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The People Are The Only Solution to Trump (w/ Sarah Longwell) | Bulwark on Sunday
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- [00:00]
Bill Kristol
Hi, Bill Kristol here with the Bulwark on Sunday. We're on at 10am Eastern Time today instead of our usual noon because of scheduling. But very pleased to have Sarah Longwell with me. And we're going to. What are we going to do, Sarah? We're going to cheer people up, update people on the situation. I did that secret podcast with JBL Friday.
- [00:19]
Sarah Longwell
What, too bleak?
- [00:20]
Bill Kristol
It was bleak. It was dark. You know, you need to. I was, you were away for a couple days with your family. Well earned, little break. And you should. I, as I said to you in attacks, you should not go away because it just leaves me and JBL there to reinforce our bleak view of things. Yeah, you had a nice break.
- [00:41]
Sarah Longwell
It did. Spring break, short thing, but good time with the family. And I'm back. But I know. I appreciate all my subs. I had a lot of travel in March, guys. April, wide open skies.
- [00:53]
Bill Kristol
Great. Yeah, no, I'm here for April, too. It's. I'm looking forward to it. Okay, so let's talk. You, I don't know. What do you want to begin? I mean, JVL and I were sort of focused on the progress of the authoritarian, Trump's authoritarian project, which I think has progressed maybe more than even we expected, but certainly more than a lot of other people expected. And some lack of resistance, lack of effective resistance, both from the Democrats and from, you know, law firms and universities and so forth. So you focused an awful lot on the resistance, the opposition, how it could be done better that it can be done at all. What do you think?
- [01:29]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, you know, I'll start by without JVL here, missing, missing my best friend, and with due respect to him, I thought his diagnosis of the problem is more or less correct in the sense that the idea that everybody today, law firms, media, like they're all acting like the Republican party of roughly 2018 as it started to collapse. Right. Like they were starting to run out anybody who was standing up and opposing them. But Trump faced opposition in, in his first term, Right. He had faced a ton of internal opposition and he faced institutional opposition. And they've pretty much figured out how to make everyone, either by running them out or by forcing them to bow to their whims, the media institutions, by threatening them, by making them feel threatened. You. We were at something recently where somebody asked the question, there's a term that's kind of used in the democracy world right now, closing civic spaces or the chilling of civic spaces. So what does that mean? And it means essentially this. And I Think it's something that goes under thought about when we sort of think like, why is everybody being such a coward? Which is how much menace Donald Trump brings with his newfound sort of swagger and what he calls a mandate from the people. And this is why he feels fine threatening Greenland and, you know, threatening Canada. It's all really dominance politics. And people are caving in the face of dominance politics really quickly. And one of the things I, I was trying to, I was trying to explain this to somebody the other day, and I, I remembered how when it came time for impeachment, when you were asking people why they wouldn't vote for impeachment, people would say things. This was in public reports, but you'd. People would just say the line, well, I've got kids. This is some of Mitt Romney stuff. And the implication there is the level of threat that they bring to one's family and to one's person when they stand up is more than I can bear. And so that menace now is like rippling through our entire society. And most people are unwilling to fight. That's the bleak part. That's the assessment JVL was making. That's the part I think is correct.
- [03:49]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. Just one footnote that I think it's such a good, useful way of thinking about it, which is what's happening, what happened to the Republican Party. And we all saw, and so many people lamented and non Republicans said, and some of us ex Republicans said, oh, my God, how can this be happening? That's, in a way is the forebear, the harbinger of what we're now seeing. And people maybe have a better understanding of how easy. Easy is not the right word, but what's the right word? How conditions can really lead to a kind of incremental collapse and people can talk themselves into things and rationalize things. And we're a combination of fear and ambition and just going along to get along. And anyway, I think it's a useful analogy because it does. We have seen this before, right? It's not something like totally. We've never experienced, you know.
- [04:36]
Sarah Longwell
No. And you're right that it is a combination. I think at this point, having watched a lot of this now for almost a decade, we can assess pretty clearly that Disney caves in part out of fear of what they will do and in part out of thinking, well, this is a very transactional person, a very transactional government. If we work with them, we will get what we want. And so that combination kind of fuses together into what looks like cowardice in part, because the cowardice that we're thinking of is the unwillingness to put the greater sort of American experiment, like democracy, the idea of sort of caving to the fascists, right. People are doing it because they're like, well, I've got shareholders. There's a story that they can tell themselves that isn't saying, boy, I'm afraid. It's one of saying, well, I've got to protect my shareholders. I've got to protect my employees. I've got to protect my family. And you, you take this psychological piece. I don't like to get in Trump's mind, but I feel pretty confident getting in the minds of the people who cave, in part because I listen to people all the time. And you can quickly understand that there's a way that people are like, well, I'm not being a coward, you know, I've just got. I've got people to protect. And so. And you saw this with the law firms recently, right?
- [05:47]
Bill Kristol
Very clearly. The Paul Weiss letter is literally what you said. That's. Incidentally, don't you think it's actually has. How should I put this? It's more effective if they do this than if they just say, I'm scared. No one wants to be part of a group that's just timid and scared. But look, I have ethical obligations to our clients. I have ethical obligations to our colleagues here. I can't just put them all at risk. You know, we can give a little bit here, some photo work with some of it, we do it anyway, you know, and as a result, I'm doing the right thing. The claim that they're doing the right thing, I think is very important, but very bad, because it makes the caving. How should I put it, you know, seem more plausible, right? I mean, not plausible, more defensible than otherwise.
- [06:28]
Sarah Longwell
Look, I mean, rationalization is sort of a key to how people get to these places. And the other thing is the sort of blame. That letter is a really good example of this, and one in which you can sort of tick through the psychological factors that allow this stuff to happen. And one is to say we became aware that people were coming to poach our clients, right? Because they knew that we were now with the eye of Sauron, had fallen upon us. We were, you know, in the breach, and they were using it against us. And so we had no choice. And so not only are you not to blame, but these other malign actors are to blame. Right? They're taking advantage of it, which is true, by the way. It Is it like there's truth in a lot of this? It is gross that in this moment, whether it's media companies that didn't rush to the AP's defense or law firms that didn't rush to their fence or universities, when you fall into the collective action problem or what is it where they. You let people pick you off one by one like, you are the. The. A gazelle. You know, the lions are coming for you, and they isolate one of you. The herd is the protection. Right. The safety in numbers is a real thing. And the fact that people aren't exercising that now to protect the broader. Yeah, just the broader project of what's happening, to fight back against what's happening. Instead, they're doing the first. They came for them and I said nothing stuff. Right. Okay. So that's the problem.
- [08:02]
Bill Kristol
Right.
- [08:02]
Sarah Longwell
And so what's the solution in the face of that? The solution is obviously. And this is where I think JBL also gets it right, is sort of. He was using the word solidarity, which rubs me and my, like, old conservative instincts just slightly wrong, because it's very like, solidarity, brothers and sisters of the. You know, whatever. That's. That's always. It's not quite for me, but it is true that all of us in a broad sort of coalition, protecting one another is deeply important. And hoping that you just get eaten last is not a good strategy. It is the strategy for ruin. And so JBL laid out kind of a populist activist way of fighting back, which kind of had AOC at the center. And so I'd like to take. I'd like to build on what he did and. But take it in a slightly different direction because there were. I have some critiques of it. So one is when you have a movement that, like, I am concerned that aoc, You. You and I were in Phoenix, right? We're in Phoenix. And Bernie and AOC had just been in Phoenix. And there were people at our live show who had also been at the Bernie and AOC rallies. And I was like, who are you people? Like, who. Who were the. Who was the audience fraud coalition?
- [09:28]
Bill Kristol
Sarah, get with it. You know.
- [09:29]
Sarah Longwell
Well, that's actually. That's sort of the point, right? And I expressed this at the live show, but I think it's really true. My concern is, is that because AOC and Bernie are the ones who are willing to go out there and say something at the moment which good on them. This is not me criticizing them. This is me saying, thank God somebody is standing up because a supine Congress, a Supine Democratic Party has been part of the problem these last couple of months. And so anybody jumping in is good. The problem is, I think it does need to be. You run the risk of it becoming a progressive, like a political movement, as opposed to a broad coalitional anti Trump movement, which is what you need for this, for this sort of thing to thrive. Right. People have to feel like everybody is welcome in this coalition, not just progressive Democrats. And so, and this is especially true, I think, at moments when you like, I think it's true when you're trying to win elections, but for people for whom you say, well, we have political differences with those people. And this again is something JBL says in his newsletter that I think is right is, you know, you don't want, you want everybody like, you can't, you can't let your sort of personal political policy disagreements get in the way of the broadest coalition possible to push back against Trump. Right. Everybody has to feel welcome in it. Which means, which brings me to one of the most important things that we need that is absent right now and is only just very slightly starting to emerge, which is leaders. Right? Movements need leaders. And so I would say that like AOC and Bernie fine, but you need the rest of the spectrum out there, preferably all together, preferably demonstrating like solidarity isn't like the fist progressive 1960 solidarity. I think that's a loser. I think broad based coalitional solidarity in which people say, look, we can all agree that what is happening here isn't okay, is deeply important from our leaders to sort of demonstrate the big tent and the big umbrella. So I'll just stop there and let.
- [11:38]
Bill Kristol
You react to that as no, that's great. I mean, and do you think the leaders. So I guess I have two points. One, I just, my footnote to what you said is I think the leaders could be different people for different issues. So that if it's the signal gates, you know, insanity, let the veterans and the people flee who have military intelligence experience, be Seth Bolton and Jake Auklaus and Jason Crowe and Melissa Slot can explain just how terrible this is if it's what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is doing to HHS. And as Jonathan Cohen says this morning and very good piece in the Bulwark on the Bulwark website and is gutting our opioid prevention efforts. Let people who. Let the physicians speak up. And you know, I think there are a lot of. Right. I mean, I don't, I don't, I think having leaders doesn't mean one leader necessarily for now. Do you agree with that?
- [12:21]
Sarah Longwell
I totally agree. And in fact, for a mass movement. Right, For a mass movement. And this is where I guess my biggest deviation from JVL is, is I don't want Bernie and AOC to be the singular representatives. It's too easy to dismiss, like, just forget my personal policy preferences aside, thinking just strategically as a matter of broadest impact. Right. You want them to put lots of different people forward so there's different avatars for people to sort of tag on to and say, oh, yeah, this is a movement for me too. Not me too, but like, me as well. And so, but, but leadership is deeply important, and I think that it can be Democrats, but it doesn't need to be elected officials. Right.
- [13:06]
Bill Kristol
I was just going to ask about that. How much of it should be elected officials or federal officials? How much could it be? Yeah. Prominent physicians who are saying, you know, this is. I've been in this field for 30 years, that it's going to damage our biomedical research and our healthcare ultimately and so forth.
- [13:21]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that it can be anybody because the, the, the antidote to the clothing. Closing civic spaces due to fear. Right. Why aren't people speaking up? We've acknowledged that there's real fear, which requires then bravery. Right. Bravery from people willing to put themselves out there at a moment when these guys are starting to test every boundary of how hard they can go at people. And so you're seeing people move to Canada. Okay, I mean, I guess. But if you're like, look, I see things clearly and so I'm moving to Canada, my response would be like, that is not how we solve this. Like, we are going to solve this by people really fighting, by people saying, like, no, from every corner that we can muster, the medical community, the military community, everybody's saying, God, what is happening right now is outrageous. And I have expertise in this. And that doesn't mean we're, we're, we're defending crusty old institutions or anything like that. We are just looking at what Trump is doing and saying, this is not who we are. And so I think that bravery is extremely important from elites. I mean, look, I made this case the whole time going into the Trump thing, and people didn't do it. Our generals didn't step up, our generals didn't talk to people directly about the threat, and now here we are. And so I think there's a way in which people fight the last battle. Right. And so they say, well, we didn't win with, you know, everybody sort of going speaking out against Trump or whatever. And I'm like, that's like saying, we never tried this thing and it didn't work. Like, we really have not had since Trump's inauguration the first time, kind of a mass movement against him, and we need to start facilitating that. But doesn't mean just hodgepodge groups getting in the streets, because those are just going to be your biggest sort of partisans. And you need it to be kind of a movement of normies. And I use normies advisedly in the sense that, I mean, it has to be things that are felt by people who are not animated by politics necessarily, but by a resistance, to use a phrase, of what is happening in this moment. Which brings me to my next sort of big thing that I think needs to happen, which is the reason that that happens isn't because of democracy. Our friend Bill Galston says this, and I think it's very true that democracy is not known by its roots, it is known by its fruits. And so the things that are happening to people are going to be the accelerants for why average people decide that this administration is not doing a good job, which is what we need. We need Trump to be at 32%. Like, just set that as a benchmark. We want Trump to be at 32% because at that point, he becomes deeply politically ineffectual. He becomes more of a liability than an asset. Now, we've always thought that his hardest hardcore people are around the 30% mark. And so how do you get him down?
- [16:29]
Bill Kristol
Just on the practical effect of knocking him down, incidentally, is not. I mean, it's public opinion in general, and it's a predicate for 20, 26 and so forth. But actually, since to stop a lot of things from happening, we need four Republican senators and four Republican House members to defect. That is so I think, God knows they seem very resistant to defecting, but I think at 35%, the odds of getting them to defect, some of them on some issues, not all about everything, but enough on some key issues to really start to chip away at the sense that he's in charge, that he's got everything under control. I think the whole dynamic changes at that point, and there is a bit of a spiral. Right? He's benefited from the opposite spiral. He's so strong, he gets all these horrible nominees through. We fight, then we lose, and then it's like, geez, you can get anything done. You know, he can get all these guys confirmed. If the opposite could happen, too, though, I think if he's reversed on some Robert Kennedy Jr. Thing here and the military thing there and the economic, the tariffs here. I mean, I think there's a real chance to chip away. Do you seem to be a little more optimistic that he could be chipped away at than other people?
- [17:32]
Sarah Longwell
I do. And, but here's why. And I think, I think that the reason that people get stuck on that, it's impossible. Like you just said something, you said, we have to get these four Republicans in the Senate and the House and everybody goes, oh, well, that'll never happen. Because it probably won't in the near term. The only way it happens. And this is my point, and this is where JV and Elle and I have like the most fundamental difference. And he seemed to kind of pick this up in his newsletter and I was talking about this in the Phoenix show. JBL thinks people are the problem. I think people are the solution. And they're basically the only solution that we have. And here's the thing, the fear that I talked about at the beginning, that tends to be more a province of people who are in some ways like high profile or near the powers, you know, like people they want to shut up. Right. Whereas in any individual person who's quite a bit further from that doesn't have that same kind of fear like I'm talking about. And this is the key, every person who is suffering negative personal consequences as a result of the Trump administration's policies, you can't get your Social Security check, you can't get somebody to help you at the offices because they're closing them. You suddenly can't have get access to vaccines. You used to get access to the tariffs are destroying your small business, whatever it is. This isn't about democracy. This is about the fruits, right? This is about what people experience in their lives and it is about getting them to tell those stories to each other. Because people, just individuals, are more credible to each other than anybody at the elite level. And so I don't think about it in terms of elites. I think about it in terms of a mass movement and I think about it less in terms of solidarity, quasi dairy and more about we are all suffering under the same bad policy regime. And, and like that extends in this broad way. And how do we get people to tell those stories so that the main dominant story that people hear about the Trump administration is it is causing lots of Americans harm in all kinds of ways. And so I think that. And the way that you get for Republicans to abandon him, right? I mean, I think people showing up at these town halls is good because you want to demonstrate that people are angry. That angry though that anger needs to turn into a mass movement and I think as the negative personal consequences of a lot of what the administration is doing, you know, we will see more of that. But I think the job of leaders then is to encourage people to tell those stories. Like it can be symbiotic where the like a Democratic Democrats, they're probably not going to lead on this. They're going to need people to lead them. They're going to need to feel like there's a movement behind them to speak. And that's pathetic on one hand. But that is I think how it's going to work. Like we are going to need people to start reacting and I think the.
- [20:36]
Bill Kristol
Leaders don't have to be super well known or super high up. They could be. I mean if it's a time for.
- [20:43]
Sarah Longwell
New leaders to be born, well that's it.
- [20:44]
Bill Kristol
And I think you see that though that who's resigning from the law firms in protests, 30 year old associates who resigned from the Justice Department about the most eloquent letter. Many people have resigned at this point but Danielle Sassoon, who's 40 I think in New York resigned from the Southern district of New York. I think somehow elevating those people more and again because people as you say will react mostly to practical effects on them but they also want to see people they admire or people they might identify with or people they would like their kids to turn out to be like you know, if they're older, my age, you know, sort of the, they want to see that kind of person out there standing up. Right. It's not just career politicians or a Democratic senator from a Democratic, from a safe Democratic state and which is fine, they should do their thing but I think somehow getting those in between leaders if that's the right way to think of it, you know, not already super famous. Not Jim Mattis necessarily not, you know.
- [21:36]
Sarah Longwell
Well Jim Mattis isn't going to help us out here.
- [21:37]
Bill Kristol
So let's not former President Bush. So all those people, you know, whatever. Right. But some of the younger members of Congress, some of the younger but younger just people in civil society too. Yeah, I think that's, that's the trick. We should you know that would be worth really obviously we are going to, we are trying to help people do that but I think that's a good focus and people, people are too much. I go to these I'm going actually taking off for Boston shortly to speak at one of these Kinds of conferences you've been at many of a Democratic Party funder types and all in there. It's always why isn't Hakeem Jeffries doing this? Why isn't Chuck Schumer doing that? And I have my own issues with, with Jeffries, especially with Schumer and, and with some of the other leaders, governors and so forth. But I think they're not the solution, right?
- [22:19]
Sarah Longwell
They are not. And I will say, look, I am, I'm sort of a down with the gerontocracy type anyway at this point. I think that the problem and, and, and not always. I gotta say I'm actually a big believer in experience. I just think the problem is this is a very unique moment. And one of the things that I think a lot of the, the meetings that we're going to and the elite level conversations are really missing is, and this goes back to fighting the last battle is they're kind of looking back and wondering what everybody got wrong. And I don't think, I think that's a useful exercise. I did a. Yesterday my podcast with Jen Psaki came out. We're still litigating 2024, but I do think that what is required is people being clear eyed about the moment that we're in. And I think when you get somebody like Schumer saying things like, well, I've gotten more Democrats elected than anybody. He's just living in an old paradigm. You know, Joe Biden and his team were living in an old media paradigm and all of that stuff has changed. And so it's not that I'm just saying like, well, we need younger people, but I do think we need people who are native so to speak of sort of the media moment that we're living in. Because Democrats are congenitally, for some reason very timid, very risk averse. And this is just a moment for people to be bold. And it's for, I think people who talk about doing things a lot of the old ways are going to get left behind. Like this is a moment to break new ground in how we communicate and how we demonstrate bravery. And I will say this is again going back to. I think that people making individual tiktoks and insta reels, these are things I'm not even on. But flooding the zone with their stories of the way that they're being impacted should generate then from elites a sense of okay, here's how people are being harmed. I can help encourage more people to do this in part by being out there myself. I think, you know, cowardice Kind of just like courage is contagious, so is cowardice. Right. And so when everybody's telling themselves that they're justified in keeping their heads down, it just gets a lot of people with their heads down. Everyone's getting steamrolled. And so people right now, they're like, well I don't want to be the one to put my head up over the parapet because it's going to get shot off. But you know, we've, it's like kind of need Spartacus moments, right? Everybody being willing to say I'm here and I'm going to speak up. And I think if we get over this collective action problem or collective inaction problem, I should so to that we can, we can get somewhere. That's what it's going to take.
- [25:02]
Bill Kristol
One way to get over the collective action problem. I was thinking this as you were speaking is of course there are people who have acted already. I think I come back to the people who have quit, who have resigned from positions they didn't want to resign from. They enjoyed being at the, and really valued being at the Department of Justice and being part of the American legal system. They valued being in charge of vaccines at NIH and, and really doing a lot of good for a lot of people. That's what their career, that was their ambition, that was their, their hope. They gave it up. And I do think they could really be elliptus. They are, they've already acted. It's not like asking people to do things in the future. I mean that's also fine, right? And I do think they, maybe we could do more, others could do more to really elevate those people. And yes, as you say, I mean the fact that Democratic members of Congress are opposing a Republican president isn't that newsworthy. And sometimes it just seems like politics as usual. It needn't be. And I think on some issues some of them have stepped up and explained pretty well why this is so horrifying. You know, the, the signal stuff and all that if you're from the intelligence community and, and stuff. But I, I don't quite know how to do that. How do you lift up some of these mid level voices? I'm going to call the younger voices too and really because I do think people will be inspired to some degree and then, then when they also affected themselves personally by the cutbacks in health services or in a million other things or they see farm that we're now buddies with Russia and enemies with Denmark or Canada, you know, it's, they think oh my God. Or that some of the deportations, you know, there's just so many things people can get moved by. Different people will get moved by different things. I don't know, elevating those, those, those new voices really is a. Some of it will happen organically, I suppose. Right.
- [26:45]
Sarah Longwell
But yeah, I think part of the problem that Democrats run into is sustainability of things. So you, you know the name of Danielle Sassoon, and. And as do I, because she was one of the first people to really stand up at a moment when nobody else was. And it was really important. But I think Danielle Sassoon was somebody who in her own just being able to sleep at night, had to stand up, but she did not crave than like a lot of additional attention. And in fact, I think some of this in the first term became a bit of a problem, right. As you got some sort of people who seemed very attention seeky in the way that they were doing it. And it kind of besmirched some of it. People were like, oh, well, you just want to like, get a sinecure on msnbc. And it seemed a little. And I think you're gonna. So some of these people, their heroine heroism needs to be sort of acknowledged and sustained in a way where people get to know who they are, why they do it. But like, she didn't go on a media tour.
- [27:46]
Bill Kristol
No.
- [27:47]
Sarah Longwell
And, and that, I think, is for the worse. And so how do we. How do. And like, you think about this, this.
- [27:55]
Bill Kristol
Is like the better for her. I mean, it's for the worse for us.
- [27:59]
Sarah Longwell
But think about how, you know, what's that guy's name who was the lawyer for Stormy Daniels? Like, he became like a resistance superhero. And they like burn bright and then flame out because you realize, oh, this person's such a scumbag. And so. But these, these people who are not scumbags, we've sort of got to figure out, like, who is. Does it. Does somebody show up and say, hey, you did a super brave thing and like, we want to help you. We want to have, you know, there's all this, I think, pent up money right now that's not going to Democrats. And people are like, what can I do? And this is the thing. People are like, what can I do? And I have two things. One is protect. Help protect the people who are doing it, help keep them safe, whether that's supporting them or supporting organizations that are supporting them, which is probably the more practical way to do it. Then the other one is to encourage people to tell their stories publicly. You as an individual, are actually safer than a lot of the people at the elite level that the Trump administration will go after. They're much less likely to try to go after, you know, thousands of just regular people saying, I've been harmed in this way. They're much more afraid of people than they are of elites, because they can besmirch elites. They can make you out to be a monster. They can find ways to go after you, and people are scared about that. But individuals who are just living their lives like you guys have the power right now, we need to help people understand that.
- [29:21]
Bill Kristol
And can we practically do that? I mean, we, under your leadership, we did pretty good job, I think, of getting Republican voters against Trump up and going. And a lot of regular people, it takes. Took a lot of work, obviously, to get these people find them, help them do their, you know, just help them mechanically do their videos and then, of course, make them circulate them on, around on digital media and sometimes on paid media. Is that doable in a sort of less electoral, less partisan context where you're trying to get regular people to talk about the effects of terrorists or the effects of Social Security offices closing? And I mean, or different groups, I guess, could do it different. Way differently. Right. There are groups that in touch with a lot of Social Security recipients. But I think your advice to them all would be to kind of focus on the regular people, right?
- [30:05]
Sarah Longwell
That is my advice. And also, and obviously, you know, this, I'm not going to. I'm not ready to get there right now. But like, we will talk more about, I think what we can do practically and how people can help. I will just say the biggest thing we need is, is you have got to get Democrats to figure out. And I don't mean maybe not even Democrats is the right thing to say. Maybe it's the pro democracy movement, but there are all these groups that have been funded for years, decades, that have constituencies or people that they work with or sectors that they focus on. And I think. When was the last time you saw them have anything remotely close to a coordinated messaging strategy? Right. And this should be something where people can come together and coordinate. And I think everybody's been sort of casting around for something to do, and I think getting everybody who really cares about opposing Trump to get on the same page about how we help people tell these stories is sort of the next step. The most important thing strategically now, that's good.
- [31:10]
Bill Kristol
If people are looking, final thing, I'd say people are looking for the message. But in a way, the ultimate message is pretty simple, right? Trump's doing a lot of damage to the country and to you. And then people can pick the particular.
- [31:20]
Sarah Longwell
Trump's failings.
- [31:22]
Bill Kristol
He's doing damage.
- [31:23]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, yeah. He's failing and he's hurting you. Trump's failing and he's hurting you.
- [31:28]
Bill Kristol
I saw something just now before we began about, you know, some law firm type, a good person on our side, so to speak, saying, you know, if law firms don't defend the rule of law, who will? And I sort of take the point. He was criticizing Scaddin and Paul Weiss. I'm very sympathetic to that criticism. On the other hand, regular people kind of need the rule of law. Right? We need the rule of law, not just law firms. You know, we benefit a lot from feeling like we're not going to be prosecute, persecuted because of our political views, that Social Security checks are going to come out no matter whether you're a Democrat or Republican, everything, all that kind of stuff. And if you're, you know, the obvious, the government's not going to come after us because they don't like some social media posts. So I don't know, I feel like, yeah, making this more concrete for people. And it doesn't. Obviously the economic stuff is the easiest in a way to make concrete, I suppose, government benefits or terrorists type stuff, but some of these other things are pretty concrete too, you know, and so I, I feel like that's a very important somehow that people haven't really focused enough on that, you know.
- [32:26]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. I mean, look, this, this idea that there is a message, right, Is a myth, or that there's a word or a phrase or a thing that's good. And I'm from, I'm a messaging person. But, like, that's not a thing. That's not a thing where you're going to come up with one. And this is what. And when people do this, they come up with Build back better or Biden nomics or some other mushy nonsense. And, and look, honestly, Trump is very good at, at the messaging game in the way where make America Great Again, or more specifically, America First. I think America first is brilliant. And the reason is that doesn't say democracy, which is an abstract term, talks about America, which is a thing that we're all grounded in, is part of who we are tribally. But America first isn't a slogan. It's a message about prioritization. And when you're an American and you say, yes, I want to come first, that can strike at the heart of every person who identifies as an American. And I think that that's important. That's a good, that's a good way to think about how do you create an umbrella movement in terms of how do you make people feel like they're all a part of it. And he has done a good job of that. And I think the best way that Democrats, I think one of their big failures over the last many years is compartmentalizing people. And so that's why I am going back to the very beginning, want there to be massive and diffuse leadership, lots of rising stars, lots of different messages for different audiences. But the ultimate place you're getting is Trump is doing damage to us. All kinds of ways he's doing damage to us. So, you know, I don't have a slogan for it yet exactly, but I'll work on that.
- [34:20]
Bill Kristol
Well, that's close. That's pretty close, you know. No, that's great. Well, thank you. This was really terrific and I hope a lot, I'm sure a lot of people watch it and I hope they act on it. Meanwhile, you and jbl, because now that you're back and spent all week arguing about just whether he's too gloomy into the chances of dictatorship as he thinks, 30 or 40, really only 10 or 20% and so forth.
- [34:41]
Sarah Longwell
Well, can I tell you one last thing? Just I'll leave you with this thought because I've been thinking about this a lot, which is we're in this moment where Trump is going to tear everything down and Elon, they're going to tear everything down. And there's a lot of support for that because a lot of people were fed up with a lot of the institutions anyway. Right. Didn't feel like they were serving them. And there's a world in which they're going to tear it down. We're able to explain to people why Donald Trump is the cause of their personal pain. And then we're going to get to rebuild and it doesn't have to be what it was. And we should start thinking about how do I have a forward, forward looking viewpoint and vision for what an America resurgence is going to look like. And we, if they want to own tearing it down, fine. I want to own the resurgence.
- [35:32]
Bill Kristol
That's great. That is really a great note. And Sarah, thanks for taking time out of your Sunday and let you get back to it. And thank you all for joining us on Bulwark on Sunday.