To Elect A Predator
Episode Notes
Transcript
Donald Trump is found guilty of sexually assaulting E Jean Carroll, but no one doubts he’s still on a path to the top of the Republican ticket in 2024. The GOP is also sticking by Rep. George Santos after he was indicted by a grand jury on 13 criminal charges. They really know how to pick some good ones!
Plus, what do our hosts think of President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s standoff over the debt limit? And Tucker Carlson announces his return to spewing propaganda on Twitter, while RFK Jr. does surprisingly well in Democratic polls.
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Next week’s TNL will be streamed LIVE on YouTube on The Bulwark’s main channel. Tune in May 17th at 3 pm EST to watch Tim, Sarah, and JVL record in the same room for the first time in ages! The chat will be open to get ready to ask our hosts your burning questions! Join here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONVoAmys1Lg
The Bulwark is heading to the Big Apple for a night of politics, laughs and maybe even a few tears—with special guest Molly Jong-Fast of the Fast Politics podcast.
Come meet the gang from The Next Level and fellow Bulwark+ members in Manhattan on Thursday, May 18.
For tickets go to TheBulwark.com/events.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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!
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Hello, everyone. Well, to the next level. I’m JVL here with my best friends, Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of The Bulwark. Guys, Donald Trump,
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New York. Legal system really working in our favor right now. Law and order is here.
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Sam Wasserston went and got his gotten I mean, not really. That’s not what happened, but there were consequences.
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Oh, is that what that was? The law and order theme?
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Yes. That was the lawn odor theme.
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Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum
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Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum B, Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum I love the smell of accountability in the morning.
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Donald Trump has suffered some consequences for the first time since he got gonorrhea as a college student. And He a jury took three hours. That seems to be quite quick, by the way, by the standards, by which juries operate.
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But journey was woke socialist.
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They had like a charging document with, you know, very complicated details about how to think of different aspects of the case. They came back and they found five million dollars worth of damages for both sexual batteries, sexual assault, and defamation against the former president of these United States. I mean, let’s just start with how this made you feel Tim
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And maybe if you’re all warm and fuzzy. And just to get a little George Santos Lanjap, thank you to New Orleans listeners who corrected me? Like J. V. L.
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I’m just I’m trying to custom myself to my new culture. I apparently pronounced alpha a little too Frenchy and not enough southern last week, a little lamb yap from George Santos, it made me feel really great. There’s some mixed feelings on the inside, which I wanna get to next, but I just wanna focus first on the positive. Good on Eugene Carol. For doing this.
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Obviously, she was subjecting herself to unbelievable amounts of scrutiny and betrayal to tried to do the, oh, this happened thirty years ago thing. It took a lot of gumption to do that. And I’m happy that she did. I’m happy for her. Happy with my friend, Robbie Kaplan, who was her lawyer, who absolutely stunned Donald Trump in that deposition.
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Her deposition video verse Donald Trump was so great if people haven’t had against to watch it. They absolutely should where she basically gets him to admit that he liked sexually assaulting people. That probably didn’t help him. I think in the jury deliberations, so that may be very happy. Donald Trump’s consequences make me feel happy.
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You don’t think that when he said it was fortunate, that powerful people who
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used to be able to
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do whatever they wanted, that that played well with the jury?
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Fortunately or unfortunately. He didn’t take a size. He said it could be fortunate or it could be unfortunate that famous people.
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No. No. He said unfortunately first and then said, unfortunately unfortunately
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unfortunately for me. Maybe, unfortunately for the women, but fortunately for me, stars can grab pussy whenever they want. So great job, by Robbie. And I think we can get into all the political stuff that, you know, I was doing a radio show yesterday with the iPad. This doesn’t mean Donald Trump’s going down.
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And I’m like, okay. Well, if our bar for happiness in six as the complete destination of Donald Trump and his political project, we’re never gonna be happy. So we might as well enjoy the small battle victories. And this was one.
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Sarah, I have a question for you. The Republicans are the party of law and order. They say it all the time. They want to defund the FBI, etcetera. Marco Rubio, his comment yesterday, was that this jury is a joke.
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I saw that. So not
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a lot of respect for the legal process or the justice system.
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Or the jury?
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Or the jury? Thought
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Has Marco met the jury? Did Joe Perticone get a follow-up? I I was all confused me.
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You know, Joe Perticone did get that, didn’t he?
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I’m the halls of Congress.
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Yeah. That that was a bulwark exclusive. If you guys aren’t signed up for the bulwark newsletters and you can get this stuff for free, go to the bulwark dot com
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and get
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it. Yeah. The state of New York does not like Donald Trump. It’s almost like they know him. Like he lived there for a while.
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Can I just start with saying, that JBL, you and I talked about this in the Secret Podcast? I was not sure. Only guy there of us were sure that the Eugene Carroll case was gonna produce much in the way of news or results or accountability, but this is the first time there’s been like an actual judgment against Trump. Right? This is a civil case So he’s found liable as opposed to guilty, but he does have to pay her money, and that’s a real thing.
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I am a little surprised and I guess I don’t quite know how I feel about the ability to bring a case twenty, some years later. Like, I do have some complicated feelings about that. Lots of you know, memories are thin at that point. But the thing is, is the reason that I suspect they found him guilty is for the reason that you just said. The deposition revealed Trump to be the person that we know him to be, but it was like, you know, an extra special level of vial.
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What he says in that deposition is he says, for the last million years. Unfortunately, or fortunately, stars have been able to do this. And what’s interesting about that is that it went from This is locker room talk, which was the how he described the Axis Hollywood k. To Canon, to an absolute truth that has been around for millennia.
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Just the birds in the bay. Ciprocal. Thanks a lot.
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This is just how things work. My guess is that five million, that judgment is actually just a jury being like, you’re disgusting despicable human being. And I have no doubt that you did something bad here because of the way you’re talking about this. There was sort of a great moment where he kept saying because he’s the most disgusting never that he couldn’t have sexually assaulted her because she is not his type. And so at one point he has shown a picture of Eugene Carol, who he then says, well, that’s Marla Maples, my wife.
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That’s a woman he had married. And so he confuses them. So this woman who is not his type apparently looks identical enough to a woman that he married. For him to confuse them, which is just crazy. So anyway, I think that the judgment is really just against Trump for being and and I’m not sure I have, like, some sort of, some complicated feelings about that as a
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It really is something. Just can we just rest on that? Because people have used that technology very quick in, you know, Twitter dunking settings, but, like, not recognizing a and I know I’m significantly younger than Donald Trump, but it would be like I find it very hard to imagine that somebody would show me a picture of Tyler from when we first started or someone else when he first started dating and he’d be like, that’s Tyler. And then, like, no. That’s Trevor.
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Somebody from Montana. I was like, what? I mean, I I think it speaks to to him losing his morals, but also just the utter narcissism of this man. I know the he he never really actually contemplated one of his many wives, like, features in a detailed enough way. He never processed it in a detailed enough way to be able to, like, to tell her apart from just any other made up long.
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If you haven’t watched the deposition tapes, you should go. I I think those are the things that sunk Donald Trump more than the specifics of the allegation.
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Mean, it does seem to me. We had talked, right, about how one of the things that when he was president, the White House Council’s tried to do was prevent him from ever testifying for anything. Right? And there there was even a moment in one of the many reports about this where one of the White House lawyers is quoted by somebody else’s saying, you cannot let him testify because he will simply lie under oath. Without even, you know, knowing that he’s doing it.
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Or tell the truth under oath.
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Or tell the truth under oath.
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Both are bad for him.
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And this deposition shows that this guy can never be put under oath and sworn in to testify. Right. And every lawyer going forward has to know that you cannot Right? I mean, in the alvin Brad case, in any any other cases that are to follow, Trump can’t be allowed to testify. I do wonder what this does for his ability to get future legal representation?
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I mean, if you’re Joe tapioca, you come out of this thinking thank god I got away with my my life and like some shred of my reputation is another competent lawyer gonna wanna take that risk.
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Ed, do you think Joey t is back on the payroll from one of these other cases after that l?
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Would he be willing to? Oh, I don’t think so.
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I even quit his job to take job. So I think probably probably needs a client. So
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the the last thing I wanna get is too, though. The the judge instructing the jurors Look, I can’t tell you what to do because you’re all grown ass adults. But if my strong suggestion would be don’t tell anybody that you were on this jury, which I think is sensible advice. Wow. And also is a statement about where we are as a country.
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Which is a problem? Maybe.
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No. It also speaks to the Marco thing that the Joe asked about yesterday. He’s just blindly condemning a group of people based on, like, their residents in New York City, I guess. Right? Like, I just it’s not like the situation with the woman in Georgia who is out there on the interview circuit.
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Who’s on the grand jury. It’s like it’s been one of those situations where you know all these people and can have the nail the render a verdict on their, you know, humanity. It’s just like it it is again to our asymmetry. Like, the notion that Chris Murphy, you know, would be like, well, you can’t trust a jury in Alabama. All those yokels, you know, like it would just be filleted, right, for days.
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How dare he hewn the repetition of the intelect to the great minds of the Alabama. How dare this latest Democrat Marxist BLM sympathizer. Right? That’s what we would get.
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Yeah. So that’s part of it. The security part, I don’t know, that I’ve deep thoughts on a bit. It is sad. It’s true.
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It was sensible advice that, like, And this is the real world that we’re in now in a week where we had, you know, a white nationalist mass murder at a mall.
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Alright. So let’s hit the political stuff. Sarah, this means he’s finished now. Right?
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Mhmm.
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Because, Ron DeSantis is gonna take dead aim at this stuff. Ronnie d is gonna he is gonna go to town on Trump is gonna open a can of what bass and talk about how, look, a jury of his peers found that Donald Trump is liable for actual assault and how could we let this man be the the standard bearer for our grand old party? Is that what’s happening, Sarah?
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I got two things on this. One, we did a focus group last week of two time Trump voters, and we asked about the Eugene Carol case, and only one person had heard about it. I think that’s important. And JBL, when you and I first talked about this, like, I remember you brought it up and I was like, hey, I’m not actually following this that closely.
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To be clear, I’m sorry, did you mean that they had heard of it or that they had followed the star? No.
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They hadn’t heard of it. They didn’t know what we’re talking about. Didn’t
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know what to guess
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that. So I think that that’s
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Do the voice, Sarah Longwell the voice.
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Vlogging, guys. Hold on. This is important, though. This is a what are these media silos situations? Right?
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It did look like Fox News eventually covered it a little bit yesterday. Like, they did the breaking news. This is happening. But and then because Murdoch is kinda out together. But, like, people who are deeper in the ecosystem, and I don’t know how much recrimination he really faced on Fox News.
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I did see Andy McCarthy seemed to, you know, ding him a little bit. The question is, is, like, boxes are ready right now. Like, hemorrhaging viewers. And so how far are they willing to go on this? I don’t think they’re gonna give it wall to wall coverage.
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So maybe after the verdict, if I were gonna do a group today. But, you know, will people have heard of it now? Maybe more so. Maybe more so. But it’s important to know, one, A lot of people hadn’t heard about it.
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Okay? Secondly, when we sort of said, hey, here’s what’s going on, you know, We heard a thing that we hear all the time, which is that voters really compartmentalize the moral, the liberties of Trump. It’s not that they say I don’t care. These aren’t bad. Some of them say that.
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But for the most part, people are like, you know, I don’t like the tweeting you know, his mouth or the way he treats women. I mean, you know, nobody says the rapey stuff, but they sort of like lump it all together like the tweets and not and they say, I don’t like that, but I think he was a good president. I’d like how he handled the economy. I like to and they compartmentalize it, but they wanna do the throat clearing, the moral throat clearing, so that you know that they don’t think it’s okay. And that’s a certain bucket of voters.
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These are often Ron DeSantis people or, like, they’re like, move on from trumpers or maybe trumpers, then there’s the always trumpers in how they think about this, which is different. This is just them them being, I guess, lives the media — Mhmm. — whoever, this is just them trying to get Trump. Because they know Trump can win and they’re afraid of Trump. And that’s why they love him.
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And you saw this in
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evidence of his strength.
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It’s right. You saw this in Tommy Tuber Mills. Tweet. Right? Where he says this makes me wanna vote for Trump twice.
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And there’s a a big group of voters who feel like that. To the more they come for Trump, the more evidence it is that Trump is their guy and the right person to punch back.
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Could we get Jeb to come out and defend Trump on the aging Carol stuff?
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Poor job alone. Maybe that would make it done? Yeah. I hadn’t heard of it thing relates to one of my complaints about yesterday, one of my little ramps. So I wanted to go on, which was who’s responsible for them not having heard of it?
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Right? Obviously, in the triangle, doom, the media is part of it, conservative media. But the politics and the leaders are partially part of it. And and I was interested yesterday to see that on the hill, Joe and others who are asking the senators about this.
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That’s right.
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You got the senators who know better saying ish sort of the right things. Right. Jonathan Last like, you know, this is I pick a market against doing it and I can win Kevin Kramer. Mhmm. I ended up with two Dakota senators there.
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There’s something in the water in the Dakotas, you know, said that there’s a mark against him on the ledger, etcetera. And it wasn’t, you know, they weren’t railing against him. They weren’t getting on their moral high horse. But, you know, they were saying, this is wrong, this isn’t good. But here’s the thing.
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It takes Joe Bertocone and Manu Raju and Garrett Hake asking them about this in order to say anything. And then their response is reported in the Bulwark and MSNBC and CNN. Right? And so I do think that this is the Republican elites just decade long failing now. Right?
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And I think that the people that you’re talking about, Sarah, not the Tommy Tuberfell crowd, but that first group that the scientists absolutely need, if he wants to enter, anyone would need, if they wanted to be jumping or primary. Like, that group is movable. If these people were out there in their ears on the platforms that they listen to, that they watch saying, this is bad. He’s unelectable. A good person doesn’t do this.
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It was, you know, wrong of him to what he said. And, you know, I don’t know the specifics of this case, but there have been many accusers and he said it live on tape that he like grabbing people by the p words. Like, if they were out there doing that, not just to Joe Veritone, but on the daily wire, and in their conservative radio hits. Like, that could have a meaningful difference. It just doesn’t raise the to to that level for these guys.
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And I think that it’s particularly cowardly because, you know, guys like John Dude and Kevin Kramer, they’re not at threat. You know, it’s not like they have this imminent threat of losing an election coming down over their head. You know, they’re just being cautious They’ve learned all the wrong lessons for the last seven years, and they refused to do anything that might move the needle even a little bit against Donald Trump.
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I just tag onto this? Because this is my rant
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to people.
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And just to say that Republicans have agency here, that the only way that this has political consequences for Donald Trump is if Republicans decide that it needs to have political consequences for Donald Trump. And the fact that the elected officials, like and they all kinda wimp out and do, like, I don’t think he’s electable in the general thing because that’s their safe space. Say he’s morally deficient Like say what that Romney says, if they all were saying that if his rivals were hammering him, his twenty twenty four rivals, but when they come to his defense, when they say things like, well, the jury’s idiots or whatever like and I don’t know if we’ve seen a statement by Nikki Haley or if they just choose silence, if they just choose silence, they become part of the permission structure to continue to vote for this guy again. And like, THIS IDEA OF LIKE IT’S THE NEVER TRUMP’S FALL. IT’S THE MEDIA’S FALL.
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NO. AND YOU KNOW WHAT, YES, IT’S REPUBLICAN VOTERS, BUT IT’S THESE REPUBLICAN ELECTIDS they have agency they can make a news cycle that Republicans here if they want to. They choose not to.
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Can I tell you the funniest quarter of the day? Yeah. I was pulling this up. On the same point. Republican sources tell Bob Costa that they do not see this moment at the beginning of the political collapse of former president Donald Trump, but there is the possibility of a slow erosion of support.
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There is the possibility of a slow erosion.
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That possibilities out there. Now I don’t I’m not gonna do anything.
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In fourteen or fifteen months, he might be down to fifty five percent.
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That statement is, like, true in the in the most narrow sense and that eventually Donald Trump’s port will slightly erode. You would imagine he’ll die or something will happen eventually that will make his support slightly erode.
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I just wanna snap us back to thirty five thousand feet though. My my pal, Bernie Belvedere, mentioned this today. The idea that a guy who lost as an incumbent president by seven million votes who has impeached twice who is under criminal indictment on thirty four counts who has just found liable for sexual assault is currently at sixty percent with a forty point lead over the next guy in the most recent poll for the Republican nomination is insane. And is the kind of thing that if we were just sitting in twenty fifteen and I had, you know, said to you, hey, this is gonna happen. What would you like to bet?
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That this is gonna happen, you’d have been willing to bet your house on it. It’s insane.
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The interesting thing about all that for me is and I hate to do this, but we gotta do this like one every ten podcasts is, you know, not one of those guys have been like, you know, you guys are really bright about I would I just like one really. Right? I was reading the Jim Garrity post the other day just talking about how hopeless all of the candidates he likes are. I was like, oh, if Esa Hutchison or Nikki’s, like, I like Aldi’s, but we need to be realistic. They need to drop out if they have to because It’s just like, at any point when you’re typing that, when you’re like, all the candidates I like are absolutely helpless because none of my peers would even consider voting for them.
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Does the thought of her cross your brain, like, oh.
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Maybe the party’s gone wrong. Maybe it’s bad. And I should stop defending it all.
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How about Ross Douthan yesterday talking about how constrained Trump will be in a second term? Oh my god. Because he doesn’t even really wanna be there or
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he should be fired. This guy is a bad take machine.
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Thank you, Sarah Longwell JBL goes a little overboard on her off sometimes. It’s sometimes you know, JVL has a bee in his bonnet, and I love you for it. But this tweet was the stupidest fucking tweet I’ve I think I’ve I I think I’ve ever seen from a credible mainstream pundit who he was legitimately making the argument that he said that the most important VP selection in history was would be Donald Trump’s VP selection because that person would have power since Donald Trump doesn’t I’m like, the opposite The least important vice president has felt choice in history. Donald Trump, have you been awake? Do you think it matters if Donald Trump picked who?
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I don’t know. Whoever Ross Deltic likes. Like, you think it would matter if he picked Rick Santorum? If he picks, like, some Catholic integralist. Do you think that that would matter?
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What are you talking about?
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Do you think Ross’ arms are, like, super tired from carrying the goalposts? How far he’s gotta carry them? To justify, I thought Trump wasn’t happening, Ross. I thought there wasn’t gonna be a coup, and then I thought we weren’t gonna like Trump anymore. And DeSantis was gonna be great
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Trump is weakening.
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Yeah. Now we’re
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already picking his VP. Yeah. And we think that’s gonna matter.
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Now it’s gonna be okay because Ross’ new theory is that, like, well, Trump’s gonna die. Because that’s the only way that anything good happens. He’s saying he’s gotta die. Right. So it’s about his VP.
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Or he’ll check out. It’s just like were you not awake for John Kelly? Like, we did this. We did all this. Mike Pence.
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John Kelly, he’s bringing in the adults, the committee to save America. I mean, like, he tried to have his last vice president hanged.
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Well, I
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have his last vice president, Hank. Didn’t you think the next one is gonna kinda corral in?
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Don’t be such an alarmist, Tim. Jesus Christ.
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We’re all juggling life, a career, and trying to build a little bit of wealth. The Brown Ambition podcast with host Mandy and Tiffany the Budget Neesa can how can I protect myself from identity theft?
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I think the first thing is to be aware of what phishing attempts look like. So check that email address. And now is it coming to your text? Are you guys fishing texts now?
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I’m like, with your lack of funding. I hate the crown ambition. Wherever you listen.
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Alright. We can have some polls. Robert f Kennedy junior is popping somewhere around ten and twenty percent of the Democratic primary. Which is fascinating to me, and I will ask you guys the question I posed to readers today. If Robert f Kennedy junior was running in the Republican primary, what number do you think he’d be pulling right now?
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I think somewhere between ten and twenty percent as well. But maybe higher.
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I don’t know. I made this joke on hacks on tap yesterday. I just think if Robert Kennedy was running in the Republican primarily, he’d be doing way better.
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Yeah. I don’t think that’s a joke, actually.
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No. I Well, I mean, I made the joke, but I think it’s true. I think he’d be a legit contender in a Republican primary. And for people who are, like, well, with the last name Kennedy, he wouldn’t do good with Republicans. Are you kidding?
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With the last name Trump, he did just fine. These former Democrats, like, these Democrats who turned into anti vaccine conspiracy Luna ticks. The right loves those guys.
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The Matt Taiby Glen Greenwald Tulsi Gabbard.
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Tulsi Gabbard, everyone thinks she should be Trump’s VP. They love her.
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Better than Nikki Haley and Mike Pence.
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Oh, I’m not even close.
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RfK, I think they’d all do great in our Republican primary.
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Yeah. RfK would be doubling up.
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David Gromma Swamy’s currently tied with the vice president
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of the United States,
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the last vice president, with a hundred percent name ID.
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Yeah. And what do people know about that? I’d rather on me. They’re like they know that he’s some guy that goes on Fox that doesn’t like rogue people.
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Does not like the rogue.
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It’s literally all they know about him. I know the Kennedy thing is a boost Again, this just shows that the old line pundits class Mitch McConnell Republican establishment class just is willfully ignorant to what is actually happening in their party. They did not listen to the media outlets that their voters listened to. They did not spend any time with the voters. This is true about all the contrarian substackers, god love substacks, that whole crowd, all of them.
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They live in liberal spaces. They live in elite big cities. The Taisha Republicans say no are not the Taisha Republicans in Sara’s Focus Group. Taisha Republicans a service focused group have no interest in Nikki Haley, and they would be quite interested in Robert Kennedy because he’s a candidate. Because the biggest driving motivation for them is that it’s troll.
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It’s a troll of the left. It’s like, oh man, we won over JFK’s nephew. We got him on our side.
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Don’t forget that in the Qnon mythology, John F. Kennedy Junior is on Trump’s side.
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Yeah. Right.
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And coming back
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He is still live because he faked his own death.
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He’s alive. I met him. Actually, it’s CPAC. Seriously. The person they think is Jeff K junior.
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They’re just in brass tacks on the polling. I I think that when we have been talking, could another person emerge, you know, as DeSantis goes down. And, you know, all the Norway pundits are like, well, you know, could the key get a boost? Or might might Brian Kemp get it or whatever. No.
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Tulsi, RFK, those of you who we’re talking about. And I think that if RFK ran a serious campaign, right now, if he jumped in, he might be at five or six because people aren’t thinking about him as a Republican candidate and like like but if you read a serious campaign that was like, I love mister Trump, but he gave in a little too much to the deep state And I’m very worried about the surveillance state, and I’m I’m, you know, I’m
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And the vaccines.
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And the vaccines. And he just focused the campaign on that. And kind of ran from that angle, which nobody has against Trump. I think that person, whether that be Telsey or RFK, or somebody else, would be a strong third and maybe closing in on second. Second.
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Maybe closing in on second right now. Yeah.
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But he is pulling weirdly high in the Democratic primary.
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Yeah. I think there are two things to play. I think that right now he is I think that there’s probably five percent of the Democratic base. Maybe it’s even eight percent that, like, kinda like says, you know, they’re CHOPPO, Democratic lefties. It’s the horseshoe, and they haven’t jumped the horseshoe yet.
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Hell, maybe maybe it’s twelve percent. It’s not twenty one percent we know that from other Democratic primaries, but maybe it’s twelve percent Then I think there’s another category of people that is, I think, probably bigger than the first category or equal that is Joe Biden is old and this person’s last name is Kennedy and I’m registering that I think it should be someone else besides Joe Biden and you could put any name in there. You can put any name in there, doesn’t matter. And I would choose that person over Joe Biden because I’m registering my concerns about Joe Biden’s age. I think that is why he’s at twenty one percent in the Democratic primary.
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So I think that that first group is a little bit concerning, but it’s just such a rump. And I really would consider it to the, like, the equivalent of the Never Trumper of the Republican Party just like a total rump small portion of of the Democratic base. Yeah.
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This is the problem. Right? I mean, the problem is that those people have literally zero influence in the Democratic Party itself. No. Whereas on the on the Republican side, the people who they are very comfortable with, the Alex Joneses, and those people own the party
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or run the party.
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They just own it outright. This is the other thing. People forget political ID is people can change their minds on issues, but they will hold on to their political ID till long after. Right? The political ID is the last thing to flip.
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And so there are a whole bunch of people who are, as you said, like anti unit party people who are but that’s what these people are. They aren’t actual, you know, part of the Democratic party structure. It’s great.
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What’s your tech, sir? Do you assess my breakdown of his twenty one percent accurately?
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I do. Although, I I think you’re right about the protest. I was also gonna be like, there’s just, like, a chunk of low info.
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Oh, okay.
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This guy’s last name’s Kennedy. I don’t know. Like, I still think Bobby’s alive. I don’t know.
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Yeah.
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That’s out there. Did we just say enough about George Santos?
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I would like to say one thing about George Santos, I guess, Anthony Devolder, KhitaRavash, it’s kind of sad that the first drag queen in congress ends up being George Santos. Maybe there’s something too, those critiques of drag queens and their moral harpitude. It’s really telling that Kevin, his answer to this question, is still if he’s found guilty, we’ll push him out of the conference. I mean, I I just think it just shows how ingrained, you know, the apology it is that just have so I just glanced at it, but I think it was seven counts. I it’s it’s wire fraud.
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Like, campaign violation.
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Frauding the government And that’s just a start. He’s also under investigation in Brazil. I hope that Lula and Biden are cooperating on this so that justice can be served to George Santos in two countries. But it is pretty telling that, again, like, Mitt as moral conscience of the party is, like, the only one to say, I the right thing to say, which is, okay. Maybe we can’t resign this guy, but at least you should go sit in the back and shame.
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So that’s my Anthony to build a hot take I mostly just wanted to marinate in in my happiness of bad things happening to bad people, which is, you know, as JBL said, is the sweetest actor.
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Alright, Tara. Do you have anything before hit that ceiling?
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Only every member of congress on the Republican side is very important. To Kevin right now. He needs every single vote he can get. And when they go down, it makes this current debt ceiling fight even more interesting razors edge.
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Speaking of his death sailing. And on this, just really quick as we get as a transition to the death in. The Nancy Mace do you see the Nancy Mace profile that the Times did?
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Only an excerpt.
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It was not quite as effective as the Liz Holmes profile for the peptide stent, which was like, oh my god.
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That I read.
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Yeah. I, like, literally, that is insane. The person had a sentence and then it was, like, my editor told me that I was being snowed by Elizabeth Holmes. And I don’t think I am. And like they put that sentence in the piece of being so about anyway, sorry, I got off track.
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I can’t believe the times would run something that the editor thinks. I mean, that to me is such malpractice.
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Yes. Anyway, the the Nancy Mace thing in the Times revealed just how tenuous is all is like her big stick in this piece is that she’s independent because there were all these things that she was pushing back on Mcarthy on, that she ends up coming back on board on all of them. Right? And because he can’t afford. If you had a bigger majority, you could afford letting Nancy May’s, like, do some protest votes to show she’s independent.
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But you can’t do that because you can’t trust any of the Matt Gates insane people on the right, so like you need Nancy on everything. And so Nancy is like, well, I’m gonna criticize him and then vote for him. And he’s gonna give these kind of, oh, mysterious concessions. So I I think that that, you know, speaks to the ten uousness of his position here at the debt ceiling.
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That said, are you surprised? I mean
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I am surprised.
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He got that first vote through. And and so, like, I would say, you know, we were all predicting that, like, the debt ceiling thing was gonna be just a catastrophe we’re having. And so far, He’s not, like, in a strong position. He’s not really in a weaker position than Biden. Like, they’re both sort of equally weak going into this negotiation.
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And his conference stood behind him.
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I don’t know.
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I think he’s in a stronger position than Biden. And here’s why the bet your friend Ben Wittus, JBL’s best friend Ben Wittus, did a really good analogy on this. I’m just gonna completely ate it from him. And it is, if you’re in a game with chicken, okay? And you’re both driving the car eighty miles an hour at each other and you’re driving your car and you know that the other guy coming at you is making the calculation that, like, they are more likely to survive ahead on collision with you.
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Than they are to survive if they wimp out, that’s a very tough position to be in, and that’s position Biden’s end. Because Kevin McCarthy looks at this and he’s like, if I crash this economy? Maybe Biden takes a blame for that. Maybe Democrats take the blame for that. Not that we’ll see how it shakes out.
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I don’t know. But if I a cave to buy them, then I’m certainly gonna be tardent feathered by my own crazies. Okay? So in a weird way, Kevin is kind of in a stronger position, not, you know, at least, with regards to the negotiations, because of just the stakes, not that he’s in a stronger political position.
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I THINK THAT’S RIGHT. I HAVE A QUESTION, A SERIOUS ONE. ARE YOU SYNICAL ENOUGH? DO YOU THINK REPUBLICANS ARE SYNICAL ENOUGH? IS MCARTHY SYNICAL ENOUGH?
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THAT HE WOULD RISK. The entire country’s full faith in credit. Right? I mean, you think there’s like no doubt in your mind. Because I was talking to reporters about this, and I couldn’t quite get myself to go there to say that I believed that McCarthy would tank the economy because Biden will take the blame, which by the way — Mhmm.
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—
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Biden will take the blame. He is the president of the United States. Think about people not knowing about the Eugene Carol thing. This process story only becomes vivid and real for voters when it has a personal consequence for them. And when they look up, because the four zero one k has taken a massive hit or whenever they’re not gonna be like, let me go back and read all the punch bowl news articles about the brinkmanship on this gonna be like the president of the United States.
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Why did this happen?
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I’d go step further, Sarah. They will react even if it doesn’t touch them personally in the way that they have over the last two years where even though unemployment isn’t at four percent and they’re personally doing very well. And, you know, the surveys, they say that their life is great. They say that, you know, we’re on the wrong track and things are terrible. And this is so I I agree a hundred percent.
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Well, that’s because rent is up eight percent. Their rental debt is up eight percent. Groceries are up seven percent, and it is making a meaningful dent. I mean, the futures are up right now because for Walmart, because people who make over a hundred thousand dollars have started shopping there to save on food.
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The question’s up for the first two, JBL. Come on.
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I’m agreeing with you. I’m just with you more enthusiastically, Sarah Longwell saying that they will absolutely blame Biden.
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Yeah. Someone said they’re on background. They think they’re like the market and like the normal Republic laws at normals are banking on, like, a tarp moment. You remember when, like, the banks led to happen in, oh, it was o eight.
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October, it
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was o eight. And dad, this vote in Congress, like, not gonna bail them out, and, like, they’re gonna let the banks classic. Ron DeSantis stock market tank — Yep.
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—
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for a few hours. And then, like, it’s prevailed. And then, like, okay. We’re go out.
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You’re big to fail.
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Oh, we’re gonna reluctantly, we’re gonna do this. I think that is what they’re banking on happening, and I don’t know. Just a different Republican congress. Now I don’t know that a stock market tank over this would move that necessarily.
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On the other hand, I would like to ask, is it sustainable to live in a political dynamic in which the debt ceiling fight only happens when the president is a Democrat? Because Democrats didn’t hold the American economy hostage when the debt feeling was increased under Trump.
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Oh, sure. What do you mean by sustainable?
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Is that sustainable? Like, you know, hey. You Democrats have to understand that whenever you hold the presidency, and the debt ceiling comes up, you are going to be held at the point of a gun because you’re a responsible governing party and the other side isn’t. Good luck.
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I’ll answer that question a different way. I do think that that is a calculus that is factoring into the considering that the Biden administration seems like seriously considering they’re just gonna go out to solo and fight it out in the courts. Right? You know, I think them decide to afford to the amendment and says by executive order, you know, we can deal with this administrative ratively, and I’m not gonna negotiate with an administration who’s gonna do it, and you can see if you want. And, you know, we’ll just we’ll just see everybody in court and kick the can on this.
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I I think that a legal expert I don’t know exactly what the run of show would be on that, but, you know, I said Dan Fyfro was arguing that they do that, and I’ve seen a bunch of other dumb providentists, arguing that they do that. And I think that what you’re saying, JV, I was factoring into that thought. Right? Which is, like, why are we doing this to ourselves? I think that has some other negative externalities, right, when it’s like, oh, because they’re a publicist, democrats just to get to act like monarchical now when we’re in power.
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No. But on the other hand, there’s a practical element here.
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I’ll just register how much I’m against the fourteenth amendment play. And that what Biden should do, in my opinion, is negotiate with McCarthy, do what he said he was gonna do as a I can work with Republicans. Alright. That was his that’s a big part of his pitch. And you should live up to that pitch right now, and he should go back and give McCarthy some kind of deal.
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They make some cuts. On the big, biggest, broadest question of are we spending too much? Republicans aren’t exactly wrong. And then Biden should say, I’m gonna work with Kevin McCarthy. We’re gonna hammer something out.
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And Kevin’s gonna have to go take that deal back to his guys. His guys who don’t wanna pass that deal and give it back to him and let him go, let those guys say no. We are not gonna raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances. Okay? I think that he should do the right thing and Jim McCarthy up, and I do not think he should do the fourteenth amendment.
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And I think people who rationalize this stuff, this, like, the court packing and everything else, it’s like, well, because we’re right, and they’re wrong. I think that’s a bad way to govern.
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I think ultimately Biden is likely to do exactly what you suggest, Sarah Longwell I didn’t think he’s unlikely to get any credit from voters. Alright. Tekka Carlson has taken his talents to Twitter. What do you guys think? It’s a big deal.
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Twitter’s gonna become a broadcast platform now that it’s the X Corporation. It’s gonna become the everything app. We’re gonna be doing payments on it probably and also WhatsApp style communication probably. It seems to me that neither Tucker nor Elon understand all that much about platforms. And at best, maybe this winds up like rumble and at worst it’s quibi.
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Yeah. I don’t think that it’s a win knocker at all. I think that Tony Ross and Pose made a good point, which is like, the the nice thing of being on cable is that terrestrial cables, if you were to be going down, but then you get all the bonus views of people clipping you on Twitter and all that stuff work in reverse of your show on Twitter like Fox who just fired you is about to show you that it’s show the clips and people would say really racist stuff for MSNBC to show it. So it limits your reach. I think Tucker incorrectly thinks that he’s doing Twitter because if he went and that Riley route, nobody will talk about him.
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I think he correctly sees that nobody talks about O’Reilly. So if I go down streaming thing. We gotta pay ten bucks a month to get me. I’ll get rich, but nobody will talk me. Okay.
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I I think that’s the correct assessment. He then makes the incorrect assessment then, okay, what I should do instead is good at her where people will talk about me, and I don’t know, we’ll figure out the money stuff on the back end. Maybe he doesn’t need money and that doesn’t I I don’t that you have the influence that you think because people don’t consume Twitter that way. They scroll through Twitter and and watch videos on Twitter. And as for, like, the monetization thing, Again, it might work as a niche monetization that you make money in the weird conservative ghetto that I know anyone normal that is gonna give Elon Musk their credit card generation.
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And shit. And I saw this tweet from Elon that was like, I will know that our
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crazy dream.
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What’s the word encryption? I will know that our encryption works. When someone comes in my office, puts a gun to my head and says, Elon, can you read someone else’s deeps? And I get on the keyboard and realize that I can’t. I’m like, that’s an insane thing to say.
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That is an insane thing to tweets like any and anybody who has given that they might try to get into other VDM’s with a gun to their head is someone who I’m knocking my any of my data or information to at all. So that’s the business problem with it.
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I don’t think that Tucker seems to realize how much of his audience was over the age of sixty five.
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Twenty five to fifty four or whatever that’s
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He was winning in the, like, coveted eighteen to forty five demo. He is winning that slot, but, like, a lot of his viewers are too old to figure out how to become a subscriber to his Twitter show. I don’t know if this is gonna make Twitter go under. I gotta say, like, Twitter has gotten markedly worse but it’s like still enough the same that, like, I still use it. And listen, as I’ve gotten older, you know, I used to Tim and I used to burn a smoke together in our twenties.
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I used to have a lot of vices. Now I just my vices are fewer. And Twitter’s really one of them. And I’m, like, committed to this vice. I do not wanna give it up.
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And I’m mad about how crappy they’re making it, but I still don’t think it kills it. Like, too many of us is like it is where we go to have the political conversations we wanna have with the people we wanna have them with. And until somebody provides an alternative, that is basically exactly like Twitter that we all go to.
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And then how do you get people on there? Give them money. I guess it’s like a thought base of zero interest rates where you can be like, hey, I’ll give everybody a ten buck entry fee. If you jump over to Skye, like, maybe that would do it. People would go somewhere for money, but they do it.
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I don’t know how to answer to that.
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Well, that’s what SubStack Notes is. Right? I mean, SubStack Notes is you you are we’re gonna let you monetize your audience with newsletters and so here’s a social network for it. Blue Sky is banking on status.
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You guys? It’s called Blue Sky
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—
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Yeah. — it’s not called Blue Sky.
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I I don’t think so. It’s one word.
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I believe it’s blue sky.
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Pretty sure it’s blue sky.
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You think it’s blue sky? You think it’s blue sky?
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You think it’s blue sky?
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I will tell you in my head, but it is one word. When written, I’ve only ever seen it written. You’re the first people I’ve heard say it out loud. And Blueski
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It’s Busky. Bluskey.
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Bluskey.
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Like a Mary Anne Bluskey, who is one of your teammates in your your high school basketball team. Nice Polish family from Central Pennsylvania.
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Like, blue eyed the curve two.
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Don’t think so.
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K. Do one of accountability podcasting here? Again, we’re only a few weeks in, but the ratings, we didn’t question this podcast three weeks ago. That whether we did. This was a the the hamster situation or whether that Tucker had a unique audience.
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And we didn’t really know and some of the leaning towards the hand show with the pellet side of things. And it seems like he had a real audience. I mean, praise on Friday beat Tucker, not in the demo, but in total viewers. So including the seniors who are just getting their palate, Alright? So do you think that there’s something to be said there that connects back to our conversation from earlier about why Tulsi and RFK, and we have a better chance than the primary than Nikki Haley.
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Like, there’s a big group of people that don’t want generic anymore.
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Yeah. Well, I was certainly wrong about that one. Planet of the cabin building. Alright. Guys, been a good show.
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Next week, by the way, we’re doing this live at three PM. We’re gonna be all be in the same place together.
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Oh, yeah. I know. I was upstairs We’re doing the studio. We’ve we’ve building the studio yesterday. Barry thinks it should be have pink lighting.
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It’s gonna be amazing, the next level. On YouTube.
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Tim will be licking my face. It’s gonna be fantastic.
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I like that.
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I can’t wait to get COVID again. It’s been, you know, almost ten months since I’ve had COVID. So that’ll be wonderful. Tune in. Come to the channel and you’ll get it.
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And if you are in the New York area, You’d still grab tickets to come see us on the eighteenth. And in the meantime, go over to the Bulwark dot com. Sign up for all this get Charlie’s fantastic newsletter. Subscribe to his podcast. Hit the like button.
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Subscribe to this show. Give us five stars. Haven’t checked the reviews in a week. I hope they’re good. Alright, guys.
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We’ll see you next week. Bye.
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Bye.
