Tom Nichols: Our Surreal Moment

Welcome to the

Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is August twenty second two thousand twenty three. It is The day before the first Republican debate, two days before the former president of the United States does his fourth Perp walk. And We are joined once again by Professor emeritus Tom Nichols.

I’m sorry. Tom Nicholson, staff writer for the Atlantic. How are you doing, Tom? It’s been a while.

I’m good, but I’ll thank you not to laugh at Professor emeritus.

I know it’s the emeritus thing. It’s sort of like professor Old guy.

Professor, that’s exactly what it means. Professor, Craig.

Let me tell you what I was thinking this morning that I wanted to talk to you about. I wonder whether or not there are millions of people who maybe are much younger than us, Who do not realize how surreal our times are? Who have grown up in this time of crazy vacation or looking around and going, yeah, this is the way things are. I mean, you know, I mean, political parties can be, you know, political cults. And, yeah, you know, somebody who is being arraigned on racketeering Charlie Sykes ninety one felonies, of course, he’s going to be surging in the polls.

And, yeah, is, like, this does happen on a regular basis. Right? We have presidential debates, and the front runner doesn’t show up because he’s in a jail down in Atlanta posting a two hundred thousand dollar bail and the judge is warning him not to, intimidate or threaten witnesses. I mean, Tom, even you and I, once in a while, then we have to step back and go, okay. The full insanity of this moment.

You and I have been doing this now for seven, eight years. I don’t think we ever thought it was gonna last this long. Don’t that we ever thought that the stupidity would would seep so deeply into our culture.

I think once a day. Once a day, I have to step back and say, this can’t be happening.

Yeah. Right. And it’s going to keep going.

And you’re right, you know, that for younger, of course, you know, being a professor emeritus, everyone is younger than I am and you. You know, if you’re twenty five or thirty years old, yeah, for most of the time that you’ve paid attention to politics, oh, this is just normal. This is just how it is that we don’t flinch. And I think, you know, the phrase that I’ve used so often in in writing and in discussions, you know, you and I have talked about it is how have we just gotten used to it? Yeah.

And I think that is, you know, the bad guys in the world, not just Donald Trump, but, you know, Vladimir Putin. Right? There’s a huge war raging in the middle of Europe, something thirty years ago we would have thought of as an existential danger. And we’ve just gotten used to it. That Trump and his guys are being arraigned for racketeering charges, which John Eastman this morning, you know, that we’ve crossed a Rubicon.

I’m being prosecuted for my first amendment. Right? I mean, There was a time, I think, a better we always have to qualify when a better time was, but a better time when people like this would have said on advice of counsel, I am not saying anything. And they would be ashamed. Not only do we live in a time where our politics have become so completely hallucinatory, but we’re living in a time without shame.

What blows my mind about the current situation we’re dealing with, you know, with Trump and all these other guys getting hold up on charges they’re not really disputing that they did the things they did. They’re just disputing that they’re illegal. And Again, in a better time first of all, on a better time, there would have been somebody in the room say, you guys, we cannot plot to overthrow an election in the United States. You know, it sucks. We lost, but we can’t do this.

But also on a better time, you know, there would be people who would say, Hey, you don’t want to admit that you were part of a slate fake electors?

You know, I actually think it’s worse than that, though. I’m sorry to even go down to a darker road here, but there are millions of Americans who, according to the polls, are saying that, yes, it is illegal. Yes. There are crimes, and I’m okay with that.

And I’m gonna call you for money anyway.

And that’s part of the culture of shamelessness. Right? I mean, I guess part of it is that we’ve always had, you know, spasms of idiocy of, you know, extremism of crackpotism of of cruelty, but there’s always been the correction there. There’s always been you know, sayoner voices. I won’t use the term adults in the room anymore, but sayoner voices, you know, the center will will Will Saletan.

It doesn’t feel like that right now. It used to be that if you were caught committing a crime or alive, there would be consequences because people would not tolerate it Now when you’re caught committing a crime or telling a lie, it just doesn’t matter. In fact, people like you even more because it’s a fucking cult.

The thing about adults in the room, because the other thing that I think really contributes to this is the juvenileization of our culture.

Oh, yeah.

And I don’t mean a youth culture. I mean a juvenile culture. I was thinking of this the other day. You know, of course, I I worked on the hill thirty years ago, and you’ve started in politics when, you know, men wouldn’t leave the house without wearing a jacket, and until, you know, those days.

This is actually true. I was

thinking of this watching cat camec, you know, jumping around barefoot on stage at, some young Republican thing. My wife was looking at this and I and she who’s that? And I said, that is a member of Congress of the United States. And by the way, Kamek was just the most recent version. There are plenty of Democrats who do things where I just kind of put my hand to my temple and say, you understand that you’re like a senator, right, that you’re a member of Congress, that you’re an adult, that you are a handful of the most important leaders in this country, And they’re all, you know, like teenagers, and I think that reflects this juvenile culture we live in that says nothing matters.

There are no consequences. Nothing’s really dangerous. No decisions really matter one way or another. Nobody gets really hurt. Nothing can go wrong.

And, you know, I think part of it is that the the small number of people who do make the country work on a day to day basis, it’s kind of like putting toddler bumpers on all the sharp edges. You know? And so we have everybody else kind of crashing around and making asses of themselves. While, you know, there’s this small handful of people who make sure that, you know, the airports are funded and that clean water comes out of your tap and that your passport still works. And I think people just don’t understand that anymore.

They think everything’s just a big fucking joke at this point. Man, we went dark fast.

We’re we’re not done yet.

We don’t usually get this dark this fast, this early, Charlie. I’m just saying.

Woke up kinda dark today. Every few years, people circulate this, Carl Sagan quote from nineteen ninety five. His, rather uncanny prediction. It was in nineteen ninety five in the book called the demon haunted world. You’re familiar with it.

It seems like it’s like sort of rip right from the pages of your death of expertise books. And

— Right. —

he wrote. Again, this is nineteen ninety five. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time when the United States is a service and information economy when nearly all of the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries, when awesome technological powers in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues. When the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority, When clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide almost without noticing back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media The thirty second sound bites now down to ten seconds or less, the lowest common denominator programming.

Credulous presentations on pseudo science and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. Mister Nichols, I think we are there.

But enough about Elon Musk and Vivik Ramoswamy.

Yeah, can you not listen to that and think that? You know?

And I thought as well. And that brings us to Tommy Tuberville. Right? I mean, there are there are millions of Americans.

It’s a blackburn. Carrie Lake. Right. Marjorie Taylor Green.

But that inability of the public to understand the problem I mean, Tuberville’s summing the time of his life with this And people don’t understand that we now have several of our top military posts I mean, there’s a war going on in Europe. We’re competing with China. There’s all kinds of bad things going on. And, you know, Tuberville has literally held up hundreds of these positions, including the first female chief of naval operations. My old job, right, at the naval work the naval war, College reports, right, to the chief of naval operations.

In theory, they don’t have one right now. They have an acting because Tommy Tubeville has decided that he’s going to abuse the Senate hold power, which, you know, at this point, should be trashed and that rule should be thrown out. And if if Mitch McConnell were doing his job. This would have been stopped by now because he, you know, Tuberville is one of his guys. But the public’s like He was a football coach.

Right? And he’s cool. You know, what’s the big deal? And I think we just don’t understand that, you know, these consequences And we have people running for office who are completely ridiculous that in an earlier time, they would have been an asterisk, but in the television age and the internet age, especially where there’s just so much bandwidth that you can have Mary Ann Will Saletan. And Vivic Ramaswamy and Robert Kennedy Junior.

Junior. I mean, some of these people are complete crackpots

before we move on from Tommy Timberville. Why is the rest of the Senate allowing him to do this? I understand that they have procedures and norms, but I mean, at some point, you know, WTF. First of all, you know, why is Chuck Schumer who is the majority leader, why does this happen? Why does Mitch McConnell allow this to happen?

For two reasons, until you’ve ever been inside that body, you don’t realize how true is, but the Senate is very much a club, and it operates. Everything operates on consent and collegiality. Which means that any one senator who wants to be enough of a jerk can hijack almost any process. I mean, remember that every morning the Senate begins with you know, the guy in the chair who has no power, by the way. The senate president — Yeah.

— unlike the speaker of the house, the senate president is just a traffic cop. Is why they always give that job to, like, the most junior senators so you can go learn parliamentary procedure. And every morning, they start by saying, hearing no objection, so ordered. And all it takes to screw that all up is some senator saying, well, I object. And then the day is shot.

But the other reason I think Charlie Sykes because the senate is so closely divided that neither of them, no side wants to trigger any nuclear options about stuff like this, because at any moment, the majority can be the minority again, and they have to keep flipping. Now that was less of a problem when there was a little more trust and collegiality among the two parties to say, you know, we disagree about a lot of stuff. But, you know, you’re gonna be in charge for all. We’re gonna be in charge for all. We have to live together.

Unfortunately, they don’t think that way anymore.

I understand that they won’t wanna railroad it, but you would think that there would be a meeting between Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell who they would basically say

— Right. —

you know, they would, you know, sit down in the room and going, you know, Chuck would say to Mitch, like, this is bullshit. We’re not gonna let this happen. I mean, how how do we fix this? Right?

Well, it would start by Mitch sitting down with, from Massachusetts. So I don’t know if it’s Tuberville or Tuberville, and I don’t really care. But sitting down with Senator Tommy and saying, before Schumer even has to ever be involved in this, say, okay. Tommy, this is bullshit. Yeah.

And you’ve had your fun, and now it’s time to take care of the national security of the United States. You’re gonna cut this shit out. But nobody’s gonna do that. I mean, if McConnell sat down with Schumer to do this, the immediate howl from the GOP would be that McConnell’s a traitor and he sold out his caucus, And, you know, all hell would break loose. The problem and the fundamental problem, and now I get to go dark Charlie Sykes that Tommy Toperville can get away with this because the people of Alabama let him.

Because this is what a significant number of voters want. They want this chaos and hold up, and they don’t care if the National Security of the United States is endangered by it.

I would normally completely agree with you. I’m just not sure that if they understood exactly what it meant to our national security, the attack on the military, I’m not sure that this would be a winner for him, but maybe you are right. Okay. So speaking of Dark, I wanna go back to how I started this Secret Podcast. Which was my sense that I wonder whether people understand how surreal and bizarre the times are that we’re living in.

And also how thorough the transformation has has been. And then I think it’s going to be lasting for a long time is, you know, we talk about the depression generation. Well, how long did the depression last? What years would you say? You know, nineteen twenty nine to, let’s say, nineteen forty?

And what what do you think?

Yeah, twenty nine to forty, basically, or at least, you know,

okay. We talk about the impact of the nine eleven generation, which, again, you know, people who grew up in that their entire world was shaped by that decade. After the the attack on the twin towers and and the Pentagon. Right? So you had depression generation, the nine eleven generation, there are other generations, obviously, we could throw in here.

I think now, we’re seeing the growth of the Trump generation. Now there may be some positive developments. You know, young people may be permanently turned off to conservatism in the Republican Party for decades. But there’s also going to be a class of people who have been formed in narrower insanity is the norm, where shamelessness is the norm.

Well, I think shamelessness, and here, I’m gonna throw some shade at our friends on the left because I think the emergence of shamelessness actually begins in kind of the moral relativism you know, of the left, you know, twenty, thirty years ago. The left may have pioneered it, but the Republicans have perfected it. And they’ve weaponized it and turned it into a political movement. But I will look for one sliver of light here and say, I think if Donald Trump is decisively beaten and taken off the political board here as an option in the future. That this almost decade that we’ve been living with this madness can come to an end because I think and I’ve been saying this now for a few weeks watching the polls and watching, you know, people are dealing with Trump.

I think there are a lot of people who want to be let down off that cross. That they are up that tree. They don’t know how to get down. They don’t know what to do. And they won’t be the ones to vote against Trump and end his career.

But if trump would somehow lose without their hands on it. I think that there are people who would be just as happy to just let it go. Because I think he’s exhausted them as well as us. And I think that that could be the beginning of something different. Now the one thing that I think you’re right about, Trump will be gone, but there will always be a Marjorie Taylor Green.

You know, there’s gonna be these other people in office who are going to be. But I I really think that we’re heading for a realignment, and I also think that that means that the Republicans basically become this kind of rump party in the south and the west and some pockets of upstate New York for a long time to come because they can’t get people to buy what they’re selling either in terms of their candidates, or in terms of their programs. And so I think they’re entering that period. If that that once Trump is gone, they’re also gonna face the problem of, you know, no matter how many labels we put on this dog food. You know, the dog doesn’t like it.

And I think that right now, that’s getting blocked out by a lot of noise generated by, you know, Trump and his alleged crime spree that he’s now under four indictments for. I do think if Trump loses, this is why I find it so manning. When people like Bill Barr, you know, sit there and say, well, you know, he’s a terrible guy and he did all these illegal things awful blah blah blah, but I’d still vote for him. If I had to. Well, at some point, the way a party recovers itself is to say, look, I will not do this.

There are things, you know, that’ll joke about lawyers and rats, right, that, you know, there are some things even rats won’t do. And you just say, I’m not gonna do this. And until some of these people get to that point, we’re not out of the woods. And but I think the first step is that Trump has to be beaten and, you know, at the ballot box and just driven from our public life. And I think that’s within reach.

So let’s talk about this week because, since we’re talking about the surreal nature of our politics, We have the first, debate Donald Trump will not be showing up because he’s gonna be, down in Georgia, being booked had his mugshot taken and then released on two hundred thousand dollars bond. So let’s talk about it. You always watch these debates. Why are you tuning in? What are you looking for in this debate?

Well, I was talking to, Julie Mason yesterday. And I, you know, I worked for years for the military. And I said, my feeling about the debate is like the joke officer evaluation that said his men would follow him anywhere, but mostly out of morbid curiosity. You know, it’s like, yeah, I’m gonna watch the debate in part because I’m gonna write about it. And, you know, like you, I’m a writer and I’m more because Comment turn all of that.

Also, there’s a part of me that just you gotta be kidding me that we’re gonna have a debate between Chris Christie and Vivik Ramoswamy and How is this even possible? A lot of people, and I know Charlie, you and I have dealt with this for years. How could you guys have ever been Republicans and everybody knew and the bad? There was a time when the Republican Party was the boring adult party that was all about, you know, the kind of the get things done party I guess I’m gonna tune in because I can’t I still can’t accept that the Republican Party has turned into a freak show.

It it is a freak show of. Thing.

You know, I’m every now and then, even after all these years, after almost a decade, every now and then I’m kind of still in denial. I mean, let’s be more practical about it. First of all, I am curious to see if someone solidifies, you know, if the excalibur of fighting directly with Trump, gets passed to someone who will actually wield it. Because every time I think of the debates, I think of Christine, Ramaswamy, and know, some of these other but the person, you know, who has fallen out of all this is Ron DeSantis. You know, DeSantis was supposed to be the Trump slayer.

He’s barely you posted that video the other day of him grinding his teeth.

Next to a picture of Homelander. And and again, that’s kind of a deep dive for some people because that that is spooky.

It was creepy.

Because once you see Rhonda Sanders as Homelander, and that’s that’s from the show, the boys, you’re not gonna be able to unsee it. Just trust

It’s like Homelander without the charisma or the superpowers, but yeah.

So you said he was supposed to be the ten foot tall trump’s lair, and now he is walking with chunks of his campaign falling and burning globs out of the sky.

Well, yeah.

I just love reading these things, you know, that he needs to have strong debate. He needs to hit it out of the park. I just don’t think that’s gonna be happening. I am sorry.

Now there are people who are gonna be staring at his jaw, but I think the question is if the sword is gonna pass, you know, from him, where does it go? And also, I’m fascinated to see who aligns with whom But I’m glad Aisa Hutchinson’s gonna be there. I’m kinda hoping Hutchenson’s the guy who just throws is kind of our surrogate there. Right? The Charlie and Tom guy who throws up his hands.

He’s and says, what are we doing here? You know, what what the hell is going on here? Because he’s kind of been that guy. I’m just curious to see if there’s any flicker of integrity or truth telling or honesty because, you know, there are still plenty of Republicans who don’t want Donald Trump And I think, you know, it’s kinda curious to see who picks up that torch.

Yeah. And and, you know, the the the problem is people to keep talking about, you know, the breakout moments. I mean, there’s a couple of problems with that. Number one, you know, how many people are actually going to be watching? I don’t know.

Number two, whether eight people on stage And so I’ll be honest. The way that I watch and listen is that I put it on mute when certain people are talking because I don’t care what Doug Bergam has to say. I’m sorry. You know, If if somebody asked me about him, you know, tomorrow, I’ll just say, yeah, I wasn’t paying any attention. Sorry.

But you’re undercutting the possibility of Bergamentum,

Obviously, I wanna watch Chris Christie who has I mean, Chris Christie who has become I think is, you know, sort of found his own rhythm to, you know, return to the of the most impressive performance artists in politics, and he has he has no bleeps left to give. I am interested to see whether they go after Vivekramaswamy, because I think they will. I think that he’s going to be the punching bag because if you’re Nikki Haley and you wanna show that you can, you know, kick with those sharp heels you don’t wanna go after, you know, the maga precious, you know, beat the crap out of Vivek. You every single day says something not just deplorable, but that shit crazy. Whether it’s about nine eleven or whether it’s a I mean, he just it is really a sign of the degradation of our politics that that Vivek Ramaswamy who is complete fraud phony is the hot new thing in our politics.

You wanna talk about the trivialization of our politics?

Right. A guy who never voted and who I think crossed I mean, you know, he could sell himself as I’m, you know, sort of charmingly naive rich guy, you know, kind of the younger Ross Perot. Well, you know, I don’t know a lot about all this crazy stuff you guys do. I think he crossed the line with the nine eleven thing. That is a sacred and horrible thing that Americans you don’t you don’t mess with nine And the only people that can mess with nine eleven are people that by definition, I think the vast majority of Americans have just defined a way as crackpots and conspiracy theorists.

That’s not even a mega thing.

Right. It’s that even the mega folks, you don’t go down that road about nine eleven. You can come up with all kinds of terrible things about COVID, and vaccines, and UFOs, and all that other horse shit. But when you start talking about nine eleven, you’ve you’ve really crossed the line. And I I’ll be curious to see if anybody calls him out on it.

And then, of course, there’s Mike Pence, and we don’t know which Mike Pence will show up, whether it will be the guy that, you know, will take on Donald Trump we’ll forget to say his name.

Oh, he wants it.

Nobody’s gonna beat up on Tim Scott, I’m guessing. So that there’s an advantage that he has. Right? He’s the one guy that nobody’s gonna say anything about.

He’ll be a funicular and charming and funny and everyone will nod politely and say, you know, great guy, too bad he has no chance at all.

I have a question for you. I I talked about this in and our other podcast that I do with, with Mona Charen, and I could argue both sides of all of this. That, you know, the conventional wisdom is that, you know, part of Donald Trump reptilian genius is knowing that being arrested the day after the the debate will suck all the and out of the room. And because he’s such a genius, he knows that he will be able to knock down any bump that anybody gets out of the debate. I mean, that’s the conventional wisdom, you know, the new normal now.

I sort of have this residual before times thought, though, that, you know, the split screen is going to be pretty stark. Where you have these candidates standing on stage running for president. Some of them occasionally talking about things of substance versus Donald Trump walking into the Atlanta jail. To be arrested and charged with thirteen more felonies, including racketeering. I understand that cliche that, you know, noble is bad publicity.

I don’t know. Some publicity is bad publicity. And if you’re Rhonda Sanders or you’re Mike Pence or Chris Christie, This split screen of okay Republicans, this is one future, these people who are alternatives versus this guy who is going to spend the next year and a half in and out of jails and courtrooms and arraignments, and you’re gonna see his mugshot. I don’t know that this is the genius move, that some of the smart kid pundit class is saying it is. What do you think?

You’re one of the smart kid pundits?

Don’t buy what the other cool kids are saying.

Oh, breaking with the cool kids.

I know it’s kind of a to underestimate the Magabase, you know, you you can rarely go wrong on that. And they’re going to say, they’re gonna tell pollsters, and they’re gonna say, we like him more now that he’s been indicted a hundred million times. But nobody likes that. Trump doesn’t like it by reports that we’re seeing people near him. He’s scared out of his mind.

If possible, he’s become even crazier. I mean, at some point, he’s just gonna violate the terms of his release. I mean, that that’s gonna take all of ten minutes before that before either Tanya Chuck in or or the judge in, Georgia is gonna haul him in for threatening witnesses yet. Absolutely. I guess part of the reason I’m gonna watch the debate is wouldn’t it be awesome?

And this is just my wishcasting. Wouldn’t it be awesome if someone says, look, while while we’re here, like that line from Doctor Strange of all we’re here chatting so amiably, you know, that Donald Trump is going to be arraigned. Is this our party? I wanna know around this room? Who of you?

You know, why aren’t we together? And I understand millions of people want this person, but it’s time to speak truth to our own voters. Even if we lose. And then for all the jokey about something like Doug Bergam, you know, there are a lot of people who have the complete freedom to say this out loud. In this debate.

But I think that that split screen, Charlie, you know, it’s not just that it’ll rattle, I think, Magga World. Because I think it does, and I think They’re just really good about bamboozling the press into saying that it doesn’t. But the more important point is that all of the other millions of people who are not Republican who are independents, who are Democrats who could have been moved either to stay home or to kinda take a flyer the way they did in twenty sixteen and, you know, we already saw it in twenty twenty that there were just millions of vehicles. So I can’t go through this again. And I think with this much drama, you know that I’ve been banging this gong for a while.

Put Trump on TV twenty four seven, let people see exactly what they’re getting, you know, make them have to listen to them. Don’t let anybody out there ever say, well, I didn’t know that was or I didn’t hear that or I didn’t see it happen because I think, you know, by fall of twenty twenty four, people are like, look, you know, I don’t care if Joe Biden’s old. I don’t care if I don’t particularly like Kamala Harris. I can’t live through more of this guy and his and his hijinx. It’s embarrassing.

It’s humiliating. It’s dangerous.

I don’t know that that a majority of Republicans will think that way, but a significant enough minority to make a difference.

So to make a difference, in the general. Yeah.

I mean, do you mind that this is on Fox. So in terms of the hermetically sealed alternative reality silos, you know, when Chris Charlie Sykes says something along those lines. When ace Hutchinson calls him out or any of the other candidates, when Mike Pence says, no, he was wrong, that is going to be be beamed out to, listeners of of Fox, not mention that Trump’s whole deal here was basically to say screw you fox. Now look, he’s got the experience of two thousand sixteen. Knowing that he can insult Fox, boycott Fox and that they will come back, you know, like, like, beat puppies to him.

So, I mean, you know, he’s reason to believe that he’s not gonna pay a price. But it is interesting that his counter programming is going to be this interview with Tucker Carl on Twitter. And that feels I’m sorry, diminished. It it’s a diminishment for — For both of the Bulwark tucker, and it’s a diminishment for Trump who’s then going to be doing, you know, what ought to be a walk of shame in Atlanta. So I’m just not sure that this is the genius move that everybody attributes, to him.

And the choice of Tucker is interesting because the minute he announced it, a lot of the stories about it, and a lot of the social media announcements about it were prefaced with Tucker’s immortal comment. I hate him passionately. You know, I mean, it’s like Oh, right. Let’s not

forget that one.

You know, Trump is going to go to the guy who obviously hates him, but now they’re going to pretend to like other. Tucker’s gonna grovel because he has no choice now. Somebody in there can have a viral moment that will swamp this tucker thing. I mean, nobody there’s not gonna be a lot of coverage, I think. And may I could be wrong about this, but because of the venue because it’s Tucker Carlson, not a lot of people are gonna wanna spend a lot of time trying to find stuff to pull out of that Tucker Carlson interview, and people just people don’t watch Twitter.

They watch television.

Let’s spend about five minutes on this question of Twitter at and Elon Musk, because you’ve been a dead enderer on all of this hanging on by your fingernails. I don’t know what’s going on with Elon Musk. I don’t know whether it’s the drugs or some sort of decomposition. I don’t know what’s what’s happening, but it does appear that his business model is to vandalize the site to make it as unusable as possible. He’s now saying that he’s gonna make it impossible to block people.

He’s going to eliminate headlines from articles. I don’t even know where these ideas come from. Now you’ve been hanging in there, and and you’re a big user, but Twitter, it feels as if it is imploding in real time.

First of all, again, it’s the it’s that morbid curiosity factor, right, that I’m sort of curious to watch, again, kind of a Doctor Strange Love image I’m sort of curious to watch Musk ride the, bomb all the way down to the end.

No. That’s a great image. That’s a good one. Yep.

Yeah. Well, you know, with a hat, whoo, you know, yeah. Like the rodeo clown going down on the bum. But I’m also curious to see if at some point you know, Twitter is a valuable thing. It’s a valuable service.

I’m just wondering if anybody ever steps in to return it to being some sort of new source, but I think what’s really interesting, about it, your your point about him vandalizing the site. I don’t think that’s it because if he’d really wanted to just trash it. He could have bought it, trashed it, sold off the parts, done what he could to recoup his money, and then gotten back to dealing with the problem that Twitter stock is like worth what, you know, sixty percent of what it was. Yeah. And, that SpaceX is having all kinds of problems.

And you know, that he’s he himself seems to be, as you pointed out, kind of, decompensating somehow. I don’t know that he set out to do that. But I think what you’re really seeing and the Ronan feral piece that came out yesterday, I think was pretty damning in this regard. You’re seeing somebody who it’s kind of like when Trump couldn’t take being mocked by Obama, that we are now dealing with a whole group of politicians and rich guys who are just determined to punish everybody in some way because at some point in their lives, they got stuffed into a locker. And I think, you know, Musk comes across that way.

Well, you know, these news sources, they’re not friendly to me, so I’ll throttle them. And nobody will leave because you people wanna be with me because I’m the cool kid. And I can do this. And of course, everybody says, what what the fuck are you doing? And he goes, okay.

And he took sort of turns it back on. Then he swam and eliminate blocking and everybody’s sitting. I mean, James Woods. He gets into a pissing match with James Woods who has two and a half million followers and and a fit of peaky says we’ll delete your account. Well, okay.

That’s a great strategy. You know, tell tell the right wing, tell the right wing influencers with two and a half million followers. Who have supported you up until now to go fuck right off. You know, that’s incredible. And I think again, it’s because He’s such a fragile and immature guy.

He can’t take anybody criticizing him. He just can’t deal with it.

I think that’s true.

And I think that’s what you’re seeing. And again, I’m sort of watching it out of a kind of morbid fascination to see a fifty odd year old man At one point, I tweeted something like, I wonder how many at Twitter feels that their salaries and their pensions and their futures are all dependent on what is in effect a nine year old billionaire.

Well, I mean, the political significance is that as Twitter is kind of teetering on the edge, and I don’t know about you, but I mean, a lot of people are, you know, saying they get a lot less engagement, it’s a lot influential, a lot less useful. I mean, there’s a lot of problems with it, but it was at this moment that Rhonda Sanders decided to basically run a Twitter campaign. He announces with with Elon Musk. And you can see that that every one of his talking points is appealing to Twitter. And where’s Donald Trump Donald Trump is back on Twitter with a guy that’s been fired.

At the moment when people are going, this is hard to use. This is like what?

I have to say one of the big failed predictions I will totally own that I thought that Trump would not be able to resist coming back to Twitter.

I thought so too. I know I I agreed with you. And and who who knows whether he will at some point?

Right. But And

we’ll see what his ongoing relationship with with Fox because, you know, very clearly know, if he thinks going back onto Twitter, we’ll screw somebody that he doesn’t like, he will do it.

I mean, in a way, true social is even better for him because he does it And then people just put it on Twitter as a screenshot. And that way, it doesn’t have to put up with any shit from people who own the the platform. He doesn’t have to worry about, you know, people that run the trust section, if there are any left. But I think it’s it’s been a fascinating kind of dance here watching Musk really not understand any of this and just, you know, like, this is what happens when you do things in a fit of peak. And I think that today, apparently, well, you know, today is Tuesday, here in radio world.

So Zuckerberg and by the way, What a rehabilitation of Mark Zuckerberg because of Elon Musk. You know, up until now, Zuck was, like, the dark prince, you know, and I’m already hated Zuck and now they’re going, Hey, Zuck. If you get that cage match, kick his ass, you know.

Gotta get threads up and running, though.

He’s rolling out a desktop version today, apparently.

Okay. Good. Because it’s not going to be a thing until there is something. Okay. Okay.

So I wanna get your take on another big, big mega here. Okay? There is a huge amount of shall we say resistance wishcasting. I’m kind of giving away where I’m going on this about the disqualification of Donald Trump. Now I devoted an entire one of my morning shots newsletter to this original law review paper that says that argues very, very forcefully and very persuasively The Section three of the fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits clearly disqualifies Donald Trump from ever being president again in disqualifies him from being able to run.

And this was written by two very, very prominent, conservative legal scholars, members of the federalist society, It is a very powerful argument. I think that they are right on the constitution. So does judge Michael Ludig, conservative former federal judge, and Laurence tribe, Harvard Law Professor, who write in your publication, the Atlantic, that they agree with this, that that the constitution bars Donald Trump from ever serving again and, suggesting that there’d be legal action to kick him off the ballot or to go to the Supreme Court, whatever. What do you make of this? Where is this going?

I think it was a a marvelous, and thank you for, you know, reminding folks that they can read the tribe blooded piece in the Atlantic. I thought it was remarkable and heartening to see a very conservative and a very liberal jurist both agree that this is true, but I don’t think it’s gonna mean a thing. I don’t think it matters at all. Unless, unless and until some group of secretaries of state who control the ballots. Right?

They, you know, control ballot access, basically go to federal court and then all the way to the Supreme Court in the next ten minutes and say, We want a ruling on this fourteenth amendment issue, and that we wanna be able to decide this. And until somebody does that, it’s a great talking point. Okay. One share for the federalist society. I’m sure that the writers, I don’t know them personally.

So I’m gonna say I’m sure that they were our men of probity. Who believe what they wrote. But I also think that there are a lot of guys in the federal society saying, you know, another four years of this, we might get some more judges And then the whole conservative movement is pretty much over. I mean, back in twenty sixteen, you and I were warning about this. If you are a Republican, if you care about the conservative movement.

If you care about conservative ideas at all, Donald Trump is gonna end that. And I think you were seeing that right now that the country is moving to the left. Some ways that I agree with, some ways that I don’t. But I think that there are a lot of conservatives out there saying, you know, this guy has to be stopped before he completely destroys whatever was left of conservatism in America because Donald Trump is not a conservative. He’s not a Republican.

He’s, you know, Donald Trump. He’s a he’s a cardio He’s a buccaneer. He’s in it for himself. And I think, you know, okay. It’s great that it came from the federal society, but thank you for the opinion.

Now tell us how to enforce it. Tell us how you actually get this done.

This is my problem. I wanna make it very clear that I I think this is know, fantastic work of scholarship. I think that they are right about this. I think that they are right on the law. I believe they understand, you know, the real meaning and the the import of the fourteenth amendment.

But the key word is okay. So what is the mechanism to enforce because as we know the constitution does not enforce itself, something has to happen. In short of a majority ruling by the US Supreme Court next week, Right. You know, however, that happens, that in fact, Donald Trump is disqualified. I don’t see that this goes anywhere.

Also, I do think it’s legitimate to say, how can he be disqualified before there’s an adjudication that says that you committed these acts? I mean, I think that that’s not a small detail. And I guess I’m also concerned that this wish casting is going to lead people down some dangerous political paths. So for example, Let’s imagine that some progressive activists here in the state of Wisconsin bring suit against election officials saying that Donald Trump you know, because of the Section three of the fourteenth amendment is disqualified from being present. And therefore, they are suing to have him excluded from the Wisconsin ballot.

In a swing state like Lake Wisconsin. And let’s say that the Wisconsin Supreme Court that is now dominated by Liberals agrees with them. Now, wait. You can see the backlash on this if it’s a state by state thinking, particularly If we are arguing that we need to preserve democracy, this is going to be an on fire talking point on the right I’m not endorsing it. I’m just saying, you know, they’re saying, wait.

You are taking away our right to even vote for this candidate. You are taking him off the ballot. How is that not anti democratic? So in some ways, that creates an issue that I think now look, I understand that we are not actual democracy, that there are reasons why we have the constitution. There are reasons why we have the rule of law that basically says that Yeah.

The majority doesn’t get to do anything. There is accountability. And I understand all of those intellectual arguments. But the enforcement could be very messy, and in some ways could be counterproductive. What do you think?

I’m worried about that.

I think there’s two problems. One is I disagree with you that there needs to be an official adjudication because giving aid and comfort to insurrectionists, you know, there’s no federal code about that. The constitution put that in there in some sense that we would all know it when we saw it. Right? Well, but

there has to be a finding that it happened, though. Right? I mean, there has to be a finding that yes.

And somebody needs somebody needs to make that finding, and of course that somebody is probably Congress, and that’s not gonna happen. No. My wish casting, by the way, on this, when I had too many margaritas after the beach is when I sit back and say, you know, a handful of Republicans join with the Democrats impeach trump again. It goes to the Senate. The senate convicts and rules him ineligible, for any further, you know, federal office.

And it’s all done by the book.

I have a question, professor. My hand is up. How many margaritas did you have to have to come up with that idea? Just have

to yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s, that’s usually when I’m sitting there, talk with a Eleanor Roosevelt named Lincoln. I think barring that, you’re gonna need the Supreme Court. Yeah.

No. And you would need a bunch of secretaries of state. And you’re right. Because then the next move, if this actually happened, is that in twenty twenty eight, you’d have a bunch of people saying, well, we don’t want Kamala Harris on the ballot or we don’t want so and so on the ballot. But the saddest part of all this is that the real mechanism of enforcement for this kind of issue should be and I and I’m gonna go all James Madison here.

Should be the virtue and decency of the American public. Yeah. Our constitution does not rely as much as people think it does on Bulwark letter law.

We have learned this.

It relies on a basic decency. You know, I’ve been throwing this quote out over and over again when with Madison talking about the tuition. If there is no virtue among us, you know, if there is no virtue among us, then we’re in a terrible place. That that no check no balances, no legal promises can solve the fix we’re gonna be in. And the problem is that millions of people who in an in an earlier and better time would have said, look, I’m don’t agree with Joe Biden.

I don’t like, you know, I don’t like abortion. I don’t like big government, whatever it is. But a basic circuit breaker of decency would kick in to say, no matter what, Donald Trump cannot be in the nominee of a major party. It’s just not it can’t happen. It’s not allowable.

And that circuit breaker is completely blown now. By people who say, you know, I don’t care. There was a an interview that Jordan Clepper, the invaluable Jordan Clepper did with a Trump supporter where she finally admitted. Okay. He did it.

And he said, if I could show you that he did these things, would it change your mind? And she said, sure. And so he says, well, here’s what he did. Here’s what he did. There was this long pause, and she not.

And she said, I don’t care. There’s nothing you can do. There is no legal decision or supreme court case that can restore a sense of fundamental decency to the voters until they make a decision that they don’t wanna be that kind of person anymore. I don’t know what to do about that other than

And the founders didn’t know either. I mean, clearly, James Madison was not naive about this. Remember, I mean, he wrote in the in the Fed you know, if men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary, which is why you had all those external and internal controls. But even with that, no one imagined that someone like Donald Trump would ever be elected president.

All Hamilton kind of did, you know, and he he and others worried about it. But John even John Adams was like, I wonder if we can hold this thing together for, you know, one or two more generations. Because without basically, you know, a a decent public, this this whole thing, you know, our constitution is made for our religious people. You know, it’s and not this kind of or not this kind of cultish, you know, sort of religion as my cudgel to bash other people, but people have some sense of you know, transcendence of that some things are transcendentally important, that you are part of a community that where there are people who came before you, There are people who are going to come after you. We are the stewards of our institutions.

We are the stewards of our government that we inherit it, and then we pass it on. That’s gone. This is now in the hands of people that are like, look, I’m playing a, you know, it’s a reality TV show and, I’m playing a game, and I don’t care what happens you know, ten or fifteen or twenty years from now. And I don’t care about the constitution because I’ve never read it. And I don’t care about the law because I think you know, everything’s rigged against me.

It’s people who are just cosseted in this cocoon of rage yelling me me me. Why doesn’t anybody listen to me when, in fact, they’re being taken to the cleaners. And I was talking about this with somebody yesterday. I said, these people who love Donald Trump If they knew someone like Donald Trump in their daily life, they would hate

him. Absolutely.

If these are working guys who, you know, Trump walked in and said, hey, I’m stiffening you on your paycheck, and I’m gonna grab your sister. These guys would lose their mind. They’d punch him out. But when he does it from a stage, They say, that’s my guy.

Or all the soccer parents out there who are hearing a lot about parents’ rights and how hard it is to raise a kid these days. You know, what parent would want Donald Trump to be a role model? I mean, you know, in terms of sportsmanship and all of those things, I guess it’s the experiment whether whether you can sort of have a bifurcation whether or not you can live lives of of virtue and responsibility in your personal life and hope that your political positions don’t leak out.

The founders did not think so, Charlie. The founders made the argument that if you live an unvirtuous private life, you will eventually bleed into an unvirtuous public life.

Conservative used to believe that.

Right. We used to talk about character, the character issue that, you know, the thing that was more important than your position on any one issue was had the appropriate character to hold public office, and they have completely thrown that out the window. I had hoped that any number of things would kind of snap us out of this narcissistic coma. But I think, again, to end on that same dark note, I think these are people who have just climbed way too far up that tree. The psychic cost of that climb down for them.

They would rather watch the world burn then deal with the psychic cost of having to admit that they were taken. I mean, are there lives any better after four years of Trump? Did he change anything? Did he save their communities? Did he build factories in, you know, Ohio?

He did none of that. And still drains money out of their pockets, a billionaire, nominally a billionaire, draining money out of their pockets to pay his legal bills and they write those checks with a smile on their face.

Okay. So to your point before, in your personal life, you’ve known people who have lied to your face. This affects your relationship, and you don’t trust them. Right? You probably terminate the relationship at a certain point.

If somebody rips you off, if somebody cheats you out of money, you don’t do business with them anymore. It is this weird thing that and I and I I wrote this for your publication, the Atlantic that we right now, at this moment, have the lowest possible standards for the presidency of the United States, that we would not apply to anything else in our life, the coaches, the people we hire, the people we would we would hire to walk our dogs or or look after our children, or would run the local car wash. None of that would apply. So the problem is going to be long term since we’re now taking the long term here is after Trump, after all of this is is all done. We have to rebuild that civic virtue.

We have to rebuild all of those qualities. And the institution that would be essential to doing that would be, I think, churches. And, wow, I’m cringing to saying that because this one institution that we will ultimately have to look to you know, to make people understand the difference between right and wrong and the importance of virtue and everything, we’ve seen the complete corruption of the churches in this era of Trump as well. So that also

— Right. —

I think creates a long term lingering problem.

Some of that is ailing to me. I’m people that have followed us know that I’m Greek Orthodox. So, you know, I come from a religion that doesn’t do a lot of politics. From the pulpit. And in fact, we’ve been I can remember even thirty years ago that my church was criticized for not being kind of more activist than, you know, good works out in the world and all that stuff.

But think there is something very American about this problem that religion gets turned on its head that you go to church not because you believe in what’s going on there, but be you go for this sense of power of political, but you go in there for worldly power instead of going there to let go of the world for an hour. Yeah. You know, that that you go there because it puts you even more in the world that the sermons you’re getting are about the world and not about you know, being a good person and, you know, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and, you know, all of these other things that, you know, for people a lot better versed than this than me have written great stuff about it. People like Pete Weiner and Russell Moore. You know, written with great passion and and pain.

About this. Yeah. But I think the other thing that can do it, Charlie, I think, is people letting go of nationalizing everything and kind of restoring some sense of moral order and cooperation in small communities. How about instead of arguing about Donald Trump, you work with your neighbors to get the potholes filled, or that, you know, that you have enough police in your community or that you have you know, a public park that’s cleaned up. People don’t do that because of this narcissistic nationalization and heroic narrative.

Everybody wakes up in the morning and say, I’m gonna save the world. Well, you know what? How about you save the park down the street? And I think that’s the small scale projects are places where state legislators. But again, You know, I’m sorry.

I was optimistic for a moment. Let me now remind you, however, that the state Republican parties have been completely captured by Trump and trumpists. And, you know, maybe that’s where you start. It’s just flush out these, you know, there’s no point in being a trumpist on the city council. Because in the end, that doesn’t matter.

You’ve gotta pick up the garbage, you know?

This is a a non trivial point that you’re making here that that if you take out some of the top line, you know, trump versus or, you know, some of the the cultural issues, the reality is is that people aren’t that divided. Right. And they can work. And then you begin to focus on actual real world things as opposed to your identity, your, you know, the the attitude that you strike. And and I’ve noticed that that you can have, you know, really interesting conversations with people who disagree with you on a lot of things as long as you don’t focus on those top lines.

So anyway, Tom, it has been a great conversation. Hopefully, it has not been too dark. And if it was too dark, it was still it was still pretty good, Tom. I mean, it’s You know? I mean, it is what it is.

It’s hard not to be.

We’re not the crazy ones.

You know, part of the problem is that when things look this dark, it means you’re absolutely and properly comprehending the current political situation. But, you know, we’re still here, and they’re still that, you know, there’s still a chance that this age of Trump ends sooner than we might think. I think, you know, I always hope that with a cult, the way cults off and end is that the fever breaks. And I think that that’s the hopeful thing is that somehow this ends, and rather than a kind of big reckoning and all that. The Trump just goes off and he deals with all his court cases and millions of Americans say, well, okay.

You know, kind of back to work. Back to real life. Maybe I’m too optimistic about that. We can end on a total dark note, but I’m hoping that that’s that that’s what happens.

Well, there is a difference between hope and optimism, which we have discussed in the past. I’m not necessarily an optimist, but I am a, you know, hope means that we will continue to work for, a better future. And thank you so much for for joining us that I appreciate it, Tom.

My pleasure, Charlie.

And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back with the Trump trials tomorrow. We are scheduled to talk with former congressman Adam Kinzinger on Thursday. To recap Wednesday night’s debate.

And of course, Tim and I will wrap up the whole week on Friday. Thanks for listening. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper. And engineered and edited by Jason Brown.