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- [00:00]
Commercial Narrator
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- [02:26]
Charlie Sykes
Welcome back to this episode of to the Contrary Podcast. I'm Charlie Sacks. We are moving into the Christmas week. Probably we'll have a little bit of a different schedule but we are going to be doing a number of year in review programs so stay tuned for all of that. On this particular program, look back on another extraordinary weekend. The Epstein Cover up continues. Rather aggressive. We saw the future of MAGA down in Phoenix at the TPUSA conference. And it is, shall we say, brutish, ugly. And it's going to be very, very dangerous. JD Van saying no purity tests for the right, which apparently means neo Nazis. And Ben Shapiro deciding that he's gonna take a strong stand now against his MAGA fellow travelers. I have some thoughts about that in the newsletter yesterday. We have a lot of ground. Stay tuned. On today's episode of to the Contrary podcast, I'm joined by my good friend Lucy Caldwell, political strategist and former, by which I mean recovering Republican. Lucy, welcome on the podcast. How are you?
- [03:43]
Lucy Caldwell
Hey, Charlie.
- [03:44]
Charlie Sykes
How have you managed this year?
- [03:46]
Lucy Caldwell
I'm great. It's good to see you. How are you holding up?
- [03:51]
Charlie Sykes
Well, you know, it's day by day. You know, I was a little bit encouraged last week watching Jimmy Kimmel's Last monologue, where. And I've kind of become a fan, I confess this. And Jimmy Kimmel says, you know, this job is kind of hard. It feels like you're spinning your wheel sometime. And I'm raising my hand going, yeah, I know that. And he says, you know, we're watching all the crazy things going on, watching all the harms that are being intentionally inflicted, and. And it's hard to get your head around that. And, yeah, we identify with that. And then he said, you know, the problem is that we've grown up watching Superman, you know, Truth, justice, and the American Way. And in the last year, you think, what happened to all of those things? What is the American way anymore? And so as you look around and see other people who realize that, okay, we think that's crazy, you feel less crazy. So I actually felt a little bit validated because this has been a very, very long year.
- [04:46]
Lucy Caldwell
Hasn't has been a long year. We made it. We made it to December. But what's really something is to think we're only 11 months into this presidency, almost to the day.
- [04:59]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, see, yeah, there's my buzz. There's my buzz. Actually, when I did a podcast with Adam Kinzinger the other day, I saw that, and he said that he woke up with this. More with this morning dread that we had three years to go.
- [05:10]
Lucy Caldwell
And.
- [05:10]
Charlie Sykes
And, you know, that kind of stuck with me. I thought, you know, you try to pace yourself, but, you know, you and I have actually been doing this now for like a decade. I mean, I think you and I were at a conference back in 2017 or 2018 and realized that we have been doing this stuff longer than the duration of World War II. And now. And then we drifted off into the length of the Vietnam War.
- [05:38]
Lucy Caldwell
Yes.
- [05:38]
Charlie Sykes
Now it feels like Afghanistan or something. Like. Okay, so I want to talk about what's going on. The. The MAGA Civil War, which is real. It may look performative, but it is nasty. The. The Ben Shapiro versus Steve Bannon versus, you know, Tucker Carlson, all of that. I want to talk about Barry Weiss spiking the story. I want to talk about RFK Jr. And what he has done. It's, again, one of those stories that feels like it's dropped into, you know, dropped into the memory hole. But. But let's talk about the big story from last week because, you know, as we try to separate out the important consequential stories from the distractions. Okay, so maybe the Trump Kennedy center was an outrage. It was a desecration. The stupid plaques in the White House, again, juvenile desecration. But the big story of the week was supposed to be, right, the release of the Epstein file, something that MAGA had been promising for years, that Donald Trump had promised for years. Dan Bongino promised for years, Pam Bondi promised for years. And Congress actually passed a law saying that they needed to be released on Friday, and they were not. So just give me your take, because it feels to me as if this bot's job is one of those cases where the Trump administration managed to make a bad situation even worse. But what's your take?
- [07:07]
Lucy Caldwell
The Abstein files really are the Trump team's Frankenstein's monster, right? They ran on this. They ran on this idea that the Biden administration was corrupt, that Democrats had something to hide. That's why one of their best lines right now is to go back to Bill Clinton. Like, if that's the thing, you have to go back to a person who hasn't been president since the 1990s, right? But they invented this. They created this mess. And it is one of these rare issues. As a strategist, that is an unbelievable gift because it has no backlash, right? A year ago, it was Republicans who were so spun up about the Epstein stuff. And, I mean, Republicans across the board, right? Thanks to TP usa, thanks to everyone from Candace Owens to Steve Bannon, all of these guys. But now it's also an issue that Democrats are sort of hip on, too, right?
- [08:03]
Charlie Sykes
So.
- [08:04]
Lucy Caldwell
So it has no backlash whatsoever. Every American, basically, the question is, how motivated are you by this? Or not? Right? But it's like a rare bipartisan moment in this hyperpolarized environment. And every time Trump does something, it Makes it worse, right? Like redacting these files or there was a photo that he was in that it was pulled down from the website. I'm actually of the mind that I think that the worst stuff in the Epstein files about Donald Trump may not even be that bad for him. Like, we already know that he is a disgusting sexual predator. I'm not sure that there's anything that happened on one of Epstein's islands or that Donald Trump was involved in that would change anyone's perception of who the man is. And yet, for whatever reason, hubris, favors to someone else, other types of capture, who knows, they just keep making the situation for themselves worse every day that goes by.
- [09:08]
Charlie Sykes
Well, I agree. Just leaving the politics aside for a moment. I mean, there are real victims, there were real crimes.
- [09:14]
Lucy Caldwell
Absolutely.
- [09:14]
Charlie Sykes
This ought to shock the conscience of the nation. And many of these young women who have been out there pounding at the doors and they've been ignored or they've been attacked, and some of them were, were not survivors. They did not make it. And the more we learn about it, the more we learn about just how outrageous it was, the exploitation of these young women, the rape of many of these young girls. I mean, it is a horrible, horrible story. And Donald Trump is clearly at the center of something there. The New York Times had some reporting last week that was absolutely devastating. Going back to what we actually know now, whether that's going to be in the Epstein files, I don't know. But the fact is that Donald Trump's involvement, I mean, how do you describe, I mean, you know, what a lecher, what a predator, what an abuser, used his power, used his wealth in order to exploit young girls. Now, will that make a difference? Because as you point out, you know, before he was first elected president, he was bragging about grabbing women. They let you do it, you know. Well, apparently the definition of when you're a celebrity, they let you do it was a lot more than just that. But in, just in terms of all of this, this, his cover up of this was kind of a break the glass moment for some Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene. There is some, some sense of disillusionment in maga. And then there's the Streisand effect. The more they try to hide something, the more they call attention to it. And I thought, once again, as you started watching what was coming out and not coming out, it's the Streisand effect. What are you redacting? Why are you taking these pictures down? Okay, you know, look, Bill Clinton should not be president. Again, Bill Clinton's behavior, I think, is indefensible. I'm willing to throw him under the bus on all of this. But the way that Pam Bondi is handling this, and once again, the contempt for the law, this, the sense we don't care what the law says. And so you have these legislators out there who are saying, no, we passed this law. You are violating this law. You have people like Tom Massie who's saying that this is an impeachable offense for Pam Bondi. So, I mean, again, Lucy, the amazing thing about, I'm sorry to go on here, but amazing thing about, you know, 2025 with the flooding of the Zone is that nothing would stick. Stories that would have dominated the news cycle for six weeks or forgotten in 24 hours. This one is the exception, isn't it? This one is going to continue to be a problem into 2026. It is not going away. And I think they've actually made it worse.
- [11:54]
Lucy Caldwell
They have made it worse. And there are paths in the multiverse that Donald Trump could have chosen where he could have really dispensed with this much more effectively. Donald Trump was an extremely close friend of Jeffrey Epstein. He just was. Last year, ahead of the 2020, 24 election, I had a chance to get to know Stacey Williams, who is a person who was a Sports Illustrated hall of Famer, Swimsuit Edition supermodel, who, who dated, casually dated Jeffrey Epstein in the early 90s. And she got to know Donald Trump in that time. And Donald Trump was she realized that she was like the subject of kind of like a Trump Epstein, truly cat and mouse game. And she had an experience where she was out on a walk with Epstein, whom she was dating at the time. And he said, oh, we're near Donald's office. Let's, let's stop by. And they went up to his office and Donald Trump said hello to Stacey Williams. And he walked up to her and he groped her in front of Epstein. And she was stunned by it. And afterward, Epstein, she describes. Epstein was angry at her, but she could also see, in a way, she had this perception and more sense of this as the years have gone by, that she was actually just part of a game they were playing with each other, right. Of women as objects. And they were having. There was a transactional nature to this. And she is a person who has, you know, undergone a lie detector test. She was a world famous supermodel. This is not like some person who, you know, was plucked up out of off a street corner who's like, oh, I have this wild tail. She's undergone a lie detector test and passed it. She has evidence of Donald Trump writing her postcards from Mar? A Lago. Right. Like, this is. But she's so interesting because she is not a victim of Epstein in that she. She's very clear about the fact that her relationship with Epstein, which I won't go into more details, but she's been on the record and clear about the fact that that was a consensual relationship. But she is such an interesting voice on all of this because she has this perspective on how they interacted with each other in New York in that time as these sort of playboy types and what their dynamic was like. Actually, one of the most interesting things about becoming close to Stacey was to watch ahead of the election last year how all of these Republicans across the board, including some voices in conservative media who like to play the part of. No, I'm skeptical of Trump. I'm anti Trump sometimes. Like an Eric Erickson just got in line to try to come after Stacey. Right? So, like, when her story came out last fall, Erik Erickson was like, I don't believe this story because she's a brunette and Donald Trump goes for blondes. Right. Anyway, I'm. I'm telling you about this particularly dumb take.
- [15:04]
Charlie Sykes
I'm sorry.
- [15:04]
Lucy Caldwell
So stupid. Right, Exactly. Right. You're right. He does not like brunette supermodels. He does not like brunette swimsuit supermodels except his wife, who is a brunette. But putting that aside.
- [15:18]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, putting that aside.
- [15:20]
Lucy Caldwell
It's interesting because we've seen this in multiple cycles, right. And obviously Donald Trump went on to win the election last year, but we know exactly what all of his people, both voices of politicians and media, try to do in these really crucial moments for him. And it was one thing to be doing that when simultaneously Donald Trump, even though of course, it's like, if you're so concerned about this, why didn't you release the Epstein files in your first term? But it was one thing when he was running against the corrupt Biden, White House and Democrats and, you know, Bill Clinton and Larry Summers and this, that and the other thing, this cabal. It's another thing when you now have been in office for almost two years, it's the midterms, Your own people are the people who are being the impediment to releasing of these files. There's a whole apparatus now of voices, including now victims, Epstein victims coming together. They had an ad on NFL Sunday Night Football saying, we want this out there. So it is. The specter is different than it has been at this point.
- [16:32]
Charlie Sykes
Right. And it's an easily understandable scandal. There are some. There are some scandals that are very, very complex. This is one. And of course, again, the MAGA base has been the one that has been prepping people for this, this story. So we're going to see how this goes. But Pam Bondi is, you know, to say that this is not. This is the gang that can't shoot straight is, I think, being somewhat kind. Interesting that Susie Wiles actually threw her under the bus last week. You know, the Trump chief of staff who said that she had completely whiffed originally on the Epstein files. Do you have any take as a. As you know, you've been in that world. Why, why do you think that Susie Wiles sat down for 11 interviews with Chris Whipple. What was she trying to do or not do? How did that come about, do you think? That's a strange story.
- [17:24]
Lucy Caldwell
One of the things that I've been mulling over about that Vanity Fair piece is I don't believe. Look, Susie Wiles is seasoned. She knows what she's doing.
- [17:34]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [17:35]
Lucy Caldwell
Not only is she a seasoned operative, but she also. Yes, but she also grew up around media and celebrity. Her dad was a famous sports commentator. That's apparently one of the reasons that Donald Trump was so pleased to have her join the team.
- [17:49]
Charlie Sykes
Pat Simmer.
- [17:50]
Lucy Caldwell
Right. Yeah. Yes. So she is not. This is not her first rodeo, and she's much more institutional as a Republican operative than some of these people who've come up through maga, like a Brad Par Scale, say, Right. Where you think, well, you might just be so excited that you're the subject of a Vanity Fair profile that you get a little too comfortable. Right. I don't think that's what was happening with Susie Wiles. I think that Susie Wiles was actually being extremely strategic in that interview and that there is a possibility, or believed she was, and that there is a possibility that a lot of the things she said, including the ways in which she was pretty rough on Pam Bondi, were intentional. And it was to be able to create distance, for example, between Trump and Bondi. Right. And buying time. There have been reports that Bondi was never going to serve as Attorney General for very long. Right. So you could see, for example, the idea that maybe at some point next year, Pam Bondi leaves, they put someone new in. Maybe it's Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch, maybe it's someone else, but that this is a sequencing strategy to buy time or buy other types of optionality. Right. If you make Bondi the fall gal, you can always say, we're gonna look at that. But now a new person has to get in. Right?
- [19:39]
Charlie Sykes
But it wasn't just Bondi. There were a lot of people who she dissed. I mean, we're talking about JD Vance as being a conspiracy theory, Russ Volt being an extreme right wing ideologue, Donald Trump having the personality of an alcoholic. That's where I'm a little skeptical on the strategic wisdom of all of this. And, and also, I mean, look, Susie Wiles has been one of the few people who's been in the shadows, has not gotten a lot of attention. Not gotten a lot. And you know, I mean, my take was actually somewhat different than yours, which was that she sort of got seduced by this celebrity of it, you know, that she maybe thought that she was gonna charm this guy or, you know, convince him of her, of her relevance and her honesty and that this was a moment for her to emerge from the shadows. And of course, it just went disastrously wrong to the point where apparently they had to, I don't know whether you buy this, where they had to, you know, announce that quickie address to the nation in order just to change people's attention off of it, which, by the way, was a complete disaster. I don't know why people talk to the media. I think sometimes there's. Never underestimate just the amount of pure ego involved in some of these people who just want to be like, seen and get credit for and be the cool kids. Yeah.
- [20:58]
Lucy Caldwell
And we actually, we, we used to have more, we used to have clearer lines between elected officials or candidates, that category of people and operatives. There were a few operatives who became kind of famous, right? Like James Carville or Lee Atwater, you know, Karl Rove. But, but now there is, I mean, strategists do media and commentary. Right? And so the, the lines are really blurred. But. And between celebrity operatives, right? And like celebrity politicians and the, the, the, the. That border between those two archetypes are very blurred relative to how they once be. And so once were. And so to your point, now operatives might really want to be out there. Right? Susie Wiles has been doing a lot of media.
- [22:04]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. No, everybody wants to, Everyone wants to be out there. Everybody wants to be out there. Okay? So I want to, I want to talk to you about what happened at TP USA and the, the, you know, MAGA eating its own. But before we do that, I just, as a, as a recovering journalist myself, I'm a little obsessed still with what happened at cbs. And I also want to make it clear that I've kind of given a benefit of the doubt more than some other folks to Bari Weiss. You know, I've met her, I've talked to her. I think she's a serious person. I also think she's totally, totally out of her depth when it comes to moving from being an opinion columnist and a website manager to running CBS News. And of course, the larger context here is that Donald Trump has been bullying cbs. He's been bullying abc. The owners of CBS Paramount are in this very high stakes fight to take over Warner Brothers. A couple of weeks ago, they did 60 Minutes, did an interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene that Donald Trump really hated, said, you people are worse than the other people. And then all of which leads up to this very strange moment where Bari Weiss has spiked a CBS, a major CBS investigation on 60 Minutes of that Salvadoran gulag and waited till the last minute, waited until after CBS actually broadcast promos. I mean, here's a promo that was airing almost right up to the moment that Bari Weiss pulled the plug on all of this. And just give you a sense of, of what, you know, what Americans might have learned had this CBS program aired.
- [23:48]
Commercial Narrator
It began as soon as the planes landed.
- [23:52]
Lucy Caldwell
The deportees thought they were headed from the US Back to Venezuela, but instead, they were shackled, paraded in front of cameras, and delivered to Secot, the notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador, where they told 60 Minutes they endured four months of hell. Did you think you were gonna die there?
- [24:13]
Charlie Sykes
We thought we were already the living dead, honestly. All right, so that looks like a pretty powerful story. It looks like a compelling story. Whether it would have told us something that we don't know, I am not sure. But give me your sense of the way she handled it. I mean, number one, it makes her look like she's doing the White House's bidding.
- [24:32]
Lucy Caldwell
And.
- [24:32]
Charlie Sykes
And it was handled about as ineptly as you can. Why wait until the last minute when everybody has seen that it's coming to kill it? I'm reminded again of the Streisand effect. More people now are going, what was in that report? What's going on? So what do you make of that? What does it tell you about Barry Weiss?
- [24:48]
Lucy Caldwell
I'm just still chuckling to myself, and I know I'm going to be laughing all day at you calling her a website manager. I just. That's.
- [24:56]
Charlie Sykes
We're all website managers.
- [24:58]
Lucy Caldwell
Well, we're all today. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was handled terribly. It's interesting that she didn't even have the sense to contact Sharon Alfonsi, the 60 Minutes correspondent who was putting out the piece. So she, to your point about the Streisand effect, she created all this space for Alfonsi to do this. And Alphonse then sent a. Very clearly, she's much better at this than Bari Weiss. Right. Well timed and effective email. And I think there were probably some people BCC'd on that email or some people who were told, I'm about to send you an email, and when I do, I need you to send it to Dylan Byers or whomever. Right.
- [25:47]
Charlie Sykes
Yes.
- [25:47]
Lucy Caldwell
And the D list of that email are all of her fellow correspondents. It's Scott Pelley, it's Anderson Cooper. And 60 Minutes has already been at the center of a lot of this swirl because 60 Minutes, longtime showrunner, actually left earlier this year because of all of this stuff. Exactly. And so it's funny because I'm paying so much more attention to this segment. I think if the segment had just aired, I probably would have woken up today and thought, oh, yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't tend to watch 60 Minutes. I watch the clips. And I would probably. There'd be a little bit of a news cycle around. Oh, you know, here are a couple of things that came out that we already knew about how terribly the administration is handling this particular issue. Instead, now there's this. When will they air it? Will they or won't they air it? And a whole new lens into CBS News under Bari Weiss, who, to your point, in our last line of discussion about everyone wants to put themselves out there, seems to be spending a lot more time putting herself on camera than she is paying.
- [26:54]
Charlie Sykes
That's a tell.
- [26:55]
Lucy Caldwell
Yeah, Paying the respect that her journalists are owed. So now without, without a clear line about why this story was spiked, like, I mean, I don't know what a good reason would be. This story had been vetted extensively.
- [27:13]
Charlie Sykes
Well, she's off. No, she's offering the. Well, she's basically saying this was a standard editorial decision and she wanted it on the record. Interview with the Trump White House and apparently.
- [27:23]
Lucy Caldwell
But they won't do it.
- [27:24]
Charlie Sykes
You should do an interview. But. Right. But she said, you know, Stephen Miller, and here's his contact information. And let me just read you from Alfonsi, because, I mean, the Sharon Alfonsi, you know, condemned this decision. This is, this is really a big deal. She was not an editorial decision. It is a political one. Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. Noting that if the standard for airing a story became whether or not the government agreed to be interviewed, the network would lose its editorial control. Exactly. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state. So in other words, if this is the standard, then the Trump White House or whatever agency says we're not gonna comment and therefore we have now effectively killed the story, which is a really interesting story. And again, this is one of those out of your depth moments where I mean, Barry Weiss is a very, very talented person, but it is not necessarily the same thing to write a really powerful op ed piece and then to run a major news organization and make these editorial decisions. Especially when you are surrounded by very, very talented, very principled, very aggressive colleagues who are going to call out your bullshit if you try to spike the story. So bad moment for. And again, if you are Bari Weiss now, you're being told by the Ellisons that you have to clean things up. You have to be. You're probably being told by the Ellisons, who by the way, paid you $150 million for your substack newsletter. By the way, I have a substack newsletter and no one has offered me $150 million. But if you did, I'm still not going to be killing your stories for you. But anyway, they're on her. And to go after, you know, CBS is the Tiffany Network or was, and their Crown Jewel is 60 Minutes. So if you wanted to set off a bomb in your own organization to your own reputation, it's kind of hard to know how it would be worse than this. You follow me? I mean, it's just, you know, I can't imagine how she would have handled this worse.
- [29:36]
Lucy Caldwell
Do you think she'll work there in six months? Charlie?
- [29:39]
Charlie Sykes
I don't know. You know, the money's good, the power's good, you know, the if, if, if, if not, why don't.
- [29:46]
Lucy Caldwell
She wants to work there. Will she be employed there?
- [29:50]
Charlie Sykes
I don't know. I honestly, I honestly don't.
- [29:55]
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- [30:40]
Lucy Caldwell
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- [30:42]
Charlie Sykes
You know, one of the perks about.
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Lucy Caldwell
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Lucy Caldwell
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- [31:13]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, now speaking of nasty moments, look, you have followed the internal fights on the right. And look, I wrote my newsletter yesterday sort of on the irony about the baby alligators growing up. My analogy of all of that. I applaud Ben Shapiro for going down to Phoenix, going down and calling out Tucker Carlson's platforming of neo Nazis. I applaud him for calling out the bullshit conspiracy theories of Candace Owens and going after Steve Bannon as sort of the ultimate grifter. I really, because both those things, that took guts. It took principle. I just wish that Ben Shapiro had had those guts and that principle a few years ago because unlike a lot of these guys, he knew. Do you remember him back in 2016? He was an original, never Trumper. He was like all there around Michelle.
- [32:10]
Lucy Caldwell
Fields and Corey Lewandowski. Do you remember that incident? He was a lone conservative voice. So Michelle Fields was a reporter who was trying to ask hard questions to the Trump campaign and Corey Lewandowski was physically aggressive with her. Corey Lewandowski gnomes means we. How do I put this? Companion, companion to secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. And everyone was kind of like nothing to see here. And Ben Shapiro stuck his neck out. He was like a never Trumper, like, rah, rah, this is really bad guy. So he's flirted with some of this before, but he doesn't have the will to actually the kind of meme of like, you're so close to getting it right. There's a lot of that with Ben Shapiro. And this is another episode. You're so close.
- [33:08]
Charlie Sykes
They're so close. So I actually went back and pulled out the pieces that he wrote back in 2016 about Donald Trump and what Donald Trump actually meant. And the thing is that he was very, very clear about the dangers that Donald Trump posed and his disagreements with him. Let me see if I can please edit this out here. I'm having some technical problems here. He said, I will never vote for Donald Trump because I stand with certain principles. I stand with small government and free markets and religious freedom and personal responsibility. Donald Trump stands against all those things. Correct. He stands for the targeting of political enemies and an anti morality foreign policy and government domination of religion and nastiness towards women and tacit appeals to racism and unbounded personal power. Yes. 2016, this was Ben Shapiro. Now he said, I will never, ever, ever vote for Donald Trump. It had an expiration date because in 2020 he was all in. And he said, you know, whatever damage Donald Trump has done, he's already done. This was before January 6th, before all that. But then again, 2024, Ben Shapiro is back in. So he has been riding the MAGA wave. He has been riding the Trump wave. And he's standing up there, you know, in Phoenix, looking out at sort of what has grown, what has been nurtured in this bathtub. And I, you know, part of it is like, good for you. We understand exactly what you think. We said it 10 years ago. You said it 10 years ago. But I guess this is part of the problem of our times, isn't it, that people make these choices and they make sense for the time. There's professional advantages to it, but ultimately this is where we are. So give me your sense about this MAGA fight, because it's real. There's a power struggle between, you know, the Tucker Carlson's, the Bannons, and, you know, J.D. vance is part of all of this. You know, have we already moved into a post Trump era in maga? What do you think?
- [35:25]
Lucy Caldwell
No, I don't think that we've moved into a post Trump era at all. I think that in fact, I think that in fact you have people like Alan Dershowitz as recently as last week. You didn't expect me to say that name dropping little. No, I did breadcrumbs around things like, you know what, actually I'm a con law Expert and the 22nd Amendment thing isn't that clear? It's not that clear actually, like I've told the President, we can look at that. And so you know, J.D. vance, who's such a toady, he's a safe person in a way to create as the distraction vehicle around this so that we will look away from the 22nd Amendment stuff. And they can maintain their options for future illegal activity behavior there. If we all, if we're all signaling, actually everyone is going to coalesce around J.D. vance. It's just an extension of Trump 2.0, 3.0, whatever. I think on the Ben Shapiro stuff, I mean, we forget that actually a lot of people, even during the first Trump term, there were still Republicans and conservative media folks who were much more critical of Trump than across a lot of different sort of filters, including he's inadequately conservative. When I was running Joe Walsh's kamikaze campaign primary challenge to Donald Trump in the 2020 cycle, and I was in Iowa like Bill Weldstein was in New Hampshire. We were in Iowa.
- [36:55]
Charlie Sykes
That must have been fun.
- [36:57]
Lucy Caldwell
Yeah, I love Iowa. But there were. Sometimes I'll meet people from Iowa, like a hairdresser, you know, like. And I'll be like, where are you from? And I've had this happen a few times. They're like, I'm from Iowa. Oh, what part? They're like, no one knows Iowa. I'm like, I'm a political operative. I know Iowa. But. But even in that time, it was before the first Trump impeachment. It was before the fateful phone call recording from the Vindmans. Even at that time, there were still Republican forces that were willing to be much more open about the problems with Donald Trump. And at that time, the people who were. And there were, you know, we used to talk about like, the never, never Trumpers, right? The kind of like, Washington examiner crowd, some of them fell into that category. But at that time, people who were raising alarm bells, like you, people like me, we were being told no. And you just alluded to this a moment ago. No, no, no, no, no. Like, he would never do those really bad things. Then he does the really bad things after, especially culminating with January 6th. And then flash forward, they're like, oh, but he already did the really bad things. So now you're still wrong because he can't do those really, really bad things again, I think in terms of the MAGA Civil War. And I was actually thinking about this in recent days because to this point of where we were then and where we were now. I am a Phoenician. I grew up in Phoenix and I worked at the Goldwater Institute for years. And my counterpart, one of my sort of young rising star counterparts at the Goldwater Institute at the time was a guy who was then Goldwater's director of development. He was a fundraiser, great operator. He left. He was doing things in other organizations and he was a fundraising consultant. And during the Walsh campaign, he was my friend. I called him and I said, would you, behind the scenes, could you help us? We're this kamikaze little upstart campaign. It's crazy. Like, I could really use help. And he sent me a proposal. He was like, yes, we also don't like what's happening. I will absolutely help you. We hate that. We hate Trumpism. It's, you know, it's terrible. Like, here are things we could do. You know, you could. Whatever. It was boring stuff, but operative stuff, right? Like, you know, lift swaps, whatever fundraising ideas. Anti Trump. Anti Trump. In late 2019, he is now the chief operating officer of Turning Point usa. Like, this is like, you know, people at an individual level are still on these journeys where they are becoming more and more radicalized, because that is part of how they survive in this current environment. But the MAGA civil war at the same time is very real. And. And it hurts the left when they can't acknowledge it, when they're like, my God, it's just a complete cult. And you can't say anything bad about anyone, because then most Americans are looking at the TPUSA stage or seeing clips about Candace Owens versus Ben Shapiro versus Tucker versus anyone else, and they're like, oh, no. This is a rich tapestry of people in the kind of, like, laboratory of ideas and exchange of ideas, and they're actually more willing to be controversial and fight with each other than Democrats. So.
- [40:22]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, Well, I mean, back to one of your earlier points. This is what makes 2025 so different than, say, 2017. Remember, we thought 2017 was this, you know, insane year, but in 2017, there was still hope, there were still voices, there were still Republicans who were willing to push back. And I think, you know, one of the worst aspects of 2025 has been the complete suppression of all dissent in the Republican Party. The lockstep support, not just of Republic Republicans, but of, you know, any right of center, most right of center, you know, politicians, institutions, think tanks. And. And. And that's. And that's. And. And. And that's. It's particularly bad because there are no illusions. Back in 2017, there was room for illusions that maybe he will become presidential or maybe it will be more reasonable, or maybe we can stop him from doing the bad things. And then, as you point out, he does all the bad things. He does all way more bad things than you expect. And everybody is like, yep, we are still okay with all of that. We are still gonna give him everything. He wants. Okay, so you have been talking a little bit about. And you know, it is hard. I mean, you know, part of the problem of 2025 is it is hard to keep your focus because there are so many things, you know, we could spend all of our time talking about, you know, what Cash Patel is doing or what Pete Hegseth is doing or what Pam Bondi is doing. And of course, you know, all of those are extraordinarily interesting, important, consequential, dangerous stories. But I keep coming back to something that you have talked about before. RFK Jr. Is continuing to be out there. And despite all the personal scandals, despite all of the stories. I mean, by the way, okay, so all of the media people watching us are completely absorbed by the whole Ryan Lizza, Olivia Nuzzy story. And it's like, I'm like, wait, how come this is not affecting RFK Jr. Because the scandal, what's being exposed about his personal character and his dishonesty and thuggery is unbelievable. Not mentioned. Not even to get to the damage that he is doing to America's public health infrastructure, which we may look back on a decade or a century from now and see as maybe the most consequential thing that's going on now. So your thoughts about RFK Jr. Yeah.
- [42:43]
Lucy Caldwell
The nuzzy Lizza filter around the RFK of it all is shocking because we are learning things about what RFK did during that episode in 2024 and that summer that are so corrupt, they are so appalling and really attempting to ruin Ryan Lizza's life. Right. And he is a person who we know is a completely morally bankrupt person. He is a philanderer. RFK Jr Yes. Yes, he is a philanderer. He is one of these people who like Donald Trump. Somehow the more bad things you learn about him, the more he rises to power. And what I feel most, most troubled about when I think about RFK is that in a way, RFK and then the rise of the Maha movement, I do believe could have been avoided if Democrats had handled him differently.
- [43:55]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, how?
- [43:57]
Lucy Caldwell
I think that if the Democratic campaign machinery when RFK Jr was running as a Democrat in, early on in the 2024 cycle, I think that if the approach had just been, sure, bring it on. Yeah, your name is Kennedy, but look, every other member of the Kennedy family is going to endorse Joe Biden. And why don't we let people learn about you that you are a disgusting person. You are a, like, former heroin addict who, you know, the only reason that you have Anything resembling Stache's dead bears. Yeah, yeah, all of it. I mean, where to even start, right? There's so much. There's so much there with the guy. Stash's dead bears while at Peter Luger for dinner. It's all very. It's very, very, very weird. On the way to the airport, going back into the city from Williamsburg to drop the bear off in Central park, but you're supposedly on your way to the airport. The guy is. No sense of driving directions. So put that. Add that to the list. That doesn't make any sense. No, but they should have just said, fine. Do you. Do.
- [45:04]
Charlie Sykes
You had me at brain worms.
- [45:05]
Lucy Caldwell
I forgot about the brain worms of God.
- [45:08]
Charlie Sykes
But you have the brain worms.
- [45:09]
Lucy Caldwell
The brain worms eating the dog too much.
- [45:11]
Charlie Sykes
It's like, where do you start?
- [45:12]
Lucy Caldwell
It could have been the dog.
- [45:14]
Charlie Sykes
The babysitter could have been the dog.
- [45:16]
Lucy Caldwell
It could have been too much carpaccio. Who knows? You know, who knows?
- [45:22]
Charlie Sykes
The problem is, is that if you. I mean, maybe what the lesson here is that if you have skeletons in your closet, that what you should do is just cram your closet so full of skeletons and dead bears and brain worms and everything that everybody goes, yeah, whatever, just don't open that door, right? And yet here's the guy who is in charge of the American health, American public health. And what was the headline in the Atlantic? The most powerful man in Science.
- [45:52]
Lucy Caldwell
Science. The Michael Scherer. Michael Scherer article.
- [45:54]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, you. Yeah, so.
- [45:58]
Lucy Caldwell
But look, here's why he's so dangerous, and here is why he has risen. Let me give this caveat. I'm. I'm on the team that's trying to burn this Republican Party to the ground. RFK Jr and this is not a unique insight, but RFK Jr is a conspiracy theorist, you know, fear mongering psycho sicko. But he's also right about a few things, and he's willing to talk about those things in a way that Democrats don't want to talk about. And in fact, we've had a lot of coverage recently around health care. But actually, the way Democrats talk about health care is to talk about health insurance. And health insurance is not the same as healthcare. And so RFK Jr. Has been able to tap into something that feels very real to a lot of Americans. And it has. He has given people.
- [46:59]
Charlie Sykes
Like what? Like what, like what are we talking. What are, what are we talking about?
- [47:02]
Lucy Caldwell
Like, like refined sugars are really bad for us. Like, we should tackle the obesity epidemic, you know, like. Like we need to examine our relationship to pharmaceuticals. Like we need to think about illnesses instead of whether they're just druggable. Like are they. In other words, like we can prescribe you something like what is the underlying cause of this and how could we help you become more fundamentally healthy? And this is one of Democrats Achilles heels because they are so into virtue signaling on a variety of things that they can't have sincere conversations on these issues. And so then you have RFK over there, who didn't. Was not famous except for his name, suddenly gets a platform and he's like, and look, and he's a martyr. Like, look, they're coming after me. You know, I'm just trying to speak truth to power. But big Pharma, like, everybody hates big Pharma. Like they are, you know, suppressing my voice. And he tapped into something that feels real but also has, you know, part of why, you know, there is a kernel of truth. But the outgrowth of that is stuff that's very dangerous. Like questioning all pharmaceuticals. Like modern medicine is the greatest, right? Questioning all vaccines. Like miracle fear. It's a miracle. Fear mongering around vaccines, fear mongering around Tylenol. And so, you know, this is what the left at its worst does do. And they do it in this issue in particular. Like, you know, they'll, they're like, how do we find our Joe Rogan, our voice, who are like the Candace Owens, the Tuckers, all this stuff so that we have people. It's like every time any of these people come along, they eradicate them, right? Like Andrew Huberman is a good example, right? The Stanford podcaster who is kind of like an alternate manosphere guy, but he talks a lot about health and he's a right winger in their views, right? Like these are all examples of the kinds of things where it's just a, it should be a cautionary tale to us going forward of how to manage people like rfk. Because now the consequences are he's trying to end childhood vaccines and stop pregnant women from being able to like treat the illnesses that they're having while carrying babies. And that's just, that's just like the tip of the iceberg of what could be next with this absolute menace of a human who never should have been. It should never have been elected to like a school, a town board, let alone become the head of Health and Human Services.
- [49:44]
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- [50:47]
Charlie Sykes
So in the brief time that we have left in terms of like the advice that you do give, you described this political moment as sort of a uniquely populist moment. And I do sense that both political parties are trying to navigate. They know that all the rules of politics, or they ought to understand that the traditional rules of politics have been upended, that we're in a, if not a revolutionary period, a populist period. So what do you sense is the political moment? What advice do you give to Democrats, how to tap into this? Because I think what you were just describing was the reluctance of Democrats sometimes to tap into genuine concerns that people have and therefore, you know, make it impossible for them to engage. So how do Democrats tap into this uniquely populous moment we find ourselves in?
- [51:44]
Lucy Caldwell
I'll give you an example of a current race that I think encapsulates this phenomenon. And it is the race for the Democratic primary race for the U.S. senate seat in Maine where you have Graham Platner, who is a upstart, versus Janet Mills, the nearly 80 year old Democratic governor of Maine. And Janet Mills is like a perfect Democrat. She's done everything right. She has stood up to Trump. You know, she was the person who famously in that meeting of governors with Trump, he said, I'll see you in court. Or she said whatever. They had this exchange, tough cookie. But she is very institutional. And Graham Platner is a person who is a, I think he never finished college, he's an oyster farmer. And he's a person with a privileged background too, but former, he's a veteran, he was a seal and early on in his race and he had this.
- [52:48]
Charlie Sykes
Unusual tattoos, terrible tattoo choice.
- [52:50]
Lucy Caldwell
I mean, look all tattoos are regrettable and really, really hard to remove, unfortunately. But Graham Platner, this unbelievable campaign launch. And so everyone knows this is Susan Collins Senate seat and she's running for reelection. And Graham Platner has this winnable, winnable, winnable. And the fight going on between Democrats there who want Janet Mills, who, you know, is the pick of all the institutional powers that be. But also as recently as like eight weeks ago or 12 weeks ago, you know, it's like on camera talking about how she loves working with Susan Collins and Susan Collins is a wonderful Republican, right? Like still operating in like a 2012 Obama, Mitt Romney paradigm was like, no, let's just get back to working together. And then you've got Graham Platner who's like filming his launch ad on his boat and he's like, you know, oligarchy. And he said, you know, the difference between Susan Collins and Ted Cruz is that Ted Cruz is honest about the fact that he is screwing us over. And why do Mainers have to have multiple jobs and why can't we get any fricking health care around here? And he is a person who's like a combat veteran, right? So you can see how someone in Maine is a really interesting state politically, but you can see how Graham Platner might really tap into a sector of the voter base, right? Like gun owners. We need to make friends with gun owners. Right? Like there was this big oppo drop on Graham Platner of stuff he'd said on Reddit, you know, that I think actually like probably helped him, right? There's probably a reason that days after that there was a supposed oppo drop on, on Ruben Gallego, the senator from Arizona, where Ruben is saying in text stuff like, yeah, I mean, my party is way too woke and we need to, you know, get. It's. Get more sensible on a whole bunch of issues around, you know, trans, whatever that is where we are headed, right? So it's not like progressive, like left wing, like wokeism, but it's populist. I think it's populist. And you don't have to like populism. Those are not my reflexive politics either. But I think that either we. And by the way, Graham Platner is up by 20 points in that primary. Either you.
- [55:18]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.
- [55:19]
Lucy Caldwell
You get with the program. Polls two weeks ago, up 20 points. You get with the program and you accept that we are in a populist moment. And you can either fight it and fight upstream or you can be and be overtaken by the tsunami of toxic maga populism. Or you can say, who are the figures in the Democratic Party who seem to have tapped into that, who we can trust? And it might not be in the language that is our preferred language, and it may not be in the social settings that we enjoy, but that could do something to make this populist moment healthy.
- [55:59]
Charlie Sykes
That is fascinating. I need to take another look at that particular race because I think I checked out after the whole tattoo thing. But, you know, the fact is that if you keep offering the same old, same old, then you're not playing the game. I mean, you know, again, in one of my many strained analogies, you know, if you keep bringing the Parcheesi board to the Thunderdome, don't be surprised when you. You keep losing or they just throw your ass out. I mean, it just. You have to understand the moment you're in the game, you're playing. And, you know, what was the one analogy somebody said that, you know, if somebody is just. If you're playing chess with somebody and your opponent just punches you in the mouth, your solution to this problem is not to work on your chess skills. I mean, there's like, it's a different thing. So I think that's what you're saying here.
- [56:50]
Lucy Caldwell
If I. Charlie, I've not heard anyone mention Parcheesi in years, but you're tapping into my childhood because I was a champion Parcheesi player, but no one in my family would play it with me because all I would do is I would just immediately create a blockade and it would be the boringest game. And people would be saying, like, no, no, please lift your dumb blockade and be like, but I'm winning. And so. But no people to play with me because I was so unpleasant as a Parcheesi player. So there you go.
- [57:26]
Charlie Sykes
Life lessons from Parcheesi. Lucy Caldwell, thank you so much for all your time. I appreciate it very much. Love to have you back soon. Thank you.
- [57:32]
Lucy Caldwell
I love that. Thanks, Charlie.
- [57:34]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. As I mentioned, we're going to be doing a series of year in review shows. So stay tuned for all of that because, you know, as we look back on the year, it will be once again our mission statement to remind you that you are not the crazy ones. Thank you.
- [58:06]
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- [58:41]
Lucy Caldwell
Paige desorbo they are Tommy John. And yes, I'm stocking up because they make the best holiday gifts so generous. Well, I'm a generous girly, especially when it comes to me. So I'm grabbing the softest sleepwear, comfiest underwear and best fitting loungewear.
- [58:57]
Commercial Narrator
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- [58:59]
Charlie Sykes
Of course I'm getting my dad Tommy John.
- [59:01]
Lucy Caldwell
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- [59:19]
Charlie Sykes
Curious about how AI is reshaping industries.
- [59:21]
Lucy Caldwell
From the top down? YouCan with AI hosted by Nathaniel Whittemore.
- [59:25]
Charlie Sykes
Of AI Daily Brief delivers real world.
- [59:28]
Lucy Caldwell
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