Will Saletan: Israel’s 9/11

Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is October ninth two thousand twenty three. And once again, we find the world at war. These are the hard mornings I think to do programs like this because the the horror and the heartbreak is just so much.

I mean, watching the images coming out of Israel. But also trying to get your head around what it means for the world. The attacks on ten seven Israel were that nation’s nine eleven. The shock, the horror, the illumination of any sort of complacency we had that the world was a comprehensible place. And as I wrote my morning shots this morning, Twenty years ago, George w Bush talked about the axis of evil.

And back then, it was Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, but Today, this Monday, we have our own axis of evil, and it is Russia, it is Iran, and it is Hamas. And to break it all down, including the way the zone is being flooded with disinformation and, moral equivalency. We’re joined, of course, by my colleague, Will Saletan, Will. Good morning. How are you?

Good morning, Charlie. I wish

I had some cute, sports talk for today, but with all this, tragedy

and guessing.

Yep. No. We might as

well dive into it because there is so much. I mean, I think the anticipation was that we would be talking about to, hey, the chaos of the House of Representatives, and this is one of those reminders that You know, there is a reason why it is a really bad ID to even think about shutting down the US government right now. It’s a terrible ID to be playing political games with the US military. And what an awful time to be without a speaker of the House of Representatives. And by the way, those are, like, the least important things for us to talk about this morning.

So where do you wanna start here? Where do you wanna start this vicious surprise attack by Hamas which is going to lead to a an absolutely righteous, but terrible response from Israel. What do you think?

I think Americans have trouble grappling with the magnitude of this because Israel’s a much smaller country, obviously. So, yeah, we have about thirty five times the population of Israel. And they have, as of this morning, reporting about seven hundred deaths. Okay? So that would be in American terms.

That’s about eight times the size of nine eleven in terms of proportional to their population. And that’s just the number of deaths, the nature of is horrific. Obviously, we had planes flying into buildings. They just had, you know, a thousand or so, Hamas, they’re called fighters. They’re not really fighters.

They’re, you know, rapists and murder they they went into homes. They, like, they murdered people. They went to, as you saw, and I think you reported, a music festival that was supposed to be celebrating peace. He loves. Right.

Yeah. Gun people down. They went in there.

Tundress mowed people down. Yeah. Right. At least a hundred, I’ve seen upwards of two hundred reported. They dragged away children, old people, holocaust survivors, they targeted civilian populations.

So it’s a horrific attack both in its quantity and in the nature of it.

And the way that they are taking videos of some of their worst atrocities as if to celebrate them blowing up ambulances, you know, naked women in the back of trucks, the bodies, in the backs of trucks, the murder of children. The barbarity of it is overwhelming, but there’s also the shock of the incredible failure of intelligence that allowed this to take place. I mean, Israel has one of the most sophisticated intelligence operations in the world mean, so do we, and yet Hamas pulled this off. And it doesn’t detract anything from the barbarism to say that this was sophisticated. It there was a land, sea, and air attack.

They launched thousands of rockets. Then they used bulldozers to break through the wall. They had terrorists with hang gliders landing and securing territory that enabled them to move ahead. It appears to have been incredibly well planned and well orchestrated on a mass scale. Is it too early to go into the how did this happen?

How did this happen to a country that has such a sophisticated understanding of its enemy as Israel?

All of the statements from public officials in Israel and the states are, oh, let’s not do second guessing of the intelligence. Right now, we need to focus. Right. I hear that. But you and I are not subject

to that.

This was a massive intel. And it’s as you point out, Israel is supposed to be, like, the best country at intelligence. The best. Right. Right.

And they have to be. They’re surrounded by enemies. There’s constantly plotting against them. So it is shocking that they missed this. This is, I believe, more than two thousand rockets.

I’m not sure what the eventual number will be. The rocket parts, by the way, are exactly what Israel tries to prevent from going into into Gaza. Right? There’s a lot of screening of what goes in there. And they have massive, first of all, they have electronic surveillance.

They have human intelligence that was supposed to penetrate this. But To miss all of this, to miss all of the methods, the the attack itself, the rocket parts, the the hardware that went into this, just shocking. Just a shocking failure. And and this Israeli government. Part of me is saying Charlie, let’s not get into recriminations.

For a podcast, we can do that.

They had one job. This was Benjamin Danyaru. This is Likud. They have one job and it is security, and they failed.

Did the incredible division in the country, the political division in the country over the judicial reform? Was it a distraction? Did it add truly degrade Israel’s ability to anticipate and stop this. Do we have any idea? I mean, by the way, that’s gotta be a big question.

Whenever the second guessing starts, that’s gotta be one of the central questions. Don’t you think?

I don’t think so. Okay. In a situation like this, there’s a lot of attribution of if only we had done this, if only this hadn’t been the case. I don’t believe any of that. This attack was the fiftieth anniversary of the Yonkopur war, Hamas planned this.

They’ve been building it for a long time, but what exactly precipitated it, whether imagine that the Saudis already had signed a deal with with Israel. There was already a recognition and all that treaty and all that. They would have done it anyway. Absolutely. They did it when they could, and they did it on this anniversary.

There’s two levels of, I think, intelligence failure here. One is the how did they not see that they were assembling this attack? The missiles, the hang gliders, the fighters, all of that. That’s the sort of the hardware version of it. The software version of it is the larger intelligence failure, the really fundamental misunderstanding of Hamas and what Hamas was capable of doing and what Iran was capable of doing.

There’s a lot of naivete. I think some belief that, well, Hamas may have been a, you know, terrorist organization, but they wouldn’t do this. Iran we can actually negotiate with them. We can do and we’re gonna get to the whole bid administration and the spin on that, the deal they just cut with Iran. But it strikes me as kind of a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature, the nature of of our existing axis of evil, I guess.

What do you think?

Some of the background for this was that Israel thought that Hamas was not going to do something like this because Right. Israel was trying to be Look, Charlie. There’s no way for us to talk about this topic without pissing off a bunch of people. Yeah.

Fine. I’m down with that.

So for those of you who you know, believe that what Israel is doing in Gaza is unjust and resistance is necessary and all that stuff. Sorry, but what I’m about to say Israel was trying to be kinder gentler with people in Gaza. To be fair about the situation in god, Gaza is a giant hostage situation in which So a bunch of militant killers control of territory in which a lot of innocent people live, and it’s very difficult to get to one without accidentally hurting the other. So one of the things that Israel had done. Israel had just recently allowed a lot more work permits for people in Gaza because economic development, in theory, if you believe in helping the people of Gaza and trying to encourage them to abandon militancy, you know, economic development and seeing that there’s a better life for them in peaks and in cooperation, that was part of the strategy.

And so there were something like fifteen thousand work permits given out. And the Israeli authorities apparently thought that Gaza was gonna be quiet because of that. And that seems to have been a mistaken bit. And so one of the tragedies coming out of this Charlie is that voices inside the Israeli government and in Israel in general who believe that being nice to Palestinians doesn’t work and that you can only show them the fist. Those people have gained credibility as a result of this attack.

I don’t agree with those people, but they’ve gained credibility. So just a little bit of background here. Israel withdrew from Gaza more

than fifteen years ago. Right?

Right.

But then the decision was made to allow Hamas to participate in the elections, and Hamas won those elections. So in retrospect, huge mistake miscalculation thinking that, hey, Let’s let Hamas act like a regular political party in government, and maybe they won’t be, bloodthirsty terrorists.

Yeah. And this is a constant frustration for anyone who deals with the issue Palestine. You have Yeah. Constantly attempts to separate the extremists from the moderates. And very often, the moderate just turn out to not be very moderate.

Yeah. Like a fatah.

Yeah. Shortly after this attack was underway, and it was clear that it was barbaric and awful. I saw in CNN, supposedly moderate Palestinian politician, Mustafa Buguti, was being interviewed. And Krishna Amanpour is trying to tee this guy up. She’s saying, but, of course, Hamas is your enemy.

You’re for and he’s like, no. No. Hamas isn’t our enemy. Israel’s our enemy. And I’m like, this is the moderate.

Let’s dive into this whole Iran situation because clearly it looks like Iran was funding, arming them, Hamas, saying that that Iran was behind a big Wall Street Journal exclusive story this morning talking about, you know, Iran being part of the the planning of all of this. The Biden administration just cut a deal with Iran. And, of course, this is becoming now a partisan cudgel. A lot of disinformation misinformation about the six billion dollars in Iranian assets that were unfrozen. Now we’ll talk about the the fact check on that in a moment, but this has been seized on from a political point of view to score political points, saying, I mean, there are people like Rick Scott and Tim Scott out there saying that the Biden administration funded this attack.

And I think they’re referring to the Iranian money, but also the fact that we’ve been giving a lot of aid to Gaza as as well. So let’s sort through all of this. Bad look for the Biden administration that had cut a deal with Iran or or just a lot of totally disingenuous demagoguery by the Republican critics. Where do you come down, Will?

Both. Why not both? Okay.

To have.

It’s not causally related, but it does look terrible. This is the way American politics is sorted out. Republicans are the anti Iran party, isolate Iran. Right? And Democrats are the, you know, if we make nice with the moderates, we can somehow encourage positive developments.

And then this happens. Right? And Just to be clear, we don’t yet have solid intel. And although everybody believes that Iran is behind us, you don’t get all those rockets in Gaza. Without Iran helping.

I mean, Hamas is saying Iran did it. That’s for the sake of this assumption that that Iran is the deep in all of this. Right. I think we have to make it clear. The six billion dollars itself did not finance it.

Okay? The money, because the money has not yet been released. Now the US government says it’s only for humanitarian use, but, I mean, come on, let’s not be naive. Money is fungible. I give you six billion dollars.

You know, you have to spend it on your garden. You know, you’re also gonna be able to then be able to afford a, you know, whatever you wanna do. But I guess to your point, though, this goes back to the the way Israel perhaps uncharacteristically naively underestimated what Hamas was capable of even cutting a deal with Iran seems in retrospect to have been based on assumptions of their moderation or their restraint that have not age well.

No. No. And Charlie, the six billion dollars was part of a deal to get out how many American hostages like five Okay? There’s now at least a hundred and fifty hostages.

I know.

They just got taken. And they’re inside Gaza. They’re in tunnels. They’re get they’re already apparently supposedly. Being killed in some of the air strikes because they’re human shields for so we’ve multiplied by thirty at least the number of hostages and the six billion is out the door.

Why we once said we never negotiated with terrorists. It’s a bad look, and it’s a bad bet. And, again, as in the situation in Gaza, the voices who say we need to be harder. We need to be tougher. We need to be more of isolating of Iran, have gained credibility with this.

But, by the way, Charlie, it would be so much better for the people of Gaza if we had better intelligence linking this to Iran, like, clearly. Because it would be so much better if the retaliation were focused on Iran.

But that’s a wider war, though. What are you asking for? Okay. Bill, we’re going here.

Alright. So there were ways to retaliate that are not necessarily about dropping bombs.

Yeah.

But I’m really concerned about Charlie Sykes going and I don’t wanna jump ahead of the conversation, but there’s going to be the carnage in Gaza, like you would not believe. A lot. And it is absolutely horrific and terrible that innocent people in Gaza are going to pay the price for this. I’m not necessarily saying that Israel is wrong to take a deterrent action, but even if you believe that Hamas is responsible for what’s happening in Gaza, it’s terrible for the innocent people there.

It is. But and it but here’s also where there’s there’s not symmetry The Israeli military forces are warning the civilian population to evacuate. They’re saying, look, this is what you should do. You should not be in these areas. This was not something that Hamas did or Israeli.

So there is not a moral equivalence between what happened over the weekend and what is about to happen. What is about to happen is solely the responsibility of Hamas. This is an intentional thing that they did They were hoping they are planning on, as you point out, using civilians as human shields, not just Israeli civilians, but their own civilians. So they are unleashing intentionally this wave of of terror on their own people.

Yes. Yes. And so it’s very important that everybody understands what Hamas’s mentality is. You’re not dealing with people like you and me. You’re not dealing with people for whom you know, death is tragic and hard.

I mean, Hamas is a martyr culture. Part of the problem that Israel has is it’s surrounded by a lot of these people who would believe in martyrdom. In a normal deterrent situation, Charlie, you or I could say, look, you mess with us, we mess with you.

Yeah.

Right? You kill us We kill you. Right. Yeah. But you kill people in Gaza and Hamas celebrates that.

All the death and destruction it makes Israel look bad. And if Hamas spiders die, that’s martyrdom, they celebrate. They glorify the violence. That’s why what Israel has to do in situations like this They have to prevent them because once the killing starts, you’re just helping the militants and the martyrs.

By the way, just mentioned here because we we talked about, Israel’s policy toward toward Gaza. Some of the commentary that I’m seeing seems to miss the fact that Israel no longer occupies Gaza that they withdrew from Gaza. I think this seems like a relevant point especially when we’re seeing some of the comments, particularly on the left. About Israel being an apartheid state, and we need to end the US support for Israeli occupation. Israel is not occupying Gaza anymore.

That’s kind of

a significant baseline point when we’re discussing this. So, yes, Israel doesn’t occupy Gaza anymore. Withdrawal was part of an attempt to see if if a kinder gentler approach worked. But let’s not gloss over the massive blockade that’s going on. Right?

The gauze is completely trapped there. Mean, it’s a terrible situation for Israel. What would we do if we had, you know, a population, a quarter of our size sitting on our border and, like, firing rockets in.

I understand this. So we have Hezbollah who is sitting on another border firing rockets as well. Mona Charen has a great piece in the Bulwark about all of this with a little bit of the background and also pointing out, you know, don’t don’t try to draw some moral equivalency between what Hamas is doing and what Israel is about to do. She writes, Hamas calculates that we’ll be able to use the imagery and reality of Palestinian grief and suffering to hurt Israel again, and perhaps even to draw Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy to join the conflict. Hezbollah has about a hundred and thirty thousand missiles in Lebanon and commands twenty thousand active fighters along with twenty thousand reserves On Sunday, there were short exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah, suggesting that they are on a hair trigger already.

So that there’s a real danger that this could escalate and this could spread particularly as, as Israel launches, you know, fire and fury on Gaza. And and that is, you know, when I said it’s going to be right just and terrible. I meant, you know, capitalize. I mean, it it will be I’m not criticizing it. I mean, it but it will be very, very dramatic.

And so the question is what will the rest of the world do, what will Iran do, what will Hezbollah do. We just don’t know what will Saudi Arabia say. What does this mean for the future of diplomacy, the fact that so much of the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, etcetera, put out statements, essentially blaming Israel for all of this. I mean, this changes everything in terms of diplomacy. Right?

I mean, for people who thought that we were going to somehow ease into a post Abraham Accord, Kumbaya world. I’m not seeing it.

No. And of course, the point of it was to derail that fish Right?

Well, success.

For anyone who has studied the Middle East or followed the history of the Middle East, this is how it always happens. There are so many forces. There are so many people involved who are invested in violence, who are invested in warfare. And even though most, you know, Jews, most Arabs want peace, It’s really difficult to do that when a thousand guys can go execute an operation like this and and trigger a massive conflagration.

Well, let’s talk about some of the reaction over the weekend. I tried to come up with a, very incomplete list of the absolute worst takes before we get to those though. Michael McCall is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. And, he was on one of the Sunday shows yesterday. He this is not one of the worst takes yet.

But describing what we know about what happened.

We do know that Iran is behind this. They have financed this every step of the way, and they’ve trained these terrorists. This must have been planned for months to strike on the fifteenth anniversary of Yon Kippur, you know, the war in nineteen seventy three. And, and that’s very evident. I’m also concerned about the six billion dollars in lifted sanctions that have now gone into Iran.

I don’t think it, played a part in this, event, but it certainly can play a part in any future, terror activity.

Yeah. I don’t know where the money is, Will, but, I I would think you might wanna put a stop on that check. I just this is my thought.

It’s not a check. It’s Iran’s money. Just so everybody knows, like, it was moved from, like, South Korea to Qatar, and it was sanctions money. It wasn’t our money. It wasn’t taxpayers money.

Right?

Well, of course, speaking of the worst takes, Republicans almost to a person are citing all of this. And, of course, Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, had this to say over the weekend. Here’s a little compilation of some of the things some of his comments.

The war happened for two reasons. The United States is giving and gave to Iran six billion dollars six billion over over hostages over hostages and what’s going on with Israel right now. People were shocked. I wasn’t shocked because two weeks ago, we gave us six billion dollars.

He wasn’t shocked. Oh, fuck that guy. We’re gonna hear that six billion dollars every minute of every day for the next several months, I’m guessing.

So you and I, Charlie, we we exhale carbon dioxide. Right? Donald Trump exhales lies, and this is a really spectacular Right? He says two weeks ago. It’s actually, like, four weeks ago.

We transferred this six billion. He flies about what it is. So that’s four weeks ago. Right? Meanwhile, McCall is saying, obviously, this was planned for months.

Right? Because it’s was planned for this fiftieth anniversary. So the logistics that went into this with getting the rockets together and everything took a long time. So Donald Trump is lying. He’s lying because all he cares about is attributing to Joe Biden and to this transfer of Iran’s money, the reason for this attack.

The attack was gonna happen anyway. There’s no causal connection. It just looks bad.

Yeah. Okay. Among other really, really bad takes, and we can just sort of run through this. Elon Musk actually linked to an account. On X that refers to Israel as the Zionist regime, the US terrorist state.

He since deleted that. Must recommended this information she said, you know, go to, you know, this site for information on the Israeli attack. It’s an anti Semitic account with a history of spreading disinformation. Wonderful. Don junior, this is one of my favorite tweets.

John junior used the incident to display his own, inveterate ignorance once again. He actually put out how is it possible that I’ve seen more videos out of this war in Israel in a few hours than I’ve seen in Ukraine in almost two years.

I don’t know.

Maybe because you’ve had your head up your ass for two years because you’ve been too busy kissing Vladimir Putin’s butt to notice what’s going on in Ukraine? I regret to tell you that Lawrence tribe, progressive law from Harvard who we have quoted many times. Also, in a since deleted post, put out, is Netanyahu wagging the dog to get attention away from his own war in the independent judiciary? JD Vance, of course, blames America first. By the way, this is a new thing.

Among Republicans, blaming America first, we did it. We paid for it. JD Van says, as we watch this horrible situation in Israel unfold, Americans must face a stark truth. Our tax dollars funded this. Bulwark.

The democratic socialist of America, have you followed this one? Oh, god. They’re having a rally in support of Palestine. And this democratic, congressman named Ritchie Torres really went on a torrent this weekend. Attacking the democratic socialist and his colleagues from the squad for attacking Israel or blaming Israel.

I I don’t know what Ritchie Torres is. Story is, but but he is really outspoken. He said the New York City DSA, Democratic socialist of America, is planning to hold a rally tomorrow, glorifying terrorism of Hamas as resistance. And then he just, you know, walks through how awful that is. So just a reminder, there is a an element of the left that has been consistently anti Israel, and will blame Israel for anything.

Let me pull back from whether this is right or left and just draw a general argument. What happens in politics is we tend to sort of find people who agree with us and then we form like minded silos. Right? And we have our issues There’s your issues and there’s our issues. Like, Ukraine,

if you’re

on the right now, Ukraine is your issue. You lefties. Right? But Israel is our issue. Right?

So Don’t care about Ukraine. Do care about Israel. Or the I care about the Palestinian cause. And so even on a day when a bunch of Hamas terrorists went and murdered a bunch of Jews I’m gonna, like, talk about Palestinian rights. Read the room.

Read the situation. Okay. Like, and just to turn things around for a little bit, About thirty years ago, a Jewish settler went in and murdered, like, thirty Muslims who were, like, praying in Israel. Right? That would have been a really bad day for me to talk about, you know, the importance of defending Israel against extremists.

Right? So folks, I appreciate all the concern about Palestinian causes. Today is not the day for that. It’s gonna be really bad in the next couple of weeks as Israel goes into Gaza. And and by the way, Charlie, this applies to us too.

Right? For those people who believe in Israel’s right to defend itself and who recognize the threats to Israel. We mustn’t lose our souls, and we mustn’t lose our perspective. And just because it is true that Hamas uses human shields does not mean that Israel should go into Gaza with no regard for civilian casualties as a result of its operations.

Okay. Here’s a strange one. Here’s a strange reaction. Mike Pence, who, in case you forgot, is actually still in the race president, Donald Trump’s former vice president, mem remember him remember Mike Pence? Who occasionally says, like, things that you go, hey, That’s wonderful.

He had this to say in reaction to the attack on Israel this week. And listen to this.

I also believe this is what happens when we have leading voices like Donald Trump Vivecrom Swamy and Ron DeSantis signaling retreat from America’s role as leader of the free world.

Well, I really want to agree and applaud that. All of my instincts. I have to say. I mean, they’re all up there going, but then I go, wait. Wait.

Wait. If we accept the argument this has been planned for a long time, and it’s hard to get in Hamat. I don’t think that Hamas launched this because of anything that Ron DeSantis of Vivek Ramaswami has been doing I would be more than willing to blame this on Donald Trump, but I’m not totally seeing this. And I thought it was interesting that Mike Pence, who’s basically been handed this high lob to do what he does so well, which is just attack Democrats, that he decided to turn this on his fellow Republican The whole thing was puzzling me. What did you think?

Can I applaud Mike Pence here? I I mean Okay. I’ve been enjoying Mike Pence ever since several weeks ago, he gave a speech about populism versus conservatism. I mean,

I was great. Wonderful speech.

Pence has been in the process. I know everybody there are a lot of Bulwark readers and listeners who, like, despise Mike Pence, he stood next to Donald Trump. It’s all true, but recently Mike Pence has been on a start to express the truth tour. And so he’s been acknowledging a lot of the stuff. He’s right.

But he had to take a partisan political shot. I guess I’m trying to have a something of a consistent standard here. Is that if your first reaction is to say, how can I score a political opponent against somebody that I’m earning against?

It’s like

a a little cringey. Right? Well, he’s right though.

He’s right that there these are voices of appeasement. Hey, Charlie, you and I were just discussing Ukraine, Israel, and that the Republicans have decided we don’t care about screen, but we do care about Israel. No. Pence is saying, I’m consistent. You may disagree with me.

I may be wrong, but I am a consistent, you know, hawk I believe in a strong American foreign policy and a strong American involvement in Israel and in Ukraine. And these guys like JD Vance, can’t talk soft about Ukraine and then suddenly pose as hawks when it comes to Israel.

That’s going to be very interesting because the whole know, JD Vance’s line is that any money you spent on any country fighting for its own freedom is somehow, coming out of American pairs pockets and is bad for America. Right? That’s the whole American America first. So you’re right. At some point, I think we do have to have a vigorous discussion about you cannot say that it is wrong for us to support Ukraine and then pivot and say that we are a reliable ally of Israel.

That if you are basically single, we’re withdrawing from the world and we will let, you know, the big fish swallow the small fish because it’s not our problem, then what message are you sending to Israel and to any other country that might fight for it. So if I agree with that, I just I’m trying to figure out Mike Pence’s psychology. So it’s, like, Mike Pence woke up. He says, I’m gonna run for president. I’m gonna stand for these values.

And then the next day, of course, it’ll be something different.

But Okay. But sometimes deeply flawed people make deeply true arguments. Right? And that’s just the way it is. Right?

So just because we don’t like Mike Pence and because Mike Pence was a Weasel for four vipings. Right? So he’s expressing rate and conservatism. That is a, you know, legit point of view that that ought to be heard here. Can I say one more thing here to undercut all of this causal analysis?

Cause I think it’s all bullshit. I just think Hamas was gonna do this anyway because they wanted to undermine peace. Right?

Yeah.

The complaints that any kind of softness in the United States, Joe Biden, you know, with the money to Iran, or appeasement among the Republican elite, right, affected what happened here in Israel. They ignored the obvious truth that Israelis themselves elected parliament that installed a right wing Likud government. The government of Israel is a right wing hawkish government. Don’t tell me that Hamas looked at what was going on in the United States and said, you know, oh, you know, that there’s they’re soft. So we’re gonna attack Israel.

When Israel itself was was electing a hawkish government, Hawkishness failed here. It failed.

Alright. So, among the weird things that we’re talking about today is the fact that all of this is taking place. The world is obviously a very, very dangerous place. And the United States Congress appears to be absolutely paralyzed because I am not an expert in the, operations of the house. But, much smarter people tell me that unless there’s a speaker to the house of representatives, pretty much, is out of business.

They can’t do anything. There’s also a thing called the gang of eight, which are the top congressional leaders who are always briefed during a time of national crisis or global crisis. It’s not clear whether or not the acting speaker should be included. We don’t know what’s going on with the house. The house can’t really pass any led translation, it cannot do anything until has it as a speaker.

And who knows what’s gonna happen? So there was a lot of wishcasting over the weekend, a lot of fan fiction. There was the fan fiction. Hey, maybe there’s going to be a consensus speaker. Maybe Republicans will vote for a Democrat.

I don’t know why are you smoking that Hopium? No. Okay. I mean, this is like the it’s one thing to find the pony in the pile. It’s another thing to be smoking the, hey, maybe I will date,

Maybe I’m

gonna be dating, sit to Taylor Swift and maybe Republicans will vote for a team jefferies. The other, though, wishful thinking, there are moderate publicans were saying, look, this is an emergency we need to bring back Kevin McCarthy, right, which strikes me as also unlikely. However, This does change the dynamic because this is not, like, everybody’s prepared to sit back and eat some popcorn and watch Jim Jordan and Steve’s, scalise, piss on each other, and maneuver and go back and forth and try to come up with two hundred and eighteen votes. Now the cost for, you know, watching the Jackal caucus play games with Congress seems to have been raised. So what’s gonna happen with the speaker’s election this week?

It’s gonna be scalisa Jordan. I don’t I don’t think there’s any other possibility. McKinry.

Telling you.

McKinry would actually be better than either of them by a large margin, which probably means it won’t happen. Right? Almost guarantees it. Charlie, every time, every time I have tried to make predictions about what is gonna go on in the republican party based on rationality. I have been wrong.

So they won’t do the rash.

I am not judging.

Look at me. But on this question of, like, how much does our chaos affect things? I in the chaos in the house, I think not much. Oh, I

don’t know. Going forward? Okay.

In terms of the things that the house has to do, like budgeting, right, passing Keep the government open. Yes. Yes. Keeping the government open. I fully agree.

Right? The house can take that down. And they will take that down in November, I think. But as in terms of responding to a situation like Israel, I think the House of Representatives was already kind of irrelevant. I mean, there’s a gang of A and they do need to be brief, but wasn’t like Kevin McCarthy was running a tight ship in terms of everybody being together, and here’s where the United

That’s true. And I and I I think there’s some denial about that. Yeah.

So I I think there was already chaos, and now there’s more chaos. But, yeah, I don’t think it affects the foreign policy situation.

Where did you come down on this debate about what Democrats should have done. I know it feels like ancient history now. That was, like, a less than a week ago. Right? I mean, that was feels like another lifetime ago.

But you had the Gates caucus, the crazed Slavering Jackal caucus, and then the Democrats went along with it. Now I think it’s crazy to think that they should have bailed Kevin McCarthy out, but there are others who think that, no, they should have been the grown up They should have done the statesmanlike thing. Well, what should Democrats have done?

I think the House Republican conference is unsalvageable. I think you can’t run the House, so I don’t think that voting to keep McCarthy there was gonna solve the problem. I mean, Kevin McCarthy was he was bankrupt in terms of he had made so many promises to so many people that he couldn’t keep

Right.

McCarthy is a weasel. So his promises were contradictory. He told Biden he would do things. He told the, you know, the right, if he was not sustainable. So I don’t think there’s anything Democrats could have done.

Part of me, sort of, the nicer version of me, look, Charlie Sykes, we, at the Bulwark believe in institutions, and we should, you know, try to uphold the institutions even when the other side is trying to tear them down. But I don’t think it was salvageable in this case, and I think that by going with gates and taking down the dispute, which is what normally you would do. We, Democrats support Hakim Jeffries. If you want unity, vote for our guys. Want your guy, we’re gonna vote against him.

That’s a perfectly reasonable position to take. And if you can’t get enough Republicans together to keep your guy in power, then you shouldn’t have had him there in the first place.

Yeah. And also, it it was not a vote for the institution because that would have really, you know, defined deviance down to think that Kevin McCarthy somehow became this pillar of the institution. No. It does not actually work that way at all. Okay.

So this fight between Scalia and Jordan is interesting. And, you know, we were talking about, Mike Pence saying, unusual things. You know, remember when Ken Buck was kind of a key party fire breathing, right wing congressman from Colorado. He still is kind of, but he says some awfully interesting things he was on one of the shows yesterday, talking about Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy and everything that was going on. And I thought he made a highly relevant point This guy is way to the I would say he’s right.

Well, I wanna say way to the right of the of the median of the House Republican caucus since that’s pretty far. Right? But, I mean, ten bucks never been considered a Rhino before. Right? Right.

Except a he’s obviously kinda fed up with the Jackal clock us a little bit. This is Ken Buck yesterday morning.

Jim Jordan and Steve Scalia voted to to five the electors. I don’t know that it’s gonna be a very big factor at all. I think the factor, George, is that we continue to perpetuate a lie about the two twenty twenty election being stolen. That we talk about the January sixth, events as a unguided tour of the capital. That we are, pretending that the, people who assaulted police officers and destroyed federal government property are political prisoners.

Yeah. So he seems to, be thinking, yeah, our larger problem is that we’ve craisified our party. You know what I’m saying?

Yeah. Right. Charlie, I love it when extreme right wingers say stuff like this because Look, I can disagree with them on policy, but there’s a shared reality. Things are true or false. Right?

The election was not stolen. Right? January sixth was an insurrection. Those are not political prisoners. What Buck is doing is validating in a way that I never could.

You never could. Right? He’s a very hard right guy who is just telling the truth. So he can communicate with conservative Americans, including some people who are sympathetic. To Donald Trump Ron DeSantis say, the sky is blue.

The election wasn’t stolen. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So he’s validating that.

I think that’s important. He adds in there. He says scalise is not really any better than Jordan, because scalise didn’t like Jordan voted to decertify the electors on January. That’s an important point because we’ve lost some perspective about how as you put it crazified, the Republican Party has become, that we think that because scalise isn’t as bad as Jordan Mhmm. That scalise would be a sort of moderate speaker.

He would not be.

In one respect, there is a distinction between the two, and it’s not that squeeze is better. It’s that Jim Jordan is exponentially worse. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not it’s relevant to the house, conference that Jim Jordan was very much a conspirator on January six, that he is knee deep, that he’s not just one of the guys that voted against certification. I mean, he’s got his fingers in it. He defied the subpoena.

There’s a very, very detailed piece by David Corn over the Mother Jones. I mean, think about how weird the world is that I’m setting Mother Jones. But David Corn is

a very

good reporter, and he lays out all the ways in which Jim Jordan was a coconspirator in what many of us regard as an attempt to overthrow the US government overturn the election. Now maybe that won’t matter, but what a statement it will make for House Republicans to nominate somebody who was that active in trying to throw out tens of

millions of votes. I just think it’s going to be

extraordinary who Willie was complicit in this violent attack on the US capital in which can I remind people people died and police officers were assaulted?

This was Liz Cheney talking about Jim Jordan. I think it was on Wednesday. She said exactly what you said Charlie Sykes, quote, Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned. For January sixth than any other member of the house. If the Republicans decide that Jim Jordan should be the speaker, There would no longer be any way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the constitution.

So she’s not just pointing out that Jordan was up to his eyeballs in the plot. She’s saying that if other Republicans, if the house republican conference decides that that man, someone who did that, should be speaker, then the whole Republican conference cannot be relied upon. And she says, any Republican, she is talking about an entire political party, and she’s right. Well, Jim Jordan has some other baggage as well. And yesterday, Nancy Mace, who, by

the way, This is where Kevin McCarthy and I actually agree. Nancy Mace was a whole different story. Try to figure out Nancy Mace. Nancy Mace again is one of these people who they don’t have good days. They’ll have bad days, and they’ll have like, oh, what the hell days?

So she was on one of the talk shows yesterday, and she’s asked about some of the other issues involving JimDry.

I know you’ve been outspoken about, defending of sexual assault due to past allegations against Jim Jordan that he turned a blind eye to sexual abuse, give you any reservations.

I yeah. I’m not a familiar or aware with that. I he’s not indicted on an thing that I’m aware of. And so I don’t I don’t know anything. I can’t speak to that, but I will say that I have state university organizations.

A very, yeah, don’t I don’t know anything and I I don’t know anything about them.

I don’t know anything about that. She says two days before she has to decide whether or not he becomes second in line to the president of the United States. I’m Gus going on this national, you know, program to talk about Jim Jordan, and I don’t know. He may become the next speaker of the house of representatives, but I don’t know anything about that. That’s become kind of the go to Dodge.

Like, no. I didn’t read those tweets. No. I don’t know anything about that.

Yeah. Yeah. So I don’t have to address your point because I’m ignorant.

Yeah.

For people who don’t follow this you know, Jim Jordan was he was not responsible for this, but there was a, what, a team doctor, I can’t remember, at Ohio State, the wrestling team. And there were a bunch of wrestlers who said they had been groped by the doctor. And so this is a sexual abuse case in which Jim Jordan was told

Yeah.

There was witness testimony that he was told. Jim Jordan simply denied it. He said they’re all lying. Right? Now this is men, not women.

Yeah.

And Nancy Mayce poses as a protector of women and, you know, Nancy Mace herself a victim of sexual assault. Right? So I’m sympathetic to that. But if you care about this issue, you can’t just care about the women. You care all victims of sexual assault.

Jim Jordan looked the other way, and then he lied, and he claimed that the victims were lying about what he knew I forget how many years ago this happened, but it’s never too old.

And if it’s gonna be speaker, it’s going to become an issue again. Absolutely. This is what blows my mind about politicians. Every time you you assume that they’re gonna behave in a rational manner, well, if you ever assume that, if anyone ever assumes that, they’re quickly disabused of all of this because it is a little bit like, you know, the the RNC is about to nominate Donald Trump with all of his indictments and the crimes and the impeachments. And then the House Republicans go, hold my beer.

Look who we’re gonna put in as speaker. We’re gonna put in the mini knee Trump who’s also got this credible allegation of looking the other way of a sexual assault on me, Jesus.

By the way, can we stop hearing about groomers on the left when we have I mean, with Danny Hastert, Jim Jordan. I mean, if can you imagine what the record of

And

what are these successor for Danny Hastard? Okay. Now that’s a great line. Right? Yeah.

You missed Danny Hasturt? Here’s Jim Jordon. Oh, jeez. Yeah. From the people who brought you speaker Danny Hasturt, here is speaker Jim Jordon.

What could possibly go wrong. Right? Something like that. Okay. So in the time we have left here, I talked with Tim Miller about this.

I’m trying to figure out what Democrats and the Biden administration are doing with the border. And and I understand that that’s maybe not the top issue this Monday morning, but I wanted to get your take on all of this. Because, you’ve had what what could be interpreted as changes in direction or vibes involving the building of the wall. Changes in policy involving deportation of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, but also very notably. Very outspoken, leading, very prominent Democrats who are very critical of immigration policy.

Now here is the Democratic mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, and then I wanna play Illinois governor Pritzker, who’s also a very prominent Democrat on this This is, New York mayor Eric Adams on refugees.

We can’t have a rule that one can come from anywhere on the globe and come to New York City and remain in New York City as long as they want, and taxpayers must push pick up the cost.

We’re also getting pushback from the Democratic governor of Illinois who also a head point was rumored to, you know, have some presidential ambitions himself. This is, governor pritzker.

My family were refugees to the country too. We ought to welcome them, put them through

a process. And if they don’t meet the requirements, they should be sent back. Okay. So, Will, I’m just getting a sense that there is more resistance in the democratic party now to some of the policies and and some of the things that are happening with the border. None of them are, of course, going, you know, the heavy handed trump throw them all out, build the wall.

But there’s clearly some some movement. What is your diagnosis here?

Well, a a couple of things. First of all, and this goes back to what we were discussing earlier in the context of Israel and Hamas. When the sky is blue, acknowledge it, reality, acknowledge it, Democrats have not been looking squarely honestly at this massive migration crisis that is that has been coming into the United States and up the Western hemisphere. Eric Adams is doing that. Eric Adams, you know, he went to the dairy and gap.

He looked at this. He’s I mean, he’s got migrants flowing into New York. The migrants coming in Chicago, that’s that’s what pritzker is talking about, they’re simply overwhelmed. The United States is not prepared. We are not handling this well.

Can’t have this many people coming in, and we can’t have them concentrated. It’s chaotic and they’re concentrated in a few areas. They’re overwhelmed. They need federal support.

Isn’t this what Greg Abbott and Rhonda Sanders are saying, mister Salatin?

It is. And pritzker says, let’s spread out the migrants to not just the blue cities. And he’s right about that. Right? That’s a cynical operation, but they are distributing it from these red states because that’s where they came in.

They came into Texas. And Joe Biden and the Democrats cannot say that’s Greg Abbott’s problem, we’re not gonna deal with it. So these Democrats in the north are telling Joe Biden take this seriously, and Democrats should Take it seriously. We were talking before about issue ownership. The whole border issue seems to be an issue that a lot of Democrats have decided is a Republican issue.

And we can’t talk about it or we can’t talk about deportations because that’s racist or whatever. Pritzker is saying nope. They don’t qualify. You gotta send them back. Henry Quayar, democrat, in Texas, saying the same thing.

You gotta show people. And Charlie Sykes Quiar has says, you gotta put this on TV. You gotta show the people in Latin America. We are putting people on planes and we are sending them back. So these are repercussions.

It is an administration of a penalty of you will not get a reward for coming into this country illegally. I think Democrats need to embrace that message.

Does this validate, though, some of the stunts from Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis who were putting migrants on bus saying, look, we are overburdened. We need to share the pain and aren’t now. These Democratic governors and mayors saying, yeah, you know, you’re you’re right. We can’t stick them all in Florida. We can’t stick them all in Texas.

Well, not Florida, but Texas.

Yeah. I would say it does. It half validates it. Right? It validates the part where Abbott says, look, they’re all in my state.

I need to redistribute them. Now where he redistributed them to is a separate question, and part of what pritzker said is you can’t just send them to blue cities. And pritzker’s right about that. If we’re going to house them in other places, it should be in Red America too. But it can’t all be in border towns in Texas.

Cool. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about this. I think it’s very interesting the way this is played. I know that political over the weekend, had an interesting point that in many ways, the extreme position that Donald Trump and the Republicans have taken gives the Democrats a little bit more flexibility because they can, in fact, move towards the center on the issue of immigration, knowing that however far they move, the Republican position is going to be so much more punitive, so much more extreme. So, you know, there are areas of doing it, but this issue is is not going away.

Anytime soon. However, much people would like us not to talk about it. Will, we have a lot of ground to cover over the next several weeks. We’ll talk again next Monday. Okay?

Alright, Charlie. Thanks. Take care.

And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We’ll be back tomorrow,

and we’ll do this all over again.

The Boer Comcast is produced by Katie Cooper, an engineered and edited by and Brown.