Tom Nichols: He's Bait for the 25th Amendment
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Sponsored by the Coalition for Medicare Choices. Learn more at MedicareChoices.org. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Yes, yes, I wasn't just going to punish you with the all-in podcast guy today. We have a regular podcast. We have your candy. We have your favorite guest. He's Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College, staff writer at The Atlantic. He wrote The Atlantic's cover story for November called The Moment of Truth.

His books include The Death of Expertise. It's Tom Nichols. What's going on, Tom? Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me back. There's a lot going on. I think we're going to have plenty to talk about today. There is so much going on. It's hard to even know where to start, but I guess we have to start here. Donald Trump had a

It's a familiar playlist for me.

He stopped periodically at one point to talk. He said that the Democrats are evil during these brief intermissions, but he spent many minutes just kind of spacing out. It's hard to know how to translate such a bizarre scene to this podcast medium, but I just want to give people a little taste. So let's listen to one little 30 second bit. Go and vote. Let me hear that music, please. Everyone, let's thank President Trump. Nice and loud. God bless you. Let's send President Trump back to the White House.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone.

Trump just swayed. Very moving. That takes me back to the 90s. I was going to start singing along. But we digress. What's happening with him? What's happening with this guy? I don't know. You know, we always make fun of how Trump, how weird he is during his rallies. But this is now beyond...

you know, humor this, there's, there's something really wrong with the guy. I mean, there's something seriously wrong with him. And I mean, this is,

He's not capable of being president. And basically, this is now everything they tried to project onto Joe Biden, right? Who clearly Biden, you know, clearly has lost several steps. But, you know, it's one of my friends says the old man still knows what he's doing. Trump is lost. I mean, they're basically like propping him up like Brezhnev at this point.

getting them to wave while people play Ave Maria over again. Think of this, that this is how the scariest moment we're at that a deranged,

sociopathic autocrat who is barely functioning is going to be voted into office by millions of people who think this is all a TV show. That's all right. It's been another edition of the Bulwark podcast. We'll see you guys back here tomorrow. Yeah, that pretty much covers... Always lost. Begin your day drinking. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. That pretty much covers the main theme of the Bulwark podcast since its inception. Yeah, on the age thing, I mean, I just think...

We're in a country of 330, 40, 50, whatever it is now, a million people. We probably don't need to have an 82-year-old president of either party. This guy is just so – what is happening? He's just standing there. He can't talk. He doesn't know. He's not answering questions. He's just standing there spacing out. Can you imagine if Joe Biden had gotten on state – and by the way, I'm going to digress for a minute and say I took –

raffs of shit for being an early adopter that Kristi Noem is just an empty female equivalent of an empty suit. An empty pantsuit. Just a fraud. I bought that stock when it was a penny stock, so I'm glad that has finally... And I just took so many... Kristi Noem has really deranged boy fans out there. But imagine if Joe Biden had gone to a rally

with some Democratic governor with, you know. Tony Evers. Tony, thank you. Tony, I'm right. It's 1030. You know, this is early for me, man. I don't know. But he stood there with Tony Evers and then just swayed while they played, you know, Celine Dion or something, you know.

And people would say, okay, well, that was it. He had a good run. It's time to invoke the 25th Amendment and he's out. I mean, this guy is going to be 25th Amendment bait the minute he steps into office because he can't do it. And he was 25th Amendment bait when he left office the last time, four years ago. So, yeah. Yeah, it's true.

It's proof again that people voting for Trump don't care about policy. They don't care about his competence to run the government. They don't care about whether or not there's going to be a crisis with Russia or China. They want to do it because they still, even after having won the presidency for four years, they still have this itching sense that they have to flip the bird to millions of their fellow citizens. And they just want to piss everybody off.

by putting this guy in to see what happens and to hear other people bitch and moan about it. And that's really, I'm just going to say that's unpatriotic that you don't take a guy like this and put him in the Oval Office just because it's going to give you shits and grins. It is. And it makes the weird and deranged stuff more appealing to them, right? Because it's even a bigger F you. Like, yeah, we're still going to be for the guy that's swaying and listening to

like, you know, J.R.'s Monday musical night style gay playlists at the event, spacing out like he's on gummies. I think this is something that a lot of journalists and a lot of commentators don't get about Trumpism, that the worst he gets, like, every time Trump does something, you know, I'm going to use the army, you know, I'm going to sway to the village people, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to eat flathead screws for lunch, you know, this...

They don't understand that the more outrageous he is, there's a whole bunch of people in MAGA world going, good, it's going to make it that much more painful for the rest of you normies when he becomes president.

I always think back about like I'm in some of these videos, but like the thing that makes them the most happy is like their YouTube super cuts of sad commentators on 20 on an election night 2016 that I still get sent to me like periodically, like once a month by some crazed mega person online. And like that's that's what it's all about. It's not about policy. It's about they want to see sad people on MSNBC. In moments like this, sometimes I turn to subject matter experts. And frankly, I'm just going to be honest with the audience.

I don't know how much of an expert this guy is, but his take resonated with me. Matthew Remsky. He's a journalist who covers cults. He wrote this. Trump.

Trump surrendering tonight's Q&A to 30 minutes of his fave songs while standing on stage awkwardly conducting at times echoes many instances of cultic leaders who exhausted, ill, and at the end of their cognitive rope outsource their emotional dominant subroutines to canned music they personally find exquisitely sentimental. As traumatized narcissists, they're seeking comfort and avoiding work,

but also assume that their core memories of pleasure will make their power and soul transparent and accessible to their followers. Well, I guess I'm going to declare that guy an expert because I like it too. That feels right to me. It feels right. I don't know. I'll defer to other cult experts, but that felt pretty right. And does the person picking the music hate him? Because the clip you just played, if you recall, the English translation is time to say goodbye. Right.

I mean, I'm sorry, if I were, you know, having a rally and I were running something, you know, my playlist would not include time to say goodbye. I mean, you know, what else can you put on a on a rally playlist, the long and winding road? Goodbye, stranger. Hello, goodbye. I mean, what what is the point of that? Maybe saying it's time to say goodbye to the American experiment.

Or maybe, like that guy just said, he finds it comforting music and he doesn't know what else to do at a rally. So he basically does the equivalent of 39 minutes of holding his binky and sucking his thumb. It's just weird. That is beyond... His rallies are always weird. That was not weird in the sense where I was watching and saying, here he goes again and he's got... He's sticking artichokes in his ears and he's going on about sharks. No, this was like...

My dad lived to be 94 and I had to help him into assisted living. This was like somebody take this disturbed man off the stage because now it's like literally making me uncomfortable in a way that is not related to politics. And I'll just add at 78, my dad was sharp as a tack. And yet, you know, this, this guy, this is becoming a kind of form of cruelty that

Not just on the part of his voters, but his family. Cruelty to who? Cruelty to this confused old man who has no idea what the hell he's doing. Are you sure he's not trolling us? I do think he's... I mean, his original theme was... Remember, the first game he made was you can't always get what you want, which did feel like a troll on the country. Like it was an intentional troll, I think. I don't know if... It's hard to know...

like whether he can abstract into other people's feelings enough to understand the troll, but it seems like sometimes he does troll. Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, he knows, he knows how to be a jerk. Yeah.

But I think with this, if this was trolling us, it was so clever and so meta that it would require so much forethought and cleverness. I think he's just an old guy who just 39 minutes went by without him really understanding. Who likes his comfort tunes. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's everything it's everything the Republicans tried to project onto Joe Biden. Oh, won't somebody help this old man? You know, well, that's this is the other thing. And I'm going to yell about the about journalism again. If Biden had done this, it would be a national crisis. It's all we'd be talking about. It would be leading the front pages of the national newspapers of record. It would be the only tape anybody plays ever.

all day. Fortunately, there was other tape that also was equally shocking, which you and I will get to in a moment. I know, you know, with the governor of Virginia. Yeah, let's get to Youngkin. I will say this. So hold on. My only defense of the media. Isn't Trump a national crisis? Trump is a national crisis. Yeah, it's like, what moment do you think? It's just kind of like, what do you do? Fair enough. Everything he says is a national crisis. The Youngkin thing here, because this is where things get dark, is that it's one thing if you have

A weird, deranged, declining, sundowning old man swaying to music. And he has a few little gerbils around him, like Stephen Miller. And that's a scary situation enough. But in addition to the Stephen Millers, he has a raft of successful, ostensibly normal, competent musicians.

younger people that are doing their best to run cover for him, including the governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin. And so I want to play, this is a little out of the ordinary for this podcast. We're going to play a very long clip of Glenn Youngkin and Jake Tapper. But before we do that, I just want to remind everybody what we're talking about. I want to re-listen to Trump. I know we've played it before, but I want to re-listen to Trump talking about who he's sicking the military on if he gets back in there. Let's play that clip with Maria Bartiromo.

I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country. By the way, totally destroying our country. The towns, the villages, they're being inundated. But I don't think they're the problem in terms of election day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics.

And I think they're the and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by national guard or if really necessary by the military, because they can't let that happen. So twice he makes clear he's not talking about the illegal migrants. He's talking about people inside the country. So before we get to Youngkin, just thoughts on just how ominous that bit is. It's not the first time he regularly fantasizes about this. He

you know, talks about my generals, you know, that this is a guy who literally said, why can't you generals be more like Hitler's generals? Because of course, Trump being one of the dumbest people ever to become president has no idea that Hitler's generals, you know, tried to kill him.

But he really thinks that his generals should be like a Praetorian guard. They should go out in the street. One of the things that I quoted in the cover story this month for The Atlantic is from one of the books about Trump's administration, where he says, go on out there, beat the fuck out of them. Shoot them, you know, shoot them in the legs. He really believes that the U.S. military is just his personal palace guard that's supposed to get out there and crush dissent.

hurt people. This is the United States military. This is the American armed forces. He constantly thinks about turning them against

the people of the United States against American citizens, which is just, this is where I'll remind people, I taught military officers for 25 years. I mean, this is the thing that they don't ever want to do. They never want to turn their weapons on their own people. They don't think of themselves as that kind of force. These are honorable men and women who are loyal servants of the Constitution. The idea that you would

you know, just be called into action to go shoot other Americans just because the president's pissed off is, is repugnant to them. But that's his thing. That's his jam, man. Yeah. Actually, let's just sit on that for a second. How do you, how do you, how do they hear that? Like, how do you, how do the people that you taught? I don't know. I knew, are you still speaking to anybody? Like when this stuff happens, like at this point, is it just bad?

background noise of Trump's nonsense or our, you know, email chains, text chains, you know, lighting up like what, like, what is this? I just, how is that processed in the military world? Well, you have to realize that the military has a very strict code of political non-involvement. So I respect that by not putting active duty military officers on the spot and asking them about it because that puts them in a, in a jam. I left before January 6th.

I retired shortly after that, so I didn't have a seminar when that happened. I didn't have any officers in my class. But I know that a lot of retired officers are either openly opposed to what Trump talks about because they just find it appalling. You have to remember that, you know, the cover story I wrote about George Washington. We think of him as the father of the country. The U.S. Army thinks of him as the father of the U.S. Army.

that the American armed forces are born when George Washington takes command on the green in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1775. And some of the others I think just are in this kind of anguished silence, but I have, I have yet.

I know they're out there and I know they exist where there are senior military officers who think Trump is just dandy. But I think they are far and few between. But as I say in the piece, all he's going to need when he gets back in is a handful.

He's just got to find the 0.001% and then let the chain of command, the discipline of the chain of command end up solving some of his other problems. But my sense of most military folks is that they are appalled by this kind of talk and don't ever want to have to turn their guns on their fellow Americans. Yeah.

All right. So with that as the backdrop, now we get back to Glenn Youngkin. And again, I want to play the original clip again for people just so you could see that it's very clear. Like Trump two times specifically says, I'm not talking about the illegal migrants. I'm talking about the enemies within. Jake Tapper on CNN confronts Glenn Youngkin about this, and they have a lengthy exchange. And I want to play the whole deal for everybody. So here it is.

You heard some of the language that Mr. Trump used over the weekend. What do you think of this idea of, quote, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics, and I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, the National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military. Is that something that you support? Jake, first of all, thank you for having me. And I guess what I want to just make very clear is that it's my belief that what

former President Trump is talking about are the people that are coming over the border that in fact are committing crimes, that are bringing drugs, that are trafficking humans, and that are turning every state into a border state. And I'm a governor of a state that is not near the southern border and yet I see the impacts of 10 million people illegally coming across the border every single day. Five Virginians die on average from fentanyl overdose.

We have folks that have crashed, the illegal immigrants that have crashed the front gate at Quantico in a box truck.

trying to gain access to Quantico, and we've had Virginians who have been subjected to sexual assault by Venezuelan gang members. So to say that this isn't happening, Jake, is just not fair to Americans. And so it is happening. I'm not saying that at all. Obviously there is a border crisis. Obviously there are too many criminals who should not be in this country, and they should be jailed and deported completely. But that's not what I'm talking about, because he was talking about

sick people radical left lunatics who should be handled by the National Guard and the military and then later on in that same speech he said that one of the lunatics he addressed was Congressman Adam Schiff that's who he was talking about using the National Guard and military against radical left lunatics

from within people like Adam Schiff. Again, Jake, I don't think that the... And again, I can't... I'm just reading you his quotes. I can't speak for him. But I do think that you are misinterpreting and misrepresenting his thoughts. I do believe, again, it's all around the fact that we have had an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants come over the border in an unconstrained, unrestrained fashion. The Biden-Harris administration has allowed it to happen. It was their policies. They did not fix it.

And as a result, we do see a substantial number of folks who are violent criminals, folks who have been identified as national security threats here. And in fact, just two weeks ago, we in fact had senior people from our national security apparatus say that there's 15,000 violent felons

in the united states they have no idea where they are that is what i believe the president is referring to i don't think that he's referring to elected people in for in in in america but i was literally reading his quotes i'm literally reading his quotes to you and i played them earlier so you could hear that they were not made up by me he's literally talking about quote radical left lunatics and then one of those lunatics he addressed he mentioned was congressman adam shift so tom i mean

You wrote about this, about how Orwell doesn't quite cover it. But, you know, what's your reaction to Glenn Youngkin? A couple of folks, Bill Kristol, for one, had the reaction of hearing that Orwell quote, the party commanded you to, you know, it was their final commandment of the party to reject the evidence.

of your eyes and ears. But I think people misunderstand that in context of the book, they got you to do that by basically torturing you to death, by breaking your mind to the point where you just rejected reality. And you know, you would say two and two is three or five or whatever the party wants it to be. Junkin is doing it just because he's ambitious.

He's not doing it because he's scared or terrified or, you know, in a fascist regime somewhere. He's doing it because he thinks it's very important to lie about this. I mean, it's just a that's why this clip, I think, captured so many people last night and today, because it's not even subtle.

You could see the frustration on Tapper's face, right? He didn't say that. I'm literally quoting it. I'm reading it verbatim to you. No, no. He calls out Adam Schiff. He's not talking about El Chapo. Yes, he says, I want to talk about Adam Schiff.

Yes. Noted illegal immigrant Adam Schiff, right? There's no doubt that he's talking about, because again, he has a long history of doing this. And Yunkin just, you know, kind of with that aw shucks, no, no, Jake, he's talking about it. No, it's a lie. And why? So that one day, Governor Glenn Yunkin can, along with Governor Nikki Haley and others, can emerge from the ashes and

You know, and say, now we rebuild, you know, now, now I will lead us, you know, back to the promised land, because I never betrayed you, you know, I mean, you can see Haley doing the same thing, and a lot of other prominent Republicans.

And it is it's it's worse than cowardice. I say this in the piece. It's worse than cowardice. Cowards. I have a certain amount of respect for those, you know, when they're doing the interview, a guy like literally congressman just like literally runs into traffic. I got to go. I got to meet. I got a hearing and cars are.

you know, honking. I have too much dignity to shame myself the way that Glenn Young did. I can't do this. I'm going to run away from you like a coward rather than confront this. This guy practically grabs the microphone and says, no, no, I'll do it.

I mean, I don't even know what the it's not cowardice. Is there another name for this? Like, you know, energetic paltry or something? I mean, what is that that you that you just jump in front of the camera and say, No, no, Jake, I will stand here and tell millions of people like he's a Jedi Master. No, this isn't the this isn't the phrase you think it is. This isn't what he really said when.

It's right there. And I think one of the things that's always been fun about Trump, I mean, this is chilling, this is awful, but it's also funny that every time a Trump enabler or sycophant goes out there and says, no, no, that's not what he meant. You have Trump running in front of a camera and saying, no, that's exactly what I meant.

And they just end up getting hamstrung. Everything happened to J.D. Vance yesterday, trying to say, oh, no, he's not. He would never do these things. Trump didn't. And again, Trump raising his hand. Sure, I would. I would do all these things. He's telling you who he is over and over again. And shame on Glenn Youngkin for that moment. I mean, how do you ever trust a man who.

Who stands in front of a camera and says, you didn't hear the thing that you just heard. Yeah, well, that's the one. It's just utter shamelessness, like to the, you know, to the most extreme possible degree. And for what? You know, this is one of those kind of morality tales where it's like, you know, you've got these in the Bible and in Dickens, you know, where you go to somebody and you're like, I'm telling you that in the future you will do this thing. And they're like, no, I would never do that.

Right. You know what I mean? Like you go to Glenn Youngkin eight years ago and just be like, hey, just so you know, there's going to be a clip of you. You're going to be sitting on CNN. Donald Trump's going to be saying that he wants the military to go after liberals. And that's what he plans to do when he gets back in the White House. And you are going to respond to that with, well, no, that's by defending it and by running circles around. Glenn Youngkin would say, I would never do that. I would never. Why would I ever do that? But yeah. I am too principled. Right. Right.

I would. And for who? For Donald Trump? I would never. Donald Trump. First of all, I will make sure that Donald Trump is never the nominee of our party. And certainly, certainly not the nominee of our party three times. This is the other thing that pisses me off when you do this. Nothing gets my blood boiling more than the we're going to rebuild mindset.

Cause it's just like, I just want to grab Glenn Youngkin by the lapels and, and just be like, there is no rebuilding. If he wins, he can win, right? Like you realize he can win. It's a fucking coin flip right now. And if he wins, he will have been the president twice and they're not coming to Glenn Youngkin in 2028. By the way, if we're having elections in 2028, the party's not going to turn to Glenn Youngkin after Donald Trump has been president twice. Okay.

Okay, and is going to have the much, much more toadyish or whatever, much more MAGA nativist, whatever word you want to use, lick spittles to follow in his footsteps. And he'll probably fucking Trump Jr. or Vance, right? It's just like the only way that there's a possibility of rebuilding is by slaying him.

Now, politically. Electorally, yes. Yeah, yeah. Politically. I wonder, too, if there's even a chance of rebuilding now at all.

As you were saying this, Tim, I was thinking about one of the first never Trump meetings that we started having back then, one of the places I first met. The meeting of the concerned? The meeting of the concerned, which is what it became called back when we were sort of meeting in secret in a Washington basement of a Washington office building. And I remember having this conversation with a lot of the folks there about, well,

you know, well, look, parties don't just fall apart and disappear. I mean, we're not the Whigs. The Republican Party is a good party. It could be saved. You know, of course, me with my New England Republican optimism. Of course, I'm saying this while the number of elected New England Republicans is dramatically approaching zero, you know, except for Charlie Baker. Charlie Baker's at the NCAA now. Bill Scott, I think, is all you got left. Yeah, right. Which is so weird in, you know, in Vermont, of all places.

But, you know, we walked outside saying, well, this was back in 2017. This is like seven years ago. And we're walking out and saying, well, you know, the future of the party, do we quit? Do we stay? Is there going to be another party? But we all kind of had that sense of, no, there's going to be a party. You know, it's like it's like Youngkin and Haley and the rest of them are still back there somewhere saying, oh, this this fever will break. It will pass that. It took me a long time to get to get past that.

And I don't think that the current Republican Party survives in its current form, whether Trump wins or not. But the idea you can see these people, you know, basically, what was that Bill Clinton phrase? I'm preserving my viability in the system, you know, like it's going to be Glenn Youngkin's time in 2028 or something.

There's no system. There's no system left to preserve if he wins. So this takes us to your cover story, which has this ominous subhead, which when I clicked on it, because, you know, the title is The Moment of Truth. It's a picture of George Washington. I'm like, OK, this is going to be a, you know, a create a core, an uplifting rallying cry. And I click the reelection of Donald Trump would mark the end of George Washington's vision for the presidency and the United States.

Dun dun. Like, that's it. Anyway, give us the premise of the story. How long have you known me that you expected uplifting? Well, I just thought with three weeks to the election, it was going to be George Washington. It's going to be, we're storm. It's a, you know, we're charging the battlefield, you know, kind of a rallying cry. No. Yeah, it's going to be doing the William Daniels from 1776. You know, coming land, what may, you know, no. No, this is,

All of the other presidents you can place along some continuum, even the very worst of them, the worst, you know, Buchanan, Jackson, Nixon, you know, anybody. Pick your favorite. Pick your favorite president that you hate. They're still recognizable as American presidents in the system that George Washington helped to establish. I think people don't realize. Barely for Johnson.

We're getting very bare. Hanging by the thread on the end of the continuum for Andrew Johnson. Okay, but Johnson never elected an accidental president. I mean, Donald Trump was elected and he's been nominated three times. It's like Andrew Johnson, you know, this is...

It was William Jennings Bryan or something where they just kept putting him up over and over and over again. I mean, it was just a freak accident and also didn't call a mob when he had to step down. I mean, this is something we've set the bar so low that we look back now at bad presidents and say, but, you know, at least they left.

Yeah, right. At least they walked out of the office and packed up their shit and went home. And Trump just isn't on that same continuum. He doesn't care about it. I started to say, you know, part of the reason that Article Two of the Constitution can be so

frustrating, right? Because Americans have argued about this for years. The president too powerful. There's a lot of kind of shady gray spots in article two. It's because the founders trusted George Washington. They basically said, we can't agree on a lot of this stuff. He'll figure it out. And he did. He did for a lot of that stuff. The problem is now we have a president who says article two means I'm a king. And the Supreme Court has said, yeah, basically, that's right.

And we are facing a crisis of I think part of the reason that the election is so close because you keep coming back to this and I get it because it just gobsmacks, you know, I think a lot of rational people that the election is this close. People cannot get their arms around the kind of power that.

that this sort of demented man child is going to gain by returning to the Oval Office, especially without people around him to stop him from doing any of this stuff. And I think his supporters think it's going to be just awesome. They still don't believe that he would plow them under his tires just as quickly as anybody else. But I think a lot of even, you know, and I have to do my usual angry dance about the Democrats. I think a lot of

If I have to hear the term disaffected Democrats one more time, I'm going to scream. You know, who are saying, well, don't listen to the Jason podcast. Yes, please. If that word makes you scream, you can't handle a full 45 minute bonus podcast. I'm disaffected. My taxes might go up and, you know, Harris is going to be a little bit too far to the left that I don't like. Okay, fine.

But the stakes on the other side of this are so monumental that all the other stuff can get figured out if we get past November.

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Can I take you to the dark place on this then? You say this is why I keep coming back to this. I'm sorry, darker? Yeah, I'm way darker than that, actually. Because I was just reading your article, and I'm like, okay, I'm getting into JVL territory here. But is it kind of already over? I mean, just like the idea that we could be in this place. People are like, Tim, your anxiousness is rubbing off on me. I've had a couple bits of negative feedback on that. But I think I can explain it by saying this. Like,

The fact that we are even here, I give the best case scenario following the insurrection attempt with as big of a buffoon as this person is and following four indictments and two impeachments is that Kamala Harris, who's like a totally mainstream Democrat, squeaks out 276 electoral votes and it takes five days to count Pennsylvania and

And during that time, we have mobs, you know, starting to form outside state capitals. And then the one party president doesn't accept the results again. And then we have to wait for the House to count votes.

you know, to make sure that we can have a speaker of the house that will confirm the election and we're into January. Like, like if that is the outcome that everybody's excited about, I mean, like a great, I'm happy for that. That's great. Kamala Harris is in there few, but isn't the, isn't the whole point that you're talking about? Isn't the system deeply, deeply, deeply,

potentially irreparably damaged from having to go through that and have that be the best case outcome we're looking at. Doesn't that put you into a pretty dark place about the state of affairs?

Well, as I said, time to uncork the bourbon first thing in the morning. Yes. And unfortunately, I agree with you and I agree with JVL. I mean, he, you know, the three of us are now a dark triad. But yeah, look, the system isn't broken. The system is only as good as the voters in it. And a big chunk of the electorate is just broken. Three years ago, I wrote a piece for the magazine called Mass Psychosis.

And it's funny that you bring this up because I just reposted it the other day, feeling the way you feel right now. And I said to a colleague at the magazine, I said, I was trying to work through something I was writing. And I said, I don't, I feel like a certain number of Americans. I spent my life writing.

having, as Trump would say, the best words, right? I was a college professor and a public speaker. I am used to speaking to people. And in fact, my days, I spoke to kids at night and my days were spent talking to military officers or tough audience. So I think, you know, I have a pretty good ability to talk to other human beings. I don't know how to talk to certain people now. I just don't know how to, and I'm talking about friends, relatives, you know, some neighbors who, who just, it's like,

You know, it's really hard to talk to somebody who says who believes, you know, that the moon's made of cheese. Yeah. I was just going to say that the moon's made of green cheese. And you kind of blink stupidly for a minute and you say, we went to school together, didn't we? Like we learned and, you know, they landed on the moon when we were in fourth grade. Remember? Remember that happening?

And I don't know. I mean, I don't argue. I don't find myself saying, no, you're wrong. We need to do this as opposed to that. I find myself hearing people say things. And then I'm just lost for a moment to say, you know, that I've done this. And when I've done some public speaking gigs and people have come up to me and I've said, look, please don't be offended. But that's just wrong. That didn't happen. That's not a real thing.

That's not something that's going on. And, you know, as one of my friends said to me, a boyhood friend, he said, see, you just don't get it. You're you're one of them now. And I'm like, well, I'm one of you know what? I'm one of the people who now believes in algebra. You know, what does that mean? And I think that that psychotic bubble is.

I think without Trump there to push, let's try and put a little sliver of daylight. Okay, let's try to get some positive on it. Tiny, tiny sliver. Let's try to get some positive on it.

I think a lot of people are holding to this. Let me... Give me 10 seconds to sort of spool this out. So people committed to Trump before they knew how completely crazy he is. They thought he was a businessman. He was eccentric. Right. They thought he was eccentric. He said non-PC things, but he wasn't like... That's the best spin you can put on him, right? He wasn't like a racist. He just said non-PC things sometimes. And he was a businessman and eccentric. Yeah, that's the...

A lot of people bought that kind of image of Trump. Okay, so they didn't realize how completely disordered and weird he really is. So they doubled down, they tripled down, he gets elected, and they say, now you're going to see how awesome he is. And it's four years of this bonkers nightmare where then we have a national crisis. I mean, the first few years, the economy sort of goes along the way –

will do. He cuts taxes, blows a hole in all this stuff that Republicans normally hate.

And then this scientific, this national crisis comes along, except for Operation Warp Speed. Give him credit. He completely bungles this. Tens of thousands of people die. Well, you know, that I would trace to him. Okay. An additional. Around the world, millions of people die. But he is responsible, I think, for thousands and thousands of unnecessary deaths. He helps the government or he enables the government to develop a vaccine and then basically scares people out of taking it.

Okay, so now they think, all right, fine. We're done with him. He's out. He lost in 2020. We did our duty and we stood by him. And then he gets the nomination again because the primary system rewards the kookiest and most extreme voters who show up. And nobody really thinks this is going to happen. So now they're like, well, shit. Now what do I do? And now you're starting to see like the Glenn Youngkins and Nikki Haley saying, no, no, he's going to be defeated. We don't have to live with this again.

And now here we are in 2024 where he could win. And people are saying, I guess I have to do this again. If Trump is defeated in 2024 is where all this was going. These people may, some of these people may finally be able to let themselves off the cross.

you know, to just come down off of their, their self flagellating loyalty to Trump. You know, I always bring up the uncle Ned, right? The guy that's always at your family dinner saying, yeah, you know what the problem with this country is? Um,

Jewish space lasers powering Venezuelan voting machines to let in, you know, MS-13 into Idaho. And I suspect that what you'll get if Trump is finally vanquished, and yes, there will be violence, I think, a lot of these people are not going to take it well, but that by Thanksgiving, your Uncle Ned's going to just be saying, you know, is the game on. What's on TV?

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Let's continue down this path because this is where I was. And this is, I think, where I think this gets at the core of my anxiety and creeping despair, which is I agree with you in a situation where if Kamala Harris sweeps the seven swing states, she gets 319 electoral votes. This is possible, by the way. I just what I said earlier was what I think is the most likely scenario, but it's not actually the best scenario. Like she very well could sweep all seven swing states.

that is not outside the realm of possibility. She wins 319 to 219. The whole counting thing doesn't really matter because who cares? It's like it wasn't one state flipping the whole thing. So there's not like really a flashpoint. And I think that what you just laid out could happen.

We're just not staring down that situation right now. God willing, that happens. God willing, that happens. We're three weeks out. I still would rather be her than him. But I think we're staring down a situation where she's looking at 276 electoral votes, where Pennsylvania is the make or break thing, and where Pennsylvania can't count their votes, as anybody that watched 60 Minutes this week saw. It's going to take them fucking forever to count their votes again. By design. By design.

by Republican design. Yeah, by design. Republicans' fault. Totally Republicans' fault. By design, absolutely, to create trouble. That's ugly. And that's, hey, when it's called for common law, I'll be the happiest person in the world. But I mean, in the biggest picture...

That's still setting us up for a pretty ugly situation about the state of the country. Maybe the historical analogy we should be looking for is Nixon's resignation, right? I was almost 14 when that happened. I was about 13. I delivered that newspaper the day Nixon resigned. That's how old I am.

There were people even in my working class New England town who were Nixon's getting screwed. And this is the plot. You know, and they just Nick, I don't believe, you know, I remember seeing bumper stickers in my name. I don't believe the New York Times, you know, impeach Nixon, defend Nixon. I mean, it was my grandmother. Right. Okay. Nixon resigns and all of that went away. It just ended.

And I think Ford, I know people hate it when I say this, Ford was right to pardon him and just end it and get him, you know, people's all go, you know, Trump, Trump is Trump because Nixon was pardoned. Trump doesn't even know what happened to Nixon. He couldn't care less. Trump is going to be Trump. But at the time, for people who remember the mid 1970s, it was really important to get past Nixon.

Watergate and Nixon and bring an end to the 1960s, basically. And that was an important thing to do. So I'm just, there were people who were convinced that Nixon was, the Jews were out to get Nixon, the hippies were out to get Nixon, the left, the commies, the whatever. And then Nixon, you know, six months after Nixon's gone, nobody's talking about it. It's all, it's over. It's gone. Now, is that going to be the same with Trump? I don't know because when Nixon resigned, nobody got killed.

And we've already had bloodshed because of Trump. I guess my point is that's much more likely to be the case if Kamala wins in a very clear victory. And this is, again, takes me back to the other obsession of the Bullock podcast, which is why more people aren't trying to make it a blowout victory and why so many people are on the sidelines. But we've done that every episode. We don't need to do it now. One more thing about your George Washington story. Let's just focus again on history and being positive. The other thing that I love about it is just, and the contrast with Trump,

is you go over one of my favorite anecdotes from Washington, which is that Adams wanted the president to be named His Highness or something like that. His Highness. And George Washington said, no, it should be Mr. President. It's such a small thing that maybe as a lover of words and language, it's such an important distinction.

And it is something that I feel like has been a through line through the country up until now that is really being challenged by Trump, Trump's vision for the presidency and the Supreme Court ruling. So anyway, I just wanted to hear you riff on that for a minute. Yeah, you know, the full title was something like His Highness the President Protector Trump.

you know, of the rights of the American people, you know, like you could almost hear the trumpets blare every time he said it. And it's one of the reasons that Washington, I mean, Adams was just a dislikable guy and Washington didn't trust him for a lot of reasons, but that one got under his skin. You know, it's been a long time that we have abused the term Mr. President, because in theory and in etiquette, as it used to be, you did not refer to a former president as president.

You referred to him or well, there was only him. You referred to him by the last lifetime title they had the proper way to address Bill Clinton as Governor Clinton, the proper way to address Dwight Eisenhower. And you hear this when JFK and Eisenhower are talking during Cuban Missile Crisis is general. That's what, you know, JFK calls him general. Right. But.

It's okay in modern usage to refer to President Bush, President Clinton. What you don't say and what Trump's people do all the time is refer to Trump as the president. Right. Because America only has one of those at a time.

So, you know, George H.W. Bush at one point is being introduced. They said, you know, President Bush. And he he did that thing, you know, with his head. He went former, former president, former because Bush was old school. And he knew that technically he wasn't President Bush. He was former President Bush. I think that was a great Dana Carvey version of Bush. Dana Carvey now goes down in history with two of the best presidential impersonations ever. His Biden, it's so good. His Biden now is just painfully good.

And I literally made me do a spit take when I was watching it the other day. Because here's the thing, by the way, you know, and I just like, oh, this is too, this is too on the nose. And yes, every time I imitate Bush now, we all lapse into, we all lapse into carving out, you know, not getting it with the hands and the.

People at home can't see this. Maybe you'll post it. We got it on YouTube. YouTube viewers can see it. Oh, good, because then they'll see Lily climbing up my chair a couple of times on YouTube as well. But I actually saw George Bush do this. He said, I want to bring people together, not push them apart.

And the hands, it was like a badly dubbed Godzilla movie, you know, where the hands and the voice were behind, you know, and I'm like, you know, I just love the guy for that because he just wasn't not going to message. I care. And, uh, but he, he felt very strongly about that. He kept saying he would correct people. It's a former president because he understood the importance of that, of that use of titles and Trump abuses it regularly. So thank you again for coming to my Ted talk about presidential etiquette have

Of course, it's a great cover story. People should read the whole thing. All right, two things really quick. Kamala has made a media strategy pivot. I'm pretty bored with the obsession in the media and social media of people analyzing every media decision. I've always been a more is more person. I don't think we need to micromanage every hit these days. She should do as much as she's capable of doing without doing harm to herself is sort of my view on this.

But it's interesting, I guess, that she's chosen to do Brett Baier. And I guess they're in negotiations with Joe Rogan. My bias would be I'd rather debate Trump again on Fox than do Brett Baier. I guess would be my one nitpick. But I'm happy that she's doing it. I think that she's more than capable of it. Some people have concerns. I don't know. Where are you at on this?

I think the first part of her campaign after Biden stepped down was flawless, which was keep the focus on how completely terrifyingly weird Trump and Vance really are. And let's not sleep on Vance. He's a very weird guy. I think that a lot of the media criticism got inside our head.

Like, how are you going to define yourself as different from Joe Biden? Well, what I'm sorry, Joe Biden's leaving office with a pretty strong term behind him. You know, you don't normally you don't run. I mean, you didn't see, you know, Bush 41. So.

saying, you know, kinder, gentler, that was it. You know, kinder, gentler Reaganism. Gore runs away from Clinton and kind of pays that price. Although I think, you know, there was no way out for him on that one. So I think those voices got inside her head. I agree with you going on Brett bear. I don't know what the point of that is my guess. And the only way I think this turns out, okay. That, and I could see if her campaign is thinking this way is that the more people see her as

the less she seems like a cartoon villain. Right. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it was good to just let Trump fulminate about having to run against a black woman and,

You know, but OK, now she's got to get out there and say, no, look, I really don't have fangs, you know, no horns, no horns. So maybe that will help provide something of an edge in in those swing states. I think, however, her campaign and this is not look, I'm not I'm not you. I've never run a campaign. I've never done comps for a campaign.

The only thing that I find puzzling in all this is Trump is every day doing something outrageous and weird and freaked out. And if I were doing comms for the other side, I'd be like, that should be part of the message of the day. Well, and she did that last night. She did do that last night, we should say. She aired the clip that we aired earlier of the enemy with one thing in her rally, which is a little different for her. Yeah.

Yeah, but there could be more of that. Well, and she said people should – I mean on this, I also have to say it's really nice to hear the candidate say something I've been saying for years, which is people should watch his rallies and just go and just watch them over and over again. We had a piece of the magazine. People should go to a Trump rally. You should watch this.

And of course, for years, liberals were like, don't give him exposure. Don't give him oxygen. No, put him up there. Buy those motion capture billboards that are nothing but Trump doing rallies all day long because it's so freaky. But I do think...

Like she does risk that trap of, okay, but like that Brett Stevens piece that, you know, is just still mind boggling, right? About, okay, but I need to be sold on you. And the only way you're going to do that is to tell me which administrative regulations you're going to waive so that we can build more housing. As if like, that's the, you know, holding you back in this decision between, you know, sociopathic autocrat and standard issue Democrat and,

The big thing that's going to do it for you is whether or not you're going to raise marginal tax rates 2%. Right, or move the embassy back from Jerusalem or whatever, like some random foreign policy. Yeah, I mean, just to put a button on that, I think what I strongly suspect, and some of this is available in public data, is there's a huge swath of undecided people out there that are basically, if you put them in your mind's eye, it is a...

Brett Baer watching Fox, not Jesse Waters watching old guy that's been a Republican his whole life that doesn't like Trump and

And maybe voted for him once, maybe not the other time. And they're kind of teetering. And this is really just an effort to try to convince that old guy to just not vote. She's almost not even trying to convince them to vote for her. It's just like their data says that there's some of these guys teetering. And if you can just get them comfortable enough, going back to your no horns thing, that she doesn't have horns, to keep them off, off, and they live in Bucks County, that's a worthwhile endeavor.

And I'm pretty sure that's why they're doing it. Or split their ticket. Or split their ticket. Vote for Dave McCormick and Kamala or whatever in Pennsylvania. I told a story about my dad just before he died. He died in September of 2012. And he could have gotten an early bait. But at that point, he was done. And part of the reason he didn't vote, I think, aside from being old and infirm and it was going to be a hassle...

I told this story in my book, Our Own Worst Enemy. My dad and I were watching TV in his assisted living room and they were doing the Romney thing and, you know, talking. And then they switched over to Obama rally. That was, you know, very energetic. And I said, I don't think Romney's going to make it, dad. He's a good guy. You know, he was our governor in Massachusetts. We liked him. And my dad, very cool. My dad, the most right wing, you know, Archie Bunker guy.

You know, never going to vote for a woman or a black person or anything. You know, just my dad sitting in his chair and he said, they're both good men. We'll be fine. Maybe that's the thing they're hoping to get to where you get people that are like my dad saying, you know what? Maybe we're going to be OK. Maybe she's going to win. And that's not the end of the world because that the hyperbolic mania is

on Fox and other outlets about Kamala Harris is it's bonkers. I mean, it's just beyond, I don't even know how to describe it. I mean, I don't know. I always wonder with some of these folks sitting there on the five or wherever they are, how much do you really not love this country that you're willing to do this for money?

That, you know, that your preferred outcome in the end. And I don't mean even the right wing pundits like that are like, you know, that sort of hyper anti-abortion folks who will admit like, I'm not going to vote for Trump, but I'll be glad when he does, because anything that Greg Gutfeld and these guys are just right. I'm talking about people that couldn't care less. And it's like, is it really that important to you to play act this to the detriment of your own country? And apparently, you know, there's everybody has a price.

Or at least, you know, everybody has a salary. They'll accept to say certain things. And I just find it astonishing every time I watch. So maybe going on, maybe her going on Fox, you know, is an antidote to some of that. I hope anyway. I mean, it's, you know, she's a normal person. I mean, she's,

running against two guys that are clearly not normal people. So maybe that'll, that'll actually give people that, that sense, you know? Yeah. I think the answer to your question, some of these guys hate, do hate the country as it is, you know, and they, they hate the big, big swaths of the country. And I think that drives some of this. All right. The final story.

that I need to tell you about. Is this the one that you said is going to light my hair on fire? Yeah. Are you ready? Yeah. Final topic. Hit me. National Rifle Association's new boss, Doug Hamlin. Have you seen this? He's on the Daily Mail. Daily Mail does some bad reporting. This is pretty important. We've mentioned your cats. Your late cat, Carla Lilly, has been in the picture today. Well, that should be in your mind's eye as I read you this.

Doug Hamlin was involved in the brutal torture and killing of a cat when he was a fraternity brother in college. He was appointed NRA CEO this year. He pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty and the vile killing of his fraternity's cat, BK. Hamlin was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor when he and four of his Alpha Delta Phi brothers were accused of capturing the cat, cutting its paws off,

stringing it up and setting it on fire. It's the new head of the NRA. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for letting us go out on a... Wow.

You know, I saw that link on Drudge and I was like, I know what I'm talking to Tom Nichols about at the end of the podcast tomorrow. Anybody that's capable of being cruel to an animal, you know, especially once you've reached adulthood. I don't mean, you know, five-year-olds pulling on a cat's tail. I mean, you're a grown man and you literally torture an animal to death. There's something wrong with you.

But how reassuring that someone like this is now in charge of pumping gun propaganda to, you know, millions of people with high powered weapons. That's that's really reassuring. Thanks, Tim. You know, I thought we couldn't go. I'm here to reassure. That's that's what it's called. The reassuring. Hello, darkness. People say that all the time. Wow. Thank you to Tom Nichols. I'm not thanking you. Not after. No, we're not going out on that. I can't. I'm not even.

I'm going to say thank you. What do you want to go out on? Do you want to do some show tunes, trivia, or let's see. Do you want to give us an election prediction? What do you want to go out on? I need to hear Conte Partiro again just to calm me down. Okay, let's put it back on. Jason, let's put it back on the opera. God bless you. There we are. Let's send President Trump back to the White House. Boo. Boo. Guys, thank you to Tom Nichols. Thank you, everyone.

No thank you to Donald Trump and Kristi Noem. Tom Nichols, I don't know. You'll probably be back next time during the period between the election and the actual call of the vote. So I'm trying to put you on our calendar for that right now. I will be here. We'll see you then. All right. Take care, Tim. Thanks. Thank you to Tom Nichols. Thank you to Jason Calacanis for the bonus podcast and for the very revealing interview he gave to me. We'll be back tomorrow with a double header. See y'all then. Peace.

♪ Haven't fallen down in a while ♪ ♪ Sitting here walking the line ♪ ♪ Well that's okay I ♪ ♪ Pulled 'cause nobody's off the hook ♪ ♪ See you looking so sad ♪ ♪ Trying to live your life in style ♪ ♪ Well that's okay you ain't no crook ♪ ♪ 'Cause nobody's off the hook ♪ ♪ ♪

I remember you and Looking like a teenager How you have become a man With all the power Running the road or ground You would ever have thought Hanging with a homo and hairdresser You would become the one desire

In every woman's heart But you never will love your heart with those little boys

Haven't fallen down in a while Sitting here walking the line Well that's okay 'cause I have looked And nobody's off the hook

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

More than half of America's seniors choose Medicare Advantage for high-quality health care at more affordable costs. In fact, seniors in Medicare Advantage are saving more than $2,500 a year compared to original Medicare. To protect and strengthen Medicare Advantage, we're making our voices heard. From our local communities to Washington, D.C., seniors are voting, and we're voting for Medicare Advantage.

Sponsored by the Coalition for Medicare Choices. Learn more at MedicareChoices.org.