Tom Nichols
Appearances
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Look, part of what helps society keep its guardrails is the old expression. Hypocrisy is the tribute. Vice pays the virtue. Yeah. Right. To say, yes. You know, look, when people talk about somebody was doing a piece, they said the same office held by, you know, Lincoln or Reagan or I can't remember what it was. And Jack Kennedy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And I'm like, Jack Kennedy did things in the White House that are really bad. Would make you blush. Yeah. Exactly. But there was at least a sense that the president had to say things and behave in a way that preserved a certain amount of the social order in public.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And what Trump does, I mean, in a way, I imagine that the Trump White House is probably far less creepy than a lot of things that happened in the Kennedy White House, but far more destructive to the country. Because there is no inspiration there to be better. There is no ask not what your country can do for you. You know, there is none of that. It's Trump. It's crudeness and vulgarity.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And it's all kind of put out there as a virtue in itself. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You know, I was joking. I was joking about Andrew Jackson a minute ago, you know, being being the kind of Northeast elitist that I am. And I'm not a big fan of Jackson. But on the other hand, I'm like, I look at him on a 20. I kind of get it, you know, that we create a myth around Andrew Jackson of, you know, the populist, the Democrat, old hickory, old. Yeah. You know, man of the people.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But because it does inspire us to at least try to be the better people that we are when we are in public and dealing with each other in the civic space. And, you know, when you look back at presidential debates, for example, you know, where you said these are reasonable human beings, we disagree.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And like John McCain said, you know, he's a good family man with whom I have very profound disagreements. Right. And now it's all become this reality show kind of, you know, what's that squid game kind of, you know, nonsense. And it just I think it just makes us into worse people. And I think now we have to wrap up the darkness, Tim. But going back to your point about.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You know, how do you kind of process how many people voted this way? I think eight years of the age of Trump has made a lot of Americans into worse people. I mean, genuinely corroded their characters. Look, you and I even... You see it on the internet. I mean, I find myself writing about politics in a way that when I was, I mean, remember, I came to writing out of 30, 35 years of academia, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You know, I tried to do these very measured things about foreign policy and national security. And now I find myself saying, you know, I'm writing about all this lunacy going on and it affects all of us. It has brought all of us down closer to Trump's level. And I'm sorry to see that. And I wish there were a little more hypocrisy in American public life, to be honest with you.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You sent me the email this morning because I had missed this piece of news. And you said all it said in your email was, hey, Tom, topics, you know, Jared Moskowitz and FEMA. And I'm like, what is there? Does Trump said he's going to use FEMA to arrest Jared Moskowitz? What does that mean?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And so, of course, you know, being the conscientious podcast guest that I am, I went and looked it up and I went. Again, is this happening?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
First of all, the first thing I thought of is what Democrat who cares about his party, what member of either party, let's not make it about Democrats, what member of either party would leave when their party is close to pretty much a tie in the House and endanger that? But also, then I thought, what do you gain from this? Because And again, there's no comment from Moskowitz, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
At this point, this is all speculation. But assuming that you take a job like this and you say, well, look, rather, to quote Mr. Burns, rather than allowing them to wallow in their own crapulence, you decide to say, look, I'm going to pitch in and help out because it's a really important thing. And if there's a disaster, somebody, you know, respond.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I mean, but that was what every establishment Republican who went to work for Trump in 2016 thought. It did not work. And the other thing is that if you've never worked for a politician, dear listeners, you can't just work part of the street. You can't just say, well, I'm going to be the appointed FEMA head, but I'm going to totally dissent from the president on all these other important issues.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
No, once you're an appointee, you are on the team. You are part of the administration. You're part of the team. You defend the president's positions and And if you don't, if you can't, then you have to get out. I mean, I worked for a senator.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I didn't call my, you know, write stuff and give interviews and say, you know, I think the senator's great senator, but boy, his position on this farm bill is just nuts. You know, if you work for the guy, you work for the guy. I understood that idea in 2016 or 2017. I don't understand it in 2024, how anybody can think that they are going to do that and somehow, you know, end up unscathed.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
shit that goes on in washington no to join this administration and really to join almost any administration but especially this one you are going to get caught up in it and especially in an organization that is at the center of so many crazy pants bonkers conspiracy theories Climate.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I think that's a really good analogy, Tim. I think she's a good example of that. you know, I tried to defend Berks during the pandemic by saying, look, she's, you know, an appointee, she's an ambassador, she's a career military officer that telling the commander in chief that he's all hosed up doesn't come naturally to a lot of, you know, former military folks. It's not, not part of that culture.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You know, what do you expect her to do? Just walk out and resign in the middle of pandemic and all that stuff. But, but with all that said, you know, hey, you She's a big girl, grown woman, a colonel in the army. I mean, you know, an ambassador, a doctor. At some point you say, yeah, maybe I do walk out there and say this is too hosed up. But as you say, the lesson is out there.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
This time there cannot be any doubt about what happens to you if you become part of the Trump administration.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Really didn't need the thing about the toes, Tim. I mean, I have a lot of theories about the kind of tech oligarchs that came up in the 90s, which I think were a very dark time in American history. I shouldn't plug other people's books, I guess, because you've got to get out there and get my audio book. But I've been reading the John Gantz book about the 80s, which I think are the 90s.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
It's been on my list. It's actually very good. And I think, you know, even where I disagree with it, it's easy to have reasonable but interesting disagreements with it. But the 90s to me were this time where, you know, guys that were not, shall we say, the most socially adept human beings, nonetheless kind of walked into this internet casino and came out gazillionaires. They invented something.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And, you know, God bless them, right? If you invent a browser or an app or whatever it is and you get rich off it, that's the American dream. I think that's wonderful. Somehow, though, as those guys progressed into middle age, two things were true. One is that they became convinced, as rich people often do become convinced, that great wealth means that they have great insights about everything.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And also that they still carried those kind of weird insecurities and resentments, you know, from being nerds or whatever they were back then. I mean, you look at Zuckerberg, you look at Musk, you look at, you know, who else do you want to pick? There's this kind of strange, almost outsider status that they can't seem to get over.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I mean, Musk and Trump, such a natural pairing to me of two guys that no matter how successful they get, are always trying to like figure out where the cool kids are.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
There was a lot of stuff in the social network that that was fictionalized. But, you know, there were I mean, there was an essential truth that, you know, this was kind of like, how did this guy become famous? Well, sort of hanging out and. feeling sort of socially excluded and creating this thing, and it makes you super rich. It doesn't make you super smart.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
When I have interacted with some of these guys, David Sachs comes to mind. Nothing makes them angrier than telling them, look, this is not something you know about. No, you don't really understand the Ukraine war. I'm sure you invented a very good app that does a thing on my phone, and I'm glad you got rich from it, but that doesn't mean you have a clue about geopolitics in Central Europe.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
They just get furious about that because, again, it's that sense of like, no, I matter. I'm important. I have big things to say about important stuff. So it's not surprising that when finally Trump says, hey, all the gates are down. Experts don't matter. All that matters is that you come and, you know, kiss my ring and you can talk to me about any kind of important stuff. That's catnip.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
That weds this notion of that great wealth should imply great influence. As opposed to people saying, hey, you know, I'm a really rich guy, but this isn't my bailiwick, you know.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
He is certainly the most visible figure He has a lot of influence over a president-elect at the moment, but of course, as is always the case, whoever the last guy in the room is always has a lot of influence with Trump. He certainly seems to spend more time with Trump than – who's the guy I'm trying to think of? He's supposed to be really close to Trump. Vance, J.D. Vance. Oh, the vice president.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
The invisible man, right? I mean, if you were from Mars, you would think that Elon Musk was Trump's vice president at this point. But, you know, all kidding aside, when I think of really influential oligarchs, I think of the guys we never talk about, right? The guys that for years, I mean, you know, if you talked about like the guys from these Wall Street firms, a guy like, you
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Oh, you know, I purposely went there with intending to avoid the news, which I did. I just tuned into the to the Beeb to keep up on the serious stuff. And it was a very nice break. It was a reminder of how self-absorbed American politics has become that, you know, you turn on BBC World and
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Or somebody like that, who these people were part of this permanent elite that even when they were in their law offices in New York, they were running things in Washington. So I don't want us to fall too far down that hole about how powerful Musk is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Now he's like the crypto czar or whatever, you know, while, while we're on the subject, I mean, and Joe Rogan, who has a huge, huge amount of influence, you know, for a guy that used to eat bugs. I mean, it was, I mean, it's just, yeah. And I mean, I'm kind of interested in where Tucker is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
He's been, that's one of those things where, you know, while, while Musk is capering and cavorting, I'm kind of wondering where Tucker is. Well,
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
you find out a lot about basically that the entire geopolitical order of the Middle East is being reorganized rather than, you know, what Pete Hegseth's tattoos mean.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
One is that I thought when he said, I'm paraphrasing, I thought that word was doing a lot of work. Yeah, like I'm making this up, actually. I'm paraphrasing. Oh, okay. I'd like to know. I mean, I can't say that his account is accurate or not, but I'll just say that when he said, I'm paraphrasing, I said, sure sounds like a lot of paraphrasing going on there.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
That was my second reaction as a bona fide Cold War expert. That is not what happened during the Cold War. I'm sure he thinks that that's what happened. No, entire parts of physics did not go dark during the Cold War. Work that was done with physics on things related to nuclear weapons became classified. One of the funniest moments, funniest, one of the
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
coolest moments of the cold war was when a when a doctoral student i want to say princeton basically wrote his thesis on how to make a nuclear bomb and the fbi showed up and the guy was like listen these things have been around for like 35 years or not they're not hard to figure out you know by the time i was finishing my teaching career i would tell students remember this is a technology that came out when you know like before people had tvs and airplanes still had propellers
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
So this notion that, oh, yes, well, they just classified. I don't think he knew what he was talking about there. My gut sense of that, you and I kind of talked about this a little this morning, is that I can't believe that anybody's entire position on who should be president rested on one conversation about AI. But maybe that's how he does things.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But it also struck me that that sounded very much, again, like somebody went down and said, I have many smart things to say about AI. And some government people said, well, we don't agree with all that. And he said, OK, screw you. Yeah. Screw you. And you know who will listen to me? The other moron. Right. The guy who doesn't understand a word of any of this and doesn't care.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
He'll treat me because when you said they're looking for attention, the word I replaced in my head was respect.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
There's stuff happening out there, exactly. But I went to Europe because my wife and I decided that after the election, win, lose, or draw, no matter how it came out, we planned like six months ago that after just living through all this politics that we were going to pull chocks.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Or even unrelated. I mean, I think, again, all these guys have this sense that I am fantastically wealthy, and somehow that hasn't bought me the respect that I crave in all of these areas. And the one place where I can really get it is in the place where expertise and knowledge just don't matter, which is going to be the Trump administration. We're going to have much more where this came from.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
These are the guys to be monitoring right now. I can't believe I'm going to quote Bernie Sanders here, but wasn't it Sanders who said something this weekend about never have so few people had so much money and so much influence concentrated in such a small circle.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You know, I am not a big fan of Bernie Sanders, and he said a few things that I think are kind of kooky, but that was a pretty good summation.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And for a movement that thinks of itself as populist, which is always, you know, that's never going to be not funny to say, well, we're the populist movement, which is why we're guided by a handful of oligarchs and billionaires, you know, doing things behind closed doors.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And so we started in London and we went through Paris and Brussels and ended up walking the cobblestone streets of Prague. And it was very nice. But it was interesting because I went in 2017 after the election, and people would say, oh, you're an American. What's going on with that new president? This time people were like, yeah, whatever. I ran into a few British tourists.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Well, first, let me say about the Claris Award thing. I think people are just too hard on journalists on the ground in places like that. In the middle of a total shitstorm, you're going to make a mistake now and then.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But you should, instead of saying, aha, gotcha, as I think too many people wanted to do, because that's the new game with journalists for new, for 10 years or so, you should say, wow, it's really great that somebody had the stones to actually be there and
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
in places that you would be you'd be standing outside the embassy screaming to get you out in the middle of that so i you know i i give all the credit in the world to those folks and if they have the occasional stubbing of their toe that's that's just the way it's it happens and good for them for being there but people should understand how epical this is i mean this is the assad family has been in charge of syria since i was a boy a long time indeed
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Well, you know, we've had our old man jokes. An epoch is correct. Yes. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
As was the style at the time, exactly. The idea now that this regime has collapsed, the Iranians are in a tough spot, the Russians have been flushed out of their one major geopolitical toehold outside of Eurasia, which is amazing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
By the way, for the Russians, one thing that I think some of the better reports have focused on, but that has been glossed over in all of the jubilation, Putin for years made his name by saying, if you're a friend of mine, you don't go down. I don't let that happen. My friends don't get pushed out of power. And this time, this happens like in, you know, 72 hours. And Putin's like, well...
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
What are you going to do? You know, I'm busy. That stinks. That's a big black market. Unfortunately, and I'm going to bring this back to American politics. Unfortunately, instead of being able to, you know, really hold on the pressure and keep pushing back the Russian position in Ukraine and, you know, in other parts of the world, he's going to get a respite now, which is really unfortunate.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But I'm glad it happened before Trump came into office.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
They're like, well, interesting, mate. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, whatever. The few times that politics came up when I was with groups, I ran into some Americans and ran into other people overseas. And, you know, I just found myself and them with that sort of same vibe we all have over here of like, I don't know, you can't even sum it up in a word.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Well, here is my darkest thought. It is my Christmas wish that something alleviates it. When I wrote books about expertise and the decline of democracy in America, I focused pretty heavily on narcissism. What I regret is that I didn't talk more about something that I'm coming to realize is really destroying the country, and that is the epidemic of loneliness.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And the problem where that intersects with the Internet is when you are lonely and isolated, the Internet is this wonderland, this carnival, this theme park that you can just wander through. You know, the days where a kid got radicalized by reading Catcher in the Rye or, you know, I don't know, you know, pick your, you know, the
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
anarchist cookbook or whatever it was at least had to go to a bookstore had to walk through a library had to do something as opposed to just sitting in the dark alone isolated in your room and saying i'm a teenager i'm troubled i have issues oh look turkish nazis something that you probably you know 30 years ago if you lived in wisconsin you were not going to be really
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
you know aware of able to encounter and so that one thing that we know from research about extremist groups is that they are reaching out across boundaries to feel like they're bigger than they are to say i mean the way i always put it is every town has one guy who thinks that aliens are stealing our water right problem is if you have a thousand towns and the one guy in each town reaches others well there's a thousand of us now we're we're a union we're a movement
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
No, you're just the one guy in every town who is, you know, committed to these kind of bonkers ideas. And the Internet has really I was such an Internet optimist. I mean, I was the guy when I was in my late 20s, I was a young professor at Dartmouth. I was the guy that showed other people how to use like Netscape.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Showing these 50, 60 year old professors that were my senior colleagues saying, hey, you know, there's this thing and it's called a browser and it's cool. But I've come to realize that it's, you know, it's basically the Internet is a giant bad neighborhood that you can wander around in if you don't if you just have too much time on your hands and it'll just lead you into trouble.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Well, love your kids. What's the answer to anybody listening? It's going to be counterintuitive to say, stop listening to podcasts and go outside and go to a movie with a friend.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
It's more like, yeah, you know, this sort of this kind of sigh of exhaustion of like, Jesus Christ, here we go again.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
My Christmas Spotify list. OK, first of all, I'm going to apologize for wonderful Christmas time. Somebody asked me why it's in there. I said, I don't know. I had fond memories of my freshman year in college when it came out. And so I put it there because even though I put it in my list, I turn it off when it's on the radio because I can't help it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I think somebody had a great line about that, which was Paul set out to write a Christmas song, and instead he decided to experiment with every sound a synthesizer could make, which I think is true. On the other hand, I tried specifically to make it a combination of kind of 70s and 80s pop linked to schlock. So, of course, Andy Williams is in there. Of course he is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You don't have a Christmas list without Andy Williams. And if you and I are going to disagree about this, I'm not sure we can be friends. Okay.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
You are familiar with a recording artist named Andy Williams, right? You know he existed and was the voice of Christmas for most of the 1960s and 70s.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I don't have. This is why generational conflict exists at all. But I also had stuff in there. I tried to put in things that were not people that didn't think of, you know, as cheery Christmas stuff like Circle of Steel by Gordon Lightfoot, which is a wonderful song. Yes, I included Do They Know It's Christmas? Because actually.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
The first time you could write it off and say, most of us aren't like this. Most of us wouldn't want this guy in our house talking to our kids. But look, he won 49.8% of the vote or whatever it was. He won – As I said in 2016, he won fair and square. Doesn't matter whether you like him or not. He's the duly elected president, you know, 47th president.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I kind of like that song in part because Sir Bob hated it after he wrote it. And I've always enjoyed... I'm Greek Orthodox. And one of the things that always makes me laugh about that song is he wrote it about Ethiopia and the famine in Ethiopia. Apparently, Sir Bob didn't realize the major religion in Ethiopia is Orthodox Christianity. So yes, in fact, they did know it was Christmas. Yeah.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
you know, but I have this cool 12 inch and you and I fooled around with it in the green room. I have this cool 12 inch that I bought, which again, why do, why do I like it? Because I have fond memories of buying this in a Boston record store. And the other side is this long outro where they finally finish. And then Bob Geldof says it's now like, you know, 6am on November 25th, 1984.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And everybody on the record comes in to say, Merry Christmas. You know, hi, I'm Sarah from Banana Rama. Happy Christmas. Um, The guys from big country, they're all Scottish. One of them says, we're here to wish you Merry Christmas. Feed the people. Stay alive. It's just this great 80s kind of time.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And then, of course, at the end of it all, Paul McCartney calls in because, of course, he wouldn't be on the record. But David Bowie shows up in this very quiet recording. And he's like, you know, the scary David Bowie voice about how people are starving. It's just this great kind of 80s Times capsule. So give me my nostalgic moments.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But other than that, there's stuff on there that I will absolutely defend, including if you don't like the Waitress's Christmas rapping. Oh, a great song.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And you can't write that off as an accident anymore. You have to say this is, you know, this is what American voters wanted. And before I get angry mail from Democrats who say, well, it's not what we wanted. Well, you know, you didn't show up. So by default, you were either OK with it or it didn't bother you enough to show up in the numbers that you did in 2020.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
So, you know, it is kind of who we are that either we actively wanted this or it didn't really bother us enough to be, you know, arsed enough to kind of go vote. So, yeah, there was that sense. I think I don't think it's defeat, though, Tim. I think it's exotic. I think you got it right with it's just like acceptance, like whatever, you know.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I am both more and I'm going to give you one of those Weasley answers. I'm more optimistic, Tim, but I'm less optimistic too.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
In what ways? I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn't expect his cabinet nominations to sound like the setup for a cold open at Saturday Night Live. Like you can see them sitting around the writers room. It's like, okay, okay. All right. So Pete Hegseth comes in, right? Because he's the Secretary of Defense now, right? And Tulsi Gabbard is the DNI, okay?
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And you're like saying, okay, nobody, even Donald Trump, nobody would do this. So in that sense, I'm like just – astonished that how quickly we've normalized saying things like defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, as if that's like a thing you would say outside of a parody. On the other hand, I really want to caution people against this
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And preemptive despair and nihilism, you know, I mean, it seems like a lot of the folks who once, you know, were running around being resistance liberals and Trump opponents and, you know, even I suppose I think are never Trump OGs or, you know, always held firm. eight years ago and now. But look, the guy is not a supernatural being.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I mean, the fact that Matt Gaetz got turfed so fast should tell you something. And that the thing going on in the Senate right now, I keep hearing these stories about, oh, Joni Ernst is getting to yes, and they're going to warm to these nominees. Look, I worked in the Senate. Right now, these senators realize there is nothing in it for them right now.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
To keep going out there and slamming their head into a brick wall and getting hate mail and death threats from MAGA World. That doesn't mean anything for what could happen in the next month or after confirmation hearings. You know, I guess what I'm saying, Tim, is in a way, I thought it would be. Bad in a very dark way, like there would be all these nominees like, OK, I'll give an example.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
One nominee that I think flew right under the radar who is really dangerous because I think he does know what he's doing. He's thought about stuff is Roosevelt. Roosevelt. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like we're all sitting here saying, oh, you know, you know, again, what does it mean when Pete Hague said, you know. Took his shirt off. No, Russ Vout is the guy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
If I'm going to worry about anybody, I worry about the guys who know what they're doing, who have made plain their intentions, you know, in numerous writing and speeches. So I expected more guys like that. not this kind of, you know, clown bus of, you know, stuff that is just, but that's bad too.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And I don't get off my soapbox, but I don't want to minimize that because one thing that occurred to me, I was trying not to think about politics in Europe. I was going to Christmas markets and I was trying, I had mulled wine for the first time in my life and it's bad. Yeah. So I'm just going to say that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I think it didn't taste, it didn't taste good. But I kept watching this news from Syria and saying this is a momentous event. earth moving, you know, geo strategic change. And I'm trying to imagine if this had happened and somebody walks into brief secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth and DNI Tulsi Gabbard and, you know, attorney general Pam Bondi. Well, the DNI is on the side of the deposed.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
Well, exactly. You know that I kept thinking that it's like, it's like, okay, how do you go in and tell, uh, how do you walk into ODNI, you know, and, and there's Tulsi Gabbard saying, um, madam director, uh, You're not going to like this because I got good news. I got bad news. No, I'm lying. There's no good news. So, you know, I'm worried.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But I think there were a lot of strategic mistakes in this tranche of nominees. And one last thing. These are the nominees right now. Remember that everybody that Trump appoints, even after they're confirmed, they're
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
It is hard to feel the same way about the country. These days, at least for me, patriotism is an act of will. I still love this country. I love what it stands for. I love the values on which it's based. And I think most, I still believe that most of the people in this nation
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
believe in the founding principles of America, at least in some core gut way of constitutional, not the legal sense, but that constitutional guarantee of freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion. So before I descend too far into the darkness, I'll just say that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
But with that said, yeah, there's something, there is a, when Jimmy Carter loses to Ronald Reagan, I mean, that was my first election, right? You know, you had gripey college kids and I was living in Boston at the time, you know, liberals walking around Boston, oh, this is terrible and America's screwed. But, you know, you didn't have this sense of like existential doom, even among the far left.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I mean, Nixon wins a landslide in 72, right? and you don't get this existential doom, and in fact, he's gone two years later. This time, I think the problem is, and you can tell that we both spent some time talking to Jonathan Last, who is the king of this kind of gloom.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
JBL, he's the prince of darkness when it comes to this, to say that if Donald Trump were impeached or removed from office three days after he gets in, you still have to live with the fact that that in any, you know, many settings, you can look around the room and say, at least, you know, if you live in a blue state, at least three or four people.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And if you live in a red state, seven or eight people think that everything Donald Trump said was basically okay. And that's hard. That's a hard thing to grasp. I was with some friends here where I live. And one of them said, well, you're not, you don't judge people based on how they voted, do you? And I said, I I said, I don't want to, but it's hard. And I know you and I have brought this here.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
I use the David Duke analogy. I said, replace Donald Trump with David Duke. Say, I'm a good family man and I love my country, but I voted for David Duke. I'm sorry, but you reach moral conclusions about people when they do stuff like that.
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Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
That they just really didn't tune in or pay attention to any of this stuff. Or they tuned out years ago. But yeah, I share that kind of existential dread that can the country. When I was a kid, and now I'm going to do the old man thing. When I was a kid, every classroom in the 60s, you know, we had a calendar. And the calendar always had a picture of all the presidents.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And you just felt like that was like this. I mean, at the time, you didn't know that Warren Harding was a womanizing doofus. You didn't know Andrew Jackson was a genocidal maniac. Now Trump's on that picture twice. Oh, my God.
The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness
And I can remember when Nixon resigned, and I was just coming out of that kind of grade school, and I was like, wow, there's a guy on here who got forced from office. And now it's like, yeah, maybe just don't put up those calendars anymore.