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- [00:00]
A
Hey, next level, fam. It's JVL here with Sarah. Sarah, say hi.
- [00:05]
B
Hi.
- [00:06]
A
So I. I know you guys like the show, but have you ever thought to yourself, what if this show just didn't have Tim in it? Couldn't it be even better?
- [00:14]
B
I know you thought that. Of course you thought that.
- [00:18]
A
Well, dude, we have a treat for you because Sarah and I do a show, just the two of us every Friday. It's called the Secret Podcast. It's only for Bowler plus members, but we wanted to give you guys a little bit of a taste here today. We talk about some really, really wonderful things. That's wrong, Sarah. They're all terrible things. This week. It's a really. It's a really dark week. And I'm sorry in advance for that, guys, but we talk about RFK and the terrible shooting in Minneapolis and the CDC and whether or not Chicago is going to be occupied by federal troops next. It's. It's kind of a. It's kind of a big old thing. It's pretty dark. But.
- [00:59]
B
But if you want to hear us go deeper on issues and also work out thoughts before we have them, because I would say the Secret Podcast is secret in part because we're not always committed to our takes here. We're thinking out loud, so come do that with us.
- [01:14]
A
Yeah, there's a lot of that. A lot of just like, hey, we're. We're just talking. Talking between ourselves while we think of this stuff. Anyway, come and join us, and we hope you like the show. Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark.
- [01:34]
B
Sarah.
- [01:35]
A
I mean, I guess I'll just say Happy Friday. I don't feel Happy Friday. I love your new studio.
- [01:40]
B
Thank you. Barry was here until very late last night, you know, conjuring a new studio because that. You know how I had that screen in the background?
- [01:50]
A
Yeah, I loved that.
- [01:51]
B
You did. Well, it was. It was technically too difficult for me to muster the lighting, the camera, the tv, the background, and I needed something just, like, permanent that when I turned it on, it was ready to go.
- [02:07]
A
Was he. Did he, like, put up drywall and stuff, like.
- [02:11]
B
Yeah, he put up this, like, it's. It's only half the room, but it's kind of this mock hardwood.
- [02:18]
A
Is it a real corner or is that just a real illusion to make.
- [02:21]
B
It a real corner? I'm sitting in. I'm sitting in the corner. They put me in the corner.
- [02:26]
A
Nobody puts Sarah in the corner.
- [02:28]
B
Barry does.
- [02:30]
A
Oh. All Right. So I. I'm going to need some help from you today because I have had kind of a week. I don't know if you've been reading any of the Triads, but I am trapped in this place where I feel like I'm writing the same thing every day. And read, I think, don't like it. I don't like writing it. And it is basically every day I now write, holy shit, this thing just happened. It's really, really bad. I don't know how we come back from this. And it's just like, you know, there's a new thing every day, and what.
- [03:13]
B
If you experimented with a new formula where you said, this terrible thing happened, and here's how we come back from this.
- [03:20]
A
Okay, so, you know what? And I'm so glad you said that, because this is a complaint which I am seeing often.
- [03:26]
B
Yeah.
- [03:27]
A
And I. I don't mean to crack back against people making this. This complaint and criticism. I just want to explain something to them. It is not the case that I have the answer, and I'm just withholding it from you because I either get off on withholding like Lucille Bluth, or because I am trying to keep you on the hook and make sure you come back the next. If I had the answers, I would tell you. I promise. I promise. I just don't. It's not that I don't have the answers. I don't even see the answers. I don't see possible answers, really. I. I mean. Well, we'll talk about all of it. But see, that's.
- [04:16]
B
That's where you land, though, if you think that people are fundamentally rotten and cannot be persuaded and that there's no coming out of this moment, which is where I come in, because I don't agree with that.
- [04:30]
A
Well, but it's. It's actually worse than that, though, because I think, and this is what I'm going to write about today, I think we're now very close. I don't think we're there yet, but I think we're very close to the point where the cascade failure in the liberal democratic system can't be winched back, even if people decide they want it to be. Like, I mean, so much has now been destroyed and perverted that I don't know that even if 55% of the country decided, holy shit, this was a big mistake, we got to go backwards. I don't know that we. We could go backwards now. I mean, we could if we did it right now, but we can. We got to wait another year. And a half. And I. I don't know, man. Like, it's. It's all very bad. The CDC thing, the. The troops coming to Chicago because the president is making a lot of noises about how he wants to occupy Chicago. The shooting. The shooting really, really hit me pretty hard. Like, I don't like another school shooting. We have them all the time, but I don't know. The. I guess we'll start. Can we start with that? Can we start with the school shooting? Or would you rather not?
- [05:57]
B
No. Okay, let's. I'll start wherever you want to start. I just. I guess I want to. I'm eager to take on your premise of there's no coming back.
- [06:08]
A
Let's save that for the back half, okay? Because that's like a big. That's a big discussion and it's not a. Look, I'm not. Not sure of it. Just thinking these things through. All right, So I have a. I have a political question for you.
- [06:23]
B
Okay.
- [06:24]
A
Okay. Why are so the. The director of the FBI says that the shooting in Minneapolis was domestic terrorism. I am happy to agree with that. Sounds right to me.
- [06:37]
B
Yep.
- [06:40]
A
Why can Democrats, or why have Democrats not with one voice gone to every camera in America to say Cash Patel has turned counterterrorism operations inside the FBI upside down? He said that he's going to focus on immigration and violent street crime. He is raiding. A week before this tragedy. He was raiding John Bolton's house four days before the tragedy. He's posting videos of himself doing pull ups because he says the FBI's mission is doing the Kennedy Hegseth challenge. This guy should have foreseen this. This. The FBI and Cash Patel failed to stop domestic terrorism because they're incompetent. There must be consequences. Why? Why is that not the unified Democratic message from every single elected Dem in the country?
- [07:40]
B
Well, careful, jbl, because you'll get accused by our audience of only bashing Dems.
- [07:47]
A
No, I'm not bashing. Like, I just. I just feel like, isn't this the most obvious thing in the world? Like, I wrote about this yesterday. And like, you know, like, nobody even really responded to it. Like, it just seems obvious to me this is. This is a massive intelligence failure on the part of the FBI, which I wouldn't pay all that much attention to had the FBI not specifically said and acted that in ways to suggest that they don't really care about counterterrorism anymore. And so, like, I don't know, shouldn't this be hung around their necks?
- [08:17]
B
Of course it should. And this is, this is where, this is where I live right now and why I get, I get so many people get so angry at me and say, Sarah, why do you just focus on what Democrats aren't doing instead of what Republicans are doing? And I'm like, because they're symbiotic. Like, the more, the more outrageous what is happening with Republicans is, the more desperate we are for serious, meaningful pushback from Democrats. From. I mean, it doesn't even have to be coordinated messaging from a communication standpoint because it should be organic outrage. Like they should be moved by this. They should be moved to go on offense, not because somebody told them to go on offense, but because it's so obvious when you look at the situation that the problem, especially Republicans are out there right now. You got RFK saying the problem is ssri.
- [09:14]
A
Yeah. The problem is that Cash Patel is spending his time doing pull ups instead of running counterterrorism operations. That's the problem. Can you imagine if this was Christopher Ray during the Biden administration? Right? Like what Fox would be saying right now? Like, you know, this is fire. Christopher just ought to be a steady drum beat fire. Cash Patel. Cash Patel should be fired. Cash Patel should be fired. Cash Patel. Just say it over and over.
- [09:37]
B
This is just the next thing. This is the next thing too. Like, this is Cash Patel also didn't release the Epstein fight. Like, it takes everybody like a million years to jump on and say because they're, they're like, well, this takes us away from kitchen table issues. And I. Are you, are you effectively talking about those either? Because like, I guess if you, I guess if you showed me that you were winning a massive communications battle on kitchen table issues and economics and in a way that, you know, I saw you guys out there all the time, maybe I'd be like, okay, well, they're really focused on this. So they're not talking about this, but instead it's just an excuse to talk about what you are and are not going to talk about rather than talking about the thing that moves you at the time. No, it's. And these are all gimmes. They're all gimmes. Like they are doing insane things that have people angry. Donald Trump is underwater on all of these issues. You can go push on these. You know, jbl, I am, I'm working on a project right now. This is one of the reasons that I, I had to take a summer break from a couple of the pods because there's a couple other things I'm working on. But one of them Is this essential question of why does 2024, 2025, why do they feel so different from 2017 and 2018? Like, it's so much worse than it was then. Like, if you think back to Muslim ban, right, that time, and then women's march in the streets, you know, just the way that people were pushing back the, the level of confidence going into 2018, the number of new candidates, like, the level of energy in the Democratic Party was through the roof. And it's just this exhaustion now.
- [11:27]
A
Also, Trump's approval is, is much better now. And this is the other thing that's crazy to me. I was looking at this this week, and I've become slightly obsessed with it. In late August of 2017, Trump was -16 net approval, and things were pretty good, right? Like, just objectively in the country, things are bad objectively in the country. The economy is slowing down, inflation is back. Like, there are troops in the streets. And he's only at like minus 8. He is literally twice. He's doing 2x better now with conditions being objectively worse than he was.
- [12:05]
B
Do you know why?
- [12:06]
A
Yes, because people are used to it. This is. People are just used to. And they're like, oh, okay. You know, in 2017, there was a sense of, holy, what did we do? It was buyer's remorse. And now people are just like, well, this is the world we live in.
- [12:21]
B
Well, people didn't think it would happen. I mean, I just, I did so many focus groups about this in the years following the 2016 election. And the thing I heard over and over again was I didn't think he was going to win. I just, you know, I didn't want to vote for Hillary Clinton. So I took a flyer. And then right afterwards, they were like, this is terrible. Like, we do not want this. But you are right. Not only are people conditioned to it, but the entire culture is conditioned to it. So it took until. Because I also was looking back at this, it took until 2018 for Republicans to really start falling in line. Like, what we saw a lot of in 2017 was resignations, people pushing after the blowout.
- [12:58]
A
It was after the blowout, midterms, when Republicans find. Which again, is the craziest thing, you would think it would be the opposite. You would think, like, oh, the Republican Party got blowed up, then they would. But. But it didn't. And it's because the. The people who got blown out of the Republican Party were all of the marginal Trump supporters. So all that was left, or even.
- [13:17]
B
The non Trump supporters. Like, that's When Carlos Curbelo lost, it was a lot of people who won in sort of center, center left districts, super moderate Republicans. And so they got, they were the first to go. And anybody who spoke up also went. That's when Jeff Flake went. And so Trump started to get more consolidated power as people fell in line. Anyway, the, the vibes, the energy is so different now. And, and this is, this is how I close. Every Bulwark live show, right. Is about talking about how the authoritarians want you to be tired. And so when people are like, what can I do? I was just, I was with a bunch of people recently in older, more like our parents age and they were, a lot of them were just like, yeah, I'm not, I used to, like, I watched, I was really, you know, watched all the news and, but like, I'm not doing that this time. I just, I'm tapped out. And I think that's a real thing. I hear it in the groups too. People saying, I can't, I can't watch it.
- [14:15]
A
I do this for a living and I feel it.
- [14:17]
B
Yeah.
- [14:18]
A
I mean, I, I don't know how somebody who's, whose job wasn't doing this could force themselves to stay looking at this car wreck every day. I honestly, it's. But all of this is just like, I don't know, I want people to say, fire Cash Patel. And I, like, it just seems like the easiest thing in the world to say. This guy's made a point of saying he isn't going to do counterterrorism anymore. His, his organization used to be responsible for counterterrorism. There's a terrorist attack on US soil. So why don't you make them pay for that with public opinion? Like, I just. That pull up video ought to be fucking infamous.
- [15:01]
B
Yeah. And embarrassing. They should be ashamed of it.
- [15:04]
A
But it should be my pet goat. Yeah, the pull up video should be my pet goat.
- [15:08]
B
Instead it's become about the sexual identity.
- [15:13]
A
Or lack, you know, guns or whatever. And look, I have zero sympathy on guns, but like, you got to be nimble and go where, where there are openings. Don't make this a gun conversation. Make this a FBI Cash Patel problem.
- [15:30]
B
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. You can still make it a gun conversation. And I don't think we should let. I don't think Republicans want to bully people into not politicizing these tragedies. But they do, like, while politicizing the tragedies. Right. Like they, they think they only get to do it. And so I need people you know, like, Jen Psaki was taking a lot of heat from the right. They just decided to make her the mark and call her ghoul. She. She was talking about prayers not being enough. And I think Edgar actually took her on, too, on the idea of, like, no, like, praying is good. It is what we have in the face of senseless tragedy. Fine. Like, but it is not a question of prayer. No prayer. It is a question of why do these young people have guns. Like, sorry. And your locked doors wouldn't work in this case. Ted Cruz, the idea that we're locking down churches.
- [16:25]
A
The doors are the problem. Do you remember that from your.
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B
Yeah, the doors problem. I do remember. I just. I think. But. But you. You have a better chance of taking a. An immediate bite out of Patel than you do out of the gun lobby, I guess is your point. I still think the thing. It's not the message or the particulars of this message exactly. To me, it's simply the lack of full force outrage. These are little kids in church. Like, why do we continue to tolerate this as a culture? And I always think these things are a little bit related in terms of what we become more and more tolerant of as a culture where it should have been enough. After all those kids in Connecticut.
- [17:24]
A
Yeah.
- [17:24]
B
Sandy hooked where we said, you know what? Because these are. I'm not talking about banning guns. I'm not. I'm talking about. Are we raising the age that somebody can acquire one of these? Are we. Are we lowering the magnum capacity? Like the capacity of these weapons?
- [17:41]
A
Yeah, I. Well, it's all. It's all very bad. And rfk.
- [17:48]
B
Speaking of people dying.
- [17:52]
A
That guy, I had some things about him that were edited out of my newsletter the other day. I'll just say that. I'll just say that.
- [18:02]
B
Tell them to me.
- [18:03]
A
What a. What a monster. I think. I think the phrase I used was donkey raping, shit eater. But, you know, it wasn't. It didn't make it to the final copy. So. So that's fine. Can I.
- [18:21]
B
We're here to save you from yourself.
- [18:24]
A
Can I read you something from. From our friend? I know what a healthy child is supposed to look like. I'm looking at kids while I walk through the airports today. As I walk down the street and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges. Inflammation. You can tell it from their faces, from their body movement, from their lack of social connection. This guy's the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Like, I just don't. Again, I don't Understand how a country can tolerate that because it's insane.
- [18:59]
B
Yeah.
- [19:00]
A
I was in head of Health and Human Services for the American people. Is like, yeah, well, I'm. I'm an old man. I went to law school a long time ago, and I know what healthy children look like. And they. I mean, I could just see the mitochondrial problems in their face. Like, what it's like having some dude with, like, face piercings and explaining how Santeria is how you do hell, it's insane. And the country is just like, yeah, okay.
- [19:35]
B
That. I mean, the country. Well, to be fair on the. I can't speak for the country, actually, but I'll speak for. At least on the CDC side. We're starting to see what I. What I hope that we would see in some of these other agencies, right, where people are walking out and resigning at the CDC much which. Which is a negative for our health system in the immediate term because he just appointed his like, random deputy now as his. His like chief of staff is now like the deputy director of the cdc.
- [20:11]
A
Well, let me. Let me read this to you, Sarah. Okay, so our new acting CDC director is a gentleman named Jim o'. Neill. You might wonder, did he go to medical school? He did not. I'm going to read to you from the garden.
- [20:26]
B
I don't have to wonder.
- [20:26]
A
I know he is a former speechwriter for the health Department during the Bush years who went on to work for tech investor and conservative mega journaler Peter Thiel. During the COVID pandemic, o' Neill voiced public support for unproven treatments that were not supported by scientific evidence, including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, as well as vitamin D and supposed prophylaxis. He also posted a number of conspiratorial theories on social media, including the baseless claim that the name Covid was chosen to conceal the origin of the virus. This name made it harder to study and probably slowed the response.
- [21:04]
B
What?
- [21:05]
A
This is the guy who's now in charge of the cdc.
- [21:09]
B
So anyway, short term, that's bad. In the short term, I do think. I think. I think in the long term. To your question about how do we rebuild, I do think people getting out of there in the short term so that they can come back when, you know, knock on wood, you've got a normal president that says, we are going to re. Establish these agencies and we would like the experts to come back now, and hopefully some of them will. But these scathing resignations. And when you. So when you say Americans don't care. They might. There might not be, like, an immediate revolt. I do think I am hopeful that people will start to care as this becomes more. You know, it's funny. It's. It's a really difficult decision to decide who is the worst of the cabinet members. I do think RFK Jr is the one who's ultimately going to do the most, like, immediate damage to people. Did you know he's a foreign. Former. He's speaking. Former heroin addict.
- [22:16]
A
Yes.
- [22:17]
B
And I just listen to him, and I cannot believe it is. It is the most preposterous. I mean, Cash Patel is preposterous. Pam Bondi is, Is. Is behaving preposterously like, she is terrible. She's terrible at her job. You know, Pete Hegseth was preposterous to run this massive bureaucracy, but I think RFK might be the most preposterous and ultimately deadly. But you know who I blame? Senator Cassidy.
- [22:52]
A
You can blame him.
- [22:53]
B
I can blame him. And Susan Collins, who. God, I hope she loses this Senate race. It is. But Cassidy, everybody looked to Cassidy. This was like a moment of leadership potential where you could say, look, I'm a doctor. I know a crank and a quack when I see one. And he did. And he thought, sure. Run America's largest health agency. Sure.
- [23:20]
A
I mean, there's enough blame to go around. I blame Cassidy. I blame all these people. But also the people who voted for Trump and the people who don't care. Again, 40, 44 approval right now. I think he's got.
- [23:35]
B
In his, in his aggregate, it's like.
- [23:37]
A
Oh, in his aggregate.
- [23:38]
B
Yeah, yeah, silver.
- [23:41]
A
44% of the country looks at all of this and is like, yeah, thumbs up. I don't, I don't know what to do with that.
- [23:50]
B
To be fair. I agree. It's actually one of the stranger phenomenons of this term so far is that Trump's personal approval is holding somewhat steady, around 43, 44%. But his issue by issue approval.
- [24:06]
A
Yes.
- [24:07]
B
Is extraordinarily underwater. Like, he's really underwater on immigration. He's really underwater on putting National Guard in the street. He's really underwater on the economy. And so the fact that his purpose, personal approval remains that high, I think is a sunk cost like, problem for people where they're just like, yeah, I'm gonna support him no matter what, because I, like, I, I just, I own this decision for him. But that is a reversal from how things were previously.
- [24:37]
A
Yeah, that's a very good point. That is reversal. All right, so I want to talk about Pritzker and the next wave of National Guard deployments, but we should probably do that on the other side. So, guys, if you have enjoyed this amazingly happy and optimistic show so far, you should come and listen to the rest of it as a Bulwark plus member, because it gets even better. Right, Sarah?
- [25:10]
B
I think. I think it does get better. It always gets better. It can get better. We have agency over whether or not it gets better. That's my line, and I'm sticking to it. I will say, though, you should come join us behind the paywall, because we paywall almost nothing. Sometimes I see people getting angry, saying, how can you guys put a paywall up? And you know what? We think you can't save democracy from behind a paywall. Which is why we make just about everything at the Bulwark free. There's, like, two things that you pay for, and this would be one of them. And so paying for you is less about getting this amazing content and more about coming to ride with us and supporting the overall mission so we can continue to have more influence over the conversation, and we will continue to make as much free as possible. So come ride with us, Sam.