← The Focus Group Podcast
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- [00:00]
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- [00:30]
Sarah Longwell
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters, but when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. Hey everyone, Sarah Longwell here, publisher of the Bulwark. My schedule in March is a little bit messed up and so long story short, Bill Crystal and I just pre taped a pod that I decided I could not wait to give you because we talked a lot about Iran and that situation is obviously fluid and news could overtake our analysis and so I wanted to get it to you fast. We also talk about conspiracy theories and about the Bulwark. There's a fun little surprise where people bring up the Bulwark in focus groups that I think you guys will think is funny. We got more coming soon, both from me and from Rachel Jazza on Gen Z. So stay tuned. I will see you guys soon. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group Podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week we're catching up on our foreign policy because you may have heard we recently went to war with Iran and voters are a little bit freaked out. America's also been fighting this war alongside Israel, which as we're going to discuss today, has become a huge political flashpoint. And a lot of, I don't know, interesting conspiracy theories that you'd usually think of as crazy are working their way into what should be mainstream focus groups. And during the focus groups, we've heard more and more about Israel being linked to a couple of the biggest stories in America of the last year. We're going to talk about what those are. We're also going to check in with voters on the Jeffrey Epstein saga, and if you stick around through all of that, we have a fun and uplifting surprise at the end. My guest today is the wokest neocon out there, Bill Crystal, co author of Morning Shots and editor at large of the Bull Work, and my friend and colleague, Bill Crystal. Thanks for being here.
- [02:41]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, thanks for having me, Sarah. I look forward to this discussion and focus. You've done such a great job with these focus groups. And should we use this occasion to plug your book, which is your new book, which is available for free order, which is based partly on the work you've done over really the entire Trump presidency and first Trump term, obviously, and the intermission between the two Trump terms with voters out there.
- [03:03]
Sarah Longwell
So the work we've done, people need
- [03:05]
Bill Kristol
to get the book.
- [03:06]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, people. That's great. Thank you. Preorders. Preorder. Pre order now, especially if you like the focus group stuff. Okay. Bill, the last time you were on this show was right after Renee Good was killed by ice. Now Kristi Noem is on the outs. She's got some new job that's like assistant to the assistant regional manager. Do you think public opinion played a role in that? Did any of that create any optimism in you that there's a shift happening in terms of, like, accountability inside the administration?
- [03:33]
Bill Kristol
There certainly was a shift to public opinion. Right. I think you found this qualitatively in the focus groups and certainly clear in the polls where immigration, one of Trump's signature issues and one that helped him in 2024, once that went from being the border to being internal enforcement and mass deportation, and then the way in which ICE was operating, it became a pretty big negative. I really think we shouldn't underestimate that. And I will say you and I both were of the view in early 2025, talked to a lot of Democrats that they were too spooked. On the one hand, they messed up the immigration issue, but on the other, in 2024. But on the other hand, they were too spooked by that. And, you know, driving, looking in the rearview mirror in 2025 and scared to even talk about it. And mass deportation is a different thing from being serious about the border, you know, and then the way they did it was so grotesque and obviously accommodating in. In Minneapolis. So I think it changed public opinion a lot. I wish I could say that that has caused, you know, an outburst of accountability in the Trump administration or even among Trump, even among Republican members of Congress. But. And there's some of that. I mean, some. A couple of senators started to criticize Noem. She had a very tough hearing. But the thing at the Hearing that seems to have done her in was telling the truth about Trump's approving or, well, master truth, but claiming that Trump was okay with the $200 million whatever it was Christine Ohm self promotion PA that she had DHS doing and that apparently infuriated Trump. It's not clear that it was actually about the policies. We did see some reaction earlier when, when he moved that creep Avino out and put Tom Homan in charge of Minneapolis. So they are not totally unresponsive to public opinion, but I wouldn't say we yet have an administration that has anything resembling a normal account of accountability, normal amount of accountability.
- [05:13]
Sarah Longwell
So that is basically a perfect answer to set up the dynamic that I think is also at play with Iran, which is that public opinion kind of matters, but not nearly as much as, like, if Trump feels like he personally is under fire some way like, or that he personally would suffer in some way. But it is not singularly public opinion that drives these things. So I say this because obviously I think public opinion matters a great deal, but I do sort of want to lay out that I have a bit of a theory around public opinion for Trump at this particular moment, which is that it doesn't matter as much as for any other normal politician because Trump does not care about the future of the Republican Party. He doesn't care about any election going forward. If, like, the public's mad at him about Iran or is spooked for a period of time, he's not that worried about it. He's not that worried about the fact that a lot of people might die. And so until there's, like, something that he personally sees as a consequence to him, I'm not sure we get an actual policy change. So I say that to set the stage as we listen to a bunch of Trump voters. These are all swing voters who voted for Biden in 2020 and then voted for Trump in 2024. But this group was like, this most recent swing group on Iran was like, kind of jarring to me. And so I want to just play, just to start, let's listen how those voters talked about Iran.
- [06:50]
Swing Voter 1
We're already in bad economy and going into another war and going to battle for another country. When we have enough problems on our hands over here, especially when it comes to funding, I just feel as though it's going to hurt our economy as well as our troops. I sort of feel as though he might be trying to hold out his script when it comes to. He has always made jokes stating that there won't be another election. And I just feel as though maybe this war is also the catalyst to somehow allow midterm elections to not happen because of us going into war.
- [07:32]
Sarah Longwell
I'm a little nervous about the whole Iran situation. The thought of war does scare me. But I also do believe that war fuels an economy. So if we wind up going to actual war, I think our economy will eventually thrive.
- [07:50]
Swing Voter 2
I wasn't overly thrilled about it. I know we bombed them earlier in the year in Trump's administration just because, like, they were, according to intelligence, we're getting close to developing nuclear weapons. And they hate the West. They hate everything about our society. So we have to do what's best for our national interests. And I think I would have felt differently if all like Canada, for example, who's kind of been very anti Trump even they backed up the attack on Iran and Palestine.
- [08:24]
Swing Voter 3
Well, if you bombed them the first time and set their nuclear program back decades, then why are we bombing them again? That's my first question. My second question is, if we're bombing them so we can have a regime change, what's our game plan for who's going to take over now and how are we going to ensure that they're not going to be worse than the ayatollah? Because my fear is that it's going to be a repeat of what happened with Saddam, when we killed Saddam and then ISIS took over and ISIS was worse than Saddam.
- [08:53]
Swing Voter 4
This is a problem over and over again. Like, how many years now have we been talking about different wars with Iran and countries like that? Like, I don't like that we have to bomb anybody. I don't know what a good enough reason to go bomb a country is. You know, I definitely know that the Twin Towers, good enough reason to go blow somebody up, but because they keep fighting with other religious, the opposite religious country that they've been fighting with since time began. I don't know if we should go over bombing for that. So I don't know what a good enough reason is, you know, and so it's going to suck either way.
- [09:37]
Swing Voter 3
I feel definitely more on the unsafe spectrum solely because I fear, like a retaliatory type terrorist attack similar to 911 happening either from, like terrorists themselves or if I put on my tinfoil hat, an inside job to essentially scare Americans into supporting the war on Iran. A terrorist attack is what I hear.
- [10:03]
Swing Voter 2
Under Biden, it was the Ukraine, Russian war, and now under Trump, we're in Iran. So it's like it doesn't matter what blue or red, it's still a war. It's still getting involved in other people's business before our own. It's still like the same stuff. It's just a different flavor.
- [10:19]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so quick disclaimer that these were very initial reactions to Iran. Like, we're trying to do more focus groups on this, but we've basically just been asking it to groups that have, were previously scheduled to talk about other things because this sort of came on us fast. But Bill, what did you make of sort of those initial reactions from people who, you know, voted for Trump in 2024?
- [10:40]
Bill Kristol
They're, I think, hostile to foreign wars. I think we knew that especially for Trump voters, but the public as a whole, and a very jaundiced view of our efforts over the last 20 years. Maybe too jaundiced, but that's another whole issue. And so I thought in that respect, kind of what I would have expected, I would say this. I mean, my, my experience has been events actually and outcomes really do matter. You know, we can, obviously messaging is very important. You, you work a ton on this. But, you know, Biden's messaging about inflation was bad, but you know what was even worse? Inflation. You know, once you have 9% inflation in 2022 and, and, and a whole generation of people, I remember inflation that high from the 70s, but a whole generation of people like you have never experienced it. That's going to have a massive effect. And it did. And so I feel the same wars, you know, the real events of wars, Vietnam, you know, wasn't the messaging. It was that we got stuck at a war with 55,000 people getting killed. So I, I still think as we speak, what the outcome. We don't know how it all turns out. Obviously, I think that's the most important thing that's out there. And people are therefore insofar as they're a little hesitant in passing judgments. I sort of sympathize with them. With them about that.
- [11:48]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. I mean, I, not just in this group, we're playing on a play sound from this group, but obviously there's been a couple other groups that we've just sort of touched on this with. And there's been a few things that I found interesting. One was a couple of the groups, again, this was quite early that I believe this was like just the Monday or Tuesday right after, you know, we woke up on a Saturday and the bombing had begun that were listening to these voters. But there were some that didn't even know that we were at war yet. And the administration, whether purposefully it's funny listening to sort of the conspiracy. I mean, people sort of acknowledge, they're like, maybe I'm putting on a tinfoil hat. Maybe I feel conspiratorial about this. But part of what I have always found about voters is that conspiracy is what creeps in when facts are not being made clear. Right. And Trump has very oddly, unlike Iraq, where there was like this big run up of public opinion discussion. And one of the things I kind of can't get over is that Trump on a Tuesday gave the State of the Union where he talked about Iran almost not at all, and then on a Friday night began the bombing campaign like three days later. And so they didn't. They, like, purposefully haven't gone to the American people. And this is goes back to my earlier remarks about feeling like Trump doesn't really care as much about public opinion, or at least they are trying to manipulate public opinion in some way, partly to say, we are not going to hold an Oval Office address, we're not going to talk about it in the State of the Union because we're sort of trying to not totally let people know we're at war. I mean, if you ask them right now, are we at war, they're even cagey about that. In your experience, have you ever seen somebody do a war this way?
- [13:35]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I'm very struck by what he's done, and I assume there is some attempted cunning behind it, which is, you know, the obvious thing is you go to war, you give a solemn Oval Office address, it gets big ratings. People usually like it at first, incidentally, they rally to the flag. I wonder if they've seen after the 25 years of these, that, you know what, we don't want to treat this that way. We don't want a Trump Oval Office address comparable that they'll show clips of Bush's Oval Office address or Obama on Libya and, oh, my God, it's another one, or Biden on Ukraine even. And let's treat it as a, you know, a special military operation. We'll bomb the hell out of them. And for our own, as Lindsey Graham has said, and I think Hegseth may have even used that term, and for our supporters and people like this kind of thing, we'll release plenty of video of bombs going off. And so we'll have, we'll have our sort of performative tough guy stuff. But Trump otherwise will give some random interviews and adjust each day or each hour as he chooses to mix the blend of belligerence but also reassurance that we're not getting stuck there. And in fact, we're getting kind of close to the end and all that. And so maybe it's sort of clever of them and keeps it a little less fraught than it would otherwise be. And as long as the casualties aren't too great, as long as it doesn't come home, God forbid, in the shape of terror and so forth, it sort of becomes, you know, not the issue of the day, but one of the. Of several issues. And maybe that's kind of clever from their point of view, I don't know. But it is striking the. I mean, Trump normally likes the what you would think, in a way, knowing his character a bit as we do, he would like the grandiosity of the Oval Office address. But he's actually got. I've got to say, they've got out of their way to avoid that in this case. Right.
- [15:14]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. We're basically only getting updates on his personal publicly. You know, like his. His personal, it is an llc, a business of his, is how the American people are getting their information about the updates on this war that he doesn't want to call a war, which I find really odd. I genuinely, as I've been listening to voters, I'm obsessed with public opinion, and I'm also obsessed with the way that people manage public opinion or attempt to manage public opinion. This is one of those, though, where I'm a little bit out at sea even as I listen to voters, because it's. It is unclear to me whether Trump stumbled into this accidentally because Bibi, you know, said, we gotta go do this now. And, like, we did it on a just kind of just cause and, like, we didn't go to Congress or anything else, or whether there's something tactically, whether there is a tactical attempt to sort of not admit we're at war and not have to go to the American people and not have a big debate in Congress so that there's not enough time for people to kind of catch up. But in any event, it seems to me that the state of play with public opinion is that for people who know that it's happening and seem like are and are aware, they're just leery of how much the echoes of Iraq and Afghanistan, they feel differently about a Venezuela in America's backyard that's a very weak and poor country versus these Middle east quagmires. Like, that feels different to Americans, and so they have some initial skepticism. But for people who are pretty into Trump, a lot of those people are like, well, we'll see. Maybe it'll be like Venezuelan. It'll be short and it'll be easy and big, strong America. Now we're all done. To me, it feels like where we are because Donald Trump gave an, again, an incredibly confusing speech in which he said that the war was both over and also just beginning. Like we could be there for as long as we need, but also mission accomplished. And it did sort of strike me as the George W. Bush aircraft carrier moment where we say mission accomplished about the initial phase where American might rains down. And then the next part is the quagmire part. Like, the next part's the hard part, the part where like, we have to go in and we don't know how this is going to go yet. And so public opinion is still, I think, very much in flux. But I think it's safe to say the initial reactions are just people are spooked that it is both that it could be like the Middle east and also despite that one woman saying it is good for the economy when we go to war, which is not true generally, people are like, hey, we already have a bunch of problems. Why are we doing this now?
- [17:58]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I think since the end of the Cold War, I think one rule, one conclusion one could draw is wars have not helped presidency. I mean, even well executed wars or quote, successful wars haven't helped administrations much. I mean, obviously the greatest example of that is the one I served in the 91 Gulf War, which went much better than people expected. Saddam was driven out of Kuwait. Bush actually called an end to it after the ground effort, after 100 hours. Some of us thought he might have gone to Baghdad and gotten rid of Saddam then, but he chose not to. But in a way, it ended. There was a nice victory parade. Everyone was saying, well, thank God, you know, the sort of ghost of Vietnam has been put behind us. Bush's ratings did go up wildly in the summer, spring, summer of 91, so much so that people like Cuomo decided not to run against him. He was too formidable. And we ended up with 38% of the vote in 1992. And for me, that was such a lesson that. And I think that would not have happened in the Cold War. I mean, I do think, you know, Reagan and Bush were helped in the 80s by the sense that they were doing a good job of dealing with the Soviet Union after Carter had done a poor job and obviously Johnson was destroyed by Vietnam more than by domestic policies. But I think that the Trump people have probably internalized the notion that wars can hurt you, but they probably can't help you that much. You mentioned Venezuela and the one day attack on Iran. Well, getting one day attack on Iran and then Venezuela and they didn't, you can't notice them in the public opinion polls. If you look at Trump's approval, there's no, there's nothing that happens right around them. They went well, there were no casualties. Whatever one thinks of them, they didn't, you know, there's no obvious blowback, so to speak. There wasn't much of a, whoa, okay, Trump's doing better than I expected. I mean, people might have said that though, even there, I don't think even in this issue issue specific questions in the polls. Do you approve of him in foreign policy? Not much of a indication there. In the last seven years, what's the one time when a foreign policy thing has really, I think contributed, led to a kind of immediate jump or drop in the polls? Pulling out of Afghanistan. Drop. Right. So I just think they're not foolish in a way to try to minimize it. But that skepticism is a problem for them because I do think it means that if things go badly or even if the second order effects seem problematic, as we're now seeing with oil prices and stuff forth, people are going to kind of pretty quickly cotton onto that. If there's an indirect good effect and that could be in obvious certain ways, people might just sort of not might shrug that off. Do you think that's, that's, that's plausible?
- [20:21]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I do. We are taping this on a day when, and I'm sorry to keep trying to date it, but I'm doing that because these things matter in our understanding. This has only been going on for, you know, a week and change. But what Trump did yesterday was he announced that the war was over right before the markets closed to one reporter. And then after the markets closed and rallied, there's a big rally because the stock markets had dropped. And Trump doesn't like it when the stock markets drop because all his friends lose money then and they start calling him and they're upset. So he says, well, the wars, the war's, the war's ending. And he says it to a reporter, the, that quote gets out there, the markets rally and then he holds a press conference afterwards to say, well, we'll see it, it could be over, it could be going on for a long time. But like he did enough to manipulate the markets that today they are still up just a little. Like in, in that they've rallied back from their low point and he sees that, right? The. It's not just that his friends get mad. It's that those become public opinion markers. People will be like, the Dow dropped on news that the war with Iran could be pro. He doesn't want those headlines. And so he is now in an active mitigation mode of trying to kind of dance and weave to try to keep public opinion from thinking that we are in something that is likely to be protracted or require boots on the ground. And so I just. It is hard and gets increasingly difficult to try to track public opinion on specific issues with when they spend so much time lying to people. So, like, it's. You can't get a clear read. I guess all of this is a way of me saying we've done a week's worth of focus groups since we've been in the war. I would say that what we played for you is very representative and that the bottom line is that there's deep skepticism about doing this. People will give him the benefit of the doubt for this period of time because maybe it'll be over fast. If it is not. I think you start to see people get really upset about it, especially if prices continue and affordability continues to be such a problem, which is just showing no signs of waning. And especially, especially if gas prices go up, because that's the place where it really hits the public. But we're still in TBD mode. But I did want to get people some sound on Iran so you could at least get a touch point of how people were reacting. Now, since we haven't done it in a while, I want to talk about how these voters are feeling about the Trump administration more broadly because the hits just keep on coming. But there was a major through line that will become apparent when you hear the clips. Let's listen.
- [23:08]
Swing Voter 1
Unlike our last President Biden, I feel as though he is communicating. Biden. I really felt as though he. He didn't communicate enough. So that's one thing I can say. I really do appreciate the fact that he is communicating. However, when it comes to things like the Epstein file, he is communicating, but the transparency isn't completely there as well as accountability.
- [23:34]
Swing Voter 3
Up until the shutdown, he was doing a lot of what he said he would do, like deporting Ms. 13 gang members, departing violent criminal, violent criminal, illegal immigrants, a lot of the, like the food stamp regulation of, like, if you're younger than 65 and you're not disabled and you don't have children, you have to work 80 hours a month to be on food stamps. That was all stuff that I was in favor of. And then why I would give a C is because the Epstein files, like, he ran on a campaign promising that he would release them and is now, like, dragging his heels. And at least the optics make it look like retaliating against Congress members who do want to release the Epstein files, which is just a terrible look.
- [24:21]
Sarah Longwell
The only thing that I feel like I really like I saw something about was that people were saying that Trump was so big on, like, exposing the files. And then when it. When it came time to actually deliver, I forgot where I read that they said that, that he realized that he was in the files, and that's when he decided that he doesn't want to expose them anymore. I don't know how true that is,
- [24:43]
Bill Kristol
but that was, like, kind of crazy.
- [24:45]
Swing Voter 5
The only reason I voted for Trump, really is because I'm a big conspiracy theorist. And when he came out saying that he was going to release the Epstein files, that was my whole thing, because I felt like within those Epstein files was all of the government secrets. And so that was my main point for voting for him. And right off the bat, when we got in and that narrative changed in the way of the economy and everything is going commercial, completely changed my view on Trump overall.
- [25:11]
Swing Voter 3
So my most, like, controversial take is that I think the Epstein list is controlled by Israel. And that's a big reason, like, why we end up shoveling billions of our dollars over to Israel while they have universal health care and they pay for college for their citizens. But we don't get any of that here.
- [25:31]
Swing Voter 5
And once you start to realize that Ghislaine's father, who he is and how he was caught up with the people at the Wall street journals, I think it was taking their pension and how he mysteriously died on this boat and Israel had a hand in that and massage and the MI6, and all this stuff started coming back. It's like, okay, who is really controlling the country? And why does everything keep coming back
- [25:50]
Bill Kristol
to Israel before we get to the war? Serious stuff. I was sort of amazed when that woman said, well, I'm a conspiracy theorist. And so I'm old enough to remember when people who were conspiracy theorists and there were plenty around back in the day, the first thing they would do is deny they were conspiracy theorists.
- [26:05]
Sarah Longwell
Today it says, I'm a conspiracy theorist. Let me tell you, my favorite conspiracy
- [26:08]
Bill Kristol
theorists, I think that's very revealing. I guess it's fine, you know, I guess people feel like, enough, these conspiracies are true, or Trump has just legitimated the note. Trumpism and MAGA have legitimated the notion of conspiracy theory so much that it's no longer a negative.
- [26:21]
Sarah Longwell
I have to interject here because I've got two words for you and they are Candace and Owens. And so many of these young voters, even swingy ones, listen to Candace Owens. That's number one. Number two, the reason that even though the book isn't coming out until September, I needed to be able to have it public isn't because I needed six months worth of pre orders. It is because in moments like this, I am desperate to say in the book I write a whole chapter called Conspiracy Land, which is on this point about how much, particularly on the right, but not exclusively, but even in this swingier. Like people sort of think of swing voters as people who might be more, you know, invested, thoughtful. That's why they're swingy. And that is true of one category of swing voters. But these are the red pilled swing voters and these voters are the ones who, they voted for Trump because they wanted to know if there were aliens, if the, because he said he was going to release the Epstein files. You know, they didn't think that he was going to be like a tool of Israel, like the, all the, the Mossad, all this stuff that I can barely follow, but I know where it's coming from. Like if you live in the cesspool on the right or you listen to Candace Owens, this is how you start talking.
- [27:40]
Bill Kristol
I think the conspiracy thing is so important. I think I've consistently underestimated it just because for most of my adult life it was around and certainly if you read history, it's always been around, but it was on the fringe. The establishment, if I can put it this way, worked pretty hard sometimes to keep it on the fringe. That's one reason Bill Buckley, you know, quote, expelled the John Birch Society from the conservative movement because they thought that Eisenhower was some agent of the communist conspiracy and so forth. And somewhat on the left, I guess there's some similar efforts of liberals to fight against sort of excessive conspiracies of, you know, plutocrats getting together and fixing every price and so forth. But once that's collapsed, and I do think the conspiracy theory thinking is everywhere, mostly on the right, a little bit on the left. But I think this is your point about the swing voters. You could be a, quote, swing voter and you could be a normal voter. If I could put it this way in terms of your views on economics or, I don't know, some social issues or you have whatever, you know, conventional within the 40 yard line or 30 yard line views people have. I guess believing in one conspiracy tends to is a pretty good predictor that you believe in more than one conspiracy. Right. Renee Diresta, our friend who studied this stuff professionally said this is really true that the tip offs and I think they actually showed this by studying some social media patterns. The single best way to recruit people if you're pet peddling QAnon conspiracy is to go find people who believe in some other conspiracy first. It's not to actually find other people on the right, it's to find other people who are, who like conspiracies.
- [29:10]
Sarah Longwell
I'm sure that's true. I would like to offer an additional theory which is when a conspiracy that was called a conspiracy turns out to be roughly true, it generates a lot of new people. So like the Epstein thing, and this is again what I write about in the book, to me it is a cross partisan thing. Like if you are, if you bring up Epstein in a focus group room, the room snaps into alignment. It is, everybody agrees that like Epstein didn't kill himself and like, and, and, and I just think that as the Epstein files come out as it implicates all these powerful people. As you see both the COVID up in real time as well as the casual way people were interacting and all of this stuff, it validates for a lot of people, at least in the macro, the idea that there was an elite cabal. There were people who were covering up for this pedophile. Now was it a cabal in the Hillary Clinton, you know, at the basement of the pizza restaurant, you know, that all was a lie. That's not true, but it is gross. And there was if not a pedophile ring, there was a pedophile who was at the social center of a great many powerful people, many of whom seem to know about it and be looking the other way. And it's funny to me the way that these voters, they're mad that Trump didn't release the files. They are aware that it is potentially because Trump is in the files. And yet they sort of have a sanguine way of processing that information. It is not making them hate Trump. They're just mad he's not putting out the rest of the files. There is something interesting to me about the fact that like a, we have, we are elevating conspiracy theorists in a, in a new way. People are engaging in conspiracy theor, theorism in a new way in a more sort of mainstream People magazine kind of way. But like, the worst part of it is that some of these things are being validated by people, which is only going to engender more conspiracism.
- [31:20]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, you mentioned People magazine. Made me think back in the day, you go to supermarkets and then there were those two tabloids, I can't even remember their names, like the Stories Star or something like that. This was where Trump was shrewd, Right. He saw that that was part of the public culture and you could engage it. What he did see is that you could engage in it without destroying yourself. You could somehow have those people, that there were a lot of people out there to be recruited through conspiracy theorizing. And you could do it in a way, maybe if you were a well famous business guy and a billionaire and you had your name on hotels and golf courses. So you didn't seem like some crackpot who couldn't wear a tie, a coat and tie, and who was, you know, semi homeless. Right. I mean, you seemed like a respectable person. He got the best of both worlds. A lot of semi normie Republican voters told themselves, come on, he knows what he's doing, he's a business guy, he's been around forever, he'll be fine, he'll point some good people, you know, blah, blah, blah, need change, drain the swamp, good on immigration, whatever they thought. And then the conspiracy people came in in droves and they were the ones who often hadn't voted in the past and weren't particularly, quote, conservative. I think I just underestimated that side of the, of Trump's support, just how many people were involved in that. Our friend Tom Joselyn has looked into this in some detail. There were just a lot of people floating around out there. Not a majority of the country, but maybe 10 million, 15, you know, who kind of got activated on this stuff and it really ended up helping Trump in a non trivial way. But actually the fringes of that movement were more central to that movement. I guess that became sort of clear on January6. And Trump and Roger Stone and those guys, Bannon have always had some feeling for that, I think, and they've done a pretty good job, I guess you'd have to say, from their point of view of roping them in without getting totally discredited by them.
- [33:02]
Sarah Longwell
Part of the case I make in the book is that it's not that there was always this, it was always just humans, Right, that are open to conspiracies. It doesn't necessarily know a political party. What had never happened before in our history was that the President of the United States, the commander in chief was also the chief conspiracy theorist. A guy who launched his campaign with the conspiracy theory that, that Barack Obama was a secret Kenyan Muslim and demanded his birth certificate to the point that Obama did release his birth certificate. Like, if you remember all this, like, there's a birther conspiracy that also birthed Donald Trump's political career. And so conspiracies have been at the center of the Trump experiment from the start. You're right. That sales rack at the grocery store that you would look at but never actually up the paper, the human embodiment of that now just who stands there handing those papers to absolutely everybody is Candace Owens. And there were a handful of people in this swing voter group who follow Candace Owens and her series of conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk's death in particular. This is one people are very invested in. It's coming up in focus groups all the time. She actually has a docu series about Erica Kirk called Bride of Charlie that is meant to cast her as a suspicious figure. Let's listen to that.
- [34:21]
Swing Voter 5
I'm interested in this Bride of Charlie, so I listen. Watching Candace Owens, I've had it. Joe Rogan is also sometimes informative.
- [34:32]
Swing Voter 3
I just think she's asking a lot of the questions that nobody else is asking. Also she had a sit down with Erica Kirk and all of the lawyers that they have trying to prosecute the name of the guy that they arrested, I can't remember right now. And they had a whole sit down and everything. And like Candace just told them straight up, like, you guys need to get better lawyers. Because it's just a lot of things aren't adding up to like, gosh, it's been so long. But it's like, like the guy changed outfits so quickly. The, the gun that they were saying was used is a bullet that's this long, but then like the hole in his neck is so tiny straight through. Like, just a lot of things don't add up. And then there's all of like the other like, paper trails and stuff of like Turning Point USA getting offered few million dollars from Israel to have a pro Israel stance. And then Israel coming out right after Charlie's desk saying we had nothing to do with it. But it's like no one even asked you why are you saying that? Yeah, I just think that a lot of the Turning Point USA stuff is very murky and she's asking those questions that no one else is asking.
- [35:38]
Swing Voter 5
I just feel like she's asking all the normal questions that anyone would ask in an investigation. It was something. It was just like, this is the story. You need to believe it. That's it. He did it. Close the book. Do not look over there anymore. And so I've never seen something that happened so publicly broadcast. It wanted to be hushed away so quickly. And then there's just too many coincidences. Down from like everyone wearing the same color shirts, like, but yet there's not even a drop of blood on the crime scene. And they paid over it the very next day. Like, I've never seen a crime scene be cleaned up so quickly. Not even for like the burglary. Like we even accident. You can't even get the tow trucks to clean the glass out of the, you know, the streets on the highway. But we could pave over this the very next day.
- [36:23]
Swing Voter 4
She just seemed to turn real conspiracy theory extreme recently to me. I mean, she's always had a little. And we've all asked a lot of questions, but it feels like she just really changed. I don't know if it's her opinion, but just the way she's approaching her broadcasting too, does that make sense? Like she's just. I feel like she's a different person on her shows than she was a month ago.
- [36:54]
Sarah Longwell
So I play that mainly to just show you how much Candace is having an impact on people's information diets. She is so replete throughout the focus groups that at some point I'll do a whole show with Will Sommer, who is our, our in house expert on the maga. Right. Her megaphone is powerful. She's also a complete anti Semite. But I've been seeing this in focus groups for a long time, which is the generational divide on support for Israel. And this is cross partisan, like much more. It's aligned. Like if you get older Democrats and older Republicans, you will see like a lot of support for Israel, but you start getting below people in their 40s and it, it dissolves. And voters on the right and the left sound pretty similar. It's like a bell curve. Like, and there's anti Semitism out here and then there's a much bigger part that's just sort of skepticism of America's relationship to Israel. And so there's been a lot of, I think, I think now some legitimate criticisms of Israel during this particular war with Iran. But like, where do you draw the line between the kind of anti Semitism tinged conspiracy theories and like a new, a new sense of our relationship with Israel that people are uncomfortable with?
- [38:17]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I think that is a very important line And I'm a little personally spooked by hearing those people who seem like relatively normal people and I guess weren't selected in order to find conspiracy theorists, were they? No. I mean they just.
- [38:31]
Sarah Longwell
No, that's just a normal swing group of Biden to Trump voters.
- [38:34]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, Biden to Trump voters. So I'm a little freaked out by their willingness to go not I very much accept that younger voters are less pro Israel. I accept that that's for various reasons but some of them have to do with legitimate concerns certainly about Israel's policies in Gaza and elsewhere and and dislike there are some legitimate questions you could ask about Iran. I don't know that Rubio himself sort of gave them some oxygen by sort of making it seem as if Israel had kind of dragged us into that war. I don't again, I think Trump had agency here and God knows American presidents, including Trump have told Israel they weren't going to get involved in wars that Israel was involved in or have discouraged Israel from doing certain things. Trump did it just in June when he said no, no, no more bombing. So it's not correct to sort of let Trump or anyone, any other American president off the hook by talking about the power of Israel. There's an empirically true movement, especially among young voter younger voters away from support for or maybe even sympathy with Israel that's very different from anti Semitism which is, you know, hatred and dislike of Jews KWA Jews. I think that's still somewhat that's rarer and I hope not taking off but I'd say the conspiracy stuff is what can bridge you from one to the other. Right. And also it also is is unrefuted irrefutable that if someone could tell me I think they were harsh and gods and I so I agree with that in part but we also have to understand October 7th and then we have then you have a sort of more normal historical or public policy discussion. This is why conspiracies are both are so powerful and so dangerous to a rep. To a deliberative democracy kind of unfalsifiable. The more it seems wrong that the more they can invent more conspiracies for why they're not letting you see what's I think you're really correct about Epstein. You need to that's a point that really is worth developing. The COVID up is really the Epstein thing is bad. It turned out to be worse than many of us realize. It was the elite willful turning of a blind eye to what he was doing willfully Going along with accepting gifts from him and benefits from him and hanging out with him because it was exciting to hang out with him, I suppose, and all that kind of unpleasant, the worst and unpleasant side of epsi. But then the COVID up just fuels that, you know, hugely. And even though literally, why would Trump be covering up stuff that hurts Larry Summers? I mean, you know, well, because maybe it hurts him as well and that people don't have to assume that Pam Bondi and Cash Patel can't quite sort those two things out. Maybe they. Maybe they can't. So anyway, Epstein's very important, I think, in helping legitimate, as you say, the notion of conspiracy theories. But the Israel side of the conspiracy thing, I guess I hadn't focused on as much. And that's bad. I mean, and maybe I'm a little more sensitive. Jews are sensitive. I mean, having seen what conspiracy theories have done to Jews in modern times, not in ancient times, though there too. I mean, it's something that people should be very sensitive to. I think it's very important in arguing against them or in exposing them, not to conflate that with. You think Israel overreacted in Gaza, or you think Bibi Netanyahu's domestic policies are not what a liberal and Democratic, what those of a liberal and democratic state should be. It's a tough challenge, I think, for the broader pro Israel community. But how much have you seen the, the conspiracy stuff attached to Israel?
- [41:44]
Sarah Longwell
It's kind of starting to really, really get in there. And this is why. So I kind of had this conversation with Tim on the pods, but I've been trying to think through this as somebody who, let's just say, has always had a very, like, reflexive pro Israel bent and who has a real. I just like, I remember growing up and the Holocaust was so as I think for a lot of young people, it's like both slavery and the Holocaust are two things that you learn about as a young person where you realize the horrible things that humans can do to each other. I didn't understand it growing up in modern times. Like, how could people do this to each other? How could they not see each other as human beings? Everything else. One of the earliest things I did on here was that French Village podcast because I thought it captured this so well. But listening to the voters, I can see it all now. I could see how people get walked into these insane beliefs and the dehumanizing of, of different people. And so all of that I carry with me to saying, like, we have to find a way to keep anti Semitism out of a legitimate conversation of American foreign policy and how we approach it. And that is also different from a conversation between somebody like, Israel has an absolute right to exist versus how does Israel conduct themselves as a democracy against Palestinians and for how long? And the proportionality. Like, one of the things I hear in the focus groups all the time from young people, young people on the right is they say, I don't understand why we can't question Israel's role in foreign policy. Like, why isn't that okay to say? Because they feel like the adults in the room are telling them, you can't say that without being anti Semitic. And they say, no, I think we can. And so there's this, like. And that goes then. And there's like a tale on that that goes all the way over to Nick Fuentes and the more neo Nazi side, which is like, why is it forbidden for us to, like, have this conversation? Which makes it seem provocative to talk about it. This is, I think that we are. We are allowing the conversation to be had by the wrong people because the responsible people, I think, are not willing to have a big defined conversation in really open and adult ways. And that's allowing for the conspiracy stuff to creep in. Does that make sense? Am I saying that right?
- [44:04]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. Yes. I mean, I'm not sure how I think it's true. We should have. We can have that discussion. Should have more of it, I suppose. I mean, there is a fair amount of it. On the other. It's not like people aren't debating issues relating to Israel in the Middle east and in both parties. I guess what I'm struck by is this. I think Ben Shapiro, not one of our favorites, but, you know, tried a couple of months ago, I think, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's killing, actually, to say, well, look, I don't know if you put it this way, but you can criticize Israel, but you really need to draw the line somewhere before Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson and real anti Semitism and real conspiracy theorizing that blames Israel for everything up to and including nine, 11, I guess. And. And J.D. vance then spoke the next day. I think I was at the Turning Point conference, actually, and sort of was like, well, we have to have a big tent. We shouldn't go out of our way to criticize it. We're all on the same side. We should. I'm paraphrasing, but we shouldn't go out of our way to criticize our people. That is super dangerous. He's vice president of The United States, I mean that's a whole different level. And I would say on the left too, there are people on the left who have tried to be in a way the, the Ben Shapiro's of this Chris Murphy for example is quite a strong. Or Van Hollen or there are people in Congress who are strong critics of Israel. I don't know if they've had felt they should do this. Maybe they don't have to do this. Maybe they should do this a little more. Say I just want to distinguish this from crazed conspiracy theories about Israel. Maybe there are less of them on the left, fewer of them on the left, so they don't feel they have to do that. But it's very important for people on both sides to do what Buckley did with the Birches to kind of draw the line. The flip side of what you're saying is it's hard to have that responsible debate if people aren't willing to set up the boundaries of that debate first. And the people who set up the boundaries can't be mushy centrists and I'm mushy, but can't be complicated centrists who have confused and sort of on the one hand, on the other hand because they sort of have to be people who are a little bit more on one side or the other, the Bill Buckley equivalent if you want but saying no, no, this is, that's different. Saying the US should have a serious debate about whether we need to send $3 billion of aid to Israel for weapons purchases every year. So that is a legitimate debate. You are not an anti Semite if you think Israel could buy the weapons. Israel can make the weapons. We don't like the way Israel's been using the weapons. We should cut the 3 to 2 billion. We should cut it to zero, whatever. You know, that's very different from the kind of conspiracy stuff and I think it would be very helpful, important if people on both sides did what Ben Shapiro tried to get people to do, the JT advance. But the degree to which on the right in particular. And again, it's one thing for random Democrats say or not say certain things. It's another thing for the president for Trump to be so quiet about it, let's just be charitable, put it that way and not police his own administration. God knows, look at the people who are in reasonably senior positions there. And then for Vance to say what he has said and meanwhile Trump's hanging out with Tucker Carlson and so forth. That is, I guess I've sort of assumed that ultimately America. And that's not going to take off here, but I think I've been a little too optimistic about that.
- [46:59]
Sarah Longwell
We will have that conversation, I think, more and more just because, God, it is. It really comes up a ton in the focus groups and I'm still trying to get my arms around it. But as we come down from the heaviness of that discussion, I've got just a little bit of a treat, Bill, both for you and for our listeners, in honor of what the Bulwark community has done already for pre sales of my book how to Eat an Elephant, One Voter at a Time. You know, they've already made it a bestseller and I'm extremely grateful. Grateful. And so, so we asked Democrats about their media diets. We often ask about their favorite independent media outlets. Just checking across. And we do this across the swing voters, the right, the left. Several people brought up the Bulwark and let's listen to what they said.
- [47:47]
Democrat Focus Group Participant
It's probably my favorite thing I listen to about political commentary. I like the fact that they were former Republicans and to get that perspective of what it took to get them to flip and how they think the people who stayed are insane. Like just, you know, like there's no bias there. You can accuse them of always being for Democrats, no matter what, because these were, they were political operatives for the Republican Party. So I love getting it from that perspective. They're very smart, they're entertaining. Sarah Longwell is really good. She does a, like these types of political get togethers, focus groups. So it's like you kind of like this type of conversation. She like. It's interesting to hear her insights from that because no matter what we think people should think, like it's. We gotta live in reality. What are they saying in these focus groups? That's the only way you're gonna reach these people to understand where they're coming from.
- [48:43]
Sarah Longwell
I really do love the perspectives of Republicans that crossed over. That said, this stuff is crazy. And it's Tim, Tim Miller, right? He's, he's fantastic.
- [48:57]
Swing Voter 5
Really incisive and, and on point and
- [49:00]
Sarah Longwell
seems to have the inside scoop on a lot.
- [49:03]
Swing Voter 5
The Bulwark makes me think of my dad. He was a very liberal Republican and I didn't even particularly like my. I mean, I love my pop, but it's not like I've got some daddy thing or. But, but, but I like, I like staying in touch with them and the Lincoln guys because I think they're super important for how we make our way back to a more balanced system. And I. And they're really bright. I mean, I love snark. They're just so bright.
- [49:40]
Grainger Announcer
I think they're a little bit too ego, but they often have relevant things to discuss and good information. Although I think they think way too highly of themselves. I'm blocking the name, the. The woman and the guy with the
- [50:03]
Democrat Focus Group Participant
beard,
- [50:07]
Grainger Announcer
main editor and. And the gentleman with the beard who has the pinto bean thing in the background and is often unshaven. They're both bright and informative, but I think they. They just appear way too, you know, egotistical to me. One of the things I always find interesting is one of them's former Republican strategist or operative who left. And so what I get more out of that outfit is the political thought and strategies which are going on between behind different moves. Like a lot of other news I get, it's like maybe opinion or just digging. What could this mean? What could that mean? But from them, I'm like, okay, there's some more substantive things about what are these moves actually do in the machinery of politics. And so for me, I find that part interesting.
- [51:05]
Sarah Longwell
There we go. And to preempt you guys in the comments, no, we're not going to tell you how to apply for one of our focus groups, though at some point we may do one specifically for Bore plus subscribers to get their feedback on a variety of things. But how funny is that to just hear, I mean, the guy who suddenly was like, you know, Sarah Longwell, does these groups just like this? Great stuff.
- [51:26]
Bill Kristol
Speaking of conspiracy theories, as we were a minute ago, no one will believe that this is legit. No one will ever think we went out of our way. You had One of the GU guys, you know, Connor, call up, you know, 100 bulwark, actual bulwark plus subscribers, seed them into the focus group. Pretend it's a focus group of just random Democrats. Tell them, hey, you gotta praise the bulwark. And now we're just putting it on the air as if it's legit. You know, this is how these conspiracies work, Sarah. They try to fake. They try to fake you. They try to fake you. And you know what?
- [51:56]
Swing Voter 4
They.
- [51:56]
Bill Kristol
They're so clever, they put in that one guy who's a little bit.
- [51:58]
Sarah Longwell
I was gonna say, you think I paid for somebody to call me clever?
- [52:03]
Bill Kristol
But me, that's the clever. The real cunning of conspiracies is that you put. You even have the fake. Isn't that what a false flag is?
- [52:09]
Sarah Longwell
You have the fake veneer of reality.
- [52:11]
Bill Kristol
You have the Fake, you know, criticism even. So that's, that's my interpretation, frankly.
- [52:15]
Sarah Longwell
So I. Clearly, our brand as former Republicans is strong with people who, like, know the bulwark. What do you. Is there anything you wish people who seem to have this sort of casual acquaintance with us or actually one of those guys was, or a couple of them were pretty deep, but anything you wish people knew about us?
- [52:32]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, it's a good question. Actually, I'm a little surprised. I mean, it's been a lot of years since we've supported Republicans much and we don't talk. I don't think we talk among ourselves. I feel like I've done, obviously, as you have a million podcasts and videos and written things. And I think it's pretty rare that we get into the former Republican stuff or say, as a former Republican, there's a little bit of. We understand that party maybe a little better than. And people have always looked at it from the outside. But I'm a little struck that it just shows you that, I guess, you know, I don't know what it shows you. These things stick. The initial brand sticks. What don't you think. As I say, I think you could, if you flip down the bulwark beginning the day after the 2024 election, you could watch an awful lot of our content and not necessarily would you even know about our histories a little bit, I guess, just from reading around. But I mean, I don't know, it's interesting to me. Were you a little struck by that, or do you think that that's as prominent?
- [53:23]
Sarah Longwell
Well, you know, I get. I get struck sort of in the opposite way, where people will often be like, they don't grapple with the role they played. There was many years, clearly before you showed up, like, Tim wrote a whole book about it. We spent a lot of the early years wrestling with this stuff. But that part, now, you know, because I think about this in the context of you mentioned and Shapiro and Candace Owens. Like, he platformed Candace Owens. She gained her prominence at the Daily Wire. And so I, I'm just, I'm loathe to give him, like, he's correct objectively about the wrongness of their position. But he does that without realizing how much he did to contribute to that in a way where I wouldn't put us in that same category. Like, I think that we all worked for the Republican Party where you may disagree with the policies of it, you may disagree with people who are involved in it, but, like, it was nothing like what we're dealing with now. And we were all out from the jump. I think it's like we said no from the beginning.
- [54:30]
Bill Kristol
No, I'm very. That I think is important and I'm proud of that on all of our behalf. And that's what tied us together. And everyone's. Oh, it's just. You don't like the tweets, but, you know, you don't understand. He's really doing some pretty good things where he's gonna have some people around him. The Republican Congress, it's the same one you guys work with to some degree. And they'll keep under. And we, I do think we understood what a threat, what a danger Trump was and is. And we saw that right at the beginning. And it wasn't about his distasteful habits or, you know, kind of vulgarity or the particular policies in many respects, because obviously we've, you know, you can be a more. You don't have to be a pure free trader and you don't have to be an internationalist interventionist as I am and so forth. I was very used to having, working with, or at least, you know, tolerating understanding the points of view, I think of people who didn't agree with me on those issues. I think we saw what a. What a sort of authoritarian demagogue, how dangerous that would be if he became the nominee, which we failed to prevent him from being if he became the president. And then as president, just kind of doubling down on all that. And four years of seeding that, and that's when the bench appears of the world. I think we're all on board. So many other people who then wrote then January 6th and then to come back from that and then winning in 24. I do think we are now in a situation. It gets back to the very thing we just. At the very beginning. I mean, how much of these. How much these Trump voters have invested a lot in Trump. A lot of them. Certainly the. Well, let me say two things. The elite supporters have really invested in him and doubled down after he won because they felt, okay, four years, we've got to make our deals. And so the. The public has moved away from trump some, right? 49, 50% to 40%. Let's say that's not nothing in a year, a little over a year. Be nice if they kept on moving to your 32% magic number in November of 2026. It's not inconceivable. So that part, I think the public has moved. It's sticky. It always sticky with nicks until the end. You Know, they just. People are reluctant to say I was wrong. And also they believe in certain things or they like certain parts of it that are distasteful, but unfortunately, they like it. For me, it's the elites. I always come back to that, who. And this is where your point about Ben Shapiro is so important. They have not come to grips with what they tolerated, enabled, acquiescent, acquiesced in, and still acquiescent. And some of them more so than they used to. That's what's so terrible, I think, about this second term, this first year, the second term, and maybe that'll change a little bit as Trump with ICE and his foolish policies in many ways. But again, I'm amazed at the stickiness of the elites. So you need to do focus groups with the elites. Get Jamie Dimon, put him under the microscope the way you put these voters under the microscope. Because I, I don't fully understand it. You know, I sort of understand it, and I guess I understand the human side of it and also the business interests they have and all that. But one of the most misleading things people said a year ago was, well, the rich people who are really wealthy, they won't go along with, they don't have to go along with this because they're, they're immune. They can't be retaliated against if you're a multi zillionaire, if you run Amazon or if you've run the Washington Post. We were totally wrong about that. We weren't. I think we were actually never, I never quite believed we knew. We knew, but I think a lot we knew because we had seen it close up for years. Maybe that's been a bit of an advantage we had. I think the liberals actually, who sort of had a slightly excessive. Not slightly, had an excessive faith in the sort of, you know, the, the kind of. Well, the elites will be okay. The establishment will be okay. Our establishment was okay. So their establishment's gonna be okay. The MAGA establishment and the willingness of the old Republican establishment to just subordinate itself to the MAGA establishment has really been bad for the country.
- [58:09]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, well, unfortunately, I don't think Jamie Dimon's gonna take our $150 incentive to come sit in a focus group, but lots of regular Americans do. And every week we tell you what they think. Bill Kristol, thank you so much for joining us. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the focus group podcast. We'll be back next week, but in the meantime, remember to rate and View us on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the bulwark on YouTube. Gum a bull, work plus member@thebull work.com and go pre order my book how to Eat an Elephant One voter at a time. See you guys next week.