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- [00:02]
Narrator/Advertiser
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Sarah Longwell
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Sarah Longwell
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Sarah Longwell
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Narrator/Advertiser
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- [00:26]
Sarah Longwell
Details@lowes.com Terms subject to change. Want to try a free sample of berry pie? Oh, yeah, I do. Wait, will this send me spiraling out of my routine? Time to consult the online experts. Hi, Felicia here with 1 million followers. That bite will destroy your metabolism. Is it really that bad? I had protein this morning.
- [00:48]
Swing Voter 1
Ugh.
- [00:49]
Andrew Egger
But it looks so good.
- [00:50]
Narrator/Advertiser
Only eat after walking 10,000 steps.
- [00:54]
Sarah Longwell
Pie is only two steps from here. Am I overthinking again? Oh, the kids would really love this. Are we every. Stop it. Stop it. They don't know your body. Only you do. Psygnos pairs AI with a biosensor so you can track your body's unique responses to food, movement and more in real time, helping you achieve your health goals. No fads, no fear, just your signal. Get $10 off select plans@psygnos.com that's S I G N O S.com with code Spark Signos Foreign and welcome to the focus group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week I'm bringing you a bit of a smorgasbord of focus groupery. We could call it an authoritarian smorgasbord. We got a lot of stuff to get through. First, we are going to check in with certain swing voters queasiness about the Trump administration broadly before we dig in on Trump's attempt to deploy the National Guard in Chicago. And then we're going to break down this new dynamic that has emerged on the right in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's death. We are talking to lots of groups on the right and we're seeing a very clear pattern that I guess I would call sort of right wing cancel culture, both online and by our government. And the Trump administration has really, really gotten in on the canceling. They are the counselors in chief. And so that's going to be a big part of today's conversation. Because while the right was very much into free speech and states rights, then they realized, I think, that they care more about power than principles. Or also maybe just these voters do not understand free speech. It's unclear. Andrew Egger, the Bulwarks own author of our Morning Shots newsletter. He is here to help me break it down. Andrew, how you doing, man?
- [02:58]
Andrew Egger
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me back on.
- [02:59]
Sarah Longwell
Sarah, if I called you our boy wonder, does that make you feel big or does that make you feel. Is that not a nice thing? When I say boy wonder, I'm starting.
- [03:09]
Andrew Egger
To feel old as the hills. Are you aware I'm turning 31 in a couple of months here, which is pretty old.31. I thought turning 30 was like the big system shock, but actually the fact that the numbers have continued to tickle beyond that is even more alarming.
- [03:24]
Sarah Longwell
I think I have heard it works that way. Well, in any event, you guys, if you're not reading every single morning Andrew's newsletter, you are missing out on one of the best things to hit your inbox for free every single day. And Andrew, I was excited to have you on the show because we're going to talk about the right and its evolution and you have a very solid history in the conservative movement and you're probably still like, on the spectrum of Bulwark staff, which I think ranges from the weird salad of jvl, which is more socially conservative, but, you know, sort of a commie on. On capitalism. You're on the more conservative edge of our particular spectrum. But the rise of MAGA has been a defining feature in your professional life. Talk about, like, the tension of this, like a liberal shift on the right and your own conservatism. Like, how are you balancing it these days?
- [04:18]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, it's been strange because I think that, you know, a lot of times people will ask me, like, all of this sort of Rise of Trump stuff, has it like, sort of shaken your previous conservative beliefs or your current conservative beliefs or made you reevaluate things. And I think in a lot of ways it has. Obviously there's a lot of things that I used to sort of just like take on on faith because they were sort of like the conservative position. The people who like me believed these things that I have needed to sort of reevaluate and start to kick the tires on. But in other respects, I mean, like, there are a lot of features about sort of the conservatism that we used to have around here until about like five seconds ago that seem to have been really affirmed and shown to be important in their absence in the present moment. Things like, you know, a respect for federalism and the idea that, like, more power should be decentralized in America, more things should be in the hands of cities and states and, you know, local governments and the federal government should be this sort of managerial body over it all that doesn't actually wield all that much power and doesn't actually throw around all that much money and that there are real risks to letting in particular the executive of the country accumulate more and more and more power to himself and to lose sight of the fact that that's even possible when you're passing laws and all of these sorts of things. I think all of that has been pretty well vindicated in the Trump moment. But the weird thing, obviously has been that when I was coming up in the world and getting my lessons on absolute power, corrupt absolutely. And all those sorts of things, it wasn't necessarily, necessarily like in my Magic 8 ball, that it was going to be, you know, the Republican Party primarily, that was going to be the principal aggressor in all of this stuff. So that's been kind of weird to navigate, I will say.
- [05:55]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, not just the Republican Party, but the conservative movement too, which has been deeply corrupted. And it's funny, I came up similar to you, although I bet you and I would have been different kinds of young conservatives because you might have been more socially conservative than I was. I was always kind of a bit of a squish on social issues. You know, you're, I think, more on the pro life side. And I'm still like, not in the third trimester unless it threatens the life of a mother, but also, you know, leave people alone in the first, you know, 17 weeks. Anyway, the point being, you and I, even on the spectrum of conservatism as it was, we're not the same. But you, you brought up something that we don't talk about enough, which is I get this push from people sometimes as a now, never Trumper, as somebody who's like, no, no, thanks with all that. I'm done with all that Republican stuff. They're like, well, you betrayed all your principles. And I'm like, you and I, you person on the Internet yelling at me must not have gone to the same school of conservatism, because conservatism as we were taught it. And you're right. Like, we got brought up in this way. Like, Republicans are much better at this, I think, than the left, where they have like real pipelines, both professional, one intellectual ones, where they like train you up and they teach you this stuff. And the things that they teach you are about the absolute dangers of federal power. Like, we are federalists in that we believe in states Rights. We were raised on states rights. Like, so much of the things that made me a conservative were institutional ones. And so I am always shocked at these people. I'm like, what did it mean to you guys then to be a conservative? That what Trump is doing right now is, isn't completely anathema to everything that you were brought up in. But I will say this was one of the things that I definitely missed in the early days, which was it's not that I thought every Republican out in the world was like reading Road to Serfdom or read the Federalist Papers until it was dog eared. It's not that I thought that's how voters were, but I guess I did think that voters on the right broadly cared about limited government, American leadership in the world, free speech, pluralism. Like, I kind of did think that there was a, a unifying ideology. And when I started doing focus groups, especially with Republicans, to figure out why they were so attracted to Trump, the very first thing I realized was, oh, they, they are not thinking about any of these things. They are not coming to this for the same reasons that I am. That to me is, is always something that I can sort of accept. That's like, easy for me to get my head around. Like, okay, not everybody was a political science major in college. That makes sense. Lots of people didn't go to college. Lots of people are just thinking about their politics in terms of how much money they are going to get to save in their taxes and things like that.
- [08:48]
Andrew Egger
They're out there developing skills that make them functional in the economy. Things that, I mean, I personally would not be able to do because I instead have been reading the things that you mentioned before in my, in my professional time. So, yeah, you can understand it.
- [09:01]
Sarah Longwell
But yeah, that's on us. That's on us, the people I don't understand. The things that I find so destabilizing are all of the people that I know were raised just like us. They came up through the same pipeline. I mean, I did this bit one time with a, a reason debate, but like, I have a thousand pocket constitutions. I got pocket constitutions coming out of every pocket because every organization that I ever worked for gave us a pocket constitution. The Cato Institute, like mails them to you all the time. And I was like, remember when this was important to you guys? Remember when this was like what you mailed to everybody? And then there's a guy who runs for president saying, yeah, I'm just gonna get rid of that thing. That thing doesn't matter. Everybody's like, I want that guy anyway. So I want to run through how we have heard some Biden to Trump voters talk about the Trump administration over the last few weeks, which in my opinion is accelerating very quickly from, you know, the places where we're like, you know, it could unravel into this. And now we're like, no, it's unraveled. Like, we are firmly in the middle of some things that are very scary. And I like to do this on the pod every so often because it's instructive to hear how these, like, middle of the electorate voters sound. Even when they're negative. They're often more circumspect about the Trump presidency relative to our own dire takes. So let's listen to how these swing voters are grading Trump right now. He's acting like a kid and in a sandbox. He's just using his power for all.
- [10:28]
Narrator/Advertiser
Kinds of crazy things, except for trying.
- [10:30]
Sarah Longwell
To stimulate this economy and make this country better. I knew he was going to push for some difficult decisions, but I didn't fully understand how he would go about it. And I think that I didn't fully understand when I voted for him that I now consider him to be dangerous. I mean, that would be a descriptor that I would use for him, that I think he's a dangerous leader. And I think that I never considered Biden to be actually dangerous to our country. Incompetent at times. You know, looking back, I was happy that he finally recognized, you know, that he had a limited mental capacity.
- [11:08]
Swing Voter 1
I felt like my pocketbook was better when Trump was. Was in office. So I thought Trump was going to come in and literally save the day. You know, like, he was talking a bunch of stuff, and now I feel like he, he lied and he's using his presidency as like a personal, you know, I, I think it's a good thing. Like, if a country was coming after us or something, he'd be quick to push the button, but that'd be the only time it'd come in handy because he's just stepping on people like. And so I think somebody mentioned they didn't realize he would do some of the things he's doing, how he's doing them, because at the end of the day, you know, yeah, I think we need to do border control and immigration, but going in somewhere and just the way he's doing it is kind of inhumane to me. Like, there's still people at the end of the day.
- [12:07]
Swing Voter 2
I'm a registered Democrat, and I don't feel like they represent me anymore. So that's really why I voted for Trump. But I was under no illusion that Trump was going to be horrible. But sometimes you got to have a little rain before the sun comes out, right? But yeah, I was under no illusion that Trump was going to stink Any ass dunk for his economic policies, particularly tariffs are horrible. He's an idiot. He talks like a 7 year old. He's immature, surrounds himself with yes men. But I mean, that's what I voted for. But I knew what I was getting into. I, as a person that is of my skin color. I'm definitely not a priority for the Democratic Party, not a priority for anybody. When I mentioned spite before, I'm not voting for him anymore. You don't represent my interest and I don't care. It seems like people like me are only mentioned when they need my boat, not much more than that. So if that's the case, you can go off yourself and not get in my boat anymore.
- [13:06]
Sarah Longwell
On certain domestic stuff, he's doing good. But he did say that he was going to be able to like stop the Ukraine and Russia war and that's still going on. He's still going to send money to Ukraine. So things like that have been disappointing. So I just kind of gave him an average grant.
- [13:22]
Conservative Voter
I, I probably align more with some of the populist stuff the Republican Party is doing, but less of like the traditional conservative, like George W. Bush Republican platform. I, I find it unfortunate that, that like my, my religious friends are, have, have all been, I mean that it feels like this is the only direction we can go and that, that we've been kind of captured by the, by the Republican Party. And then with Trump this, this term with a C, I think he's done a lot of what he said he wanted to do. He, this seems like it was a return to power. Being vindictive and vengeful against his enemies and going after people and boy, he's certainly done that. The border's closed. I mean, I'm, I've actually become a lot happier about that than I thought I would be. I realized eventually under Biden, like, this is a crisis. This is, this was insane. Like how many people were coming across the border and the, the Epstein thing continues to dog Trump. That's a little ridiculous. I mean, I'm glad that people are calling him out on it. That's, that's, that's good. It feels like he's trying to distract.
- [14:22]
Sarah Longwell
For every time I read, oh yeah, these tariffs are going to Kill us, you know, a month later. Well, maybe the tariffs weren't as bad after all. Or maybe they didn't have the impact or they're not passing on to the consumer. So it was interesting, these voter groups, because they were kind of like a mixed bag on Trump. But I'm interested in, like, you have our alarm bells, right? We're using words like authoritarian and fascist, which, by the way, I was really careful about using those words in the early days of Trump, like in the first Trump administration. And when people would be like, when are we just gonna call this what it is, it's fascism. And I was like, well, I'm not sure we're there yet. I'm sure we're there now, though. I feel strongly that we are there. But these guys aren't throwing around terms like that. They're more like, yeah, I'm giving them a C. But anyway, what did you make of them?
- [15:10]
Andrew Egger
My sense of just sort of the overall picture, obviously a lot of different perspectives there. I would guess that of that group, if you had asked any of them a follow up question, and we were like, so do you think Donald Trump is basically acting like a fascist? I basically expect that all of them would have pushed back on that. They did not seem to have that sort of like specific of a level of alarm they could sort of like put a name to. But it is interesting, I mean, like, there was just sort of unformed and almost unnamable unease that some of them were talking about just in terms of, I mean, going in. It did not seem like any of them were really expecting the amount of disruption between Trump 1 and Trump 2 that they have seen. And some of the things that were very different between Trump 1 and Trump 2, they were fine with that. One guy kind of talked about the border there at the end where he was like, you know, they shut down on the border. And I actually kind of like surprised myself by being sort of like emotionally okay with that. Right. But there is a level of going into the unknown or something like that when you're messing with people's expectations like that. Right. And for better or worse, people like us were running around with our hair on fire, trying to clang every bell we could reach. Like, Trump 1 and Trump 2 are not going to be the same thing. And he's saying they're not. And, you know, don't take our word for it. Listen to what he's talking about. Look at the people he's surrounding himself with. Unfortunately, it was hard to get that message across to a Lot of people. And so like when people are sort of like surprised by that, it's like, well, okay, one missed opportunity, but two, I guess, another opportunity now because people are constantly reassessing, like every day there's like a new thing, some brand new, like unconceived of thing where people are like, gosh, I didn't know anybody could do that and I certainly didn't know he would. And then they're constantly kind of like interrogating themselves about like, well, how do I feel about that? And it's hard because like you were saying before, like, it's not like these people have incredibly sort of like formulaically structured political beliefs, like laid out like a scholastic treatise or something like that. Right. I mean, people go on vibes. So it's constantly like a tension between like, well, I did like the guy I voted for the guy, I thought he was the better option and that I've got some skin in the game there in terms of the loyalty. But also we're in a way different place than I thought we were going to be. And that's a thing that you have to continually figure out whether you are still okay with going forward.
- [17:17]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I mean, I like when we do smorgasbord stuff a little bit because it allows me to make a point that I think is really essential about voters, which is they're like a kind of a weird salad of stuff. Right. Like we were talking about, not ideologically linear and even say often very contradictory things in back to back statements. But it's not just that. It's more that Americans want to be fair minded. And so what you hear from a lot of voters, especially people, because we do, we'll run groups and we will specifically screen for people who voted for Trump but are unhappy with the job he's doing. And what they do is they're like, well, over here in column A. I do not like how he is, you know, sending the National Guard places. I don't think the way that they are going after people who are not criminals, like they're going after immigrants like too heavy handedly and sending people to foreign countries. I don't like that. But I believe that Joe Biden really did make a huge mistake on the border. Everybody who talks about illegal immigration or immigration in general should start from the premise that like we should have a secure border. I think Democrats are gonna have to figure out how to start prefacing every conversation about immigration with. It is important that we have a secure border. But I don't sit around Though being like, well, on one hand, Trump's, you know, doing an authoritarian takeover, but on the other hand, he did secure the border. And so, you know, all things being equal. Cause I hear people all the time say, like, well, he's doing this insane thing over here, but, you know, he is stopping trans kids from transitioning. And I think that, like, for us, we're not putting a lot of weight on this other side of the ledger and then using it to create this full picture, because we see the things that are happening on the, hey, he's doing authoritarianism side as, like, overwhelming the part of us that care about the specific policy preferences. Because for us, if just policy preferences mattered to us, we might have approached the entire Trump thing differently. But it is worth just noting that the voters give him credit for some of the things that he does that they see just as policy net goods.
- [19:26]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. And I think it's more than just like, a little from column A, a little from column B, like, here's a bad thing over here, here's a good thing over here. There's like a psychological, like, connective tissue between those things. Because when they're saying, like, well, here's this thing that he's doing that I basically find insane, that I think is crazy that he would be doing that, then a lot of times you will hear them sort of balance that out with. But over here on this other thing, he's actually taking action on something that I thought was insane that was happening before, you know, and they sort of fall back on Trump as this sort of, like, avenging figure for the wrongs of sort of managerial, technocratic liberalism over the last, you know, 20 years or whatever, where, like, the President wasn't openly insane for many of the past 25 years, but the problem of illegal immigration did continue to just get kicked down the road without any people doing anything about it. And it's just sort of getting worse and worse, culminating in, you know, millions of people streaming in under Joe Biden. And people process that information as. So, like, could you blame us for. For throwing the Hail Mary pass, you know, to Donald Trump? And so I think that, like, they almost, like, retreat to that as sort of like a security blanket of like, talking about their own decision tree, where they're like, yeah, man, it's a little weird that I voted to usher in this insane stuff that's happening right now. But on the other hand, I thought a lot of that stuff that happened before was insane. So, you know, it's sort of like a self apology in that way.
- [20:43]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, you know, that's a really good point because a lot of times people sort of understand the top line, right? They understand that it's not so easy for people to say something like, I was wrong. And that's true. But what I like about these groups is it gives you that sort of next level of where they're doing a kind of assessment where they are willing to admit, like, I didn't think this crazy thing was going to happen, like, he's going too far on that. I don't like it. And if you give them a poll that just says, like, do you like the way Trump is handling, you know, immigration? Or do you like that he's, you know, sending the National Guard and they're going to be like, no, I don't like that part, don't like it. And then they're like, but why is his approval level kind of staying sort of stable? And it's like, well, there's another side of a ledger for them. And like, they're not blind, they're not incapable of doing a self assessment. They're just doing it differently than you might think. They're not saying, ah, he's doing authoritarianism, shame on me for voting for him. They're like, man, he's doing some insane stuff, but he's also doing some good stuff. And I still remember why I wanted him to do the good stuff that he's doing. But I wish he wasn't doing this crazy stuff.
- [21:43]
Swing Voter 1
Yeah.
- [21:43]
Sarah Longwell
And that's all exists in the same person. This show is sponsored by Mint Mobile. If you're still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no. At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no bs. Here's why so many people are making the switch and getting Premium Wireless. For $15 a month, you can ditch overpriced wireless and their jaw dropping monthly bills, unexpected overages and hidden fees. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. That's good because otherwise I wouldn't have Andrew's number Ready to say yes to saying no. Make the switch@mintmobile.com the focus group. That's mintmobile.com the focus group. Upfront payment of $45 is required, which is the equivalent of $15 a month. This is a limited time new customer offer for the first three months only speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes. Unlimited plan taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. It is in your show notes. Go check it out. Thanks, Mint Mobile. Okay, now we did another group this week with black Biden to Trump voters, a group you're going to hear more about on this show and on the Bulwark site pretty soon. This group took place when we knew the National Guard was about to deploy to Chicago this week, but before it actually happened and before a judge block blocked the deployment. So let's listen to these reactions to Trump's use of the National Guard is needed in some cases when it comes to violence, and not everyone is just going to back down easily in those type of cases. I think it's important for the military.
- [23:34]
Andrew Egger
To kind of step in.
- [23:35]
Sarah Longwell
But if it's things like peaceful protests or situations where it can be resolved, I don't think that excessive force is needed. If it's a gang, sure, get the military. But if they're just, you know, illegal people that came here and are just normal workers, then maybe you could come in a little bit more, you know, more peaceful to try to get them to go back, but just addressing them by the trajectory of how they are in that moment.
- [24:04]
Former Military Voter
I don't agree with the military being used against civilians at all. I'm former military. I was in the army, and I didn't sign up for that. I signed up to fight enemies of the United States and my fellow Americans are not my enemy. So there's no way I could agree with that on any level, whether it's gang members or whatnot. That's why we have police forces in all of these cities. And that's where we have to start at, get proper training for our police forces, sheriffs and all of them. Get them proper training and hire more of them to be able to deal with what's happening all over the country. Putting the military out there. A lot of these people, they have, you know, family and all of that. I mean, it's just a recipe for disaster in my eyes. And I've actually had the opportunity to go to, I, I travel for my job, so I go to different places. And last place I went to was South Texas, McAllen, Texas, close to the border. And they actually have National Guard down there, just all over the place in the city. And I talked to some of those guys, you know, ask them, hey, where you from there? Some of them from Austin, some of them from San Antonio, and they're being given these orders to go down to secure the Border, but it's more about they're actually acting like police in the city. And I went through one of the checkpoints while I was there, and of course they stopped. They ask you these questions just to basically get an idea of what you're doing and where you headed and if you're in the country illegally, but they don't actually ask you that. It's a weird thing, and I don't agree with it. I feel like the people are scared.
- [26:04]
Sarah Longwell
To do anything you even affecting the legal residents.
- [26:09]
Swing Voter 1
Right.
- [26:09]
Sarah Longwell
You know, because people might, like, not be used to the military being around and all that.
- [26:16]
Narrator/Advertiser
So I believe that the police need.
- [26:18]
Andrew Egger
More funding, and then they need to.
- [26:20]
Sarah Longwell
Hire more on the police force so they can help.
- [26:22]
Andrew Egger
But bringing in the military, I don't think is the, you know, that is helping.
- [26:27]
Sarah Longwell
If they did have more structure with police, more police training, and having more.
- [26:33]
Andrew Egger
Of a stronger police force, that we wouldn't need a National Guard.
- [26:36]
Sarah Longwell
I do believe that in Washington, D.C. the National Guard creates chaos. I mean, I'm right in the middle of this. I can see it all the time. It's constant protesting, constant violence. I'm just kind of confused, like, what's really going on. And I think he's opening the door to something that could lead further down the road to where they have more of a chokehold on the area or region that they're looking over. So, to me, these were interesting responses, especially the guy who was himself in the National Guard or the military. But this is a pretty common response that I get to Trump's excesses from swingier voters, especially on immigration, for instance, where they think he's, like, doing directionally the right thing but taking it too far, or he's doing too much, but they directionally want secure borders. So I guess I just want to ask you generally about what it's like to cover these kinds of actions every day. Like, you're writing this newsletter every day, and it's super common to hear from groups about how some actions that we are outraged by, like, you had a banger this morning that you can talk about if you want. Like, the voters think it's facially reasonable in some way. So, like, maybe James Comey and Lisa Cook and now, like Letitia James, they did commit crimes. Like, the voters don't know. They're like, I don't know, they arrested them. Maybe they committed crimes. And people think that either it wasn't necessarily politically motivated or that all prosecutions are politically motivated. So, like, I don't know if I'm trying to make you and I both do some pundit accountability or self assessments, but I guess it's a question of are we talking about the stakes correctly? Because, man, when I listen to voters, like us versus where the voters are in terms of their alarm, it's very different.
- [28:26]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, I don't know. I struggle with the right way to approach this question because sometimes listening to voters like that, I do think there's this sort of almost like animal impulse to just be like, no, guys, it's really bad. Like, care more, be more alarmed, be more anxious about these things, like, for this, that and the other reason. And like, there's a place for that. And I think, like, you know, especially there's a place for that when you are talking about sort of like pundit on pundit violence, where you're assessing other people's, you know, temperature who are in the know and should know, you know, should have a good sense of what's going on. But I don't know, my heart really went out to that very last guy in the clip right there where he was like. And I'm paraphrasing now because we've talked since then, but he said something along the lines of, like, I just don't really know what's going on, but I just have this sort of like, vague, uneasy sense that he is opening a door to an even darker place than where we are right now. And I think that is just like the baseline voter right now. You know, like the baseline American. Either you are in sort of like one of the two main tribes and you are sort of like, swimming in the same direction as everybody around you, and you have a nice, tidy, like, media diet that flatters your priors. And like, that's cool for, you know, the 60 or 70% of the country that's in one of those two camps. But everybody else is just like, I don't know what is happening right now, and I wish I did, but I don't know where to look to find information about it. And everybody seems to be lying a lot and everything's really confusing. And it's just like, I don't think I can trust anybody. A guy who feels that way is less likely to subscribe to the Bulwark or to pay for any political media or anything like that. So maybe I don't necessarily need to be, like, thinking when I'm writing about trying to reach him, but maybe there is more to be done in terms of just like, no, look, man, let's just go real simple, like nuts and Bolts and get you from where you are now to where that guy who was in the military was, where he has a sense of the way things are done, the pre existing reasons why soldiers don't police, like why that has not been done in the country before and in fact why there are a lot of laws to separate those two functions of state violence from one another. Right. And I just think like it's really hard to think about politics ever and like to get educated about these things ever. But like it's especially hard when you're a guy like that. And like it just seems like everywhere you might turn for information is just like all that information is part of this partisan war. Right. And that would in theory suggest a less kind of outrage heavy and more just sort of like don't worry yet about how you feel about it. Let's just talk about what is first, like what it is. So I don't know, I go around and around and around and I don't know if I'll ever get to a satisfactory answer about it, but there we are for now.
- [31:01]
Sarah Longwell
This is like Hannah Arendt, like her critiques about the way that authoritarianism sort of creeps in is when people don't know what to believe. And I gotta tell you, especially for people who are like how can you listen to people? They're so stupid and they have all these idiotic opinions. And to me, this guy actually I'm glad you pointed this out because this comment of I just don't know what to believe is a thing we hear over and over and over again. Not only that, they're like I don't know where to find the right information. Like it's a little bit of a punchline. They're like, I'm going to go do my own research because it became very popular especially during the anti vax. Like, well, I'm just not going to trust all these doctors. I'm going to do my own research and Google's going to tell me, you know, I'm going to take it from Aaron Rodgers who is a sportsball person or whatever. But I have a tremendous amount of empathy not for the individual opinions but for the bewilderment. Because you know, we used to talk about low information voters. I constantly defend this idea of like actually being low information just means like you're a well adjusted person who lives your life and doesn't get sucked into all of the insanity of all this. But like there is no such thing as low information anymore really. It's like everybody's saturated with Information. The question is now discernment, right? And how can you apply discernment? And now you're like, well, unless you go back and like, really give people a deep civic education, which by the way is to me a big part of the answer. Like, instead of politicizing education and deciding who gets to teach kids what about what, like, we just really need to get them in on. Like, here's how our government works, guys. I would like to tell you what the United States Congress does so that, you know what, when it's really not doing its job like it is now, you're aware that that's a problem.
- [32:52]
Andrew Egger
Can I just add one thing on that, which is that it's not even just that so many Americans are lacking, you know, the skills they might need to sort of like navigate through this insane, horrible information ecosystem in a healthy way. Like, there is a lot of that, obviously. But the other thing is just, it's just the collapse in trust in information sources, period. Because there are so many kinds of information that it doesn't even matter if you have like a, a healthy skepticism or you know, how to approach information gleaning on the Internet. There's just stuff that you can't get firsthand. I mean, like, I encountered this myself, I have encountered this myself a lot just to go in one random direction when trying to figure out, you know, how I ought to feel about the war in Gaza, right? Where it's like, it's a bunch of different journalistic platforms and narratives that you read and you don't really know because you don't. I don't have a lot of pre existing foreign policy chops. I don't really know which of them are more reliable than others. And all of the primary source stuff is video clips with a bunch of people speaking languages I don't understand, right? And so like, I have found like an enormous amount of like epistemic difficulty and just sort of like, what are the baseline things I think about this conflict, even though I am a professional journalist and I do this sort of stuff all the time and I live on the Internet and like, hopefully am a little bit better at processing this information than like the median person. But it's just if you don't know where to go to find information you can trust about a given thing, you're just lost right now. And that is so many people. And it's not clear how to help them because it's different for every issue. And it's, you know, there's all these barriers. People have so much built up cynicism about authoritative sources of information. It's just a really hard nut to crack and a really tough place to be in. And I guess we now acknowledge the problem. And that's the first step, right? We've, we've done some good in this moment, but I don't know what the second step is.
- [34:30]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, let's keep going. Even though I think that that is actually an extremely important point. So I'm glad we hashed it out. Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and, well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy. But I like it. Sure, you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all. So farewell.
- [34:53]
Andrew Egger
Oatmeal.
- [34:55]
Sarah Longwell
So long, you strange soggy.
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Sarah Longwell
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- [35:39]
Sarah Longwell
Now, the National Guard going into places is not the only way this administration has been exercising its power, let's call it irregularly. That's just putting it mildly. But we asked some Biden to Trump voters about ABC's decision a couple of weeks ago to very briefly remove Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves under pressure from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. And believe it or not, a lot of them were at least a little queasy about this. Let's listen to how they sounded.
- [36:10]
Swing Voter 1
We're like a little minions in Trump's playground. Like he's doing stuff that I don't think the President should step in and worry about. The biggest thing is the Jimmy Kimmel thing. Like that's not the President's job. Like we have so many problems in this country. Why are you, you know, picking on him, you know, for free speech? It's not who you, you know, I do feel like, you know, he has a lot to do with this Charlie Kirk. You know, they're Just kind of blowing it up. I understand it's a life, but they're. They're just putting this life up on a pedestal because Trump wants it that way. And then somebody said something he. He didn't like on tv, so he tried to shut him down. I don't think that's good, and I don't think that's very good for a president to be acting. It's embarrassing to me.
- [37:05]
Conservative Voter
It's cronyism. You know, I really don't like that behavior. I don't like the chairman of the F or the commissioner or whatever he is of the FCC tweeting, this can be done the easy way or the hard way. Coming from a federal government perspective, I lament that from here on out, the entire federal administration is going to be politicized one way or the other, instead of being this neutral arbiter. See, I, unfortunately, I kind of like the swamp. I like the idea of a swamp where it's a neutral group of technocrats and policy wonks who understand, like, government and who don't care about the politics of it. And, you know, of course, they trended to be Democratic in and liberal in D.C. but in my mind, I want people who know what they're doing running the government and who aren't going to be just swayed by the will of whoever's in charge. So that's. That was an asinine thing to do, I think, from a. From a governmental perspective, and I think a violation of our Constitution.
- [37:57]
Sarah Longwell
I had such an issue with that in terms of freedom of speech. It's a horrible, horrible thing would happen to Kirk. It's this horrible thing. Kimmel. It was a dumb thing to say, but it wasn't something that the Trump administration had the right to come in and basically try to censor. So to me, it was indicative of a potentially very slippery slope of what else is the government going to come in and try to censor? Because to me, freedom of speech is a foundational principle for our country. So to me, it was very much a attempt at censorship, and it was scary.
- [38:34]
Swing Voter 2
To me, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
- [38:38]
Swing Voter 1
Right.
- [38:39]
Swing Voter 2
And you know, they deplatformed him, right? Basically. But I seem to remember Donald Trump being deplatformed. And this is what is happening. It's this tit for tat nonsense where people go back and forth. I guarantee you that's why that was the impetus behind that, is Trump wants the deep platform. The people who championed him being deep platformed. Right. And if you're going to play that game, I think you have to expect consequences to come back your way, especially when you have a president who's a petty ass.
- [39:10]
Andrew Egger
It's.
- [39:11]
Sarah Longwell
It's certainly scary, but frustrating as well. Like, I mean, at the end of the day, I don't want this to happen. And it was happening in silence in, in previous administration. Right? So, like, is it better that. That it seems to be more apparent, you know, like a more direct. I don't know, I'd like it to. No, it's bad. It's wrong. You know, especially on the pressure side. Oh, you didn't read that tweet correctly.
- [39:37]
Conservative Voter
Right.
- [39:38]
Sarah Longwell
It wasn't a threat.
- [39:39]
Andrew Egger
Bullshit.
- [39:40]
Sarah Longwell
But then you find out, okay, you know what? We pressured all of the social media platforms to take conservative voice down. And it's like, we're not gonna win that way. Sooner or later, somebody's got to be the adult in the room, you know, two cheers for the guy who basically is like, I like all the swampy technocrats in there just implementing government. Let me tell you what that is. You do not hear very often on the focus group podcast that does not come up in groups very often. And I will just say in a minute, we're gonna play a more conservative group on the Jimmy Kimmel issue, which is different from how the swing voters sounded. But were you encouraged by not just their perspective on it, but about what ABC did, The fact that they returned Kimmel to the air and eventually sort of everybody, you know, nexstar and Sinclair, they kind of, after trying to preempt him, eventually also put him back on the air. And people did that because they canceled their Disney plus subscriptions. Like, is that the way of the future? Is it all going to end up with us canceling our Amazon prime subscriptions? You know, this is what they did to Budweiser when they had that trance.
- [40:46]
Andrew Egger
Like Dylan Mulvaney, Trans Dylan.
- [40:49]
Sarah Longwell
I forgot about that. They did one trans influencer hawking their beer and everybody had to pour out all of their.
- [40:56]
Andrew Egger
I think we all have too many monthly subscriptions as it is. We all need some reason to winnow them down a little bit. Probably too many light beer brands on the market. So, you know, maybe this is all fruitful. I don't know. Just so I'm clear, these are. I think I'm right, that these are 2020 Biden to 2024 Trump swing voters.
- [41:12]
Sarah Longwell
That's right. That's right.
- [41:13]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. So a couple things about that one right at the beginning, you had made some kind of comment about, like, your sort of education over the last decade or so about how like a lot of people on the right, their like sort of commitment to certain principles was not. It wasn't as strong or it wasn't as deep or it wasn't as considered as maybe you had thought it was. I think that is true, but it is also true that a lot of these things that we think of as sort of like principles, first principles that are like, you build everything else around them and they are sort of bedrock and untouchable. Like the First Amendment is important and free speech is protected in America kind of no matter what. I think for a lot of voters, those are not like tent poles that they build on so much as they are like deeply held maxims, right? Like, it's like free speech is really important in America. I'm an American and I think free speech is really important. But it's not necessarily like a load bearing pillar, right, like that can sort of queasily coexist alongside like. But I didn't like this speech and I don't really hate that somebody's cracking down on this speech because I didn't love it. But it's still there and there's still sort of like an allergic reaction for a lot of people against ostentatious government action to crack down on speech. I think that is what we saw with Kimmel, right, where it was like a more widespread sort of allergic pushback to what, you know, Brendan Carr and Donald Trump were doing there than maybe they expected and maybe more so than what ABC expected. And that is why we did see that pretty quick reversal in that particular case. That said, a couple of those people, you could definitely see sort of how they became sort of Biden Trump voters in the way that they sort of were talking about what we were talking about before, which is just sort of like this base level cynicism about everything and the system and everything's a tit for tat and everything's this back and forth war. And if you believe that, then even if you're this guy who thinks Donald Trump's a stupid ass or whatever he said, you can kind of get yourself in this sort of like place where you're real politic in your own spirit into being like, well, he's a stupid ass, but he's my stupid ass in these six or seven ways. So whatever, I'll pull the lever for him. And that's a big part of how we got back where we are in 2024.
- [43:13]
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- [43:44]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, now for all the apprehension we just heard from our group of swing voters, we talked to another couple of groups recently that were more uniformly conservative. Not just swing voters. These people largely voted for Trump multiple times. Let's listen to how they talked about the Kimmel and ABC of it all. Can I ask a stupid question? Aren't they the ones that set the standards and guidelines on what can be aired on television?
- [44:08]
Andrew Egger
Yes.
- [44:08]
Sarah Longwell
Why wouldn't they step in for stuff like this? If it's something that is a global tragedy or issue that is affecting the nation in such a way and is a global tragedy or not a global tragedy. But you get what I'm saying, Like this is obviously a big criminal offense and it's causing an uproar in the community. And why wouldn't they step in? That's kind of their job. So sorry, that's kind of how I feel about it. May. I think they should have stayed out of it. Going back to the whole free speech thing. I think it should have been handled without government intervention because they kind of went against their whole free speech thing. It's the law. People sometimes confuse freedom of speech with consequences of freedom of speech. Right. Like, yes, we all have freedom of speech, but there's consequences to using that in the wrong way. So you can't just say, oh, it's freedom of speech. I can say or do whatever I want. Yes, you have the ability to say that, but you also have to be willing to accept whatever consequences are going to come from that. And that's what Jimmy Kimmel did. Yes, he utilizes free speech, but there's consequences to that. Because if we're trying to bring our country together, how is that doing that? So to me, the FCC should be regulating those kinds of things because this is a widely viewed program. We don't have hate speech laws in this country, and I pray to God we never do. But there are consequences to what you say. And I think that the market should be able to dictate that. And so I think that they use the Charlie Kirk thing as an excuse to get Rid of Jimmy Kimmel because his ratings suck. That's just what I think. After 911 they had a radio list that they sent out of a do not playlist of songs to not play on the radio. After 9 11. Why wouldn't they step in for something like that? I feel like that was necessary theory and they did the right thing by stepping in that that was their job. They did not step in. That would have been a questionable offense. I am just tired of seeing political things happening in TV and social media. I think it doesn't have a place there. Like 20 some odd years ago the Dixie Chicks got canceled basically for backing a different, you know, a presidential candidate that didn't win.
- [46:21]
Conservative Voter
It's kind of blurred a little bit now. But the big abc, cbs, NBC, those are licensed by the government to broadcast. So there's probably rules and regulations with that.
- [46:32]
Sarah Longwell
I don't know what they are, but I think you probably need to follow the rules and regulations of the public broadcasting.
- [46:39]
Conservative Voter
If you want to bend those rules.
- [46:40]
Sarah Longwell
Like adult content or cuss words or.
- [46:45]
Conservative Voter
You know, things that don't fall within.
- [46:47]
Sarah Longwell
That realm, then you go on cable TV and to me, you know, they got a choice. You know, he wants to start his own, he can say anything he wants. Freedom of speech doesn't protect you from freedom of consequence when you say something that isn't professional or ethical or. And I get that he's a comedian, I get that he has said a lot of off color things about other things. But there is a line that has to be drawn. But the government should have stayed out of it if nobody was pressing charges against anything that you know what? They need to be out of it. Oh well, really amazing to hear that Dixie Chicks call back. They are just the chicks now because they're woke. So because of woke. Actually I saw them recently. They're still so good. God I love the Dixie Chicks. Or the Chicks, whatever. Okay, so it's true that free speech means that there can be consequences. But my God, it's like they don't understand that. But you are free from consequences, from the government. The government. Want to try a free sample? Oh yeah, I do.
- [47:52]
Andrew Egger
Wait.
- [47:53]
Sarah Longwell
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Sarah Longwell
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- [48:21]
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- [48:51]
Sarah Longwell
So, Andrew, is right wing cancel culture going to be more of a standard feature over the next few years? Like we're just sort of a long way from the, you know, facts, don't care about your feelings world of the right. Like now they're just indistinguishable as far as I'm concerned, from the sort of left wing snowflakeism that they used to deride. So what do you think?
- [49:12]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, a lot of it just has to do with sort of who has power and whether that's real, actual political power or whether it's sort of like this sense that you have this mob power that is maybe backed up by the real actual political power. And when you are the one who perceives that you have it, it becomes a lot harder to sort of hold back, right, and restrain yourself and say, well, we shouldn't use it. Cancel culture used to be sort of like seen as this thing that sort of like leftish people online would sort of band together and organize these boycotts and you know, put pressure on companies or later on put cancellation campaigns together for individuals within the last 10 years on social media and things like that. And it was sort of a phenomenon of the left. And so from outside of that on the right, you had a lot of these critiques, like, this is bad behavior. You shouldn't be doing this. Even, you know, internal to the left, there were a lot of people saying it wasn't great. Now you have a broad sort of like right wing faction that's decided, well, we can do the same thing. All these companies are sort of running scared right now because of Donald Trump. And it is now in our power to sort of like put spotlights on them that the actual people in power will follow up on. You know, like we can tag a Department of Defense employee into Pete Hegseth's mentions on X and maybe something will actually happen, right? There's this actual sense that there's this collective power that they can wield. And as soon as that happens, you know, it's much harder to resist. It's much harder to make those same sorts of like arguments against the concept of cancel culture because you're not just arguing against this happening in the abstract, you're arguing against you yourself doing this thing that feels really good to do right now. As far as the people we listen to in the group just now, I kind of go back to what I was saying a minute ago about how these things don't exist in a superstructure. These are not ideas that these people have that are like held in a specific deliberate relationship with one another. That free speech is important in America and the government shouldn't burden it. But on the other hand, that there are consequences for saying stupid things, play stupid games, win stupid prizes, all those sorts of things. For a lot of people, those are both just true statements. When you're sort of feeling your way through a conversation about these things, you sort of say some things that are more in alignment with the one, more things that are in alignment with the other. I thought there were a lot of actually pretty decent arguments that were put forward there. I mean, it's true that it's a slightly different matter when you're talking about the public airwaves. The government does regulate what can go out on there. And that if it were true that Jimmy Kimmel were actually saying horrible things about Charlie Kirk, maybe there should be some sort of regulation. That sort of thing doesn't happen in the public airwaves. First of all, there is no such regulation. So it was just purely retaliatory on the part of Brendan Carr and the fcc. And the second thing is, if you were to start doing that, how would you possibly ever stop? You run into prudential problems, but you can understand why a person would make that argument. And I was sort of heartened to see a number of people there still having that sort of knee jerk reaction. It should be private pressure and not the government doing this. And again, I think this is a big part of why we quickly saw this one get kind of walked back in terms of the FCC not pushing the issue. Now, of course Donald Trump was unhappy, was unhappy that they put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. And I think if it were up to him, they would still be full steam ahead on this stuff. But I do think that is why sort of some of the people around him were like, let's maybe slow roll this one a bit. Where even a lot of our own fans are uncomfortable with the way we're talking about, about this.
- [52:18]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, that was also in the same context where Pam Bondi did her little hate speech thing where you went, oh no, oh no, the Attorney General doesn't know about free speech. So tough.
- [52:27]
Andrew Egger
He's one of one. Man, she is an amazing specimen. I don't know.
- [52:32]
Sarah Longwell
He's got a cabinet full of them of amazing specimens. Andrew Egger, you too are an amazing specimen to me. 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 review us on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Bulwark on YouTube. I cannot stress this enough. Go subscribe to our channel on YouTube. We need it. It helps people find us. We're growing. We want to be more influential all the time. So go subscribe to our channel and then go be a bull work plus member@the bulwark.com and you know what? I think that if you don't want to pay to be a Bulwark plus member, even though you should at least sign up for free over on Substacks, you can get Andrew's Morning Shots newsletter because it is excellent. It will help you start your day right. Andrew and all of you, we'll see you guys next week.
- [53:25]
Narrator/Advertiser
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