← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:00]
B
Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with my buddy Andrew Egger, author of our Morning Shots newsletter. You can get that@thebullork.com, go sign up for it. I want to talk to Andrew about his newsletter this morning about the news yesterday out of Atlanta, out of Fulton county, where the FBI raided an elections office, I guess, in order to find ballots from the year 2020. I know time kind of flies, but that was six years ago now. So in the year 2020, they're looking for ballots to, I guess, try to further provide evidence for the fantasy that Donald Trump constructed in his head that he actually won Georgia when he lost. A lot of elements to this. It's, as usual with Trump, it's kind of a combo story of, like, menacing and clownish all at once. Andrew, what was your. What were your big takeaways?
- [01:51]
C
Yeah, I mean, this really is kind of one of those what you see is what you get stories, right? Donald Trump has continued to spread about his lies about what happened in 2020. He cannot let this thing go. He breaks it out at the craziest moments. A week or so ago, he was telling the world's assembled glitterati at Davos, the World Economic forum, that the 2020 election had been rigged and we were gonna be doing prosecutions about that pretty soon. So that appears to be what this is. The FBI rated this facility as this big, big new. It's kind of like an elections office, but. But in part, it's like an elections archive. Right? I mean, they have all of these, you know, stored up materials from these previous elections, including the 2020 election. The FBI went in yesterday very openly. They were open about the fact that they were there to, to collect 2020 election materials. They ended up, it's been reported, taking about 700 boxes of ballots. And again, this is, you know, Donald Trump has not been playing this very close to the chest either. He was up all night on Truth Social, basically posting about it, posting about how this was part of the vengeance campaign, that we're finally going to get to the bottom of all of the election stealing that happened in Fulton County, Georgia, back in 2020. And it is. I mean, it's a real escalation in many ways. The most obvious of which is that this is stuff that Donald Trump wanted to do in the moment when he was president in 2020. He tried to tap the Justice Department to go and seek seize a bunch of election infrastructure in these swing states. And Attorney General at the time, Bill Barr told him he wouldn't. He said that he would not have probable cause to do any of that. Apparently, the current folks in charge at Justice, Pam Bondi, the new Attorney General, Kash Patel, the new director of the FBI, not as many compunctions about this sort of thing. So that's where we are right now.
- [03:38]
B
We've seen this stuff pretty noteworthy. Just to put a finer point on it, that Bill Barr, not exactly a model of independence and separation from maga. I know a lot of times where he put his thumb on the scale for Trump, rhetorically especially. And Bill Barr at the time just basically said, no, you don't have the goods here. And here we are six years later. There's been no additional evidence presented. Nothing else has happened. And Pam Bondi looks at it and says, you know, full speed ahead. I guess to that point. You flagged this quote in your newsletter, which I think is important. Mo Ivory is a Fulton county commissioner down there. And they said, look, we know in America right now it does not even matter if what you're saying is the right thing. If our president wants to bring in the forces, he will. That was a very apt point across a few different parts of the country right now.
- [04:35]
C
It's true in Minneapolis, it's true here. I mean, this is what you said a minute ago about how, like, we haven't learned anything new since Bill Barr said they couldn't go in. That's true in one sense, but it's also not true in another sense because we know in Fact, a lot of stuff that's new since then. I mean, like these.
- [04:52]
B
We know a lot of debunking. We know a lot of material that makes the case worse.
- [04:55]
C
These claims have been presented and re presented and the, you know, the ballots in these various swing states have been recounted and audited and lawsuits have gone forward in, and in particular when, when it comes to Fulton county, some of these very specific claims have been not only, you know, litigated in all of those ways, but have been subject to defamation lawsuits. I mean, like, let me, let's just, let's just focus in on one. Yes, exactly. Let's focus on one specific thing here, which is that Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss sued Rudy Giuliani over his false statements, over his, his slanderous claims that the two of them had been at the center of this, you know, election conspiracy based on this footage of, you know, that, that MAGA claimed was of them sort of hoisting up fake suitcases full of ballots to count and recount and recount and tip this thing to Joe Biden. They won a lot of money from Rudy Giuliani over this because there was never any evidence to support this claim. So that exact specific allegation has been like quadruply tested and retested. And yet the very night that this operation happens, the FBI goes in and, and, and takes all of these ballots with which the President explicitly says is for the purpose of, you know, getting the people who did this. The President gets on Truth Social and repeats yet again the exact same debunked claims that these two women who have won this defamation lawsuit, who have never been credibly accused of anything, tipped the, helped tip the election to Joe Biden by taking suitcases of ballots out from under the table and scanning them over and over and over again in order to tip the election to Biden. I mean, it's like none of that stuff, none of the proof, proofing, none of the actual evidentiary leg work and judgments of courts and things like that has, has had a smidgen of impact on the way that Donald Trump and his FBI see this case. And I think that's what, what the Mo Ivory quote that you just read really gets at is like, it doesn't matter. None of that stuff that happened matters. It could have, they could have done it. They could have not done it. The President of the United States could not care less about any of that stuff. He is going to send in his guys and, and get this stuff and try, I guess, try to ruin these women's lives all over again. Every indication of what we're getting from his posts right now.
- [07:04]
B
A couple additional thoughts that you just sparked there. One, this morning there's a post by eagle Ed Martin, who's working at the doj, who posts a picture of himself with Sidney Powell with the phrase Good Morning America, how are you? Sidney Powell, like, was advancing claims about the election theft so insane, so crazy that even like Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump were looking at her a couple times and being like, is this lady psychotic? Like, is she seeing things right? Is she seeing ghosts? And here we have one of the DOJ officials that we don't know, I guess, but presumably had some involvement in this or at least is in the administration having involvement with this is kind of re elevating her in this picture of, of Sidi Palin himself as if they are kind of, who knows, looking into the claims that she put out or that she is vindicated in some way. And I, you know, I just think that is telling just as far as like, how like the degree of lunacy here.
- [08:10]
C
Yeah, yeah. The thing, like the thing that makes me like feel like I personally am going insane about all this stuff is it's like if the President were actually actively setting out and all the people around him were actively setting out to disprove the claims and make look like fools. The specific subset of people who want to say this argument, who want to say, well, yeah, you know, all that stuff the president did in 2020 was, you know, pretty crazy and really cringe and everything. But, you know, the guardrails held. Like, let's, let's, let's focus on the fact that like the system actually worked and it did constrain him and he did leave office and all of these things. These are the people that are being proven so, so just sort of like high on their own supply right now. Just because in every way it's like the President is taking pains to like, demonstrate how each of those individual guardrails that helped to constrain him in the past are no longer in operation. Right. Whether it's the Justice Department, whether it is, you know, the courts, whether it is even like the small factions in his own coalition that were like, guys, I understand we're trying to stay in power right now, but, but Sidney Powell is really giving us like, kind of a bad name. I mean, it would be like, it would be like if like in the first J.D. vance term, you know, God forbid, in 2028 or whatever, it's like mid-2029 and he's marching ICE officers into Minneapolis again for some reason. And then like he posts a selfie with Greg Bevino. Right? I mean, is that kind of a move? It's like, wow, okay. I guess we are really just like we rubbing people's noses in. The fact that we are going to just go totally crazy right now and there's nothing you can do to stop us is kind of the, it's the, it's the mood of all this posting.
- [09:48]
B
Well, there's something that can be done to stop them, which is the courts, which continue to stop them over and over again. That's kind of the loon. That's sort of the clownishness side of this. Every attempt so far to get revenge has, has failed. Like, they've just rake stepped. And one thing I like to do when I get into this conspiracy mode, I just think it's valuable is to just kind of get out of the theoretical and like into the practical. Like, it's like, okay, what, what happens now? You know, I guess I was, when I was debating with the officer, Brandon Tatum, and he was throwing out the theory that Elon Omar, the guy faked it, that it was staged, who sprayed the thing at Elon Omar, and I was like, well, that's interesting. So who do you think that person is? Because he's going to jail now. Like, do you think he's a, he's an antifa. Is George Soros paying him? Is he a lizard person? Like, why did he do that? You know, it's important. Just kind of walk through the details. In this case, it's like, so they have the ballots now. What's the plan? People that work for the FBI career people, like, not political weirdos like Eagle Ed Martin, but like people who go and work at the FBI office at the Bureau, like rank and file guys, Are they going to be ballot counting now? Is that what they're going to be doing? Are they going to be reviewing things, looking for markings? Is that going to be, you know, is there going to be time spent on that that could be spent, I don't know, arresting. But criminals, you know, or people that are actually trying to do harm to our country, you know, like that's where this stuff sometimes breaks down for me. I don't know. Does it sit behind Epstein files in the line? I mean, like, what could they even do? Like they don't have anything.
- [11:17]
C
Yeah, yeah, no, I totally get where you're coming from on this. I think the way that I see it is not so much that this exact Operation, like, opens the door to any particular thing that Trump wants to do. I mean, maybe. Maybe the goal is just to sort of muckrake through this stuff, like, for. In the same way that they have muck raked through, I don't know, all of their political enemies, like mortgage applications and things like that.
- [11:42]
B
The Bill poll find one mistake somewhere.
- [11:44]
C
Yeah, maybe there's something to that. For me, the bigger angle is just what this sort of demonstrates about. About the relationship between the DOJ and Trump and in particular his. His sort of angle on future elections. Obviously, this is. This is one thing that the Fulton county officials who quoted Mo Ivory a minute ago, there have been a lot of them talking about this, that they just. They basically just view, you know, intimidation ahead of the 2026 midterms and, and ahead of, you know, the 2028 presidential election. And the point that you make about the courts and the fact that they tend to slap this stuff down is apropos when it comes to, like, is this guy going to be able to get, like, personal vengeance on Ruby Freeman and Sheamos? Like, the answer is probably not. Right? Like that. That seems extraordinarily unlikely to happen. He's been failing everywhere else with Jim Comey and, you know, let's just. James and all these people.
- [12:35]
B
But.
- [12:36]
C
But it doesn't necessarily. It shouldn't necessarily reassure us about the general approach to elections. Right. I mean, like, the courts are great at, like, eventually getting to justice in these specific instances. We don't yet know what the outcome would be of, like, a real clash in real time around an election between a government of Donald Trump trying to put his thumb kind of openly on the scale in one way or another, as people are actively going to try to cast their ballots. I mean, the role of courts in a situation like that would be a little more dicey. Right. It would be not so clear exactly. Exactly how they would get us to justice in real time. And I think that is the sort of thing that people are right to be alarmed about when they see these sorts of, yes, clownish, but also just sort of like unapologetic attempts to use the infrastructure of the state to pursue these stop the steal aims.
- [13:28]
B
That's the real ominous part here. Right. It's just. That's what I was going to go next as well. It's just the potential for election stuff. And who knows? I mean, you see this in Minnesota. It's kind of hard to predict. Sometimes it's like this Somali story comes up and then that's weirdly used as Pretext for ICE coming in. And then the ICE guys say that people are being mean to them and that's pretext for CBP coming in. And then the thing escalates. Right? And so you do wonder about that in Fulton county, some of these other places. Obviously it'll be important. Senate race there, House race is there. You know, it's like, I don't know, you know, National Guard goes in or insurrection. Like, they decide that they're going to put people outside the courthouse. Some of this stuff, to me, I'm always more. Me and Mark alliance talked about this a few times. Like, I'm always more on the side of being concerned about what happens after, like, the stop the steal stuff again, because a lot of times, like, voter suppression stuff backfires. You know, they put National Guard troops out outside Fulton county and that just reminds everybody they should fucking vote in an off year election. Because, you know, like, a lot of times it does have that backlash effect. But I just, to me, it's just kind of like the unknown, like, the known unknown here is that they want to tamper with this. They found the target now and kind of we'll see how that expands to, yeah, 100%.
- [14:47]
C
And I don't want to overstate it either. Right? I mean, like, we don't know for, like, nobody here is saying, like, ah, it's over. You know, we're cooked. Democracy has fallen because of these things. What we have is just a bunch of really alarming, like, facts that are impossible to deny. Like, obviously Donald Trump would if he could. He, he is very likely to try. There are very few people around him compared to last time who are going to even say no thanks or you know, let alone work to stymie him in any way. And in fact, will probably be likely to help. And, and so how does that all filter down? I guess, I guess we have to wait and see. But it's just, I mean, like, the other thing about the newsletter this morning that I just like the way that we think about this election stuff. It's like the eighth story at any given time because it's been in the news. And it's like we all know about his claims and like, he gets up on stage at the World Economic Forum and is like, the 2020 election was rigged and we're going to, you know, we're going to have some trials and everyone's like, oh, there he goes again. You know, and it's like, I get why people feel that way because there are a lot of controversies, but this actually has the potential to be like this, the big one, depending how the next year goes or three years go. So I don't know. I've been trying to keep that in mind as well.
- [15:59]
B
There's one other subplot here that I'd be remiss if we didn't mention. A photo was taken of a lady in a cap in Fulton county. And people were looking at it, and they're like, who is that? And it turns out it's Tulsi Gabbard. Who? Last time I checked. Does she work for the FBI? What's her job?
- [16:18]
C
She's the Director of National Intelligence. Yeah, but.
- [16:21]
B
But her doesn't seem to have been involved in Venezuela or the Greenland operations. But she is involved for some reason in the 2020 election fraud stuff, and she's been a participant some of that. Mark Warner did a video where he's talking about why this. The Tulsi being there is a little bit concerning. Let's watch that, and then we can both talk about it.
- [16:40]
D
Yesterday, the Trump administration, in a move that should scare the hell out of all of us, went to seize election materials from the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost in Fulton County, Georgia. What does this mean for the fall? And what should particular us is. Guess who showed up at this FBI raid? Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi Gabbard has nothing to do with election security. Tulsi Gabbard has even been in charge of dismantling what was called the Foreign Malign Influence center to try to make sure foreign countries don't interfere in our elections. This complete Trump loyalist somehow popping up on an FBI raid. What the heck was she doing? We got to stand up and step up against ice. We also got to stand up, step up to protect our elections coming this year.
- [17:24]
B
It is ominous. It's kind of like it's hard to think of a good reason for her to be there. I guess maybe the good reason is that she has nothing else to do, that she's been totally sidelined by the administration, and so Cash gave her a little favor. I don't know.
- [17:37]
C
That's the good reason from our point of view. I mean, it really is just astonishing, like, the complete. Just sort of abandonment of any pretense about this sort of stuff. Right. I mean, like, you could see a world where Donald Trump is openly continuing to prosecute this case against, you know, his. His 2020 enemies and try to get. Get even with those people, but there's like, a tiny bit of window dressing about, like, Normal procedure. And he gets up there, he says, you know, this is just the FBI doing the FBI's thing. I wasn't involved. I wasn't informed. No, obviously not. There's not even a shred of that. He is so informed that like other random members of the, of the sort of like the party are like, hey, we're going down. We're, we're heading on down to Fulton County. Anybody want. Oh, yeah, I'll hop in. Like that. That sounds great. I'm not doing anything right now. I would love to come participate in this random woman in this complete random other part of the federal government just because, like, there's no wall of separation. There's absolutely no even pretense that the Justice Department is acting independently on this sort of stuff. It is 100% a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Incorporated. And this is.
- [18:43]
B
That pretenseless corruption is the good story. The more potentially bad story, as Warner lays out there, is that like, you know, I mean, Tulsi has pals in countries that are hostile to us. She has dismantled. There have been efforts in other countries. I mean, it hasn't been exactly in the way some people have said, like they didn't break into the machines, but there have been efforts by Russia, China, Iran, other countries to interfere in our elections already. And if she's out there making that easier on them while also participating in some fakacta effort to create rationale that like that there was some kind of fraud in the past that necessitates the changes that makes it easier for people to screw with election. You know, I just like there could be the Keystone Cops explanation or there really could be a pretty alarming explanation here given her position and her contact. So we'll keep monitoring all that. That's Andrew Egger. I got one more thing for everybody. If you stuck all the way to the end of this, you probably like us enough to come see us live. So save the date for our live tour. We're kicking off February 19th with our friends in the Twin Cities. We had to go to Minneapolis first. We'll be there February 19th. Then we're gonna head to Texas for one night in Dallas. March 18th. One night in Austin. March 19th. Minnesota tickets will go on sale tomorrow Friday and both Texas shows will be on sale next week. Watch your inboxes. Sign up@the bulloark.com if you're not getting our emails or go to the bulloark.com events thebuller.com events. Come hang with us. Minneapolis, St. Paul, Dallas, Austin subscribe to the feed here. Tell your friends we'll see you soon. Thanks, Edgar.