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- [00:00]
A
Hey, next level listeners, this is Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, here with my best friend Jonathan Last. The jvl, JBL and I are going to do most of the Secret podcast today behind the paywall for members only. Because this is a week when the Secret podcast really is sort of the best place for us to wrestle with the difficult things in front of us. But we want to do that in a place that is with our community, where we can get feedback on the conversation, where we feel like we can really say things that we're not sure we think yet.
- [00:41]
B
It's like the scratch pad version of this conversation, right? Yeah, we're just like, I don't know yet. Like it's too big to all do, like as the first take, as the final take. Let's, let's try putting some ideas on paper and see what we come up with.
- [00:53]
A
Well, there's also so much we don't know. And so I think, you know, we want to, we want to turn over how you deal with moments like this and talk a lot of different things through. So come ride with us. Come, come join us. Come be part of that conversation. This is why we do the secret pod.
- [01:07]
B
Hello everyone, this is JVL here with my best friend, Sarah Longwell. Sarah, it's Friday. We have sat down to tape minutes after the announcement that they have in custody a suspect in the Charlie Kirk murders. We are going to talk about a lot of stuff that's kind of meta. We're going to do a lot of, of bulwark centric talk and philosophical talk deep in this, and we will get to that in a few. But I want to start with what I see as tremendous irresponsibility on the part of the part of the President and I. So I want to say very clearly, I have tried to not only avoid, but to really discourage dunking on people on social media. There was, there was a guy, again, I won't, I won't say his name, who was like, this should be our Reichstag fire. And I was like, and you wonder why people think you're Nazi, you know, but, but look, everybody processes their grief in different ways. I, you know, I really do believe you gotta try to offer your own grace as a down payment on other people finding theirs. And, but it's, it's different for leaders, right? Leaders have responsibility. Leaders don't get to have feelings because they have, they have jobs. They, they, they are entrusted with tremendous power on behalf of all society. For the President to say, we gotta go and Beat the hell out of the groups who he holds responsible for this before he knew at all who was responsible for it. I, I just, it's so dangerous, it's so dangerous to have a president who talks like that. I just think about, you know, Barack Obama after the, the, the church shooting, like the Dylann roof shooting. Remember that?
- [03:16]
A
I do.
- [03:17]
B
And Barack Obama didn't come out like you know, we had to go find all of, you know, ever all of these patriot types. We got to go and get them. Like that was, it was a, we're all together, we're going to heal. Right? That is, that is the only message that any president should offer in like moments where the temperature is really, really high. This is why George W. Bush After 911 went to a mosque and you know, went around saying Islam is a religion of peace because he realized his job was to take the temperature down. It's what like every president since, you know, certainly in modernity, right. Certainly in the post communication, like mass communication age has, has done at every moment. And Trump just acts like he's an Internet commenter and it's, it's so dangerous because it is a category difference between his power to shape public sentiment and the power of just random people on Twitter.
- [04:15]
A
I think he's worse than an Internet commenter and the reason is that I think he knows what he's doing. Especially on, on this particular piece, Donald Trump and Nancy Mace and a bunch of other Republicans in Congress without a single bit of evidence, without knowing anything about this shooter, without knowing who they were, without knowing what their ideology was, what their politics are, what, what caused this, what motivation was. They rushed to get in front of cameras and say the left did this. Donald Trump didn't just rush to find a camera. He held an Oval Office briefing in which he condemned a political group, not a niche political group, his opposition party of causing this and saying that we needed to do something about it. And they did this with no information. Now it may turn out that this person was motivated politically by, against Republicans. It may turn turn out to absolutely not be that we still at this moment suspended in time, don't know. What we do know is that a bunch of the things that they said initially that it was a trans shooter that they found shell casing with, with trans ideology and anti fascist ideology on them, that all of this has turned out to be wrong. The only thing we know right at this point is that as a 22 year old young man from there in Utah, that's what we know as of this taping Donald Trump didn't even know that when he rushed into an Oval Office briefing to tell the country that this was done by radical left lunatics that we had to do something about. He didn't know anything when he said, we need to beat the hell out of these radical left lunatics standing on the White House lawn before getting into a chopper. This is the most irresponsible. Now, granted, this is the same guy, though, so it's not a surprise. This is the same guy who stood in front of a hopped up crowd who has hopped up on his lies about an election being stolen and incited them to attack the Capitol. It is the same person. This is the same person who took the political violence of the January 6th protesters and said, I'm going to pardon these guys. These guys were on our side. And it dovetails perfectly with the comments he made today on Fox News on the couch while he just rolled out a bunch of nonsense talking points as information was breaking where he said, you know, the radicals on the right, you have to worry about them. They're just mad about crime, they're just mad about borders and, and so they're fine. That's why I pardon the January six folks. You know, those are just people concerned about the election that was stolen from me. Doesn't matter that they committed political violence against police officers and terrorized our elected officials. He doesn't care about that and he doesn't care about the truth right now when we don't know anything and it literally doesn't matter how it turns out. What matters is that when Donald Trump and then Nancy Mace and a whole bunch of elected Republicans, people who were elected, who are entrusted as our elected officials, and then it trickled down to all their influencers, Meghan McCain and Matt Walsh and all of these guys, Jesse Waters, they are fomenting a kind of civil war with zero information other than that Charlie Kirk was murdered. And I understand having rage and sadness over somebody who is in political ally, who's somebody maybe you were personally friends with. What happened to him was horrific. And so I understand feeling enraged by that. But the idea that you would take that and turn it against the other political party with no information is so deeply irresponsible that nobody should trust you, nobody should listen to what Donald Trump is saying. And I want to get to further in around the hagiography around Kirk that the way that people are treating this. But I just as a political matter and as a sort of a civil discourse matter, what Donald Trump is doing is one of the Most shameful things I've ever seen.
- [08:53]
B
And it's. It's not helped by the fact that he describes basically everyone who is even tangentially associated with the Democratic Party as radical left lunatics.
- [09:06]
A
Yeah.
- [09:07]
B
So when. When he says radical left lunatics, he's not even doing a sort of Hillary Clinton. Two thirds of the Republican Party are very reasonable. And then there's this other third who's a basket of deplorables. He's not doing that, like, for him, radical left lunatics. That is just the language he uses to talk about everybody who's not or who isn't maga.
- [09:29]
A
Yeah, right.
- [09:30]
B
Even. Even, like apostate Republicans are radical left lunatics to him. And I mean, there is no benefit of the doubt. I just. It's just, it's so dangerous. So I wrote a long triad today and we'll. We'll just sort of do this before. Before we move on to the meta stuff about us. So you. You saw. People just kept saying, like, you know, this isn't who we are. This isn't who we are. False. Absolutely false. American history is. Is just riddled with political violence from stem to stern. It is a deeply embedded part of our history and our culture from from the moment of the founding and the rebellion through the Civil War, through Reconstruction, through the civil rights struggle, through. I mean, this is. You know, again, I just sort of took a spin through history, like bloody Kansas. Right. You know, leading up to the Civil War. The gangs of New York, where you had all these political gangs who were, you know, literally waging street warfare against one another. In, like 1905, the governor of Idaho gets assassinated because there's like a big dispute over miners and mining unions. This is Harvey Milk. We have. We've had four presidents assassinated in 150 years. There is no other first world nation in which that's true. We had. In addition to those four, we had Ronald Reagan shot and Gerald Ford had two assassination attempts in 17 days. Within 17 days. One like this is. Political violence is always there. Right. The 70s with, you know, everything from the Weathermen and, you know, weird communist radical groups. There was. There was a. So the building which is now the Human Rights campaign building in D.C. do you know about this? That used to be Benai Breath. So that building was the B' Nai Breath headquarters.
- [11:34]
A
I'm sorry, I don't know what that is.
- [11:36]
B
It's a Jewish organization.
- [11:37]
A
Okay.
- [11:39]
B
And so this is a building in Washington, D.C. about four blocks north of the White House in the 1970s, a group of radicals with machine guns took over that building and took everybody who worked there up onto the roof and held them hostage for, like, three days. This is a crazy story. Can you imagine if a group with machine guns, like you're in some Bruce Willis Die Hard movies, had, like, a hundred office workers on the roof of. Of a building four blocks from the White House and kept them hostage for three days? Can you imagine that? What level of story that would be in modern America? Right? And this is a thing which happened and which nobody even remembers anymore. That's just like it didn't. This is an 18 history. This didn't happen in, you know, this didn't happen in 1845.
- [12:33]
A
When did it happen?
- [12:34]
B
It's like the mid-70s.
- [12:36]
A
Okay.
- [12:36]
B
So it's like, you know, like five minutes before yesterday. Very, very funny aside in this story of the b' Nai Brith takeover, this was a coordinated piece of radical action, and the. This group that took over the building simultaneously attempted to take over DC's City hall, and they shot a young staffer at City hall whose name was Marion Barry. Oh, isn't that wild?
- [13:08]
A
Yes. I didn't know Marion Barry got shot.
- [13:11]
B
He was wounded. I say shot. I don't mean he didn't die. Obviously, he later on become mayor of dc. Anyway, just funny. Small world. My point is when we say this political violence isn't who we are, that is an aspirational statement, and it is whistling past the graveyard. And it is why is precisely why our leaders don't have the room to be cute with political violence. Because their job is to recognize America's history of political violence and to always be working to tamp it down and keep it in remission, because they should recognize that it is there under the surface. It's right there, and it's so dangerous. I really, again, I really want to offer grace to every. Anybody who's like a normal person, who's on Twitter for people who do this for a living, like, I think you should be better, and I hope you do be better. But, like, whatever. I'm willing to offer grace for the people who have asked to have positions of leadership. You don't get a sort of like, well, they have their feelings. No, you have to do better. You have to do better.
- [14:26]
A
Yeah, I mean, obviously agree with that. Hold on. I just want to back up and tangle with a little bit of what you're saying. I do think that when people say, like, this isn't who we are. I take your point about political violence. Founded this country and and it exists. And I. And I think it exists, especially if you go back further in history. Like, the further back you go, the more violent it gets. And obviously there are parts of the globe that is still incredibly violent. I will say the period of time since 1980, and I think this is where a lot of people sort of our age. Ish.
- [15:03]
B
Yes.
- [15:04]
A
Kind of come from this. Like, from the time that there was like, the wall came down. Like, I remember I just have, like, a few formative political things. One is the challenger exploding. I don't really remember Reagan getting shot at or. Because it was like, did it. Was it only the one time with Hinckley? With.
- [15:26]
B
Yeah, he was. He was only shot.
- [15:27]
A
Okay. But was. Was there ever another attempt or was it just a joke he told in the crowd? Like a balloon exploded and he said, missed me. Maybe. I. Whatever. The point is. The point is. Point is that I think until 9, 11, for, like, we grew up in this, like, period of time where it's not like you didn't see violence. There was the riots in la.
- [15:52]
B
There were Oklahoma City bombing.
- [15:54]
A
Oklahoma City. It's not like there's no violence. But I do think it was a pretty.
- [16:04]
B
Club shooting.
- [16:05]
A
Yeah.
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B
But it's been a long time. Yes. It's remission. This has been a golden period.
- [16:09]
A
Yeah. Like, each of those things, they felt like punctuations in an otherwise relatively safe time, which is why they sort of hit so hard versus living in an ongoing tinderbox that is being constantly doused with lighter fluid by our elected leaders. I have never seen this before. I've never seen it before. And now we live in a world where we see it all that we're. And. And even January 6th at the time did shock the consciences of the people as it was happening. But they. They gave up some part of their humanity in that they sacrificed it on a political altar of like, well, we want to move on because this is bad for us politically. And I don't. Here we are with Donald Trump being that same guy. Like, instead of him getting better as a result of that, like, he is infinitely worse. Infinitely worse. And this is why whenever people like you have Trump derangement syndrome. No, I don't. What I've always seen in Donald Trump is that he is a bad person. He's a bad person, and as a result, he behaves badly in all of these situations. And here's the thing I want to wrestle with. Behind the paywall. Jbl. So Donald Trump is accusing people of incendiary rhetoric that leads to violence. Well, what are you supposed to do when the truth about Donald Trump is that he's a bad person? I don't want Donald Trump to be shot at. I want to defeat Donald Trump. I want to beat back his ideas. I would never want to see because I don't want anyone to be hurt in the name of political violence or hurt violence at all. But I, I will not stop telling the truth about this person. Now that, like, what do you do when you both want to, when the temperature needs to come down, but you also need to tell the truth about who someone is? It's a complicated thing.
- [18:25]
B
I am sorry to do this, guys, but we're going to, we're going to pull the, pull the curtain over with that and we're going to go have that conversation just in the family. If you want to join us, we'd love to have you. I mean, it's. Can't promise any good news. Don't know we ever get any of that. But come be with us.
- [18:53]
A
Sam.