Sarah Longwell
Appearances
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Yeah. And so did JVL. So it's hard to know because I also listen to you guys, especially when we're doing crossovers. And so we just have we have a both a parasocial and a real social relationship.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
You know, I was annoyed by the speech for the positives in it, because I think that Trump did a pretty effective job on several fronts. Number one was creating heartwarming moments with and this is I mean, on right wing Twitter right now, the the big. takeaway is that Democrats did not clap for the young boy with brain cancer and that they are ghouls.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Yeah. And I think that it is possible that what the reaction was, was a frustration of you are sort of putting the camera on this young guy, and it was a sweet moment, right? His dream was to be a Secret Service, they made him a Secret Service thing, but I think that my guess is Democrats were sitting there being like, this guy is cutting pediatric cancer research right now as we speak. And like,
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
If I had to get in their brains, it would be things like that. But anyway, I thought I also thought the part where he went through the USAID stuff and like crack jokes about it and got laugh lines out of it like that right now. I've got Tommy on the show on Saturday and we're talking about foreign policy.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And one of the things that I think Trump has done, especially on the right, is to create a constant sense of. Of scarcity. And when people have a sense of scarcity, they are constantly doing the math of, oh, money goes to Ukraine. It's not going to Americans. Money's going to this weird country I've never heard of.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
When Trump does this thing where he's like pronouncing countries names as though are these places even real?
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Normally, the leader of the free world might not be keen to admit that they don't know where these different places are on the map. But Trump is happy to do it. And frankly, that lands, right? Because people also don't know where these are. And so while it was filled with lies and the smug faces of Mike Johnson and J.D. Vance behind him sort of Fake laughing at everything he said.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And so it was and it was too long and had all these problems. It did the job for the audience that Trump is trying to reach. And I just the fact, though, that he this is the one thing. And I read Pfeiffer's message box this morning and it was we did a live stream right afterwards. And it was my initial takeaway was like the minutes that the economy got.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
so deeply paled in comparison to what voters would tell you is their absolute priority, which is the cost of living and the inflation. Trump barely talked about it except to blame Biden. And then he spent the rest, like if you, I should do this, I should go figure out what is the breakdown of things where Trump was talking about trans stuff Versus the economy.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Yeah, you get rid of DEI and everything just – prices go down. Those things exactly work together.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Well, so here's the thing. I just don't think that many people are going to watch like the State of the Union, which is not called the State of the Union. This first one, because he's only been there a little bit of time.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
two groups for people like us right who have to watch them and like hate watch them really yeah and for fan service and i thought it was a pretty effective fan service speech and the fact that it like blended kind of rally points and he was he was doing all the hits for the people and it's why he talked about trans stuff it's why he talked about spending it was um you know and and uh and and you know he did the thing with zelensky where he read the letter there for the first time like it was
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Pretty theatrical. Again, I don't think people are going to watch it or consume it last night, but I think in terms of what they're going to get out of it. Here's the main takeaway. Republicans were pumped during this. They looked like they were having fun. The energy was high. They looked like they were winning. And Democrats...
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
sat there with their arms crossed, waved a cane and like didn't really know what to do in the face of like North Korea levels of enthusiasm. I mean, Republicans cheering at stuff that I'm like, well, if I showed you maniacs cheering like this because Trump sounds invading Greenland. Yeah, right? Like, you guys would never have believed me.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
You'd tell me how deranged I was if I showed you what's happening right now 10 years ago and said, no, you're going to cheer for all this stuff and he's going to sound just this moronic and you're going to love it. They would have said, no. The only thing I liked about the whole speech and the only thing that I think unifies us today Because it's supposed to be a country unifying speech.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And the only unifying piece of it was, I think, the ritual humiliation of Marco Rubio is something we can all get behind in that speech.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
I mean, I could go on at length about all the things I think Democrats need to do from a communication standpoint. But I will say for a thing like this, I just think it's the thing where you sit there in stony silence and then clap for the kid with cancer. Like, oh, yeah, that's basically it. And I don't think I think. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene did this with Biden.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
I just think when they have that scene from The Wedding Singer where he's drunk and he's yelling, because I have a microphone and you don't. Like Trump's on stage. He's got the room. You're not going to win this. So just like sit there and be. And this is my overall feeling. feeling about Democrats right now is I think Democrats are internalizing the need that they need to be better communicators.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
But for some reason, they are deciding that that means they should all just like get on TikTok and they should become... Vertical video is the way to be a better communicator. Put on sunglasses and do a slow-mo walk. And I just... What I want to tell Democrat... If Democratic legislators are listening... You do not need to be influencers.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
You do need to be influential, which means govern and give – let the influencers package your stuff for audiences. But you should look like serious legislators. You should look like people who are going to be an opposition party that people can take seriously. And like if you're good at it, if you're AOC and you like know how to do it, cool.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
But nobody should be going to Chuck Schumer and be like, you know what, Chuck? What we really need is you on the TikToks because that is going to give the Democratic Party the brand that it's looking for. Like, don't do that.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
I mean, generally, I think part of the problem is that Democrats are looking for other people to tell them how to behave in this moment because people do feel at sea. And I guess I would say to them, like, this is going to sound ridiculous, but like, what do you feel authentically?
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
What do you feel authentically is the thing that is the most harmful? And then go talk about that and do it as somebody who where you express your concern for the American people and the direction of the country sincerely and say, if I were in charge or what I think that what we should be doing instead is this. And I just, I do think everybody's like, well, what is my talking point of this?
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Like, by the time everybody gets their talking points or by the time everybody's being told what the, everybody's focused, as somebody who does focus groups, I'm like, please don't wait for my guidance. Like, just say the thing you've, you know, that matters to you.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Yeah. And also, I don't know. The message to me is always a little bit like, what are you mad about? That's Trump's fault. Yeah. You know, like the reason I do focus here is a lot of listening. So I'm like, what what is annoying them? What don't they like? Why is that Trump's fault? Like this is that's all the Trump guys did. Right. Or are you mad about inflation? Are you mad at this?
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Well. You know, here's the thing, though, just what you and I were just talking about, where we talk about the passion and the authenticity. So I'm an Alyssa Slotkin fangirl. So I'm not good for this because I love a sturdy Midwesterner who talks about her mixed marriage parents of Republicans. That's great. And I also thought she was doing something really important.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
I talked about this a little bit with Tommy that I think Democrats have been failing to do, which is – Voters don't care about democracy, quad democracy. And so to tell a better story about democracy and make people care about it, you have to tell a better story about America. And she talked about democracy last night through the lens of America and why America is uniquely good.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And I was like, yes, this is what I have been waiting for. The problem is that Alyssa is – this is not a problem that she's a serious person. And so she delivered what I was like a 10 out of 10 technical speech for 2009. And I just – I think that if – I think she can and should be a leader for the Democrats, somebody that they look to to think about how they're going to –
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
like who their leaders are gonna be in the future, but I also think they're gonna have, it's such a tone shift to go from Trump's just casual way of being up there, the bombasticity to sort of the like very Washington, I'm going to read a speech now. I'm gonna do it very proficiently. The substance is going to be very good. But did I make you, did I light you up?
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Did I make you feel like I was your champion? And I was, no. And like, that's kind of what people, I know that's what, I listen to Democrats all day long. And if you ask me, what do Democrats want? I'll be like, they want to win. They want to feel like they are winning something and they want someone to go make them feel that way.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
We used to have this joke in conservative circles where we would talk about how conservatives didn't make good protesters, because it would be like, what do we want? slow and gradual change. When do we want it in the due course of time? You know, like, uh, and it's a little bit, it's the way that everything is upside down.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Now it's a little bit where Democrats are like that, where the, the, the sober and serious people in the party really, who I think appeal to swing voters and can win in a lot of these swingier places. Like they're not filled with the passionate bombastic intensity of, uh, what I think a lot of people are yearning for out of leaders in this moment, right?
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
They're, they are, they are threading a needle by saying, yeah, like what's happening right now is strange, but they're also like, but I'll work with him and I'll do, and you know, they, and that it's like Obama when he sat there chatting with Trump or Joe Biden went to the office. There's, there's this, there's this real dissonance between the guy is a really bad guy destroying democracy.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Well, I think, you know, it's funny. Normal person is better than normal politician. Yeah. So I think here's here's the voters just say it all day long. They're like, I don't. So and so seems like a regular politician. And I guess that's my. Unfair because I liked it. Knock on the speech as it seemed like sort of a regular political speech.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
What voters say that they want actually was talking to Dems right now is a real is funny because it's just a bunch of it is like it's black women and it's it's. older white men, everybody sort of agrees, we need a straight white man who's not a politician.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
It's like everyone has really internalized this idea that everybody is too racist, because people will be like, you know, I love Pete Buttigieg, but we're never electing a gay guy. Or I love, you know, Jasmine Crockett, but we're never electing a black, like everybody's just like, who is a white straight man who's also not part of like the Democratic firmament?
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And then, you know, everybody just goes, Mark Cuban. Yeah. Uh, like if you raise Mark Cuban to voters, they're all like, yeah, that guy, or they bring it up. Uh, and so, and what they mean is can we get our own bro-ish billionaire who can go on every podcast and talk normally, but also basically shares our values.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Bombastic, but not cruel. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Like he's on a TV show and apparently we're doing that now. So.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Well, and that is I mean, I just I kind of keep wanting to say to Democrats, like, don't I don't want you to believe that we're too racist and sexist country or too homophobic. Because I'm sorry, but most like a lot of your best stars, a lot of your bench doesn't meet this criteria. Yeah.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
It depends which people look. So I actually maybe I'll try to split it into three buckets. So the Trump fans write your MAGA voters. The number one thing, their takeaway. And this last night he leaned into this, which is he's doing stuff and he's doing it fast. He's like, yeah, it's like the action. And they don't.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
I don't really know what all these executive orders are about, but I know he's signing a lot of them. And they're saying, you know, I see ice trucks in my neighborhood, so I know they're doing something about immigration. And so there's really that bucket of love and they love what Doge is doing. What is it doing? They don't know. But, like, it is doing stuff and they see the action.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And I think for what has become a real impatient American way of, like, I do not want to wait for the Congress to pass all that. Just do a thing that helps, which I think is not great for our system of government. But there just is this sense of I'm not waiting for you all to get get it together and compromise like Trump is doing stuff. That's good. OK, so that's one bucket.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Then I would say there's I wrote a piece for The Atlantic yesterday. I was like, why do you you literally have this other media company?
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
I am the worst. I am the worst. He, I deserve, I deserve. But like the, they just hound me more than he does. I don't know. They were, I was, I had been doing a series of focus groups with kind of the low level they're not hard partisans, but they voted for Trump. I've done a lot of Biden to Trump voters.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And the thing that you hear from these sort of not super political, the not super mega voters is they're just like, I want something done about the economy. And JBL and I do have this fight all the time about, he's like, the economy's good and this is all just fives and it's BS.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And I get really mad at him because I say, I don't know, man, all I do is listen to people talk about the real trade-offs in their lives. They know exactly how much everything at the grocery store is. And it's not just like a talking point about groceries or gas, whatever. People's cost of living is the place where politics meets their lives. And it is an enormous impact on them.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
I am certain that it's real. And I think that it has been tough for Washington to like catch up to. And honestly, I don't understand why this is so hard for even like JVL or Democrats to understand because we've been talking about people, Democrats have been talking about income inequality for forever. Yeah.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
So like maybe what's happening is that, yes, some people are doing well in this economy and that the macro economy can be well, while there's still a group of people who are falling further and further behind and sort of a middle-ish class tier that is finding the level of inflation to be really having a dramatic impact on their life.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
So those voters are very interesting to me because I think those are the ones who easily either could swing back in 26 or... even if they're low propensity and maybe aren't big midterm voters, they're the kinds of people that like they're just they're not like a firm part of the Trump Republican coalition. They're just mad about prices.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And they're also and what they're saying right now is why is he doing this other stuff and not focusing on prices? Yeah. And so like that to me is a real opportunity for anybody who wants to disrupt sort of the broader Trump coalition is to say, hey, he's not focused enough on this. And you can see it in the polling too.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
It has been almost, I don't know if axiomatic is the right word, but it has been a truism that sort of Trump equals good economy. Like people kind of have this vague sense, Trump, businessman, good economy. That's why he was elected. And now- His net positive rating on the economy, people are like, you're not paying enough attention to it.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And that's what we hear in the focus groups from this group. And that's what I was listing is all the people who are like, I don't know, inflation is still really bad for me. Maybe it's even getting worse. So like the tariff stuff scares me or prices are getting worse. And he seems to be doing all this other stuff. He's not focused on this. So I think that is an opportunity.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
So that's the other bucket. And then there's a third bucket, which is the Dems who are feeling very depressed. They are, I think, desperate for a leader like the absence of and I mean, I heard this before, too. I think a lot of the frustration with Biden and his age that I heard from specifically from Democrats was just around the fact that, like, he couldn't fight effectively because of that.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And like now they're they're just kind of like, where is everybody?
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Where is the fighting? Where where are the people who are standing up? Why isn't this happening? And then, you know, and it's you get it is tough because you sort of like beg the Democrats to do something. And they're like, OK, well, we're going to go protest outside USAID. And then you're like, no, no, no, but nobody meant that. So it's a little it's hard.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
It's not an easy solution, but I just know what that's what they want.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Yeah. So Elon's I did a good episode of it with about Elon with Kara Swisher, where we listened to we asked a bunch of Biden to Trump voters about Elon, what they thought. And you could basically split the groups in two. On one side, there are the groups. There was the people in the groups who were like, yes, love this. They're cutting stuff. They're finding abuse.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
They, you know, they know about the they think about the condoms, like the fake condom story. They'd internalize that, you know. And so therefore and they also they know Elon. I was listening to Kara talk about Elon recently. is funny to me because I often listen to Kara only when she's talking about politics.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And when she was talking about Elon, I was like, oh my gosh, you know, all this stuff that I had no idea about, because Elon's just one of these cultural figures that I haven't paid attention to until he broke the political plane, right? But a lot of these voters have been, just like with Trump, they'd been tracking Elon forever. They hold stock in his companies. They think they want to go to Mars.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Like they're invested in the whole Elon thing. Then there's another half of the voters who are like, why does this billionaire want to be in our government? Like, what is he doing? And I often talk about how persuasion is not teaching. It's like making somebody switch a position that they previously held. It is about unlocking something that they already kind of believe.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And so people have deeply embedded in them the archetype of persuasion. The sort of evil billionaire trying to get more. And so there's a lot of people who are just like confused about why Elon is doing this. Why is Elon the guy? Why is this billionaire who gave they know gave Trump a lot of money? Like, what is the deal here? So there's this other group that's just deeply skeptical.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
And I thought that was a real vulnerability for Trump and Elon.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
That was her theory, and it was just the first time I'd heard it, and it made... A great deal of sense to me as a thing, you know, because there's a world out there of people who know Elon really well because he's been and they'll they'll really balk at the notion that somehow it's all corrupt. They're like, he's not corrupt.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
That works with some voters there. Yeah, that he is doing this because he really cares about America. And maybe I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know all the rich people and I don't know. But I just I suspect that people get very rich like that because they like to continue to get very rich. I don't know about how much of it is like a deep corruption versus.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
elon thinking having like a master of the universe feeling right like yeah give me all this and i'm gonna do what i want with it and like the ego on these people yes uh that to me could be enough explanation itself but i i do knowing not a ton about ai just just enough to be dangerous it struck me as an interesting idea that the government was the last sort of
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
big pot of information that one could get access to for the language learning models.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
I think so too. And look, I don't know what he's doing, but that's also, what's so weird is that all the people who love Elon are like big transparency advocates. Elon himself will tell you he's a big transparency advocate. None of this is transparent. And I do think that that is something that people should be like, what is happening? You don't even have to say what you think it is.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Just put them on defense and say, I demand you tell us what you're doing with Americans' information.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Yeah, I mean, I guess I don't necessarily I obviously have more activist things that I do. That is how I think about, like, how do you fight back? Exactly. I think for the bulwark, it's more about. I think that Trump is such a liar that what he creates is this distortion field that for a big group of Americans suddenly causes them to be like, I'm trying to figure out what the truth is.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Who can I trust? What is going on? And I want to be a place where people feel like I trust these people because we've earned it not by being right all the time, actually, but by having really honest discussions between us where we admit my favorite thing about like JBL and I do the secret pod and we call it the secret pod in part because we give ourselves permission to be wrong on it.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
a lot, but we tell everybody, I don't know that this is my opinion. Like I am trying to figure out what my opinion is and we work through a lot of it together. And so I think for us, we want to put more nutritious information to the world. We wanna have a community. I think we do wanna model though, and maybe this is more intentional than anything else,
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
There's a tremendous amount of fear right now. Like we are watching so many media companies be unwilling to say the true thing or kind of mind their P's and Q's or worry about their parent companies and the deals that they have to do. And I think we just try to want to maintain and hold our space as we will continue to tell the truth. And like, we don't, we don't care.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
We don't have, Disney's not our parent company. Though if you want to buy us, go ahead. But no, no, no, just kidding. Just kidding.
Pod Save America
The DOGE Who Caught the Car
Yeah. We're not here to worry about their mergers and acquisitions. We're just going to tell the truth in this moment when I think people are desperate for it and not a lot of people are giving it.
Pod Save America
The Pundies: Worst Takes of 2024
never she's not been the wrong one like there have been times where she has produced things that look like outlier results and what pollsters learn is that when ann selzer's poll looks like an outlier you better shift your polls to think more like hers it doesn't go the other way i think the rare take that will appear on the pundies and in discovery
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Well, I don't really want to answer that particular question, because maybe. It's bigger than just the one issue, though. I do think part of what we're seeing is actually a more fundamental tension that exists between the actual MAGA base and and many of the new people who've become red-pilled into the Trump transactional coalition. And I don't think those tensions go away.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
It's sort of how I feel about the speaker, as we're like, there are a lot of events that are going to take the fundamental tensions and they're going to create the rub where these things sort of burst into view. And also, I think part of it too is that if you're Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer, you too have a base.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And you have been saying things to those base and your base is in part contingent on the idea that you have influence over Donald Trump. And Elon now has influence over Trump and has his own base. Right. And so when those are intention, those things will also create these inter or like intra coalition things. fights that I think can fracture.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And this is what I've meant when I've been talking about how, hey, look, as we look at the future, we need to remember that governing is harder, right? Getting elected and just centering everything around Trump. Bannon and Elon agree, Trump. Bannon and Elon do not agree on much else.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And they have constructed their own visions of what MAGA means for audiences that have viewed it through their lens. And as those things then are forced into a policy realm, I think you will see those tensions continue to ignite. And so I don't know that I agree that everybody just gets away with it. Maybe, maybe. But can I also just, on both of your globalist versus JBL's
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
sort of more, I would say this is even sort of like a Bernie Sanders version, because it used to be that Democrats were the ones saying, no, you have to make things in America. You know, we want American labor right there against shipping jobs overseas, et cetera.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And so because the coalitions now are completely different than they once were, I think having these arguments come with a new sense of like who's on which side. But I don't think that your side's JBLs or TIMs, need to be in tension, right? Like, in an optimal society, we would be talking about how do we improve the American education system? How do we defeat China, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
How do we make sure that we continue to lead in technology? And, like, there's an aspirational way that you can talk about this that both creates, then, an appetite, like, We want to both produce the smartest people and attract the smartest people. And we want to be such a big, rich country that people want to come here.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
It used to be a point of pride that people wanted to come to America because we were a great place and they were going to be additive. And that is a sense that we've lost now. because the nativist wing of MAGA, which is a big, big piece of it, just wants nobody coming in. And this is where Elon and Vivek, they see things through a prism of their own experience.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
It's in their tweets where there's a clear sense of, There are good ones and bad ones, right? There are good immigrants and bad immigrants. And those are classes of people that they seem to take for granted in their mind. Whereas like I used to do a lot of work for the restaurant industry, restaurant industry, they want people from all these other countries to come.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And many of them are illegal, right? Like they're the ones right now thinking, I hope Trump doesn't mean it when he says he's going to raid us because our kitchens are full of immigrant workers that the American economy relies on.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Yeah, which is basically they mean Asians.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
I think it's a vulnerability, but here's the thing. it's a vulnerability. This is much closer to a mutually assured destruction than any relationship we've ever seen out of Trump. Like, Trump could do that to Elon, but not without real costs to himself. And so the question is, and for me, I think the most
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Interesting piece of the new dynamic has been Trump's perceived whether whether people see him as a lame duck or not, because I think there's a reason.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Thank you for saying there's a reason why everybody is suddenly saying, like, OK, we got four years of transactions. Trump's a transactional guy. We can get him to do what we want. We just got to be nice to him. And he's gone. And I do think there's a way in which Elon is much more the future than Trump is because And so I don't know. I mean, I think Trump has real power.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
He's president of the United States. But his hardest, hardcore people, they're already on Truth Social. I just don't see how Trump could... He would not blow up Elon over nothing, just because he's annoyed.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Elon has utility to him in a way that nobody else has, and also has his own power base in a way that nobody else has, and vice versa, which I think makes them unlikely to blow each other up super quickly.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Oh, Tim, my sweet summer child, come on. You think that Trump endorsing Mike Johnson just now is going to solve Mike Johnson's problem? Because let me tell you what... They may have they have to have a speaker vote. Then they've got to vote on this bill to pass funding the government. And that is a speaker eater. That's where people go down.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
I've never agreed with JBL's particular contention that like one of the Trump kids is next in line because there is nobody. Trump is such a unique blend of things. But I will say I brought this up at that deal book thing with Kevin McCarthy. And I wish, you know, when you replay things in your head and you think, man, I really wish I had said this or hit this particular piece harder.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Can I just say my favorite thing about the speaker just like fights in general is that Trump put out another bleat in which he blamed Kevin McCarthy and said he did the dumbest move in history, passing the last election.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
But I pointed out, like, what are you guys going to do post Trump? Because you've run off. you know, all the regular Republicans. And so now everybody's fully MAGA. What do you do without Trump? He's the one who's turning people out. They don't turn out for regular problems. And I wish I had pointed out to him that I have done many, many focus groups where I've asked people about Kevin McCarthy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And if they know who he is, which is often not the case, if they know who he is, they hate him, right? They hate him and they hate other people perceived to be the establishment Republican Party. And Trump gets away with things. That's why it's red-pilled. They're not Republicans. The Elon thing, they're not Republicans.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
You think they're going to... Now, maybe they show up for Vance because Vance is one of them. But like, do regular people who like Trump because they've watched him on the television show where he fired people and they think he's a great businessman? Like, does he have the same mythology? Does he hold the same place in the American psyche and American lore? I don't think so. So what do they do?
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
funding bill but he's a good man he's a friend but it's the dumbest move ever made and it's did that especially tickle you for any reason it did trump is the worst in all cases but there is something about people who have sold their souls to him and in return he kicks them in the face and whenever that happens i'm going to look we've got to take our little pleasing. Yeah, where we can get them.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Yeah, so I want to defend JBL actually on this, and I'll tell you why. So I am part of a lot of like democracy groups, and there are many scenario planning exercises that people do in these spaces to sort of figure out like, okay, well, what is Trump going to try to do? How's he going to behave? And I had the displeasure of playing Trump in some of these scenarios. And here's what my team did.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And seeing Kevin McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, I don't know what his job is these days, but presumably he's angling for something in the Trump administration. And I felt like that was a little bit of a sign that maybe Kevin wasn't getting any cool ambassadorships or anything.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
I'll just tell you how we approached it. We wrote 100 tweets. And they were everything from, let's invade Canada, to Kid Rock is a great American, and everybody should celebrate him. You know, just a bunch of insane stuff. And then over here, we had a plan for how to actually dismantle the government, which is actually sort of what I was going to say first is...
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
tearing things down is a million times easier than building anything, right? And so when you play these scenario, when you do these scenario things, you are already at a massive advantage when your role is to burn stuff down. Because people trying to react then, because what Trump is trying to do, and the reason I... The reason we had a pretty...
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
clear strategy about how to approach it is dismantle the administrative state over here, what they would call the administrative state, shut down the Department of Education, do real things over here, and over here tweet. Because no matter how long Trump is in our public consciousness, nobody has seemed to learn that he is like a guy with a laser pointer, and we are all cats. Right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
That chase it. And so I think to JBL's point, so much of this second term should at least be among the journalism or pundit class should be able to disaggregate the real from the trolling. Now, to Tim's point, though, I think the idea that the trolling doesn't have real consequences is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
because not everybody's able to disaggregate these things, or because sometimes things that read as funny, like, saying we're going to take over Canada is kind of funny to Americans because of, and maybe even to some Canadians, just because of the unique relationship, the closeness, the cultural closeness, but also, like, no one really thinks this is going to happen, but does that change society?
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Certain geopolitical calculus does it. Trump wants people to be like, he's unpredictable. He's a madman. And he wants to do it to places like Greenland and Canada, where he feels like everybody will kind of be cool about it, as opposed to Iran and Egypt and places where it can set off real potential issues. And so- Cuba, even.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And the only way to try to dig in on that is to not chase too much of the shiny stuff that is meant to be part of the zone flooding shit.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
My only thought is that, and this is where JVL and I tend to depart a little bit, is that, you know, even if he doesn't, let's say, do the thing, And I'm not eager, in many cases, for him to do the thing. I understand JVL's point that we can't keep sort of protecting people from the consequences of their actions.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
JVL and I talk about this in The Secret Pot all the time and other places about how there's sort of... I keep drawing lines between, okay, where are the consequences just enough that people have, like, touched the stove and they have to experience sort of what they have wrought with their vote versus...
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
What is going to have deleterious consequences for so many people that we should try to fight it? And I think that is something that we should endeavor to sort of sort through over the next four years. That's my main takeaway on that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Oh, but actually, sorry. And I'll just say one other thing, though, that's bad about it, though, is it does create an appetite for people. Just because he doesn't do the mass deportations but talks about it forever... It doesn't mean that it doesn't have consequences, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Like, it continues to have the consequences of demonizing people, of creating consequences, or just creating an environment that we live in where people are like, oh, well, they didn't do mass deportation, so I hate immigrants more. None of this is consequence-free. I agree with Tim, though. I agree with part of it is that, like, we should do more pointing and laughing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
But this is, again, I think, for us to figure out Like, this is why the Doge fight, the Laura Loomer versus Elon Musk fight is a good point and laugh moment while also acknowledging that the consequences, like, I would say that, you know, Trump reveals people, right? It's not just that he changes people, although I think he does that, but he also reveals people.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And I guess I can still be shocked by the amount like reading all of the way that people talked about Indian Americans and like call centers. And I mean, it was I don't even want to I don't want to repeat all the racist stuff. I was I was still genuinely shocked by how much of it was out there. And it's not good for us. Right. Anyway, it's not all consequence free.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
One of the other sort of strains of conversation that ran through there's the anti-immigrant conversation. And then there was sort of the white people can't get jobs. You know, like my there's a lot of like my son is, you know, white male and can, you know, can't get this job or that job.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
That is like clearly, again, not pervasive, but it's a little bit like the healthcare shooting where you're sort of like, oh my gosh, look at all these responses and the way that people are willing to like, be ghoulish about the fact that a man died because there's been this festering issue, uh, for them that actually clearly sits more on the surface than you realize.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And this is now sort of popped a lid off of something. And now you're hearing about it. I do think their racism is sort of similar that we're seeing or the, the, the acrimony or not acrimony, but the sense of that Americans are being passed over. Like that is pretty deeply held. And I think rooted by, by certain in certain quarters and in those quarters, uh,
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
It is straight up anti-immigrant feeling in part because, right, this is how authoritarians work, which is they pit people against each other. And I think what's interesting in this fight is the fact that the coalitions that they pit against each other actually are in the same coalition and maybe didn't quite realize it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Okay, my 2025 resolution is actually really about the business. I think that for those of you who listen to Tim's podcast, it's obviously become a juggernaut just in general. It's one of the top news podcasts out there. It's an enormous accomplishment. Our YouTube channel has absolutely exploded in large part because Tim is a workhorse who has been just churning out tapes.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
I'll stop. I'll stop. But we've had a big growth year with 2024 was a big growth year for us. And I think that one of the things that has been the most alarming to me since Trump got elected and even just before the election has been the pre-surrender of the media. I don't know if you guys have been following the media defections, but, you know, the Atlantic picked up.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Ashley Parker and Michael Schur. And like, they're sort of poaching the Washington Post's top political people are leaving. I think that you can expect the Washington Post to be a very different publication. They've also had, you know, Mattia Gold, like big editors, like people are not getting their contracts renewed.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And so that of the big papers, right, we've seen the gutting of small papers, but I think you're going to see a massive shift in the media environment to be much more accommodating to Trump over these four years. And
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
because people are afraid, because Kash Patel and others have said they're going to specifically target the media, there's a lot of people, they may not even realize how they calibrate. I think a lot of the people in national review land or commentary land, I don't think they realize how much they started to calibrate because of their audiences and to Trump and how much it changed them.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And so I think that we will be sort of singular out there as a publication that will not calibrate at all. And what I want to ask people, because it's part of my resolution, is to, I want to be at a million free subscribers. I want to be a million free subscribers by the end of 2025. And I think we can get there, but you guys have to go tell everybody about the bulwark.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And here's the thing, I'm talking about free subscribers, I'm not talking about paid. Because one of the most interesting things about the bulwark is that we make most things free. And people who become paid subscribers typically do so for one of two reasons. One, they want to go deeper with us as a community member.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And so they get a lot out of being in the comments sections or doing the secret pod with me and JVL. And obviously JVL's triad is one of the, it's sort of the signature gated piece of content, right? There's still like all the YouTube stuff, it's all free.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
So I want to be at a million free subscribers, but we're going to need all the people who listen to this podcast to help us and go tell people about the bulwark. We're tipping over, I think, in public consciousness. A lot more people know who we are now than they did before. But I want to go big because I think we will be pretty fearless. I think we deserve an audience that big.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
So go tell all your friends.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
I mean, try not to libel people if I would like you to try not to. And look, there's probably more lawyers in everybody's future. But no, don't calibrate. You say you're going to care about what you're going to care about. We're going to tell you the truth about what we think. And that's the thing that's made, I think, this really special. But I really want to grow it, not for the sake of...
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
just more subscribers or because there's some number, but because I believe we make an impact on people's lives. The number of people who come up to us at the shows and talk about how we keep them sane or like they feel in these relationships with us, that feels great to us. And I think that like, I think it's a good thing. I think we should have more subscribers.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
I think more people should do this. I think it will help us get through this particular period of time.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
is a win-win play for Trump, right? Because this is what he does, is either he gets what he wants out of Johnson, Johnson does it, or Johnson loses for not doing what Trump wants, and Trump sends the message, you don't do what I want, and you don't get to hold this role. And so for me, it's a decent play by Trump. But the other problem for them is
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
is that there are still some insane true believers. And I got to say, sometimes I value the insane true believers over the cynical MAGA players. Because like a Chip Roy, like these are the people who built the debt limit. They fought really hard to get a debt ceiling. And so the idea that Trump would just overturn it, they're going to fight that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And who staked their entire careers, right? Their entire reasons for being is about spending. And so the idea of getting rid of the whole point of the 10-minute ceiling is to keep spending under control. It is to force people to have these fights. Republicans did that. That was their idea.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Yeah, I did not realize how much I miss you guys when news happens and I can't talk about it with you. I can try talking to the people around me, but they reach a threshold.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
The worst part about it, and maybe Tim, you know, I catch these intermittent battles and I'm trying to stay off X, but I did go deep on a couple of places. But one of the things I couldn't quite figure out is there is a guy who is Indian. His family originates from the continent of India, as best I could tell. And he is in some way, he is liked by Elon and has a role. And MAGA's base is,
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
maybe led by Laura Loomer. It's unclear. They were upset that this gentleman is going to have a role. And that I think is what kicked off the H one B visa.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
So this is the part, though, that I ended up weirdly going deep on because I was genuinely shocked by it. There are these big accounts. And they were just saying horrifically racist things about America.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Like you talk about shots fired, like the shrapnel was the Indian American community who was suddenly... And part of it was also, there's a lot of different players, but then there's Vivek Ramaswamy, right, who also in this fight... put out a tweet in which he said that the problem with America is its culture, that we value sort of the quarterback and homecoming queen over the science fair winner.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
We value, what is it? Stefan Urkel over the Stephen Urkel. These were some like real throwbacks to the, you got to be like deep in both nineties, like sitcom world to get these. Cause it was like, he dragged the same kind of bell crew in. Yes. Right. An elder millennial.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
No, I have.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Not in Silicon Valley. Not in Silicon Valley.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Well, so, but no, I think this is part of the rub of the fight, is that Vivek Ramaswamy is saying that the best people are like the people in the tech sector and the sector that he works in who value these things. And there is this contingent, right, that became a very dominant MAGA force in Silicon Valley. It is like the Elons.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
who is also an immigrant from a different country, who came here, by the way, illegally before his H-1B visa.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Right. Illegally. Let's be clear.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
But this is the rub. There is a huge disconnect between the reasons that the Silicon Valley type guides are into Trump and the reason the base MAGA voters are into Trump. And that is the tension that got exploded. There's different threads, but one of them was because of Vivek and then because of this other guy who was
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
the AI consultant who MAGA was targeting, there became this sudden narrative around, well, Indian Americans that we import here because they're smart are a big part of the problem. And then when I went down the rabbit hole of all the people tweeting about it, it was like dark. It was dark and racist and gross and awful. And then you see some of the Indian MAGA types going,
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
I was like, because I haven't even broached Elon Musk. Like, I've already done, you know, they know about the Trump stuff. But now, I mean, the number of villains in this story, I need them to have, you know, hope and optimism. Anyway, I'm glad to see you guys. I've got a lot of things that I would like to talk about and catch up on.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
wait, are there racists in the Republican Party? Could it be? Could it be that this is a movement that perhaps isn't for us? And so watching all of this come into view, there's always a little bit of, right, any moment where the scales fall from people's eyes, where sort of they see clearly something that you've been seeing is a moment of saying, yes, this is a problem.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
And also, if you thought that Trump was super pro-immigrant, I don't know, did you hear him say that eating the dogs and cats? He hasn't mentioned that lately, I know, but did we forget?
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
He scammed people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: We Are Sticking With the Mission
Alzheimer's, about Alzheimer's.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that there was anybody who was losing their... You guys got some bulwarking people here. To the point of much of their annoyance, nobody yelled louder about Joe Biden deciding to run again than I did because it was all over the data that voters didn't want him to. And so the idea... I mean, it's interesting. I think Matt and I might end up agreeing more than...
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I thought we would, because I don't think what we're talking about right now or I did not take this proposition to mean that voters don't can't sometimes decide that they don't like either option. I took it really to mean what is our responsibility as people who other people look to for political analysis and judgment?
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And my beef with sort of libertarians in general is I think because they have been tribally of the right, they found themselves unable to go hard against their tribe, actually.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And I think they got boxed into a place where they felt like they could criticize Trump enough for some CYA, but not to actually say, and this is where I guess I don't understand your point, Nick, because it feels like, look, if we're talking about McCain-Obama, Yeah, man, either way, right? Choose who you wanna choose.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I think the question is whether or not we decided that Donald Trump was something different, whether or not there was something unique about the threat that he posed. And now Matt, you did do a little bit of like classic both sides of some, because I don't feel like 2016, I didn't have to say that Donald Trump won because of, what did you say? I don't remember.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
But it's like because of a Russian YouTube operation or Facebook or whatever.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
But this is where you sort of- Those things happen. What? What did you say?
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
But also, we weren't there being like, Donald Trump's not president. And none of us, nor did Democrats. I mean, they did hashtag resist, but they weren't like- We're going to march to the Capitol, storm in there with guns and carry the banner of our leader, Donald Trump, while we do it.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And so I think that the sort of very weak both sides ism is a plague of folks who are tribally of the right and who lost the ability to, for the sake of their audience, be able to distinguish between something that was uniquely bad and uniquely a threat to your wheelhouse.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Yeah. Okay. So let me tell you a quick story. I was in the Czech Republic one time and I was talking to- Matt Welch loves the Czech Republic.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I drink a lot of absinthe. I lit a bar on fire one time accidentally. But when I was there, we got to go and meet some of the senators, right? And I was very young. I was still a libertarian. And so we were there and I got to talk with a senator and she said, I knew that we had, it was after the Velvet Revolution, and she's like, I knew that we had reached a stable place
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
when the number of people who were voting went down. And if you think about it, I move in a lot of democracy circles and they're always like, oh my God, people don't vote and it's terrible. And I'm like, actually, voting's as high as it's ever been. Do we think things are going better? No, we don't.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Because the reason that people are voting at such high rates now is because they think things are existential at every level across the board. And so I don't think that it's more voting as representative of us being in a better place.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I do think that an unwillingness to admit that Donald Trump presented such a unique threat that it was worth taking a side sort of is is at the center of this debate, though.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And I'm not going to become a devotee of the Democrats or their coalition.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
That's not where I- I said you live in the tribal space of the right.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I mean, intellectually, like your people.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I believe America is underreacting to the threat of Donald Trump. Deeply underreacting. And I don't know what you mean by extinction level event. Like, does he have to nuke everything before we react? Or could he just refuse to accept the results of an election and do violence? Not like verbal violence, like the left kind of talks about, not hate speech, like actually try to overturn an election.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Is that not enough? In which you say, unfit, absolutely.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
No, he's going to put your people into the Capitol to try to murder them.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
That sounds exactly the right, exactly how I describe it.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Oh, yeah, this is my favorite thing that you said, was when you accused us of not having influence as the libertarian.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
They're little pocket constitutions. And here's the thing, on the back it says the Cato Institute, which is a preeminent libertarian think tank. And now if like me, you moved in the libertarian-ish movement or the center-right here in DC, they mail you one of these like every year. I mean, and I just grabbed the first four I had, cause I got like 12.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Cause the libertarian's been sending me pocket constitutions since I was a kid out here. And I watched, and this is why it's so funny, next clip, it's about 2004 when that clip made sense. Cause now we're talking about a shit sandwich with glass and arsenic in it versus like chicken that's not that good, right? That's the choice.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And so I don't know, I think a sentient being can make that distinction, number one. Number two, to have people so devoted to the constitution that they mail you this thing, And me, liking it so much, I kept them all. Only to have Donald Trump come in and they went.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Okay, but is that the knock on us? Because we, I mean, anybody who listens to the book will tell me, they'll tell you, we do plenty of knocking on Democrats when they do something stupid. It's the deepest theme after Donald Trump is definitely very bad.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Also, the smartest, most informed people on the stage picked a side hard. So, just FYI.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
But look, every election gives you data that politicians then use to make future choices. And so if suddenly, you know, the vast majority of people were opting out of it, like people would be like, great, well, now there's this huge pool of voters that we need to go get.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And in fact, right now, right, that's, people are looking at this election and thinking, man, there's a lot more non-college working class voters than there are college educated suburban voters. We better figure out how to fight for them because the other side just beat us. You know, Republicans just beat us on that. So like, if that happened, you know, it would calibrate.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
So there's a couple of us up here on stage that were Republicans. And now we talk about why you shouldn't vote for most Republicans. And I think that's a pretty nonpartisan thing to do because you shouldn't pick a team, I agree, where you feel like you have to then be on their side for everything. That's stupid, that's brain dead.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
But you do have to decide that there are a bunch of ideas that you stand for, that there are values that you stand for, that there are things that really matter, and then you should defend those things. And I remember being in high school or college, and teachers would sort of pose the question to you, well, what would you have done during the Holocaust?
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Or what would you have done during the Civil Rights Movement? And I've always liked to think that in a time of moral crisis, I would understand how to choose between right and wrong, that I would be able to see it clearly.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And I feel like there has been a lot of people on the right through Donald Trump's tenure that have done whatever they can to obfuscate, to brush away, to downplay the noxious, toxic, soul-destroying force that Donald Trump poses. And I want to fight that. Yes, what I'm going to do, I'm going to continue to fight that all through. I'm going to continue to fight what Trump's doing.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I'm not going to fight what he says. I'm going to fight what he does. But I am going to continue to fight it. And so I... became a conservative and liked Libertarians and read Reason Magazine and have lots of friends that have gone through Reason all these years because I was on America's side. Like I wasn't really on a partisan side.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I thought Republicans were better at liking America and defending, because everybody kept mailing me those pocket constitutions. I thought, surely these are the guys who want to defend the constitution. But then I watched an entire political movement that said it was committed to ideas lie down for this guy and forfeit their intellectual credibility and not stand up at the moment that it mattered.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And I will never stop condemning people for that. And so I choose America's side. That's the side I'm on. And I think you should be too.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Why does he get the medal? Yeah, take that thing off of him. All they want.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I would like to thank the audience for making good choices.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I don't usually have notes for things, but I do this time. I read this to Tim before we got started, and he told me it was too mean. So I dialed it back a little bit. We'll see. And actually, look, I actually kind of agree with you that I don't think voters have to choose. I listen to voters all the time.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And one of the things I do, anybody who listens to the stuff around focus groups knows that I am a big defender of what people call somewhat derisively low information voters, because I believe that people should be able to go out and live their lives and not have to be obsessed with politics all the time, right? And if they decide that a quick scan of the candidates
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
choosing between them, neither one is going to materially make a difference in their life, then fine, they don't have to choose. But if you're a close political observer, or say, editor of a magazine devoted to politics, with a clear lens of liberty and freedom, I think you should be capable of an accurate threat assessment with regard to which
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
which candidate would do the greatest harm to the freedom agenda? And look, I'll admit, I was always kind of a libertarian myself. I mean, then I grew up, but like I was a libertarian for a while. Sorry, sorry, sorry, just kidding, just kidding. And to be fair, I was sort of more like a right-leaning independent who thought that I was, you know, nominally pro-choice.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I was definitely pro-weed and I was definitely pro-gay marriage and I went and got one. So that made me sort of a libertarian when I was young here in DC. And I think where libertarians get in trouble is that they know perfectly well that Donald Trump presents the greatest threat to freedom and the American Constitution we've seen in our lifetime.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And I'm just going to throw a few at you just in case you don't believe me. Tariffs and hostility toward free trade, corporate subsidies for favored industries, which is anti-free market. Trump wants to strengthen qualified immunity and bring back stop and frisk. We hate that, libertarians.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Deploying the military to suppress opposition and generally trying to crack down on protests, attacking the free press. He's suing a pollster because he didn't like her poll and threatening to pull broadcast licenses. Also hate that, libertarians. RFK's nanny state in food and health. When I worked in Washington, D.C., we saw, call it the nanny state big brother.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
We were super against those things, but now we take the Democrats and we install them in our government to do those things. We're These guys are, you know, Trump is generally supportive of right-wing cultural war issues, like, you know, we're against drag things, you know, these free expression things against trans people. He's increasing the national debt with spending increases.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Donald Trump, everybody, they did the, they looked at it and Trump was gonna double the amount that he was gonna raise the debt over Kamala Harris. He says he's going to execute drug dealers without trials. I mean, Kamala was a cop, but Trump says we're gonna execute drug dealers without trials, so cool. Letting states ban abortion rights.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
cozy relationships with dictators who are complicit in global repression, deporting millions of immigrants via raids, weaponizing federal law enforcement to go after his enemies. He's doing that with Liz Cheney right now. One year prison sentence for burning American flags. I definitely thought we were free speech as libertarians.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
He wants to expand executive power and limit checks on his authority. Said he would suspend the constitution straight up and then lied about the 2020 election and tried to overturn an election. So that's just to name a few of things. Other than that, how's the show, Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln? So I think that... 40 seconds.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
But libertarians are often tribally of the political right, and they're addicted to heterodoxy for heterodoxy's sake, which leads them to plead neutrality so they don't have to defend the side they've actually chosen. And this is my point. They... do choose a side. They are perennially anti-Democrats.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And they're so anti-Democrats that even when the biggest threat to freedom is standing right in front of them, they can't acknowledge it clearly or with the right threat assessment. Namely being, this is the biggest threat. Trump is the biggest threat. Nick tweeted recently that he was glad Kamala Harris lost. And so I'm saying you do choose.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And when you are an editor of a publication or part of the political elite, you decide who you fire, who you hire, what articles you publish, what articles you spike. And when you make those choices, you choose a side. And I will just end by saying the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
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The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
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The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
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The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
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The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
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The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
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The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
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The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
Matthew Brady's Civil War pictures. Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of the records are about our wars and our veterans and the way they keep and Take care of these records is so solemn and so serious. And I mean, these soldiers died in the Civil War. And I mean, I just think about them all the time. What would they think if they knew they were in these wie Glaskäse in Maryland, um sich zu kümmern.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
Aber ich kann mich wirklich auf diese Dinge kümmern, weil all diese Rekorde so interrelativ sind. Eines von Pam Wrights Programmen war die Digitisierung der Zinsen, die online gelegt wurden. Und ich meine, die Zinsen in 1870 sind anders, weil all diese Leute, die in diesen Glasplatten-Negativen sind, weil das war der erste Zins, in dem alle afrikanischen Namen listet wurden.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
like the knowledge that the federal government provides. I mean, I talk about like all the federal records start with the Constitution and the Declaration. And the Constitution requires census to be taken to apportion the House of Representatives, which, you know, yawn. But you go into those census, you can learn.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
The last one that Pamela Wright got online was 1950, because they wait 72 years, because there's a lot of private information. You know, it just came out with these, um, JFK-File, die diese Woche online veröffentlicht wurden, von NARA, dass viele dieser File Menschen, die noch lebendig sind, soziale Sicherheitsnummern haben.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
Aber anyway. Also, wie der Census von 1950. Ich habe Dinge über meine eigene Familie gelernt, die ich nicht wusste, dass jeder da ist. Und es ist völlig demokratisch.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
I learned things I didn't want to know about my family, but you know, you can't pick and choose.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
I just learned why my mean drunk grandfather was a mean drunk and as a liberal it was a hard lesson because it turns out he worked for the WPA on a road crew and that's how he broke his back and turned into the misanthrope who ruined all our lives. So it's really hard for a liberal to know that the New Deal is responsible for an entire family crumbling for decades.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
Which is his right.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
and keep them safe for us. Like when I was going to see those Matthew Brady cases, I had an ink pen. dass ich Noten mitgebracht habe. Und wir mussten zurück in jemanden's Office gehen und mir einen Pencil geben, weil sie so ernsthaft daran sind, all diese Rechner zu kümmern. Ink kann die Rechner verletzen und ein Pencil kann erlöscht werden.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
Also mussten wir zurückgehen, mir einen Pencil geben, damit ich nichts verletze. Sie sind sehr ernsthafte Leute und kein Nonsens. Und es gibt all diese Regeln, die belegen, wie NARA funktioniert, vor allem das Präsidentenrechnerrecht, vor allem, wie sie How would you put that with the ERA thing? Like they're the ones who put these new amendments into the Constitution, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
So there are whole processes that they're all going to follow to the letter because they're actually, I mean, Michael Lewis, his whole thing is, let's take something you think is boring and make it interesting. My whole thing is like, no, this thing you all think is so interesting is actually super boring and that's how it should be.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
And the National Archives is completely, you know, nonpartisan and just follows the law. But because, I mean, the interesting thing is, if you, like one of the strains of American thought that goes into whatever this madness we're in right now with firing the federal workforce is suspicion of the government, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
Like, NARA's function since Watergate and since the Freedom of Information Act is to provide us the access to our own records so that the government is held accountable. So if you're suspicious of the government, which all of these, you know, government efficiency people seem to be, NARA is the place to go to confirm your suspicions.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
And the other thing is, I had this list of documents I wanted to see, partly because I'm a history nerd and I was like, hey, can you guys show me the Louisiana Purchase? Because I wanted to see it. And because Pamela Wright was born within its borders. And that was kind of the moment when America becomes way too big to govern. And her mission was to shrink down that distance.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
But when I looked at my list, it was a pretty liberal list. And so I asked a Republican ex-governor of Montana to like, what should I ask to see? Because my list was so liberal. And he gave me a bunch of Nixon stuff, like the bright side of Nixon. And it's incredible. Like I saw the Clean Air Act that Nixon signed. And, you know, that doesn't really conform to
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
How I think of Nixon and like so much of the archives is the Nixon tapes and his worst impulses. But the Clean Air Act has saved tens of thousands of lives. So like the other thing about the National Archives is it tells the full story, even the ones we don't want to know or think about.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
I would love the one that Michael Lewis just told you about, where he just like doesn't work too hard or overthinks things. Because I like working with him. Or you can succeed without trying. Yeah, totally. I'm a doer of homework. I like send him a bunch of articles this morning. Maybe he should think about like he doesn't do any of that. I've been up since 4 a.m.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
reading about, you know, investment of the US government and like, did you know this, Tim, that there's this new medical journal article about the COVID vaccine that 35 years and $337 million worth of federal research Ja, genau. Mehr als 300 Millionen Dollar. Das ist das, was ich tue, dass Michael Lewis nicht um 5 Uhr am Dorito kommt.
The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
Das ist die Superkraft, die ich will, aber nie haben werde.
The Megyn Kelly Show
Tariffs and Markets Perspective, Exclusive Info From Nashville Shooter's Journals, and American Held in Russia, with Victor Davis Hanson and Chris van Heerden | Ep. 1043
you know, you join the legal profession and they hit you with, I have a lot of really good friends who are lawyers. They hit you with a lot of like, this is a revered profession. You have a real role that you play in society. There are these invisible lines that you help maintain for the constitution. Um, and, and then to have everybody just act then like it doesn't matter at all is bizarre.