Jonathan Chait: A Scary Clown

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast - Episode: Jonathan Chait: A Scary Clown
Release Date: November 27, 2024
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Jonathan Chait, Staff Writer at The Atlantic

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Introduction and Overview

In this engaging episode of The Bulwark Podcast, host Tim Miller welcomes Jonathan Chait, a seasoned political writer from The Atlantic. The discussion delves deep into the current political landscape, focusing on Democratic strategies, the challenges faced by Kamala Harris’s campaign, and a critical examination of Pete Hegseth’s suitability for the role of Secretary of Defense.

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Democratic Campaign Strategies and Challenges

Shift in Public Sentiment

Tim Miller initiates the conversation by addressing the Democratic campaign's recent performance metrics. He references the Harris campaign leadership team's interview with Dan Pfeiffer from Positive America, highlighting a significant shift in public sentiment:

• Tim Miller [01:19]: "The numbers he gave was that the country shifted 8 points to the right. He called it negative 8 points in non-battleground states and negative 3 points in swing states."

Jonathan Chait responds by contextualizing the Democratic defeat as part of a broader global trend where incumbent parties facing economic challenges, such as inflation, have become unpopular:

• Jonathan Chait [02:30]: "Global inflation made every incumbent party super unpopular across the world, including every incumbent party that stood for reelection in a democracy, lost."

Kamala Harris’s Campaign Approach

The discussion turns to Kamala Harris’s inability to sufficiently distance herself from Joe Biden’s presidency, which Chait argues hindered her campaign:

• Jonathan Chait [04:25]: "She also never convincingly repudiated her left wing stances from 2019. So she stopped talking about the stuff she was talking about four years before."

Tim Miller underscores the Democrats' struggle with authentic messaging, exacerbated by internal party pressures:

• Tim Miller [08:49]: "The Democratic candidates ... are very forced to be more cautious because they're worried about backlash from within their own coalition."

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Analyzing Republican Strategy and Success

The 2012 Autopsy and Republican Adaptation

Tim Miller brings up Chait’s 2012 article analyzing Republican failures and their subsequent success without altering core policies. Chait explains that while Republicans did not fundamentally change their economic policies, the messaging under Donald Trump—particularly distancing from figures like Paul Ryan—played a crucial role:

• Jonathan Chait [17:51]: "Donald Trump attacked Paul Ryan for wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security and said, I'm not going to do that."

Populist Messaging Over Policy Change

Chait emphasizes that the Republican success was more about shifting the narrative and utilizing populist messaging rather than implementing new policies:

• Jonathan Chait [22:20]: "He really did understand to an extent that this was like why Mitt Romney lost. He was, you know, seen as having economic plans that were contrary to the interest of what most people wanted."

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Pete Hegseth: A Critical Examination

Background and Controversial Views

The second half of the podcast focuses on Pete Hegseth, scrutinizing his qualifications and ideological stance for the position of Secretary of Defense. Chait outlines Hegseth’s extreme rhetoric and militaristic metaphors applied to domestic politics:

• Jonathan Chait [33:06]: "He has come to see the Democratic Party as an enemy... He constantly applies metaphors that are sometimes not even metaphors of military fighting to this domestic political struggle."

Dangerous Perspectives and Policy Proposals

Chait highlights Hegseth’s advocacy for aggressive policies, including disregard for military regulations and support for war crimes, raising alarms about his suitability:

• Jonathan Chait [35:13]: "He chillingly expresses some quick regrets about what happened to the Jews during the Crusades. He does not have any regrets about what happened to the Muslims during the Crusades."

Implications for National Security

The conversation underscores the potential dangers Hegseth poses to national security, envisioning a military under his command that lacks meritocracy and is driven by extremist ideology:

• Jonathan Chait [40:08]: "Pete Hegseth is begging Donald Trump to purge the military, commit war crimes, and use the military to crush any kind of domestic protest that embarrasses or discomforts Trump."

Chait’s Assessment of Hegseth’s Writings

Chait critiques Hegseth’s books, describing them as alarmingly conspiratorial and devoid of substantive policy proposals:

• Jonathan Chait [43:42]: "He used to be a neoconservative anti-Trumper, and there's almost like this struggle session he conducts in his book where he beats himself up for having been fooled by the elites into hating Donald Trump."

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Path Forward for the Democrats

Strategic Moderation Without Surrender

Towards the end of the episode, Miller and Chait contemplate the Democrats' need to adopt moderation in their strategies without appearing to surrender key principles. They debate the challenges Democrats face in selecting candidates who can authentically connect with voters while navigating internal party pressures:

• Tim Miller [28:31]: "Fighting smart is not the same as surrender. Choosing winning political battles is not the same as surrender."

Policy Choices and Political Legitimacy

Chait discusses the delicate balance Democrats must maintain in enforcing policies without appearing overly punitive, using the example of sanctuary cities and immigration enforcement:

• Jonathan Chait [25:59]: "The federal government does have the right to enforce immigration laws. ... It should be the federal government, not the states and cities."

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Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Tim Miller wraps up the episode by reiterating the importance of authentic and strategic political messaging for Democrats to regain momentum and avoid internal conflicts that undermine campaign effectiveness. The conversation serves as a critical analysis of both Democratic vulnerabilities and Republican tactical shifts, offering listeners nuanced insights into the current political dynamics.

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Notable Quotes

• Jonathan Chait [02:30]: "Global inflation made every incumbent party super unpopular across the world, including every incumbent party that stood for reelection in a democracy, lost."

• Tim Miller [08:49]: "The Democratic candidates ... are very forced to be more cautious because they're worried about backlash from within their own coalition."

• Jonathan Chait [33:06]: "He has come to see the Democratic Party as an enemy... He constantly applies metaphors that are sometimes not even metaphors of military fighting to this domestic political struggle."

• Jonathan Chait [35:13]: "He chillingly expresses some quick regrets about what happened to the Jews during the Crusades. He does not have any regrets about what happened to the Muslims during the Crusades."

• Jonathan Chait [40:08]: "Pete Hegseth is begging Donald Trump to purge the military, commit war crimes, and use the military to crush any kind of domestic protest that embarrasses or discomforts Trump."

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Final Notes

This episode provides a comprehensive and critical examination of current political strategies, highlighting the challenges Democrats face in messaging and candidate selection while casting a spotlight on the concerning qualifications and ideologies of Pete Hegseth as a potential Secretary of Defense. Jonathan Chait's insights offer listeners a deep dive into the complexities of contemporary American politics, emphasizing the need for strategic adaptation and authentic leadership.

Transcript

[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, coming at you from my husband's childhood bedroom because it's Thanksgiving week. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. And I'm here today with a friend that I do not want to talk about college football with. His name is Jonathan Chait. He's a staff writer now at the Atlantic, writing about American politics. He was previously at New York magazine. How you doing, man?

[Jonathan Chait]

I'm doing great, Tim. Absolutely great.

[Tim Miller]

Really? Yeah. Just based on your family or the country or Michigan's recruiting, you know, all the above.

[Jonathan Chait]

Well, not the country. Two of the three. Two out of three ain't bad, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

Two out of three ain't bad. That is for sure. Well, thank you for coming with us on Thanksgiving eve. You wrote about something of great interest to me, which is Pete Hegseth. I'm obsessed with Pete Hegseth and this choice. I found it very strange. I don't find it strange actually that I found it very miscarried that everybody spent their focus on Matt Gates.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yep.

[Tim Miller]

When Pete Hegseth was obviously the most absurd and ludicrous choice and dangerous choice, frankly. And so I want to spend the second half of the podcast on Pete Hagseth. We got to do Democratic stuff first, if that's okay.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yep.

[Tim Miller]

The Harris campaign leadership team, Steph Cutter, David Plouffe, Jenna O'Malley, Dillon Quentin. Folks did an interview with Dan Pfeiffer of Positive America yesterday. It was very lengthy, so I don't expect everybody to have listened. I want to plot two points from their conversation that I particularly wanted to get your take on. The first one was something that Plouffe was talking about. The numbers he gave was that the country shifted 8 points to the right. He called it negative 8 points in non battleground states and negative 3 points in swing states. I've seen other analysis that put it at 5 and 2, but whichever number you want to use, clearly the country moved more towards Trump in places where the campaign wasn't waged. So to me, there are two ways you can look at that. On the one hand, the campaign wasn't as bad as everybody makes it out to be and that the campaign strategies worked to some degree. The other way to look at it is that the Democratic brand is worse than it seems, actually, because in places where the campaign wasn't waged, they got absolutely slaughtered by somebody that attempted a coup and is a total ass clown. So I guess open ended question on how you see that.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah, I mean, multi causality, I think is the Word. You have to keep in mind when analyzing the cause of this defeat. There are factors within their control, there are factors that are outside of their control. If you want to hear my take on it, it's going to go through a few steps. But I think you have to begin with the fact that global inflation made every incumbent party super unpopular across the world, including every incumbent party that stood for reelection in a democracy, lost. I don't think losing was totally inevitable. I think if they ran a perfect campaign, they could have won, but they only ran a good campaign and not a perfect campaign. That, to me, is the big picture. But the mistakes they made started with, I think, a failure to appreciate how unpopular Joe Biden was. I think the Democrats had really been trying to psych themselves up into seeing Joe Biden as being the new Roosevelt and this guy who's accomplished more than any Democratic president since Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson or whatever. And I think they actually internalized this message and this prevented them from seeing that Joe Biden was perceived by the country as Jimmy Carter. They saw him as a totally failed president. And so when. So they stuck with Biden too long. They accepted his excuses for his performance for too long. And when they finally got slapped into reality, they said, well, why don't we just pick Joe Biden's the vice president that makes the most sense to us, not thinking like you want to get as far away from this presidency as you possibly can, which I think was actually the correct choice. So I think Harris took a lot of steps in that direction, but she didn't take enough steps in that direction. And she also never convincingly repudiated her left wing stances from 2019. So she stopped talking about the stuff she was talking about four years before. And she was talking differently than Joe Biden, but she never really said what she would do differently than Joe Biden, and she never really said why she was thinking differently than she was in 2019. And so I think she made a lot of good choices and had a lot of good messages, but she just couldn't quite cut those ties to her previous campaign into her administration. I think because she was coming from a place of conviction, which is ironic because I think people think of her as a totally plastic individual, but I think she just genuinely likes Joe Biden, agrees with what they did, doesn't really have a huge problem with the things she said in 2019, even if they weren't her deepest beliefs, and just couldn't quite be cynical enough to say, no, I don't believe any of that stuff in Joe Biden was wrong about X, Y and Z.

[Tim Miller]

You know, there was a lot of complaints about that section of the interview also where, you know, the team was kind of giving excuses for why she didn't distance from Biden more. And as somebody that's been in those rooms, like, they made some points that made sense to me, like, you know, like, okay, let's say we had said that, you know, Kamala Harris thought that we overspent on the second stimulus bill. Right. Or let's say that we thought that we should have addressed immigration more aggressively earlier. Well, there's no evidence that she did that, actually. Right. And so then the next questions come. You have to, you know, Democrats get graded on a different curve. The New York Times reporters and Politico are following up. We're like, well, did she say that in a meeting? You know, is there any evidence that she actually like. And so you end up getting wrapped around this axle where like, she didn't actually. Distance.

[Jonathan Chait]

That's too. It's too naive. I mean, you're the cynical political operator here. Clearly, I'm sure you've already thought of the answer that popped into my head when I heard that, which is like, what about the private meeting she had with Joe Biden where she told Joe individually, Joe, I'm worried that we're spending too much and there's going to be inflation. Joe, I'm worried about the immigration. Now, publicly I'm going to back you, but here are my private concerns that I'm registering just between the two of us and won't be recorded anywhere. What about those meetings, Tim?

[Tim Miller]

Are you ready for the problem with that answer, which they didn't want to say on this podcast, which is the true. The true problem, which is that the Joe Biden problem extended deeper than the fact that the people didn't like his record. It was that personally, he was defensive and prickly about all this, and Joe Biden was not going to let her off the hook to do that. Like, there was no, Like, Joe Biden needed to have the moment where he. Where, when he picked her, where they had a call, where he was like, Kamala, whatever he called her. I'm sure what. I'm sure he had some folks he name. He called her young lady. You need. You need to just do what you need to do. And if that means throwing the old man under the bus, you throw the old man under the bus. And no, no worries here. And he did not do that. He did the opposite. The team was prickly and did not like any evidence of distancing. So I think that he made it hard on her to do that too.

[Jonathan Chait]

That's a pretty devastating indictment of Joe Biden.

[Tim Miller]

I just don't see any other way to analyze it. There's not been any piece of evidence to the contrary. Democrats don't want to say it. I'm free to say it. There's not been a single leak that Joe Biden. You know what I mean? We would know if Joe Biden was doing that. And we see with our eyes the opposite, that both him and Jill are sensitive about all of this.

[Jonathan Chait]

But that's true. But I suppose the more forgiving interpretation is that he genuinely believed all the stuff that everyone was telling him for four years. Right. You're the new Roosevelt. You've accomplished more than anybody in history. Like he internalized that. So, you know, I think it was just impossible for him to get into the headspace of I'm Jimmy Carter and the candidate needs to get as far away from me as possible.

[Tim Miller]

That is true. I think that is a more generous and accurate interpretation of his perspective. So I guess just back to the original question. My other thought is, as I was listening to that is to me, all of the autopsy stuff that focuses on tactics is basically wrong. If you come to the fundamental. If you just focus on that fundamental stat that Harris did 3 to 5% worse in places where they didn't campaign. The campaign tactics worked. The Democratic brand was at fault. Whether it was just inflation, whether it was just Joe Biden, whether it was something more fundamental about how people see Democrats. Like the only way to actually change the result was to change one of those more fundamental things. And all the other stuff is nitpicking.

[Jonathan Chait]

That's right. I mean, there are different ways of saying the same thing, but. Right. They put her in the game in the fourth quarter when she was down by 17 points and they lost by six. So you could say, hey, she came back, she did a lot better than when were starting. But also they needed a plan to score three touchdowns and they didn't. They didn't quite get there.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, back to the football analogy. I know you're for people that don't didn't understand the intro. The number one high school player in the country was supposed to go to LSU and Michigan stole them right out from under us, gave him $10 million. And you need, in sports, you need, you need villains. You know, it's important. Like, you know, and so I'm glad that I have a villain and it's and it's Jonathan Chaitz, new quarterback coming in next year. And I really, I really hope he face points.

[Jonathan Chait]

Thank you. Michigan's been losing recruits to SEC players because of the money in the paper bag for decades. And then finally they legalized this. So we can go to our network of billionaires and suddenly Jim Bob's auto dealership in Baton Rouge is no longer dominating the financial space in recruiting. And we could just tap Larry Ellison's fortune. And Jim Bob is just cursing angrily.

[Tim Miller]

Bryce underword. I'm cursing Bryce Underwood underneath my breast. The other thing from the interview, Quentin folks who was there as part of the transition. He was Raphael Warnock's campaign manager in 22, was senior on Biden's team, and then stuck around after the switch, as almost all the senior people did. He made this point and I think that there was. I think there was a lot of subtext here. And I'm hoping to talk to him about it. But in the meantime, I want to get your take. Let's listen to what he said to Dan Pfeiffer.

[Quentin Folks]

Jen said earlier that this isn't the problem of 107 day campaign to solve. It's a party problem. Republicans don't make Trump apologize. And as Stephanie said, we don't have to mimic it. But I think that there are a lot of times where if you're in the Democratic Party and you step out of line, you get punished for it.

[Tim Miller]

That was what I was trying to say.

[Jonathan Chait]

Thank you for being more direct, Quinn.

[Quentin Folks]

You get punished for it by your own party. Republicans do not do that.

[Jonathan Chait]

Look at Kamala Harris comments in the 2019 primary.

[Tim Miller]

The reason why even that was being discussed is because.

[Quentin Folks]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Of interest based politics.

[Quentin Folks]

I mean, we put out an ad with a cuss word in it. And the amount of feedback that we got.

[Tim Miller]

That's true.

[Quentin Folks]

Was insane.

[Tim Miller]

Some of that is like just typical staff annoyance. Right. I complain to my colleagues when I feel like I get unfair, negative feedback about the brilliant work I do on this podcast. So some of it is that. But I think that there's something deeper there. The Democratic candidates, and it relates to this authenticity question where it's hard, actually, for Democratic candidates to go on a podcast and talk for two hours and be themselves because they're very. They're forced to be more cautious because they're worried about backlash from within their own coalition, that if they say one word out of step that they're gonna, you know, get slapped down or if they give a policy position that's not in vogue on Twitter or TikTok that day that they're gonna get dunked on and that Republicans don't have to. Trump in particular doesn't have to worry about that and the Democrats do. And it's affecting the ability for candidates to message effectively. Is that how you heard it?

[Jonathan Chait]

I heard a blending of two different ideas which to me run in different directions. One is the idea that the Democratic Party has a lot of interest groups and pressure groups that police the language of phrasing of their candidates to an excessive degree and make it impossible for them just to communicate in normal human language terms. Yes, that I think is like a really. I think it's a legitimate true complaint. I think that's something that needs to be fixed. I also thought, I understood that as a reference to the different kind of media ecosystems that the two parties operate in, where Democrats need the New York Times to write stories about them that make them seem like decent people. Right. If the New York Times writes a terrible story about Kamala Harris, it's a problem for Kamala Harris. Donald Trump doesn't have that problem because the conservative news ecosystem is never going to write a terrible story about him. As he said. Right. You could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. So that is a different kind of problem with different kind of ramifications. Right. I mean, yes, having critical news coverage makes it harder for Democrats to win, but it also allows them to identify and correct errors. So fundamentally it allows them to sort of get the poisons out of their system, whereas the Republicans are in the sealed media echo chamber where the poisons just recirculate and get more toxic over time. So in the short run, it helps Republicans win elections, but this culture of total cult like discipline just makes them unable to govern or think clearly about reality. So I think I wouldn't trade the Democrats problem for the Republicans problem in terms of the accountability they have to media.

[Tim Miller]

The media question is so complicated, Right. Because then they complain about the media stuff a lot in this interview and how they're just an imbalance. And that's true. Right. And as you point out, sometimes that imbalance works out of Democrats favor because it's important to not to be outside of a bubble. Other times, and I think particularly in this election, it worked to their disfavor and I think particularly so because of just like there was just nothing new under the sun to say about Donald Trump. And so some of the stuff, like some of the mainstream media stuff that trickles down and hurts some Republicans didn't really hurt him in the same way. That it hurts other Republicans. I think that that language policing thing is important and it is important to take away for the Democrats because I think it's important for the whole br. That like the way that people consume media. Now I did an interview for YouTube with Cameron Caskey who was one of the March for Our Lives kids and he's just like the way my friends consume media. Like we expect politicians to talk to us. Like everybody talks to us on Instagram and TikTok and like nor and. And you can't do that if you're always looking over your shoulder about the fact that everything that you say is going to be policed. And it makes you come off as inauthentic. It makes you come off as phony. And that I think has to be fixed before 2028. I don't exactly know how to fix it either because it's a bottom up problem. Like the Republicans have their own bottom up problem which is that their voters are crazy. That's a bigger bottom up problem. But the Democrats bottom up problem which is that their voters demand total fealty to right speak. That's also a problem. I don't really know how to fix it.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah, no. I mean I think the Democratic Party becoming more and more reliant on college educated voters has changed the culture in a lot of ways. And one of those ways is just a kind of obsession. Power of language to frame choices. And I, I feel like people apply this to the media. You know, we're like these constant campaigns to get the New York Times to use the word lie when they're clearly saying Donald Trump said something that isn't true. Like, you know, it's, it's just important. It has to have the word lie instead of like Donald Trump made this obviously false claim that will rebut in the next six paragraphs.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. There's one other autopsy thing I want to talk about to you, which was a coincidence. So I was. You've joined the Atlantic again recently as I mentioned. We love the Atlantic. I keep asking Jeffrey Goldberg to give me like some residuals on all the Atlantic subscriptions that I've been bringing them, but that hasn't happened. But your last article for the Atlantic, I don't know if you noticed this like comes up and it was from 2012 after the, after the Romney loss. And it was about Josh Barrow, who's a like me, a lapsed Republican. I don't know what you want to call him. Apostate. Apostate. Center. Right. Thinker. And I want to Pull one paragraph from it, because I just think it's telling in two ways. And you are writing about Barrow, and Barrow set a mini profile. It was a mini profile.

[Jonathan Chait]

Mini profile.

[Tim Miller]

You're writing about him. The trouble is not simply that Republicans lack the imagination to come up with ideas to get higher wages, more jobs, and affordable healthcare to the middle class. It's that there is no set of policies that is both acceptable to conservatives and likely to achieve these goals. The GOP's choice to advocate low taxes for the rich rather than fund any kind of scheme to provide health care for the uninsured was no mere oversight, but a conscious decision, he later wrote, one that inevitably followed from the party's dogmatic attachment to market outcomes and dictates of its donor base. The pro middle class conservative project, he pronounced, is doomed. I found that so interesting because on the one hand, he continues to be right. Like, they have not actually offered any new pro middle class economic agenda items really, that are meaningfully different from back then, but it's. But they've been able to get those voters by doing something completely different, you know, through economic nationalism and Trump celebrity and et cetera, et cetera. I'm interested in your take on both those things. Am I correct in how the Republicans successfully got middle class voters? And isn't it telling about this autopsy project that you can like, have, that you can write this very correct, sensible analysis of how the Republicans failed and yet they can, can succeed in a totally different way that we never would have expected in the fall, in the winter of 2012?

[Jonathan Chait]

I mean, I think concrete questions of distribution are an advantage for the Democratic Party and have been an advantage for the Democratic Party for the long, for the long time. Right? The Democrats want to tax the rich at higher rates. That's popular. They want to spend more on retirement programs than the Republicans do. That's also popular. But that's just not the only issue set upon which elections are based in 2012. It was the main one. Obama was very good at making that the main question of the election. You know, who's going to tax the rich more or less? Who's going to let government spend more or less on Medicare? But those questions just faded into the background in subsequent elections. So elections were decided on issues where Republicans earned stronger position.

[Tim Miller]

But Republicans didn't actually change.

[Jonathan Chait]

No, they didn't change. Not at all.

[Tim Miller]

If you look at the 2012 autopsy and you're like, okay, there were multiple ways that you could change. I was, as a, as a social squish, was Like Republicans should reach out more to, you know, should soften on immigration and reach out more to the suburbs and do better with socially moderate suburban voters. That was one Barrow is offering that Republicans should try to come up, you know, break some of their economic fealty to upper class tax cuts and reach out to working class voters, you know, with a more populist economic agenda.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

The Republicans did neither of those things and yet still succeeded.

[Jonathan Chait]

Let me amend my previous statement. They did change their message in a crucial way. Donald Trump attacked Paul Ryan for wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security and said, I'm not going to do that. So he really distanced himself from that image that the Republican Party had built. Now, I don't think his actual approach to governing changed very much, but his message and his profile did. And so, I mean, I think a lot of people saw Donald Trump as being more moderate than Mitt Romney. I mean, I think that actually showed up in survey data. He had a more moderate image. And I think that that's why, I mean, the area where most people saw the Republican Party as extremes on fiscal policy and Donald Trump was talking much more like a Democrat. He was, you know, he even said at times in 2016 he would make the rich pay higher taxes. Now he did the opposite, but he talked about it and that worked. Of course, the fact that he did the opposite is one reason why he lost in 2020 after winning in 2016. You know, he didn't follow through on his promise and that was among the things that hurt it.

[Tim Miller]

But he wins in 2024 doing even better with working class voters. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that like at this moment there are these ways where you, where everyone is like put projecting their own ideological agenda onto what needs to happen. And it's like the Democrats do need to figure out a way to do better with working in middle class voters. But the sense that there is necessarily a policy answer to that is like maybe, maybe there's a policy answer to that, maybe there's a different policy switch. But also like the Republicans did it without really making meaningful. I guess your point is that they changed how they talk about Medicare and Social Security. I guess that's. But that's.

[Jonathan Chait]

And taxes.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, maybe the Democrats need to have a candidate that can do that and fake it, but they didn't. I guess my point is Rogans didn't really change their policies in any meaningful way and made huge gains with working class voters because the brand they had approved brand with working class voters because of other issues and ways that they.

[Jonathan Chait]

They didn't change how they governed, but they really did under, like, I think Trump did understand to an extent that this was like why Mitt Romney lost. He was, you know, seen as basically having economic plans that were contrary to the interest of what most people wanted. And he messaged very differently about that. And that was, and that was a smart choice. So, I mean, I think, you know, ditching your most toxic policies can work if, you know, if you can it work now. The problem was for Republicans that their party's conservative movement apparatus was all based on disciplining people on policies before Trump. And so it was really difficult for a conservative to come along in the Republican Party say, I'm going to be more moderate on fiscal policy, because then you'd be a squish, you'd be a rhino. Right. They would kill you on Fox News over that. And you could never get the nomination. Trump found other ways to prove to Republicans that he was not a squish. He was the opposite of a rhino. He was a fighter. Right. Democrats hated him. While making those heresies on the fiscal policy be palatable to the base.

[Tim Miller]

All right, so John Chase, path forward for the Democrats. Ditching the most toxic policy positions. Good. And then identifying a demagogue who can signal to the base that they are extreme in very superficial ways and gain such loyalty with Democratic voters that they have the ability to separate themselves on policy. Is that the path forward? I don't know who can do that exactly.

[Jonathan Chait]

But Bill Clinton doesn't have any eligibility left, does he?

[Tim Miller]

He's pretty old.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe Hasanabi the Twitch streamer. I don't know. We'll have to love to look for potential candidates for that. Hey, guys, you know, I've been in the market for a new pair of pants that's not dress pants and not jeans. Everybody's casual in New Orleans for starter, but the whole world is getting casual, you know, but you're going to meetings and sometimes you feel like, gotta have a step above a jean. But, you know, I don't want to put on my fancy slacks. And I've turned to a new brand called Public Rec. Public Rec's daymaker pants are here to make sure you stay comfy and classy. This season they almost feel like sweats, but they look like tailored pants. They're super stretchy with an elastic waistband, so you can rock them any time. I got a pair of brown public wreck pants because I've been in the market for kind of having a more autumnal Al Gore type palette to my outfits. You know, for years I was just black and gray and blue, black and gray and blue. I feel like, I don't know, something spoke to me in 2024. Maybe it should have been a warning sign that I wanted to look like Al Gore before the election, but something spoke to me about those earth tones. I tried these brown pants and you might have noticed me wearing them at that live event in Pittsburgh. I think I was looking pretty sharp. Usually when you order comfortable pants, you only get to pick from small, medium or large or extra large. But with the daymaker pants from public Rec, you get to select the exact width and length you need. So Whether you're a 30 by 32 or a 44 by 36, you can find perfect fitting pants. Stop suffering in regular pants and give the gift of comfort. This holiday season, for a limited time only, our listeners get 20% off when you use code theBullwork at checkout. That's 20% off with code [e-mail] after you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Say goodbye to pants that put up a fight, because when comfort meets style, you've found public rec. Your latest article since the Hegseth one, which is up today, Moderation is not the Same Thing as Surrender is the headline. You write about how you can follow that mindset under the rubric of trans issues. We've been talking about trans issues about as much as I can handle over the past three weeks. So you're welcome, you're welcome to speak to that. But I want you to take the same thesis and apply it to another issue for me as well, because I've been watching the brewing fight over sanctuary cities that is coming, and I think that is going to be a real pickle for Democrats, which is if the federal government and, you know, Tom Homan and Stephen Miller are like, sorry, no such thing as sanctuary cities. We're going to deport people from Denver or Oakland or wherever and where they actually really kind of do it performatively, really more than have a real effort to deport a lot of people from those cities. But they do it to pick the fight. And so I guess on both of those issues, I'm wondering the cheat answer for how do you not surrender while also doing smart politics?

[Jonathan Chait]

It's a tough one because you know this policy is going to cause a lot of horrible cruelty in people's lives. But I think just as a matter of political legitimacy, the federal government does have the right to enforce immigration laws. Right. And if someone is here contrary to the law, I feel like the federal government has a right to deport them. It's more of a practical question of how much disruption they're willing to tolerate in the enforcement of those rules. But this isn't a situation like, you know, Donald Trump ordering the Defense Department to fire on innocent protesters or ginning up, you know, cases against his political enemies. Like, that's a legitimate, straightforward function of the federal government. And it shouldn't be states and cities that are mainly tasked with enforcing these laws. It should be the federal government. Right. Like, I don't think Democrats would want a situation where Democrats won the election and Republican cities or states or localities were just defying an area under the control of the federal government. Right. So I think the procedural ground on which Democrats are standing here seems kind of shaky. I also think politically that this, if executed in anything like the way Trump says, is going to backfire. It's going to be massively disruptive. It's going to put a lot of industries like construction into chaos. Agriculture, you've already got industries begging Trump for exceptions to this. So, I mean, you don't want to just say, let him do what he wants to do, let him hurt as many people as he wants to hurt, and then wait for political profit. But I think you have to understand that he is proposing a course of action that's likely to backfire politically. And as the Bulwark wrote, maybe this is like an approach to Trump instead of having people stop Trump from doing the things he wants to do, which allows him to have the double benefit of the dramatic announcement. Liberals going crazy and then nothing bad happens, and then it just feels like the boy who cries wolf to the public, you actually have the wolf eating some sheep. Now, I'm not one of those sheep, so it's easy for me to say. But I think as you understand the political leverage points, that's the dynamic that springs to my mind.

[Tim Miller]

I think it's a really tough one. I put you on the spot, so it's a decent answer. I think that the thesis, which I agree with at the top line, which is maybe a different way to put moderation, is not the same as surrender, is that fighting smart is not the same as surrender. Like choosing winning political battles is not the same as surrender. Right. And I think that across all of these issues, trans, gender rights, immigration, even the issues that are the. That are unfavorable for the Democrats. In the macro, there are examples of fights where the Democrats are on the winning side and choosing those and elevating those during the next two years before the midterms is probably going to be the judicious move. But that's tough to do because there's not like a Democratic boss that gets to tell every Democratic mayor, don't pick this fight. This one isn't a judicious one. Pick a different fight. So it's tough to manage.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right? And Chicago seems to be the place where the Trump administration is most focused on this immigration fight. And Brandon Johnson is going to relish that. Brandon Johnson has run the city schools into the ground, right. He's basically like, you know, put the teachers unions in charge of the school system. His Approval rating is 15%. There's nothing he would love more than a huge fight with the Trump administration to get the liberals who are disgusted with his, with his leadership of the schools back on side. So I think, you know, it's going to work out well for Brandon Johnson and for Donald Trump to have this fight, but it may not work out well for the Democratic Party.

[Tim Miller]

Is 15% not good? Are you trying to get a little. Are you trying to get a lot higher?

[Jonathan Chait]

I'm not a math major. Tim, help me out.

[Tim Miller]

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[Jonathan Chait]

He wrote five books. I deemed only three of them relevant because one of them came when he was like a bushy neocon and he since completely repudiated all those views. So I didn't need to read all the beliefs he no longer holds. And one of them were just a bunch of war stories which I also thought wouldn't tell you a whole lot. But the other thing, there are three books I found very pertinent to his worldview and his descent into crankery.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. So there are a few elements of these books I want to talk about that I think are mockable and alarming at the same time. We have to hold both of those ideas in our head at the same time that he is both a clown and a scary clown. There are a lot of scary clowns out there and so he might be their leader. So among the three books, give us your. Give us your top takeaway holistically reading the Pete Hegseth oov though I mean his Ghost Riders oeuvre. But you know, anyway, two of those.

[Jonathan Chait]

Books feel like they were primarily written by him. I mean the Language sounds like it. But there were a lot of interesting themes. The number one theme I got is that the distinction in his mind between the mentality you use in fighting overseas enemies like Al Qaeda and in fighting domestic political enemies like the Democratic Party has narrowed to the point of almost non existence. He has come to see the Democratic Party as an enemy. He constantly applies metaphors that are sometimes not even metaphors of military fighting to this domestic political struggle, which he sees as completely existential. He's convinced the left, which he means basically anyone to the left of Donald Trump, is going to destroy the country unless they are destroyed by the forces of Trump. And now I feel like he's in a position to advance that project.

[Tim Miller]

Give me some specific examples of that that he talks about.

[Jonathan Chait]

So the first book that I looked at, it's called American Crusade, and that's basically, he uses the metaphor of the Crusades, which I don't find is especially inspiring historical episode, but he does find an inspiring historical episode. And he basically calls his supporters to launch the equivalent of a crusade here in the United States of America. And the crusades were bad for the Jews, bad for the Muslims. He chillingly expresses some quick regrets about what happened to the Jews during the Crusades. He does not have any regrets about what happened to the Muslims during the Crusades. And that's the central metaphor he constructs for domestic policy, a crusade.

[Tim Miller]

It doesn't seem like he likes the Muslims that much. That message really didn't trickle down to Dearborn, apparently in the protestors that pivoted to voting for Donald Trump. But he doesn't seem to be a huge fan of Muslims.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right. I mean, that's, I think, one of many problems that comes through. He is this, you know, a traditional kind of, you know, conservative philosemite in a way that feels almost uncomfortable for Jews sometimes. Like, you know, the Jews are our little buddies in the war against the Muslims. And, you know, the role of the Jews is to control the complete, you know, Holy Land until they are destroyed in a fiery holocaust when the world ends. And, you know, it's not the worst thing that can be said about the Jews, but it's also not the best.

[Tim Miller]

The other thing in American Crusade that I pulled out here that is relevant to our domestic concerns, our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.

[Jonathan Chait]

Italicized.

[Tim Miller]

Italicized yet.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are a lot of lines like that where he's basically using a military metaphor. And then he goes right up to the line of Saying, well, actually this isn't just a metaphor. This is how we're going to do it. But that's the overall mentality, the overall approach, where he's just got this completely hysterical analysis of the American left and its control of all the institutions and sees this as a fight to the death and doesn't see the possibility of America basically surviving with people holding views he finds objectionable over the long run. He sees that the need to essentially exterminate that opposition politically. And sometimes it's not totally clear. He only means politically. So there's just this, like, bloodlust that comes through the rhetoric he applies to domestic political conflict. That's uncomfortable. His most recent book is, among other things, are just a straight up defense of war crimes. He basically objects to military law as it pertains to treatment of enemy combatants.

[Tim Miller]

Enemy detainees, and he's a big advocate for war criminals.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah, he loves the war criminals. He talked about how in the military the Judge Advocate General was called jagoffs. And he has multiple lines in his last book where he just, in toto objects to the idea that the military should have to follow rules. He basically says, like, the enemy doesn't follow any rules and we need to be more ruthless than the enemy. So his basic idea of fighting Al Qaeda is we need to be Al Qaeda needs to be the ones who's being held to the higher standard. We need to go lower than Al Qaeda in our self regulation. That's a whole other area that's incredibly disturbing and I think totally disqualifying for a defense secretary.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I mean, and among the many problems, again, having a book where you're maligning as jag offs, like a whole category of people that is going to be reporting to you and working for you, and between women in combat and army lawyers, like, there is going to be hundreds of thousands of people that are under his remit that he has said shouldn't be there, essentially.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah, he puts like scare quotes around phrases like international rights. And, you know, he just completely objects to the whole idea of, you know, the rules of war. Just like, he just doesn't think that that stuff has any legitimacy whatsoever. And also, I think, also pertinent to how he would conduct himself in this job, he wants to purge the military of anyone who basically disagrees with him about social policy diversity, which I think is more or less a code for getting rid of anyone who's not a Republican from the military leadership, which is also something that Trump is very interested in. So I think, I think people saw Pete Hex and said, oh, Trump is appointing the guy he sees on television and likes. But I think there's actually a real commonality of agenda that drove this decision.

[Tim Miller]

You have more of a calm sometimes than some of my colleagues at the Bulwark, including jvl. But I want to represent JVL here. If you think about the potential dangers ahead of a Trump term. Right. Like the worst case outcome, essentially, I mean, I guess nuclear annihilation is the worst case outcome, but like in the top three or four of the worst case foreseeable outcomes is having a military that becomes completely beholden to him and his extrajudicial demands, whatever they may be, whatever they may be at age 82, when he is of declining mental faculties and losing his grip on power and having a military that has been shed of anyone that is going to object to those sorts of things. And like HGSeth feels like exactly the type of person that you would want to be Secretary of Defense in that worst case scenario.

[Jonathan Chait]

Precisely. No. Pete Hegseth is begging Donald Trump to purge the military, commit war crimes, and use the military to crush any kind of domestic protest that, that embarrasses or discomforts Trump. And I think you have to even think this through to the next step is what happens when some of these steps start to happen. I mean, I feel like the whole conservative movement, even the anti, anti Trumpers, are pretty much behind this unitary executive theory, Right. So like they're saying now, oh, don't worry, the military will stop him, but they don't think the military should be able to stop them. They think the federal government should be under the complete control of the President. Or at least they think that when the President's a Republican. So I don't really see any intellectual basis for them to resist these moves. For him to just fire generals on the basis of politics in order to order the military to do things that he wants them to do, that that have been outside his traditional purview.

[Tim Miller]

So sometimes like when you actually read the full three books, you know which, which you did versus just kind of like glancing at the worst quotes.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

You get a, you get a more full perspective on how much this guy seems brash and how much of this was for the book jacket to you. When you think about that worst case scenario, the person that you somewhat got to know over the course of those three books. How do you judge, how do you assess how much Pete Hegseth seems to be willing to go along or interested in going along with Donald Trump's Worst impulses.

[Jonathan Chait]

You know, what kept flashing in my mind is General Ripper and Dr. Strange Glove. I want to bring in the third book that we did discuss, which is about the American education system, because in some ways this is the most deranged of the three books. He argues that the entire American education system. So just to pull back, you've had a lot of complaints about the education system from the right. And some of those complaints I think have real legitimacy when they talk about the 1619 Project and Howard Zinn and weird left wing theories in the classroom. Some of that stuff is real and some of that stuff, you know, I understand what they're saying when he's, he's saying the American education system is communist. And he's not talking about things that have happened in the last five years. He's talking about things that have gone on since the 19th century. He says the whole structure of American education, the creation of social sciences, the very way the schools are structured, are a plot to soften up the American public for communism. I can't tell you how, how far from reality this is, but it's so. It really did feel like I'm, you know, listening to General Ripper and Dr. Strange Glove talk about, you know, our precious bodily fluids in the communist conspiracy. So he really does think, he equates Marxism with the entire, not only the entire American left, but almost every American institution that isn't directly controlled by the Republican Party and sees this vast sinister plot to completely destroy the United States of America. That's, that's been moving at an accelerated rate and has to be eradicated. That's the worldview you get from these books. So he's really a guy who's gone very, very far off the rails in five. I mean, he was very, very conservative a few years ago and he's gone significantly to the right since then.

[Tim Miller]

So we have somebody with no qualifications and no leadership experience who is consumed with a deep paranoia and is borderline bloodthirsty to take out his domestic enemies. Is that a fair assessment of what you saw?

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah, that's the picture.

[Tim Miller]

That's great.

[Jonathan Chait]

It's pretty chilling.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, that's basically a worst case scenario for Secretary of Defense. I liked in that book you pulled out one quote, which I liked because it also speaks to his dumbness. Here's a sentence from the book. Let that sink in. The manner in which we study politics, history and economics in American schools today is the product of Marxists. It's just like a six. I don't even know it's like a high school Republican writing at a sixth grade level with Twitter brain assessing the American education system.

[Jonathan Chait]

Now, this book, the education book was co written with some kind of right wing conservative education Christian school specialist. And it seemed to be that hexith, almost like the way Trump reads his speeches and then comments on his speeches because he's encountering the words for the first time. He's like, whoa, it's so true. True. It's amazing. He's sort of doing that where it's like he's like encountering this passage written by his co author. He's like, wow, can you believe it? I had to read that again to believe it myself. It's crazy, but it must be true because my name is on this book.

[Tim Miller]

It's like, let that sink in. Smart man just told me something about Marxism. I'm still sinking in myself. The defenders of Hegseth have pointed to the book, which we've talked about some, but I only go to one element of it, the war on warriors, as the rationale for him being Secretary of Defense. Right. That he has assessed the failures within the Defense Department, mostly related to DEI and you know, the way that they're letting the lawyers run the show. And he's done a deep dive on that and he's proposed reforms and he wrote a best selling book about those reforms and that is what undergirds the rationale for him being Secretary of Defense. Are there serious elements to the proposed reforms or is the entire book like written at a weekend Fox and Friends host level?

[Jonathan Chait]

It's the latter. And that's why I sort of challenged you when you said like his ghostwriter wrote the book. No, I mean it reads like just a bunch of Fox News monologues strung together. Like it reads exactly like he talks on television. And at that level of thought, there's no plan, there's no detail here. It's just a bunch of diatribes against the woke military, against DEI unqualified women and minorities who are being raised about levels above Pete Hegseth, when of course, Pete Hegseth is the most unqualified promotion in the history of the Defense Department.

[Tim Miller]

I do struggle with that. I do struggle with marrying the two thoughts that the biggest problem with the military is that it's no longer a meritocracy and we're letting too many woke transgender black people into leadership roles. And at the same time, the solution to that is to put somebody wildly unqualified with absolutely no merit into the top role at the department.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right. Well, because he doesn't see qualifications the same way you do. He sees Pete Hegseth as uniquely qualified by virtue of his own grit and determination. And I also think he in some ways equates qualifications with whiteness and maleness in some implicit way. Now, he does take pains to say at many points in this book, you know, I knew this black soldier and that Latino soldier, and they were good soldiers, and they weren't the woke ones. They weren't the diversity hires. But he also is, among other things, a complete egomaniac who can't stop talking about his own manliness and his own grit and how he overcame all terrible odds and everything he did and dragged himself up from the bottom and by his own pure merit. So I think the idea that Pete Hegseth is not a merit hire is incomprehensible to Pete Hexen.

[Tim Miller]

The egomania is something that's interesting. My father, I was talking to this about my father over the weekend, and that was his observation because he's, like, more conservative and not, like, is not going to be as offended maybe by some of the ideological elements or some of the specific statements of higth. But it's like, you know, he was like, if you somehow became president and you were like, hey, I want you to make me the treasury secretary. My dad was like, I would not accept the role. Right. Like, you just, you have to have some level of. You do have to be totally psychotic to think you can run the Defense Department after being a weekend talk show host. Okay. The last thing on this point is, you know who is aware of this. It's Pete Hegseth. My colleague Sam Stein had an item about this over the weekend. This was when Pete Hegseth was running Concerned Vets for America, an astroturf group. He said this. I've got a glimpse inside their campaign. They're probably assembling some generals right now to bring into a room to brief Donald Trump about some of these particular nuances. Because at the end of the day, foreign policy and national security is not about TV shows. It's a complex web of relationships I could literally beat. Exit criticized Donald Trump in 2016 for caring too much about what TV show hosts think. And here we are. So that's the sadness of our life.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah. No, he used to be a neoconservative anti Trumper, and there's almost like this struggle session he conducts in his book where he beats himself up for having been fooled by the elites into hating Donald Trump. And he really confesses error and repents for his anti Trumpism.

[Tim Miller]

Well, that's the fastest way to the cabinet these days. Being on TV and repenting for your anti Trump sins.

[Jonathan Chait]

There's hope for you, Tim. The path is there.

[Tim Miller]

There is hope for me. I say this to Democrats sometimes. I was like, if there's one thing that you could learn from Trump about accepting apostates and accepting people that disagree, if I put on a red hat right now at the end of this podcast. And I was like, I've trolled you, Jonathan Chait. Trump is the best Heg set for Sec Def Heg said forever. No women in the military. I'm on the crusade. I'm in now. Hell yeah. I could conceivably be the spokesperson for the Defense Department.

[Jonathan Chait]

Liberals are always looking for heretics and conservatives are always looking for converts. Michael Kinsley once wrote that and it's still true.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, there's a lesson there. Okay, everyone, have a wonderful Thanksgiving. If you missed it yesterday, I did a mailbag on how to deal with Thanksgiving family members that might be a struggle. Hopefully my wisdom was helpful for some people and, you know, take it, take it as it is. If not, if that wisdom of how to deal with your family isn't helpful, I've put in the show notes for you. My Thanksgiving playlist. I do not accept Christmas music before December, so I've made a Thanksgiving playlist for everyone that you can enjoy while you are digesting your stuffing and cranberry sauce. Thank you so much to Jonathan Chait. Everybody else, we're taking the week off. Unless. Who the hell knows. Unless, I don't know, something happens that makes me come back. And until then, I'll see you guys on Monday. Have a wonderful holiday. Peace.

[Jonathan Chait]

Thank you, Tim.

[Unknown]

So put the food on the table and papa says a blessing they're cutting up some turkey and goblin Some dressing My aunt's praise and Palin My niece was a bomb My uncle came to dinner wearing his pajamas thank God for the filter that enables them distance we screaming and crying and the needs of assistance Wonder why Drinking curse the holidays Blessed be my family three miles away Jesus, unfounded drink of your mama and the love among you Thanksgiving is over and Christmas Thanksgiving Jesus, I'm back with you Pick off the prayer and the love mountain Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is sweet Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is.

[Tim Miller]

Singing the Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.