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- [00:00]
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- [00:31]
Tim Ohr
Hey everybody, Tim Ohr from the Bulwark here, my old colleague on the Jeb Bush campaign, Scott Jennings. You might know him as the heel on cnn. He went on to Emily Jashinsky's afterparty podcast, which I've done, and boy, he had some not too nice words to say about me. He was going off on the Never Trumpers. He's really in his feelings. He's really upset. You can kind of see how physically upset he's getting talking about Never Trumpers and bashing us and demeaning us and, you know, like he is shooting strays at Nicole, attacking me. And he's trying to rationalize, justify why somebody who was, you know, a rank and file part of the Bush gop, who spoke out clearly and authoritatively on the night of January 6th about how horrible it was and his children and how they're going to look back on the night and that guy now becomes Trump's like, biggest cable TV shill. Like, how did that happen? People want to know that. And so he's on his book tour and in order to defend his position, he comes after the Never Trumpers. Might be a little bit of projection there. I want to play a couple of the clips and just talk about his arguments because I think it seems like he thinks they're really smart. He says, so basically we can just respond to those together and see what we think.
- [01:39]
Scott Jennings
I'm not going to be sucked under by these silly people and their silly arguments. I'm fighting a larger battle here. And a larger battle is which of these people actually loves America? Which of these people is actually going to stand up for the West? And if Donald Trump does what I want him to do 95% of the time, and he loves America and he stands up for America and Kamala Harris does what I want her to do 0% of the time, and we're going to spend our 250th anniversary apologizing to the rest of the world for America. This is an easy vote for me every day of the week. And so I was more than happy to vote for him for a third time. I was more than happy to make the case for him. I was more than happy to knock down these stupid arguments. And to this day, I still do not understand people who claim to be Republicans running around having voted for Democrats in each of the last three elections, having advocated for Democrats to win the Senate, having advocated for Democrats to win the House, having advocated for pro abortion policies, having advocated for every liberal social crusade and then have to look me in the eye and say, you know, you're hurting conservatism by supporting Donald Trump F all the way off. That's what I say.
- [02:47]
Tim Ohr
So we're going to start there. This is part of very long rant about never Trumpers. But so before we get to the personal attacks on me, I want to dial in on his core argument for Donald Trump is that he will stand up for America and he will stand up for the West. Because I just think this is a fundamentally flawed argument that undergirds a lot of the rationalization for supporting Trump, that there's some idea that the left is out there and they're in league with the Sharia law, Muslims and these other people that hate American values. And so you have no choice but to support Donald Trump, who likes to wave the American flag and claims that he believes in America and says he wants to make America great again. Here's a problem with that. Donald Trump is a direct threat on American values at home and abroad, and Donald Trump is a direct threat to the West. If you care about the Western world order, the Post World War II alliances that have allowed us to live peacefully in this world, that have created unimaginable economic success and freedom and liberty for people in Europe and here and throughout the world, then how can you then say you're for Donald Trump? Donald Trump is trying to unravel all that. Donald Trump is trying to dismantle the Western world order, he said. So he went to the Middle east and gave a big speech about how all this talk in the past about supporting democracy abroad and all this stuff was naive, silly, dumb. You know, all the stuff that all the presidents, from Kennedy to Reagan to Bush, all the stuff that all they promoted that was just nonsense. And what you need to think about now is the new World order, the Trump world order, where realpolitik rules, where you have to be tough and you gotta make good deals. So what's happened? We're Already seeing what's happening to the West. You're concerned about the West, Scott Jennings, we're seeing what's happening to the West. A report out this week says that Canada is starting to do more trade with China and less trade with the United States because they don't trust us anymore. You laugh about that on tv. You laugh and joke about Trump's bullying of Canada, but it's having a real impact. Trump's bullying of Canada means that Canada is disentangling from us a little bit and entangling with China, a country that is by definition not part of the West. In Eastern Europe, you've got Russia trying to run roughshod over Ukraine. And just this week you have the vice president and Trump's son in law and others and Steve Wykoff doing back channel deals with the Russians to try to work with them to figure out, you know, how to get Donald Trump to pressure Ukraine to surrender and let Russia have this new territory and weaken Ukraine and weaken NATO. Donald Trump has threatened NATO many times. The NATO countries themselves no longer really trust that we're a reliable ally. So they're trying to build up militaries of their own. Then you have the other thing that happened this week, which is that Donald Trump welcomed Saudi Arabia, Sharia law san dictator to our country, feted him, had a grand ball at the White House, invited all of his best friends. They got up in their tuxedos and they feted him. They talked about how great he was. They made excuses for his murdering of journalists. It's like that, like the world is reordering right now. The west is as weak as it's been because Donald Trump is annihilating our alliances and repositioning us where our new friends are, El Salvador and Saudi Arabia and who knows how things go in Eastern Europe, maybe Russia. He's trying to do deals with Russia. That's what Donald Trump wants to do. If you believe in the west, you live in freedom of speech, free markets, free people, well, then you wouldn't be making excuses for a journalist murderer. You wouldn't be instituting a global tariff regiment that makes it harder for people to do business with us. That's not supporting Western values. If all you mean by the west is that you like white people and you want to make sure our country's whiter. I'm not saying that that's what Scott Jennings believes, but there are some out there that make the argument that in order to protect the west, we need fewer brown and black people in the West. And if that's what you mean, then okay, then, yeah, Donald Trump is doing that. The one thing he's doing to protect the west is he is trying to make sure our country is whiter. That's not how I define the West. I think of it as a values proposition. But if you think about it solely as like a blood and soil nationalist way, then I get it. But if you're Scott Jennings and you're saying that you're arguing in defense of the conservative tradition, the Bush Reagan era conservative tradition generally, that's not how we talked about Western values. So we didn't talking about it as related to whiteness. So when I look at Donald Trump at his scorecard, I see somebody that instigated an assault on the Capitol that is weakening all of our democratic institutions, that is weakening our alliances with our Western allies, that is sidling up to Sharia law despots and putting in a tariff regime that makes it harder for people around the world to do business with us. I don't think that's preserving the West. I think it's doing his damnedest to accelerate the west decline. So that's just one argument. Now, I want to get to the part where he talks about me and Nicole. Let's take a listen.
- [08:18]
Scott Jennings
You know, Tim Miller, this other Looney Tunes, you know, he was supposedly a Republican operative. Now he is one of the most liberal people in our political affairs ecosystem. Did you ever believe any of it? And what is it about Donald Trump that made you change every single thing that you supposedly ever believed in? And I just, I don't understand how one person could break so many supposedly smart and experienced people. But you look around, all these people who are making this argument that in order to save Republicans or save conservatism, you had to vote for Kamala Harris. I mean, that is the craziest bunch of crap I have ever heard in my life.
- [09:02]
Tim Ohr
Okay, there you go. There's the rhetorical question. What is it about Donald Trump that made you change everything single thing you ever supposedly believed in? I guess people would ask that question about you, Scott, because I didn't change every single thing I ever believed in. There are a lot of things I believed in that I didn't think were up for debate. Right. I thought that this was a country that welcomed immigrants. This was a country where if you lost an election, you conceded. I thought that this was a country where you didn't, you know, send direct messages to your attorney general telling them that you wanted them to target your political foes. Thought this was a country where we had basic due process, where you didn't have masked guys jumping out of cars, grabbing people on the streets because they were brown. Like I thought we all agreed with that. And then once Donald Trump came in power and instituted the most illiberal regime in my lifetime, my parents lifetime, well, then I realized, well, actually we don't all, we don't all agree with that, it turns out. And it turns out I need to stake out some ground on these other issues that were not, that were not up for debate before, where I am completely out of doorstep with my former party. I think that makes a lot of sense. And so when Scott says one of the most, I've become one of the most liberal people in the ecosystem, I know he means that as pejorative, but I take it as a badge of pride because to me, liberal means defending the liberal values that undergird our society. And our president is an illiberal wannabe autocrat that basically took everything from Reagan's farewell address about how we're a shining city on a hill with doors that welcomes people so they can live a life of opportunity and meaning and threw it in the garbage and said no. Now we're a country where we take people who come into this country who are fleeing communism and we send them to a foreign gulag with no due process over the objections of a judge. That's what Donald Trump did. And so I think that the moment calls for liberalism. Liberalism is the only thing standing between us and the abyss. And liberalism is the only thing that is standing between us and somebody deciding that they want to stay in power against the will of the people. And so I am guilty. I am have enforced liberalism has been thrust upon me by Donald Trump. And so then when you ask what made us change, I guess probably talking about other issues like changing your views on, I don't know, the old, you know, three legged stool. Taxes, abortion, foreign policy. And again, I guess my answer would be I wouldn't, I haven't. I've changed somewhat my thoughts on taxation, et cetera. Like Scott's apparently changed his views completely on free trade, for example, and on the role of America's military in the world and on immigration. It is important to remember that George Bush and John McCain ran as compassionate conservatives who had a pretty liberal view of how to handle immigration policy. So I've been consistent on that. Scott, that's changed his view on that apparently. But I think in this question of like, who has changed? I think it's kind of stupid, like the world has changed. Donald Trump changed everything. I think anybody that saw a moronic reality TV show host running on a campaign of nativism and bigotry take over a party, unexpectedly win the presidency immediately institute a muzzle ban, like anybody who looked at all that and said, you know, nothing's really changed. For me, in my worldview, I think that's a sign of a weak thinker. I think that much has changed. And so you have to assess the new environment. And if you were to try to determine who has changed, more or less, if you were to make the argument that it's a bad thing to change, because that's what Scott's doing, he's saying that we're phonies, that he's the real conservative, that we're phonies, and we abandon these things we believed in. I guess I would just say I think the truth is the opposite. And the best evidence I have for who has been consistent and who has been a phony is by looking at the actual politicians themselves. Right. So if the argument that Scott is making is that George Bush, conservative, because he says he's a conservative guy, would have stuck around for Donald Trump because there's a direct line there, policy wise. And I guess if I was him, my question would be for George Bush. Why didn't he endorse Donald Trump any of the three times that he ran? The question would be for George H.W. bush. We both worked for Jeb. I was on the road with Jeb a lot, a little bit closer. So I was there when George H.W. bush would call him, call his son. I briefed Barbara for a lot of the interviews on that campaign. George H.W. bush and Barbara, I'm not speaking out of school to say hated Donald Trump. Poppy Bush would throw his shoe at the TV when Donald Trump came on. So the Bushes don't see Donald Trump as inheriting their legacy. None of them supported him. John McCain obviously didn't see Donald Trump as inheriting his legacy. He never supported him, really. And I guess he went back and forth, but in the end, obviously, he gives a thumbs down on Obamacare and was a very vocal critic of Trump. Mitt Romney voted to impeach and convict Donald Trump twice. Mitt Romney voted twice to remove Donald Trump from office because he was such a threat to the country. So those were the nominees from 2000 to 2012, when me and Scott were working in Republican politics together, not a single one of them showed one iota of support for Donald Trump or demonstrated one iota of feeling that he was like the heir to their mode of conservatism, of compassionate conservatism in the Bush definition. And the feeling is mutual. Donald Trump does not see himself as an error to Bush era conservatism or to John McCain who he slanders and insults all the time, or to Mitt Romney who he slanders and insults all the time. And that works for him politically. That's again, that's okay, you know, it's not my cup of tea. Like, what Donald Trump is offering, I think is a direct assault on the prior Republican nominees. And Donald Trump and his biggest fans would define it as a direct assault on the prior nominees. The only person who seems to think that Donald Trump is like the error to Bush and that any good Bushy would want to also be for Trump, except for maybe disagree on the tariffs. The only person making the argument is Scott Jennings. No one else thinks that. Donald Trump doesn't think it. His family doesn't think it. Romney, McCain, Bush's don't think it. So to me, if you just look at what the actual politicians say and how they define themselves, you can see that Trump is a huge, massive departure from the previous definition of conservatism. And in fact, I would say he's an attack on the previous definition of conservatism. And I'm pretty sure Donald Trump would agree with that statement. And so look, I think if the question is if Scott's big attack is that like me and Nicole are phonies. Oh man, I'm on this mic hours and hours a day. I'm saying what I really think all the time. I'm shitting on Joe Biden sometimes and attacking lefty Democrats who are doing things I don't agree with. Going back and reflecting upon my previous views, some of them have changed. A lot of them are the same. You go through a quiz. I wrote a whole damn book on this where I lay out what my ideology was before and the ways that I've evolved. Scott's the one who's on TV playing a character, right? I mean, he's playing a wrestling heel on tv and so he doesn't get to say what he really thinks. And you can go back to January 6th video if you want to see what he really thinks about that. But you know, he has to be a guy that toes the party line and come up with arguments for why it's not that big of a deal for us to pretend to invade Canada. That's Scott now. And so I understand where he'd be sensitive about all of this, but I just think in reality, anybody who is looking at this clearly, who is not paid to spin and not paid to rationalize, anyone who's just paid to say what they really think, or anyone who's not paid at all, who's just observing reality, would look at and say, well, it seems like it's Scott that changed what he believed in. One more thing. He does come back to me at the very end. Let's just play that clip. Tim Miller, catching some strays here from Scott Jennings. I want to play this.
- [17:24]
Scott Jennings
I mean, honestly, just the worst, the most. I mean, I don't know if I've ever been around anybody who was less good at their job but more condescending. Like his. His talent to condescension ratio is so far off, it's ridiculous.
- [17:38]
Tim Ohr
Scott gave me. And another thing, I'm not talented and I'm condescending you. Comment below if you think I'm condescending. Me. Here's what I think. I. I don't think I'm as condescending as J.D. vance. I think at times I can be condescending, and I can be particularly condescending to one type of person, and that is a person that knows better about Donald Trump and goes along with it anyway. And so I can understand why Scott would get his back up. I posed a question to him on Kara Swisher's podcast, and you know, where I asked him what he thought 2015 Scott would say about 2025 Scott. And I don't. I could see how he would take that as a condescending question. But I'm. I mean it genuinely. I think that 2015 Scott would think that 2025 Scott had really lost the plot. Maybe not can't get inside his heart. And so I think that when some people hear that, when they feel like they're questioned at an ethical level and at a moral level, they start to think the person is doing that is condescending, like they're on their high horse. I just think that that is what we have to look square in the face of. And in this moment, like, things really did change in a massive way. The type of government that we had, the type of way that we conduct politics changed. And we all had to assess, like, do we want to go along with that change? Do we want to object to it? And me and Scott went opposite directions. And if he thinks that my critique of his direction is condescending, well, then probably sometimes I'm guilty of that. But simultaneously, many of you may saw the jubilee video. And I think I did the best that I could talking to those younger MAGA kids in a way that was open to hearing what they had to say. Maybe I got a little condescending one or two times because sometimes it's tough. I can't help my face. I just can't help my face. But I'm trying, so I'll take that feedback. I'm doing my best. I don't suspect that Scott will be taking my feedback anytime soon, but we'll see. Isn't that some great Thanksgiving week content for y'? All? A little bit of a rap, A tap tap. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you think I'm as untalented as Scott Jennings thinks that I am. Give a hug to your friends and family, and we'll be seeing you back here soon.