David French: We Are in the Bad Multiverse

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast: "David French: We Are in the Bad Multiverse"
Release Date: December 5, 2024
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: David French

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of The Bulwark Podcast, host Tim Miller engages in a candid and in-depth discussion with David French, a renowned opinion columnist for The New York Times and co-host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions. French brings his expertise to dissect pressing political issues, particularly focusing on the current political climate, the implications of recent nominations, and the intersection of religion and politics within the Democratic Party. The conversation is both timely and critical, providing listeners with a comprehensive analysis of the challenges facing liberal democracy today.

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The Pete Hegseth Nomination Crisis

Topic Overview:
The episode kicks off with a heated discussion about Pete Hegseth's nomination for Secretary of Defense. Tim Miller expresses his frustration with Hegseth's qualifications, highlighting his background as a TV host and activist rather than a seasoned military leader.

Notable Quote:

Tim Miller (02:03): "You calm me for some reason. And people notice that I don't cuss as much when you're on the podcast. So that's a double victory for you as a guest."
David French (02:42): "Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of veterans are more qualified to be Secretary of Defense than he is."

Key Points:

• Qualifications Concerns: French emphasizes that Hegseth lacks the necessary experience, stating, "He's been a TV host and an activist," and contrasts this with the thousands of veterans more suited for the role.
• Personal Conduct Issues: The discussion touches on Hegseth's alleged personal failings, including rape and alcoholism allegations, questioning his suitability for a high-ranking defense position.
• Political Ramifications: French warns that Trump's appointments, like Hegseth's, may sow the seeds for political downfall by surrounding the administration with incompetence, ultimately alienating the broader electorate.

Tim Miller's Perspective:
Miller highlights the absurdity of defending such nominations, noting the disconnect between Hegseth's qualifications and the responsibilities of the Secretary of Defense. He underscores the importance of senators upholding their constitutional duty to provide "advice and consent" rather than merely supporting the president's picks.

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The Role of Defamation Law in Political Intimidation

Topic Overview:
The conversation shifts to the chilling use of defamation law as a tool for intimidation, particularly in the context of Cash Patel's nomination for FBI Director.

Notable Quote:

David French (16:23): "This is a tactic that you often see... anti-slap laws... attempt to intimidate somebody and silence somebody with legal threats."

Key Points:

• Intimidation Tactics: French explains how powerful individuals leverage defamation lawsuits to silence critics, a strategy increasingly common in political arenas.
• Impact on Critics: He discusses the potential for nominees like Cash Patel to target critics, creating an atmosphere of fear and discouraging dissent.
• Checks and Balances: While acknowledging existing safeguards against prosecutorial overreach, French points out that investigative powers remain vulnerable to abuse, allowing for extensive and burdensome investigations without immediate accountability.

Tim Miller's Concerns:
Miller expresses deep concern over the implications of such tactics, especially given Patel's position as FBI Director. He fears that legal threats could signal a willingness to target political opponents relentlessly, undermining trust in federal institutions.

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Social Media: BlueSky vs. Twitter

Topic Overview:
Miller and French explore the role of social media platforms like BlueSky and Twitter in shaping political discourse and maintaining ideological bubbles.

Notable Quotes:

Tim Miller (53:16): "Blue sky versus Twitter... my case for staying on awful Twitter... bubbles are bad."
David French (56:41): "I've had a number of people ask me... what are you actually getting out of it by engaging deeply?"

Key Points:

• Platform Utility: Miller defends his continued use of Twitter for its role in monitoring and engaging with diverse viewpoints, despite its toxic reputation.
• French's Take: French prefers to limit his engagement with Twitter, finding it both toxic and unproductive compared to real-life interactions and other platforms like BlueSky.
• Ideological Bubbles: Both acknowledge the dangers of ideological bubbles but debate the best platforms to address or escape them. French emphasizes that meaningful engagement often happens outside of social media, in real-life interactions.

Implications for Political Engagement:
The discussion highlights the challenges of maintaining a balance between staying informed and avoiding the negativity inherent in certain social media environments. Both agree that real-world engagement is crucial for fostering understanding and combating ideological extremism.

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Democratic Party's Struggles with Working-Class Voters

Topic Overview:
French and Miller delve into the Democratic Party's ongoing difficulties in retaining and attracting working-class voters, examining the role of religious identity and cultural alignment.

Notable Quote:

David French (45:16): "Elements of blue run America are not working well... the dysfunctions in America's crown jewel cities."

Key Points:

• Cultural Disconnect: French argues that Democrats have not effectively connected with genuinely religious and working-class voters, who often feel alienated by the party's cultural and policy positions.
• White Evangelical Alignment: He points out the seamless alignment between white evangelical communities and the Republican Party, making it difficult for Democrats to penetrate this demographic.
• Urban vs. Rural Challenges: While urban areas face their own set of issues, French emphasizes that rural America has its own dysfunctions that the Democrats have failed to address adequately.

Strategic Recommendations:
French suggests that instead of attempting to convert deeply aligned groups like white evangelicals, Democrats should focus on improving governance in their stronghold areas, such as cities, to demonstrate competence and attract voters disillusioned with the status quo.

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Potential Actions for the Biden Administration

Topic Overview:
The discussion moves to what the Biden administration could feasibly accomplish in the remaining time of its term, particularly concerning immigration, defense reforms, and foreign policy.

Notable Quote:

David French (35:31): "The grim reality is that Russia is taking enormous losses... there's a clock ticking."

Key Points:

• Insurrection Act Reform: French laments the lack of progress in reforming the Insurrection Act, which grants overly broad powers to the president, posing a significant threat to democratic checks and balances.
• Economic Sanctions: He proposes seizing frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, which would both weaken Russia economically and bolster Ukraine's defenses.
• Ukraine Conflict: French expresses concern over potential ceasefire agreements that could disproportionately favor Russia, resulting in Ukraine's loss of territory and sovereignty. He warns against solutions that may appear as victories for Putin rather than genuine peace for Ukraine.

Biden's Limited Options:
French acknowledges the Biden administration's constraints but emphasizes the importance of strategic foreign policy decisions to support democratic allies and counter authoritarian moves globally.

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Reflections on National Character and Morality

Topic Overview:
In response to Mick Federation's farewell address, French and Miller explore the theme of national character and whether America is deserving of divine favor based on its actions and policies.

Notable Quote:

Mick Federation (59:25): "It is only if the American people merit his benevolence that God will continue to bless America."
David French (60:05): "God loves us whether we merit it or not... the entire point of the cross."

Key Points:

• Theological Perspective: French clarifies that, from a Christian theological standpoint, divine grace is unconditional. However, he interprets Mick's message as a call for America to uphold virtuous standards to justify its status as a "shining city on a hill."
• Moral Accountability: The discussion underscores the belief that nations, like individuals, are accountable for their moral and ethical conduct, aligning with certain interpretations of religious doctrine.

Implications for National Policy:
This reflection serves as a moral critique of current American policies and leadership, urging listeners to consider the ethical foundations of their governance and societal structures.

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with heartfelt thanks between Tim Miller and David French, reflecting on the gravity of the topics discussed. French's insights provide a sobering analysis of the current political landscape, emphasizing the need for accountability, strategic policy reforms, and a reconnection with core democratic values. Listeners are left with a profound understanding of the challenges facing liberal democracy and the imperative to address them thoughtfully and decisively.

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Key Takeaways:

• Credential Matters: High-ranking positions require not just loyalty but substantial qualifications and integrity.
• Legal Tools as Weapons: Defamation law can be misused to silence legitimate criticism, posing threats to free discourse.
• Social Media's Double-Edged Sword: While platforms like Twitter can offer engagement, they often perpetuate toxic environments and ideological bubbles.
• Democrats' Electoral Challenges: The party needs to bridge cultural and economic gaps to regain working-class support.
• Foreign Policy Urgency: Strategic actions are necessary to support allies and counter authoritarianism effectively.
• Moral Responsibility: National character and ethical governance are paramount for maintaining the nation's standing and divine favor.

This episode serves as a crucial commentary on the intersection of politics, law, and morality, urging listeners to remain vigilant and engaged in the preservation of democratic principles.

Transcript

[David French]

Lights are going up.

[Tim Miller]

Snow is falling down. There's a feeling of goodwill around town. It could only mean one thing. McRib is here. People throwing parties, ugly sweaters everywhere. Stockings hung up by the chimney with care. It could only mean one thing.

[David French]

McRib is here at participatingmcdonald's for a limited time.

[Tim Miller]

Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm delighted to have backed favorite of the pod opinion columnist for the New York Times, co host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions. His most recent book is Divided We Fall, America's Secession Threat, and How we Restore our Nation. An uplifting topic. It's David French. How you doing, David?

[David French]

Hey, Tim. It's always great to see you.

[Tim Miller]

It's good to see you too, man. You calm me for some reason. And people notice that I don't cuss as much when you're on the podcast. So that's. That's a double victory for you as a guest.

[David French]

Yeah, I'm just. I'm glad to have that calming effect, Tim. I don't have it on everybody. I found out.

[Tim Miller]

I've noticed that. I noticed that. I want to start with Pete Hegseth. There's this guy I follow on social media, Max Twain. I really like him because He's a rabid DeSantis supporter, way more conservative than me, but unlike 99% of MAGA world, he does not go along with the Trump BS. He's just. It's like what you would expect from somebody living on earth. Here's how he described the DoD nomination. I thought he put it quite well. Pete Hegseth is the most unqualified cabinet nominee in American history, and that's before accounting for all the rape and alcoholism. And so I wanted to start with you as a veteran, as a conservative, somebody that cares about this, like, it must. You must feel like you're in a simulation that people are taking this, like, seriously.

[David French]

Yeah, it's nuts, Tim. I mean. And look, I'm not going to denigrate Pete Hegseth service. He served honorably, by all accounts. That's not the issue here. I served with a bunch of guys in Iraq who served honorably as well, with more distinguished records than Pete Hegseth. They're more qualified to be Secretary of Defense than he is. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of veterans are more qualified to be Secretary of defense than he is. There might be, Tim, 10,000 people in the greater D.C. area more qualified to be Secretary of Defense. I'm not exaggerating.

[Tim Miller]

I Mean, he's a TV host. For eight years, he's been a TV host.

[David French]

He's been a TV host and an activist. And his activism, according to the recent news reports, was largely a failure because of his own failings. And so he ran small organizations that he's left, he hosts a TV show. And his basic qualification is that he served, which. Good, good for him. Again, we honor that service he served. And he's Super Maga. Super Maga.

[Tim Miller]

And he wrote a book. He wrote a book.

[David French]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

As two authors here, you know, we don't want to denigrate that work either.

[David French]

No, no, no. But no, it really is true. And I'm very glad you brought that up because the statement, aside from all of the alcoholism and the allegations and all of this, one of the issues with Trump's, many of Trump's new appointees putting aside all their scandals, if we can put those aside for the moment, yeah, sure. A lot of them are just totally not qualified for the positions. Matt Gaetz, before he left, was absolutely not qualified. And I'm sorry, being an anti vaccine, sort of fringe nutrition activist doesn't qualify a person to become the head of hhs. I mean, this is, you know, what are we doing here? And I, and I think that one of the things he could be doing, or he actually is doing if all of these go through, is he's really planting the seeds of his own political demise. I mean, the, the majority of the people who voted for him were not voting for the MAGA extended universe. The majority of people were voting for him were voting out of discontent with the status quo. And if you roll in with a parade of incompetence, you're not going to improve on the status qu.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I want to get into the political of it a little bit more as far as what the potential ramifications could be going forward. Because I read your column on that point, I think it's interesting. I share that view, that I think he's planting the seeds for his own demise. But I think there's some counter views that are worth discussing in a bit. But I just want to, on this nomination itself, just to kind of put a finer point on the ridiculousness. There was an exchange between Jake Tapper and Rick Scott yesterday. And this was on the personal allegations. But I want to play it just to show how wrapped around the axle the defenders of the Hagsef nomination are. Let's listen to Tapper.

[David French]

We have the risk of war. The world's on fire. We've got to change how Our Department of Defense is run. Yeah, no, he's going to do it. I hear you, but you just, you started this interview and saying you don't like all these anonymous accusations and I should be able to interview these people. I'm saying, okay, shouldn't Pete Hegseth release this woman from her non disclosure agreement so that I can do what you suggested at the top of the interview you wanted me to do? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. No equivocation there, Tim. Absolutely not.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And so, like, this is the situation with these guys, right, where it's like, on the one hand, if he did have the qualifications, you know, then you could go through this whole personal, you know, stuff, and it's like, is, you know, is the fact that his personal life is a complete disaster and that he's a serial cheater and that there are rape allegations, is that enough to disqualify him or if the opposite was true, he wasn't really qualified. But he's really shown a lot of. In his personal life, he's been very distinguished and he ran these other organizations and he ran them well against neither. And these guys. It's just hard to understand. Like, what? It's not hard to understand, I guess, but like, can you just believe that? How these guys are putting themselves in the position to have to defend something this preposterous?

[David French]

Well, you know, it's deja vu all over again, tim. We remember 2017-2021, when Trump was president. And all of these guys are having to defend the latest tweet, they're having to defend the latest temper tantrum, the latest scandal. And you know, some of them just duck, kind of duck and cover. Do the Mike Johnson thing of pretend you're talking on the phone while racing through reporters. Some of them make ridiculous statements like this, I want to interview the person. Okay, release her from NDA. Absolutely not. I mean, this is.

[Tim Miller]

But this is like, this is a different category than just avoiding people about the Trump tweets. Like, at some level, it's like, oh, Trump said this crazy thing. He's the president. Yes. Members of Congress should have thoughts about statements made by the President of the United States or the President elect in this case. That's true, but it also is Trump. Right. And that's just the reality that we live in, that he's going to say crazy stuff. And it's at least, you can at least understand the rationale behind these guys not answering for that at this point. What is the rationale for excusing this? There's a Way out here. This, this is maybe the most serious job in the world, the non elected position in the entire world. The Secretary of Defense of the United States. They have agency on this, right? It's not just like Trump popping off.

[David French]

Well, not only do they have agency, Tim, they have responsibility here. They have constitutional responsibility. And so this is one of the things that's so frustrating about the moment is at this circumstance, you're exactly right to draw a distinction between responding to tweets or even responding to policy papers or positions or executive orders and things like that, and a nomination for which that senator is constitutionally obligated to give advice and consent. And so what we're beginning to see is a morphing in the Republican Party of the idea of the job of the senator. In this moment, they're really seeing themselves, many of them, not all of them, thankfully, but many of them are seeing themselves as. My job is to vote for the President's team. You will hear this. The President won. He is entitled to his team. But that's actually the opposite of the truth. When you read the Federalist Papers and you read none other than Alexander Hamilton talking about the advice and consent role, the advice and consent role was specifically designed to prevent the nomination of people through favoritism, obsequiousness, to where the President would only get yes men and yes women around him. And so what we're actually talking about here is what is their fundamental job? What is their role as a senator? And the founders were very, very clear about it. And so far as I know, the 2024 election does not abrogate their constitutional responsibilities. They have it. They have that responsibility. And you know, yes, they're, they're ducking it. And it is more, far more serious than ducking, commenting even on Trump policies.

[Tim Miller]

I think this is the prime example that we are in the bad multiverse. I do have to say the hag set thing I just think is too ridiculous to.

[David French]

It's absurd to be real.

[Tim Miller]

It has to be real.

[David French]

Well, you know, it's so absurd, Tim, that it's. We've spent five times more time talking about him than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Which is also unbelievably absurd. And haven't even raised the name Tulsi Gabbard, which is also ridiculous. And then let's think about this. We're actually. If we're in a world where I'm breathing a sigh of relief that Pam Bondi is the Attorney General nominee now, she would have been my worst case scenario a few years ago and Now I'm like, okay, Pam Bondi. Okay. At least it's not Matt Gaetz.

[Tim Miller]

People are like, oh, return to Pam Bondi. That's somebody responsible. I'm like, she was with Rudy, like, when he was at Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Pam Bondi was going around with them. And there are other people that we haven't mentioned. Going to get to RFK isn't even on my outline. And we're planning a Rogan length podcast here. So you are correct. We are in a strange times. But I want to pick your brain in particular. One more thing. On the HEG set thing, you wrote something, I think maybe over on Blue sky, we're going to get into Blue sky versus Twitter too. That's also coming about how, you know, as part of his defense of his personal behavior, he's talking about how he's found Jesus and how, like, obviously you have respect for that and somebody finding their faith and turning over a new leaf. Relatively convenient timing, I would note.

[David French]

Great timing for finding Great timing, spectacular timing.

[Tim Miller]

There is the other side of that coin, which you've also written a lot about. I mean, he is at the megachurch in Tennessee in your home state that has ties to the Doug Wilson Church in Idaho, which we have covered here, that has kind of these deeply radical Christian nationalist beliefs. And I do just wonder whether that gives you any pause thinking about maybe he has found Jesus, but maybe he's also found the political Jesus.

[David French]

Yeah, it does give me pause, Tim. There's no question about it. And, you know, look, I've seen some of the defenses of the tattoos that he has. You know, he has a Jerusalem cross tattoo. He has another one that says Deus vult, God wills it, which is a slogan of the Crusaders.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, somebody was trying to say that that was a Catholic slogan. And I was like, I did 13 years of Catholic school. My mom's a daily churchgoer. I never heard Deus vault before.

[David French]

Yeah, I don't love this term. You know, the term gaslighting, which everyone uses all the time in this era, but this is actual gaslighting. Because, you know, on the one hand, a lot of these Twitter people are like, oh, how dare you take umbrage at a Christian cross or a Christian saying, you anti Christian bigot. When anyone who spends any time in these spaces knows that those particular symbols usually but not always. I have to say it just like flying an appeal to heaven flag or whatever. There is a usually but not always element to this. But those symbols, especially in this current moment, usually indicate that they are part of a particular strain of Christian nationalism. And if you doubt that, if you follow any of the major accounts, if you follow any of the people who are deep into this, you see this Deus Vault stuff all the time. You will see it in responses to me online. You'll see it all the time. Deus Vault. God wills it with a crusader swinging a sword. It's an image you see frequently. And you know, when you combine it with the fact that he is part of a church and a denomination that has had ties to not just Christian nationalists, but some pretty nasty racial stuff as well. Now, I have no indication that he's into that.

[Tim Miller]

A lot of churches in the sea, though, you know, you could choose.

[David French]

Boy, that again, this is the kind of thing where if you understand this world, it's alarming, but you have to really understand this world and those who don't walk into it and they'll be like, they'll be saying things about tattoos or crosses, et cetera, that have no bearing to what's actually happening in this sort of online subculture. And it's entirely possible, Tim, one of the reasons why I haven't really raised this and drilled down on this, it's entirely possible that he has those tattoos in this completely sort of innocent, coincidental way that he belongs to this denomination but has not been part of the sort of move to the Christian nationalist right and elements of the white nationalist right. That's all possible. But the affiliation with a denomination in a movement that is one of the most Christian nationalists in the Protestant world is a bit disturbing to me.

[Tim Miller]

Same. I'm happy to hear that you said that.

[David French]

Same.

[Tim Miller]

You know, it's just.

[David French]

And you know, look, there are no religious tests for public office that is part of the American Constitution. But if you have a view of the American Constitution that is subordinate to religious authority, that absolutely you can take into account.

[Tim Miller]

Well, and it ties to what we had an interview earlier this week with Thomas Zimmer about like Russ Vogt. Right. Like there are other like actually more explicit about that than Hegseth. Right. Just about like his views of kind of being in a post constitutional moment and what the obligations of the administration are.

[David French]

Right, right. The actual faith itself should not disqualify anybody. Christian, Muslim, Jewish, of course not. If they have a view that is dangerous to the Constitution, you can consider the view that is dangerous to the Constitution, regardless of the faith source, if that makes sense. So whether, if you are hostile to the American Constitution, you come at that hostility through a dedication to say Sharia law, or if you're hostile to the United States Constitution, and you come to that through theonomy, sort of Protestant religious nationalism, either one of those sources, the core issue is, are you hostile to the United States Constitution? Not are you Muslim, Are you Christian? And that. And. But again, I have put that further down the list just because we have so many other things that require no.

[Tim Miller]

Speculation arguing for him, you know, Exactly. So getting through all the arguments against is pretty challenging. All right. Speaking of people that might be hostile to the Constitution, our incoming at least nominee for FBI Director, Cash Patel. There's a letter yesterday that was pretty chilling to me that I wanted to get your take on. Olivia Troy, she says. Friend of mine was on MSNBC talking about Cash, particularly about the story which we've discussed on this podcast, in how he allegedly lied to the Defense Department about getting approval for airspace over Nigeria as they were doing kind of an exfil operation for somebody out of Niger. I think this was in Mark Esper's book. So she talked about that and said that he kind of lied about intelligence or something. Cash Patel's lawyer sent a letter to her saying that litigation will be filed against you if you fail to retract defamatory statements made about Mr. Patel. To me, that's chilling for a lot of reasons, but I'm curious what your thoughts are.

[David French]

Yeah, I mean, this is the kind of intimidation that you've seen, you know, in a number of places, a number of spaces, where somebody with superior resources is trying to challenge a critic and drag them into either. Intimidate them into silence, because maybe that person doesn't have a lot of resources. They can't hire a lawyer. They, even if they're telling the truth, they just don't have the resources to fight the battle over the truth. So you might be trying to intimidate into silence, bully into silence. And this is a tactic that you often see. At one point, it became so common to see sort of more powerful larger entities trying to bully smaller critics into silence, that this is a reason why a bunch of states have passed what are called anti slap laws. In other words, a slap lawsuit is strategic lawsuit against public participation. It's where you are filing a lawsuit to try to get somebody to shut up. And a lot of states now have these summary proceedings where if you file that defamation lawsuit and it doesn't have merit, you can have a very short summary proceeding where the lawsuit gets dismissed and the person who filed it has to pay your attorney's fees, which is not the Normal course of action. So she's almost certainly legally safe. I mean, she did not defame him in those statements. She's almost certainly legally safe. But that's not the question, Tim. The question is, is she going to be bullied? Is she going to be intimidated? Now, we both know her, and she's not the kind of person who's going to be bullied or intimidated. She has high quality legal counsel, unlike a lot of people who are in these circumstances. So she's going to be fine. But there's absolutely. There's no question in my mind. This was a shot across the bow. It was a symbol that if you are going to come after him, he will come after you in some way. And I think that symbol does really matter. That symbol is really important. And look, defamation law has a role to play in American life. I mean, it was a defamation lawsuit that held Fox News accountable, Rudy Giuliani accountable, Gateway pundit. I mean, we can go down the line, but abuse of defamation law is one way that powerful people try to silence criticism. And so this looks like that textbook abuse, that effort to try to intimidate somebody and silence somebody with legal threats.

[Tim Miller]

In addition to everything you said, the thing that really concerns me the most about this is that it is the person that's the incoming potential FBI director. Right. And it was an action that, to me, I don't know how you can read it any other way than as personal vengeance or grievance, particularly when you consider that this claim against him has been made by lots of people. Again, it was in the former defense secretary's book. So to pick one person to target them, to me, that's a signal that I'm going to plan on targeting people. And the FBI has huge leeway to target people before you ever get to legal proceedings. Right. Like there are checks eventually. Okay. Like, eventually you have to prosecute somebody. They're going to be checks, and you're gonna have to have grand juries or juries or other doj, you know, whatever, to approve it. Like, there'll be other checks. But an incoming FBI director, like, to me this is signaling that, yeah, I can go, I'm going to go after you, and there's not actually going to be a lot you can do about it. There's not an anti slap lawsuit you can file against the FBI director for investigating you.

[David French]

Yeah, I'm so glad you raised that point, Tim, because I've had a number of people ask me, okay, wait a minute. How much can the Trump administration really target you after all you've got juries, you've got judges, you've got a lot of checks. That's absolutely true. When it comes to can the Trump administration prosecute and convict with the emphasis on and convict it's critics? Yeah, there are a lot of safeguards against that, no question. But where are the safeguards the weakest? The safeguards are the weakest when it comes to investigations. So, for example, you could have Pam Bondi appoint a special counsel to, quote, investigate Russiagate, you know, in other words, like, go back over all the Durham ground or whatever. Or you could have a special counsel to investigate irregularities in the 2020 election or some mandate along those lines. And then this person then just proceeds to pull into the dragnet dozens of Trump critics, dozens of media figures where everyone's got to get a lawyer. You're going to be spending enormous sums of money that often people don't have. All of a sudden, your name gets leaked into the public as a potential target of an investigation. Then the threats come in and maybe you don't have the resources for security and that sor circumstance. And, you know, so whether it's the FBI, whether it's, you know, larger main justice, whether it's the irs, one of the things that we have seen is that investigation capability. The process is the punishment. And so that's why the investigation powers of the federal government should be used sparingly only when there is probable cause to believe crimes have been committed, because the investigation can be so incredible, incredibly burdensome to its targets. And so, no, you don't have to prosecute and convict people to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. You can extend the investigation dragnet and literally just ruin people financially.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, this is.

[David French]

That's cheery. This is so cheery, too.

[Tim Miller]

This is cheery. Yeah. And I'm adding this question now. We've been doing, we've been doing, we've been doing this with some of my colleagues here. But I'm curious, your take. So now, looking at all these nominations, what is the thing that alarms you the most because of that answer you just gave? I look at these things and I think that Cash and Tulsi are the most alarming because of the leeway they will have to act on things before you get to potential checks from other areas of the government. But other folks have different views. People are very concerned about RFK and whatever polio is a reprisal of Polio polio. I'm just wondering what your threat assessment is sitting here right now as you kind of look at the potential incoming administration with a month's worth of data.

[David French]

Yeah, I mean, I think to me, the Cash Patel nomination stands out because you're talking about somebody running one of them. And look, there are a lot of good folks of the FBI who would resist them. There's just no question about that.

[Tim Miller]

Or resist extra legal demands or whatever.

[David French]

Yes, correct. Resist extra legal demands. Yes. They shouldn't resist him if he's offering, you know, making directives that are legal and appropriate, but extra legal demands. There will be people who resist that. There will be people in the DOJ who would resist extra legal demands, for sure. But the amount of power and authority that he has over individuals who have really almost sort of unrivaled ability to dig into your life, unrivaled ability to turn your life inside out and to place you in profound legal jeopardy. Because, you know, one of the things that you've seen, and one of the. There were critics of the Russia investigation and critics of FBI investigations more broadly have a point about, is that often the FBI will dive in to an issue and they won't be able to prove the underlying crime that was the instigator for the investigation. But there are crimes that are then committed in the process of the investigation. Among them, things like lying to the FBI, etc. And so, you know, one of the things you'll see happen is they'll be investigating topic X, but they get very angry at how the target of the investigation behaved during the investigation. And they'll charge what are called process crimes, crimes allegedly committed during the course of the investigation. And. And sometimes that's totally appropriate. Sometimes somebody does, in the middle of the investigation, try to obstruct it. They do lie, et cetera. And then sometimes, though, it's a reach, it's a stretch. And so it is just a very dangerous thing to get the FBI targeted on any given person's life. It is. And so that is very disturbing to me. I'm actually. In a weird way, Tim Hegseth is so unqualified, so profoundly unqualified, that in a way he's less dangerous because he'll be surrounded by. If you've ever been in rooms full of generals, these are not people who are intimidated by a Pete Hegseth.

[Tim Miller]

Right. Though can you imagine having to. Yes, sir, Pete Hegseth, if you are like the commanding general of Europe, you're a West Point grad and have been 40 years on the job, going up the ranks. Ridiculous. But. But yes, I concur with that. With your point.

[David French]

Yeah, I Mean, it's not that he's harmless. I just think the institution of the Pentagon is not easy to hijack, let me put it that way. But I will say this. I mean, I do think there are real security risks here. I mean, Tulsi, for example, her past is a past that would. Let me put it like this, Tim. There are a number of things about her past that would make it difficult for her to get a security clearance.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[David French]

Just starting from scratch. Now, I know she's served in the military and all of this, and she, you know. But if you're starting from scratch and you are filling out a security clearance form, and you're talking and interviewing in that security clearance form, and you're talking about your contacts with foreign powers and foreign leaders, right. There are elements here that just raise concerns and raise alarms. And then when it comes to Hegseth. Let's just presume for the sake of argument, Tim, let's just presume for the sake of argument that he had a genuine religious conversion, that he was a philanderer before, but now, by golly, he is faithful to his third wife. There's just no question about it.

[Tim Miller]

Well, he's faithful to his third wife. Now, we do know that he cheated on her once already because he was with her when the woman who alleged him of rape reported that to the police. And he says it was a consensual affair. So now he's belatedly, belatedly faithful to.

[David French]

Right now. That's what I'm saying now. He's faithful. He's faithful now. But the problem you have is he's got this long trail of alleged womanizing. I mean, it's so concrete that his mother's letter. I mean, that letter is chilling. On the one hand, I feel very uncomfortable reading a mother's letter to a son. On the other hand, how bad does it have to be before a mother writes a son a letter like that?

[Tim Miller]

A grown son.

[David French]

A grown son. Yeah. This is not a high schooler. But here's the issue, Tim. How many scandals are just embedded in his past? And so how vulnerable is he to blackmail over scandals embedded in his past? Even assuming he's all faithful and good now, how much vulnerability is there to scandal in the past, which is, you know, again, one of these issues. Adultery, for example, is against the Uniform Code of Military justice. And he's going to be running the Pentagon. I mean, there's just so many layers to this that are absurd, but in a weird way, because the Pentagon is an actually really difficult Beast to sort of wrestle to the ground. I worry about him less than I might worry about an RFK or certainly a Cash Patel.

[Tim Miller]

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[David French]

Yeah, I think it's a bad idea, Tim. I really do. Let me put it this way. Here would be a good way of thinking through it. You and I are both occasional Trump critics.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[David French]

We've had beef with MAGA. We both believe the 2020 election is. Was free and fair. We both debunked election stolen election theories. If Joe Biden offered you a pardon, would you take it? Because my answer is no. Because I would not want any implication at all that I had done anything illegal, improper, immoral. And my view would be to Trump, you're just going to have to come after me. You're going to have to prove it. I would not accept a pardon because I wouldn't want the implication at all that I'd done anything.

[Tim Miller]

And can I just add to this, just because for people think. I hear from people, and I think this is kind of true in the Hunter thing where they're like, well, you're not considering how dangerous Cash could be. And I'm like, I'm considering.

[David French]

No.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I guess my. Yeah. But my point is I think I would come down on no. 2. My initial instinct would have been, yeah, let's do it, let's roll. But I come down on no. 2 for this reason, which is like, if they are going to go so far outside the bounds of the law, if you think the worst about this administration, if you think that the worst authoritarian nightma of the person that spends all day watching, doing resistance media, like on resistance social media, you take their worst nightmares, right? And then you put. I put myself in that situation, then they decided to target me. Well, a pardon's not going to protect me from that. You know what I mean? Like even the Joe Biden part of Hunter, right. It expires on New Year's of this year. Right. So you don't think that they are going to. That if they really wanted to target Hunter, they couldn't target him and investigate him, do all the things you were just talking about earlier, about that Cash Patel could do, investigate your life and find other future crimes or past crimes that go past past 11 years. I kind of don't know what good it does because if they're going to act within the normal checks and balances, like, you are going to be protected not from investigation, that's going to happen, like, but eventually when these things get to juries, et cetera. And if they're going to go around, if you, like, you really are in dystopian world and think that they're going to go around all that, well, then what the hell is a pardon going to do for you? So, yeah, I don't know. I just kind of, as a practical matter. And the other one other point I'll say is one of the people I spoke to about this said they don't want to be on the list because they think that they would, that would worry them, that it would make them targeted more by swatting crazy people, targeting them. And they're like, they're. Then this person said they're more afraid of that than they are of the Justice Department.

[David French]

Well, that's why I raised that very point when I talked about investigations before, because when names leak out that are being investigated or it becomes known that someone's being investigated, and then that sort of worst element of maga, that, you know, that sewer MAGA comes out in intimidation and threats. And so. No, that's absolutely right. Here's what I think is a lot more productive response to this Trump challenge. It's not preemptive pardons. I think that that is something that there's a rule of law implications there. There are implications that if you accept the pardon, a lot of people view that as sort of accepting a level of or degree of guilt that is not appropriate. Here's what would be far more preferable. Remember how I said the process is the punishment? What would be far more preferable is if you took a slice of sort of political slash cultural philanthropy and you created a defense fund. You created a sort of a mutual defense fund where people, regular, ordinary people who, you know, that the list, the Cash Patel list that you put online, Tim, most of those folks are not rich people. They do not have infinite resources. And so creating a sort of a defense fund or that capacity for people who get in the crosshairs to have attorneys fees taken care of, to have security maybe deployed to their homes, you know, these kinds of things, I think would make people feel far better than a pardon, which implies, even though the whole purpose of it is to foreclose the possibility of innocent people being targeted, the pardon implies a measure of guilt. It will be interpreted by an awful lot of people as an acceptance of guilt. And again, there are rule of law implications. I think it's a lot better to create more of a defense fund, security assistance for people who are targeted than it is to do preemptive pardons.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I'm deeply torn about this. I don't know. I'd like to think about it more. And, like, Fauci is kind of a strange example. Right. Because they already are planning on investigating him. Maybe there's a. An argument for that in his case versus, like, like the Liz Cheney. Like, they're throwing out some names. It's like, Liz Cheney. I'm like, what Liz Cheney? What are they gonna investigate her for? Like, she didn't do anything. She was on January 6th committee. Right. But, you know, the COVID stuff, I don't know. I think it's a. It's a tough question. Do you have other thoughts about productive things that the president could do in the last month here, you know, to either safeguarding against Trump or anything? I think you wrote about potentially some actions around Ukraine. You think you could think. Yeah.

[David French]

You know, it's. What's unfortunate is that when the Biden administration was trying to trump proof American democracy, it focused on elections appropriately so, because we'd just been through January 6th. Right. So I'm not. The Electoral Count act reform is a tremendous Biden administration accomplishment. It was important for our country. It's going to be good for us for next 100 years that we won't have the same kind of vulnerabilities that we had in 2020. But what did not happen in the Biden administration was reform of the powers of the presidency itself, very specifically around the Insurrection Act. The Insurrection act is ridiculously broadly drafted to grant the president the ability to deploy troops in American cities on his own initiative when he wants to. And it's just a very scary law. But sadly, I could say, hey, in the remaining period, try to push through an Insurrection act reform. I don't think Mike Johnson's gonna go for that.

[Tim Miller]

You don't think so?

[David French]

I don't think so. But I do think that there's.

[Tim Miller]

People tell me he's a straight shooter, earnest man.

[David French]

So it's very hard to sort of come up with, what can Joe Biden do domestically in these next couple of months, aside from these pardons, which I'm against, to really sort of Trump proof America. But there is something overseas, I think, where he could deploy his influence, and that is, and I wrote about this, there are more than $200 billion in Russian assets that are frozen right now, most of it held, interestingly enough, in Belgian institutions. And that Money has been frozen since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. What I urged was Biden tried to seize it to get our NATO allies to just seize that money. Why? Because one, it would deal a tremendous economic blow to Russia. And two, if you seize that money and transfer it to the Ukrainian war effort, you can at least try to mitigate some of the effects of lost American support. You know, if we do pull out our support from Ukraine, there's elements of that that are irreplaceable. We just have more stuff than any of our Western allies. We have more shells, tanks, infantry, fighting vehicles, missiles that we can send to Ukraine. But if Ukraine at least has resources it can purchase from foreign sources, you know, at least some arms to make up for that shortfall. Not entirely, but some. So I think that that would be a very concrete thing he could do to at least improve Ukraine's bargaining position if there are armistice talks or ceasefire talks in any way. But, Tim, we're just at this point where there's just not a lot of options. There's just not much that Biden can do.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know. People on Twitter are telling me that he's got to play hardball. This is the moment. Get rid of the norms. No more norms. Hardball time right now, the last month, you don't have any hardball suggestions?

[David French]

I mean, not that are consistent with the, you know, civic reality of the American Constitution? No, I do not.

[Tim Miller]

Got it. Okay. Any other thoughts on the incoming administration on the Ukraine side of things? There was a Reuters story about, you know, the different kind of options that are being floated by Kellogg and Vance and some of these types. As far as negotiating, I'm less confident that, like, Putin is going to want to play ball with this administration's deal making than I think the administration and others are. Maybe that's wrong. Maybe they have a handshake deal and the secret phone calls that Woodward reported on, but I don't know. Do you have any sense for where things are going?

[David French]

Yeah, you know, it. We're in a grim place, Tim, but not hopeless. So here's what's grim, and then I'll say, why not hopeless? The grim reality is that Russia has seen an opportunity and is expending enormous resources on the battlefield to try to push Ukraine back. And it is pushing Ukraine back. Ukraine has lost. I'm not going to say a lot of territory relative to the size of the country. It's a big country in Europe, but a lot of territory relevant to the last two years, and they've lost like The Dakotas.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, we wouldn't be thrilled about that.

[David French]

Yeah, yeah, not that big. But they have, and they've taken serious losses in equipment and personnel. So Russia has been pushing its advantage on the battlefield field. And so what I'm very worried about is that what you would have is a situation where essentially Trump pushes the situation to where there is a ceasefire agreement that is a clear win for Putin, but is broadcast to the American people as I brought peace. And here's how you'll know if Trump has given Putin a win that he will then turn around and try to talk about like, I'm the guy who brought peace. And the clear indication would be if you had some sort of ceasefire roughly along the current lines of battle. I don't think Russia will ever agree to a ceasefire while Ukrainian troops are on its soil, because there are still Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region. You'll have a ceasefire somewhere along the line of battle, which means Russia is going to hold a significant portion of Ukrainian territory. I think that's generally a foregone conclusion in most people's minds. No matter how this thing ends, Russia's going to have some more territory than it started with in February of 2022. But what are the other conditions? It's a win for Ukraine and a loss for Russia. If the ceasefire occurs and Ukraine joins the EU and NATO, that's a loss for Vladimir Putin that he lost that war. Even if he got a few more chunks of Ukraine, he lost the war because he lost influence over Ukraine. If he gets a ceasefire with the pledge of neutrality, with the pledge that. That Ukraine won't join NATO, that it won't be part of the eu, and heaven forbid, deposing Zelensky as leader, then Putin won. He not only got Ukrainian territory that becomes part of Russia, he also essentially got exactly what he wanted by turning Ukraine into a satellite of Russia and not a true free and independent country, that's the outcome that would be a big win for Putin. And then Trump would turn around to the American people and say, I ended the war. Look at my negotiating skills. I ended the war. But you, quote, ended the war. That would be ending the war through what is effectively a surrender to Putin.

[Tim Miller]

That's what they're proposing. I mean, that's literally the J.D. vance and Kellogg. I mean, not the deposing of Zelensky, but who knows what would happen there. But the rest of that is what they're proposing.

[David French]

Well, it'd be hard to see Zelensky surviving a settlement agreement like a peace settlement like that. But here's where it's kind of hard.

[Tim Miller]

For me to see any of the players going along with that. Except for J.D. vance, radiant. Vance seems to be the only person in this that would really like that engagement. But who knows?

[David French]

Yeah, well, and, but here's where things I said grim but not hopeless. So here's the not hopeless part. At the very beginning of my answer, I said Russia is taking enormous losses. It really is. The casualty figures out of eastern Ukraine right now are just mind blowing. And it's not just the casualties, it is the loss in equipment. And a lot of folks are saying Putin's got until somewhere in 2025 before the equipment losses reach such a critical level. Not the manpower losses. In theory he can replace those, but he's digging through his Cold War era stocks and you just can't wave a magic wand and create a lot more main battle tanks or cruise missiles. And so he's using up these resources faster than he can replace them. And the clock is ticking on that. And so there's sort of two ticking clocks. One is the pressure on Ukraine, outnumbered, insufficient resources. And the other one is the pressure on Russia. It's expending its superior resources at a terrifying rate from the Russian perspective to try to achieve these battlefield gains. And they can't keep doing this forever. They're going to hit a critical stage.

[Tim Miller]

I just wanted to go briefly into some Democratic Party autopsy stuff.

[David French]

Fun.

[Tim Miller]

I wasn't going to do this actually, but I was talking with somebody yesterday about how we were doing this pod today and I was like, what would you ask them? And they brought up something that I don't think anybody's mentioned, that you are maybe the perfect person in all of America to weigh in on something when you look at what the Dems are doing, and that is that there's a lot of talk about how Democrats have lost working class voters and hemorrhage working class voters. I've also just hemorrhaged these huge swaths of America. This is a long time coming. Steve Shaley wrote about this for the Bulwark earlier this week about the Florida experience, which I really highly recommend. I'll put it in the show notes. He's a Democratic. Yeah, he's a Democratic strategist. Very smart guy. There's a word that doesn't really ever come up in all this, which is Christianity, which is a religion. And that the Democrats. It's almost like, well, maybe we should be more economically. Populist is the answer. Or maybe it is. Or Maybe we should be tougher on immigration and crime and maybe so like the other thing is, you know, Joe Biden was a, is a faithful Catholic. It was believable that he was, that he's church going Christian. Besides that, you know, I mean, Kamala and the President Obama are Christian. I'm not saying they're not Christian, but like not, not in the culture.

[David French]

They didn't enter public life.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, yeah. And I don't, I don't mean it's not race and it's not race based there. Raphael Warnock is a culturally Christian. Right. Talks about it as comfortable talking about his.

[David French]

He's a pastor.

[Tim Miller]

He's a pastor. There are plenty of people like, I'm not, I'm Catholic. I'm not culturally like, no, I couldn't run for office. And people would be like, he's a Christian. I mean, in a gay marriage, I don't go to church anymore. So this is what I'm talking about. People that are Christian, that are genuine believers, that go to church and that talk about it. Would the Democrats benefit from recruiting more candidates like that, do you think? Or the other side of this is like the kind of people they've lost that are evangelical are more like they're more culturally evangelical than faithful evangelical anyway. And so there's not actually not a lot of ground to gain there.

[David French]

Yeah. I'm going to take the darker view of this, that right now what you're dealing with is the product of a decades of acculturation in white evangelical spaces. So I'm somebody, I'm pro life, I'm socially conservative, I'm evangelical. I go to church every Sunday and I've been expelled. Tim. Like, people call me a heretic, people call me a wolf, even though I've not changed my views on the confessions of faith. Hey, they have beards like the Theobros. They all have beards.

[Tim Miller]

That's true. They have those big beards, though. You have kind of a wolfian kind of narrow beard.

[David French]

So it has become so acculturated within sort of white evangelical spaces that to be an evangelical in that culture is to also be Republican. It is very difficult even for somebody who's pro life, even for somebody who agrees with the confessions of the faith, who believes in the divine inspiration of scripture. But if you're not with Donald Trump, then people question whether you're even a Christian. And Tim, that sounds absurd.

[Tim Miller]

Makes sense.

[David French]

It is totally absurd. It's utterly absurd. But unless you live in these evangelicals.

[Tim Miller]

Jesus loved the whoremongers and The.

[David French]

Unless you live in the sort of heart, the cradle of evangelical culture, you don't realize how much is just part of the air you breathe, the water you drink. You meet a group of people who come. Let's say they're at Sunday brunch after church, and there's 15 people at a table, the assumption would be that all 15 are Republicans. Ryan Burge wrote this really interesting thing. He's probably one of the best statisticians of religion out there. And he said, look, white evangelicals are Republicans. Republicans are white evangelicals. He showed a graph of where does every religious subgroup line up with the ideology of their party? And so what he found was that black Democrats are to the right of the Democratic Party. White atheists are to the left of the Democratic Party. Mormons are to the left of the Republican Party. Catholics go right down the middle between the two. But white evangelicals were the only group that exactly matched the party exactly. And so there's this. Just melt, this union between white evangelical culture and the Republican Party that is extremely powerful and extremely difficult to crack. I do think the Democrats can carve off people on the margins. But if you're saying, like, here's our electoral strategy is we're going to pry white evangelicals from the Republican Party, that's really hard because they have become so culturally combined that especially in regions like where I live, that it is extremely difficult.

[Tim Miller]

All right, well, so if you could use your dark magic as a, you know, former person in good standing and help the Democrats, you know, since that's what the white evangelicals think about you use your nefarious powers to help the Democrats, what would you tell them to do? If there's just one thing, what would be the thing that you would. You would say would be the most helpful?

[David French]

Run your cities better. I mean, I'll just be honest now. There are things that.

[Tim Miller]

They kind of annoys me living in Louisiana, which is run like shit. And nobody's like, well, we can't give Republicans power because the Democrats. No, no, I know Republicans aren't exactly knocking it out of the park here running Louisiana, but. I hear you. I agree. But I just, you know.

[David French]

And look, I think people are overreading the results of the election quite a bit. I think that, you know, at the end of the day, this was a very close election, both on the electoral college and the popular vote. A couple hundred thousand switched votes, and this thing goes a different way. So historically, this is a very close election, and I firmly believe that the. But for inflation and the Border Harris would have won this thing. And if Trump botches it the next four years, if there's higher inflation or if the economy's struggling, the Democrats could win again without changing anything. I mean, this is a very close, closely divided country. But I will say that, look, it's just a simple fact that elements of blue run America are not working well and they're not working well in the most public of ways. And so unlike, say, rural Louisiana or rural Kentucky or rural Tennessee, you know, close to where I live, the dysfunctions in rural America are not front and center in American faces and the way that dysfunctions in America's crown jewel cities are. And so including, by the way, the inability to get affordable housing, for crying out loud. I mean, so if you look at who voted for whom, the high information voters voted for Kamala Harris. The people who sort of like are like you, Tim, that they know immediately, well, San Francisco's struggling, but have you seen Louisiana? Louisiana has some issues, right?

[Tim Miller]

But the people gleaming downtown in Shreveport.

[David French]

Let me tell you, there are lots of parts of red run America that are struggling. There's just no question about it. But people who are not paying attention to politics, it's not front and center. They have economic concerns. And then also it's quite telling that a lot of America's urban areas had a big red shift in 2024. So my colleague Ezra Klein has been saying this. I'm not saying anything brand new, but embracing an abundance agenda, a growth agenda that says we're the party of optimism. We're the party that wants to get things actually done in this country. I think that is. And expresses optimism and hope for the country. But Tim, everybody overreads these elections. When I was, I mean, you alluded.

[Tim Miller]

To at the top and you wrote about this. But like the main Tim theory at this point is that, I mean, I think that there are things Democrats should do and we'll spend a lot of time talking about that. But like Trump, Bailink is the main thing that could help rejuvenate the Democrats, as you mentioned. And there's certainly some pretty good signs that he's on that trajectory.

[David French]

But tbd, yeah, yeah. I mean, and look, if you go back and you read commentary after 04, it will be Republicans crack the code. They're going to have the enduring majority after 06. Oh, look, Democrats cracked the code. 08, Obama, it's the new era. Then 2010 Tea Party, it just, I.

[Tim Miller]

Remember the 2012 front page of Buzzfeed is just like burned in my mind. Liberal America, you know, and it's just like it's here.

[David French]

Yeah, exactly. You know the phrase coalition of the ascendant, you know, so every party overreads its victories and there are a lot of people who are sort of saying about the Democrats, well, you're engaging in too much self loathing. The MAGA, you know, MAGA didn't question itself after 2020. It just, just charged on believing it had won. But I actually think some of this reflection and angst is healthy. You know, look, and you too. Yeah. You know, if you can't give up.

[Tim Miller]

40% of the country, this is going to happen. When you give up 40% of the country, I mean, that's my one thing to the Democrats is like you can't just count out, like if Ohio and Iowa and Florida you just won 10 years ago, you can't just count them out now and like not come up with the strategy and expect to be a majority governing party. So.

[David French]

Yeah, exactly.

[Tim Miller]

So Blue sky versus Twitter, you laughed, you had a long thread on why you're sticking with Blue Sky. I'm gonna make the counter case to you really quick and we'll see. My case for staying on on Twitter is essentially twofold. One, that it's kind of my job. And so this is not a recommendation really for listeners, but I like knowing what the crazy MAGA people are saying. I think it's useful to know what they're saying. I think it's useful to engage with that with some of them. Not, not many people it's not useful to engage with, but there's some that it's useful to engage with. But two, all bubbles are bad. And Democratic bubbles might have different kinds of badness, or you might want to say they're not quite as bad or not quite as cruel or quite as whatever, but it will make me hate my new allies to go into a democratic bubble and be just bombarded anytime I issue any wrong speak, you know, by people who are trying to get me in line or have to go through, as we saw yesterday, a list of people who are purportedly the good hearted, angelic ones that are cheering the murder of a CEO in cold blood on the street because he's a healthcare executive. So I just. Bubbles are bad. Liberal bubbles are bad. MAGA bubbles might be worse. That's true. But I would rather try to engage in a space where there is a variety of views. So that's my pitch for staying on awful Twitter, which is awful and Elon is awful. So it's a modest case but that's my modest case.

[David French]

Look, I monitor it. I left for a while. I came back right before the election season, just because it was the election season and it was worse than when I left it. And here's the other thing about it, Tim. It was more boring. So it's this kind of weird combination of super toxic and super boring in the same way that like a sewer is, you know, it's. You don't open the sewer and go, oh, gross, let me keep watching this. It's no like, yuck, let me close the manhole cover. And that's sort of how my feeling is about Twitter. And look, I agree with you. That's one of the reasons why monitors. I do want to see what sort of like, what are the weirdo Christian nationalists tweeting about today or what? There is some value in that. But I have to say, as far as my job, Twitter or social media is, it's not primary, it's not secondary, it's not even tertiary. It is just an occasional outlet for me and that's that. And, and so for me, it's a low priority. And so if I have a low priority engagement, I'm going to engage where quite frankly, I enjoy it more. And also I realize that, you know, for some people on Twitter, they, they are desperate for us to stay because they're desperate for us to say, because they, their whole sort of business model, for their whole brand management, their whole everything that they're doing online is really focused around taking a rent, taking down, never trump conservatives or fighting the establishment or whatever. And so in a real way, they feel a sense of loss when we don't post because that's how they build their own platform. And so in a real way, like, some of these people need you, Tim, more than a lot, a lot more than you need them.

[Tim Miller]

That's a good point. This is a good pitch. What about the side of it, about growing resentment to the progressive bubble that you've ensconced yourself in. You're at the New York Times now, you're on Blue Sky. Are you worried about growing resentment?

[David French]

I dislike the bubble. I mean, it's so funny, you know, you post something on threads or on blue sky that's critical of a Democrat and gah, they come at you and it's hilarious that after all that we've been through over these last nine years that some sort of like snarky pile on on social media, what's that gonna do? Oh no, you know, you're a Republican.

[Tim Miller]

Is showing, David. Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah. We're a decade into. I don't know how much more evidence you need.

[David French]

It's. But no, I. Because social media is so below tertiary for me, I'm not as worried about the bubble because I just don't live in it much. I kind of dip in and out. And that raises, I think, a point I think is important. And I'd love your thoughts on this. Like, how important is this engagement? I think there was a point in time in which people thought that Twitter really did drive the national conversation. I don't think that's the case anymore. I think that Twitter in particular is one of the least relevant social media platforms towards. For ordinary people's lives. And so I'm not sure what you're actually getting out of it by engaging deeply, I think. Engaging to a shallow to moderate level.

[Tim Miller]

I agree with that. And I will say this. The thing that people on the left are, even people like us, people in the middle, people, the center right, who are not maga. There is value in getting outside of liberal spaces and engaging, but that doesn't need to be Twitter. And Twitter might be the least valuable place out of all that. And I'm talking about the streamers and TikTok and the bread. TikTok has its own problems, but the bro podcast world and YouTube. Absolutely. I do not think I am totally against hermetically sealed bubbles. And I think that it would be good for the public sphere, as well as Democrats political interests to engage in broader places. But I don't know that it has to be on Twitter.

[David French]

My main MAGA engagement is in real life. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Right. So, yeah, you don't have to actually do that. You're out of your bubble. You go to the store.

[David French]

Yeah. My neighborhood is 85% Republican, so it's.

[Tim Miller]

Your job to get that down to 82% by 2028. That's Steve Schale. Steve Schale has deputized you. All right. Last thing. Mick gave his farewell address yesterday.

[David French]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

And I want to play a clip from it. Then I'm going to have a question for you that's going to sound snarky but is actually serious. So I want to. I want to listen to it.

[David French]

A country's character is a reflection not just of its elected officials, but also of its people. I leave Washington to return to be one among them and hope to be a voice of unity and virtue. For it is only if the American people merit his benevolence that God will continue to bless America. May he do so, is my prayer.

[Tim Miller]

I Thought that was interesting. Only if Americans deserve it. Merit God's love. He seemed to leave it as a question, and I want to leave that question for you. Are we meriting God's love right now?

[David French]

Well, now we're going to get a little gospel, Tim, so let's do it. The bottom line is God loves us whether we meri. Merit it or not. And God's grace has been poured out upon us whether we merit it or not. And in fact, that's the entire point of the cross. The cross is Jesus taking upon himself the punishment of our sin. He loved us so much that he took upon himself the punishment for our sin. But that's not really what Mitt is talking about here. I don't think he's talking about, does God love Tim Miller or David French, and do we merit his blessings? I don't think he's talking about that. I think he's talking about something that's actually, you know, a quite biblical concept, which is, you know, if you read the Old Testament, God does judge nations for their wickedness. You know, there. There are times when God, you know, in the Old Testament accounts is very displeased with the Babylonians or the Assyrians or the, you know, the Israelites at different points in time. And so I think that what he's saying is, look, you know, a lot of people have viewed the United States as sort of this shining city on a hill, that we are a country that's not only great, as in powerful, but it's also a country that is good as in virtuous. And that's not something that we can take for granted. And I think that adding in that sort of element of meriting God's favor sort of is a message, you know, to theologically conservative people who've read scripture and realize that God does judge nations. And in fact, you know, Tim, it's fascinating. That would be a very uncontroversial message in Christian circles. It would have been. In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention wrote a statement on character and politicians. This was when Clinton was in trouble, not Trump in 98, that said this. That tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, leads to unrestrained lawlessness and will surely result in God's judgment. It. So this was a sort of a conventional statement of Christian theology for a long time that, yeah, in fact, a country can go awry and God can judge a country. So I think in that sense, I don't think he's talking at all about, does God love Tim Miller or David French, depending on how good or bad we are, it's much more, wait a minute. You know, we have a responsibility as a country to be good as well as great. And, you know, if you are a believer in a holy and righteous and just God, that if a country is evil and, or, you know, wicked in some ways, that, you know, there, there are consequences.

[Tim Miller]

David French, thank you for your judgment, for hanging out with me and we'll be talking in the new year.

[David French]

Tim, it is always a pleasure to talk to you, even when the topics are grim.

[Tim Miller]

Have a wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas to you and the family. Early Christmas and we'll see you soon. Everybody else, I'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. Come hang out with me then taste.

[David French]

Your fears it's going to lift you up and take you out of here and the bone shall never heal I.

[Tim Miller]

Cannot kneel.

[David French]

We can't find you now.

[Tim Miller]

But they're going to get their money.

[David French]

Back somehow and when you finally disappear we'll just say you'll never hear Been working for the church while your life falls apart Been singing hallelujah with the.

[Tim Miller]

Fear in your heart Every spark of.

[David French]

Friendship and love would die without a home.

[Tim Miller]

Here the stones are grown. The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.