The GOP's Disgusting Future
00:04:
(JVL)
Hello, everyone.
00:06:
(JVL)
Welcome to The Next Level.
00:07:
(JVL)
I'm JVL here with my best friends, Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of The Bulwark.
00:13:
(JVL)
Let's get to it.
00:14:
(JVL)
The impeachment of Joe Biden is moving forward in the House based on...
00:21:
(JVL)
Sebastian, can you give us some audio to start us off with Representative Joe Neguse?
00:28:
(JVL)
Neguse, did I have that right?
00:29:
(JVL)
Or is it more of the Italian Neguse?
00:32:
(JVL)
Neguse.
00:33:
(JVL)
Out of Colorado.
00:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
Come on, he got famous during the first impeachment.
00:36:
(JVL)
Talking with Guy Reschenthaler yesterday.
00:40:
(JVL)
That's very German.
00:41:
(JVL)
Yeah.
00:43:
(JVL)
Sebastian, hit it.
00:44:
(Crosstalk)
What is the specific constitutional crime?
00:48:
(Crosstalk)
that you're investigating?
00:49:
(Crosstalk)
Well, we're having an inquiry, so we can do an investigation and control the production of witnesses.
00:54:
(Crosstalk)
And what is the crime you're investigating?
00:56:
(Crosstalk)
And documents.
00:58:
(Crosstalk)
High crimes, misdemeanors, and bribery.
01:00:
(Crosstalk)
What high crime and misdemeanor are you investigating?
01:02:
(Crosstalk)
The high one.
01:03:
(Crosstalk)
Once I get time, I will explain what we're looking at, and I will make the equivalency of the last impeachment.
01:10:
(JVL)
No, I'm just asking you for the...
01:13:
(JVL)
So, I mean, normally when there is a high crime, you can do an elevator pitch for it.
01:20:
(JVL)
For instance, the president of the United States got on the phone with the president of Ukraine and said, you have to investigate my political opponent or I won't give you military aid.
01:31:
(JVL)
Or for instance, the president of the United States stood up on a stage and said, you have to go down to the Capitol this afternoon and stop the certification of the electoral college votes with strength.
01:46:
(JVL)
There, that's the elevator pitch.
01:48:
(JVL)
The elevator pitch for the Joe Biden impeachment is that the crimes he is accused of committing are high.
01:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
Maybe it's because Hunter Biden was high.
02:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
That's it.
02:03:
(JVL)
Sarah, how is it that this could... How is it that this could float with the general public, right?
02:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, I get very JVL in my head with stuff like this because this is one of those asymmetric things, right?
02:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
I listened to voters...
02:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
During all of these impeachments be like, this is a political witch hunt.
02:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
This is silly.
02:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
Why are they spending resources on this?
02:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
And like there was a thing.
02:30:
(Sarah Longwell)
There was a thing to follow.
02:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
And the idea that they are going to impeach now.
02:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
But and here's the other thing, like they keep doing this.
02:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
They keep being like, well, we need to impeach.
02:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
to do the investigation to find out the things.
02:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
And this is not the first time they've said this.
02:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's just now they finally got to the formal part.
02:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I guess it's because they've realized they have so little that they have to formally impeach in order to, I guess, get the legal standing to try to dig deeper.
03:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
But they must already know.
03:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
They would have found it by now.
03:04:
(Sarah Longwell)
They've been in a formal inquiry now for months and months.
03:08:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
03:08:
(Tim Miller)
No, they have to impeach to find out what's going on.
03:10:
(Tim Miller)
They took it from Nancy Pelosi.
03:12:
(Tim Miller)
You know, we've got to impeach Joe Biden to find it out.
03:15:
(Tim Miller)
I got to tell you, I had a couple of observations.
03:17:
(Tim Miller)
This fella, Reschenthaler fire.
03:20:
(Tim Miller)
I'd never heard of him.
03:22:
(Tim Miller)
And it's like,
03:24:
(Tim Miller)
I just think that there is this insight into what is happening in the Republican conference, which is like every time you meet a new person, they're stupider than you could possibly imagine.
03:35:
(Tim Miller)
I don't want to insult the Penn State University at Erie.
03:39:
(Tim Miller)
I was Googling a guy's resume here, but he seems like a total moron.
03:45:
(Tim Miller)
He was completely unable to answer the basic questions about what he's doing there.
03:50:
(Tim Miller)
He doesn't seem to care.
03:51:
(Tim Miller)
And this is just a median member now.
03:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
This guy might be above median.
03:55:
(Tim Miller)
I know.
03:56:
(Tim Miller)
People are still living in the 2017 construct, which is like if you didn't know a Republican congressperson, they're probably a basically, you know, a minimally competent member of Congress from an earlier era who decided to be quiet because Donald Trump took over the party.
04:14:
(Tim Miller)
And now they're sitting silently in the back bench.
04:16:
(Tim Miller)
That's not it.
04:17:
(Tim Miller)
Most of those people have cycled out.
04:19:
(Tim Miller)
And they've been replaced by the Reich and Slater fire.
04:21:
(Tim Miller)
So that's one observation I have.
04:23:
(Tim Miller)
Here's the other one that's only kind of tangentially related to this.
04:27:
(Tim Miller)
There's another big news this week.
04:29:
(Tim Miller)
I don't know if you saw this, which is Biden's Department of Justice laid a pretty serious indictment against Biden's son.
04:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
Mark Hunter.
04:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, the deep state.
04:38:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, like you might go to jail.
04:40:
(Tim Miller)
You really very well –
04:42:
(Tim Miller)
This is a – Hunter is in very serious danger of going to jail level indictment.
04:47:
(Tim Miller)
This is not a little BS patty cake indictment or a show indictment, whatever.
04:53:
(Tim Miller)
This is a real deal indictment.
04:55:
(Tim Miller)
And when DOJ indicts somebody with real deal indictments, they go to jail most of the time.
05:00:
(Tim Miller)
And so it's intriguing because the fundamental –
05:05:
(Tim Miller)
underlying element of, that I actually can explain better than Guy Reichenflasher, of what the point is, of what they claim to be investigating, is that Joe Biden was wrapped up in Hunter Biden's foreign dealings in some way or another.
05:21:
(Tim Miller)
When he was president, right?
05:22:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
05:22:
(Tim Miller)
No, no, no.
05:23:
(Tim Miller)
Sorry, when he's not president.
05:25:
(Tim Miller)
Oh, when he was not president?
05:26:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, no.
05:26:
(Tim Miller)
And also not when he was vice president.
05:28:
(Tim Miller)
That's so weird.
05:29:
(Tim Miller)
Also not when he was vice president, actually, when he was after the vice presidency.
05:32:
(Tim Miller)
There are some spurious accusations about his time when he was vice president, but most of the core accusations happened in the four years when Trump was president.
05:40:
(Tim Miller)
That seems so weird.
05:41:
(Tim Miller)
That is weird.
05:42:
(Tim Miller)
So anyway, if Biden was using the levers of his power—
05:47:
(Tim Miller)
in order to help enrich his son and help his son when he was VP and when he was not in an elected office.
05:54:
(Tim Miller)
You would think that when he'd be president, he might try to do that as well.
05:59:
(Tim Miller)
I don't know.
05:59:
(Tim Miller)
Try to put his thumb on the scale with old Merrick Garland.
06:02:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe have a tarmac meeting.
06:04:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe berate him publicly on X as another former president did.
06:11:
(Tim Miller)
I don't know.
06:11:
(Tim Miller)
There are a few potential things.
06:13:
(Tim Miller)
And he doesn't seem to have done any of that.
06:15:
(Tim Miller)
His last surviving son.
06:18:
(JVL)
Worst head of a crime family ever.
06:20:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, who seems to love very much.
06:22:
(Tim Miller)
And Hunter's in deep doo-doo.
06:25:
(Tim Miller)
And yet, somehow, this chain of events has not changed the narrative from a single Republican.
06:32:
(Tim Miller)
There's a great Jonathan J piece in New York Magazine today that he goes through.
06:36:
(Tim Miller)
Rich Lowry at the National Review is out there talking about, I can't believe people are getting the vapors about Donald Trump wanting to be a dictator when Joe Biden's out here running, having the DOJ indict his opponent.
06:48:
(Tim Miller)
And the Wall Street Journal is out there saying, oh, the Biden DOJ is corrupt.
06:52:
(Tim Miller)
Well, how much worse could Trump's be?
06:54:
(Tim Miller)
And it's like the Biden DOJ has indicted now Joe's son, Bob Menendez.
07:00:
(Tim Miller)
They're investigating Eric Adams.
07:02:
(Tim Miller)
They're investigating a member of Congress from the Democratic Party from Texas.
07:07:
(Tim Miller)
I mean, there is no amount of actual facts and action that could possibly change this imaginary narrative that Biden is corrupt and is the same as Trump.
07:17:
(JVL)
And yet all of this stuff, which is apparently, you know, prima facie insane, is going to wind up hurting Biden and helping Trump.
07:26:
(JVL)
Right.
07:27:
(JVL)
Because we will get both.
07:28:
(JVL)
Hey, see, Hunter Biden is guilty.
07:31:
(JVL)
And so Joe Biden is just as corrupt to go along right next to Trump is innocent because it's all a deep state conspiracy.
07:39:
(JVL)
Both of those things are going to be true in the minds of voters.
07:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
Here's the thing, though.
07:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, some of it is the bifurcated media.
07:45:
(Sarah Longwell)
Some of it is the shamelessness of Republicans, whatever.
07:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
But like the case that we are making about the DOJ, I don't hear that from Democrats very often.
07:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Now, maybe I'm not watching the right MSNBC shows, but I feel like- The White House can't make it because the White House shouldn't be commenting on these things.
08:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm going to lose my mind on this surrogate stuff.
08:03:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like the idea that there is not an army of talkers out there to be like, look how fair this Department of Justice is.
08:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
Look at what they're doing.
08:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
They are investigating Joe Biden.
08:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
Now, maybe some of the lawyerly types are doing it.
08:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
But like the political side needs to do it.
08:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
This campaign needs to start.
08:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
I am getting beside myself.
08:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like the reason I'm sorry, the reason for the asymmetry is in part.
08:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
Because of a communications gap, because there is no offense strategy right now.
08:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
Everybody thinks that Trump's going to do it for them.
08:31:
(Sarah Longwell)
And he's not.
08:32:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, he is to some degree, but like you got to do your job.
08:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
You got to get out there and be really aggressive about making these cases.
08:39:
(Tim Miller)
I want to agree in part and disagree just in part.
08:42:
(Tim Miller)
So the Biden White House has been pretty aggressive at making James Comer seem be clowned.
08:48:
(Tim Miller)
They put out a lot of press releases, a lot about that.
08:50:
(Tim Miller)
They talk about that.
08:52:
(Tim Miller)
I do think that there's a media element to this.
08:54:
(Tim Miller)
James Comer being a total clown is not on the Today Show.
08:58:
(Tim Miller)
I just, it isn't.
09:00:
(Tim Miller)
We talked about this a little bit last week, that it's kind of crazy, right, that we have a head of a committee that puts out these wheels off press releases with accusations with no basis behind them.
09:10:
(Tim Miller)
And it kind of doesn't make the news a lot of times.
09:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
But this is my point.
09:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
My point is that the reason that the Republicans are able to dominate these narratives and conversations is because they're out there being like, put me on TV.
09:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
Comer with no evidence goes on television all the time to talk about all the evidence he doesn't have.
09:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
Right.
09:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
To just blow the smoke.
09:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I'm saying that the Democrats, you can't get a hundred of them to be out there all the time to be pushing the story like the media.
09:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
You have to you have to set the narrative.
09:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
You have to set the tempo.
09:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
I just I think they are living in a bygone era where they think the media is just going to like do it for them.
09:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
And you know what?
09:44:
(Sarah Longwell)
Their stuff's not as exciting.
09:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
They got to make it exciting.
09:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
They got to get aggressive.
09:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
They got to have people who are validators and messengers.
09:51:
(Tim Miller)
The part where I do agree with you, I was going to save the story time for the very end.
09:53:
(Tim Miller)
But I will say, without betraying any confidences, I think it will be pretty easy to figure this out.
09:58:
(Tim Miller)
I was at a Democratic fundraiser where I met with a certain secretary in Joe Biden's cabinet.
10:03:
(Tim Miller)
We won't say who it is.
10:04:
(Tim Miller)
And I said to the secretary, I don't know what exactly your day-to-day looks like, you know.
10:10:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe it could be fixing potholes.
10:12:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe it could be looking at the hospital system.
10:14:
(Tim Miller)
You guys can decide who that might have been.
10:17:
(Tim Miller)
And that's really important.
10:18:
(Tim Miller)
And I've got some potholes on my street.
10:20:
(Tim Miller)
But maybe there's a better use of your skills.
10:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
Your particular talent.
10:25:
(Tim Miller)
Your particular talent.
10:27:
(Tim Miller)
Like taken.
10:28:
(JVL)
You have a very particular set of skills.
10:30:
(JVL)
Yeah.
10:31:
(JVL)
You can go on television and explain things.
10:33:
(JVL)
And you will go on television and explain everything to everybody unless you people elect Joe Biden.
10:38:
(Tim Miller)
And I got to tell you, the response is tepid.
10:43:
(Tim Miller)
The response is tepid.
10:44:
(Tim Miller)
Again, there's a lot of, we're kind of doing this.
10:48:
(Tim Miller)
There's a lot of, oh, I don't know.
10:50:
(Tim Miller)
I don't want to step on.
10:51:
(Tim Miller)
All well-intentioned, right?
10:53:
(Tim Miller)
All well-intentioned.
10:55:
(Tim Miller)
But there's a tepidness about it, just about whether this is needed.
11:01:
(Tim Miller)
Right.
11:01:
(Tim Miller)
Whether it's needed.
11:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
Whether it's needed.
11:04:
(Sarah Longwell)
There's just this gap to me that drives me crazy.
11:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
There's a gap between the language of, boy, democracy might end, Trump might be a dictator, all this stuff.
11:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
And then the like, do we need to get out there and push hard?
11:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
Maybe it's a little overkill.
11:20:
(JVL)
Maybe they're just waiting for the fourth quarter.
11:21:
(JVL)
You know, everybody makes a run.
11:23:
(JVL)
They want to make their run in the fourth quarter.
11:25:
(JVL)
Before we move on, just very quickly, I went to check in on our friend Andrew McCarthy, the very serious lawyer at National Review, because I was curious as to what he had to say all this.
11:34:
(JVL)
Here are the last two stories from him.
11:36:
(JVL)
The first is about the Trump prosecutions.
11:39:
(JVL)
Headline, the wages of prosecuting presidents over their official acts.
11:43:
(JVL)
You don't have to support Trump to worry that the criminal charges against him will set a dangerous norm-breaking precedent.
11:50:
(JVL)
Okay?
11:51:
(JVL)
That's on the one hand.
11:51:
(JVL)
On the other hand, he wrote about the Hunter Biden stuff.
11:55:
(JVL)
The Hunter Biden tax indictment is a disaster for the White House.
11:59:
(JVL)
So, you know.
12:01:
(Tim Miller)
It's a norm-breaking precedent to investigate Republicans, but totally appropriate.
12:06:
(JVL)
For things they did while president.
12:07:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, totally appropriate to investigate the sitting president's own son.
12:12:
(JVL)
For stuff that he did while the president himself wasn't even president.
12:16:
(JVL)
That is okay, and that's really important.
12:19:
(Tim Miller)
And it says bad things about the president.
12:21:
(Tim Miller)
One more thing just worth mentioning on this before we move on about, again, just the absurdity of all this, like to argue that this is some deep state plot.
12:29:
(Tim Miller)
Charlie wrote about this this morning called This is the Big One in his newsletter.
12:32:
(Tim Miller)
The short of this is Trump is saying in the Jack Smith case that he is immune from all his crimes because there's some sort of magic presidential immunity.
12:41:
(Tim Miller)
Judge Chutkin said this is nonsense.
12:43:
(Tim Miller)
And now this is being appealed to the Supreme Court.
12:46:
(Tim Miller)
The Supreme Court says they're going to take this.
12:48:
(Tim Miller)
So this whole question of whether or not Trump is held accountable for what he's doing now sits in the hands of a Supreme Court where he appointed three other people, right?
12:59:
(JVL)
He still needs to get two people he didn't appoint.
13:02:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, and still-
13:03:
(Tim Miller)
They will be able to make the case that this is some deep state plot against Trump when four separate grand juries of regular people in four different jurisdictions decided to move it forward.
13:13:
(Tim Miller)
And where the most serious case against him, whether he can be held accountable on this indictment.
13:19:
(Tim Miller)
Now that choice sits in the hands of a court where he appointed a third of the members.
13:24:
(JVL)
And yet still there's some democratic bias.
13:26:
(JVL)
We really do have to move on.
13:28:
(JVL)
But I want you to explain to me, Sarah, because I know what the answer is, but I don't know what the explanation is.
13:33:
(JVL)
Why is it that the three justices who Trump appointed should not recuse themselves on this case?
13:41:
(JVL)
Because I think they shouldn't, probably.
13:43:
(JVL)
But on the other hand, we hear all the time from people in your focus groups about like, well, the...
13:49:
(JVL)
I don't know, because it's the Supreme Court.
13:51:
(JVL)
You pull three people off on a big, important case like this.
13:55:
(JVL)
You have to be able to trust them somewhat.
13:57:
(JVL)
If they were to recuse themselves, it would be fine with me, but I can also see my way to say, no, that's a bridge too far.
14:04:
(Sarah Longwell)
This is a legal question that I don't know the answer to.
14:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like, do judges, when the people who appoint them, like if you're on a circuit court or something lower, the people who appoint them, a case comes in front of them, do they recuse themselves?
14:15:
(JVL)
Yeah, no, it does seem to me, right, if you were appointed by the governor to a court and the governor was charged with embezzlement and you, the judge, you would not get that case, right?
14:26:
(JVL)
Or if it came to you, it would not go to you.
14:28:
(JVL)
Seems obvious to me.
14:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
just as a last point on this, the extent to which we are just slowly walking towards multiple constitutional crises, like the – if we spend some time mapping it out, the idea that Trump could get convicted in Georgia, which is not federal, which is a state, and also then win Georgia as part of the election and, like, be sentenced to prison but also be the president of the United States, like –
14:53:
(JVL)
Everything breaks their way.
14:55:
(Tim Miller)
It does feel like a rigged game.
14:57:
(Tim Miller)
Okay.
14:58:
(Tim Miller)
This is the frustrating part about all of this is that I just feel like it's also so obvious.
15:01:
(Tim Miller)
We're so right.
15:03:
(Tim Miller)
We're so right.
15:05:
(JVL)
Why isn't everybody just saying what we're saying?
15:08:
(Tim Miller)
It's frustrating.
15:09:
(JVL)
Vladimir Zelensky came to America and everything went great.
15:14:
(JVL)
Republicans are not going to sign off on giving aid to Ukraine unless the House passes H.R.
15:22:
(JVL)
2, which is their border security bill, and unless the Senate passes some undefined border security bill, which Republicans won't actually say what it is.
15:32:
(JVL)
They say that they're willing to pass the Ukraine aid, provided the Democrats
15:37:
(JVL)
are good on border security, but when the Democrats have asked them to say, okay, so what is it you'd like to do on border security?
15:43:
(JVL)
The Republicans have declined to say anything.
15:47:
(JVL)
That's great, right?
15:48:
(JVL)
This is all perfectly normal stuff that, again, falls right within those two 40-yard lines on the football field of American politics, right?
15:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
Here's the thing.
15:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
Republicans do not want to give the Democrats a win on immigration.
16:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
They don't want to solve this problem.
16:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
They want this to be a bad situation going into the next election, so they're not interested in doing it.
16:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I have a critique of you, JVL, from reading your newsletter.
16:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
Read it.
16:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
Great.
16:11:
(JVL)
You finally read it and you want to read it.
16:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I've got and I've got some I've got a problem like it because your Joe Biden should cave on immigration.
16:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
Got some people's backs up.
16:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
Mine included.
16:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
And part of it was the framing of the idea that Joe Biden should cave on immigration versus people to read.
16:29:
(JVL)
It's just a headline.
16:29:
(JVL)
That's the only place the cave appeared was in the headline.
16:32:
(JVL)
You got to get people to click the piece, Sarah.
16:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
Oh, okay.
16:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
Well, I'm sorry.
16:35:
(Sarah Longwell)
I got a few things to tell you about people and headlines.
16:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
Okay.
16:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
But the idea of caving is terrible.
16:41:
(Sarah Longwell)
What he should do is make a big production out of the idea that I'm with you.
16:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
Let's do something about the border, guys.
16:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
Let's go on offense.
16:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
Let's do it and make them come to him.
16:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's not caving.
16:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's not playing on their terms.
16:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
He's going to set the terms and the terms are going to be, yeah, but we need to do something about the border.
16:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
What do you want?
17:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
Let's do this all together.
17:01:
(Tim Miller)
That's caving.
17:02:
(Tim Miller)
I'm sorry.
17:03:
(Tim Miller)
So this is the definition of terms.
17:04:
(Tim Miller)
I defended JBL's honor against Liam Donovan of the Lobby Shop podcast.
17:08:
(Tim Miller)
He's pretty good on there.
17:09:
(Tim Miller)
And because he said this too.
17:11:
(Tim Miller)
He was just like, well, what do you mean cave?
17:13:
(Tim Miller)
Like Biden is already coming to the table with them on immigration.
17:15:
(Tim Miller)
And I'm surprised you don't agree, Sarah, because this goes to your communications question.
17:19:
(Tim Miller)
And my response to Liam was, well, my definition of terms on caving is people that do not have a podcast specializing in lobbying are aware that Joe Biden is giving Republicans what they want on immigration.
17:31:
(Tim Miller)
That's my definition of caving.
17:33:
(Tim Miller)
And so to me, the point is, and some of this is a little bit of a semantic debate.
17:38:
(Tim Miller)
I wish Frum was good on this on Charlie's pod yesterday.
17:40:
(Tim Miller)
I wish we could have Frum on to kind of work this out.
17:42:
(Tim Miller)
But the semantic point is that
17:44:
(Tim Miller)
I think that there are two tracks here.
17:45:
(Tim Miller)
I think that the Biden administration in good faith is working with the Senate to come up with a deal.
17:50:
(Tim Miller)
Your girl, Kristen Sinema, seems to be the point person on that.
17:54:
(Tim Miller)
Once again, I have to succumb to saying nice things about Kristen Sinema.
17:58:
(Tim Miller)
So there you go.
17:59:
(Tim Miller)
Kristen Sinema, who has some credibility with these guys.
18:02:
(Tim Miller)
As you've said over and over again, Sarah, there was some point to her being so annoying so that she can gain credibility with these people.
18:07:
(Tim Miller)
Well, now it's time.
18:09:
(Tim Miller)
Let's use that political capital you've gained with Republicans for being so annoying, Kristen Sinema.
18:14:
(Tim Miller)
So that's happening already.
18:16:
(Tim Miller)
That track is happening.
18:17:
(Tim Miller)
I think that there needs to be and maybe this is coming.
18:20:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe this is post Zelensky.
18:22:
(Tim Miller)
You can call it whatever word you want.
18:23:
(Tim Miller)
But like a public clear sentiment that is Joe Biden is saying there are some things Republicans want to do about the border that are not the ideal Democratic proposal.
18:34:
(Tim Miller)
And I want to meet them in the middle.
18:36:
(Tim Miller)
Right.
18:36:
(Tim Miller)
Like I've already proposed border funding.
18:39:
(Tim Miller)
They are proposing border funding plus some other stuff.
18:42:
(Tim Miller)
I want to give them some of the stuff that they want because this is so important, right?
18:47:
(Tim Miller)
To me, that is caving, like whatever you call it.
18:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
Caving sounds weak.
18:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
Negotiating sounds strong, like negotiating and coming to terms.
18:55:
(Tim Miller)
Okay, so this is where I think there's a disagreement.
18:57:
(Tim Miller)
We, being the pro-democracy side, I think we want to give Republicans a win on this.
19:03:
(Tim Miller)
Let them have this one.
19:04:
(Tim Miller)
This is a battle in a bigger war.
19:07:
(Tim Miller)
The win is they can have their little immigration win in exchange for Ukraine gets funded, which is really fucking important.
19:14:
(Tim Miller)
Israel and Taiwan get funded.
19:15:
(Tim Miller)
They probably get funded anyway in a different context.
19:18:
(Tim Miller)
And in exchange for now we share the border.
19:21:
(Tim Miller)
Now we share it because we gave this to you, right?
19:23:
(Tim Miller)
Like that is the strategic play here, which is we are giving you this win.
19:27:
(Tim Miller)
You get it.
19:28:
(Tim Miller)
You get to go out and say, hey, we have a bloody shirt.
19:31:
(Tim Miller)
You get to have two days on the news, which is like, hey, we're doing some of Donald Trump's policies on the border that these Democratic cuck squishes said was so horrible before.
19:41:
(Tim Miller)
Now they're giving it to us.
19:42:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, we're giving you that bloody shirt.
19:44:
(Tim Miller)
in exchange for sharing the border owning and paying for Ukraine.
19:48:
(Tim Miller)
Now, is that practically possible?
19:50:
(Tim Miller)
I don't know.
19:51:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe the Republicans will never do that.
19:53:
(Tim Miller)
And maybe the Republicans want Ukraine to lose and want the border to be chaos.
19:56:
(Tim Miller)
And then the Democrats can have that argument, right?
19:59:
(Tim Miller)
Which is, we tried.
20:01:
(Tim Miller)
We gave them what they wanted, but they wouldn't come to the table.
20:04:
(Tim Miller)
And now the border is chaos and Ukraine is losing to Putin.
20:08:
(Tim Miller)
To me, that is the win-win position.
20:10:
(Tim Miller)
And getting to the win-win position requires losing.
20:14:
(Tim Miller)
on this first one.
20:15:
(JVL)
Yeah, my real question to you guys, and I think the best criticism of my piece is that Biden doesn't have control over whether or not he can cave, because he can cave, but Republicans have to accept it.
20:28:
(JVL)
And it is entirely possible that even if he were to say, HR2, done, right?
20:35:
(JVL)
I'm just gonna swallow all of HR2, no matter how mad it makes my base.
20:39:
(JVL)
The Senate Republicans could still just decline.
20:42:
(JVL)
Right.
20:43:
(JVL)
And I don't think they pay any price for it.
20:45:
(JVL)
I think the person who gets hurt on this is Biden.
20:49:
(JVL)
So that's I mean, it is possible that no matter how hard he tries to cave, the Republicans won't take it.
20:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah.
20:56:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I do think this creates a lose lose where the impression is now that Joe Biden, you know, didn't negotiate well enough or didn't give them what they wanted when actually and I do think he should give them what they want.
21:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I guess the one thing that I think is compelling about the case Tim's making, although he didn't quite say this, is the idea of like if Joe Biden needs to cave in order to.
21:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
make it clear to his left flank that he didn't want to do this, I can sort of see it.
21:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
But to me, like, you want to be in the sort of Trump seat of being like, no, I'm a master negotiator.
21:30:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I'm going to give you guys, like, we're going to meet in the middle.
21:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
I'm going to give you guys a bunch of this stuff.
21:35:
(Sarah Longwell)
You're going to give me what I want, which is to protect Ukraine.
21:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
And like, I'm a dealmaker.
21:39:
(Tim Miller)
But Trump didn't cut any deals.
21:42:
(Tim Miller)
That doesn't work.
21:43:
(Tim Miller)
I understand that Trump didn't do it, but I'm saying that that is— What you're pitching is no.
21:46:
(Tim Miller)
What you're pitching is ending with nothing.
21:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
No, I'm not.
21:49:
(Tim Miller)
If Biden comes from the alpha position of, I'm the master dealmaker, Republicans come to the table, Republicans say, fuck you.
21:57:
(Tim Miller)
And so the border stays how it is, and Ukraine loses.
22:01:
(Tim Miller)
So the choice is to give Republicans what they want or to not fund Ukraine.
22:05:
(Tim Miller)
Those are the choices on the table.
22:07:
(Sarah Longwell)
Optically, he has to look weak in order to give Republicans.
22:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
I mean, I just think he can say, okay, well, I'm not sure he has to take that hard an L on it.
22:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think it can be a win-win.
22:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think the problem is fundamentally, and I'm much maybe closer to JBL on this, which is I don't think the Republicans have any interest in
22:25:
(Sarah Longwell)
No matter what, whether it's caving, whether it's negotiating, I just don't think they want to play because they want chaos at the border because they know that's hurting Joe Biden.
22:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
And it is hurting Joe Biden right now.
22:36:
(JVL)
If I can be incredibly darkly cynical, Republicans have a political interest not only in the border being chaotic, but also in Ukraine losing.
22:48:
(JVL)
And if they are able to hold tough and prevent the needed aid to Ukraine and things go badly in Ukraine, that's bad for Biden politically.
22:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
I actually agree.
22:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think that they are so awful now.
22:59:
(JVL)
I just think all of their interests are aligned with this.
23:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
I no longer will defend them on the merits.
23:05:
(Sarah Longwell)
I think they would rather not give Ukraine aid because it's also a base issue, right?
23:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
They don't want that.
23:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think they want chaos at the border.
23:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I don't think that they care about the practical effects of either of those things because they think it's electorally in their interest.
23:21:
(JVL)
And they're right.
23:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
They are right.
23:24:
(Tim Miller)
They're right.
23:24:
(Tim Miller)
Maybe you guys are right.
23:25:
(Tim Miller)
So this has been my problem with the people that are criticizing the, you know, the other people who I respect, like Sargent, who are like, Biden shouldn't give the Republicans what they want.
23:35:
(Tim Miller)
Biden's already making a good deal.
23:36:
(Tim Miller)
What I'm trying to say is true.
23:38:
(Tim Miller)
I agree.
23:39:
(Tim Miller)
Biden has already made a good offer.
23:41:
(Tim Miller)
He offered a ton of money for the border initially, and he's offered some asylum changes.
23:46:
(Tim Miller)
So he has made a good offer in the old school version of politics of horse trading, blah, blah, blah.
23:52:
(Tim Miller)
That's not where we are.
23:54:
(Tim Miller)
And so I'm sitting here in the chair of – there are a lot of important things out there in the world.
23:57:
(Tim Miller)
But I think the Ukraine thing is really, really, really important.
24:00:
(Tim Miller)
Really fucking important, giving them money.
24:03:
(Tim Miller)
And me and Bill were talking about this last night.
24:05:
(Tim Miller)
And if we get to a situation where this gets delayed and delayed because Democrats are like, oh, we have the moral high ground on this.
24:12:
(Tim Miller)
And we're sniffing our own – like everyone here knows that we've made a good offer.
24:16:
(Tim Miller)
And it's the Republicans that are bad faiths.
24:18:
(Tim Miller)
Like, OK, you can say that.
24:21:
(Tim Miller)
You can have the moral high ground here and say we've made a good offer.
24:25:
(Tim Miller)
The Republicans are bad faith.
24:26:
(Tim Miller)
And now we're going to take that argument to next November.
24:29:
(Tim Miller)
But that is a path for nothing changing on the border and for Ukraine not having absolutely needed weapons and resources and other material.
24:39:
(Tim Miller)
That's a path for it because taking the moral high ground and saying we've already done what people are suggesting we do is a path to stalemate.
24:48:
(Tim Miller)
Republicans are happy with stalemate.
24:50:
(Tim Miller)
I'm deeply concerned about this, and I think that Bill's point last night was like the longer we wait, if Trump's the nominee, this thing is over.
24:58:
(Tim Miller)
This thing is over.
24:59:
(Tim Miller)
The Republicans are definitely not dealing once Trump's the nominee because whatever deal they come to the – Yeah, because whatever deal Biden comes to the table with, Trump will say this is a bad deal.
25:08:
(JVL)
He'll kill them.
25:09:
(Tim Miller)
So they've got six weeks, four weeks, whatever, six weeks to figure this out before New Hampshire.
25:16:
(Tim Miller)
And I don't think they're going to.
25:17:
(Tim Miller)
And this goes back to my which I guess I'm the most full throated person in the case for caving, which is like I to me, it looks like the options on the table are doing everything possible to get Republicans to swallow this right now, which means things we don't like or getting that saying, you know what?
25:34:
(JVL)
We're not even going to amend it.
25:35:
(JVL)
H.R.2 done.
25:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, but this is where Joe Biden needs to go out publicly.
25:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
He needs to stand up at a podium and say, nothing is more important right now to the stability of the world than Ukraine defeating Putin.
25:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
And we need this aid.
25:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
Zelensky came and he asked for it.
25:51:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so I am willing to, in this moment, give Republicans what they want on the border.
25:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
Anyway, I just think there's this way you can do this from a position of strength.
26:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like this is the thing that drives me crazy is that people assume that the average American has any sense of what these negotiations are like and who gets the blame for it.
26:09:
(Sarah Longwell)
And the answer is like always the person in charge because they're not paying attention.
26:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
So Joe Biden has a vested interest of like elevating this and making it clear that he wants to give them what they want as part of this deal because the stakes are so high.
26:23:
(JVL)
All right, Sarah, before we get off of this, you had a J.D.
26:24:
(JVL)
Vance thing you wanted to do.
26:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
So, you know, I think a lot about what does it look like post-Trump?
26:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
So let's say Trump dies.
26:30:
(Sarah Longwell)
We know the Republican Party is bad, but who really carries it forward?
26:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
And J.D.
26:35:
(Sarah Longwell)
Vance, so he walked out of the Zelensky meeting yesterday.
26:38:
(Sarah Longwell)
He has figured out how to basically, the extent to which he is an isolationist now in a way where he knows how to take every single thing.
26:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
We can't support Ukraine.
26:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
We need to secure our border.
26:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
You know, we can't trade with these guys.
26:51:
(Sarah Longwell)
We have to do this.
26:51:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like,
26:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
I actually think J.D.
26:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
Vance more and more is the cynical, disgusting future of the Republican Party.
27:00:
(Sarah Longwell)
He wanted to be famous.
27:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
He wanted to be, he has these delusions of grandeur.
27:04:
(Sarah Longwell)
His whole life story is about then being in this place where he thinks, now he tells himself, he's fighting for the little guy.
27:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
And he's fighting for the American people who got left behind.
27:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's a thread.
27:15:
(Sarah Longwell)
You can see the thread from his hillbilly elegy days.
27:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
And the way he has convinced himself to do that is we abandon our Democratic allies abroad.
27:21:
(Sarah Longwell)
Not just abandon them, but we make a moral case that doing anything for them is leaving Americans behind.
27:27:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think he is the future, and I hate that future.
27:30:
(Tim Miller)
It is sick.
27:31:
(Tim Miller)
I agree with that.
27:32:
(JVL)
Hold on, Tim.
27:33:
(JVL)
I'm going to say it right now.
27:34:
(JVL)
I said it at the time, and you guys disagreed with me.
27:36:
(JVL)
I'm going to say it again.
27:37:
(JVL)
America would have been better off if Josh Mandel had won that primary.
27:41:
(Tim Miller)
I agree with that.
27:42:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, I'm not sure in retrospect.
27:43:
(Sarah Longwell)
That's not true, yeah.
27:44:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, JVL is always right.
27:45:
(Tim Miller)
I agree with that.
27:45:
(Tim Miller)
J.D.
27:46:
(Tim Miller)
Vance is sick.
27:46:
(Tim Miller)
I will say just one closing thing on the Biden thing.
27:49:
(Tim Miller)
Even on this podcast where everybody is always right, we've underestimated, and maybe not Sarah, even though Sarah's kind of underestimating it now, the ability of the Senate to work things out with Joe Biden.
27:58:
(Tim Miller)
They've worked shit out at the last second a few times, and I'm just hoping that it happens again sometime before Donald Trump wins New Hampshire.
28:06:
(JVL)
We've got a case going on in Texas.
28:09:
(JVL)
I hate talking about abortion on this show because...
28:13:
(JVL)
There is no way to come out of these conversations without feeling terrible because it's horrible.
28:19:
(JVL)
Here's what's going on.
28:19:
(JVL)
I'm gonna give you guys the 15-second version for anybody who has not been following the story of Kate Cox.
28:24:
(JVL)
Kate Cox is 31.
28:26:
(JVL)
She's got two kids.
28:27:
(JVL)
She was about 20 weeks pregnant and started having complications.
28:32:
(JVL)
She showed up the emergency room to see what was going on, did testing.
28:35:
(JVL)
It turned out that her baby has trisomy 18, otherwise known as Edwards syndrome.
28:40:
(JVL)
This is a condition which almost always results in stillbirth.
28:47:
(JVL)
When babies do survive birth, fewer than one in 10 make it to their first birthday.
28:53:
(JVL)
There are the occasional examples of these kids living a little bit longer than that, but it's very, very bad.
28:59:
(JVL)
Because Kate Cox has already had, from her first two kids, C-sections,
29:04:
(JVL)
This puts her at all sorts of elevated risks with the C-sections and increased age.
29:09:
(JVL)
She wants to have an abortion of this kid because it's, A, life-threatening, B, as important to her, it threatens her future ability to have babies because it already having had two C-sections carrying a stillbirth to term could make it very, very hard for her to ever have kids again.
29:26:
(JVL)
No doctors in Texas will perform an abortion because of the law in Texas.
29:30:
(JVL)
She goes to Texas district court.
29:32:
(JVL)
The district court allows abortion to proceed for her.
29:36:
(JVL)
And the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, he is so hot to prevent her from terminating this pregnancy that he has this escalated to the Texas Supreme Court where the nine Republicans on the Texas Supreme Court vote to overturn the district court and prevent her from having an abortion.
29:56:
(JVL)
As I said, this is a horrible story.
29:57:
(JVL)
There are no good things in it, but holy shit.
30:01:
(JVL)
I mean, the takeaway from this is if you have a serious medical condition in the state of Texas, the only way to get an abortion of what is going to be a horrible pregnancy that could possibly endanger your life and your ability to have kids is to get the Texas Supreme Court to personally sign off on your situation.
30:24:
(JVL)
And I don't understand why that is tenable as a political matter.
30:33:
(JVL)
Like we can leave the moral stuff aside.
30:35:
(JVL)
We can even leave the legal stuff aside, right?
30:37:
(JVL)
Just put aside whatever your personal moral, like what should be or shouldn't be.
30:41:
(JVL)
Based upon all the polling we've seen for like 20 years on this stuff, I don't understand how politically that is a sustainable position.
30:49:
(JVL)
Thoughts?
30:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, so I have a number of thoughts, but let's talk about the politics of it.
30:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
So there's a, we actually, we probably should have talked about some of the polling that's come out this week.
30:58:
(Sarah Longwell)
We've had a bad polling week, meaning that it's a week of polls that are bad for Joe Biden.
31:02:
(Sarah Longwell)
They're good for Donald Trump.
31:04:
(Sarah Longwell)
And one of the polls had, that I have a difficult time, this is a CNN poll, had Trump
31:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
beating Biden by 10 points in Michigan.
31:13:
(Sarah Longwell)
Now, that doesn't sound right to me, but part of the reason it doesn't sound right is that Gretchen Whitmer just beat Tudor Dixon in Michigan, the Republican candidate, by 10 points.
31:24:
(Sarah Longwell)
So that would mean there would be a 20-point swing in the people voting there in Michigan.
31:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
So, okay.
31:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
Now, one of the main reasons that we talked about this a lot in 2022 during the focus groups that voters voted for Gretchen Whitmer over Tudor Dixon is that Tudor Dixon was one of the people who said that she thought this 12 year old rape victim should have to carry a baby to term.
31:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
And people were like, yeah, no.
31:49:
(Sarah Longwell)
And that was it for them with Tudor Dixon.
31:50:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like she said that and it was over.
31:53:
(Sarah Longwell)
And even people who were frustrated with Gretchen Whitmer, they had complaints about how she handled COVID.
31:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
She hadn't fixed the potholes.
31:59:
(Sarah Longwell)
They were absolutely a no on Tudor Dixon.
32:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think that one of the things Republicans, you know, when people say abortion is going to be an issue, I think what they don't realize is coming is hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of stories like this one where
32:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
There is a tragic situation either of rape,
32:19:
(Sarah Longwell)
or of a terrible medical complication where the life of the mother is under deep threat, where you are forcing people into the saddest situation where Republicans who can believe in limited government, right?
32:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like what the stories will do, it's not the issue of abortion.
32:37:
(Sarah Longwell)
The stories will remind people of the immense amount of state power that Republicans are now exercising over people's personal medical decisions.
32:46:
(Sarah Longwell)
And they will tell these stories and
32:48:
(Sarah Longwell)
for women especially, like part of this story, I think about the idea of something happening just to me and the idea of having to clear it, not just with the Texas legislature, but with a corrupt POS like Ken Paxton, who's been indicted multiple times and been let off and he is now in charge of a complicated medical decision for this woman.
33:08:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like it does, it is the kind of thing that instills the sense of urgency and anger and fear that drives people to the polls
33:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
and drives them to vote against politicians who would support these types of things.
33:21:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
33:22:
(Tim Miller)
I'm going to reject your offer to not talk about the moral implications about this JBL, because I just, I do think it's important to just give my perspective on this because I think it colors my political analysis.
33:33:
(Tim Miller)
And I just, I don't know what the point of all this is.
33:36:
(Tim Miller)
If I, if I cannot say that I fundamentally believe that every human life has value and, and, and I have a good friend that has a kid that has a minkus, which is not similar to Edwards in, in the,
33:50:
(Tim Miller)
science of it, but it's similar in the, you know, the likelihood of survival and, you know, how long the kid is supposed to live and development and all that.
33:58:
(Tim Miller)
And, you know, he's a sweet boy, but, you know, his life is going to be, his life is not great.
34:02:
(Tim Miller)
You know, his life is full of pain and he's lucky that he has parents that are wealthy and that can, you know, do everything possible to keep that kid in comfort.
34:14:
(Tim Miller)
That is not true for everybody, right?
34:17:
(Tim Miller)
And this is where I get to the fundamental pro-life of it all, right?
34:21:
(Tim Miller)
It's like if Ken Paxton was out there saying, I just so deeply believe in the dignity of every human life that like, I'm sorry, but this fell past the X week line.
34:33:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, okay.
34:35:
(Tim Miller)
It's six weeks there.
34:36:
(Tim Miller)
So that's where I would put it.
34:37:
(Tim Miller)
I just mean in a hypothetical world, right?
34:39:
(Tim Miller)
Right.
34:39:
(Tim Miller)
This is what, 21 weeks or 20 weeks?
34:41:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
34:42:
(Tim Miller)
You know, so it fell past the 20-week line.
34:45:
(Tim Miller)
Let's say that they had agreed on a 20-week ban.
34:47:
(Tim Miller)
And we don't know what's going to happen.
34:49:
(Tim Miller)
And, you know, there's still going to be value in this life.
34:53:
(Tim Miller)
This child is going to have a hard life.
34:55:
(Tim Miller)
And we're going to be there.
34:56:
(Tim Miller)
Like, we're going to make sure that there is nursing care for this child, et cetera, et cetera.
35:02:
(Tim Miller)
Even then, I understand the anger in Sarah's face of being like, Ken Paxton is going to be involved with this at all.
35:08:
(Tim Miller)
Even then, I understand that this is very complicated.
35:12:
(Tim Miller)
But, like, that's not what's happening.
35:14:
(Tim Miller)
Oh.
35:14:
(Tim Miller)
Right?
35:14:
(Tim Miller)
Like, there is no indication here that the nine Supreme Court justices of Texas or Ken Paxton give a fuck about what happens to Kate Cox or what happens to this child after the forced birth.
35:30:
(Tim Miller)
And that is where this whole thing crumbles for me on a moral level.
35:35:
(Tim Miller)
And I think that's separate from...
35:37:
(Tim Miller)
The political question.
35:39:
(Tim Miller)
You know, this is a woman that wants to have another kid and I think, you know, it seems like would be unable to, you know, given various stuff that I don't really understand about uteruses.
35:49:
(Tim Miller)
And that is where I'm, like, most sympathetic to this.
35:53:
(Tim Miller)
Like, this is a complicated choice.
35:54:
(Tim Miller)
This is a choice between the woman and her doctor.
35:56:
(Tim Miller)
She has other aspirations to have children.
35:59:
(Tim Miller)
This is not, like...
36:00:
(Tim Miller)
Kermit, whatever his name is, in Philadelphia.
36:04:
(Tim Miller)
This is not one of those cases.
36:06:
(Tim Miller)
I just think fundamentally the argument is being lost by the pro-life side because I am the swing voter in this case.
36:18:
(Tim Miller)
I'm putting myself in like, you need to win me over.
36:20:
(Tim Miller)
that these laws exist because you care so deeply about human life.
36:26:
(Tim Miller)
Because I care deeply about human life, and you've lost me, right?
36:31:
(Tim Miller)
Like by the way that you've treated her, by the lack of support for women post-birth, and so here we are.
36:37:
(Tim Miller)
And so now I think you end up in a situation where if you've lost that argument with me,
36:43:
(Tim Miller)
You're definitely losing it with the secular swing voters that we've talked about a bunch here, you know, that Tudor Dixon did not do well with the secular Trump voters who are not on board with this, who came on board for all these other reasons with Trump.
36:55:
(Tim Miller)
And you're definitely motivating young women and suburban women and other people.
37:01:
(Tim Miller)
And so that's where, to me, it ends up being a loser on all counts.
37:05:
(JVL)
This is worth saying.
37:09:
(JVL)
Ken Paxton could have just accepted the district court ruling, right?
37:13:
(JVL)
That's the other thing, right?
37:14:
(JVL)
If you're in Texas and you want the law, like, you could just leave the law in place and the district court ruled what it could.
37:22:
(JVL)
There is a weird maliciousness to...
37:26:
(JVL)
Like, no, no, we're going to go with the extra mile here to see if we can appeal the decision and get it.
37:32:
(JVL)
But I bring that up because I want to juxtapose this with a piece that's in Politico today about Kellyanne Conway and Heather Higgins.
37:38:
(JVL)
Most people know Kellyanne Conway.
37:40:
(JVL)
Most people don't know Heather Higgins.
37:41:
(JVL)
Heather Higgins is a rich woman who, because she has a lot of money, is considered an intellectual in a Republican circle.
37:48:
(JVL)
And they are going around the hill to Republicans saying that's very important that Republicans start talking about contraception instead of abortion.
37:59:
(JVL)
Because if they would only just talk about how great contraception is, that's a winning message for them.
38:04:
(JVL)
And Heather Higgins, this is what she says.
38:07:
(JVL)
Republicans are like your uncle who really loves you and loves the women in his family, but he's bad about showing it.
38:15:
(JVL)
It's just not in their natural vocabulary.
38:18:
(JVL)
And we're trying to help them learn how to make this be more part of their vocabulary.
38:23:
(JVL)
That's what it is.
38:24:
(JVL)
Ken Paxton is just like your uncle who just loves all the women in his family and he's bad at showing it.
38:29:
(JVL)
That's all.
38:30:
(Sarah Longwell)
Well, they're bringing in the cavalry here because they know they got a real big political loser on their hands.
38:36:
(Sarah Longwell)
I got news for Kellyanne Conway.
38:39:
(Sarah Longwell)
It's that, go ahead, make contraception an issue because what you're going to get is a bunch of Republicans who are actually like, actually, I don't think so great about contraception either.
38:47:
(Sarah Longwell)
And actually, I would like to remind people what an absolute cave person I am.
38:52:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I think it's not going to go well.
38:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
Every time...
38:54:
(Sarah Longwell)
When I start to look at these polls, as I do, and I'm sanguine about the polls in a lot of ways because I listen to voters all the time and I have a strong sense right now that when push comes to shove, you know, without the third party option and things like that, Joe Biden is still – all the hands still go up for him.
39:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I don't need to sit and unskew all of them.
39:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
I just think they're snapshots in time and people should –
39:17:
(Sarah Longwell)
People should do the work.
39:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
There should be more urgency.
39:20:
(Sarah Longwell)
But also this like obsession with them is not good.
39:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
But I do when I when I do start to be like, oh, these numbers are super bad.
39:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
I do think about the ability to tell these stories on abortion and how viscerally women especially.
39:34:
(Sarah Longwell)
But but I think folks in general feel about this.
39:37:
(Tim Miller)
Can I just give you one sentence on the contraception, please?
39:39:
(Tim Miller)
And then you can move on to whatever you want to.
39:41:
(Tim Miller)
It's just something people might have forgot.
39:43:
(Tim Miller)
It's a really smart vote that Mike Kevin held.
39:47:
(Tim Miller)
Just last week, 195 House Republicans voted against the Right to Contraception Act.
39:53:
(Tim Miller)
And now they've blocked action in the Senate as well.
39:56:
(Tim Miller)
So that was, let's see here, July 2022, last July.
40:01:
(Tim Miller)
So Kellyanne's a little late.
40:03:
(Tim Miller)
She needed to make her trip down there about 20 months ago and stop them for voting against the Right to Contraception Act.
40:09:
(Tim Miller)
Anyway, sorry.
40:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah, that's a good one.
40:11:
(Sarah Longwell)
That's a good one for some ads.
40:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
Well, I just, we didn't even talk about, we didn't even think about having as the topics, like the Seltzer poll that came out in Iowa.
40:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I want to bring it up just because I think this is a good one for Tim, where
40:22:
(Sarah Longwell)
Now that people have dropped out, right?
40:23:
(Sarah Longwell)
And so just so you know, Ann Seltzer there in Iowa, she's the gold standard pollster.
40:29:
(Sarah Longwell)
She is the one who knew, what did she get right last time that everybody else got wrong?
40:34:
(JVL)
She saw Santorum surging.
40:36:
(Tim Miller)
No, but it wasn't that.
40:38:
(Tim Miller)
It was her poll that came out the weekend before 2020 that was like, actually, this is going to be close.
40:43:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
40:44:
(Tim Miller)
You know, it was it was actually this is going to be close.
40:47:
(Tim Miller)
It was when people were feeling starting to feel a little confident about Biden right towards the end.
40:51:
(Tim Miller)
And her poll came out on Thursday or Friday.
40:53:
(Tim Miller)
It's kind of 100 percent.
40:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
Yeah.
40:55:
(Sarah Longwell)
Nope.
40:55:
(Tim Miller)
Actually, it's going to be close.
40:57:
(Sarah Longwell)
So she just put out a new poll, and I always wait for her polls out of Iowa.
41:01:
(Sarah Longwell)
And now that we've had more consolidation in the field, Donald Trump has gained eight points.
41:06:
(Sarah Longwell)
Ron DeSantis, hot off of his Kim Reynolds endorsement, got three points.
41:10:
(Sarah Longwell)
Nikki Haley stayed exactly the same.
41:12:
(Sarah Longwell)
And Vivek is down there with nothing.
41:14:
(Sarah Longwell)
Same with Chris Christie.
41:16:
(Sarah Longwell)
Donald Trump is up now the eight points.
41:18:
(Sarah Longwell)
And I can't remember what that put him at, but it was certainly above 50 percent.
41:21:
(JVL)
51.
41:22:
(Sarah Longwell)
Look, the Nikki, I want the Nikki boom as badly as anybody.
41:26:
(Sarah Longwell)
But Trump is over 50 percent in Iowa.
41:28:
(Sarah Longwell)
And this isn't some like rube off the street pole.
41:33:
(Sarah Longwell)
So I think people need to, that's why, this is why with the Biden stuff, I mean, I have just, I think that people need to kick it into gear.
41:40:
(Sarah Longwell)
Like we're doing this thing and we got to get ready.
41:43:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah.
41:44:
(Tim Miller)
Well, consolidation has helped Trump.
41:46:
(Tim Miller)
I don't know if you've heard anybody say that before.
41:49:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, you did.
41:49:
(Tim Miller)
Somebody on this podcast has been saying that for about a year now.
41:52:
(Tim Miller)
And I did a whole separate – we have a YouTube page now where I do separate little short takes.
41:59:
(Tim Miller)
And if you just want to hear me rant about how consolidation is helping Trump, I did one of those on YouTube.
42:04:
(Tim Miller)
And it's nice.
42:05:
(Tim Miller)
We love our home team.
42:07:
(Tim Miller)
The YouTube comments, they're not as nice as you people because we're out there in the Wild West and a lot of strangers are out there.
42:13:
(Tim Miller)
That's a good thing because we're reaching new folks.
42:16:
(Tim Miller)
So yeah, consolidation is helping Trump.
42:18:
(Tim Miller)
And I started to get – this week was the week.
42:22:
(Tim Miller)
I'll look at the December 11th week when I started to receive texts from people that are like –
42:28:
(Tim Miller)
this is happening.
42:29:
(Tim Miller)
Like, this is really happening.
42:31:
(Tim Miller)
Like, it's sinking in.
42:32:
(Tim Miller)
It's starting to sink in out there that it's like, it's really going to be true.
42:34:
(JVL)
Text from people who are civilians or people who have clinical problems?
42:38:
(Tim Miller)
Civilians.
42:38:
(Tim Miller)
So these two that I'm thinking of are pretty engaged civilians, but not like weekly next level podcast listeners level engaged, like kind of engaged, right?
42:48:
(Tim Miller)
And so we're moving slowly.
42:50:
(Tim Miller)
The concentric circles are moving slowly out.
42:52:
(Tim Miller)
And eventually, like my high school buddies that don't watch the news are going to start texting me and be like, it's really Trump again.
42:59:
(Tim Miller)
And so, you know, people are starting to get nervous.
43:02:
(Tim Miller)
We've moved one concentric circle out this week, I think.
43:06:
(JVL)
That's great.
43:07:
(JVL)
Well, I had something great to talk about, the Trump NFTs, but we are out of time.
43:11:
(JVL)
So I'm going to save that for the secret show.
43:13:
(Tim Miller)
Can I tell you about the White House Christmas party?
43:15:
(JVL)
We have one minute.
43:16:
(JVL)
I think we may have to get Sarah out of here first.
43:18:
(JVL)
No?
43:19:
(Tim Miller)
Sarah, do you want to hear about it?
43:20:
(Tim Miller)
Just go ahead.
43:21:
(Tim Miller)
Hurry, hurry.
43:21:
(Tim Miller)
You just want to hear about it?
43:22:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, do.
43:22:
(Tim Miller)
I did get to meet Joe Biden this last week.
43:24:
(Tim Miller)
And I don't want to admit it wasn't anything special.
43:26:
(Tim Miller)
It wasn't a private briefing.
43:28:
(Tim Miller)
I was in a line.
43:29:
(Tim Miller)
It was a cattle call line of people.
43:31:
(Tim Miller)
We were going through, getting our Christmas party picture.
43:33:
(Tim Miller)
And I'll tell you this, you're supposed to go up there, hold your hands by your side, get the picture, move on, brief greeting, Merry Christmas, Mr. President, move on.
43:40:
(Tim Miller)
I did not do that.
43:41:
(Tim Miller)
I went up to Joe Biden and I did, this is Sarah's right about this, where she said maybe I was maybe a little disingenuous when I told Carrie to stop touching me because I do like to touch people.
43:51:
(Tim Miller)
And I just grabbed Joe Biden by the arms, just both arms.
43:55:
(Tim Miller)
And I was just like, Mr. President, God love you.
43:58:
(Tim Miller)
We are keeping you in here.
44:00:
(Tim Miller)
I need to understand that.
44:02:
(Tim Miller)
I was like, we are not letting that other guy get in here.
44:04:
(Tim Miller)
We are going to keep you in here.
44:06:
(Tim Miller)
And I just had a 40-second out-of-body experience where I just held him up and I just sent all of the energy in my body into his body.
44:16:
(Tim Miller)
And then I grabbed onto Jill's two hands and I was like, God love you.
44:20:
(Tim Miller)
You got to keep him.
44:21:
(Tim Miller)
We got to keep him in here.
44:22:
(Tim Miller)
We are going to do this.
44:23:
(Tim Miller)
And the people in the picture line are like, what is happening?
44:26:
(Tim Miller)
They're like, please, sir, please turn around.
44:28:
(Tim Miller)
Sir, please turn around.
44:30:
(Tim Miller)
And Tyler is like standing there just waiting for his picture.
44:33:
(Tim Miller)
And I received the picture this week.
44:35:
(Tim Miller)
I was happy when it came out because I thought it might be everyone looking at the camera except me staring at Jill.
44:40:
(Tim Miller)
But I...
44:40:
(Tim Miller)
I must have turned around for one second right before the camera took.
44:43:
(Tim Miller)
So I did everything I could in the energy space.
44:48:
(Tim Miller)
Chakras.
44:48:
(Tim Miller)
Yeah, in the chakras.
44:50:
(Tim Miller)
In the chakras, I did everything I could do in the chakras.
44:53:
(Tim Miller)
Now we're going to move into the actual work part of things.
44:55:
(Tim Miller)
Merry Christmas.
44:56:
(JVL)
Merry Christmas to everybody.
44:58:
(JVL)
We will probably do this next week.
44:59:
(Tim Miller)
We're doing it next week.
45:01:
(JVL)
Definitely show up on Friday because I've got some hot Trump NFT talk for Sarah.
45:07:
(JVL)
Bye.
45:08:
(JVL)
Peace.