JVL (5:15)

So we don't know. And you know, I, I don't want to prejudge it. We will find out. I mean, I, My general view of classified documents mishandling is that, I mean, a lot of it is really circumstantial and like, one of the reasons normies, right. If you are just a line agent in the FBI or the NSA or something and you, you don't have access to all that many classified documents, which is why it's a, a big deal if you mishandle them. Whereas at the upper echelons of government where you're like deeply involved in record keeping about what you do, there's, there's a, just a, a sea of documents. Documents do tend to be over classified. Like we do classify too much stuff and like innocent mistakes are the norm, not the, not the exception. And like the, the law of this as practice is typically like it's self policing or you know, in cases where you don't like you find yourself, you yourself find classified documents. You're like, oh crap, have your lawyer call the archives or the Justice Department to try to arrange a return of them. It just happens. And what made the Trump prosecution notable wasn't that he had classified documents. Like that is a totally, that's a non story. What made it notable was that he engaged in a prolonged period of lying to the Department of Justice about whether or not he had them and he refused to give them back and engaged in all sorts of criminal activity in order to avoid giving them back. Like that is, that is different. It's just a wholly different. Now maybe John Bolton, I was clear.

Sarah Longwell (7:21)

That I also thought it was different. Right. I made that clear.

JVL (7:23)

No, no, I.

Sarah Longwell (7:24)

Completely different.

JVL (7:25)

Maybe, maybe Bolton did the same thing and we'll find out. But I will say this is one of the. Because we're going to get real dark as we go. One of the few things that I feel relatively good about over the next three years is the criminal justice system. Because I think we have already seen that the Department of Justice is totally politicized and is going to prosecute people almost entirely based on politics, but they still have to convince juries. And that's one thing that MAGA can't fix. Right. Like they can't get into the jury room. And what we've seen with grand juries already has been very encouraging. And I, you know, I mean you could see where they will try to bring these cases in friendlier venues. Right. Like, you know, oh, we'll see if we can find a way to try them in Texas. Right. But yeah, in general I feel like a jury of 12 of your peers is like the closest to an uncorruptible place as there is. So I feel pretty good about that.

Sarah Longwell (8:41)

Even with your low opinion of humans.

JVL (8:43)

Yeah. Because one person in the jury room who is like not a mouth Breather can just say no, right? This is, this is why, you know, it only takes one of 12. You know, what are the chances if you put 12 people together that one of them will have an IQ over 80? I mean, it's not bad. That's pretty good odds. So that's bad. But I want to move us into item two here, because what I'm trying to do is layer. This feels like it was a slow newsweek, and yet I think there's so much that happened that just feels like authoritarianism run amok. Andrew Cuomo said this week that if Mamdani wins, quote, Trump will take over the city and it will be Mayor Trump who runs the city. This is probably not true, but on the other hand, like, it's not, it's not a ridiculous political attack, right? The idea that if, if Mamdani wins and Donald Trump has made it clear he does not like Mamdani, then Donald Trump will attempt to punish the city of New York for electing a politician he does not like, and that we're now at a place where that is just a totally acceptable of. Sure. Of course. Of course he would do that.

Sarah Longwell (10:11)

Can I just quickly flag, though, how insane of an argument that is from Cuomo? Elect me because the authoritarian likes me better than the other guy.

JVL (10:21)

I mean, it's, it's not insane.

Sarah Longwell (10:22)

Shut up, Cuomo.

JVL (10:23)

It may be the best argument he has.

Sarah Longwell (10:28)

I don't know. I just, I think it, I think it demonstrates just how cynical and nihilistic Cuomo is sure to try to. He's basically like, threatening New Yorkers with Trump to get himself elected, even though he's Trump's preferred candidate. Gross, gross, gross. Okay. Like we've been saying, I'm anti anti Mamdani and I'm, I'm hard anti Cuomo. That said, I do. When we were in New York recently, I was talking to someone in New York and I was asking them, like, you know, I'm surprised you guys have avoided the National Guard so far. Like everywhere else, they've been going in to every major liberal city, or at least saber rattling about it. So why not New York? Why do you think? I, I, I suspect that would be in a way where you could sort of get away with Chicago because a. Whether it's true or not, the perception of Chicago as like, very, very like a place of deep crime, I think is enough of a national story that they can sort of use the pretext of that. It's also like the, and then D.C. i was going to say, like the Media is here, but we also have home rule complications that make D.C. a little bit different. You go to New York, you are full on in the national media. You are, you are in the place where the finance, finance and media live. And I wonder if there's something about New York that is causing him to not do that yet. But maybe it's true that as soon as Mamdani is in there, they will do the National Guard.

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JVL (13:53)

I mean, I think it's as simple as Eric Adams is mayor and Eric Adams is a Trump ally.

Sarah Longwell (13:58)

Yeah, right.

JVL (13:59)

And so that's right, yeah, you're the pretext. Trump wants pretexts. And so the pretext to move on New York would be, well, they elected a socialist and we got to stop socialism. Look at what this horrible socialist has done, right? And then it'll be, look, everything was fine in New York when Eric Adams was Eric Adams, who I've just pardoned or whatever. When he was in office, everything was fine, but it's all gone to hell since you elected this socialist. And, and then they'll go, I mean that's just what I assume also it could be they can't eat two major cities at the same time. I mean, Chicago is sucking up all of federal resources. I don't think they can do Chicago and New York simultaneously. I think they have to do these things in serial.

Sarah Longwell (14:50)

What happens when there's, like, a real emergency? Like the kind of thing the National Guard would do before it was planting trees in major cities.

JVL (14:58)

You mean like a. No, kings protest that they have to go break up, or do you mean something different? Different kind of emergency. What kind of emergency? Are you talking about a political emergency or, like, an actual natural disaster?

Sarah Longwell (15:08)

I meant like a natural disaster.

JVL (15:10)

I can tell you exactly what'll happen. If the natural disaster is in a blue area, they won't show up. And if it is in a red area, they will show up belatedly. And none of the voters there will blame them. They will blame the Democrats. Somehow it'll be, Somehow it was AOC's fault that the National Guard didn't get to Asheville North Carol or something, because that's how those people are.

Sarah Longwell (15:36)

All right, keep going. What are we getting? We're getting progressively darker. You say?

JVL (15:40)

Yeah, we're gonna get progressively darker. Pentagon has purged the press corps. There are only three American news outlets which are now credentialed at the Pentagon.

Sarah Longwell (15:53)

One of them's Oan, One of which.

JVL (15:55)

I have written for.

Sarah Longwell (15:58)

Oh, the Federalist. Did you write for the Federalist?

JVL (16:01)

I did.

Sarah Longwell (16:01)

What'd you write?

JVL (16:03)

I wrote a piece, a long piece, about how Prince Hans was not actually the bad guy in Frozen.

Sarah Longwell (16:16)

Are you serious? Are you telling me the truth right now?

JVL (16:18)

Yeah.

Sarah Longwell (16:20)

Okay.

JVL (16:23)

This is the piece I wrote for the Federalist.

Sarah Longwell (16:25)

Man, I got to tell you, we were living in a different world when you just had the time to sit there and opine on the frozen characters.

JVL (16:35)

My case for people listening is not that, of course, Prince Hans is the villain in the movie as we saw it, but if you go deep in the early versions of the frozen script, the reason Elsa has these powers is because she is cursed. Like, there's a prophecy, and they did away with the idea of a prophecy. And once there's no prophecy, which is powering her arc and all of the tragedy they have to create. They had to create a villain, right? Because the prophecy was the villain. And so that's why they took. So Prince Hans, his character, he takes a turn that is basically totally unearned. Like, he is a genuinely. Like, hey, Prince Hans is great. And when he turns and goes bad, you're like, wait, A minute. That feels out of left field. The answer is it was out of left field. It's because, as he was originally written, he wasn't the villain.

Sarah Longwell (17:32)

Anyway, it does feel out of left field, now that you mention it.

JVL (17:35)

It's the only thing wrong with that movie. It's a great movie.

Sarah Longwell (17:38)

Great. Great music.

JVL (17:39)

Yeah, fantastic. Anyway, that was the piece I wrote for the Federalist. Again, it was a different time. So our American Pentagon press corps is the Federalist, the Epoch Times and oan and six Turkish outlets which are of various connections to Erdogan.

Sarah Longwell (17:56)

Well, like a surprising number of Turkish outlets.

JVL (17:59)

Is there twice as many Turkish members of the Pentagon press corps as American?

Sarah Longwell (18:06)

Well, we're all gonna have to start reading the Turkish papers to find out what's going on at our Pentagon.

JVL (18:11)

So I don't know if you listened to Tim's Ann Applebaum show yesterday. I assume you did. She. Don't answer that. Don't answer that. She made a point which I had not considered, which is that the Pentagon and the Trump administration knew full well that no American news outlets would agree to this. And the whole point of it was to get them out of the building so that we now have official state sanctioned media outlets. Because that's what the Federalists and the Epoch Times and OAN are now. They are people who. They will report only the administration approved news. No different than, you know, Xing Zhao or Pravda or anything. So they've gone from being like, you know, obviously, totally, and maybe there's. This is a distinction without a difference, but from like, just ideological allies and political allies to wholly owned subsidiaries in terms of what they are allowed to report because they've signed a pledge. I thought that was pretty sinister.

Sarah Longwell (19:22)

That is. Well, it is sinister. It's interesting, this idea that they wanted them out of the building on purpose because I will tell you, I am surprised at how many people didn't sign it, including people like the Washington examiner. And because we've had a real problem. I mean, Trump has been doing the thing where they kick out reporters who have been reporting stuff. Right. They're going after the Wall Street Journal. And the media has been. Has done nothing to defend themselves, their professional allies. Right. Their colleagues. And I was actually was genuinely viewed it as a positive, like a net positive.

JVL (20:09)

Oh, don't. Don't do that.

Sarah Longwell (20:12)

This is unwilling to sign it.

JVL (20:14)

Now this, this wasn't principled. This is. I mean, what, what distinguishes Newsmax from OAN or the Federalist or the Epoch Times is that those three outlets which are on site are judgment proof because they have no assets like those. Those are fly by night operations with nothing for anybody to ever come after. Whereas if you are Fox or the Wall Street Journal or even Newsmax. Newsmax is a publicly traded company. You can get yourself into legal trouble. Right. You sign on that pledge and you wind up breaking it somehow accidentally. And now you are opening yourself up to legal action and you have assets. That's what this is about for them. They're like, no, no, we can't do that. We'll still be friendly to the administration. This is about principle. But like, we do have to protect our assets. And so they're, they're, they are not judgment proof. And you know, Oan and the Epoch Times and the Federalist are.

Sarah Longwell (21:17)

Okay, well that. All right, you've convinced me that that is deeply sinister. And actually the only thing I'm going to. Yes. And on this is it does layer into what is. To me. Sometimes people ask the question, you know, what keeps you up at night? What are you most worried about? And for me, it is. And it's happening slowly, but it's happening really, really clearly. The media legacy and independent and new is increasingly owned by Trump. Sympathetic allies, people who are trying to curry favor with Trump. And that goes for Paramount and the Ellisons who have purchased Paramount, which owns cbs, they are trying to buy Warner Brothers. Goes for Elon Musk who owns X and Mark Zuckerberg who own, owns Instagram and Threads and, and Facebook. It goes for many of the people who are working on the AI slop that is coming our way. It Tick Tock was just sold to Trump's allies. Like, the. The extent to which the media ecosystem is becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump and his allies cannot be overstated. And that has the very long term ramifications. And so this is another way in which the more they own the media or it is seeking Trump's approval, the more they feel emboldened to do things like this.

JVL (22:54)

Yeah. All right. I want to take you further down the hole, but we should do that behind the paywall. So, I mean, what, what a, what a great sell that is to people listening to the show. If you would like to be even more depressed and hear even darker stuff, you should become a member of Bulwark Plus.

Sarah Longwell (23:13)

I will say, depending on what he's about to say, I may have an optimistic take, but I may not.

JVL (23:19)

Spoiler. She's not going to be able to.

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