David French: 2017 Trump Is Gone
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Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to be here today with opinion columnist for the New York Times, co-host of the legal podcast, Advisory Opinions, America's number one defender of drag queen story hour. Of course, it's favorite of the pod, David French. Tim, it's so good to see you. And I just, I'm just so glad that you didn't leave out the drag queen story hour part of the bio. It's just so key. Well,

Well, it's now that Sohab or Amari, we're getting really nerdy already for people. But now that Sohab is like come completely around and is basically a Frenchist, you know, I think it's important to just make sure that you're victory in that battle. I just wanted to memorialize it for listeners and for history. Yeah.

I'm sorry to do this to you. We've got a lot of serious business to cover, obviously, about the election and some issues I want to go over. But first, I think we have to start with Tucker Carlson at the Turning Point USA conference yesterday discussing why we need Daddy Trump to come home. Let's listen. If you allow your hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter to slam the door of her bedroom and give you the finger, you're going to get more of it. And those kids are going to wind up in rehab.

It's not good for you, and it's not good for them. No. There has to be a point at which dad comes home. Yeah, that's right. Daddy Don Chancellor. Dad comes home, and he's pissed. Dad is pissed. He's not vengeful. He loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them. Because they're his children. They live in his house. But he's very disappointed in their behavior. And he's going to have to let them know.

He's gonna have to get to your room right now and think about what you did. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it's not gonna hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it's not. I'm not gonna lie. It's gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl.

I'm sorry to make you suffer through that listeners and David, but what's happening out there? What is the, what's the spanking that he wants to give? Yeah.

Yeah. So this is an extended analogy of Trump is dad. Yeah. I guess Democratic voters is teenage girls who now are going to face dad's discipline. Yeah. And I mean, number one, the whole way that was told was weird and gross. You know, there's just no deep analysis to this other than that weird and gross analogy.

But the thing that really stood out to me, Tim, was not Tucker being Tucker. I mean, this is a guy that we're all familiar with this routine by now, the maniacal laughter sometimes, the weird comments. I mean, this is Tucker being Tucker.

The thing that disturbs me more about that clip is the crowd reaction. Uproarious applause. This is giving them their thing. This is the good stuff. Like this is, this is what I want to hear, you know, and you hear the yelling and the encouragement and the roar from the crowd, from all of this. And, and, you know, the most disturbing aspect of, of where we are right now. And, you know, I'm going to steal a line from Beth Moore was it's not that Trump is Trump, not that Tucker is Tucker, right?

It's that Republicans have become this as Republicans. There is a demand for what they are selling. There is a demand for what they are saying. And that is what is more disturbing than what they're saying in many ways. Yeah. And not to take this metaphor too seriously, obviously, because I don't think Tucker's taking himself that seriously. But it's not exactly a metaphor that represents small government conservatism either. Yeah.

It's like, what is the federal government's role exactly in spanking the protesters or the Democratic voters or the media members that get out of line? You know what I mean? Like, if you actually took it even kind of seriously, it's a vision of...

an authoritarian type of leader that you're looking for to deliver the spanking, I would say. Well, what it shows is this is not a crowd that's there for policy. This is a crowd that's there for punishment. This is a crowd that wants vengeance on its enemies. This really is the animating spirit of MAGA, is this pugilistic punishing spirit. Then the thing is he can't win through that alone.

But he's also bringing in all these normie Republicans who are like, well, all of this stuff, media is blowing it out of proportion. All of these comments, media is blowing it out of proportion. All of these weirdo authoritarian policy proposals, media is blowing out of proportion. He's going to be 2017 Trump or 2018 Trump. And they're just utterly convinced of that fact. And then he has this whole other faction that's like,

No, this is Trump unleashed now. 2017 Trump, 2018 Trump is gone. Now I want 2020, 2021 Trump when he was free of all of the responsible people and was trying to unleash himself on the American public. And those two things cannot exist at the same... They're not both true. You don't have both Trumps running. Yeah, they're incompatible. And I, just on this exact point, I debated Dan Crenshaw a couple of weeks ago and he was...

On the normie side of this. Right. I kept coming back to the same point. I kept coming back. Well, you keep saying he's going to do these crazy things, but I'm just telling you what happened in 2017. Right. I'm just having a 2018. I have this evidence. I guess I wonder why do you think that has persisted?

in that group. It's persistent in that group at a level maybe I wouldn't have expected. You know, we had Fred Upton today come out and say that he's endorsing Kamala Harris, former congressman from Michigan. But it's pretty much the same group from 2021, right? Like not a lot of people have been added to the cause of anti-Trumpism. And the normies that excused Trump through January 6th are all still kind of doing it. Can you get inside their heads for me a little bit? Well,

Well, you know, I think if you're talking about like the Dan, getting inside the Dan Crenshaw's heads, I think that they...

accurately perceive reality in one sense. And that is, if you, one of the most disturbing charts that I have seen came right after January 6th, when there was polling of Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, and Donald Trump amongst Republicans. And right at January 6th, two of those three people's approval rating amongst Republicans plunges. Only one stays relatively high, and that was Trump. So Trump, even right after January 6th,

right in the aftermath of this riot and attempted insurrection, he had slight decrease in approval from Republicans, but the people who had precipitous decrease were Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell, two of the people who stopped this. And so very quickly, you began to see Republican politicians reacting to what their constituents were telling them. And so a lot of these more normie folks were

immediately began to fall back in line because you can go back and you can see this, Tim, happen in real time. There are all these quotes on January 6th and after January 6th and this is it, this is it, this is it, we're done, we're done, this was unacceptable. And then within two weeks, within three weeks, the message had been heard from the base that

And these guys snap back in line. Yeah. Is there anything to their argument? I guess it was just all post hoc rationalization, right? I don't know. I mean, I guess sometimes I just wonder, I like look back at it. It's not me. That's the crazy one, right? It is them. Here's what I do not think. And Tim, I live in an area that's 85% Republican. Like, you know, it's funny. All of these people say, well, you're at the New York times. You don't understand MAGA. Like, are you kidding me? Okay. Yeah.

And what I have seen is there's just very few people who are sitting out there going, I'm going to make the 27, 2018 argument, even though I know that Trump is not there anymore. He won't do that anymore. People have convinced themselves. They have absolutely convinced themselves and they've given him a total pass for 2020 and 2021. It's really fascinating. This Trump nostalgia is fascinating to encounter because they'll go back to 2017, 2018, 2019.

and say that's the real Trump presidency, really the first half of 2019. And then after that, they just give him a pass. They give him a total pass for first impeachment is nothing but democratic persecution.

They inexplicably give him a total pass on the pandemic. That is something that blows my mind. But there is no responsibility allocated to Trump at all, even though we know, I mean, we know the man lied to the American public about how serious this disease was. He out and out lied to the American public about it, handled it in many ways that were incomprehensibly incompetent. Yes, we got the vaccine. Very, very important.

And absolutely Operation Warp Speed, I think, was the best part of his presidency. But when you look at other aspects of the pandemic management and the messaging and the communication, it just was an incredible mess. Then you had the chaos of 2020, the crime spikes of 2020.

All of that occurs and they pretend as if he has no responsibility. There's no accountability for his conduct at that time. And Tim, this is so backwards from the way we normally evaluate presidents. Normally, when we're defining who's a good president or a great president or a bad president, it's those times of crisis that define them.

And here they're saying, oh, no, the crisis, we just got to give him a full pass for that. It's the times that when he's inheriting peace and prosperity, that's when we're going to judge him. It makes no sense at all, but that's where we are. There are millions and millions and millions of people who think 2020 is just it's an asterisk. It's a blip. Don't pay any attention.

they've been somehow convinced in their mind that January 6th was much less serious than it actually was. And besides, weren't there questions anyway? And this is sort of how that rationalization process works. Yeah, I wonder then, and that takes us kind of the news of the week with John Kelly, you know, which is, how do you get past all of that, right? That to me, I think is...

The most compelling case that you could offer to this type of, you know, we're just, we're picking on Dan Crenshaw, but we're just kind of using him as an avatar for this type of Republican, right? That, that,

Mike Pence is not for Trump that Mark Milley has spoken out and said he's concerned that John Kelly, who was the longest running chief of staff, who was at DHS during the travel ban. And this is no Ryan running DHS during the travel ban. This is no Rhino is, is issuing this warning. Mattis, we can go down the list of,

You see the Kelly response this week, and it's, I guess there's just an impenetrable bubble that it doesn't reach these people, right? Is that how you would explain it? Or how would you explain why the Kelly stuff has no salience? Number one, we cannot underestimate the extent to which core Trump people are insulated from negative Trump news.

And when they do get it, it's filtered. Not a lot of John Kelly talk at the coffee shop, the diner down by you, you know, your local watering hole. If you went to like the top 10 right wing websites right now, I wonder how many of them are dealing with this at all or dealing with it in a way that is really telling the story through the prism of more democratic persecution or more betrayal of Trump.

So this is the way this news is communicated to the right-leaning public. It's either, A, not communicated at all, or comes through the prism of look at the latest thing the left is trying. Look at the latest thing the left is doing to Trump. And so it's always presented as,

not as a story, not as a scandal, but as persecution, that Trump's scandals aren't scandals, it's persecution. And so that's how it's presented time and time again. Yeah, I can field this one for you. I just pulled up the dailywire.com. Three stories about Kamala and illegal immigration are the top three. Number four is about the LA Times editorial board, that person quitting. And then number five is Ben Shapiro.

media launch ugliest anti-Trump smear yet. Okay. Media. The media did this. Okay, yes. It's not John Kelly. It's not his longest running chief of staff. It's that the media conspired to do this. See, that's exactly my point. Presenting this as an attack and not as a story or not as a report or as a scandal that it actually is. And then at the same time, you can see this happening as clear as day. It is no rules apply to Trump.

All the rules apply to Kamala Harris. So how many days have we been talking to some degree or another as to whether or not she worked in McDonald's when she was really, really young? We've been talking about that for a long time. MAGA is demanding answers on that, Tim, demanding answers on McDonald's gate. Meanwhile, the longest serving chief of staff of the former president who wants to be the future president has said that he wants generals like Hitler's generals to

But no, Tim, we got to know about those McNuggets. Did Kamala Harris fry up those McNuggets when she was 16 or did she not? And if she didn't work at McDonald's and she says she did, that's bad. But you know what? That's like saying, yes, jaywalking is bad, Tim. You should not-

You should not engage in jaywalking. Meanwhile, can we prosecute the bank robber? Can we do something about the bank robber? As a jaywalker, I'm feeling targeted.

If you would indulge me, I want to do just in the context of Kelly, a little backwards looking that I'm interested in your take on. I want you to adjudicate a debate between me and your good friend, Stephen Hayes, our good friend, Stephen Hayes over at the dispatch. Oh, gosh. It's a really tough question, though. But the Kelly news brings all this stuff up for me. And Steve and I have had a long running discussion about this, where I fall on the side of, I think in retrospect,

People probably, like with the exception of National Security Advisor, like people probably shouldn't have went in to serve Trump to protect him from himself. Like John Kelly, even when he took the jobs, like told people that he was taking it because he felt a duty. We needed a good person in there. We needed the country. It was service to the country. We needed a responsible person in there. Like, would we be here right now if we just let Corey Lewandowski be the chief of staff?

Might Donald Trump have just burnt himself out already? We would have just let his freak flag fly and maybe people shouldn't have gone in. What do you think about that? That's a great question. I mean, you know, it was so bad that there was reporting at one point early in Trump's presidency that John Kelly and General Mattis would not be out of D.C. at the same time because one of them felt like they always had to be within arm's length of Trump in case something

He engaged in one of his impulsive ideas or one of his impulsive policy thoughts or in case he, you know, was Trump being Trump. And there is a level of damage that Trump being Trump could inflict upon us that I do think is

Let me put it this way. I think that he could have inflicted a level of damage that both would have been a point for you and a point for Steve in the same time, right? That it would have ended the Trump phenomenon, but it also would have been at such steep cost to the country because that, and that's exactly why I go back and forth on this issue. If push comes to shove,

I think I'm more in your direction at this point, if push comes to shove, because I think that as I see all of this unfold, I see all of this nostalgia for the time when the quote unquote adults were in charge, when you had that initial cabinet, when you had Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House. This is when he got everything done in his presidency. And there's so much sort of nostalgia for that phase of the presidency that

which you and I now know and which everyone, every thinking person should now know is no longer an option. This is not what Trump is going to be this next time around.

And so there is a gravitational pull, though, from that era that is so strong and I think so inherently deceptive that it sort of pushed me more in your camp, Tim. I still think, though, it's a really hard call because I think you're absolutely right. If Trump had been sort of left to his own devices early on, we wouldn't be in this position. But at the same time,

Would the costs of not being in this position be so great? Yeah. So it's a hard one. It's a hard one. It's so hard. I think about it a lot. I've increasingly come more and more into my camp, if that makes sense. I was more borderline for a while. You're increasingly convinced that you're right. I've increasingly convinced myself that I'm right. But it's like both the devil and angel on my shoulder kind of feel that that's the right way. Like the devil is kind of like, let him bury himself. Not literally, but like in his own errors.

Right. And the angel side of it is like, I'm kind of compelled by the, the only defense of the John Kelly revelations that I have heard from the right that I found it all compelling. I forget who said it was somebody that was like,

H.R. McMaster was saying to Kelly and Mattis the whole time that they shouldn't be slow walking him, that they weren't elected, that he was elected. Right. And the people elected him. So, you know, we should be trying to execute the policies that he wants. Again, like that feels kind of right to me. I don't know who the fuck knows how I feel about that. Excuse my language. And in February 2025 in Trump 2.0. But that's like the scariest part of all of it.

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's no question that Kelly as chief of staff, in many ways did not behave as a classic chief of staff, which was essentially like the president's right hand. Instead, he was more like a

I'm trying to think of a bench player in the NBA who's grabbing one of his other players, holding them back from going on to the court, right? And holding them back. Don't get a technical, Draymond. We need you for the rest of the game. Exactly. And so I don't think there's much question that he was playing a role that chiefs of staff don't normally play. And to some extent, McMaster's

right that, look, Trump was the elected president of the United States. No one elected Kelly chief of staff. No one elected any of the rest of the cabinet. I mean, they were confirmed, of course, but no one elected them. And so there's a sense in which he's right. At the same time, I just keep going back to that cost point. But here's the thing, Tim. Here's the thing. We bore a really high cost watching Trump be Trump in the election contest and the big lie and January 6th

And here we are. Here we are. Here we are. So I do sometimes question the very foundational premise that had he been allowed to be, you know, who he wanted to be, would we be cured of it or would we not? Because I think when let's, let's circle back to the beginning with the Tucker Carlson speech, you hear that crowd, the anger, the rage and the enthusiasm of that crowd watching Trump be Trump, which in many ways is punishing the left or punishing other people in this country and

Truth be told is what millions of people want not to go all JVL on you, Tim. Actually, can you JVL those in his little bubble in New Jersey? Um, though he does, you know, he does hang out with the trad calves. So he gets outside of his bubble a little bit, but, um,

This is a thing for me. It's like now I'm getting into Tom Nichols' territory. Like what are they mad about? You know what I mean? Like that's the thing that I've just been really kind of gnawing over. I have a couple more debates with more Trump-friendly people over the last 10 days. I'm trying to think about how I'm going to make my arguments. And it's like at the surface level, I understand it. But at a deep level, I don't understand what the rage is about. Like the people that are at the Turning Point USA's conference's lives are pretty good.

Yeah. I mean, a Trump boat parade just from the get-go, these are not like homeless people who are living or people who are like living out of ramshackle boats. These are their luxury items. They're sailing in to support Donald Trump. Yeah. Look, there are problems in this country. There's just no question about it. You have the fentanyl crisis, for example. The border was way too open for most of Biden's presidency. Yeah.

But look, a lot of this are what I would think of as problems that are significant. They're significant. They're also within sort of the normal range of problems you have in a really big country. And in addition, at the same time these problems are happening, they're happening with very low unemployment rates.

They're happening with now we've really pared back inflation. They're happening with an economy that is the envy of the world. And they're happening in the backdrop of falling crime rather than rising crime. For example, we just saw a decrease in overdose deaths.

for the first time in some time. So yeah, there are problems and I can understand being upset about those problems. But at the same time, what I cannot make the leap to is the burn it down level of rage that says, now let's hand the keys over to this absolute berserker. But Tim, I will say this, there's something that I've learned being the object of MAGA hatred for years.

And I'm sure you've seen it. You've been the object of MAGA hatred. The hatred is so separate from the facts about who you are, the specific facts that the caricature of who you are and the reality of who you are are just two totally different things. And so, for example, I was recently canceled by my former denomination. They would not allow me to, I was invited to speak in an event for the denomination. And then when the news came out that I was coming to speak in

at a Presbyterian Church of America event, like the MAGA nationalists and everybody. They got very angry. I have great news for you. Now you can go on an I'm canceled tour. There's nothing better in the comedy business than getting canceled right now. You could sell out the Smoothie King Center down here, I'm sure. So canceled, you're selling out the Smoothie King Center. But the funny thing was, and this is what was so eye-opening,

All of these people send tweets and they write emails and they write articles and they say, I'm a wolf. I'm a heretic. I'm woke. I'm a communist. And so they're

Normal, average, everyday people reading it don't do this. They don't say, huh, why would you call that man a wolf or why would you call that man a heretic? Let me investigate that. You know, let me see what he says. No, they get this information from a trusted right wing source and they go, David French is a wolf and a heretic and a communist and he's a threat to America and he hates America.

So if you listen to the rhetoric from the right about this election, Kamala is a Marxist. She's going to destroy America. The country is on the verge of extinction. It might already be over. So that's your answer, Tim. Why are they so angry? Well, because Kamala is a Marxist and she's destroying America. This little Johnny goes into school in the morning and he comes home as Jane. Comes out little Jane. Yeah. They don't do that one extra inch of effort to say, wait,

Why would you say she's a Marxist? Let me investigate that. Why would you say she would destroy America? Let me look at that. Why do you say she hates America? Why do you say that they're going to put Christians in gulags? Like, let's investigate this. No, it's just absorbed and taken in. And if you go with the top line rhetoric and you believe that top line rhetoric, then you begin to understand why people are so, so, so mad.

So let's talk about the election that's coming up in two weeks. You had a little blurb in the Times recently about how you're seeing the races, the Kamala coalition versus the Trump movement. Talk about that a little bit and just talk about how you see the race shaping up right now. So first, let me just say, talk to me in any given hour, Tim, and I have a different feeling about how this is going to come out. And it's usually related to whether I'm on Twitter or off Twitter.

Are you that kind of sports fan, too, where, you know, the Grizzlies have a bad quarter and you're like, we're going to be terrible. They have a good quarter. You think they're going to win the NBA championship? Is that you? Are you an up and down? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm constantly using my mind to try to moderate my emotions in sports. Right. One bad game by Zach Eadie does not mean he's going to be a bust as rookie. Right. I mean, what's some ugly free throw shooting yesterday? Right. Right.

So I have this mind versus emotions fight that goes on. And here's what my mind is telling me, is that anyone who tells you that they know how this thing is going to go on November 5th is just making it up. That there are people who are better informed or less informed whose guesses are more educated than other people's guesses. But this thing is pulling so close that we just don't know. I mean, where I am right now is I just, my instincts say that it's going to

It won't be a situation where all seven, the seven big swing states are split that much. I think they're going to tend to go one way or the other, but even that assessment could be completely wrong. It is so, so razor thin and the margins are. And I saw an interesting chart that showed that if they have the same polling miss that existed in 2020, then Trump wins all the swing states. If you had the same polling miss that happened in 2022, then,

Then Harris wins all the swing states except for Georgia. So there will be some kind of polling miss here. We just don't know in which direction. And I also think that, and I don't know if this is your sensation, Tim, but I also think that sort of the media and journalists zeitgeist is being way too influenced by Twitter. And Twitter has sort of reversed the polls so that when you come onto that site, it has such a sort of right-wing zeitgeist to it

that everything good about Trump's chances gets elevated. All of the propaganda for Trump gets elevated. And so if you're someone in our profession who's prone to spend too much time on that infernal site, you'll start to marinate in MAGA, so to speak. And I think it's messing with how people are viewing this election. I think there are facts about this election that

that are much more stable than Twitter would indicate. Twitter seems to indicate there's these big momentum shifts and there's not, there's not. Yeah. I think that's part of it. To me, the other part of it is at least in our world, well, maybe not in your, I guess I got to separate you, but for most of the world of most of the people around here, I'm dealing with

Democrats who are genuinely concerned about what happens in the country if Donald Trump wins and the Republicans that still talk to me could kind of give or take Donald Trump, right? I don't have a ton. I have one or two actual people that buy the BS about Kamala ruining the country left in my life. I just don't have that many people like that in my life. And so it's natural to me that...

the Democrats would be more anxious and like be a little bit more negative or never Trumpers for that matter than soft Republicans who kind of like can, who cares if Donald Trump loses, they can pretend like Glenn Young can, I'll be the nominee next time. And that's actually probably a winner for them. Right. You know what I mean? Like I, so I think that like that imbalance also contributes to the, to the imbalance in the anxiety. Yeah.

Yeah, I can see that. I have people in my life who are absolutely MAGA. Sure. And it's interesting, their emotions swing wildly as well. And right now they are feeling very, very, very, very confident. They think they're on the verge of winning and winning pretty darn big.

And their confidence makes me nervous, not so much because I think that they've cracked the code or they have insights into the polling and the data and the turnout that I don't have. It's that this is laying the stage for an absolute freak out if Trump loses. The more confident MAGA is, the more prepared it is to receive all of the worst conspiracy theories if he loses. And that's why I say,

Look, I don't think the underlying facts of this race have changed much at all after Kamala made up that gap. Once she made up that gap, then this race became basically the race it was always going to be against Donald Trump. It was always going to be a tough, heavy lift. Once we knew that Republicans were not going to abandon him in 2020 –

It was going to be a tough, heavy lift after Afghanistan, after inflation. This was just going to be really a hard race to win for anybody. Now, I think a more normie Republican would be running away with it. Already, I'm seeing people say, well, it should have been somebody other than Harris. I think the fundamental reality of this race is still Trump more than the Democratic opponent.

except with the exception of the, if the democratic opponent is too old and can't do the job. Sure. But if you have a competent democratic Republican, I think this is the race. This is what the race was going to look like. It was always going to look like this. I share that fear about, cause I think if Harris wins, it's a narrow race. And so that, that kind of leads me to another thing I want to talk to you about, which kind of combines your expert, your legal expertise with your MAGA living and living amongst the MAGA's expertise.

The thing that worries me about the election is,

let's say your theory of the case is wrong. The swing states don't break like they do. And that we just kind of have a break between Trump does a little bit better among black and Hispanic voters and just enough to win all four of the Sunbelt states. Well, he already won North Carolina and Harris does just enough better among white working class women, post row and older Republican types that left the train after January 6th.

that she wins the blue wall and she wins 270 to 268. And that one of those blue wall states is like Bush Gore level close. Yeah. And this thing really does go all the way through the courts. What's your level of concern, I guess, both about how the Supreme Court would handle that and how kind of the MAGA would

minions would handle it. I just wrote my newsletter on this very topic. And I think the answer is encouraging on the one hand, potentially discouraging on the other one. Let me do the encouraging part first.

Believe it or not, Tim, we actually learned something after January 6th and made some changes in the United States code. And there have been some judicial precedents set. So three big legal slash statutory moves have been made since January 6th that I think put us in a much better position. One of them is just the wave of defamation lawsuits. So

Fox has had to pay $787 million. Rudy is on the hook for more than $100 million. We just saw words of Gateway settling claims. OAN has settled claims. Newsmax has settled claims. Salem has issued apologies and retractions. So we

The legal environment for lying with gusto has changed a bit since 2020. So I do think that there is greater deterrence against the kinds of gross conspiracy theories we saw broadcast all over right-wing media. That's number one. Number two is the key legal theory that Donald Trump was relying on to actually engineer a reversal of the election results was called the Independent State Legislature Doctrine.

The Supreme Court in a case called Moore v. Harper just gutted that. That is dead. It's gone. That's not available to MAGA. And then number three, thankfully, after January 6th,

enough lawmakers looked at the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and said, this thing's a mess. It's confusing. It's absurd. All of that ambiguity and confusion. And the Trump team tried to use that to engineer the coup. So they've changed the way we can contest elections so that the entire process that Trump tried to initiate before, that avenue is closed to him now. So we've made major changes that mean that it's just...

Once the state certification is made, it is extremely difficult and much more difficult than it was before to do anything about that. So that's what's encouraging. What's discouraging is I also am very worried that as these legal doors slam shut,

Because MAGA will try, they'll file all the frivolous lawsuits. And as all these doors slam shut one after the other, as they're designed to do to prevent a frivolous effort to overturn an election, that MAGA will view that as once again, more deep state conspiracy against them and will be more apt to resort to the streets. So I think the closer the election, the bigger the shock to MAGA is.

I don't think Trump has the legal tools remaining in his toolkit to actually mount a serious effort to overturn the election. But that doesn't mean that it will be peaceful. That doesn't mean that there won't be chaos. And we know that Trump will play whatever card he feels he can play to try to cling to power or regain power. So on the one hand, the doors have basically been slammed shut for any sort of effective coup attempt anywhere.

On the other hand, that doesn't mean that MAGA's rage will be entirely impotent. That is encouraging. And I'm with you on anything similar to 2020, which eliminates a lot of potential outcomes, right? Like, I worry a little bit about a 2000, I think a 2000 situation is tough, you

you know, where Kamala is Bush and Trump is Gore and you have secretaries of state and certain like election board officials trying to create, you know, like imagine that Marjorie Taylor green is the Palm beach County election official. You know what I mean? Like you can, we could do disaster porn on this. I agree with you that, that as, as long as,

It looks closer to 2020, at least in the gap. That's a lot harder to do. And there's another thing. Let's look at personnel. So if you look at the swing key swing states, with the exception of Nevada, all of them are run either by Democratic governors or in the case of Georgia, they've already stood up to Trump once, both the governor and the secretary of state. So if you look at the actual swing states,

You just don't see any fertile ground for Trump to turn a governor, for example, because the Electoral Count Act reform places a premium on the governor's certification.

If Pennsylvania is close and Kamala Harris is winning, Josh Shapiro is certifying that for Kamala Harris, right? Yeah, right. So there's an extra layer of protection in the actual personnel. And this is where 2022 was so important was, you know, these primary challenges against Raffensperger and Kemp failed. The statewide MAGA candidates failed.

that were election deniers in these swing states, they all failed. And so right now we're living with the benefit of the 2022 victories over MAGA. All right. That's uplifting. Glad we had David French on today. I like that. I like green shoots. Thank Katie Obbs. Who the hell knew it? Just by the skin of her teeth, potentially a big, big 2022 win.

I want to do some abortion talk. There was an interesting online conversation in Never Trump or World or an anti-anti-Trumper and Trump skeptical conservative world. How about that? About Liz Cheney's answer on abortion when she was talking with Sarah Longwell. And then again, when she's talking with my former colleague, Charlie Sykes at those town halls with Kamala Harris, I want to play one of the answers that Liz gave and get your take on the other side. I think there are many of us around the country who have been pro-life and

but who have watched what's going on in our states since the Dobbs decision and have watched state legislatures

put in place laws that are resulting in women not getting the care they need. And so I think this is not an issue that we're seeing break down across party lines, but I think we're seeing people come together to say what has happened to women when women are facing situations where they can't get the care they need,

where in places like Texas, for example, the Attorney General is talking about suing, is suing, to get access to women's medical records. That's not sustainable for us as a country, and it has to change.

So there's some critiques from the right, some on the actual policy. I think Charlie Cook and others were saying that Liz was like selling out her old pro-life views with that answer. And then there's some political critiques. Like maybe she could be a more compelling messenger if she had leaned more into the pro-life side of her views than the answer she gave. I'm interested in your take on both of those. Yeah. So there's a couple of fights here. And I think –

I think Charlie has uncharitably, he's misread her comments. I think she is referring to state laws that were passed after Dobbs that did not have carefully crafted provisions for exceptions, for example, for the health of the mother. And to say that that's only a Democratic concern is completely wrong. I mean, the Supreme Court of the United States not too long ago, by a 9-0 margin, was hearing a challenge to an Idaho law that

was interpreted at early on not to include robust protections for dealing with severe physical health problems for the mother. And you had evidence of life flights out of Idaho, for example, into other states.

And this led to a Supreme Court case in the Supreme Court. Actually, at the oral argument for the case, it appeared that Idaho might have modified its position or its understanding of its own statute. And the Supreme Court sent it back down for more proceedings. But it was very clear from that case that even some of the Trump appointees in the Supreme Court were very concerned about that Idaho law and the meaning and interpretation of that Idaho law, including some members of the Dobbs majority.

We're concerned about the Idaho law. So it is not a betrayal of your pro-life principles to say, if I was in favor of Dobbs, that means then I'm in favor of whatever law the state legislatures craft to limit abortion. No, the law still must be carefully and well crafted or it's a bad law. And so I interpreted Cheney not as saying Dobbs was wrongly decided or that states shouldn't restrict abortion, but that some states have done it in a way that's ham-handed and

and dangerous. And I do agree with that. Not all of these state laws are equally well drafted. And so I do think what was happening there is she was reaching for a point of common connection. And that point of common connection was some of these state laws have been poorly drafted. And it's pretty obvious that there are some pretty notable people in the United States of America who agree with Liz Cheney on that, who include some of the justices who were in the Dobbs majority. And so

This is not an out-of-bounds betrayal of your conservative principles. For example, I've written in favor of the Florida heartbeat law that's up on the ballot in November, in part because it has clearly defined protections for life, for the physical health of the mother. In the cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality, there are exceptions. So it's a much better drafted law. And you can say, even as a pro-life person,

That I'm pro-life, but that law, this pro-life law, is poorly drafted in a way that harms people. That's not a betrayal of pro-life principles. What about the political case that Liz's tour – I don't know how much of it you watched – with the vice president –

Did lean in more onto commonality, right? And so they talked about some common views that might code more Nikki Haley Republican-ish, you know, America's role in the world, concerns about the Constitution and rule of law. But like on actual issues, there wasn't a lot of like,

Harris moving to the center or even Liz saying, I disagree with the vice president on this specific conservative principle and we'll just have to deal with that after. And there's been some critiques that maybe that has limited the efficacy of the message in reaching out to people who just to stereotype are more in the kind of like the dispatch national review kind of world. You know, obviously MAGA people aren't gettable, but like maybe that they could

you know, do a better job at reaching out to that world. What would you say to that? I don't buy that at all. Okay, great. I was going to argue with you about it, but we have an agreement. That's fine. Let's agree. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we have Brett Stevens can argue about it tomorrow, actually, because I think he agrees with that critique. No, no. Okay. So I think when you say, look, we have policy disagreements, right?

That's enough. That's enough, right? To then say, here, let's dedicate some period of the 30 to 40 minutes that we have to fleshing out my beliefs, why the person I'm campaigning for is wrong and saying, oh, that will be a more effective campaign appearance doesn't make any real sense to me. What we're talking about here is.

Twitter isn't – because again, just ignore Twitter because a lot of this is people who are not persuadable to vote for Kamala or even to sit out this election saying, well, you didn't reach me. Well, you're not reachable, dude. You're not reachable. You're the guy – and not everybody. There are some people offering this in good faith, but a lot of this is concern trolling. A lot of this is –

Well, you're not going to get me, but you know, if in theory I was gettable, maybe it'd be like this. No, no, no, no. This is not aimed at winning over people who are about to pull the lever for Trump, in my view. Because remember, Kamala Harris only has to hold the Joe Biden constituency to win.

In my view, this is aimed at a lot of the people who were previously supported Biden and were maybe wavering. This is aimed at exactly the community that has always been most willing to jump over to support the Democrats. And these are suburban voters, educated suburban voters who have maybe more concern about what

foreign policy and the rule of law than the average voter. It's not a big group, Tim. It's not a big group. But you know what? When a race is this close, you put together these small groups in these suburbs and you actually can turn an election. We know it because we've seen it before. So I see this as much more, hey, Biden coalition,

you know, we're still here. Let's keep the gang together. This is how I interpreted it. Much more so than come on all you Reagan Republicans. You know, you've been aching to pull the lever. Come on over. I did not interpret. It's not that at all, in my view. I think that's correct. Okay, final question. You don't need to dime out any of your Reagan Republican friends in particular, but I just, we're 12 days out. It's like, you know, you got David French,

You've got Liz Cheney. George Will. You've got Fred Upton today. We've got Ala Pundit. You've got all the bulwark people. But it's like, given the fact that I look at this race and see a basically normal Democrat versus somebody that, at the worst case, is a grave threat to the country.

And it just doesn't seem like that close of a call to me. And I know that you've come out and, you know, there's been a little back and forth about your support for Kamala versus some others in your world that are more neutral. Are you surprised? Like, what is it? What's the holdup? To me, it's like so obvious that if you see the Trump threat, like, why aren't there more of us? Why are there so why are there so few of us? I guess that's my final question. Do you have any clarity for me on that?

So I've gained a little extra insight ever since I made the leap, Tim, instead of going from third party. I voted third party in 2016 and 2020. As I tell people, I voted for Mitt Romney more times than any living person, including probably Mitt Romney. So I made the leap and wrote a few months ago that I was going to support Kamala Harris. And

The backlash to that was considerable, shall we say? Yeah. And to a degree that surprised even me. I mean, I've been doing this for a while. I've been in this Never Trump world for a long time, Tim. I've seen a lot. We were recruiting you back in 2015 to run. You know, I mean, you were the OG. I was the OG alternative. And so I have seen things. But even after all of that, sort of all that I've seen, all that I've experienced in the level of sort of cynicism

that I'd built as a result of that, I was still surprised at the depth of the backlash. And I think, Tim, what we constantly underestimate, just because it's kind of hard to wrap our minds around animosity at the level of intensity that we see, we constantly underestimate animosity

the raw animosity that exists on the Republican side for Democrats. And by the way, on the Democratic side for Republicans, the data here is unmistakable that there is just an enormous amount of visceral hostility. And so when you say normal Democrat, the way that codes in Republican speak is awful human being.

Right. And so the, the level of negative polarization is out of control in this country. And, and,

I'm teaching a college class called Why American Politics Went Insane. And about two thirds of it are dedicated to social and cultural forces outside of politics. And the last third are the politicians coming in on top of it all to make it all worse. And one of the realities is if you look at the data regarding polarization, even before Trump came down the escalator,

The hatred the two sides had for each other was staggering. And so when you say normie Democrat, that triggers all the alarm bells of a lot of just normal Republicans. And so that's why this sort of, you know, how Sarah and Arvat Republican voters against Trump, the genius of their method was they were just saying, just don't vote for Trump.

you know, just don't vote for Trump. Right. Because there's just so many people who have that level of animosity that they look at Trump as bad as he is, even the ones who agree that many of the scandals are true and real and concerning. And they still see Democrats as such a massive threat to the country. And it's that negative polarization. And I'll talk to people about it and I'll say, you do know that

Kamala Harris has been moving towards us. You know, this is not 2019 anymore. This is a very different situation. And she'll have a Republican Senate and a Republican Supreme Court and like...

Or what will she do specifically to destroy America? And this is, you know, then where the answers start to fall apart. Right. And they go back to that top line, Marxist, hates the country, blah, blah, blah. But it's...

It's that negative polarization, Tim. I mean, you say the words normie Democrat and Republicans here, you know, they hear that as awful human being. And socialist monster. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, well, David, we'd be in a much better place if you'd won in 2016, I think. So President French would have been a good alternate history. I don't think it was likely, but you know, one of the multiverses.

Things are peaceful with you finishing your second term right now. Well, let's put it this way. America has some anti-democratic elements, like the Electoral College is, you know, an anti, sort of an anti-democratic element. It does not have any mechanism where somebody who can only win dozens of votes can become president. Yeah.

Alas, alas. All right. For the audience, I got a little homework for you. This week's Ezra Klein podcast, David French's colleague, he had a very thought-provoking monologue on what's wrong with Trump. I'm going to have a bit of a response to that tomorrow. So if you want the context, go listen to Ezra's podcast, and then I'll be interviewing another one. Well, you can see how native we've gone. We'll have another New York Times columnist guest on tomorrow's podcast. So thanks to David French. We'll see you all then. Peace.

You can find me over there at the bar. You ain't even gotta ask. I don't know where they are. I'm a bad, bad daddy. I'm a bad, bad daddy. And I'm nasty. And I still ain't calling it quits. But Sean, what the fuck's wrong with all of your kids? I'm a bad, bad daddy. I'm a bad, bad daddy.

Sitting at the bar just minding my biz Came down with all nine of my kids And they all got an attitude Mad cause I said we can't go to the zoo It's not a lie, but daddy's too high If I drive I will probably catch a DUI Here, play with this pitcher of beer Sit in these chairs and don't disappear Everybody on your best behavior Tipped over, I'm on the floor

The waitress, respect your neighbors I'll be watching, you know what not to do Don't make me walk over here just to talk to you I gave them all some money so they could play pinball And put grub in their tummies Now I'm a go-getter, you better not tell your mom You can find me over there at the bar You ain't even gotta ask, I don't know where they are I'm a bad, bad daddy

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