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- [00:00]
Commercial Narrator
Shelby Power Nitroplus fuels every drive from the Pacific coast to the high desert. With a fuel like no other. It provides engine performance that lasts to give you more time on the road. That means more protection with active ingredients for longer lasting engines. Shel VPower Nitro Plus Premium Gasoline Engine performance that lasts. Chances are you're not far from a Shell station. Find it using the Shell app formulation unique to Shell compared to minimum detergent gasoline with continuous use of Shell V Power Nitroplus and gasoline direct injection engines, actual effects and benefits may vary. See Shell Us More Dash Protection for more information. If you're chasing data down instead of seeing it one place, you need the Intuit ERP Intuit Enterprise Suite. All your data in one place with built in AI for real time insights. Learn more@intuit.com ERP hello everyone.
- [00:46]
JVL
This is JVL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Buar.
- [00:52]
Sarah Longwell
What's up Je.
- [00:54]
JVL
Happy Friday.
- [00:55]
Sarah Longwell
Happy Birthday, jvl. Thank you. It's such a classic thing for you, where I had to find out it was your birthday from somebody else. Then I had to text Tim and you on our chain, which you ignored until the following day, to say Happy Birthday. What is it about you and birthdays? Are you just. Do you not. Do you keep a low profile? Do you not tell people?
- [01:17]
JVL
I love birthdays. Huge birthday fan. I don't like. I don't. I don't make a big deal about it externally, but like internally we got an ice cream cake. Oh, ice cream cake.
- [01:29]
Sarah Longwell
It's my fave.
- [01:31]
JVL
And. No, it was. It was absolutely lovely. And, and I wrote for myself a big birthday newsletter that nobody cared about.
- [01:42]
Sarah Longwell
Is this the insignification one?
- [01:43]
JVL
It is, it is.
- [01:44]
Sarah Longwell
I got to tell you. So I read the whole thing and
- [01:48]
JVL
God love you because that was a long one.
- [01:50]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, it was, but it was good. It was good in that it was. I thought it was a very fun or interesting to the extent these things are fun. But it was a really interesting thing to tease that analogy out. I have in my mind immediately went to all the ways in which I thought the analogy didn't quite work. But actually, of course, because I can't help it, but I thought the overall point was deeply worth wrestling with. I liked it considerably better than the Graham Platner one, which we can fight about behind the paywall.
- [02:22]
JVL
Okay. I. I mean, I am happy to fight about it again. Everybody, everybody has yelled at me for the Graham Platner piece.
- [02:29]
Sarah Longwell
Yes.
- [02:30]
JVL
Because evidently people believe the people who hate Platner believe that saying that what Platner is doing might be successful means that you want Platner and that you love Platner and that you think Nazis are great. And for the people who love Platner, if you don't say, I love Graham Plat, he's better than Cats, right? If you don't say that you love Graham Platner, then you are indistinguishable from Mitch McConnell. And so I'm just trying to do like an analytical, like take, take JVL's preferences out of this. What does. What do we think? Analysis. And nobody cares about that or nobody believes it.
- [03:14]
Sarah Longwell
Well, I know you're not on Twitter, so I, I've been out there, I've been defending you mightily on Twitter, despite disagreeing with the, the piece of analysis. It certainly and clearly is a piece of analysis. It's just people don't read the piece and so clear, they don't read the piece because, like, the front of it is this huge disclaimer about how it is not your preference. You're not arguing from preference. You know, this is, you're just analyzing sort of what's going on. And then even in later, you're like, and I don't like this. Like, I don't like the populism of all of this. I've seen this movie before because I do think that this is, this is why, like, if, if Tim kind of says, like, why are people making Hassan Piker a litmus test? Or you say, if Graham Platner beats Susan Collins, does he sort of jump to the top of the conversation for 2028? You know, people just sort of, they don't like the idea that you're saying that people who have ideas that they hate and that maybe even we hate. Right? And that, and for us, right, because we've been so clear about our feelings about Trump and the, the garbage that he pumps into the system. Like, the question is, are we allowed to analyze other people who have lots of non flat. Like, I don't even know how to, because it depends on which person you're talking about, how aggressive I want to be about their level of badness or things that I think, like,
- [04:51]
JVL
many times I have analyzed something Donald Trump is doing and said, I think this is likely to be very successful. I don't think people think that I want that thing to succeed or that I think that thing. Here's the deal, like, I do not view the value proposition of my newsletter as telling people what I like. And the Things that I want and the things that I think would be best, I do that every once in a while. But normally I do not deal in shoulds, I deal in wills. Like, what. What is going to happen? Not what I want to happen. Believe me, what I want to happen almost never happens.
- [05:31]
Sarah Longwell
Oh, well, this is. If I was like, if I was arguing from preference, we'd spend a lot of time on debt and deficit reduction, guys. We'd spend a lot of time on education policy. But. But that is not the world we're living in. And I do think that's part of it is. And actually, when we go behind the paywall, we can have a longer discussion about that. But I, the part that I, That I'm stumbling over, I'm trying to get my arms around is when you oppose Donald Trump on moral grounds as well as the grounds of he is illiberal, he is racist, he is sexist, he has. He's a bad person with horrible. Who treats people terribly. Then. Right. The rejoinder of you sort of can't be like, well, this guy has a Nazi tattoo and, oh, well, but right. That from us. Like us as us. And so I find the fact that he has this Totenkampf tattoo troubling. Very, very troubling. So he's covered it up. Right. But at the same time, I can also hold two other thoughts in my head. One is, it is possible. Part of it is like, is. It's a. There's an open question about whether or not he sort of has lied about his knowledge of what it was. I've had trouble exactly tracking who said what. He had, like, a staffer that resigned over it on one hand. I also, Michelle Goldberg has a piece today in the New York Times, and he. Let me ask you a question that gets at the Grand Platner thing, which
- [07:10]
JVL
we were going to do later, but go ahead, ask the question. We'll tease it. We'll tease it. It's okay, go ahead.
- [07:16]
Sarah Longwell
Did you know before Graham Platner was a thing, Right. A guy who none of us had heard of a year ago, who is now a big part of the discourse. Did you know what a Totenkampf was?
- [07:29]
JVL
Cop. Not. Not Kampf. Kampf is like struggle, say. I'm just saying.
- [07:36]
Sarah Longwell
Well, this is sort of my point.
- [07:37]
JVL
I could not, I could not have told you the German name for it. If you showed me the symbol, I probably would have said, feels like I saw that a lot during World War II. Ish. That doesn't feel like a pirate flag. That doesn't feel like a punisher. Like, military guys get all. Not just military guys. Young guys who think they're badasses get all sorts of stupid. Look at me. Tattoos. Oftentimes they get Chinese characters, the meanings of which they have no idea.
- [08:10]
Sarah Longwell
Well, so.
- [08:10]
JVL
Which are like, you know, like, I enjoy crab wontons. And they think this means honor and respect. And that.
- [08:19]
Sarah Longwell
That is. That is a little bit. My point is, I didn't know what it was. If you would. If I had just seen a dude on the beach with that on his chest, I would have had zero idea that it had any of that significance.
- [08:32]
JVL
I would not have had zero idea. Like, again, I would have looked at that, and I would have thought, that rings a bell.
- [08:39]
Sarah Longwell
Well, I remember being in Ohio when I was at Kenyon and going to, like, a gas station that. And the guy there, when he was scooping my ice cream, I. He had a Nazi, Like, a. He had a swastika. That is a symbol that I understand. And I got.
- [08:55]
JVL
Sure.
- [08:55]
Sarah Longwell
I got in a fight with this man at the. When my friend was like, why are you fighting with this guy behind the ice cream? I was like, he's just got a Nazi tattoo while he's scooping my ice cream. I don't want that ice cream now. And so, you know, that is clear to me. I would say the Graham Platner stuff. I'm trying to tease apart a few different dynamics that I think are at play here. And I think one is not about Graham Plattner. I think one is about us.
- [09:19]
JVL
Okay.
- [09:20]
Sarah Longwell
Okay. Meaning there's a. We have taken a moral stand around illiberalism and around sort of horrible actors in our politics. And we have done that against Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene, except for now that. With her turnaround. But like, and Tucker Carlson and all of the Republicans who went along with Trump. Right. That we have gone at the Bulwark, and I hate it when people say the Bulwark because we all think lots of different things. There's a whole podcast we're doing right now in which we argue about these things because we disagree often. But we all started out when we started this thing as folks on the center right, of varying degrees. Some of you were magazine people, some of us were political operatives. But we started out from the center right. And as we watched the Republican Party fall in line against Trump, right? We started out. We were never Trump. And then quickly we became sort of like, wait a minute. In this assault, you guys are just going along with this? And then it became clear that democracy, the rule of law, the way we do things in this country, was under deep threat. And over time, we even moved on, I think, from the political piece of it to the higher order piece of it, which is liberal democracies under assault from Trump and the people who are enabling him. And we're lining up against them, including all of you who run magazines and who used to believe in the conservative movement, who, who used to be people that we respected. We're watching every single one of you fall in line behind this guy and we call bullshit on you. We think you are wrong morally, ethically, and intellectually. Right. And, and, and then, and, and we. Some of the toughest fights we've had with people have been with people who, knowing how dangerous Trump is, knowing how bad Trump is, actually, they also say it, but they refused to say. And so Democrats are preferable. And so we have spent the last eight years or so really pummeling people for what we believe is a total lapse and collapse of the character counts ethos that used to dominate the conservative movement. Right. And they succumbed to. They, they found all these ways to sort of, like, backfill for Trump to carry water, even if they said they were never Trump, they were there to be, like, the anti. Antis were there to be. But we'll carry his water. But we'll say Democrats are worse, but we'll find rationalizations any way we can to justify what Trump is doing. And so what they're on a lookout for right now is any sniff of us doing that in reverse. Right. I think, like, that's part of what this is about is because we have been so clear about our moral lines and boundaries, and we have accused them of, of being bad actors in this. They're like, oh, well, are you guys, are you now saying it's okay for somebody of poor character to, like, be in office?
- [12:27]
JVL
Yeah, I mean, I, I have a series of responses to this, first of which I just don't give a. What those people say.
- [12:34]
Sarah Longwell
No, they have no moral authority. But I'm.
- [12:36]
JVL
Well, no, no, but they're, they're bad actors. Like, they're, they're not. None of their critiques are ever made in good faith. And everything they do is, like, about narcissistic self positioning and like, as if they, their position on the political spectrum is the most important thing. Secondly, I mean, I should make my preferences very clear. What I want is Mark Carney.
- [12:59]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [13:00]
JVL
What I want is somebody who has, like, run the IMF and is, is a very smart economist who Understands fiscal policy and is like really hard headed and clear eyed about the world and is a technocrat. And that's, that's what I want. There is a gigantic difference between Platner and MAGA and Trump.
- [13:31]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [13:31]
JVL
And the, the difference is Platner isn't campaigning on the stuff that he once upon a time said. He rejects that. Now, maybe he's sincere, maybe he's insincere, I don't know. We'll find out. But whereas Trump campaigned on violence and Republicans are committed to the illiberal project. Ross Doutha fucking writes about this all the time. J.D. vance talks about it, about, you know, illiberal democracy. That's what they want.
- [14:09]
Sarah Longwell
Right?
- [14:09]
JVL
Right. I mean, when, when Trump did the bad character things, it was never a, that was a mistake and I apologize. That was never like, look, I got, I was at that rally, there was a protester screaming mean things at me. I said somebody should knock him out. You know what? I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry.
- [14:26]
Sarah Longwell
Right.
- [14:27]
JVL
It, the violence and stuff is all the project.
- [14:32]
Sarah Longwell
The point. Yes.
- [14:34]
JVL
With Platner. Platner's position is I did these, or said these illiberal things in the past about rape or about all cops are bastards, or about communism or about Hamas or whatever, and those things were wrong and incorrect. And I am firmly within the liberal mainstream now. And you can believe him or not believe him. You can say that it's great that he's changed his mind, but the fact that he once had those views suggests to me that his capacity for judgment isn't what I want or need. Right. But it isn't the case that he's doubling down and saying, yeah, fuck yeah, I got, I got a skull on my, on my chest. Screw you and your woke pipe. Right? I mean, that's not, that's not the position he's in. And so all of this stuff from the, the anti, anti crowd is just bad faith bullshit. Like there is no. You know what I'm saying? Like there, there are, there are reasonable ways in which you could say no, Platner's populism should be rejected. It's foolish, it is dangerous. Right. It's slopulism. Again, I'm not saying this is what I view as what I think is better or Right. I've told you what I like. I would like Mark Carney, please. We have, we have an American, Mark Carney.
- [16:05]
Sarah Longwell
This is, what's funny is, you know what? You and I, if it came down to who you and I actually Would, like, choose as our preferences. We'd probably. We would get to the exact same place. I also kind and fierce, you know, like, smart. Like, I want. I want a president who is smarter than us. Like, I don't like the idea of that.
- [16:25]
JVL
Mark Kelly seems like a very intelligent guy and courageous. I like that. Mark Kelly.
- [16:30]
Sarah Longwell
That's right.
- [16:31]
JVL
Like, so, yeah, this is. This isn't about preferences, but anyway, so I just reject entirely the bad faith from the anti. Antis. And I. I do not like the Platner stands because what I see from them like that freaks me the fuck out. That looks cultish. The sort of. The. Like, you can't just be like, well, I guess Platner's the lesser of two evils. All things better, all things considered. It's better to have a Democrat vote in that seat than it is to have Susan Collins in that seat. Especially because we're gonna get to. You can't say that.
- [17:12]
Sarah Longwell
Right?
- [17:13]
JVL
Right. You can't. You have to be like, no.
- [17:15]
Sarah Longwell
Grand Platinum say that. I think. I mean.
- [17:18]
JVL
And no, I mean, I mean, you can say that, but for. For the. For the Platner Caucus, like, the. The Platner. I don't even know what the Platner bros. Like that. That. I mean, you say that and again, you might as well be rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell, you know, oh, you're just a neocon who just can't wait to go back to voting for Republicans or some like that. Even if you're like an actual registered Democrat. Like, you know, if you're. If you're a main. If you're Chuck Schumer. Just saying, yes, I endorse Ramplatt, but that's not enough.
- [17:47]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [17:48]
JVL
So can I.
- [17:49]
Sarah Longwell
So. So I have my own experience with this. We both. We. So this. I don't even. Because you're not online. I'm not sure if you quite groked this yesterday. It's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about it, which is you wrote that piece about Platner, and it came on the same day I wrote a piece about. About the voters in Maine. So I had done a focus group of.
- [18:09]
JVL
I listened to the focus group. Where did you. Did you write the piece for us?
- [18:12]
Sarah Longwell
I did. There's a piece for us.
- [18:14]
JVL
How did I miss that?
- [18:15]
Sarah Longwell
I don't know, because when the Bulwark tweeted it, like, when our institutional account tweeted it, and I didn't notice until a day later, but it is, like, filled with anti. Anti. As being like, see See, you guys love Graham Platner. And let me tell you.
- [18:29]
JVL
Is it because you said, I love Graham Platner in your piece?
- [18:32]
Sarah Longwell
Sure didn't. Sure didn't. But this is. This makes me so. I am. I'm upset on your behalf.
- [18:37]
JVL
Hold on. Pause, pause. Guys, I want you to. Everybody just look at the. Look at the counter and write this down. This is the first time in the history of this publication that Sarah has read my piece and I didn't read hers.
- [18:54]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I wrote a whole I. Because. So here's the thing. Here's what happened.
- [18:59]
JVL
How does it feel, Sarah?
- [19:02]
Sarah Longwell
It makes me sad, actually, because I write so rarely. It's hard to keep up. It's part of me. When I wanted to defend you online, and it was funny defending you because I was like, yeah, I don't agree with this piece either. But also. Leave him alone, guys. He's just doing analysis. He's just putting ideas. He writes 2,000 words a day. He's gonna say some things that he throws chum in the water that you're not gonna like. Okay, so give me.
- [19:24]
JVL
Give me, like, the 32nd version of your piece.
- [19:25]
Sarah Longwell
So my piece was because Janet Mills dropped out. We were going to do an episode for the focus group podcast on the Democratic primary in Maine. Mills drops out. And I was like, oh, well, there was, like, really interesting stuff in the focus group, mainly around why they didn't like Mill. Well, actually, the most interesting thing was they really like Mills. They all like Mills. We've done multiple groups of Democrats in Maine. They like Janet Mills. They think she's done a lot of good stuff. Um, and they. None of them wanted to vote for her. So that, to me, is an interesting phenomenon, right, Where. Where voters really like the person. But. And why don't they. Why don't they want to vote for her? One, they think she's too old.
- [20:01]
JVL
Old.
- [20:02]
Sarah Longwell
Two, they think she's like. They know that Chuck Schumer, like, dragged her into the race.
- [20:07]
JVL
Fact of having Chuck Schumer, the best thing he could have done for her is said Janet Mills is running. Oh, no.
- [20:14]
Sarah Longwell
That's right.
- [20:14]
JVL
I don't like that. That woman's terrible. Can't we get another candidate in there?
- [20:19]
Sarah Longwell
That's right.
- [20:20]
JVL
And that helped her campaign.
- [20:21]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people in the groups are merciless on Chuck Schumer. Like, and that is part of. So I'm writing about it because there's a bunch of phenomena in here that I think are relevant to politics right now and our politics and how it's changing in the moment. One is the anti establishment feeling among average voters, which again, I want to just make clear, anti establishment doesn't mean that they are anti moderate. It means they are anti. This sense that we're going to get like an old, like, standby, regular politician. And I want something new. You can be a new moderate. You can be heterodox. Mary Peltola in Alaska is running a fish first, Alaska, first working class heterodox Democrats out in Washington aren't doing enough to lower your costs kind of campaign. She is a moderate and she is one of the best Chuck Schumer recruits of the cycle. Like, in some ways, voters are being a little unfair to Chuck Schumer because actually getting Sherrod Brown and Roy Cooper and Mary Patola, like, he's got some good recruits anyway. So, like, there's some good Senate recruits in there. I understand why they thought Janet Mills might work, but that was a misunderstanding of the moment in Maine and what Maine wanted. But so I also wanted to know what did voters think about all of Platner's baggage? Right. What did they think about the. Because there's the, there's the question of the tattoo, which I think gets murky as to what did he know and when did he know about it? And like, does he disavow it now? Which of course he does because he's covered it up. And so. But like, the stuff on Reddit too is like, really gross. It's like just gross stuff. But what's interesting from the voters perspective is how they just think like, well, I think he's changed. Like, they're just like, I don't think he believes that stuff anymore. He apologized. And this is the thing, we talked about this a little bit previously, but your point earlier about the fact that, like Trump, when he said the Hollywood Access thing, you know, when you're a star, they let you do it. I go up, I grab her by the, you know, whatever. He didn't say that was a terrible way to talk about a woman. No. He walked into the next debate with Hillary Clinton flanked by Bill Clinton's accusers and just said, it's locker room talk, no big deal. And that was on top of the way he talked about, you know, I mean, how many racist things did we have to hear from him? Mexican judges, you know, Muslims can't come into the country. You know, congresswomen of color. Go back to where you came from. Like, all of that stuff, all of it over.
- [23:08]
JVL
I want to be a dictator on Day one.
- [23:10]
Sarah Longwell
I want to be a dictator on day one. Let's throw out the constitution. Like the things that Trump said every time were consistent with the things that we said we objected to about him. He's never changed. He's gotten worse as it's gone on. And I'll tell you something about the anti antes right now. People will forgive you for being wrong. They will not forgive you for being right.
- [23:30]
JVL
And because we have been right jblism
- [23:32]
Sarah Longwell
about Trump the whole time, people right now are just like, they were right about this. And so they really want to hang us on the idea that like, okay, you guys are in. They want to act like we're endorsing like all of Platner's baggage. But what. So like what makes me mad though is I'm just telling you what the voters think. I'm like the weatherman, right? I'm just telling you which way the wind's blowing. It's raining guys. The populace in Maine, right?
- [24:00]
JVL
Same.
- [24:01]
Sarah Longwell
The rain in Maine falls mainly in the populous plain. Okay. And like that's what's happening. And it's a weird state. It's a really, really weird state. And this is just going back to your piece. It's why I disagree with you ultimately that Platner has any national either aspirations or abilities or like that anything. I agree with you that any if somebody unseats Susan Collins just the same way John Ossoff, like people either either have a big upset, right? They do something that hasn't been done to the people have been trying to unseat Collins forever. If he does that. Do you want me to stop and wait until after the paywall? I have so many thoughts on this. So okay, we'll do it afterwards.
- [24:42]
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- [25:17]
Sarah Longwell
Shh.
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Sarah Longwell
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Sarah Longwell
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Sarah Longwell
They are so essential and then have
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Sarah Longwell
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Sarah Longwell
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