy. And getting better schools and, you know, time to time, I’ll work with that, probably that person would lose that the fact that no one is even trying that attempt. I just think shows how deep inside their own belly button, the Republican consultant classes, and how just scared they are still of their own voters in Donald Trump. So
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:43

    let’s talk about the Donald Trump indictment which did take place only a few days ago.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:47

    Right. Are you sure that was a week? I don’t I don’t I can do you have a gear calendar out that you guys swear to god? We we talked about this last week.
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:54

    I double checked it. Okay. He did his quasi curp walk on Tuesday. And of course, there’s a division of opinion about how strong the diaper is, whether it helps and whether it hurts him. You know, our colleague Amanda Carpenter has a great piece in the bulwark today where she connects the dots and and essentially says, don’t get lost in the weeds here because there is a connective tissue that links together everything that’s happening in Georgia with the Department of Justice and in New York, which is they all involve Donald Trump’s election criminality.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:26

    And I think this is really a good point all of the things that he’s done in order to try to influence elections, corrupt elections, overturned elections, from trying to, you know, extort and even going back to, you know, the first impeachment. And I listened to all of the debates from all of the pockets going back and forth from, you know, you who were celebrating with mimosas, I believe, the night of us. Other people who decided that they were going to Nudhons, sat cloth, and ashes I’m sorry, I just don’t see how thirty four felony indictments with pending indictments coming from Georgia and the Department of Justice actually or anything other than really bad news for the Republican Party. Maybe good news short term for Donald Trump and the base. But you wanna talk about a nightmare scenario for them because maybe we’re just overthinking this.
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:18

    The guy is toxicly unpopular. And it’s hard to imagine that all of these indictment and Perpwalks and arraignment and maybe mugshots are going to convince large number of swing voters in these swinging states to go hey, I didn’t support him before, but now I really kinda like the idea of Trump two point o. Okay. Where do you come down on all of this?
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:43

    Yeah. I mean, you and I are aligned on this. And again, I just think it shows a complete lack of imagination among the Republican consultant class. There’s a handful of them left that hateless into this podcast. So, you know, take my advice for what it’s worth.
  • Speaker 2
    0:31:55

    But, like, this very people who now you know, if you look at these polls were, like, now rallying to Donald Trump’s side, Like, it wasn’t that long ago that they were expressing an openness to wine
  • Speaker 1
    0:32:06

    to move on.
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:06

    Right? And I just I can’t imagine that the type of person and, you know, you caricature these people. You just like imagine, what’s you know, you think about them stupidest person that you see on the on the man on the street interviews, you know, by Jordan Klepper at Magarow. But but they’re just regular mega people out there. And they’re being told this now by Fox.
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:24

    It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Right? Everyone is coming to his defense. Everyone is saying we’ve got a stand by our man. Everyone’s saying this helps him.
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:30

    Like, does it have to? I really don’t think so. I I don’t know. We’ll see maybe he’s locked this whole thing down. Maybe it’s just that his opponents are too weak and that it doesn’t matter.
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:40

    I think that’s very possible. But I just land with you. I mean, thirty four counts. I thought Ben witnessed did a very nice job earlier this week on the podcast of explaining why it was serious. And then he has so much coming down in his head.
  • Speaker 2
    0:32:51

    We talked to him about on the next level. Cesare was a little more negative on this. I don’t want to put words in her mouth, but I was like, what if we inverted this? What if the funny Will Saletan had come first? And then the Stormy one had come?
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:01

    Then what would have happened? Well, my opinion, the same thing with the Fox people and the Republicans would have said this shows that they’re coming after them. Now we gotta defend them. So they’re always gonna say that. And I just think that until there are conservative leaders, which is apparently gonna be never, maybe after he dies, you know, who are willing to go out there and say, hey, gold watch time for this guy.
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:20

    Like, look at all these indictments, you know, then maybe the republican party will be stuck with them, but it’s certainly not good for somebody’s political brand to constantly have court dates. For multiple different investigations. Like, I’m sorry. I know that everyone’s brains are broken because, you know, the the statutory rate that Donald Trump committed apparently helped him in the twenty sixteen primary. So, you know, there are things that there are things that we’ve been surprised by, but I promise you, you know, we have enough evidence now.
  • Speaker 2
    0:33:45

    You just listed all the losses in Axios Endointment after indictment, investigation after investigation, court hearing, after court hearing is not good for Donald Trump. Trump wants to take and I’m gonna talk more champagne. Every time it happens.
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:55

    I have deep sympathy for people who who have PTSD from twenty sixteen. We understand this. I bet you. We are gentle. But PTSD is not a strategy going forward.
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:07

    It is not a philosophy of life. It is not necessarily the tool that you need to use to analyze everything is gonna happen. I also understand that it is a completely rational thing to say that if something has happened in the past, numerous times that it will continue to happen, you know, that bad things happen, and and it helps Trump. I get that. Right.
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:26

    But as I wrote yesterday in my morning shots newsletter, there’s also such a thing as overlearning the lessons of the past. And this is called another context, fighting the last war, assuming that every war will be the same and it will turn out the same. And it’s just wrong because sometimes things change. And and I understand that after seven years, you know, having done the Lucy with the football thing so many times. You know, I’m listening to the talking headset where the walls are closing in now.
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:53

    The walls are closing in now. Now, Sure. But this is new. It’s new because you have this guy out there who is, you know, throwing out the threats, the insults, the false information as he has done in the past, but now he is an accused felon under the jurisdiction of the criminal courts, and there will be more that’s new, that changes the environment here. But there is the collective action problem of Republicans, so I’ve been spending a lot of time last couple of days talking to Wisconsin Republicans who are really freaked out by what happened.
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:26

    I mean, you know, very few of them were in any denial about how horrible this election was. But it is interesting that there is a formula out there, that they’re trying to figure out a way to finesse, which is we need to stand by Donald Trump in this, you know, moment of his victimization, but we have to move on from the guy. You know what I’m saying is that they understand that politically they can’t separate themselves from a member of the indictment, but they all know that it is absolutely insane to go into next year with this guy. But the problem is maybe that’s unfinmissible. If you’re not willing to break with him, you’re going to be stuck with him.
  • Speaker 1
    0:36:06

    There is a obvious option, which is to be like,
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:09

    and again, I’m about to say this, gonna wash my mouth out with soap. This is not what I think. I’m just offering strategic advice to Republicans who wanna get off Trump. Is it really that hard to say man, I think what Donald Trump did for the Republican Party is great, and I’m so happy we’re more Jonathan Last now, and we hate immigrants more now. And and he set us on the right path.
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:28

    That, like, boy, we need to win. And the real enemy is the lips, and the real enemy is communist Joe Biden. And in order to beat them, in order to get solve inflation into secure our border. We need to actually win some elections again, and Donald Trump has too much happening right now. And maybe that’s because people were unfair to him, and and the media was really unfair to them, but, you know, we need to live in reality, and let’s move on.
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:48

    Are they sure that won’t work? I don’t know. Maybe it won’t work. But why nobody’s trying that? I just don’t understand.
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:55

    It feels like it’s worth a shot. And instead of just like whispering to Charlie Sykes about how we need to move on, for eight straight years as they go older and older, like the image of Matt Damon in in Goodwill Hunting, you know, aging. You know? Maybe try something new. How about that?
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:10

    That’s just one idea. One man’s idea.
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:12

    There’s another thing that I’m picking up talking to a lot of these folks. Of course, because there was a lot of speculation that Republicans in Wisconsin would use their super majority in the state senate maybe to impeach one of the liberal supreme court justices, including Jennifer Aewitz, who was just elected. And so I made some calls, how serious is all of that? And I get a very mixed message on on this, which is that the more responsible normals Will Saletan, there’s no way. There’s Absolutely not.
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:37

    We’re not even going to talk about it. No chance. And then they’ll take a deep breath and saying, yeah, except certain people are talking about it. And then they’ll name somebody And, yeah, I was talking to so and so, and they just brought up the issue that maybe we gotta hold this overhead, maybe we gotta do this. And it’s like, are you kidding me?
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:52

    And so they’re pretty much set and I think they’re sincere when they say they have no intention of doing it, but here’s the thing. People are angry. They’re scared. They’re pissed. And we know what happens when the base gets stoked up, when they get jacked up.
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:07

    And if the base begins to demand that they act, and let’s say that the, you know, orange cholle, down in Nammar a Lago begins putting out bleeds, saying what’s wrong with those rhinos up in Wisconsin? Are they gonna allow? These radical lefties to throw out everything they want, or they a bunch of cuffs, there will be tremendous pressure on them And I have to say that it’s a coin flip whether or not they’ll stand up to it because they haven’t shown much willingness to stand up in the past. But
  • Speaker 2
    0:38:36

    we will see. I believe when I see it, I’m standing up to
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:39

    him. Because here’s a party where I think it’s a mistake to listen to what their leaders say if you don’t know what the base is going to say because
  • Speaker 2
    0:38:47

    the leaders are not actually leaders, they’re followers. They are in a lot of ways kind of exacerbating the problem, right, by continuing to tell the base what they wanna hear, you know, and giving them more ammo. To hit their leaders over the head with. Again, just going back to this chunk thing on the victimization thing. And there’s been some debate about this even among never jumpers in center left viewers about whether, oh, you know, is this exact indictment?
  • Speaker 2
    0:39:12

    Is down Trump a victim? Is this being politicized? There’s another imaginary world one that we don’t live on. We’re responsible people spoke up and could say, you know, in the same breath. I’m not sure about the specifics of this indictment whether it reaches the level.
  • Speaker 2
    0:39:26

    But, like, let’s be honest, Donald Trump has not been a victim of the justice system. He’s taking advantage of justice system over the years. And this is a man who has made so many different crimes that he’s committed. He’s under so many different investigations there are so many women who have accused him of assault, and he literally said on that famous tape, if you’re a star, they let you do it. What is the do it in that thing?
  • Speaker 2
    0:39:48

    Grab women pussies against their will. Right? That’s what they do it was. Sexual assault. If you’re a star, they let you do it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:39:55

    So he has not been a victim of the justice. System. And I, you know, I wrote that thing this week about Jordan Hamlet. This is this guy in Louisiana. And and and what he did was was wrong.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:03

    Yeah. He did down
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:04

    Trump’s
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:04

    Social Security number and put it into an IRS form to if it would spit back out, down from tax returns, it shouldn’t do that. There were two other people that did that, and they got probation. And maybe that’s appropriate, losing a license. That’s appropriate. You know, they’re appropriate ways to handle this.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:18

    But how did he get treated? Well, Trump had just got elected. Right? And so they’re all these district attorneys that wanna please the new boss. You know, there’s some concerns in the FBI about how this guy might have tried to interfere with the election, which were all overblown.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:29

    This guy gets rail loaded. He’s on house arrest for twelve months. He has fifteen months in a prison. Okay. So he spends a year and then two years and three months, you know, without his freedom.
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:40

    Know, for putting Donald Trump’s Social Security number into a form, like, how does that look compared to how Donald Trump has been treated by Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis and Jack Smith and Over and Robert Mueller. You know, like, there are plenty of people out there who get treated poorly by the justice system. You don’t have to go out on Fox News and say that Donald Trump is one of them because he isn’t. And so all these guys going out there and saying that over and over again and saying, oh, why can’t we get off Trump? We can’t get off Trump because you’re telling all these voters this victim.
  • Speaker 2
    0:41:07

    And maybe they all would have believed it anyway because Donald Trump would say it, but it sure isn’t helping that they’re echoing. No.
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:13

    It is it is not helping. But, no, I I think the most amazing thing about Donald Trump being in court is that it’s taken this long for Donald Trump to be in the dock. He’s he’s been skirting the law for twenty or thirty years. And the notion that somehow a billionaire former president is being treated unfairly. Look, we have a two or three tier criminal justice system.
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:31

    And if you or I had committed, you know, even one tenth of the the acts of fraud that he has, we would have been fingerprinted, and we would have had a mugshot, ankle bracelet, and ankle bracelet. So let’s talk about collective action. Wanna spend a lot of time on this, but Ron DeSantis we’re hearing now has a plan B that maybe his people are thinking maybe we won’t go for a big splash early on. Maybe we’ll go for the long term to run against Donald Trump. Help me with this, but in the past, every candidate for president that spoke is on, like, sort of, the the long run, ends up losing and disappearing before you’d even get to the long run.
  • Speaker 1
    0:42:09

    Except
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:09

    Joe Biden, I guess. Right? That’s maybe the exception of the press a current press them. I don’t know how good the sourcing is on that story. You know, the actions that DeSantis has taken, you know, over the past few weeks, I think it’s good reason for people to, you know, question.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:22

    We talked about how he has the sniff of Scott Walker on a podcast a couple weeks ago. The thing he is going for me. He’s got a good elevator pitch. But he’s not given it — Yeah. — anymore.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:31

    Right? Like, he’s elevator pitches. I’m a winner. I own the lips. I know how to do it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:36

    The other guy, you know, might talk a big game but you’ve seen the results. That’s his pitch. But he’s not giving it. And he can’t give it right now, I guess, because he’s been bullied by Mega Media into having to stand by Trump’s side and threatened that he, you know, he would break the constitution and stand in the way of New York. If Donald Trump wanted to evade extradition, that stuff’s all crazy.
  • Speaker 2
    0:42:57

    The other thing, you see this this week, the Disney thing, which I just have to do one little marathon because it’s so perfect for the Bulwark. It’s just like, DeSantis now is so wrapped around the ax on this Disney thing. He announces yesterday that he wants to get back at them right now, obviously, because for folks who don’t remember that Disney pulled the rug out from Under Armour and then he thought that he was taking over the Rainy Creek board, but the old Rainy Creek board passed like a resolution that said that actually the new board has no authority until, like, after King Charles’ last Progyny his dad or something like that. And Ron DeSantis says, okay. No.
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:31

    I’m going back after them. So what did he say? He’s out there yesterday saying, we’re putting tolls on the road to get to Disney World. We’re gonna increase the taxes on the hotels on Disney’s property. And it’s like, wait a minute.
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:43

    This is conservatism. What was Disney’s crime? Nobody can’t even remember what Disney’s crime was anymore? Like, what started this all? It’s just he’s in a stubborn pissing match with a company.
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:51

    That he was mad at, I really do believe that the origin of this is that there were two girls kissing in the Buzz Lightyear movie. He was mad about that. He was mad that Disney had put out one press release about the don’t say gay bill. A million companies put out press releases about bills all the time. And so he’s mad about one press release and one lesbian kiss And now he’s increasing taxes and tolls on the company because they exercise their free speech rights.
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:13

    Like, this is conservatism. And by the way, who
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:15

    pays those taxes and those tolls other than families?
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:18

    I mean, it’s like
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:19

    what? I’m gonna disagree with you a little bit, Tim. Here he is. I think Miranda Santos’ war on Disney is a complete political winner because there are millions of parents of small children who are sitting there going, you know, please, Ron DeSantis, I want you to crack down on Disney. Rhonda Sandis is the only person that can save me from having to watch Frozen.
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:37

    I’m so sick of that song. I’m so let it go. I can’t
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:41

    hear it one more time, Ron. Can you make it stop? I am being sarcastic here. I’m this is one of those, you know, being in a bubble things where, you know, he’s having a fight and and he’s being, you know, gind up by, you know, people like Christopher Ruffo And there is a point, and I’ve said this before, where the fight becomes about the fight. You forget what you’re fighting about.
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:59

    It becomes about the fight. And so for him, as you point out, what exactly did Disney do? Was it because they said something about the don’t say gay, Bill? Is it because of a lesbian kiss between two cartoon characters? No one knows.
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:13

    Ron DeSantis feels I need to punch the nose. And if we don’t hit them hard enough this time, I’ll have to hit them again. And you have millions of people out there who subscribe to Disney plus who, you know, at some point, you’re gonna go, alright, why is it your beef? What are you doing? Why are you making things more expensive?
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:29

    Why? So weird.
  • Speaker 2
    0:45:32

    Wait. That’s awesome. Why are you so weird? Can you just help can you just help lower some costs? Like, things are a little expensive for me.
  • Speaker 2
    0:45:39

    Can you just
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:39

    focus on that? I mean, it does. Anyway and I think you made this point. You know, some of the stuff is pretty easy to understand, which is that Guys like Wanda Sanders want to protect kids from books, but not from guns. And I know that’s a simplistic thing, but it’s like, wait.
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:56

    You are pushing all this stuff forward because we must protect our precious children, but not protect them from a nut with an a r fifteen.
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:05

    No. They’re gonna protect him. They’re gonna give my, you know, my mother-in-law as a substitute teacher, and we’re just gonna, you know, give her a sidearm. That’s how we’re gonna protect the kids. We’re gonna have a he’s fifty nine and a half.
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:17

    We’re gonna have my fifty nine and a half year old mother-in-law out there with a side arm in somebody comes into the school. She’s gonna be the first line of defense. They’re protecting kids. That’s brilliant. That’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:46:26

    brilliant. Okay. So the other big story And this is really a remarkable story. People have not read it. I mean, I would strongly or do you you have a you have a holiday weekend coming up so you don’t have an well, maybe you have an excuse to DMV.
  • Speaker 1
    0:46:38

    You have family events and everything. But when you have an opportunity, go read that pro publica investigation, flagrant act of journalism about just is Clarence Thomas, and all of the gifts he’s been accepting, the gifts, the travel. This is another I mean, a one level story about the American oligarchy in a way billionaire who has his own pet justice, but it is an amazing story And how long this has gone on? For more than two decades, Clarence Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from this Dallas billionaire without disclosing them, a public servant who has a salary of two hundred and eighty five thousand dollars It’s not chump change. As vacation on this guy, Crowe’s super yacht around the globe, he flies on Crowe’s Bombadier global five thou how do you pronounce that?
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:27

    Bombardier? I don’t wanna sound stupid here.
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:29

    I’m also not part of the Uber Wealthy, so I have no idea how to pronounce that.
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:33

    Okay. We will confess that we miss pronounce that because we do not fly on private jets. So,
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:37

    hey, if we have any billionaire listeners out there who wanna invite me on their Bombardier jets and take me to remote island resort. I’m I’ll accept. I’ll disclose and accept.
  • Speaker 1
    0:47:47

    Well, he’s gone to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California All Male Retreat. And the crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas, and Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at crow’s private resort in the Anirondacks. The extended frequency of Crowe’s apparent gift to Thomas have no known precedent in modern history of the US Supreme Court, and they appear nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. So a couple of things like, okay, how did we get you to the point where virtually every other government official has an ethics code with the exception of members of the US Supreme Court. And also, what the hell with Clarence Thomas?
  • Speaker 1
    0:48:31

    And with Jenny Thomas because there is a tie here, this billionaire has given big bucks to number of Jenny Thomas’s right wing cause. So, you know, democrats in congress are talking about investigating it. You know, AOC is saying he ought to be impeached I think people need to take a deep breath. That is not going to happen. He’s not going to be impeached.
  • Speaker 1
    0:48:48

    He’s not going anywhere. But what the hell? This Clarence Thomas. Right? I mean, if you are John Roberts and you are concerned about the integrity, the reputation, the legitimacy of the high court, this has been a just a terrible year.
  • Speaker 2
    0:49:05

    Yeah. And there’s two things that’s one on the actual story. I thought that Chris Murphy’s observation on this was the most relevant because it isn’t just like a rich guy doing favors as Murphy writes here. It’s not like Harlan Crow is some apolitical pal of Thomas. He constantly has cases before the court.
  • Speaker 2
    0:49:23

    He funds groups that argue for conservative outcomes. One group is filed eight briefs before the court. Thomas cited with Crow in all eight cases. You know, again, it’s not as if always some childhood friend that had it rich and, you know, he’s going on vacations. Which again wouldn’t probably be great.
  • Speaker 2
    0:49:38

    You should disclose it. It’s more corrupt than that. I I think that’s important to point out. And then you get to the Ginnie Thomas part of this. And I was saying a year ago, And I I still don’t understand why they didn’t do this.
  • Speaker 2
    0:49:50

    And I guess there’s still is a synergy to the sheriff committee, so they still could. I still think that Clarence Thomas should be investigated for what he knew about efforts to overturn the government. You know, I mean, maybe it’s maybe I have TDS. Maybe it’s just me going off the deep end, but I don’t think it’s great that one of our nine supreme court justices’ wife was organizing a coup. No.
  • Speaker 2
    0:50:08

    And I think that it’s probably worth at least putting him under oath and trying to see what him and his wife talked about at the dinner table during her two attempts. So, you know, in addition to this corruption, I think that that’s something that that deserved oversight. You better believe that if the shoe was on the other foot, that Republicans would have no compunction of that dragon. Stone you so to my or whoever in front of a committee. And so,
  • Speaker 1
    0:50:33

    anyway, those are my two big, hot clearance Thomas takes. I find it fascinated to this guy who has basically been, you know, sucking at the teeth of this billionaire and flying around on the on the private jets and doing all of this stuff. Is pretending to sleep at Walmart. Yeah. But he is the populist hero.
  • Speaker 1
    0:50:50

    And this is the new populism which has no relationship to the actual people. I mean, we live in this populous era where the biggest superstars are, you know, the guy with the, you know, gold plated toilet seats, you know, in in Mar a Lago, and Clarence Thomas who was on a very, very short leash from this billionaire Olaparque. It’s just like this is great. So you have not yet made your your move. You’re, like, halfway, you’re waiting to embark on this epic road trip?
  • Speaker 1
    0:51:18

    Yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:51:19

    I know. I must have been clear because I got a lot of messages from people on the road of the road trip, like, hey, are you driving through? And it’s like, no, I had to so last week when we spoke, the movers were coming to move my stuff out of my house. And then when they were moving in, you know, because I’m not like Carlin Crow, I did not have what my real estate agent thought was the appropriately fancy you know, furniture to make the house look beautiful and help make sure we could sell it at the appropriate rate. And so they’ve moved in staging I’m homeless.
  • Speaker 2
    0:51:49

    My child’s on Spring Break. We were, you know, trying to just find places for me to activate content from, for everybody that that subscribes to BoldR Plus. And then next week, we go back to Oakland, gather our remaining stuff, get in the car, start a drive, at the end of next week that lands us in New Orleans, the middle of the following weeks. I will not be with you next Friday. We are still maintaining our same schedule towards the end of next week of Joshua Tree Tucson, Martha, Dallas, New Orleans.
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:18

    If you have any any recommendations along the road, I’ll take them. We’re gonna, you know, try
  • Speaker 1
    0:52:23

    to enjoy ourselves, learn about the American culture. People should DM you. So are you you have any special plans for Easter? Sounds like you’re on your own. This is
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:31

    probably the saddest Easter of life. We’re totally homeless. My child is flying from one place to another. I’m five or so. No.
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:37

    I don’t know. We’ll we’ll probably do nothing for Easter.
  • Speaker 1
    0:52:40

    I was very concerned about that because I knew that you needed a little bit of Easter cheer.
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:44

    Oh, yes.
  • Speaker 1
    0:52:45

    Therefore, from me to you just a little bit of Easter inspiration, just something something to fill
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:53

    you with, Charlie. Said, did you send me a chocolate bun? From
  • Speaker 1
    0:52:57

    your favorite musical. Let’s play this. Removed. I have to say
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:04

    for musical. Why? Was this the phantom of the opera?
  • Speaker 1
    0:53:16

    I can just see you going up the hill. That’s it. Just
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:24

    All the Bulwark This Jesus Christ
  • Speaker 1
    0:53:25

    superstar. Gotta have hope. Come on. Things are gonna get better. It’s not all darkness.
  • Speaker 1
    0:53:38

    It’s not an amazing. It’s gonna be Sunday. Come
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:43

    on. Good bake. It’s done. I can’t. This is horrible.
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:46

    What is this? Oh, what is this? So This is horrible. Hang on. Oh, I’m alrighty.
  • Speaker 1
    0:53:55

    Come on. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.
  • Speaker 1
    0:53:58

    Here we go. No. I get goosebumps every time, you know? And as Tim Miller, as he heads off toward the sunset, pork away from the sun. Does that ever gonna end?
  • Speaker 1
    0:54:14

    Pork it well? Come on. I want you to be singing this in the car. As you head toward your new home and as you think about the future.
  • Speaker 2
    0:54:24

    I’ve never heard that in my life. I’ve never heard that one time in my life. And we do have an Easter episode next level with Frank Bruny, which he was supposed to do. And I bet Frank Bruny, that Queen has probably heard whatever that musical was that you displayed for me. So Thank
  • Speaker 1
    0:54:37

    you. Of course, the the sound of music, and, of course, that was the voice of Annette Furnachella. No. Was Annette? No.
  • Speaker 1
    0:54:43

    The sound of the sound Of course, the sound of music. If you had ever watched the sound of music, you would recognize that song and you would go, jeez, Charlie, that was so thoughtful of you to play that for me. On Easter week. And I’m telling you, you’re gonna be lying by the pool in LA, and it’s going to be Easter Sunday, and you’re gonna find yourself kind of just coming and you can think what is that song? Where did it come from?
  • Speaker 1
    0:55:05

    Tim Miller? Have a great and blessed Easter. I
  • Speaker 2
    0:55:08

    think I think I’ll be in rainy, Sacramento, actually, but I’ll turn it on. And thank you all for
  • Speaker 1
    0:55:13

    listening to this weekend’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back on Monday, and we’ll be this all over again.
  • Speaker 5
    0:55:52

    Dissecting politics with exclusive interviews, commentary, and humor, useful idiots. With Katie Halper and Aaron Mate.
  • Speaker 8
    0:55:59

    Check out this story that comes via wedding planner, Georgia Mitchell. I that’s a deal breaker if you were to catch your partner being breastfed by their mother. The thing is that she’s here in the second hand. So —
  • Speaker 1
    0:56:08

    Right. — really Did responsible
  • Speaker 7
    0:56:10

    journalist in Aaron. It’s it’s an allegation. Yeah.
  • Speaker 8
    0:56:13

    None of my sources have confirmed this story. Right. So
  • Speaker 7
    0:56:15

    Terrible if true.
  • Speaker 5
    0:56:16

    Definitely a deal breaker. Useful idiots. Wherever you listen.
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