Mitch Landrieu and Will Saletan: Trump Lives in the Mud
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Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm just delighted to be here today with the former mayor of New Orleans. He's the national co-chair of the Harris-Walls campaign. He was the infrastructure czar during the Biden administration. I got a couple questions about that. And last week, he was in North Carolina with Bill Clinton on a rural bus tour. And he's been all around the country campaigning for Kamala Harris. What's going on? It's Mitch Landrieu.

Oh, no. Hey, Tim, how you doing? No, listen, when I saw you, I think we saw each other in New Orleans. And right after that, I headed to North Carolina with President Clinton. We had four stops. I jumped up to Pennsylvania and then I went to Wisconsin, got home late last night and starting over again.

Well, that's great. I want to hear a little bit more from you on what you've been seeing on the road. But first, we had, you know, the queen never Trumper Liz Cheney making the rounds yesterday. She was an event with my colleague Sarah Longwell yesterday morning in Pennsylvania. I want to play you one clip for that and talk about it on the other side. And I don't always feel like we're talking about the stakes enough. And

Liz Cheney would not be here if she didn't think that the stakes were very high. And frankly, the Republicans wouldn't be so angry at you if they didn't think you were an effective surrogate as somebody speaking about the stakes.

Some Republicans. Some Republicans. Hashtag not all Republicans. I've seen a lot of Republicans. I've seen it, and I know it happens. They occur constantly. I know it. I know it. They're going to vote the right way on November 5th. They might not be public about it, but they'll do what they know is right. I think so. Right.

All right. Two questions for you, Mitch. First thing, obviously, the campaign is focused a lot on this demo. Like, what is your sense for how much how many more votes are left out there? How much juice is left in the squeeze on reaching out to Republicans that don't like Trump? Well, you know, I think that the fact that Sarah's done a great job, by the way, and she's been working really hard. So I'm thankful to her and to all the other folks that have been pushing as hard as they have. And of course, to Liz Cheney.

sometimes it gets lost. Liz Cheney's not out there by herself. Just the other day, 100 Republicans, very prominent Republicans stood behind Kamala Harris and said, listen, we may disagree about a lot of things, the way the economy works and things of that nature, but we're all unified in the very simple idea that democracy can be fragile if you don't pay attention to it. And of course, if you don't

If you don't have the right people in the right place, our national interest, our national security, our domestic security can be challenged. And I think it's really powerful that Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney and other folks like Mark Esper, for example, and General Kelly. And you just go down the list of people that have witnessed Donald Trump firsthand make

decisions about our national security. They're going to put our nation at risk. It's going to create a more isolated America. It's going to make us weaker. It's going to make us less economically strong, have stood up and have spoken to the issue because they think, and I completely agree with them, if democracy is not protected, the rest of it is really not much of a discussion. So I think there are many Americans out there who self-identify as Republicans or independents or Democrats who

that share that very thought and are willing to put aside some of what are more minor differences than the salvation of democracy. And so if you look at where the possibilities are, I think that we're looking at where Nikki Haley's vote was when she got out of the race. She clocked in about 20% of the vote in a number of swing states

And that is very fertile ground and indicates that there are people there who are willing to put aside their hardcore, you know, what Donald Trump wants to be hardcore partisan MAGA thoughts. And I think that, I mean, honestly, if you're given a,

If you're giving some serious thought to this and you were a Reagan Republican or a Bush one or Bush two Republican, if you were a Jack Kemp Republican, what Liz Cheney is talking about today resonates really loudly. Now, you know, Tim, I'm from Louisiana. I'm from a red state. I served as lieutenant governor two terms here. My sister Mary was a United States senator. We are used to crossing the aisle and working with people. And there are a lot of people of good conscience that understand that it's democracy first. Everything else comes after that because they know how serious it is.

Yeah, I agree with you on all that. And I think that the campaign's been doing a great job. It speaks to the campaign's commitment to getting as many of those voters as possible that there were three events with Liz Cheney yesterday. And so and good on Liz. I guess just what she said at the end of that answer, though, where she was like, there are a lot of people that are going to do the right thing in private. I guess my question is, is it the right thing to do it in private? I mean, shouldn't there have been more people with Liz Cheney yesterday? Like, where's Chris Christie, Mitt Romney? You

You mentioned Esper and Kelly, but they haven't done ads for you guys or done campaign events for you guys. Like, what's the holdup there, do you think? Well, I think one of the things we're going to have to ask ourselves after this election, win, lose, or draw, and I think we're going to win, is why so many of our fellow Americans are susceptible to Donald Trump, who obviously not only does not tell the truth, but generally is making wrong decisions about how to make America strong, safe, and

and secure. It's not only that he doesn't tell the truth about anything, it's that his views of how to make America strong are wrong. When you just bend the knee to Vladimir Putin, or when you're inconsequently willing to give Ukraine away, thereby threatening NATO, and then the safety and the security of pretty much the world, when you really kind of are playing footsie with other dictators, and you think that being authoritarian is the American way, you're just dead wrong about that. And so all of us have to stand up and speak. Now,

I say this just observationally, that the Republicans in Congress had a chance to do the right thing twice, and they chose not to do it. Donald Trump has effectively, through mechanisms, shut down all the legal challenges. There is only one way to stop Donald Trump from going to the Oval Office, and that power is maybe where it should be with the American people. And so I think this is a time that requires really sober-minded thought here, because we're about to make a decision that's going to impact

the future of the United States of America for 50 years and maybe even the world. And I think it should be pretty clear to people that Donald Trump is going to take us in the wrong direction. And Kamala Harris is really trying to take us in a different direction. Just think about, think about all the pain and agony that we have gone through since this man has been in office, waking up every day thinking, what the hell did he say today? Listen, he did it the other day with Arnold Palmer. I mean, you know, every day you wake up, you get exhausted and

with all of this ridiculousness. And it takes away from, you know, putting food in people's mouths, giving people jobs, helping people have the kind of economic security they need and the national security we need to protect ourselves. And I'm just really thankful to the folks that have stood up. And I hope that however people decide to do it, because there is a tremendous amount of peer pressure that Donald Trump brings through fear, which people should think about, because if he does it now, what is he going to do when he's president? Why would you put a bat

in the hand of a guy that's going to hit you with it. That is kind of a basic thought. We can just capsulize the entire campaign into that just very one thoughtful question. Can we put Mary to work? Any of those ex-senators? Can we get Pat Toomey on board or Chris Christie? You did the bipartisan stuff. You said it. It is weird, right? It is weird that they're – why are they so afraid? What are they afraid of? I don't know, man. I was on the campaign trail with Sarah Matthews the other day. She was a 25-year-old.

Deputy press secretary in there. And she's now out there campaigning. She is reasonably afraid. She didn't have money for security. She had her whole career in front of her. What's with them? What are they scared of? Tim, you know, first of all, I'm not afraid and you're not afraid. And so thank you for your courage. But you know, it reminds me, I just came back from after the storm. I jumped into North Carolina to help. And I noticed there what I noticed after Katrina hit that like when the world was looking like it was going to hell, when

when people had lost their homes, lost their lives, the miraculous thing, and it happens all the time without fail, is that there are these people

who nobody has ever seen in normal life, somebody who was a healer, somebody who was a parish priest, somebody that might have been a paralegal in a big law firm, that all of a sudden just kind of rises up and becomes this incredible leader with incredible courage that starts to feed people and put their lives back together. And that's the thing that gives you the most hope. And that's why I'm so hopeful about this election, because there have been regular American citizens who

that nobody would expect to step up to say, listen, it's clear to me what the right thing to do is. I don't know why you big people are all confused. But if you think about, and this is what kind of confuses me about some of my fellow Americans,

My wife and I have five kids. I coach my kids' teams. And every year when baseball season or basketball season or football season or soccer roll around, all the dads and the moms get together, right? And we start picking teams, who's going to be on the team and who's not going to be on the team and who the other coaches are going to be and how we're going to organize our lives around whether we think our kids are going to be professional athletes or not. And if Donald Trump was in that room,

You know, our Donald Trump wanted to be the coach of one of our kids teams. And we knew about him. What we know now, we wouldn't let him on the playground.

You would not hire Donald Trump to be the CEO of any company in America because he wouldn't pass it. So why in the world do people think that he is going to be good for the country? And then finally, I would say just about the choices he's made in his personal life, in his professional life, in his business life, and of course in government have demonstrated that he doesn't really make good choices. And bad choices equal bad consequences. And we've had many of them. And people should expect a lot more of the same. So he's just going to be a lot better at being really bad.

And I think Kamala Harris has demonstrated that instead of being isolated and insular and excluding people, she wants to have a big tent and bring everybody in and give the folks of America a better chance at a better future. And I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think that's going to resonate with more Americans on Election Day, which is why I feel good about where we are. You mentioned the hurricane and how you visited North Carolina. I just want to play a couple of short clips that are representative of how Trump and Vance have been talking about the hurricane. Let's listen to that.

They spent their money on illegal migrants. They spent their money. They didn't have any money left for North Carolina. That's not the way it's supposed to work. Or other places, by the way. Plenty of other places. What do we need to do to restructure FEMA? I actually think this one is pretty straightforward. You've just got to fire the present leadership and tell FEMA to focus on American citizens and not the illegal migrants.

That's just stupid. That's just stupid. I don't know how else to say that except for this. You know, when Katrina hit, it was a reasonable observation that the country was not yet, because we didn't have a megastorm like that, as well prepared as we should have been. And if you look back on the responses of any catastrophic event to 9-11, to Katrina, to Rita, to Ike, to Gustav, to the national recession, to the BPRs, but we've been through many of these events.

It is true that way back then, the country had to get better at emergency response. And since 2005, every state in the nation, every governor has created a governor's office of Homeland Security and emergency preparedness. FEMA, through the reform of the Stafford Act, has gotten much better and much faster. And throughout the Biden administration, I can tell you from personal experience, because I was actually there,

that anytime a catastrophic event happened, the destruction of I-95, the same thing that happened in Los Angeles when the I-10 collapsed, when the bridge collapsed in Pittsburgh, President Biden and his team were on the phone like two minutes after it happened. And they said, get down there on the ground and give them everything that they need. The bridge collapsed

in Baltimore. And this administration has been on it like a dog on a bone. And FEMA and Deanne and them have done an incredible job. They prepared for that storm. They pre-deployed and they actually got out there. So what Donald Trump said and J.D. Vance said is just factually not correct. Secondly,

As a matter of leadership, this is really important. What kind of leader do you want? When you're in peril, when you're at war, when you're having a catastrophic event, do you want people in leadership who are scaring the hell out of folks who have lost everything, who are in their most vulnerable state, or do you want them to try to lift them up? It's about whether you like working together or bringing them apart. Donald Trump has made a decision. It's really easy to understand.

that if he divides people, if he causes hate, if he causes fear, if he causes anger, that will help him have power. When he gets power, he will help his friends. Who's he going to help? You already know. He's going to help the top 1% and he's going to tell everybody else to go to hell. That's essentially what his life has all been about. And if you fight with Donald Trump, he will punish you. So in effect, if you disagree with him,

let's say it's Gavin Newsom in California about something. Instead of having a fair fight like we do on the fields of democracy, what he says is, I'm going to punish your citizens. How is he going to do that? He's going to do that by withholding funds for firefighters. Now, what does it mean when you withhold funds from firefighters? You know what happens? People get burned. They

They actually die. Their houses get burned down because Donald Trump disagrees with somebody about a philosophy, does this with immigration. Now, let's juxtapose that to Kamala Harris, who says, listen, I'm going to fight with you on the field of democracy. We're going to fight in Congress. We're going to fight in the state houses. We're going to try to get to a resolution. But when we're in peril,

When we are fighting overseas, we are one team, one fight. And I am going to be the president for everybody, hence, which is why she's going to Texas today. And I'm going to make sure that whatever it is that I do, even if you did not vote for me, I'm going to make sure that every American is going to get the benefit of

of what the American people want to do. Now, that is two very distinct ways to govern America. I come from, let's be more inclusive. Let's reach out. I think we're better together, even if we fight. Look, I got a big family. Over Thanksgiving, we don't all agree on everything, but you know what? We eat together.

We go to church together, and then we fight again, and then we come back together because there is a higher cause and a higher purpose. And Donald Trump doesn't understand that because he lives in the mud, and he thrives in the mud. Just don't let him drag you there. I thought she was going to Texas because we needed an excuse to have a Beyonce event. Is that not right? Well, that's fine, too. I like Queen Bee. I'll tell you what. Part of the reason he gets away with this stuff –

Let me put it this way. There was one day during this campaign where Trump didn't get away with his BS talking about how migrants are getting the FEMA money and all his other lies and nonsense. And it was when he went toe to toe with her in that debate. And since then, he's run from 60 Minutes. He's run from that debate. I mean, can you guys be taunting him a little bit more on this? I mean, shouldn't he be like made into the scared little boy that he is that he won't debate her again? Look, Donald Trump's a sissy.

And he's a bully. And you know, with bullies, when somebody, you know, pops them in the mouth, figuratively, not literally, bullies tend to back down, which is exactly what he did. I mean, she took his lunch money during the debate. There's no question about it. And as a consequence of that, you know, he's kind of run all over the place, you know, not doing too many events. When he does events, he kind of says crazy stuff like the other day. I mean, if you think about that, if Joe Biden stood on a stage,

for 40 minutes swaying to music, Donald Trump would have said, put a straitjacket on the guy. If Joe Biden would have said, you know, that I'm really thinking about Arnold Palmer's junk, people would have gone like, wait, what are you talking about? So there are a lot of folks that have given Donald Trump a pass because they think it's a joke, but he actually thinks that way. And the problem is he governs that way. And when you govern that way, you hurt

American citizens. Donald Trump is going to be really bad for this country. And, you know, the McDonald's thing the other day, which I thought was cute, is really the best illustration of what Donald Trump is. Donald Trump made a joke of going to work at McDonald's and playing like he worked at McDonald's, just like it's a joke that he wants to be president and playing at it when Kamala Harris really did work there.

I mean, it really is a good symbol of what this race is all about. While he goes to McDonald's, then he starts talking about how good the people are, but he's not for increasing their wages. He's not for giving them better health benefits. He's not for lifting up those folks. Kamala Harris, again, wants to grow the economy from the bottom up and make sure that people have lots of jobs. And there's lots of good examples of how her theory of governing works really, really well. We have a lot of work to do because people are feeling, you know,

out of sorts right now. And I think that she's been concentrating on ways to make people's lives easier by lowering their costs. And there's a whole list of things that people can take a look at. But just her demeanor, the way she's handled herself, I think most people that have watched her over the past few months, even if you don't like her, you have to concede that she has handled herself remarkably well. And from my perspective, is going to be a spectacular president for all of us.

The vice president has Eminem campaigning for with Obama and Detroit today. I love that. They're out campaigning until they collapse. You mentioned earlier, you're a little league coach. You obviously had to get a lot of votes from the black community. You become mayor of New Orleans. Yeah.

Like there's concern in democratic world, like the democratic message isn't resonating, particularly with younger black men. And by younger, I mean, kind of like black men under 50, you know, middle aged black men and younger black men, and that there's been some erosion, you know, with the vote there in that group. Do you think that's true? Is there something else the campaign can be doing, you know, to reach those voters? Like, like, what's your what's your impression?

Well, I have a lot of impressions about this. So let me... Just roll it, baby. Just cook. ...comments about it and make sure that my comments are taken in context. First of all, 80% of anything is a hell of a lot. If Donald Trump had 80% of anything, the story would be, look how much Donald Trump has, not, oh my God, look how much he's losing. And so I think that sometimes Democrats get a little anxious and nervous about that. I don't believe at the end of the day that Donald Trump's going to get that many votes from young African-American men. I believe...

that when all is said and done, and we do our work of really trying to earn their vote, which we all have to do, I believe they're going to understand that Donald Trump is not good and never has been. And there are myriads of examples that range from the criminal justice to economic growth and development, and just the way that he handles himself. So I'm not as worried about that as other people are. What I do notice, though, is that a lot of white guys

you know, of a Donald Trump, no matter what. And nobody pays a lot of attention to that. Hence I'm pumped up. The M and M is, is gone. And yesterday I was in Wisconsin. I,

I was at the Microsoft plant that is being built. There was 1,600 folks that were working there primarily because of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden's legislation that we passed relating to chips and the Infrastructure Act and putting all of these people to work. And I think that that's going to make a big difference. But I do think if you look at just the polling numbers,

that we have a much worse problem with white men and especially non-college educated white men that we have to continue to talk to so that they understand and know that we're fighting for them as well, because the Democratic Party is a big tent party. You know, I'm very, as I always have been as a state representative and a lieutenant governor and the mayor of New Orleans about this.

the needs of African-American men of America, who, in my opinion, have been left behind. And there's a lot of need there that has been unmet. But we need to keep speaking to it. And we have done that much, much more forthrightly and better than the Republican Party ever has. And I believe that they know that. And I believe that they will be there at the end of the day. You got a favorite Eminem song? No.

I had to ask that for your kids. I need to give them some material to embarrass you with next time I see them at the Kingpin. All right. We got to do a little Louisiana business before I let you go. As we mentioned, you're the infrastructure czar. We have Cedric Richmond that was in the Biden administration. I know you're not the mayor anymore, but you always get mayor questions.

When are we getting these pumps fixed? When are we getting these pumps and potholes fixed, Mr. Mayor? Like, you know, we had you in there. Infrastructures are. We got to get the cash down here. First of all, you know, when I became mayor, the entire city had not only suffered from Katrina, Rita, Ike, Gustav. The BP oil spill happened three weeks before we got there. So the city was about to fall into the Gulf. Literally, it was almost bankrupt.

And we rebuilt the city. And it took a lot of money to do that. Hundreds of billions of dollars have come into the city of New Orleans. The sewage and water system is really the biggest challenge that the city has. The Biden administration has been there for the city of New Orleans in a big way through the ARPA funds and through the bipartisan infrastructure law. But it's really a challenge. And it's not only in New Orleans. It's all over the country, the 30,000 plus

systems like that that are in difficulty. After I was in the White House, as you know, Jackson had some challenges with their water system, as did Flint, and we're working really hard to do that. But power generation is critically important. I think I saw where the city council the other day allocated $30 million to fill the gap on the substation, but they can't do that soon enough. They've been working on that for a long time, but they got to get that done, and I'm sure that they will.

All right. Whoever, the people that are running for mayor, when I see them on the street, I'm telling them to get a hat that just says, fix the pumps. Yep. Fix the pumps on the hat. I don't think people appreciate how big

that particular system is. And remember that it was hurt before Katrina hit. And then after Katrina hit, 17 feet of water sat on that system for about three weeks. So the pipes underneath the ground were bleeding about 40% of its water. And the fix is really expensive. And I know they're working really, really hard on it. It takes a long time. It's very, very frustrating for everybody. You're not making me feel better with that answer, but I appreciate your candor and honesty. All right. And the last thing people always ask me, they're coming to New Orleans.

you know, send me to someplace cool. I don't want to go to a touristy place. Tell me something that I should check out that, you know, that isn't the obvious thing. So give us a mayor's tip for visitors to New Orleans. First of all, you've got the shirt on. And I know everybody in the world loves tipatinas, but that's a place. You also have referenced a number of different times, the greatest bar in the history of America, the Kingpin, which is right off of

Britannia Street. And that's a great place. I like N7, which is really fantastic. And there are a bunch of other holes in the walls that you got to find when you come to New Orleans. Parkway is, you know, got great sandwiches. Domelisi's if you're hooking up for a shrimp sandwich or an oyster sandwich, you know, and then the rest of it is take your pick.

All right. But come ready to have fun. We'll put out that list in the show notes for people. Thank you so much, Mayor Mitch Landrieu. We'll be seeing you around town. Appreciate it. And get out there on the campaign trail every last vote and start shaming any of those remaining Republicans that call you. If Liz Cheney can do it, they can do it. All right, brother? Listen, however you can get a vote, get a vote. If you've got to be silent, you know, then do that. Do whatever you need to do to save the country. Thanks. Amen. Thanks to Mitch Landrieu. Up next, Will Salatan.

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After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support your show and tell them we sent you. Give your skin the scientifically proven gentle care it deserves with One Skin. All right, and we are back with Will Salatan. It has been so long that he's dark Will Salatan now. Instead of handing out ponies, he hands out dragons. He's got the beard. He's got the black shirt. And I don't know. Have you gone to the dark side completely, Will?

Yeah, you got the black shirt too, buddy. I do. I can't be the pony guy today. So I'm more the glue guy. But that's okay. That's okay. Because that way I can have the pleasant surprise of being, if you're a pessimist, then when things turn out okay, you're like, oh, that's great. Yeah, life's all about low expectations. All right, before we get down to business, I have a quick pop quiz for you. What nations does Moldova border? Well, Ukraine's one of them, right? So what the heck, Slovenia, Croatia, what's in there?

Oh, one for two, one for three. Actually, it borders Ukraine and Romania. Bill Kristol said it bordered Russia yesterday. No. And that peaked a little eyebrow raise for me. I was like, I don't think that's right. But like maybe Russia loops around and we're going to give Bill the benefit of the doubt because if Donald Trump becomes president...

Moldova certainly will. So that's just a quick, quick fact check from yesterday's podcast. In case you have a geography beat coming up. I want to start with the person who used to sit in this chair. Charlie Sykes was with Liz Cheney in Wisconsin yesterday.

There's a series of town halls, obviously, as we discussed yesterday, Sarah Longwell moderated the one in Pennsylvania, Charlie Sykes in Wisconsin, Maria Shriver, weirdly in Michigan. I'm not really sure how she fit into that. She knows Kamala, old Kamala friend. Old friend of Kamala. Okay. I want to play a clip from the Charlie event. It's a little bit long, but I think it's worth listening to his full question and Liz's very fulsome answer. So let's take a listen.

Congresswoman Cheney, you know how hard this is, though. You know how hard it is to break away from tribal loyalty, to do something you haven't done before. So I'd like you to address that as well. Lindsey Graham was on television yesterday saying, what are you, never Trump Republicans, you know, what are you thinking of? How could you possibly do all of this? There are a lot of people who are listening to us who may be disillusioned with what's happening with the Republican Party, but they don't

They're afraid of paying the price because there is a cost to all of this. So what do you say to those Americans? Well, don't listen to Lindsey Graham, number one. It's good life advice, actually. But what I say is that what undergirds everything that we are as a nation, everything that we are as a nation is the rule of law and it's our Constitution. And

When you look at what Donald Trump did after the last election, when you look at the cruelty that's involved in someone who watches an attack on the United States Capitol, an attack conducted by people in his name,

and refuses for over three hours to tell the mob to leave. I mean, I really, people just need to think about what that, that's depravity. He watched the attack happen, and people kept asking him, please tell the people to leave, and law enforcement officers were being brutally beaten.

and the Capitol is being assaulted, and he would not tell people to leave for over three hours. That cruelty is the same cruelty that we see when he lies about the federal government's disaster response, when he puts people's lives at risk because he won't tell the truth. He's a man who's unfit to be the president of this good and honorable and great nation. And so

I've spent a lot of time working before I was elected to Congress in countries around the world that weren't free or where people were trying to achieve their freedom. And I know how fragile...

fragile this can be, how fragile democracy can be. And so in this election, we have a choice. We have the choice of somebody in Vice President Harris who you know is going to uphold the rule of law. You know that she's going to lead this country with a sincere heart. You know that she is going to always be thinking about what is best for this nation. We might not agree on every issue, but

But she is somebody that you can trust and someone that our children can look up to. And I think it's so important for us to cast the vote for Vice President Harris this time around.

All right, well, so she takes a shot at your old buddy, Lindsey Graham there and makes the case really on the issue of democracy. And so I know you watched all three events yesterday, but I was interested in what you made of Liz's answer for what the argument is, why somebody like her should be voting for Kamala and what you made of the day all put together.

Well, let me start with her answer to this question. Liz Cheney versus Lindsey Graham is a very good distillation of what happened in the Republican Party. We found out that the Republican Party is a large animal kingdom of which there are some vertebrates and some invertebrates. It turned out that the vertebrates were like less than 5% of the party. Okay. So what you're seeing in Liz Cheney tour is a representative of the small section of vertebrates. And we're trying to get enough of them to form with the Democrats, enough of a coalition to beat Trump, right? Yeah.

So she split from Lindsey Graham, who is an invertebrate and a representative of those people. And what they split on is a couple of things. And she talks about them in that answer.

One of them is character, right? Lindsey Graham decided that he was going to ignore Donald Trump's awful character. And just when he criticizes Trump, he would say, well, this went too far, that went too far. But, you know, classic example after January 6th. Well, I think it was kind of, you know, overboard to try to, you know, have this attack on the Capitol. And Lindsey Graham voted to certify the election. Let's give him credit there. But then he decides to bring Donald Trump back to power, which is, you know, we're going to set aside the fact that Trump perpetually does this.

Liz Cheney says, no, character is fundamental. When you see somebody do something depraved, she uses the word depravity there, right? Trump is depraved person. He's going to keep doing those things. And then she brings up disaster aid as an example, but there's lots of other things.

So she decided character mattered. Lindsay decided that it didn't. There's a little book actually called Character is Destiny that was written by one of Lindsay's friends, John McCain. I guess the message, the subtle title didn't sink in for him. Right. Tim, think about it. McCain, Romney, even Paul Ryan, people who actually decided character mattered are the ones who turned against Trump. The other thing is the way she talks there about other countries. I've seen this happen in other countries and

These are hawks, right? Lindsey and Liz Cheney are people who said, we believe in democracy. We believe in democracy abroad, standing up to autocracy. But Lindsey Graham decided there was an American exception, that when it comes here and we have an autocrat in our own country, an authoritarian demagogue,

You know, that's fine. We Republicans are going to cut a deal with him. And Liz Cheney decided, no, it's the same thing that happened in other countries, and I'm not going to let it happen here. So those are two fundamental differences between the Cheney and Graham models. And I think that's a very good argument for why people like Liz Cheney, who believe in character, believe in a strong foreign policy, and believe in democracy, would turn against Trump, where Graham didn't.

The character thing is an obvious argument, but I guess just people are so sick of Trump nobody makes anymore, like nine years in. It gets made, but it's sort of always like it's an ancillary point, it feels like. But in some ways, to me, it's like,

If you're making the case about the risk of Trump, the character argument is almost a little bit more tangible than the democracy argument. Because it's like, we aren't really sure that maybe he'll go home in four years, right? Like, you don't know, right? But like, what we do know is that his character is so low that he will do something or some series of things.

things that endanger the country. And that as he ages into his 80s, and as the people around him become more pliant, the risk of that seems even higher. For some reason, I feel like that's just a hard argument to get to sink in with people. People tend to focus on their pocketbooks. They focus on results. Results is not character, right? Results is, well, he makes the trains run on time.

And so it's elite. It's people who understand, like, you know, focus on the person. There is a constituency of voters who do talk about character and just say, look, I don't like the guy. The problem is you have this chorus of Republicans in the invertebrate elite who call it mean tweets, right? They just say, well, that's a little outburst here and there, but fundamentally we agree with him. So I think that's the fundamental divide. I wonder since most of the people on this podcast are

Cheney admirers at some level or another. I'm no Sonny Bunch. I don't have like a Dick Cheney picture above my bed or anything. But, you know, I mean, I voted for a couple of Cheneys in my life. That was not you. And so I wonder what you think about the critique that you hear in some left quarters that it's like, is this that helpful actually to have Cheneys running around with Kamala two weeks out from the election? What do you say to that critique? Oh, absolutely. I mean, the problem is we don't have enough list Cheneys.

The failure of so many traditionally Democratic constituencies to stand with the Democratic nominee is why we need more and more Republicans to come over and fill in the gap. And Liz Cheney is doing that, you know, for God's sake. That outreach is to an audience that will matter in this election. What she's drawing is...

Tim, isn't this one of the few places where Kamala is doing better than Biden? Like she's, I mean, she's drawing like 9% of Republicans in some of these polls. That number has gone up as the support from like Latinos, like lots of Democratic constituencies has got white working class has gone down, right? So the Republicans are filling in. I just wish there were more Liz Cheney's doing these events. Can I say one other thing about gender here?

At these events, here's Liz Cheney sitting next to her. Meanwhile, Kamala's talking about, you know, Mark Esper and John Bolton and, you know, these, John Kelly. Like, here are all these men who worked for Trump, who Kamala has to say that they're against Trump. And, you know, good for them that they've come out. But where are they? They're not showing the courage that this woman is showing. This is a whole thing. This was like a lot of women standing up where a lot of men are not.

Yeah, that's just what I was talking to Mitchell Andrew about. That's what I talk to everybody about. I can't talk about I talk to strangers about this at the coffee shop. I'm like, where is Mark Esper? You know, I'm just like lashing out at the French truck.

But we do have Charlie and Sarah. So good on them. Our pals. Sarah Long, she did. She was marvelous yesterday in Pennsylvania. It was good to see Charlie stepping up in Wisconsin where he has a real name ID where people know him. And having been on radio, no, no squish like you and me, you know, has a reputation of being an actual conservative. So good, good on Charlie.

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You've been watching a lot of the Trump rallies and wrote an article for us yesterday that was really strong that kind of tried to simplify, like we throw around these terms, autocratic, fascistic, and you just tried to lay out in a list, like what exactly are we talking about when we talk about Trump's plans to run a fascist government? And so why don't you just walk through what you've been noticing in the Trump rallies and kind of what encompasses that list of fascistic tendencies?

Yeah, well, I mean, nobody wants to watch all these Trump rallies. I did. But the thing is...

He will say things here and there, which if you put it together are a fascist agenda, which coincide with things that he says all the time. He talks a lot, for example, about jailing his opponents. And he will just go off and name people like, you know, Hillary, Chuck Schumer. He'll say people shouldn't be allowed to run for office. He'll say this or that network's license should be revoked because he doesn't like the way that they edited an interview or what they broadcast. And he talks a lot to him about violence.

His supporters, he encourages that. He talks about unleashing the police, unleashing the military. The most recent one, for example, was

stuff about the enemy within. I mean, if you track what Trump has said about the enemy within, number one, it includes people like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi. I mean, Trump just repeated that on Fox, right? And number two, he says, you know, if these people get a little uppity, we might need to call out the National Guard, call out the military. And you would think that this is just hype, except for the fact that he did on January 6,

send him off to the Capitol. He did clear Lafayette Square. He did talk about sending in the National Guard to states and cities, whether or not they want it. So he's got a track record to back up the fascistic rhetoric. I think the other thing that I observed that hasn't sunk in with some people, but you're watching the speeches is,

Even when he's talking about policy, like the difference between 2016 and now to me is like the policy segments of the speech, if you go back and watch them in 2016, like they were Trumpy, right? So they were not, you know, he didn't sound like Mitt Romney, right? You know, but the way he talked about building the wall and draining the swamp, but he was kind of on message, like he had a specific policy agenda that he told people that he was going to enact.

It also included jailing Hillary. So there were some fascistic elements then too, right? But like alongside that stuff was a pot. That's not happening now. I like the only policy things that he brings up when I'm watching him are the cross the board tariffs. Right.

which is authoritarian in its own right, because he often mentions he doesn't want to deal with Congress on that, the mass deportations. And I guess we're being generous, the liquid gold, right? We're going to drill more, right? Like besides that, it's nothing. It's all vengeance, grievance, authoritarian plans, right? Am I missing anything? Yeah. So here's where I have a problem. So I agree with you that that's what's happening.

He's kind of evacuated the policy agenda. The energy thing he claims, the thing is he claims that migrants energy explain everything, right? Migrants are the reason why social security is at blah, blah, blah energy. If he, he's going to drill more, he's going to somehow increase beyond what the private sector would want to do. I don't know how he would get through that, but that's going to drive down prices. So he's got these magic keys that he claims will solve everything else, which is just bullshit. Yeah.

They're just two. He's 11 short of Alan Lichtman. So there is a little bit of an agenda. But by and large, Tim, I agree with you that he's way more scattered, meandering than he was before the Arnold Palmer thing being the latest example. Here's my problem, Tim. I agree with you about all that. But I feel like we're in an oncology situation where I'm looking at the numbers at the polls and I'm like, the patient is doing everything right. The doctors are doing everything right.

The numbers should be moving in the right direction and they're not. - Cancer spreading. - And that scares the hell out of me. That absolutely scares the hell out of me. Like people have made up their mind

So I'm trying to understand why they haven't moved. And the fact that everything should be going in the right direction and it isn't makes me way more worried than I would be if a couple of things were going wrong. Yeah. Can we go even deeper into the worry for a second since we've got dark will with us today? Yeah. We're just going to do one question on this because, you know, you don't want to spend too much time. Let's just say that those worries are well-founded and that Trump does squeak this thing out. Having just written the fascism article, having watched all these speeches, I

Where are you on the alarm scale? What do you think it would look like? I am alarmed. I'm actually less alarmed because, look, I agree with your diagnosis of Trump that he's become more scattered. That's in some ways a good thing in terms of how much of a threat he poses. Because authoritarians who have done a lot of damage are very focused. Putin's a very focused guy. If you want to go back to the fascists of the 20th century, very focused people.

Trump's not. Gaddafi, not that focused. Still created a lot of problems. True, true, true. What worries me more, Tim, is we have seen the Republican elite exposed as a bunch of invertebrates.

So I can't name to you, Tim, I can't name to you things that Lindsey Graham or Mike Johnson or any of these other... Yeah, I can't name what they're going to stand up to. They've pretty much folded on everything. So if Trump decides to do something... I mean, let's take the most obvious example. This is not a specifically authoritarian thing. You brought up the tariffs. What is most likely to happen in a Trump administration? Trump says...

I'm not a warmonger. We didn't start any wars when I was president. He will start a trade war, a massive global trade war, right? He's going to do his tariffs. It's going to be, and Americans are going to be like, holy cow, like all of a sudden everybody's hitting us back with tariffs. Everything costs way more than it did. Are Republicans going to stand in the way of that? Can they? That's the president who can do tariffs, right? So that's a very realistic thing that will happen.

Yeah. And with the deportations, let's go to immigration. For example, there was a quote from Trump's speech yesterday in Greenville that I want to play where he is talking about the Harris campaign ads and her rhetoric that is correctly blaming him for killing the bipartisan immigration bill. Let's listen to that. And so they tightened it up a little bit. Oh, look, our numbers are a little bit better. Look. Oh, Trump stopped the bill. He told the Senate that.

Ted, did I ever tell you not to sign that bill? No, right? I didn't tell anybody, but they liked that Trump stopped. I sort of liked it. It gives you such power. You know, you come from Queens, and now I'm calling, you will not sign that bill, senators. You will not. They had me calling up, you will not sign that bill. Actually, I like that sort of. Maybe I should go along with that story, Ted. That's something nobody's had that kind of power in a long time, right?

Classic on the fascism scale there. Like that's a, he knows it's politically harmful for him to be credited for killing the bill, but like he, he can't help himself, but brag about it anyway, because like just that allure of being all powerful. Right. Right. And I actually take some consolation from the specific way in which Trump talks about this, because like,

Again, not to dispute your Gaddafi example, but the authoritarians... I think the Gaddafi example spoke to your point. I mean, like a lot of problems in Libya, but you know, I mean, it was contained. Right. I mean, if we take sort of the classic example of Hitler, Hitler wasn't just in it for the ego. Hitler wanted to do things. Trump is in it for the ego. And you can hear him talking about that. He loves the power because of how it reflects on him. He likes to feel powerful.

I don't think Trump is likely to do the kind of damage that the authoritarians of the 20th century did. The more likely course is what Kamala and Liz Cheney were talking about, which is that because Trump likes the feeling of power and ego, he's easily manipulated by the guys overseas who really are into doing something like Putin. I'd like to take over Europe, right? He knows how to manipulate Trump's ego. Kim Jong-un knows how to manipulate Trump's ego. Xi Jinping. These guys are all going to...

manipulate Trump's ego. And because Trump has no values, he's as happy to be manipulated by our enemies as he would be by our allies. Yeah. One more thing on the immigration topic, something that flummoxes me, because I think maybe at my, usually I can put my political strategist brain on and be pretty rational about what I think the right approach is, but like the immigration stuff makes me so mad. And I was always such a squish on immigration back when, you know, compassionate conservatives were a thing that I feel, I feel like I might be clouded on this.

But like Cuban was doing the rounds. He continues to do the rounds, him and Liz Cheney, if we get out of this or the heroes of the cycle on, you know, I think this was on CNBC or some more conservative outlet. And he was like, I talked to small business owners in Texas and I asked them, how's it going to look for your restaurant or your, you know, your retail store. If Stephen Miller's thugs come to the door and say, Hey, I want to see everybody's papers, right? Like, how's that going to look? I'm like, well,

The answers I get in Texas is a lot of, we don't want to do that. I don't know that that would be actually good for my business. And so he was making kind of a pro statement.

economy argument for immigration. And, you know, I've been arguing that the Democrats should make more like in the Hispanic community, obviously they're losing ground has like, it sunk in that, you know, this little fascist from Santa Monica is going to be sending jackbooted thugs into the quinceanera. And some people are going to get around, you know, so yeah, sure. Some bad guys are gonna get sent back, but other people, there's going to be some ancillary damage. Um,

The other side of that argument is like Matt Iglesias is like Democrats should never talk about immigration. They should always talk about health care, you know, and since that's a winner and I don't know, maybe that's right. But I just when I hear him talk about this immigration stuff, it's like there's a lot of vulnerabilities. I don't feel like you're being exploited because I don't know that people can want to go there in their heads.

I don't know. What do you think?

And the analogy that comes to mind when you're talking about that for me is abortion, right? Like here's all these people who said, like, we think, you know, we don't like abortion. Let's restrict abortion. And then we start to see states doing it and we see the results of it. What is it like when the government goes in and wants to sue for your medical records? What is it like when they tell the doctors that, you know, they're in legal danger if they help you end this pregnancy that's gone wrong?

And all of a sudden, a lot of people who are pro-life are like, holy shit, that's not what I wanted. Right. So it may be sadly that we have to see the deportations similarly before people who believe in deportations go like, well, that is not what I wanted. I did not want to see these kids dragged out of this house. But that's just what's going to happen if Stephen Miller gets his way.

That's a good and depressing analogy. I'm kind of anxious about that. Okay, before we lose you, I want to talk a little bit about Elon. Some legal issues. He's given away, he's got a million dollar lottery, but you have to register to vote to be eligible. And that might be illegal, but we don't really have a federal election commission. So who knows if that's enforceable. He's also running these

ads and it's two separate ads. I'm going to play them back to back. One is being run targeting Muslim communities in Michigan. The other one is being run targeted Jewish communities in Pennsylvania. Let's see if you can guess which one is which.

Nice. That's sweet.

Kamala and Doug, America's pro-Israel power couple. Love that. Two-faced Kamala Harris is secretly campaigning for Palestine and trying to get away with it. In Jewish communities throughout America, questions are being asked. Why is she running ads pandering to Palestine? We must stand up to anti-Semitism. We say no more. Kamala Harris, stop pandering to Palestine and stand with our ally Israel.

Nice music there. Yes, that's the same pack. Don't know if you caught that. Same group running both ads. The one that focuses on Doug, the first Jewish first gentleman, potentially, was targeting not Jewish community, but the Muslim community and hoping to, I guess, banking on the fact that those voters anti-Semitism will be influenced by learning about Doug.

Wow. Okay. This is to me easily one of the most despicable things that's happened in this campaign. I'd like to believe that

Jews and Arabs can agree that we may have lots of disputes about land and stuff that's very serious and lots of people getting killed, but that we both can agree that we don't like being lied to. And that's clearly what's happening here. We're being told two different messages by the same people that can't both be true. I'm glad that the fact that this is being aired by the same organization is being made public so that everybody can understand that we're being manipulated. The other thing, Tim,

That ad about Doug Emhoff, the one that she has a Jewish spouse, that is the most overtly anti-Semitic thing I have seen outside of like Nick Fuentes and like the wingers, right? This is coming from the Elon PAC. Yeah. That doesn't say he's pro-Israel. It says he's Jewish.

and therefore you can't trust him. That is overt anti-Semitism coming from Elon Musk and his people. We should be talking way, way more about that. Overt bigotry. I agree. And there are, I think, conservative Jewish voters that are anti-Trump that are part of this small percentage of voters that are still swing voters right now because they are more focused on Israel's security. And I think that

That you hear from these folks all the time is like I got into a fight with on MSNBC the one time who was blaming Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the campus protesters, which I didn't think made a lot of sense since the campus protesters calling him Genocide Joe at the time, but didn't seem like they were big allies. But I need this to say, like those people exist and they're out there. And I think communicating just about how.

debased and how overt the anti-Semitism is coming from Elon, who's Trump's like number one ally at this point, is pretty remarkable. So I don't know. Any other thoughts about that or Elon's malign influence on the campaign generally for Alusia?

Elon may be like Trump in the sense that he's evil, but also stupid. And the stupid may overcome. There's my pony for us. OK, the stupid may overcome the evil. For example, Elon is he's doing these ads. It's the most clumsy thing to put out these two messages in a way that you and I can just play for people. Right. The other thing is Elon's handling trying to handle so much of Trump's get out the vote.

And Tim, my secret prayer, my pony is I am hoping that Elon has done and will do for Trump's get out the vote what Elon did to Twitter.

Elon's a moron. I mean, he's a genius at some things, but he's a moron in many ways. He's kind of a moron at people. Good, smart at things, dumb at people. We've all seen this before. I would like to hope that Elon has set things up so that when the numbers start coming in on election night, we find out that the get out the vote operation was a disaster. And eventually we have all the stories about how Elon screwed it up.

Yeah, inshallah to the Trump. GOTV is akin to my Twitter mentions. If only. That'd be great. We should also just mention, that other ad was Islamophobic. We got so focused on how anti-Semitic the dugout was. Like the music, you know, AI, generic music.

Arab music and the whole it's just so hackneyed. It's so pathetic. Anyway, Will Salatin, it's been too long. We'll be bringing you back again soon. And keep an eye out for Will's YouTube videos. You know, I'm doing the quick takes. All right. You know, the hot takes. Will has been putting together these awesome, like longer videos that deep dive into an issue. The latest one is kind of what we were talking about earlier on the fascism topic. But there's a lot more there. So go check that out on YouTube.

will we'll be talking to you soon everybody else we'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the bulwark podcast see y'all then peace sometimes you just feel tired feel weak and when you feel weak you feel like you want to just give up you gotta search within you try to find that inner strength and just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to knock it up and knock it with it no matter how

I'm not

So it's just not real enough The criminal cop killing hip-hop Filling a minimal swap to cop millions of Bach listeners You coming with me, feel it or not You're gonna fear it like I show you The spirit of God lives enough

You hear it a lot, lyrics that shock. Is it a miracle or am I just product of pop? This enough, this is the one. Whistle, this is the plot. Listen up, you pistols for God. Slizzle does not give a fuck. Till the roof comes off, till the lights go out. Till my legs give out, can't shut my mouth. Till the smoke lives out, and my heart burns out. I'm a real bitch and I'm a boner. Till the roof comes off, till the lights go out.

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