Bill Kristol: Words Are Not Violence

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I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. We are here with Bill Crystal as always.

Just wanted to shout out to everybody outside at Jazz Fest this weekend, especially the guy. The couple, actually, from Central Illinois, wearing Tim is always right shirts and this bullwork Oasis hat. I received so many pictures from people that have got selfies with these characters. So it was great. I also did an interview on the Allison minor stage of Young River Eckert. It was nice to see some of you all out there. And so I was a little distant from the craziness in D.C. For that reason, but I was present with the bullwork community.

Bill, you had to suffer through a Sunday live stream about all this nonsense.

So I might have to carry a heavier load today, but how you feel?

“Yeah, you should do that. I didn't know you had relatives from Central Illinois. That's nice.”

Then I said they're showing up wearing shirts. It would be strange. I appreciate it. And you know, one more weekend ahead of us. Unfortunately, we have to start with the nonsense at the White House correspondent's dinner. Obviously, with this point of view, post-scene. There was a gunman that had stayed at the hotel that I before that tried to storm the dinner. The president and others were evacuated. He didn't even make it to the floor that the dinner was on.

So I feel like there's a little bit of misunderstanding about what would actually happen. But that said he did engage the secret service this down custody. There's a ton of discourse around this. We're going to try to get through it as quickly as possible, the most annoying elements of the discourse.

“But Bill, why don't you start with what you were ramping about the newslight at this point?”

Well, obviously, you know, I'd deploy violence and efforts to use violence in this way or anywhere, really. We should be clear about that 100%. One thing that we both said that I think and should. Having said that, one thing that's may be, I think that it's striking about this photomocracy movement that we are part of, I think, is how committed it's been to nonviolence. And pretty strikingly, so I mean, they could easily have been fudging and stuff with the margins.

But obviously, members of Congress are going to say they're against violence and they are. But the no kings marches, which were the more mass protests side of the movement, you might say. The organizers just got out of their way to say over and over again, it's on the website that these are going to be nonviolet, that we should be peaceful and lawful.

And people were incidentally, eight million people, right?

So this is a genuine nonviolet resistance. Now, I did notice that some maga types who decided on that trip based on weapon that the shooter attended a local low kings rally are using that to try to discredit the entire no kings. And that's the kind of thing that people need to push, we all should push back on. It should be no giving of ground here, no, oh well, yeah, it's kind of a problem, you know, maybe on the fringes. No, eight million people showed up, peaceful lawful protests.

One person showed up, we then turned out to go to Washington and try to commit violence, that person should be deployed and punished. But it does not tarnish the movement at all, there's no evidence anyway, it doesn't.

“And I think it's very important to make that point.”

And it's very important now to fight back aggressively against the attempts by the Trump administration and all their lackeys and Congress and outside to try to use this as an excuse to use this moment as an excuse to intensify their attacks on free speech on descent, using the federal government to criminalize descent on passing bad legislation on the grounds that it's necessary at this moment of this national aburgency. And that's past the bad 702 legislation or the bad DHS legislation. So if we're striking how quickly they went to that by Sunday on that was the talking point of Ron Johnson and Jim Jordan on the talk shows on site totally unconnected, right?

But you know, this isn't it's a moment to take advantage of and the Trump administration and Trump personally, of course, have always been pretty good or trying at least to take advantage of such moments. And we saw this also as well with the stupid ballroom discourse, which we can kind of just dispense with really quickly, but that was happening on social media was that this is why we need the Trump ballroom that he is building illegally without support for for Congress after, you know, just setting a wrecking ball to the people's house.

These two things have nothing to do with each other. For starters, again, as soon reiterate, we'll hopefully just more on the secret service stuff tomorrow because a lot of some sub stories, but just fundamentally, like the shooter didn't get anywhere near the present. I like literally the suit shoot wasn't even on the same floor as the president, and we've all been to the center. I haven't been a many years because it's stupid. So we'll get to that next, but like go down escalators to get to the ballroom at the Hinkley Hilton.

And you know, he was stopped on the floor above. And so, okay, so for just for practical purposes, I don't know what what was what the security issue was.

And then secondarily, you wouldn't have had this dinner in the ballroom at the White House because it's a lighthouse correspondence dinner wasn't the president's event. He is invited as a guest. And so, you know, the whole thing is just kind of post-facto rationalization for Trump's, you know, soft authoritarian desire to remake the Washington and his image. You know, just two quick points out of the volume thing, which is just, it was Trump himself, of course, who voted up right away.

“Maybe an hour after the dinner, I think I saw somebody in that the press conference he had around 10 30 in night. So this isn't just, you know, you know, maga mugs doing this. This is Trump himself, making the case.”

It's very revealing that we think about Trump because he assumes that any dinner he's at is about him.

And that he would therefore, if he had the ballroom, leaving aside the fact that it only seats third of what the Washington doesn't all this, it would be moved to his ballroom.

And I guess it would be his dinner. It would be his dinner. It would be at the White House. He would control, they White House would control the guest list. The White House would presumably run the dinner. The White House would, I mean, as the White House does when it hosts the dinner, it's Trump's dinner. He's he welcomes people. He arranges the entertainment or so forth. The White House does White House social staff. The whole point of the White House guards what his dinner is. It's not that, but it's so revealing the Trump assumes that it should be that, right?

And he assumes any dinner he goes to. Chaper of commerce, national farm, bureau, all the million things people speak at presence. We get politicians. We get that they should be at that ballroom because he thinks it's not just that it thinks it's about him.

“And it's not just that, of course, there are special security precautions that are taken wherever he goes and that's fine, you know, but he thinks not just that it's about him, but he thinks that he should run it.”

I mean, the authoritarianism that lurks behind the ballroom thing, I guess is what I'm struck by, just in the way Trump presents it, as you say, and thinking that this would be something that he should be writing.

The press dinner. So you control the press.

Yeah, which takes us to like why, you know, I was checked out from the weekend to begin with, and you know why I wasn't flying to Washington for this, which is that, you know, I don't understand why the press was in the first place, even participating in in this kind of tuxedo and ball gown awards dinner and toast with a president who is engaging enough full out of salt on them. And many of the people in attendance, president is suing. He's trying to sue multiple outlets to shut them up, getting multiple outlets to, you know, make payments, you know, to him as part of like totally, totally rigged, you know, agreements after he bully them with lawsuits.

And then on top of that, he had a dinner with CBS the night before CBS had a toast to like him and their correspondence where he gave an hour-long speech in private. They didn't report on it. We don't, we don't know what he said at the speech. The CBS journalists did not report on what the president said to them at their toast. And he assumed he was insulting people and doing his insult comedy at like he always does. He is orchestrating the takeover of multiple outlets that were in attendance at that dinner by one of his billionaire buddies and like the whole dinner shouldn't have taken place.

And then they're going to do it again in a month and the idea they're going to let Trump stand up there and insult and be right them while he is trying to silence them and use the levers of power that he has to manipulate them and control them.

“I think it was a total fucking sham. I think that it was a matte way, just like the existence of the dinner was a gift.”

Or it's certainly the fact that he was an honor-ree. That's the official title. He was up on the stage because he was going to be asked to speak because he's an honored guest. I mean, there were many guests at the dinner and I sure he could have sat there in the audience, I suppose, but that wouldn't be the way it would work obviously. So yes, he's an honor-ree of the press corps whom, as you say, he's suing into attacking at all kinds of ways. Who was called traders, right? Who personally he's insulted in the most go test ways insulting women for their looks and insulting people with medical disabilities for their disability.

I'd like to have a test, and I'd like to sit there and be humiliated as you insult us. So the whole thing, but the whole thing was a sham having the dinner, not the shooting or going to get to that in a second. That wasn't a sham or coming back to that.

“One more thing you just mentioned though, that I think bears discussion about this resistance and this movement and the obsession to him and what is not only appropriate but praiseworthy and like what is outside the balance.”

Totally absolutely fine. People should feel unvarnished to not only criticize the president, but criticize him in harsh and personal terms.

He deserves it. Words are not violence. You can use words to call for violence, but criticism are not violence. I felt this way when there was some of the stuff on in campus protests culture where people are like, "We need a safe space from speakers. We don't like." It's like, "No. Sorry. Words are not violence in a free country. People can say what they want." I was struck watching Jamie Raskin get bullied on CNN over the weekend. It always happens whether there's some political violence you'd be like, "What about the rhetoric?" It's like, "It's at the rhetoric." It's like we have people at mental health issues in the country and very easy access to firearms.

“That's why this happens. It is not the manner in which people were speaking about Donald Trump on this week on the Sunday shows. The whole thing is insane and Jamie Raskin ends up being like, "Why do I have no personal issues with Trump?"”

I just oppose his policies. It's like, "No. I oppose his policies and I've personal issues with him. He's a horrible president. He's a terrible president. And I uphore any attempt to do violence against him. Those things live totally peacefully together, like the positions of having harsh criticism of the president, even in personal terms and also opposing in all forms any attempt to violence. That is not complicated, anybody that doesn't have a baby brain should be able to understand that, and yet after every one of these things, we go round and round on the cable news panels about trying to police people's rhetoric.

It's crazy. I totally agree. Criticism is the president of the administration's policies and administration's rhetoric, genocide and so forth, for the nation's civilization and all that. Those criticisms are true today as they were Saturday afternoon. And there's no reason not to make them, honestly. There's no reason not to make them period. We were joking in this morning with headlines for morning shots. I suggested Orange Man Bad, Orange Man Still Bad. I believe Orange Man Bad. I give you credit for that. I don't know if that's actually the original formulation.

But I did, I did embrace it and I wrote about how important it is actually. People tried to tarnish the phrase Orange Man Bad and say that it was cringe and I wanted to retake it back.

So it was actually all you need to know about the last decade. This is the Orange Man Bad. Everything else is kind of superfluous. And you know what? He was bad on Saturday. He's bad today and we deploy violence against him and being bad doesn't mean anyone should take matters into their hands and shoot people at all, obviously. But yes, his administration is bad and he's not a great person either. He is. He's horrible and he shouldn't be shot. This is not hard. The last thing that I wanted to rant about on this topic is there's some stupid discourse coming from in our own ranks about this. You saw this immediately after the shooting, which is that this was a false flag attempt. This was fake right the president did this himself because he wanted the attention.

Just for starters, the idea that Donald Trump would want to do this right before he had the chance to stand on stage and do his favorite thing which is insult the press for an hour.

“I find that very hard to believe. I think Donald Trump was championing at the bit to have that evening and if you want any evidence of that he wants to do it again in a month.”

So I think he was very excited to dunk on all the journalists that stupidly dressed up in Tuxedo's to smile and giggle with him. So just this is a practical matter. I also just am very annoyed about this because I made the joke with the weekend like people on the internet have successfully identified 300 of the last two false flag attempts. Like everything now is a false flag attempt. If you don't know what that is, it's basically when somebody in power fakes an event. Fakes a shooting in order to get sympathy for themselves, essentially, or in order to advance some other policy agenda item that they have.

It used to be the right wing crazies that always saw this Alex Jones said every shooting was a false flag attempt in order to get us to take their guns and now like there are people on the left and like everything's a false flag attempt in order to make Donald Trump more popular or let him get more power or whatever and it's just like we have to live in reality. Okay, everyone's in a while. There has been a false flag attempt. I think it's pretty good evidence that Russia did do want to insert via in order to try to influence the hungry elections, but I guys, again, what is happening here is that crazy people have easy access to firearms of the country.

These guys aren't that smart. It's guys can't do it. Why is the person in charge of the false flag account at the White House? The only person getting anything done. It's like these guys are incompetent on all levels. You think that they can keep the secret.

“Donald Trump can't keep any secrets. He blurt's everything out. Like the whole thing is crazy. They said that the Butler thing was a false flag and one of the pieces that evidence was a crux doesn't have a long internet history.”

This guy called Alan has a huge internet history. You can see everything. He went to a good college. You can see it back in 2017. You can see everything that he's posted. He posts a lot on blue sky can clip and steam interviewed some of his friends, you know, he had a psychotic break and an easy access to guns. It's like the idea that, I mean, what? The CIA planted this guy 10 years ago and had him post a lot of anti Trump stuff that, you know, as part of this cover story, because maybe Donald Trump would get elected 10 years later and they could use him as part of it's all nonsense.

You didn't happen for yourself from it. Truth is an important part of democracy. And if you let yourself get sucked up by a bunch of lies and crazy, it's going to lead to negative impacts on democracy. We've seen that very clearly on the right. So there's my rant about that. I don't know if you have anything you'd like to add. You're just ignored all that false flag stuff that you're right to call it out and you know, and others should because that is not, you know, a sane or healthy part of the photoboxing movement and people should fix that in themselves, or we should just say it, you just said eloquently that that is wrong.

“It was an attempted act of violence and we'd deploy that, you know.”

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Well, then aren't you being inconsistent? Like shouldn't you be encouraging the conspiracy theories. I'm not trying to create new cranks and conspiracy theories. I was like of the existing cranks and conspiracy theories. I think that we should engage with them on issues where there is agreement, like such as how Donald Trump sucked us into the Iran war and various types of malign influence. It was involved in that. I think we should engage with them on pallin tier and the security state and the way that they're spying on people and going after their areas of overlap with cranks that I think that it's important for the Democrats to engage on.

But the whole work is not the place for cultivating new new cranks. Okay. This is a place for radical candor and truth of honesty. So. To the degree of the wedding gauges with cranks, one engages to try to lead them out of to say, look, this is this thing here is a reasonable point because there is evidence for us and it's trying to attempt to lead them out of being cranks not to double down on being a crank.

Okay, I'm done with this. Do you have anything else you want to say about the matter now? Let's move on. Okay, the Iran war.

So since Friday, I guess here's the update essentially from the two sides of the war Iran has an offer that they'll open the straight on their terms and agree to end the war. As long as there's no further nuclear talks, that part the nuclear enrichment has the canis to get kicked down the road. I should also note that this offer comes for Iran, but.

Part of the problem with like the initial effort here to just decapitate not only the eye at all of it. Everyone else that could have succeeded him is that there are now a bunch of factions inside the new eye at all. We don't even could be in a coma like we don't know exactly what's going on. He's suffered serious injuries. So we don't even know who we're negotiating with. So that does make the go shooting see stars on the challenge on our side trump set on fox over the weekend that his current plan is he's hoping that the oil block aid is going to lead Iran to cave.

Things that's going to cause systemic issues in Iran if they can't move oil out of the country onto the seas. So that is the current state of play doesn't seem like a solution is around the corner here bill.

But what do you make of it? I mean, it's pretty amazing eight weeks in that Iran clearly feels they have the upper hand and is playing that for those cards if I can use Trump's favorite analogy.

The cards they have pretty aggressively and we're saying, you know, gee, I think we hope we can hope there could be peace soon and maybe the straight could be opened and maybe we won't even look too closely at the details of how much control you still have it over it and what tells you might exact after it's opened. And I get the feeling that I don't know we'll see on the nuclear thing whether there isn't some kind of I chop really wants out of it and I think the Iranians they're actually being a little more aggressive and pushing their advantage that I've expected because obviously Israel and we could still do the real hell out of damage.

But but here we are very hard to see that this is coming up working out well and look and the one thing Trump never mentioned so I've got patience I've got plenty of time is the straight of our loses closed. The damage is being done is being done to the globally economy and to our economy and not just on oil gas prices and an oil but on petrochemicals and all kinds of things which people have extensively written about.

Is that like once it's closed as closed and so that's sort of that's part of the cost to the war like blowing up someplace or something. No each day it's closed increases the cost you know.

“So yeah, the Trump is just sitting there patiently it's nice that he's patient, but I don't think it'll have a lot of businesses and other finance ministries and others around the world are I think that's just great.”

Just go on like this forever. So the pressure will be on Trump. I don't know we could start bombing again. I guess he could go to ground troops. I can't believe you will he could. He doesn't seem to want to know his own ceasefire expired and he was making threats about how he's going to escalate and then he pretended like they had a deal because he you know, I don't really didn't want to go back to vomit. So I think you know hope maybe things gets a good break in the next few days maybe this there's more pressure on Iran internally and then we know the regime's a little unstable.

But I still think we're heading towards a pretty humiliating defeat and really a defeat in which Iran emerges with whatever actually they do with the straight over the next weeks and months.

They have established the principle that they can close it and they haven't paid a fundamental price for doing so most of the damage was done actually probably before they did that right. So that's very, very bad for the end of nuclear things left on results and our credibility isn't atters in the region and elsewhere very bad.

“Yeah, and I think the Iranian foreign ministers and visiting Putin today, China's in the mix, you know, it's really good.”

He had a meeting with a man and then a man and the Iranians are now talking about that toll booth that they can put onto the straight. So, you know, conceivably, you know, a whole new funding source because semi permanent funding source for for on if it turns out like this and Trump. In addition to what I said, I'm five years like he thinks, you know, might take a couple more weeks for Iran to cry on goal. And it's like the longest goes on. Why would Iran cry on? They don't even actually care about what happens to their people certainly not at this point. And so they have a lot more. I would think appetite for pain or ability to to weather pain at, you know, economically than then Trump does.

So, you know, like you said, I mean, maybe, you know, some pressure point happens where things collapse and Trump can get some kind of face saving deal out of this, but like hope isn't really an option and it's unclear what their strategy is besides that. Trump administration is talking about, that's what you tweeted about this. I totally agree with you on this. I'll range us as a bailout for the UAE. So, we're going to bail out the United Arab Emirates, which have an average income of, I don't know, whatever, 50, $60,000.

And of course, that average is wildly distorted because the people who actually run the place are making our zillionaires and then they have a lot of very cheap immigrant labor who may exploit a terrible place. Why are we building them out at all? I hope in fact, the Democrats make a huge fuss about this. I guess there's some treasury program that they can sort of aren't through.

“Yes, well, yeah, the executive branch has the ability to do that without congressional Google logo, Congress could step in and change those rules as speaking of that. I think the ridiculous justification for the war.”

There was an imminent threat, which if they really were an imminent threat, the president can use force and it had 60 days to get congressional authorization or to stop his military action.

So even if you buy the imminent threat thing, which no one should have, I wonder though, to some Republicans in Congress say, yeah, well, this is kind of 60 days.

I mean, can only mention this because a couple of Republicans have used this. This is a talking point. Well, he has 60 days, you know, so.

“Correct. I think fell on the Democrats should pressure them. This is what I think they're going to do.”

So I just want to think in addition to the UAE bailout you posted a subject from David Rothkoff does reading this morning and just the cost of the war is also, you know, kind of lost a little bit in the conversation about this and the amount of cost that is taking us to run the war every day. The material loss that we're going to have to replace now potentially bailout for UAE of Ron as part of the deal is going to want some kind of, you know, bailout Trump has even suggested potentially that we might help them with with a rebuild and it is mind blowing like the amount of waste and the addition towards that you could think about what the what we could have spent that money on domestically.

And all of that for again, like a strategic objective that is MIA at this point, like what it seems like the strategic objective at this point is like let the straight get up.

Which it was before the war started right before we spent all this money and lost lies and killed a lot of people incidentally in Iran too and did huge amount of damage to our standing credibility around the world. It's really a pretty epic failure. I've got to say it so far.

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All of me is a landscape and I we've got this a lot, but I do think just when you can take the lens back it's pretty striking the degree to which now like Zelensky because of the experience of the war and Ukraine. Ukraine has a very large standing military and a lot of expertise that now like they are sharing they develop their own like arms industry and you know they're reaching defense deals now with the Gulf states when it comes to you know drones and weapon defenses. It's pretty remarkable like we have very few positive stories on here so do like to mention that the like that Ukraine is not only repelled the Russian advance but has used this opportunity to build a quite impressive military apparatus and the Zelensky himself when there were so many opportunities for this to go sideways has like really bolstered their standing in the world relationship with allies in Europe and elsewhere.

And has done so in defending his own country but his own country as a liberal democracy and a tolerant one and a decent one, which is very good reminder to us that liberal liberalism does not have to be weak and sometimes it is a little weak and sometimes the party that's on the liberal side can be a little weak and there's that Robert Frost line what is it a liberal is someone so.

Leaders of 21st century liberalism from centrally Eastern Europe and I guess I wouldn't have predicted that you know 10 or 20 years ago or 15 years ago but you know I mean I give the but huge credit to them more credit away that they come out of cultures you might say that that don't make this as easy as being you know. A liberal here in the US right I mean it makes sense I just think you better right now after you said that people say there's always something about like the patriotism of the immigrants to America like somebody that has come here and is new particularly fled oppression overseas and they have even like more.

“More vigor zeal you know in their commitment to the democratic system and folks who've you know been here a while and don't know the alternative either something to that about Eastern and central Europe like the you know the memory.”

repression and totalitarianism is more fresh and you know the threats are more real and so there's less incentive towards decadence. That's an appealing theory. I don't know what to blow up to explore that later.

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I'm talking about the domestic political situation for Trump for the shooting. I guess I should just say I do understand the impulse totally wrong to want to get to your size about this thing because like the best area of that case is that Trump Trump's political standing was cratering and if you look at his numbers he really was around.

“The W line is no use approval rating. He's getting into the 30s. You're seeing in the data you know anecdotally from from people that you meet just like a sense that that Trump's.”

I don't think that what happened over the weekend is going to do anything to arrest his political decline. Maybe lots and buy a couple new cycles for whatever nonsense they want to push about the ballroom etc. But the fundamental decline was related to the fact that Donald Trump said that he was going to run on America first. And caring about Americans and caring about Americans, economic interests. And instead what he has done is get us involved in stupid wars and focus most of his attention on redesigning Washington in you know his gold lament image right like that's what he's focused on.

And this is not really doing anything to change that trajectory in my opinion. I'm wondering what you think about that.

I totally agree and I do think the economy. I mean he did better for more than he deserved to and people like us complain about it and think it's both the Congress not everything A and B wasn't quite as glad as people as he said. But he did a pretty good job of selling the fact that it was very good under him. And then they did a very good job of selling a fact which was partly true of course that we had inflation under Biden kind of economic growth is actually okay of the Biden four years is pretty comfortable.

“I think to the Trump almost entirely exactly comparable to Trump four years, but whatever people thought the Trump was better in the economy. That's one large reason he won as well as getting prices down.”

The economy's been sluggish and he hasn't gotten in prices to go back up. And that's not going to change. That's going to get worse. I would think over the next few months it's still longer.

Straight up our moves is a close for one thing. Not better. It was hoping for the magic moment and I don't the Trump, you know, the the inflection point where Trump gets, you know, it reversibly damaged. I don't know if life works that way. And I've had a politics that's had to be a little more, you know, sliced by slice and that's certainly what it's been for Trump over these 15 16 months. But now, you know, he is probably in the even if he's in the mid-high 30s, which maybe is a worse safer way to put it.

He's losing almost a point of, lost almost a point of month. And I keep thinking one kind of sort of things. Well, okay, it's going to staple, you know, he's got that solid base. He's got that solid base. And therefore he's going to stop going down as quickly. And of course, there's some comments that's true to that, right? You lose your 49th and 48th percentile support faster than you lose your 38th and 39th. You lose your 38th and 39th, physically right there, the weaker ones. Having said that, what is striking is that the pace of decline hasn't slowed. If anything is picked up during the last two months, during the war. And there's now real evidence in the data that his base is beginning to lose confidence in it.

The people who strongly approve that percentage is gone down. And it's really upside it down. We're getting to 50% strongly disapprove and like 20% strongly approve.

But if you're starting at 2050 of people who are unlikely to change their mind, that's very bad for Trump and very bad for the Republican party.

“You know, I think part of it is the economic stuff, as you mentioned, part of it is like this is why it matters that these crazy America first media people are turning on them.”

And this is why it is worth paying attention as noxious and gross as he is to a Tucker and Candace and them are saying because like there is some, you know, some slice of his strong backers that genuinely did not want us to get back into Middle East wars. You know, like this is, I think the Iran thing is so made out of inflection point as in this was the moment that, you know, the walls caved in on Trump and he never was able to recover, but I think that why it was important for him starting to lose that category.

Because fundamentally, like there were a group of, you know, conservative type voters who were genuinely upset about the cost of the Middle East wars. And, you know, in some of those cases, it was because they had people that were serving in them in their lives, in some of those cases, it was just a kind of broad idea that their lives are getting worse. Why are we spending this money overseas or they're about their different reasons. But I, that was a core group that he started with and this has just been a total betrayal of them.

I'm like a very fundamental thing, you know, like sometimes people say, well, Trump betrayed conservative principles on, you know, this issue or that issue.

But it's not a lot of times it was on stuff that I really only DC Beltway conservatives cared about, it's in the first place, tear off policy or whatever.

There were a lot of America first type voters in the country that did think we were spending too much money overseas, doing too much overseas. And that usually overlaps with the type of person that also didn't want immigrants to come into the country and other views that I don't agree with at all, but they are genuinely held.

“Trump is just totally kicking dirt in their face on it right now.”

And so it's like not surprising that some percentage of them are bailing. And again, not the whole country is not podcastless. And there's a lot of these people are fox listeners and they're getting, you know, more positive Trump coverage. But some segment of the mega base is alternative media listeners. And if you look at the stats, like Tucker and Candace's audience is growing and the audience of the podcast that are more supportive of what Trump is doing is declining.

That is a real thing, maybe it's only a couple percent here or there, but that matters. No, I agree. And just other people who were on the softer supporting side, who care less about these individual issues, just see the general, you know, fracturing or support and the kind of chaos. And they sort of think, you know, these were as supporters, what's wrong, kind of thing.

It's like that, you know, as opposed to, I care so much about this issue. I agree with you, the Iran War wars awards, you know, and if they go badly, then this is the president's war. This was not, I mean, whatever one thinks of the other wars, which also presents the paid a huge price for,

they did have some congressional support, at least at first at authorization.

Here, this is Trump's war and only his war. The fact that it looks like it's had to kind of end up as a pretty bad failure, they're pretty evident failure. Particularly hurts. I mean, I was making the having an argument or discussion with the foreign policy, the friend who does foreign policy this weekend, talking about how all the coverage was on the White House.

Obviously, dinner and everything, this was yesterday, because we're talking and not, not this Iran stuff, which is pretty striking that Iran is made. The IRGC is taking the demands it is now about, you know, well, we'll open the war to wait on our terms and put off the nuclear stuff. And this country, we were pummeling it allegedly, you know, was we have all the cards. I said, yeah, well, I guess we have people get back to making that argument point. And he even, he said, look at some point these things do get, I don't know, they escaped could find, but you know, people just know what's happening.

People see what's happening. People like this is a war. People that are following it. It's been a news a lot for two months. And they kind of know that this is not the outcome that he said we were going to get to.

“And even if they're not following the news, they see it at the gas pump, right?”

That's just real tangible impact here. And in that way, you know, you said that some of the software Trump supporters are seeing, you know, they do get influenced in some ways by seeing the Tucker's jump off the ship. Yeah, the comparison, and obviously all of the ants Larry stuff around Trump is so much worse. But just like looking narrowly at this decision to go up the river on more and like the way that the Afghanistan withdrawal happened.

I do think that a lot of the Biden, like people that got off the boat with Biden was a sense. I was like, yeah, I think he's kind of old, but, you know, we needed normal feedback. Things were too crazy under Trump. And then after you're going to see what's all happened since like, well, that seems like somebody was asleep at the sweatshirt. Like how that happened. Like that was very, it just wasn't handled well.

And then right on the heels of that, you see inflation start to tick up.

start to look at all this and say, this guy, you know, who's driving the ship here?

Like, do we have a captain? Like things are getting out of hand, you know, and maybe they didn't care that much personally about the Afghanistan policy, one way or the other, but it was that combined with the economic stuff. And there's just a sense that started to grow that like, we didn't have the strong leadership that people wanted to get things back on the right track. I do think there's some parallel to that here.

“That's a good point, but also I'd say a parallel in that Biden paid a price, I think, for seeming unwilling to acknowledge that Afghanistan could have been hit or better on the withdrawal.”

And I seeming almost oblivious to the inflation problem, or denying it or trying to expand it away, you know, deny it or or kind of minimize it for quite a long time.

And I think that's also true here, right, Trump obviously never acknowledges any problems.

And that doesn't matter as much of the problems seem to be either incidentals to his policies or people don't care about them, or maybe it's a global thing like a pandemic. And so Trump's been kind of a clown in handling it, but honestly, is anyone handling it very well, a lot of people told themselves that these are pretty particular problems that he has caused or not dealt with or promised to deal with and hasn't dealt with. And that he doesn't seem to want to acknowledge maybe the little course correction is needed.

And with the checkout with the world, the best converse, the right path, the checkout with the world, the best converse. The legendary checkout of Shopify, just the shop on your website, a bit to social media and over it. Well, that's a music for your ears. I know on videos of least of vendors, mid Shopify can't sit to an average and hit bad and start to design a test not only for you, but also for me. This matters.

Trump political standing going down because knocking on what he's not going to try to run again is, you know, particularly about the midterms and for me, particularly about the Senate. And so I do want to kind of do some temperature checks and make sure we're keeping our eye on what's happening in the Senate races as we get through the rest of the year. The baseline for this, which I'll just repeat briefly for everybody to make sure they're if they're not as close followers of the political report as I am and aware of the map.

The Democrats need to save their own seats. You know, obviously the incumbent Democrats or retiring Democrats those seats need to be protected. That's the Michigan Senate race is one of those. There's a big primary going on there right now.

“The Georgia Senate race John Ossoff is kind of be challenged. I think he's looking pretty strong right now and then there are the two states where Democrats are looking to do pickups where they've won something statewide relatively recently.”

So they seem more getable that is North Carolina with Roy Cooper running really strong race and then main looking like Graham Platner or Susan Collins, that's a bit of a wild card.

So let's just separate main for a second. Let's pretend like that is going to happen.

And if they get to Senate seats, then you got to go pick up two in red states. And so Ohio is the first one with shared brown back running again, the people look at and then you get in this jumble of Alaska, very tall Paltoa. So it's when I have my own closest Texas Florida Iowa Nebraska, you've independent running Montana independent running. Those are all Trump 10 plus states. So you need Trump standing to get really low to start to have hope that either Trump voters are so sick of them that they'll vote for the Democrat in those states or they'll stay home.

How do you kind of assess the state of play right now? I think there's a period of time where people are starting to get very excited and conventional wisdom. I was seeing some posts on nerd Twitter like the Democrats might get 54 cms in the Senate. It's like maybe who knows? But I don't know. I've looked at the data at recently. There's an Ohio poll that really stuck out to me that had shared brown down three that makes me think like more work needs to be done here. Trump's number stated be driven even lower, but I wonder what your view is on the state of play in the Senate.

I think the Senate is doable. I would still allow you to fight limits under 50 50, but it's not, you know, 90 10 either anymore. And I think it's very, very important. I think they're going to win the house. And I actually got an argument with some Democratic operative. We can't get loose side of the house. You know, that's where the winnable seats are. We're wasting a lot of money on these Senate, especially in big states.

“Obviously they should win whatever they can win in the house. But honestly it makes much more difference to win the Senate by one vote than to win the house by 27 s opposed to 22.”

You know, I think the house will happen now, especially if Virginia gets upheld and in the courts here, which I think is likely. I mean, Alaska, there's actually a poll showing the incumbent, I'll tell the hotel I had, right? Tell them it's down by like five or something. So I give you the Ohio things a good reminder that look these states are sticky and they can look possible, but then the last minute reverse and often is to the baseline Republican on the other hand if Trump's numbers go down a couple more points.

And then there are these, yes, wild cardish, Montana, Nebraska states, Southern states. This is simply a really close one.

I just want to say, the Mississippi candidate is kind of interesting than that Senate race, and it wasn't. Was it the Elvis Presley's cousin or whatever Brandon Presley ran down there statewide and got a little closer than you would think. I think black vote in Mississippi. That's a totally different type of strategy than like for a teleka like there you're trying to just maximize black vote. Hopefully, you know, the Trump unpopularity depresses turn out among white Republican voters at tough, but not a zero percent chance.

No, and I mean, these states are different. And this is where, you know, there's a lot of Washington, Denver, operatives are like, what's the magic, but there's no one, but I mean different issues work differently. The farming economy is really suffering and continues to get worse. It could be as a straight or more moves affects things like fertilizer. You know, then I, when Kansas, I think really are, but they both elected Democrats statewide in recent times in Trump times. I mean, so this is not like such an amazing thing that Democrats are winning and they tend to win the non federal offices because the state officers.

“I think for example, when I a Rob Sand who is a statewide elected officials, the auditors running for governor.”

I think he looks very good. The Senate, the Senate racist little different and and in some ways that complicate sex and now you're asking some Trump voters to go out and cut to Democratic boxes.

Governor and Senator, there's some psychological effects there, but I agree. I mean, depending on how the farm economy goes, Iowa might end up looking, I'm for all to talk about Texas, Iowa Nebraska, Alaska, you know, very well can end up being much closer. I think it's all in play. It's a, if it's a wave election, it's getting not quite there. I agree, one should be cautious. The generic ballot isn't quite where it might be at this yet.

But again, I history suggests it tends to continue trending in the direction it's in not not to reverse back, but a lot of things are going to happen. Well, they'd be a Supreme Court retirement.

What would the economy be in six months? And how will the war end? We sort of see where it seems to be going.

“How will we, we don't see the ending? Will there be other wars? God knows what Trump could try?”

Will some of the elections to version stuff work? How much will his desperation? And I do think this a lot of desperation coming here in terms of, you know, making him more authoritarian, not less. I don't think, I don't think we're going to see a triangulation situation here at it. We don't see, see, tidy bits of it. Let's get rid of Bavino and bring it home and kind of thing. But I think on the whole, what you see it did justice department and the defense department at this point is is intensification, not triangulation.

I guess some of that might work, but this is a big year. It's really a big year, you know. It's got to go on this Mississippi candidate's name. I had it in my head. I knew it was that, but I didn't want to get it wrong. And so I just, I don't know what you'll check. It's an interesting race in Mississippi. As you mentioned, you said it's below 50% I was just curious, polymarket, which I did not support. Okay, I did not support production market gambling, but, you know, just as a benchmark is interesting. It has Democrats 52 Republicans 49 right now for the Senate. That feels a little bullish for me on the Democrats.

That's higher than I would have it, but it's telling and it also just kind of is reflective about like that's where the real real battle is going to be this year.

“Okay, Bill Christ or anything else? I think I missed anything grinding your gears. You need to get off your chest.”

I think we got a fair amount of I just today. Yeah. That was good. That was wonderful. All right. Well, I appreciate you. We'll see you back here next Monday. Everybody else. We got a good guess line up this week. So we'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of the podcast piece. The more podcast is brought to you. Thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper and with video editing by Katie Loots and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.