S2 Ep1048: Jonathan Chait: House GOP Doesn't Care How Bad the Bill Is

Summary

Summary of "The Bulwark Podcast" — S2 Ep1048: Jonathan Chait: House GOP Doesn't Care How Bad the Bill Is

Release Date: May 22, 2025
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Jonathan Chait, Staff Writer at The Atlantic

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1. Introduction and Passing of the "Big Beautiful Bill"

The episode opens with host Tim Miller welcoming returning guest Jonathan Chait, a staff writer at The Atlantic. The primary focus is the recent narrow passage of a significant piece of legislation in the House of Representatives, dubbed the "Big Beautiful Bill," which House Republicans are rebranding as the "Big Fugly Turd."

Tim Miller initiates the discussion by referencing Chait's recent article highlighting the bill's role in what Chait describes as "the largest upward wealth transfer in American history."

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2. Republican Ideological Commitment to Redistribution

Jonathan Chait expresses shock at the Republican Party's willingness to undertake the political and economic risks associated with the bill. He emphasizes the party's steadfast ideological commitment to reducing economic redistribution:

"The Republican Party's just absolutely implacable commitment to shrinking redistribution. They just hate when the government taxes rich people to give money to people who aren't rich. They think it's just wrong, it's unfair at a cosmic level and they'll do anything they can to roll it back."
— [00:53]

Chait underscores that this commitment has been a consistent theme in his journalism career, illustrating the party's long-term dedication to these principles despite potential backlash.

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3. Economic Implications of GOP Policies

Tim Miller elaborates on the economic context surrounding the bill, highlighting high interest rates, rising deficits, and the resultant strain on middle-class Americans. He points out the contradiction between the GOP's populist messaging and their enactment of regressive fiscal policies.

Chait agrees with the economic concerns but differentiates his view from Miller's on the political implications:

"It's gone back and forth with the control of government."
— [03:23]

He acknowledges that the era of low-interest rates and manageable deficits, established during Bill Clinton's presidency, appears to be over, making the current fiscal environment more precarious and risky.

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4. Jared Golden's Critique of House GOP

The conversation shifts to Jared Golden, a Democrat known for his willingness to challenge his party's orthodoxy. Golden criticized the House GOP for not collaborating across the aisle to prioritize middle-class families, instead pushing forward an extreme agenda detrimental to the working poor.

Golden's Statement:

"House GOP had every opportunity to work across the aisle to write a budget that put middle class families first. Instead, they're ramming through an extreme agenda that takes health care away from the working poor and borrows trillions of dollars to fund a package of tax cuts tilted to those at the top."
— [06:18]

Tim Miller interprets Golden's stance as a potential warning sign to House Republicans, questioning why the party is proceeding unabated despite such critiques.

Chait responds by asserting that Republicans are aware of the political costs and are willing to accept them to advance their ideological goals:

"They think it's very, very important to throw 10 million people who are poor off their health insurance and to give wealthy people a tax cut that is in keeping with their moral values. They're willing to pay a price for it."
— [07:24]

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5. Policy Details: SNAP and Medicaid Cuts

The discussion delves into specific components of the bill, notably significant cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and modifications to Medicaid.

Tim Miller highlights that:

• SNAP cuts: 30% reduction affecting primarily low-income families.
• Medicaid amendments: Introduction of work requirements, moving the implementation deadline from 2029 to 2026.

Chait elaborates on the mechanics of these Medicaid cuts, explaining that they impose stringent, often unattainable, requirements for beneficiaries to maintain their eligibility:

"What you do is you impose work requirements. Now, the overwhelming majority of the people on Medicaid are eligible, so they could pass the requirement or it's not. You have to be working. You have to be, you know, of working age. So you have to prove that I'm too old or I have kids at home or I'm disabled or I'm working or I'm looking for a job."
— [12:20]

This strategy is criticized for indirectly removing millions from healthcare without an overt policy of cutting Medicaid outright.

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6. Democrats' Leadership and Voting Behavior

Miller and Chait examine the Democratic Party's current state, noting the passing of three Democratic representatives who held safe seats. This loss arguably facilitated the GOP's narrow victory in passing the bill by one vote.

Chait criticizes the Democratic leadership for prioritizing personal satisfaction over public responsibility, suggesting that older Democrats are occupying critical roles longer than might be beneficial for effective governance:

"What you should be thinking when you wake up every day is, how can I maximize my choices to benefit the broader world, given how many people depend on my choices?"
— [18:55]

He argues that this self-centered approach hinders the party's effectiveness and adaptability in addressing pressing national issues.

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7. The Abundance Agenda and Inflation Reduction Act

The conversation transitions to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its ambitious "abundance agenda," which aimed to combat climate change and stimulate green energy development. However, Chait points out that the implementation faltered due to bureaucratic hurdles, particularly regarding permitting processes.

Chait draws parallels between the IRA's challenges and President Barack Obama's experience with the stimulus during the early 2000s:

"The recession is going to be over by the time we actually put anyone to work in the 30s. They weren't worried about the regulations that were hampering large-scale infrastructure projects."
— [31:32]

He explains that modern permitting processes are so convoluted that they impede large-scale government projects, undermining the IRA's objectives. Environmental groups are also cited as obstructing necessary reforms, adhering to outdated agendas that prevent effective policy implementation.

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8. Ezra Klein's Shift and Progressive Movement

Tim Miller brings up Ezra Klein's recent ideological shift, noting a departure from his previous stance. He expresses curiosity about how this transformation aligns or conflicts with the broader progressive movement.

Jonathan Chait observes that Klein's new approach involves challenging progressive dogma, which has led to his demonization by some factions within the left. Chait appreciates Klein's efforts to maintain civility while confronting entrenched progressive norms:

"He really challenged progressive dogma for many people at such a fundamental level that they need to do the only thing they ever do when their ideas are challenged, which is to demonize the person who's challenging them."
— [34:06]

This shift is indicative of a broader trend where internal dissent within progressive circles is stifled, preventing healthy organizational discourse and adaptation.

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9. Immigration Policy and Human Stories

A poignant segment discusses a real-life case involving Casper Eriksen, a Danish national facing deportation due to an oversight in his immigration paperwork. Despite having legitimate ties and family in the U.S., Eriksen is detained in a Starkville, Mississippi, private prison, highlighting the inhumane aspects of current immigration policies.

Tim Miller shares the harrowing details:

"He was shackle'd and sent to Natchez now. He's been there for one month awaiting deportation while his pregnant wife is at home with the four kids."
— [57:16]

Chait criticizes the administration's approach, suggesting that the policies are intentionally cruel and designed more to intimidate than to enforce rules effectively:

"My suspicion is that they recognize that actually finding and deporting all the people that they want to find and deport is not going to be possible... what they're trying to do instead is to scare people."
— [63:29]

This segment underscores the systemic issues within immigration enforcement, where policies disproportionately affect individuals who pose no threat to society.

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10. Trump's Foreign Policy Values and Authoritarian Engagement

The discussion shifts to former President Donald Trump's foreign policy, particularly his admiration for authoritarian regimes and values-based alliances that conflict with liberal democratic principles.

Chait contends that Trump's foreign policy is not purely mercantilistic but is also driven by a shared, albeit regressive, value system with authoritarian leaders:

"He genuinely admires the authoritarian character of these regimes. He loves the fact that he can go there and no one is allowed to protest against him...He loves dictators. He admires them."
— [51:27]

This alignment reflects a values-based component that entrenches illiberalism within U.S. foreign policy, contrasting sharply with traditional, value-driven diplomacy aimed at promoting democracy and human rights.

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11. Conclusion

In wrapping up, Tim Miller and Jonathan Chait reflect on the various topics discussed, emphasizing the challenges facing both Republican and Democratic parties in addressing systemic issues. They highlight the need for ideological introspection within the Republican Party and leadership reform within the Democratic Party to better serve the American populace.

The episode concludes with brief mentions of upcoming content and a somber note on recent events, underscoring the podcast's commitment to covering significant political developments comprehensively.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• "The Republican Party's just absolutely implacable commitment to shrinking redistribution..."
  — Jonathan Chait, [00:53]

• "They think it's very, very important to throw 10 million people who are poor off their health insurance..."
  — Jonathan Chait, [07:24]

• "They're willing to pay a price for it."
  — Jonathan Chait, [07:24]

• "He just doesn't care about these people at all."
  — Tim Miller, [14:53]

• "We are the problem. The things we did in the 1970s are causing us to fail today."
  — Jonathan Chait, [36:43]

• "He genuinely admires the authoritarian character of these regimes."
  — Jonathan Chait, [51:27]

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the episode, providing a clear and detailed overview for those who haven't listened to "The Bulwark Podcast."

Transcript

[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to have, back at the show, staff writer at the Atlantic writing about American politics and policy and triggering John Podoritz. In the far left daily, it's Jonathan Chait. What's happening?

[Jonathan Chait]

So glad to be on your show again, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

It's good to have you. So we have passed the House, rather has passed by one vote, what they've termed the big Beautiful Bill. Sarah Longwell and Bill Kristol are trying to rebrand as the Big Fugly Turd. And I guess you have an article out this morning about how it's the largest upward wealth transfer in American history. Why don't we just get your overall reaction, then we'll kind of go through the policy and politics of it.

[Jonathan Chait]

It's pretty shocking in a way that Republicans were willing to absorb the political and economic risks that this legislation is going to cause them. The political risks of combining two unpopular things, tax cuts for the rich and Medicaid cuts, and the economic risks of blowing up the deficit at a time when interest rates are high and rising and interest payments are already a trillion dollars a year and the recovery is teetering from the trade war. To me, the argument I make in this piece is that just shows the level of ideological commitment they have to the project of shrinking redistribution. And that's really been the major theme of my writing since I started in journalism. The Republican Party's just absolutely implacable commitment to shrinking redistribution. They just hate when the government taxes rich people to give money to people who aren't rich. They think it's just wrong, it's unfair at a cosmic level and they'll do anything they can to roll it back. And that's what they're doing now.

[Tim Miller]

Not to in any way minimize the work that you've been doing in journalism, talking about the Republicans love for tax cuts for the rich for the past couple decades. It does feel like this is the worst example of it for a variety of reasons. One, it is happening at a moment where they're trying to brand themselves as a populist working man's rebrand. So it is in direct conflict to the actual messaging that they're putting forth. I mean, say what you want about the tenants of Reaganism. He was pretty unapologetic about this. So that's one. So there is a dishonesty to it. But also just the economic situation that we're in right now, given the massive, as you just mentioned, the interest payments on the debt that we are Making given the fact that what we've seen from the bond markets about how it's really impacting people's lives in a way that the debt and deficit wasn't during some of these past tax fights. People who have car loans, home loans, student loans, the interest rates are rising in a way that's squeezing a lot of middle class people. It is happening in a way like after we've had several of these already. The Reagan tax cut took a top tax rate for a very high level down to a lower level. Right. There was what, 1, 1 increase since then. And so, and it's been brought back down then by Trump.

[Jonathan Chait]

It's gone back and forth, it's gone back and forth with the control of government.

[Tim Miller]

So, you know, I mean, we're doing it just at a moment where it is on the merits, the least called for and potentially damning and where the politics of it betray a deep hypocrisy and what Mag is putting forth.

[Jonathan Chait]

So I agree with you on the economics, I disagree with you on the politics. So why don't I start where I agree and then we'll move to the disagreement. So I'll give you a chance to push back on the economics. You're right. I mean, the interest rates have been low since Bill Clinton came in. Bill Clinton got rid of the deficit, created a structural surplus, brought interest rates down to rock bottom level and he created so much headroom on the deficit that George W. Bush could blow up the deficit, Trump could blow up the deficit, Biden to an extent could blow up the deficit, and no one really paid a big cost for it. But that era seems to be over. I'm not sure there is an economic free lunch where you can just keep issuing treasury debt. We want more people to borrow money to fund our deficits and they'll just keep buying up those T bills over and over again at any price. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. So we don't know what's going to happen. I don't want to say that there will be a huge crisis, but we don't. There might be and we don't know and it's highly risky. So on the politics, sometimes when I listen to your show and you guys talk about the past, I think, oh, this is why these guys used to be Republicans.

[Tim Miller]

Well, that's nice. That's refreshing.

[Jonathan Chait]

That's why you use me a lot.

[Tim Miller]

It's nice to remind people. It's nice for us to flex the old muscles. It's nice to demonstrate to people that we haven't gone fully native. You know, that's good. From time to time, when you put.

[Jonathan Chait]

On those rosy glasses and remember the good old days, this is when I like to put on my old liberal Democrat hat and remind you that George W. Bush didn't say he was going to give rich people a huge tax cut because he thought they were productive or they deserved to keep their own money. He just lied. He said, no, no, no, the poorest people are gonna get the biggest tax cut. It wasn't true. Ronald Reagan was also, in many ways, selling himself as a new working man's Republican. He would, you know, speak to the unions. He would say like he, he's more populous than old than old Republicans because it was never popular to say I want a tax cut for the, for the rich. So people are always comparing the rhetoric of whoever is a Republican now with the policies of the old. But at the time, they were never selling the policies at face value.

[Tim Miller]

We're just going to have to go through and look at some George W. Bush. We're going to have a separate bonus segment where we want. We watch George W. Bush's 2003 speech about the second tax cut, the speeches about it together, and we'll do a mystery science theater. Well, that'll be some bonus content for the weekend. I'm not prepared to push back on that. So I'll grant it to you for now with a caveat that we might have some bonus content later.

[Jonathan Chait]

Sure.

[Tim Miller]

I want to get into the policy substance of this a little bit. Just one more on the biggest picture. I thought Jared Golden's critique was pretty compelling because Jared Golden's been a craw in the eye of Democrats in a lot of ways. And he's probably been the most mansioning in the House. He hasn't maybe gone full mansion, but he has been willing to buck the Democratic Party on a number of things related to working class voters in particular. And so it was interesting to see his response to this bill. He writes this. The House GOP had every opportunity to work across the aisle to write a budget that put middle class families first. Instead, they're ramming through an extreme agenda that takes health care away from the working poor and borrows trillions of dollars to fund a package of tax cuts tilted to those at the top. Mainers want more health care, not less. They want a tax code where everybody pays their fair share. They want Congress to get its fiscal house in order. The bill fails on each of those fronts. So this is one of the easiest no votes I've ever taken. Yeah, I would think that would be like a warning sign to some of the frontline Republicans. Like to have somebody like Jared golden, the most frontline of the frontline Democrats, saying this is the easiest no vote he's ever taken. And yet there doesn't seem to be any concern. It's kind of full speed ahead on this.

[Jonathan Chait]

I don't think they're not concerned. I think they're concerned. I think they're just willing to pay the price. And in a way, you have to hand it to them sometimes if you really, really care about policy, you're willing to take political risks in order to advance something you think is important. They think it's very, very important to throw 10 million people who are poor off their health insurance and to give wealthy people a tax cut that is in keeping with their moral values. They're willing to pay a price for it. So you can question the values, and I do. But they're not cowards.

[Tim Miller]

Is that your real view? Like, you really think they. Or do you think they've tricked themselves?

[Jonathan Chait]

No. No, I don't.

[Tim Miller]

You think that across the board, the 215 Republicans voted for, they have a passionate, principled commitment to throwing the working poor off their health care.

[Jonathan Chait]

I mean, yes, they have fought for decades on these principles. I mean, the Republican Party has been utterly rock solid, consistent on opposing economic redistribution from rich to poor for decades. And they paid a heavy price in the past and will continue to do so.

[Tim Miller]

I'm not saying that they wish they could keep the people on healthcare. That's not what I'm saying. I guess I do think that there's more of just a straight cultish political element, like, strain to this. Like, I was listening to Bannon yesterday. Bannon can, you know, use the muscle to muscle these guys into not to voting against stuff. We've seen that. I mean, Bannon basically deposed a speaker by himself with Matt Gaetz. Right. So he didn't do that. But still, on the merits, Bannon was basically like, they should have increased taxes on the rich more. There should have been fewer cuts to Medicaid. There should have been cuts in other places so that we would have got deficit number down. Like, that's basically the Bannon position on this. And I feel like had Bannon been the chief of staff and had Trump tried to jam that through, I think they would have jammed it through. I don't know. Do you not think that's right? You think there would have been a principled objection among House Republicans to Maintaining Medicaid and letting tax tax rates rise on the rich. I don't, I don't know. It's a counterfactual. So I don't know.

[Jonathan Chait]

They've pushed in this direction. They haven't laid down the hammer as you said, but they pushed pretty hard. They said like, what if we just do like a small tax increase on the R. Just to give us a talking point, just to give us something to say like, hey, we raised the top tax rate by 2 points and the rich are paying their share. It's not all the sacrifice going on on the poor. Even if the overall thrust was still very regressive, you'd still have a talking point. And House Republicans just absolutely refused to go along with it. There was almost no support for that anywhere.

[Tim Miller]

That's a good point.

[Jonathan Chait]

So I mean, I don't think they completely lack power. I think this is the deal, the reason the House Republicans have been willing to overlook the corruption in the authoritari and even some of these old line Republicans don't love that stuff, but they're willing to live with it because there's a payoff in the end and this is the payoff. You take away that payoff and the whole bargain that holds together, this party unravels.

[Tim Miller]

I think there's plenty of evidence for that point and I think you make a compelling case. Just looking at local Republican, looking at the states, there's a ton of evidence for this too. And just like what happened here in Louisiana, they passed the most insane regressive tax cut that I've ever heard of last year. And it's like preposterous that they even did it. It was great for me. They cut the income tax for everybody. But obviously that's disproportionately favors folks towards the top. And they increase the sales tax to pay for it. It's just a pure straight regressive tax. And they jammed it through party line here in Louisiana. Crazy. So there's a lot of evidence for.

[Jonathan Chait]

You that that's at the state and federal level. That is the central policy goal of the party.

[Tim Miller]

Let's look really quick at just a couple of the policy particulars. The cuts to SNAP. 81% of recipients of SNAP live below the poverty line. About a third live below half the poverty line. They're cutting 30% from SNAP and we'll see what kind of happens in the Senate side of this. But a really draconian cuts to the.

[Jonathan Chait]

SNAP program, which also hurts farmers, coincidentally because the people who are too hungry to Eat food, don't buy food. And then the people who are selling them food lose out.

[Tim Miller]

You wrote also about updating. We'll just keep trashing Reagan's legacy today. Medicaid Queens, one of the amendments that they gave to the Chip Roys of the world who were never going to vote against us anyway, so I'm not sure why they felt like they had to give him concessions, but they gave some concessions to the pretend deficit hawks in the House that voted for the largest debt busting bill ever. Certainly in modern times. They moved up the work requirements for Medicaid from 2029 to 2026. You wrote about kind of this myth of the Medicaid queens. Just talk about that policy a little bit.

[Jonathan Chait]

Jonathan Cohn wrote a terrific piece for you guys as well about this for the Bulwark.

[Tim Miller]

But congrats to Jonathan Cohn, our newest Bulwark member, who we love. And his son's getting married.

[Jonathan Chait]

His son's getting married.

[Tim Miller]

So I would have him on instead of you to talk about this. So you're going to have to talk about it in his place.

[Jonathan Chait]

I will be there. I'm going to witness the event. The way this policy works is that you don't technically throw people off Medicaid, or at least not directly. What you do is you impose work requirements. Now, the overwhelming majority of the people on Medicaid are eligible, so they could pass the requirement or it's not. You have to be working. You have to be, you know, of working age. So you have to prove that I'm too old or I have kids at home or I'm disabled or I'm working or I'm looking for a job. You have to go through this, these steps, and you have to go through them usually every month. And you know, if you've ever dealt with paperwork requirements from the government, these are like the worst version of paperwork requirements where it's like impossible to understand what they're asking for. It's impossible to get people on the phone to answer your questions. It's vague.

[Tim Miller]

And we've dozed all the people that would have answered the questions previously in previous years.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right. They've tried this in two states, Arkansas and Georgia, and the experiment has proven that. What it does is it throws eligible people off the program. People who are eligible, who are working or otherwise eligible to receive this just can't get through the paperwork and they lose their eligibility. And then they go to the doctor and they find they can't pay for it and then they're ruined. Sometimes Those people had jobs and get sick and can't get treatment for getting sick and then lose their jobs as a result of the fact that they're now too sick to work. So rather than promoting employment, this actually discourages employment. But what it does do is cut government spending because a lot of people just lose their access to Medicaid and then that's how the government's able money. That is literally what it does. But you know, they're going to claim that, well, we're just making, you know, 25 year olds get off the couch and stop playing video games. But that is absolutely not what these requirements do.

[Tim Miller]

Any other thoughts on the health care cuts? I know some marketplace cuts, you know, some of the various ACA plans. But I mean, it's not just Medicaid folks that are going to be hurt, right?

[Jonathan Chait]

No, they literally just threw that in the last minute. I mean, it's happened so fast. We don't even have analysis of the effects of how many people are going to lose their insurance and how much the deficit is going to spike. And they just don't care. I mean, they're literally just rushing it through so fast because in a sense they don't even want to know.

[Tim Miller]

The lack of caring is pretty striking. I'm going to do a separate. I haven't finished it because I have to watch it in small doses because it just, I'm concerned I'm going to stroke out and I have a young child who needs her papa. But I was watching Ross Douthat interviewed J.D. vance. Oh yeah. And it's in Rome. So J.D. had just met with the Pope.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

So you think if there was ever a moment for the humanity and the caring of your fellow man to be overwhelming your political instincts, that might have been in that hour right after you'd met the Pope. Not the case for J.D. vance. And they start talking about the migration issues and the immigration issues and like truly the biggest takeaway is just that he doesn't give a fuck. He just doesn't care about these people at all.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah, you know, he's just the epitome of an absolute power hungry striver. And you don't look, that's how he's gotten to where he is from humble beginnings through just relentless attention to upward advancement. And he's not going to stop doing being that person now.

[Tim Miller]

All right, well, that's two bonus segments that listeners can look forward to. Me and Jonathan Mystery Science Theater watching old Republican speeches and me responding to Ross Douthat and JD Vance after I Have a couple cigarettes to try to keep even. Depending on where you live, sometimes it's a little risk finding a good quality seafood. I don't know if you got a great fishmonger maybe if you're in Iowa and our newest sponsor gives you a great solution no matter where you live, if you're looking for high quality fish, it's the Wild Alaskan company. It's the best way to get wild caught. Perfectly portioned, nutrient dense seafood delivered directly to your door. You haven't tasted fish this good. I gotta tell you, I little behind the curtain for you. A lot of these sponsors will send me a little something to test out, you know, so I can endorse it in goodwill. So I'm not bsing you guys, but a lot of times just, you know, it's just a little something, which is nice. I appreciate all gifts. It wasn't the case for wild Alaska. They sent me like more fish. It was like Jesus just can tupling the fish and the loaves in my home. It was a bounty. There was Pacific halibut, co host salmon. There were some fish I'd never even heard of before. And so I'm opening it on my front porch and one of my neighbors walks by and she's like, what you got there? Like more fish than I know what to do with. And so I was like, do you want some? So gave some fish to the neighborhood. She cooked it that night, was raving about it the next day walking down the street. So it is not just my endorsement, but it is an endorsement of the entire neighborhood. The Espionage is nutrient rich and full of flavor. It's frozen off the boat to lock in taste, texture and nutrients like omega 3s. You can try it risk free, 100% money back guarantee. If you're not completely satisfied with your first box, Wild Alaskan company will give you a full refund. No questions asked, no risk, just high quality seafood. Not all fish are the same. Get seafood you can trust. Go to wildalaskan.com bulwark for $35 off your first box of premium wild caught seafood. That's wild Alaskan. There's an N on the end there. Wildalaskan.com Bulwark for 35 bucks off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. I wanted to get to the politics of this time to turn to the Democrats a little bit. The Democrats all voted against us, of course, except for the fact that there are three Democrats that have died this year. It's hard to talk about this without being too macabre, crude, and so obviously nothing but sympathies for the families of Sylvester Turner, Raoul Grialva and Gerry Connolly. But they're all over 70 and they're all running in safe Democratic districts. Jerry's maybe a little bit less so, but generally they all would have been replaced by younger Democrats. And Republicans probably still jam this through if they get them like, right. They only got it by one vote yesterday. Two Republicans didn't show up to the vote. Two Republicans voted against. So, you know, they would have had to twist an arm. Tom Massie is a crazy son of a bitch, so he probably was never going to vote for it. But, you know, maybe who's the other guy voted against? A Davidson of Ohio. So, you know, Republicans probably still get this passed even if the all of the Democrats were there. And yet it's, like, hard to talk about this without, especially in the context of Biden, without just talking about the fact that the Democrats once again, like, made this easier on them than they needed to.

[Jonathan Chait]

I think what this points to is just a broader cultural problem within the Democratic Party's leadership class. When you're a public servant, the responsibility you have is to the American public. You affect hundreds of millions of lives in this country and around the world. That is an awesome responsibility. That responsibility should dwarf whatever feelings you have about your own life and your own satisfaction. What you should be thinking when you wake up every day is, how can I maximize my choices to benefit the broader world, given how many people depend on my choices? And time and time again, old people in these jobs have chosen to put their own life satisfaction ahead of the broader good. They've decided my life won't have as much meaning if I step aside and let some younger person take this job. That's what Ruth Bader Ginsburg decided. That's what Dianne Feinstein decided. That's what Joe Biden decided. That's what all these old Democrats who actuarially stand a high chance of dying in office at an important time. I'm not saying everyone over 65 needs to automatically retire, but the older you get, the easier this choice gets. And they just don't care enough about the country to make the right choice. And I think it's a cultural problem in the party that people need to get tougher about discussing openly and not be held back by, oh, we need to be sensitive to their feelings and, oh, they've served us so long. And the poor old.

[Tim Miller]

You make a really good distinction there because sometimes this pushback is, oh, this is ageist and we need to respect our. And if you want to work till you die, I'm for that. I don't care. I mean, I understand. Maybe it's smarter to want to spend some of your golden years with your grandchildren. All this is a personal choice. If you started a PR firm and some 30 year old young buck is trying to kick you out, fight back, keep working, I don't care. It doesn't matter what you do. Whatever you feel, whatever you need to feel fulfilled, I'm for. This is public service. And this was my thing about the Biden thing the whole time. And I wrote several columns about this where I was like, this is not about you. Like, this is not about your legacy. Like Your legacy is 100% immaterial to anyone except for you and Jill and your grandkids. Like, that's it. And so. And frankly you're harming it by what you're doing. But like there's just has been so much focus on all of that rather than focus on this is public service. The threats are very great right now. And as a leader you need to do what is in the public interest first. And I just think that you pointed that out perfectly. And then you add into that just the fact that there's been no. I think finally the pressure is starting to build for the Democrat leadership class to reconsider this because just the idea that after the Biden catastrophe that Gerry Connolly won a leadership battle against AOC to run the Oversight Committee, it was preposterous. It was preposterous at the time. I'm not on the AOC 2028 bandwagon. Objectively, AOC was the right person to lead oversight against this administration, not somebody that had health issues.

[Jonathan Chait]

And she was good on that committee. I mean, the things you and I might not love about AOC were not germane to her performance in that committee.

[Tim Miller]

Correct.

[Jonathan Chait]

Because that committee was not about Medicare for all. It was not about foreign policy. It was just the blocking and tackling of working really hard and communicating Republican corruption to the country. And she's really good at that.

[Tim Miller]

I guess just since we're here and we're doing with the Biden book tour, do you have any additional Biden thoughts you want to share? If any of the revelations from the past week brought any nuance or color to your views or. Same as it ever was, I have contradictory thoughts.

[Jonathan Chait]

I think a point that you made is that like the COVID up thing is real. To the extent that people around Biden understood how limited he was. And they were working to keep that hidden. But they thought he was going to go on the debate stage and win. They didn't put him up on the debate stage because they thought he was demented. They thought he was going to win. So it's very hard to reconcile the most extreme kind of COVID up scenario with that. That said, I think if you look back on the way liberals were discussing Biden all along and even after the debate, there's a real internal culture problem we had where it was hard to say this guy shouldn't be the candidate we're going to lose. Like I wrote those pieces and when I wrote those pieces I would get slammed over and over again, right? You've got, you know, an audience capture problem. You've got social media dynamics that people hesitant to say what they know. And like, wouldn't it be easier just to write the column or to make the point about the thing that all my audience is going to like hearing and not the thing that they don't like hearing. And when enough people do that, it prevents you from correcting real mistakes in your own position and then you lose and then that feels a lot worse. And you know, and I hope people learn the right lesson, which is like an open culture where people can actually identify mistakes on their side and say them without getting slammed by their own side and treated as the enemy is ultimately a healthier culture.

[Tim Miller]

And within any organization, dissent within an organization is helpful. Right? Like everybody's saying, yes sir, Mr. CEO, sir, like is a path to Enron.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right?

[Tim Miller]

You know, I don't know. You can just look at any organization, right? Like that's a healthy organizational culture. Aligned descent. Also, why don't we give a quick shout out to some of our elders too? There are, you know, benefits and threats to every situation. While as a public servant in a safe blue district, maybe it doesn't make sense for you to be 77 years old with health issues and running again. Maybe it's better for you to have a younger person replace you in the pundit class. It seemed like there was some value actually in being, you know, a semi retired person because David Axelrod and James Carville and Bill Kristol, they weren't worried about what people said about them. They're old and curmudgeonly and they were able to actually say the truth.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah, right.

[Tim Miller]

That a lot of people who, you know, maybe hoping that they could get invited to the 2025 White House Christmas party weren't. And so, you know, there's A role in life for everybody. I guess as one lesson for this, maybe no role for Mike donilon and his $4 million payout that he got to fucking ruin the country. So, boots to you, Mike Donilon, one other quick thing on age, or I guess maybe it's more acuity. You wrote about this. There's this Fetterman saga that I was like, somewhat wrapped into just because I interviewed him. And. And I was like, he is just not capable of doing these kind of interviews, and I had to treat him with kid gloves. I felt like some people, some listeners were like, why didn't you go harder at him on that? And I was like, it felt like arguing with a second grader. I didn't want to be too mean. And so I said that after the interview, and that got included in this big. The first Ben Terrace article about Fetterman. And there's been this backlash. Now the Republicans are on the right. There's been a lot of commentators and on Fox coming to Fetterman's defense be like, his mental acuity is fine and the left is just coming for him because he took a pro Israel position. And I don't know how that squares with the bulwark coming for him, but.

[Jonathan Chait]

Whatever, because you guys hate Israel so much.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. So anyway, I don't know if you have any additional thoughts on the Fetterman saga.

[Jonathan Chait]

I mean, I wrote a piece about it. You can read it in the Atlantic. And I tried to just go through this argument step by step. So I'm not going to recapitulate the whole thing. But number one, the position the Republicans are taking on this, this makes absolutely no sense. The main person who's testified about Fetterman's mental state is his chief staff. It's Adam. Jen. Friend of mine, Adam Jenison, has complained about the woke staffers. When the wokestaffers were attacking Fetterman's Israel position, he was slapping them down and saying he got elected. You didn't get elected. So the idea that Adam Gentleson is complaining about Fetterman's health because Adam Gentleson is upset about Fetterman's Israel position is implausible. And what I wanted to point out in this piece is that the Republicans are literally doing the exact same thing that the Biden dead enders were doing, which is just disregarding extensive evidence that this public servant has lost cognitive ability because it's inconvenient for their position to make that admission. And it's just remarkable that when they knew they were coming into this big public debate about Biden's fitness. They had a test case to show that actually we're better than you hacked. We're willing to admit it when a guy we like is sick. And they all flunked the test. 100% of them flunked the test because they get some marginal value out of Fetterman. Casting a vote for Pam Bondi and saying a nice thing about Trump and being pro Netanyahu.

[Tim Miller]

By now you've heard about the game changing product that I use before a night out with drinks. It's called Pre Alcohol. Let's face it, after a night out with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. I gotta make a choice. I can either have a great night or a great next day. That was until I found found Pre Alcohol Zebiotics Pre Alcohol Probiotic is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of that byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for rough next days after drinking. Pre alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. Got back into the Zebotics game last week because I knew it was going to be a big night. I got invited to a sushi dinner here in New Orleans and it was one of those omakase deals where you have like nine courses, nine very small Japanese courses. But then they give you a sake shot to pair with each course. And I availed myself of all those sake shots. So you know, you know Zebiotics Pre Alcohol came in huge the next day. Summer's here, which means more opportunities to celebrate the warm weather. Before that, backyard barbecue, a glass of pinot, watching the sunset at the beach, or cocktail by the campfire. Don't forget your Zebiotics pre alcohol. Drink one before drinking and wake up feeling great. Go to zebiotics.com thebullwork to learn more and get 15% off your first order. When you use the bulwark at checkout, Zbiotics is backed with 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zebiotics.com thebullwork and use the code the bulwark at checkout for 15% off. There's some other context just in the kind of what was happening during the Biden administration that relates to the big beautiful turd. And that was like the inflation reduction act and how they tried to implement Senate. So while we're doing intra Democratic debates, maybe let's get abundance pilled here. There's some discussion that the ira, the Inflation Reduction act, they were ostensibly trying to rush some of the money out so that Republicans couldn't claw it back, had Republicans won. But it turned out that was a big failure.

[Jonathan Chait]

I have a big piece coming out of the magazine this weekend about the abundance agenda that I hope people will have a chance to read over the weekend. What people discovered basically in the final stages of passing this signature legacy bill for Biden is the same thing that Barack Obama discovered in the early stages of passing the stimulus. There's no such thing as shovel ready jobs is what Obama said. And what that really means is that we have made it so time consuming for the government to build anything that it can't be done at scale and in a reasonable time. Obama's whole idea when he came in is like we're going to do what Roosevelt did during the Depression, right? We're going to put everyone to work by building all these big infrastructure programs. And that's what they did in the 30s and it was successful. But they said we can't do that. We could do it in the 30s. We can't do it anymore because now the permitting and all the hoops you have to jump through will take so many years. The recession is going to be over by the time we actually put anyone.

[Tim Miller]

To work in the 30s. They weren't worried about the rare grouse that was like habitat that was going to be affected, right?

[Jonathan Chait]

No. They built the Empire State Building in a year.

[Tim Miller]

Crazy, right?

[Jonathan Chait]

They built these giant infrastructure programs with worse technology way faster than you got.

[Tim Miller]

A Trader Joe's going in down the block. I feel like that's going to be in by 2027.

[Jonathan Chait]

Exactly right? Then they just kind of forgot this whole lesson. It was just like, well, that sucks. I wish it was different. And then they did another gigantic infrastructure bill. They get to the final stages and they say, oh wait, you actually can't build stuff in this country. That's a problem. And one analysis said like the whole purpose, or at least the main purpose of the IRA was to get greenhouse gas emissions down, right? We're going to build out green energy. We're going to put people to work. It's going to serve all these purposes, right? They're going to be in these battery factories, these car factories, these new power plants. They're going to have jobs. They're going to love Joe Biden because Joe Biden gave them these jobs. We're going to get emissions down. But they said 80% of the emissions reductions projected in this bill will not materialize if we can't fix permitting in this country. So they tried to fix permitting. And you know who blocked them? Among them, one thing was Republicans. Because Republicans were so mad that they raised taxes on the rich in this bill. They said, like, we're going to make this bill fail because you violated our moral precept to bring this back to point one. But point two, the environmental groups, almost all the environmental groups, lobbied to block the permitting bill because they are so committed to this 1970s Ralph Nader era agenda of blocking everything the government does in paperwork that they can't get their heads around the fact that the situation has changed. And what you actually need to do to save the environment is build stuff and not prevent the building of stuff. So a huge part of the abundance agenda came out of this realization that the choices that liberals especially have made in the past have prevented us from doing the things we want to do today. So you have to almost completely reverse your old mentality in order to do the things you want to do. And getting people to reverse their mentality is hard work, but that's what the abundance agenda is about.

[Tim Miller]

It is hard work. You know who's out there in these streets doing it? Is Ezra Klein. What have you made of Ezra's heel turn and this was your space? Do you feel a little. Do you feel a little jealous, you know, that Ezra's out there arguing with Sam Sader and like, getting shouted down by, you know, all the liberals that loved him when he was, you know, starting vodka? And what do you make about kind of like dark Ezra?

[Jonathan Chait]

Ezra doesn't love being hated like most people. I kind of do. I kind of enjoy being.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe that's why people have moved on for you, because haters don't love hating people that don't mind being hated. Haters want to hate. Haters want to get under the skin.

[Jonathan Chait]

No, it's true. So Ezra's really. I mean, Ezra's a brilliant writer. I've loved his work since he started. His work is better than ever. And I feel like he tries to keep things as civil as he possibly can, but in a way, it's become impossible for him because he's hit this red line. He's really challenged progressive dogma for many people at such a fundamental level that they need to do the only thing they ever do when their ideas are challenged, which is to demonize the person who's challenging them and say, that person's a terrible, evil person who's our enemy. I mean, you should never listen to a single word he says. So he's really struck this raw nerve within the left that it's been fascinating to see because he's the nicest guy on earth. And convincing people to hate Ezra Klein is a hard task, but people are trying it anyway.

[Tim Miller]

Convince people to be a little annoyed by him, maybe would be easier, but hate is tough. He's such a sweetheart. I feel that. So we discussed earlier, going back to our top topic, maybe some of the blind spots and some of the limitations of being a former Republican commentating on the news of the day. And I'm open to the fact that I've got some of those. I've been working them slowly but surely. There's also some clarity, though. Just the Biden thing last year and this, now this Ezra kerfuffle. I look at it and I'm like, have all these people lost their mind? And like, Ezra is not saying anything that is just not as obvious as the sun rises in the East. Or like, LeBron James is a good basketball player. It's like, California is a blue state controlled by Democrats and they have the highest cost of living. It's challenging for middle class folks. Folks, they are unable to build a train and that's a problem. And they have a homelessness crisis and that's a problem and California should try to fix it. That's really all he's saying. You could kind of sum. Abundance has a lot of detailed policy wonk nerd stuff. But his overarching point you could summarize in a tweet and a very obvious one. And it's pretty. I guess it's kind of alarming to me that it's even controversial.

[Jonathan Chait]

People don't like being told that they're the problem. No one likes that. And what abundance does is it points at the progressive movement and says, we are the problem. The things we did in the 1970s are causing us to fail today. We have to change our mentality. And a lot of people are still invested in those ideas. And one of the points I tried to make in this piece that I'm writing that obviously you haven't seen, hasn't come out yet, is that Ralph Nathan.

[Tim Miller]

We'Re just teasing people now. Pretty much all of our listeners are already Atlantic subscribers because this is the official home of the Atlantic, the official podcast home of the Atlantic. So I'm sure they'll be able to read it.

[Jonathan Chait]

It's true. You guys have.

[Tim Miller]

But if there are any who are not go subscribe to the Atlantic.

[Jonathan Chait]

That's right, we're going to go.

[Tim Miller]

And eventually Jeff Goldberg will give me a 10% vig on all those subs. But it hasn't happened yet.

[Jonathan Chait]

I'm sure it will. People talk about the groups, right? That's part of the discourse within the left is the role of the progressive groups in creating this infrastructure where every group has its position that it holds to and it gets all the other groups to hold to it. And, and that's what's pushed the party to the left over the last 10 years. Ralph Nader pretty much invented that. He invented the groups. He invented all these groups that came in to D.C. to lobby for their individual position. The whole idea that he called them, like a new class of citizen that were inventing this professional activist group. So this is a gigantic part of the progressive movement infrastructure that has a stake in. In this set of laws that the abundance movement is trying to change. So it's not a small thing that they're trying to revise. It's really the entire orientation of the.

[Tim Miller]

Progressive movement, as somebody who's been making these cases for 30 years, a neoliberal shill who has. You have college aged kids, not college, right? We're in college.

[Jonathan Chait]

I do.

[Tim Miller]

That's right. College. Go bloom. And so you're in touch with what's happening with the youth a little bit. Just from a parenting perspective, do you ever kind of sit back and be like, why are we so unpopular? I just, I got. It's hard to kind of understand, right.

[Jonathan Chait]

Because we being the.

[Tim Miller]

We being kind of neoliberal. Neoliberal democrats, right? Like, it's like the. There is. There's this huge, like, negative reaction, you know, online. It's like the MAGA folks, like, we need to tear everything down and the young online leftists, like, we need, we need to totally, like reject all of these leaders that have got us to this place and instead, you know, go to our perfect socialist future. And I just, I kind of like look at the arc of the last 50 years and think, I don't know, things are pretty good. I mean, I can understand why you're mad if you live in Youngstown, you know, but it's not like Venezuela over here or Argentina or it's not like, you know, like things like directionally have gotten better since our grandparents were kids. What do you think it is that reason that the Ezra Jonathan Chait view is being rejected by the youth?

[Jonathan Chait]

I mean, that's a really big profound question. I think to the extent you want to focus on youth, I sort of buy the theories of Jonathan Haidt, who is not me. Little known fact, completely different person that.

[Tim Miller]

Just one different letter. No, two different letters.

[Jonathan Chait]

I guess a couple different letters. He's got a D. I don't have a D. Obviously the social media has caused this kind of negative affect and mental health difficulties in a lot of this radical politics on the right. And the left really is, at some level it shades into mental illness in a way that is sometimes difficult to distinguish one from the other. Where you just view everything in hyperbolic negative terms and refuse to like, like look at practical steps you or the world can be taking to make the situation better. It's cognitive behavioral therapy in reverse. I think that's Haidt's phrase, right? Where you just catastrophize everything that's happening. And in a lot of these spaces I think it's gotten better actually since Elon broke Twitter by mistake. But just even saying that like, hey, I'm kind of like happy makes people angry. Because if you're like a happy, normal, well adjusted person, that means you don't know how terrible the world is and you're insane, sensitive to all the problems out there. And people have actually built political movements around that whole way of thinking and expressing yourself. And it's totally impossible, right? It's just unworkable. It's not a practical way to make the world better. I think there is this nostalgic idea on the left that you old Republicans are not burdened by that there's something noble in being a protester who shouts and screams and exaggerates and carries on. Because even if you're not technically right, you're pushing things in the right direction.

[Tim Miller]

Direction.

[Jonathan Chait]

And I think, you know, vestigial Republicans like yourself understand that that's actually not always the case. And oftentimes you just convince people that you're crazy and they shouldn't listen to anything you say.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I was with you on the, on the cell phone answer. I don't know if the protest answer is right because it. Cause I've been talking about this a lot on my Gen Z pod. Like there actually is kind of a surprising lack of protest among young folks on the left, right Now, Yeah. Right. And so. So the allure to that might be more of a generational thing about your peers who are out there in these streets. And we appreciate that.

[Jonathan Chait]

That's true.

[Tim Miller]

We appreciate that.

[Jonathan Chait]

That's true. That's true. No, my people will at least leave the house. Young people want to do it all on the phone.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I don't know, we could probably do a whole podcast on it, but I think it's just a big challenge. Right. What Ezra is pushing for and Derek seems to have an appeal to basically upper middle class, college educated folks. And it is not resonating beyond. I saw a little image of some of the abundance meetups and it's exactly, it looks exactly what you think it'd look like. And God love all the folks at those meetups, some of them probably bulk podcast listeners, we'd probably hang out and agree on a lot of things. But in the social media age, where all of that catastrophizing is winning beginning, how do you make the argument that, well, guys, some of these radical changes might make things worse, not better? Have you seen China? All of those arguments are a little bit. It's tough. And honestly, maybe it's just cyclical and letting the populace fuck things up for a while is the only path back. I don't know.

[Jonathan Chait]

I mean, the irony is the biggest piece of it and the oldest piece of the abundance agenda is housing. We should build more housing. Look, I'm 53. I bought into the housing market in the 90s when it was the cost of what's now a nice cup of coffee at Starbucks. The young people. I don't need it. I own a house now. If anything, I stand to lose from building more housing and devaluing the cost of property of which I'm already an owner. It's the young people who actually need to allow more housing to be built. And the only way to do that is still legalize it. But no, you're right. And the other aspect of it is that abundance agenda, like I said, when it says, who's the bad guys? The bad guys in many cases is us. Or the bad guys isn't a corporation. It's that when you have, when you want to build a new apartment building, you have to get approval of some neighborhood planning commission and they're going to listen to the four 75 year olds who've lived there for 50 years who want to show up and complain about how they don't want anything to change in the neighborhood and they get to veto the whole prospect and Tie it up in lawsuits if they get cranky about it. And those bad guys aren't as compelling to some people as a bad guy who's a giant, wealthy corporation. But they're bad.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, there's some bad corporations and some bad geriatrics that aren't letting people move to the neighborhood. Hey, guys, it's Tim and Sarah. We're here with my frenemy, John Lovett from Love it or Leave It. We're bringing you guys all a special crossover collab with the Bulwark and Crooked.

[Jonathan Chait]

Media, the Never Trump Rhinos. Meet the self important podcast bros. You.

[Tim Miller]

Are definitely the fucking self important one. June is Pride Month and we're gonna be live in D.C. on June 6 for World Pride for a very special live show FundRaiser featuring the three of us plus some gay special guests.

[Jonathan Chait]

This one's a little different. Proceeds from tickets will be donated to support Andre Romero, the makeup artist who the Trump administration wrongly disappeared to El Salvador and who is currently being held in Sakat. Crooked and the Bulwark will be donating the proceeds from this fundraiser to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.

[Tim Miller]

Tickets on sale [e-mail] events. These are going fast, so get yours before they're gone. Go to crooked.com events and we will.

[Jonathan Chait]

See you all on June 6th.

[Tim Miller]

Speaking of radicalism gone awry, this just is such a fucking horrible story. Two Israeli embassy staff were fatally shot at the Capitol jewish museum in D.C. yesterday. Yaron Leshinsky and Sarah Milgram. They were engaged, they're about to be married. The suspect, I guess suspect is the term that we have to use. But the guy that did it was chanting free Palestine and globalize the Intifada while being taken into custody. I don't even really know what to say about this beyond the fact that it is so. It's just fucking self sabotage, this radicalization that you're seeing that could lead to something like this. It's pretty alarming that this stuff keeps going on. And it's unfortunate that we have kind of this fake anti Semitism agenda being put in place by this administration when there's actually real issues there.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right? The administration is stocking up with right wing anti Semites and using antisemitism as a pretext to crack down on peaceful demonstrators, often with very unobjectionable views. At the same time, a lot of these demonstrators have very radical, very dangerous views. I mean, globalize the intifada. This is what it means. If they wanted to say, let's just get people around the world to speak up. Peacefully. They could say that, but that's not what globalizing the intifada means. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab. Means that there won't be any Jews anywhere in the state of Israel. There won't be a state of Israel. I mean, these groups actually are fairly tightly organized and disciplined and they're loyal to Hamas. They won't denounce Hamas. They won't denounce 10 7, because that is actually what they believe. They attract a lot of people who are just motivated to help the Palestinians who are suffering, suffering horribly. So many of the people who are attracted to these protest groups have noble motives that I share, but the causes into which they're joining are often bloody ones that we should be honest about describing.

[Tim Miller]

And all of these things can be true. What's happening in Gaza right now is almost as bad as it's been the whole time. What is happening Gaza? Blocking food from getting into Gaza. Young children and babies are dying in Gaza as we speak. These are not Hamas toddlers. Like, these are just toddlers.

[Jonathan Chait]

They're being held hostage by Hamas.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And so, you know, like, there are valid reasons to protest and to speak out about the atrocities there. But it's very obvious to anybody seeing this clearly how often that, like, bleeds into the type of anti Semitic rhetoric that can take a person to the place where they feel like the right thing to do is to randomly shoot people outside of a capitol Jewish museum.

[Jonathan Chait]

Here's a point that I think I've been making. Students for justice in Palestine is a radical group with eliminationist goals that supports Hamas and supports violence. People should not work with that group. People should not endorse that group. You should find other ways to support the Palestinians. I don't care if they're the main group on your campus that's organizing a protest. Organize your own protest that's separate from them because they are bad.

[Tim Miller]

Blunt and well said. Speaking of people that are bad and eliminationist, we had another one of these fucking reality show Oval Office meetings yesterday between Trump and the president of South Africa. Trump advancing the notion that there is a white genocide happening in South Africa. There have been. Also in the Washington Post was there have been 12 deaths, 12 murders on farms in South Africa, which is not good. But there were 6,900 murders in South Africa last year. Right. So we just have to contextualize all this that's happening. A nice note from a South African who just, you know, wanted to make sure it is important to contextualize this administration in South Africa. There's some bad laws that are being put in place. There's some race based laws that are being put in place that are pernicious. But like, in the grand scheme of things, the idea that, that the white farmers, the Afrikaners in South Africa are like the only victims in the world that we should care about and that the United States president should browbeat the president of South Africa in the Oval Office a week after sucking the cock of MBS is obviously motivated by racial animus. Like, it's just obvious what Trump is doing here. And so anyway, you've written about this. I wonder if you have any other stuff.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right. One of the columns I wrote last week was that I was trying to make an old New Republic counterintuitive argument.

[Tim Miller]

Which is that watch out, no Slate pitches on the Bulwark podcast. Okay. Radical candor here. We've updated that.

[Jonathan Chait]

The public invented that. Yeah. Before Slate existed, that the Slate pitch was the New Republic. But anyway, when Trump flew to Saudi Arabia, he basically, he gave a speech. We're saying we're not here to moralize. We're just about making business deals with people. And that's what our foreign policy is about. I think a lot of people took that idea completely at faith value. But my argument is actually they do have a values based foreign policy. JD Vance has gone to Europe and he's lectured people about their immigration policies and about their free speech policies and about letting AFD have more access to the political system, their policies. They've lectured South Africans on their treatment of white farmers. Their concepts of democracy and free speech and human rights are very important to their foreign policy. So they have values, but their values are bad. Bad. It's not amoral, it's immoral foreign policy. And I think it actually gives them too much credit to assume that it's pure commerce based, just making money and making deals. Trump's dealings with the Gulf are corrupt. They are money based. But there is a shared value system. He genuinely admires the authoritarian character of these regimes. He loves the fact that he can go there and no one is allowed to protest against him in that he can get his palms greased. So that's not just about making deals for the country or even for himself. It's really, you can see it in his face. He loves dictators. He admires them. It's a value of his. And so, like, it's a values based part of policy, I think, is an important point.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, the pluralist countries are the foes.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

It's across the Board. It's like anything in life, you know, when you have a friend or a colleague, you know what gets them excited. You know, like you can just tell, like, you can tell like in their energy and their voice and their engagement level. Like, Trump gets very engaged and excited when he is attacking our small l. Liberal allies around the world. Like, he does not like them. He does not want to be in their company.

[Jonathan Chait]

And when they're black, all the more so.

[Tim Miller]

Yes, right. He does not really want to be in their company. He wants to talk down to them. And he enjoys erotically the company of the Middle Eastern fascists. And like, that's just it. I think it's a very. It is a good point. Point. And I was making a softer version of the point yesterday by saying that like, that the Trump doctrine is that there is a Trump doctrine that is mercantilistic and that they just have carve outs for white people. But I'm open to the next step of that argument, which is, no, it's not purely mercantilistic. It's also values based. It's bad values. I thought it was really. You might have pitched it as a con, as a contrarian pitch, but I.

[Jonathan Chait]

The Canadians are mostly white. The Western Europeans are mostly white. I mean, their leaders are white. And he's hostile to them because they're liberal democracies.

[Tim Miller]

There's this concept that's been going around that if people who are listeners who are blessedly off of the Internet are probably not even going to be aware of this concept. It's an intra right wing fight about the woke right. That there is a woke right that is themselves obsessed with. With race and identity and identitarianism in a similar way to how Robin d' Angelo might be, but in a way that is ill of ill intent. And so the key difference is the intent is ill, but the identitarian obsession is the same. You've kind of observed this. I do think that this in some ways overlaps with what we saw with the South Africa discussion too. But I don't know if you have any insight into the what right.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right. So this is a critique that sort of originated on parts of the right that were at least open to Trump, if not completely in his camp, and then have since that were basically against the illiberalism of the far left and saw Trump as a corrective to that and then realized that Trump was just recapitulating or in my view, exceeding the illiberalism of the far left left. I would say massively exceeding the Illiberalism of the far left. And so they were using the word woke to express the kind of parallel, the sort of meet the new boss same as the old boss dynamic of this. I personally prefer illiberal or authoritarian as descriptors, but the difference between my descriptor and woke is they hate the term woke, right? It makes them so angry they can't stop talking about how angry it makes them.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, so that's appealing. It's appealing to use it for that reason.

[Jonathan Chait]

There is a real appeal. But also making them realize the degree to which they really have recapitulated the worst habits of the people they most hate. Can I repeat one of my little Twitter burns, please? Will Chamberlain, one of these right wing Fed soc illiberal lawyer types, who's in the Trump circle, he was really complaining about Ed Whelan, who's a more traditional conservative, who called Emil Bowe, the Justice Department staffer, a henchman, saying, we can't promote a henchman. He says, like, how can you. Is this the term we're using? We're calling him a henchman? Is that fair? And I said, like, you're right. When you're in the woke, right, you gotta call a hench person or person experiencing hench. That's the real nice woke right term. So, you know, in a way, there are all these parallels between the language policing and the conscious obsessions with race. They like to claim sometimes that we're the race neutral people, but they're not race neutral. They're very, very conscious. Conscious of race.

[Tim Miller]

I want to give one example of this conscious obsession with race that's really kind of tragic that I want to talk about. Just really quick, though, for listeners. I did a late night chat with Patrick Gaspard, who was on the show a couple weeks ago, who's ambassador to South Africa, where we went more into the details about what's actually happening in South Africa. So, folks, if you want to listen to that and go check it out either on the YouTube or on the Bulwark Takes feed, Patrick's really, really good. I was noticing this more in my comment section from both the woke left and the woke right. And so I just kind of wanted to weigh in on it because it's such a tragic story. There's a story out of Mississippi, out of Starkville. Really annoying that the cowbells at the football game. It's very annoying. But it's America in Starkville. Okay? Casper Eriksen, he came from Denmark. Maybe he's being targeted because as part of the pressure Campaign against Denmark to give up Greenland. I don't know. He came from Denmark on a cultural exchange program in high school. One of these things where you come and do a semester abroad. Went to high school and started. He meets an American girl there. They fall in love. He goes back to Denmark. Their pen pals. He comes back, they decide to get married. They have four kids, one on the way. The guy tries to fill out all the forms to become an American citizen. His wife's Americans. Kids are American, I guess. Ten years ago, one of the forms he did not fill out, there had been an oversight. He'd had many, many meetings with immigration in the intervening periods where they had not told him about this form that he'd forgot to fill out. Out. He says it happened right after there's a stillbirth of their child. So they just. There was a lot happening in the household. He went in for his immigration checkup. He's still like going through the process like you're supposed to do to become a citizen. The fucking ICE goons shackle him and they send him to Louisiana. He's in a cell in Natchez now. He's been there for one month awaiting deportation while his pregnant wife is at home with the four kids.

[Jonathan Chait]

Kids.

[Tim Miller]

They're charging a ridiculous amount for him to even use the phone to call her because it's a private prison that's monetizing all this. This is a horrific story. And it just. And what it is is an example of just how inhumane the Trump immigration regime is across the board. There are elements of it that are racially motivated. There also are. That is just a. Just blanket inhumanity. And they're trying to reach their numbers. And the easiest way to reach their numbers is to take people who are doing things the right way, not criminals. It's hard to find fucking criminals. It's easy to find criminal.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right, because they're the ones who walk in the door.

[Tim Miller]

Exactly. It's easy to find the people who just walk in the door. And so this guy is going to be sent back to Denmark. Who knows what happens to his family. It is despicable what it is doing. It is just fundamentally un American what we are doing, this immigration regime. And so I was grossed out by it. And then literally my entire reply changed chain from left and right was about how this guy's white. It's like, oh, lefties being like, oh, well, it's a white guy. So the Trump people let him off the hook eventually. And then it's right wing people being like, Oh, I thought that we only deported brown people. See, we also deport whites. Hell yeah. And I just like it leads to an unhealthy culture where you're centering the skin color above everything. Because the center of this case is the tragedy of it and the fucking horrific immigration policies that this administration is putting forth. And it makes me concerned when we are immediately leading to where people are stoking race war over things such as this. So anyway, I don't know if you have any thoughts about the story.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah, I mean, I think what you're hitting on is the hangover of this ideology that really got very fashionable in this country for a few years, maybe peaked around 2020, which is a really a kind of totalizing analysis of race, like Ibram Kendi saying that literally everything is either pro racist or anti racist and nothing is neutral. And I think it began with the very correct understanding that racism left an incredibly deep and enduring imprint on American society that didn't go away when slavery disappeared and didn't go away when segregation disappeared. But in many people's minds, that has grown into just a totalistic explanation for evidence, everything. So it certainly impacts our immigration policy, but they have no other way of understanding anything else that could be impacting our immigration policy. And so they're driven to this totalistic frame. And so you're just left with these kind of black. I mean, black and white, I suppose is the wrong phrase to use, but.

[Tim Miller]

You know, to speak right.

[Jonathan Chait]

This absolutist analysis, it's a black and.

[Tim Miller]

White cookie living in harmony together.

[Jonathan Chait]

I think you need to, you not only can, but you have to recognize the impact of racism in American life while leaving yourself room to see other forces that are at play.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And to me, this case in particular, and what we are doing across the board that I just, I like to keep bringing up because sometimes just people don't think about it like they have a, you know, whatever their view is about immigration, like liberal or conservative. It's about like, well, he didn't follow the rules, he should leave. Or, you know, well, we should be more generous.

[Jonathan Chait]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

But like, there are choices that are made by the government about how to handle situations such as this. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, we could change the law where if you run a red light, you know, you get jailed for life, like, or you could get a ticket. Right. Like, there's a whole range of different punishments for things such as this. And the notion and this is happening across the board on these immigration, detentions and every story I read about it is that this, this administration, probably because the private prison lobby is the one that's making the most bank during the Trump years. Private prison folks are crushing right now. They've made a decision that anybody who has an immigration violation, you get shackled, put on the bus and sent to Natchez, Louisiana or the other places where there is are these private prisons. And you sit there and like, that's where Makmu Khalil is. That's where this Danish guy is. That's where the woman, the woman from Georgia that I've been talking about, about the immigrant from Mexico, she got sent to one of these in Georgia. And it's like, none of these people are a danger to their community. Why are they in cells? There's no reason for it besides intimidation, cruelty and wanting to give widgets to your private prison pals, right? Human widgets. Because none of these folks have any past crimes or any threats to their community. And all of those them, you're trying to get them to leave. So like there's no flight risk. It's not like, ooh, maybe the Danish guy will leave to Denmark. Like that's what you want, okay? So it's not like there's a flight risk situation. There's no reason this man should be away from his four children. Like, even if in the end you do a stupid policy that I disagree with, which is to deport him, like in the meantime, the idea that he should be in a prison in Louisiana is insane and inhumane. And that's the center of this. And it's happening across the board.

[Jonathan Chait]

My suspicion is that they recognize that actually finding and deporting all the people that they want to find and deport is not going to be possible. Even after they get the money from this bill to staff up on the immigration enforcement. It's just too hard to find everyone. It's too resource intensive. Just the, I mean, doing the math and the plane loads and the bus loads of people, it's too forbidding. I think what they're trying, trying to do instead is to scare people, right? You create enough high profile cases that make it into the media, then anyone who's here illegally will self deport. The cruelty is the point, as my colleague Adam Serwer said, right? It's like the abuse is better. It's better to. And if you're getting an innocent person and mistreating them and it makes the media all the better because that's just going to be a better story for the media. It's going to travel farther and scale, scare more people. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it is purely incompetence, and I'm sure incompetence is part of the play.

[Tim Miller]

No, there's malice and incompetence and cruelty, and there is just straight grift.

[Jonathan Chait]

Yeah, I don't think they're concerned about abuse. I think abuse is really built into the plan.

[Tim Miller]

Absolutely. All right, any parting thoughts? Any recruiting, Michigan recruiting news? Any?

[Jonathan Chait]

Well, you know, I know you had two Michigan professors on in the last seven days, and now you've got a Michigan alum on. So is it. You know, I, I love Michigan week. It's. It's been the best week of your podcast.

[Tim Miller]

I'm not letting my bitterness over Bryce Underwood abandoning us for Michigan affect the guest list on the podcast, which the listeners who have no idea who Bryce Underwood is appreciate. So there you go. I, I, I do have to give a final, just big condolences to friends of the pod, Timothy Chalamet and Ben Stiller, John Ham and all the other Knicks fans. That was a brutal loss last night, but basketball is great, and I hope that, I hope that the Knicks can rebound and make this a series. What a game that was last night.

[Jonathan Chait]

You don't make the choke sign after game one. You make the choke sign after games.

[Tim Miller]

It was a risk for Tyrese Halliburton. Hopefully he gets his comeuppance. And I don't want to jinx the Knicks by saying I'm rooting for them, but I would like to see Tyrese get his comeuppance. All right. Jonathan Chait, always a pleasure. Thanks so much. We'll be having you back again soon. Enjoy the Jonathan Cohn wedding this weekend.

[Jonathan Chait]

Will do.

[Tim Miller]

Everybody else will be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. Peace.

[C]

Well, I left my motel room down at the Starkville Motel the town had gone to sleep and I was feeling fairly well I strolled along the sidewalk neath the sweet magnolia trees I was whistling Picking flowers swaying in the southern breeze I found myself surrounded One policeman said, that's him, come along wild flower child don't you know that it's 2am they bound to get you Cause they got a curfew and you go to the Starkville City jail well, they threw me in the car and started driving into town I said what the hell did I do? And he said shut up and sit down well, they emptied out my pockets Took my pills and guitar picks I said, wait, my name is all shut up well, I sure was in a fix the sergeant put me in a cell Then he went home for the night I said come back here you so and so I ain't being treated right Will they bound to get you Cause he got a curfew and you go to the Starkville City Jail I started pacing back and forth and now I'm back Then I'd yell and kick my $40 shoes against the steel door of my cell I'd walk a while and kick a while and all night nobody came Then I sadly remembered they didn't even take my name at 8am they let me out I said give me them things of mine they give me a snare and a guitar pick and a yeller dandelion they're bound to get you cause he got a curfew and you go to the Starkville City Jail and you go to the Starkville.

[Tim Miller]

City Jail the Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.