Will Saletan: Everybody Hates Matt Gaetz

Welcome to the Bull Work of Podcasts on Charlie Sykes. It is October second two thousand twenty three. We actually made it through September. Hey, just a quick note. For those of you that, regular listeners of the podcast, if you actually wanna see the podcast, if you actually wanna watch, we are now on YouTube and also Just in case you don’t get enough morning shots, we also have a short shots that we’re putting out on YouTube as well.

Our shot on on Friday was about the incredible, clown car in a dumpster fire of the, GOP impeachment hearing. And, you you can find that on YouTube as well. So just check it out, or you could just keep listening to us on the podcast. So it because it’s Monday, I’m joined by my colleague, Will Saletan, Will, We have so much stuff to talk about today.

We do have a lot to talk about, and that wasn’t the stuff I thought we were gonna be talking about.

On my list, we have to get to, what happened over the weekend, the shutdown that did not occur, the coup that is about to occur, Matt Gates, has decided that he’s gonna go after Kevin McCarthy. What a surprise. I mean, this is, like, the least shocking development of the year. But it it does occur to me. I mean, before we we’re gonna get to that later.

Does occur to me. We have a really bitterly divided Congress only. Yeah. But there is one thing upon which there is general agreement, there is consensus that everybody hates Matt Gates. Everybody hates Matt Gates.

I mean, they just loathe him. I mean, they loathe him on so many different levels. I mean, you know, let’s count the ways. His personality, his dishonesty, the way he blows up his own ideological side, didn’t get any spending cuts, the fact that he’s Just kind of a creepy guy, kind of a kumbaya moment that you can see there’s bipartisan agreement and all

of that. So I totally thought you were gonna say What Matt Gates said, which is everybody hates Kevin McCarthy, but no, in fact, your thesis is more true.

Well, nobody necessarily respects or fears Kevin McCarthy So we’ll talk about, the the self gilded speaker and what happened to him over the weekend where he he had to go hat and hand to the Democrats and Of course, I love the way he’s spinning this, that I am the adult in the room. Yeah. I’m not sure that that’s the tape. We’re gonna get to that. So one of the things, and we pass over some of these things too much.

My newsletter today is about the banality of crazy, which is a phrase that I borrowed from Brian Class who basically says, look, we get numbed by how nuts a lot of this is. And the news media generally has a bias towards things that are new And as a result, Donald Trump’s crazy is not new. Right? So Joe Biden slips and maybe falls or doesn’t fall, and that’s big story. You know, Donald Trump then calls for the execution of a leading American general.

And it’s sort of like yeah. Well, that’s Donald Trump. I mean, it’s just more insanity. So we actually Don’t treat the insanity as a big story. It’s actually a really good point.

So one of the big crazy stories from last week, and I just don’t wanna totally let it go, is, his suggestion that the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff be given the death penalty. This is Mark Millley, And over the weekend, Mark Millley appeared to appeared to appeared to we have to pretend answered Donald Trump when he had this to say about the oath that the men and women of the US military take.

We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator, and we don’t take to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.

Okay. So, Will Saletan, I don’t think that was particularly subtle on, general Miller’s part who he was talking about, what he was talking about, your thoughts.

Right. Well, when I wanna be dictator, obviously, as a reference to, the former president, that yeah. But a couple of things about what Millie’s. This was really remarkable, and I watched this at the time. And Joe Biden sat there, Stone Face, Kamala Harris, that there’s Stone Face, Lloyd Austin, but they all knew what was being said there.

So it’s a dig at Trump, but a couple of things. One, this is the difference between a real patriot and a fake one. Right? Donald Trump is a fake patriot. He talks about America, but it’s really all about him.

What he could do for America and all the money he gets for the farmers and all that kind of thing. Mark Millley is a genuine patriot, and part of the way you can recognize that is that Mark Millie understands the difference between America. When he he’s not America first. He’s America as an idea. He understands that America is a country built on a constitution.

It’s built on around ideas of of liberty, inequality, and it’s not blood and soil. That’s what Donald Trump doesn’t stand. So when Millie talks about it, he says we take an oath to the Constitution and to that we’re the idea of America.

Right.

The second thing that’s important about this is Milly is correct that Trump is a wannabe dictator. And if he could, you know, control America the way that, you know, Kim Jong un or Vladimir Putin controls their country, he would. And one reason why that hasn’t happened even though Donald Trump attempted it is that the United States military didn’t go along. Right? Trump tried to coop the military.

He tried to make the military. He would in the second term try to make the military Because

he thinks of the military as being his personal possession. Right? I mean, there is a philosophical issue here because Donald Trump clearly thinks of the commander in chief, the president of the United States as being the man who is, has all of the power can do anything he wants, and this is his military. And here you have Mark Miller saying, no, we don’t pledge allegiance to the man. We pledge allegiance to the constitution, but Look, there’s a little bit of edginess here.

Isn’t there? Because under our constitution, the president is the commander in chief. You know, he issues orders, and those orders have to be obeyed. Did you see the Wall Street Journal editorial? They actually took this whole episode and said, very disturbing that Mark Millley would himself, you know, say these these disturbing things implying that the military, you know, might not follow the lead of the elected civilian leadership So, I mean, I think they got this thing absolutely upside down.

But we’re now having this rethinking. The military does not work for the president. And there are some things the president might ask us to do that we are not going to follow. I mean, so this is not just boilerplate pokes at Donald Trump, is it?

No. No. Not at all. And let’s all remember Donald Trump referring to my generals. Right?

He thought he’s thinking that the generals work for him. But let’s also remember Trump saying, I think it was in one of the debates with Hillary Clinton, or no note, maybe it was in one of the Republican primary debates. In any event, it was in twenty sixteen. He said that he would order, you know, he was asked by Brett Bear at one of the debates. What happens if the military refuses to follow one of your orders to violate the Geneva convention to violate human rights.

Right.

Right.

Because Trump said things like he would execute people. I mean, he would order them to commit torture, for example.

Well, and they would kill the families.

Oh, yes. They would also target the family. Right. Try to deliberately target. Not accidentally as collateral damage that the families have.

Right? It’ll take them hostage and kill them. And so Brett Paris says, what if the military refuses these orders? Because they’re illegal orders. And Trump says they won’t refuse.

Right.

Right. Right.

Trump says they won’t refuse me. Milly is saying we don’t put one man who orders us to do illegal things over the constitution that the military would would not follow the source. And that is actually crucial. So the Wall Street Journal does have it upside down. And the reason that we still have a democracy, Charlie, is that the military doesn’t follow such orders from a wannabe dictator.

And if they ever did, we could lose our country. Okay. So the other thing over the weekend, I mean, this speech, going back to the banality of crazy, Donald Trump goes

out to California, and he delivers yet another deranged speech, but but I think it’s important to note how he keeps escalating his rhetoric. Look, I’ve I’ve written for, you know, the brutality is the point. I mean, Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that he kinda likes shooting people. I mean, he wants to build a wall with, you know, razors on on on top. He wants to shoot protesters in the legs.

He said, you know, frequently, that he wants to execute the drug dealers and human traffickers you know, he quotes, you know, president Xi of China saying that they don’t have a drug problem because they just execute them, you know, the the day of the trial. So This is something that Donald Trump has been dining out on for some time and has been using as part of his stump speech, but he escalated over the weekend, didn’t he? I mean, he Where do you wanna start? Let’s start at the at the least significant things. I mean, it’s interesting.

The the former president of the United States who, of course, is is running to be the leader the party that is really, really concerned with what young people hear and read in schools uses his Best presidential words to call for the indictment of Joe Biden. Let’s play this. Trigger warning, by the way.

You become president and you don’t like somebody or if somebody’s beating you by ten, fifteen, or twenty points like we’re doing with Crooked Joe Biden.

Let’s indict the motherwacker, listen, please.

Okay. Now, actually, as I listen to that again, is the motherfucker referring to Biden or to himself? Is he trying to quote a crooked Joe Biden is saying lesson dice? Yeah.

Right. So just to be fair to Donald Trump, he’s suggesting that that’s what the other side is doing, that they’re saying of him. Right.

Okay. So he’s the motherfucker. Yes. No. There’s a twist people didn’t see coming.

Right. So he also mocks the hammer attack of Nancy Pelosi’s husband, which is So I’m not even gonna play it, but I mean, the crowd’s laughing because, you know, there’s really nothing funnier than making jokes about an eighty two year old man being beaten with hammers. And he also comes up with a new category for extrajudicial police killings. Now I I just wanna back up a little bit. Earlier this year, I wrote that there’s gonna be a new litmus test in the Republican Party, which is that it’s it’s not just cruelty anymore.

It’s like, who will be the most enthusiastic in terms of endorsing brutal policies? And and you could tell that that Ron DeSantis who really, really thought that that he could be the mini me, the mini trump me. He wants to participate in this this Olympics brutality by, you know, laying out who he wants to kill. And and remember what he said about killing folks, stone cold dead at the border. This is Ron DeSantis.

So we are gonna authorize the use of deadly force against the cartels If you have somebody coming in with the fentanyl on there and the backpack, they even break through the border wall where there is wall, if they’re doing that

Right.

There is.

That’s the last thing they they’re gonna be able to do because we’re gonna leave them stone cold dead at the border. We’re not putting up with it anymore.

Now, Will, I I know this is kind of a quibble, but I assume that they will check the backpacks afterwards to make sure that they have fentanyl instead of skittles in them. Right?

And if that doesn’t have the fentanyl, you can be sure they will put fentanyl in the backpack.

I mean, this is this is the thing is you just sort of know it’s like, this we’re gonna kill them dead. We’re not gonna warn them. We’re not gonna fire warning shots. We’re not shooting. You know, all of this stuff.

There’s no arrest. There’s no trial. There’s no due process because the applause line is stone cold dead. And he thinks that He’s gonna show the, hey, I’m just as brutal as Donald Trump. But the problem with all of this is we’ve discovered over and over again, and I’m sorry to repeat ourselves on this.

That for Republican voters, why would they want a knock off Donald Trump when they can have the real thing. And over the weekend, Donald Trump basically says, yeah, you just wanna kill, you know, people coming across the border with fentanyl. You wanna kill them stolen cold dead. I will see you and raise you. So here is Donald Trump saying that he if he’s president again, he will order law enforcement to go into cities and shoot Shoplifters.

Shoplifters. Listen to this.

And we will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store. Shut.

Shocked. Okay. Again, no arrest, no trial, no due process. But I think it’s worth spending a moment on this. The crowd loves this.

This is the hot moment. And you know that Donald Trump with his reptilian instinct, in his mind, he’ll play back what really hit the erogenous zones of that MAGa crowd. And this would listen to the crowd. He’s just said, we are going to shoot Shoplifters coming out of a store. We’re gonna order to them, get not arrest them, not try them, not go through DuPont.

We’re gonna shoot them and the crowd just loses its mind.

And everything will immediately stop. You won’t have any more of that.

It’s very simple. All you have to do is kill people Don’t worry about any of this other process. And the crowds reaction was trump. Trump. Trump.

Trump. We can’t make this shit up, Will. I mean, I’m just

you know, I I’ve seen rallies like this, but not in our country. Right? You know, Trump keeps saying, you know, we’re turning into a third world country. He’s doing his best to make that true. And so is his party in general, right, and as the DeSantis clip illustrates How do you become a third goal?

How do you lose your democracy? Well, you you, one way was to corrupt the military to make them an instrument of the current president. Another way is to overturn elections to refuse to leave office when the people try to turn you out. Here’s the third way, right, which is to eliminate due process to I mean, remember, Trump his previous applause line when he announced for president last year was one day trials. Right?

We’re gonna have one day trials for a drug dealers. Right? So one was apparently too many.

Right. Right.

Right. One was too many. So now we’re Turn up the data a little bit. Yeah. So the operative phrases, obviously, and what we just heard were saying we’re gonna leave you stone cold dead at the border.

We’re gonna shoot you on-site. Right? And by the way, DeSantis, we don’t even know if somebody has fentanyl on their backpack, are they a dealer? Are they a mule? Are they one of the people who, like, you know, we’re gonna make you carry drugs in in exchange for getting your child across the border.

So We have no idea whether you’re actually hitting somebody major. So if we actually did this, it would be absolutely barbaric. But Trump has one up that as you point out by, on the border, the presumption is the person coming in is not an American, not that we should, you know, disregard human rights, but now Trump is saying, our own people, Americans, in our own country. Lee, he says we’re gonna shoot you, I believe, as ready was as you’re leaving the store. So there’s no question about you go undergoing any inspection.

Right? You’re coming out of the building, and we shoot you. Well, yeah, once we do that, what kind of country are we anymore? Right? He says America first, but he’s eliminating the difference between America and other countries that don’t have any of our constitutional protections.

I have a small quibble that I don’t think you’re going to quibble with is that we do talk about losing our democracy. When we use the word democracy, What we mean is a liberal constitutional order. Because in a democracy, the crowd Kanielle. Trump. Trump.

Trump. And what if a majority of Americans decide they support this and they love this? By the way, you know, that crowd It was chanting barabbas, barabbas, barabbas. That was pretty democratic, wasn’t it? So the point here is not just democracy as in the rule of the majority It is also the rule of law.

It is the fact that the majority does not get to kill the minority. It means that the majority cannot say Hey, you know what? We’re gonna do away with due process of law and trials and the presumption of innocent and everything. There are many, many things that are anti democratic because we understand that a liberal democratic constitutional order relies on all of those elitist norms. I was reading, I think, like, the comments section, somebody was saying, well, you keep talking about democracy.

So what if Donald Trump wins fifty one percent of the vote? Isn’t that a triumph of democracy? Well, if he then uses that Democratic majority to destroy the constitutional order and the rule of law, That is not a win for democracy, and it shows a misunderstanding of what we mean by the term. So I think that there’s a little bit more precision. I’ve been I know I know you don’t disagree with No.

I fully agree with you. And but this is a this is a paradox. This is that that you and I and other defenders of the constitutional system have to grapple with. Because we believe in democracy. We also believe in the constitution and its protections.

And what do you do when we have this very large movement of people who are cheering the destruction of those principles. Right? But what if most Americans reject them? I don’t have a simple answer to this, but my gut says we have to preserve America. And by that, I don’t mean the blood and soil of America.

I don’t mean white people. Right. I mean the ideas of what distinguishes America from countries like Russia or North Korea where human rights are disregarded where there is no constitutional protection. Ron DeSantis we go with the mob, you know, I think we’ve lost that.

Well, and also the main there there is always this long running tension between security and freedom. Right? And people are willing, and let’s be honest about it. A lot of people are willing to make that trade off, which is also why it is absolutely essential for whatever governing party there is to make sure that public safety is protected. Because otherwise, if the public decides that this party will not protect the border and or law and order.

They will turn to the, the extremists, to the, trump, trump, trump, barabbas crowd.

I fully agree with that. And this is really important for you and me to express to people because Yeah. I think that too many leaders in the Democratic party don’t take security issues seriously enough, by which I mean, a lot of the crime stuff is overblown and statistically. It’s not great, but the border situation is really bad. Yeah.

Okay. We have just flood of people coming across the border. It’s a giant business moving people up the Western hemisphere using our asylum laws. And if the Democratic party doesn’t show the voters, that we’re taking this seriously and that we’re going to restore some order in terms of people coming into our country. There is a significant danger of those people going over and supporting it, wanna be dictator in Trump Ron DeSantis or somebody else.

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.

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Okay. So let’s talk about The very surprising developments over the weekend. I think that if, you’d gone to the betting pools, the odds would have been very heavily against us of winning a shutdown. Mainly because nobody really expected that Kevin McCarthy would essentially give up this agenda made for weeks and months. He’s been threatening to shut down the federal government.

Unless, he got massive domestic spending cuts and, you know, a, you know, all of these tough on the border provisions And then over the weekend, he looked around, realized there was no way he was going to get that from his own caucus. So he basically caved a clean CR relied on democratic votes. He did not get the spending cuts, did not get the border provisions, He screwed over Ukraine, but we’ll leave that aside for a second. So what happened here? Because he’s out saying I am the adult in the room.

I mean, that there are dueling headlines. You know, why Kevin McCarthy decided to defy and take on to the right versus Kevin McCarthy surrenders. So which camp do you come down to will? I’m gonna let you call the Soundbytes. Okay?

Because you were you were following this. I’m I’m gonna turn over this to you now, what we should be listening to, okay, from from the Sunday shows as they try to spin this.

Let me just start with the general outline of this. As the pony guy, I’m very excited today because instead of having to look for the pony under the manure, you’re gonna have to look for the manure under the pony. Right? Because the pony’s right out there. We avoided this shutdown.

Mhmm. I gotta admit I did not expect that.

I do.

So I’m just gonna give you my optimistic spin, which today is merited by what happened. I think we certainly re began to restore the proper incentives in this country. That is to say, What we wanna do is stop the crazy behavior from being rewarded, crazy political behavior. Shushing down the government is crazy behavior. Right.

Crazy behavior to begin with because they’re gonna end up paying people for not having worked, you know, and they’re gonna come in while they’re gonna have put them through, you know, worrying about their paychecks.

They’re utterly pointless.

Right. They don’t accomplish anything fiscally conservative or anything else. But Kevin McCarthy flinched. He flinched away from that. He knew I believe, he recognized that that was gonna hurt his party.

And if the speaker of the house flinches because he recognize that the shutdown is gonna hurt him. Then we’ve begun to restore the incentives that will have now it’s only forty five days. Yeah.

I guess

if you’re looking for the the pile under the phony, there it is. And we’ll be back here again. And I don’t know if Kevin McCarthy can survive with a bunch of Matt Gates in his conference. But for forty five days, I’m gonna take a victory lap. So tell me

what you think. It just seems premature at this point. I mean, I led with this, quote from former house a Brendan Buck who used to be the spokesman for both John Bainer and and for Paul Ryan. He says, I think the best way to understand what happened today is that this shutdown was simply too stupid even for the house. People are like, it is nuts.

But you do have Kevin McCarthy doing something that that I think a lot of observers said would be political suicide. He went to the Democrats, cut a deal with them. The conservatives, as predicted, got absolutely nothing. And this is part of this, the genius of the Matt Gates is that, you know, if they would have stuck together, they might have been able to get some modest cuts, not everything. But they were demanding, you know, these double digit percentage cuts.

And what did they get? Absolutely nothing. And they’ll probably get absolutely nothing in forty five days. So I really like this exchange with Matt Gates, who is universally loathed by everybody. And, let’s say, not the big winner of the weekend.

Matt Gates now, of course, pledging that he is going to try to oust the Kevin McCarthy, which raises all kinds of interesting questions, which you and I will get to, and I wanna hear your prediction. But let’s play Jake Tapper and Mattgate.

Since the mid nineties, this country has been governed by either continuing resolution or omnibus spending.

And you have voted for continuing resolution in the past.

I’m I’m five years sober voting for continuing resolutions, and I should, note that during those years, president Trump was growing the economy. But January marked the difference. Yeah. And you know what? Growing the deficits

as well.

I regret.

Growing the deficits as well.

But we were growing the economy.

And look, look, you’re talking about the National Debt. You were growing. What did he what did he add? Seven trillion dollars, eight trillion dollars to the National Debt?

And by the way, I voted against ten continuing resolutions under Donald Trump did not stand with Donald Trump on all of his spending priorities. I voted against a way more than my point is for.

I don’t know what this shutdown did to help the

What shut what shut down?

The the shutdown that almost happened.

Okay. So there wasn’t a shutdown.

So the the shutting of the shutting of shutdown that you created.

We have to break the fever. We have

to move to single You broke a fever?

No. We didn’t, unfortunately. That’s why we have to now move to vacate because we have to get a system where the and Senate will negotiate over each of these agencies of government independently. And I understand that in divided government, that means that you have to take into account the views of Senate Democrats that’s the views of the White House. But what I wanna do Of course.

Do you understand

that? Of course.

Because you’re on the courthouse talking about what Kevin McCarthy needs to do is to allow line item vetoes by people like you. Line item votes against the salaries of

people who

are investigating

Donald Trump. The galleries of individuals who are offering sweetheart deals to Hunter Biden. That to me is not the language of somebody who understands the balance of our in houses. Senate and how the all legislation actually functions.

Well, I

I think that too. That to me is the language of somebody who is looking for, clicks and lie mics and Fox hits, not somebody who actually is trying to reduce the debt.

Oh. Well, yes, will. That does sound like the person who doesn’t have the slightest fucking idea what he’s talking about. It has no interest in actually reducing the debt.

Right. So, but back aids in, he’s unserious about policy. Right? Kevin McCarthy’s line is, would you rather have a hundred percent of nothing or, you know, fifty percent or eighty percent of something? Gates would rather have a hundred percent of nothing because he’s not about legislating.

He’s about Yes. And in that clip, you can hear. He’s totally obsessed with his voting record. What I voted for, what I didn’t vote for, as opposed to what got past. Right?

Because what happened here is that because Matt Gates and a bunch of other crazies wouldn’t accept Kevin McCarthy’s version of a CR. McCarthy turned around. I give McCarthy some credit for this. Right? He’s a weasel, but Mcarthy then turned around and said, okay.

If I can’t get it from my right, I’ll get it from my left. He goes to the Democrats. So Matt Gates got the opposite of what he wanted in terms of alleged solution, but Matt Gates doesn’t care because he doesn’t care what the policy actually is. In fact, if the policy is bad from his point of view, if the government continues to run out more debt, that’s great for Matt Gates because he’s just about posturing and complaining about the system. They have given Matt Gates voters have given him a job with responsibility, but he doesn’t want that job.

He doesn’t wanna be, you know, a Congress person doing something passing legislation. No. He’s like doubling as a as a host on NewsMax for god’s sake. Right? So Kapper has him debt to rights on what he’s about.

No. And I I think that was really important. And so I wanna get to the the substantive debate over Ukraine and where we’re going on all of that. In the short term, we’re about to have a little bit more theater. And again, Matt Gates is being formative, you know, wants to have the show, and the show will be the motion to vacate.

This is complicated, I think, objectively speaking, but in the context, it’s really complicated. Order to be speaker, you have to have a majority of elected members of the house, which is usually two hundred and eighteen. I don’t know what it is right now. So Kevin McCarthy, I don’t even think got two hundred and eighteen votes when he was elected after the fifteen ballots. Right?

So you have a motion to vacate. How will Democrats vote on this. This is the interesting question that if Kevin McCarthy does not have two hundred eighteen votes in the Republican caucuses and by the way, just so people know. Members of the opposite party never vote for the speaker of the other party. It’s just it’s just never done.

No Democrat voted for Kevin McCarthy. So will any of that change? If Kevin McCarthy does not get two hundred and eighteen votes, what will the Democrats do? Will they vote to rescue Kevin McCarthy? Will they vote against Kevin McCarthy?

Will they vote present? Will they just not show up in order to lower the threshold? What do you think? Well, what is the calculation here?

So this is somewhat complicated by the facts. This is a a motion to vacate. It’s an affirmative motion. So a Democrat doesn’t have to vote for Kevin McCarthy to help sync this motion and bail out McCarthy. As you point out, they can vote present.

They can do various other tricks to sort of lower the number.

You need two hundred and eighteen votes to kick him out.

Right. To meet Charlie, it depends on what is Kevin McCarthy’s relationship with Akim Jefferies and what is McCarthy offering? Because, you know, AOC, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was on CNN, I think, and was asked about this, what what would she do and what would Democrats do? And she said they’ll follow Jefferies, but she said we’re not gonna give our votes away for nothing. McCarthy just had to drop in order to get the CR passed.

He had to drop a bunch of things that would have ticked off Democrats. So he made concessions. What else is McCarthy willing to offer Democrats to save his skin? We don’t know the answer to that yet.

Not the bogus impeachment hearings.

The fundamental thing about Kevin McCarthy is that he is a weasel. Yes. There’s nothing he won’t offer to save his skin if he needs to. And now we’re just down to the question of, to whom will he offer it. So Gates’s argument is, if McCarthy cuts a deal with Democrats to save his skin, to save his job, That’s gates says I can’t control that, but then he’ll be owned by the Democrats.

What if McCarthy does that? He could do that. He could make some Ron DeSantis. And maybe he holds together some coalition of Democrats and Republicans. And then it was it’s a really open question the house looks like at that point.

I assume there would be more motions on the right to take down McCarthy, but would they succeed?

You’re a team, Jefferies, and you’re sitting in in the room with Kevin McCarthy. You know, and Kevin obviously now suddenly needs democratic votes to survive. So what’s on the table? Ukraine’s on the table. No massive cuts to domestic spendings on the table.

Right? I mean, those sorts of things. No draconian border policy is on the table. The Biden impeachment, I mean, how do Democrats save Kevin McCarthy? I’m just trying to imagine how that negotiation goes.

Don’t know

the answer to that. You know, and then there’s the question of who comes in after McCarthy? Like, you gotta have an alternative. Because remember, McCarthy survived all of this in January because they didn’t have an alternative. Right?

Skalese is sick. He’s, you know, dealing with blood cancer. He’s gonna have, you know, we’ll see how he does. But other people didn’t want the job. We’ve had series of other people decline, you know, to be the alternative to McCarthy.

So McCarthy may just be figuring that they don’t have anybody place him. And, Charlie, that may be the bet that McCarthy has already made

by

cutting this deal on the CR.

Okay. So now the relatively bad news, because, you know, you found the pony. Now, I’m gonna find the pile of I do a couple of things that were very, very disturbing over the weekend, including the fact that for the first time a majority of Republicans in the house voted against aid to Ukraine, And the one thing that was left out of this, of all of the things that Kevin McCarthy said, I’m gonna stick with this, is the screw over Ukraine, not include, is it what are we talking about? Three hundred million dollars?

I think the Senate had six billion in their in their version of the CR.

The other really bad thing was that Mitch McConnell, who has been really a stand up guy on the Ukraine stuff. Like, don’t DM me on this. He’s he he actually has said that he is not gonna cut off aid to Ukraine. He went to his caucus and said I think we ought to stay in tough on the Ukraine aid. And a majority of Republicans in the Senate said, yeah, we’re not backing you on this.

We we just wanna we wanna go along with this deal. So Ukraine and the supporters of Ukraine, I should be a little bit concerned about this. Let’s play Kevin McCarthy’s justification for why he’s holding Ukraine hostage in this deal.

The American border matters, and more more Americans are dying on our border than Americans are dying in Ukraine.

So you are explicitly right now linking any Ukraine aid vote to a border, Billy.

I’m telling you that the American border matters, and that is our priority to make sure we secure

that has to work first.

I’m gonna make sure that the weapons are provided for Ukraine, but they’re not gonna get some big package if the border is not secure.

But you haven’t figured out yet the vehicle through which to move that Ukraine aid or a date by which to do it.

We will work with people in need, but the one thing the White House has to understand they better be prepared to secure American border.

Okay. So, Will, the big picture here is that the Republican Party, which was the party of Ronald Reagan, is no longer So part of it is why you just identified a majority of the House Republican Conference voting against aid to Ukraine. The isolationists are taking control. But the other thing that happened here is Kevin McCarthy, who is nominally a defender of Ukraine, and he has sympathetic to supporting Ukraine. Is now using Ukraine as a wedge issue against the Democrats.

So McCarthy says there about the Democrats, they are not going to get some big package for Ukraine if the border is not secure. So we want some border concessions from the Democrats, and we’re gonna give them concessions on Ukraine. McCarthy is disowning Ukraine as an issue. He’s saying that to give money to defend Ukraine is a Democrat, not a Republican priority. It’s something that the Republicans would do as a favor in exchange for border concessions.

Now I’m for the some border concessions because the it’s completely out of control. But the idea that the Republican Party does this, not because it believes in defending Ukraine, not because it believes in stopping Russian aggression, But because the Democratic party believes in those things, the Democratic party is the one that believes in defending a democracy against Russia. And that’s a favor to the Democrats. That signals a complete realignment of the parties on foreign policy and on the role of America and

the world. It is mind blowing for those of us that remember what the the political alignments were in the nineteen eighties. Now you’re good friend Lindsey Graham, who has been a very strong staunch supporter of Ukraine appears to be endorsing. McCarthy’s linkage of aid Ukraine to the border. So here’s Lindsey from yesterday morning.

You’re our Lindsey whisperer expert.

He will help Ukraine, but he’s telling everybody in the country, including me. You better send something over for the border for me to help Ukraine. And he’s right to make that demand.

I have the sense that there is a compromise that is possible here, which is the kind of thing that I I’m probably gonna regret saying, but going back to your previous points, it is in the Biden administration’s interest to look like they’re doing something on the border. Right? And to get the aid for Ukraine. Is there any possible compromise that Republicans Will Saletan, You’ve now done enough on the border to satisfy us to release Ukraine. I mean, you understand this is one of their main talking points, their main issues, Are they ever going to actually cut a deal with the Biden administration?

It strikes me it’s very much in the interest of the Biden administration to cut a deal, take the border issue, you know, water that down, get the aid for Ukraine, but can Republicans do that? Can they actually concede that, yeah, we’re all on the same page. With you evil open border Democrats who are bringing in the fentanyl and the rapists?

I think they can cut a deal. And, you know, the the only way out of this other than another shutdown is that they will cut some kind of a deal, and it will involve both of those. But what’s significant to me about the Lindsey Graham comment? It’s not just Lindsey Graham. Mike Waller, who’s a Republican house member in a swing district, was on the floor during the debate over this CR, and he said to the Democrats.

Well, this is a quote from Waller. Are you telling me you would shut down the government if there is not Ukraine funding? So the point is Waller, he is also using Krain as a wage issue. You Democrats are holding up everything else over money to Ukraine. It’s your issue.

Right? So we have a large percentage of isolationists now in the Republican Party. And those votes against Ukraine funding signify that. Right? But beyond that, we now have Kevin McCarthy the speaker who was nominally a supporter of Ukraine, using Ukraine funding as a wedge issue against the Democrats.

Lindsey Graham, who is nominally one of the most stalwart Republicans on Ukraine agreeing to hold the Ukraine money hostage for border concessions. Right? Mike Lawer, who is a Republican in a swing district, who is not supposed to be one of the crazies. So this is now a party wide capitulation on the right. Republican party is no longer the party of defending democracies against totalitarianism or against Putin.

It is the party that is fundamentally isolationist or is willing to use isolationism in public opinion as a weapon against Democrats and as a weapon against Ukraine.

Okay. So we haven’t done any, horse race punditry on today’s show. And by the way, there’s so much other stuff going on. I mean, he does seem to be relevant on Earth two point o that the former president’s trial in New York about his, the fraud of his companies is is starting today. And Donald Trump is saying that he’s going to be in court, which will be very, very interesting.

He’s ranting and reeling. The judge has essentially already ruled. Yeah. You’re a crook. You’re a fraudster, and I’m taking away your business.

So he’s already lost this trial. Kind of an interesting calculation on his part to show up in New York. Although, I think that he’s not totally inaccurate in saying that, you know, simply because he’s he’s cheated and lied on his taxes and valuation. That’s not gonna budge Republican voters. Look, I mean, if they’re willing to overlook the conspiracy, the insurrection, the rape, and all of that stuff, there’s no primary voter that’s gonna go, oh, really?

You, overvalued Mar a lago. I I think he kinda knows that. Right? That’s not gonna be a problem for him.

I’m less concerned about the people’s judgments about the particulars of a civil case than I am about the whole bizarre incentive system where a guy gets indicted four times and goes up in the polls in his party. Right? That’s what’s totally messed up. So if I can just return to what we talked about at the beginning, I think the goal here is to restore rational incentive Right? So don’t shut down the government.

That will hurt you. We that seems to have had an effect. Kevin McCarthy is recognizing the rational incentive. Here, the rational incentive to restore is don’t commit crimes or it will hurt you politically. Yeah.

That would be good. Right now, it’s really bad that committing crimes and blaming the evil, you know, Jack Goodted thugs is helping Donald Trump in the Republican primary. Yeah.

So I

will be happy if what comes out of this is gradually the trials begin, the evidence is presented. And if the it would be great if the initial reaction of Republicans, which was the evil government is out to take down Trump. They’ve weaponized law enforcement changes to, oh, gosh, now that we see the evidence presented against him, some of us are not gonna vote for him, and that will hurt him.

Well, I wouldn’t hold my breath on that. So, among the other, news stories we got over the weekend, r f k junior, is floating an independent bid. Of course, this leads to all sorts of, you know, predictive punditry about who does this hurt more? Does this hurt trump? Okay.

So you can make the case that RFK hurts Trump because, you know, he’s clearly established himself. He was an anti vax conspiracy theorist. He’s been, you know, big on Fox. Clearly right now his political appeal. I’m not convinced of that because I think there’s a big swath of voters that think that he’s still RfK.

Junior. And so that there might be some attrition of democratic votes, particularly from so we say elderly voters who think I like that RfK senior. He’s he’s a Kennedy. I’ve always voted for Kennedy. So where do you come down on this?

I mean, I, again, I don’t know the answer. We’ll have to get some more data on this. And even when we get data, who knows when we get it to the ballot box, but RFP junior running is an independent. You know where the money’s gonna come from. The money’s gonna come from the right.

He’s gonna get propped up by Maga World, but does it hurt Trump more, or does it hurt Biden more? Crystal ball will.

RFK is running he’s been running in the horseshoe lane, right, with the, the crazy part of the right and the crazy part of the left, and they all come together with the horseshoe. So I think Democrats have done a pretty good job of prying a lot of rational Democrats away from him. That is showing he’s an anti vaxxer there’s various signifiers about RFP. He’s not one of us. Yeah.

So he’ll keep his crazies on the right. I don’t think he’s gonna hurt Biden that much at this point because I think he’s already lost a lot of the people who would vote for Biden. You know who I think he’s gonna hurt? Cornell West. I think that there’s a there’s a pocket of people who are not gonna vote for Trump or Biden.

They’re nuts. And some of them would vote for Cornell West or Ralph Aeder or Jillstein or whoever, and RfK Junior’s gonna pick up those people because he’s got the name.

We should devote a whole show to the explanation or try to understand this horseshoe theory where the far left and the far right have come together and in their sort of nuttiness and extremism are not that far apart. It really has become a thing. Right? With people on the far left, begin to make common cause with people on the far right, and it’s it’s not immediately obvious. I could engage in sheep shot, punditry, which I’m going to just now.

I mean, It’s like not cases and conspiracy theorists, you know, it’s it’s like a magnet. Think of the horseshoe as a big magnet. You know, all the filings, you know, tend to go together. You know, is that nut case calls onto nut case. But there’s obviously something else.

It’s just sort of a, what a disillusionment with the status quo. A deep distrust of any sort of conventional wisdom, any sort of elite, any sort of establishment, a belief that America and our our systems are thoroughly corrupt and discredited. So at some point, they hate the same people, they hate the same things.

Yeah. And especially at the warmong They hate the warmongers, which is you and me, anybody who believes in, you know, to stopping Russian aggression. So can we call them their anti warmonger mongers? They’re sort of they’re they’re hanging out together against the the globalists and the warmongers and the elite.

Yeah. He has to be pretty far right, though, to look at Vladimir Putin and say, hey, there’s my champion of West civilization. Okay. The other, like, mildly interesting development, and I say mildly because I do not want to encourage any iraq exuberance about what’s happening in the Republican primaries. But, Donald Trump has apparently decided that Nikki Haley is somebody that that he can punch down on.

So he’s out there. There was this weird episode over the weekend. Did you see this where she comes back to her hotel room and finds a birdcage from the Trump campaign? Everybody basically, What what the hell is this about? And and basically, it’s Donald Trump’s jive that she’s a bird brain or something like that, which strikes me as one of his labor sorts of things.

And she’s kinda shrugging well, not kind of she’s definitely shrugging it off. And I think that her folks are going see. You know, Donald Trump thinks that I’m the number two now. So where are we at with Nikki Haley? Because it sure seems that way.

I thoroughly agree with that. I mean, Trump’s been beating up on Ron DeSantis for months. DeSantis has plummeted. I don’t know if he’s statistically still I think nationally he’s still in second, but He’s on his way down. What’s the point of continuing to kick him?

So Trump’s now kicking somebody who’s on her way up, and that’s Haley. Right? And she may have stalled. She had a really good first debate. Her second debate was okay.

Not not amazing. Right? But she had some momentum. So if you’re trump because remember, trump is like Kronos. Right?

He’s just in he’s just wanting to eat all the children, musty. Kill everybody off. He’s thoroughly consumed with self preservation and with hurting anyone who gets near him. So I think it’s a compliment to Haley. That this campaign is targeting her at this point.

I think she’s right about that.

She’s been sort of waffling back and forth in Trump’s camp and my appeasing Trump and my Trump adjacent Do I wanna be vice president? Clearly now she has decided that she’s not running for vice president. She’s running for president. Don’t think she’s gonna have a shot, but if you’re looking at this, okay, the field coalesces around somebody. And, by the way, this I feel like we’re back in twenty fifteen all over again.

I don’t think it’s gonna be Glenn Youngen. I think that’s Wishcasting. It’s obviously not gonna be Ron DeSantis. I’m I’m sorry to all of our good friends over at National Review. I mean, they they tried so hard to will him a personality.

I mean, they really, really did. I mean, they tried all of the de asshole programming they could possibly think of. It failed. So if it’s not gonna be Duncan,

if it’s not gonna be DeSantis, then is it gonna be Nikki? Which on paper is not a crazy idea. Right? Right. To her credit.

Look, a lot of us have criticized Ron DeSantis. For not being different enough from Trump. Right? He’s running as to substitute for Trump, but he goes to the trump audience and he tries to be trumping. And they’ll whole, we’re gonna shoot them at the border thing as part of that.

Right? Stone coal dead at the border. Yeah.

And as you point out, if people want that, they’re gonna go for So to Haley’s credit, partially, she’s not doing that. Right? She’s been different enough from Trump to sort of carve out an audience among the non Trump voters which is a substantial number of people in the Republican Party, not enough, but it’s substantial. And so I think that makes her a more viable alternative to Trump. And this birdcage thing and whatever, and his attacks on social media are probably part of him recognizing that.

And his power to hurt her is less than his power to hurt the stantas because the people I Because Tell me more about that.

Because the pe the audience she has targeted is not so thoroughly trumpy. Right? This is really a good point. So Ron DeSantis made himself vulnerable to Trump by basically saying I am the the successor for Maga. So I’m going to go as hard Maga as I possibly can.

So, this is my constituency. When Donald Trump basically said, no, you’re fake, Maga. That did go at at his target audience. Haley is really been targeting the more rash uncommitted Republicans who will all come back to Trump eventually. We know, and we know that.

Yeah. These donors that are sitting around thinking, you know, who are we going to support now? What are we going to do? Nobody’s gonna say, we can’t support Nikki Haley because Donald Trump says she’s a bird brain. I mean, that’s disqualifying.

Right? So you’re right. Right.

I mean, Chris Christie has gone right at Trump. And while I applaud it for that, and I think you do too, It may be that he has alienated a sort of middle audience in the Republican party of people who are don’t really like Trump’s personality, but they like trump’s policies. They don’t like attacks on Trump. Haili has been kind of weasily. She’s navigated in between these.

And I don’t like it morally, but maybe it works better. So she has an audience of people who, as you just described, Trump can’t take away from her so easily because they’re already they’ve already decided they’re not gonna vote for Trump. But there’s also sort of a larger audience that could reach in the party by being a little bit nicer. It may be the difference, Charlie, between New Jersey and South Sarah Longwell, you know, and the New Jersey is very blunt. We say what we think.

Right? They And South Carolina is more like bless your heart. It’s a subtler way of taking digs at people, and Haley has been doing with the exception of her attacks on Vivik Ramoswamy, which I applaud, She has been subtler and it may be that she has made herself more viable as a result of that. What she gets out of it, I don’t know, because she’s not gonna be vice president. Okay.

So what

are you gonna be looking at this week? What are we forgotten to talk about today? I I just feel that things are are rushing so quickly.

I’m really kinda interested in these impeachment hearings. The impeachment inquiry hearings against Biden. Yeah. They’re going so well. They’ve found and not found on it.

And I’m particularly interested in this complete lie that they’re promoting about that Biden went to Ukraine and said that they should, you know, we’re gonna withhold a billion dollars unless you fire the prosecutor because the prosecutor’s going after my son.

That was debunked years ago.

It was debunked years ago, but I see this everywhere now. The Republicans are relying because, of course, they don’t have a quid pro quo. They have Hunter Biden as a sleaze ball who tried to profit off his connection to his father true, and they don’t have anything on Joe Biden because he didn’t do anything. So they’re trying to turn this firing of the prosecutor into the quid pro quo.

Right.

And I’m I’m gonna be writing something about that. Yeah.

I mean, if that’s their quid pro quo, they’re not gonna go anywhere. I mean, on the other hand, look, I I I do think that people need to recognize how sleazy some of the hundred Biden, some of the family stuff was. This doesn’t rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, but, you know, this wasn’t an error in judgment. And maybe the error in judgment is that that Joe Biden just loves his son too much. But, I mean, clearly, you had these folks who were trading upon his name to make a lot of money And the reason people were paying them a lot of money is because they thought that perhaps it was going to buy them some sort of influence.

So it’s the appearance of it. Again, it’s depressing to read. But unless they can show that they actually got something for it, there’s kind of a lot of nothing. You’re especially and I’m I hate the whataboutism card. I really, really do.

But I just don’t know how you can become really, really morally indignant. I mean, genuinely morally as opposed to pretending to be morally indignant as opposed to the performative aspect. When you’re looking at the trump family and seeing, like, yeah, While the trumps would never trade upon their name in order to make money, we never heard of this Jared Kushner Ivanka Trump folks. I mean, what what is that all about?

I agree with that. And and this is an area where I think the bulwark can play a useful role because there’s too many people who are Democrats, who are progressives, who think that the the way to oppose Republicans is to hold the party line and never acknowledge anything. This is a terrible, terrible mistake on their part. There is a serious problem at the border. Republicans are right about that, and Democrats need to step up and deal with it, or people will turn to the wannabe dictator to deal with it.

Right? And in the case of corruption, Hunter Biden, no Joe Biden is not corrupt, but Hunter Biden absolutely used his father’s name to make money. Joe Biden probably helped more than he should have in terms of, like, going to dinners with people and that kind of thing. He shouldn’t have done that. And Democrats should be upfront about the corruption of what Hunter Biden did.

It was certainly trading on his father’s name and exploiting the appearance that he could get his father to do things. And that’s just gross and wrong, and it, and it hurt Joe Biden, and it’ll hurt the whole party if

we don’t face it. Then right. And also, I mean, it is the problem for for Joe Biden because he can’t fire his son. Right? I mean, it’s like under normal circumstances, I mean, you can get rid of Bob menendez.

But you can’t get rid of hunter hundred Biden. Hundred Biden’s gonna be there. And this is part of this culture of political denial where people say, well, you know, if you just don’t talk about these things. They go away. And I’m sorry that, you know, and you you’re paying attention to this is like watching a prairie fire come toward you.

Okay? You’re going to have to confront this and simply saying there’s no prairie fire. There’s no fire. I see no fire. If you see a fire, there’s something wrong with you.

Then you’re not gonna be able to engage it. So they’re gonna have to engage on all of these things that many of our commenters say, please don’t talk about the fact that he’s old because if you don’t talk about it, nobody will know Please don’t talk about inflation because otherwise people will will think that it’s gone away. Please don’t talk about Hunter Biden because otherwise, you know, people will think that the Democrats have suddenly developed this incredible ethical compass. The problem with that line is that, hey, boy, you know, we have this one corrupt party and Democrats are just the moral avatars If you’re not going to acknowledge that the hundred thing is a problem, it’s gonna be hard to be taken seriously. This is part of the problem I think of of our siloed world.

And punditry that that doesn’t actually deal with real people that you go into a room with real voters in a swing state and say a mythical state like Wisconsin and say, well, you know, what I really love is, you know, that there is no in inflation anymore. There is no problem at the border. And, you know, Hunter Biden, it’s all made up. People are gonna go, okay. What?

Right. I love what you said about silos. That is the problem. So to everybody out there who’s like, you, Charlie Sykes Will, you and everybody, you should stop talking about these things because nobody, you know, you are living in a silo. You need to hear from more Yeah.

People who, a broader cross section of America. That doesn’t have to be the people who are at the Trump rally, but, like, This guy, Trump is sitting at, like, you know, even Steven with by a guy who tried to overthrow the government is sitting at even Stephen. Right. You gotta get out there. You gotta talk to a broader cross section of people.

I think that’s part of your job in mind, Charlie, is to introduce the lefties who think that if we don’t talk about this, nobody’s talking about it. To all the people who are talking about about inflation, about the border, about all of those things.

I totally agree with you. And so, Will, we will continue talking about and we will talk again next Monday. Because think how much smarter we’ll be a week from today. And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes.

It’s a quick reminder. You can watch on YouTube. This will be published later today. And, keep an eye out for our very, very short morning shots. They’re only about two or three minutes, but I think they carry kind of a punch.

We’ll be back tomorrow. We will do this all over again. The Bullbrook podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.