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- [00:00]
A
Hey, guys, it's JVL and Sarah.
- [00:03]
B
What's up, guys?
- [00:05]
A
Got a big show for you today. Big secret show. A Tim free secret show. We're talking about all sorts of great things. You know, it's been a good week for America and we finally get to do a happy show with good news that's going to just. It's gonna be like. Like a. Taking a warm bath in the sunshine, right, Sarah?
- [00:23]
B
I mean, I do have a bunch of polling to go over that shows some bad news for Trump, but that's something. It's pretty bleak.
- [00:34]
A
Can't wait to get to it. Guys, if you like this, come and do the whole episode with us. Join. Join Bulwark plus, get the full secret pod. That's where all the good stuff is. Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. Hey, Sarah.
- [00:52]
B
What's up, jvl?
- [00:53]
A
Yeah, I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Woke up this morning to see a substack writer. Call me deranged substack writer. Who has appeared on. Appeared on several Bulwark podcasts over the years. He subtweeted me over the East Wing of the White House thing. It is no big deal. The president is totally within his authority. Presidents make alterations to the White House all the time. This is the smallest thing in the world. This is not what you should spend political capital on. Please. This is. Oh, this freakout is why everybody thinks these two people are so. Fuck you. Sorry. We'll bleep that out. Or maybe not.
- [01:32]
B
Okay, keep. Keep going. Well, no, it's fine.
- [01:36]
A
It's fine. So I, you know, I. The more I've thought about this, the more, the more dug in I've gotten because one of the.
- [01:49]
B
Oh, that doesn't sound like you.
- [01:51]
A
Well, it isn't always like me. I, I mean, often you and I will talk about something on this show and I will end with me going, no, you know what? You're right. You turned me around on this.
- [02:00]
B
I know, but you've written a lot of triads about this East Wing thing.
- [02:03]
A
I mean, three, I just felt like main part of the Trump superpower is like, he just does a thing and we go crazy about it for one day and then we move on to the next thing. And I sure feel like maybe we should, we should spend more than one day on this. But one of the straw man arguments about my freak out is like, oh, you know, are you saying we should make this the center of our campaign? The top priority and answer is no. It doesn't have to be any part of anybody's campaign, but it should be a state of policy position for people who say they want to become president as Democrats. And as far as like, the list of priorities, I understand that it would be a higher in the list of priorities to let's pretend we have President Gavin Newsom. It's January 2029. Yay. It is more important for him to reform the FBI, the Department of justice and Department of Homeland Security. Right? Yes, I think we'd agree. Yeah. But here's the thing. Reforming those things is going to be incredibly hard. It's going to take a lot of political capital, may require acts of Congress and legislation. And doing this thing, undoing the destruction of the East Wing, he can do in about 20 minutes. It costs nothing. You just sign the piece of paper and it goes away. And my point is that anybody who is unwilling to do the easy thing is never going to be able to do the hard thing. It's just, this is all about willpower and seriousness of purpose. If you don't have the willpower to just press the button to undo this, you are never going to have the willpower to like, dismantle ICE and, and reform the FBI and all of that stuff, because that stuff is hard and that stuff will require lots of fights and you need buy in from other stakeholders. And so if you're like, oh, I can't undo the, I can't restore the East Wing in the White House because that, I'm sorry, you're never going to do anything else. All the other stuff, you're going to.
- [04:14]
B
Let it slide, Man, I thought I was going to agree with you on the East Wing stuff, but I, boy, I don't agree with you at all on this. And it's not that I think you're deranged, but the idea that it is a prerequisite to, like, knock this down. Like, and here's the thing, I get it. I understand. I actually, I don't think you're deranged. Like, I agree with you that there is a reason that we feel emotional about him destroying the East Wing. And in a lot of ways, it's because it encapsulates a bunch of things that Trump is doing. He is a, he's lying about it. Right? He lied and said he wasn't gonn touch the East Wing. So that's a, that's one thing that we object to about Trump. Like, this has all the hallmarks of the reasons that we Think Trump is unfit. He is doing it without. Yeah. Buy in from people also. But, and this is, this is really the nature of my, my pushback to you is he is focusing on this at a time when Americans want him focused on affordability. And because he is a narcissist and because he doesn't actually have his own plans for how you. You know, he has like a few beats. Right. It's like tariffs, right. Immigration. I'm going to tell you that prices are going to be lower, but I don't actually have any policies to lower them. So I'm just going to cut taxes and hope that takes care of it. And this construction is Trump's like, toy and him tearing it out. The East Wing feels metaphorically very on the nose. The guy's tearing apart the institutions of our republic, our democratic republic. And that feels awful. And so we're getting this visual representation of it and we're like. So it feels super icky. But I gotta say, as a political matter, the idea that you focus on this as a campaign matter, not saying.
- [06:19]
A
I focus on it. I'm, I'm focused on this as a government matter.
- [06:23]
B
And I just, I think that this is a cosmetic. Like, it is.
- [06:27]
A
Sure.
- [06:28]
B
And so it is. And, and, and, and voters won't, won't care about it, not even a little.
- [06:32]
A
So that's why you should just do it. Again, this is. I am not saying that this should be part of a campaign.
- [06:39]
B
But you're saying it's like a prerequisite for anything else. I think, I actually think that the good judgment, a person of solid judgment who is going to get our democracy back on track is the kind of person who knows what to ignore and what to focus on. And that is small ball. I don't, I don't think, I don't think that nothing.
- [06:57]
A
It costs nothing.
- [06:57]
B
That's not true. That's not true. No. It's hugely disruptive to the place where everybody works. There will be.
- [07:04]
A
No, you just, you sign the piece of paper that costs no political capital. You do it on day one, you never think about it again.
- [07:11]
B
You have. That is like, it's a major construction project. There's a reason Trump is obsessed with this. Like, this is just like a practically speaking thing makes no sense. Like it. I look, I hate it. I hate it. I also think that it is not a thing to focus on. I think it is not. I don't think.
- [07:27]
A
Not saying it should be focused on. I'm not. I'm not.
- [07:29]
B
Yes, you are. You've Written three triads being like.
- [07:31]
A
Because I think it is for somebody to do the thing, not talk about the thing, do the thing. That's all. If Trump can do it because the White House belongs to the president, then the next president can undo it with the stroke of a pen.
- [07:48]
B
Sure, they can.
- [07:49]
A
And then it's done.
- [07:50]
B
And look, and maybe the thing is, I sort of don't care one way or another if they do it, because I don't think it matters that much. I think it's a weird. I don't know that obsessing about this or acting like this is the point of what the person should do. I want somebody.
- [08:08]
A
I'm not saying the point. I'm saying it is one of the things. And if you can't do this thing, then they're never going to be able to do the other thing.
- [08:16]
B
I disagree. I just don't. I don't see this. This is not like, to me, it's not a litmus test.
- [08:21]
A
They will find anybody who isn't willing to do this will find ways to wriggle out of not doing the other stuff and will say, well, I. I mean, yes, I should reform the Justice Department.
- [08:33]
B
I don't think these are related.
- [08:34]
A
People don't care about that, really. They care about the price of. I'm just going to pass more infrastructure spending and if we can get more money into West Virginia, that's how we convince the red voters of West Virginia that we're on their side.
- [08:47]
B
Yeah, I just. This, to me, does not seem related at all. Like, somebody can come in, be a reformer, undo the things that Trump has done that really matter. Like the way he's approached the FBI, like he's approached usaid, like there's all kinds of ways. But this idea that that is related, they're not related. I see. I can see they've become emotionally related to you, but they are not.
- [09:07]
A
Well, no, I think they're related because one is easy and the rest are hard. And somebody who's not willing to do the easy thing is never going to have the stomach to do the hard things.
- [09:16]
B
Yeah, I just. I just. I, like, totally reject that premise because I don't think they. I think. I hope somebody comes in ready to do the hard stuff and ignore the cosmetic stuff.
- [09:29]
A
The good news is we're not going to have free and fair elections anyway, so. I'm kidding. You know, I'm kidding. We might. We might have free and fair elections, and we have to proceed as though we will.
- [09:40]
B
So I just, I talk to a lot of election experts about this. And I ask this question all the time. And you know what they say? They say actually, like, so far, the election administrators, when the, when Trump has tried to lean on them, including Republicans, in fact, definitely Republicans, they rely on state law, like, this is a federalism for the win. And if you go deep on the election stuff, I'm not saying Trump's not going to try to mess with the elections in some way, but I am telling you, in terms of him saying, like, give me the voting machines or anything that he's tried to do to lean on election administrators has, has not worked so far.
- [10:20]
A
No, I, look, I probably, probably. Well, not probably, maybe. Well, there's no alternative. Right. You can't, you can't throw in the towel and you can't. All you can do is proceed as though there are going to be free and fair elections. Right. I mean, that, that's the only course of action. So that's what we do. That said, like, so I want to talk a little bit about the Ed Loose piece in Financial Times. I'm a Financial Times nerd and I love it and I wish it didn't cost a bazillion dollars a year. It's really expensive, but absolutely worth, if you, if you can afford it, it is worth your money. Ed Luce has a giant piece today. And what did you make of it? Because he talks to like dozens and dozens of people in and around Washington, has outstanding access. And like one of the people who says, like, yeah, I'm kind of worried about free and fair elections is Mark Warner, who is not a resistance Dem, like, who is a.
- [11:27]
B
No, he's like a third way centrist Dem.
- [11:29]
A
Yeah. And he, he said to Loose, among other things. You know, when, when Trump was sworn in, there was a lot of talk about like, free and fair elections and I just thought it was ridiculous. But now we're at the point where I'm starting to get concerned. Yeah, I think that's about like the sensible place to be. Yeah.
- [11:46]
B
Yeah. I mean, and this is where just on the election piece specifically, what I don't like is saying, like, we won't have free and fair elections and assuming it's a fait accompli, I do think we are going to be in a fight with Trump who is going to try to almost probably out in the open in a way that he's been pressure testing and seeing that nobody really is standing up to him. Although again, election administrators have, because of state laws that require certain things from them that the federal government isn't allowed to interfere with. And so they can just say the state law says no. And so far he has. Nobody's buckled for him on this. But Trump has made it very clear he doesn't respect any of these lines. Right. He's going to do Constitution, he's going to do power plays all day long. Now, whether or not he tries to do those power plays, like outside of norms, but inside the law, which is what he's doing with redistricting. You know, it's not illegal to do mid century redistricting. It's just not what we do. And so he's doing that. So him, him trying to find ways to put his thumb on the scale 100%. That's not the part about that piece, though. I mean, I, I sent that piece around this morning because there was a part in it that was to me like the nub of the nub. And it was him saying, talk to all these elites, all these people, and they all say the key to pushing back against Trump is for people to stand up to him. But also I need to be off the record because I'm not going to.
- [13:20]
A
Stand up to him who are like, willing to go on the record.
- [13:24]
B
That's right. And I think that this is, and you know, I should have talked about this more during our discussions around no Kings. I mean, I do, I kind of always talk about like the premise of the home of the brave work that we do and everything is this idea that people are the only solution because our elites have caved. They all look like Republicans roughly in circa 2018, just bowing down to Trump. The law firms, the universities, the, the, the media companies, like everybody is, is laying down for this guy. But to me, having all of them say the only way you turn it around is to stand up to him and speak out. And also I am too afraid to speak out struck me as like kind of the whole ball game around elites right now.
- [14:13]
A
Yeah, it's really, it's pretty bad. I want to point to something else in Luce's piece that crystallized something for me in ways that I had not. So many things like we know, but we couldn't put words on it. Right. So we have often talked about, not just us. Like, everybody talks about how, like, obviously Trump prefers dictators to democracies. It's why he's much closer with Putin or Orban or Kim Jong Un or Xi than he is with, like, I don't know, you know, the, the Prime Minister of the UK or, or Germany or, you know, the, or Canada. And so Loose has a section talking about Trump's corrupt dealings with, like, the Middle East. And here's, I'm just going to read this paragraph because I think it's, again, it's just very profound. Trump sees no distinction between public and private states governed by ruling families, thus find it easiest to do business with him. This leaves America's democratic allies stuck in a perpetual antechamber. And here's the, here's the money quote. This is a quote now from the foreign minister of a large NATO country. Even if we wanted to invest in Trump's crypto schemes, we would legally be unable to do it. And this is the thing, right? Like, Trump runs his whole life as pay to play.
- [15:42]
B
Right.
- [15:43]
A
And the problem is that democracies, functioning democracies, can't do pay to play even if they wanted to. Right. If Sweden decided, we, look, we don't like it, but we would like to pay Trump off to get him to do what we want. The problem is that they have rules and laws in their country which forbid them from doing it. This is why Trump hates them. Right, Right.
- [16:09]
B
Yes. Can I just, just while we're on things, ideas that have crystallized recently for us, there's a guy who I don't know well and I, I, I've just seen him on Twitter, this guy, Richard Hanania, who was somebody who was like pro Trump and anti Trump. And I think he is maybe problematic for reasons that I don't know about.
- [16:32]
A
So fairly problematic.
- [16:33]
B
Okay. Is that right? He's, it's. So this is my understanding. I should probably run down why. However he wrote, he frequently writes some of the most trenchant observations about the Trump moment of anybody else on Twitter. And he had one the other day that said, here's the problem and this is true, but he's framed it in a way I talk, I talk about this a lot, but he framed it in a way that I thought was better than the way I talk about it because I often talk about the scale of what Trump does and how it makes it impossible for voters to get their heads around any one thing. And it is why, if Biden has one, one like Achilles heel, it's Hunter. Hunter has corruption problems. Hunter is not present in the United States. But Hunter is a thing where he has, he's using his dad's name for access. He's selling his paintings for. It's a, it's a scandal that people can get their heads around. It is something that the entire right wing media ecosystem like, went deep on. They had pictures, whatever in the scheme of things, other than when Biden pardoned him at the end, which, you know, difficult call, I wouldn't have done it because he promised not to. But, like, whatever, it is minuscule in relation to the level of Trump's corruption. I mean, it's not even. They're not in the same universe. They're not in the same ballpark, not in the same solar system. Right. You cannot compare them. This isn't both sides. It's, like, nonsense to act like it is a both sides thing. But his point and that he made that I thought was really good, is even if the media, or even if Commentary was trying was, could focus 100% of the time on Trump's corruption, it still wouldn't be enough. Like, there's no way to proportionally no cover it, because you would just have to do nothing. Like the media. This is why they're not built for it. They're not built for it because to actually match the scale of his corruption, every single story in your paper should be about the scale of Trump's corruption. And absent that, absent that, you end up with something that in no way can encompass this difference in scale, the asymmetry in scale that that is doing it. And to me, just the idea of, like, yeah, to adequately cover Trump's corruption for the, from the, the media or anybody else, it would be you. Just, like, you can't cover anything else because it's so big. But they can't bring themselves to do that just out of sheer their own, like, sense of commitment to what it means to be sort of neutral, to be neutral on these propositions.
- [19:33]
A
They would have to see themselves as like a DA's office, right? And reporting on the administration as if it were a criminal enterprise that they were investigating. And our media is not built to do that. Like, it has to assume that, like, you know, whatever you think of the administration, they may be wrong, they may be bad people, but they are not. Like, they're not intentional criminals. And Trump just sees himself as a mafia don. Like, it. It is just gangster government. And they're not built for that.
- [20:15]
B
Because, like, if you, if you kill one person, it's a scandal, but once you're killing, like, 40 at some point, they're like, how many times can I call him a murderer? And I, I just. But can I just. As a. Just. We can move on to Canada, but I would just say we should endeavor to cover him at the scale of the problem. Like our mainstream media, I know, should endeavor to impress upon the public. How absolutely out of the ordinary. All of this is in aggregate, not just in the specifics of every scandal that happens every day.
- [20:54]
A
This Loose piece in the Financial Times. The Financial Times is not. It's not even the Wall Street Journal. It's so straight laced. It is. It is like an unbelievable. And to have a piece like every, every CEO in Europe who saw this piece today has to be thinking, holy shit, the ft, who is not resistance born. They're telling me that from the ground in America, it looks like Hungary or Turkey.
- [21:26]
B
Yeah. Although Loose. Loose has been on this beat.
- [21:29]
A
Like, oh, yeah, he's been great, but.
- [21:31]
B
He is one of us.
- [21:32]
A
Totally. But. But only because, like, it's real. Like, he sees the things that are real.
- [21:38]
B
All right, sorry, go ahead. Canada.
- [21:39]
A
Canada. So in game seven of the American League Championship Series, there was a commercial ran by, I think, the province of Ontario, which they just ran a whole, whole bunch of Reagan quotes about tariffs. And this made Donald Trump very mad. He suspended all trade negotiations with Canada. And then it triggered the Reagan foundation to say that this was. This was fake news on the part of the Canadians and that they are pursuing legal action for taking the President's words out of context. So it seems to be the Reagan Foundation's position now that actually Reagan would have been totally on board with the Trump trade wars and tariffs. Not true. The way for us to protect Reagan's legacy is to make sure that today's Republicans see him as being on the side of Trump. Oh, and I, I am interested in this for a couple reasons. One of which, though, is that Reagan is the only guy that Trump feels the need to claim for himself and to not say, was a sucker and an idiot. That's interesting to me. Right. He can say that George W. Bush and everybody else, idiots and wankers and they were suckers, but he has to stay on side with Reagan and say, actually, Reagan was a great president and Reagan would be with me. That's interesting to me. That says something about the vestigial Republican mind and their need to hold on to St. Ronnie, I guess.
- [23:33]
B
Although I got to say, I've listened to Republicans over the last, you know, now we're going on a decade here, basically be like, well, we don't want zombie Reaganism. Reaganism. And when, when, you know, St. Larry of Delaware. I'm sorry, St. Larry of Maryland. My bad. Of Maryland. When he kind of started to. He was putting his toe in the water on a presidential campaign. He did it with the bust of Reagan. Right. We've got to return to this. And at the time it was sort of like, I've never heard Trump talk about Reagan in any way, sort of period. And so it's interesting to me that on the tariffs he feels like he needs Reagan on his side.
- [24:20]
A
Yeah, it's weird, isn't it?
- [24:21]
B
It is weird. I wonder what that's about. Other than, other than I do think something's happening to Trump in his old age with all these North Korea style. Like every single person in his orbit now is kissing his ring and his ass so hard that I think, like, he just can't abide the ghost of Reagan disagreeing with him on tariffs because he needs to so thoroughly have co opted the party that even it's the fact that historically so many of the people in the party would have been against everything he's doing. He needs to pretend like they were.
- [25:05]
A
It's a.
- [25:06]
B
What do you make of it? Do you have a theory?
- [25:08]
A
I mean, I, well, my theory. The Reagan foundation. And here I have this right here. The Ronald Reagan Presidential foundation and Institute learned that the government of Ontario, Canada created an ad campaign using selective audio and video of President Ronald Reagan delivering his radio address to the nation on free and Fair Trade, dated April 25, 1987. The ad misrepresents the presidential radio address. The government of Ontario did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks. The Ronald Reagan Presidential foundation and Institute is reviewing its legal options in this matter.
- [25:47]
B
You don't have legal options. You're allowed to just like play how dare tape of Reagan get.
- [25:52]
A
They didn't ask permission to play tape of Ronald Reagan. Sarah.
- [25:57]
B
Oh my God. That's embarrassing.
- [26:01]
A
You think? I mean, I, it's wild. It is wild to me. And it's interesting. Here's, here's what's interesting. So they, the people at the Reagan foundation clearly sense that in order to protect Reagan's legacy, they need to be on the right side of Trump. Right? But they also don't want to say, actually Reagan would love tariffs because he.
- [26:31]
B
Did it, he famously was against tariffs.
- [26:33]
A
So instead they have, their position has to be. This is a terrible ad. It's fake news. And how dare they use Reagan because they're bad people and it was misrepresented. It's, it's like the way the new move for like the, the young Nazis with their texts, how they, they say, well, you know, I can't vouch for the authenticity of any of that because AI is so prevalent. I mean, who even knows if any of those things were real? Instead of saying, like, oh, I disavow those remarks or I shouldn't have said them, or what. It's like, I don't even know if it's real. That. That seems to be the Reagan Foundation's position here. I mean, you know, it's so edited and selective, and they didn't even ask permission. So, you know, what a bunch of cowards.
- [27:26]
B
Yeah, that's a pretty straightforward one.
- [27:28]
A
One last thing on Canada, Here is Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, after he gave remarks on. On Trump suspending trade negotiations with the nation of Canada because he did not like a TV ad run by the province of Ontario.
- [27:47]
B
Donald Trump is such a baby.
- [27:51]
A
Here's Carney. We can't control the trade policy of the U.S. we recognize it has fundamentally changed from the policy of the 1980, 1990s, 2000s. And it's a situation where the US has tariffs against every trading partner. What we can control is developing new partnerships, including with economic giants of Asia. But this is.
- [28:15]
B
Trump is making China great again.
- [28:17]
A
The whole world understands reality, right? The rest of the world, they know what time it is. Mark Carney knows what time it is. China knows what time it is. It's only here in America that the American people are like, oh, I don't know. Everything's fine. All right. Want to go behind the paywall?
- [28:36]
B
Yeah.
- [28:36]
A
Because I don't think it real dark.
- [28:37]
B
I don't think that's what people think based on the latest polling.
- [28:42]
A
All right, guys, if you want to hear the rest of the show, come become a member. Like, we don't. We don't. We paywall almost nothing. It's like my newsletter, which nobody reads anyway, and this show, and lots of.
- [28:54]
B
People read your newsletter. And also, if you guys are looking for something else to go listen to, go listen to my talk with Dylan Byers at the Grill Room, where we talk business about the Bulwark. And one of the things I talk about is that the magic of the Bulwark is that we make most things free. But for people who want to ride with us, who care about the mission, because we're not just trying to sell it for a big bag of money. Like, we need you to support us so that we can keep it free, so we can have the influence that comes from not hiding everything behind a.
- [29:28]
A
Paywall, come join us, guys.