← The Best People with Nicolle Wallace
The Best People with Nicolle Wallace
Sarah Longwell Knows the Cheat Code to Politics
00:53:39
Sarah Longwell is a “bulwark” against allowing democracy to crumble. And she’s got the data to show Americans how it's done.
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- [00:01]
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- [00:55]
Sarah Longwell
This is one of the reasons that Trump's numbers are starting to fall and where the objective reality kicks in is that people know that the tariffs are Trump's. People know that the Iran war is Trump's. They don't think it's Congress. They don't think it's somebody else. They know Trump is doing it, that he made the call to do it and that it is raising their prices and that is what they are mad about.
- [01:17]
Nicole Wallace
Hi there everyone. This week's guest had me at hello. She's the emotional and intellectual lifeline to the pro democracy movement for any and every ex Republican looking to migrate or land on the right side of history. She's also the most important human for any Democratic politician to know and learn from if that politician wants to build an enduring and winning coalition. She's the publisher of the Bulwark, the author of a new book coming in September, how to Eat an Elephant One Voter at a time. She hosts the podcast, the focus group and the illegal news. She is my spirit animal. This is the Best People podcast and this is Sarah Longwell. I'm so happy you're here.
- [01:56]
Sarah Longwell
I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. And thank you for having read the book.
- [02:05]
Nicole Wallace
You know, we can't get enough of what you know about what voters think and I feel like I've wishcasted what you're excavating. Right. I've wanted voters to see reality and see the truth and I wanted it probably too urgently to wait for it, but I feel like what you're investigating and unearthing is this sort of arc of Trump's sort of betrayal of his base. And I feel like that's as good a place as any to start. Yeah.
- [02:39]
Sarah Longwell
You know, Nicole, I wonder. Our journeys, I think, maybe line up similarly in that both of us came from Republican backgrounds, but when Trump came on the scene, I was immediately like, no, this is absolutely not. And the reason wasn't policy related. It was sort of first principles related. It was like, this guy's a bad guy. He's a bad person, and he treats people poorly, and he doesn't understand the American experiment or what we're doing here. He's hostile to American values and liberal democracy. And so I was kind of out from the jump, but I realized not only that voters were not out, obviously, like, after the 2016 election, I. I was going, like, solving a mystery. Like, I had two things going on. One, I wanted to defeat Trump. I wanted to primary him. And so I grabbed Bill Kristol. Bill Crystal and I had met, and we went on this journey of, can we primary him? And we were talking to Larry Hogan. Good. You know, centrist Republicans, moderate Republicans that we liked. I even talked to Kinzinger at the time, and we're running around saying, somebody's got a primary, so he's got to save the Republican Party. And everybody had the same reaction, which was like, well, tell me that I can win. Tell me that I can not embarrass myself. Tell me I could go do this and that there's an appetite for it among Republican voters. And I was so sure that there was. And so I said, okay, well, I know how to do this. I'm gonna go do focus groups, I'm gonna do some polls. We're gonna figure out what the appetite is for an alternative to Trump. People, obviously, this is like 2017. People have to be unhappy about this. And I walked into those rooms in New Hampshire and watched those voters rocking in their chairs, and the moderator started to ask them, and you're behind, like, the one way glass and the so how do we think Trump's doing? And immediately it's like, great. I love it. This is exactly what I wanted. And it was one of those scales fall from your eyes moment. And largely not about them, but about me. I had spent too much time in, you know, the Heritage foundation or Cato or any of these think tanks in Washington. And it was just like, oh, I missed this whole thing. I had no idea that people would feel this way. And that, for me, sent me on kind of an urgent mission, which was not only did I start to realize quickly that there was no primary in Trump because this is what voters wanted. And that to do that, I was gonna have to make an uncomfortable decision at the time, having worked in Republican politics my entire career, to say, okay, well, that means we have to elect a Democrat. And that led me to, how many people who consider themselves Republicans or normally vote for Republicans can we get to vote for a Democrat? And that I started, like, chasing the dragon. Like, I was just like, how many disaffected Republican voters can I talk to, listen to, to understand how we might be able to elect a Democrat? And that was the beginning of the journey. And now I can't not listen to them. Like, there's just not a time where I don't have them in my ear. And I gotta tell you, I think voters are like, cheat code for politics. There's all these shows and all these talking heads, and everybody sits around, why is this happening? Why is this happening? If you just listen to people, they will tell you straightforwardly why this thing is happening. And sometimes it has to do with their information environment, sometimes it has to do with their personal experiences. Sometimes it has to do with, like, deeply rooted identity things. But you still can get an answer to why people are making the decisions that they are, even if you don't like the decisions that they're making.
- [06:01]
Nicole Wallace
I mean, it's such a basic thing. And I mean, I'm married to a journalist, and people always say, you know, how do you get people to tell you things? Like, people want to talk, like, how did politics and politicians lose that touch and lose the interest in listening to voters? Because that happens on both sides, right? That's how Trump goes in and wins in 16. And I'm actually not convinced that he's a great listener, but he heard something primal and was able to reflect it back to the voters better than any Republican in that primary.
- [06:37]
Sarah Longwell
Well, first of all, you're right. People do not listen to voters nearly enough. I actually was shocked when I started listening to them how as soon as you start listening to them all the time and then you hear the analysis that's happening kind of in D.C. you're immediately like, oh, wait, this is. So. This is not connected to what voters are thinking at all. I do think a big part of when people talk about D.C. as a swamp or Hollywood is the cesspool or whatever. It's less that they're swamps, whatever. They're more like they're bubbles. They're bubbles and they have engines, right? So in Hollywood, it's culture and in D.C. it's politics. In New York, it's finance and money. But you get into these bubbles where your lives are really nice, and any politician who moves here immediately, right, they're making a good salary and people are paying them for speeches. And, like, they become increasingly detached in that bubble from just what it means for a person to have to go through their daily lives not thinking about politics mostly, but politics having an influence on their life in almost everything they do. How much things cost, how their schools are run, how their local government works. Like, politics is everywhere, but people are experiencing it. Not in the way people are experiencing it in D.C. and as soon as you start to, like, get at that gap, disaggregate it from what happens in Washington and listen to these voters. Because people are often say, you know, have you changed your mind about things? And I've changed my mind or evolved on certain things. But there's nothing more that I think about now than how hard people's lives are every day. It's. It's not even about income inequality exactly. It's just how desperately people are trying to get ahead. And it's the kind of thing people say in Washington or you hear in speeches, but it does not capture the, like, in and out of a person. And the thing about doing the focus groups, too, is now we do them on zoom, because when the pandemic hit, we started doing it on zoom. So you're kind of in people's houses and you can see, like, they've got their baby in the. You know, the square thing that holds babies. I forget what they're called.
- [08:35]
Nicole Wallace
Like a playpen.
- [08:36]
Sarah Longwell
They've got. They've got, like, a playpen next to them. They're trying to do the focus group for the. You know, for that 150 bucks, and they've got the baby there, and, yeah, you know, their dogs are barking. But you just see how people's lives are so different from these bubbles. The problem is, is that in those bubbles are where people make decisions and where people tell stories or people are making big, big moves on things and they're just not connected to these average people's lives. And I have felt it has been like a. Like a revelation to live with those voices inside my head all the time, because you just see how hard people are trying, want to do the right thing, want to be good people. Not that I don't wanna crap on the voters voting for Donald Trump because I'm such a nice person. I wanna make sure we take them seriously. It's more Like, I don't know, this does sound really hard, like, your life. And you do wanna do something to help people, and you want politicians to help inspire people and help them make their lives a little bit easier. Like, it does reorient your politics around individual people, which suddenly you're like, I don't know. I do see why people are mad.
- [09:32]
Nicole Wallace
What is your theory on what it will take to sort of break up this coalition? Or is it what we're covering right now, what we're watching?
- [09:39]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so a couple things. So first of all, the thing that Trump understood, you got to understand that Trump has figured out how to squeeze money out of desperate people for his entire career. Like, him being in TV didn't just create a parasocial relationship with a lot of America, though. It did.
- [09:57]
Nicole Wallace
Right.
- [09:57]
Sarah Longwell
It also taught him what their lizard brains wanted.
- [10:01]
Nicole Wallace
Right. And how to sell it to them.
- [10:03]
Brian (Trump Voter)
Yeah.
- [10:03]
Sarah Longwell
How to sell it to them. Whether it's products, whether it's the Apprentice, didn't matter. He had a better bead as somebody who understood voters as consumers of things, because what people consume, those are their true desires.
- [10:18]
Nicole Wallace
Like, what do you value? What can I get you to value? What can I get you to buy from me?
- [10:23]
Sarah Longwell
And so that's what. That was his leg up. Yeah. Also, his political innovation in some way was that he both didn't have any shame and he understood how to weaponize fear and anger. Right. Fear and anger are these incredibly potent emotions. And Trump not only first figured out how to weaponize them, and then subsequently in our politics, the algorithms have figured out how to accelerate them. And so we are, as a people, very scared and very angry. And Donald Trump, so a normal politician, let's say George W. Bush. George w. Bush after 9, 11, he goes to mosques and he talks about Islam being a religion of peace. He sits down with imams to say, like, to make sure there's not discrimination, there's not backlash. Right. Because he sees his role as President, United States, to lower temperatures. Donald Trump does not. Donald Trump turns it up at every point he can where he thinks that he can extract value out of that. And so once you just sort of understand that he has that special understanding of voters that doesn't come from a political valence that really did give him a leg up. That's the thing that he's able to do now in terms of getting out of the moment. So the breakup of the coalition, there's one naturally, that has nothing to do with us or like, hoping that some fever breaks, and that is that there is in the Trump coalition that he's been holding together an America first wing and a MAGA establishment wing. The America first wing is the Tucker Carlson's and the Marjorie Taylor Greenes. And they're the ones who are saying more in sorrow than in anger. That's how they're trying to come at this. Now, Trump promised America first he was gonna. He was gonna center Americans cause America first is not just a slogan, it is a statement of prioritization. You, Mr. Mrs. America, you are my priority. And everything that the largess of this country is going to be directed at you, it is not going to be directed at other people, other countries, people like that, they want to be centered, they want to be prioritized. But Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene are saying this war in Iran, all the other stuff Trump's doing, he's not. He's failing. He's losing that promise. The MAGA establishment is your Mike Johnson,
- [12:31]
Nicole Wallace
Marco Rubio, Sean Hannity.
- [12:33]
Sarah Longwell
Sean Hannity, right. This is just sort of like whatever Trump says is the thing now. We recognize that he's got a unique power over voters. And so whatever Trump says goes. And we'll figure out how to twist ourselves into a pretzel to defend it. But there's a breakup happening there. There's a wedge happening there. And it is deeply accelerated by the war in Iran. It is accelerated by a relationship to Israel. And this is again, one of Trump's unique powers, which is that Trump was able to sit on top of those two wings and fuse them together. Right? He holds together a bunch of tensions that I think a JD Vance is going to have a much more difficult time doing. And that is why I think the only way you really hollow out this coalition over time, you want it to break apart, you want it to fracture, number one. Number two, you want Trump to be a failure objectively, at the end of George Bush's career. Because both where the economy was and because of the wars that now people were souring on, public opinion was turning. He left office around 32%. And, and I think what happened as a result of that was not only did Republicans then lose two national elections, both Mitt Romney and John McCain lost their elections to Barack Obama, who's also an extraordinarily talented politician. But by the time the Republicans came back around to a primary, all of the normal, the Marco Rubios and the Nikki Haleys, they had decided, we don't want that. And not only was George W. Bush not like, not only did it not help Jeb, it was Like a. They were like, no, this is not even the party anymore. It's not even for you anymore. And so what you want for Trump is to leave office at 32% or below, but, like, so low that everybody objectively looks at Trump and says, that was a failure, that was a failure.
- [14:13]
Nicole Wallace
But do you think we're capable of objective truth when it comes to an ability? I mean, like, like his numbers are 33 now.
- [14:20]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Not. Not in the total aggregate. He stays hovering around 38% of Nate Silvers. But we are seeing more and more polls hitting that line, hitting that 32%.
- [14:28]
Nicole Wallace
I've got AP. AP is at 33 approved. UMass is at 33 approved. 67 disapprove.
- [14:34]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, 100%. No, there's. We're starting to see polling come out and quality polling. That AP north poll is a high quality poll. That UMass poll. I know the people who run it. It's a good poll.
- [14:42]
Nicole Wallace
Yeah.
- [14:43]
Sarah Longwell
And it's going to take a while to get the entire average, I think, to come down. But at some point, if he is in those low 30s, and honestly, I think he could potentially go lower. And it's all because of the economy. And this is where the fundamental coalition of Trump that encompasses the MAGA establishment in America first doesn't even really count. The sort of all the swing voters who voted for Trump just because of the economy.
- [15:09]
Nicole Wallace
Right. The price of eggs, voter. Yeah.
- [15:11]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. And, you know, sometimes when we say things like price of eggs, you know, now Trump is like, see how cheap eggs are? And I was like, it was never about eggs specifically, bro. Eggs is just a stand. And just like your wall, just like your wall was a stand in for. I take immigration seriously. Price of eggs is a stand in for. What do groceries cost for the average person? And staple items, how high has inflation driven them up? Or how high are gas prices? Which, you know, those things. All people tend to look at them as one thing. Okay, here's how much bread is, or here's how much gas is. But of course, for an average person, they, they fuse together like Voltron to make a catastrophic financial environment for them where they have no purchasing power. And voters, that's the number one thing people talk about. We start every focus group with the same question, how you think things are going in the country. And you learn everything you need to know, usually in that first 25 minutes where everybody just talks because they bring up organically the things that are on their mind. And right now, everybody does the same thing. Number one, everybody thinks the State of the country is bad, which is why right track, wrong track is so low. These guys reinforce that with their everything's terrible. And then they immediately go to how expensive things are and how the war in Iran is raising them, how tariffs are raising them. And this is one of the reasons that Trump's numbers are starting to fall. And then where the objective reality kicks in is that people know that the tariffs are Trump's. People know that the Iran war is Trump's. They don't think it's Congress. They don't think it's somebody else. They know Trump is doing it, that he made the call to do it and that it is raising their prices. And that is what they are mad about.
- [16:42]
Nicole Wallace
Let me play some of your Trump voters. You sent us some. This is Stephanie. I think she describes herself as a three time loser.
- [16:50]
Stephanie (Trump Voter)
I am a three time loser. I voted for him three times. I believed in his mission. He had like this. That he was outside of that whole D.C. swamp and that he was actually going to drain the swamp. Like that's what I was really hopeful for. And I feel like it's such a downward turn as soon as the Epstein files came out, which really puts this thing in my heart to think that maybe he did something bad because it's like now, I mean, everything is going wrong after the. Even the threat of the Abstein files. And my home base is Texas and gas is almost $5 a gallon here, which is ridiculous. I have a real problem with. My dad's the Marine. I just don't believe in losing American lives for something that has nothing to do with us. Right. I'm just like, come on guys, let's support ourselves before we start handing out money to other countries. And the price of groceries makes me want to cry.
- [17:41]
Sarah Longwell
Wow.
- [17:42]
Nicole Wallace
It's everything.
- [17:43]
Sarah Longwell
It's everything. And that is how sometimes people are like, oh, okay, you cherry picked one person. So you found one person and voted for Trump three times. No, I promise you. And it's the reason I do the podcast that I do is because I'm like, I just, I don't, don't take my word for it. Listen to the voters in their own words and you can hear. Not just that, that's the thing they talk about. Like when you get a poll, it's like, okay, I see people care about the economy. That's the top. The focus groups allow you to hear people say, it makes me want to cry. Like it is causing me pain. I have to choose between whether I can get groceries or whether I pay for my kids to be able to participate on the soccer team like all day long. That's what I hear is about the trade offs that people in this economy feel. And that's why I talked about it all the time. When Joe Biden was saying it's good, they're trying to run on sort of Biden nomics. I was like, you guys, you guys. People are so upset about how they're still feeling. I know the macro economy is improving, but you got to pitch it as a recovery because people do not feel good yet. And it's now even with the partisanship where people sort of last year you would, you would say this to me, right? We would be on the show and you know, like, are people, are people upset yet? Are people. And like they were like, well, he's not fixing things, but Rome wasn't built in a day. We have patience, give him some time. That is not how they sound now. Now they sound like, what is he doing with Iran? What is he doing with the ballroom? Why is he focused on all this other stuff? Nothing's getting better for me.
- [19:13]
Nicole Wallace
We'll take a quick break right here. When we're back, much, much more with focus group powerhouse, publisher of the Bulwark, our friend Sarah Longwell. Stay with us.
- [19:29]
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- [20:14]
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- [21:04]
Nicole Wallace
The Epstein story and Minneapolis felt like the end of the beginning to me with the Epstein story. It was a story like I covered it in the first term as a heinous sex crime and a weird sort of Trump cabinet affiliation in Alex Acosta. But then I didn't cover it again until the day Elon Musk tweeted, trump's in the Epstein files. That's not the like on the right. They covered it every day like Kash Patel, Joe Rogan. All these guys were talking about the Epstein conspiracy for, for the period where Trump was out of power.
- [21:42]
Sarah Longwell
How is it that my father could be convicted of 34 crimes but no one on Epstein's list has even been brought to light?
- [21:51]
Progressive Advertiser
Who's on the Epstein tapes, folks? Who's on those tapes?
- [21:56]
Sarah Longwell
Who's in those black books?
- [21:58]
Progressive Advertiser
Why have they been hiding it?
- [22:00]
Sarah Longwell
What the hell are the House Republicans doing? They have the majority. You can't get the list. Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are.
- [22:09]
Nicole Wallace
It's interesting to hear it come up as context, right, that like, do you hear this thing from voters where the Epstein isn't. Isn't the thing, but it's sort of the keyhole through which they start to doubt his credibility and his truthfulness and
- [22:25]
Sarah Longwell
his commitment to them 100%. I mean, the thing about the Epstein files is that goes directly to something that they believed about Trump. They believed that Trump was not like regular politicians and that he was going to show them all of the COVID ups that the Deep State has had, that there is this elite cabal. Like one of the things I talk about in the book is I have a chapter called Conspiracy Land. Because one of the things that Donald Trump has done that is different from every other leader, it's not that conspiracies are always in America. Second gunman on the grassy knoll and is this boy actually a bat or whatever? We used to see the Inquirer say as we were in the grocery store, right? Conspiracies are always with us. We have never before had a President of the United States who is a constant pusher of conspiracies. He launched his political career by saying that President Barack Obama was a secret Kenyan Muslim socialist. And he needed to produce his birth certificate. As a result, he has attracted into his coalition many, many people who are fellow conspiracy theorists. Right. They're attracted to him because of this. And that's the Epstein thing. And so, like, you live by the conspiracies, you sort of die by the conspiracies. And so for them, it goes to a central promise he was supposed to make, which is, you're gonna show us the truth. You are never gonna. You're not gonna hide these stuff from us. That's. That's what Donald Trump does. Not like these other regular politicians. And so for him to do it is what causes their faith in him. And another thing is people have said to me the whole time, they're like, I don't think Epstein's really gonna matter. And I'm like, you're wrong. It matters so much to all of these people.
- [23:59]
Nicole Wallace
So I started listening to Joe Rogan's podcast, when I started having a podcast, because a lot of people listened to him, and I wanted to understand his relationship with his audience. And what I understood immediately is that it's not a political show. But the Epstein story is one among many. Like, I listened to a whole thing on the Pyramids, and I. And I, like, couldn't. I had a million things to do. I'm like, I have to get. And I was in the car. I'm like, I have to get out of the fucking car. I kept driving. Cause I'm like, where's this going?
- [24:28]
Sarah Longwell
And they go nowhere. They go nowhere.
- [24:30]
Nicole Wallace
Like, the thing with conspiracy content is it's endless. Like, it goes on and on and on and on and on. And, like. So it's, like, perfectly understandable why it populates a podcast and why it's a conversation starter when you're the party out of power. It absolutely blows up in your face when you are handed the keys to the kingdom and you completely reject all your own promises about transparency.
- [24:57]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. I do think part of it. It's not funny.
- [25:00]
Nicole Wallace
Ha ha.
- [25:01]
Sarah Longwell
But it is ironic in the sense that if you look back carefully, with the benefit of hindsight, you'll see Cash and Dan Bongino and all of these MAGA, even J.D. vance, going on all these podcasts to hyperventilate about the Epstein stuff. But Trump himself never does. Doesn't. Because Trump. I think that Trump just let himself get caught in the middle of this. Like, okay, they were out there talking about it. He did not want this Epstein. He thought when he got in there that he'd be able to just Say as he tried, who cares? No one cares about this. Epstein died. He was a bad guy. I didn't even like him. And everybody's like, no, wait a minute, you promised. And it's this sort of, this was always. It's funny things about voters is they often decide that you've told them something, even if you haven't. So like people decided that Joe Biden told them he was going to be a one term president. He didn't really do that, but they were sure that he had promised him that. This is the same thing. Trump didn't really promise the Epstein files, but everyone's sure that he did.
- [25:55]
Nicole Wallace
It's ironic and sad and I think the other thing, my sense about him is that Republicans are like those sort of victims that are in a room but they've never tried to open the door, so they don't know that it's not locked and they could walk out. I mean, the Epstein survivors are tough in a way that always confounds Trump, right? Like he doesn't know what to do. Like Republicans don't stand up to him. The Democrats that do are usually individuals. It's not like a whole party that comes together and attacks him. The Epstein survivors are reflexively nonpartisan and they've been through something so much more heinous than the political, you know, mud pit. I wonder what you make of the role they've played in sort of getting him back on his heels.
- [26:42]
Sarah Longwell
I mean, mainly it's just that they're relentless, right? I mean, how is like to your point, Trump is used to being able to steamroll everybody. I mean, you know, you and I have talked about this ad nauseam, but watching the law firms, I hate it. The media companies like everybody roll, the universities, everybody roll for this guy. It's like, guys, if you just did and it's, this was what happened, right? The Wall Street Journal stands up to him and what happens, it gets tossed, you know, and whenever somebody actually stands up to him, it doesn't go his way. And so the Epstein victims are people, they don't want anything from him. They don't want to be famous, they don't want to do any of this. They just want justice for the thing that happened. They want people to admit the truth about this. This is a thing about survivors is so much of what they just want is for say no, admit that this happened to me and that it was wrong. Stop gaslighting me, stop trying to. They just want, they want the dignity of being told that they were harmed. And so as A result. They just keep pushing. And he doesn't know what to do in the face that he has know what to do in the face of good, righteous anger. He just. Then he, yeah, he wants to get away.
- [27:45]
Nicole Wallace
Where do you think we are in the Trump story?
- [27:47]
Sarah Longwell
It's a good question. I. I think here's a tension, a tension between, I don't want bad things to happen to anybody. I don't want our economy to crash. I don't want us to blow up Iran. I don't want gas prices to be six bucks. I don't want bad things to happen. But Donald Trump has made choices. And there's this other part of me that says, yeah, this is what we said would happen. Like, if you put this guy in charge, this is what we said would happen. And it is happening. He is not consulting Congress and he is going to war. He's threatening to end civilizations. Like, this is not small stuff. He is trying to prosecute his enemies. He is focused on a ballroom instead of anything for the actual American people. He is. It is the most corrupt administration we've ever seen in our lives. And I think because it is having negative personal consequences for people. Like, there's no. There was no way to get around this. There's no way to get around that. The Trump experiment only ends when people are hurt by it. And I don't wish for people to get hurt, but I do wish for people to understand the consequences of electing an authoritarian like Trump who doesn't care about them. And so over at the Bulwark, we often talk in terms of stove touching, right? Where you sort of learn the lesson of getting burned. And I've always been like, there's nothing I can actually do about this. But my hope has always been like, is there a way for people to get burned just enough that they never want to experiment with a Trump like, figure again without it doing the kind of irreparable damage. As a country that sort of, we can't claw our way back from. Like, is there a sweet spot in there? And I'm not.
- [29:20]
Nicole Wallace
Do you think there is?
- [29:23]
Sarah Longwell
Ideally, it would sort of be right where we are now. Right? Is that Trump would continue to not know how to get out of this war that he started and kind of are kicking things down. People are increasingly angry with him. But look, because you don't want it to end with what? Violence in the streets, People flooding the street, like, people the bottom falling out of the market, having the kind of rupture economically that takes a decade to recover from. There's all kinds of much worse ways it can go. And I don't want the bottom to fall out, but I do sort of want there to be just enough that people recognize that they've been sold a bill of goods and that he is not improving their lives, that they can make better choices. Regret is an incredibly good emotion. It is a healthy emotion because it's a teaching emotion. People who say they have no regrets, I'm always like, well, that's not a good. That's bad. You should have some regrets, because that's how you learn to make better choices going forward. And so I think where we are right now is. But I'd like it to be that people lose their confidence in Trump and want to move on from him without it doing catastrophic damage.
- [30:28]
Nicole Wallace
I want to play Brian. He's one of your Trump voters from West Virginia.
- [30:33]
Brian (Trump Voter)
I'm, like, really getting concerned about the war in Iran, being in a situation where I've sold my house and I have this lump of money that I have set aside to build my new house, and then we go to war in Iran and the prices are just going up, but my pile of money is not getting any bigger. Some of the stuff that's been happening just so shocking. It, like, just seemingly out of nowhere to be like, you know, the Venezuela situation or that war, Iran, or just some of the other rhetoric. It's just really bizarre. And there's not a whole lot of good stuff happening.
- [31:06]
Nicole Wallace
I find it so, to your point, distressing to hear people's distress. And I grapple with the tension every single day. And I. And I remember first giving voice to it when I was covering tariffs. Like, I want someone to stop the tariffs. Like, I have kids that play sports. And so, like, I. I'm at Walmart all the time. Like, like buying new batting, like, the cost of sort of raising a family, you know, and if you've got kids that are little and you work and you're paying for preschool, like, life is so hard that I remember grappling with this around the tariffs and wanting him to not hurt people. Like to call off the tariff obsession, the tariff regime. It gives me a physical feeling of distress to hear voters grapple with that much fear that Brian had sold a house, had a pile of money, that that money wasn't going to grow.
- [31:58]
Sarah Longwell
Right?
- [31:58]
Nicole Wallace
That was the money he had to work with, and now things are getting more. More expensive. How does a Democrat talk to Brian in a way that doesn't leave him disgusted with all politicians, but makes him Think that the Democrat will be on his side.
- [32:12]
Sarah Longwell
Well, this is why a lot of what I want to do is Clockwork Orange Democrats. I wanna take them, I wanna sit them in the chair. And I'm like, okay, you're gonna watch. You're just going to mainline 10 focus groups of people, Trump voters, independents, Democrats, whatever. We'll do Hispanics. We'll do black voters, we'll do women, we'll do everybody. Listen to how they talk, because every single one of them is going to talk about the anxiety that comes with being able to afford the things that they want to afford, live the life they want to live, whether or not they have a job, how are they going to raise their kids? I'm actually glad, like, there now is a conversation happening around cell phones in school that comes up all the time with parents. You know, it's just like. And politicians don't really think about it. And everybody's in these process frustrations and conversations. And I'm like, okay, just listen to these voters and listen to what matters to them. And then, like, feel for them. I always thought one of the reasons that Obama. Everyone's like, well, he's a generational political talent. And I'm like, yes, but he was an organizer on the streets of Chicago who listened to people all the time. And the second that you have regular people in front of you, this is why I say the bubbles are so bad for people in these elite circles is because they just don't hear the anxiety in people's voices. Because if you did, if you heard the anxiety day in and day out of people just trying to get through life trying to afford health care. Oh, my God. The stories around people getting sick, their kids getting sick, them not being able to afford healthcare, it focuses your mind on these are the problems we need to solve. And I think if you were. If you were that politician and you listened to all these voters all the time and somebody came to you about trans sports, you wouldn't have to sit there and calculate some answer. You would be filled with righteous indignation and say, I am not gonna sit here and debate with you whether or not we have to fight about transports for little kids when the vast majority of Americans can't afford groceries. That is a problem to solve. And you should be ashamed for distracting us with your petty conversations when so many people are in dire straits right now because of your policies. Like, I just feel like if Democrats were listening to these voters, they would feel righteous on their behalf. I've started to feel righteous on their Behalf Like, I don't even. There is a meta conversation that is stupid about whether sort of the never Trump types that we are, whether we abandon our conservative principles because we now ally with Democrats on things. And I'm like, you know what, man? I'm so much less ideological than I used to be on this issue or that issue. That was good for when normal politics happen. And we could just argue about marginal tax rates, but we live in a very different country where we are focused on the highest order of things. But also because I listen to voters now, I just think in terms of the vast majority of Americans have the same problems, they care about the same things, talk to Americans, address their concerns. Like, that is what politics is supposed to do. And every time I see politicians getting wrapped around the axle about nonsense, I just want to be like, why do this? Just opt out? Just say, I don't want to do that, because I'm going to focus on these people. And I think they would if they were listening to voters all the time.
- [35:12]
Nicole Wallace
Who do you see out there doing it?
- [35:14]
Sarah Longwell
Well, okay, so I have a couple people. But right now, I know that so much of this is about being able to say to voters, I see you, I hear you. I've got you. Like, it just is that emotional connection to people. And I believe that either somebody's gonna come along who is gonna feed the good parts of people, or somebody like Donald Trump will feed the worst parts of people. But, see, I don't think everybody's like, good or bad or stupid or smart. I think people are complex. I mean, you listen to voters enough, you're like, you guys are a weird salad of stuff. Such strange contradictions and everything you do. But I also know that you can pull kind of the light out of people and you can pull the darkness out of people. Trump goes for darkness all day long. Fear and anger. Fear and anger. Fear and anger. But I keep listening to Jon Ossoff, and he has this. He's kind of doing almost a cadence of a preacher of some kind. He has long pauses. And so his communication style is storytelling. It is connection. And I'm like, okay, now I'm starting to feel something. Like, make people feel something that isn't miserable. That's one piece. Also, look, I'm always gonna be a Pete fan. I can't help it. I think that Pete Buttigieg is very sweet and very smart and dismantles people when he. Like, I just. Democrats, I do watch a lot of them. They get Republicans, you know, you remember all these like street mercenaries and Democrats are so nice with their good intentions
- [36:39]
Nicole Wallace
and yeah, and it's hard.
- [36:40]
Sarah Longwell
They don't get in the ring. And Pete has it it and he never, he never becomes a super jerk about it or whatever. He just is smarter than they are and he'll go everywhere and he'll do that. So Pete, John Alsof. But then there's the other side of it for me. So those are kind of two people that, that's maybe speak to me a little bit. I'm less sure of the politics of a Bernie or an AOC or a Mumdani. But I gotta tell you, because they know what they believe. I'm with Democrats sometimes and there's sort of a, you know, what are the magic words? Or how do we talk about this or how do we say this? And I just like want to grab people by the lapels and sometimes I do and just say, what do you believe? What are you passionate about? What matters to you? And the reason that Mamdani and AOC and Bernie are so good at their messaging is because they believe in some things. They have these values that they believe in. And even though from a policy standpoint they might not always resonate with me, them as people and communicators resonate with me. Like AOC is very good at getting in the ring and speaking clearly to people. She goes out and has her own audience. She doesn't need to go everywhere on other people's stuff. She's building her own audience. And totally not everybody can do that. But I just, I do think that that ability to have a parasocial relationship with voters, cuz they do demand it now. And it doesn't mean you create slop all the time, doesn't mean you need to be on Instagram all the time doing it as a, as a serious politician. But you do need to be talking to people. Donald Trump, he took every gatekeeper and he moved them aside and he talked directly to people on Twitter. And now we have to just repopulate his truth social garbage. But he removed it. He removed the barrier with people because he already had kind of a parasocial relationship with them.
- [38:14]
Nicole Wallace
From the Apprentice.
- [38:15]
Sarah Longwell
From the Apprentice. And this is where Kamala people are having this incredibly stupid conversation right now. Should she be more moderate? Should she be more progressive? I'm like, no voter that I was listening to was talking about whether she was sort of to this or to that. Mostly they were like, I don't know who she is. I didn't know, I didn't know anything about her because they felt like she didn't talk to them and explain clearly, here's who I am. Here's exactly who I am. And so like, I just think that is what I'm looking for in the next person. It's much less. Do they, do they share my spectrum of policy choices? I care so much less about that then are you going to help America not feel like garbage every day? Like we have to hate each other? Are you not going to live to divide us? And are you going to try to do some good things to improve people's lives?
- [39:01]
Nicole Wallace
My conversation with the one and only Sarah Longwell continues right after the break. We'll be right back.
- [39:17]
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- [40:51]
Nicole Wallace
What do you think of the six who've been in a fight with Donald Trump over the military? Because I feel like the best way to figure out all of these things is to be in a fight with him. And I feel like I think Slotkin was always really strong. I feel like she's even better. I feel like Kelly I watched him challenge Hegseth in his hearings and I thought I'd just never seen Kelly so sort of direct and effective as a communicator. I think Crow is really talented. And I think you and I have talked for years about how important the generals are and how important generals and military voices are to most American Americans. What do you make of the six? I guess Trump calls them the seditious six, but the six who dare to say that no one in the military should follow in a legal order.
- [41:37]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. So I have a chapter in the book called Wartime Generals and part of this speaks directly to these types of people. Go at him. It is a different moment. I do think Democrats are. I still hear a lot of people being like, well, you got to reach across the aisle and you got to, you know, try to find common cause with Republicans and that that's good. Okay. But actually what I like about those six is that they're finding common cause with each other in a space that they understand uniquely well. Donald Trump is a draft dodger who has never done an ounce of service for this country. And so people like them should stand up all day long, talk about their service, what they understand uniquely about it, and why Donald Trump is wrong. There's a reason that they went after them so hard. There's a reason they tried to actively prosecute them. Of course they couldn' Free speech. They were just quoting what was legal. Like there's no way to get at them. So the case had to be dropped. But it was potent and he came back at them because he knew it was potent, because he is scared of people who demonstrate character. There's a reason he needed to shit all over John McCain because he wasn't. He's not a tenth of the person John McCain was. John McCain was in a torture prison camp for this country, like wouldn't leave his troops behind. Donald Trump doesn't even understand anything remotely close to that. And so he has to belittle John McCain cuz he doesn't want people to notice how deficient he is. And I just think people of character, it's why the silence, to me, it's always the silence is worse. Is the most awful thing. Like the people who don't speak out anyway, I'm glad that they're speaking out and I think they should all go harder. And honestly, any Democrat who wants to have a future political or just as a pure rank political matter going after Donald Trump, people are gonna remember the voters, Democratic voters right now, they don't care about whether you are gonna be more progressive or more. They just want to know, are you going to go fight for me? Are you going to take this guy on? Are you going to stop letting him run roughshod over us? Because that's what they want. And so every single person in that video knew that they were going to get blowback, and they did it anyway. And that is what this moment demands from people when you look at their
- [43:43]
Nicole Wallace
ability to continue to move the Overton window. Right. So I covered the Mueller probe every single day. And. And I think I missed you talk about things we missed. Like, I missed how indifferent or how detached people felt from the rule of law. And I also missed the fact that companies and CEOs who are only gazillionaires because they're located in a country where there are laws and their courts and their judges, that I erroneously assume that they would have skin in the game, that the big banks would have someone in a padded room saying, oh, we don't want to become Orban. And so when Trump did authoritarian things, people in that arena would say something. And the business community been silent. I'm disgusted by them. I've really spent an inordinate and probably unhealthy amount of time trying to understand their silence. But on this issue of fighting, I wonder what you make of the brand damage all of the cowards are doing to their brands and themselves with their silence.
- [44:42]
Sarah Longwell
Man, this is tough, because I wish I could say that they were doing more damage to themselves. Like, there's a reason that they're silent is that every lawyer that they have is telling them, don't get in the crosshairs. Right.
- [44:52]
Nicole Wallace
They're all of the 33% authoritarian, insane president.
- [44:57]
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- [44:57]
Sarah Longwell
Of the Trump administration. Like, this is. This is the problem. You know, I'm here in D.C. so I know lots of people who are kind of in the space, and they'll tell you, yeah, well, Trump, you know, if he turns his eye of Sauron on you and he's gonna mess with your business, everyone's like, keep your head below the parapet. Every lawyer in town, everybody in this, every comms person, they're telling people, don't put your head up, it'll get cut off. He's vindictive, he's awful. He'll come for you. And as a practical assessment, if you've got shareholders, if you're a law firm, cares about business that wants to be in front of this government, all of that, that's true. It's true that it is better for business. It is Better right now, objectively, for your bottom line to keep your head down. But also you are a coward. If they all put their heads up collectively, you could change the game, but instead, everybody is protecting their personal, you know, bespoke whatever. And I didn't know quite how these kinds of social contagions happened. I sort of assumed better of people. The voters are one thing, people who don't have a lot of information. These are people with plenty of information. And here is the one thing that I do think Democrats should be tough on. I think the Democrats should, should hold some of these people who just paid off Trump and walked away. They should start even now. I think they should be saying to them, we're gonna be back in power and this is not how we're gonna behave as a country. It makes me so angry. These are, these are billionaires and millionaires and they've got every resource at their disposal. They got good law firms. And what, they're not gonna go stand up for James Comey, they're just gonna make sure they're keeping their head down. This is how bad things happen is by a bunch of people individually deciding they're not going to speak up.
- [46:40]
Nicole Wallace
And I think it matters. When you see the voting rights case, we have changed people's right to vote in America predicated on a lie, on something Bill Barr called bullshit. And law firms being on the sideline have a consequence, right? More people will not be able to drop a mail in ballot in a Dropbox. The most secure ballots in any election are always mail in ballots. I mean, there is a damage being done to democracy. All the law firms that capitulated, like, how is some of this stuff happening?
- [47:11]
Sarah Longwell
I mean, I can give you a real answer that, but none of it's good. I mean, it's, I don't have, I don't have a response. Like, you're just right. You are correct that this is what's happening. It is a catastrophic moral failure on the part of elites.
- [47:23]
Nicole Wallace
Like, I hate them too. Like, like, like, like, like, I like, I watch your voter groups and I'm like, yeah, I understand why no one trusts anyone in power.
- [47:34]
Sarah Longwell
That's exactly right. You know, I think there's been some evolution and I think in the very beginning of Trump, as you saw him coming, to sort of tear down norms and values and institutions. There's this part of you that wants to defend the institutions, and there are still institutions that I think are very important to uphold. But I'm like, institutions, they can't protect themselves. Like, they are people. And these people are not protecting their own institutions, and they're not protecting the institutions that protect them. This is your point about. Without the rule of law, there's an economic term around trust, like trust in economics, knowing that America will be an honest broker, that we will pay our loans back. All of those things require trust. Our economy runs on it. And so for these elites who have so much to basically abdicate, the responsibility to stand up for the things that undergird their success, that give them the largesse that they have, has just been one of the saddest things that I've ever seen. And it makes me not. Not blame voters for wanting. For having, like, pitchfork feelings about elites, which doesn't mean I am. Look, I am firmly against any of the sort of, like, let's condone political violence, because that's illiberal. That's illiberal. It's below the line. It's not. Okay. But I understand people, their anger at elites, and certainly in this moment, elites are earning it by having no higher sense of duty to the country and only to their own bottom lines. And I'm a capitalist, but that is not how it's supposed to. Like, it's a. It's a reciprocal arrangement capitalism. Like, you have an obligation to. To be a good, honest broker and to. To protect the institutions that undergird the value of your companies. And if you abdicate that they shut us down or our. Our credit rating gets, you know, whatever, there's a million consequences. And if they come to roost, they will just. They will have earned them.
- [49:22]
Nicole Wallace
What is the Sarah Longwell sauce that makes, you know, everything you've touched in this moment such a success?
- [49:31]
Sarah Longwell
You know, I do think that the watchword authenticity is a thing that people throw around, but I do think, in a moment of collapsing trust, the thing that the Bulwark has provided has been both. Hey, we're gonna be honest with you about our journey. Where we come from, who we were, what our worldviews were, how they're changing as a result of Trump. We don't just have an audience. We have a community. They talk back to us. We are in community with them. I mean, we make most of our stuff free because you can't save democracy from behind a paywall.
- [50:02]
Nicole Wallace
Correct.
- [50:02]
Sarah Longwell
But they get to be inside the community. And I think being honest with people and trying to communicate with them all the time is a big part of the moment. And so, like, a lot of the lessons I've learned from the Bulwark, I can sort of take to politics. So one of them is, you know, to build a community, you have to be a community. And I think that one of the reasons people develop a parasocial relationship with us is because they can tell we fight all the time. JVL and I don't agree Tim Miller and I don't agree Bill Crystal. We all have different. The only thing we all are together is super pro democracy. We believe in the higher order things, but we disagree on all kinds of things and we fight it out. And the audience likes that they participate, that they understand each of us. It's a pretty sticky thing when you have an audience. And so we have focused on that community element, nurturing that and trying to never be audience captured, but also never be sort of bullied into saying anything that we don't believe to be true by the context of the moment. And so I think that has bought us a lot of trust in a low trust time.
- [51:05]
Nicole Wallace
What do you see in the media? I mean, I say this all the time, you know, I don't have any awareness really of what's happening in other cable networks because I know where my audience is pulled to. They're curating sort of news. And that's largely sort of pro democracy. And that is a heavier mix of independent media than I think legacy media. And I wonder what your sort of take on the media is at this moment.
- [51:36]
Sarah Longwell
I mean, look, there's no doubt that there's a massive fracturing going on in mainstream media and much of it is to our detriment as a society. I think that more paywalled stuff, you know, if you've got to pay to get really good journalism, that's tough. I think none of us can do what we do as sort of independent media without the shoe leather journalism, the news gathering that happens at real media companies. And so I don't wanna see them go away. I don't wanna compete with them. I don't wanna even benefit from their fragmentation. But I do recognize how much fragmentation is happening and I'm in constant build mode. I just see, look, the Washington Post, right, All of those good journalists lost their job. We should build new things out of them. But I'll tell you, obviously I do your show a lot and I do your show more than any other show because you have a couple things like that I think a lot of other people don't want is you create community on your show. You bring the same people back for conversations that can extend so people know them and so it feels comfortable. Like this is the Nicole Wallace Cinematic Universe. People who recognize me out in the world, they're either Bulwark fans or they're your fans. Like, those are the two kinds that really. They know that we're on your show. You know how to talk to people. They can feel. They know that you care about the things that you're talking about. And it is that, that is the sauce. Like you have it, which is obviously you have it. You have a big TV show. I don't. You don't need me to tell you.
- [53:01]
Nicole Wallace
You're making me cry. I like spent the whole week, I got on the verge of tears and you're making me cry here. I love the audience. Like, I remember the morning after the election, I was like, like, not like, I have to go to work, I get to go to work. Like, this is my job. It's ridiculous. But like, but like, who is going to turn on the TV today? Yeah, I had one short, ill fated season on the View, but I saw the way Whoopi Goldberg interacted with every viewer of the View. She treated the View viewers with such reverence and love and tenderness and gratitude that like anyone that turns it on is gonna get like whatever the best I have to offer is. But I also though, have struggled every day over the last 15 months with like, know, I don't want to be overly optimistic. Like, in your view, how does this end?
- [53:49]
Sarah Longwell
So this is the thing is most things don't have a direct start point or an end point. In some ways, Trump has a little bit of a start point until he came down the escalator, whatever, and we all remember that, but it was before that. He's had a long journey. And so look, I do think the Trump, a lot of it happened. Like what happens to Trump? Does Trump, he's an old man. Does the actuarial table get him? Or does he, does he have his hands and his grip on the Republican Party for the foreseeable future as he ages? Like one of these weird dictators in a Latin American country, you know, that just like hangs on and continues to lord over things. Maybe. So I don't know where it ends, but I will tell you we can. The best outcome is that Trump leaves office. And I could just put a period there that Trump leaves office having cratered as a failed experiment. Because from that flows everything. From there flows Don Jr. And Eric's ability to have continuing influence over our policies. Cuz they're weight gating making millions and millions of dollars. Like Elon's brand needs to be tainted by Trump. Like the entire Trump thing, these social media people that propped him up, the, the law firms that capitulated to him, Trump's failure, catastrophic failure as a political figure that should taint everybody who propped him up. And like, that's the best outcome that we can look and say, no, you failed America when we needed you. And that they pay for that. That with a certain amount of shame going forward, that forces the society to recalibrate around better things. And I think that's why having good politicians come up, you know, the Democratic Party just is the organizing vehicle for the pro democracy coalition, which means it's gonna be big and multifaceted and weird and have a lot of strange bedfellows. I'm looking forward to the Democratic primary because my hope is, is that somebody fierce and kind is able to like, feed the good parts in people and bring us up from the there.
- [55:42]
Nicole Wallace
Fierce and kind. Would that ever be you? Would you ever throw in and run for office?
- [55:46]
Sarah Longwell
I think there's an audience for us, a good audience for those of us who are laps. I'm not sure they're electing us president of their party yet. I think that might be a stretch, but I don't know. I'll continue to try to figure out where I can do the most amount of, I don't know, have positive influence. That's all I want to do.
- [56:02]
Nicole Wallace
We appreciate you so much. I love getting to talk to you today. More and more places, same. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Best People. And a note to listeners, last chance to grab your tickets for a live taping of the Best People podcast with our friend, the iconic documentarian Ken Burns. It's happening at the 92nd Street Y right here in New York City. It's on Tuesday, May 12th. We have a link in our our show notes to learn more. All episodes of the podcast are also available on YouTube. Visit msnow thebestpeople to watch. The Best People is produced by Vicki Vergelina. Our associate producer is Iggy Monda and our intern is Colette Holcomb, with additional production support from Ayan Chatterjee, Cory Robinson and Rana Shahbazi. Our audio engineers are Bob Mallory and Hazik bin Ahmad Farad. Katie Lau is our senior manager of audio production. Pat Burkey is the senior executive producer of Deadline White House. Brad Gold is the executive producer of content strategy. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of audio, and Madeline Herringer is senior VP in charge of audio, digital and long form search for the best people wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to follow the series.
- [57:35]
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