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- [00:03]
JVL
Hello, everyone. I'm JVL here with my best friends Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the Bulwark. Twelve hours ago, Jeff Goldberg dropped a story in the Atlantic in which he ran through all of the Donald Trump's greatest hits, but then also had a bunch of new stuff from John Kelly who is out on the record. And you know, like, this should be a bombshell. It should destroy the Trump campaign. It should cause, it should cause Kamala Harris to wind up with 55% of the vote. Sarah, hit me because I get the sense you're loaded for bear on this and I want the full McGill from you.
- [00:50]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Let me just start by saying normally in a normal circumstance, this would be the October Surprise. Former chief of staff for a president comes out and said he routinely praised Hitler's generals. And this would come shortly after the President himself had said that he wants to use the military against the enemy within, meaning Americans who do not agree with him politically. This should be the whole ballgame. Should be the whole ballgame. But in our current circumstances, the October Surprise would be the media giving this the seriousness, the gravity and the longevity. Meaning this is not a one day news story. It's not something we talk about for a 12 hour news cycle. It's the kind of thing that explodes a campaign. Now, I just did a big Twitter thread on this because I am out of my mind on a couple specific pieces. One is I already, when I tweeted this story last night, I immediately had sort of the Trump defending sycophants in my comments saying, well, this is a lie. You know, these have been debunked. These are anonymously sourced. And I responded, these are not anonymous, anonymously sparked. John Kelly is on the record. He's not just on the record. In the Atlantic, he did recordings with the New York Times, which means John Kelly is officially on a media tour with the information that he has about Donald Trump. Right? This is, this is he, John Kelly's taking it seriously enough that he went with the New York Times and did recordings and he gave all this new information to Jeffrey Goldberg. And one of the things that frustrates me about people saying that like this is what, this is what happens when something like this happen. This drops like there is a media way or there's like a way that Trump defenders, they isolate the single instance and they try to find something that they can grab onto to discredit it. Either the context, we don't know the context. I'm watching Dead Eyed Scott Jennings on CNN saying, well, we are And David Urban, we don't know. And also the real Nazis are the kids on college campuses. Nobody look at the guy praising Hitler's generals who might run the country in three months. These people make me sick. They make me physically ill, the way that they treat us. But here's the thing. They want to gaslight you. This is peak gaslighting time, where they come for us to try to isolate the individual and say there's something wrong with the individual story, some reason it can't be trusted, and they want us to ignore the cumulative weight of the evidence. General Kelly is not alone, not by a long shot. You've got Mike Pence saying that Donald Trump is unfit for office because he put himself over the Constitution and asked Mike Pence to do the same. You've got Millie on the record calling Donald Trump a fascist. You've got his old Homeland Security adviser saying he's unfit. John Bolton saying he's unfit. His former White House attorney saying he's unfit. Ty Cobb. They're not all lying. It's just like the sexual assault victims, are they all lying, every single one of them. But because Trump defenders do this thing where they circle the wagons and they pinpoint one thing, they want you to forget all of the other contexts, not the least of which is the stuff we hear coming from Trump himself. Here's the reason that we know that Donald Trump talks like this about soldiers. He said it on the record about John McCain. Yes, right. He said it on the record. How do we know that he thinks Hitler's kind of a cool guy? Is he out there right now calling Americans vermin? Is he talking about immigrants poisoning the blood of our country? He sure is.
- [04:30]
JVL
Didn't he have dinner with a Nazi?
- [04:31]
Sarah Longwell
Did he dine with a white supremacist? A self described white supremacist? We have the evidence we need. This is a question of whether we decide to take it seriously. And I will tell you, this is the media's last opportunity to cover the stakes and not the race. Cover the stakes and not the race. I'll let someone else talk now.
- [04:55]
JVL
Tim.
- [04:57]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I mean, I appreciate Sarah giving me a stiff backbone here and getting my blood pressure going because it is easy to go into the back because we're in year nine of this and you wrote the whole triad about the normalization. It's easy to get your mind as a political animal naturally goes to, does this matter? What's the meta commentary around this? What's the impact? And it's kind of like I have to actively stop myself from doing that and focus instead on the substance of the threat and the concern, which is extremely alarming, which should be alarming, which, if there was a cacophonous echo chamber of people discussing all of the alarm, would certainly have an impact. And if it wouldn't, then, well, than it would. It would tell us more about the country than it would about what the arguments were that were being made. To me, I think the most alarming thing substantively in there. I had Jeffrey Goldberg on the Daily Today, so it's interesting to hear his perspective on this. But the substantively interesting thing that I found was not the Hitler generals in isolation, but it was in combo with the story about how he said during the George Floyd protests that he wishes his generals were more like the Chinese generals in Tiananmen Square. And then there's another anecdote where he calls himself. He calls the generals fucking wusses, or. I don't have the exact quote in front of me.
- [06:35]
JVL
Doesn't use the wuss version, okay?
- [06:38]
Tim Miller
He calls them that because they didn't want to shoot the protesters in the leg during the George Floyd protest. Didn't. Didn't have the same mentality for the Capitol Police. I would notice he wasn't. He didn't want them to hit. He didn't want them to shoot his people. The weed was storing the Capitol. That is weird. But to me, I thought that was like. That's the most interesting part, because it's like, you know, you can get Raptor on the axle on the Nazi thing. Like, is he really a Nazi? And how much of a Nazi? And what did he like about the Nazis? And it's like he's telling you what he actually wants if you just put it all together. What he wants is generals that will do whatever he says, that will go after his enemies. And he wants that in the second term. He thinks he's going to be able to get that in the second term. And as the term goes on and as he becomes older and less inhibited and more, you know, and surrounded by an increasingly small circle of crazies, the risk becomes higher and higher that he's able to execute on it. Right? And so, I mean, to me, like, that is the big takeaway from this as far as the practical element of what to look for in a second term. And what is. What's the most alarming about it? And, you know, the other thing, when I asked Goldberg about this, Jeffrey, what he said was, I was like, so how do they really feel? Because that's the thing that's hard for me to parse because I don't know these guys, where are they on the scale from? This is bluster from Trump that is un American to. I'm actually really fucking scared that he's going to do this stuff. And Jeffrey said he's like, they're scared shitless. He's like, they really think that he's going to do this stuff. That's the side that they fall on. It's not because it would be bad enough, right? Like, if it was bluster, if it was un American talk, if he's talking like a fascist, but he's all talk, no action. Like, to me, that's still bad. Like, that's still disqualifying. We don't want a president of the United States talking like a mini Mussolini, right? Like that is disqualifying in itself. But I thought it was telling that these guys, at least Millie and Kelly, clearly think the risk is real, is high.
- [08:58]
Sarah Longwell
Let's talk about this part for a second, because this is the part that's got me. So on one hand, you do have Kelly two weeks before the election, sort of trying to make a difference here, right? He goes to Jeff Goldberg, who with whom he clearly has a relationship. Jeff Goldberg is an excellent reporter, has clearly cultivated strong relationships with these guys. He's been the point person writing these stories. Whether he did a big profile of Millie. We got the Matis sort of on background stuff that was all in the Atlantic. So I presume Jeff Goldberg is like, sourced up hard on this. And then he goes to the New York Times, right, And he's willing to make recordings. Here's the thing, though. Anything that is filtered through the elite media is not going to help. It's not nothing, right? It's not nothing. It's important. But we don't live in the media environment that we used to live in, where this is the kind of thing that creates a bombshell that ricochets everywhere. And this is why Kelly and Mattis and everybody who's ever gone on background, right, they have to go look America in the eye and say this. It cannot be filtered through a media lens that the people we need to reach distrust, fairly or unfairly, they do. They are distrusted, right, by the exact people that this needs to penetrate. And that is why, if I am begging, begging these generals, if they are scared, if they're as scared as Tim just said they are, if they're scared, as Jeffrey Goldberg says, go say it straight to the American people. It's not Hard. Every media in the world will show up if you just say we're going to hold a press conference or want to talk to you and we're going to take questions.
- [10:37]
Tim Miller
Or just say it to Brett Baer.
- [10:40]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, or say to Brett Baer. Good, but just say it live. People need to be able to see your eyes, man.
- [10:46]
Tim Miller
Fox would put it on air. If John Kelly said that they would call Bret Baer, they would put it on the air. They would.
- [10:52]
JVL
So I guess I have a question. Do they need to reach the people who are fully siloed at this point or do they need to reach people who are just low information, not really paying attention? Voters? And then the sort of, you know, Wall Street Journal editorial page, the people aren't actually siloed because if that's like if the kid. If the point is you gotta flip a bunch of Trump voters, then yes, you gotta find a way to puncture their media. But if you gotta get a bunch of people who are watching football who may or may not vote, you could do this with paid media, couldn't you? They've raised fifty gajillion dollars. The Harris campaign. You could. This is what, you take this audio and you put it into an ad and you just drop $50 million of this ad on Pennsylvania.
- [11:43]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, right. I think, yes, true. You could. That's, I mean, look, that's better than what we have right now. The reason I think the press conference matters such a great deal. I think it matters when people take questions right when. And I think it matters when there's a bunch of people together. Right? Not just one person. And I think that if Kelly, who was the chief of staff, who's like a very respected general, led the charge that others might go with him. I, I just, there is something about looking people in the eye and look, if they want to do a live interview with. On Fox News, fine, I'll take it. I'll take it for the love of God. But this is the, the media will do with. This is where Tim and I don't know what you think about this. I am loath generally to blame the media because the media is not a thing. But I will say the extent to which people are covering the race and everybody's a freaking analyst. Tim's point about the meta conversation. We only have the meta conversation. No one's having the base level conversation around. God, I was watching CNN last night or clip of Scott Jennings, Bakari Sellers, Ashley Allison, like they were doing one of those roundtables on lower coats. David Urban and, like, if you just leave it to the meta analysis, everybody can obfuscate and change the conversation.
- [13:09]
JVL
You've got to have both sides of the argument represented. You know, that's a really good job.
- [13:12]
Tim Miller
I see an anti Trump or bad for Trump? No. Is it good or is it right or wrong? Was it right or wrong? Like, is what are you doing right or wrong? Right? Like, they don't have that. I would say this. I don't know if our clips get to these people. There's somebody who tweeted I saw yesterday that was like, it's an alarming sign. If Sarah is begging John Kelly publicly to do a press conference because it means that private entreaties are not working. And I'm like, yeah, private entreaties are not working. By the way, I'm doing. We're all doing private entreaties. They're not working. Okay. If they were working, we wouldn't be talking about it. And you would be seeing the result of the private entreaties because we're 14, 13 days away now. So, yeah, breaking news. Private entreaties to all these people are not working. So a public message that maybe, hopefully could resonate is like, none of the. Like, we are in a communications battle space to get people to understand what the real threat is of Trump. And none of these guys would go into a real world war. A real world war battle space. None of these guys would go into a real battle space with hands tied behind their back like this. You have Donald Trump on one side. It's like, I will go in front of the camera, I will go into a stump speech, and I will say, they are liars, they are losers, they are idiots, they are morons. They don't know what they're doing. I love this country. I love America. They hate America, okay? And he will use every communications tool at his disposal to do it. And then to counter that, they will say, well, I'll do an audio message with the New York Times that's kind of rambly and where I sort of acknowledge that Trump has some good qualities, but he also might be a fascist. And I'm really worried about it. And it's like, you would never do this. It's like, you know, the equivalent to a military is like, you know, you guys, like, they are dropping drones and just like, tomahawks on your head. And you're just like, well, I don't know.
- [15:13]
JVL
I'm gonna bring out the artillery. The artillery's all the way back there at the armory. Do we need to get it out and drag it out towards the front.
- [15:20]
Tim Miller
Lines, Bring out the artillery. Bring it out and have the full. Just have it out fully. Because the other thing, my other point is like the pretense is also wrong. It's like the fact that this is not politics. What they're doing is not Millie talking to Woodward and Kelly talking to Schmidt and Goldberg and Maggie. The idea is that this isn't politics. This is what generals do. We talk to reporters for history books. And so people can have it down. It's two weeks up for the election. Whether or not you intend it to be politics, it is. You're already in the politics bucket. You're well into the particularly Kelly Miller you could maybe make an argument for is not in the politics bucket. But Kelly, during the Times. Yeah, during the Times interview, Kelly says, well, basically at this point he said, I acknowledge I went in and took a political job, but at this point, I'm basically a retired general. And as a retired general, I would never deign to tell the American people who to vote for. And I'm like, you're a retired chief of staff. Actually, you're a retired chief of staff. There are retired generals out there. Bill McRaven is a retired general and he's telling people who to vote for also, by the way. But you are a retired chief chief of staff. That was your last job after you left being a general. You took two other jobs after that. And so that's the part that is frustrating, that gets me mad. I'm trying to re channel my anger from Kelly, who's doing the right thing, towards all of the assholes like Tom Cotton, who know that John Kelly is telling the truth, who've praised him, who revere John Kelly, who revere John Kelly, who understand the importance, you know, like how much he sacrificed for this country, who frankly like John Kelly a lot better than I do when it comes to his policy proposals. You know, like I found John Kelly's immigration regime to be unconscionable. So, like, there's a group of Republicans who are much more aligned with John Kelly who are now either silent or trying to pretend like they believe Donald Trump over him, which is preposterous. So I'm trying to refocus my anger at those guys.
- [17:26]
JVL
I got a question. Can you name or point to a single anti anti Trump type at the elite level who is going to be swayed by this?
- [17:41]
Tim Miller
Oh, of course not.
- [17:43]
JVL
That's kind of telling, right? Isn't it telling that there's not a Second, no. Am I wrong? Maybe I'm wrong.
- [17:48]
Sarah Longwell
All right, so I haven't, I'll admit, you guys, I appreciated everybody's nice comments about my hair during the last event. You can see that I woke up today on the west coast, I did nothing. I haven't showered, I haven't done anything because I'm sitting on Twitter and sitting on email and whatever. Healthy.
- [18:06]
JVL
Yeah.
- [18:06]
Sarah Longwell
But I'm trying to figure out, I just, I'm like, how do we get these guys to speak out? Right? How do we. And so, and I'm looking, I'm looking for signs too, from that. Like, this feels to me like at least a Dispatch Ian moment.
- [18:21]
JVL
That's such an interesting question.
- [18:22]
Sarah Longwell
It should be a dispatchian moment and.
- [18:27]
JVL
Not just why does it matter who?
- [18:28]
Tim Miller
They retweeted me today. Jonah retweeted me. I don't, I don't want to get down on the dispatch thing. Jonah retweeted me.
- [18:33]
Sarah Longwell
But no, no, no, I'm just saying, like, will it matter to some of the anti. Anti types? I do think that there are the Rich Lowry.
- [18:40]
JVL
Does Rich Lowry have anything to say?
- [18:41]
Tim Miller
Like, this is the problem with all this also is. And this is a little bit, you know, like, the reality is there's a lot of people that try to live in this gray space, you know, but the reality is anytime something like this happens, like, you can be a. As far down the MAGA pipeline as possible. I mean, you could be the type of person that we all find disgusting. Like Bill Barr. I'll speak for myself again. John Kelly sacrificed his child for the country, obviously has great traits and is a patriot. I found his immigration regime disgusting. Like, but John Kelly, like, these guys were not rhinos. It's not like the Gary Cohn types or whatever you know, that went in, like people that were fully on board the Trump project, let's put it that way, fully on board the Trump project, like Bill Barr and John Kelly, they speak out and they get treated like they're us, you know, like there is no, like, as soon as you've done that, it's like all these guys try to pretend like, oh, well, if it was somebody without Trump derangement syndrome that was talking about this, then maybe it would have more credibility. Right? But clearly this guy John Kelly has like, these guys have lost their mind. They think he's Hitler. Now, there's no. They pretend like there is some higher minded way to be anti Trump. But anytime anybody actually speaks out with clear eyes about the threat of Trump, those concerns at the Elite level are immediately rejected, and they send them down the bulwarks. Shoot. Because that's the only way to maintain the posture, right? Like, that's the only way to maintain their posture.
- [20:19]
JVL
So they don't fucking matter.
- [20:20]
Tim Miller
Actually, it's the voters that matter.
- [20:21]
JVL
Right, Right.
- [20:22]
Sarah Longwell
Can I. Can I read you something that Nikki Haley just tweeted?
- [20:25]
JVL
Yeah, go ahead. But then I want to ask you about Bill's. Bill's newsletter this morning.
- [20:29]
Sarah Longwell
Okay. Nikki Haley just tweeted, thanks to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, there's chaos around the world. The debacle they created in Afghanistan emboldened our enemy enemies. Russia invaded Ukraine. Iranian proxies started a war with Israel, and China threatens Taiwan daily. Make no mistake, American national security is at risk if Kamala Harris becomes president. This is Nikki Haley being enlisted in this moment to change the conversation. Right. This is what Trump will do. There's a. Trump is. His campaign is genius about this. They know that. If you don't like the conversation we're having, change it. I remain convinced, the Springfield conversation, that they kept that thing going a, because they thought it was good to keep it in somewhere in the vein of immigration. But also it was because Trump had just gotten absolutely smoked at the debate and they wanted that conversation to end. So no matter how insane their conversation was about eating cats and dogs, for them, that was better terrain than Trump got smoked at the debate. And so they are going to deploy people now to try to change this conversation. I do think our job and the job of any media person who is listening, is to not let this go. This is the whole ballgame. Like, do you think that Trump will engage in the peaceful transfer of power if he is reelected? No. How do we know that he didn't do it last time? That's it. He lied to everybody. He caused an insurrection. These generals, his chief of staff, his vice president, they're all telling us and what we're just going to be like, dude, Kamala Harris lost a point in Michigan.
- [22:03]
Tim Miller
Yeah. I'll give you a tangible example of this, actually. How about this? And all this stuff, I think only matters on the margins, but it matters. As far as keeping stuff, what's the high salience issue? The last 13 days. Does matter. Mattered in 2016. Mattered in 2020. They've got sick with this on the Hill. There's a period in 2017 where after something like this, there'd be people running around the Hill going, senator Cornyn, what do you think about this? Congressman McCaul, what do you think about this. Our colleague Joe Perdacon said he was looking at the congressional, at the congressional social media feeds. He's like, none of the Congressional Republicans have said anything about this. You would think that'd be something you'd be interested to hear about. Do none of you. Who confirmed, at least on the Senate side, who confirmed John Kelly to the cab? Does it not concern any of you that he thinks that the candidate you're supporting is a fascist? Have you talked to John Kelly? Have you called John Kelly? I got one reporter in trouble on MSNBC because I was on a panel with them and I was like, has JD Vance called Mike Pence? The reporter was a Mike Pence or was a J.D. vance beat reporter? They were like, I don't actually know the answer to that. I didn't really mean to put him on the spot, but it's like, people aren't thinking about this like that. It's like, isn't this crazy? Has Tom Cotton called John Kelly to see what he thinks, to like, hash it out, to disagree? I mean, he approved it. He admired him. He sent multiple tweets about how great John Kelly was.
- [23:40]
JVL
Nobody asked.
- [23:41]
Tim Miller
Isn't he at least curious?
- [23:43]
JVL
Because we all know the answers already, right? Because they know it's true, right? I mean, the answer is that we gotta take a break. This podcast is sponsored by Rhone Apparel. The pain points of finding what to wear and avoid uncomfortable, tight clothing that's never your size is a problem we need to move on from. If you want to look good without having to think hard about it, then Rhone Apparel is for you. Men's closets were due for a radical reinvention. Lucky for us, Rhone stepped up to the challenge. Rhone's commuter collection is the most comfortable, breathable and truly versatile set of products known to man. They have products for every occasion. We're talking about the world's most comfortable pants, dress shirts, quarter zips, polos, blazers and T shirts. They look great as individual pieces and work seamlessly together. Rhone's signature four way stretch fabric is breathable, flexible and works anywhere from your commute to work to the 19th hole. It's time for unparalleled confidence without all the hassle. Roane's commuter collection features wrinkle release technology and is 100% machine washable. Looking good is that easy. I was given shout outs to Rhone Apparel on our swing state tour. I was wearing my Rhone T shirts and they were, you know, sitting on a bus for six hours at a time isn't super comfortable, but it was just Fine in my Rhone T shirts. Sarah, we may have to have talked to our HR person because I did find myself at one point sitting with our colleague Heather. And when I remarked, you know, I'm wearing a Rhone T shirt, and she laughed, I was like, no, no, feel, feel this fabric. Touch it. Touch this fabric. Don't you feel how supple and comfortable that is? And she was like, no, no. Yeah, it's like super comfortable. I'm like, it's got four way stretch. I was just doing these endorsements forcing.
- [25:37]
Sarah Longwell
People to touch your shirts.
- [25:38]
JVL
I know, I know. I was literally. But the point is, this isn't shtick. I was actually doing this on the bus because I love these things so.
- [25:46]
Sarah Longwell
Much, I put my hands all over him. Call HR on me.
- [25:50]
JVL
That's right. Head to roan.com the next level and use promo code the next level to save 20% off your entire order. That's 20% off your entire order. When you head to r h o n e dot com, slash the next level and use code the next level. It's time to find your corner office comfort. Can I just introduce a simple moment of levity in all of this? Because I do feel like you need a little comic relief to let some of the tension out. The part that I thought was maybe the best in the Jeff Goldberg piece is when Trump says to Kelly, I wish I had generals like the Germans. And Kelly said to him, and you imagine this is the kind of private joke that one does with oneself to keep one's sanity, says, oh, which ones? Like Bismarck's journal generals. Because as Kelly says, he knows full well that Donald Trump has no fucking idea who Bismarck is. Right. Donald Trump has never heard of the Franco Prussian War. Donald Trump might have been commander in chief of the greatest military force the world has ever known, but he's never fucking heard of the Franco Prussian War. And then when Trump is like, no, no, you know, the other ones, Hitler's generals. Kelly says, you know, Hitler's generals tried to kill him and Rommel had to. And the phrase Kelly uses, I believe was President Trump was not familiar with the name Rommel. Probably the single most famous German general of the last hundred years, and he just never even heard of him. And that level of invincible ignorance is.
- [27:44]
Tim Miller
Maybe thought it was pronounced differently, like Rommel, Rommel, Romel. You just didn't recognize.
- [27:50]
Sarah Longwell
You know, it's probably that.
- [27:51]
JVL
It's probably that we're, you know, we, we live in a world in which 47% of the country is going to vote for this guy who's an unbelievable ignoramus. And I found that darkly funny. But also, again, this is my warm blanket. Nobody's going to make this choice accidentally. Right. And here I really do believe this. I believe that it is simply unfathomable that more than, say, 5% of Trump's voters will come to this having never heard a single word about any of this. They will. They'll have heard it somewhere. They'll have seen it in an ad. They'll have seen it in a newspaper, on a TikTok. They will have maybe seen the denials on Fox. They talked about it on Fox and Friends, even to dismiss it. Right. And so it's not like they will be totally blind to the fact that this is a thing that is out there that happened, so people are going to choose it.
- [28:51]
Tim Miller
A Brian Kilmeade defense that he might just not have been aware that. Like comparing yourself to the Germans as a third rail. I like that. Yeah. It might just not. He just. It was natural. He just might not have been aware of that.
- [29:03]
JVL
You know, the 2 3rd rails in American politics, they always say Social Security reform, Hitler and comparing yourself to Hitler.
- [29:11]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Those are the two things Trump is on. Guys. He's too stupid to know this. All right? It's like they always, at the end of the day, they always fall back on. He's actually too dumb to be intentionally bad. Great. It's reassuring.
- [29:28]
JVL
It's the rost out angle. Right.
- [29:31]
Sarah Longwell
While you're talking about Trump being an absolute idiot, I have, you know, I discover some of the more bad faith anti. Antis. I discover new ones that I find to be the most objectionable. Charlie Kirk. Sorry. Charlie Cook. Accidental confusion there. Charlie over at NR has become of one of the very worst. And I got in a kind of an argument with Key and with Josh Crash, who I think we've all had on our shows in the past.
- [30:02]
JVL
Are you spending time with these guys, Sarah?
- [30:05]
Sarah Longwell
Can I just. Hold on, let me. It's not about spending time with them. It's about the way that these conversations evolve or like what people focus on. So after the event with Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris and you, both of them and me, which is why I felt really like strongly about jumping in on this. They Josh tweeted that Liz Cheney said that the abortion restrictions, the reversal of jobs had gone too far, which then Charlie Cook tweeted with like quote tweets around. Too far. She never said that. She just didn't say it. It was just a lie. It was made Up. And it was about.
- [30:48]
JVL
This is my shocked face.
- [30:50]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, it was about maternal health. The discussion was. And she. Liz was talking about her concerns that in some states, like Texas, where the state level laws are so restrictive that it's causing women not to be able to get the care that they need. That was what she added to the conversation. And I included the direct quotes. Neither of them deleted their tweets. They just were happy to keep the misinformation flowing because they think in this moment, the real enemy. The real enemy is Liz Cheney and that we need to spend more time with Liz Cheney explaining herself for her evolution. And I saw a bunch of other people pick this up, too. A bunch of the anti. Antis. Even Nick Cataggio wrote an excellent piece. But it's still like, this is where the naval gazing is. They refuse to engage on the substance of Donald Trump's threat, but they are happy to sit and just pick over Liz Cheney's abortion policy and where her disagreements are with Kamala Harris. But that is even not the point of what I was saying. Charlie Cook also wrote a piece in which he called Kamala Harris an idiot. And his whole piece was about how she was an idiot. And I gotta say, I was listening to her talk when I was interviewing her, and I was thinking about that because, you know, what is she a little standard politician? Like, does she kind of lapse into her stump speech? Sure. Is she an idiot? Not by any stretch of the imagination.
- [32:18]
Tim Miller
I mean, she passed the California bar, for starters. Like, even if you wanted to engage on the merits of this, like, that's. She passed the California bar. It's hard to pass. I just. Is Charlie Cook a lawyer? I don't think so. You know what I mean? Like, JBL didn't get into med school.
- [32:30]
JVL
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Still too soon. You have to get out the mass spectrometer, like the micron microscope, the electron microscope. There it is. See all these science tools? I can barely tell them apart. To examine every single clause and word in Liz Cheney's answer on abortion. Charlie can just say whatever the fuck he wants that nobody gets to look at it.
- [32:53]
Tim Miller
These guys.
- [32:55]
Sarah Longwell
I think there's just a gap in idiocy. Like the way that people talk about her, like she's not smart.
- [33:01]
JVL
And then there's pundit accountability gap. Yes, totally. But here's what I want to ask. So Bill in his morning newsletter, which, if you're not subscribed, you should be. I love it. I love Angry Sarah. It's like I'm looking in A mirror. And Bill noted that there is a panel out from a Democratic group showing where they were testing messages, like closing messages. And the thing which resonated the most with undecided voters was where it was former Trump officials calling him unfit, erratic, and dangerous. That's kind of hopeful, right? I mean, we could, you could, again, you could just put money behind all of this instead of hoping for a press conference or something like this. You have a campaign with a ton of money. There's 14 days left. I understand votes are already being sent in. But again, the people you got to reach at this point are not early vote people. These are the people who are trying to get off the couch the very last minute. There are only three states. You don't have to hit the entire country with it. Couldn't you just spend $150 million, 50 million in Wisconsin, 50 million in Michigan, 50 million in Pennsylvania over the next 13 days to make this message resonate so that at least nobody can say, well, we never even heard that stuff. Right? We have the audio from Kelly. Right? Even. I mean, isn't this a solvable problem, my campaign friends?
- [34:43]
Tim Miller
I mean, to solve? I mean, no is the real, really the answer. It's just not 1998. I mean, yeah, sure, she should do that. Yes, she should do that. And if you look at the testing, the blueprint group that does message testing, like it matters, like it matters to people when you remind them that half of Trump's cabinet isn't for him. You know, if you, if you put this is why it's in. When Kamala or when Sarah was doing the town hall with Kamala and Liz, while they both said that they know it, their teams are telling them that this works with people. Trump's own vp, his own chief of staff. This is old news to us, but other people know it, but don't think about it. And if you have to frame it in a way to make them think about it, doesn't that give you a second doubt? Doesn't that raise the doubt in your mind if you're teetering, if you're one of these people who don't like Trump, but you might vote for him anyway? Does it make you rethink that a little bit when you realize that his own chief of staff, his own national security advisor, his own vp, blah, blah, blah. So I do think so. I think it will be in paid. Their paid lately has pivoted a little bit more to that. Trump is risky. He's unchecked. You heard Obama say that yesterday in his speech. So you can tell they're moving towards that message a little bit. But I just don't think that that is the equivalent of four guys standing in front of a bank of cameras saying it themselves. And I just, I, the efficacy of it is just, is just much less as far as understood.
- [36:17]
JVL
I'm just saying that if you can't get the hundred percent that you'd like to with that, could you get 80% of that by just, by just dropping a money bomb on it? That's, that's my question. Just as a, as a purely political, you know, a matter of like, the.
- [36:32]
Tim Miller
Ads have to be good, though. A lot of people tune out ads. It's just, it's a more, it's more complicated than it sounds, I guess, is all I'm saying. And I think that there is diminishing returns and paid at this, at this date in the campaign.
- [36:43]
JVL
Fair enough.
- [36:44]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, there's a, I mean, well, yeah, I mean we, there's a reason that a lot of us put, I mean, look, you put a lot of money into the ads at the end, but like a lot of times when you're trying to shape public opinion in the long term, create issues that the, the conversation is going to, you know, pivot around, you spend that money early. And like, that's why we've seen a ton of movement. I mean, we do see a lot of center right voters. But right now you are trying to both sort of sweep up the last bit of people who, you know, think that Trump was better on the economy and make them think and like don't usually. I don't vote for Democrats and get them to believe that Trump is too dangerous, I think. But I agree with you. I think this is a good closing argument, as good as. And our research, I've been on this thing about the generals for forever because all the research does show nothing but like, I can't tell you how much, how important it is when it's filtered through something else, like a paid ad or it's filtered through the media. It is like 30% as effective as if they called a press conference and said it directly to the American people and let those clips go far and wide.
- [37:55]
JVL
So this is. One of our colleagues made this point to me yesterday that it's kind of extraordinary that the Harris campaign is basically closing with the bulwark. Like it's, the closing messages are basically targeted for the kind of people who read and like the bulwark. Very centrist, very moderate, like really good stuff in that way. And that's kind of extraordinary and gratifying, which is nice I think for us, but also makes me a little nervous because like if it doesn't work, does that mean it's on us?
- [38:39]
Sarah Longwell
No, I mean the reason that they're doing it the way that they're doing it is because the data shows that that's what they should be doing. Right? Like they're looking at their own data that is saying, hey, about half of what's available and left are these center right voters that we've got to convince and get over the line. It is, it just so happens it is our cohort of people but like they're not listening to us to make that decision. They made that decision because their data shows that it's the right thing to do.
- [39:06]
Tim Miller
So we get the credit but not to blame. Actually jbl, that's how that works, Wins.
- [39:11]
JVL
We get the credit.
- [39:12]
Tim Miller
I like when we get the credit. Otherwise other people the blame if we lose. Just one last point on this is because J Mart wrote an article about this yesterday that had a lot of people up in arms in the never Trump world about how the Longwell, Liz, Kamala, Charlie, Maria Shriver, weirdly, events were aimed at the bulwark. Really. He didn't say it like this, but it was aimed at bulwark people more than I'm a really hard right conservative and I'm just reluctantly going to get there. And I understood to J Mart's point, maybe there's some more potential voters out there if she had pivoted even more ideologically to the center rhetorically. But she's done a lot of pivoting to the center already. But the point is, which we'll get to in the next segment. I was talking to a lot of top Democrats last night at a social function and their pushback to J Mart is their data basically shows that the things that work are the Generals, Mike Pence, January 6th and abortion. And like I know you don't think of abortion as like a conservative issue, but like in Florida right now it's 60 plus percent on the abortion ballot initiative. So the kinds of Republicans that are gettable for her are at least in the middle somewhere on abortion. And so that's why they're talking about those issues I guess is the point. And that's not why they're not talking about, I don't know, a balanced budget amendment or whatever. Okay, we've got an ad if at the beginning of the fall has you feeling farmers market vibes, but you don't have Time to go to a farmer's market. Look no further than Green Chef, the first certified organic meal kit. Company bring the flavors of Farmers market to you with fresh seasonal organic produce in every box. Plus premium proteins like organic eggs, sustainably sourced seafood and hormone free chicken. All these get delivered right to your door. Plus you don't have to guess what to make with your farm fresh items. With Green Chef's easy to follow recipes and pre measured and prepped ingredients, you'll be serving up a restaurant worthy meal in no time. Green Chef makes it easy to eat right for your lifestyle with delicious options like Mediterranean plant based, calorie smart and more. Save time in the kitchen with premium ingredients that arrive prepped. Many come pre chopped. That's important for me. I don't like chopping and ready to cook like pre measured sauces, spices and dressings. Stock up on tasty extras from Green Market, your one stop shop for high quality curated items that make it easier to eat clean all day long. Green Chef is also owned by HelloFresh. So with a wider array of meal plans to choose from, there's something for everyone. Do you think I have time to cook right now, people? Do you think I have time to cook? Have you been to the YouTube page? Have you watched our tour? We're just surviving, all right? Like we're just lucky to lose is just lucky that she's getting any nutrients at all. Alright? That it's not just pop tarts for.
- [42:07]
JVL
Dinner, it's basically all on Green Chef. Green Chef is keeping that kid fed.
- [42:11]
Tim Miller
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- [43:04]
JVL
All right, Sarah, this is a real question. You're going to think I'm being glib, but I'm not. Kamala Harris has Gretchen Whitmer, Eminem and the Insane Clown Posse out stumping for her. How does she not win Michigan?
- [43:22]
Sarah Longwell
I mean, she's going to win Michigan.
- [43:24]
Tim Miller
Surrogates matter, is this question.
- [43:28]
JVL
That is my question. Like, shouldn't that be helpful? I mean, those are surrogates who aim right at the heart of, like, the Trump Coalition.
- [43:35]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [43:35]
JVL
You know, angry young dudes and Clown Posse.
- [43:39]
Sarah Longwell
Are they. They're like, 50s now, right? I mean, these are people. We were.
- [43:43]
JVL
Tim, can you feel this, please?
- [43:45]
Tim Miller
I can't.
- [43:46]
JVL
Juggalos. Can you explain the Juggalos to.
- [43:50]
Sarah Longwell
I'm out of my depth, man.
- [43:51]
Tim Miller
Yeah. There's kind of an insane Crown Posse diaspora. It's not the kind of music that I like. It's a little for my taste, but, you know, they dress up in clown makeup. Angry people go. A lot of boys, but some women. Lesbians. I imagine there are a couple lesbians there. No. And, you know, they wear cargo pants. And then it has. Their fanship has evolved into kind of like a cultural totem as well. That does overlap with MAGA a little bit at times. They're called the Juggalos. The fans, some of them had showed up to kind of counter protest a Black Lives Matter at times. During the. During, you know, the 2020 protest wars. So I guess the point JBL is trying to make is, like, it's not. These are not the, you know, kind of elite woke. This isn't Taylor Swift. Yeah, it's not Taylor Swift.
- [44:43]
JVL
This is not.
- [44:44]
Tim Miller
You don't see a lot of people in. In Insane Clown Posse gear at your local Whole Foods, you know?
- [44:50]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. As intriguing as the cargo pants sound, I can't. I can't say that this is a demographic I've ever been hip with. I. I do think Eminem, though. Eminem, I'm here for. Eminem is a person whose music I. I listened to all of, even when it was way too angry and scary. But it came to me very formative. I thought it was great that they had Eminem out there. I do think. Look, I. I get a little nervous, and I saw some people pointing this out. It's not worth me pointing it out, but I would just say in general, like, oh, you've got Springsteen. Like, there's something about, like, Democrats do have all the good celebrities. And I do think that it's good when they use their massive social media profiles. Like, it doesn't hurt. But the idea that surrogates can be decisive now is. I don't know. It just. It has not in the modern era of Trump. Trump is his own Kind of celebrity and has his own like it celebrity world that I'm just not sure. Like, maybe young men notice that Eminem is doing it, but also like Eminem, I don't know, is he like, he's like a, he's old now, right? He's like got grown kids and I don't know. So I look, you know, I think surrogates matter and I thought Joe Biden needed them. I have cooled on my need for surrogates pitch since Kamala Harris is able to make her own case for her campaign. And I really think people want to see her more than anything else. You needed it for Biden because he couldn't do it, Right?
- [46:40]
Tim Miller
All right, I agree. I would say this. I have one positive thought about this before we get to close with my negativity. And that is it matters in this election, I think a little bit more than others. Because the two demos that you're trying to talk to at this point are the people we've been talking about the whole first 45 minutes of this. College educated, high income Republican types. You're trying to scare off a Trump. And then the other people are people who like, are like, who is John Kelly? What is a John Kelly? What is a jbl? Right? Like, so having surrogates out there that could conceivably reach people that are like, I literally don't know who any of these people are or what you're talking about. I just see the memes. I. Trying to reach them through influencers, through celebrities is a valuable use of the campaign's time in this election in particular.
- [47:32]
Sarah Longwell
It's also good. Look, I just think right now, in your closing arguments, like in jbl, this goes to a point you've made that I think is really true that I think they're struggling with right now, which is like, how do you own news cycles? How do you make it so that you are the one people are talking about? And Donald Trump is really good at this. Like working the friar at McDonald's, like the way that they do that. It's not that you might as a listener be like, but that was a stunt. And they closed it down. And I'm like, yeah, are you talking about this? Are you talking about Donald Trump working at McDonald's? Like, they win. That's how they win. And I think that you want them to be like, ooh, Eminem endorsing Kamala Harris as part of a news cycle, right? You're trying to dominate sort of the attention economy.
- [48:15]
JVL
Ooh, he wants Nazi generals. Yeah, All Right, Tim, we gotta close this out because we're running long, but you have some important feelings to share, and I'm. I'm here for them.
- [48:27]
Tim Miller
I do. I just. I don't want to be the person, the core tenant of the Bulwark and of the podcast that I'm on in particular is that I don't bullshit you. Like, you just get out. What I'm saying at a party is what I'm saying at a podcast. And so I had a little guilt last night because I was at James Carville's 80th birthday party. It was amazing.
- [48:49]
JVL
I felt like it was.
- [48:51]
Tim Miller
It felt like it was sacrilegious, actually, that I only got to have one drink because, you know, we got a lot happening right now. So I only had one drink, but I had a great time. But there are a lot of Democratic poobahs there. A lot of people close to Kamala and Joe Biden were there. And, you know, I was saying to all those already that I'm, like, really concerned. I just. I'm really concerned. Like, what I said at the tour last week, I don't, I don't. I don't denounce. Like, I still think she's a clear path to 276, which is too narrow. I think she's probably the favorite in all of those states, a very narrow favorite in those four states to get 276. I agree with Sarah's point that I'd rather have older people and women in my coalition than men. That said, like, there are three outs for Trump, and I don't like three coin flips where you got to get tails every time. Like, that worries me a lot. And it's not exactly like that because they sort of move together. It's not really like three coin flips, but you know what I mean? I don't like the fact that he only needs to win one of those to break the 270 and that there's not a great, clear alternate path like North Carolina, maybe. That worries me. And I think at this point, it's a pure toss up to me. And I mentally coming to terms with the fact that Trump could actually win. And when I was pressing all of those people last night who are in a position to know, in a position to see private data, I kept hoping that they were going to tell me something about what they're seeing in House races or Senate races or whatever. I was hoping they were going to give me a fact that I could hold on to, and they didn't give me anything. I had no conversation that made me feel better. And frankly, most of the conversations made me feel worse.
- [50:36]
JVL
So isn't that good in a way?
- [50:38]
Tim Miller
Yeah, sure.
- [50:39]
JVL
They're not wishing past the graveyard expectations wise like it suggests. The Democrats are not shining themselves up and deluding themselves that their position is better than it is.
- [50:49]
Tim Miller
That's true. They're not shining themselves up. They all think it's close. They all are confident, but in that same narrow path that Sarah's been laying out. So anyway, I say that not because I want people to get down. I want everybody to be motivated and to going. And I also say that, like, I was wrong in 2016. We were pretty right in 2020. In 2022, I was wrong about the House, we were right about the Senate and the in the governor's race. I guess I missed Nevada in 22. So, you know, you get right and wrong. And this is not like I don't have new information. It's just the path. The path is very precarious. And I was, and I was, I was kind of the negative Nancy at the party last night. So I didn't want to be a phony about it on the podcast.
- [51:30]
Sarah Longwell
You know, I appreciate that. And I want to say something on this point as well, although, like, we've litigated sort of our feelings plenty, so I don't want to get into that. But I do want to. I've had a lot of, I haven't been able to be as responsive to, like, media requests of late. There's a lot of people right now who are texting me, emailing me, saying, you know, what are your focus groups saying? Right, because everybody wants a tea leaf read. Everybody wants to, like, open the bird and read its entrails and, like, figure it out. And so since I've not been responsive to the media requests, you can also feel free to quote me from this section because this is what is happening in the focus groups. But it's deeply unsatisfying, which is I could make a case either way using what I'm hearing in the focus groups for either to win. Because here is the long and short of it. We are constantly looking at swing voters, meaning people who voted for Trump in 16, Biden in 20. We're trying to figure out, does that coalition hang together? Right, because they made up the margins in 2020. And the fact is, the vast majority of people in every single one of the groups that we do is voting for Kamala Harris. And when she was swapped out for Biden, she did a tremendous amount. We saw a huge surge in the groups of people being like voting third party, I can't stand these choices. We saw the elimination of the double haters and we really like, like I always said, with speed and alacrity, she put the coalition back together and so that's good for her. But in almost every group, you get some clean sweeps sometimes. We had a clean sweep in Pennsylvania recently for Kamala Harris from the swing voters. But in most of the groups, you're losing one or two people back to Trump. Like there's some backsliding. It's almost always about the economy or immigration. They are just like a general sense that they don't like the way that things have gone under Joe Biden. And so that makes me nervous. You lose a couple people when the narrow, the margins are that narrow. There's also another group of swing voters, though, and these are the ones that I think Kamala Harris has been doing well with, which tend to be two time Trump voters who were out after January 6th. And a lot of them are old white voters in these key states that she needs to win. Who came to the Republican Party because they voted for Ronald Reagan. Right. And when you look at young Republicans.
- [53:36]
Tim Miller
Poppy Bush voters, key demo.
- [53:38]
Sarah Longwell
That's right. Who thought like they held their nose and voted for Trump, but then they kind of thought like after January 6th, they were like, I'm done with this now that. So we call them two time Trump voters who are out on Trump. Those are the people who are struggling to get there on Kamala Harris, but are out on Trump. And so like, what do they do? Do they stay home? Do they write something in? Do they go third party? I hear a sort of a broad thing. Some of them are going to vote for Kamala Harris. Some of them are just going to say, I'm going to leave the top blank. And I think that the question is kind of like, how does that all add up once Kamala Harris has turned everybody out and Donald Trump has turned everybody out? And I don't think there's a pundit in the world right now who knows the answer to it. My only thing that I can say is that I believe, and if you ask me what am I going to watch, it is non college women, non college white women specifically. But I think black women turnout is going to be as big as we've ever seen it. I think there's going to be some slide in Hispanic and black voters. I think if she can do just about as well with, if she can blow the doors off with the college educated suburban voters that we continue to politically realign, that continues this political realignment. And then she's able to up the numbers with non college white women because of abortion and Donald Trump being a disgusting, despicable human that she can win those states. And that, that's my bull case.
- [55:02]
Tim Miller
But that makes me feel, that makes me feel much better than every elite Democrat I talked to last night. So thank you for that. Sarah.
- [55:09]
JVL
Good show. Long show. Less than two weeks. Next Wednesday will be our last pre election next level. Good luck, America.