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- [00:01]
JVL
Hey there, it's JVL on the Secret show with Sarah Longwell. Today we talked about John Kelly and Hitler's generals and the election and just we talked about all the stuff that you knew we would talk about because we are less than two weeks away from the election, which is really something. Here's the show.
- [00:28]
Sarah Longwell
You did because the.
- [00:29]
JVL
New national number for the New York Times has Harris and Trump tied it. So it would be great if that's not the case.
- [00:36]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I didn't love that. New York Times. Santa Poland by. I have no reason to doubt it. I just didn't care for the results. I've. It's making me. Most of the national polls still have her up a couple points.
- [00:48]
JVL
Yeah, I think that's right. And the truth is, look her up. A couple points is within the margin of error for the New York Times Sienna poll. That's the. Every discussion we're having is about the margin of error. And every result that we're talking about would be completely consistent with the polling. Like from they finish exactly tied to. She finishes winning by three points. All of that is indicated by the poll. And people are like, oh, the polls are wrong. I just say, no, the polls are instruments designed to do a specific job. This is like being mad that a pair of high powered, you know, military grade binoculars aren't giving you the results that a microscope, micron electroscope would, you know, like. That's just, you know, the poles are binoculars designed to do one job. A micron electric, you know, microscope, an electron microscope is designed to do a different job. And you can't use poles to tell within 10th of percentage points where candidates are going to land. Right.
- [01:54]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. I just, I'm not finding your metaphors to be like as intimidating as if we just talked about the numbers. But that's. That's fine. That's fine. Okay. Let's talk about Bill's morning shots today. I liked. Let's talk about, let's talk about that. Because his argument is. Or he's just making the case that if Kamala Harris loses this election, it's not her fault. And Strong agree. One of the things I like about this observation is that it's close to something, I think, I feel like I've been saying this whole time, which is this election is about us. Us, the American people. And what it says about us is like the final word here. And I think Kamala Harris, like in a way that I feel like Joe Biden, it might not have been about us. Right. It very well could have Been that plenty of voters, especially lower information voters who look at Biden, they're just like that. That man is too old to run this country and he's not up to it. And Dems are, you know, there's no enthusiasm. And Donald Trump crushes that. That had a lot to do with Biden. Kamala Harris has run quite a good campaign. Not perfect, but perfect.
- [03:16]
JVL
But no campaign is perfect.
- [03:17]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, but like a strong campaign. She, if you had asked me like what advice I would give her, you know, a couple months ago, like, she's done most of it with the exception of not picking Josh Shapiro. I would say, like the extent to which she has tacked to the center, the extent to which she has actively reached out to the right leaning independents and soft GOP voters. Her hustle, obviously, I wish she'd gotten her reps in like this is where like I've got some nits to pick. I think if she'd gotten her reps in earlier and done more media because I think they thought they could kind of coast on, on the vibes and they realized later they couldn't. And you know, on that CNN town hall, I was watching her and thinking she is a gajillion times better than Donald Trump. She sounds, she is cogent, but she also sounds kind of like a rehearsed regular politician. And you can see her when she gets asked a question, she's got like some ticks I don't like where it's like, let me be honest with you. And I'm like, don't preface everything with let's be honest, let me be honest with you. Because it, and you know, there's just like things like that where, but like those are, she is like, she has run a good campaign and she's, I mean, I don't know, I was sitting across from her thinking everything you're saying makes perfect sense. I don't agree with all of them policy wise. But you know what? I don't agree with the Republicans. It's not even a question of policy. Like both, and both sides have some to like, some to dislike. And so, you know, I'll take the one who's not the aspiring authoritarian who lied about the election results and tried to overturn the last election. Seems, seems an easy choice to me. But I recognize that that's not for everybody in any. And, but that's the point. The point is, is that it'll tell us about us because there's nothing we don't know about Trump. And even, you know, I have spent A lot of time, I don't know about defending voters, but certainly trying to explain that, like oftentimes the things that we know, they don't know and that is still true, that there's a lot of things about this that the average voter doesn't know. But like they got the, they know enough. Like they know about January 6th, they know he lied about the election. They know that he is a convicted felon. And you know, if you can, they know he's been accused. Accused and convicted now is an adjudicated rape. Like they might forget about it. It might not be like highest salience to them, may not be at the top of their mind, but you can't say they don't know it.
- [05:54]
JVL
Yeah. And anybody who doesn't know it, I'm not convinced that there was a way to make them know it. Right. And this is, you know, or make them care or make them care or whatever. And on the subject of the perfect campaign, I mean, you know, the, the biggest vote share won by any presidential candidate in the last generation and a half was Barack Obama in 2008. And he didn't run a perfect campaign either. Like the perfect campaign does not exist. Right.
- [06:22]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [06:23]
JVL
Although people make mistakes.
- [06:24]
Sarah Longwell
He was an enormously compelling individual.
- [06:27]
JVL
He was. But he then was given rocket fuel when the world melted down and we had a global financial crisis that the Republican sitting president had failed to foresee and didn't manage well. Right. And that, you know, like that, that, that is what an insurgent candidate running against a third term from the other party. That is what helps you win the sort of majority he had in addition to all of his compelling, you know, candidate skills and whatnot. But the point is like, again, he didn't run a perfect campaign either. And to say, well, Harrison win because she wasn't perfect, well then you're saying that like, that it's just a cop out because nobody can run a perfect campaign. It doesn't exist. And I don't know, you know, like the people, I mean, Jonathan Martin, she didn't move toward the center enough. Like, I don't know, like how. What else could she have done? Right. And if anything, I wonder if the opposite case might not be theoretically true where, I mean, maybe one of the, maybe one of the lessons people will learn is actually she ran two centrists to campaign and she should have run all the way out to the left and tried to grab some horseshoe voters from Trump. Right. Try to bring some, you know, done populist, liberal demagoguery.
- [07:51]
Sarah Longwell
She is Doing populist, liberal demagoguery. I mean, when I having to listen to her talk about how she's gonna, you know, when people ask about grocery prices and she starts talking about price gouging and how she's gonna, like, do these caps, I'm like, sure.
- [08:07]
JVL
But I'm saying there are, that's like the sophisticated way of doing it. There are gross ways of doing it. And she could have. Maybe the answer is she should have done that. I don't know, like you and I wouldn't like that. But the point is, if she loses running the kind of centrist campaign she's running now, I will be hard pressed to believe autopsy reports saying, oh, well, she wasn't centrist enough. She wasn't like, I just don't think that now. And maybe the answer is that she couldn't have been liberal enough either. Right. That if she was, if she went and ran as a radical, she would have repelled a bunch of people in the center and still would have lost. At which point you wind up with just, at the basic, people just wanted Trump. Right. And when people want something, they get it. And I think that's the only. I think that's probably the only rational way to explain a loss. If she loses, which again, not saying she will, I think it's a coin toss. But if she loses in a reasonably close race, I think the answer is that this is what. This is who America is. This is what America wants.
- [09:14]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's that clear or I think that there's a lot more we could press into. And I do think that the, you know, sort of a topic for another day. But I think that the Democrats have struggled in the wake of Trump, that, like the. Trump is the glue that holds Democrats together in many ways. And so I think that they have had a difficulty presenting to the public a very clear message as a party of what they stand for. And like that the focus on democracy, like, it's fine. But I just, I think about how, like, when people say they don't know what Kamala Harris stands for, I think they struggle to say, like, what is Democrats position on immigration? What is, you know, what, what do Democrats want to do about health care? What do they want to do about the economy? Now she, she goes back to housing all the time. I think housing is a good issue, actually. Like that she's leaned on housing. I think coming from California, it's an issue she feels comfortable with because it's just been long debated out there. And like, they really are trying to build more. And so I think that's fine. But I, I think that the Democrats are going to have to, because there's been so. And this is true both parties, actually, because there's been so much political realignment, both of them are going through a bit of an identity crisis on policy. And so, you know, at some point, although I think that Republicans have, They've basically, in some cases, they've like, switched entirely their position on things like, let's say Ukraine. But they're able to benefit from having a very clear message over the long term that gives people that, like, oh, just like the fumes of Reagan. Like, oh, I think the Republicans will be better on the debt and the deficit. I think Republicans will be tougher internationally, you know, just like, they just have.
- [11:15]
JVL
Some of that counterpoint. If she loses, it will have absolutely nothing to do with policy.
- [11:20]
Sarah Longwell
Not absolutely nothing.
- [11:21]
JVL
I agree that it's a lot entirely driven by culture. And, you know, I mean, to the extent that Trump is leaning into. She wants to give transgender reassignment surgery to Mexican murderers in prison, as if a. Every murderer in Mexico is. Is an aspiring trans person. And the reason they came to America was because they just wanted to kill someone so they could get locked up so that they could undergo gender reassignment surgery. Like, it's the.
- [11:55]
Sarah Longwell
Do you know how many times there's been that this. How many people have undergone the gender.
- [12:00]
JVL
Reassignment surgery as federal prisoners?
- [12:03]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, like, how many times it has been available?
- [12:06]
JVL
100.
- [12:08]
Sarah Longwell
I saw two, maybe.
- [12:10]
JVL
Yeah, that sounds about right.
- [12:12]
Sarah Longwell
You know, I mean, the extent, like.
- [12:14]
JVL
If people want to vote on that, you're like, that's okay.
- [12:17]
Sarah Longwell
Okay. But this is actually, I'll take this because on one hand, I think you're totally right. Like, the fact that Trump's closing argument is not about the economy, which is actually super strange. It's not even about immigration. It's like, sort of about immigration and like, transgender and crime. Like, they're wrapping all of those things together by, like, this very. With this very weird anti trans stuff. On the flip side, this is about. This is about getting, like, unlocking what is, I think this feeling that people have that the Democrats are weird. Like, that they're strange. Right. That they don't, like, it's such a. It's a much easier thing for people to understand than economic policy. That goes to the heart of. Oh, yeah, Democrats are crazy. Like, they do the, they do the craziest stuff, the weirdest stuff. They're not in the mainstream. And I think to the extent that people's fears around Kamala Harris are that she is too progressive, it tags into that like there's a reason that they are putting all their money behind it, because I bet it tests off the channel.
- [13:28]
JVL
Well, I'm sure it tests well. But my point is that it's not an actual policy argument. It's just a weird cultural decadence argument.
- [13:37]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [13:37]
JVL
Anyway, we should talk about the John Kelly stuff. And I want to talk about Tucker and daddy spanking girls. I want to talk about the Post report about Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin. Let's start with. I mean, do you want to just get the Tucker daddy stuff out of the way?
- [13:59]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, let's get it out of the way.
- [14:01]
JVL
Go ahead.
- [14:03]
Sarah Longwell
You guys saw this clip, and if you haven't, I hate to tell you to inflict it on yourself, but it's. Here's what I. Here's what's interesting to me about it. So Tucker Carlson gets up on stage, he gives this. He's. He's opening for Trump at, like, Turning Point. And so. And man, is Tucker. It too, to me, is, like, very repellent as an individual. Like, I just think his affect and the way that he talks is very gross because it somehow manages to both be like, it's like a feet intellectual trying to sound like a cool guy and trying to sound tough. I swear to God, at every single one of these guys from Elon to Tucker, you can just see, like, them being stuffed in lockers as teenagers and like, no one liking them at, like, this deep, like, brokenness that leads them to be the people that they are right now. So Tucker's whole rant, though, is about how the American people have done a bad thing. We've done a bad thing, and we're like a hormonal teenager. And you know what? Daddy's home and he is pissed. And now you, hormonal teenager who's been able to run around, he loves you. He loves you, but it's not going to hurt him more than it hurts you. No, it's going to hurt you because you need a spanking. You need a spanking.
- [15:30]
JVL
I mean, he genders America in this.
- [15:32]
Sarah Longwell
He does.
- [15:33]
JVL
He talks about the bad. America is a her, which is bad.
- [15:36]
Sarah Longwell
America is a hormonal teenage girl. And the person setting it, all right, is the daddy.
- [15:44]
JVL
Now, I can't understand why Trump is losing women voters. Yeah.
- [15:50]
Sarah Longwell
But it's also. Isn't it, like, weirdly porny? Like, who does this? Like, daddy's home like the way that he said it.
- [16:01]
JVL
I mean, who wants to view the president of the United States as daddy?
- [16:06]
Sarah Longwell
Can I just tell you my. All my early years in, you know, Conservatism Inc. They were. It was anti nanny state. Right. It was like the government doesn't get like this is where my libertarian. Like I was always kind of a conservatarian. Right. The government doesn't get to tell us what to do. The government we want as we want as little government as possible in our lives because of self determination is at the center of the conservative spirit. Right. Self determination. And so like the idea of the government being the daddy that punishes you because you've been bad because you're a hormonal teenager who get that is the.
- [16:52]
JVL
Opposite of everything in their defense, Tucker. And these people don't want the government to have the power to punish you. Just Trump, because the government is like a whole bunch of institutions that function according to rules of law and stuff. They just want one particular guy. I mean, they literally. They just want the strong man to have the power to punish you. They do not want the government to have the power to punish you. As they talk all the time.
- [17:19]
Sarah Longwell
I don't know if you know Kamala.
- [17:20]
JVL
Harris coming in, trigger guns and stuff. Yeah, I guess. But they want him to do it sort of like he's a whole branch extra constitutionally. Right. I mean, they don't, they don't want Trump to pass a, you know, to propose a bill which the legislature votes on and then he signs and then it is testament. That is not the vision here. I don't think maybe I'm not giving enough credit.
- [17:44]
Sarah Longwell
Well, it's hard to know like the real vision because it's just, it is.
- [17:47]
JVL
Hard to know what the policy vision of spanking is.
- [17:50]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, yeah, great. I do. To the extent that, that there's something pernicious, but also that feels prologue about the Tucker, like intro ing Trump. Like I have always believed that the future of the Republican Party is some combination of J.D. vance, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. And I feel like it is moving in that direction more every minute. Obviously. Like he's picked JD Vance as his running mate and political successor. Tucker Carlson is like his spiritual guide and also the one who led him to pick JD Vance along with the Trump boys. Does they all hang out? I suspect. I don't know, man. I don't know, man. It feels like the future of the right.
- [18:47]
JVL
It's pretty, pretty bad. I mean, I could see a world in which we look back on Trump Wistfully. Because at least Trump was a clown. Right? You know, like he's a clown of. Clown with a flamethrower. Still a clown. We may get to the point where we prefer when it was a clown with a flamethrower as opposed to like an SS officer with a flamethrower.
- [19:10]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. I don't know.
- [19:13]
JVL
Hey, how's that for. How's that for an uplifting thought on Friday?
- [19:17]
Sarah Longwell
It's fine. But let's scoot past Tucker and while.
- [19:21]
JVL
We'Re talking about the SS John Kelly.
- [19:22]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, let's talk about Kelly, because I got. I have a take. I want to hear it on sort of where we. Where this conversation has gone is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. So you see our friends on the anti. Anti. Right, as well as the sort of sycophantic Trump defenders as they rush to defend Trump, they're like, boy, you know, this would land a lot. Them calling Trump Hitler would land a lot better if they hadn't been calling him Hitler all along. Which, by the way, that was something J.D. vance said. I've never called him Hitler, but J.D. vance has.
- [19:57]
JVL
I'm sorry. By the way, J.D. vance's defense of this is like, I don't believe John Kelly.
- [20:03]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [20:03]
JVL
Like, I think John Kelly is lying. As if it is inconceivable that anybody could ever call Trump Hitler. Which, again, is something Vance. The shamelessness of it is really shocking.
- [20:15]
Sarah Longwell
It is.
- [20:15]
JVL
But can I just say, even now, like, I didn't think we could be shocked, but I'm shocked.
- [20:18]
Sarah Longwell
But can I say, like, this is actually how these conversations get twisted just slightly so that they live on the terms of the anti. Antis to make it look like the left is overblowing this. John Kelly is not calling Trump Hitler, nor am I. What we are saying is that Trump, a guy who just out of his own mouth, which we heard, talked about using the military against the enemy within, meaning us people who oppose him politically, elected Democrats. Yeah. So that's not. We're not making that up. That's on tape. Trump said it. Okay. That that guy has also expressed admiration, which, again, we know dictators who. He has said it about Xi. Right. Or said it about Kim Jong Un. Anybody. Anybody who has. Who is an authoritarian or a dictator who uses the threat of violence and who commits acts of violence against their people in order to keep them in line. Donald Trump has expressed admiration for them.
- [21:26]
JVL
Always calls them smart and brilliant and tough.
- [21:30]
Sarah Longwell
That's right. And so the idea that Hitler, who had generals who also did exactly what he said because he was a murderous dictator, although on a scale that obviously shocked the world's conscience enough to generate an entire world war and has defined the post World War II era and try. And has been the thing in most sort of living memory that has kept us away from authoritarians and dictators. The idea that Donald Trump would just express admiration for them is not only believable, it is, like, completely consistent with everything else that he says.
- [22:12]
JVL
Yeah. And so it's not like, oh, this is out of left field. Wait a minute, hold on. He said what?
- [22:18]
Sarah Longwell
But they want to say that we're calling Trump Hitler. No, we're not. No, we're not. We are saying. And this is the thing, right? This is where they push the argument into a place where they're saying, no, you're exaggerating. Right? He's not Hitler. He hasn't killed 6 million people. That's right. That's why you don't call him Hitler, because he has not killed 6 million people. It is not the same.
- [22:40]
JVL
Yeah. He doesn't talk about rounding up people by the millions and putting them in camps.
- [22:44]
Sarah Longwell
Oh, oh, okay, okay. What he does, what he has done and what he has said, right, Is that, like, we are talking about his admiration for these people at a time when he has also expressed in his own words all the ways in which he wants to use either the government or he wants to go after people in the United States as well. You're right. About immigrants and put them in camps. Like, I just. I think it is not. It is not us calling him Hitler. It is us expressing who this guy is. But they want to have a slightly different conversation that's on more favorable terms to them.
- [23:24]
JVL
And yet if Trump came out tonight at his rally and said something like, you know, the fake news media, they want to say that I'm Hitler. They want to. Well, let me shock. You're not supposed to say this, but I love Hitler and I want to be just like him. The next pose of the anti. Antis would be wants to be like Hitler. First it would be like, he's joking. And then it would be like, actually, the German economy under Hitler was fantastic. Right. I mean, this is. This is how it. This is how it is on everything with Trump, you know, like, no, he didn't say that. That's fake. Then, like, he gets proven to have said it, and it's like, well, you're, you know, you're exaggerating it. And then it's, you know, he says it himself. And it's like, he's joking. And then he's like, I'm not joking. They're like, well, of course he said it. That's exactly right.
- [24:14]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [24:15]
JVL
This is how the progression runs for everything. I. For today's newsletter, I have gone. I have a buddy who's been collecting string and going through the archives of many of these people.
- [24:29]
Sarah Longwell
Oh, the Urban Achiever thread.
- [24:32]
JVL
Yeah. And I'm making that into the newsletter today.
- [24:35]
Sarah Longwell
That is so good. So I've been retweeting all that stuff because he has done the Lord's love.
- [24:39]
JVL
I hope you retweet my newsletter.
- [24:41]
Sarah Longwell
I always.
- [24:42]
JVL
I don't think I got a retweet yesterday.
- [24:44]
Sarah Longwell
Yes, you did.
- [24:45]
JVL
Did I. Did I get a. Did I get Sarah tweet or just like, a retweet of somebody else?
- [24:50]
Sarah Longwell
No, you got a optimistic jvl. Makes me nervous.
- [24:54]
JVL
Oh, well, I'll take it. Yeah, I'll take it.
- [24:57]
Sarah Longwell
Full tweet.
- [24:59]
JVL
But my. I mean, my. The point of my newsletter today is not to dunk on these people, but as a warning, because what it says to us is that if Trump does try to do actual authoritarian stuff, like he has said he wants to, like, if he tries to deploy the US Military against, like, civilian populations who he does not like, these people will not stop him. Yeah, that's the point. I mean, the point is that these people will defend it. And that's like, you know, there. There ain't no more guardrails. Right? At that point, you're just like, well, are there senior flag officers who are willing to resign? What happens if they resign? Do they get, like. You know, you wind up in places that are very dark, very fast.
- [25:50]
Sarah Longwell
And can I tell you what I love about him? Gathering that string and going back and looking at it is not. You're right. It's not even about dunking on them, although that's a good byproduct.
- [26:03]
JVL
The conversation goes on from there. If you want to hear the rest of the show, head on over to the Bulwark plus and subscribe. Come and ride with us. You'll love it.