Amanda Carpenter: Get With the Program, Already
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Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm delighted to be here with my old friend, Amanda Carpenter, writer and editor at Protect Democracy. She's co-author of The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025. And we are together in my new little tiki hut studio set up here in New Orleans. We're not together. I'm here. She's on Zoom. What's going on, Amanda?

Yeah. Hey, I like the new setup. So what is the New Orleans style drink that gets served in the Tiki Hut after the Friday video pod is done? Probably a hand grenade or probably a daiquiri, a banana daiquiri, a banana daiquiri, I think. Oh.

I love a frozen banana DAC. We'll be maybe having one this afternoon. I don't really drink daiquiris, but I think it was on the Strategist, which I visit way too many times a day. They had a thing about the Ninja slushie machine. It does cost $250, but apparently it makes perfect slushies, which I like to do my Powerade mixes and things like that. But it is...

for alcoholic drinks, but it is highly reviewed and it might be on my birthday present list. So maybe I'll get that and maybe and let you know how it goes. That is a good tip. Color me interested in the Ninja Slushie machine for sure. Before we get to business, I do want to just do one other comment about our audience. I had asked Mayor Pete, Secretary Pete, but he was in his role as Slayer Pete on this podcast, to slay

J.D. Vance in Norwegian. And I made an aside comment about how I'm sure our one or two listeners who know Norwegian will weigh in on his insult.

What I found out was we have like 100 people that speak Norwegian who listen. We have such amazing listeners. It's just unbelievable. On Reddit, people are talking about it. People are emailing me about it. I'm getting contacted on every platform from people who speak Norwegian who are very excited to let me know that he said that J.D. Vance is bad for democracy and it's certain that he knows better, that he knows what he says.

And the reviews were mixed. There were some stickler Norwegians out there that didn't like his accent. And there were some Norwegians who were really impressed. So that's my review. All I know is apparently we're huge in Oslo. Yeah, well, okay, two points on that. I was excited to hear him give it a good go with the Norwegian live on the pod yesterday. Like that is a very fun party trick. I have a healthy degree of Norwegian heritage, and I don't think I've ever heard it spoken before.

And so I wasn't sure how it was going to sound. But number three, like Mayor Pete, and I also appreciate that he keeps the lines very clear for when he's on official duty and he's not. The staff around me really does appreciate that.

He always manages to be relentlessly on message, but still make it sound interesting, which is a very weird, weirdly hard talent to achieve. So congrats on that. It is. In Norwegian. And we appreciate that as a podcast host, because sometimes politicians don't make the best podcast. Okay, let's get down to business.

Should we start with Kamala or J.D.? We've got Kamala news. We've got some J.D. news. Dealer's choice. Let's do Harris. That's the most newsiest news of the day and has a lot to do with what Trump was talking about yesterday. So let's hit that. More candy at the end with J.D. All right. Kamala Harris is going to the border today. She plans to say the Border Patrol agents who she'll visit with need more resources to do their jobs to keep America safe.

She's going to be talking about how border agents got a raise over the last four years while she was vice president and how she strongly supports the bipartisan border bill, which she'll reintroduce as president. She's also got a new ad out talking about the border. Let's listen to it.

Kamala Harris has never backed down from a challenge. She put cartel members and drug traffickers behind bars. And she will secure our border. Here's her plan. Hire thousands more border agents. Enforce the law and step up technology. And stop fentanyl smuggling and human trafficking. We need a leader with a real plan to fix the border. And that's Kamala Harris. I'm Kamala Harris and I approve this message.

What say you, Amanda Carpenter? Yeah, I mean, that's all good, right? Like standards, secure the border stuff, nice to be, you know, not natural territory for a Democrat. I think it's remarkable. I haven't really heard her get much backlash from the left for doing this, which you might anticipate. But walking into this, I spent some time this morning, early this morning, listening to the Trump press conference yesterday that he did in New York.

I mean, it was a press conference, air quotes. The first half hour is just him railing against Comrade Harris.

for failing to do anything about the worst immigration crisis in history. And the kind of way that he was setting it up, like clearly they want this to be the biggest deal. I mean, J.D. Vance pretty much admitted to keeping the story about pet eating Haitians alive just to keep immigration in the discussion. And so they think that this is their biggest card to play against terrorists. And it just seems very easy to answer. I mean, Trump is standing there talking about supposedly what a huge immigration crisis there is.

And blaming Harris for not doing anything. I mean, she can just as easily turn around and say, I'm walking into the mess you created. I mean, where's the wall? This isn't hard for her to do. And then, of course, you know, the answer that she has is that she would sign the border bill that Trump lobbied Congress to kill is her most effective answer. And so, yeah.

I think she's just kind of checking boxes pretty easily here. What do you say? Yeah. So my bias is just towards like relief. I know we're not going back, but for most of the first half of this year, I was just desperate for the Democrats to go on offense on this issue at all. They just were bleeding out.

you know, they were going on offense legislatively, but like the messaging apparatus around it was just not there. Like this stuff, like you're saying, it's box checking. It's obvious, but like you got to do it. You got to do politics. Yep. And so it's, it's good on that front. It's refreshing that they are on offense. They're trying to mitigate their worst issue. The contrary view to that, or like the devil's advocate that I think is worth batting around a little bit is, and this is their worst salience issue.

Right. If you look at the polling numbers of like, who do you trust more on this than that? Voters trust Trump more on immigration by a big margin over Harris, bigger than any other issue. So, you know, there's like the Karl Rove theory of go right at your opponent's strength.

There is like the popularist David Shore theory. I'm getting nerdy over here. Like you shouldn't talk about your worst thing. Like you should just talk about other stuff. She should just be talking about abortion instead or talking about uniting the country or whatever, you know, Ukraine. I kind of land on the Rove side of this, of like she has to do this. She has to attack him. But I'm just kind of interested in your thought on that. Like I'm thinking through there's only 40 days left. Should she be spending it one of those days focused on the border?

Yeah. Yes, I think she has to do it. Immigration is a continually ongoing issue, especially in presidential elections. And people want to know how a president would handle it. Where I do think she has more opportunity, especially after listening to what Trump had to say yesterday, is how he intends to solve it versus how she intends to solve it.

Because primarily in his remarks, he was really hitting her. He was sort of pretending that she was president right now and she could wave her magic wand and issue all these executive orders. But that is actually his plan. His plan is to unilaterally carry out the biggest deportation raid in history by fiat, you know, like a dictator on day one. I mean, he's talking about empowering state and local officials to carry out immigration enforcement and go raid these towns. I mean, he's very explicit about it.

And so I think that's where I'd like to have see more of a conversation. She's saying, yes, you know, we do need to solve this border, but we're going to do it in a way that builds consensus. And I can work with Republicans and Democrats to pass the bill the way that this legislation should be passed and not act like a dictator and order raids that are certain to round up all kinds of people in this kind of chaos. I mean, he is campaigning on this.

you know, door knocks in the middle of the night and bringing back the travel ban. I mean, have a conversation about that. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that probably this is caution, you

You know, like if you just look at numbers, if you're just basing this on data and, you know, they've got pluff and they're running a rigorous campaign right now. You know, we don't have to question whether they're whether or not they're doing that anymore. And I'm sure what they are seeing is that deportations poll. Well, I mean, it says something dark about the country. We could have a separate convo about that, though. I would be interested on Tuesday. This kind of takes us into JD a little bit on Tuesday.

Walls potentially has an opening to kind of make that case. And using J.D.'s own words, you know, and J.D. said, you know, that as a conservative, he knows we can't do mass. You can't trust the government to do mass deportations. And I think that's the point. Like, you may think that these people need to go like we do. We deport people a lot. But do you trust Donald Trump and his henchmen to be the people to do it in a respectful manner?

orderly manner. Clearly no for me. That's enough for me. I don't know if you're asking me the question. That's a hard no for me. Yeah, no, but I'm interested. So you think that JD perhaps makes a better foil character

Well, no, I mean, I think that my point is that Tim Walls maybe can make this case. It's a little it's a little more high degree of difficulty than the simple case, which is we tried to solve this problem and you guys scuffle it because you're a cult of Donald Trump. Like that's a simple case. And maybe you stick with a simple case, but we're just we're just talking it out loud.

The more complicated cases like J.D. Vance, you used to know better, right? Like you used to say that you were conservative and said that, you know, you cannot trust a huge government bureaucracy to do something like this in a way that is respectful of human rights and certainly not conservative.

Somebody who's like a lawless freak like Donald Trump is not going to execute mass deportations in a way that does not create real harm for people that are here legally, for families, for people that are working hard. And Trump even said it himself right in that one interview where he's like, you know, you're going to get out nine bad guys and then you're going to get out the one mother who didn't do anything wrong. And the media is going to talk about the mother.

And it's like, that's not an oopsie. That's not the media's fault. That's really bad. You shouldn't accidentally deport a woman just because her last name is Gutierrez or whatever. Right. So you can just already see this is complicated, though. Yeah. The government that still executes people that, you know, I don't know if you've read the news about that latest execution that the Supreme Court went through and said,

had to be done, even though the VidCon's family, all this evidence had come out in the aftermath of it. Conservatives used to be cautious of big government, and they should be, especially when it'd be run by Trump. Yeah, I guess we're not conscious when big government is killing people.

that are falsely convicted of crimes or deporting people. Other than that, you can have skepticism. It seems backwards. I mean, it seems authoritarian. And this goes to your expertise, Amanda. And it does. It really comes down to, it's like, we do not trust the government except for when we are wielding the power against outgroups. Yeah. I,

That's a really good working definition. I like that one. We have to steal that for you for my next paper. Okay, that's all yours. Yeah, you can put it in the next authoritarian playbook part two. Another thing on JD. So the Washington Post has a big story this morning. These more private texts for JD. This is where politics is going. And these Zoomers, us millennials and the Zoomers especially, like we've been sharing too many of our thoughts on our phones. Yeah.

And it comes back to haunt you. J.D. was texting somebody who wanted to remain anonymous in 2020, February 2020. This is not the beginning of the Trump administration. It's the end of the Trump administration. And he says, Trump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism, except his disjointed China policy. That's what he wrote. Okay. So that's a nice little caveat. He got that one thing kind of almost a little bit right on China. And the interesting thing about this is...

Obviously, we know J.D. Vance is a huge hypocrite. But it's interesting in two parts. One, this criticism is directly on the core case that J.D. Vance makes about Trump, that he cares about economic populism in a way that the rest of the old country club Republicans didn't. And secondly, it undermines his case that he flipped on Trump because he saw how great things were under Trump. That's his answer whenever asked in these interviews.

Why did you change your mind on Donald Trump? You used to think he was Hitler, and now you think he's the greatest thing ever. And it's like, well, I saw how awesome he was. Well, here he is in 2020 talking about how he failed. So that totally undermines his explanation.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's hard to keep knocking J.D. for being a flip-flopper on Trumpism because it's just apparent what a transactional human being that he has become. And he's now on the Trump train. And so I think I'm not sure we learn much about these revealed texts other than the person who received them hates him now and gave them to the Washington Post. Yeah.

Which, you know, apparently he's not good at keeping his friends around, which is sort of interesting. But, you know, there's... Not surprising, though. Yeah. Like, I mean, I guess we can get into the whole dossier that was dumped about him that we aren't supposed to read. But, like, what are we learning from it? I mean, the guy has documented his thoughts ad nauseum. He wrote a book. He was, like, the reply guy on who was that medacious gold... Curtis Yarvin stuff all back in the day. Like, we know how he evolves. And I...

He is good at putting like this pseudo intellectual framework on things. And so I just I don't think the flip flopping is the biggest thing to nail him on. What I have spent some time doing is just like looking into what he's done as U.S. senator, because I think that's the best predictor of what he would do as a vice president or what he would like to do. And one thing that I just keep returning to that hasn't gotten much play is.

In December 2023, he wrote a letter to the Department of Justice asking essentially, would you be willing to look into the Washington Post editor at large, Robert Kagan, because Kagan wrote this big piece saying,

essentially exploring the consequences of a Donald Trump 2.0 and had some language in there talking about like, well, how could blue states have some kind of resistance to this and maybe nullify authoritarian things that Trump would do? So J.D. twisted that into saying like, this is evidence that Kagan might be mounting an insurrection in

And J.D. just wrote this really snarky letter, like pretty much saying, like, why don't you investigate the guy? And while you're at it, why don't you look at his wife who works at the State Department to see if she is compromised because of his views? I mean, that's really, really dark stuff. He's doing it through his Senate office. And I think that's indicative. I mean, we talk about this whole retribution agenda and how he'll clamp down on the free press.

J.D. Vance is more than willing to do it. That is what he is willing to do in official capacity. So I think that's more interesting than what he vents about in his private DMs. That's just me. Yeah, no, that's two things to think about. Just listening to that righteous rant, which I agree with. Number one, J.D. Vance just screams somebody. I have these men in my life. You know, these men, as they get older, they don't keep any friends anymore. And then like their only friend is their wife by the time that they're old.

And that's just, J.D. Vance just screams like he's that person. It's just, he's not going to have any friends. He certainly doesn't have any friends from high school who still like him. That's very hard to imagine. And I think that that's a telling character trait about somebody. To your more serious point, the retribution agenda is also not popular, right? And I don't think the Democrats can get bullied into not talking about it. And Trump yesterday,

in his press conference was talking about jailing Pelosi. That's right. And it's like, okay, you know, if this was 2016 and they're doing the stupid, take him seriously, but not literally thing. And Trump is just, this is just bluster. And Trump doesn't really, isn't really going to lock her up and all of that. All that.

That was really dumb then, but at least you had plausible deniability at that point. Yeah, it was funny. He was talking about, if I recall correctly, he was talking about jailing her because supposedly she failed to secure the capital from the supporters that he encouraged to go march there and breach it on January 6th. It was her fault. Jail her for it, not him. Got it. Yeah, so insane, delusional.

deranged, might be losing his grasp on reality. But in addition to that, it's like they're promising retribution. They have a record. Trump, and as you rightly point out, which doesn't get mentioned as much, both Trump and J.D. have a record of trying to pressure the Justice Department to investigate their foes. They're saying that they're going to do it. Like,

It's all right there. What reason is there to believe that they wouldn't do it? I mean, especially like from the point of view of how they continually talk about the need for free speech. I mean, J.D., especially he has this point about wanting Robert Kagan to be looked at for a piece that he wrote in The Washington Post. But also his excuse. I mean, the blame shifting that he did in light of the assassination attempts that people who talk about Trump as a threat to democracy say.

are somehow responsible. I mean, when it comes to suppressing dissent and going after people who say things that they don't like, JD is just as bad on it as anybody else.

Indeed. The only good news we have here is that these guys are so incompetent. In the dossier that was referenced, it was hacked by the Iranians and then leaked. Andrew Agar wrote about this this morning. He said the only interesting thing in the dossier is what wasn't in it, and that's childless cat ladies. So the Trump team vetted J.D., supposedly, but was unable to identify the thing that has done the most damage to the ticket's brand. So heck of a job, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.

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This is kind of related to both of the first two topics. This Republican push to focus on illegal voting. And we're seeing so many examples of this, talking about illegals voting and sense of undocumented immigrants voting. Also, other types. There's Tom Tiffany, a congressman, tweeting out this insane conspiracy theory earlier this week about how there are multiple barcodes in

And that allows people to vote met multiple times. And Stephen Richer, our friend in Maricopa County, the Republican recorder down there, like responded to him just with just owning everything that he has. Like, no, that's actually not how this works. This is how it works. And so this effort to kind of lay the groundwork for Stop the Steal is interesting. But so is how they're kind of tying it to the immigration message. So talk about what you've been seeing on that.

Yeah, I think this is definitely a way like keeping immigration at the center of the debate is part of laying the groundwork to challenge election results after the fact on the basis of the so-called non-citizen illegal voter. And it's just, you know, I...

I'm pretty certain about this because it has so many similarities to the way that they laid the groundwork to challenge mail-in ballots in the 2020 election. Like, it's all like part of the same strategy, right? Like, long story short, this is laying the pretext to challenge certification. I mean, all the stuff that like we're pretty like freaked out and vigilant about has to do with the certification process.

I mean, I know you covered it, the stuff that was happening in Georgia to make it easier to open inquiries after the fact at these certification processes, which really should not be the place to be launching inquiries. But, you know, you...

you have a number of lawsuits being launched by the RNC and battleground States and make references to these non-citizen voters. You have Chip Roy, Mike Johnson, you know, threatening to have a government shutdown. If this legislation to make illegal voting, which is already illegal, more illegal, it didn't go through, but like it was part, it was a messaging bill. We know what messaging bills are, get it in the conversation. Trump talks about it a lot. The right wing media sphere, whatever we want to call that these days is illegal.

pretty easily transitioned into taking white replacement theory and transition into Democrats want a legal vote so they can cheat to win elections, right? Like that is the charge. No one can show me like evidence of a Democrat saying, yes, this is our strategy. Like if it was a grand strategy, wouldn't you have somebody caught on a secret tape at some point in time? That's not even a substantive point. But I do think what makes the strategy incredibly revealing is the timing of it.

So right now you have all these people saying like, oh, we've got to go look at investigate the voter rolls. Well, how come this never comes up in midterm elections? How come it never comes up in the spring when the voter maintenance is actually done? It's always raised. Where there are a lot of Hispanic, a lot of immigrants, but Republicans win. Nobody ever is talking about it there. Yeah, but this conversation becomes the loudest.

during the 90-day freeze when no changes can be made. It's deliberate. You bring up the conversation when nothing can be done and the maintenance has already happened. If you wanted to engage in this process, there's a time and place to do it. And it is done with regularity. We've looked at this. Look at the people who are most motivated to find this fraud somehow

they never do. And I think the best evidence of that is Donald Trump's own presidential voting commission, which was led by Mike Pence, which had to be disbanded because they couldn't find this kind of voter fraud. I mean, when you people do find it, it's so exceedingly rare. I mean, the statistic instances are so small. If you do find a nine citizen voter, like Ohio just did their review this year, I think they found out of 8 million voters, like 135 cases, and most of them are naturalized citizens.

who the paperwork just didn't kick in yet. Like these things are easily resolved and you have millions of voters they can't come up with. And it's just, I think it's so, we probably have other things to talk about with Mike Pence like we always do, but Mike Pence led this commission, right? We have more Mike Pence coming. Yeah, he,

was supposed to go find this fraud. His professional career and almost his life was undone by these lies about voter fraud. You know, he walked away from what, what's he saying about these things that are coming up again now? Nothing. He has nothing to say about all these

you know, governors that keep going after it. Ron DeSantis, he's got his election integrity in it. He spent millions of dollars. Where's the fraud? Governor Abbott, he's doing it. Ron DeSantis did falsely arrest a couple of people. So that was, that was very important. Yeah. Falsely arrested people. Governor Abbott has gone after people. They've like,

had one judgment so far. They wouldn't even say what the judgment was for that. All the door knocking rates that they've done and what they end up finding are, you know, people who are naturalized citizens who the registration just didn't kick in yet. Like very, very small instances, people who voted in the wrong County and they throw the book at those people. And so it's just like, it's,

We know what this is about. It's about sawing distrust in the system, telling people that something is happening that isn't. And they have been charged with finding this for years and years and years, and they never come up with the goods, including the Heritage Foundation, right? Like they've been chasing this story forever. Ben Ginsberg, who is an RNC lawyer who is in charge of a lot of the election fraud,

from a legal perspective at the RNC. I mean, he's come out in the Trump years and said, essentially, this is a Loch Ness monster. They keep pointing the ether and saying it's there and they never find it. I had some follow-up questions, but all caps, Amanda kind of covered all of my follow-up questions as you kept getting warmed up. No, there's probably more.

The Heritage Foundation thing is funny. I wish I had it in front of me because occasionally some asshole on Twitter will send it to me. Like whenever I'm debunking voter fraud stuff, I'll get like, have you not looked at the Heritage Foundation archive? And it's literally like the archive goes back to like 1992 and it has like

600 examples or something of individual cases that are mixed parties. It's nothing. Look, every item of law breaking matters, including all of Donald Trump's indictments. There's no scale. There's no scale. Can we just do like from a common sense perspective, you are a

Cartel loving human trafficking, illegal, you know, the worst picture of someone you can imagine. Do you think that they're running into the country to go vote illegally, which is probably one of the most documented crimes you can commit? Yeah.

I mean, I don't want to say like how stupid do you have to be, but how stupid would you have to be? It is overwhelmingly clear. It is illegal to do primarily because Republicans keep talking about it. It is illegal. Post the science. The governor of campus is going to be posting signs saying if you're not a United States citizen, it's illegal to vote. Great. Keep telling people that it is true, but no one would do that. You don't crawl through the desert and swim through rivers with your life in a backpack to go one vote less.

illegally that will probably not change anything. I've just, that is my common sense perspective. They're just so excited about John Ossoff. These legal, they've come across the Rio Grande to save their lives and they've got the drugs on their back. They've got the cantaloupe. They've got the cantaloupe size thighs and,

And all that they want to do is risk everything to be one vote, a single vote for John Ossoff, who they feel very, very passionately about. Sprinkling fentanyl into the machines. I mean, you know. The whole thing is ridiculous. The good news is at least some people have gotten held accountable for their lies. We've got great news. Newsmax yesterday settled a defamation lawsuit brought by voting machine company Smartmatic.

Right before a high-profile trial was about to start, Newsmax commentators, including Mike Lindell, had said that Smartmatic software was part of an international plot that included China and others to steal the election. All of that was fabricated in Mike Lindell's meth-addled dreams, and now Newsmax has to pay out. I saw a big tweet from Ed Henry, the Newsmax commentator.

Anker, who's had to settle several cases himself based on his personal conduct. Not to do a smartmatic. Based on his personal conduct. The other things that Fox anchors usually settle for. And so he knows a lot about confidential settlements. And they're excited to move forward over there at Newsmax. This is kind of good, I guess. I don't know. The trial would have probably been better. But I'm happy that Smartmatic got their payout.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that nobody wants to have these claims aired before a jury when it comes to the media side. That's interesting. I mean, this is good news, but the message does need to be sent home more broadly that lying in this way has consequences. I mean, it is good. The defamation law is holding up. Nobody's First Amendment rights are being run over publicly.

because people are being held to account for malicious lies that spread real long-lasting and damaging harm. I didn't see Ed's tweet, but I just...

Do you feel like they're getting it? Oh yeah. Cheeky reply. I was pretty happy with it. Okay. I'll have to go see it. But you know, I'm thinking of, you know, Frank once the other day kind of was tweeting incredulously like, well, why doesn't Harris agree to participate in the Fox news debate? And it's like a G I wonder why, probably because they had to pay $787 bazillion million for

for the lies they spread about the last election. Like what, do people not understand that people remember what happened? You had to pay a ton of money. And so are only the accountants taking note of this because there, there are more lawsuits going forward. So Fox had to pay dominion.

OAN has had to pay, as I recall, both Dominion and Smartmatic. Now Newsmax is paying Smartmatic, but Dominion is going after Newsmax. And I'm losing the other one in there. Like it's going on. Must be the lawfare and the biased juries. I don't know. Also, we should throw in not related to the election lies, but just to

Right-wing outlets just lying and getting held to account for it. InfoWars is now up for auction. So that's something we can all be happy for on a Friday. That's something you can think about when you're having your banana deck this afternoon. That InfoWars is now that they've got to sell it off to pay the Sandy Hook families who are finally getting their justice. What are you buying if you buy it at auction? Well, there's some people I've seen some chatter out there that, uh,

Maybe some people... This is something to bat around in the Protect Democracy break room. Oh, no. Yeah, there's some chatter. Yeah, there's some chatter out there that like a disinformation, like a pro-democracy disinformation nonprofit should purchase Infowars.

And use the brand to publish truth because you have all those InfoWars stickers that are still out there and you see them on crazy people's trucks. Oh, that would be so funny. And so then when people go back to InfoWars, then they would at least once or twice before they get in on the joke be kind of shot with a little dose of reality.

So what would the play be? Just silently take over the desk. Like I just go sit there at the desk and act like everything is normal and just start. I don't think you'd be able to act like everything is normal. No. I haven't exactly thought three or four plays down the field on this, but I've seen some chatter about it. So there's, again, no bad ideas in a brainstorm. You know, get Ian over there and kind of just, you know, it's like a Friday after the noon thing. See if there's anything that we think can be done with the

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Protect yourself with a 30-day free trial at LifeLock.com. Use promo code NEWS. Terms apply. I have one more fraud kind of in this space, our friend Elon. So I just, this is like more of a rant than a question. I'm ready for it. I'm so fucking sick of the anti-woke free speech people. Like the pretend like they're free speech absolutists.

And then anytime something happens that's like borderline controversial that challenges them, they want to be the first ones to crack down on free speech. And you saw this around the protest. I didn't like a lot of the stuff that was happening in the in the Gaza protest. Some of the stuff I liked was well-intentioned. There was some of the stuff. There was definitely some rhetoric that I did not like. But like this effort by the free speech people, like we have to shut down these protests. We have to shut down the campus protest. Bill Ackman and all these guys. I'm like, wait a minute. I thought you were the free speech guys.

Like you can't take a little uncomfortable language about the Israel-Hamas war? Okay. And here we have yesterday, Ken Klippenstein. Who is it my favorite? If I'm just being candid. So this is not like my friend Ken Klippenstein.

the JD Vance, the Iranian hacked JD Vance vetting file that I referenced earlier. And he posts it. And in the file, it includes, I guess, JD's address, which is very gettable online. And Elon uses that as a pretense to suspend Ken Clemenstein's whole account and to block people that are linking to the file. Uh,

And it's like, this is what you guys, you guys spent years complaining. This is what Twitter did about the Hunter Biden laptop, by the way, which I disagreed with at the time. I thought Twitter should just let people post the Hunter Biden laptop thing. I like that. There's a very small cadre of us. I feel who are in the middle who actually care about free speech, who are like pro free speech, even when we don't like it.

But the loudest free speech people, the Elons, the Bill Ackmans, the Ben Shapiros, these people are all just happy to shut down speech anytime they don't like it. And it's just like, F these guys. It's all a fraud. So that's the rant. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. It's so apparent that Elon, and this is sort of independent from the free speech thing,

which I largely agree with you on, although I do think there is questions about publishing hack materials. And there's a whole question about whether Elon is a publisher or a platform. Pretty clear to me he's a publisher. He makes selective choices all the times, but at the same time, content moderation is extremely hard. It's messy. It's what you sign up for. But what we know for sure is

is that Elon uses the platform for political purposes and political influence. Like he's donating tons of money to Trump. He's interviewing him for a show. He's helping JD out in this manner. And so he, he has clearly made a bet that,

where he stands to benefit a great deal should Trump be elected again. Like he's made no bones about it. I think in terms of the government contracts, like all kinds of side issues that are unrelated to the Twitter platform. At the same time, I don't know if you've been watching what Mark Zuckerberg has been doing. He's a libertarian now.

interesting. He's kind of the corporate do-gooder, social striver guy. He's sort of remaking himself from my understanding. And he announced, what was it last week, that he's not doing politics anymore. Apparently, he had a phone conversation with Trump recently, why you would want to get on the phone and talk to somebody after January 6th, make nice, treat them like a regular candidate. But they had a good talk. And after that talk,

Zuckerberg decided he's not doing politics anymore. You know, he kind of got rocked by the whole Zuckerbucks conspiracies where he spent money in the last election trying to help local election offices carry out their elections. Like, okay, Republicans didn't like that. There's a bunch of investigations. Did they reveal any crimes? Those investigations? No.

No crimes. But also as like a turn away from politics, he sent a letter to House Republicans reiterating again that there was outreach from the Biden administration through the pandemic trying to get them to stop publishing misinformation. You know, that went to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court found that nothing wrong was done. But this is part of what Zuckerberg is doing now. He's

He's saying he's getting out of politics, but he's really just making nice with the worst people. I mean, there's a term for this, like in the democracy spaces is anticipatory obedience. Like it's essentially just saying, I'm not going to be a problem for you. And that's what, that's what I see it as. I don't think he's really retreating from the public space. I think he's making nice with the worst people and the bullying and

that Trump and other Republicans waged against him after the last election is extremely effective. He's essentially surrendering from the public space. Like, okay, that's his right, but don't say that that's a political decision. Like with the amount of influence that he has, sitting this stuff out is a decision in and of itself. And I think it's sort of misleading to say like, oh, I'm a libertarian now. I don't have to worry about these things.

So that's the contrast I see when I see Elon Musk becoming much more assertive and making these very concrete decisions to clearly benefit a candidate. And other people who used to just like typically do good government stuff say, I'm retreating from those spaces. You know, that's not good. That's not a good dynamic. This is an important thing to observe. I'm glad you brought this up because –

There has been a meaningful change since 2016. Republicans are always going to do the fake grievance thing. Oh, we're so, you know, the culture is out to get us and the powerful institutions are out to get us.

And that's, you know, that's been happening since Spiro Agnew. But, you know, there was a period of time in the post-Obama years, like there was some evidence of this, right? Like that the big tech companies were mostly run by the kind of liberal do-gooder crowd. And that's true. Right? Yeah. Okay. Sure. Yeah. But there's been this change that is meaningful, which is Zuckerberg moving away from that and kind of, you know, moving towards dark Zuck, Elon buying Twitter, and

And then, you know, kind of the fragmentation of the media and who, where the media power centers are. Mark Cuban did the thing I've been begging Democrats to do for years, but particularly lately. He went on one of these bro podcasts, fellow Louisiana, Theo Vons pod. And he also went on CNBC squawk box who has kind of this MAGA co-host Joe Kernan and gets kind of a more upscale male audience and

And in both pods, he made this case about how MAGA is really kind of the mainstream media now. And I think it's a compelling message. Let's listen to how he explained it on CNBC. What's the most watched news channel?

Who are the most watched and viewed and listened to podcasts? Who are the most watched and listened to? Is it Fox? Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's not close. Right. The number one shows are all Fox. The number one podcast. So even in spite of that, she's been able to not in spite of that. Meaning, well, in spite of that. Yeah. Meaning the mainstream media is not who you think it is. The mainstream media truly leans right.

And that's a good point by Cuban. He made it in both cases, but I think the Theo one is particularly interesting just because it's his audience I've been talking about. So I'll put the link to the whole pod in the show description. What was your thoughts on that? I heard about that and I'm glad you brought it up, but I'm just watching Mark Cuban get out there more. Like, you know, he's a Harris surrogate and I actually was kind of like, what's he really going out there for Harris for? And it's like, oh yeah, it's a stop Trump. He did the same thing for Hillary in 2016. So maybe this is a new territory for him. But, you know, he is,

Very assertive. He's good on his feet. And when I was watching him the other day, I was waiting for a deadline hit on MS. All I could think is like, I really don't want to watch JD and Walt's debate. I would love to see Mark Cuban and Elon Musk debate. That would be wild. It would. He's kind of filling this void that needed to be filled, which is kind of talking to guys who care about finance and crypto. And he does it because this is him. This is his world. And so he does it.

He speaks the language naturally. It doesn't feel politician-y. It doesn't feel fake. Anyway, I think he's been really good. Okay, we need to spend the preponderance of the rest of our time on our favorite subject around here, which is the future of the Republican Party. I just feel like ever since I've started doing Even Cable in 2006, whenever it was, that's the eternal question. I'm sure you've gotten the same. The eternal topic.

I know. I was on with Alicia Menendez recently, and she was like, I want to get my producer to do a super cut of all the times I've asked you, is this rock bottom for the Republican Party? And what your answers have been each time. That would be kind of fun to watch.

This time, we're not just doing it because we like to sniff our own farts. We're doing it because both Mike Pence and Mitt Romney have made comments about this that I think are worth chewing over. Let's do Pence first, since you teased him. The former vice president told Semaphore he's laying the groundwork for a party that could move on after the election from Donald Trump's populism and protectionism. Sometimes that means being a rare voice of public dissent. Huh.

Haven't heard that very much. Other times it means quietly trying to recruit allies to his cause. We're trying to plant a flag for conservatism, says Mark Short, Pence's longtime advisor. The former vice president's Wall Street Journal op-ed taking veiled shots at Trump's policy priorities is just a hint of what Pence is thinking as he waits for the 2024 election to play out. Thoughts? So he wants to have influence later, but not now. Yeah.

per se. I did look at his op-ed. Well, I saw the write-ups of the op-ed first, where it's like, Pence breaks his silence on Trump. And it's interesting, he's taking a shot at Trump over tariffs, which I actually think is really good territory. Like,

The way that Trump sees tariffs as this like magic wand he can use to punish companies he doesn't like who take economic actions that may reflect poorly on his own jobs record is just ripe to be ripped apart. And I think actually Harris did that.

in her economic speech earlier this week. I mean, she was sounding so Republican. It was like, did I write this for Jim DeMint back in 2010? She's talking about like, we need a stable, predictable business environment. It was just so, you know, paint by numbers Republican. But like, so he thinks he can take veiled shots at Trump without naming Trump in the Wall Street Journal on tariffs. And that's going to be the big recruiting angle for the greats

Republican realignment in 2028. That's the play. Yeah, this it reminds you of the Republican primary, which he was in. People might forget that. But Mike Pence was part of the Republican primary, and nobody supported him, which tells you a little bit about what his influence over the future of the Republican Party is likely to be. But during the primary, I would say over and over again about DeSantis, like there is no other political situation where

where a candidate, a candidate's advisor would say, the best thing to do here is for you to make very veiled attacks at your opponent that are so subtle that people might not even notice that they're attacks.

and otherwise be nice to them. Well, your opponent makes fun of you for having pudding fingers and being a man girl and like being, and, and being corrupt and being an idiot and being the sanctimonious. Like I, you can't win a war if one side is using bazookas and the other side is using veiled shots and wall street journal op-eds. And so it's like,

I would be much more interested in the Mike Pence fight for the future of the party if I felt like he was actually fighting and not just wanting to be able to go to the AEI panels and convince rich people that he was doing something that they liked. Yeah, I agree with that. I think the Romney...

stuff that he's been saying this week is, is much more, I mean, I hate to say this, but it's so, it's even more cowardly than what Pence is doing. Do you want to, do you want to pull that out? Yeah. Let's read the quote. I've got them. I've got, trust me. Oh, I'm ready. I'm loaded for bear. And by the way, I love Senator Romney. I love him. I went against him in two primaries. I'm saying this because I want him to come on the pod. I would like for you to come on the pod. I've been trying privately. It hasn't working. So come, I'm saying it publicly. Um,

I'd love for him to come on. I'll be nice to him. I went against him in two primaries. He's the only person I went against that I liked more after both primaries. Especially in 2012, I was like, I almost kind of wish I was working for him instead. That's a real thought I have. I really was impressed by him. And obviously, I've been impressed by him from 26 to 2024. I think that this is a mistake, what he's saying right now. I think he's wrong. He's making a wrong judgment.

My particular vote doesn't have a big impact, he says. I'm from Utah. In my case, having been the former nominee of the Republican Party, I want to make sure I'm in a position after this election to have some influence on the direction of our party in the future. So I'm not going to go out and do something that would make that more difficult to occur. The thing that would make it more difficult to occur is if Donald Trump is the president.

Donald Trump might be the president. Why are we planning this? Why are we making this bet based on your potential influence in a world where Donald Trump loses when you're not helping trying to get him to lose? You don't think the Mormons in Arizona and Nevada, you don't think you have any influence? You have no influence over the Mormons in Nevada and Arizona or the finance bros in Buckhead and Atlanta? Mitt Romney has no influence over them? I refuse to believe that, Amanda.

If you want to have influence, you should attempt to use it in times that matter. And now would be that time. I mean, it's like, you know, it's like he thinks he was the former president and he as a former president should not weigh in. You weren't. I mean, sorry, I wish you were, but you were the nominee. It is OK for you to weigh in on the current presidential race. And I'm sorry, this applies to Pence and Romney.

It's not a brave stance to do it right now. Like, it will be brave if they were to come out and say, I'm voting against Trump. Therefore, I am going to vote for Harris, whatever formulation they want. But my God, like Dick Cheney has already announced that he's going to do it. We are witnessing the greatest cross partisan movement, I think, ever.

in history. I mean, the historians can fact check me on that, but it is happening. It has been happening. Like there were Republicans all over the Democratic convention. Like what is this huge risk that you would have to make to say like, we have to stop Trump? I mean, Donald Trump didn't even have former presidents and vice presidents at his own convention. So why do they think

think this is like, Mike Pence, you already said that you're not going to support Trump. So what is the big deal here? Like, what is this thing that they're so scared of, or think that no one would listen to them after? Like, I'm sorry, the Trump people don't want you there to begin with.

So be a part of the cross partisan movement that says we have to stop this in order to have a healthy Republican Party in the future, of which I would love to be a part of and recruit people and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're not wanted. It's like the thing with Nikki Haley. You are not wanted in the Trump Party. Quit trying to be a part of it. It's like they are trying to get into this like club and they keep getting bounced out by the bouncer because they're not wanted. Yeah.

And they keep scratching the door and clamoring and try to get in through barred windows to get in. I have so many thoughts in your comments that they're all gurgling out of my mouth right now. But I wanted to let you because you're exactly right. 100% of that.

One note, the Reagan Democrats, the Southern strategy. There have been a couple other ones. There were a couple other ones on the cross partisans. But yeah, this is it is happening. I mean, like it is happening. It is happening at the voter level. It's the elites that are failing us. Right. I get this happening at the voter level. And the thing about Romney going to the having influence and how they don't want you. Your point about how they don't want you. I've said this before. I think I said this to Karl Rove one time we were talking. Could Mitt Romney go to a Trump rally and feel safe?

No way. No way would Mitt Romney walk through a Trump rally without security and for good reason. And that says this really sad thing about our country. It's about the MAGA movement for everything. So you can't tell me that you think you're going to have influence over these people in the future fight for the Republican Party when you can't even feel safe talking to them. OK, so like stop. You're not going to have influence over people that literally some of which were literally trying to kill you.

on January 6th, you're running away from. All right. You do not have influence over those people. There are people you have influence over. Some of them are still in the Republican party. Some of them are independent voters. Some of them are people like, I'm trying to think of, I have some friends in my life that have switched to become Democrats, but are still like, still like Mitt Romney voted for Mitt Romney. Like those are the people you, you, he has influence over. And so the idea that he, that he wants to save his influence for people that hate him,

In 2025, but won't use his influence right now on the key demographic of people that might listen to him. I'm just begging people that Senator Romney listens to, to try to make that case to him. It's a misunderstanding. I understand the word cowardly. I don't, I think that he genuinely doesn't.

is wrong. I think, I just think he's generally, I think his political assessment, I think he's genuine and his political assessment is wrong. And I hope that somebody can persuade him of it. Maybe Liz Cheney or somebody. Yeah. And I will say maybe I was wrong to use that word. I don't know. It's a high emotion time. It's a high emotion time. Just a point that I think should be persuasive to him and his people. If anyone happens to hear this, you're retiring, Matt.

You're not going to have more influence as a retired senator. You serve alongside J.D. Vance right now. You know what he's done in the Senate about Ukraine, an issue you care about, the world cares about. You will have far more influence if you just tell the truth and what's on your heart and say, I can't be a part of this anymore. That's why you're leaving the Senate. Like, we're all sad you are.

Just say the truth. That's all you have to do. And it is never, never will be as important as it will right now. Sit with Liz Cheney, have a, have a Mormons for Kamala thing in Arizona, go to Atlanta. Yes. Yes. So Jeff Flake, go to Atlanta, go,

Hang out with some rich Southern guys. Convince them that we're going to make sure that the tax on unrealized gains is not going to happen. And use the influence of the people that will listen to you. Okay, that's that. Amanda, do you have any final thoughts? Anything that I didn't get to? Final thoughts. Your life's good? You know, with the media stuff, I'm still thinking about how Benny Johnson ever thought he was worth being paid $400,000 a month to make YouTube videos. And how come...

That money hasn't been seized by the government? Or returned. It is shocking. You'll be shocked to hear, if listeners haven't followed the story closely, that the influencers, the MAGA influencers that took the Russian cash, they claimed unwittingly, haven't returned it yet. Haven't returned the cash. That is shocking. Yeah. Are you allowed to take... I mean, maybe I'll talk to some of the lawyers I know, but it seems like if the Russians are clearly bribing you

maybe not bribe, paying you to be a part of a disinformation campaign that is uncovered by the U.S. government that somehow you just get to keep the money and everything's fine. That doesn't seem right. It does. Hopefully, hopefully the deep state's looking into it. Amanda, don't listen to that Tim. Don't listen to that Tim Pool. Don't tweet that clip, Tim Pool. It's just a joke. He's going to issue the death penalty for you, which is...

Watch out. Yeah. Amanda Carpenter, I appreciate you so much. I love hanging out with you. To our friends in Florida and Georgia, et cetera, that are being affected by Hurricane Helene, that looks brutal. We are thinking about you. Make sure to listen to authorities and evacuate. And if there's anything we can do to help you out...

Please stay in touch. Send us a note on Substack or leave a little comment. And obviously, the Bollard community is here for you. We appreciate you. Amanda Carpenter, thank you so much. We'll be back on Monday with Bill Kristol. We have a lineup next week, y'all. We have a lineup coming. So tell your friends. Subscribe to the feed. We'll see y'all on Monday. Have a great weekend. Peace.

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.