1072: Did JD Vance Tell the Pope to Shut Up?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Next Level – Ep. 1072: Did JD Vance Tell the Pope to Shut Up?

Date: April 15, 2026
Hosts: Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, Jonathan V. Last (JVL)
Description: Sarah, Tim, and JVL break down the week's biggest political and cultural stories with their signature mix of insight and banter. This episode centers on JD Vance and Donald Trump’s attacks on the Pope, the state of the Trump administration, campaign chaos, foreign policy disasters, and a major Democratic scandal.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the political dust-up caused by JD Vance and Donald Trump’s public criticism of the Pope—despite Vance’s status as a Catholic convert. The trio explores the implications for religious voters, the performative nature of MAGA spirituality, Trump’s growing troubles with his base, and ongoing US foreign policy blunders. The hosts also dissect the fallout from Eric Swalwell’s abrupt resignation and what it means for Democratic politics, and reflect on the surprising defeat of Viktor Orbán’s regime in Hungary and its meaning for international illiberalism.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. JD Vance vs. the Pope: Authenticity or Axe to Grind?

[03:22 - 05:34]

• Vance’s Hypocrisy: Hosts lampoon JD Vance, a high-profile Catholic convert who just weeks before releasing a memoir about his faith, told the Pope to "stay in his lane and shut up" regarding criticism of Trump administration policy.
  • JVL: "He’s never even been to the church that’s on his conversion book... then says the Pope should shut his fucking piehole."
• Religious Posturing: The group skewers both Vance and Trump for their inauthentic religious claims.
  • Tim Miller [05:37]: "JD Vance is not an authentic spiritual person and neither is Donald Trump."
• Moral Limits and the Pontiff's Authority: They mock the idea that the Pope should stick to “matters of morality” and not war, pointing out that Catholic teaching has always addressed both.
  • Jane Coaston [05:02]: "That’s just not something a Catholic would say... the Pontiff’s remit is quite a bit wider."

Memorable banter:

• JVL [03:30]: "Is that teabagging the Pope?"
• Jane Coaston [03:33]: "No. Eiffel towering."

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2. Trump, Evangelicals, and the Fracturing Right

[06:11 - 13:50]

• Trump Losing His Grip? The hosts note a shift within evangelical and conservative Catholic circles after Trump’s “Jesus AI” debacle—some are beginning to see him as “demon possessed” or even the Antichrist.
  • Jane Coaston [13:50]: "She said, Trump has crossed the line. He might be the Antichrist. This is a woman that is a three-time Trump voter."
• Signs of a Crumbling Coalition:
  • Movement figures like Tucker Carlson and Bishop Robert Barron offer half-hearted condemnation.
  • Tim Miller [11:29]: "He is having trouble keeping people on side... he’s lashing out."
• Potential Impacts: Even a small sliver of defectors in the evangelical base could dramatically affect Trump’s prospects.
  • Jane Coaston [14:13]: "If 10% of the evangelical base decides we might have got tricked by the devil, I'm great. I'm into it."

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3. Foreign Policy Fiascos: Iran, Blockades, and Failed “Deals”

[19:35 - 33:59]

• JD Vance’s Failed Diplomatic Tour: JD’s efforts in Hungary and Pakistan backfire; U.S. enters uncertain, dangerous territory with Iran.
  • JVL [20:44]: "He went to Pakistan to negotiate a ceasefire. In fact, the ceasefire is now over."
  • Jane Coaston [22:16]: "He’s better suited for being the fake Pope than VP."
• Administration’s Belligerence: Trump’s team celebrates war over diplomacy, refuses to limit civilian casualties, pardons war criminals, and puts forth military propaganda.
  • JVL [10:48]: "This is an administration which has pardoned war criminals... puts out snuff porn videos... threatens genocide."
• No Strategic Objective: Negotiations with Iran are erratic, based on Trump’s personal psychology, not any coherent U.S. interest.
  • Jane Coaston [31:22]: "We don’t have objectives anymore... It’s just truly based on the psychology of Donald Trump."

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4. Hungary’s Shock Election: The Limits of Illiberalism

[35:47 - 50:27]

• Orbán’s Defeat: The Hungarian opposition delivers a stunning blow to Viktor Orbán’s autocratic regime, which many American conservatives had admired.
  • Jane Coaston [40:23]: "I was super happy about it... the viral posts of the gays kissing in Budapest outside the celebration."
• Rod Dreher and the American ‘Orbanist’ Right: Discussion about conservative writer Rod Dreher’s rationalizations for Orbán’s loss, blaming Instagram posts and “corruption optics,” not systemic corruption itself.
  • JVL [39:14]: “Rod’s piece does not say Orban shouldn’t have done the corruption. He says... he shouldn’t [let] oligarchs’ children rub Hungarians' faces in it.”
• What It Means for the U.S.: The defeat is uplifting; it proves illiberal systems can be pushed back by civic action.
  • Tim Miller [43:21]: "Because Donald Trump and MAGA have intertwined themselves with Orbanism... to see it defeated does have implications."
• Ross Douthat’s Cope: NYT columnist argues that Orbán’s defeat means Hungary wasn’t truly illiberal—hosts mock this logic.
  • Jane Coaston [46:23]: "When the Trump thing totally unravels... they’ll drop columns about how the problem was people who were a little too alarmed."

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5. Democratic Scandal: The Fall of Eric Swalwell

[58:14 - 66:10]

• Quick Resignation: The hosts discuss how Swalwell, plagued by misconduct scandals, is forced out rapidly—unlike many Republicans.
  • JVL [58:14]: "From the moment I first saw that guy... something’s wrong."
• Impact on California Gubernatorial Race: Swalwell’s exit reshapes the race; Tom Steyer likely benefits due to deep pockets, as Democrats rush to unify.
  • Jane Coaston [61:19]: "I think people will coalesce behind Steyer... to me, the more relevant element... is the impact on national politics."
• Rubén Gallego’s Sticky Situation: Gallego is criticized for a lackluster response given his close friendship with Swalwell.
  • Tim Miller [66:10]: "He’s got that deer-in-headlights look... he’s caught a real stray here."

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6. The Standards Debate: Moral Hypocrisy and Realpolitik

[71:05 - 77:28]

• Do Standards Still Matter? The crew ponders whether personal conduct still matters for politicians in the era of Trump.
  • JVL [71:10]: "Married people out constantly drinking and hitting on people... shouldn’t be trusted with high office."
  • Jane Coaston [73:24]: "This is a very heavy topic at the end of a long, good show... but I think this is going to be an important discussion inside Democratic circles."
• America’s Shifting Morality: Voters’ tolerance for personal foibles has increased, but serious offenses like assault remain disqualifying—at least for Democrats.
  • Tim Miller [75:40]: “Personal virtue matters a little bit less than it used to. But assault, for Democrats, is still a line, which is good.”

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• JVL [04:52]: "Does he mean like adultery or bearing false witness or covetousness... is that the sort of thing the Pope should weigh in on vis a vis the American President?"
• Jane Coaston [06:39]: "It’s just tremendously bad luck that JD Vance is always surrounded by assholes everywhere he goes."
• Tim Miller [25:23]: "People are starting to say 'Marco Rubio is really impressing me.' ... The meme of Marco getting every job, it’s like he’s the only person not a screw up."
• JVL [51:50]: “It is very, very hard to imagine a Democratic candidate winning a presidential election with more than 53% of the vote... the margins that any Democratic opposition will be working with here will be much, much smaller.”
• Jane Coaston [54:05]: “It’s critical to absolutely humiliate them and snuff them out... forcing them to change is as achievable as reforming the 300-year-old sclerotic democracy.”
• Tim Miller [75:40]: "Personal virtue matters a little bit less... but assault for Democrats is still a line, which is good."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• JD Vance and the Pope Controversy: [03:22 – 07:02]
• Religious Voters and Trump Backlash: [13:13 – 16:09]
• Foreign Policy, Iran, Vance Abroad: [19:35 – 33:59]
• Hungary Election, Orban’s Defeat: [35:47 – 50:27]
• Dem Scandal: Swalwell Resigns: [58:14 – 66:10]
• Standards and Hypocrisy Debate: [71:05 – End]

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Tone and Style

The episode maintains the trio’s familiar irreverent, sharp-witted, “friends in a bar” banter. They oscillate between mockery (“Is that teabagging the Pope?”), genuine frustration at elite hypocrisy, policy wonkiness, and sobering warnings about democracy’s fragility.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

This episode is a showcase of The Bulwark team’s ability to dissect headline-grabbing absurdities (JD Vance vs. the Pope), expose the performative and opportunistic nature of modern right-wing politics, scrutinize the shifting moral standards in American public life, and—just maybe—find hope in unexpected developments abroad. It’s equal parts roast, rant, focus group recap, and civics lesson.

Transcript

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[Sarah Spain]

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[Jane Coaston]

10% of the evangelical base decides we might have got tricked by the devil, I'm great.

[JVL]

I'm into it.

[Jane Coaston]

Awesome.

[JVL]

Love it.

[Jane Coaston]

And it could be right, by the way. He could be demon possessed. I'm not ruling it out.

[JVL]

Hello everyone. This is JVL here with my best friends Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the Bulwark. A little bit of shameless self promotion. The Webby Awards for voting. JVL closing.

[Tim Miller]

You have to stop.

[JVL]

And he tried to make me set

[Tim Miller]

up a six hours. He tried to make me set up a burner email.

[JVL]

Can't make you do anything you don't want to do. You are multiple emails out of the field.

[Tim Miller]

It's not even close.

[Jane Coaston]

Why did you not ask one of the nerds at the office just to create you a bot army to do this if it's that?

[JVL]

Because that would not be authentic and I want to win authentically. Yes, it is asking my you asked me to set up a burnout. JVL has a pos. I just asked if you happen to have, say, spare email accounts set aside for your children that you could log in, which would be jit, because your children would vote for me if they knew that the Webby existed and they had access to the Internet, So I don't think that would be an authentic seven. My lead over second place is only 61 points right now. And that is unacceptable. It could go away in a heartbeat and we need to lock this thing down.

[Jane Coaston]

Is the second place newsletter that like Canadian Energy Report?

[JVL]

It is, and it's a very fine newsletter. I love their product. I think it's great. But guys, I want this.

[Tim Miller]

I'm gonna set up a bot army to go vote against you. I'm gonna set up a bot army to. We're gonna start. We're gonna swarm you. Yes, I will.

[JVL]

Don't you do that.

[Tim Miller]

I'm get all Hasan Piker's people against you.

[Jane Coaston]

That should be doable.

[JVL]

All right. Also very quickly, tickets are going on sale this week for the California Bulwark Live tour. I will not be there, but it will be a fantastic show all the same. They're going to be in San Diego on May 20, La on May 21. The presale for subscribers starts today and then general pop tickets go on sale Friday. So get in now. TheBullWerk.com events. That's the Bulwark.com events. Don't sleep on these tickets the way some people did in Minnesota because they will go fast.

[Tim Miller]

We're not adding second shows this time.

[Jane Coaston]

No.

[Tim Miller]

So go get them.

[JVL]

So JD Vance and Donald Trump are tag teaming the Pope.

[Tim Miller]

JV praising.

[JVL]

Is that. Is that teabagging the Pope? Is that the better?

[Jane Coaston]

No. Eiffel towering.

[Tim Miller]

You've lost me. Is that. What does that mean? I don't know.

[Jane Coaston]

You just kind of imagine it in your head.

[Tim Miller]

Is that like.

[Jane Coaston]

It's kind of like the triangle of doom. The triangle of doom.

[JVL]

So I will say it is funny to me that the guy who is a Catholic convert who has written a memoir about his conversion story and his lifelong love of Catholicism is now a couple weeks before that book drops saying, you know, the Holy Father should just stay in his own lane and shut up. Talk about shut up, dude.

[Jane Coaston]

Stick to Jesus.

[JVL]

Leo, the guy who has a church that isn't Catholic, that he's never been to on the COVID of his book about converting to Catholicism, then says before the book drops that the Pope should shut his fucking pie hole. Sure, why not?

[Tim Miller]

He said in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality. And I was like, that's so interesting because it feels like a. These are matters of bombing people, murdering

[Jane Coaston]

people, not a matter of morality.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And also, I mean, if. If J.D. vance wants the Pope to start weighing in on Donald Trump's issues around morality, I think there's a lot of context.

[JVL]

Does he mean like adultery or bearing false witness or covetousness or theft? Is that the sort of thing he thinks the Pope should weigh in on vis a vis the American President?

[Jane Coaston]

I know the listeners are going to get sick of all the cradle Catholic talk with me and JVL and Jane Coston on Friday at this point. But like, again, that's also just not something that a Catholic would say like that. The idea that the Pope's remit should be limited to morality like it is, it's a very, you know, kind of axe type mindset towards what the role would be of a spiritual, of a spiritual leader. You know, the Pontiff's remit is quite a bit, Quite a bit wider. A wider berth, I would say.

[Tim Miller]

I have a theory on this.

[JVL]

Please.

[Tim Miller]

It's that JD Vance is not an authentic spiritual person and neither is Donald Trump. Okay, got it. I don't know if that's too far out on a limb for you guys, but I think that maybe these guys don't mean it.

[Jane Coaston]

Don't you think he should try to convert his wife before he writes a book for converting everybody else? That's just something to think about. I mean, the kids aren't even really going to church. What is he doing? It's the fakest shit I've ever seen in my entire life. And you know, you'd think that he could at least pretend to like the first American Pope if he's going to do a book on this Catholic rollout, at least pretend to like him.

[Tim Miller]

They have to do this because the first American Catholic Pope doesn't like them. And he's being sort of clear on it.

[Jane Coaston]

Yeah, but a lot of people don't like J.D. vance. And he's figured out how to manage that throughout his whole life. I mean, he was pretty unlikable in high school, unlikable at Yale. His whole book was about that, how offended he was that everybody was mean to him. His parents didn't really like him. Like, he was not alike. He's not well liked. And so he's figured out how to navigate that in other settings. And so I don't know about in this setting how he would tremendously bad

[JVL]

luck that JD Vance is always surrounded by assholes everywhere he goes.

[Jane Coaston]

I know, but it's just like, you know, one thing you consider saying is I've got nothing but respect for the Pope. You know, we're going to appreciate and consider his guidance. You know, the Holy Father is very important to me as a leader of the church. You know, Donald Trump has to do what's best for the nation. Right? Like, you know, you could just do that. You don't have to.

[JVL]

This is what happens all the time.

[Tim Miller]

This is how Riley Gaines, you know, responded to Trump when he. After she said that perhaps he should not post pictures of himself as Jesus responded with, I've never liked Riley Gaines. Which, you know, what was her response to that, Sarah? Her response was, I hope to be in heaven with Donald Trump because he's a wonderful man. I just. I just disagree with him on this point. But, you know, and I was like, that is embarrassing for you.

[JVL]

She begged like a dog.

[Jane Coaston]

What vision of heaven has Donald Trump in it? I mean, honestly.

[JVL]

Honestly, we saw it. It's the one with that weird forearmed demi gorgon with the no head and the spikes sticking out of it.

[Jane Coaston]

Maybe it's kind of my version of heaven. Maybe you die and then all of a sudden, you know, you're in this. You're in this place. It's like Treasure island in the Pinocchio movie. Everybody's partying, people are having sex. You're like, donald Trump's over there. Pin like, shit, I'm in heaven. Well, no, they weren't. They weren't having sex, but, you know, the kids were smoking cigars. You know, the kids. Kids were drinking. Yeah, okay, right. And maybe it's like that you think you're in heaven. It's like a good place situation. You think that you're in heaven, Donald Trump's there, and then you come to find out, actually, no, no.

[JVL]

Bad place.

[Jane Coaston]

You're in the.

[Tim Miller]

I will tell you, if I wind up anywhere and see Donald Trump there, I will know immediately I'm in hell. Even if it's not actual hell, it will certainly be my hell.

[JVL]

All right, so for. For people who are under the age of, like, 60, who don't have much of a memory of the papacy, pre John Paul ii being against wars is kind of the. The single biggest constant in potpourri. This is. This is John Paul ii, John Paul the Great, who is on the conservative Mount Rushmore. It's. It's up with. It's Maggie Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, JP And I don't know who the fourth one would be. Who would the fourth one be?

[Tim Miller]

Donald Trump.

[JVL]

Okay, probably he was against both Iraq 1 and Iraq 2.

[Jane Coaston]

Right.

[JVL]

I mean, the invasion. Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the Pope was like, guys, war's not the answer. We don't need to do this. This is, this is just how. But Trump turns it into. Look at this. This, this DEI woke Pope who has tds. And can you believe that they're against my war because they hate me so much.

[Jane Coaston]

The popes don't match cleanly across American politics, partisan lines. You know, I mean, the popes have condemned abortion before. And I don't recall Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden saying, shut your pile, Pope Benedict. Like, you know, stick to pontificating, like what I, you know, so you can just ignore, you can just say, I appreciate the feedback.

[JVL]

But here, here's the thing that really gets me. So this administration has gone out of its way to denigrate any idea that there should be limits on war or that such thing as proper conduct in war exists. It views things like limiting civilian casualties to be woke up in dei. It, this is an administration which literally changed the name of the Department of the Defense to Department of War to celebrate the idea of we're not using military to defend ourselves and our values. We're in war. We do war here. War fighters.

[Jane Coaston]

The war fighters.

[JVL]

War fighters. This is a administration which has pardoned war criminals, which has been putting out all of this, like, snuff porn videos where they liken the killing of Iranians to scenes, cutscenes from video games where the President threatens genocide. And then when the Holy Father says, this stuff seems pretty bad. This does not look like just war theory. They're like, what is he talking about? How dare he? And it's like, you take him, you take them seriously, and they're very offended.

[Tim Miller]

You know, I don't want every piece of analysis to be like, Trump is working on a distraction. Because I don't know that. It's just that I actually think part of it is like, they are under siege and they are being abandoned. This is why Trump's little Jesus AI foray couldn't have been more ill timed. But part of what was interesting to me about the kerfuffle on the AI is how many Christians on the right who are normally Trump sycophants jumped on him. Them jumping on him is a sign of Trump's declining power. He is having trouble keeping people on side the way that he is used to keeping them on side. And so he's lashing out.

[Jane Coaston]

He's lashing out. He's on tilt. JBL wrote up yesterday, he's on tilt. And this is what Trump does. And in the past, it has worked because people get back in line, particularly if you're, if you're a politician, they get back in line because the voters want them to. If you're a media figure, you get back in line because your viewers or listeners want you to. If you're a MAGA media celebrity. And it just like the more that Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly, this is why their stuff matters. Just, just as far as what the incentive structure is concerned, the more they step out and don't see their ratings go down. But opposite, in fact, like right now, it's Ben Shapiro whose ratings are going down and Tucker's that are staying the same are going up, whatever you bet, for better or worse. And so that, you know, people are starting to see that they don't, they don't have to cower. Totally. I mean, some of them are going to still. I mean, Riley Gaines, like, you know, said that she's going to go to heaven with Trump and all this again, it's not, it's not a total flip, but you can start to see it changing for sure.

[JVL]

So this is a real question for you guys, Was there really a, a backlash? Because I saw very little of it. Not that I was especially looking. What I saw was like, Bishop Robert Barron, who is Trump's favorite bishop, put out the most pained, oh, this is regrettable. I serve on Donald Trump's religion. He's such a great president. Oh, he's so this is unfortunate. I think think he should apologize. You know, like, it sure didn't look to me like it looked like it was performative half condemnation.

[Jane Coaston]

I have some feedback for you on this. That was my initial instinct as well. And so I just provide a couple of anecdotes. It's just anecdotes. This is a fellow, Joel Webbin. He's a husband, father and pastor. He's also a podcaster. His post was this. I genuinely believe Trump is currently demon possessed. This is interesting. It's an interesting data point because he's getting bad advice. Tucker is also right. Exactly. Tucker has also kind of suggested he was demon possessed and then kind of suggested that he was controlled by the Jews. But it both. The thing, the thing that connects them is not the Jews or demons. The thing that connects them is that, like, it isn't. Trump doesn't have agency. Right. That it must be some other outside force, whether it be the devil, you know, or Israel. But then just bring it to normies. It's just one anecdote I did mention on the daily podcast today, but it's too good not to mention again, I landed home from vacation. Last night was very Tired, I got into the bed, received a text from one of my friends right before I put on do not disturb. And I looked at it and I was like, this is a nice way to end vacation. It was a text from a screenshot of a text from his mother in law to him where she posted the. The Trump is Jesus thing. And she said, Trump has crossed the line, exclamation point. He might be the Antichrist. This is a woman that is a three time Trump voter that always fought with my friend, her son in law about this. He was the lib in her life that they would text fight over. Again, just an anecdote, but I'm just saying it's like three is a trend. The fact that he could either be demon possessed or the Antichrist, if that's what it takes for some percentage. I'm not saying everybody, but like if 10% of the evangelical base decides we might have made the wrong, we might have got tricked by the devil, I'm

[JVL]

great, I'm into it.

[Jane Coaston]

Awesome.

[JVL]

Love it.

[Jane Coaston]

And it could be right, by the way. He could be demon possessed. I'm not ruling it out.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. He also just could be decompensating quickly. I will say JBL and I are doing focus group POD together. We've got two groups of Catholics. We are convening to hear what they think and so it'll be interesting to see like how much this did penetrate and if it impacted things. I do want to say that conservative

[Jane Coaston]

Catholics or like Trump voted Catholics.

[Tim Miller]

That's a good question.

[JVL]

I think you're doing, I think you're doing one. It's happening this afternoon. I believe it's one conservative, one lib.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, my team is doing it. So. But that would make sense. We would normally, if we're doing two groups, it's probably, it's probably Catholics who voted for Kamala and Catholics who voted for Trump. It'll be interesting to see what the Trump voting Catholics say about it. But this is where you end up with, this is what I mean by when you talk about under siege. What that means is like when things get cumulative. And I think that you have Trump fighting an unpopular war, the economy in shambles, oil prices high, and you know, the. He's doing a million things that people are upset about all at once. And then he's like, and I'm Jesus. And it's just the thing that makes people go, right now I am not feeling like you're Jesus. I really think you're not Jesus. I hate this. Oh, and then, I mean the explanation. The explanation was beautiful. This idea of Trump saying, I thought I didn't know that was Jesus, I was just trying. I was a doctor. That's me depicting myself as a doctor. And I don't know about you guys, but if my doctor showed up in a white tunic with a red sash and a ball of light in her hand, I would say, am I dying? Like, is this the end for me? What is going on?

[JVL]

Should I walk toward the light?

[Jane Coaston]

Yeah. It also kind of betrays the options for him are either the obvious thing that we all know, a total fraud who does not care at all about the religion, and I've just been pretending, which I think some evangelicals are kind of on board with that deal, you know? Or I've come to believe that I'm actually Jesus himself, and neither not and I guess one is slightly better for him than the other, but not great.

[JVL]

Either way, I've got a really good idea about what he can do with J.D. vance. We'll get to that in a minute. First, Sarah, we got to have a word from our sponsor.

[Tim Miller]

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[JVL]

So our friend Nick Cataggio wrote a fantastic, fantastic column about J.D. vance and the Pope stuff. And his suggestion was, it was one of the rare moments I read it. I was, like, jealous. I was like, oh, I wish I'd written this.

[Jane Coaston]

This is big of you. You do deserve that, Webby. To be able to be admit that you're jealous of another person's writing shows such growth that it means that this should be the moment in your career for this kind of recognition, I think,

[JVL]

because God knows if I get the recognition, I'll really show so much growth. Anyway, he said Trump should just actually create a splinter to the Catholic Church and make JD the antipope. Have JD be the anti pope of the Trump orthodox version of the Catholic Church. It solves, like a whole bunch of problems all at once. It. It probably does create a small schism in American Catholicism. There would be Catholics who would follow him. It gets JD out of the way. JD gets to do something that he's probably better suited for. It frees up room to being a Marco into the VP through.

[Jane Coaston]

Yeah, he's better suited for being the fake Pope than for being the Vice President.

[JVL]

Better at that than he is at this.

[Jane Coaston]

I don't know about that, but okay, sure.

[JVL]

And it was just. I loved that idea, especially coming off of what we've just seen with JD and his weekend where he went to Hungary and failed to even help Viktor Orban. He seems to have hurt him a little bit, at least. Was sent off to Pakistan to negotiate a ceasefire. In fact, the ceasefire is now over. So this isn't just he didn't get the deal done. It's that, like, the ceasefire we had is falling apart. Not great. Not great. So I don't know if you guys had thoughts about JD or the blockade, because I feel like the blockade is underappreciated because the naval blockade which resulted from JD's failed negotiations is an act of war, which means that the ceasefire is over.

[Jane Coaston]

Well, kind of. We let a Chinese ship go through. A sanctioned Chinese ship has gone through the blockade so far. So it's kind of an act. It's a maybe act of war pending. Trump wants you to think that he might want to do a war, but he's not really ready for a big boy war yet. Which is good, by the way. Not complaining about that, but just saying I'm really stuck on JD as fake Pope. I don't think that would work. I guess I would say I don't think that he's got the, I don't know what kind of Riz Martin Luther had, for example, but it had to be more than JD's, I would say. So I don't, I think that's probably a no.

[JVL]

I bet he could reconvert Rod Dreher.

[Jane Coaston]

And I'm also pretty skeptical. There's, you know, Michael Weiss was on the show, on the show today and he, you know, there is this kind of in the talking head class, this Marco momentum that JD can be pushed aside in favor of Marco. Everybody knows Marco's deal, okay? And so it's like not surprising that the people who didn't really like the isolationist Trump are like pushing Marco as the real successor because they got on board with Trump hoping he would do what he turned out to be doing, which is warmongering Trump. And, and that the voters also know that. And the media members that MAGA folks listen to also know that. And the Iran war. I still am just going to continue to repeat my point is way worse than people think. Not in the deaths area, but the economic impact. And we just saw the price of beef is going, the price of everything is going up. It's going to take a little bit to trickle through the whole economy. It's not there yet. But every day we add on the fucking blockade is another day delay, delay of fixing the supply chains. And we're going to get into the fall and be in an economic, in a really painful economic situation. And then the rats are really going to be jumping off the ship and I don't think they're going to be jumping on to boat Marco.

[Tim Miller]

I have some pushback on this. I have some pushback on this. I don't know if you, you must not have been listening to the focus group podcast because I will tell you, I did Coachella.

[Jane Coaston]

No, I did not.

[Tim Miller]

No, not just Coachella. I might have been a couple episodes ago. But we did a piece on the strange new respect for Marco Rubio coming from voters. And I think that it is. I've got a couple theories on this. One is people really don't like J.D. vance. They still think he's the most likely nominee. But people are starting to say, oh no, Marco Rubio is really impressing me. And I actually think it has a lot to do with the meme of Marco getting every job. I think there is a weird psychological thing happening where this idea that Marco Rubio is The singular person in this administration who is not an absolute screw up, who's not like a psychopath or whatever, is leading a lot of people to say, well, he seems better. He seems like the one who knows what he's doing, number one. Number two, I have long held the theory that people who were popular in the pre Trump era that we speculated would likely one day be president, like Nikki Haley, like Marco Rubio, that they're all de to the MAGA base. And I, I'm not, I'm not letting that go. Precisely. I do think, though, especially among younger voters who didn't encounter pre Trump Marco Rubio, they are encountering him for the first time as a MAGA establishment figure and find him fine. Right. And like less noxious than J.D. vance, like a more serious person. And so I just, I've got my eye on that as a phenomenon. And so I don't think it's like, I don't think it's preposterous because I am starting to hear it in the focus groups quite a bit.

[Jane Coaston]

Yeah. My pushback to the pushback. I agree with, I agree with your assessment of the current situation. My pushback to the pushback is premised on the idea that they're going to lose control of the rope on the Iran war situation, like the economic fallout from it. And I just can't imagine a situation where that takes down JD and not Marco. Like, that doesn't, that doesn't compute to me. Maybe that could happen, but. And either the situation is so bad that we end up in a Bush situation where the Trump family isn't even invited to the next convention and somebody else comes forward, probably from even a kookier wing, or we end up in a situation where JD Is their apparent. I think it's tough to see the Marco, for me, like, how he games his way through that, but maybe, I don't know, long way away.

[Tim Miller]

I'm not saying he's definitely going to be the person. I'm just saying I do think people are giving him like a new look.

[Jane Coaston]

Yeah, sure.

[Tim Miller]

And partly I also think that's in the absence of a, like there's a vacuum being created in post Trump and we don't know where all of this is heading. The one thing I, when we started talking about this a month ago or six weeks ago, however long ago it was that this war started, one of the, one of the outstanding questions about whether or not this was going to matter, how much it was going to matter, it really was our answer to that was it Depends on how long it goes on, right? That the public's tolerance for it was going to be. It depends on how long it goes on. Because that's the difference between people thinking you went to war versus you bombed something, right? Because if you just bomb something and nothing happens, the public, the memory on that fades really quickly. I don't think there's any way now in 2026 or even going into 2028 that people will forget that we did this war, right? Like they will be able to run against it and talk about the broken promises and hanging around JD's neck. And so I do think it matters in that regard.

[JVL]

I will never bet against the capacity of the median American to forget something that happened five minutes ago. I'm not saying they, I'm not saying they will definitely remember it or will definitely forget, or I'm just saying that it's possible these people can forget anything.

[Tim Miller]

I believe that. But I also believe Democrats will make hate with it. Like this will be a big piece of pushback from them.

[JVL]

Maybe, maybe. I am interested in the Trump administration's flip flop on the ceasefire and I wanted to just unpack this a little

[Jane Coaston]

bit with you guys.

[JVL]

So we got our ceasefire, it was basically everything Iran had wanted. And JD shows up and what it seems to be is that Trump has decided he wanted to renegotiate. Like he just thought this was like making a deal with the local pipe fitters and that, you know, he could sign a contract, then when it came time to pay them, he could just tell them, well, we have to renegotiate. What are you going to do? Because what J.D. and company seem to have proposed was that Iran would undertake a 20 year long suspension of nuclear activity. And the Iranians said, fuck you. Why do you think Trump would have done that? Why not just you've already taken the loss, you've already had everybody say that you surrendered, right? Like, why now try to unsurrender and drag it out?

[Jane Coaston]

I don't think there was ever a deal, is the answer to that question. I don't think that there was a deal at a change. There was never really a deal. Trump didn't want. Trump bluffed. He didn't actually want to end the Iranian civilization. And the Iranians went. So then when the next day asks his friends in Pakistan, please post this, saying that the Iranians are begging for the ceasefire so I can get the ceasefire that I need. And the Pakistanis did that. And then Trump is like, great, happy to do it. And then I think the Iranians are like, okay, well, if you're going to stop bombing us for a little while while the straits still closed, that's fine. We'll kind of see how this goes. Maybe we'll get some cash out of the deal. And that was it. And, like, I think that the negotiations were basically square one. I mean, not, you know, not exactly. And obviously there were back channels happening and they were texting and all this. But, like, I don't, I don't. It doesn't seem to. It didn't never really seem to be like there was a deal. There are multiple 10 points going around. There's never an official real statement about which one it was. There's complaints from Trump about the ones that it wasn't true. Israel's bombing Lebanon within two hours. Initially, I think we were on last week, whenever that happened, the thinking was like, maybe that was kind of this last, like, we're going to get a couple in before the ceasefire actually happens. But now it kind of seems like, no, they didn't actually even negotiate over Lebanon. They were just. There was never an agreement about that. So I think that's what happened. And then I don't, you know, then Trump lives day by day, and then, you know, it's like, I live to survive another day. And then it's like, okay, today the thing to do is to blockade. That's basically what I assessed to have happened.

[Tim Miller]

I think that's exactly right. And one of the ways you can tell that that's right is that all of the new information we get is either right before the market opens like it is, it is always, it is always meant to calm internal pressures, is you get a little drip out of information that lets people feel like, oh, no, it's going to be okay. Only then to later see like, actually nothing has changed.

[JVL]

Yeah, that sounds about right. So where do we think this week, as of today, where we have a blockade, which, by the way, just, I'm sorry, just as before I ask you where we think this is going next, if America is undertaking a naval blockade, which is by definition of act of war, doesn't the President have to go to Congress to get an authorization to go to war?

[Jane Coaston]

We are coming up on that, the authorization of war time. So we'll see how that shakes out.

[JVL]

Is that something Democrats should talk about or.

[Jane Coaston]

No, it is something that's something Democrats should talk about. Again, I think that there have been some good Democrats in this, which one of them I want to talk about at the end, But I do think more is More. And again, this is all premised on my assessment that this is going to get a lot worse economically. And so you want to be out there gaining credibility now. So I do think that the Democrats should do more. Another reason why there should be more just clear opposition to this and calling for him to stop is, is that we don't have objectives anymore. There's no point when you ask what is going to happen this week. It's not going to be based on what the Iranians offer. It sort of is, but only in the medicines. It's like Trump on the one hand wants it to stop so he can declare victory and get the economy back going and then whatever. It's like maybe we'll bomb again next year. You know, like that, that's, you can tell that's what he kind of wants. On the other hand, he also wants people to praise him. And you know, if he, and if he feels like he needs to go in there to get more praise, maybe we'll do another thing. And related to that hand, he doesn't want people critiquing him because he doesn't want a deal. People can say this is worse than Obama's deal. He's very concerned about that. Right. And so it's like whether or not this escalates in eight days or they come up with some temporary deal is like just truly based on the psychology of Donald Trump. And what, and the fact that he doesn't want like a worse deal with Obama, like that. It's not based on, I mean, they're gonna say it's based on the number of years of enrichment or whatever, but like it's not what, it's, he doesn't care about that.

[Tim Miller]

That is why he can't take the three to five year deal being put forward by the Iranians is because that would be a worse deal than Obama by a, by a real stretch.

[Jane Coaston]

And so it puts him in, it does put him in Iraq and a hard place. And I think that the only way out is to take a worse deal than the Obama deal and pretend it's a better one, which he's done before. You know, NAFTA was basically that. But the idea that getting out of this without Iran either giving sanctions relief or revenue from the strait or ability to nuclear enrich, I don't see how. I think at least some of those things have to be on the table. Right? Yeah, all of them. All of them, probably.

[JVL]

All right, this episode is brought to you by Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first bake from Frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries and fresh pastas. Unlike many store bought options, Wild Grain uses simple ingredients you can pronounce and a slow fermentation process that can be easy, easier on your belly and richer in nutrients and antioxidants. Plus, all items conveniently bake in 25 minutes or less with no thawing required. Wildgreens boxes are fully customizable. In addition to their variety box, they have a gluten free box, a vegan box, a new protein box. You can go crazy with how you want to customize your box. You can load it up with croissants and things for delicious breakfasts, then also stock up on after dinner dessert options like delicious cookies. It's all there for you. In fact, I was on another podcast recently and the host and I were talking in the green room and she told me that on my recommendation she went and subscribed to Wildgreen and she loves it because it's so good. Imagine having fresh bakery quality bread, pastries and pasta at home without any trips to the store. And don't just take my word for it. They have over 40,000 five star reviews and have been voted the best food subscription box by USA Today for three years now. For a limited time, Wildgreen is offering our listeners $30 off your first box plus free Croissants for Life when you go to wildgrain.com thenextlevel to start your subscription today. That's $30 off your first box and free Croissants for Life when YOU visit wildgrain.com thenextlevel or you can use promo code thenextlevel at checkout. Okay, can we talk about Hungary? I know nobody cares about foreign policy, but the three of us haven't had a chance.

[Jane Coaston]

People care about Hungary, just not everybody.

[JVL]

And right before we came on, I read Rod Dreher's 4,000 5,000 word post about his reaction to the loss by his political patron.

[Jane Coaston]

Should you tell people who Rod Dreher are? I know that it's kind of like the next level listeners I know are here for us doing burn book stuff on like random figures from the, you know, cinematic Republican online commentator universe. But I do think you should probably tell people who Rod Dreher is.

[JVL]

So Rod Dreher was a writer at National Review who broke with National Review. He became a Catholic, I think, and then left the Catholic Church for the Orthodox Church. He moved to Louisiana, Mississippi, someplace deep down south and wrote a whole book about how important it was to be there with his family and how real men take care of their family. And the Benedict option was just retreating from the world with your family. And then he left his family and moved to Hungary and started posting a lot of really interesting photos of himself and other people.

[Jane Coaston]

Other men. Didn't really like the gays very much. Very anti gay. Should just say that. Very anti gay. And Budapest does have a great sauna scene. Have been there. Really nice.

[Tim Miller]

There is so much going on in this conversation. I don't understand.

[JVL]

Anyway, he has been an Orban. He was. I want to say Rob might have been like patient zero in the American conservatism turn towards Orbanism. And he has one of the. A gig at one of the Orban run think tanks. Had. I suspect had. Is it already.

[Jane Coaston]

No, I just think that. I do think. No he hasn't. The Magyar is going to stop funding all that shit. CPAC was getting hungry. I'm going to continue. We'll get back to that.

[JVL]

Anyway, so Rod wrote a long post about the results of the election in which he spoke to a large number of ordinary Hungarians about their thoughts about the loss. Weirdly, every single person he spoke to voted for Orban in an election which Orban lost 2 to 1. I mean I'm sure this just random sample could have happened anywhere. And. And he says that it's really. You know, honestly Orban probably would have won if there wasn't this stupid pedophilia scandal. I mean it's all local stuff and there was corruption and Orban really should have done a better job in telling the children of Hungarian oligarchs not to post on Instagram like pictures of themselves in Dubai on vacation and that this is what cost cost them the election. How the the Prime Minister of Hungary was supposed to stop individual Hungarians from posting on social media. Unclear anyway, but Rod seems not really.

[Tim Miller]

If he didn't do the corruption there wouldn't be pictures of all the corruption.

[JVL]

That's not what Rod was saying. Very important to say. Rod's piece does not say that Orban shouldn't have done the corruption. He says the corruption is just endemic everywhere in Europe. And what he should have done was stop trying stop the oligarchs and their children from rubbing normal Hungarians faces in it.

[Jane Coaston]

Okay.

[JVL]

Very, very important distinction.

[Tim Miller]

And that basically

[JVL]

Orbanism won and it's coming to the rest of Europe. And the Atlanticists, which is a pejorative weirdly enough.

[Tim Miller]

Is that us?

[JVL]

What is the Atlanticists, people who value the North Atlantic treaties and Relationships between liberal democratic countries against communist and authoritarian countries. Those people, they're losing, and they're about to see just how badly they're losing. It was a very brave, stiff upper lip sort of thing. And Rod says he's prepared to just move to Austria and live off of his substack and his book royalties.

[Jane Coaston]

What's happening in Austria?

[JVL]

Unclear. I did think to myself, is there.

[Jane Coaston]

Why not Belarus?

[JVL]

They have bathhouses in Austria, too. Why not Moscow? Why not Moscow? Do you guys have thoughts about the. Because. So, Tim, you talked a little bit with Bill. Saren talked a little bit with Bill also. I was like, weirdly buoyed by the election.

[Jane Coaston]

Same, same. No, it was great. Was the only news I allowed myself while on vacation. I was super happy about it. I got some feelings seeing the, you know, viral posts of the gays kissing in Budapest, you know, outside the celebration. I listened to the. We are the Champions. Just awesome. Unbelievable soft power for the Anglosphere that, you know, after overthrowing an autocrat in Hungary, they play queen. They play queen.

[JVL]

Rodrier sitting there going, I was right.

[Jane Coaston]

That's right. So that, that's wonderful, you know, and I think that it's one. It's a country. I think that it should be a. Should give resolve to everybody else who sometimes is, you know, people, I don't know, maybe on this podcast or off this podcast, who at times can be fatalist about the direction of the world.

[Tim Miller]

He's in the room with you, jbl. He's in the room.

[Jane Coaston]

I think that there can be a lesson there that these things can be pushed back against. You know, we'll see how the new guy does. But I thought it was wonderful. I, I already. And the, the fact that that Magyar, like, goes in, he's doing his first interview with public television there. They blocked him from doing interviews, doing that today. I think in the first press conference, he mentions how they're going to stop funding the political efforts of the Fidesh Party. And he mentions both CPAC and that college that J.D. vance had. The. You know, it must be like the University of Texas of Hungary where J.D. vance did the, did the interview.

[JVL]

University of Austin.

[Jane Coaston]

Sorry, the University of Austin. Sorry, Horns down, but University of Austin is what I meant there. The. So that's. That's great. But I do, I just think it's worth sitting on the CPAC thing for a second. I mean, the, the Hungarian taxpayer, your average working Hungarian, was subsidizing an American sex pest that runs a, like far right American or what would you even Call it, you know, political organization.

[JVL]

Yeah, but not a straight sex pest.

[Jane Coaston]

Yeah, gay sex pest. Allegedly. Allegedly. Multiple times. Allegedly. And like, the taxpayers in Hungary are funding him. Like, who else was getting money from them? And think about this. Maybe that's part of the reason why J.D. vance went over there. Not just because he liked Orbano, because he wanted him to win, but because they were a funding source for all of JD's friends. I mean, like the idea that the Hungarian taxpayer was doing that is insane.

[JVL]

How about the idea that the American taxpayer paid for JD Vance to go over there and stump for this guy who was losing?

[Jane Coaston]

Yeah, that's true.

[Tim Miller]

It is.

[JVL]

Incredible problems also, though.

[Tim Miller]

But this is one of the reasons why Orban's resounding defeat is so positive for us, is that because Donald Trump and Maga has intertwined themselves with Orbanism. Orbanism was a playbook that we were following. And so to see it defeated does have implications. And I mean, I don't know whether it was monetary. I don't. There are monetary reasons why jv, JD Vance went over there for himself, but certainly the idea that a bunch of people who are in his world have been propped up by this guy and we're about to lose their livelihoods, and so they tried to call him in as a reinforcement as they started to see how bad it was going to get for them seems pretty likely. Like, it's crazy that he went over there. I couldn't have been happier to see Orban go down by so much. And I think it matters more than people think for the United States, both because it has sort of big implications for whether or not illiberals are starting to be toppled in places by their people like that has got to have Trump feeling nervous. But I do want to just bait JVL for one second with Ross Douthat, who wrote an insane column in the New York Times suggesting that the fact. Suggesting that the fact that Peter Magyar won in Hungary is evidence that they weren't illiberal to begin with. Because if you have an illiberal country, how could you possibly have an election, a blowout election like this? And this is an astounding level of cope and also sort of a prequel to them all trying to figure out how to kind of move the idea that Trump would. Did not create an illiberal situation in this country. And I just want to make one point because this is, I think, is important. This idea that being illiberal or liberal is like a light switch that you switch on and off is very silly. It's like you either move closer to it or further away from it. And I think that Orban had moved Hungary, like, extraordinarily far in the illiberal direction. He had packed the courts and gotten rid of his political enemies. He had shut down the press. He had bribed everybody who is notoriously corrupt. He managed to stay there for 16 years by manipulating all kinds of things and paying people out and not letting people have access to media. Donald Trump is also waging war on the media. He is currently suing. He just lost to the Wall Street Journal, but he has been trying to sue every media outlet that says anything bad for him because he wants to chill civic spaces. They doged all that. They did a doge over in Hungary when Orban first came in to get rid of all the people who were in the institutions who could hold him accountable. Trump demonizes the media, tries to own the media by the media. Like, there's a million ways in which Trump is not. He doesn't have to be exactly like it to be moving America very steadfastly into an illiberal direction. And I just thought that was a really Preposterous piece by Mr. Galfett.

[Jane Coaston]

Yeah, you were right when you said the prequel. Like this is what they're already laying the groundwork for, the rostouts of the world is when the Trump thing totally unravels and God willing, the Democrats win in 2028, they'll be able to go and drop columns about how the bad ones were, the people who are a little too alarmed, people who warned you that democracy was at threat. They were the ones that were really causing a lot of friction and tension in society and they should be cast out. The people that did the soft fascism that did all the things that created their unpopularity, that caused the decline of their movement, like, that's not. That wasn't. That wasn't the issue. Like, the issue was the people who had their hair on fire a little too hot for my taste. And, like, that's what they're all going to do. And you know, the only time that people opposed to Trump, people of the pro democracy movement are ever going to get a hint of credit from the Ross Douthats of the world is like, the first time that a Catholic goes into the concentration camp. Like, that's it. Not until up until that moment, we always are just a little too hot. Just a little too hot. That's the problem. You know, I'm just going to judge your rhetoric. We're not going to judge the actions of the other side too harshly. We're going to focus on the rhetoric of the people that oppose the actions. That's just so. You just got to deal with that. That's why you need yoga and therapy and deep breaths. That's going to happen.

[JVL]

It's not just about that though. Like it is, it is. These people are constructing arguments in order to try to stop reform and accountability should they lose. Like it isn't just about. Like Ross isn't just trying to position himself. He is setting up lines of defense to say, no, there shouldn't be accountability. No, you shouldn't. You shouldn't make Washington D.C. a state. How dare you? That's terrible. Look at, everything works, you know, the problems of every old work. You don't need to do anything. You know, I gave my 6 year old a gun yesterday and you know, he didn't kill himself or anyone else. So giving six year old guns is cool. There's no, there's no problem with it. I would like to bring us down a little bit though.

[Jane Coaston]

Change of pace.

[JVL]

Sorry. Magyar's party TIA 1, 52, 54% of the vote. They only get to the magnified 66% I think of parliamentary seats, but because of the weird ass rules that Fidej and Orban put in. So this is for instance, I went deep on this today. One of the things they did when they were trying to disassemble the liberal order and the democratic order was they, they Hungarian. So it's a multi party states parliamentary system. They used to do two rounds of elections. And the idea was in the first round, you know, you have all the parties running together and you would get, the ruling party would finish at the top and then you'd have a muddle of the opposition parties and then in the second round you would wind up with coordination. So all the opposition people would then coalesce around the one. And so one of the things that Orban, the Fidez did was they said no, no, all elections are going to be in a single round. Which makes it very, very hard for opposition parties to coordinate one another. Another thing they did was they, they did a sort of winner take all plus in which they tried to magnify majority. So in 2014, the, the FIDEJ party or Don's party only got a plurality of the vote. They finished with, I think it was 42% of the vote. And yet they wound up with 68% of the seats in parliament. That's crazy, right? I mean this is because, because again, you win with a bare plurality, but then you control a super majority that allows you to amend the constitution at your will on party line votes.

[Tim Miller]

It's basically like gerrymandering here where like

[JVL]

you could, if you gerrymandered, he also gerrymandered. They also did gerrymandering on top of that. What it is, it's saying that if you, you know, within Parliament, you, it's like superdelegates, you know, if you, if you, if you get 48% of the vote and that's a plurality, we give you extra parliamentary seats. So absent that magnified system, Magyar would not have the power to go in and begin reforming the, the Hungarian constitution. We don't have that sort of thing here. It is very, very hard to imagine a Democratic candidate winning a presidential election with more than 53% of the vote. I think even 54% of the vote seems like almost unthinkable. And so the margins that any Democratic opposition will be working with here in America will be much, much smaller than they have over there. The resistance to change in terms of the institutions, much, much larger. I mean I, again just looking forward, like even if we turn back this authoritarian attempt, do we really think that there exists the political power or will to try to reform the systems? That can't happen again.

[Tim Miller]

I do. So I, I, I do. I'm just going to take the, the happier side of this and say it is not at all unimaginable that this hot war extends inflation. We go into a recession, the Republicans get wiped out in 2026. The best they've they've got going into 2028 is the J.D. vance, Marco Rubio, Tucker Carlson, Triumvirate of doom. And Democrats have a wide open insane primary that sharpens everybody up and gets them into fighting shape and they win. And here's what the thing is. Even if you take, let's take, let's say they get like 54%. Hold on, just let's, but let's say they get to 54%. One of the ways in which it can still be a blowout is if they win all the blue wall states, plus Nevada, plus Arizona and they pick up a place like North Carolina or some, someplace the Dems haven't been winning. Maybe it's, maybe it's Iowa, right? Just, or because of, because the farmers have been devastated in that state by the tariffs. Let's just, you know, Obama won Iowa. It wasn' so long ago. And, and even though Florida, they, you know, Republicans hold on to Florida, but by two Points, you know, like something like that. Trump flew into office this time around claiming a mandate, which mutt with much less than that. And I think that a Democrat can come in and claim that mandate. And I also think that the demand from a Democrat to do something immediate immediately to do like there's a lot of people writing books right now about what are we going to do, how are we going to wield power, what changes are we going to make? They are going to, they, they have. I'm not saying Democrats are going to be perfect, but they will have learned at least a few lessons. Not that we haven't even, we haven't talked about Swalwell or Because like, I'm not learning all the lessons here. But, but I just, I, that would be my optimistic take.

[Jane Coaston]

Yeah. We're going to have plenty of time to talk about the potential reforms if Trump ever, you know, gets pushed aside. I think this is why it's critical to absolutely humiliate them and snuff them out though.

[JVL]

Right.

[Jane Coaston]

Like, and that is, and I think it is more likely this is all hard work, going to be a stretch and event dependent and tactics need to be smart, strategy needs to be smart, all that. But, but they, I think probably a more likely way to get to an outcome that you're looking for JVL, is not the idea that a Democrat wins 58% of the vote in the election, but that a Democrat wins by enough and that the Republicans are humiliated by enough enough that they go through a period where they like at least try to move away from this and that might not work. And then again then eventually you're gonna have to deal with this. I know all the flaws in system will still be there and the Democrats can do some things around the margins to safeguard against a few of the tactics that they used. There's no magic amulet that prevents you from a future Trump trying another attempt at this, but weakening them so much that there is some kind of internal reckoning. And not an internal reckoning based on the scales falling from every everybody's eyes and then becoming good, but internal reckoning based on the fact that like, no, this has been rejected so forcefully that we need that other strong voices are going to emerge to offer a counter and maybe those voices lose again in the Republican side and I don't fucking know, Tucker becomes the nominee. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, Candace becomes the nominee. I don't know. I don't have this crystal ball. But like, that is why the scale of the defeat matters. It's why Totally. I can always come back to this. It's why I was like, sad the morning after Biden, morning after the Biden election. That's why I was sad, because I knew that it wasn't over. And so like, that part of it is like forcing them to change is like as achievable or maybe even a little more than dealing with the 300 year old sclerotic fucking democracy that we have that is also going to have to take reforms. But to your point, like, it's going

[Tim Miller]

to be very challenging and is also just to say one more note, which is this is where you going to find Republicans, not just in the wilderness, but without the leader that they have built a cult around for so long. Like they really could be at each other's throats without any kind of cohesion. I mean, the, the level of diminishing of any core beyond Trump in that party. Like, what do they have? What do they stand for? Who are they?

[JVL]

All right, we're going to talk about swallow in a sec, but we got to do one last ad.

[Jane Coaston]

Tim, you know, being a Coachella does make you think about your wardrobe a little bit. And you don't. In middle age, you can't compete. You know, there's no point in trying to compete. You look ridiculous if you try to compete. But what you can do is ensure that you have some cool looking basics. Cool looking basics never go out of style. You can do cool looking basics at Coachella. You can do cool looking basics at the diner that JVL goes to in New Jersey. Either place, it works. And one place to get cool looking basics is from our friends at Quince. Quince makes high quality everyday essentials using premium materials like 100% European linen and their insanely soft flow knit activewear fabric. The men's linen pants and shirts are lightweight, breathable, comfortable. Basically the perfect layer for spring. The best part is their prices are 50 to 60% less than similar brands because Quince cuts out the middleman. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. I've already tried the linen shirt, the white linen shirt, as mentioned, that is beautiful for April weather here in New Orleans. It's a little the weather. The warmth is coming a little later to Sarah and JVL in the Northeast so they can order their linen shirts now and by the time they come, it'll look good and it'll be linen shirt weather up there in the Northeast. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com the Bulwark for free shipping and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. Go to Q U I n c e.com the Bulwark for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com the Bulwark so Eric Swalwell he gone.

[JVL]

This is I, I don't claim any special. I will claim it. From the moment I first saw that guy in 2020 I just thought no, something's wrong that, that no remember him?

[Jane Coaston]

You judge the book by its cover?

[JVL]

No, I judged the way Hector Joe like turn over the torch old man and like everything about him was like Gavin Newsome but a thousand times worse. And like more like Gavin like has a weird he owns his inauthenticity. Swallswells was like an awkward inauthenticity and I I don't know just one of the things where I I least surprising scandal ever and but I don't know like he's out. He's just out. Like he didn't linger for, you know, forever. I think as we were taping he and Tony Gonzalez both expelled from the House or resigned from the House. They're both gone. But the, the Gonzalez thing took a year.

[Tim Miller]

The Gonzalez thing probably wouldn't have happened if the Swalwell thing hadn't happened.

[JVL]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

Like it, it became, it was going to become politically necessary if they were going to vote to expel Swalwell. That because all the Dems would vote to expel Swalwell. Maybe not all of them, but most of them would have if not all of them. And so the Republicans were then going to be up against a brick wall. So I'm sure people went to him privately and said you've got to go. This is going to be politically untenable if this actually goes to a vote. I think there's a few things that are interesting here just politically. I do think the word you were looking for though is smarmy. The thing about Swalwell is he's just always suffered from an overexposure on cable news. He was just, he was like always so he had a little bit of that little thirst but he was the most likely nominee. He was winning that California primary which is an insane primary if you have been following it because right now in California that's basically now that Swalwell is out a five way race in which the top two because they have a jungle primary out there and the top two right now are Republicans, Republican Steve Hilton and then Chad Bianco who I don't know, he's some sheriff I guess but they both have 14% and this is what's crazy is how small the margins are for each of these guys. So the top two both have 14% each and then you get to. Oh no, I'm sorry. There was five with Swalwell who had 12%, Tom Stiers at 11% and Katie Porter is at 7%. Within this like enormous swath of people, like it's like 30% who are undecided. I think Katie Porter is probably not the person. I mean there's been so much oppo on her that's come out showing her abusing staff. And so like is Tom Steyer. California is such a big state. It's so hard to compete there. You need so much money. And the one person with so much money and is Tom Steyer. He's got to get now somebody they've got to coalesce beside behind one of the Democrats to get them above these Republicans because it will go to a two person runoff. And you need like, you need Stier against.

[JVL]

Probably possible that the runoff could be two Republicans who both finish at like 15 or 7.

[Jane Coaston]

I don't think so anymore. I honestly had Swalwell had this thing. I had Swalwell done the Trump thing, right. Had. Had this all happened his way through it and tried to brazen his way through it and talked about how the MAGA media was out to get him and the establishment was out to get him. And this is, you know, they judge it's unfair bias. Donald Trump is the president, right. He tried to do all that. Right. And try to be a victim. And I think that it was possible, right for him to have been a spoiler in that sense. But now that he's out, I just, I think that people will coalesce behind Steyer. Whatever. It seems like kind of a. Just a basic rich guy Democrat. And so it is what it is. I posted 2 weeks ago now saying like could the Democrats find somebody actually popular to get into the California governor's race? And like Eric, her name was Kamala Harris. Yeah, Eric. Eric talks to me who was. Yeah. Unhappy about it. So. And now two weeks later he's out of the race. It's just like, okay, well obviously San Jose mayor, tech guys all like the San Jose mayor. So that's. It is too late. No, it's too late. I was joking. I was like, could Oprah just get in? So no, that's an ugly primary. His behavior is gross.

[JVL]

How about jfav? Could Favreau.

[Jane Coaston]

I was calling for. Yes, they. Dan. I went on to a crooked media podcast and said, Dan Pfeiffer. Yes, we Dan. Sorry, not yes, they Dan. Yes, we can. Yes, we Dan. He might be in the top two right now. Yeah, have you listened to me? He might be in the top two, right? It's a shit show. It's an insane primary. Nobody is popular. So Tom Steyer's got the money to go on airs, so we'll see. But to me, the more relevant element to this is like the impact on national politics and the way that it's. It's sucking up Ruben Gallego right now. And I just do want to talk about this for a second. He gave a press conference, came on. And I've been glazing Ruben quite a bit lately because he's doing the thing that I just think more Democratic politicians should do in a bunch of different areas. He talks like himself on social media. He has been extremely passionate and unapologetic about opposing this war. No mealy mouth, no weasel words like talking about his experience as a veteran. He is willing to go talk to people outside of the basic northeastern corridor, coastal corridor, college educated liberal circles. He moved to the middle a little bit on immigration, just on the need to be more serious about border security like that. It's the type of thing that if you're kind of making a Frankenstein monster of what I think a Democratic politician should be doing right now, he's been doing most of it and so I've been praising him for it. And his reaction to all this has been awful, which is, which is really disappointing. And I don't, you know, you just have to call it like you see it. And I mean, he posted yesterday. I wrote this down. I trusted someone who I believed was a friend. But it is now clear that he is not the person I thought I knew. He said that he has a double life. And no, in response to a question, he said no, he hasn't seen him have an affair. This is preposterous. This is ridiculous. They were roommates, they went on trips together, they were tweeting each other all the time. They were drinking buddies, they went on a tour of campuses together at some point, I think. And so like, I just. Come on. I mean, you know, just be real, right? Like, be real. It would be fine. I don't know what the truth is, right? So I can't tell him exactly what to say if this is true. I think it would be fine to say, look, I didn't know like the extent of what he was doing. That's really inappropriate. I'm really disappointed in my friend. Like, the idea that he assaulted someone or spiked their drink. If these accusations are true, like, these women deserve justice. Right? Like, whatever. You could say that. And I'm mad at my friend. So to act like you didn't know that he was out there drinking and cheating on his wife is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And, like, I don't know, maybe this is just something about, like, American Puritan culture or whatever, but it's just like, you know, Donald Trump is a fucking president. Like, in this day and age, like, I don't think that you need to act like it's Gary Hart if you had a buddy that was cheating on his wife and that's all it was. But, like, because that's obviously what was happening, and now it just. It just feels so phony and off and wrong. And I don't know. That's just my two cents on it.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And I think because I also watched this press conference, and he's got that deer in headlights look, like he just. You could tell this is like he's caught a real stray here. And part of it is that he was publicly defending Swalwell when this stuff first came out. And then he did, like, many people who were maybe, you know, because there is. There was, I think, a moment where everyone's like, do we still care? Like, do we still care as a country? I don't. And I actually don't think that if this was a scandal about cheating on his wife that people would care. I think. I think that. But I think they. They. To our credit, to Democrats credit, they do still care about sexual assault. And so Swalwell, as he was going down for Gallego to defend him, and then kind of be like, no, I didn't know anything. And he did go on the record and say, like, I didn't know about not cheating or anything. And the thing is, like, his text messages, like, there's just stuff that can come out. Like, clearly, this is what is funny about this is. Everybody's like, well, everyone knew. I gotta say, I didn't know. I. I don't know the whisper campaigns among staffers. I guess people sort of knew who Swallow was. And that's the thing is everybody's like, well, people knew this. And I think what they knew is that he was philandering around and maybe like, sleeping with interns, sending dick pics, like, doing those things. Very, very bad.

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[Jane Coaston]

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[Jane Coaston]

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[JVL]

Perhaps it's true.

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[Jane Coaston]

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[Jane Coaston]

I hate the people always knew thing. It's kind of like, well, yeah, like you assumed I heard from somebody. It's like, oh, people knew. It's like, well, what did they know? You know, like he was sliding into girls DMS and that that was inappropriate. And it's like, okay, but is that a Washington Post article? How does that stuff get out? You know what I mean? Like, a lot of that is. I don't. I'd never heard anything about him roofing somebody. And again, that, again, is just an allegation at this point, but.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Jane Coaston]

You know, I do think that some of the. This is my point. Like what, what was the thing that everybody knew? The thing that everybody knew was that Eric Swalwell, not alone in Congress, was away from his family in California and in D.C. and like drinking and going to parties and, you know, hitting on young girl. That's what people, younger girls. That's what people knew. And like, so Rubin obviously knew that. Right. And so like, that is the part of this that is kind of like, well, okay, but.

[Tim Miller]

And I do think this is part of why the Swalwell thing is a. Ends up being a bigger issue. Is he, if he was just a figure in California, the way, let's say. I don't know if this is exactly right about Ken Paxton. I don't know if that's exactly the right analogy, but Swabble very much made himself a national political figure. Right. He's run for president once. He's on national television all the time. One of the reasons he was running ahead in that race is I think he just probably had really high name id and so he has national Democratic brand all over him. And that is part of the reason that I think it's. It was sort of a problem for Democrats, although they dealt with it so quickly. And that's why the Gallego thing is like, that's going to drag this out to somebody who's currently in office, who had higher office aspirations, who was on a lot of People's short list for 2028 in a swing state. If not in a swing state, VP

[Jane Coaston]

would have been a likely VP person, you know, demographically swing state kind of person that could do that job. And so. So to me, it's more like. I'm more like disappointed in him. I'm like, why. Why are you doing this right now? Like, why go. Why let Eric Swalwell take you down? And maybe there's stuff that we don't know that's yet to come out, but I don't know. To me, the right answer in this case is, yeah, dude was partying in D.C. but I did not know the extent of it. I'm so sorry for these women. And I don't know that that, you know, I don't know that that sticks in this day and age. Maybe that still does, too.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I got to say that the Trump of it all. And there's plenty, like, there's still other members of Congress, like, they did a one for one trade here with Gonzalez and Swalwell, in a way, like, Corey Mills is still there. Corey Mills, the stuff he's been accused of is, like, horrible, horrible. And so, like, they are. It's not like there's been a new line drawn and we're back into a place where, you know, this kind of behavior is deemed, you know, routinely unacceptable. And we get rid of everybody who does this. This was like a political maneuver where they're like, you've got one out. We're going to get one out, and we're going to try and call it a day. Because there's way more people who could go down on things like this if the actual standard mattered.

[JVL]

Feels like the standards should matter.

[Jane Coaston]

I don't know.

[JVL]

Just one man's opinion.

[Jane Coaston]

Which standard?

[JVL]

That married people out constantly drinking and hitting on people who are much younger than themselves and in positions of inferior power probably aren't exhibiting good judgment and shouldn't be trusted with high office and places where good judgment is important. Yeah. Just one man's opinion.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I mean, look, I don't even know this is worth. It's like. But you could. There's sort of a distinction probably you can make between people who have messy personal lives versus people who, like, assault people do, like, especially people on their own staff, you know, abuse their office. And. And that is happening a fair amount in. And this is. This is why the Trump stuff is. You know, I think for a lot of people, they were like, I don't know, maybe you can get away with this in this Day and age. Because Donald Trump is the president now. And you know, when, when I, I sort of tweeted it. Anna Paulina Luna, who was saying, because the right, of course, is all over this. Right. They're all over Swalwell for it without the slightest hint of irony. And, and, and, and it's like, I'm like, hey, let me introduce you to Donald Trump. And Republicans will still be like, he didn't do anything. These are all unsubstantiated claims. There's nothing about Trump. And you're just like, what planet are you living on?

[JVL]

But this, this is really about the judgment stuff. Because if Swalwell had stayed in, just as a House member, it is not clear that any, I mean, when you look at the reporting on these, nothing would have happened. This would never have come out. It was because he was on track to become governor of California and then, by the way, would have become a top tier candidate for 2028.

[Jane Coaston]

Yeah, it's hubris.

[JVL]

I mean, that's why it becomes super relevant. Because, like, hold on, the guy's asking for a whole lot of responsibility.

[Jane Coaston]

Yeah. Not so the Gallagher thinks relevant.

[JVL]

Yeah. Very quickly, who will be the first publication to publish Tom Steyer, 2028, question mark. No, he's an elected governor.

[Jane Coaston]

You need to watch an interview, somebody.

[JVL]

No, no, but I'm, that's what I'm saying. It's preposterous. But because he'll be the governor of California, somebody will have to write that piece. Well, it may seem unlikely, but Tom Stark. No, of course it won't be us. This is. That's the joke, Tim.

[Jane Coaston]

That's the joke. Yeah. I don't know, man. I do think that the standards thing, I think this isn't. And you know, we're kind of. This is. I'm doing the JVL now. This is a very heavy topic at the end of a long. Good show. Long show. But, but I think this is going to be an important discussion inside Democratic circles over the coming years because there is the side of this that is like, no Democrats should be. You don't want to become Trump. You stare into the abyss, it stares back at you. There's that element to this which is real and true. There's also a real and true element that's like, this is a competition and the threats are real. Right. And like this is all wrapped up in the Swalwell conversation, the Platner conversation and all this stuff. Right. Not, not to compare them or what they did, but, you know, like this judgment question. And I think that like Democrats, Democratic voters are in this moment going to be just a little less interested in throwing people over the overboard on more borderline topics and whether the standards, you know, need to, you know, whether they need to follow like the highest possible standard of comportment in personal life.

[JVL]

And the Virginia Democrat, right, J. J. Jones, this is all the same piece

[Jane Coaston]

and you go back and it goes back to Clinton. And I think that it's interesting, this is interesting, this thing, this is happening because there was like a, there was a reconsideration of Bill Clinton that was happening like five years ago. There's the big Slate podcast about him. And I started to hear Democrats in my life be like, you know, in retrospect, we should have been a little bit tougher on Clinton. And I think that that is as reverberating back the other direction right now where people are kind of like, you know, I don't know actually if they care about people and their policies are good and they have some questions in their personal life who are why should we cut off our nose despite our face? And I think that those two sides of that argument are going to be, that's going to be an ongoing argument on in the, on the anti magazine

[JVL]

tell you I am confident that my preferences on this will lose.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I mean, look, I have a whole chapter in my book called Character Doesn't Count, that that is specifically about this issue, the way America has changed on these things. I do think, though, that America still want to see a certain amount of civic virtue from someone, which is why I think that people are now much more tolerant of personal foibles. Right. Like you made mistakes if you own them and you talk about them. That's one thing. I do think that at least for Democrats, assault still seems to be like the line, which of course it should. Yes. It's not, it is not for Republicans. And this is the main point I'm trying to make is that just because Gonzalez is out, that that was a tactical political move and not a moral stand, the Swalwell stuff was actually a moral stand where they were like, this is, this is we're not allowing this behavior. And it is because part of the, the what I was trying to get at in the, in the book is that like, people are more tolerant of this, but they still do want to see. And I think that for Trump, Trump did convey to a portion of voters who liked his performative patriotism and hyper nationalism. They still saw him having civic virtue at when he did not I mean, I don't think he had any civic virtue, but they saw him as having civic virtue and they were distinguishing that from personal virtue. And so I think personal virtue matters a little bit less than it used to. But like that assault for Democrats is still aligned, which is good that someone

[JVL]

has it all right guys, good show. Long show. It's been great to all be back together. Hit like hit. Subscribe. Vote for me for my Webby follow show. The the channel will be back soon with more probably okay news maybe come see us in California by Go see us in California. Good luck America.

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