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- [00:00]
Charlie Sykes
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Mike Pesca
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Charlie Sykes
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Mike Pesca
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Charlie Sykes
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- [00:34]
Mike Pesca
Hi, it's Mike. It's Saturday. It's the Saturday show and this Saturday I'm going to bring you a conversation I had with Charlie Sykes on his show, the new show that he's been doing since he left the Bulwark. It is called to the contrary. I love Charlie Sykes. When he was the regular host of the Bulwark, I knew of him and did some MSNBC with him beforehand. He was, he's a real Republican and he was an important player in Wisconsin broadcasting and politics. And he early on talked about some of the postcards from the fringe that a lot of the Republican establishment dismissed. That was a, that portended what we got with Donald Trump. And Sykes has been on it and I was on his show. So I'll play not all of that. You could go to his substack. And here we go, Mike and Charlie. I don't even know where to start with folding a fitted sheet in the middle somewhere. And HIMS can help you with that either, but it can help you with other aspects of performance in bed. So if you have ed, it doesn't mean your love life is over. With Hims, it may be getting started or some rocket fuel. Through hims you can access personalized prescription treatment treatments for ed, though not for fitted sheets. You need a prescription, but getting a prescription is very easy if you qualify and the price is really affordable. Generics that cost 95 less than name brands if prescribed, they bring the experts straight to you. It's all online personalized treatment and it's not a one size fits all care that forgets you in the waiting room. They put your health and goals for first with real medical providers. So think of HIMS as the digital front door that gets you back to your old self where you did not care about sheets except what activities occur on top of them as opposed to how to fold them. To get simple online access to personalized affordable care for ED, hair loss, weight loss and more, visit hims.com the Gist that's hims.com the Gist for your free online visit hims.com the GIST Featured products include compounded drug products which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness or quality. Prescription required. See website for details, restrictions and important safety information. Actual price will depend on product and subscription plans.
- [03:08]
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- [03:20]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [03:21]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [03:42]
Charlie Sykes
Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. Think about the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, Donald Trump was astride the world, master of the universe, threatening to swap countries, right? Threatening everybody in his path. And yet in the last couple of weeks, he's had to back down twice, hasn't he? He had to retreat on attacking Greenland. His board of peace was, I think, universally derided. And then of course, the new tone in Minneapolis. Probably temporary, but at least for the moment, it looked like he was backing off. He was somewhat humbled. In my newsletter yesterday, I described the little platoons of Minneapolis residents with cell phones who turn to be Donald Trump's kryptonite. At least short term, he's sidelined Kristi Noem, sort of put her in the penalty box for a little while, apparently thrown Greg Bovino under the bus. Even Stephen Miller is backing off. So we have a lot to talk about. How much of this is temporary? How much of it is real? What happens now? And joining me somewhere in Florida, in a closet in Florida, our good friend Mike Pesca, who is the host of the just the longest running news and opinion podcast I think in the history of mankind or something like that. Mike, how are you?
- [05:05]
Mike Pesca
They did find one in the Pleistine era. No, I think you're right. I started it like 12 years ago and I am in a closet because we wrote out this blizzard or were forced to. And so we're in Florida, which is nice. I live in Brooklyn. I know you Wisconsinites don't even look at this thing as a blizzard, but it's a blizzard, right? Deem it a blizzard, yeah. Okay. As long as we have the Badger State Blizzard seal of approval, I don't feel so bad about being in my father in law's closet and if you're watching the video, my face is blocking his pants and he has very nice pants, but I don't know if that's a visual. You were.
- [05:37]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I'm really glad, I'm really glad to hear that. No, no, I'm willing to concede that this was, this was a real blizzard. Of course, you know, the weather's somewhat nicer in Florida. It's about, I think, zero degrees here in Wisconsin. It's been that way for, for some time. So let' about what's going on up in Minneapolis. We have the sort of somewhat climb down the defenestration of Greg Bovino. Just give me your thoughts on all of that because this was an interesting development. I always stress how temporary this is, that the problem with the Trump administration is not about personnel. It's not about Kristi Noemus, it's not about Greg Bovino, it's not about Tom Homan. The problem with the Trump administration is Donald Trump. It all flows from him. But it was still interesting the way in which this played out. They went from complete denial and smearing of the victim in this case, Alex Preddy, to a cover up, to an acknowledgement that, damn, this looked bad. So, Mike, what's happening up in Minneapolis? What is your take?
- [06:40]
Mike Pesca
Right, it's not about personnel because these people who you named are accurate reflections of Trump's policy preferences. However, I think if you unwind back and really ask yourself, the administration have a theory of the case. I think they did and I think they were wrong. And so I'm going to say some things that I've heard you say over the show is that they were spoiling for a fight. They thought that if they could have aggressive immigration tactics, especially in blue cities, they'd provoke a reaction and then they'd look good. Because this part is right. Their theory was that Americans hate chaos and scenes of violence. That's true. Here's where they were wrong. Who would they blame the chaos on? And when they went into Los Angeles and picked fights with some protesters in an area of town that a lot of Los Angeles didn't know existed. You know, that one square foot area didn't really work for them. When they went to some other cities, it didn't really work. When they went to Minnesota, they got the chaos. But America is rightly judging the administration and the ICE tactics to be the source of the chaos. And there are reasons for that. And it's the signaling that the ice that the ICE agents got from, especially Stephen Miller. But that is there's so much horror and there's so much humanity at stake. But if you want to be very gimlet eyed about it and just look at it from an amoral standpoint of strategy, that is where their strategy went wrong. I think.
- [08:06]
Charlie Sykes
No, I think that that's exactly right. I mean, they did create this monster and then they encouraged the monster to be as monstrous as possible, as you point out. You know, Stephen Miller telling them, you have absolute immunity, you have absolute impunity, by the way, which I think is, is, is untrue. But they thought that chaos was the latter. Right. For my, my, my Game of Thrones reference here, that that chaos was the ladder to power. In fact, as you point out, the, you know, the public is, is seeing this and going, well this is, this is not a good thing. Why are we seeing the chaos? Trump and Miller assumed that the public would blame the protesters or the, the, the criminal class of, of immigrants. In fact, what they saw was this completely unnecessary surge of a thousand I were acting as a brute squad fomenting one act of violence after another. And by the way, you know, here's kind of an interesting irony that, you know, we thought we were in, and we still are in a post truth world in which we would have all the deep fake videos and everything. But the decisive thing that seems to be playing out is individuals, just average, ordinary citizens with the cell phones taking those videos and showing, you know, telling those stories. And they've gone viral. And isn't it interesting? I mean, I'm really struck by how this broke through, how this, this showed up on social media sites that were not political. And I think that this is the key thing that's happened here, is that a lot of folks, you know, it's one thing for the political podcasters, like, you know, us to talk about it, but this was showing up on podcasts for bourbon drinkers and cat lovers and mountain climbers. And I mean they're, they calculated that, that the, that they could control social media and it came back to bite them in the ass, didn't it?
- [09:58]
Mike Pesca
Right, because they know that with our attention being attenuated, they can have narratives that don't have to be even close to true, but they can brand elements that they don't like as purely antifa or terrorists. And there is sometimes enough truth to that that unless you have the time to dig through it and to figure out exactly when they're lying or when they're not and who does be me or you. But when you see not just a video, but Videos from dozens of angles combining good and pretty then it's very hard to ignore. Now I think there are a couple of things and I'd like to ask you about this. I don't think that the abuses of ICE when they were just going to people's houses and detaining five year olds and really doing the, the detention and the things that I defined either brutally or more civilly when they were doing the ICE things of detention, it wasn't breaking through, it was the deaths, it was the killing. And the killing comes back to the permission structure that Stephen Miller especially gave. And there was good Axios reporting about how all of this falls at the feet of Stephen Miller. And there is a signaling within the administration because they're so disorganized and discombobulated and the executive has no executive function going on in his own head. I think, I think that's fair to say so that what you do is you take, if you're a gnome or a Bevino, signals from other members of the administration. You get way, way, way out ahead of your skis, to use a blizzard term. And what happened was, I do think the administration figured, well, we have these trained professionals who know what they're doing. And they thought of the riots of 2020 and they thought of how mostly the police forces did their jobs. And that wasn't the case here. That got to be less and less the case because they were injecting more rhetorical chaos into this situation. And ICE agents just took the signal and began acting what I would call unprofessionally. And if there was a real investigation, what maybe we would call criminally.
- [12:03]
Charlie Sykes
No, I agree, I agree with like 95% of that. I do think that some of the stories were breaking through. That story about the, what was it, the five year old girl or the two year old girl lose track at a certain point. These stories of these, you know, children who are being taken away from their parents who are being deported. I think that there was sort of a growing sense of what's going wrong here? Who are these people? Why are they behaving this way, breaking the windows of cars, dragging people out. So what was happening was I think that the ground was being softened up and then you had the killings, which as you point out, really did break through there. There is, there is no question. And one of the things that they've discovered, and I think this is interesting, is that, well, maybe they haven't discovered it, but you know, it's been revealed that they are not in fact jedi Masters, they are not able to say you are not seeing what your eyes are telling you. No, we are going to tell you what reality is because that's worked for them in the past. Right. That they have this almost infinite confidence in their own belief to warp reality into their own image. And they just figured, and you could see with the playbook, we're just going to figure he was brandishing a gun, he was a terrorist, and that they could get their supporters to believe all of that. And yet the visual evidence was so compelling, it was so overwhelming. What do you make? Okay, so that's, that's the first one is that, is that this their pattern of being able to basically Jedi mind the, the MAGA cult just simply may have worked with the MAGA cult, but it does not work with the normies. And I think they're losing the normies big time on these, on, on the, in these stories.
- [13:40]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, but I do think, but for the killings, I don't know how much you would see a change. We saw it in polls. So this I'll definitely concede the polling, even on immigration, his best issue, he turned under Trump turned underwater on that just from enforcement reasons, just from horrific visuals of see cot prison which America was not in favor of. And even if you put aside the debate over Kilmar Garcia, these everything having to do with kids. But I don't think yesterday or today I think I saw a headline on espn, Victor Wembanyama, who is the great as you know, the great like unbelievably tall basketball player from the San Antonio spurs, says the killings are horrific. I don't think you'd get a quote, the necessity of a quote ESPN thinking about that because their, their ratings when they got into the social justice coverage of the of 2020 and 2021 wasn't great. So I don't think you'd see that. I don't think you'd see Bill Simmons, another sports guy, big sports platform, having to end his talking about how he couldn't not comment on it. So that's what I'm saying. I'm saying that but for the killings, I don't know that Trump would be at least rhetorically pulling back. I don't know how much it is, but it does seem like, you know, Bavino has been sidelined. I don't think Bevino would be sidelined or Noem would have gotten even a slight shot across the bow. But for these killings and the killings aren't just the random occurrence of what happens when you have 4,000 ICE agents, it's all these ice agents essentially told that there is no consequence to doing your job poorly or criminally.
- [15:20]
Charlie Sykes
No, I think that's true. And so this breakthrough moment that you're saying, so do you think there's going to be a boycott of the World Cup? I mean, there's starting to be that buzz. No. Why not?
- [15:32]
Mike Pesca
I don't think people are bad or evil. I just think that they want their lives to be enjoyable and some sense of justice around them. But the three levels of what people want is my theory of government. It's not just mine, but first, people. Second, people want prosperity, and third, people want justice. And so the enjoyment, whatever enjoyment the world takes from the World Cup, I think they'd be hurting themselves more than they'd be helping themselves advance a somewhat abstract theory of justice. And also, you know, who gets punished? Is it Trump gets getting punished? Is it FIFA getting punished? To some extent, but it's all these people who would enjoy themselves and the athletes in the world. It's also such a nice. I think it's a nice coming together, and it's good that it's going on in America. I wouldn't want to punish America for the things that are bad with America, because down that road, we'll never have anything nice again.
- [16:25]
Charlie Sykes
We do need some nice things, don't we? Hey, let me play you a sound bite. And, you know, as part of the. The endless series of There is no bottom with this guy, you. You undoubtedly have heard, you know, some of the. The interviews that Donald Trump has given over the last couple of days. This was, I think that he's sitting down with the Will Kane show and he's talking about the two victims, the unarmed protesters who were killed. And this is what he had to say.
- [16:51]
Donald Trump
And I'm not sure about his parents, but I know her parents were big Trump fans. Makes me feel bad anyway, but, I mean, I guess you could say even worse. They were tremendous Trump people. Trump fans. And, you know, the daughter was. She was, I don't know if you could say radicalized, maybe. Radicalized, maybe not. I don't know. But I hate to see it. I hate to see that he has.
- [17:13]
Charlie Sykes
To make everything about himself, doesn't he? I mean, the way this man's mind works, it's fascinating, even after all this time, that he makes it about himself.
- [17:24]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, it really hits home if parents were Trump fans. Without it, I really didn't understand what the importance of a life lost for no reason was. See, I saw that. I actually first heard him say something like that when Tony Decopol interviewed him on the floor of that plant. And I saw the inklings of him for a second being something other than truculent. Oh, they were Trump fans. I had heard that. And that seems to have grown bigger and bigger in his mind. Yeah, the rhetorical. So it also shows that as Trump gets more and more, I don't want to say deranged, but loses it a bit and bit more. And I don't think we're in the 25th Amendment category yet. But as he gets less and less tethered to a rationality that all but those and his thrall would understand, the consequences of the things he says off the top of his head are more and more real. And so the three biggest issues in the world in the last month have been the Iranian protest, Trump's threat of Greenland, and what we're seeing in ice in Minnesota. Maybe I should say the three biggest issues to America and in their place in the world. And they're all, they're all dictated by really irrational and not measured pieces of rhetoric that Trump has committed to. And even though we get more upset by rhetoric than deeds, and deeds are more important than actions, as you know, when the president says words, not only does it have consequences, I'm sure you saw the accounts of Iranian protesters saying, I went out there because the president said he had our backs and people.
- [19:01]
Charlie Sykes
Believe the president, help is on the way. Yeah.
- [19:03]
Mike Pesca
And in all of those situations, we've had to do this great unwinding, or in the case of a couple of those, not even unwinding, just because Trump speaks intemperately and also in a way that doesn't even help himself. Right. That used to be one of the standards. Like, oh, he says these things that annoy us, but they also annoy the liberals. And once you're to his, once you're creating liberal tears, you're doing something good. But, you know, as I said on my show the other day, one of the reasons that Democrats and liberals are so upset by this is that they're just a subset of America and humanity and people are upset by this. And we'll be back in a minute with more of Mike Pesca. That's me on Charlie Sykes. That's the other guy I've been talking to. In a minute.
- [19:52]
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- [20:26]
Mike Pesca
I'm going to now play you not the entirety of the rest of the conversation I had with Charlie Sykes. I'd like to leave a little bit if you could go and discover Charlie's own show. He was nice enough to have me on. So he's on Substack, the host of to the Contrary. And this is, I would say, some of the final half, the middle half, the final third of me talking to Charlie.
- [20:49]
Charlie Sykes
No, I'm. And apparently now we're sending a great armada to Iran because we have to wag the dog at this point. But the incoherence of his policies and the unpredictability, I think has. Seems to be settling in on people. I don't know whether you saw this, this interview that the. Where the story, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, who's actually kind of pro Trump and he is telling people how alarmed he was by the mentality of Donald Trump after meeting with him at Mar a Lago. And I think that you sort of see this sense around the world that we just can't be trusted. I mean, one of the big stories, kind of a wonky story maybe for some listeners, is the way that the EU basically said, you know, fuck you to Donald Trump cutting this massive trade deal with India. And you can just see, you know, whether it's, whether it's, it's Canada, whether it's Europe, they're going, you know, we, we no longer think of you as a reliable trade partner. So let's go on, you know, sticking with, with what's happening in Minnesota and what, and what happens right now. I want to get your take on all this. First of all. Yes, go ahead. Sure. Absolutely.
- [21:52]
Mike Pesca
Listeners should know that the slow. The Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fitzo is, was widely described as Trumpian.
- [21:59]
Charlie Sykes
He's very Trumpy, very, very maga.
- [22:01]
Mike Pesca
Yes, he was shot. He took a bullet. Not for Trump, but for these ideals. And he's broken. Trump forces even the people who are predisposed, cynically or politically or whatever, to be on his side. He forces them out of that position when he picks these fights just with the words he uses, not any actual policy thought or forethought. So. Sorry, I just wanted to add that.
- [22:25]
Charlie Sykes
Context, but go on. No, no, this is, this is, this is really important because you can imagine what these conversations are like behind closed doors. And yet there are real consequences. I mean, you know, as you point out, if we do have an armada of air aircraft carriers heading toward Iran, you know, that is going to have real world consequences for a lot of people. So, going back to Minnesota and domestic politics here. So what do you think Democrats in Congress should do? Right now it seems inevitable that the Senate is going to vote down any spending bill that includes funding for ice. Is that the right call? Is this worth drawing a line in the sand for Senate Democrats?
- [23:04]
Mike Pesca
100% not to do it. You have to always evaluate what are the downsides of not doing it. Enormous. Right. That's the only reason I support reported the last shutdown, especially for Schumer's own self preservation. But there are arguments that why preserving himself is actually good for the party in the country. But yes, to not do it at this point would be ridiculous and feckless. And also I agree they quote, unquote, won the last shutdown. And this is something that Republicans should be forced to come off their points to. Number of Republican senators, sure, Thom Tillis, who's not seeking reelection, but some who are and maybe Murkowski is and, and Collins is. And we've also seen even dissents from Moran of Kansas and a number of Senators Cassidy of Louisiana, signaling that essentially they're not going to go all out to support the DHS bill. I saw some comments by Collins saying, oh, you have to understand that the majority of this funding isn't ice. What is she acknowledging there? That ICE is so politically toxic that you can't even begin to defend it. And that's a huge difference from what I started talking about, which is the theory of the case, which is he thought this was the best in the best policy and the best for him. It's clearly not.
- [24:25]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean ICE is toxic. You have the polls showing half of Americans now, you know, support abolishing ice, which used to be kind of a, you know, you know, on an edgy, an edgy position. You have states all around the country taking action. But I agree with you. There is no way the Democrats can go into that Capitol building and vote to continue to fund what has been going on. And maybe that's one of the reasons why Donald Trump figured he needed a clean house, he needed to clean up a little bit. My guess is by the time there's a vote, people will understand. You know, putting Tom Homan in charge of this does not fix the problem. You have tens of billions of dollars flowing in. They are recruiting people. And I keep coming back to this. The thousands of agents that they're recruiting now to be the mask members of the brute squad, you know, the thugs that we're seeing here. What kind of person is saying, I want that job, I want to be in that. I want to be in that picture? And we know how badly trained they are. So there's just no way that any Democrat can in good conscience vote to continue business as usual, because this is not business as usual. And that's always like the push pull with Democrats. Right. You know, with Chuck Schumer. No, it's not normal Chuck, really. This is not 1994. The rules are changed. It's a different world.
- [25:44]
Mike Pesca
Right, right. You're not negotiating with Fritz Hollings over the table.
- [25:50]
Charlie Sykes
No.
- [25:50]
Mike Pesca
And it is interesting that Tom Homan actually is an improvement in this situation. You said you're not gonna solve it by sending Homan. Homan, who took the $50,000 bribe in his cava.
- [26:04]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [26:05]
Mike Pesca
Kava. To go bag with, seemingly without confidence. He actually is an improvement in this situation because he has some experience in running a law enforcement agency, whereas Kristi Noem clearly does not. And Greg Bevino maybe has the wrong kind of experience, and that tells you exactly where we are. That was a question. Good question for Democrats, as you could tell, you run a podcast, and I run a podcast, so I like to ask questions. My question for you is, what do you think the Republicans should be doing? Do you think that John Thune at this point should be saying, why are we in this job? Why do we have Article 1 powers? Don't you think? Can they? And during the Trump administration, angering the Mad King has always been bad policy for them. But can they and will they assert? And I hear so much reporting about how they're very frustrated having given away their powers and their prerogatives. Can they assert any of their powers now? Is this a moment to do this?
- [27:03]
Charlie Sykes
Well, there's several answers to this. You know, will they do it? Probably not, because just assume that they're gonna continue doing what they've been doing. The muscle memory of being sycophants. Can they do it? Absolutely, yes. And I've been asking this question literally every day since the beginning of Trump 2.0. Why have members of Congress been so willing to turn themselves into potted plants, particularly senators? I mean, there was a time within our lifetime when being a United States Senator was a very big deal, when members of Congress thought of themselves as a co. Equal branch. Of government and how they have just surrendered their Article 1 powers on one issue after another. This is like fundamental to the founding, right, that James Madison just simply assumed that there'd be a jealousy between the various branches, that they would provide a check and a balance on one another. Never anticipating this kind of absolutely spineless caving in. Also self humiliating. What is the point of being a senator if, in fact you have no influence? If no one's taking what you're saying seriously, so should they? Can they? Absolutely, yes. Will they? Look, we've seen the Republican Party over the last 10 years. I have, you know, little confidence. On the other hand, it does not take very many Republicans to change the entire dynamics of American politics, does it? It only takes a few, you know, Mike Johnson has a majority of what, like, you know, half a vote? All you need is a few people standing up and saying, we're done with this bullshit. You know, hey, we're still here on tariffs, on foreign policy, on war, all of these things. We're here and we're not gonna simply roll over anymore. But who knows?
- [28:44]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And they surrendered their power by drips and drabs suddenly and then all at once. And I, I know it is harder to get it back, but I think about some of the inflection points and just the, the confirmation of RFK Jr. There's a big, several big ones along the way, and I think a lot of them regret it. But once you do it and once you go down this road and once you establish yourself as instinctively rolling over and showing your belly, how do you get it back? You can. There is power within the institution and the executive is leeching power because Trump is not on top of his game as he was. And I also think that he was actually assisted by the people who kept guardrails like Mattis and McMaster.
- [29:27]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, absolutely. In retrospect, yes. More so than realized at the time. Yeah.
- [29:32]
Mike Pesca
Right. Because he could say the things he said and that, not follow them up by doing the things that were undoing his popularity. And that dynamic is gone this time around. So we see with Taco, I don't know if you saw the Bloomberg story that they did an analysis of how often Trump actually caved on his tariff threats. And it's not all the time. It's not the Trump always chickens out, but he followed through a quarter of the time. And so at that point, I think you're probably safe to say Trump mostly chickens out and we're gonna have to play it like that. But there's just an example where he thinks he has a certain rhetoric that helps him in negotiations. Maybe he would say this about Greenland, maybe he would say this about the extreme rhetoric around Iran and ice. But the rhetoric gets ahead of him and he's being hurt. And without someone to actually rein him in, what we're seeing is not just bad for the country, but bad for his own standing, his own self interest. He's a person who doesn't always. He thinks he has a supreme knowledge and understanding of his own self interest, and he does not. Not as good as he thinks he does. All right, that's it for today's show and we will talk to you on Monday.
- [30:59]
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