Tom Nichols: Knuckleheads with Flamethrowers

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That’s bolen branch, b o l l a n d branch. Dot com promo code, Bulwark, exclusions apply, see site for details. Welcome to the Bulwark Secret Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is the Tuesday after a long memorial day weekend.

It is May thirtieth two thousand twenty three. It’s kind of amazing that we’re nearly the the halfway point. So we are joined today by Tom Nichols, professor Ameritus at the Naval College, now a staff writer at the Atlantic author of the Atlantic Daily newsletter. And most importantly, a cast member of the completed show succession So first of all, congratulations on that, Tom.

Thank you, Charlie.

We haven’t talked about that. What a weird experience that was?

It was totally trippy. We should be clear with people that my screen time was measurable in seconds. But technically, yes, I was a cast member. I had a name and I had a script and all this other stuff.

And you got to hang around with them. I mean, you got to see how it was made.

That’s the thing. You know? There’s a great scene in the penultimate episode where Tom whispers to Greg, you know, information is like a bottle of fine wine. Hoard it. You store it.

And then you take it out and you smash someone’s fucking face in with it. I was standing like six feet away, and they were having a hard time with that because it’s such a great line. And I got to watch them do that as well as a few other scenes. And also to realize how many scenes I watch them do that in the end, they just cut. There was a whole scene where Tom argues with Darwin about how fast they were gonna make the call, and it was funny.

And they did it a whole bunch of times, but it never made it into the final cut. I wrote a little piece about it for the Atlantic. And I said, you know, one of the things I learned is, man, you can know that entertainment is hard work, but until you see it and you realize these people work like sixteen hour days.

And how much goes into it? Yeah.

Yeah. You know, that they’re just there all day and there’s a lot of hurry up and wait There’s a lot of dead time. You know, like you said, I got to see how how it was made by the scenes. And it was really once in a lifetime experience.

You played a right wing cranky pundit on television.

Yeah. It’s a nice reach.

So how did it happen? What is the backstory? How did they choose you to do this? They were looking for a man of a certain age, a certain look, a certain disposition, and somebody said, Tom Nichols would be great to play this right wing nut job.

That’s exactly what happened. That is that’s exactly what happened. That one of the producers called somebody he knows who works in political media and stuff and said, hey, we need a kind of middle aged cranky white, you know, pundit guy. You know, sort of curmudgeonly middle aged, you know, right when he went, I’ve got your man. So he told the producer and I guess before the producer called me, they also needed somebody who could do this on short notice.

Like, I didn’t go to New York the next day. He went and looked at some of clips of me that are on the Internet on, like, CNN and MSNBC see and stuff like that. He said, yeah, he looks right. Next thing I knew, I was on a sit here in a makeup chair getting my hair done in this kind of Fascist high and tight.

Oh, really? Oh oh, they gave you they gave you the fascist high and tight hair thing. Yeah.

Good. They kind of slick down the sides and poofed up the middle and — Mhmm.

—

I brought my own blue suit, but they gave me the red tie and the flag pin, Daeguire. Settle. And my character’s name was Ben Stove, which to me sounds suspiciously like Carl Rove. You know, they were like, yes, Portly middle aged cranky right winger. I think I nailed it.

Okay. So because I’m a fanboy here. So what did the director say you should do? The director says, this is your character. You’re not Tom, you’re Ben.

So what do they tell you? How did they direct you?

Well, they said loosen up because I I was so used to doing the stuff you do. Right? Where we sit there, we look into camera where and he said, hey, you’ve never been on this network until tonight. It’s election night. You think you’re you know, just having the time of your life.

And so I had a couple of little monologues I had to go through about what was going on on election night and we would do them tour three or four times and he said, okay. Try it this way as straight news. Now do it again, but, you know, a little snippy.

Oh, but that was easy. But that came naturally.

Well, there was one point where I think I may have actually annoyed I hope I didn’t annoy Jesse Armstrong because I couldn’t figure out a part of the script. Where I had to say something. And because it was on a teleprompter, there was no punctuation where it ought to be. Mhmm. And I didn’t see him sitting over this.

It’s like a Britishism. You know? Is this like because it doesn’t sound right. And he came over and was like, that’s a direct quote from, you know, somebody on TV. And then I figured out I was supposed to say it a certain way.

And I said, oh, wow. Okay. First day on the job. Alrighty. I’m messing with the script.

We did a full day of nothing but the pundits and the anchor desk doing hours of exposition that just got completely cut out. Really? But again, it was like, It’s there so that it can be on in the background while the characters we were like moving wallpaper for that. And it was very cool. And I got paid, by the way, which was very nice.

I got paid union scale. And, you know, I had a little dressing area and It was really an experience.

And now you’re sitting by the phone saying, I I am ready for my close-up.

Just to know. Charlie, I’ve told you many times. I don’t want green M and M’s. In my dish here in the green room, so it was a lot of fun. And I I actually spent the most time with Zach Robatas who plays crazy crypto Nazi Mark Ravenhead.

Very nice guy. And he has a great rant that’s actually pivotal in the next the last

This is fantastic. I wanted to ask you about all this. Okay. So I also wanted to talk to you about this because this delay is having to talk about the whole debt ceiling deal, which

the dagger of boredom deep into the heart. Right?

Okay. You know what? I feel this way, except that I have to admit that this time My default setting is, look, don’t pay too much attention. It’s a kabuki dance. Eventually, you know, there’ll be a lot of, you know, you know, there’ll be a lot of, you know, throwing them around their hands and everything.

And then eventually, they come to a deal. This time, I wasn’t totally sure because of all the incentive structures, particularly on the right, you know, the craziness, the way that Kevin McCarthy self gulded himself.

Mhmm.

So it does look like we have a deal. I I don’t know where where you come down on all of this. You know, I’m looking at this going. You know, all of that for this. You take the nation and the world economy to the brink of fiscal catastrophe for this.

This sort of nothing burger of of a deal that you could have gotten through the appropriations process. What do you think? Eddie come down on this.

That’s part of my problem with it. But I’m with you on one thing, which is that, you know, I have this kind of normal seat bias. Right? Like nobody’s ever gonna destroy the sovereign credit in the United States, you know? Gosh, my good man.

Who would do that? Have you met these people Yeah. Well, that’s the thing. Right? And then you kind of look at the current Republican house conference and you see these people are lunatics.

And it’s not that they will collapse the economy because they intend to, but because they’re, you know, a bunch of knuckleheads playing with flamethrowers, you know, and somebody’s gonna get hurt. And in the end, Mcarthy, who is whatever his weakness is and his lack of spine, he and Joe Biden sat down like a couple of normal politicians. And said, okay. We got to hammer out a deal. And I think one thing that came out of it was a reminder that Joe Biden’s pretty good at this president thing stuff.

I mean, I ripped him last week for not using his bully pulpit, you’re addressing the nation sounding the alarms, but in retrospect, I was probably wrong about that, that he he was playing an inside game. I guess, I didn’t have sufficient confidence that he was gonna play it as effectively as he did. Kind of remarkable how little he had to give up to get this deal.

I think too, the bully pulp I mean, of course, I read your piece. And, you know, we weren’t there yet. I mean, if we were coming into June first tomorrow and you know McCarthy had walked out and the economy was gonna collapse and the markets were taking then I think you go to the full Reagan. Right? Which is that you side step everybody.

You go on television. You sit down. You say, good evening my fellow citizens. I wanna explain to you. Why we’re about to have, you know, an economic catastrophe and who you should blame.

We weren’t there yet, and I think if Biden had pulled that card it would have encouraged the Republicans to just double them. Well, it

would have been premature. I think I had the caveat. You know, if the negotiations went sideways and if we were actually going into

And the deal they got, you know, like, you just pointed out. It’s a perfectly normal deal. I mean, oh my god. It’s actually a compromise. In Washington where nobody got everything they wanted, and they sort of agreed to do something, you know, to avert a bigger problem.

Wow. You know, the one good thing you can say that came out of this despite all of the Charlie Sykes and kooks on the carnival midway, is that Boy, that just felt normal for a moment, didn’t it?

It did. It actually did. And, you know, what I wrote this morning was that, you know, politically, nobody really won because the whole thing was just stupid, futile and and dangerous, you know, play this game. On the other hand, there could have been massive losers in this there still could be, I suppose. But you know, had the country going into default, had this pushed the country into recession, this would have been potentially disastrous for Joe Biden.

And I think that he was savvy enough to realize, okay, you know, I’m going to avoid that. What was the surprise was how little he had to give away. And what Kevin McCarthy was willing to agree to, knowing he had the Taliban twenty behind him. And, you know, I I’m reading these stories about you know, the the freedom caucus being upset and the growing rule. Well, of course, again, this feels like kind of a kabuki dance because they is what these guys do.

This is what they exist to be outraged and to be betrayed. Right? I mean, you know, Chip Roy exists to set himself on fire on the house floor and stuff like this. Not a prize at all.

I think there’s an important point here that and I think you and a lot of other folks have raised this. Okay. McCarthy establishes the point, right, that I’m willing to, you know, play chicken. I will get in the car and I will gun it. Even if I swerve, I’m I’ll actually play that game.

Yeah.

The problem is that nobody behind him, you you’ve established that I will weaponize these debt ceiling negotiations. Okay. You’ve done that. Now what do you want? And behind him, as you just pointed out, nobody agrees on what they want.

This is not a United caucus that says, okay, Kevin. Go in there. And you’re gonna put a stop to this. And here are the three inflexible things that Will Saletan only are what we want but are, you know, ideologically consistent that we know the cost that there was none of that. It’s like, you know, just go in there and count the table and shout, like you say.

So Chip Roy can go to the floor. And go, Giba Giba Giba and Gabba Gabba Hey. And then they all go back to their districts and say, that Joe Biden. You know, what a communist. Without anybody really understanding I mean, the deal is I don’t wanna say nuanced, but it is a little wonky.

Right? You’d have to kinda know the details. And nobody’s going home and talking about that. It’s all like you said, we were betrayed. The communists have taken over our socialism.

Yeah. Blah. Blah. Get his kabuki.

Well, except that Kevin McCarthy now owns it. Nancy Mace, who’s I don’t know, she’s going through some things. She tweeted out Washington is broken. Republicans outsmarted by a president who can’t find his pants. Again, let’s we just stop there for a moment because a little bit of cognitive dissonance that Republicans got outsmarted.

By a president, she says. Who can’t find his pants? So at the same time, they have to say he’s completely senile, and he is, you know, drooling in the corner incapable of coherent thought. And yet, he outsmarted us. So good luck with that.

Are chime in flashbacks though? The way Liberals used to talk about George w Bush. This guy is a complete moron. Reagan. Yeah.

Reagan. Right? He’s a complete moron. These guys are morons. They read scripts.

They you know, mean frat boy who flunked out of college, Reagan, you know, actor, and yet taking them to the max over and over again. Hey, maybe they’re actually okay at this. It’s okay to say that Joe Biden, after forty seven years in government, you know, and making deals in the Senate, is actually pretty good at doing budget negotiations. Was it in your piece of sporting where he said, why can’t I say it’s a good deal? Right?

You had a great corner. It’s like because if I say that,

You

know, that doesn’t help it get passed, which is why I’m better at this than you are, basically. And I thought it was pretty funny.

Yeah. Exactly. He understands, like, people were saying, well, why aren’t you saying, you know, I destroyed the Republicans. I got everything I wanted to yeah. Does that help me get this through?

No. This is part of the deal. I also thought it was interesting that punch bowls match Bern asked Kevin McCarthy. How would you describe your interactions with Biden during these negotiations? And McCarthy said speaking of being off message, said, very professional, very smart, very tough at the same time.

Yeah. That’s not the way that the right has been portraying Joe Biden, is it?

Look, he’s eighty years old, but there are a lot of, you know, very sharp guys. Who know their jobs. Now, you know, do what I want? Biden playing short stop on a you know, on the congressional team. No.

He’s and move as fast as he used to. But, you know, he seems to actually know what he’s doing with this stuff. And for McCarthy to come out and say, yeah, very professional, very tough. You know, it was a real conversation. Look, that’s all I want out of our national politicians.

Go sit in a room, figure stuff out, come out with a deal, you know, and get on with the business of the country.

Don’t crash the country. Just don’t do any harm. Don’t break anything.

That Nancy May’s quote, I mean, of course, I saw all this stuff going by on Twitter. That was all preloaded no matter what they got.

Exactly.

It didn’t matter.

There are some of these folks who cannot possibly ever sign on to any deal. People need to understand this. This is how they exist. Hey, folks. This is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast.

We created the bulwark to provide a platform for pro democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous, yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day, we remind you folks. You are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to the bulwark dot com and take a look around. Every day, we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact.

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Exclusions apply, see site for details. Alright. So we have to do this and we have to do this again, unfortunately. Over the weekend, David Jolly, who’s a former Republican congressman from Florida, and and Back up frequent guest on this program, good friend, good, you know, anti Trump, very consistently never Trump Republican. Went on many Hassan’s show and was talking about Ron DeSantis versus Donald Trump.

Let me just play this. This is Medi Hassan asking David Jolly

David, last word to you. You and I have talked a great deal about DeSantis authoritarianism in Florida. Nevertheless — Yes.

—

were you shocked by his announcement this week that he would quote aggressively go after pardons for one six insurrectionists.

No, Medi. I say this with conviction. I think Ron DeSantis is far more dangerous than Donald Trump for a very specific reason. Donald Trump is willing to ignore the rules, ignore the constitution, and frankly lead to the incitement of January sixth. But Donald Trump is a transactional figure.

He’ll do whatever it takes to win. Ron DeSantis, I believe, actually in his ethos, is a culture warrior who wants to take us back a hundred years and believes he can use the constitution to that to that end and ultimately has a very dark vision of what America will be. So the idea of pardoning January six PUTONVIX, if you will, at this point, is because he believes we are engaged in a real war that he has to win. Ron DeSantis tonight, a very dark figure on the political landscape far more dangerous than Donald Trump.

Okay. So Tom, I agree that Ron DeSantis is a dark political figure, but I think at least I think we need to remind people that when we say that Donald Trump is a unique existential threat, we mean he is a unique existential threat, and no one is worse than him. But what do you think?

Well, you know, it’s funny you say about about a dark figure because I as I was listening to David, I thought, I agree with everything you’re saying until you got to the worse than Donald Trump

part. That’s right.

Almost as bad. Yes. A particular kind of menace The thing about DeSantis that I flip back and forth in my mind, there’s so much that he does that is purely theatrical I shouldn’t even say theatrical. That he obviously doesn’t care that much about and will flip flop on the, you know, the Ukraine one eighty that he did a few months ago is a perfect example of, you know, oh, well, I I’m not he’s a congressman. I’m in favor of AD.

Well, no, I’m not because the base is well, my donors are mad. I guess I am. But there is a part of DeSantis that is just weirdly mean and angry and aggressive about some I mean, vindictive. Ventictive and also just weird. I mean, his Twitter announcement, such that it was, turned into him and Eelon Musk and David Sachs and, you know, a panel of guest stars, which I didn’t think you were supposed to do during a presidential announcement since supposed to be about you and not about, you know, Tom Massey or Jay Badaracha or whoever.

But it turned into a bunch of wonky it was like a bunch of guys in mom’s basement going on about, you know, ESG and CRT. And he really believes some of this stuff, which does make him weirdly dangerous because, you know, I keep coming back to the word weird because it seems just so weird. But I think that Trump, let me just know, you know, with all respect for David who, you know, I think, as you say, is one of the principal, never Trump folks. I’ll make the case that Donald Trump’s far more dangerous in part because he has a cult. Because Trump has a forceful personality.

You and I may find it odious and hideous and repugnant. But it is a definable forceful personality that has attracted a cult around itself. So if Trump says storm the capital, you know, millions of people are gonna go, AI aye. And they’re gonna start Ron DeSantis is gonna come out and say, I I I’m gonna pardon these guys, and he’s gonna do that kind of high pitch. You know?

And people are gonna go, yeah, whatever. What I worry about more is that DeSantis will be better at turning some of the knobs of government to get what he wants. You know, and wear away some of those — Most confident. — internal. Yes.

In some ways, more competent. But is he more dangerous than Trump? No. You know, I don’t think DeStana’s gonna walk in I mean, assuming he gets the nomination and assuming he wins the election, he’s not gonna walk in and say, okay. I’m disbanding NATO, and I’m loving up Putin.

And I’m gonna start jailing all of my, you know, critics.

You have to put Steve Bannon and Regiliani in the cabinet and bring back General Flynn and I’m

gonna bring back Mike Flynn. Exactly I mean, right there, if you’re gonna say DeSantis worse than Donald Trump, when Donald Trump says I will bring Mike Flynn back into government, you have to stop and say, okay. DeSantis is bad. He’s not that bad.

I think when you say that Rhonda Sanders is worse than Donald Trump, what you’ve done though is you’ve forgotten a little bit about Pudonald Trump has been. I mean, there have been so many things I understand. It’s hard to keep up with. Could we just go back to that moment? I talked to Moniture about it a little while ago.

You know, in Secret Podcast. You go back to that moment where Donald Trump explicitly in writing calls for terminating the constitution. So that he could be restored to power. Right. Okay.

So I understand when David Jolly says that he is transactional, but I think that there’s a fundamental misunderstanding there. There is a huge transactional element to Donald Trump, but there’s also something else. And it has been getting worse and worse and worse. It has become unhinged. And so you’re talking about someone who has extreme political views versus somebody who has called for terminating the constitution.

That’s not normal. That’s not within the normal continuum. And it suggests that someone is worse than that. Kind of normalizes something that is deeply abnormal. And we have been doing this for so long.

That maybe the abnormal has become so familiar that we mow things like his unique existential threat. But then go Yeah. But that Ron DeSantis is is really he’s even more dangerous. No. No.

No. Wait. Wait. Unique existential threat means unique. It means no one — Means unique.

— and Edna potential means we don’t just disagree with you on policy and you’re gonna do bad things that we don’t like. It means that you can burn down the whole fucking country and you’re prepared to do that. So I mean, that’s different.

I feel like we’re kinda beating up on David here, and now I’ll flip to the other case to say, I think what David was saying. I know in politics, if you’re explaining, you’re losing. But I’m gonna take a shot at why because I I have felt it sometimes too. I’ve watched a scientist and I say, hey, this guy really Will Saletan, you know, without the big rallies and without you know, without all the stupid vulgar exposition. This guy will just come in and quietly dismantle the constitution because he actually believes all this nuttery about ESG and CRT and m o u s e and all all that other stuff.

But I still would argue that that does not make him as bad as an emotionally disordered sociopath who will literally burn the country if it means resolving his narcissistic injury. And getting even with millions of people that he thinks have

— Yeah. —

affronted him. And I I I just think you’re absolutely right to say we can’t normalize Trump by putting him on that continuum. When you were talking about DeSantis, I kept thinking about what PJ O’Rourke once said about Hillary Clinton, something to the effect that he thought she was awful within normal parameters, right?

No, that was exactly the way I described. Yeah, I knew her. You could sort of hold your fingers together and, like, yes, within these parameters, and then there’s Trump who’s, like, whole different scale.

I think too, your point about banning and Flynn and the rest of them. Does Santos would bring people to I mean, I I just think DeSantis, you know, wouldn’t be good for the country. But I as I wrote recently in the Atlantic, it would be a better election with anyone but Donald Trump as the nominee

— I agree. —

of the Republican Party. Anybody. I mean, I You know, there’s plenty that I just absolutely cannot endure about Ron DeSantis. I think once America gets a look at again that kind of very strange affect that he has I also don’t think that he would bring this whole band of, you know, miscreants. I mean, Donald Trump would literally, I think, come into office pardon a bunch of felons, install them as acting secretaries and throughout the government, dare the Senate not to confirm them, which he doesn’t care about one way or another, and go from there.

And I mean, I really think that would be the beginning I don’t wanna use the word fascist. That word triggers me and other people, but I think it would be, you know, Trump returning with all of these creeps and clowns behind him. Would be the actual authoritarian takeover that we have been fighting against for years.

So, you know, speaking of any Republican being an improvement, you wrote about Tim Scott and Tim Scott. It sounds like a, you know, fundamentally decent guy. But as you point out, he’s a classic no hope or presidential prospect, but a strong choice for vice president. I think I described him as a potemkin candidate. Mhmm.

Tim Scott doesn’t sound like he’s running for president. He sounds like he’s running for vice president. I mean, he would be a definite upgrade from Donald Trump, but I just don’t see that happening in this universe that we inhabit.

What I wrote about Scott is the same thing I wrote about Nikki Haley and the rest of the Republican field, which is, you know, Tim Scott seems a decent fellow. You know, he’s more to the right than probably I would like. But again, he falls within those completely normal parameters of government but none of them are willing to throw a haymaker at Donald Trump. And I just don’t think that you can run-in this primary, especially with any hope of succeeding in a general. Without just fronting the Trump problem.

And I it feels to me like twenty sixteen again, where they’re all kinda looking at each other and saying, well, I can’t really go after him because once he implodes, I wanna be the one to scoop up his voters. I don’t know why it doesn’t get through to these guys. You’re not gonna get his voters. What you have to do is concentrate the other I’m gonna say the other sixty percent of the party at this point, that really would abandon Trump and coalesce behind somebody else. I mean, look at Ron to save this approach.

Right? Do you think Donald Trump won in twenty twenty? And of course, DeSantis and the rest of them say, yeah, basically. Or they say, I don’t want to talk about it. You know, they won’t just say, no.

Twenty twenty was totally fair. They imply that Trump actually won. But then when they said, why are you running against him? Well, because he’s unelectable. Well, by your definition, he’s won twice.

That’s not unelectable. And they won’t go after them.

So I don’t know how you Chris Christie might. But Chris Christie might also go after somebody else. I mean Chris Christie might play the same rule that he played in twenty sixteen. I mean, I’m kind of rooting for Chris Christie to come in and throw that haymaker at Donald Trump, but it’s just as likely that he will get on the stage and he will throw that haymaker at Ron DeSantis, or he’ll throw it at Tim Scott, or he’ll throw it at Glen Youngen, or anybody else that gets in his way Again, it it does feel that way. It feels as if everything is is settling in.

One other thing about Tim Scott. Right? Part of his appeal within the Republican Party coming out as candidates say, I am well liked. Everybody thinks I’m a very decent man of good character. Right?

If you’re basically running again on the character issue. The obvious question is, really, compared to whom. Mhmm. And then they say, well, I don’t wanna say. You know?

It’s like, I there are some people kinda like that Godfather line. You know, there’s some people who shouldn’t be bothered. I’m gonna blame some of the people in this room if we lose again, you know. And I don’t understand why if that’s what they’re running Ron DeSantis, and character, and normalcy, to come out and say, Donald Trump is manifestly unfit to be president. Period.

That’s why I’m you know, the only one who has and I we would be remiss not to say it is Ayson Hutchinson.

Right.

Who has come out and said, totally unfit. He should drop out of the race. And I thought louder for the people in the back governor, but he’s the only one so far.

Well, and the other thing, people like Tim Scott to deal with is is the way that the republican base has changed. I mean, a lot of what he is saying does sound like pre twenty sixteen Republican Party, you know, back when people the Heritage Foundation were rational before people like Denesh Desuza were tweeting.

What has happened to Heritage?

Well, I was gonna ask you this because, I mean, heritage to be very mainstream conservative. It was normally at the heart of the Reagan revolution. Now the head of the Heritage Foundation is going on Fox News and talking about dismantling in destroying the FBI. Now talk about, you know, defunding the police. This new president, Kevin Roberts, has gone complete nationalist conservative.

Not even pretend to be mainstream. Do you see the Denesh de Sousa tweet over the weekend? I I’m sorry.

It it’s just horrifying.

Me selling, I’m punching down here, but I wanna read you this is a guy who is, you know, widely respected in Maga circles. His movie his bogus complete bullshit movie, you know, about the three thousand Mules was shown at Mar a Lago. I mean, he he’s had a lot of credibility. He was he was pardoned by president Trump. He put out a tweet over the weekend.

Let me just read this. Virtually every IQ study over the past half century shows that blacks who are the rock solid base of the Democratic Party have the lowest IQ of any ethnic group, one standard deviation below whites and Asian America. How is this compatible with your thesis that goes on to it? Okay. So here you have this figure who has been a fixture on the right for many, many years.

Now feels that it is completely okay to tweet out a grotesquely racist meme like this. And there will be no consequences for Nesh de Sousa on the right. That’s an indication of how the world has changed. Because there once was a time when first of all, people would have said I’m not gonna tweet something like that or if they did tweet something like that, they would be immediately excommunicated because who wants to associate with that kind of, you know, hard white supremacy, white Jonathan Last. And there’s Danes de Sousa, and he’s doing it.

And I think people are just just gonna shrug it off because this is the new the new world. You know?

They will shrug it off in part because I think what’s happened to the Republicans is that they have given up on being a party of the majority. When you and I you know, you got there a little earlier than I did. But when I signed up in nineteen seventy nine and nineteen eighty, the Republicans were the part that said, we can actually be a durable governing majority in this country. And I think these conservatives and Republicans now are like, you know, we are this small put upon band of misfits and grievance you know, people carry grievances I mean, DeSousa is a classic case of this. Right?

He starts thirty years ago with a book that wasn’t bad actually about higher education. Yeah.

It

wants to be taken seriously as a conservative intellectual. And like so many of them, like Carlson, like Ingram, you know, it’s like, oh, being responsible is boring. And it’s not getting me anywhere. You know, these these guys were all vying for the two shares that are already occupied by, you know, George Will and Charles Crowdhammer. Right?

Mhmm. Mhmm. And when that fails through a lack of talent, the market being a little too top heavy with, you know, young conservatives who wanna be pundits. They said, okay. Then I guess I’ll just go for crazy attention seeking.

And then, Tesusa’s life implodes. Right? He gets

—

Yeah. — he ends up getting convicted of a crime. Mhmm. And now says, fine. I am just going to live among the he’s like, Mike Flynn that way.

You know, I am now going to live among the craziest people who believe the craziest things who will not hold me responsible for anything I say and they will buy any crap that I put on the market, you know, because that’s all that’s left. And so that’s really kind of giving up on politics with a capital p and just saying, I don’t wanna use or a GIF because it’s even worse than that. It’s simply saying, you know, I’m just going to go to this well and my own grievances over and over again. But in a way, Charlie, I think it’s actually good that kind of more national level conservatives aren’t bothering to denounce DeSouza because he he just doesn’t live there’s no point in, you know, Ron DeSantis or Mike Pence or whoever. Saying, hey, I have to say something about the Nesh desousa.

I think most of them would say, you know, like you said, it almost feels like punching down at this point. But but this thing about heritage, You know, I got shelled on Twitter yesterday because I said, you know, heritage used to be a serious place. Of course — Yeah.

—

the usual angry Twitter Liberals were all like, oh, no. They were always this, you know, band of Nazis. And I’m like, no. I’m sorry. But in the nineteen eighties, even if you were on the left, you paid attention to what Heritage was saying.

Because you wanted to know what the ideas perk I mean, this is back with Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Right? Suddenly, the Republicans are a party of ideas. And a lot of those ideas were coming out of heritage. And heritage often had debates within itself that were interesting.

Over those years. And Jack Pitney, who teaches at Clairemont Mckenna, which is not the Clairemont institute. They should be clear. You know, Jack and I both worked in Congress back in the day. Right.

When Heritage sent stuff out, even if you didn’t think it was great, you read it. You said, okay, this is you know, these are serious people who have serious ideas. Not all of them are good, but you paid attention to it. And we were having trouble kind of convincing people that no. No.

Seriously, like Republican staffers read this stuff. And now, as you point out, new I’d the thing I love about this new president is that he rails about, you know, professors and PhDs and elites. And this guy has a, you know, a CV of resume that is classic kind of intellectual elite. And it’s almost like this protective coloring. No.

No. I’m not one of them. I’m not one of the, you know, hyper educated, but you’re right. It’s become this kind of nat con client servicing. And I guess the only thing I would assume, I assume so there are people who actually believe this stuff at Heritage, but I also figured there’s got to be a follow the money issue here.

I assume there’s some donor servicing going on or something. But it’s just

You always have to follow that money.

Yeah. Yeah. I was never a huge I think it’s important to remind people. I was always one of those kind of squishy New England modcons, you know, unlike you tough guys out in the Midwest. But, you know, I read stuff from Heritage, I paid attention to it, and and what a fall for a a think tank.

It’s really amazing.

You know, I suppose this is all along the same lines just about how the base has changed. I know you’re in you’re right about the heritage and about the donor class, but also what’s happened in the base? Did you see yesterday? People have to follow me on this one. Ted Cruz — Uh-oh.

— put out a tweet condemning Ugandaanda’s anti homosexuality law. So Uganda has now banned homosexuality. Ted Cruz put out a tweet saying this is wrong. Okay? The responses from the right from Ted Cruzland was very instructive because there was a huge blowback be like, why are you saying this, Ted?

Why are you going this far? This flex on the part of the right, the culture warriors, to go after not just the trans issue, but all gay rights. The fact that every conservative didn’t go, okay. If Ted Cruz is saying this is wrong, I’m I’m gonna go with him. No.

This is one of those cases. And Ted Cruz has always been pretty careful, you know, to stay in, like, I am your leader. You know, wait for me. I I need to lead you. But clearly, he was out of touch with much of his own base yesterday.

On a law, which should not have been controversial for any American.

Right.

It was just kind of a weird moment.

Uganda has outlawed homosexuality to take one of my favorite quotes from Ghost Busters. That ought to do it. Thanks, Ray. Exactly. Good.

Good move. Alright. Well, now that it’s illegal, you’ve really solved that problem. The thing you’re seeing that came about cruise, there’s some thing going on in the base, and I think it goes back to this thing I was talking about earlier that they now realize what a minority they really are in the country. That all of these culture war issues are responded to with terror, with fear.

You and I I know on your show, we’ve talked about this many times. There is no confidence left in the American right. Everything is this fearful freak out

— Mhmm. —

that is always predicated on unless we take the most extreme measures we are going to lose something important to us, you know, because we couldn’t possibly convince anybody And we know that most people just don’t agree with us

—

Yeah.

—

and so instead of saying, you know, especially if you live in a world where friends and relatives and people you care about who are gay, you say, hey, this law is just a bad idea. It’s just repressive. And debt it’s got to be, no, you know, everything is the slippery slope toward you know stalinism or something. And I think that that explains a lot with that. And that fear is stoked every night

— Every night. —

fox to the max. And on talk radio, the talk radio fox nexus, we didn’t even bring this up. But that Mark Levin interview Donald Trump

– Oh my God. Okay. So so I had seen references the fact that Mark Levin gave a suck up interview to to Donald Trump.

That is not even close to the right word?

No. That is not even close to the right word. This is one of the most embarrassing grovels I have ever seen. From a guy that You know, Mark Levin used to have a little bit of pride, a little bit of self respect, a little bit of substance, am I wrong there?

I think you’re wrong there, but okay.

But it was like okay. But like, I’m going to crawl naked on my belly and lick your

toes for

the interview and it was, oh my lord.

It was in the words since, you know, I’ve been going through my box of cultural references today. Will say that in the words of sideshow Bob from the Simpsons, I will just say, oh, okay. You know, it was just it was so cringe inducing.

But you know what? You actually have to read it in order to understand that we are not exaggerating here?

Yeah. Well, or just watch the clip Okay.

But but let’s get to some substance here. Okay? Because since you’re an actual expert, don’t play one on television. So I’m sorry. Go throw a little dark here.

But you wrote about this recently. Is rush about to stash nukes in Belarus? What happens if the Russians move nukes in the Belarus to escalate its the pressure on Ukraine. What is going on do you think?

Well, let me start by saying all is well and remain calm.

Yeah.

But it’s bad. So here’s apparently what’s going on. The Russian and Belarus’s defense ministers have signed an agreement that will allow Russia for the first time in its post Soviet history to base its nuclear weapons outside of Russia. This is reversing years of progress on nuclear weapons. There used to be nuclear weapons in Belarus because they were stationed there in the Old Soviet Union.

In the Soviet times, when the USSR was this one big state

—

Mhmm. — there were nukes in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. And by treaty, all three of those countries returned those nukes and made Russia the kind of custodial successor state to the Soviet Union that had to deal with all Nukes and get them off their territory. Putin wants to move nukes into Belarus, these, you know, short range nuclear weapons that could be delivered by rocket or jet and put them close to Ukraine just to see if that rattles everybody. You know, again, Putin is such a lousy strategist, and he’s just so kind of in the bubble about how things work in the West.

My suspicion is that he wants to do that and make a big deal of moving them during this big summer counter offensive. And then say, you know, that the Ukrainiansians are threatening Russia’s nuclear deterrent, that he wants to get this to some kind of crisis. Where the west says, well, it’s just too dangerous now. We just have to drop everything. And instead, what I think and I’m what I hope and is that the West says, hey, you’re putting these nukes in another you’re responsible for these.

By treaty, these are Russian nukes under Russian control. So you know, don’t fuck up. These are yours. Take care of them. Make sure that things don’t get out of hand here.

I wrote on Friday, in the daily, I said, Pooten thinks that western leaders are afraid of nuclear war. Well, they are afraid of nuclear war because they’re not psychopaths. And he’s afraid of There were. And so are his generals. You know, one of the things we found out after the end of the Cold War.

We interviewed a lot of senior Soviet generals and marshals. And they were like, Yeah. Oh, yeah. We were pretty scared of that whole business. We didn’t we didn’t wanna do that either.

You know, these are normal human beings. Nobody wants this. But Putin, I think, figures, I can bluster this better than other people can. It’s also a way of tying Lukashenko to Russia even more tightly in this war because, you know, Belarus really didn’t want nobody wanted this war but Putin. And even Lukashenko, who is an Odiest creep himself was like, yeah.

Sure. We’re on your side here, but well shit. You know? The other thing that could happen is that Lukashenko’s apparently again, there are a lot of rumors that flu. Let this be a lesson to people on Twitter.

Don’t post rumors until they’re verified by legitimate media. You know, holy shit dot news dot com is not legitimate media. But Lukashenko is apparently in bad health. So if he’s gone, there will be a Russian military presence in his country when the succession crisis hits. That may be a part of this whole business that this may not be.

And again, I’m Warning to everybody listening to me. I am theorizing in the absence of evidence. I did that about the Kremlin drones. Right? Because I wrote on Friday, I was wrong.

But I think one possibility here is that Putin is saying, hey, if Lukashenko’s gonna go down, you know, if the Grim Reaper’s gonna step in here, It wouldn’t suck to have a Russian military base, you know, right there in Belarus where I can look at this country and say, don’t do anything that pisses me off. Or endangers this space that whatever happens, you’re gonna have to stay close to me. But, you know, the other possibility is that he that Putin’s just strategically, you know, for years, I and Lawrence Friedman were the two people saying, this guy’s not a good strategist. Stop trying to find, you know, twelve dimensional chess moves here. So it’s just a bad idea.

So let’s talk about these drone strikes, you know, leaving aside the first drone strike that I think you’ve you’ve discussed it at some length. The latest ones multiple drone strikes in Moscow the day after this massive attack on Key. At this point, is there any doubt that this is based the Ukrainian is doing this and that it’s justified.

The US intelligence community I mean, let me back up and say, with that first kinda weird middle of the night thing, you know, that dropped on top of the Russian Senate. I said, geez. That

—

Yeah. — that looks like the kinda clumsy thing that the Russians would would pull as a false flag because then Putin can, you know, put the screws to everybody Moscow, and, you know, the security services kinda clamp down. US Intelligence now says, but with low confidence that they think this was and the word they’re using, and this is why you have to read, you know, newspapers carefully. Orchestrated by they think orchestrated by Ukrainian security services. Mhmm.

But that word If they meant conducted, they would have said conducted. So that could mean anything, Charlie. That could mean that, you know, that there’s a James Bond that they set loose, that there’s a small band of civilians who are working with them, there could Russian dissidents working with them. Could be a commando team for all we know. So I don’t wanna I kind of burned myself with an early take on this.

You know, rule of expertise. If you’re wrong, come forward and own it. So I’m I was wrong about the false flag approach. So I just don’t know who’s doing these drone strikes. Think about drones is, right?

They’re cheap and they’re easy. Hey, Amazon was gonna use them to drop packages on your lawn. This isn’t like a super high-tech. Is it the Ukrainians? Or is it the Ukrainians with help from local Russians?

Is it I I just don’t know. But the one thing I think is wrong is that it’s the Russians themselves. Now there’s one other interesting theory. A friend of mine is a pretty good Russia watcher. He said, you know, sometimes what the Russian security services have have done is they know something’s up and they kinda let it happen anyway as a way of then going into the front office and saying, hey, we’re beset by spies and saboteurs and traitors.

You gotta cut us loose and let us start crushing skulls. But I just don’t know.

What do you make of Russia going after Lindsey Graham right now? Above all the people a target to issue an arrest warrant at the head of Russian state TV calling for his assassination. I mean, Lindsey Graham has been critical Russia, you know, from the get go. He’s even a supporter of our aid Ukraine from the get go. He’s clearly a very, very close ally of Donald Trump.

What’s happening? Do you have any insight on that?

No. Except that Russian media is, you know, crazier than ours. You know, Russian right wing media is crazier than than, you know, news even newsmax or OEM. If you’re on social media and you’re not following Julia Davis, you’re doing it wrong because Julia takes a lot of these clips and then translates and subtitles them to show you what goes on Russian televisions every night and it is pure hot crazy. So you know, it could just be like this is just trolling or that the Russians have kind of you know, that kinda lost their minds and have just decided to, you know, do things to make us look at the big shiny object over there about arresting Lindsay Graham.

It’s dumb because it’s you know, I don’t think either of us are huge fans of Lindsay Grant, but he did have a great comeback, which is I will submit to the arrest warrant soon as you do and I’ll meet you in the hague, which was a great line.

It’s one of Lindsay’s better moments,

I have to say. Yes. It was, you know, it I was like, okay, that’s pretty clever. We’ll agree. We’ll meet and hang.

And, you know, I’ll stand in the dock and so will you and we’ll see which one of us gets convicted first. And I think too, you know, part of it is kind of dumb for the Russian meat. I guess it’s not dumb. It’s a diversion. Because if saying things like Graham said are prosecutable, you know, as war crimes, then everybody in every Russian TV studio is on their way to to the hague.

Because they’ve called for, you know, genocide and massive indiscriminate bombing and all that stuff. So, you know, some of it’s just the trolery of the Russians these days. But I did miss and I I’ll just end on this, Charlie. I missed the old Soviet leadership, and I never thought I’d say that. That boring committee of old men who you know sort of knew how to run a major country and not look like a bunch of unstable clowns while they were doing it.

And it’s really strange for Reaganite Sovietologist of the nineteen eighties to say hey, you know who I miss Breznev. Compared to these guys, they were pros.

Tom Nichols, as seen in succession is Noah Staff writer at the Atlantic author of the Atlantic Daily newsletter Tom. It is always great to have you back on the podcast and have a great vacation now.

Thanks Charlie. Thanks for having me.

And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We’ll be back tomorrow and we’ll do all over again. The Bullbrook podcast is produced by Katie Cooper. And engineered and edited by Jason Brown.