Will Saletan: The Politics of Atonement

Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is September twenty six two thousand twenty three, and I am joined by my colleague, Will Saletan, one day late. Happy Tuesday, Will. Thank you, Charlie.

I was out yesterday for Yankapur, but I’m feeling all atoned, rested, and ready.

I I I think a lot of us need a lot of and I think America has a lot to atone for. So I I I hope you you carried the burden for us. Okay. So where do we start today? We the president of the United States out on the picket line.

We are headed toward a shutdown this week, also the beginning of the Biden impeachment hearings. What could possibly go wrong, but I have to say that I am obsessed with two stories today. And I’m I’m not sure which one I wanna start with. You know, number one, A moment to reflect upon Maga World’s obsession with masculinity and masculine courage. And yet, when it comes down to masculine courage, when you compare all of the Uber male members of the Torian guard for the endomorphic orange god king to twenty six year old Cassidy Huchess.

And you get a really interesting contrast, don’t you? I mean, you think of all these guys that kept their heads down who came up with all the reasons why, oh, geez, I can’t speak out or I’m afraid of this or that. And then you have this twenty six year old young woman of incredible poise who just comes out and says, you know what, this is wrong. I’m going to testify, and she knew the shit storm that was coming down on her head, and she did it anyway. I mean, it’s impressive, Will.

You know, good for her. And I hope she’s a model to other people who Charlie Sykes it Mark Twain who said if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything? No. There’s this marvelous clarity that comes into your life. Everything comes together Right.

When you stop lying, when you stop excusing the inexcusable. And Cassidy Hutchinson obviously worked for Donald Trump But when it came time to tell the truth about January sixth, she’s the one who did. And so she doesn’t have to go through any of these gymnastics the embarrassing gymnastics that other people are going through, that these men are going through. Right? And, of course, she’s being attacked for it.

But You can be under attack, and you always have that inner solace that comes from knowing you did the right thing.

It’s the looking in the mirror I I think it was, you know, somebody that told her, you need to be able to look yourself in the mirror every single day, but it raises the question. Why so many of the people that she worked with in that administration failed that same test? I mean, I don’t think this is a political It feels like a psychological question, maybe a theological question since you’ve spent the last couple of days doing atonement. You know, why do some people atone? And some people refuse to atone.

It’s not just fear. There’s something else there. Right? It’s some inner character. It’s some perspective on life you know, I think Adam Kinzinger says that he he keeps thinking about, his kids and his grandkids reading the history books and not being embarrassed to see his name.

And yet, There’s a whole bunch of grown ass men whose no manhood was put to shame by Cassidy Hutchenson. What makes the difference?

So the gender stuff we’ve just talked about, these men did not stand up and do the brave thing, and this woman did. Yeah. Which I would make the same point about Liz Cheney, by the way. Yeah. But in addition to that, there’s the factor of age.

Right? One of the things that happens to us as we age is we get kind of encrusted. We develop rationalizations for our predilections. We want to believe certain things. We tell ourselves they’re true.

And then we build these rationales around them. And that’s what these old men have done. Right? And, basically, our government is run by old men. Here we have a young person, and part of the point of young people is to come into the world fresh.

And, you know, as a baby, you’re fairly genuine in the way you deal with other people. Right? You’re not you’re not accustomed to why you’re trying to understand with what is really true. And I think what Cassidy Hutchinson has demonstrated here is that having some young people in positions where they can at least expose the truth, tell the truth, is really important to our system of government.

That was way more profound than I was expecting this early in the morning, Will. I mean, obviously, you you picked up some stuff on the day of of atonement, because I think you’re right. I I think that, everybody goes through that, that phase of life where you go. Okay. So what I am saying and doing is completely absurd, but you know what?

I’m stuck is the choice that I’ve made. Right? I’ve invested twenty years or thirty years in all of this, and so that they have the sunken cost. She obviously had some can cost as well. I mean, she went into the Trump White House.

You know, she adored the president for a while. She’s looking back, like, what the hell. But it is easier at that point. When you haven’t devoted decades of your life and built up all of this this incrustation. But she was on, MSNBC last night.

And, again, reminded us of, rather the incredible poise that she brings to all of this. I’m, I’m not trying to gush about this. I really am not, but It is the the the contrast between her and all the other toadies from the White House, you know, particularly the ones who are constantly talking about irradiating their test goals to make themselves more manly and everything. And then just watch her going out and putting them to shame So here’s one of the clips from Cassidy Hutchenson from last night.

I can’t speak to the psyche of my I won’t say my fellow Republicans I do not think that we are a part of the same Republican Party. I still consider myself a a Republican. I consider self a Republican in the sense of Senator Mitt Romney and the Reagan Republican Party. I believe that the Republican Party needs a strong conservative party. I do not believe that Mr.

Trump is a strong Republican. But in this next election cycle, it’s, in my opinion, it’s the make or break moment for the Republican Party. Now is the time if these politicians, these men, and some women that are currently in Congress want to make the break and want to take the stand, they have to do it now. We can’t wait any longer for them to do it. I don’t know why they’re so will so willing to support him.

I think it’s extremely disappointing and it is not a issue to take. It’s we’re talking about a man who, at the very essence of his being, almost destroyed democracy in one day. Ron DeSantis to do it again. He wants to run for president to do it again. He’s been indicted four times since January sixth.

I would not have a clear conscience be able to sleep at night if I were a Republican in Congress that supported Donald Trump. And, you know, I think that if they’re not willing to split with that, then, for a serious danger for the party.

Part of me is is hoping that there are some members of Republican members of Congress that watch that or hear about that that and are actually embarrassed. I’m not gonna name any names like Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin or anybody like that, but you would think that they’d be a little bit embarrassed, this young woman who is saying what they know is true. They all know it’s true. You know, but having praised her poise, who’s gonna break the bad news to her? That, you know, the the make or break moment has come and gone.

The time for choosing has has happened. The Republican Party has chosen all of this. And the future of the Republican Party is It’s not gonna be Mitt Romney. They’re not gonna go back to zombie Reaganism. I mean, I agree with everything she says, but I feel like we’re seeing sort of a Nacent never trumper is, like, welcome to this, but we’ve been out here for seven years saying this sort of thing.

And, you know, It’s not just over the mountain. The unicorn is not coming over the hill to rescue us here, but, of course, we do have will here who’s always gonna find the pony.

The pony is, this is what old guys like us say, right, that it’s over, that it’s done. The Republican Party made its choice. Right? And and part of the point of Cassidy Hutchinson is to remind us it’s never over. It’s never over.

There is always an opportunity to do the right thing. Right? I’ll just pull back and say, I just, you know, I was in yom kippur for twenty four hours, and, you know, you’re thinking about all the things.

This has been a good experience for you.

Yeah. There’s always a chance to to repent and atone and redeem yourself. And I would point out that, you know, she starts off in that clip talking about the Reagan Repuff a party, a party that you and I would say is gone. Right? But it’s not entirely gone.

I mean, just to give an example, Mike Pence, the guy that you and I would say, you know, sold himself out for four or five years. Pence did give a few weeks ago a very good speech about the Reagan Republican Party and the Trump Party. Right. We’ve talked about that. He articulated, and others are articulating some differences on policy that are also differences in character and principle.

So there can be movement in that direction. It may be too late for some people to redeem themselves in the history books. But it’s as long as there is a new generation coming along, the new generation of young conservatives who can look at this and say, You know, this was a terrible blot on the history of of the movement, and we choose to go in a different direction. I don’t know about the party. Charlie.

I think you make a good point about the party, but the conservatism can redeem itself. Well, we will have to see.

But, you know, when you when you see somebody like a Cassidy Hudgins and coming out, saying all of that. It it has to give you a little bit of hope, but it’s also worth remembering what an outlier she was. And I I know you can sends in her tone of voice that she’s kind of amazed. Like, why are other people not seeing what I am seeing? Why are other people not saying what I am saying?

Well, Keep in mind that she was working in the Trump White House she was working for Donald j Trump into January of twenty twenty one. So okay. You know, a lot of us have been asking this question for some time. We have one more quote from, Cassidy Hutch, and since she’s out there doing all that, you know, was coming her way. I mean, the New York Times story, you know, it talks about the, you know, the incredible flood of social media attacks on her that has kind of forced her into being a hermit.

And you know that they’re gonna ramp up, but now that she has a book coming out, here’s the second cut from Cassidy Hutchenson.

Looking at the bigger picture here, bringing it back to next year’s election, these people very well could be in power again. And do we want people who have already shown that they’re willing and want to overthrow an election that duly elected for a duly elected president

Mhmm.

Which is the pinnacle of our see. Do we want to put people like that back in power? Do we want to put people back in power that have mishandled have been showed to mishandle the most sensitive national security secrets that our nation has. Yeah. You know, that’s the question that we need to ask ourselves.

Yeah. I’m willing to ask that question. Will, I wasn’t planning on asking you about this because the polls were getting a little bit boring. But, I mean, the polls are let’s leave aside the Washington Post poll. Right?

I mean, the one that shows, you know, trump ahead by nine points, I think that was an outlier, but all the other polls are showing that this is gonna be a close race. That Americans are kind of looking at these two guys and scratching their heads and going, yeah, maybe we gotta give the guy an another shot. So I’m sorry to use the phrase when people are saying, Why do you keep using the phrase bedwetting? It doesn’t seem like an appropriate well, you know, okay. You know what I mean?

There’s a lot of democratic bedwetting about this. What do you make of these polls? Joe Biden seems to be historically unpopular at this point. Got a lot of negatives, a

lot of angst out there. What’s going on with you, Will? Here’s where I really wanna make a point to some of the progressives who respond to people like you and me on social media Some are followers of this podcast, there’s a lot of dismissal of the Washington Post poll. Now the Washington Post poll is an outlier. Right?

Yeah. You know, artificially inflates Trump’s number to fifty one percent. Trump’s is not up nine points on Biden, but he is running even with Biden If you look at the average, that’s what he’s doing. Right? It is not just the post poll.

The NBC just had a poll that just came out, right, and they show Again, Biden’s approval is in the toilet. Basically, tie his his right. A bit his Yeah. And Biden has lost a lot. He’s lost a lot.

With black voters, Latino voters, people with a high school education or less. So it’s not just about this poll. And poll denialism. I’m starting to see not just criticism of this particular poll on the on the head to head number, but people are dismissing polls when they don’t like the results. Okay?

So this is a general problem and look part of the sickness of Donald Trump is not accepting negative feedback, not accepting information that says you lost an election. Right? Mhmm. So a poll is not an election, but it is a warning It is talking to Americans.

It can be a quasi reality check. Absolutely. How do you respond to the reality checks? Do you go deeper into your bubble of denial? Where do you think?

Okay. We need to pay attention to this because

we have time to address this and deal with it or Should we pretend that if we don’t talk about it, it will mysteriously go away. It’s not gonna go away. And retreat into your bubble where all your friends on social media reject polls, you’re gonna be surprised when you lose an election. And we can’t afford to be surprised time. Right?

We can’t afford to lose to this guy.

No. We can’t. And I know people, you know, don’t like us talking about, Joe Biden’s age, but I did actually come out yesterday. With a formula for Joe Biden, which deals with the problem of Donald Trump, but also, you know, Joe Biden, how do you address it? And my take is basically that Joe Biden needs to say something like, yes, I’m old.

But he’s crazy, and he’s dangerous. Okay. Yes. I am old, but this guy is deranged. She’s anti democratic, and he is fascist to Jason.

Right. You know, just, like, own it. Okay. Okay. I’m the old guy.

This guy is the absolute menace. Just basically boil it down. Okay. By the way, we were talking about Cassidy Hutchinson. And the reason you know that they’re gonna go crazy about her is because you know that there are certain targets for the Mago World that they just cannot resist.

And there’s something about young women that apparently triggers them. Have you seen the latest Magak Jjad? They’re going after Taylor Swift. Because no. Seriously, I don’t know whether you saw this.

I mean, you almost have to have visuals for all of this. So you have Sean Davis, one of the founders of the federalists, and, you know, her music sucks because, of course, you know, she’s woke now. And Roger Kimball, is, and and she’s holy too. Okay. So, yeah, this is this is a great cause.

This is a great fight for Maga Tubic. Let’s go after Taylor Swift, because she’s not popular or talented or anything. She’s not influential or anything, but she’s a young woman who’s out of her lane. So I don’t know. At some point, you know, I I I know it’s a cheap shot, but I am not better than doing the cheap shot.

And about I know Roger Kimbell. I I have had dealings with Roger Kimbell. He has blurred my books. I wanna do this. But I do think that it’s worthwhile to put a picture of Roger Kimbell next to Taylor Swift with his tweet.

And she’s only two. Really, really, Roger. You wanna go there. Okay. Really?

Alright.

Before we move on, can we just dub this Taylor Swift Insanity, TSDS, right, Taylor Swift, derangement syndrome. I think I think there’s a serious case of that going on on the right.

Oh, that’s pretty good. You’ve already put that out on Twitter. Haven’t you? I have. Hey, folks.

This is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day, we remind you folks. You are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to the Bulwark dot com and take a look around.

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So the other story, which I think has its comic elements as well, even though it’s also got its serious elements is the Robert Menendez indictment. And I wrote about that in morning shots this morning. I mean, look, the thing about Robert Menendez, who is the former temporarily stepped down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I mean, this guy is a big deal. He’s been indicted before he has escaped that by having a hung jury, that apparently emboldened him because it certainly didn’t make him more prudent or more cautious.

Because we have this new indictment, you know, alleging that he and his high maintenance wife were, soliciting massive amounts of bribes from these Egyptian businessmen And so, I mean, on one level, it’s a pretty serious case because it sounds like he was accepting these bribes in order to protect the Egyptian government and help his crooked cronies. So that makes it a national security issue. This is not a trivial issue. The comic opera part about all this is that it’s like a throwback. It’s it’s old school crook.

I mean, the guy is you know, has cash, hundred dollar bill stuffed into envelopes stuffed into his clothing, gold bars lying around his house, a Mercedes Benz. I mean, this is, like, I wrote this morning. It’s almost nostalgic where you’re not dealing with some, you know, esoteric, you know, they’re There’s some, you know, seven levels of separation or, you know, here is this, you know, shell company where they transferred money? No. The guy was accepting envelopes of hundred dollars bills in cash from his crooked friends, and he left it around the house.

When the FBI raided his house, they found And this is where it becomes almost cartoonishly corrupt. They found four hundred and eighty thousand dollars in cash which is I don’t know. Do you have that around your house well? I mean, for me, you have, like, a little bit of mad money around your house, you’re a little bit worried, right, you know, under your match. Four hundred and eighty And by the way, so this is his explanation.

Defiant, Robert Menendez comes out. He’s, you know, he’s a democratic senator from New Jersey. He’s up for reelection. He’s not going anywhere. And so all the headlines use the word define.

This is his explanation. Let’s play a little bit of this.

For thirty years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account. Which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba. Now, this may seem owe fashioned? No. Seems But these were monies drawn from my personal savings account based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those thirty years.

Oh my god. I mean, seriously. Okay. He didn’t mention the gold bars, and he’s been apparently drawing this out for thirty years, even though apparently the bills that they found have only been minted in the last ten years, and little just dazzling detail. They have the DNA of the Egyptian bribers on it.

I mean, that’s like, really. Well, They use the word defiant, but it’s just shameless. I mean, isn’t Robert Menendez basically kinda testing the post shame world that we live in right now, figuring, hey, in the era of Trump, you know, the evidence that your eyes doesn’t matter. Accountability doesn’t matter. I’m just gonna brazen this out.

I’m gonna play the victim card and what? What do you make of this, Will?

Okay. So first of all, I brought a prop with Faith. This is the Yam Kapur prayer book. I was reading this yesterday. Okay.

Alright. So Okay. In the in the younger prayer book, we say this Jewish prayer where we ask forgiveness for a whole bunch of things. We or others have done, not necessarily us. So this is an others thing.

Right? The list literally includes Charlie, the way speaking to god, the ways we have wronged you, by offering or accepting bribes. That’s literally in their prayer book. Wow.

Okay. That seems very specific. Yeah.

There’s a little problem though, Charlie Sykes. Right after that, the harm we have caused in your world by failing your name in public. So we’ll we’ll set that’ll be for you next week. But Okay. Let’s go back to the bribes.

So The prayer book says, and the Christian Christian says seek forgiveness for wrongs you have done, including bribes, if you’ve done bribes. Well, Robert Menendez has finally done plainly done bribes. And instead of asking forgiveness, instead of apologizing or acknowledging instead of showing the honesty that Cassidy Hutchinson did, he’s lying. Right? It’s absolutely perfect that his excuse is the trauma of his families, you know, in Cuba.

Right? The government is so I have done a little bit of research. I have investigated and found the exact village in Cuba where Robert Nernandez was born. It is called New York City. It is called New York City, New York.

Okay. He was born in this country. He has lived in this country in New York and New Jersey, and he’s claiming that because his parents suffered under the Cuban government, that for sixty nine years, he has been hoarding cash. Right? As you point out, it’s logically impossible because the the bills aren’t dated from that long ago.

He’s got the fingerprints on the envelopes. I mean, Charlie Sykes been watching the sopranos. Like, I thought envelope cash that’s gone out. Nope. Nope.

Menendez has them. The gold bars that he’s got, the serial numbers are traced to the guy that he got the bribes. Right?

Right.

So He’s dead to rights this guy. It’s bad. Yeah. For him to come out and claim that he’s being persecuted as a Latino, absolutely shameless. It’s disgusting.

It’s disgusting because he’s lying because he’s a crook. Right. And it’s also insulting to every person, every Latino and every minority. Has legitimately been discriminated against for Bob Menendez to come in and use that excuse when he’s a plain straight up Okay.

So, well, just a kind of a weird footnote, and I I put this in my newsletter as well. There is kind of a soul mate thing going on with him and Donald Trump sort of released Trump thinks so. Because after he got off on his first felony charge because of the the hung jury, this comedian, and this is I said it was weird. This comedian pranks Donald Trump, who is then the president of the United States. Trump takes his call on air force one.

The guy says, I’m Bob Menendez. And so Trump is thinking that it is this democratic senator who just got off on corruption charges. And he’s saying congratulations. We are so proud of you. This is so wonderful.

This was so unfair of you. And I wonder whether or not Menendez kinda thinks that okay. So Trump has been able to brazen out these indictments and becomes more popular. I’m gonna try to see whether that works for me even though I am a democrat. It won’t.

But that’s where I think the the shamelessness comes in. Okay. So what about the democratic response? The democratic response seems very different than the Republican response to Donald Trump. There is no progressive liberal media defense or rationalization of Bob Mendendez.

You’re not seeing pushback against the the indictment. On the other hand, as you and I speaking, only four Democratic senators, four have called for Menendez to resign. Chuck Schumer is hiding in the cloakroom. Joe Biden kinda punted on all of this. So what do you make of this?

Why why the reluctance? What’s the dynamic here? Because I think it’s premature to say that, hey, the Democrats have really learned their lesson on corruption. I mean, look at look how they are lining up behind him. I mean, they’re doing much better than the Republicans are, but right now, only four.

Why only four? Because as you point out, this is dead to right. This guy’s old school crook. Why is this not an an easy you gotta go? Well, mostly what I’ve seen is Democrats saying that you should go.

The Senate, though, Charlie Sykes. Yeah. Yeah. Some. Not.

It’s a little bit complicated because, you know, the defense of I am, you know, is until proven guilty. Was this the as you point out, the same defense that Trump has used. Right? If you’re gonna accept it in one, you accept it in the other. The Senate is a particular kind of club.

Very clubby. Right? It is a big problem that senators tend to stick together. Now Right. In this case, you have the interim step that he was forced out as chairman of the foreign relations committee.

Temporarily. Right. And that’s only by rule. That’s because the the Senate has a rule. If you get indicted, you you have to step down.

He has suffered a consequence. It’s not quite the same as impeachment, but it’s a political measure. Not a legal measure. So look, I don’t wanna make excuses for this. Menendez is a crook.

More democratic senator, it should come out and say so. However And they will, I think. Yeah. Right. But I would point out Charlie Sykes at that press conference where Menendez came out and denied it.

He had a bunch of people behind him, and none of them, they were friends of his or people who had he didn’t have a single political figure behind him. Nobody came out and stood behind him the way that Lindsey Graham and other Republicans stand next to Donald Trump as he’s under indictment four times.

No. I think that’s important. And I and I think that there’s a lot of sort of, like, looking around, who goes first in all of this. I think the the the four, what, John Federman Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin. The new senator from Vermont, Sherry Brown from Ohio.

So Sherry Brown from Ohio, and Tammy Baldwin are both up for reelection. In New Jersey, all the Democrats seemed with the exception of Corey Booker so far as of the staping have said that he should step down because, you know, in New Jersey, they understand what a threat he poses. They have elections this year. Right? They’re off your elections in New Jersey.

Yeah. And you also have now a an they will have an alternative, Andy Kim, who’s a Democrat of Congressman. Announcing that he’s running against, Menendez. So they still have a little bit of time to clean up this mess. Right.

And I think they probably will even though I don’t expect that Menendez is going to do the right thing. There are people who are just arrogant and shameless, and I think he’s one of the main okay. See, here’s the thing that blows my mind about this. It is the stupidity of it. He knows that he’s under scrutiny.

He’s already faced a felony charge. Right? He knows they’re watching him. And he’s stuffing hundred dollar bills into his clothes, clothes with his name on it. You know, he has gold bars in his house.

The recklessness, the arrogance of it. That also tells me that anyone who’s expecting that he’s gonna do the right thing is naive. Honestly, if I were Menendez as attorney, I would cite all of that behavior as compulsive. I would say it’s it is irrational. Right?

So, like, he does have some kind

of compulsion to, like, save money in case Fidel Castro comes to take his to take his wealth. Yes. Look, it’s totally ludicrous. But and by the way, we played the clip of menendez saying, I hoarded all this money because I was afraid of my, you know, Cuban childhood. But the other thing is he has explicitly written two statements saying that he’s being targeted as a Latino.

One of them was this is a written statement from from Menendez. It’s not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. Right? And to the credit of some Democrats, I’m gonna specifically call out AOC here. Alexandro Ocasio Cortez was asked about that specific statement on Face the Nation.

And she said, yes, there’s systemic bias. Yes, that happens. But I think what is here in this indictment is quite clear. And it’s very important for Democrats to come out and say, just because he’s a Democrat, does not mean I’m gonna defend this criminal. And for Latinos to say the same thing just because he’s playing the Latino card.

And I would say the same thing about any Jewish person who was accused of a crime and had this kind of evidence against them. Don’t come out and claim this is anti Semitism. You’re a crook.

Okay. So let’s switch to something a little bit more substantive because maybe we’re become numbed by this that the government is about to shut down on Saturday. Any doubt in your mind that we’re gonna have a government shutdown?

No. We’re gonna have one.

Nobody’s even going through the motions of of pretending. And, of course, this comes after a week where Kevin McCarthy’s, you know, self gilded speakership turned out to be self guilt I mean, the the the hollowness, the level of humiliation for Kevin McCarthy. And none of that will is surprising. Right? This was For told from the moment that he made concession after concession to one lunatic after another, he empowered the bomb throwing caucus And now he is shocked that they’re blowing up the place.

I mean, I love his quote where he says this is a completely new thing. People that just wanna burn the place down. Really, Kevin, a completely new thing. Where has your head been the last ten years? Interesting sound bite that I wanna play for you from, Neil Bradley, who is I don’t know this Okay.

He’s the executive vice president of the Chamber of Commerce. Now this, of course, is a Republican leaning organization. These are fiscal conservatives. Right? I mean, this is we’re not going to the progressive caucus here.

And Neil Bradley was on one of these shows. And they’re talking about this shutdown and how it’s different from other shutdowns, all of which, by the way, were pointless and stupid and failed. Okay? I mean, let’s just, like, put that in some historical context. But this one is in a category of itself, and Neil Bradley explains.

Again, the guy, the executive vice president of the chamber of commerce, let’s play this guy.

If you think about, this shutdown that could hit us on Saturday at midnight, it looks a little different than, the the three most recent shutdowns we’ve had or even the five shutdowns we’ve had since nineteen ninety five. All of them, you can point to something that people were specifically fighting over. Level of deficit reduction or defunding the Affordable Care Act or the most recent one over the the border wall and funding for it. Now all of those shutdowns, none of them were successful, none of them resulted in policy changes,

But

at least you knew what they were fighting over. I’ve started calling this the seinfeld shut down. It’s really not very clear what if anything that they’re fighting over other than fighting. And, you know, that’s, that’s what’s really disappointing. When you look at this and you realize they’re gonna make a choice here.

And increasingly, I’m afraid they’re gonna make the wrong choice and shut down the government. And it’s gonna be American businesses and families who pay the prices.

Well, the seinfeld shut down because it’s like, look, what is this actually about? What did they expect to accomplish? I thought that was a really interesting point.

Yeah. It is. And You can see the illustration of that Seinfeld problem in McCarthy’s response to these Republicans who wanna burn down the government. Right? They’re trying to come up with, and the senate Republicans are trying to come up with.

What is it we can do? And they don’t know exactly what they can put in there in a CR, continuing resolution to keep the government running. One of them is like, what if we take the Ukraine money out? Well, that’ll appease some people. Yeah.

Right? But what about others? They wanna, an eight percent cut across the board. They wanna cut the government generally, but there is really

Defund the Trump prosecution. Oh my

goodness. The defund right. That is the trump agenda because, of course, trump has no agenda larger than himself. Right? All he wants to do is defund the prosecutors, defund the FBI.

And he’s got plenty of house republicans who are with him. Enough. Yeah. I’m not right. Of course, the problem mathematically is the original, what, twenty house Republicans who tried to block McCarthy speaker, they’re still the problem.

Right? Right. And without them, he can’t move. But McCarthy has choice. He has options.

So he has, as he described them, the Republicans, the House Republicans who want to burn it all down. Burned down the government, burned down the country. Right? He’s got that option. Right.

Then he’s got on the other side, Democrats. He just needs enough democratic votes. To combine with the constructive Republicans to pass something. Right.

But there’s the rub. Right?

Right. And he is choosing to work with the burners instead of with the Democrats. And that’s all on him.

Yeah. But does he have a choice here? And again, I I don’t think he has a good choice. I don’t think there’s a good option for him. Because, yeah, if he wants to actually govern, if he wants to keep the government open, which you would think is one of the fundamental first priorities of the speaker of the House of Representatives.

If you really wanted to do that, he would, in fact, work with some Democrats, find some moderate Democrats, put together a bipartisan coalition to, I don’t know, run America. But if he did that, then he would be accused of betraying the Republican Party He knows that he hangs by that thread of the favor of Mar a lago. He knows that Donald Trump is sitting on that golden toilet thinking, you know, I can end speaker McCarthy anytime, and so he can’t do it. So I love the one headline that says, Trump breaks with McCarthy demands complete shutdown of of government. So here’s McCarthy who sold everything to curry favor with Donald Trump, every ounce of self expect that he had left, and he didn’t have that much left.

And here’s Donald Trump just basically throwing him, you know, under the bus again But I don’t I don’t know what he’s going to do here. One of the reason I wanted to play that Neil Bradley phrase is he actually said something that I’ve said before that that at some point, you ask, what are they fighting about, and you can’t come up with a really good answer because we reached the point where the fight is about the fight. It’s not about winning something or accomplishing anything. It’s about fighting. And so you see from the point of view of the bomb throwers.

That there’s no way that they’re going to get what they want. And then there’s no way to give them concessions to buy them back into rationality. Because really all they want is the chaos. They want the outrage. This is their coin of the realm.

Matt Gay knows that he is relevant. He’s gonna raise money. He’s gonna get click. He’s going to become more famous, the longer they fight, and it doesn’t really matter what they’re fighting about as long as they’re fighting I mean, I have seen this again and again and again. And when you ask, well, boy, this seems irrational because they’re going to cause all this damage, and they’re not going to get anything for it.

You’re missing the point for them. Just ginning up the outrage, ginning up the that that sense of trail on the part of the base and punching somebody in

the face is really all that it’s about. And in addition to that, this mentality, of just wanting to cause chaos and be fighting all the time and to show your base that you’re fighting does not depend on being in the majority. In fact, it’s easier if you’re not in the majority. Right? So the normal political incentives don’t work here.

In a normal world, if you had people serving in Congress who actually wanted to govern and make policy. Right? McCarthy could say to Matt Gates. Look, If you shut down the government, we’re gonna lose Mike Waller. We’re gonna lose, you know, Brian Fitzpatrick.

We’re gonna lose a bunch of these other Republicans in swing districts, and then we’ll be back in the minority. Why should Matt Gates care about that? He’s hosting news match. You know, he’s a pundit in training. He’s that seat that Matt Gates has is just a platform for him, like being a host on on right wing media.

So if Waller and those other guys go down in the election, yeah, Gates is fine. So McCarthy has no leverage over the burners. He has no leverage because they just don’t care about being in the majority.

This is very insightful. There’s almost a certain you can sense in nostalgia for irrelevance. Because when you are in the minority, you can do or say anything without any consequences at all. Right? You are irrelevant.

You can be as performative as you want. There’s something a little bit annoying about actually having the responsibility of governance. Some people like Matt Gates, you know, they’re completely alright. With not having any real power or responsibility because it’s all the show. And this is this is part of this world that we live in, where if you understand that the dominant part of the Republican party is the entertainment wing All of this makes sense as opposed to the governing wing where people sit down and go, no.

We wanna have this policy and this policy and this policy. Okay. So Can we move on to the picket line? Sure. This is an interesting moment, and this is historically significant that the president of the United States is going to be flying an air wars one to Michigan, and he’s gonna join the UAE picket line.

This is as far as anyone can tell the first time a sitting president of the United States, has joined strikers on the picket line. This strikes me as a little bit risky because if this strike spirals out of control or does damage. This could come back to bite them on the other hand without venturing an opinion on the merits of the strike or the issues here, it also strikes me as a risk worth taking for Joe Biden. Because and we’ve talked about this before. I’ve talked about this with Rui Tashireh, the working class is now a political battleground.

And Joe Biden is signaling that he is not going to concede this populist working class agenda to Donald Trump who is prepared to demagogue it. And so he of the golden toilets is going to be parachuting into Michigan as well. Claiming that he is the champion of the working man, and Biden is saying, no, I’m not I’m I’m not having it. So your thoughts on Joe Biden joining pick a line. I think it’s, very risky, but it’s it’s one of those risk reward calculations.

What do you think? How do you balance it out?

Well, I think this is a straight up trade of policy for politics. The from a policy point of view, you should the the White House should want the president. From the policy standpoint, to stay out of this, send the labor Secret Podcast send somebody else, but have Joe Biden be available to broker something. Right? But the politically, you’re exactly right.

Biden needs to go there. Michigan was not as close as some of the other states, not as close Wisconsin, but it was close enough that he needs to be careful. And Biden won a majority, but not a very big majority, like fifty six percent of the union vote against Trump. So Biden has problems among UAW workers, not the union itself so much as the workers, And among unions generally, he wants to show a solidarity. He’s right to go there in terms of shoring up politically.

Politically. He’s right to go there. Is interesting to me, Charlie, that they’re both going to talk to the auto workers, but Biden is going to talk to unionized workers. And Trump’s going to a non engine shop. He’s going to an engine parts supplier nearby.

So, Trump is trying to circumvent the union and talk talk directly to the workers. And this raises a very big problem for the left, which is How do you connect with workers when the union, you know, it used to be that if you had the union, the support of the union, the Democrat did, then that would bring the workers with them. Right. That’s not true anymore. And the UAW itself has not even endorsed.

Joe Biden is holding back, although they’re very critical of Trump. And I think part of the reason is their own workers A lot of them are siding with Trump. And Democrats have to ask themselves why that is and how to bring them back.

No. I mean, and this is something, again, that Rui has been talking about is, like, look, The working class used to be, central part of the, you know, FDR Democratic Coalition Coalition. And this is where you’ve seen a lot of erosion and a lot of it is cultural. There’s a lot of other things that are going on here. It’s not just about union versus anti union.

It’s about who is in favor of the workers. And look, there are some policies that are in play here. I mean, there’s a lot of performance art here, but also one of the issues, and I know that some people aren’t gonna wanna hear this, is there is tension between the green agenda and the working class agenda or even the UAW agenda. You know, the push to, you know, electric vehicles may be good for the environment. Well, let’s leave leave that aside.

But on the other hand, if you’re a UAW member, you’re looking at that and going, okay, but this makes me nervous because It’s also going to mean fewer auto workers because the EVs take fewer workers, and those jobs may be moving to nonunion parts of the country. Donald Trump continues to lie about this, saying that all of the electric vehicles will be made in China, which is not true. But you can see how he’s playing into the globalization, playing the populist car, look, these environmental policies are going to take your job. They’re gonna destroy your job and they’re going to empower the Chinese. Whenever we might think about the merits of, and I think he’s lying about it, it resonates with working class people in Ohio and Wisconsin and Michigan.

So that’s why I do think that it’s the right thing for Joe Biden doing the picket line, but that doesn’t eliminate the tension between these agendas. And so he’s going to have to do a better job of explaining how they are not irreconcilable, your thoughts. Right.

And I would add to that. He’s gonna have to do something substantive. Because the criticism from the UAW of Joe Biden is that he’s, as you say, he’s he’s pushing the green agenda shifting to electric vehicles, the vehicles are made by automakers who are not unionized, or they’re made in plants that are not unionized. So I think the underlying question for Biden on a policy level is, what is he going to do? Is he gonna do something from this position of government to help push unionization into the plants that are gonna be making the electric cars because the unions established themselves in the gas vehicles, right, those plants they’ve unionized.

And if Biden does something in that regard, then I think he’ll win more of the union support The transition’s gonna be unfolding over a decade. Right? It’s, like, ten years from now that

You’re focusing on the union aspect of this. I’m focusing on the working class aspect of this. So you looked at and I don’t know the answer to this question. Okay? So if you looked at the working class, the blue collar working class in America, what percentage of them are unionized?

Don’t know. Okay. Not a huge number. So it’s not just union, not union. It’s also the sense that Democrats have become the party of the elite that Democrats have stopped talking to working class people.

I mean, this is one of the things that, you know, we were talking about being in denial not listening to criticism. I think the Democrats really do need to ask themselves, okay. Why have we lost the white working class? What is going on? I know, you know, a lot of the arguments are gonna be well.

It’s about race, but globalization has been a real issue throughout the Midwest, and and you know that Donald Trump with his reptilian instinct has exploited that. I think the strongest point that Joe Biden has is more than almost any of these other folks on on the scene is I think he instinctively understands how to push back against that. Now he has not always done that. I think that he has too often outsource the some of this policy to some of the activists, but I guess I’m encouraged that he’s reengaging that he’s basically gonna say, okay, I am going to contest. Not just the union membership, but the working class in in general.

But that’s, again, going to force him to address the questions of globalization, force him to address these things. And I think that’s all I think these are good things.

So part of the underlying question here is and I think you’ve just touched on it. To what extent have working class people left the Democratic Party over cultural issues where Democrats are sort of locked in to a liberal point of view. And to what extent have they left over economic issues? So let’s just say inflation. Right?

If you’re a working class person, inflation bites harder than if you’re a, you know, a wealthier college educated person. Right. So to the extent that Democrats can solve some of the economic problems to think if they can bring inflation down, they will lose fewer of those working class people. I think that’s true regardless of the cultural And I think that’s more of a problem for for the Democrats. So they gotta work on that.

But the larger theme for the Democrats has to be shared growth The Democratic party does well. Let me go back to Bill Clinton, his era. Right? The Democratic party does well when its position is we are for growth We’re not for stopping history. Right?

A prosperity agenda. Right. We’re gonna do electric vehicles, but we’re gonna, like, encourage markets. And if we can build growth, economic growth, then we’re the party that’s gonna make sure that that growth is fairly shared. So here we have automakers that are doing better than they were ten or fifteen years ago.

Right? They are profitable. And are they sharing sufficiently with the workers? If Democrats can position themselves there, against Republicans who are pro growth, but not focusing on sharing it, then I think the Democratic party is is in a winning position.

Okay. So we’re a couple days late on this, but I did wanna bounce this off you. I mean, over the weekend, we had this just extraordinary display of Trump’s agenda. I’m asking this in the context of whether or not we have become numb to all of this. So in in a very, very short period of time, Donald Trump suggested the death penalty for general Mark Millie suggested using the power of the government to tallyate and maybe shut down news networks that had been critical of him, including NBC and MSNBC, suggested all Democratic members of the US Senate resign and called for a complete shutdown of the federal government if it did not defund his prosecution.

I guess one of the things that’s notable about all of this is how completely unsubtle his agenda is. There’s nothing hidden about it. There’s nothing stealthy about it. He is basically saying, you know, you put me in. I will be your retribution.

I will use government as a hammer. And also the escalation of the rhetoric of violence that has almost become normalized. Now, I mean, you can see there’s almost no pushback. You and I are talking about this, and it feels like this was, you know, last week’s news. But I mentioned yesterday.

I think it was on the Nicole Waller show. I said, think about, you know, we sometimes get, you know, into the trap that Donald Trump has always been Donald Trump, which in, in many ways he has, but the way in which the rhetoric has escalated. So in twenty sixteen, it was lock her up, lock Hillary Clinton up, But that is morph to hang Mike Pence, the death penalty for Mark Millie. The brutality is the point now And the way in which this kind of rhetoric is now being repeated, the death penalty rhetoric has now become almost like boy, you follow social media, the, you know, the right on social media. It’s almost it’s almost become boiler play.

I kind of feel as if America is at the boiling frog stage, which is like, do you realize how much the temperature has been turned up Have we really normalized this rhetoric of political violence and killing our opponents? I mean, we thought it was pretty radical. We’re talking about locking up our political opponents. But now it’s the firing squad for our political opponents. What do you think, Will?

Okay. So, first of all, it can’t be good for Donald Trump to be saying that Mark Millley should be x executed for sharing something with the Chinese. Donald Trump himself, we’ve discussed this before, as is on tape showing a war for a an American attack plan for Iran to people at Mar a Lago. So if we’re gonna start executing

after he leaves the pres after he’s left the president So,

but I I don’t think he wants to be encouraging harsh penalties for people to do stuff like that. But on this subject of retribution, you know, you and I have talked about Trump saying, I am your retribution, I am your retribution, and we focused on the word retribution. This is disgusting. This is horrifying. This is dangerous.

What about the word your? What about the word you’re? Trump says I am your retribution. He’s not your retribution. The the items that we just listed, those are his retribution.

Right? Shut down the parts of the government that are investigating me. It’s all about him. Right? It’s dangerous for the country, but it’s not focused on any larger agenda.

So I think that’s more Republicans need to talk about that, but you raise the larger problem of desensitization of normalization. Right? We are the boiling fraud. A guy who’s, you know, running for president is the presumptive Republican nominee, has been president, has demonstrated that he’s willing to attack democracy. Is saying, you know, he’s gonna destroy this civil service.

He’s gonna go further in that direction, talking about killing people, and it just goes right off our backs. We’ve we’ve lost that, and it brings me back to what you said about Cassidy Hutchenson. Cassidy Hutchinson is not numb. And her point is, this is bigger than a trump problem. When an entire political party says this is okay, and we’re gonna re nominate this guy for president after all the stuff he says while he’s saying all this.

That is disqualifying for the whole party. So that is a reason not just to make sure that Donald Trump can’t be president, but for everybody out there to make sure that Republicans don’t get elected to the house and the senate and to governorships as long as this party is in line behind an authoritarian.

If only they had been warned, if only somebody would have said, you know, this is dangerous. I don’t know, Will. Well, great talking with you. We will do this again next week. Alright, Will?

Alright, Charlie Sykes

thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Kelly Sykes. We’ll be back tomorrow. We’ll do this all over again. Bohlberg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.