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- [00:01]
A
I'm here with spinquest where you can play and win from the comfort of your own home with hundreds of slot games and all of the table games you love with real cash prizes. Right now, $30 coin packs are on sale for $10. For new users, it's all@spinquest.com that's s p I n q U-E-T.com SpinQuest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details
- [00:31]
B
at Energy Trust of Oregon we know it isn't easy, the tremendous costs of maintaining a home, living in a house with drafty windows, poorly insulated spaces, or equipment that's running well past its prime. But we also know how to help you upgrade your systems, insulate your spaces and replace what is old with new energy efficient solutions. Find cash incentives@energytrust.org Energy Trust of Oregon More power to you.
- [01:00]
C
Hey guys, this is Andrew Egger with the Bulwark. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but 2028 is already right around the corner. We are gonna have presidential candidates coming out of our ears much sooner than any of us are prepared for. I guess in a sense it's fine. It's starting to look like, you know, at least as compared to this time last year, the odds of a Trump 3 coming down the pipe are a little bit diminished. The man is very unpopular. He's very old and tired. It's not clear he even really wants to. But never say never. And there are a lot of other Republicans that we're going to need to be familiarizing ourselves with. So jvl, our fearless leader, he wrote in his triad today, basically an early handicapping of the 2028 GOP field and we're going to talk about it a little bit. JBL want to talk us on a little bit. What's our first. First of all, maybe, maybe let's just put it this way. Who do you like? Who's in there? That's, that's fun and exciting and ready to, ready to, you know, set aside all of the likelihood things. But is there anybody in there that would, that would set your little Reformicon heart pitter pat going into 2028?
- [02:09]
D
No. And I just, I just want to say so for anybody who thinks that I was doing this just to stir things up or because I didn't have anything else to say. Uh, not true. We are either back on for our ceasefire or back off from our ceasefire. Who can say? Nobody knows. That's changing by the minute. Over the weekend. My best Friend Sarah Longwell sent me a notice from one of the polling aggregators saying that this surprise candidate had in the polling averages moved into a clear third place. And I saw this and my eyes popped open because this was a candidate who I have been talking about as the logical heir to MAGA for two, three, four years. And, and people had always laughed at me. And so I just wanted to take this opportunity to lay down a marker for when it happens because I want people to be able to look back and be like, wow, I can't believe that guy was so early on.
- [03:11]
C
This now's the moment if any of you guys are, you know, into games and things. Yes, exactly. It's Nikki Haley, everybody. Pause the video. Do five seconds of thinking right now. Predict who JBL is going to going to proclaim as his dark horse for 2028, because we're about to talk about him right now. And jvl, who is it? I mean, we all know the big names and I guess it's not really a surprise per se. But talk us through this, Talk us through this fella who has sort of emerged as an actual no fool and possibility for 2028 here, Donald J. Trump
- [03:43]
D
Jr. DJ TJ, I know what you're thinking. He makes his father look qualified and serious, kind of, I guess. And it sounds preposterous until you start to think about it for a couple minutes. And the first thing is that in the polls over the since January, in polling since January, whenever he is included on the ballot, he finishes second or third, which is crazy. And he is routinely beating Marco Rubio when he's included on, on the ballot. He's routinely in the mid Thai teens. And some of that is artifact of just name id. But on the other hand, he's not out there like J.D. vance and Marco Ruby are in the news every day. They're real politicians. People talk about them running for president. DJ TJ is this mascot for a lifestyle brand and he, he is off doing World Liberty Financial or whatever crazy amazingly smart genius business deals are that he is doing because he is such a great businessman and he's showing up and this tells you, I think that people are interested in it. Right? It isn't, this isn't preposterous like saying Eric Trump or Ivanka Trump. Right? I mean that there would actually be no viability there. But there is a viability for DJ tj and my thesis is that the more you think about it, the more a, it makes sense for him to want to run, even though so far he is mostly demurred. I was able to find one clip where he was like, well, maybe someday I'd think about the White House. But he's mostly not talked about it. And if you think about it, it makes sense as to why he would want to run. And also it makes sense why if he were to decide to run, I think he's the nominee, like really the, the only thing which prevents him from winning the nomination is him deciding not to seek it. And so I, I just having run the traps on this and we can talk about it if you like. My thesis is that if, if Donald J. Trump Jr. Chooses to run for president, he will be the Republican nominee. And I am so happy to just put that out into the universe because they say you should, you should never put horrible ideas out into the universe. I laugh at that.
- [06:14]
C
The thing that, that you said there that is most striking to me is the sort of like empty vessel MAGA lifestyle brand thing, right? Because I mean, this has been like an ongoing thing all through the Trump years is people have always wanted, and you know, various factions on the right have always wanted to kind imbue Trumpism with like, ideological content that just isn't there. Right. And you could see that, you know, for some of these other guys who are, you know, seen as the top runners for 2028, you know, JD Vance might come along and paint himself as the heir apparent to MAGA in a way that's more isolationist and more sort of like wonky, you know, in these various sort of like really online right wing ways about, you know, Stephen Miller, immigration policy and industrial policy to sort of like revolutionize the Rust Belt and all these sorts of things. Or you might have Marco Rubio come along and be like, no, you know, MAGA is actually just sort of like a sort of retooled version of the conservatism that came before it. That's, you know, matter at the media and more muscular, throws more elbows around, is less afraid of wielding state power, but it's basically the same thing. And alternatively to any of those things, because these are, these have all been kind of wishcasting projects, right? Like, it's never actually been true that the beating heart of MAGA is any of these things. The beating heart of MAGA has been the person of Donald Trump and this sort of loose lattice of grievances against different, different groups, elites in general, you know, the media, coastal people, public health, you know, like, you can kind of go down the list, but like anybody that they kind of perceive to be Sort of looking down on them is sort of the catch all thing. And Donald Trump Jr. Is a great inheritor for that because he really does not actually have any of these preexisting commitments. His commitments are to enriching the Trump family and talking up his father, the president. And that's kind of all you need, I guess. I guess I'm curious. Can we just talk a little bit because you go through in the triad today, sort of how Donald Trump Jr. Getting into the race would sort of complicate the paths of these other guys who are seen as the top contenders. Can you just kind of talk through your thinking of like what a, what a Vance run and what a Rubio run look like if they're trying to get out from under Don the son.
- [08:28]
D
So I don't think they can run. If so I think if, if Don Jr. Is going to run, it will be clear reasonably early that he's going to. And here's the other thing you have to understand. Donald Trump Senior, the current president, United States keeps publicly toying with the idea of running for a third term, which prohibits anybody who works in his administration from beginning the processes of running for president until he explicitly says I won't do this thing that's against the Constitution. So the field is effectively frozen in place until he's ready to unfreeze it. And if he decides to wait and not unfreeze it until he lays hands and anoints his only beloved, not his only his beloved son, you wind up having the legs cut out from anybody in the administration, especially J.D. vance and Marco Rubio, because I don't think they can actually run if, I mean, how can you be the sitting vice president? The guy who is like Donald Trump is our superhero. He's my everything. I trust him. I'm his serving vice president also. How dare he do this terrible thing. His son is a bum. Choose me instead. I, I don't think it's possible. And same thing for Marco Rubio. So if that happens, I think the field is cleared of anybody who is currently in the administration and really is cleared of anybody who wants to stay within MAGA and is, is not afraid of being cast into the outer darkness that would leave. There are still people on the outside. I think Tucker Carlson is the obvious choice there. Although by all reports he and Don Jr are close and maybe Tucker thinks that he could work with, with Don Jr. Maybe he thinks he doesn't want to challenge him. But if he were to. Right. I mean if you had a split where Tucker ran as like more populist in a weird way. Again, all of Don Jr's empty vessel stuff winds up helping him because I promise you, the Wall Street Journal editorial page in a in a contest where they had to choose between Donald Trump Jr. And Tucker Carlson would choose Junior, right? Because they would look at him and be like, oh well, we can work with that. He's transactional. He doesn't believe any of the crazy stuff he does, all the lib triggering and the last thing he does is he punts the big Gadar Dammerung showdown between the various MAGA factions. Right now there are some factions within MAGA and they do care about what comes after Trump and none of them really think they have the goods to take control of the move the movement or control the party. And if you just stick with the dynastic guy and you say, oh well, we'll just stay in the family, that means that you're not settling any of those ideological disputes now and it gives everybody more time to jockey. So I just think again, it makes all the sense in the world. And I have trouble thinking of somebody who could run on the Republican side, who could beat Don Jr. If he decided to swing for the fences here. I mean, do you, do you agree? How would you see it working if somebody were to try to take him down?
- [11:46]
C
Bulwark Takes is sponsored by Shopify here's the thing about shopping on the Internet. You might be doing it when you're tired, right before you head to bed. If your credit card isn't lying around, it's very easy to just switch tabs and never follow through on the purchase you intended. That is no good if you're a business trying to convert customers in your online store. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses all around the world. 10% of all E commerce in the US from household names like Allbirds or Death Wish Coffee to brands just getting started. Maybe yours. Accelerate your efficiency Whether you're uploading new products or trying to improve existing ones, Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. Get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. Best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to to processing returns and beyond. What if people haven't heard about my brand? Shopify helps you find your customers with easy to run email and social media campaigns. See fewer carts go abandoned and more Sales go with Shopify and their Shop Pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com bulwarktakes go to shopify.com bulwarktake that's shopify.com bulwarktaineS yeah, I mean, I sort of struggle with this because I think there are two pressures that kind of move different direct. And the one pressure is that the Republican Party has spent the last decade building itself into the kind of machine that almost cannot but proceed along exactly the lines that you're laying out here, where when Trump says something, it basically doesn't matter. Nothing else basically matters. You can try to sort of sail crosswise across the winds of Trump Senior's utterances and try to kind of finagle in different ways the way that he pronounces things into being to your advantage and use those in sort of like to get little advantages against your various oblique positional opponents on different things. But if he sets himself straight against you, I mean, Ron DeSantis had this problem in 2024, right? If he sets himself straight against you, you're just stuck. You just can't do it. There's nowhere to go. But on the other side of it, the cross pressure to this is that despite all of that still holding true, basically within the Republican Party of today, the whole movement is much smaller and just shakier and worse off than it was even a year ago. You know, like, he's just losing a lot of supporters. Right.
- [14:27]
D
Not within the Republican Party, though.
- [14:29]
C
No. Sure, sure. But let me, let me, let me finish laying this out, because I think you're totally right. Like, like within the core of the core, it's. They're all still with him, you know, ride or die till Judgment Day. And if that does hold together 100%, it is enough to a Republican primary. And yet, like, I can't help but wonder, like, whether, whether this whole weird trap that they're all in where, like, nobody can win MAGA except a Trump. But. But the Trumps are looking really shaky right now. And again, we're still years away. Who knows what other nonsense we'll have been forced to endure. What other kind of factional cracks will appear? So, like, part of me wonders if it's. If it's none of these guys, you know, if it's, if it's, if it's neither JD nor Marco nor Junior nor Tucker and, like, we're just sailing toward Dana White biggest sort of like, party collapse and sort of, like, vacuum of power for, like, Any random schmo to kind of catch and, I mean, do you actually think that MAGA in its current configuration, is durable enough to nominate the next Republican presidential contender? I guess is my question.
- [15:31]
D
Yes, I think absolutely it is. If you are going to take over the party from MAGA, it isn't that Donald Trump Jr. Is unbeatable. It's that you can't beat him in an election. So what you have to do is to convince him not to run. And so that would be the task of somebody like J.D. right. Like J.D. will win or lose the fight for the nomination just based on who decides to run. What he has to do is keep people out of the field. He has to keep Tucker from running, convince Tucker not to worry that, like, I'll do everything you want to do. He's got to convince Don Jr. Don't worry. I'll take care of everything. You don't want the hassle. You can keep making money, et cetera, et cetera, and that's how you do that. If. If Junior decides not to run, I think somebody like JD could hold the party together for an election. I don't know, long term, I think it becomes harder. I think somebody like Tucker could hold the party together, at least in the short term, you know, for one election. But, so what I started asking myself then was, okay, so if the way to get, to get past Don Jr. Is to convince him not to run, well, how would you do that from his perspective, why would Don Jr. Want to run? And what I came up with is, like, actually, by the logic of how the Trump family operates, it makes all the sense in the world that, of course he would want to run. And the answer is, our friends at the center for American Progress have what they call the Trump Tracker, where they keep track of all of the ways in which the Trump family has enriched themselves. And they. They believe that the Trump net worth was at about 2.9 billion, I want to say 2.9 billion when he took office this last time, and now it's at 6.2 billion that he has been just sort of given in, like, hard, tangible assets, about $2 billion worth of, like, gifts and stuff. And this is not paper value. This is, like, stuff that he has already realized the gains of. And why. Why has he gotten that? Why is the Trump family gotten it? And the answer is because they hold power of the United States government. If they don't hold power over the United States government, a lot of that goes away. There will be some grift like you can sell Trump watches to, to stupid people. But in order to have, like, Middle Eastern kingdoms thinking it's worth their while to bribe you to the tune of, like, hundreds of millions of dollars, they're not going to do that if you don't have either a hold on the White House or the potential to retake the White House in the future. And so if you're the Trump family and you're trying to figure out, well, how do we preserve access to that revenue stream, the answer is some one of you, either the sitting president or his son, has to be the party's nominee in 2028. And in a weird way, it might be preferable if it was junior, because if junior runs in 2028 and loses, so long as he won the nomination, even if he loses the general election for the next four years, he's the presumed front runner for 2032. And so now you're looking at like, six more years where you're able to plausibly represent to other parties that it is worth their while to pay you.
- [19:07]
C
You are uttering the most unspeakable sentences right now.
- [19:10]
D
Jbl.
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C
I was impaired even going, no, I'm not ready to sit here. It's just grim. It's just really grim to hear that. It is kind of fun to contemplate.
- [19:22]
D
It just has a logic all of its own, doesn't it?
- [19:24]
C
Yeah, yeah, 100%. But I like the idea of Don Jr. And Don Sr. Basically switching roles. You know, you have Junior going into the White House and then it's, it's Senior who just gets to sort of schmooze all over, you know, Qatar and the UAE and sort of rake in, rake in the deals.
- [19:41]
D
He runs the Board of Peace and he, and maybe the Iranians do a lot of work on their toll booth and see if they can get some of that proceeds. Because I, I mean, I just assume that the end of this war comes when Iran realizes that all they have to do is say, we're proposing a $2 million toll and we split it with you, Mr. Trump. I am sorry. Whatever else they want to do, if they propose that deal to Donald Trump, he's going to take it. Right.
- [20:16]
C
Let me return really quickly to the structural question of the I'm going too far out there even for you nomination. I just don't want to even think these thoughts right now. It's Monday. Save it for the middle of the week or something. But, but, but I just wanted to ask about, because, because there's, there's two other things about the nominee. I feel like you've basically convinced me that if he wants it, he has an absolute straight shot to the MAGA lane in this primary, which is, you know, until proven otherwise, the winning lane. But I did want to just kind of kick around the two other possible types of candidate that you could see, which is, you know, the kind that we got in 2024, which was, you know, the sort of like, fossilized old Republican Party kind of kicking up Nikki Haley to be like, you know, let's see if she can do anything. And. And obviously she never posed a challenge, but she did, you know, when it was finally just her and Trump, you know, she was still pulling what, like 25, 30% in a bunch of primaries. So there's. There's some energy there. Right. And then the other potential faction is the castoffs from maga, you know, the exiles, the people who have been cutting bait over various actual policy things, who are unlike JD in or unlike JD Vance in the sense that while JD Looks at something like the war in Iran and is privately horrified, but, you know, has absolutely no choice but to sort of stick with it, you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Candace Owens and like you said, Tucker Carlson, who potentially represents, you know, a sort of breakaway faction to the more nativist side, to the more isolationist side, to the more sort of conspiracy brand crank side. And people like this are plainly sort of gathering steam to actually make some noise in Republican primaries from here on out, you know, Nick Fuentes and guys like this. So you could see a world where, you know, this. This MAGA faction, which is locked down if he wants it, by Donald Trump Jr. It has to deal with these two flanking pressures on both sides. I mean, do you. Do you see that as. As a. An actual problem if he gets there, or is this just going to be another situation where it's like 20%, 20%, 60%, he's the nominee.
- [22:27]
D
I mean, I got to say so, you know, we often joke that Never Trumpers, the Republicans who refused to get on board with Trump represented a vanishingly small percentage of the population.
- [22:41]
C
Right.
- [22:43]
D
I think the MAGA defectors are going to wind up being smaller as a percentage than the Never Trumpers. Like, I just. How many are going to be. Is it going to be Marjorie Taylor Greene and who else? I mean, Tucker will be back on side. Joe Rogan is back on side already. The number of MAGAs who will really stay off of this, maybe it'll change. I have a hard time believing that, though. There's just too much power There, there's, I don't know. Again, I'd have to really see that to believe that that is more than like 7%, 10% tops, like absolute tops. And I think that having a guy like Trump Jr. Allows everybody to believe what they want to believe. Right. The Wall Street Journal can believe that. You know, he's not old and addled like, like his dad was. He won't do the tariff stuff. He'll understand how important it is to keep the stock market going. The crypto Bros will be like, he gets us. He's one of us. The people who love lib triggering will be like, he's the greatest lib trigger ever. Look how, look how much all the libs and the anti Trumpers hate this guy. And all of the, the nativists will be able to be like, you know what, his dad was always just saying it to keep us on board. But Junior really believes it. And I don't think there's anything in his background to disprove anybody's belief of these things. Like, everybody, everyone just project what they want onto him and he's safe. And also the, again, the personal cost of choosing to run against him. For anybody who thinks they want a future, just they. All they have to do is look at what happened to Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and Mike Pence and Chris Christie and say, do I want to become one of those guys? Because those guys are roadkill. Like, we now understand that if you run against the Trump family, you become political roadkill. It was untested before 2024. We just thought it would be that way.
- [24:48]
C
The thing that happened to Ron DeSantis
- [24:49]
D
in particular, yes, there should be a huge deterrent effect in here.
- [24:53]
C
I think we're going to keep following all this along, you know, putting it
- [24:56]
D
out into the world.
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C
Andrew, as 2028 gets closer and closer, we will unfortunately have to talk about all of this stuff more and more. But we can leave it there for now. We have already, like I said, put enough unsettling thoughts out there into the world for, for our people to sort of become poisoned by. I find it almost too horrible even to think, like, this idea that you're putting forward that, like, we may end up in a world where five consecutive presidential elections have a Trump as the Republican nominee, you know, dating from 2016. What it was at 16, 2024, 28 and 32. But it's, you know, I'm poking at different parts of the logic train and I'm coming up empty so far. So we'll come back to it. I'll try to think of some good reasons why this should not keep me up at night from now until 2032.
- [25:47]
D
Tell us in the comments if you can find any holes in it, I want to hear it.
- [25:50]
C
Thanks jbl for coming and talking through your early handicapping of the 28 contest. Obviously there's also plenty of other problems, you know, more immediate things. You know, we have to deal with the straight of Hormuz and 96 other more pressing authoritarian issues. So maybe we can just maybe those will just sort of shove all of this out of our brains for a little while yet before we really have to swallow the bitter pill and really start thinking about it. But thanks JBL for coming on and talking about it. Thanks to you guys all out there for watching. Hope you subscribe to the channel on YouTube or on Substack. Wherever you are, go subscribe to the Triad. JBL wrote this stuff down and it's lovely. It's great newsletter. So that's over@the bulwark.com, but thanks everybody and we'll talk to you soon.
- [26:30]
D
Being an American right now is a wild ride. Donald Trump and his administration keep testing the limits of American democracy. From ICE deportations to environmental race rollbacks to sweeping tariffs, the headlines come fast. What do they mean for real people's lives? On Crooked Media's newest podcast, Runaway country, veteran journalist Alex Wagner brings those stories to the surface. Alex talks to people across the political spectrum to uncover how this political chaos is shaping their everyday lives. This is a great show. I love Alex Wagner. I love Runaway Country. It is one of the podcasts that I personally no kayfabe listen to every week because it's sensational. If you want to understand what's happening right now, you should be listening to it. Listen to Runaway country with Alex Wagner every Thursday. Wherever you get our podcasts or watch full episodes on YouTube, forget everything you
- [27:25]
A
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- [27:54]
B
at Energy Trust of Oregon we know it isn't easy the tremendous costs of maintaining a home, living in a house with drafty windows, poorly insulated spaces, or equipment that's running well past its prime. But we also know how to help you upgrade your systems, insulate your spaces and replace what is old with new energy efficient solutions. Find cash incentives@energytrust.org Energy Trust of Oregon More power to you.
- [28:23]
E
I sold my car in Carvana last night.
- [28:25]
B
Well, that's cool.
- [28:26]
E
No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
- [28:32]
B
So what's the problem?
- [28:33]
E
That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.
- [28:37]
B
Maybe there's no catch.
- [28:38]
E
That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
- [28:41]
B
Wow. You need to relax.
- [28:42]
E
I need to knock on wood. Do we have. What is this? Table wood?
- [28:45]
B
I think it's laminate.
- [28:46]
E
Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.
- [28:47]
B
Car selling without a catch Sell your
- [28:50]
D
car today on Carvana. Pick up.
- [28:52]
B
These may apply.